YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THE LIBRARY OF THE DIVINITY SCHOOL LEX MOSAICA LEX MOSAICA OR THE LAW OF MOSES AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE LATE RIGHT REVEREND LORD ARTHUR HERVEY, D.D. Bishop of Bath and fFells EDITED BY RICHARD VALPY FRENCH D.C.L., LL.D., F.S.A. EYEE AND SPOTTISWOODE LONDON— GEBAT NEW STEEET, FLEET STEEET, E.C. EDIKBTJEaH, GLASQO-Sr, MELBOtrENE, SXDHET, ASD NE-ST TOBK 1894 PK12 lOSDOU: ETEE AHD BPOTTIB-WOOBE, Ber Maiaty's Printers, DOWITS PAEK EOAD, HACKinST, N.l ESSAYS AND CONTRIBUTORS. 1.— THE ARCH^OLOGICAL WITNESS TO THE LITERARY ACTIVITY OF THE MOSAIC AGE. Eev. A. H. Saycb, 'D.D., LL.D., Professor of Assyriology, Oxford. 2.— MOSES^THE AUTHOR OF THE LEVITICAL CODE OF LAWS. Eev. Geoege Eatvlinson, M.A., Canon of Canterbury, late Camden Professor of Ancient History, Oxford. 3.— THE DEUTERONOMICAL CODE. Eev. Geobgb C. M. Douglas, D.D., Principal, and formerly Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis, in the Free Ohwch College, 4. -PERIOD OF JOSHUA. Eev. E. B. GmDLBSTONE, M.A., Hon. Canon of Christ Church; late Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. 5.— PERIOD OF THE JUDGES. Eev. EiCHAED Valpt Febnch, D.C.L., LL.D., F.S.A., Sector of Llan- ma/rtin, and Sural Dean. 6.— THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. Eev. J. J. Lias, M.A., Sector of East Bergholt ; Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Llandaff. 7.— THE PERIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. Eev. E. Watson, D.D., Leetmer in Theology, and Fellow of St. John's 8.— THE NORTHERN KINGDOM. Eev. J. Shaepb, D.D., Sector of Elmley-Lovett ; late Fellow of Christ College, Cambridge. 9. -THE HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN KINGDOM IN RELATION TO THE LAW OF MOSES. Eev. Alexandee Stewaet, LL.D., F.A.S., Aberdeen. S 1063. ^ 3 VI ESSAYS AND CONTRIBUTOBS. 10.— THE EIGHTH CENTURY. Eev. Stantlhy Leathbs, D.D., Prebendary of St. Paul's ; Professor of Hebrew in King's College, London. 11.— THE SEVENTH CENTURY. Eev. Egbert Sinkee, D.D., Librarian of Trinity College; Ex-Examiner in the Semitic Languages Tripos, Cambridge. 12.— EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL Eev. P. E. Spencbe, M.A., Queen's College, Oxford; Vicar of All Saints', Haggerston. 13.— THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD. Eev. EoBEET Watts, D.D., LL.D., Professor of 14. -SUMMARY. Eev. Heney Waoe, D.D., Principal of King's College, London; Prebendary of St. Paul's ; Chaplain in Ordinary fo the Queen ; Preacher of Liimolns Inn; and Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury. PREFACE. r|lHE Higher Criticism has had its say in this country as well as on the Continents of Europe and America. Sporadic efforts have been already made by re sponsible writers to show that the new position is either untenable or is fraught with greater difficulties than the traditional view. But it occurred , to the Editor that there was still room for a work which should put to a more systematic test the working of the recent hypotheses. We appeal to the same documents as our opponents. We believe that our opponents are equally with our selves desirous to arrive at truth. The critics have appealed to the development of events as recorded in the Old Testament in verification of their theories : we endeavour to show that upon these theories the history is unworkable in any one of the centuries between the period of the great lawgiver and the completion of the Canon. The project was submitted at an early stage to the late Bishop of Bath and WeUs, who expressed his warm approval of, and his personal readiness to take some part in, the work, if it could be arranged that VIU PREFACE. to him might be assigned the " Introduction " rather than one of the proposed " Periods," for which he felt his strength would be unequal. To the " Introduction " the Bishop at once de voted his energies, the manuscript being completed only a few days before he was called to rest. In his letter to the Editor which accompanied his manuscript the Bishop says : — "It is far from what I could have wished it to be. Still, if the force of the argument is seen by other minds as it appears to my ow;n, I hope that, with God's blessing, it may not be wholly useless." It only remains to be added that the Essays have been written in perfect independence of each other, and that each writer only holds himself responsible for his own contribution. B. V. E. Jjlanmartin, '7th August 1894. SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. I. The ARCH^OLoaicAL Witness to the Literary Activity of THE Mosaic Age. . . 1 PAGE Historical scepticism has heen the result of a critical analysis of ancient docnments and their contents ..... 3 The "literary analyst" has dissected the Biblical books into a num ber of more or less late fragments, and the " higher critic " has accordingly denied the historical trust-w-orthiness of the narra tives in them ......... 4 Both -were unchecked in their conclusions by a comparison with other Oriental literatures of equally ancient date, and the Mosaic age was assumed to have been a non-hterary one. . 5 But archaeology has brought to Hght an extensive literature in Egypt and -Western Asia, which goes back to a much earlier period than that of Moses, and has shown that the Israelites when they left Egypt were in the midst of a society of readers and -writers .......... 7 In Egypt -writing was to be found on the smallest objects of common use, and the Tel el-Amama tablets have proved that Canaan was the centre of great literary activity ... 8 Schools, libraries, and archive-chambers existed there, filled -with books inscribed on imperishable clay ..... 9 Among the cities where we now know such collections of books existed were Jerusalem, Gaza, and Gezer, which were not destroyed by the invading tribes . . . . . . 10 The documents preserved in them, therefore, which were in great part records of contemporaneous events, might easUy have sur- -vived to the period when it is acknowledged that writing was practised by the Israelites ....... 1 1 Even in the desert the researches of Glaser and Hommel make it probable that an alphabetic script was employed by the natives of Arabia . ¦'^ To believe that the Israelites alone remained in a state of literary isolation is incredible . . . • • • • • ^"^ The Pentateuch itself contains evidences that such was not the case. Thus the statement that Canaan was the brother of Mizraim refers us to the period when Palestine was a province of Egypt, which it ceased to be in the century after the Exodus, and the name of the Babylonian Mmrod could have become the text of a Canaanitish proverb only at the same time . . . • 15 SYNOPSIS OP CONTENTS. The relationship between the earlier chapters of Genesis and the -traditions of Babylonia is accounted for by the fact, revealed by the Tel el-Amarna tablets, that Babylonian cosmological legends were studied by Egyptians and Canaanites, and the Babylonian colouring is as observable in the passages which have been assigned to the " Blohist " as it is in those which have been assigned to the " Jehovist "....... 16 II. Moses the Author of the Levitical Code op Laws. Explanation of what exactly is meant by "the Le-vitical Code of Laws," and what by Moses being the Author of it . . . 21 Four positions to be established — I. That the Levitieal ¦ Code is such a Law as Moses from his position and the circv/mstances of his time might home been expected to promulgate. This shewn, [a) From the air of extreme antiquity which attaches -to it . 21 (6) From its fragmentary character, and the inartificial mixture of the fragments with a narrative ... 22 (c) From the fact that great portions of it are wholly un- suited to the condition and circumstances of the Israelites 'at any later time than that of their sojourn in the Sinaitic wilderness ......... 22 (d) From the traces which it contains, both positive and negative, of Egyptian influence ..... 23 ' (e) From the traces which it contains of Semitic, and es pecially of Arabian, influence ..... 25 (/) From the fact that there is nothing in the Levitieal Code un suited to the time of Moses or to the circumstances under which he is stated to have become a legislator . 29 II. That the Levitieal Code is such a Law as the later history of the people of Israel postulates and requires ... 30 Condition of the people in the time of Joshua ... 30 Condition in the time of the Judges ..... 32 Condition under Samuel, Saul, and David .... 34 III. That the human testvmon/y to the fact of Moses having given the Levitieal Lann is a/mply sufficient to establish it, being extraordina/rily full and varied, and almost absolutely unconflicting ......... 36 Testimony of the writer of the Book of Joshua ... 36 Testimony of Da-vid, Solomon, and the state archives to the end of the kingdom ....... 37 Testimony of the Prophets ...... 37 Testimony of Ezra and Nehemiah — its importance . . 38 Post-exUic testimony — Author of 1 Esdras — Author of Eccle- sia.sticus — Author of 2 Maccabees — Eupolemus — Philo — Josephus ......... 40 Heathen testimony — Manetho — Hecatseus of Abdera — Lysi- ~ machus of Alexandria — Tacitus — Juvenal— Longinus — Nicolas of Damascus . 41 SYNOPSIS OP CONTENTS. xi CI n J 1- . PAGE oupposed contradictory testimony examined ... 42 Witness of early Christian teachers— St. James— St. Paul— St. Stephen— St. Peter— St. John Baptist— St. Philip—, Clemens Eomanus — Ignatius of Antioch, etc. . . 43 IV. That, beside and beyond all this human testimony, the foot of Moses homing given the Levitieal Law is attested by a Witness from, whom there is no appeal, who is at once hwmoM and Divine — our Lord Jesus Christ ... 44 Summary of this Witness ....... 45 How it is met — Argument of " accommodation " — Argiunent of " nescience "¦ — Question of the " self -emptying " of Christ 45 Supposed proofs of Christ's nescience examined ... 47 Novelty of the exegesis that the nivacns involved an abdi cation of His omniscience ...... 50 Indications in Scripture that there was no such abdication . 51 Weighty words of the Bishop of Oxford .... 52 Conclusion 52 III. The Deuteronomical Code. The critical question as to Deuteronomy First Impressions 555656 The personality of Moses : his history fits into his work . We must note (1) that this Book is not a code ; (2) that its style Is rhetorical ; (3) that so also is its grouping of facts . 56 In it the Lawgiver appears as the Prophet of Israel . . 68 It is historical as much as the Fourth Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles ......... 58 It is not like the fictitious speeches in classical historians . 59 Second Thoughts — the Critics ....... 60 Their usual position : not favourable to the supernatural ; to our Lord's testimony; to the threefold division of the Old Testament ; to the authority of the prophets in Israel 61 .Reflections on these Second Thoughts ...... 62 I. Difficulties of any date for the composition later than Moses ; not Josiah's time, not Manasseh's, etc. . . 63 II. The Book of Joshua and the so-called Hexateuch . . 67 III. Fatal objections to any date later than the time of Moses 70 IV. Lessons from the criticism of Vemes .... 74 The Objections of the Critics ....... 77 We admit development in this Law, but during Moses' lifetime 78 We deny inconsistencies — I. With the laws in the other Books : the law of the single sanctuary; the law of the priests and Levites, etc. . 80 II. With the rest of the Pentateubhal history ... 95 III. With the phrases which Moses might use ... 96 xu SYNOPSIS OP CONTENTS. IV. The Period op Joshua. Plan proposed The beginning of Joshua related to Deuteronomy, and the end to Judges ........... Direct citations from Deuteronomy embedded in the charges made to Joshua and reproduced in his own final addresses Precepts given in Deuteronomy acted upon in Joshua . . ' . Use made of the earlier parts of the Pentateuch .... Joshua's personal history threads the Books together The theology of the Book ........ If the Book of Joshua is ancient and trustworthy, its evidence goes far to estabhsh the position of the Pentateuch as a whole. The antiqui-ty and trustworthiness of Joshua is proved — I. By the fact that it is taken as true and even formally cited in the historical books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings. i. The crossing of Jordan ....... ii. The fall of Jericho. The saving of Eahab. — The curse on the rebuilding of Jericho . iii. The trouble of Achan iv. The alliance with the Gibeonites V. The sun caused to stand s-tDl . -vi. The reference to God's faithfulness II. By the fact that it stands the tes-ts of archaeology and topo graphy. i. The old nationalities ii. The settlement of the country iii. The boundary lists iv. The nomenclature . V. Notes appended vi. Use of the lists in Chronicles Testimony of recent exploration. 1. The Kamak lists ....... 2. The Tel el-Amama tablets .... 3. The discoveries at Lachish ...... 4. The walls of .lerieho ....... III. By other marks. i. Indications of the work of eye--witnesses .... ii. Use of the first person ....... ui. Special titles ......... iv. Peculiarity in the spelling of Jericho .... The modem analytical theory unreasonable and unproved The Book of Joshua firmly established, and its evidence to the Law of Moses unassailable ....... PAGE 99 100 102 103 104 106 106107107 107 108108108 108109 111 111 112112112 113 114 115116117 118119 119 119120 121 SYNOPSIS OP CONTENTS. XUI V. The Period op the Judges. The contention of the Higher Critics . PAGE 126 Object of Essay 127 Preliminary inquiries : (a) Date 127 (b) Homogeneity ...... 127 (c) Tendency 128 Evidence in detail : (a) Tabernacle 133 (6) Ark 139 (c) High Priest 141 (d) Levites 146 (e) Sacrificial system 148 152 {g) Vows 167 (h) Circumcision ...... 161 (t) Genuineness of speeches .... 163 171 „ (1) of constitution .... 172 (2) of tribal precedence 173 „ (3) of national unity .... 176 ,, (4) of worship ..... 179 The Mosaic Code a necessity .... 181 Objections considered ...... 182 Appendix A. Date of Book .... 188 „ B. Genuineness of speeches 192 „ C. Homogeneity .... 196 VI. The Times op Samuel and Saul. Functions of criticism, as described by the critics themselves . . 203 Discussion of their view ........ 203 Opposition to the critics not necessarily blind conservatism . . 208 Gravity of the issues involved, making it more than ordinarily necessary carefully to test the correctness of the conclusions arrived at . 208 Some postulates of criticism tested by applying them to the Book of Chronicles ......... 210 Principles on which the history -will be treated .... 213 General credibility of Jewish history -will not be questioned, save where special reason can be found for doing so . . . 214 Linguistic features of 1 Samuel ....... 217 Authority of the LXX. 220 Alleged " earher and later narrative " ia chaps. 8 — 12. — Examina- -tion of this allegation ........ 222 XIV SYNOPSIS OP CONTENTS. Recrudescence of the Philistine power in Samuel's later years, whether improbable or not Probabihty of the history as it stands . Hosea's corroboration of it . Undemonstrative character of Je-wish worship, as exhibited in the story of Hannah ..... General credibility of the history Probable date of First Book of Samuel . Proofs of the existence of the Mosaic Law in it Character of Samuel as illustrative of Jewish religious thought His treatment of Agag . . ¦ . His proclamation of his o-wn integrity . Detailed e-vidence of the existence of the Mosaic Law The priesthood. — Tabernacle. — Directions for pubhc worship — vest ments — ordinances — candlestick — word used to denote remission of sin — furniture of the Tabernacle Treatment of the Ai'k by Hophni and Phinehas Return of the Ark to Israel ...... Offerings — New Moon — ceremonial uncleanness — ^priests' portion- shewbread — -wizards ....... Summary of pro-visions in force ...... Samuel's usurpation of priestly functions, how explained Veracity of Chronicles ....... Worship at High Places General conclusions from examination of the history Ques-tions to be answered by the critics before they can claim that their theories are proved ....... PAGE 232 233 233234234 235 238241 244245 247 248256258269261 263266266270274 VII. The Period of David and Solomon. The period of Israel's prosperity and freedom of action. — Israel can obey her Law if she wills— Does that which is right-pThere is no polytheism or image worship — Does not conform to the standard of the Mosaic Law— Was obedience to it to be ex pected when good kings were on the throne P — Difficulties in the way of obedience to Di-vine Laws. — Dlustrations of these from general history. — Special reasons why the reUgion of David's and Solomon's days should not be of a Levitieal type — The Law nevertheless not a dead letter. — The critical argument from the silence of the history unsound.— The autho rities for David's and Solomon's reigns 2 Samuel. A life of David not a history of Israel — Does not de scribe Israel's rehgious condition. — The Ark an object of special interest — Regarded by David with the greatest reverence, but as neither idol nor charm.— Right reverence for the Ark implies much of the Priestly Code. — David's character — Its inconsist encies — These not unnatural considering his circumstances- Seems to be a true child of Moses 281 288 SYNOPSIS OP CONTENTS. XV 1 Kings. Character of Book— Standpoint Deuteronomic. Solo mon's reign, how regarded.— Relation of the description of Solomon to the Deuteronomic law of the kingdom. — The Temple an object of deep reverence to the author of Kings. — Traces of the Priestly Code in the description of the Temple and its con secration.— The Temple itseK implies a Priestly Code.— Either David and Solomon or Moses the authors of the Temple- Code. — The Temple contains no idol — Contains symbolical images— The critical theory of the relations of the Tabemacle to the Temple, and its difficulties 294 Chronicles. Its partial character — Taken alone a misleading guide — Not an ecclesiastical romance — ^Its partiality not in consistent with its inspiration. — All books of Scripture partial. — A valuable and necessary supplement to the earlier histories. — Describes the priestly side of Israel's religion. — Probable an tagonism between priest and prophet ..... 304 The Prq-vdrbs. Character of Book. — Slight relations -with Israel's History and Law. — Implies a high point of religious develop ment — and therefore long previous religious education. — A natural product of Solomon's Teign 309 The Psalms. Great importance of in regard to the Mosaic author ship of the Law. — -David a great poet — Proved by tradition — Fits in -with the history — Israel's only poet of name — Author of Davidic Psalms — Proved by titles — ^by 2 Samuel 22. — Criti cism of Professor Cheyne's line of argument. — Character of David not inconsistent -with the authorship of Psalms. — Bearing of Inspiration on his qualifications. — Moses and his Law needed -to account for David and his Psalms ..... 312 Smnmary of conclusions . . . . . . . . 320 VIII. The Northern Kingdom. The sources — Amos, Hosea, Kings — do not give a new -view of the rehgion of Ephraim. — Amos, Hosea, are genuine, au-then-tic, and support Kings ......... 325 I. The evidence of Amos and Hosea is authentic. — They had accurate knowledge and no reason for distortion.- — ^ Audience well informed — ^hostile, and supported by historic precedents. — Reference to earher prophets — -to Torah and statutes — dating from the Exodus ....... 326 II. Witness of Amos and Hosea to the Mosaic Law . . 329 i. Amos. Jehovah is Creator — God of Israel — the only God. — No image worship. — Incest. — Pledged garment. — Nazirites. — Ritual Law. — Third year tithe. — Leaven. — Unclean land. — ^New moon and Sabbath. — One altar. 329 335 xvi SYNOPSIS OP CONTENTS. ii. Hosea. Jehovah is Creator — God of Israel — the only God. — Ko image worship. — Strife -with the priest. — ^A priestly nation. — Uncleanness. — Mixture. — Devotees. — Removal of boundary. — The unfaithful -wife. — Defile ment by corpse. — Dishonourable marriage. — Ritual Law III. The Books of Kings are ki accord -with the Prophets . 341 i. EUjah and Elisha. — Jehovah controls all the forces of Nature— the only God— God of Israel— controls other nations— a God of love and holiness. — The evening offering.— The sons of the prophets.— Elijah did not support the caK-worship. — The altar on Carmel. — Summary of evidence from the history of Elisha . . 341 ii. The Disruption.— The standard of Kings is Deuteronomy. — ^No prejudice from their late date. — The main points supported by Amos and Hosea. — The causes of the Disruption.— The motive of the caH-worship.— The covenant -with David. — Mercy to Ephraim. — Ritual of calf-worship. — The distinction between Ephraim and Judah. — Objections by WeUhausen .... 347 IX. The History of the Southern Kingdom m Eelation TO THE liAW op MoSES. The higher critics aim at effecting great changes — ^Assume evolu tional processes — Assumptions not evidence .... 355 The leading critics pronounced rationalists — Denying the super natural they cannot fairly treat the Bible .... 356 Mistaken in denying early knowledge of -writing — Their analysis of the Pentateuch raises endless difficulties — Destroying its organic unity destroys the Bible as such .... 357 " Redactors " are creations of the critical imagination . . . 359 The critics are loose in thinking and illogical in reasoning — Seem unfair in their cri-tical treatment — Cannot repel the charge of making patchwork of Scripture — Are much divided . . 360 Several critical theories have been already rejected . . . 363 Critical evidence being subjective is ever changing . . . 363 The critics very defective expositors — Generally the authors of their many discrepancies ........ 364 Without reason deny Davidic authorship of Psalms ascribed to Da-vid — Cause thereby insurmountable difficulties . . . 365 Critical assumptions as to Psalms tested — These assumptions dis regard " Inspiration "........ 367 Denying Da-vidic authorship puts them out of joint -with history . 367 The titles of the Psalms very important as evidence — These titles in the Seventy Version 369 SYNOPSIS or CONTENTS. XVH PAGE If Psalms of David be post-Davidic, why have they not post-Davidic references? 371 These Psalms are valid sources of evidence ..... 371 Meaning and reference of " The Law of the Lokd " in the Psalms . 372 2nd Samuel confirms Davidic Authorship ..... 373 Psalms possess strong internal evidence — Show strong personality of their author ......... 374 Davidic Psalms thoroughly conversant with the Books of Moses . 374 The " Codes " of the critics 376 Their late origin assumed as dispro-ving early evidence of the Pentateuch .......... 376 The critics admit that the Pentateuchal Books assert their own early existence . . . . . . . . - - 377 The critical theory of origin utterly inconsistent -with the nature of the Books of Moses ........ 377 The finding of the Book not a fraudiilent or fictitious procedure, but a genuine episode in history ....... 378 Ancient behef as to the origin of the Pentateuch .... 379 The moral obliquity of the critical theory 379 If Deuteronomy were a programme, why fill it with anachronisms P — - Why omit contemporary materials ?..... 380 The critics, by altering, destroy evidential docnments, then reason falsely by reasoning from these altered documents . . . 382 The critical idea of Hebrew literature is contrary to historical evi- (jence — Is contradicted in the Books of Amos and other prophets 382 Evidence of Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch in the Prophecy of Amos 384 Evidence in the Prophecy of Hosea 385 Evidence in the Prophecy of Isaiah 386 A plurality of Isaiahs a pure invention 387 The high class Hebrew Uterature in the days of the prophets very probably maintained by the Books of Moses .... 388 Evidence from the Books of Kings 389 Conclusions of the critics beiag unproved cannot be accepted as evidence ....-•-¦•• 389 The practical meaning of " the Scientific Method "... 389 The whole line of history represents the Pentateuch as a -written unity 389 The critical theory of the finding of the Book wholly incredible . 391 No evidence that the Books of Moses were ever in a rudimentary condition ^^^ The Bible statement as to the finding of the Book thoroughly con sistent and credible * . . 392 Evidence from the Books of Kings continued .... 395 The Books of Chronicles— Their leading characteristics— These Books afford strong evidence against the critical theory . . 398 S 1063. ¦ ^ xvm SYNOPSIS OP CONTENTS. The critics aim to destroy their credibility ..... WeUhausen's special attacks much overdone .... The critical methods imply no superior quahfications or scholar ship — Scholarship not specially involved .... WeUhausen's method of reducing opposing evidence Evidence from the Books of Chronicles continued .... The Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch clearly estabhshed by thoroughly reUable evidence ....... PAGE 399399 402403 404 406 The Eighth Century. Authorities for our knowledge of the eighth century B.C. Their character and vaUdity ..... The evidence of Amos ........ The evidence of Hosea ........ The evidence of Joel ........ The article on Joel in the Encyclopaedia Britannica The evidence of Micah The evidence of Nahum ¦ . Obadiah and Jonah ........ The e-ndence of Isaiah. ....... The necessary conditions of the alternative hypothesis imagined Three explanations of the phenomena possible Professor Ryle on the Canon of the Old Tes-tament The evidence supphed by the historians of Kings and Chronicles What the late origin of Deuteronomy impUes Conclusion .......... 409 409 410 414422423423 426427 427 431 432433 436 443 446 XI. The Seventh Century. The death of Hezekiah a turning point in the history. — In the earlier -writing-prophets, allusions to the Law plentiful, though incidental — Illustrations of this — The change in this respect on Hezekiahs death a natural result of Manasseh's persecu tion ........... Date of Nahum^The nature of his prophecy in itself forbids many allusions to the Law. — Discussion of aUusions. — Severity of Manasseh's persecution. — Date of Habakkuk — Reasons for assigning him to the end of the reign of Manasseh. — AUusions 449 SYNOPSIS OP CONTENTS, xix PAGE to the Law in Habakkuk. — Meaning of the word Torah in the Prophets — WeUhausen's view on this point. — Use of the word Hexateuch. — Allusions to the Law in Zephaniah. — Josiah's re forms. — Variations between Kings and Chronicles . . . 450 Discovery of the Book of the Law. — Views of " Higher Critics " thereon. — Discussion of Negative arguments : — Deuteronomy is not a product of the age of Josiah. A point a priori. Argu ments from (1) the anima-ting spirit of the Book; (2) the absence of knowledge of earher history; (3) historic incon sistencies ; (4) presence of numerous historic details in Deu teronomy and explanation of this by " Higher Critics '' ; (5) argument from the Book of Kings; (6) archaisms in Deuteronomy; (7) the vocabulary of Deuteronomy accords -with that of the Pentateuch, rather than with that of the la-ter historical books. Argument from the New Testament . . 460 Was the discovery of Deuteronomy or of the whole Pentateuch ? — This argued from (1) nature of Josiah's reforms; (2) argu ments based on Kings; (3) arguments from Jeremiah; and (4) from size of document — Unfair argument of WeU hausen on this point. — ^Statement of aUusions in Jeremiah to (1) first four Books of the Pentateuch; (2) Deuteronomy. Theological standpoint of prophets of our period . . . 476 Paley's argument on miracles as against Hume may be paraUeled in discussions on the Old Testament, when the fact of a Pro vidence is ignored as relevant to the argument . . . 489 XII. Ezekiel and the Priestly School. The subject stated and its limits defined . . . . 493 It is observed that in the midst of much that changes in the form of the present critical position, we are confronted in what is aUeged of Ezekiel and the Priestly School with something definite, tangible, and authoritative ..... 495 We are given the critical conception of the written origin of the so-called P document in the f oUo-wing propositions of WeUhausen and Kuenen : — " Ezekiel himself led the way to it — He took the first step— He wrote the first draft — He was the leader or father of a priestly school — This priestly school in the course of time formulated the written P document as we now have it " . 495 These hypothetical propositions require the test of a comparison with the facts in three particulars : — I. By the enquiry as to what direct evidence there is in EzeHel and in history for the existence of such a priestly school ataU .500 Ezekiel the chief point of contact between the critical theory and historic reality .....-• 600 b 2 XX SYNOPSIS OP CONTENTS. II. By the enquiry as to what evidence arises -with respect to the existence and work of such a priestly school from a general comparison of the writings of Ezekiel and the P document, as regards : — 1. The primd fcuyie indications of their respective age and characteristics .... ... 610 2. The internal evidence of their respective historical surround ings and influences . . . . . . .516 3. The meaning and the extent of the knowledge of the P Code which Ezekiel himself very clearly manifests, and how far this may be considered a proof of its pre-existence and authority ......... 523 And lastly III. It being asserted that Ezekiel's so-caUed legislation was the first step, first draft, or ideal of the P Code, by the enquiry how far, and in what sense it can be so regarded, and this ¦?vith respect to : — 1. The observed nature and meaning of EzeMel's so-oaUed legislation in itself ........ 641 2. The evidence brought forward from Ezekiel's so-caUed legis lation to prove the non-existence of the P Code in his day, and his aUeged influence upon its after development , . 646 3. The difficulties which surround the supposition that the P Code followed Ezekiel's first step or draft, if we argu- mentatively grant that it was a first step or draft for the sake of observing these difficulties ..... 555 XIII. The Post-Exilio Period. The chief question raised by the Higher Critics in regard to this period 563 Perplexity of the critics to account for the fact that the Scriptures ascribe the Pentateuchal Torah to Moses, and the ethical diffi culty in the way of their solution ...... 563 Dr. Bruce's limitation of the functions of Moses to prophecy, and his exclusion of him from priesthood and ritual law . . 665 Evidence that Moses executed priestly functions and instituted the Aaronic order of priests ....... 567 Dr. Bruce's representation of God as conducting two experiments which proved failures — the second more monstrous than the first 668 Concessions made by Dr. Bruce subversive of his anti-Mosaio -theory ........... 569 SYNOPSIS OP CONTENTS. Xxi Grave misinterpretation of St. Paul's reference to a new covenant (Gal. 3. 16, 17) 570 Reason for such interpretation of the Apostle's reference in this case 571 An attempt to distinguish between a holy nation and a holy Church 572 Paul's deiiuition of a genuine Jew (Rom. 2. 28, 29) ... 573 ', Operation of the Moral Law apart from the Remedial Economy . 573 Unity of the Church under all dispensations ..... 673 The severance of Moses from priesthood carries -with it the sever ance of the Moral Law from the Ceremonial Law . . . 675 Evidence that such severance is unscriptural ..... 576 The bearing of such views of the relation of the Moral to the Cere monial Law upon the way of life during the Pre-ExUic Period 577 Vindication of the Chronicler against Dr. Driver's charge of priestly bias 578 Problem raised by this charge in -riew of the accommodation of the Divine administration to the Chronicler's aUeged bias . . 580 Bearing of the decree of Cyrus on the question of the Post-ExUic origin of the Levitieal Torah ....... 581 Evidence of the exis-tenoe of a Priestly Torah as sho-wn on the march of the first band of the exUes under Zerubbabel . . . 583 Argument from the observance of the ceremonies of the Seventh Month by the exUes when settled in their cities, who assembled without notification by Zerubbabel 585 Evidence of the existence of the Le-vitical, Torah prior to the Post- ExiUc Period, as sho-wn by the proceedings of the exUes in laying the foundation of the Temple ..... 586 Evidence that the exiles whom Ezra found in Jerusalem knew the Law of Moses before he opened, or read to them the book he brought from Babylon ........ 589 The argument from Nehemiah's confession of sius which were sins against the Law of Moses and not agaiust a Post-ExUic Code . 590 Express ascription of the Ceremonial Law to Moses by Nehemiah . 591 Answer to the objection founded on the fact that the Law as read by Ezra had to be expounded to the people . . . . 593 Argument from the fact that Haggai traces the chastisements of Israel to their disregard of the claims of the House of God . 594 The theme of Zechariah is the same as that of his colleague— the sins of Israel and Israel's priesthood against the Mosaic In stitution, and the divine chastisements through which the divine displeasure was manifested ..... 595 Interpretation of Zechariah's Symbohc Vision of Joshua the High Priest 595 XXU SYNOPSIS OP CONTENTS. PACE Testimony of Malachi to the antiquity of the Mosaic Law . . 696 Christ's testimony to His own relation to the Law as given by Moses ........... 598 Argument from the Epistle to the Hebrews ..... 698 Short method of dealing vrith the Post-ExUic Theory . . . 599 The critical conclusions of the Higher Critics put to the test in an examination of Dr. Driver's labours on the early chapters of the Book of Genesis ........ 599 The general conclusion from a review of the charges preferred by the Higher Criticism against the Sacred Record . . . 605 mTEODUCTION. XXT'E possess a Volume of Hebrew' writings which ' * have come down to us in their present condition as to text and arrangement in an -unbroken tradition of certainly close upon 2,100 years, dating from the formation of the Septuagint Version. How many hun dred years before that the Volume existed in Hebrew, in the same unity as one Book, and in the same arrangement as to its parts, we have no certain means of knowing. But we do know that our Lord gave His Divine sanction to the identical collection of writings winch we now call the Old Testament — con sisting of the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms — as constituting " the Scriptures " ; that He quoted from each section — from the Law of Moses, as in Matt. 4, 5, 15, 19, 22, and many other places; from the Prophets, as Matt. 6. 29; 12. 3, 40; 17. 11; 13. 14 ; 12. 7 ; 24. 15, etc. ; from the Psalms, as Matt. 21. 16, 42 ; 22. 43 ; 23. 39, etc.;— and, therefore, it is a matter more of curiosity than of any vital import ance to know exactly the time#when, or the manner how, the Canon of the Old Testament was finally closed. As regards the volume of the Old Testament Scriptures, it may suffice here to say that it contains the history of events, beginning with the Creation of the World, and of man as the lord of this earth, and XXIV INTRODUCTION. ending, as its latest entry, -with the name of Jaddua, who was High Priest in the time of Alexander the Great (Neh. 12. 11, 22). The first Book of this history, commonly called Genesis, from the Greek word yevetrig, meaning creation (after giving a summary account of the different races of mankind, with some details, such as the Deluge, and the Confusion of Tongues, which concern the whole race of mankind alike), from the 12th Chapter and onwards concentrates its whole attention upon Abraham and his descendants. And this it does with an avowed reference to their future settlement in the land of Canaan, where they should be a great nation, with a peculiar calling, viz., to be the people of God, and witnesses to the whole world of the ITnity and Holiness of God, and of His purpose in due time to send Messiah to be the Saviour of the world. In steady pursuance of this end, the Book of Genesis traces the arrival of the Children of Israel in Egypt, then the most powerful and civilized kingdom of the world, where they settled, and, as we afterwards learn, were gradually formed into a nation. The Book of Exodus, LXX. e^oSof, "going out," then takes up the story, and gives us a graphic account of the extra ordinary growth and increase of the people ; and how in the course of something over 200 years they increased from an insignificant tribe to upwards of two million souls. But this burst of prosperity was suddenly checked, and their national existence put in danger, by the fears and jealousy of the Egyptians. Situated as the Israelites were on the north-eastern frontier of Lower Egypt, there was a danger of their uniting with an in vading force of the enemies of Egypt, — Hittites, Arabs, or others. This led to a series of persecutions and INTRODUCTION, XXV acts of oppression which were designed to stop the growth of the population, and to reduce them to help lessness and an ignominious bondage. But the more they were oppressed the more they grew in numbers. And at length, 430 years after the promise of the land of Canaan made to Abram and his seed, the Israelites marched triumphantly out of Egypt under the leader ship of Moses. And then came that great event on which the following Essays are to concentrate your attention, — the Giving of the Law of Moses. The Book of Exodus tells us that after the Israelites had passed through the Red Sea on their march out of Egypt, they went by short journeys southward, and on the eastern side of the Red Sea, to the wilder ness of Sinai, a large spacious valley, bounded on the south by the Sinaitic range of mountains. After three days' of solemn preparation, in which everything was done that could be done to give solemnity to the occasion, and to invest it with awe, the great event was ushered in by terrific convulsions of nature. Thunderings and lightnings rent the sky, a thick cloud rested on the summit of the mountain. The mountain itself was shaken to its very base. Erom the top issued flames and smoke, like the smoke of a furnace ; and the terror culminated in a sound, like the sound of a trumpet, waxing louder and louder. Then Moses was called up to the Mount, and the Law of the Ten Commandments was given by the voice of God. The rest of the Law was given in separate por tions, and at different successive times. There was first that series of statutes or judgments which are contained in Exod. 20. 22 — 23. 33, and which are described in Exod. 34. 7 as "the Book of the Cove- XXVl INTRODUCTION. nant": see, too, Deut. 29. 1. And this portion of the Law was read to the whole people by Moses, and accepted by them in a very solemn ceremonial, as we read in Exod. 24. 1-8. The next portion is that which was given to Moses during the forty days that he was in the mount, as contained in Exod. 25. 1 — 31. 18, relating entirely to the construction of the Tabernacle, with all its furniture, the consecration and garments of the Priests, the anointing oil and sweet incense, and the offerings to be made respectively on the altars of burnt offering and of incense, closing with a renewed commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day. Again, after the interruption caused by the events narrated in Chapters 32 — 34. 8, and the revival of the promise that God would lead the people into the land of Canaan, we have in 34. 11-26 a small batch of laws relating immediately to their dealings with the Canaanites, and their own conduct in the land, in cluding especially their attendance "before the Lord" at the three great annual Eeasts of the Passover, of Pentecost, and of Tabernacles. And then follows, from 34. 27 to the close of Chap. 40, the most interesting narrative of Moses' return to the camp, of God's communing with Moses in the " Tent of Meeting," of the offerings of the people, of the construction of the Tabernacle and all its appurten ances by Bezaleel and Ahohab, and of its setting up by Moses, and finally of God, as it were, taking possession of it, "when the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle." The third Book, called Leviticus, from the LXX. AeuiTiKov, contains the great bulk of Levitieal law. It gives detailed instructions as to the various kinds INTRODUCTION. XXVU of offerings, as to the consecration of the Priests, the distinction between clean and unclean animals, the purification of women and of men, the cleansing of lepers, the ceremonial of the great Day of Atone ment, and the prohibition of blood, of unlawful mar riages, and of tmnatural lusts, these last being repeated a second time. It contains, too, divers laws against every kind of idolatry and sorcery, laws regulating the cleanness of Priests, the absence of any blemish in beasts offered in sacrifice, special directions with regard to the Sabbath and the three great Eeasts, to Sabbatical and Jubilee Years, to the laws of service and slavery and purchase of land, intermingled with striking precepts inculcating upon the people the special obMgations resting upon them to sustain their character as the chosen people of God in the midst of the heathen around them, and to deal kindly, fairly, and mercifully toward each other, as the Lord had dealt with them. Their obedience is enforced by the promise of safety, peace, and plenty in the Pro mised Land, and of God's gracious presence with them, as the consequence of their obedience ; but by terrible threats of God's extreme vengeance should they break His covenant and despise and abhor His law. And the code closes with the words, "These are the statutes and judgments and laws which the Lord made between Him and the Children of Israel, in Mount Sinai, by the hand of Moses."* And here it is to be observed that though this Book of Leviticus is substantially " the Levitieal Code," in at least that part of the Law of Moses sub- * This is not the place to consider the supplemental Chapter 27, or the cause of its anomalous position. It in no way affects the general argument. XXVm INTRODUCTION. sequent to the Law from Sinai, which was delivered in Horeb, yet it is repeatedly interspersed by narrative, specifying the time and place of its delivery, the manner of its reception by the persons affected by it, and divers events which arose in the course of its delivery, and which in some instances gave rise to the laws which followed. Thus Lev. 1, standing as it does between Exod. 40. 17 and Num. 1. 1, specifies distinctly the time when, as weU as the place from which the following commandments were given, viz., the first month of the second year after they came out of Egypt ; from the tent of meeting " in the wilder ness of Sinai" (7. 38). So, too, 25. 1, 26. 46, where "Mount Sinai" means the " hiU country of Sinai," or Horeb. (See note on Lev. 25. 1, in the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol's Comment.) Again, Lev. 8 and 9 relate the actual consecration of Aaron and his sons in the presence of the whole congregation at the door of the tent of meeting, in accordance with the, preceding laws ; and the subsequent action of Aaron and his sons. In Chap. 10 we have the sad incident of the death and burial of Nadab and Abihu, for offering strange fire, and a law springing from it by which the Priests were forbidden to drink wine or strong drink when they were going into the tent of meeting. See, too. Lev. 16. 1-34, where the whole law of the scape-goat, and of the Day of Atonement, springs from the death of Nadab and Abihu. Lev. 24. 10-23 tells us of the blasphemy of the son of She- lomith and its punishment, and of certain laws which arose out of the occurrence. Other indications occur of the time when certain laws were given, as in 28. 3, where the language shows it was after the sojourn in Egypt, and before the entrance into Canaan. INTRODUCTION. Xxix And so 14. 33. Again, 16. 21, 22 shows that the Law was given while they were stiU in the wilderness. On the other hand, Exod. 40. 36-38 must have been written later than the events dealt with in the con text, viz., when the journeyings recorded in Num. 33 had taken place. Indeed, the whole Book is in the form of a consecutive narrative of things which hap pened in the first month of the second year of the Exodus, including the giving of the Levitieal Code. It is not a separate Book at aU, but simply a con tinuance of the preceding narrative, as the Book of Numbers is a continuance of Leviticus. And this appears clearly immediately we remember that the division into books is quite artificial and compara tively modern. In the Hebrew there are no names, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, etc., but the books are merely designated for convenience by the opening words of each section: — Bereshith (in the beginning), Fe-eleh (and these), Va-yihrah (and the Lord called), Ya-yedahher (and the Lord spake), eleh haddevarim (these are the words). We shall recur to this by and by. The fourth Book, called Numbers, from the LXX. 'A§j9jU.o(, takes up the narrative where Leviticus left off, and continues the history of Israel from the beginning of the second month of the second year of the Exodus, and carries it down to the fortieth, or closing year, of their dwelling in the wilderness; It contains the numbering of the males from 20 years old and upward, in the second year of the Exodus, and again in the last year of their sojourn in the wilderness, amounting to 603,550 and 601,730 re spectively; the separation of the Levites to be over the Tabernacle and its vessels; the order of encamp- xxx INTRODUCTION. ment and of the march; the numbering of the Levites and of the first-bom; certain laws (Chaps. 5 and 6) which seem to have special regard to their camp life, with the Tabernacle in the midst of the camp ; the offerings of the Princes of the tribes at the dedication of the Tabernacle ; the purification of the Levites previously to entering upon their ministry ; the celebration of the second Passover, with the addi tion to the law respecting it, by which those who were unclean on the 14th day of the first month, were allowed to keep it on the 14th day of the second month; the first march on the removal of the cloud from the Tabernacle under the respective heads of tribes; the murmuring of the people, the second flight of quails ; the revolt of Aaron and Miriam ; the sending of the spies; the murmuring of the people at the report of the spies ; the intercession of Moses ; the sentence of 40 years' wandering in the wilderness, and of the death in the wilderness of aU that genera tion; the defeat of the Israelites by the Amalekites and Canaanites ; certain laws relating to offerings and sacrifices (Chap. 15) ; the rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, followed by the plague; the renewed exclusive commission to Aaron and the Levites to minister at the Tabernacle, and the assignment to them of their portion of the sacrifices, with other laws springing apparently from the incidents connected with the rebellion (16—19). Between 19. 22 and 20. 1 there is a gap of more than 38 years, during which nothing is recorded, except the successive encamp ments in Num. 33. 19-36, and during which that whole generation died in the wilderness. Then there follows the account of the death of Miriam ; the strife at the water of Meribah; the exclusion of INTRODUCTION. XXXI Moses and Aaron from leading the people into the promised land; the refusal of Edom to allow Israel to pass through his border; the death of Aaron, and the succession of Eleazar; the attack of the king of Arad ; fresh murmurings of the people, and the plague of serpents, and the hfting up of the brazen serpent ; the conquest of the territory of Sihon, king of the Amorites, and of Og, the king of Bashan ; the strik ing episode of Balaam's prophecy, and the idolatry of Israel with the Moabitish women, and the plague that followed; the second numbering of the people, in the plains of Moab ; the incident of the daugh ters of Zelophehad, which gave occasion to the law relative to the inheritance of daughters; the appoint ment of Joshua to succeed Moses; certain supple mental laws concerning sacrifices at their set feasts; the holy war against the Midianites, and the slaughter of their kings, and the great capture of cattle; the settlement of Reuben and Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh in the territories of Sihon and Og; the forty-two journeys of the Israelites from their departure from Rameses on the 15th day of the first month, to the plains of Moab by Jordan, near Jericho, at the close of the 40th year (Chap. 33). There then follow, certain directions relative to the division of the land of Canaan among the tribes, and the appointment of the princes of the nine and a half tribes who, with Eleazar the Priest, were to divide the land on the west of Jordan; the assignment of certain cities to the Levites, of which six were to be cities of refuge; and the Book closes with the law of the inheritance of daughters, and the marriage of the five daughters of Zelophehad to their cousins of the tribe of Manasseh. XXXU INTRODUCTION. The fifth Book, Deuteronomy, from ^euT€pov6[x.iov, meaning " the repetition of the Law," is a direct continuation of the preceding Book. The scene at its beginning is at the identical spot where the preceding Book of Numbers ended, viz., "in the plains of Moab by Jordan, near Jericho" (Num. 36. 13; Deut. 1. 5); and at the identical time, viz., the 1st day of the eleventh month of the 40th year from the Exodus, after the slaughter of Sihon and Og, where the narra tive of Numbers had come to an end (comp. Num. 20. 1; 21—31 with Deut. 1. 3, 4). It then proceeds with a recapitulation of the principal events recorded in the preceding Books, intermingled with warnings and exhortations and promises, down to the end of Chap. 11. Then, in Chaps. 12 — 26, foUow some wholly new laws and a re-enactment of some old ones. Chap. 27 orders the writing of "this law" upon great stones, and the setting of them up upon Mount Ebal, together with an altar, and the recital by the Priests the Levites of the blessings and curses which follow, from Mount Gerizim and Moimt Ebal respectively. Chap. 28 contains that striking prophetic list of bless ings and curses attached to obedience and disobedience respectively, whethet read from Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal or not does not appear clearly. Chaps. 29 and 30 contain further comments and exhortations of Moses, founded upon the preceding blessings and curses. In Chap. 31, in the immediate prospect of his own death, Moses addresses words of encourage ment to the people; gives a fresh charge to Joshua; delivers a copy of the Law to the Priests; orders the solemn reading of it to the whole congregation of Israel, men, women, and children, assembled together on each Sabbatical year ; Moses and Joshua are sum- INTRODUCTION. XXxiii moned to the tent of meeting ; they receive a warning of the future disobedience of the people; Moses is commanded to write the " Song of Moses " (which fol lows in Chap. 32). He orders the copy of the " Book of the Law," which he had written, to be placed in the Ark of the Covenant under the charge of the Kohathites (31. 24-26). Chap. 33 contains Moses' last utterance, the blessing of the children of Israel under the head of their twelve tribes ; and then, lastly, Moses ascends Mount Nebo, according to the direction recorded in Chap. 32. 49, 50 ; views the land promised to Abraham and his seed ; and then dies and is buried in a valley in the land of Moab. The Book closes with a brief but pregnant notice of Joshua the son of Nun as the successor of Moses, and a reference to the career of Moses as unrivalled for greatness and power. It should be added that there is no apparent break between the Books of the Law and Joshua, but the narrative continues in an uninterrupted stream. Erom the above analysis of the Books of the Pen tateuch, two conclusions follow: — 1. That the narrative contained in them is either absolutely true history, or a most skilful and elaborate fiction. The close connection between the parts, the cohesion of the successive stages of the drama, from the Call of Abraham to the occupation of Canaan, the unbroken thread of one purpose and one design running through the whole series of events, explaining them, accounting for them, one leading on naturally to that which follows, precludes the possibility of these books containing a bundle of traditions or •legends mingled with fragments of truth here and there. An intelligent study of the Books leaves the irresistible conviction on the mind that we have in S 1063. •= XXXIV INTRODUCTION. them a homogeneous unit of either true history, or most ingenious fiction. That it is nOt fiction is demonstrated by the realities of more than 3,000 succeeding years, the events of which form a natural sequel to the history in the Pentateuch, but are absolutely unaccountable if that history is not true. The whole life and career of the Hebrew race, from the earliest dawn of profane history down to the year A.D. 1894, is a standing witness that the narrative in the Pentateuch is not fiction. The close agreement of the colouring of that narrative with all that recent discoveries have revealed of Egyptian and Eastern history and manners and topography, is an additional witness whose voice is not easy to be silenced. And when we turn more especially to the Law, the manner of its giving, and the details of time and place and circumstance under which each part was given ; when we notice the narrative form in which the whole legislation is recounted ; the many points of contact of the narrative of the law- giving with the general narrative of the Pentateuch ; how events of the most diverse character — rebellions of the people, assaults of foreign enemies, deaths of notable persons, occasions of particular laws, miscellaneous doings, such, as the numbering of the people, the sending of the spies, and many such like — ^intervene between the different portions of legislation; — the conclusion again is inevitable, that in the Pentateuch we have either true history, or a most ingenious, skilful, and unique fiction.- 2, The second conclusion which follows from the above analysis of the contents of the Pentateuch is, that if it is a true history, and the Law was really given to the Israelites in the form and manner there INTRODUCTION. XXXV related, it must have left a distinct mark upon the whole future national life of the people. The extra ordinary circumstances of their escape from Egypt, and their sojourn in the Sinaitic desert; the awful solemnity with which the giving of the Law was ushered in ; the strange vicissitudes of their life in the wilderness, the manner of their taking possession of the land of Canaan under Joshua, are things which could never be forgotten through the subse quent stages of their national existence. Again, the Law of Moses touched every action of both private and national life, affected and dominated both the secular and the religious side of every man's life. Circumcision, marriage, the tenure of land, the food to be or not to be eaten, domestic servitude, the treatment of disease, laws of evidence before judges, of integrity of judges, of punishment of offenders, and many others, on the secular side. And on the religious side, the keeping of the Sabbath and of the three great Eestivals ; the offering of tithes and first-fruits ; the existence of a central Sanctuary, a Tabernacle, or a Temple ; an hereditary Priesthood, presided over by a High Priest of great dignity and authority. These and such like institutions, if they were really instituted by Moses, must have left distinct traces in the subsequent history of the Israelitish people. Did they ? The following pages will show. Before concluding this Introduction it may be weU to call attention to the fact that while tbe whole Penta teuch is, as we have seen, one continuous narrative, we -are nowhere told, nor have any hint given us, who the narrator is. Of large portions of the Penta teuch, speeches, songs, laws, prophecies, we are dis- XXXVl INTRODUCTION. tinctly informed that they were written, or uttered, or both, by Moses. But who wrote the connecting narrative, who recorded in a book what Moses did and said, we are not told. Reverent criticism is here quite free to put out its best powers. But this much is certain — they bear it on their face, — the records on which the narrative is founded, and which are em bedded in it, are contemporary records; they are absolutely true; they may be, they ought to be, implicitly trusted ; they are integral portions of that Scripture which our Lord, " the faithful and true witness," has told us "cannot be broken." ARTHUR BATH AND WELLS. I. THE ARCH^OLOGIOAL WITNESS TO THE LITERARY ACTIVITY OE THE MOSAIC AGE. a. h. sayce. S 1063. I. THE AECHiEOLOGICAL WITNESS TO THE LITEEAEY ACTIVITY OF THE MOSAIC AGE. THE end of the nineteenth century is witnessing the ebb of a wave of historical scepticism which began to flow more than a century ago. It has spared nothing, sacred or other wise, and in its progress has transformed the history of the past into a nebulous mist. But the ebb had already set in before its tendencies and results had made themselves felt beyond a limited circle of scholars, and before its spirit and principles had influenced popular thought. Hence it is that we can speak of its ebb at the very time when the negations of the so-called " higher criticism " are the most widespread and influential, and the assertions of its adherents are the most positive and arrogant. But it takes time for new ideas and doctrines to work their way into general notice or acceptance, and it often hap pens that before they do so other ideas and doctrines are already beginning to take their place. Before the last ripple has reached the shore, the disturbance which, first caused it has passed away. Nevertheless, it is only when a new doctrine has become the possession of the multitude that its influence for good or evil may be properly said to have commenced. As long as it is confined to a small band of philosophers or zealots, it has comparatively little power. Once, however, let it colour the beliefs of a whole nation and become an element in their education, and it behoves us to examine it carefully, and to see whether the spirit that is in it is false or true. ^ A2 4 LEX MOSAICA. Historical scepticism has been the necessary reaction against the uncritical credulity of former generations. Instead of accepting every statement about the past which had been handed down to him, the historian began to ask what sort of authority it was upon which such statements rested. He began to criticise the sources of his history, to estimate their relative trustworthiness, and to determine the dates to which they belonged. "Where the authority was late or suspicious, it was reasonable to receive its unsupported statements with doubt and scepticism. Under the blows of the critic the fabric of early Greek and Roman history crumbled into dust. All, or nearly all, was re solved into myth and fable. History, it was laid down, began with contemporaneous documents, and contemporaneous docu ments were « of late date. The history of Greece before the age of Solon was summed up in two or three grudgingly- admitted facts, and Roman history before the capture of the city by the Gauls became practically a blank. It was evident that the canons of criticism which had been applied to the history of Greece and Rome were equally applic able to the history of ancient Israel, and that the historical records of the Old Testament would not escape the scrutiny which the classical writers had undergone. The very fact that these records were invested with a sanctity to which the records of Greece and Rome could not lay claim, was perhaps only an additiona.l reason for scrutinising them with exceptional severity. The earlier Biblical narratives were pronounced to be unhis torical, and the documents in which they are embodied were declared to be of comparatively late origin. Such has been the judgment of the " literary analyst " and " the higher critic." The latter has determined to his own satis faction the date and trustworthiness of each portion of Old Testament history, finding errors apd inconsistencies where none were previously suspected, and setting writer against writer, and passage against passage, in order to destroy the credit of both. The former has analysed the Biblical books into a chaos of heterogeneous fragments, each of which, however, the "analyst" has judged himself capable of assigning to its proper place and particular author. The Book of Genesis has thus been sliced and dissected with such microscopic ARCH^OLOGICAL WITNESS TO THE MOSAIC AGE. 5 nicety, that the beginning of a verse has been given to one . writer, the middle to another, and the end of it to a third, although the separate segments, taken by themselves, would yield no sense to the ordinary reader. Yet the modern critic has no doubt about the correctness of his analysis, in spite of the fact that Hebrew is a language not only foreign to him, but long extinct, and that its vocabulary and grammar can never be fully known. He has found it possible to separate the Pentateuch into its component elements with a mathema tical exactitude which would be impossible in the case of a Greek or Latin author, or even of an English book. The assurance of the " literary analyst " and of the " higher critic" proceeds in great measure from the scantiness of the materials at their disposal. The whole body of ancient Hebrew literature — we may even say of the ancient Hebrew language — is comprised within the limits of the Old Testament. The limi tations of our knowledge of it can be accurately mapped out. It is not difficult to learn by heart every word and grammatical form in the Hebrew Scriptures, or to count the number of in stances in which the same idioms and phrases recur. The critic never has before his eyes the terror of a new and unexpected discovery — of the recovery of some lost monument of Hebrew literature which shall upset his most treasured theories, and oblige him to modify his conclusions. It is in the limitation of his knowledge that his strength lies. For a long while the Old Testament Scriptures were not only a solitary monument of the ancient Hebrew language and literature, they were also a solitary monument of the literature of the ancient civilised East. The empires and kingdoms of which we read in their pages had passed away, leaving behind them, as it would seem, hardly a relic of their existence. The Hebrew Bible, from a literary and historical point of view, was thus what the logicians would call a " single instance " ; there was nothing like itself with which it could be com pared, nothing which could correct the false ideas which had been formed about it. The assumptions with which the scholar approached its study could not be disproved, how ever baseless they might be. Foremost among these assumptions was a fixed belief in the non-literary character of the ancient world. Friends and foes 6 XEX MOSAICA. alike agreed to regard the Old Testament as an unique example of ancient Oriental literature. That the world by which the Hebrews were surrounded from the very dawn of their history was pre-eminently a writing and a reading one, was an idea which would have been dismissed with contempt. Literary culture, it was held, began in Greece, and written Greek litera ture could not claim an antiquity greater than the sixth century B.C. That a Hebrew literature should exist outside the litera ture of Greece, and of confessedly earlier date than the latter, was a troublesome phenomenon which could best be explained by bringing down the age of the Biblical books as nearly as possible to that of the first products of Greek , thought. The scepticism of the "higher criticism" rests in large measure upon the assumption, implicit or avowed, of the late application of writing to literary purposes. It has been tacitly assumed that the literary use of writing could not have been known to an Israelite of the time of Moses, and consequently that none of the narratives in the Pentateuch can go back to so early a period. They must all belong, it is urged, to a later age, when little authentic record was preserved of the Mosaic days, and when the imagination of the author or his contemporaries had to supply the missing facts. The syllogism is a simple one : No Israelite wrote or read in the age of Moses, or for several centuries afterwards; consequently the documents which profess to give a history of the time are late and untrustworthy. Such, then, is the assumption upon which a considerable part of the theories of the literary analyst and the higher critic actually rest. The documents discovered by the analyst, it is assumed, cannot be contemporaneous with the events they pro fess to narrate, and the events themselves are accordingly rendered questionable. If there was no one to record the meeting of Melchizedek and Abram, or the conquest of Pales tine by the King of Aram Naharaim, the critic is justified in disputing their claim to historical credibility. Unrecorded events soon pass into f orgetfulness, or become enveloped in an atmosphere of myth and romance; and this is still more the case in the East than in the less imaginative West. Oral tradition cannot be trusted to convey correctly the main facts of history, much less the details of which they are ARCH^OLOGICAL WITNESS TO THE MOSAIC AGE. 7 composed. The historical accuracy of a narrative, therefore, cannot be trusted unless it can be shown to rest on contem poraneous evidence. The supposed want of contemporaneous evidence is the key stone in the arch of that sceptical criticism which has distin- .guished the historical research of the past century. Remove it, 'and the whole structure falls to pieces at once. If we can show that such contemporaneous evidence actually exists, or has existed, and that the supposed want of it is a baseless assumption due to the ignorance of the critic, the conclu sions at which he has arrived are deprived of their chief support. The Oriental archaeologist believes he can show that this is the case. While the critic in his study at home has been de molishing the truth of history with his pen, the excavator and the decipherer have been restoring it in the lands of the East. Discovery has followed there upon discovery, each more mar vellous than the last, and a lost world of culture and civili sation has been brought to light. First in Egypt, then in Assyria and Babylonia, and finally in the lands of the Eastern Mediterranean, the explorer has been busily at work. Cities, and tombs, and temples have been exhumed; the dead have been made to speak to us, in living tones, and scripts and languages that had long been forgotten have been de ciphered and read. We can follow the daily life of the Egyp tian three thousand years ago more minutely than the daily life of a mediaeval Englishman ; we can penetrate into the in most beliefs and practices of the Babylonian contemporaries of Nebuchadrezzar, can analyse the policy of Sennacherib, and study the letters of Canaanites who lived before the birth of Moses. Much of this new knowledge is so fresh that it has as yet hardly made its way beyond a select band of workers, and its bearings upon the criticism of the Old Testament are but just beginning to be understood. Just now it is the voice of the "higher critic" raised in premature triumph that is heard the loudest; the archaeologist has been so busy in garnering the new facts that pour in upon him in almost bewildering abun dance, that he has had but little time to indicate the direction towards which they tend. 8 LEX MOSAICA. But it IS time that the educated public should realise dis tinctly what is perhaps the most important result of recent Oriental research. This is the vast antiquity of literature and the use of writing in the ancient Oriental world. Long before the days of Moses, or even of Abraham, the Egyptians and Babylonians were peoples devoted to reading and writing; books and schools were multiplied among them, and libraries existed filled with the literary treasures of the past. But it was not only in Babylonia and Egypt that literature, in the truest sense of the word, found a home. Recent dis coveries, more especially that of the cuneiform tablets of Tel el- Amama in Upper Egypt, have proved that the literary culture of Babylonia was diffused throughout Western Asia. In Meso potamia and Aram Naharaim, in Cappadocia and Syria, there were readers and writers, scribes and archive-chambers. Canaan, more especially, placed as it was between Babylonia and Egypt, with its long line of sea-board, was saturated with Babylonian culture. At a very early epoch Babylonian armies had marched through the country, and even penetrated into Northern Arabia, along the road afterwards trodden by Chedor-laomer and his allies. As far back as B.C. 3800, Sargon of Accad invaded the West in four separate campaigns, and eventually, as his annals tell us, united it with his Babylonian Empire. Contemporaneous inonuments of him and of his son who conquered the Peninsula of Sinai have lately been found in Babylonia by American ex plorers. More than fifteen hundred years after the age of Sargon we find another Babylonian monarch claiming kingship over Syria, " the land of the Amorites," and the Tel el-Amama Tablets have made it clear that this claim was real. They prove that at the time they were written (at the close of the 15th century before our era), though Canaan had now become an Egyptian province, its culture and civilisation was that of Babylonia. Not only was its literature written in the language and cuneiform characters of the Babylonians, even the correspondence of its officials was carried on in the same language and the same script. The native deities had been identified with the deities of Babylonia, and in the neigh bourhood of Jerusalem itself rose a temple to a Babylonian god. It is evident that Canaan must have been long subject' to Babylonian rule and influence before it could have been so ARCHAEOLOGICAL WITNESS TO THE MOSAIC AGE. 9 thoroughly imbued with the culture of a foreign and distai^ land. It is also evident that this culture was in largo mea sure of a literary character. But more than this. The Tel el-Amama correspondence reveals to us something more important than the fact that Babylonia had once exercised a long and profound influence upon the Canaanites. It tells us that in the century before the Exodus Palestine was a land of books and schools. Not only was a foreign language taught and learned there, the compli cated syllabary of Babylonia was taught and learned along with it. Only those who have studied the Assyrian inscrip tions can fully realise what this means. The cuneiform sylla bary needs years of labour and application before it can be properly acquired. Not only are the characters very numerous, not only do they diflfer essentially in form in the various kinds of cuneiform script that were used, but each character has more than one phonetic value. Moreover the characters may be employed ideographically to express, not syllables, but ideas ; while words may be denoted by a combination of them, the pronunciation of which is totally imlike that of the several characters of which the combination consists. Nor does the shape of the characters assist the memory. They represent no pictures of objects, like the hieroglyphics of Egypt ; on the contrary, they are composed merely of wedges arranged in an arbitrary way. And yet all over Canaan there was an active correspondence going on in this foreign system of writing and in a foreign language. Such a fact implies an abundance of schools and teachers and pupils, as well as of libraries and archive-chambers. As in Babylon and Assyria, so too in Canaan there must have been libraries in which the clay books with their wedge-like letters were stored and studied. Either in these libraries or in archive-chambers, like that at Tel el-Amama, the official correspondence was kept. The relics of it which have survived to us show how minute and frequent it must have been. The events of the day were as fully chronicled as they would be in our own century, and the historian who desired to compile a history of the cities of Canaan would have had at his dis posal more than enough of contemporaneous material. From a period earlier than that of Abraham there were documents 10 LEX MOSAICA. before him containing history of the most authentic and trustworthy kind. The fall of the Egyptian Empire with the fall of the Eighteenth Egyptian Dynasty, and the invasion of the Hittites from the North broke the connection between the civilisations of the Euphrates and the Nile, and put an end to the inter course between them which had been carried on upon the soil and along the high-roads of Canaan. The Hittites established themselves firmly in their southern capital at Kadesh on the Orontes, and the long wars of Ramses IL, the Pharaoh of the Oppression, the Sesostris of the Greeks, failed to dislodge them from their position. All that these wars effected was the devastation of Palestine. For awhile Egypt was again pre dominant there, but after the death of Ramses the country became once more independent. The campaigns of the Egyptian armies, however, had ruined the Canaanitish cities and deci mated their population. When, therefore, the Israelites ap peared on the eastern frontier, the Canaanites were in no position to resist them. One by one the Canaanitish fortresses fell into the hands of the invaders, and the descendants of Israel took possession of the Promised Land. But, as we learn from the first chapter of the Book of Judges, here and there a Canaanitish stronghold still preserved its independence, while in the extreme south the cities of the Philistines not only remained untaken, but became a thorn, in the side of the Israelitish tribes. Up to the time of David, and Solomon, cities like Jerusalem, Gaza, and Gezer, lay outside Israelitish rule. They were never destroyed by the invading tribes ; unlike Jericho or Lachish, Gezer was burnt by the Egyptians in the reign of Solomon, Gaza was never captured, while the Jebusites were allowed to dwell peaceably in Jeru salem after its conquest by David. Now it was just cities like Jerusalem, Gaza, and Gezer which had been the seats of Egyptian governors in the days when the Tel el-Amarna correspondence was going on. The correspondence was for the most part inscribed on imperishable clay, and much of it was stored up among the archives of the Canaanitish towns. As long as the cities remained uncaptured and unbumt by an enemy their archives would be accessible to everyone who could read them. There is no reason why the ARCH^OLOGICAL WITNESS TO THE MOSAIC AGE. 11 old books and letters of clay should not have survived to the period when the " higher critic " himself admits there was a knowledge of writing in Israel. And with the survival of the literature there must have survived also a knowledge of the way in which it should be read. Granting, therefore, that the Israelites when they first entered Canaan were an illiterate tribe of nomad Beduin, there is still no ground for maintaining that when they first learned to write and read, the history of the past had become a blank. On the contrary, large stores of material must have been lying ready to hand even as late as the age of the foundation of the Hebrew monarchy; all that was needful was the will to read it and a knowledge of the cuneiform script of Babylonia. But the assumption that the Israelites who escaped from Egypt and invaded Canaan were a horde of illiterate bar barians is one which cannot easily be ' maintained. In Egypt they had been surrounded on all sides by books and writers. Not only the temples and tombs, but the walls even of private houses were covered with writing.. The very bricks which they were called upon to make were at times stamped with hieroglyphics, and the commonest articles of every-day use and ornament were not unfrequently inscribed. Go where they might they found letters and literature staring them in the face. Is it conceivable that some at least among them should not have acquired the art of reading and writing, or have understood what was meant by written history? Even Egyptian tradition was better informed. In the Egyptian legend of the Exodus reported by Manetho, the leader of the banished multitude is a priest of On, the premier university of Egypt. To admit that the Israelites were once in Egypt, and yet to deny to them a knowledge of letters at the time when they fled from it, may be consonant with the principles of the " higher criticism " ; it is certainly not consonant with the principles of probability and common sense. It was not, however, only in Egypt that education was advanced. As we have seen, the Tel el-Amama Tablets have informed us that Canaan was- equally a land of schools and libraries. When the Old Testament tells us that one of the first cities captured and destroyed by the invaders was Kir- jath-Sepher, or " Booktown," it is in strict harmony with 12 LEX MOSAICA. archaeological fact. Among the ruins of Lachish, not far from where Kirjath-Sepher must have stood, Mr. Bliss has found a cuneiform tablet of the same age as those of Tel el-Amama, which mentions the actual governor of Lachish whose letter to the Pharaoh is included in the Tel el-Amama collection. On both sides, therefore, the Israelitish tribes would have been in contact with a written literature. On the one side their hosts and masters in Egypt, where they had sojourned so long, and from whence they had but just escaped, had been from time immemorial a literary people. On the other side, the country towards which they marched and wherein they were about to settle, was also a land where the art of writing had long been known and practised. They must indeed have buried themselves in the desert if they wished to be beyond the reach of the teacher and the scribe. But even here in the desert recent discoveries tend to show that the art of writing was not altogether unknown. In the south of Arabia, the " Happy " land of the incense-bearing trees, civilisation and culture had grown up at an early date. In Yemen and Hadhramaut, ruined temples and great engineering works still survive to bear witness to the former power and civilisation of their iahabitants. Numerous inscriptions, more over, have been found there written ia the letters of the so-called Himyaritic branch of the Phoenician alphabet. The explorations of Dr. Glaser have lately cast a new light upon these relics of ancient Arabian epigraphy. He has not only recopied the inscriptions collected by former travellers and corrected their mistakes, but he has also added very largely to those that were previously known. The main result of his discoveries is to show that many of these inscriptions lay claim to a far greater antiquity than had hitherto been supposed. Indeed, if we are to believe him and Prof. Hommel, the eminent Arabic and Assyrian scholar, there are some which go back to the age of the Exodus, if not to a yet earlier date. It has long been known that the inscriptions fall into two classes. One of these belonged to the kingdom of Ma'in, or the Minaeans, the other to the kingdom of Saba, the Sheba of the Old Testament. The dialect of Ma'in is more archaic than that of Saba ; so also are the forms of the characters in which it is written. But it has generally been supposed that the king- ARCHAEOLOGICAL WITNESS TO THE MOSAIC AGE. 13 doins of Ma'in and Saba existed side by side, and that the two classes of inscription were accordingly contemporaneous. Against this view, however. Dr. Glaser and Prof. Hommel urge objections of great weight. One of the most difficult to answer is that the cities of Ma'in and Saba are so dovetailed and inter locked together, that the sites on which the Minaean texts are met with are scattered in the midst of those on which the Sa- baean texts are found. It is as if Oxford and London were the capitals of one kingdom, while Reading and Banbury were the capitals of another. And nevertheless among the numerous inscriptions which have been copied, there is none which refers to a war between the two kingdoms. Dr. Glaser therefore seems justified in holding that instead of being contempo raneous, the two kingdoms were successive in date, the kingdom lof Ma'in being the predecessor of that of Saba. Such a conclusion, if it is correct, leads to important con sequences. The kingdom of Saba can be traced back to the reign of Tiglath-pileser III. of Assyria, in the Sth century B.C. At that time it was already so powerful as to have extended its dominion to Northern Arabia, where it came into contact with the Assyrian monarch. A few years later Ithamar, the Sabaean king, paid tribute to Sargon. Saba, or Sheba, more over, is mentioned more than once in the Old Testament ; and as early as the reign of Solomon we hear of the queen of Sheba coming from the distant lands of the south. The native in scriptions, however, inform us that before Saba was governed by kings and queens, it had been under the government of Makarib, or "high priests." It had thus been like Midian, whose " priest," Jethro, was related to Moses ; or Assyria, which, according to the cuneiform documents, was ruled by Patesis, or " high priests " of Assur, before a " king of Assyria " estabhshed himself. For the first beginnings of the power of Saba we are thus pushed back to a period considerably earlier than that of Solomon, and if Ma'in had flourished and decayed before Saba took its place, its antiquity must have been correspondingly great. Now the inscriptions ha,ve already furnished us with the names of thirty-three of the Minaean kings, the oldest of whom must consequently have lived before the birth of Moses. At this early date, therefore, the art of writing was 14 LEX MOSAICA. already practised in his realm, and a contemporaneous record kept of the events of the time. This, however, is not all. Like the Sabaean kings of a subsequent age, the Minaean princes claimed authority over Central and Northern Arabia. Minaean inscriptions, in which three of the kings of Ma'in are referred to, have been found as far north as Teima, on the high-road of commerce from Southern Arabia to Palestine, and another inscription, discovered in Yemen, speaks of the Minaean dominion as extending to Gaza. Thus, in the desert itself, the Israelites would have been brought into contact with a civilised power the subjects of which could read and write. Their inscriptions were recorded on the rocks and monuments not only of Southern Arabia, but of Northern Arabia as well, in the neighbourhood of Midian and Edom. Edom was already an independent country, as we learn from one of the Tel el-Amarna Tablets, in which it is mentioned as at war with Egypt, and a century later its neighbour Moab is included by Ramses II. among his con quests.* How, then, can we refuse to believe that the alpha betic writing which the merchants and officials of Ma'in brought with them to the North was handed on to the popu lations they found there ? In the Book of Genesis we have a list of the kings who reigned in Edom before the rise of the Israelitish monarchy, and it is a list which bears upon its face the stamp of authenticity. Why should it not have been extracted from the State annals of a country which managed to preserve its freedom in the age of the Egyptian Empire, and which — if there is any truth in the arguments of Glaser and Hommel — must have learned the art of alpha betic writing before the days of the Israelitish Exodus? It is important to observe that the writing was alphabetic, a branch, or it may be the mother stem, of the so-called Phoe nician alphabet. It would have been the letters of this alphabet rather than the characters of the cuneiform syllabary that the Israelites would have adopted when Moses was "king in Jeshurun" and pronounced laws at Kadesh-Bamea. They lived in a highly literary age and in the centre of lite- * On the base of a statue in front of the temple of Luxor, where the name of Muab, or Moab, foUoTre that of Assar, the Asshurim of Gen. 26. 3. .a.iv«..xi.^vji,utjriCAL WITNESS TO THE MOSAIC AGE. 15 rary activity ; that they should have taken no part in it, it is impossible to believe. The onus of proof, at all events, lies upon those who assert that they did not. Nor is it probable that after their settlement in Palestine they should, as it were, have gone to sleep while the nations around them were enjoying all the advantages of an ancient literary ctflture. The Canaanites, into whose midst they had come, had long been acquainted with writing, and the Tyrian annals went back to hard upon the third millennium before our era. We learn from the earlier chapters of the Books of Chronicles that a considerable part of the Hebrew population of Judah was of Edomite descent, while the Gibeonites were Serfs of Canaanitish origin, and many of the Canaanitish cities maintained their power and independence. How, then, can the Israelites themselves have remained in a state of illiterate isolation ? We have no grounds for explaining away the explicit statement of the Song of Deborah and Barak that " out of Zebulon (came) they that handle the pen of the writer." On the contrary, the testimony of Oriental archae ology is in thorough harmony with the literal interpretation of the verse. But the Oriental archaeologist can go yet further, and point out passages in the Pentateuch which imply the use of documents of the age of Moses. Let us take, for example, the list of the descendants of Ham in the tenth chapter of Genesis. Canaan is here made the brother of Mizraim, or Egypt. Now this was true only during the continuance of the Egyptian Empire, when Canaan was a province of Egypt. After the death of Ramses II. Canaan and Mizraim became strangers one to another ; the relationship described in Genesis represented an order of things which passed away after the age of the Exodus. It was a relationship which could not have occurred to the mind of a writer of a later time. Or let us take, again, the episode of Nimrod, the son of Cush. We are told of him not only that the beginning of his kingdom was in Babylonia, but also that it was said of him: "Like Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord." The proverb, however, is of Palestinian, and not of Baby lonian origin. The name of the Lord (Yahveh) was unknown in Babylonia, except as a foreign word, and we are referred 16 LEX MOSAICA. to an epoch when there was so close a connection between Canaan and Babylonia that the name of a Babylonian hero served as the text for a Canaanitish proverb. It was an epoch, too, when the Babylonian was Called a son of Cush, or rather Kash. Now, thanks to modern discovery, we know when this epoch was. It was the age of Babylonian power and influence in Canaan, the age of which the Tel el-Amarna Tablets in the century before the Exodus reveal to us the closing scenes. And at the same time they reveal to us the fact that the Babylonians were then known to the inhabi tants of Canaan as the Kassi, or Kassites. There was no later period when such was the case. But, we are told, there are certain portions of the Book of Genesis — as, for instance, the account of the Deluge — which betray a Babylonian origin, and must therefore have become known to the Jews at a late date. There is, however, no " must " in the case. It is true that cuneiform research has disclosed to us the existence of a Chaldsean account of the Deluge which resembles that of Genesis so closely as to prove that they are not independent of one another ; but at the same time it has informed us that this account, even in its present shape, is earlier than the age of Abraham, and that ' the poems and traditions on which it is based are of still greater antiquity. Moreover, as we have learnt from the tablets of Tel el-Amarna, the people of Canaan were ac quainted with Babylonian literature before Moses was born. Among the tablets are fragments of Babylonian legends, one of which has been marked with red ink in order to facilitate the study of it by some Canaanitish or Egyptian scribe. Another legend is the concluding part of a story which described the creation of the first man and the introduction of death into the world, and of which a copy of the first part, written some 800 years later, has been found in the ruins of the great library of Nineveh. In fact, the cosmological and historical traditions of Baby lonia would naturally have found their way to the West when Babylonian culture was dominant there, and have con stituted one of the most popular portions of Babylonian lite rature. It was then that they sank deeply into the memories and beliefs of the people, as is evidenced by the cosmologies ARCH^OLOGICAL WITNESS TO THE MOSAIC AGE. 17 of the Phoenician cities preserved by Philo Byblius, as weU as by the adoption into Canaan of Babylonian divinities. This was the period to which those parts of the Book of Genesis go back which have their background, as it were, in Babylonia. They bear, on the face of them, the proof of this. On the one hand there are indications, like the change of the ship of the Chaldaean Noah into an ark, which show that in their present form they were composed on Palestinian soil, and could not, therefore, have been a result of the Babylonish exile; on the other hand the Babylonian colour- mg is observable alike in the so-called " Elohistic " and "Jehovistic" portions of the narrative, both of which are equally indebted to Babylonia. We cannot say that the " Je hovist" derived his materials from the cuneiform tablets of Chaldaea, while the " Elohist " knew nothing of them ; on the contrary, the Biblical accounts of the Creation and the Flood, whether we refer them to " Jehovist " or to " Elohist," have their prototypes in Babylonian literature. What, then, becomes of those boasted "certainties " of the "higher criticism" about which of late we have heard so much ? Time after time we have been told that the acumen of the modern scholar has settled for ever the question of the date and historical trustworthiness of the Pentateuch. Moses has become a shadowy personage whose very existence has been denied; the- narratives of Genesis have been turned into fictions; the story of the Exodus has been rejected, and the composition of the greater part of the Pentateuch brought down to the age of the Exile. Indeed, it is upon the suppo sition that the Pentateuch must have been written centuries after the events recorded in it that the historical sceptic has been allowed such free play. As soon as we can show that the supposition is false, the ground is cut from under his feet. His edifice of doubt and negation has been raised upon an assumption which Oriental archaeology denies in the clearest tones. The age of Moses was a literary age ; the lands which witnessed the Exodus and the conquest of Ca naan were literary lands ; and literature had flourished in them for numberless generations before. The Book of Genesis in its present form may have undergone that revision and editing to which Jewish tradition points, and which the S 1063. B 18 LEX MOSAICA. Second Book of Esdras definitely describes ; but the docu ments of which it consists, the materials which it contains, are of far earlier date than the closing days of the Jewish monarchy. Such is the testimony of archaeology, and it is a testimony which rests upon something more solid and trust worthy than the " tact " of the critic or the theories of philo logical dissectors. n. MOSES THE AUTHOR OF THE LEVITICAL CODE OF LAWS. GEORGE EAWLINSON. B2 II. MOSES THE AUTHOR OF THE LEVITICAL CODE OF LAWS. BY the "Levitieal Code of Laws" is intended the entire series of enactments contained in the later chapters of Exodus (chaps. 20—23, 25—31, 35—40), in the Book of Leviticus itself, and in the Book of Numbers (chaps. 5, 6, 8 — 10, 15 — ^19). The term is used in contrast with the " Deuteronomical Code," which will be the subject of a separate essay. It is the object of the present writer to show that there are sufficient grounds for believing either the entire legislation of these Books, or at any rate the great bulk of it, to have proceeded from Moses, the traditional Lawgiver of the Hebrews, and to have been con signed by him, or by his orders, to writing, substantially in the shape in which it has come down to us. With this view he will, first of all, endeavour to show that the Levitieal Code is such a law as Moses, from his position and the circumstances of his time, might have been expected to promulgate ; secondly, that it is such 'a law as the later history of the people of Israel postulates and requires ; thirdly, that the human testimony to the fact of Moses having given this law is amply sufficient to establish it, being extraordinarily full and varied, and almost absolutely unconflicting ; and fourthly, that the fact rests, not merely, as most facts, on human evidence, but also on a witness who is Divine. These points must be proved separately. I. The LEVITICAL Code is such a Law as Moses, from his Position and the Circumstances of his Time, might have been expected to promulgate. In the first place, it is a law with all the signs of primitive antiquity about it. So dispassionate and unprejudiced a writer 22 LEX MOSAICA. as Dean Stanley says of it : " The general savour of antiquity about the Jewish Law throws it back to the earliest period of which criticism will admit."* Another writer, equally unpreju diced — the great authority upon ancient law, — t'rofessor Maine, had previously noted that the way in which the religious, civil, moral, and economical ordinances are mingled up together in the Mosaic Law, without any regard to differences in their essential character, is consistent only with that early stage of thought, when law was not yet severed from morality, nor religion from law, nor ceremony from religion, f And, indeed, the reader of the Levitieal Code who does not feel while reading it that he is breathing an atmosphere of extremely primitive thought and expression, must be either very unobservant or very ill acquainted with the characteristics of ancient legis lation. Secondly, the curious feature of the Levitieal Code, that it is intermittent, not continuous, being interrupted from time to time by portions of the historical narrative of the Wanderings, and having thus the air of a discontinuous and fragmentary collection of occasional enactments rather than of a formally- issued code, is highly suitable to the circumstances of Moses' life, which, from the time of his becoming the leader of the people, was so full of " tangled occupations " J as to allow him scant leisure for his legislative work, and to necessitate his executing this work by snatches in the intervals of business, knd issuing his laws, to some extent, as the occasion required. It is scarcely conceivable that any legislator whose life was less hurried and hard-pressed than that of Moses would have broken his legislation into fragments, and have intermixed these frag ments so inartificially and inconveniently with a series of his torical narratives. Further, the code is one great portions of which are utterly unsuited to the condition and circumstances of the Israehte people at any later time than that of their sojoum in the Sinaitic wilderness. The people are assumed to be living in "tents," in a "camp," and to be moving about from place to place. Worship goes on in connection with a sacred " Tabemacle," or * History of the Jewish Church, vol. i., p. 154 (edn. of 1885).- t Maine, Ancient Law, p. 16. X Gladstone, Impregnable Sock of Holy Scripture, p. 170. THE LEVITICAL CODE. 23 Tent, which is borne on the shoulders of the Levites from station to station, and forms the centre round which the tribes are grouped, alike on the march and at the encampment. The en tire ritual stands in the closest possible connection with this Tabernacle. It is mentioned in the code, and in the narrative accompanying the code, several hundred times. The code makes minute provisions for its care, its custody, its pitching, its re moval, its transference from' place to place. Now no one pre tends that at any date after the Mosaic period was the Jewish worship conducted in connection with an itinerant Tabernacle. At any other period, then, aU these laws, all these minute regulations would have been perfectly idle, otiose, without any possibility of practical application. They would be bogus laws intended to impose on the unwary. No object can be assigned to them except that of inducing persons to believe that the code whereof they formed a part was instituted in Mosaic times, when such laws would have been quite natural and in deed necessary. Again, with respect to the general character of the legisla tion, it would almost certainly, if Mosaic, bear traces of Egyp tian influence. Moses was brought up in the highest circles of Egyptian society. He was educated under priestly inffuence at Heliopolis.* He became in course of time " learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians " (Acts 7. 22). His mind must have been thoroughly imbued with Egyptian ideas. Any legis lation put forth by him would probably, nay, almost certainly, have a more or less Egyptian cast. Now what do we find in the Levitieal Code as it has come down to us ? In the first place, it is based on the sacerdotal principle, the principle more strongly established in Egypt than in any other country of antiquity. Its foundation is a hierarchical system, with grades of officers possessing hereditary functions and a sacred dress, or rather sacred dresses (Exod. 28. 2-43 ; Lev. 8. 2-13), enjoying special privileges, and laid under special restrictions. The hier archy is a caste, as that of Egypt was practically. It has enormous influence. At times it exercises through its chief functionary the supreme authority. The primary function of the priests, as in Egypt, is sacrifice — sacrifice with special rites, * Dean Stanley, Lectures on the Jewish Church, vol. i., pp. 76, 77. 24 LEX MOSAICA. and of definitely specified animals. The absolute purity of the priest before he engages in sacrifice is insisted on. Hence the important place occupied by ablution in the ritual (Exod. 29. 4 ; 40. 12 ; Lev. 8. 6 ; etc.). Hence the requirement of linen for the priestly garments (Exod. 28. 39, 42 ; Lev. 6. 10 ; etc. : comp. Herod, ii. 37). Hence the frequent purifications, or sanctifica- tions, commanded (Num. 8. 7, 21 ; 19. 7, 8, 12 ; etc.). Other features of the Levitieal Code which have something closely analogous to them in the worship of Egypt are : — 1. The triple division of the place of worship into a porch or vestibule, a sanctuary, and a Holy of Holies ; 2. The inclusion of an ark among the most sacred of religious objects (Exod. 25. 10 ; Wil kinson in Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. ii., p. 100) ; 3. The abundant use of incense in religious worship (Exod. 30. 1, 7, 8 ; Records of the Past, vol. x., pp. 18, 19) ; 4. The distinction made between prophets and priests (Rawlinson's Egypt, vol. i., p. 434) ; 5. The institution of panegyries or " solemn assemblies " (Herod, ii. 59-62 ; Lev. 23. 26 ; Num. 29. 35 ; etc.) ; 6. The en dowment of the priesthood (Gen. 47. 20, 22; Herod, ii. 37; Diod. Sic. i. 72) ; 7. The distinction of clean and unclean meats (Herod, ii. 35-42, 47); etc., etc. On the other hand, there is a marked avoidance of certain points in the Egyptian religion, which seems to imply an inti mate acquaintance with it and a strong dislike of some of its characteristic features. The Egyptian religion was chiefly a nature worship, especially a worship of the sun.* In the Le- vitical Code no honourable mention of any kind is made of the sun as there is in the Psalms (19. 4) and elsewhere. Of course polytheism, idolatry, and animal worship, are condemned. But, besides this, the Egyptian belief concerning a future life is ignored. Considering the teaching of the later Scriptures, as Job, the Psalms, Isaiah, Daniel, it is most remarkable that the Levitieal Law appeals only to earthly sanctions, and makes not the slightest reference from beginning to end to a future state of existence. The only reasonable account that can be given of this omission is that the author, aware how intimately the Egyptian belief on the subject was mixed up with idolatry and superstition, and afraid of encouraging the false views connected ' Birch, Egypt from the Earliest Times,. Introd., p. a. THE LEVITICAL CODE. 25 with it, promulgated by the Egyptian hierarchy in the " Book of the Dead " and in other works, thought it best not to touch the matter, but to leave it in abeyance. The Egyptian belief was mixed up with notions of transmigration into human and animal forms,* with a complicated system of charms and amulets, with a coarse polytheism, and with a view that the soul constantly revisited the scenes of this mortal life.f It led to all manner of absurd rites and ceremonies, as feasts for the dead, a foolish ' prejudice in favour of embalming the body after death, an un necessary expense on funerals and tombs, and an unreasonable idea that the fate of the dead could be rendered happier after death by means of ceremonial observances. A person so situ ated as Moses might well prefer that the future should be a blank to his countrymen rather than that it should be regarded by them in the light in which it was most usually viewed by the Egyptians. Moreover, there was another influence which might have been expected to be stamped on the Levitieal legislation if it had its birth in the Sinaitic wilderness and was fashioned by Moses. Moses jvas of a Semitical stock. He was half an Arab by race. His tribe had not long emerged from the nomadic condition which the Arabian people persistently aflfect almost more than any other nation. Besides, he had for forty years, during the most vigorous time of his manhood, thrown in his lot with one of the wandering Arab tribes, taken service with it, married into it, become, as it were, a naturalised Midianite. When suddenly the care of a nation was thrust upon him, and he had to extemporise rules and ordinances for its governance, it would not have been natural for him to go back wholly to Egypt. Common sense would tell him that those whom he had to direct were more like Arabs than Egyptians in their tempera ment, more Semitic than Nigrito-Caucasian. In the institutions that he gave them he would draw some drafts at any rate upon the stock of knowledge and ideas which he had acquired in Midian, and lay the new treasures that he had obtained in the way of traditional laws and customs under contribution. First, he would naturally adapt the constitution of his people, * Birch, Egypt from the Earliest Times, 1. s. i;. t See Renouf in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archceology, -voX. xvi., pp. 180-187. 26 LEX MOSAICA. in existing circumstances nomadic, to the desert. It would be impossible in this respect to take Egypt for an example. An ancient hereditary monarchy could not suddenly be extemporised. An association of Sheykhs — greybeards, chiefs — with power to superintend and judge, would suit the occasion, and would be suggested by the Midianitish model. A council and assembly of these head-men would be formed, who would greatly relieve the acting head of the state, and facilitate his management of those under him. Now this is exactly the arrangement which Moses by the advice of Jethro is said to have made ; and it cer tainly cannot well have been introduced at any later period. It recurs from time to time in all the later history, never as a new, ahvays as an old institution, with an air of remote antiquity about it. Another point in which a legislator at the time and under the circumstances of Moses might have been expected to fall back upon Arabian rather than Egyptian institutions, is that known under the name of " The Law of Bloodfeud." Under the very ancient civilisation of Egypt, where all was orderly and regular, private revenge was, of course, not allowed. Crimi nal justice was administered with as much formality and as much regularity as is now customary in Europe. But it was impossible to transfer per saltum this advanced growth of social order and development to a rude race but lately emerged from the nomadic condition, still more recently from slavery, and still a prey to the violent passions and emotions which belong to human nature in its undeveloped forms. What the instinctiye feeling of the Hebrew was in these early times, when he became cognisant of a soqial wrong, sufficiently appears from the vengeance taken upon Hamor and Shechem by Simeon and Levi (Gen. 34. 25-31), and from the behaviour of Moses himself towards the Egyptian oppressor (Exod. 2. 12). For a people in this condition the Arab traditional law of the blood-revenger,* which the Levitieal legislator followed (Exod. 21. 13 ; Num. 35. 11-33), was far more suitable than any more advanced juris prudence. Occasionally we find in the Levitieal legislation a curious mixture of Arabian with Egyptian ideas — the general principle * Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins, p. 66 ; Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, pp. 305, 306. THE LEVITICAL CODE. 27 of a set of enactments adopted from the one source, the details evidently derived from, or at any rate aflfected by, the other. The distinction between clean and unclean beasts, animals allowed and animals not allowed for food, was predominantly Egypti^'ii) a-icl would naturally be taken from that system, of which it formed a prominent part.* But when the legislator descended to particulars, his mind was drawn oflf from the con sideration of Egyptian animals to those which were commonly to be met with in the desert, and, while he disallowed the camel, the shaphan or hyrax, and the hare (Lev. U. 4-6), he gave, by implication or expressly (Deut. 14. 5), free permission for the consumption of aU those beasts of the antelope class which abounded throughout the Sinaitic Peninsula in a wfld state — " the hart, and the roebuck, and the fallow deer, and the wild goat, and the pygarg, and the wild ox (or rather the oryx), and the chamois." It may be said, indeed, that this last list is not " Levitieal," since in our present text it occurs only in the Deu teronomic legislation, but the introductory words in Lev. U. 1, " These are the beasts," seem to imply that originally a list followed. Other Arabian, or at any rate Semitic, features of the legis lation, at once indicative of its high antiquity and of the lean ing of its author towards old Semitic usages — a leaning which Moses might be expected to have had, — are the following : — 1. The bright colours of the priestly garments ; t 2. The use of pomegranates as sacred ornaments ; 3. The observance of the Sabbath ; 4. The employment of shew-bread ; 5. The variety in the kinds of sacrifices ; 6. The practice of fasting ; 7. The dedication of firstborn. Professor Sayce observes that both in the Phoenician and in the Assyrian religious systems there were "numerous parallels to the ordinances of the Mosaic Law." " Besides the Sabbath already spoken of," he says, " the Baby lonians and Assyrians had various festivals and fasts on which certain rites had to be performed and certain sacrifices offered ; they knew of ' peace-offerings,' and of ' heave-oflferings,' of the dedication of the firstborn, and of sacrifices for sin. The gods were carried in procession in ' ships ' which, as we leam from the sculptures, resembled in form the Hebrew ' Ark,' and * Herod, ii. 41, 47 ; Juv. Sat, xv. 1-6. t Exod. 28. 8, 33 ; BisseU, Pentateuch, p. 210. 28 LEX MOSAICA. were borne on men's shoulders by means of staves. In front of the image of the god stood a table on which shew-bread was laid ; and a distinction was drawn between the meal offering and the animal sacrifice. Certain unclean kinds of food were forbidden, including . . 'creeping things,' and in the outer courts of the temples were large lavers, called ' seas,' like the ' sea ' of Solomon's Temple, in which the worshippers were re quired to cleanse themselves. Many of these regulations and rites came down from the Accadian period."* The legislation of the Levitieal Code respecting leprosy (Lev. 13. 2-59 ; 14. 2-57) is Egyptian in its general character, and especially characteristic of the epoch of Egyptian history at which their own historians placed the leadership and legisla tion of Moses. The Exodus of the Hebrews was attributed by Manetho f and Chaeremon J to a great outburst of leprosy in Egypt in the reign of Amenophis (Menephthah), which induced that monarch to have the lepers at first confined in stone quar ries, to the number of eighty thousand, and afterwards driven forth from the land in the direction of Syria, where they became a separate nation. The number of the lepers is no doubt greatly exaggerated, and the special prevalence of the disease among the Hebrews may be questioned ; but unless it had been a form of disease very common in Egypt at the time, and one needing stringent measures to check and subdue it, we can scarcely sup pose that it would have been elevated by grave historians into the primary cause of great national movements. Thus the Le- vitical legislation agrees in this respect, as in so many others, with what was to have been expected from Moses. It has sometimes been urged that the multiplicity and mi nuteness of the Levitieal Code is out of keeping with the free dom and simplicity of desert life, unsuitable to primitive times, and an anachronism at the date of Moses. But, in the first place, Moses would evidently have ready to his hand, in the elaborate system of Egyptian jurispi'udence and religious ob servance, a source whence he might draw enactments of any degree of minuteness and elaboration, if he thought them needed by his people ; and, secondly, it does not appear, historically, * Sayce, Fresh Light from the Ancient Jion/uments, p. 78. f Manetho ap. Joseph. Contr. Apion., i. 26, 27. J Chceremon ap. eund., i. 32. THE LEVITICAL CODE. 29 that very simple systems of law and observance do belong to very primitive societies, but rather the contrary. Accadian in stitutions as revealed to us by the earliest cuneiform inscrip tions are very complicated,* the regulations of the ancient Phoenician ritual are most minute,! and Burckhardt tells us t that the great Bedouin community of Arabia has a most care fully elaborated system of social and legal observances, which has descended to it from a remote antiquity through a long succession of ages. It may be confidently asserted that there is nothing in the Levitieal Code unsuited to the time of Moses, or unsuited to the circumstances under which he is stated to have become a legislator. Those who regard the complicated and elaborate Jewish ritual as necessarily requiring a long period for its development, forget that the whole nation had had before its eyes, certainly for two hundred, probably for above four hundred, years (Ex. 12. 40), the (at least) equally elaborate and equally complicated system of Egypt, and that Moses must from his position have been completely familiar with all the details and intricacies of it. That Moses, bom and bred up in Egypt, and deeply versed in the Egyptian learning, should, when seeking to bind his mob of slaves into a nation, have adopted the general idea of the Egyptian system — an intricate network of minute ordinances — while varying the details in ten thousand ways, as he thought desirable, is what was only to be expected ; and, unless particular ordinances can be pointed out, of the nature of anachronisms, there can be no reason for denying to the Code a Mosaic origin. But no such anachronisms can be proved. The whole cast and character of the observances is archaic. The several parts of the legislation harmonise one with the other. Minute additions may possibly have been made from time to time to the Code,§ but they are not very apparent. The Levi tieal Code contains no enactments which bear any manifest mark of the regal, much less of the Babylonian or Persian, period. * Transactions of Soc. of Bibl. Archeology, vol. viii., pp. ii30-293. f Sayce, Fresh Light, pp. 79-81. J Notes on the Bedouins, vol. i., p. 381. § Gladstone, Impregnable Bock of Holy Scripture, p. 180. 30 I-EX MOSAICA. II. The LEVITICAL Code is such a Law as the later History of the People of Israel postulates and requires. The history of the Israelites from the time of their passage through the Sinaitic Desert and entrance into Palestine to the date of Nehemiah (B.C. 432) is known to us in any detail solely from the historical books of the Old Testament from Joshua to Esther, illustrated as these are during their later portion by the prophetical books from Isaiah to MalachL Unless we accept the historical books as delivering to us, in the main, a faithful and trustworthy account of the people and of the vicissitudes through which they passed, we must confess ourselves to be absolutely without any knowledge at all of the national history for nearly a thousand years after the Exodus. To construct for ourselves a different history from this out of our own theories of what is likely to have taken place, or by the use of an eclectic process which consists in accepting as much as we like, and rejecting as much as we do not like, of the extant narrative, is to substitute fancy for fact, idealism for reality, a mere imaginary picture of past times for an authenticated account of them. The present writer feels bound to take the Hebrew history as it has come down in the archives of the nation, and to regard the pictures which the sacred books present to us as, in the main, true pictures of the condition of the people at different periods, and of the laws and institutions which prevailed among them. What then is the representation ? First of all, in the time of Joshua. We find the nation represented as newly come out of the Wildemess after a long sojourn (ch. 24. 7), du,ring which all those had died who actually removed out of Egypt (ch. 5. 4). They are under the governance and direction of Joshua the son of Nun, who is in possession of " the Law of Moses" (ch. 8. 31)— a law written in a "Book" (ch. 1. 8; 8. 34; 23. 6), which is to serve both Joshua (ch. 1. 7, 8) and the people under him (ch. 22. 5 ; 23. 6-8) as the rule of their lives, and is to be followed with the greatest exact ness in all things. This Law prescribes the devout worship of Jehovah, and entire abstinence from all acknowledgment THE LEVITICAL CODE. 31 of any other god (ch. 23. 7). The worship is sacrificial, and includes burnt offerings, peace offerings, and meat offerings (chaps. 8. 31 ; 22. 23), which are offered ordinarily upon an altar which is " before the Tabemacle of the Lord " (ch. 22. 29). The centre of the worship is an " Ark," called '¦' the Ark of the Covenant" (ch. 3. 3-17), which at first is borne from place to place upon the shoulders of "the priests the Levites" (ch. 3. 3, 6, 17), but after the conquest of the greater part of the land is established permanently with the Tabernacle in Shiloh (ch. 18. 1). The Ark is supposed to have within it "the presence of the living God" (ch. 3. 10, 11). It is so sacred that the people may not approach near to it (ch. 3. 4), and before they follow in its wake must " sanctify them selves" (ch. 3. 5). A priestly caste exists which ministers in holy things (chaps. 3 and 4), and consists of "the Levites," or descendants of Levi, who are separated off from the rest of the people by various distinctions. They have no tract of land assigned to them, like the other tribes, but are scattered over the territory, having cities with suburbs in each tribe, but sub sisting chiefly on the flesh of the sacrifices which the people offer to Jehovah (chaps. 13. 14; 21. 1-42). At their head is an official, called sometimes " the priest " (chaps. 14. 1 ; 17. 4), sometimes "the High Priest" (ch. 20. 6), who is of the seed of Aaron (ch. 24. 33), and holds a position of authority not greatly inferior to that of the supreme head of the nation, Joshua (chaps. 14. 1 ; 21. 1). The nation is organised into tribes; and the number of the tribes, exclusively of Levi, is twelve (ch. 3. 12). Each tribe consists of a certain number of families, and each family of a certain number of households (eh. 7. 14). Every tribe is under its "prince" (chaps. 9. 15; 22. 14), who has a considerable, but somewhat undefined authority. Besides these, there are in each tribe "elders," "officers," and "judges" (chaps. 8. 33 ; 23. 2 ; 24. 1). The narrative is almost wholly confined to the civil history of the nation; but in the course of it we find further the following enactments of the Law mentioned as receiving observance : — 1. The celebration of the feast of the Passover on the fourteenth day of a month (eh. 5. 10), presumably Abib ; 2. The use at the Passover time of "unleavened cakes" (ch. 5. H); 3. The employment of " whole stones " which have not been touched by a tool in 32 LEX MOSAICA. the building of an occasional altar (eh. 8. 31);* 4. The re moval of a malefactor's body from the cross before nightfaU on the day of execution (chaps. 8. 29 ; 10. 27) ; f 5. The appointment of cities of refuge (ch. 20. 2-9) and the estab lishment of the usages commanded in Num. 35. 16-29 ; 6. The assignment of an inheritance to the daughters of Zelophehad (eh. 17. 3-6) ; | 7. Circumcision (ch. 5. 3-8), purification (chaps. 3. 5 ; 7. 13) ; 8. The apportionment of the land to the several tribes by lot (chaps. 14. 2; 18. 10).§ It appears from this review, that, according to the Hebrew historian who has left us an account of the times of Joshua, and whom critics generally recoghise as a contemporary of the . events which he records, the nation was at that time living under a law and institutions which in a multitude of points resemble those of the Levitieal Code, and which cannot be shown to have been in any important particular at variance with it. This law, moreover, they ascribed to Moses (ch. 1. 7), and believed that he had written in a " Book " (ch. 1. 8), which " book " they possessed (ch. 8. 32-34). The observance of it they regarded as imperative (chaps. 1. 7 ; 8. 31, 35 ; 22. 5 ; 23. 6 ; etc.), and important infractions of it were punished capitally (ch. 7. 13-25). As the events of the narratives belong to the generation immediately succeeding Moses, it is impos sible to imagine a nameless lawgiver stepping in, with a code unknown to Moses, and attempting to pass it off" for his. Such an attempt must have led to immediate detection. But the only alternative is to suppose that the institutions exist ing in Joshua's time were based upon an actual Mosaic legis lation — a legislation at any rate closely resembling that of the Levitieal Code. Passing on from the narrative of "Joshua" to that of "Judges," and taking the picture presented to us there, as (at least) true in its main features, what may we gather con cerning the laws and institutions of the people of Israel at that time ? Are they such as postulate an anterior legislation like the Levitieal legislation, or such as harmonise with such a legislation, or (as is maintained by some) such as preclude * Compare Exod. 20. 23. J Commanded Num. 27. 1-7. t Deut. 21. 23. § Commanded Num. 26. 56, 56 ; 33. 54. THE LEVITICAL CODE. 33 it? Now, certainly, the main characteristic of the period which the writer labours to set before us is the general law lessness. " In those days there was no king in Israel : every man did that which was right in his own eyes " (chaps. 17. 6 ; 18. 1; 19. 1; 21. 25); then "the highways were unoccupied, and the travellers walked through byways " (ch. 5. 8) ; the people "ceased not from their own doings, nor from their stubbom way" (ch. 2. 19). The idolatry which the Levitieal Law so stemly forbade (Exod. 20. 4, 23 ; Lev. 26. 1) was widely practised (chaps. 17. 4 ; 18. 14-20, 31 ; etc.) ; heathen gods and goddesses were acknowledged and worshipped (chaps. 2. 11-13; 3. 7 ; 6. 25 ; 8. 33 ; 10. 6 ; etc.) ; leagues of peace were made with the idolatrous nations (ch. 1. 28, 30, 33, 35) whom the Levitieal Code required to be exterminated (Exod. 34. 11; Num. 31. 7); intermarriages between the Israelites and the Canaanites, forbidden in the Levitieal Code (Exod. 34. 16), were frequent (chaps. 3. 6; 14. 2-8). If in these vital points the general practice of the people was in direct antagonism to the principles of the Levitieal Code, it certainly cannot be maintained that any great regard was likely to have been paid to the hundreds of minute observances which fill so many chapters in Leviticus and Numbers. " Every man did that which was right in his own eyes." But the question is, Was not the Law there all the same ? Was it not known, acknow ledged, felt as binding on the conscience, though disregarded in act ? Certainly the writer of Judges takes this view. The generation which lived under Joshua, he tells us, " obeyed the commandments of the LoED " (ch. 2. 17) and kept His covenant; that which followed it "turned quickly out of the way that their fathers had walked in" (ibid.), "transgressed His cove nant, and did not hearken to His voice." Its disobedience to the Law which God had given its fathers, and which it possessed, provoked God, and caused all those many visitations of Divine vengeance of which the book contains the record (chaps. 3. 8, 12; 4. 2; 6. 1; 10. 7-9; etc.). What then was this Law? We can see from the book that it comprised the existence of a priestly caste known as " Levites " (ch. 17. 7) and highly honoured (chaps. 17. 10-13 ; 18. 19-30) ; a reverential regard for the Ark of the Covenant (eh. 20. 27) ; the ministration before the Ark, according to the Levitieal ordinance, of a priest S 1063. C 34 LEX MOSAICA. of the seed of Aaron (ch. 20. 28) ; a power of asking counsel of God and of receiving answers directly from Him (chaps. 18. 5; 20. 18, 23, 27);* worship of God by means of burnt offerings and peace offerings (chaps. 6. 26 ; 13. 19 ; 20. 26) ; the observance of at least one religious festival (eh. 21. 19); the usage of circumcision (ch. 15. 18) ; the recognition of vows as of religious obligation (ch. U. 30) ; the existence of an order of Nazarites (ch. 13. 5-7) ; the establishment of one special centre of worship for the whole people,t which is at one time Bethel (ch. 20. 18, 26, 27), at another Shiloh (chaps. 18. 31 ; 21. 19), at another Mizpeh (chaps. H. 11 ; 21. 1); and the recognition of Jehovah as the true king of the nation (ch. 8. 23), which was the fundamental principle of the entire legislation of Moses. Are not these indications that, although unenforced by authority, and frequently in the most vital points disobeyed, there was recognised, in the heart and conscience of the nation, a Law which has so many points of resemblance to the Levitieal that it must have been based upon that Law, and may have been that Law itself, as it had effected a lodgment in the heart and conscience of the people ? It must be borne in mind that the book which contains all these indications is not didactic or ritual, but historical, and that it could therefore not be expected to give a detailed account of the regular religious and ecclesiastical usages of the period which it covers,J but would only note such matters by the way and incidentally as they cropped up, so to speak, into the civil history. It will not be necessary to pursue this line of reasoning any further. If even the obscure times of Joshua and the Judges are found to imply the existence during them of insti tutions based upon the Levitieal Code of laws, much more is such a code postulated by the narrative contained in Samuel and Kings. Samuel shows us a settled worship of Jehovah under the High Priest at Shiloh (ch. 1. 3), to which aU Israel resorts, and where sacrifice is continually oflfered (chaps. 1. 4, 25 ; 2. 13-17). The worship takes place in connection with the Tabemacle of the Congregation (eh. 2. 22), in whi^h is the ' Compare Exod. 28. 30; Num. 27. 21. t See Exod. 20. 24 ; Lev. 17. 4 ; Deut. 12. 5-14. X Compare BisseU, Origin and Structure of the Pentateuch, p. 345. THE LEVITICAL CODE. 35 Ark of the Covenant (chaps. 3. 3; 4. 3, 4); it is conducted by several priests (chaps. 1. 3; 2. 13-17) assisted by others, probably Levites (ch. 2. 13, 14), according, so far as appears, to the model laid down in Exodus (ch. 40. 18-29). The High Priest ministers, clothed in an ephod (1 Sam. 2. 28) ; he offers victims and bums incense (ibid.); the fat of the victims is the special sacrificial part (ch. 2. 16); of the flesh a portion is the priest's, a portion the worshipper's (eh. 2. 13-15); a lamp bums in the Temple of the Lord (the Tabemacle) during the night time (eh. 3. 3).* The Ark of the Covenant is re garded as containing in it the presence of God (cL 4. 4, 7), and is so holy that 50,070 persons are smitten with death for even looking into it (ch. 6. 19). It is moved from place to place, no fixed abode having been assigned to it until David's time; but it is always the centre of worship, and under the immediate charge of the High Priest. From one casual notice, belonging to the history of David's extreme distress when out lawed by Saul, we find that the shewbread commanded in Exodus (ch. 25. 30; cf. Lev. 24. 5, 6) is still stored within the Tabemacle (1 Sam. 21. 4-6). In Kings the place is at last found where the Lord would put His name; the Temple is built after the pattern of the Tabemacle ; and the full Temple worship is established. The modern reconstruetors of Israelite history deny that there was ever any Tabernacle, and regard the picture in Exod. 26, 27 as due to the imagination of a priestly clique in Ezra's time who projected back into the past a sort of reflection of the Temple of their day modified according to the necessities of life in the wilderness; but the most scientific of modern architects finds clear trace in the Temple structure itself that it grew out of an antecedent Tent or Tabemacle which furnished the basis for all its principal featureat This Tabernacle must have had its ritual; and every historical notice that we possess of that ritual is in accord with the view that it was that of the Levitieal Code. * Compare Exod. 27. 20, 21 ; Lev. 24. 2-4. t Fergusson in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, vol. iii., pp. 1451, et seq. C 2 36 LEX MOSAICA. HI The Human Testimony to the Fact of Moses having GIVEN THE LeVITICAL LaW IS AMPLY SUFFICIENT TO ESTABLISH IT, BEING EXTRAORDINARILY FULL AND VARIED, AND ALMOST ABSOLUTELY UNCONFLICTING. Authorship is generally allowed to be almost wholly a matter of testimony. If we are asked why we ascribe the Iliad to Homer, or the Mneid to Virgil, or the Nicomachsean Ethics to Aristotle, or the Jugurthine War to SaUust, or even the tragedy of Hamlet to Shakespeare, we must answer, primarily, because they have always been reputed to be the works of those authors. " Authorship generally is mere matter of notoriety ; and usually the best evidence we have for it, beyond common repute, is the declaration of some writer, later by two or three centuries, that the person to whom a given work is assigned composed a book answer ing in its subject and its general character to the work which we find passing under his name."* In the case of Moses this testimony begins earlier, is more ample, more continuous, and more varied than in that of almost any other ancient author. It begins in the very next generation with one of the contemporaries of Joshua, the author of the book which bears Joshua's name. This very early writer declares that the great leader who succeeded Moses was in possession of a law (eh. 1. 7), written in a book (chaps. 1. 8 ; 8. 34 ; 23. 6), which he calls "the Book of the Law of Moses" (ch. 8. 31), and upholds as a complete rule of life and eon- duet for the people of Israel (chaps. 1. 8 ; 22. 5 ; 23. 6). That this law comprised the entire Levitieal Code is not indeed laid down, but that it contained a number of commands which were portions of the Levitieal Code (chaps. 1. 13-15; 3.8; 4. 12; 5. 2, 10, 11; 7. 13; 8. 31; 9. 24; 12.6; 13. 14, 33; 14. 2; 17. 4-6; 19. 51; 20. 2, 3; 21. 2-8; 23. 7) is certain ; and until it is proved that that Code is a compila tion of fragments belonging to different times and authors, its unity is to be assumed, since its present form is the only one in which it is known to have ever existed. It is true that after this there is a gap. But when, after the troublous times of the Judges, the literature begins to * Aids to Faith, pp. 241, 242. THE LEVITICAL CODE. 37 reappear, the testimony to Moses as the author of the whole Law, and so necessarily of the Levitieal Code, at once recom mences. Kings and Chronicles are, for the most part, compi lations from state documents contemporary with the times of the monarchs whose history is related. The speech reported in 1 Kings 2. 2-9 contains the testimony of David that " the Law," which comprised all God's "statutes, commandments, judgments, and testimonies," proceeded from Moses and was " written " by him. The document given at length in 1 Kings 8. 12-61 cites Moses as the author of the separation of Israel from all the peoples of the earth (cf. Exod. 19. 6, 6) and of the promises found in Exod. 33. 14; Deut. 3. 20; 28. 3-14; etc., thus giving the testimony of Solomon to the same effect. Notices belonging to the reigns of Joash (2 Chron. 23. 18), Amaziah (2 Kings 14. 6 ; 2 Chron. 25. 4), Hezekiah (2 Kings 18. 6), Manasseh (2 Kings 21.8), and Josiah (2 Kings 23. 25 ; 2 Chron. 34. 14) prove the continued existence of the Law and its continued attribution to Moses by the compilers of the state archives. Among the earliest of the prophets Hosea bears no am biguous testimony to Moses * as a religious teacher (cL 12. 13), though he does not mention him by name. Isaiah (ch. 63. 11) testifies that he led the people of Israel out of Egypt, and was the '^ shepherd," or spiritual teacher, of the ffock. Micah couples him with Aaron and Miriam (eh. 6. 4) in the same way as Exodus (ch. 15. 20-22) and Numbers (ch. 12. 4) do. Among the latest of the prophets Malachi not only names him as "God's servant," but distinctly speaks of the "Law" which God " commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel," and which contained " statutes and judgments " (ch. 4. 4). Among the prophets of the intermediate period Daniel gives similar testimony, clearly laying it down that the offences which brought upon Israel the grievous punishment of the Babylonian Captivity, were oflfences against the written law of Moses (eh. 9. 11-13). The peculiar position in which Ezra and Nehemiah have been made to stand towards the Levitieal Code by a modem school of critics, renders their testimony to the Mosaic author- * See Kuenen, Seligion of Israel, vol. i., p. 191, E. T. 38 LEX MOSAICA. ship of the Code of very special importance. The Law which Ezra and Nehemiah enforced with such zeal is admitted to have comprised the Levitieal Code,* is said indeed to have consisted mainly of it, and to have been by them for the first time imposed upon the nation.t Now, in what light do they set this Law before their countrymen? whom do they regard, whom do they distinctly state, to have been its author ? Ezra, who is rightly looked upon as the writer of the entire book which goes by his name,! begins his account of Zerub- babel's religious work at Jerusalem by a statement that Joshua, Zerubbabel, and their brethren " builded the altar of the God of Israel, to offer burnt offerings thereon, as it is wntten in the Law of Moses, the man of God." This Law, he goes on to show, required daily burnt offerings, morning and evening (Exod. 29. 38-42), an observance of the Feast of Tabernacles in the seventh month (Lev. 23. 34), with daily burnt offerings by number (Num. 29. 13-38), an observance of other "set feasts," and especially a sacrificial offering on every " new moon" or first day of a month (Num. 28. 11-15). Again, later on, he tells us that Zerubbabel " set the priests in their divisions, and the Levites in their courses, for the service of God which is at Jerusalem, as it is written in the book of Moses (ch. 6. 18), where the reference is evidently to Num. 3. 6-9 and 8. 9-13. Similarly, Nehemiah begins his account of the religious reformation which he and Ezra conducted by a statement that the people "spake unto Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses " and read it to them. This book, it is admitted, was either the Levitieal Code or the entire Pentateuch. It contained the directions as to how the Feast of Tabernacles was to be kept which are only found in Lev. 23. 40. Nehemiah clearly views it as the work of Moses. Neither he nor Ezra claim any portion of the authorship. It is "the law which the Lord commanded by Moses " (Neh. 8. 14) — " God's law, which was given by Moses the servant of God" (ch. 10. 29), "right judgments and true laws, good statutes and commandments, precepts, statutes, and * Kuenen, Seligion of Israel, vol. ii., p. 231. t Kuenen, 1. s. c. ; Robertson Smith, The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, p. 383 ; Driver, Introd. to the Lit. of the 0. T., p. 135. X See the " Introduction " to Ezra in the Speaker's Commentary, vol. iii., pp- 386, 387. THE LEVITICAL CODE. 39 laws," given "by the hand of Moses, God's servant" (ch. 9. 13, 14). The people evidently accept it as the Law which Moses taught; that which was revealed to him from heaven on Mount Sinai (ch. 9. 13), and which he wrote in a " book " (chaps. 8. 1, 3; 13. 1). This evidence may be much enlarged if, with many of the best critics, we assign the compilation of the two Books of Chronicles to Ezra. The writer of these Books— whose con ception of the Law is, admittedly, that it included the Levitieal Code — in at least thirteen places declares Moses to have been its author (1 Chron. 6. 49 ; 15. 15 ; 22. 12, 13 ; 2 Chron. 8. 13 ; 23. 18; 24. 6, 9; 25. 4; 30. 16; 33. 8 ; 34. 14; 35. 6, 12). Among the institutions which he expressly ascribes to Moses are the assignment of the office of sacrifice exclusively to Aaron and his sons (comp. Lev. 1. 2-17); the assignment of the duty of burning incense to the same (cf. Ex. 30. 7) ; the assignment of the duty of bearing the Ark of the Covenant on their shoulders to the Levites (cf. Num. 4. 15) ; the observation of the new moons (cf. Num. 28. 11), the sabbaths, and the three great feasts (cf. Ex. 23. 12-17) ; the imposition of a poll-tax on the people for the service of the sanctuary (Ex. 30. 13-16); and the " removal " by the Levites of those portions of the victims which were to be offered in sacrifice (cf. Lev. 3. 9 ; 4. 41) ; — all of them ordinances of the Levitieal Code, and some not found elsewhere. If we take the writer for Ezra, we raise the number of Ezra's testimonies from two to fifteen. If we decline to accept this view, we have a third witness, of about the time of Ezra, who knows nothing of the introduction of the Levitieal Code by Ezra and Nehemiah, but regards it as part and parcel of the Law delivered by God to Moses on Sinai. And this witness is one especially learned in the traditions and archives of his nation, one who quotes more authorities for his statements than any other of the sacred historians.* Of post-exiHc evidence to the belief that the entire Law — the Levitieal Code as much as any other part— was written by Moses, it is admitted that there is abundance. Among wit nesses worthy of special citation are the author of the First Book of Esdras, who tells us that Josiah required the Levites of * See Driver, Introd. to Lit. of 0. T., pp. 495-499 ; and compare Speaker's Commentary, Introd. to Chronicles, vol. iii., pp. 159-161. 40 LEX MOSAICA. his time to keep the Passover exactly " according to the com mandment of the Lord which was given unto Moses " (ch. 1.6); that " the priests and Levites stood in very comely order to offer to the Lord as it is written in the Book of Moses" (eh. 1.11); and that the people at the dedication of the second Temple " did according to the things written in the Book of Moses " (eh. 7. 6) : the author of the Book of Ecclesiasticus, Jesus the son of Sirach, who identifies Wisdom with " the Law which Moses commanded for an heritage unto the congrega tions of Jacob " (ch. 24. 23), and asserts that God " made Moses to hear His voice, and brought him into the dark cloud, and gave him commandments before his face, even the law of life and knowledge, that he might teach Jacob His covenants and Israel His judgments " (eh. 45. 5) : the writer of Baruch, who says, with distinct reference to Lev. 26, " 0 Lord our God, Thou hast dealt with us after all Thy goodness ... as Thou spakest by Thy servant Moses in the day when Thou didst command him to write thy Law before the ehfldren of Israel " (ch. 2. 28) : and the author of the Second Book of the Mac cabees, who, in his narrative of the martyrdom of the seven brothers for refusing to transgress Lev. 11. 7, tells us that their obedience was obedience to "the commandment of the Law that was given unto their fathers by Moses " (eh. 7. 30). Other testimonies of Jewish authorities between the time of the Exile and the birth of Christ are the following: — Eupolemus (about B.C. 150-100) says that Moses was the first who gave written laws to the Jews,* and that he filled the office of a prophet to them for forty years.f Philo (B.C. 30-A.D. 10), one of the most learned writers that the nation ever produced, as signs to Moses, most distinctly, the entire Law, civil, moral, and ceremonial, devoting an entire book J to this last subject, and embodying in this book almost the entire Levitieal legislation. It is said that Philo was uncritical, and that his authority is therefore of little weight ; § but he represents his age, and makes it perfectly clear that in the schools of Alexandria, where criticism, it must be remembered, had its origin, there was not, at the cominencement of our era, any difference of opinion as to the Mosaic authorship of the entire Jewish Law, (to Hist. Qrtec., vol. iii., p. 220, Fr. 13. f Ibi^-7 1- 225, Fr. 18. X Be Vita Mosis, lib. iii. § Quarterly Beview, April, 1894, p. 387. THE LEVITICAL CODE. 41 much less any school which maintained the modem theory of a gradual growth of the Code from small beginnings by addi tions at the hands of various authors. A similai' result foUows from the testimony of Josephus. Josephus may not be a critic of the first order; but he was an extremely learned man, deeply versed in the antiquities of his nation, which he had made a special object of study, and of which he wrote a most elaborate account in twenty books. It is admitted that Josephus accepted absolutely the Mosaic authorship of the whole Law, being in complete accord with Philo and with the general stream of tradition, which, as we have shown, may be traced down from the time of Joshua to his day. Josephus had evidently never heard of any other authorship of the Law than the Mosaic. The Law is with him, not the composite amalgam of the school of Kuenen and WeUhausen, produced by gradual accretion in the course of ages, but a unity — as much the work of one man as the legis lation of Solon or Lyeurgus. Nor is this testimony of the Jewish nation unsupported by that of heathen writers. Manetho (ab. B.C. 270-240), who seems to have derived his knowledge of Jewish matters rather from Egyptian than from Jewish sources, declares that Moses gave the Hebrew nation their form of polity and their laws.* Hecatseus of Abdera (b.c. 340-300) caUs Moses the Jewish legislator, and states that to his laws, which were written, was added a declaration that they were a revelation from God.f Lysimachus of Alexandria (ab. B.C. 10-A.D. 30), while disap proving of the legislation, unhesitatingly ascribed it to Moses, whom he called a cheat and an impostor. J His example was foUowed, a century later, by Tacitus. § Juvenal speaks of the Law which Moses delivered to the Jews in his mystic volume. || Longinus and Nicolas of Damascus knew Moses as " the Jewish Lawgiver." No doubt, most of these writers echoed the Jewish opinion of their time, which they woifld naturally accept without much critical investigation; but, at any rate, their unanimity shows that the Jewish tradition was uniform and consistent. There was no conflicting theory. * Fragmewta Hist. Grmc, vol. ii. p. 680, Er. 54 ad fin. t Ibid. p. 392, Fr. 13. J Joseph, u. Apion. ii. 14. § Hist., V. 4. II Sat., xiv. 102. 42 LEX MOSAICA. An attempt is made to dispute this. There was, we are told,* a conflicting theory — an " actual tradition," and " a tra dition coming to us from the date of the Apocryphal writings," one received by many of the Fathers, as Irenaeus, Tertullian, Chrysostom, and Basil, — that the entire Law, having been de stroyed and lost at the capture of Jerusalem by the Chaldseans, was reproduced under Divine guidance by Ezra. The Apo cryphal Book of 2 Esdras is quoted as the first place where this theory appears, and is accepted apparently as a suffi cient authority for it ; but the extreme faneifulness and lack of judgment which characterise the writer of the book are forgotten, and his late date (probably A.D. 80-100) is passed over. A theory which makes its first appearance at the close of the first century after Christ, and which emanates from the wild mystic who sought to encourage his nation under their terrible misfortunes after the destruction of Jerusalem by a series of magnificent visions which he chose to attribute to Ezra the scribe, can scarcely claim to be regarded as a serious rival to the tradition which had held its ground, as we have shown, from the conquest of Canaan by Joshua to the final dispersion of the nation. It may be added that the writer himself and those who follow him do not mean to deny that the Law, exactly as we have it, was originally composed by Moses, was written in a book by him, and formed the law of the nation from its entrance into Palestine to its subjugation by the Babylonians; they only mean to append to this set of facts a strange and most improbable tale, that all copies of the Law having been destroyed or lost in the Babylonian troubles, Ezra was divinely enabled to restore the text verbatim et literatim, and so to give the old Mosaic Law back to the people. It does not add to the credibflity of the story that it did not stop at this point, but made Ezra in the same way the restorer of all the remaining Books of the Old Testament, including, apparently, his own book and that of Nehemiah.t To the witness of Jews and Heathen it seems proper to add the witness of the early Christian teachers whose words * Quarterly Seview, April, 1894, p. 386. t These are needed to make up the number of Books mentioned in 2 Esdr. 14. 44, namely ninety-four. THE LEVITICAL CODE. 48 have come down to us in the New Testament. Whatever may have been the limitations of that Divine influence under which they wrote, technically known as Inspiration, it cannot but give to their testimony a certain additional weight beyond that which attaches to the assertions of ordinary men. " Holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." Apostles, Evangelists, even writers of lesser rank, whose works have been received into the Canon of the New Testament, have claims upon our attention and consideration which few will wholly ignore. What then do these early teachers teU us ? St. James distinctly assigned the whole Law to Moses when he declared in his " sentence " (Acts 15. 21), which was at once his own opinion and the decree of the First Council of the Church, that " Moses had in every city them that preached him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath- day." St. Paul (Rom. 10. 5) assigns to Moses Lev. 18. 5 — a part of the Levitieal Code — no less than Deut. 32. 21, a part of the Deuteronomic. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews not only calls the whole Law " Moses' Law " (ch. 10. 28), but expressly ascribes to him " every -precept according to the Law " (ch. 9. 19), and especially the ceremonial precepts respecting sacrifice and sprinkling with blood, which are chiefly found in Leviticus (chaps. 8, 16, 17)-' St. Stephen attributes to Moses the fashioning of the Taber nacle (Acts 8, 44), and the reception from God of the " lively oracles " which he subsequently " gave " to Israel (Acts 8. 38). If St. Peter only happens to quote Deuteronomy as Mosaic (Acts 3. 22), yet we have no reason for doubting that had he had occasion to cite Leviticus or Numbers, he would equally have assigned them to Moses. St. John the Baptist declared that " the Law " — the whole Law, without exception or limitation — ¦ "was given by Moses" (John 1. 17). The Apostle Philip held that Moses in the Law wrote of Christ (John 1. 45). If the Evangelists deliver no private judgment of their own, yet we may sufficiently gather their view from their recording without protest the judgment of others on the point — a con sentient judgment in favour of the Mosaic authorship.* * See Matt. 8.4; 19. 7, 8; 23. 2 ; Mark 1.44; 7. 10; 10.3; 12. 19 ; Luke 5. 14; 24. 44 ; John 1. 17, 45 ; 5. 46, 47 ; 7. 19, 22, 23. 44 LEX MOSAICA. We might now proceed to Apostolic Fathers, as Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch, who both of them bear wit ness to Moses as the giver of the Law ; * and from them we might go on to the great bulk of the Patristic writers ; but it seems to us needless, and indeed, futile, to pile up any further the mass of merely human testimony. If men will not be persuaded by the human evidence already produced, by the consentient witness of Jewish and Heathen authorities, of Pro phets, Apostles, Evangelists, Martyrs, Rabbis, historians, philo sophers, critics, poets, covering the space of about fifteen centuries, it is scarcely likely that they will be moved by the opinions of later, and certainly less important, writers. A catena Patrum is of great, nay, of enormous, weight when the question to be determined relates to ancient Christian prac tice or doctrine. When it is a matter of remote history, be longing not to theology but to archaeology, no candid critic of the present day would lay any great stress upon such a col lection. IV. The Human Evidence is corroborated by. a Witness WHO is Divine. There reinains, however, one witness who, to all Chris tians, transcends every other, whose lightest word is of vastly greater importance than the very weightiest evidence that can be gathered together from the utterances of mere men — the witness of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the God-Man, at once human and Divine. Among the recorded utterances of our Lord when upon earth, a considerable number — ^not fewer than twelve or thirteen — have a bearing upon this contro versy — a bearing which to us appears decisive, and which has now to be put before the reader. It is not denied by any one that at the time when our Lord, in His great condescension, came down on earth, the Pentateuch existed in its present form — not perhaps divided into " Books," or as yet known to the Palestinian Jews by the name of " Pentateuch," but stiU substantially as we have it. It was commonly written on a single roll of parchment or papyrus, and was known as " the Book of Moses," or " the Law » Clem. Ep. ad Cor., i. 43 ; Ignat. Ep. ad Smyrn., p. 5 (ed. Jacobson). THE LEVITICAL CODE, 45 of Moses," or simply "the Law." Moses was regarded as the author of the whole, or of the whole with the exception of the last section of Deuteronomy (ch. 34. 5-12). Now it cannot be doubted or denied that our Lord sanctioned and confirmed this entire belief. He spoke of the Law as " the Law of Moses " (Luke 24. 44; John 7. 14, 23), or "the Book of Moses " (Mark 12. 26). He asked, " Did not Moses give you the Law ? " (John 7. 19). He quoted as the words of Moses passages from Exodus and Leviticus (Mark 7. 10; 10. 3). He spoke of directions given in Leviticus only (Lev. 12. 3; 14. 3), and in Deuter onomy only (Deut. 24. 1), as commandments of Moses (Matt. 8. 4; 19. 7; Mark 1. 44; 10. 5; Luke 5. 14; John 7. 22, 23). He declared that Moses "wrote of Him" (John 5. 46), and re proached the Jews with " not believing his writings " (John 5. 47). He summed up the sacred writings of the Jews under the formula of " Moses and the Prophets " (Luke 16. 29), or under thaj; of " the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms " (Luke 24. 14). He proclaimed that from " the Law," by which He undoubtedly meant "the Law of Moses," not one jot or one tittle should pass away until all had been fulfilled (Matt. 5. 18). He expressed Himself as would one who was convinced that the Pentateuch generally, and its legislative portion in par ticular, was given to the Jews in a written form by Moses. Now to this really overwhelming argument two answers are made by those who refuse to admit its force. The first answer is, that our Lord, though quite aware that Moses wrote but a very small portion of the Pentateuch, spoke as He did, attributing to him the whole, out of accommodation to the prejudices of the Jews to whom he, spoke, to avoid angering or offending them. They, it is said, were deeply impressed with the belief; it was not a belief from which any evil result fol lowed ; would not true wisdom and true tenderness equally lead Him to reticence on the subject, and to an adoption on His part of the customary time-honoured phraseology ? To us it seems that " accommodation " would have stopped short of un- veracity. It would have been easy for our Lord to have avoided all mention of Moses in connection with the Law, and to have simply spoken of " the Law," or " the Scripture," where we have now " the Law of Moses " — " the Book of Moses " — and thus to have kept Himself free from even verbal inac- 46 LEX MOSAICA. curacy. Knowing what authority His words would necessarily have with His true disciples to the end of time, would He not for their sake — not to mislead them — have avoided giving even an apparent sanction to a Jewish opinion on a sacred subject based upon falsity ? The other answer is even more unsatisfactory. It is that our Lord did not Himself know by whom the Pentateuch was written, since He " habitually spoke, in His incarnate life on earth, under the limitations of a properly human conscious ness." * While as God He knew all things, in His human capacity, it is said. His knowledge was limited. St. Paul de clares that when He descended from heaven to earth, "^He emptied Himself " (iavTov eKevaa-e) ; t and this self-emptying, it is argued, was not a mere abdication of the glory which He had had with the Father from all eternity, but an abdication also, for a time, of other Divine prerogatives. " Jesus Christ," it is said,t " in His pre-existent state, was living in the permanent characteristics of the life of God. In such a life it was His right to remain. It belonged to Him. But He regarded not His prerogatives as a man re gards a prize he must clutch at. For love of us He abjured the prerogative of equality with God. By an act of deliberate self-abnegation He so emptied Himself as to assume the per manent characteristics of the human or servile life : He took the form of a servant. Not only so, but He was made in out ward appearance like other men, and was found in fashion as a man, that is, in the transitory quality of our mortality. The ' form,' the ' likeness,' the ' fashion ' of manhood. He took them all. Thus remaining in unchanged personality. He abandoned certain prerogatives of the Divine mode of existence in order to assume the human." And one of the qualities which he is supposed to have thus temporarily abandoned was his omniscience. " In regard to the Divine attributes, what He retained in exercise and what He abandoned — whether He abandoned only the manifest glory, or also, for example, the exercise of the Divine omniscience — we could hardly form any judgment a priori ; but the record seems * See Mr. Gore's Bampton Lectures, p. 199 (Seventh Thousand). t Philipp. ii. 7. X Bampton Lectures for 1891, pp. 167, 158. ' THE LEVITICAL CODE. 47 to assure us that our Lord in His mortal life was not habi tually living in the exercise of omniscience." * The grounds upon which this assertion is built are the fol lowing: — "Our Lord," it is said, " expresses surprise on many occasions, and therefore, we must believe, really felt it. He expresses surprise at the conduct of His parents, and the un belief of men, and the barrenness of the fig tree, and the slowness of His disciples' faith." t Now it is not at all clear, in several of these cases, that there was any " expression of sur prise " ; but, where there was, as in Matt. 8. 10 ; Mark 6. 6 ; Luke 7. 9, the expression may have been, as St. Augustine supposes it was,t " hortatory," or didactic, not emotional ; or at any rate it may have been that sort of surprise which we feel at things which we perfectly well know to be as they are, as at a gambler's infatuation, or at a wicked man's persistence in evil courses. Such a feeling is more properly called " won der " than " surprise " ; and it does not imply any previous ignorance. But it is urged further that our Lord "asks questions to obtain information," § and in this connection reference is made to Mark 6. 38 ; 8. 5 ; 9. 21 ; Luke 8. 30 ; John 11. 34. It is, however, a purely gratuitous assumption that our Lord ever asked a question for inform,ation. Questions are asked for many purposes : to elicit a statement which others may hear and which may impress them ; to put a disputant in a difficulty ; to draw out a man's thoughts, and make them definite to others or to himself. St. John has given us a clue to a large number of our Lord's questionings, when he explains the inquiry made of Philip, " Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat ? " by appending the remark, " And this He said to prove him, for He Himself knew what He would do " (John 6. 6). Our Lord probably asked, " How many loaves have ye ? " (Mark 6. 38 ; 8. 5) to impress the smallness of the number, and so the greatness of the miracle, on those who heard Him ; and asked the father of the demoniac, " How long is it ago since * Gore, Bampton Lectures for 1891, p. 159. t Ibid., p. 147. X Be Oenes. contr. Manichaos, quoted by Bp. 'Words-worth (Greek Testament, vol. i., p. 28). § Gore, Bampton Lectures, p. 143. 48 LEX MOSAICA. this came unto him ? " (Mark 9. 21) to bring out the fact that it was from his infancy ; and inquired his name of the unclean spirit in the country of the Gadarenes (Luke 8. 30), to draw attention to the strangfe and probably rare case of possession by a number of evil spirits. The question, " Where have ye laid him ? " (John 11. 34) led naturally to the gathering at the tomb of Lazarus, and so to the publicity of the wonderful miracle of his resurrection. Asking a question is sometimes only a way of signifying a wish; and such would seem to have been our Lord's inquiry in this instance. He wished to go to the tomb of Lazarus, and to work the miracle in the presence of a large number of persons. Asking where they had laid Him naturally led to their offering to show Him, and so to the assembling at the tomb of numerous witnesses. Three further texts are appealed to as indicative of a limi tation of our Lord's knowledge, namely. Matt. 26. 39 ; Matt. 27. 46 ; and Mark 13. 32. " It was only because the future was not clear to Him" we are told, "that He could pray, 0 My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from Me." * But He had shown more than once during his previous life that the future — at least so far as His sufferings were concerned — was fully clear to Him (Mark 8. 31 ; 9. 31 ; 10. 32-34) ; He knew what they would be down to the smallest detail (Mark 10. 34) : so that the agonised prayer is to be regarded, not as indicating a doubt, but as expressing a wish — the natural longing of our human nature to be spared intense suffering. It is not quite plain how our Lord's cry upon the cross, "My God, my God, etc.," is thought to imply a limitation of His knowledge; but we presume it is imagined that He actuaUy regarded Himself as God-forsaken, when, of course. He was not. But even the psalmist did not think himself forsaken, he only felt as if he was. Otherwise he could not have turned to God in his trouble, and thrown himself upon Him, and addressed Him as his " strength " (Ps. 22. 19). It is a familiar experience of holy men and women in all ages of the world, to have a feeUng of extreme depression, as if God had forsaken them, when their intellectual conviction is the direct opposite, when they kV'OW that He has not done so, and will never do so. Our Lord doubtless "entered into this experience," but it in no way * Gore, Bampton Lectures, p. 148. THE LEVITICAL CODE. 49 affected His knowledge of the relations subsisting between Himself and His Father. But the fact of the limitation of our Lord's human know ledge is thought to be distinctly and unmistakably indicated by a saying of His, recorded (with some slight difference) both by St. Matthew (ch. 24. 36) and St. Mark (ch. 13. 32), that "of the day and hour of His second coming no one knew except the Father, not even the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son." * But the real meaning of these passages is much dis puted. In St. Matthew the words " neither the Son " do not occur at all ; and it is admitted that whether the Son knew or not could not have been definitely concluded from St. Matthew's sole statement.! Iii St. Mark, the order of the words is not as given by Mr. Gore, and is important. The passage runs — " But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but (ei y.-fi) the Father." Here it is suggested, that e< m properly signifies " except," and that the real meaning may be, that the Son has not this knowledge, except in so far as the Father has revealed it to Him. The passage will then be parallel to Matt. 20. 22, where our Lord says that "to sit on His right hand is not His to give, except to those for whom it has been prepared of His Father." J The Fathers generally, it is to be noted, understood our Lord to mean, not that the knowledge was not His at all, but that it was not His to make use of — " Non ita sciebat ut tunc disci- pulis indicaret." § Even, however, if it be granted that on this one point our Lord in His human nature was ignorant, have we a right to extend the limitation of His knowledge beyond the one point ex pressly mentioned ? The matter is one of those " deep things of God " which might well be concealed, if anything were concealed. It cannot be argued with any plausibility that there is any thing else which our Lord ever said that He did not know, or anything else which the Apostles imagined that He did not know. " Lord, Thou knowest all things," said St. Peter in the * Gore, Bampton Lectures for 1871, p. 149. Compare Quarterly Beview, Apnl, 1894, p. 389. t See Alford, Greek Testament, vol. i., p. 245, note. X See Wordsworth's Greek Testament, vol. i., pp. 73, 146. § Augustine, Be Trinitate, xii. 3 ; Chrysost. ad Matt. xxiv. 36; Ambros. ad Luc. xvii. 31 ; etc. S 1063. D 50 LEX MOSAICA. broadest way, "Thou knowest that I love Thee " (John 21. 17). " Now are we sure that Thou knowest all things," said the disciples generally (John 16. 30) on another occasion ; and if the knowledge of "all the secrets of their hearts" was what they specially intended, as some suppose,* yet, as the phrase used was so broad, our Lord would scarcely have suffered it to pass without rebuke had it been an untrue assertion. The notion that the Kiva ised as flagrant transgressions of the law; e.g., the altar of Joash at Ophrah (Judg. 6. 25). All other than prescribed forms of worship, as the Micah worship, were regarded as will- worship (Judg. 17. 6), whilst the book contains no trace of toleration of worship on high-places. The treatment of the Tabernacle by the critics is a crucial type and example of their method of dealing with Mosaic legislation. The * The dependence here of the ritual of Shiloh upon Levitieal legislation dis quiets WeUhausen (Hist. Israel. 41), who thinks that this passage, with its fixed tent (ohel moed), " badly attested," and its " contents open to suspicion." Mr. Cave rightly suggests that the critics, to be successful, will have to relegate 1 Sam. to the days of Ezra [Inspir. of the O.T., p. 2C9). PERIOD OF THE JUDGES. 137 root of the mischief is the antecedent theory advanced by the extreme school, that the history proper of Israel begins with the time of the early-writing prophets, whilst all before their time is legendary matter invented to give the semblance of a historic basis to the later history.* To carry out the theory, it was necessary for them to maintain that the Priesthood, etc. was a matter of evolution, not of Divine appoint ment ; that the Tabernacle as a place of worship is not historic ; that its story as told in the Pentateuch is an after-thought, a creation of exilic or post-exilic times which was passed ofE as history by a person or persons unknown, who, in order to give plausibihty ta their fable, attached to its originator the influential name of Moses. No special pleading can except such action from the category of fraud. Nor could such a fraud have been even conceived but for the pressing exigency of a sophistical theory, alike unhistoric and repulsive. For consider: (1) The command (Deut. 4. 2) was imperative, " Te shall not add unto the word which I command you." How could a later code or author such as P have allowed D* to stand with such a command as this ? He would certainly have erased the passage, as well as its repetition in Deut. 13. 32, for we are told that Deuteronomy has been manipulated in the interests of the later documents.f (2) In the period between Moses and the Captivity, we have evidence of further legislation and ordinances of worship which were not Mosaic and which were not represented as Mosaic. And we observe that the authority of this further legislation is not regarded as impaired, although it did not proceed from Moses. For example, Samuel was the prominent figure in the religious revival at the close of the period of the Judges. The plan after which matters were rehabilitated after the Captivity had been framed by David very much at the instigation of Samuel, who prompted the order of worship, revived what had become obsolete, introducing new arrangements into the Levitieal ministrations, in spite of his so-called anti-sacerdotal character, as is intimated by the collocation of his name with that of David, 1 Chron. 9. 22. * The subversion of the traditional order, and the assumption that prophets in Israel preceded priests, is opposed to the analogy of the order observed in other contemporary nations, with whom prophecy wa? regarded as a subordinate function of the priesthood. t One admission of the most thorough of the critics exposes the weakness of the entire theory : " The Hexateuch . . . embraces a great number of narratives and laws which the authors of P cannot possibly have accepted with complete satisfaction, and which they could not have combined with their own legislation and historiography of their own free choice If these older laws and narra- tives have found a place in the Hexateuch, the fundamental explanation of the phenomenon must be found in the fact that they were already in possession of the field, and only needed to maintain the place they occupied." — Kuenen, Origin and Comp. of the Hexateuch, 320. 138 LEX MOSAICA. Passing from Samuel to David, we find that the bringing up of the Ark was the first great occasion for David to introduce his ordi nances for the Service of Song, a service which had not apparently been included in Mosaic ritual. Moreover, there are grounds for the belief that David's School of Sacred Song was based upon the model of Samuel's Musico-prophetic School, though in closer connection with the Levitieal tribe.* These Davidic institutes, be it observed, were regarded as binding in the Hezekiah reformation (2 Chron. 29. 25), authorized, it would seem, by the concurrent authority of " Gad, the king's seer, and Nathan the prophet." We find, moreover, that David modified the legislation respecting the age of Levitieal service, 1 Chron. 23. 24. On another occasion his decision becomes " a statute and an ordinance," 1 Sam. 30. 24, 25. Solomon, we are told, departed from prescription on a special occasion, hallowing the middle Court that was before the house of the Lord, 2 Chron. 7. 7. Thus markedly is non-Mosaic difEerentiated from Mosaic legislation. (3) Observe, that the mysterious legislation of the closing chapters of Ezekiel, whatever be its reference, has clearly in its general tenor a relation to Mosaic legislation, but yet it is ascribed by the prophet to his own inspiration ; just as, nearly a century and a half later, Nehemiah, though scrupulously zealous " to walk in God's law which was given by Moses the servant of God," admits to prescribing new ordinances, such as the requiring but the third part of a shekel from the people, acting under emergency, guided by the spirit rather than the letter of the Law. To what does all this point ? To the fact that after the age of Moses there was legislation that was not Mosaic, and that did not claim to be Mosaic ; and yet it was accepted by the people as coming from the authorities to whom it was attributed ; thus proving that there was no need whatever to foist upon the people non-Mosaic institute in the name of the lawgiver Moses. Nay, further, the connection of his name with the Law is almost disregarded by the prophets; and the omission of his name on the occasion of the finding the lost book in Josiah's time is inexplicable if his name was thought to give to the Law its authority. And yet Moses was recognized as the author up to near the close of the Canon, for we find Malachi referring to Moses as the lawgiver, and Horeb its occasion, Mai. 4. 4. Thus, from the entrance of Joshua upon office to the close of Old Testament prophecy, we have a book, and its author, and its inspiration : The book is the Law; the author is Moses; the inspirer is God. * This, for no reason but their theory, is contradicted by the critics. Thus, "The Chronicler assumes that this organisation of the singers dated from David; but in reality it was quite modern." — Eobertson Smith, O.T. in Jewish Ch., 2nd ed., p. 204. to the same effect Driver, Introd. to the Lit. of O.T., p. 359 (3rd ed.). PERIOD OF THE JUDGES. 139 But one question must be pressed. What made the great unknown of exilic times put forth the name of Moses as the author of this new Priestly legislation? Legislation with which, by the way, Ezekiel was perfectly famUiar. Why would not the name of Samuel, or David, or Ezekiel have answered the purpose? The reason is, that a deathless and persistent tradition assigned it all to one man, and that one man was Moses. Could any one else at that period have con ceived a code so minute, so elaborate, so historically set, so unique, in that degenerate period of Israel's history,* and remain unknown ? And if such an unknown could have pro duced it, were all his contemporaries so ignorant of their present and past history as not to have known whether Moses had or had not promulged such a code. And there is no ques tion what was the current conviction, t And if this unknown had promulged such a code with a fraudulent title to make it pass muster, would he have inserted regulations which neces sitated the break-up of households by reason of tbe stringency of its marriage-laws and title-deed requirements ? Would the laws have been so closely intertwined with history of the past, so fruitful in pitfalls? Would they have been so abrupt in manner, so circumstantial in detail ? Would the new laws have been so contradictory of previous legislation, as is main tained ? These, and they are a mere sample of countless objections, have to be met before the common sense of man kind will accept such a reconstruction of Jewish history as the "Higher Critics" propose. Passing from the Tabemacle to II— The Ark, we read (Judg. 20. 27-8) "And the chU dren of Israel enquired of the Lord (for the Ark of the Covenant of God was there ia those days, and Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, stood before it in those days)." * Even Kuenen finds a difficulty here, saying, " At the first glance no doubt so great an activity on the part of the priests of Jahveh in the land of Exile is singular."— Kuenen, Selig. of Israel, ii., 153. t Moses "was regarded as the great lawgiver," and the writer adds with some inaccuracy, " all laws which God was considered to have sanctioned were placed under his name, that being the regular and only method of conferring authority upon new enactments." — Menzies, National Selig., 17. 140 LEX MOSAICA. This is not a welcome passage to the critics. WeUhausen admits that it "points rather to the Priestly Code," but, as this cannot possibly be allowed, he determines that the clause is a "gloss"; so too De Wette and Gramberg.* Kuenen reluctantly aUows it to have weight as testimony ; the late Dr. Robertson Smith (whose loss will be felt by aU lovers of literature) admits the Shiloh worship as historic, but the environment of the Ark exhibits, in his belief, glaring departure from the principles of the Levitieal sanctuary, while he omits to notice the many instances of Shilonic dependence upon Levitieal legislation. Colenso regards the passage as an inter polation: "It has manifestly been inserted by some priestly writer, who could not endure that the people should ' ask counsel of Jehovah' except through the intervention of a ' priest the son of Aaron.' " Dr. Driver differentiates the prestige of the Ark in this period from the ideal of P, noting that the Ark went out to battle without evoking comment. But surely Num. 14. 44 implies that it was a common incident in the days of Moses, f " The Ark of the covenant of God was there." How natural it all is ! What unconsciousness of history -makitig on the part of the writer ! There are no explanations ; none were needed. It is taken for granted that all is understood. The critics may writhe, but the Ark is there, and the Tabemacle is there ; they reflect Ught on each other, they are mutual guarantees; and the cord is stronger still, it is three-fold, for Phinehas the representative of the hereditary priesthood is there. The " Priestly Code " was the code of the Wanderings. The Ark is there, and the Ark must have a history. It is not jerked "" It is pronounced a gloss simply because it contradicts their theory of the late date of the " Priestly Code." The passage is, practically sacrificed to the exigencies of a hypothesis which would make the Aaronic priesthood a novelty of the Exile, fpr which there is no valid evidence. This sort of criticism cannot live; for a theory (as was well put by a recent writer) "which has to declare illusory the facts which it set out to explain cannot finally be accepted as true " (Aubrey Moore, Science and the Faith. Introd., p. xlvi.). For other instances of the methods here combated, cf. Kay, Crisis Hupfeldiana, ch. 1. §8; Lias, Principles of Biblical Criticism, p. 110 ; Green, Hebrew Feasts, pp. 28, 86. t WeUhausen, Hist, of Isr., 237. De Wette, Introd. to O.T., ii., 198. Gramberg, Geschichte d. rei. Id., i., 181. Kuenen, Selig. of Isr., i., 315. Eobertson Smith, O. T. in Jew. Ch., 270. Colenso, Lectures on the Pentateuch and the Moabito Stone, 245. Driver, Introd. to the Lit. of 0. T., 129. PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. 141 in; it is a historic factor, a national institution. Before the time that this Book of Judges was written, the enemies of God knew the potency and religious import of the Ark ; " who shaU deliver us?" exclaim the PhUistines, when they leam that the Ark of God was come into the camp," " who shaU de liver us out of the hand of these mighty Gods?" 1 Sam. 4. 6-8. The part which it plays in the First Book of Samuel defies fiction. And the same applies to aU the notices of it in the historic books. In their natural (traditional) order, the notices of the Ark are intelligible; they are not so on any other hypothesis. In Zembbabel's Temple the Ark does not appear at aU. For what earthly reason could it have been manu factured in exUic times for earlier history ? Its mere name, the Ark, connects it with the Jehovist record ; its fuller title, "the Ark of the Covenant of God," links it definitely and inseparably with Sinai. For not only is the Ark the voucher for Mosaic legislation, but it was also the visible token of the conservation of documents; and more than this, it was the voucher for the unity of the sanctuary. Whatever may be said to the contrary, and much is said by those who overlook the truth that the Tabernacle's home was Shiloh, and that the Ark's home was the Tabemacle (except when temporarily carried out to battle), the law of the central sanctuary was upheld until the divorce came be tween Ark and Tabernacle; and thus becomes intelligible the action of Samuel when, the divorce having taken place, and " the place which the Lord should choose " being in the interim unrevealed, in his dilemma he falls back upon patriarchal worship, and the hallowed sites of yore become hallowed sites for Samuel. The public functionaries of religion pre-suppose the ar rangements of the Priestly Code. I. The High Priest is introduced.* "Phinehas, tbe son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, stood before the Ark in those days," Judg. 20. 28. * The critics assume that the title "High Priest" is of late origin, and to be found exclusively in the Priestly Code. As a matter of fact, the expression is used twice in PC (Num. 35. 25, 28), and once in the chapters of Leviticus called the "Law of Holiness" (21. 10). In the historical books, the terms the Priest and High Priest are employed indiflferently. Of course WeUhausen says, " Hebrew antiquity shows absolutely no tendencies towards a hierocracy.'' 142 LEX MOSAICA. The juxtaposition of — the " Enquiry of Jehovah," of the " Ark of the Covenant," of Phinehas standing before the Ark, testifies unequivocally to the reference. We are carried back in thought to the separation of Aaron, Exod. 28 ; to his consecration, Lev. 8 ; and to the confirmation of the historic truth of the same in the message of the man of God to Eli, 1 Sam. 2. 27. To Aaron Eleazar his son was appointed successor by Moses, Num. 20. 28. He ministered in this office, Deut. 10. 6: and later still in Joshua's time, Josh. 17. 4 ; 19. 51. After his death (Josh. 24. 33) he was, succeeded by his son Phinehas in accordance with the promise made to him and his descendants, Num. 25. 13. The account of him is consistent throughout. Few characters afford more scope for study of undesigned coincidence. To Jewish memory he was ever endeared. His zeal is noted by the writer of Ps. 106 (cf. 1 Chron. 9. 20) and of 1 Mace. 2, whilst the priests of Eleazar's house after the Exile were enrolled as "sons of Phinehas" (Ezra 8.2). His importance may be further attested by the circumstance that his father is represented as buried upon property belonging to the son, Josh. 24. 33. If it be objected that this instance is the only one recorded in the period, we would urge (1) that the mention of one High Priest reveals the office with all that such office implies; a priesthood of which he is the head; a tribe set apart; a hereditary office ; one " ordained for men in things pertaining to God, who can offer gifts and sacrifices for sins " (Heb. 5. 1) ; one chosen "to offer upon God's altar, to burn incense, to wear an Ephod before Him " (1 Sam. 2. 28) ; — prerogatives corresponding to those which are secured by the " Priestly Code " to the priests. (2) The silence of the narrative respecting the successors of Phinehas to the High-Priestly office until the time of Eh need not imply any break in the office,* any more than does the silence respecting Passovers during the period imply that no such feast was celebrated ; for we know that there was at least one such celebration, as wiU appear presently. Indeed, the succession from Phinehas to Eli can be reasonably sustained in the order, — Phinehas, Abishua, Bukki, Uzzi, Eli. Abishua was son of Phinehas (1 Chron. 6. 50) : Blair places him during * For some useful remarks on this silence, cf. Curtiss, Levitieal Priests, 85, and Lord A. Hervey in Pulpit Comm., Introd., p. 6. It will be noticed that there must have been one High Priest in whom the line was changed to Ithamar. For the opposite view, Kuenen, Selig. qf Israel., ii. 169. PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. 143 Eglon's servitude and Ehud's judgeship, an opinion which is sup ported by the Chronicon of Alexandria.* Abishua is the Abiezer of Josephus, Ant. v. II. § 5. His account is, that Eleazar bequeathed the High-Priesthood -to his son Phinehas, " and after him, his son Abiezer took the honour, and handed it on to his son whose name was Bukki, from whom his son Ozi received it; after him, Eh had the office." With this account may be compared that of 1 Chron. 6. 50, 51 : "And these are the sons of Aaron; Eleazar his son, Phinehas his son, Abishua his son, Bukki his son, Uzzi his son." This Uzzi who preceded Eli is the Ozi whose High-Priesthood is mentioned in the Chronicon Samaritanum, ch. 42. (3) One important function of the High Priest is on several occasions brought into notice, namely, that of being the MEDIUM through whom Israel enquire of the Lord. The instances recorded are: — (a) Which tribe should take the initiative against the Canaanites (Judg. 1. 1). (i3) Which tribe should go up first to the battle against the Benjamites (20. 18). (7) Whether Israel should go up to battle again against Benjamin their brother (20. 23). (8) The same enquiry, as nearly as possible, repeated (20. 28). Examining instance a, we find that after the death of Joshua, the children of Israel "asked" or enquired of the Lord, in accordance with the instruction of the Priestly Code (Num. 27. 21). The elders, now that Joshua is dead, do what they had been accustomed to do from time to time in con junction with him (cf. Josh. 7. 6 ; and for a deviation from the rule as bringing its own consequences cf. Josh. 9. 14). That the " inquiry " on this occasion was by Priest with the Urim may be gathered from the technical use of 7{St2' with 3 in the sense " inquire of " Jehovah. The expressions in Num. 27. 21 and Judg. 1. 1 are equivalent, rendered respectively, "inquire for him by the judgment of the Urim before the Lord," and "asked of the LoRD."t ¦* Cf. Selden, Bf Success, in Pontif, i. 2. t Cf. iparav rhv 6€6v, Xenoph. Mem. viii. 3. How absurd is the assignment of the narration of the' above " inquiry " to the times long after, when Urim and 144 LEX MOSAICA. These inquiries are mainly of strategical import, and throw light upon the High Priest and Ark going out to battle (Deut. 20. 2 ; Judg. 20. 27). At times a war-priest was ap pointed in his place (Num. 31. 6). But the point to be observed is, that when this technical term is used, the medium of inquiry of Israel's God is always, if mentioned, sacerdotal (cf. Judg. 20. 27, 28 ; 1 Sam. 14. 36, 37, with 3 ; 1 Sam. 22. 10, 13, 15 ; 1 Sam. 23. 2, 4, 6, 9 ; 1 Sam. 30. 7, 8). And, as proving that inquiry must be made in due form, as even recognised by the Danites, compare Judg. 18. 4, 5 with 17. 5. Whereas, when the medium is a prophet, ^'1'] is the term used (1 Kin. 14. 5 ; 22. 5, 8 ; 2 Kin. 3. 11 ;'22. 13 ; 1 Sam. 14. 18, 19). The Levitieal Priesthood is further emphasized by the allusions to the distinctive garment, The Ephod. I. The Ephod is distinguished in the Old Testament from the Ephod had, or the "linen ephod." The latter is worn by Samuel (1 Sam. 2. 18) ; by the eighty-five priests of Nob (1 Sam. 22. 18) ; and by David (2 Sam. 6. 14 ; 1 Chron. 15. 27). It was merely a ritual or liturgical robe. II. The Ephod proper was a garment of which only one of tl^e several elements was linen (Ex. 28. 6). (a) It formed part of the distinctive dress of the High Priest; see Ex. 28, where the vestments of Aaron are differentiated from those of his sons. Thummim not at all existed. According to the Eabbis, the second Temple lacked five details, viz., the Steehinah, the Ark and Mercy-seat, the spirit of prophecy, the Urim and Thummim, and the fire from heaven. With what motive can the critics credit the Priests for inventing worship that was never realized? And what is to be said of the quite undesigned notice of Jthis oracular medium in 1 Sam. 28. 6, where it is said that the Lord " answered Saul neither by dreams, nor by the Urim, nor by the prophets " ? And what of 1 Sam. 14. 41, where Saul in a question of ordeal requests God to show the right ("give perfect, D'lpn)? Lastly, history, that is to say, unmanufactured history, is silent on this topic after the time of Solomon. In the time of Ezra the anticipation of these mysteries was almost equivalent to the " Greek Kalends,'' and contradicts the notion of Josephus that they did not fail till the period of the Maccabees. (1 Mace. 4. 46; 14. 41). PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. 145 {b) It forms the climax of priestly function in 1 Sam. 2. 28, where the ascending series is, (1) the common sacri ficial duties ; (2) offering incense in the Holy Place ; (3) wearing an ephod, which is equivalent here to serving as High Priest.* III. The oracular use of the Ephod by the medium of the High Priest is found 1 Sam. 23. 6, 9 ; 30. 7. The uses of the Ephod by the pseudo-priest Jonathan and by Gideon evidence in their very travesty the Levitieal Priesthood as an already existing institution. In both these instances the Ephod is a vesture, not an image. Its purport was oracular. It was a parody of the Ephod of the High Priest with its Urim and Thummim.t Such a burlesque of worship , is a certain proof that Mosaic ritual had got firm hold of the people in spite of their constantly marring it with idolatrous additions. This blending of the true and fal^e in a form of syncretism is the connecting link between the past and the future of worship. The continuity of this oracular use of the Ephod is the key to its history. Its importance is emphasized. Of the four appurtenances of the strange Micah-Jonathan worship (Ephod, Teraphim, carved image, molten image), the Ephod is the fundamental feature. It is regarded by the spies in their representation to the Danites as the principal object, and (Judg. 18. 14) is mentioned first.J With the pseudo- priest also it is of prime consideration. The uniform intention of the term Ephod up to this point determines the nature of the Ephod of Gideon. The amount- of metal employed in its composition is the main objection urged to this Ephod being a vestment. But there is no real difficulty iu finding a use for 50 lbs. weight of gold, or an * Cf. Kirkpatrick in loo. (Camb. Ser.). t Not that it can be substantiated that the teraphim corresponded with these ; they may have been images of deceased ancestors. The teraphim were false worship, not a parody of the true, as appears from Hos. 3. 4, where the prophet anticipates >• time when neither true nor false ordinances will avail Israel. The true and false are arranged in pairs, — "neither king nor prince, neither sacri fice nor pillar, neither ephod nor teraphim." Cf. Eobertson, Selig. of Israel, 239. t " Ld ye know that there is in these houses an ephod," etc. ? It will be replied that the order is reversed in vv. 17, 18, but here, the order of capture dominates the order of narration. S 1063. K 146 LEX MOSAICA. equivalent expenditure, in a High-Priestly Ephod with its costly attendant ornaments and precious stones. The probabiUty ig that Gideon in the decadence of legitimate ministration (whether or not things had as yet reached the acute stage when men abhorred the offerings of Jehovah) invaded the prerogative of priesthood in his own person or in that of some one hired, and that such breaches of the law became more and more a snare, leading to the results so graphically painted. From the consideration of the Priesthood, we pass on to notice The Position of th£ Levites. On two occasions (Judg. 17. 7 ; 19. 1) we find a Levite sojourning as a stranger ; in the one case at Bethlehem, in the other, on the north side of Mount Ephraim. This is precisely the position which Deuteronomy assumes, classing the Levite with the stranger on account of his poverty. This repre sentation of their condition in the Books of Judges and Deu teronomy is not inconsistent, as Dr. Driver alleges {Introd. 78), with the institution of Levitieal cities prescribed in Num. 35. The fact that the Levite was a sojourner (as in Judges) does not of itself imply either that he had or had not a fixed home. Deuteronomy (18. 8) supposes the case of a Levite who has had a patrimony. There was no law that he should Uve in it, he could seU it (Lev. 25. 32, 33).* Why does Dr. Driver speak of " permanent dwelling places " ? They were permanent in the sense that they could stay in them if they chose; but they were at liberty to migrate, and this very liberty is given them by the clause Deut. 18. 6-8. This is not in conflict with the law issued a few months previously ; it implies it, and is a bye-law. Nor is the contingency of an unsettled home necessarily future in the sense of remote, as has been urged. The case of the sale of the patrimony may have been somewhat remote, but there was also a near contingency. As the Canaanites were not all driven out at the conquest of the land, such cities as Gezer and Ajalon, which had been assigned to the Levites, did not come into the undisturbed possession of the Israelites; and this would * This chapter is not included in the PC of the critics, but in the section 3ntitled the "Law of Holiness" (Lev. 17 to 26), which nevertheless is regarded as of Exilic date, and possesses a solidarity of interest with the former. PERIOD OF THE JUDGES. 147 almost necessitate some of the Levites seeking sojourn in cities other than those allotted them. Thus there is consistency between the law of Numbers and the bye-law of Deuteronomy. The latter book is not only not unconscious of the former, but it refers to it : " the Lord is their inheritance as He hath said unto them" (Deut. 18. 2). But where had the Lord said it ? He had said it to Aaron, as told in Num. 18. 20, the so- called Priest's Code of Exilic date. Moreover, Deut. 18. 8 pre supposes the Levitieal cities. Some special connection between the Levite and the sanc tuary is gathered from Judg. 19. 18, "and I am (now) going to the house of the Lord." Whether the Levite intended to say that he was on his way to the house of Jehovah, which grammaticaUy is questionable, or, "I walk in the house of Jehovah," intending that his profession was therewith asso ciated, he apparently founds his claim for hospitality on his office. Whether this be so or not, the theory of more than one of the critics is contradicted. WeUhausen maintains that in the earlier history the Levites were merely a secular tribe, and were soon absorbed into the other tribes, and that their alleged functions in connection with the sanctuary were an after-thought of Exilic date. But here we find a Levite — and the designation is persistently sustained — with his distinctly tribal title, and in some way connected with the house of Jehovah. The facts are all against him. This archaic notice is entirely in accord and fits in with every Pentateuchal account of their history. The blessing of Jacob recognises the individual Levi. The episode of the "calf" reveals their tribal consecration to God. The Book of Numbers (so fataUy post-dated) assigns their duties. The Blesssing of Moses fore tells the privileges and functions of the Levitieal Priests, whUe the historic books disclose the popular and natural opinion that the Levites had a paramount claim upon the priesthood; (cf. Dr. Watson, The Book Genesis, 282 f.). It has not escaped notice that one of the two Levites were for the moment unemployed ; but it must be remembered that a great part of their Levitieal duties were suspended when the Tabernacle became stationary ; indeed, their one prescribed function at this time, except in the case of those who minis tered immediately at the sanctuary, was to " teach Jacob God's K 2 148 LEX MOSAICA. judgments, and Israel His law," Deut. 23. 10. And yet they were recognised as an order even in this exceptional period,* and the priesthood was understood to be limited to that order ; information for which Levitieal legislation alone was respon sible : " Now know I," said Micah when he had secured the services of Jonathan, " that the Lord will do me good, seeing I have a Levite to my priest " (Judg. 17. 13). Nor can any thing be inferred from this passage as to the possibility of any Levite becoming a priest. A man like Micah, who had broken two of the commandments of the moral, law, was not likely to be particular about infringing ceremonial law when he had the fortune to secure for his oratory one so near the priesthood as a Levite; especially when he had already made his own son a priest. Nor is there any wonder that the Danites, with their proverbial tendency to idolatry, should have perpetuated the same cult in connection with their idol. We consider next such notices as the Book affords of a Sacrificial System, and here the material is scanty, the object of the writer being to illustrate the character of the theocracy as a moral govern ment. There are four passages, however, to which attention must be drawn, and these fall naturally into two groups. L Judg. 6. 17-21, and 13. 15-23. Gideon asks for a sign from Jehovah, and looks for the sign to be exhibited in the present {minchah) which he offers. The point at issue is — Is this minchah a Levitieal offering? Bertheau teUs us that it has two distinctive meanings ; first a gift, then a sacrificial- gift {Opfer-gabe), and that in the Priestly Code it indicates' the meal-offering {Speisopfer) ; that in Judg. 6. 18, it does not mean the latter, or any sacrifice ; that verse 19 shows Gideon preparing food such as was usually offered to an esteemed guest ; that his desire was to honour him as did Abraham and Manoah, but in this case with the idea of giving his guest an opportunity to do something by which he could recognise whether his visitor was a man or a higher being.t Keil, from a different standpoint, maintains that minehah * Even Mr. Addis admits that "no doubt from ancient times (Judg. 17. 13) Levites were the favourite priests." — The Bocuments of the Hexateuch, Introi., 78. t Bertheau, Kurzgefasstes Exeget. Handb. Buch der Sichter, p. 136. 1883. PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. 149 does not mean merely a gift of food, nor a sacrifice in the sense of 9v(Tia, but a sacrificial gift in the sense of a gift presented to God.* The evidence from the Gideon narrative alone is indifferent, but the case of Manoah wUl be found to tum the scale. Let us therefore simply remark in passing what a strong parallel this incident presents to that of Manoah, pointing pro tanto to the homogeneity of the history proper. In the story of the angelophany to Manoah, ch. 13. 15-23, it is important to note four siiccessive acts in the presentation. (a) A kid is offered to the mysterious guest as food : " Let us detain thee untU we shall have made ready a kid for thee," v. 15. (b) The present is refused as being common food : " I will not eat of thy bread; and if thou wilt offer a burnt- offering, thou must offer it unto the Lord," v. 16. (c) The kid is offered a second time as a burnt-offering {olah) to Jehovah, with the addition of a minchah. {d) Both olah and minchah are accepted by Jehovah, as is evident from v. 23. Now it will be noticed that the olah and minchah are here differentiated. Both are a present to the Lord ; both are burned. So then, both are olah, both are minphah ; and yet they are distinct. What makes them distinct unless they are both technical terms ? We have the key to both of them ' in the Priestly Code. Without this Code we could not dis criminate them as altar gifts. The minchah of Manoah deter mines the minchah of Gideon. Both are sacrificial. The PC was known to Manoah and Gideon. Could it have been other than Mosaic ? t It is instructive to notice how minutely veracious the historian is accounted by the critics when the story makes for their theory. They bury for the moment all their hypo theses respecting the tendency of the writer which colours his would-be history. When it suits, the very words employed * Keil and Delitzsch, Judges, 333. t Principal Cav^ remarks that Minchah occurs in the narrative of Abel's sacri fice, but that there the usage is distinct from the case before us ; and there, on the theory of the critics, we have the product of a writer of the fifth century B.C. —Iiisp. of the 0. T., 264. 150 LEX MOSAICA. are made the basis of argument, nay, the determining factors of sweeping conclusions. Thus e.g., WeUhausen finds that Gi deon made cakes of flour {kemach), and infers from it that he could not have known the Priest's Code, which qualifies the flour with the epithet fine iTOD). But it is far from certain that Gideon in the first instance intended his present to his guest as an offering to God ; and even if he purposely gave his present such a form that it might serve for a sacrifice if accepted as such, as it eventually turned out, the expression kemach does not exclude PC, inasmuch as it is a generic term for flour, including both fine and ordinary. The use of soleth as an attribute of kemach, and as qualifying it (Gen. 18. 6), kemach soleth, " meal, (even) fine meal," proves that kemach is a generic term. In the same generic sense it is employed of Hannah's offering at the house of Jehovah. If the Septuagint is, as WeUhausen alleges, offended by the illegality of the material in 1 Sam. 1. 24, and reads o-ewiUxeoi;, so as to bring it into conformity with the law, why does it read aXeu'fou in Judg. 6. 19, seeing that on his showing both passages are on the same footing ceremonially? Lastly, WeUhausen was misled in Ezek. 46. 20 ; he confuses the portion eaten by the priests witb that offered to Jehovah. One more example of this verbal torture to support a theory. WeUhausen, having declared that the flesh of the sacrifice in PC is no longer boiled, goes on to say that the ancient custom was to boil the flesh of the sacrifice before it was burnt. He instances Judg. 6. 19, where Gideon is said to have first put the broth in a pot ; and 1 Sam. 2. 14, 15, where he thinks that the sons of Eli would not wait untU the flesh of the sacrifice had been boiled and the altar pieces burnt, but demanded their raw share for roasting. Here we observe that WeUhausen's intention is to pit the PC against " ancient custom," to prove that the former is a later develop ment. Let us determine his success. The custom spoken of in 1 Sam. 2 will be found to be m strict harmony with the Priestly Code. By the PC the portion that belonged to the priests, and that only, was to be sodden or boiled (Lev. 6. 28 ; 8. 31). Of this portion the priests were to eat what they chose, whUe the uneaten residue of the same was to be burnt. PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. 151 Gideon's action is not contradictory of this Levitieal in junction. He treated his visitor in the first instance as a guest ; and therefore it is no question for us what portion he boiled, nor are we told. But in 1 Sam. 2, the sons of EU are represented as wUfuUy breaking the Levitieal law in the particular respect that they asked for their portion not to be boiled, but to be given them raw, that they might roast it. Thus are the custom and the laiu uniform; the transgression of the law applied only to tiie sons of Eli, and it is expressly declared to be such. Equally unfortunate is WeUhausen (p. 68) when he refers to two passages which he regards as "polemical ordinances," and uses their supposed mutual contradiction to support the above theory. In Deut. 16. 7 (which he regards as long anterior to the PC), the flesh for the priest (he says) was to be boUed, whilst in the later (Priestly) Code (Ex. 12. 9), it was not to be boiled, but rosisted.* With the exception of the Septuagint rendering, lif-ijo-eis, there is nothing to support his theory. 2 Chron. 35. 13 is fatal to it ; there the Hebrew word for the verb " to roast," 7^3, is proved to be used indifferently for " roast" and "boil" by the two adjuncts which qualify the same verb, viz., " with fire," and " in pots." Thus it reads, " they roasted the passover with fire, but the holy offerings sod they in pots." And we know that the author of Chronicles is an authority beyond suspicion on such a point, for he is regarded as a "Priestly Code " writer exclusively. The Vulgate rightly renders tbe passage coques, indicating that it regards the bushel as a generic term. The Authorised Version was perfectly justified in rendering it " roast," doubtless remembering that whenever the verb means " boil," the how is usually added ; e.g., " in milk," " in water," " in pots." Precisely in accord with the Deuteronomic command is that of Exod. 12. 9, " Eat not of i-t sodden at all with water, but roast with fire." The two codes are again harmonious. The later code (Deut.) says, "thou shalii cook it," assuming that the mod« * It is instructive to notice that Stahelin {Krit. Untersuch.) called attention to the same alleged discrepancy, but with him the code which permitted to boil was the later one. 152 LEX MOSAICA. of cookery had been declared by the Levitieal Code, and that no further explanation was needed. II. The second group of sacrificial passages is Judg. 20. 26, and 21. 4, where the tribes after their second defeat by the Benjamites, and after the victory respectively, offer burnt offerings and peace-offerings {oloth and shelamim). WeUhausen, as usual, finds contradiction between ancient usage and priestly legislation. The picture presented by the Priestly Code presents, according to him, few traces of the original. Let us examine. The name " shelamim " is Mosaic ; the thing it- denoted is patriarchal, and not confined to the Hebrew nation.* Shelamim is a technical term limited to sacrifices. In periods ' before this determinate usage of Sinaitic date, there had been meals of fellowship and joyous thanks giving, partly sacred, partly secular ; e.g.. Gen. 21. 8 ; 31. 54 ; 46. 1. The feasts on these occasions afforded opportunities for the use of the term bad it been in existence, but it does not appear till the time of the Lawbook (Ex. 20. 24). WeU hausen contends that the shelamim of P have little trace of their old usage; that they were of old a social meal, — social, in the sense of fellowship of God with man, and man with man ; that the meal was the main point ; but, that in P all is changed, the meal as a necessary concomitant of sacrifice is at an end, and has become a due to the priest. How he reconciles this nation with Lev. 23. 30 he does not sp,y; but the notices in Judges (20. 26; 21. 4), where even WeUhausen sees an incongruity, contradict " his theory : the meal is not everything ; the feasting is fasting, the merriment is weeping, the impropriety is decorum. Shelamim is not out of place in the light of earlier or later code. The oloth had been offered; the tribes had thereby given expression to their self -surrender ; they add shelamim, being desirous of restored fellowship with God. We pass CHi to examine the allusions to The Great Feasts. In 2 Kin. 23. 21, where the writer is speaking of the Passover in ihe reign of Josiah, we read, " Surely there was » Cf. Sayce, Higher Criticism, p. 278. PERIOD OP THE JUDGES 153 not holden such a Passover from the days of the Judges that judged Israel, nor in aU the days of the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah." Here is impUed an observance of such feasts in the times of the Judges, and specifically in the time of Samuel, as well as in the reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah, as appears from the paraUel passage, 2 Chron. 35. 18, 19. Had the Chronicler not been supported by the authority of the writer of 2 Kings, his evidence would have been set at naught, and yet he derives his material from the same sources. The minute investigation, however, of his veracity, that has been instituted by Bertheau, Zdckler, and Lord A. Hervey should (dates and numbers apart) set this matter at rest.* However, we take the evidence of the writer of Kings, as cited above. The passage does not suit the WeUhausen theory, so it has to be explained away. It means, in his view, the first Passover ever held in accordance with the law of Deuteronomy. Originally, and up to Josiah's time, such celebrations had been local, mere agricultural feasts, on the same footing as the two other Great Feasts ; for, he says, the cycle seems to presuppose the homogeneity of all its members. And yet WeUhausen is not comfortable about its non-historic basis, for he remarks (p. 88), " It follows that the elaboration of the historical motive of the Passover is not earlier than Deuteronomy, although perhaps a certain inclination to that way of explaining it appears before then." And again (p. 85), " The spring festival, which always opens the series, has a his torical motive assigned to it, the Exodus — most expressly in Deuteronomy — being given as the event on which it rests." But the distinction of Josiah's Passover (2 Kin. 23. 21) did not rest in its being a national as opposed to a local cele bration, but in the universality of its celebrants on this as contrasted with former occasions, when only a portion of the people attended during the schism of the tribes. Yet WeU hausen (p. 90) says that in Deuteronomy (in accordance with which law he has told us that Josiah's Passover was held) " we * Bertheau, Biicher der Chron., 386 ff. Zockler (Lange, Bibel-Werk, Vol. viii., in loc). Hervey, Book of Chron., passim. 154 LEX MOSAICA. do not meet with one general festive offering on the part of the community, but only with isolated private offerings by individuals"; it only paved the way for the developments of the much later Priestly Code. Are we then to regard the Chronicler as wilfuUy inventing or falsifying history en masse? Are the whole of the first nineteen verses of 2 Chron. 35 a lie ? If not, the passover of Josiah was " killed on the fourteenth day of the first month," the Levites prepared themselves after their courses " according to the writing of David and the writing of Solomon,'' and every detail — the killing, the sprinkling the blood, the flaying, the removing the burnt offerings, the roasting the passover, the duration of the feast — was "according to the word of the Lord by the hand of Moses" {v. 6), "as it is written in the book of Moses" {v. 12), or, as is expressed in parallel terms by the writer of 2 Kin. 23. 21, " keep the Passover unto the Lord your God, as it is written in the Book of this Covenant." WeUhausen's method here, as elsewhere, is to connect what the Bible disconnects, and vice versd. The plain and repeated assertion in the Old Testament of the connection of the Feast with the history of the Exodus WeUhausen traverses as an "after-thought," though this connection occurs in the earliest part of the legislation, — the Book of the Covenant. Again, while the sacred record keeps the sanctification of the first born clearly distinct from the Passover sacrifice, WeUhausen connects them closely, and asserts that the custom gave birth to the late invention of the Paschal lamb. Yet, to explain the apparent disconnection of the two, he is obUged to assume that from the time of the conquest of the land, the custom of sacrificing the firstlings on the sacred festival had lapsed, had become unknown, but was revived and codified long after.* Such are the unnatural sl;iifts to meet the exigencies of a theory. We, relying on 2 Kin. 23. 21, assert that the words can only imply that the Passover of Josiah and that of the " days of the Judges " were in the fullest sense paraUel. If the Passover of Josiah was held (as WeUhausen grants) accord ing to the precept of the law of Deuteronomy, then the Pass- * Possibly we should never have heard of a celebration of this Passover Feast in the time of Moses after its institution, but for a case of ceremonial defilement (Num. 9. 10) which occasioned a bye-law regarding its observance. PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. 155 over of the Judges must have been also observed according to Deuteronomic precept. And if the Passover of Josiah is described historicaUy by the Chronicler (and the burden of proof to the, contrary rests with the critics, who have no evi dence whatever to offer to the contrary but their theory), then it is also in accordance with Levitieal law, that is the Priest's Code; and it further follows that the alleged discrepancy between the two codes is an illusion."* Is there any evidence from the Book of Judges which points in the same direction ? We find the elders of Israel, after the victory over the Benjamites, saying (21. 19), " Behold, there is a feast of the Lord in Shiloh yearly." We note here four items, whose force can only be appreciated by regarding them severally and conjointly. {a) There is a feast. Was it an ordinary or a set feast ? Was it of Divine or other origin?! Studer at once puts it down as a heathen feast, and this in the face of its plain description, as (6) "A feast of Jehovah,'' or, as it may equally well, if not better, be rendered, "the feast of Jehovah," which the French Version exa.ctly catches, " voici la solennit^ qu'on c^lebre tons les ans a Silo." The "of Jehovah" settles the question. The reason for which Studer excludes it from the category of the Great Feasts is that the dancing of the daughters of * A curious illustration of the preeariousness of building upon supposed dis crepancies is afforded by the incidental solution of au apparent contradiction between the supposed sources P and D. Exod. 12. 5 (P), cf. v. 21 (JE), expressly limits the Paschal offering to lambs and kids, whereas Deut. 16. 1, 2, includes cattle (D). This cannot, on the hypothesis of the critics, refer to the firstlings, for (from the time of the Conquest until P) the connection between the firstlings and the festival is denied. But the Chronicler (2 Chron. 25. 7, 8) in a historic narrative, and where no design can be imputed, shows that the discrepancy of the Codes is apparent and not real. The cattle of D are such festal offerings as were habitually brought on all high festivals, quite apart from the offering of the day, for it is reported {v. 7), " And Josiah gave to the people, of the flock, lambs and kids, all of them for the Passover offerings ... to the number of thirty thousand, and three thousand bullocks"; and more explicitly are they differentiated m v. 13 as "the Passover" and "the other holy offerings." And yet the whole is accounted a celebration of the Passover. From such an example we can infer that other apparent discrepancies only need such additional information for their solution, and forbid pro tanto the proposed solutions of the " higher criticism." t Bertheau observes that the expression JPI is almost without exception used of the three Great Peasts. — Kurtsgefasstes Ex. Handb., 278. 156 LEX MOSAICA. Shiloh is a concomitant, and that its proper classification would be with such an occasion as that on which the daughters of Israel lamented the daughter of Jephthah.* To which it might be replied that these dances in companies favour rather than otherwise the determination of this festival to either the Passover or Tabernacles Feast, t But another note of iden tification is (c) "A feast of Jehovah in Shiloh." Why m Shiloh? Why should the people resort thither and hold a feast? Surely a historical claim of greater weight could be urged for Bethel or even Mizpeh. But no, it must be Shiloh. The house of God was there, identical, as has been shown, with the Mosaic " Tabernacle of the congregation." To it all Israel resort, for the Ark of God is there, the voucher of God's pre sence, the voucher, too, of the unity of the sanctuary, from which the Feasts of Jehovah were inseparable. They were, moreover, {d) "Yeariy Feasts." Can greater precision be required? Is anything lacking to establish the identity of this Shiloh Feast with one of the three Great Feasts? If it be urged that the evidence is limited to a Samuel observance J and to the one just noticed, let it be remembered that these notices are incidental, and that it was not the object of the writer to record such observances. But the notices that we have prove that the Mosaic Law was in opera tion, and that the Passover is of Mosaic origin. Indeed, the scantiness of the evidence is a proof of its veracity. What would have been said if there had been a record of a score of passovers in the period ? They would one and all have been declared to be late insertions in the priestly interest. God gives enough evidence to those who have eyes to see. The evidence often is not upon th^e surface, nor is intended to be, and, as an instance in point;, showing that the Mosaic * Studer, Bas Buch der Sichter, p. 418 (ed. 1835). t This is made more probable from the circumstance that the same religious custom prevailed among the Hebrews in later times. The Talmud, in a passage of early Christian date, relates that the maidens assembled for a similar dance on the Day of Atonement, and on the 15th of Ab, the anniversary of the reconciliation of the tribes with the Benjamites (Taanith, end). t 2 Chron. 35. 18. PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. 157 ritual had struck its roots deep in the lives of the people, just as we found an argument for the Levitieal priesthood in the very parody of the Micah-Jonathan cult, so here in the drunken gathering in honour of the Shechemite idol we see a parody and transference to Baal of the Feast which the Law prescribed in honour of Jehovah. The reference of Judg. 9. 27 to Lev. 19. 23-25 is manifest. The praise-offerings of the pressed grapes in the temple of Baal-Berith were a travesty of the Levitieal praise-offerings of the fruits of the fourth year. The Septuagint retains the term Hillulim ('EX?ioi;X(|i*) in both passages, where alone it occurs, the name being regarded as a technical term. The imitation of the Passover postulates the Passover. And what is true of the Passover is true also of the two other Great Feasts, for the organic relation of the feasts to one another is a voucher for their contemporaneous origin. The next matter for consideration wUl be certain rites of a sacrificial nature, and firstly. Vows. The Nazarite vow of Samson. Here we have a certain instance of the Priestly law in operation. The law of the Nazarite is found only in the Priests' Code.* Whatever antecedent history analogous vows may have had, whether the custom was derived from Egypt, as Dean Spencer asserted, or whether it was of Shemitic origin, it seems certain that it was the object of the Priestly Code (Num. 6. 1-21) to regulate the custom in harmony with the ritual of the central sanctuary, a ritual which was pro spectively in view throughout Mosaic ordinance. The estimated importance of this Nazarite vow may be gauged from the circumstance that this vow is called by the Jewish writer jiiyaXri evxri, the " great vow."t The critics -find this Nazarite vow very much in the way of their theory of the late date of the P. Code. Von Bohlen at once cuts the knot by boldly asserting that there is no "¦ Graetz offers no proof for his assertion that Elijah established the institution. — Hist, of the Jews, i., 205. t Philo's Works, Vol. iii., 227. E. P. Bohn. 158 LEX MOSAICA reference to Pentateuchal law.* Studer modifies somewhat this sweeping denial of reference, "nicht ganz in Harmonie mit dem dariiber gegebenen Gesetze."t Professor Robertson Smith ingeniously tries in his curious chapter on the " Hair-offering in vows " to connect the Naza rite vow of the Hebrews — with its special ordinance that no razor should come upon the head — with the hair-offering of the ancient peoples ; an offering which was common, he says, not only in mourning, but in the worship of the gods. More over, from the similarity of ritual which he sees in the two cases, he infers a single principle in both. But clearly Samson's Nazarite vow of consecration has nothing to do with the shaving the head in mourning, which was no doubt a custom common to Hebrew, Greek, Arab, etc. It is impossible to prove that allowing the hair to grow was a sign of mourning. Jer. 7. 9 renders it a certainty that shaving off the hair was its token. Professor Smith, probably seeing this difficulty, ingeniously labours to find a bridge to connect this mourning with religious consecration; and his medium of proof is that as hair cut off a dead person is a connecting link between the living and the dead,J so a vow to sacrifice the hair at a given period to a god is the creation of a link between the person pledged and the deity, the former becoming in a sense consecrated. In order, further, to con nect this with Samson's dedication by his mother, Dr. Smith remarks that the natural tendency of pious parents is to dedicate their child as early as possible to the god who is to be his protector through life. An illustration is then added to the effect that among , Lucian's Syrians the hair of boys and girls was allowed to grow unshorn as a consecrated thing from birth to adolescence, and was cut off and dedicated at the sanctuary as a necessary preliminary to marriage. A little after, we are told, "the Pentateuchal law recognises the hair- offering only in the case of the peculiar vow of the Nazarite. I would ask what connection he has established between this special Nazarite vow of hair unpolled from birth to death, * Einleitung, 148. t Bttch der Sichter, 487. X The rationale of this belief is given in Tylor's Early History of Mankini, p. 127. PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. I59 and a Greek or some other vow to cut off the hair.* The Professor goes on to say, " the detaUs given (Num. 6) do not help us to understand what part the Nazarite held in the actual religious life of the Jews under the Law."t But can we faU to see the agreement which exists both positively and negatively between the position of the Nazarite and that of the Priest? Do we not see in both the consecrated one (T'TJ), both were "holy to the Lord," and wore upon their heads the "diadems of their consecration," and were required to be careful not to defile themselves by contact with the dead, a contact only to be expiated after atonement by means of a sin-offering. What can be the inference but that the Nazarite was after some sort in a priestly position, an inten sified form of that priesthood which was the prerogative of the entire nation? J Dr. Driver escapes the difficulty of this vow by asserting that such passages as point to P in the historical books "are proof that the institutions in question are ancient in. Israel, but not that they were observed with the precise for-^ malities prescribed in P ; indeed, the manner in which they are referred to appears not unfrequently to imply that they were much simpler and less systematically organised than is the case in P."§ Does not this rather suggest a fox run to earth ? Can we argue that because the ritual of the Reformation Period was simpler than that of the Mediaeval, therefore it was earlier ? We want to know how and when these institutions arose, and in a written form; and would further ask whether the minute correspondences between the detaUed injunctions in the history of Samson and the Levitieal Code of Num. 6 are satisfied by the vague generalities just cited. They are as follows: — Numbers 6. 2 6. 3 6. 4 6. 5 " Nasir to the Lord " " Wine and strong drink " . . . , " Of all that comes forth from the grape-vine " "No razor come upon his head" Judges 13. 5 „ 13. 4 „ 13. 14 „ 13. 6 * For the difference between Levitieal and Gentile prescription in the matter of the " hair," cf. Patrick on Lev. 6. t Lectures on the Seligion of the Semites, pp. 305-315. J So too Maimonides, "He who thus abstained was accounted holy, and placed in equal dignity with the High Priest as to sanctity." — More Nevochim. Tr. Townley, 309. Cf. Keil, Bibl. Archceol., i. 436 ; Kurz, Sacrific. Worsh., 446. § Driver, Introd., 136. 160 LEX MOSAICA. Professor Briggs finds that " it is sufficient to read the law of Num. 6, to see that Samson was a very different kind of Nazarite from that contemplated in the Priests' Code." What is his proof ? He urges that Samson uses the jawbone of an ass as a weapon of destruction in violation of the law of the Nazarite in the P. Code, which forbids the Nazarite from coming in contact with a dead body. So, then, the fact that Samson used the first thing that came to his hand when suddenly called upon to defend his life is the best argument he can adduce to prove that Samson not only dis regarded Mosaic Law, but was ignorant of it ! How many persons must have been ignorant of statute law when they have used a revolver to a burglar. It is unfortunate for Dr. Briggs that Samson could not have been ignorant of the law of unclean contacts, seeing that one detailed instruction to his parents was that he should eat no unclean thing. The parallelism of the cases is complete as far as the nature of the case permits. The exception is one of circum stance. The Law contemplated the case of a voluntary vow of the individual for himself ; the historic instance is a vow taken by the parent acting as proxy. Lastly, the earliest prophetic writer qf the Assyrian Period, Amos (2. 11), is a witness to the historic truth of the rite, and to its Divine sanction, and indirectly supports the view here maintained as to the r&le sustained by the Nazarite in the religious life of the Jews. At- any rate it is nothing but the recognised legal obligation of the Nazarite that gives point to Jehovah's reproach of Israel by the prophet : " But ye gave the Nazarites wine to drink, and commanded the prophets, saying, prophesy not" (Amos 3. 12). We next consider The Vow of Jephthah. Here, it is said, is a transaction so opposed to the principles of the Mosaic institutions that it could not have occurred had these been in existence at the time. Some, as Daumer,* have gone so far as to infer from the incident that human sacrifice prevailed at this time in Israel Such a notion may be at once dismissed with the remark * Feuer und Molochdienst, pp. 40 ff. PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. 161 that one swallow does not make spring, and that every cir cumstance associated with the event points in the direction of its uniqueness. There is nothing in the narrative (having regard to the rashness of the vow) to lead to the inference that Jephthah was ignorant of the letter of the Law of Moses which forbade human sacrifice. What is to be inferred (on the supposition that he sacrificed his daughter) is that he displayed ignorance of the spirit of that law. He would seem to have carefully weighed the dilemma in which he was placed. On the one hand, human sacrifice was unlawful ; on the other hand, vows once made were irrevocable, both by the Priestly and Deuteronomic Codes. Each horn of the dUemma was prompted by Mosaic law, and by nothing else. The fear of Jehovah as the avenger of broken vows pre vailed to the shedding the daughter's blood. If, on the other hand (as is held by Waterland, Hengstenberg, Reinke, Keil, Cassel, Auberlen, Dr. Douglas, etc.),* Jephthah intended his burnt-offering in a figurative sense, his language implying such a sacrifice of life in the case of a human being as would correspond to the actual offering up of the life in the case of an animal (for, be it remembered, the sacrifice of animal life is only the symbolic act representing the total surrender and devotion of the human life to God, which would fail of its accomplishment were the human life literaUy taken away), then was the Law fulfilled in this case, both in letter an'd spirit, and Jephthah's acquaintance with, and respect for the Mosaic Law established. We have in this period indications of the light in which The Rite of Circumcision was regarded. It is viewed as the distinguishing mark of Israel in relation to the neighbouring peoples, whereas the uncircumcision of the nations around is looked upon as a mark of degradation. To what is this point of view owing? Observe, that whenever circumcision is presented in the Old Testament as a racial token, a distinctive mark of Israel — * Waterland, Scyript. Vindic, 134; Hengstenberg, Authent., ii. 114, E. Tr. ; Eeinke, Ueb. d. Gelubde Jepht., Beitrage i. 419 ff.; Keil, Judges, 392; Prof. Cassel, in Lange, Judges, 176; Auberlen, Stud. u. Krit., 1860, 640 ff.; Princ. Douglas, Judges, 63 ff. S 1063. -f-L 162 LEX MOSAICA. e.g.. Gen. 17, where it is made the seal of the Abrahamic covenant; Gen. 34, where the sons of Jacob endeavoured forcibly to impose upon the Canaanites outward conformity to their ceremonies; Exod. 12. 43, where the rite is the condition of participation in the Paschal meal — the passage is relegated to the Priestly Code. Indeed, it is considered by the critics tbat the importance thus attached to circumci sion as a distinguishing national token, and the closely allied aversion to inter-marriage with Gentiles out of regard to national purity, are so markedly limited to P that it is necessary to divorce from their context certain verses con taining those views — e.g., in the narrative of Dinah (Gen. 34), — thus severing into dry, separate, unimportant tales a history so tragic and uniform. If this be so, how are we to account for these very senti ments so vividly in force throughout the history proper; e.g., the re-institution of the neglected rite at Gilgal (Josh. 5. 9), where the very same expression, "reproach," is used as in Gen. 34 ; the allusions in Judg. 14. 3 ; 15. 18, and in Samuel (1 Sam. 14. 6 ; 16. 26 ; 31. 4) ? On the critics' theory, the history is suspended in mid-air There are these strong racial beliefs and prejudices with nothing to account for them. We maintain that the history again postulates the Priestly Code (Lev. 12. 3). The displacement of the documents turns noonday into darkness, history into nonsense. Allusion has already been made to a germane subject. The prohibition of marriages with the Canaanites is recognised in this Book of Judges. From no other cause could have arisen the perplexity of the people in obtaining wives for the Benjamites (21. 7). The Deuteronomic Law had been expUcit : " Neither shalt thou make marriages with them." This was simply an enforcement of the Sinaitic command (Exod. 34. 16), which was itself based upon patriarchal experience, if not positive injunction.* And yet even this latter is given over by the critics to the Priests' Code. Cf. Gen. 26. 34, 35 ; 27. 46; 28. 9. * Cf. John 7. 22, " Moses gave unto you circumcision, not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers." Cf. Blunt, Undes. Coinc., p. 19. PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. 163 Three thoughts will close this discussion. {a) How monstrous is the statement that the rite of circumcision is mentioned only once historically for the long space of fifteen hundred years, between the times of Abraham and Ezra.* There is no instance of which we know in which this rite was omitted. We have seen how in the historical books it was regarded as a disgrace in Israel for anyone not to be circumcised ; and never do the prophets urge against the people the violation of this rite. {b) This Book of Judges is attacked from two points of view. (1) It is said to exhibit " tendency " ; that is to eay, it makes people appear to act in accordance with Law which ex hypothesi is long-subsequent enactment. (2) An argument is drawn against the then existence of the Law from the silence of the historic books as to its existence. Samson is adduced in evidence. He took a Philistine wife. If Samson did so in contravention of the Law, where is the " tendency " of the writer, who does not hesitate to narrate it ? If, on the other hand, the writer of the book is correct in saying that he was inspired to the act, then what becomes of Samson's so-called infringement of the Law ? (c) If Deuteronomy, as the critics allege, precedes by ages the Priest's Code, how is it that the metaphysical sense of the term preceded the physical, " Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your hearts?" (Deut. 10. 16). Thus far we have endeavoured to show that character istic features of Priestly and other Mosaic laws and institu tions are known not only to the writer of the Book of Judges, but to the various characters who figure in the history, proving that the late date assigned to the Law by the evolutionary critics is a mistake. We pass now to a consideration of evidence to the same effect, derivable from the Utterances of persons, divine and human, during this period. If these utterances are veraciously reported, there is no escape from the conclusion that the Peijitateuch as we have it, wherever it can thus be tested, was in existence and known to those who cited from it. And not only so, but the instances * Giles, Hebrew Secords, p. 262. L 2 164 LEX MOSAICA. are so numerous as to enable us to argue inductively that where such tests are not forthcoming the results would be uniform had we the information. From which again it fol lows that the theory of the evolutionists is a delusion. Are then the utterances truly reported? This is denied by the critics. We take Dr. Driver as a fair exponent of the case. Thus we read,* "Freedom in ascribing speeches to historical personages is characteristic, more or less, of ancient historians generally; and it certainly was followed by the Hebrew historians. The proof lies in the great simUarity of style which these speeches constantly exhibit to the parts of the narrative which are evidently the work of the compiler himself. In some cases no doubt the writer may have had information as to what was actually said on the occasions referred to, which they recast in their own words; but very often they metely give articulate expression to the thoughts and feelings which it is presumed that the persons in question may have entertained. The practice is exempUfied with par ticular clearness in the Book of Chronicles, where David, Solomon, ' and different prophets all express ideas and use idioms which are distinctively late, and are mostly peculiar to the compiler of Chronicles himself; but there are many instances in other books as well." It is obvious that for the present argument it is of the highest importance to examine this hypothesis, but, to prevent a break in the order of thought, it will be treated in Appen dix B of this essay. Suffice it here to say that Dr. Driver, m proof of his theory, bids us {Contemp. Eev.) "see 1 Chron. 29; 2 Chron. 13. 5-12; 15. 2-7; 20. 5-12; etc., and contrast, for instance, the speeches in 2 Chron. 10, which are excerpted nearly verbatim from 1 Kin. 12." Referring to these examples, it wiU be noticed that Dr. Driver distinguishes between genuine speeches that are excerpted nearly verbatim from older books, and which are clothed in older language, and such others as show the hand of the compUer by expressions and views that belong to his own period. But upon careful scrutiny we find that the Chron icler, though accurately reporting, yet in a very few instances * Driver, Introd. to the Lit. of 0. T., 84, and to the same effect in Contemp. Sev., Feb. 1890, 216. PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. 165 has modified, to the extent of verbal expressions, the very speeches whose genuineness is vouched for by their parallels in the older sources, Samuel and Kings, adapting them to the v^us loquendi of his time, but has not interfered with the matter of the speech. The alleged differences are non-existent. The speeches for which there are parallels exhibit the compiler's hand as much as those for which there is no voucher, whUe the latter bear no stronger impress of his individuality than the former. We must argue in tbis case from the known to the unknown. We can test in the one case; the results of the test we apply to the other case. Where we can test we find remarkable accuracy of quotation on the part of the Chronicler, the modifications being necessary sometimes to make clear what might have been obscure at the time of his " narration," e.g., the Chronider substitutes " David " for " the king" (cf. 1 Chron. 17. 1 and 2 Sam. 7. 1). What was per fectly known to contemporaries might be obscure to posterity. Dr. Driver's linguistic argument goes for nothing. In all the speeches adduced in the Contemp. Eev., in proof that the language is exilic, there are only two expressions which can certainly be referred to that date, as will be shown in Appen4ix B.* As space forbids an inquiry into all the speeches quoted in Judges, it must suffice to take specimens only, and from them infer what must have been at that time known of the Pentateuch. (I) Jehovah's Speech, Judg. 2. 1-4, uttered at the early period of the conquest of the land. In this speech we have quotations from all the so-called sources, J, E, JE, D, H, P. And we are compeUed to note that the language of Jehovah is the language of the Pentateuch, not this source or that source, but a blending of aU; the mouth of Jehovah speaks the mind of Jehovah. The uniting in one thought at one early period what the critics call different * One would have thought that the Chronicler's contemporaries had as good means of judging of the truth or falsity of the speeches from which he quotes as modern critics. Ewald remarks that the judgments of some modern German writers respecting the book are either based upon misconception, or else very unjust. —Hist, of Israel, 194 ff. 166 LEX MOSAICA. strata at late periods, disproves in itself the strata theory. Observe the facts: Judg. 2. 1 : " I made you to go up out of Egypt, * and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers ; and I said I will never break my coyenant with you." Judg. 2. 2 : " And ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land." "Ye shall throw down their al tars." "But ye have not obeyed my voice." Judg. 2. 3 : "I will not drive them out from before you." "But they shall be (as thorns) in your sides." Exod. 3.17: "I have said, I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt." Cf. Ex. 3. 8. Gen. 46. 4 : "I will go down with thee into Egypt, and I will also surely bring thee up again." Cf. Gen. 48. 21 ; 15. 14-16 ; 50. 24. Exod. 6. 2-8 : " I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians . . . and I will bring you in unto the land concerning the which I did swear," etc. Lev. 26. 44: "I will not cast them away ... to break my co venant with them," etc. Exod. 23. 32 : " Thou shalt make no covenant with them nor with their gods." Exod. 34. 12, 15. Deut. 7. 2. Exod. 34. 13 : "Ye shall destroy {Heb. 'throw down') their altars." Deut. 7. 5; 12. 3. Exod. 19. 5 : " Obey my voice." Exod. 23. 21. Exod. 23. 29 : "I will not drive them out from before thee." Exod. 34. 11 (cf. Josh. 23. 13; Deut. 7. 1). An expression contracted from Num. 33. 65, " But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the. land from before you, then it shall come to pass that those which ye let remain of thcan shall be pricks in your eyes and thorns in your sides."t J H JE S JE I) JJ J JE * The term used here n.?rS is diflScult on account of its tense ; but the diffi culty vanishes when it is regarded as a reminiscence of Exod. 3. 17, and still more so when the word " I said," which precedes in Exodus, is here mentally supplied, as is probable. t There are those who assert that P has here, as elsewhere, borrowed front Judges. That is impossible, since the original for "as (thorns in your) sides gives no proper sense unless the words "thorns," etc. are supplied from Nmien PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. 167 " And their gods shall be a snare unto you." Exod. 23. 33: "If thou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare unto thee." Exod. 34. 12-17. Deut. 7. 16. (II.) Song of Deborah. Judg. 6 : " LoED, when thou went- est out of Seir." "The earth trembled, and the heavens dropped, the clouds also dropped water. The mountains melted from before the Lord, even that Sinai from before the Lokd God of Israel." Deut. 32. 2 : " The Lobd . . . rose up from Seir unto them." Exod. 19. 16 : " There were thun ders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount . . . and the whole mount quaked greatly." There is no evading the conclu sion here. The double reference to the Pentateuch (Exod. and Deut.) forbids the supposition that the author of Deut. drew his materials from the Song of Deborah. Debo rah had both these sources before her. JE D JE-^orD (III.) Speech of the Prophet of the Lord. Judg. 6. 8 : " The Loed sent a prophet unto the children of Israel, which said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you forth out of the house of bondage; 9 And I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, aud out of the hand of all that oppressed you, and drave them out from before you, and gave you their land ; 10 And I said unto you, I am the Lord your God ; fear not the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but ye have not obeyed my voice." " I said unto you." Where had God spoken this? There is no vague reference here. We have the very speech preserved to us, Josh. 24. 6-18, in ej^enso. On several oqcasions the words in the origi nal (sometimes peculiar groups of words) are identical. This is fatal to the critical theory of the Hexa teuch. It overthrows, too, their theory of invented or fictitious. speeches. The Book Joshua, here in the time of Gideon, is known as one of the sacred books of the Jews, and quoted as such. (IV.) Gideon's Rejection of Monarchy. Judg. 8. 22: "Then the men of Israel said unto Gideon, Rule thou over us, both thou, and thy son, and thy son's son also : for thou hast Though there is no quotation here, we find in the acknowledged kingship of Jehovah a recognition of the most fundamental principle in loco, as the E. V. does. Even if we were to accept the explanation that D^V? is a corruption of D'"l>'^, the word that follows immediately in Numbers would be presupposed. * Cf. Driver, Introd. to the Lit. of 0. T., 89. 168 LEX MOSAICA. delivered us from the hand of Mi dian. 23 And Gideon said unto them, I win not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you : the Lord shall rule over you." of the theocracy. If Gideon did not live in the consciousness of the authority of God who revealed him self in the Law, he could not have said, " Jehovah shall rule over you." The constitution of the peo ple was sovereignty by God. To subvert this was displeasure to God (cf. Num. 23. 21 ; Deut. 33. 6 ; 1 Sam. 8. 7; Hos. 13. 9-11).* (V.) Speech of Jephthah. Judg. 11. 14 : "And Jephthah sent messengers again unto the king of the children of Ammon : 15 And said unto him. Thus saith Jephthah, Israel took not away the land of Moab, nor the land of the children of Ammon : 16 But when Israel came up from Egypt, and walked through the wil derness unto the Red Sea, and came to Kadesh ; 17 Then Israel sent messengers unto the king of Edom, saying. Let me, I pray thee, pass through thy land: but the king of Edom would not hearken thereto. And in like manner they sent unto the king of Moab : but he would not consent : and Israel abode in Kadesh. 18 Then they went along through the wildemess, and compassed the land of Edom, and the land of Moab, and came by the east side of the land of Moab, and pitched on the other side of Arnon, but came not within the border of Moab: for Arnon was the border of Moab. Deut. 2. 9 : "And the Lord said unto me. Distress not the Moabites, neither contend with them in battle : for I will not give thee of their land for a possession ; be cause I have given Ar unto the children of Lot for a possession. 19 And when thou eomest nigh over against the children of Am mon, distress them not, nor meddle with them : for I will not give thee of the land of the children of Ammon any possession ; because I have given it unto the children of Lot for a possession." Num. 20. 14 : " And Moses sent messengers from Kadesh unto the king 6f Edom, Thus saith thy brother Israel, Thou knowest all the travel that hath befallen us: 15 How our fathers went down into Egypt, and we have dwelt in Egypt a long time ; and the Egyp tians vexed us, and our fathers: 16 And when we cried unto the Lord, he heard our voice, and sent an angel, and hath brought us forth out of Egypt: and, be hold, we are in Kadesh, a city in the uttermost of thy border : 17 Let us pass, I pray thee, through thy country: we will not JE » Cf. Schulz, 0. T. Theology, i. 136. It was not royalty in the abstract that Gideon declined, but royalty in the sense in which the people offered it. Gideon knew the Deuteronomic Law. It may be noticed how absurd is the supposition that this Kingship Law should be of 7th century date. What possible sense at that period in enacting that a foreigner should not be chosen, when the Davidic dynasty had been for ages established ? PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. 169 19 And Israel sent messengers un to Sihon king of the Amorites, the fang of Heshbon ; and Israel said unto him, Let us pass, we pray thee, through thy land into my place. 20 But Sihon trusted not Israel to pass through his coast : but Sihon gathered all his people together, pass through the fields, or through the vineyards, neither will we drink of the water of the weUs : we will go by the king's high way, we will not turn to the right hand nor to the left, until we have passed thy borders. 18 And Edom said unto him, Thou shalt not pass by me, lest I come out against thee with the sword. 19 And the children of Israel said unto him. We will go by the high way: and if I and my cattle drink of thy water, then I wUl pay for it : I will only, without doing any thing else, go through on my feet. 20 And he said. Thou shalt not go through. And Edom came out against him with much people, and with a strong hand. 21 Thus Edom refused to give Israel passage through his border : wherefore Israel turned away from him." Num. 21. 4: "And they jour neyed fj^om mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea, to compass the land of Edom." 11 "And they journeyed from Oboth, and pitched at Ije-abarim, in the wilderness which is before Moab, toward the sunrising. 12 Prom thence they removed, and pitched in the valley of Zared. 13 Prom thence they removed, and pitched on the other side of Arnon, which is in the wildemess that Cometh out of the coasts of the Amorites: for Arnon is the border of Moab, between Moab and the Amorites." 21 "And Israel sent messengers unto Sihon king of the Amorites, saying, 22 Let me pass through thy land: we wiU not turn into the the fields, or into the vineyards; we win not drink of the waters of the well : hut we wiU go along 170 LEX MOSAICA, and pitched in Jahaz, and fought against Israel. 21 And the Lord God of Israel delivered Sihon and all his people into the hand of Israel, and they smote them: so Israel possessed all the land of the Amorites, the in habitants of that country." 26 "While Israel dwelt in Hesh bon and her towns, and in Aroer and her towns, and in all the cities that be along by the coasts of Arnon, three hundred years ? why therefore did ye not recover them within that time ? " by the king's high way, until we be past thy borders. 23 And Sihon would not suffer Israel to pass through his border: but Sihon gathered all his people together, and went out against Israel into the wilderness: and he came to Jahaz, and fought against Israel. 24 And Israel smote him with the edge of the sword, and pos sessed his land from Arnon unto Jabbok, even unto the children of Ammon: for the border of the children of Ammon was strong. 26 And Israel took all these cities : and Israel dwelt in all the cities of the Amorites, in Heshbon, and in all the villages thereof" This historical abstract of Jephthah is taken nearly verbatim from Deuteronomy and Numbers. It is evident that in the time of Jephthah there existed exact accounts of the trans actions of the people at the beginning of the Conquest. We have the summary by Jephthah of the detaUs in the earlier books. Jephthah abstracts from the former books just what is material to his purpose. The idea of Gramberg, etc., that the details of the Pentateuch are taken from this abstract in Judges is absurd, and one of many examples of the shifts to which the critics are put by their theory.* The Book of Numbers fails to reveal itself as the expansion of that of Judges. The former is a well-ordered narrative; the other (Jephthah's argument) is an extract skilfuUy confining itself to the point of his proof ; e.g., every reference to Ammon is omitted in the argument {v. 21); and intentionally, for the strip of land between the Jabbok and Arnon had never be longed to the Ammonites. It had once belonged to the Moab ites, of whom alone he speaks, but had been incorporated by conquest into the land of the Amorites (Num. 21. 26), from whom Jephthah claims that it passed to the IsraeUtes. This explains his sarcastic reference to Chemosh the god of the Moabites, and incidentally rescues Jephthah from the slur of * Budde, in loco, admits that 11. 12-29 is excerpted from Num. 20 and 21, but he calls it ''rein gelehrfce Arbeit," etc., merely a learned production, which does not at all belong to or fit in here. PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. l7l having acknowledged Chemosh as a rival to Jehovah. It was a mere taunt.* The examples here given might have been greatly multi- pUed, but specimens should suffice. And the value of these verbal references is that they corroborate the underlying assumption in the history of the Judges that there was an objective and undisputed law whose authority was recognised though its precepts were continually set at nought. The quotations forbid the hypothesis that contradicts them. The same conclusion is arrived at by a study of The Continuity traceable in the period. It is the steady advance in each Book of the Old Testament, the clearly marked progression, which strikingly sustains the traditional order of the books, t There is a gradual unfolding of the Divine plan, a consolidation of the Jewish nation for its great work in the world's history. This is often obscured by the very method adopted by Providence. The plan of progression is wrought out by apparent retrogression, frustra tion, contradiction. To this the critics are blind. "The historical continuity (says WeUhausen) on which so much stress is laid by the scheme is in no way shown in the individual narratives of the Book of Judges. ... In truth, it is hardly the dim semblance of a continuity that is imparted to the tradition by the empty framework of the scheme. . . . At the bottom of the spurious continuity lies an erroneous widening of the areas in which the judges exerted their "" Even Bleek remarks of Judg. 11 that the express references to the narra tives Num. 20 and 21 coincide even in expression in such a way that the author must unmistakeably have had the former narratives before him as they appear in Numbers. — Introd., i. 382. t The Old Testament writers by their connection with the previous writers testify to the continuity of tho Divine Revelation. The Book of Judges is linked to Joshua by the connective vau, as is Joshua to the Pentateuch, Ruth to Judges, and Samuel to Ruth. The Book of Judges is a link in the chain of books which relate in unbroken continuity the world's history from its Genesis to the Captivity of Judah. In this connection Mr. Lias {Principles of Criticism, 66) adduces Spinoza as having recognised the obvious continuity of the various historical books as they stand, and Eichhorn who, asserting the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, urges that if Ezra wrote it, he must have written all the intervening books, since they stand in such close connection with each other. 172 LEX MOSAICA. influence."* Thus does he fail to recognise " the identity of purpose — ^the constant gravitation towards the greatest of all events — which, under any hypothesis, must furnish the main interest of the history of Israel."t The continuity of the Books is in correspondence ¦ with the continuity of the events. The Book of Judges is in adjustment with the period it narrates. Its history of the period postulates the history of the preceding periods. Every thing is in its natural place. Everything fits. It is all otherwise with the critical hypothesis. There all is out of joint; chaos rules supreme. The Continuity that is pleaded can be exhibited in varied manifestation. (I) Continuity of Constitution. Immediately that the period commences we find a popular assembly (mS) governed by the Elders, just as in the Penta teuch. We can trace back their history. They are the national representatives of the people. They are the persons summoned by Joshua (24. 1) to receive his last instructions. They had united with Moses, at the close of his career, in commanding the people to keep the Law ; and, though the term is used with some latitude, it reveals a form of power which had a history, and of which we can fill up the outlines, viz., the growth of viUage-community government into elders, and a council of elders, pointing back to a time of settlement in Egypt. J Next, the assignment of special function to these elders by Moses, such as the being judges of smaUer matters, then a further development of such judicial function, testi fying to the commanding legislative influence of Moses by its persistence through centuries in spite of and in presence of the surrounding nations with their kings. For the judges proper, though, viewed from one side, they were a special order, yet, from another side, were a reflection and development of Mosaic institution. And was not this last development anticipated by the great lawgiver? Or are the critics, some even of conservative tendency,§ right in suppos ing Deuteronomy to be tbe offspring of the monarchy ? Are * WeUhausen, Prolegomena, 232. f Stanley, Jewish Church, i., Pref. 12. t Exod. 3. 16 ; 17. 6 ; 24. 1 ; Num. 11. 14-16. § Riehm, Gesetzeb. Mos., 62. PERIOD OF THE JUDGES. 173 they right in their contention that the existence in his time of a court of appeal is pre-supposed by the writer of Deutero nomy? For what are we told? The Deuteronomic order was (Deut. 16. 18): "Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates, which the Lord thy God giveth thee, throughout thy tribes ; and they shall judge tbe people with just judgment." But there was to be a Court of Appeal from these ordinary magistrates, viz., " unto the priests, the Levites, and unto the judge that shall be in those days." What is here taken for granted (Deut. 17. 9) is, not the existence of this higher Court of Appeal in the present, but its constitution in the future. With the spirit of the arrangement the people were already familiar. The " harder questions " which hitherto had been taken to Moses and Aaron, and then to Moses and Eleazar, were now to be heard before the High Priest as before, in conjunction now with the highest civil authority, " the Judge."* Moreover, the ancient title Elohim in another part of the Pentateuch, (utterly impossible in monarchical times when kings decided causes in the gates,) gives an archaic flavour to Ps. 82. 6, " I said, ye are gods." A fact like this prominence of the judges confirms the historical accuracy and the literary period of the writings. (IL) Continuity of Tribal Recognition and Precedence. This appears in the partition of the conquered country. It was to be expected (as Ewald urges) that as in the days of Moses and Joshua the ancient division of the tribes was maintained in all its essential principles, so it would have weight in the partition of the land.t With persistency was the number, order, and relative dignity of the tribes main tained ; e.g., twelve spies, one out of each tribe ; twelve stones erected when united sacrifice was to be offered ; in the order of encampment the twelve tribes exactly arranged in four divisions of three tribes each, the sanctuary moving along in their centre, Judah, on fhe march, having the honour and * ThSre seems to have been a foreshadowing of this arrangement when Moses, in his temporary absence, appointed Hur, together with Aaron, as his deputy. t Ewald. Hist, of Israel, ii. 48. 174 LEX MOSAICA. responsibility of vanguard. How are we reminded, as the history of our period opens with, — " Now after the death of Joshua it came to pass, that the children of Israel asked the Loed, saying. Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first, to fight against them ? And the Lokd said, Judah shall go up : behold, I have delivered the land into his band." How are we reminded of the persistence of the prominence of Judah in foregoing history ! We are carried back in thought to the Joseph narrative where Judah appears as Reuben's rival ; to Jacob's last prophetic blessing. We found him chief standard-bearer (cf. Num. 2. 3) as the tribes encamped around the Tabernacle, and foremost in the march (Num. 10. 13, 14). When the aUotment was made under Joshua, the lot of Judah came out first (Josh. 15. 1). Othniel of Judah's tribe is first judge ; in the early history of the Conquest, owing partly to the absorption of their neighbours, Judah assumes the headship of a southern confederacy which interfered little with the affairs of the more distant tribes, which may account for the absence of Judah's name from the Song of Deborah* In the war against Benjamin, Judah was Divinely appointed to lead the van (Judg. 20. 18); in later times, Without con sultation with the other tribes, the men of Judah anointed David, thus taking the initial step towards the establishment of an independent kingdom. In the light of such a continuity of precedency, so clearly natural and undesigned, how impertinent are statements Uke those of WeUhausen, that " the revised form in which the Book of Judges found its way into the Canon is unquestionably of Judeean origin. . . . Othniel is not a person, but a clan. What is said of him is made up merely of the schematic devices of the redactor, who has set himself to work here, so as to make the series open with a man of Judah' {Proleg., 232). The general position of Judah in the back- * Cf. Prof. Robertson in Book by Book, p. 75. Prof. Sayce accounts for the omission by supposing that the name Judah did not come to be territorially apphed tin a later age, " while the Amalekites, the southern neighbours of what was after wards the tribe of Judah, are described as bordering upon Ephraim and Bunjamin. — Sayce, The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, 305. PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. 175 ground, comparatively, in the history of the Judges is a con tradiction of his suggestion. We observe (III.) Continuity of National Unity. This demands especial attention. The critics, perceiving how a persistent national unity bespeaks an antecedent history fatal to their theory, use all their exertions to deny either the evidence for the same, or its veracity. Let us first trace the methods of destruction in the hands of Kuenen, WeUhausen, and Driver successively. Kuenen, in speaking of this period, declares that "as yet there is no such thing as an Israelitish nation; the unity of the people is as yet unborn, and only comes really into being by degrees, under Samuel and the first kings." Then he goes on to ask how this is possible if the twelve tribes have been united first under Moses and then under Joshua ? And if this close union, as recorded in the Pentateuch, were a fact, how could they suddenly spring asunder soon after the Conquest ? * WeUhausen's notion is that the area of the sphere of the Judges is exaggerated. He draws a distinction between the "genuine tradition" {i.e., chaps. 1, 17, 18) and the rest, which is the "redactor's scheme." "The unity of Israel (he admits) is the pre-supposition upon which rests the theo cratic relation whereby, according to the scheme, the course of the history is solely conditioned." Yet he allows that a certain inner unity actually subsisted long before it had found any outward political expression, going back to the time of Moses, t Dr. Driver foUows WeUhausen implicitly in seeing contradictions between the two relations, the ori ginal stock and the redactor, the object of the latter being "to give an ideal representation of the community as acting harmoniously," the writer sheltering himself and his historic doubts behind the more orthodox authority, Prof. A. B. Davidson. J * Sel^. of Israel, i. 133. t Prolegomena, 237, 433. X Introd. to 0. T, 159, 161. 176 liEX MOSAICA. But, inasmuch as our knowledge of the period is derived from the Book of Judges as we have it, we prefer consulting what it says to surmising what it ought to have said. And our point is, that a national unity is not only recognised throughout the book as existing de jure, but underlies the representation as a matter of fact, subject to certain breaches of it which bring their own consequences. In the outset of the history the tribes (" sons of Israel ") unitedly ask the Lord, Who shaU make the first attack upon the Canaanites ? " Who shall go up for us ? " (1. 1). It is clear from the reply that it was understood to be God's intention that the work of conquest should be given to individual tribes. This must not be lost sight of. In the battles in which the first two judges were engaged, though the data are scanty, it is probable that Nagelsbach is right in his assertion, that " all Israel joined in the struggle." In the war with the Benjamites, early in the history, (for Phinehas the High Priest was living,) the consciousness of an organic community is fully alive. This is proved by the action of the Levite in dividing the body of his concubine into twelve pieces, and sending them " into all the coasts of Israel." The subsequent action of the people points in the same direction. " All the children of Israel went out, and the congregation was gathered together as one man, from Dan even to Beersheba, with the land of GUead " (20. 1);* Now observe the attitude of the critics. Kuenen admits that this "would furnish valid proof to the contrary " of his theory, " if it were in all respects worthy of credence. But although founded on fact (cf. Hos. 9. 9 ; 10. 9)> it represents the co-operation of the tribes especiaUy with such unmistakeable exaggeration that we cannot accept it as pure history."t • WeUhausen avers that " the writer betrays himself with a self-contradiction when, unconsciously remem bering the preceding chapters, he laments the disorganisation of the time he is deaUng with (19. 1, 'No king . . • every one did that which was right in his own eyes'), and yet describes Israel to us as existing in a religious centraUsation, such as demonstrably was never attained in the earlier hie * The convocation or assembly of the people was a general one, fully repre sentative, just as previously at Bochim. t Kuenen, Selig. of Israel, i. 148. PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. 177 of the nation, but only came about as a consequence of the ExUe."* Dr. Driver agrees with both the last cited. The narrative " can hardly be historical . . . whereas in the rest of the book the tribes are represented uniformly as acting separately, and only combining temporarUy and partially, in this narrative Israel is represented as entirely .centralized, assembling and taking action as one man with a unanimity which, in fact, was only gained, — and even then imperfectly — after the establishment of the monarchy."t But the facts are again in contradiction of the ' critics, and the latter contradict each other. WeUhausen finds that " it was only for the struggle against Sisera that a number of tribes were united, receiving on that account extraordinary praise in the Song of Deborah." No one can fail to discern a general revival of the national spirit. The leaders fUl their places with zest. The chiefs become such in deed as weU as in name. The lawgivers of-Israel wUlingly offered themselves for the people. The nation heartily responded. Throughout the entire Song Israel is regarded mainly as a whole. It is true that there were exceptions, even on this occasion, and the laggard tribes are censured. Kuenen sees that these censures are at the same time evidence of a former union, but, to save his theory, he must go back for this former union to the Conquest, nay, to the Exodus of Israel, to find it. Mr. Cooke admits "that underlying the Song we can trace the presence of the belief in some sort of national life or national unity bound up with the acknowledgment of Jehovah as the national God," and yet he perversely inverts the facts when he says, " every revival of religion was brought about by a victorious war." J In the time of Gideon, after that Israel had been addressed by the Prophet as a unity, there was an equally large repre sentation of the tribes. The circle of interest widened with the growing influence of this hero, beginning with Abiezer, extending to "aU Manasseh" on both sides of Jordan, and reaching to the three northem tribes, Asher, Naphtali, and * Prolegomena, 237. t Introd., 169. The figures which Dr. Driver finds "incredibly large" are satisfactorily accounted for by Prof. Cassel, in Lange, Comm. on H. Scr. X WeUhausen, Proleg. 233; Stanley, Jewish Church, i. 321; Kuenen, i. 148; G. A. Cooke, Hist, and Song of Beborah, 56. S 1063. M 178 LEX MOSAICA. Zebulon. Issachar and Ephraim too were represented. Nor can we affirm that the southem tribal confederacy kept aloof, seeing that the Midianites and Amalekites ravaged unto Gaza and more especially as there is no hint that any tribe was dissentient when the men of Israel asked Gideon to rule over them and establish a dynasty (8. 22). Again, after the fall of Abimelech's rule the Philistines attacked Israel as a whole, a struggle that tended much to the consoUdation of the tribes. In the story of the next important judge, we can read between the lines that organic unity was the norm. The discontent of the men of Ephraim — "Wherefore didst thou not caU us to go with thee ? " — shows that the omission to seek their co-operation was unusual They regarded it as an insult. ' Eli regarded Israel collectively as the Lord's people; and all Israel, from Dan even to Beersheba, recognised the appoint ment of Samuel as a prophet of the Lord. And it may be asked, could a stronger organic unity be expected under the circumstances ? Of course there was some lack of unity arising out of disobedience. In this, as in all other cases of transgression, they were " Uke their forefathers " ; there was a continuity of disobedience. But, be it remembered, they were undergoing an untried probation. Their new tribal life must have been to some extent at the expense of national unity. Their tribal position was now territorial; this could not fail to bring into play the self-interest involving the separate interest of each. Jealousy, in this, as in aU paraUel cases, played an important part. Moreover, the visible leader was gone who was ever to them the representative and reminder of the Invisible Ruler, their true centre of gravity and unity. No longer were they stationed as formerly m the immediate neighbourhood of the Tabernacle. The sacred house was at Shiloh ; they were scattered throughout the whole land. The few prescribed occasions of worship would be a poor substitute for the daily ministrations of the wil demess. AU was transitional. The more one views the cir cumstances, the more is one convinced that the inspired history bequeathed to us is the only adequate explanation of the organic unity that survived. PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. 179 ,(IV.) Continuity of Worship. Enough perhaps has been said on this point in treating of the Shiloh sanctuary and its functionaries. But one point demands more emphasis, {a) The syncretistic form of worship throughout the period is a certain proof of an antecedent worship of Jehovah. The syncretism is almost always apparent. It took possession of the mass of the people. In the case of many it took the acute form of apostasy. " They did evil in the sight of the Lord and served Baalim ; and they forsook the Lord God of their fathers."* Here is the true account. Their worship had been Jehovistic ; they mingled with their new neighbours and learned their works and worship. Some few remained faithful. Hence the lives of some godly few. The mass made a compromise between Jehovah and " other gods." But even herein a historic continuity is dis cernible. The foundation was laid in Egypt of the religious syncretism which assumes various forms in the following centuries, and was characteristic of Israel. It is their national tendency which gives point to part of Joshua's final address at Shechem (Josh. 24. 14 : cf. Ezek. 20, 7). This syncretism is stereotyped in memory by the act of the Israelites who, after the death of Gideon, made Baal- Berith their gpd. Whether in this case the idea of a covenant God was transferred to Baal, or whether (A. B. Davidson, Expos, xxv.) the ostensible service of Jehovah was debased by assimilating it to the Canaanite worship, thus effacing in their minds the distinction between their God and the Baals of the native population, a syncretistic worship was established, which had been facilitated by Gideon's parody of true worship. (6) The revivals of religion point to this continuity of worship. They reveal inextinguishable forces at work within the nation. The Hebrew race had the distinguishing mark throughout their history of being the one people of God. And it cannot be explained on merely historic grounds how this great truth was derived and persistently maintained. Notwithstanding the continual lapses into idolatry, they always recovered themselves. How are these hidden forces to be * This would be often the result of intermarriage ; occasionally from the Canaan ites outnumbering the Israelites, M 2 180 LEX MOSAICA. accounted for ? Is it traceable to the warning voice of prophet spasmodically uttered, or to the ever ascending fiame of priestly devotion ? This cannot be. The regular worship failed to be widely influential, the irregular voice was mainly silent. The answer is to be found in " the Law of God by His servant Moses," a law embedded in the nation's heart, whose dying embers were fanned into glowing flame at the blast of Jehovah, His messenger, or His judge. The critical school elect to fix upon the apostasy and degeneracy as the real representatives of antecedent cult ; as well may we sup pose the debasements of Christianity to be its original type. (c) The Holy Lives which are represented in this period are another great fact which must be scientificaUy accounted for before the critical hypotheses can be accepted. Lives, every one of which was, in its way, a republication of the Divine Law. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, when he recalls some prominent figures of the old dispen sation who lived and died in faith, does not forget to mclude such heroes of the Theocracy as Barak, Samson, Jephthah, Samuel, etc. ; heading his list with Gideon, whose refusal of the kingship, well fitted him to be its prominent representa tive. These, he says, "wrought righteousness" . . . "These all died in faith." If the Israel of that day was a mere savage horde, as WeUhausen would have us beUeve, how is a Deborah to be accounted for ? How does his theory explain the picture of the domestic virtues and religious tone of such a trio as Naomi, Boaz, and Ruth ? It is Said " The Book of Ruth is incredible; its idyllic colouring is in irreconcilable contradiction to the Book of Judges, and therefore cannot be true." But, according to the same school, the Book of Judges is not historical. Surely if Euth contradicts the non-historical Judges, itself might possibly be history. But what if it does not contradict that book ? What if similar lives are iater- spersed amid tbe scanty records of Judges ? We should not have heard of Samson's parents, nor of Samuel's, if there had not been occasion for their incidental notice in connection with their illustrious sons. In the case of the former we can discern faith, godliness, and an earnest desire to do the right. For the latter, the narrative of 1 Sam. 1 simply requires to be read. We note Elkanah's regular attendance PERIOD OF THE JUDGES, 181 at the Shiloh worship, accompanied by his household, in obedience to Deuteronomic law (Deut. 12. 10); his affection for his wife, evidenced in his giving her a double portion of the sacrificial offering. We note too, Hannah's model spirit of prayer and self-sacrifice. Such a character could not be invented. If it could, the inventor would himself destroy the critical hypothesis. How too, does the evolutionary theory adapt itself to the lowly penitence at Bochim? The very name itself destroys the theory. How does it account for the humiliation before God at their' Benjamite reverse, their tears, their lengthened fast? Such Jewish faith .and piety can only be explained by an influence Uke that of the Pentateuch. This, and this alone, satisfies the conditions of the problem. The truth is, that the evolutionary theory of Israel's reli gion and ritual is an a priori assumption and nothing more. It has no analogy even to support it. Israel's intimate connection both with Chald^a and Egypt forbid the supposi tion. We are told that " ethical monotheism " was the creation of the prophets somewhere about the eighth century B.C. And yet we find that it was part of the State religion in Egypt before the time of the Exodus. The earliest records of Egyptian and Chaldsean history reveal to us as fuUy established, long before Mosaic times, temples, a priesthood, and an elaborate ritual. To these the Mosaic Institute bears considerable analogy, whereas the times proposed by the critical theory can offer nothing in the way of paraUel. And was not The Mosaic Code a Necessity ? Other ancient nations had codes (Lev. 18. 3). Should Israel wait one thousand years for a code, and so be at a special dis advantage?* Would not mere oral instruction have soon * The style of the liturgical ceremonial of Deuteronomy (which is asserted to be late and anachronistic) finds parallel in an inscription from the tomb of Beni-hassan in the 12th dynasty, cited by Warrington, who also gives others from the Temple of Amon, 18th dynasty, from a hymn to the Nile, Papyrus Sallier, 'lu, 19th dynasty, and from Poems of Pentaur : cf. MS. {When Pent. Written t pp. 18-20). Wilson {Egypt of the Past) adduces the prayer of Menkaura to Osiris, and the precepts of Ptah-Hotep (pp. 93, 107). Prof. Sayce {Fresh Light, 77 ff.) gives illustrations of the law and ritual of Israel from the 182 LEX MOSAICA. lost its efficacy, being swamped by idolatrous codes of worship and practice, with all their present allurements and attractive promises ? The Judges made no new laws. If the religious code of the Israelites had not been made and stereotyped (Deut. 4. 2), surely here was the opportunity for the judges to distinguish themselves. They could not have done other wise. As matters stood, however, it was their function to teach and enforce the laws as already enacted. Some Objections Considered. Kuenen {Hexateuch, 22) has remarked that " the represen tation given in the Hexateuch of the legislative activity of Moses involves the essential unity of the Torah." The obser vation is a correct one, and the record of the history for two or more centuries after the death of Moses confirms this representation as given in the Hexateuch. To this Kuenen and his adherents demur. They teU us that if such Torah as the Law of Moses were really promulgated as the Pentateuch purports, then it was certainly inoperative. The course of history, they say, knows no such Law ; the people, nay, their leaders, must have been either wholly ignorant of it, or they wUfuUy departed from it, and that without rebuke. To this position we give a direct contradiction in the name of the Book of Judges. The Book is a record of lapses into , transgression of God's Law. Both the Law and the trangression are acknow ledged. But, say the critics, we cannot aUow the Law unless Or untU we find a period when it is kept. On these premisses there was neither Mosaic Law nor Priestly Code, nor has there been any Law ever promulgated. The argument is too absurd for refutation. At what period of Christian history have the laws or principles of the New Testament been monuments of the surrounding nations ; e.g., the Phoenicians and Assyrians. Many of the Jewish rites were found among the Accadians. And yet wherever we can compare records, how differentiated is Israel's religion! Information on Ancient Religions may be found in Rawlinson's Seligions of the Ane. Worm; Sayce's Hibbert Lects., also in his Anc. Emps., and Fresh Light; Maspero, Hist. Anc. ; Lenormant, Anc. Hist, of the East, Les Prem. Civilisations, La Divination, aM Chald. Mag.; De Rouge, Sit. Funer.; Naville, Mgypt. Todtenb.; Tiele's 0««- of the Hist, of Bel.; Robiou, Croyances de I'Eg.; see also Secords of the toitl Transactions of the Soc. of Biblical Archaol. period op the JUDGES, 183 adequately kept ? Does Mediaevalism appear to postulate them ? If not, were the reformers their authors ? To what extent was the Code of Justinian regarded in the Middle Ages ? Was the Decalogue with its injunction against graven images an institute of the Lollards ? Was the New Testament not in existence because Justin, writing to either pagan emperors or Jews, did not appeal to its books as canonical ? Indeed, so precarious is the argument from silence, says Pro fessor J. Robertson, that one is almost tempted to maintain the paradox that the things which are least mentioned are the most familiar.* The critics object that there are few, if any, traces of the Priestly Code in the Book of Judges. Of course there are not when you have eliminated them. Well does Bishop Blomfield remark {The 0. T. and the New Criticism, 172), " It is startling to find a pack of cards which contains no aces; but the wonder ceases when you find that aU the aces have been previously and purposely removed." " Alleged discrepancies," says Professor BisseU, " appear only when the text is rent asunder." Does anyone conclude because a modem history like Alison's Europe makes no mention of a vast number of laws in the various countries treated of, that therefore these laws were not in force ? Is it not evident that a mention of these laws did not come within the scope of the history, and therefore was omitted? But it will be urged that such considerations do not cover the cases of direct infringement of law by responsible persons. This does not account for the Ophrahs, the Bethels, etc. What was the law ? Worship was restricted to the place which Jehovah should choose. How was it to be known ? Ordinarily the presence of the Ark determined it. But surely ¦ God might manifest His presence extra-ordinarily if he chose, in which case worship other than at the Ark could not be illegal. And such was the case at Bochim, Ophrah, Zorah, etc., where was a manifestation of the Presence ; and ih such cases sacrifices were usually commanded. The question for us is. Does this Book of Judges know of a central sanctuary as the alone authorised place of worship or sacrifice in normal * The temptation of Eve is not once again mentioned in the Old Testament, nor is circumcision mentioned in the Koran. 184 LEX MOSAICA, cases? And the same question might be asked in every period down to the Captivity, for the high places could never be utterly abolished. It is wholly false to say that aberration from law was not stigmatised. The condemnation and terrible consequences of Gideon's schismatic worship can only be under stood by assuming the exclusive legaUty of the one national sanctuary, and this at a time when the somewhat vague order, " the place which the Lord shall choose," might, es peciaUy in the very unsettled condition of things, tend to decentralize the idea of the central sanctuary. We have alluded above to Bochim. Is the narration a historical fact ? Was it so called because the people gave expression to their feelings, and vented them in their tears? Feelings aroused by memories of the past, to which their hearts found echo ? They admit that the covenant had been broken, they are conscience-stricken. Whence comes it that their prudential poUcy gives place to a sense of guilt? It has its parallel in Ezra 9. 9 ; 10. 3. Is the parallel also unhistorical? And yet the critics, forgetting that they consigned the story to the realm of " accretion," treat it, when it suits their argument, as history, and smile at " the little permanent impression " made at Bochim. There must have remained at any rate some residuum of permanence to account for the lives of piety to which allusion has been made. But, it may be asked, were the historic impressions permanent ? Was the Deuteronomic Law, we ask, on the critical theory of its pro mulgation, fully of permanently obeyed ? What account can the critics give of the idolatries of Solomon, Ahaz, etc. ? Is not Jeremiah witness to the wholesale infringements of this Law, which the critics tell us was only known just before the Prophet's day? Does he not declare (Jer. 7. 29-81), "The children of Judah have done evil in My sight, saith the LORD ; they have set their abominations in the house which is called by My Name, to defUe it. And they have buUt the high places of Tophet ... to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire ; which I commanded them not, neither came it into My heart." Under any theory, it was not long after the discovery of the Law in Josiah's time that the cup of Judah's iniquity was fuU. And did not the sin of the golden calf take place almost beneath the thunderings of Sinai's mount of instruction ? PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. - 185 The experience of lawgiver and prophet of the old dispensation was the experience of our Lord, of His Apostles, of S. Francis, of Loyola, of Savonarola, of every reformer. The marvel is not that the history of the Judges' period is as it is recorded ; the real wonder is that the people were as impressionable, as open to reproof, as ready to tum and repent after each lapse, as they are represented. When we consider that for the first time they were left without a visible leader ; that for a long time their minds were pre-occupied in obtaining possession of the land, in fighting for very existence ; that the Tabemacle was no longer as before, accessible to their tents ; its distance being prohibitory to the majority. When we remember that the new Canaanite civilization had its attrac tions, that the cult of Astarte was seductive ; that whereas in Egypt the heathen worship was in a foreign tongue, in Canaan the myths of the gods were told in a language they understood. Then moreover, the Festivals of the heathen allured them by their pomp and gaiety ; the voluptuousness of their impure rites beguiled them, their idolatrous divination whetted their appetite for curiosity. The beauty of the women and the fastidiousness of their dress captivated them, and tempted them to intermarriage, a ready avenue to the adoption of foreign manners and worship ; and, added to aU this would be an anxiety to concUiate the favour of those deities who were represented to them as the peculiar tutelary gods of the land of their adoption, not unmingled with a fear of their displeasure. Much more might be said did space permit. Throughout the book are ever interspersed recoUections of a Mosaic past ; the Mosaic system is everywhere pre-supposed. Mosaic in junction is carried out; witness the conquest of the land, the destruction (in the main) of Canaanite and Perizzite, the expulsion of the Anakim, the possession of the land, the Hormah vow, etc. Mosaic prophecy is in course of fulfilment ; indeed, the book is one long series of fulfilment of Deut. 7. The phraseology of the book bears a Pentateuchal impress; whUe it is noticeable that where the Pentateuch is sUent on Israel's doings, the historic books are also sUent. To sum up, the impression formed from a close study of the book is that the writer knew and knew thoroughly the 186 LEX MOSAICA. Pentateuch. His mind was saturated with it. A single thought often embodies two, three, even four, passages of the Pentateuch. And, in its degree, the same remark applies to some of the spokesmen introduced into the book. The assumption that there are any substantive "sources" of the Pentateuch dating in exilic or post-exUic times is, we believe, a Uterary and historic impossibility. That the " higher criticism " ever obtained the foUowing which it has had wiU be the marvel of the future. Like every other form of assault upon the Word of God, it will have its little day and die. The higher criticism is in a state of perpetual flux. No proof of this is needed beyond the facts adduced by Dr. Cheyne, in his Founders of Old Testament Criticism.* On many points the critics are them selves in internecine conflict. To this they bear witness themselves. Thus, Mr. Addis {Documents of the Hexateuch, Introd. 83) asks, " When was the Law, enforced by Nehemiah and Ezra, written? Here it is that Biblical scholars of the present day differ most widely. Dillman and others contend that the " Priestly " document is much older than Deuteronomy . . . The school of Graf (Kuenen, WeUhausen, Stade, etc.), on the contrary, believe that the 'Priestly' Law is much later than Deuteronomy, and may be assigned to the time of Ezra." The key to their speculations is a denial of the super natural in any form. Hence a revelation from above must be denied, miracle and prophecy must be discarded. The documents of the Old Testament must be manipulated to harmonize with the theory. The shifts, the resorts, the assump tions are endless. External evidence is cast to the winds. The entire argument is subjective. To methods such as these, of exotic origin, Professors of Divinity at home have attached themselves, some, it is believed, without realizing the logical issues.! But they are beginning to ask themselves, * The history of the varied phases of modern criticism , positively forbids the arrogant tone in which it is assumed that the present phase, even if put into one generally-acknowledged form, is final. The same finality was once widely assumed for the "documentary" and for the "fragmentary" hyphotheses, and yet they died of inanition. t And, as Bishop Barry urges, the critical methods must be appraised by their results. See some admirable remarks in his Bamptons, Some Lights of Science on 'Oie Faith (pp. 278 ff.). PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. 187 Qwmsque ? Indications of this are manifest in Dr. Sanday's Bampton Lectures. Deeper study and mature reasoning must assuredly convince, and at no distant date, that the balance of evidence is in favour of the traditional view, that the pre sumption is all in its favour. It is certainly the primd facie view. Whatever difficulties it presents, and there are difficulties on either theory, they are not of an insurmountable character. The history, as viewed by all tradition, is a harmonious history; the supernatural is natural. No violence is done to the documents in their unity and mutual corroboration; and, more than all, the authority of the Divine founder of the New Covenant is left unimpaired. The Kenotic theory can never be sustained. The Son, ever indwelt of the Father, manifested this indwelling alike in work and in word. He Himself declares it : — " The Father which dwelleth in Me He doeth the works," and, "The Father gave Me commandment (as to My words whether in substance or in form of expression) what I should say and what I should speak." ( 188 ) APPENDIX A. The Date of the Book of JUDGES. The date of a written history does not necessarily affect its his torical value. The mere writing down of occurrences at the time they occurred does not in itself make them credible, for they may be misstated, whilst a history written centuries after the events that are recorded may be a true story. And yet, cseteris paribus, there is a natural prejudice in favour of contemporaneous history. Although on all hands it is admitted that the writer of Judges employed documents, some of which at any rate were contemporaneous, yet for the purpose of the present inquiry, it makes all the difference whether the book as we have it was a product of exilic times, or was written much nearer in time to the events recorded.* The determined efforts of the critics to post-date the book are sufficient proof in this direction. To ascertain the truth we are compelled to rely upon in ternal evidence, merely noting in passing that Rabbinic tradition assigns the authorship to Samuel. Before tabulating the notes of time to be found in the book itself, it will be well to gather such evidence as is forthcoming from the later books. In Pss. 78. 55-77; 106. 34-36 there is distinct reference to the period of the Judges, if not to the book. Ps. 83. 9-11 refers to the narrative of Judg. 7, 8. Isa. 9 is a reminiscence of Judg. 4, 5, 6, The prophecy covers the same ground and in the same order. (a) The affliction of Zebulun and Naphtali is that of Judg. 4, 6, 10. Isa. 9. la cannot be the invasion of Benhadad, because this latter comprised towns in IfaphtaU only (I Kin. 15. 20). Nor can it be the invasion of Tiglath for the same reason (2 Kin. 15. 29). In both cases the list is summarized, "all the land of Naphtali." One (or both) of these invasions is alluded to in the latter part of this verse I. * E.g., the Song of Deborah, Jotham's parable, the records of Ehud, Gideon, and Abimelech. In such cases Dr. Driver's canon would apply: "The abundance and particularity of detail show that the narrative must date from a period very little later than that of the events related." — Introd. to the Lit. of 0. T., p. 173. PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. 189 {b) "Rejoice when they divide the spoil" is a thought suggested by the elation of Sisera's mother depicted in Judg. 6. 30. (c) 77^ ''^pY^\ (Judg. 5. 30). The very expression is present to the prophet's mind (Isa. 9. 3). {d) "The day of Midian" (Isa. 9. 4) is the prophet's expres sion for the events recorded in Judg. 6, 7, 8. Compare also Isa. 10. 26, where the prophet moreover uses the expression " At the rock Oreb," from Judg. 7. 25. The evidence is conclusive that Judges (chaps. 4 — 8) was in its present literary form and sequence in the hands of Isaiah, and there fore was not written at the late date assigned to it by many. The evidence from some utterances of Samuel is to the same effect, "In I Sam. 12. 9-11 there are not only allusions to the events which form the subject of Judg. 3, 4, 6, 7, 8; 10. 7, 10; 11 but verbal quotations, which make it morally certain that the writer of 1 Samuel had before him the very words which we now read in Judg. 3. 7, 8 ; 4. 2 ; 10. 10, 15, and probably the whole narratives as they are now contained in Judges. It necessarily follows that either the Book of Judges was already compiled when Samuel spake these woi'ds, or that Samuel had access to the identical documents which the compiler of Judges afterwards incorporated in his book." •—Pulp. Comm., Introd. 7. In the Book itself, taking the passages in order, we have : Judg. 1. 21, "And the children of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites that inhabited Jerusalem : but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem unto this day." The inference has been drawn that the Introduction, if not the Book, was composed before the stronghold of Zion was taken and the Jebusites exterminated by David; but it is thought that the Jebusite population was allowed to live as before on Moriah ; in which case the inference would be uncertain. Judg. 1. 26, " Luz : which is the name thereof unto this dayT — This latter phrase recurs in 6. 24; 10.4; 15. 19; 19. 30. The con- diiions of this expression would be satisfied at any time after the period of the Judges. Judg. 1, 29, " The Canaanites dwelt in Gezer among, them." — De Wette thinks this belongs to the time after Solomon {Introd., ii. 206). Bleek {Introd., i. 353) infers the contrary, arguing that if we compare this passage with 1 Kin. 9. 16, we find there that in Solomon's time the Egyptian king captured and burned the city of Gezer, and destroyed the Canaanites dwelhng in it, and gave the city and district to Solomon as a present to his daughter; that then Solomon rebuilt the city. ' But after this it was not again peopled with Canaanites. This leads to the idea that this must have been written (as also Josh. 16, 10) before the destruction of Gezer by 190 LEX MOSAICA. Pharaoh. To the same effect Pusey {Daniel, 311), who says, "Later times than Solomon's are excluded by the fact that the Canaanites were dwelling at Gezer, whereas Pharaoh drove them out." Judg. 2. 11, 12. — Prom a comparison of these verses with 2 Kin. 17, 7, Ewald assigns B.C. 562 as the final date of Judges. But if we closely compare the two contexts, all the difference will be found, speciaUy in Kings, the notice of the kings of Israel, v. 8, the high places, &c. Judg. 6. 32, " On that day he caUed him ' Jerubbaal." — In later times Baal was regarded in his proper light, and the term as a compound proper name was altered. In 2 Sam. 11. 21 he becomes Jerubbesheth. The Septuagint, however, reads Jerubbaal. For the same reason, viz., to avoid the pronunciation of the false god Baal, Esh-baal was changed to Ishbosheth, and Merib-baal to Mephi- bosheth. Judg. 13. 1, "The Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years." — Prom this, it is evident that the book was not written before the subjugation of the Philistines by Samuel. Judg. 17. 6, " In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes." Cf. 18. 1 ; 19. 1 ; 21. 25. — This indicates that the book (certainly the appendix) was written when monarchy was felt to be a security against reh gious declension and moral obliquity, when, in fact, monarchy was regarded as the panacea for all ill. This was impossible after the institution of Jeroboam's political idolatry, and most improbable after the rebellion against David. Only the reign of Saul, or the early days of that of David, satisfy the conditions. Judg. 17. 30, 31, " And the children of Dan set up the graven image : and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land. And they set them up Micah's graven image, which he made, all the time that the house of God was in Shiloh." The critics have seized on this passage with avidity. Here, say they, is proof that the book was written after the Captivity. But, the expression used is " the captivity of the land," a remarkable expression ; quite unique, never used of the captivity of Israel or Judah, unless here. Such an interpretation would imply that the Micah-Jonathan here ditary priesthood had a separate and distinctive existence for several centuries. It would have been impossible for such a rival priesthood to have held its ground through the many reformations of that long period; to wit, — (a) That of Samuel, whose influence was felt from Dan to Beer sheba (1 Sam. 3. 20). This was a time when .all the house of Israel lamented after the Lobd, and responded to Samuel s caU to put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth (1 Sam. 7. PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. 191 2-4).* Nor should Saul's purification of the land be forgotten {ib. 28. 9). (6) That of David. Under his direction all the Levites were registered and appointed to their various duties. Thus all were accounted for (1 Chron! 23. 3). This apphes also to the reign of Solomon. (c) Jeroboam's calf worship would have been fatal to it. One of his chief provisions was that his priesthood should be non- Levitical, and this applied not only to Bethel (as Speaker's Comm., for which there is no evidence), but to Dan also. Moreover it was his aim to establish in the Northern King dom a national worship with which Micah's nonconformity would have been incompatible. On the other hand, if he had found it there, rooted in the hearts of the people, he would not have displaced it. Lastly, there is no allusion to the Jonathan cult during this entire period. What then does it mean ? The expression "captivity of the land" Is a metonomy under any interpretation. The land did not go into exile. Verses 30 and 31 are mutually explanatory. Verse 30 in separably connects the graven image with the priests to the tribe of Dan, who served till the captivity of the land, which verse 31 makes to synchronize with the continuance of the house of God at Shiloh. Shiloh ceased to be the house of God when the Ark of God was taken after Israel's rout by the Philistines (1 Sam. 4. 10). Then was the glory departed from Israel (1 Sam. 4. 22). The Philistines themselves felt its terrific import (1 Sam. 6. 20). With the loss of it, all was accounted lost. The captivity of the Ark was to them the captivity of the land ; for the land was the special form of the covenant by Jehovah, and now Jehovah, its only guarantee was gone. All was now weakness ; for the Ark was the Ark of God's strength (1 Chron. 6, 42; Ps. 132, 8: cp. Num. 10. 35). And God's strength was gone into captivity. His glory into the enemy's hand (Ps. 78. 61). This event was treasured up in history as the first " captivity." For the Septuagint inscription of Ps. 96, the substance of which is stated by the Chronicler (1 Chron. 16. 7) to have been delivered by David into the hand of Asaph when the Ark of God was conveyed in state to Jerusalem, reads : ore o oTko? ^Kolojirirai I^Taryiv aiyjAoXaa-iav, iaSij r^ Aavli, which the Vulgate renders, " Canticum ipsi David, quando domus sediflcabatur post captivitatem." The strongest probability exists from the foregoing data for as signing the authorship of the Book to Samuel or to one of his prophetic school. The period was either the time of Saul, or the early years of the reign of David. * Baalim, etc., denoted generically in the historic books and prophets all objects of worship and practices improper in the service of God. ( 192 ) APPENDIX B. Genuineness of Speeches. Db. Deivee fixes upon the method of the Chronicler as a test whereby we can gauge the genuineness of all recorded speeches in the historical books. He says {Contemp. Bev., 1890, p. 216): "The methods of historiography postulated by criticism are shown by the example of the Chronicles to be a vera causa in Hebrew htera- ture. . . . We learn from them, namely, that Hebrew historians used some freedom in attributing speeches to historical characters; for in this book there are speeches attributed to David and other worthies of Israelitish history which can be nothing but the com position of the Chronicler himself; both the syntax and the voca bulary being such as mark the latest period in the history of the language, and being often quite without precedent in pre-exilic litera ture; the thought also often, not to say usually, displaying likewise the characteristics of the same age." "See 1 Chron. 29; 2 Chron. 13. 5-12; 15, 2-7; 20. 5-12, &c.; and contrast, for instance, the speeches in 2 Chron. 10, which are excerpted nearly verbatim from 1 Kings 12." The issue is clear. Dr. Driver says in so many words : " I give you four instances in which you can see for yourself that where the Chronicler relates speeches which are not recorded in the parallel books, the language and thought are both exihc; whilst in the one instance nearly verbatim quoted the diversity of style is not apparent." Now whereas Dr. Driver derives the proof of his contention from one instance (2 Chron. 10), and this one comprising merely seven verses, we can adduce in evidence to the contrary lengthy speeches which are also nearly verbatim excerpted from Samuel or Kings ana which bear quite as many marks of exilic language and thought as those with no parallel reference which Dr. Driver pronounces to be invented. Cf. I Chron. 21 with 2 Sam. 24, and 1 Chron. 17 with 2 Sam. 7, which are merely chosen at random. Let us closely con sider the contrasts in parallel columns. period op the judges. 193 2 Samuel 7. 1 Ceeonicles 17, V. 1. The King. And the Lord . . . round about. V. 2. Ark of God. Within the curtain. V. 3. Jehovah with thee. V. i. Word of Jehovah. V. 5. Shalt thou . . . ? (LXX. as in Chron)."and I was walking in a tent and in a tabernacle." v. 7. ''!53B>, tribes. V. 8. inxp, over My people, over Israel. V. 9. nriiaSJ, I have gladly cut off. 7\13 DB*, a great name. V. 10. Wi%>h, for Israel, iniiyVi afaiet them. V. 11. ^30 "!{? ^nn'jqi, and I will cause thee to rest from all. ^^h niy. nil ¦'3 \] 'i? Tjini., ;! The Lord telleth thee that the Lord wiU make thee a house. vv. 13, 14. V. 19. D-isri nnin nSTI, And this is the manner of men. V. 20. "SI^S 131?, say unto thee. V. 1. David. Omitted. Ark of the Covenant of Jehovah. Under curtains.* V. 2. God with thee. V. 3. "Word of God (LXX. Jehovah). V. i. Thou shalt not. V. 5. V. 6. V.7. V.8. V. 9. xt. 10. V. 13. «. 17. V. 18. "and I was from a tent to a tent, and from a tabernacle."f (LXX. almost as in Samuel.) 'Ogy, judges. X (LXX. has tribes). 'DD>? }», over My people Israel. nn?KJ. I have cut off. D^, a name. hn'ip], Israel. !iniFlVD3-1 (poetic form). im?3?, waste them. bs n^ W^^O), (LXX. as in Sam.) and I will subdue aU . . . )\ ^'? nj?? nis-i ^? n»5S}, i tell thee, and the Lord will build thee an house. (Text cor rupt, LXX. paraphrases here.) Parts of Samuel's text omitted (to spare the feelings of the king(?)). njpri Diisin nin? ''jns>i, and iast regarded me accord ing to the estate of men (of) high degree. (Text corrupt, LXX. somewhat similar.) ¦^pi; nS ~l''i2^h. 'T'^K, to thee for honour thy servant. (Text corrupt.) * LXX. {moKiTu Up^eav, under screens of skins. Note, the Sept. translators had before them nilil/, whereas the Massoretie reading is flirn^ There is a striking similarity of the letters. The lack of vowel points in those times would increase the chance of copyist's errors. t The letters are similar, but sense is lacking. It seems that the copyist servilely followed an imperfect text ; other instances of the same character confirm this sug gestion. t Note the similarity of letters. In ¦!). 11 both Samuel and Chronicles have judges. S 1063. N 194 LEX MOSAICA. 2 Samuei 7 — cont. V. 21. , . . thy word . . . to make known to thy servant. 1 Chronicles 11 —cont. V. 19. . . . thy servant . . . to make known all the great things. V. 20. 0 Lord . . . V. 22. Therefore thou art great, 0 Lord God . . . Similar differences to the end of the chapter. We have here two speeches of about twelve verses each, excerpted nearly verbatim from Samuel. Were it not for the parallel in the earlier book. Dr. Driver would no doubt have triumphantly pointed to this chapter as the acme of clumsy invention, for the language throughout is obscure and redundant, the syntax is heavy and awkward; the Chroiucler moreover employs modern words and forms, e.g. — Samuel, Cheonicles. V. 10. D'P^'p'jl, and from of old V. 11. in-n'?6.* V. 14. »n-13'?D5-l.'* V. 17. iin?, according to the rank. il7!?Bn, high degree. V. 1% nipnan, the greatness (pi.). J). 11. Di»n JpVi, and from the day. V. 12. in5^j?Q. ' V. 16. '?IPl'3^bp-'l. V. 19. JTIIFl, the manner of. V. 22. PI^14' ^^°^ ^'^ great. The existence of the parallels of these speeches is important in several ways. It not only confutes the theory that a speech in Chronicles, because it bears evident rdarks of the hand and time of later scribes, cannot be ancient, but it precludes our asserting that the Chronicler has in this case really tampered with or even re-cast his authorities. If we consider that where the Chronicler uses un intelligible phrases or modern forms the parallels to such expressions are simple and ancient, and yet the shape of the letters in the two cases is singularly alike, we cannot but conclude that the copyist, and following him the Canonist, left the text exactly as he found it, and that the text of Chronicles in this chapter, and inferentially in others, is nothing but a relation of the text of the earlier hooks in a bad state of preservation, presenting just such variations of readings as those with which we are familiar in classical authors; and that the authorities who fixed the text, instead of rectifying that of Chronicles by the generally more correct reading of Samuel, went so far in their resppct for the text before them, that they rather left the words in their enigmatical state than gave their own corrections, leaving it to the acumen of the reader to do for himself what the latter might expect the Canonist to do. But the Bobk of Chronicles presents other phenomena. If we compare 1 Chron. 21 with 2 Sam. 24, we find that while the texts * Cf. Driver, Introd., p. 603, (9), PERIOD OP THE JUDGES. 195 are substantially the same, and an even deeper resemblance is observable in the parallelism of little turns of thought and expression, yet there are such varieties observable as compel the conviction that we have two relations, the one in Chronicles being excerpted from that in Samuel in conjunction with- other source or sources, or possibly from the latter alone. But even here several of the same kind of variations present themselves, the letters being nearly identi cal, e.g. — 2 Samuel 24. 1 Chronicles 21. tl. 12. ?£53, I hold threateningly. V. 13, •'IPJ (n3D3 ?), thy fleeing. V. 10. nniJ, I extend. V. 11. nSD3, we shall be consumed (LXX., as in Samuel). If we turn to the instances adduced by Dr. Driver as tests of his position, we find again the same phenomena, the same corrupt state of the text in Chronicles as against its parallel. Cf. 1 Kings 12. 7 with 2 Chron. 10. 7, the rendering in the latter case being : " If thou wilt be for good for this people " ; in the former : " If this day thou wilt be a servant to this people." On the other hand, those speeches which Dr. Driver has pronounced fictitious contain no more traces of Exilic language than those whose genuineness is vouched for by parallels; indeed, some of those exihc words are omitted in LXX., especially iTl^Sri, while otherwise the language is the same as in Samuel and Kings.* * So in verse 4. In verse 19 the LXX. read n^.3n or ^0*3. N 2 ( 196 ) APPENDIX C. Homogeneity, (I.) Whethee we regard chaps. 17 — 21 as one appendix, or divide them into two, viz., 17 — 18, and 19 — 21, it is morally certain that they are by the same author. The peculiar formula, " There was no king in Israel " (18. 1 and 19, 1), with the addition, " every man did that which was right in his own eyes" (17, 6; 21, 25), is conclusive on the point.* Dr. Driver denies this, and separates ch. 19 from 20, 21, His reasons are : — (I) " The description (ch. 20) in part appears to be in duphcate." f But it may be asked : Could there not be two records before the compiler, and could not the combination be effected by juxta-position of the documents rather than by fusion of the contents ? Was not this the usual method of Old < Testament historiographers ? % (2) He says " the account, as we have it, can hardly be historical. The figures are incredibly large: Deborah (5, 8) places the number of warriors in entire Israel at not more than 40,000; here 400,000 advance against 25,000-1-700 Benjamites, and the. latter slay of the former on the first day 22,000, on the second 18,000; on these two days not one of the 25,000-^700 of the Benjamites falls, but on the third day 10,000 Israelites slay 25,100 of them." Dr. Driver's comparison with Deborah's computation is unfortunate, for (a) the forces enumerated by her were the muster-roU for a local battle, whilst here the war is national ; (6) the date of Deborah's muster is subsequent to the vast destruction of troops at Gibeah j (c) while 40,000 are represenlfed as the forces at disposal, Barak smote the enemy with only 10,000 men. And it is just this latter point which explains the 400,000 against Gibeah of which Dr. Driver makes so much. That this number was actually engaged against Gibeah is strategically impossible ; the main body was kept in reserve. * WeUhausen notes that chaps. 17, 18 are assumed as having gone c. 19 ff. t This is denied by WeUhausen and Kuenen, and partly by Bertheau (s. Budde, Sichter ^ Samuel, 13&). X Bertheau {Exeg. Handbuch Sichter, 1883, p. xxiv) maintains the unity of author ship on linguistic grounds, and he quotes (p. xxv) Stsehelin and Sohrader to the same effect. period op the judges, 197 Indeed, it is stated that a lot was cast (20. 9), and that the tenth part of the whole force, having gotten provision, engaged in battle ; the same persons ("they," v. 10) who had been told off to get victuals were to do to Gibeah according to the folly they had wrought against Israel. Where is the " ineredibihty of the numbers " ? Is it incredible that Benjamin should have put into the field 27,000 men? In the time of Moses (Num. 1. 37) the adult male population of Benjamin, "every one that went forth to the army,'' was 35,400. Is then the number that is given for the whole tribes, 400,000, incredible? Is it not fairly proportionate to the forces of Benjamin?* Again, the remark of Dr. Driver, " On these two days not one of the 25,700 of the Benjamites fell," is a mere assumption ; it is not even to be inferred from the text. Indeed, this would be incredible after two engagements with Israel, so fatal to the latter.| (3) Another reason adduced by Dr. Driver for disputing the homogeneity of ch. 20 is that "whereas in the rest of the book the tribes are represented uniformly as acting separately, and only combining temporarily and partially, in this narrative Israel is represented as entirely centralized, assembling and taking action as one man with a unanimity which was only gained after the monarchy. . . . Else where the people are impelled to action by the initiative of an individual leader ; here they move in vast numbers, automatically ; there is not even mention of the head who must have been needful for the purpose of directing the military operations." — Introd. 159. The question of the combined action of the tribes has been fully discussed in this essay. It need only be added that this occasion was unique. The single fact that the Levite (like Saul on a parallel occasion) cut up the body and despatched pieces to each of the twelve tribes, accounts for both the exceptional indignation and the concerted action at this time. And this meets also Prof. Driver's objection that Israel was not impelled to action by the initiative of an individual leader. Even if a leader were wanting, ample motive was at work, the impulse could not have been stronger. But the leader was not wanting; to Phinehas the moral indig nation of Israel over the criminal outrage of Benjamin is to be especially attributed. Lastly, Dr. Driver adds (p. 160), "Nor is there any trace. . . of the tribe of Benjamin having been reduced to one-fortieth of its numbers, or, in the narrative of 1 Sam. 11, of the virtual extermina tion of the population of Jabesh Gilead." * Would the critics subject a Roman historian to such rough handling ? Would they thus ridicule Tacitus when he tells us that the Egyptian Thebes could send into the field an army of 700,000 men? t See, however, Num. 31. 49, where from an army of 12,000 men, after a great battle, not one was missing. 198 LEX MOSAICA, \ Is this so? Saul (1 Sam. 9. 21) asks, — "Am not I a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel ? " At the time of the wilder- ' ness census Benjamin was not the smallest tribe, and the point of Saul's remark is that the tribe had been reduced to insignificance by the terrible slaughter recorded in Judg. 20. 46 (cf. Kirk patrick, in loc.). And as to the omission of reference to the extermination of the population of Jabesh, was there need to tell what every one knew ? Can Dr. Driver recall no instance of a town peopled or re-peopled in a century or two ? We have read of towns in the far west of the States peopled within an hour, (II.) The next point is, whether the author of the appendices and of the main body of the book (2, 6 — 16) is the same person. WeUhausen observes {Proleg. 283) that the "story relating to the migration of Dan northwards is plainly connected with that imme diately preceding, where the tribe still finds itself ' in the camp of Dan.'" On the other hand, Dr. Driver looks upon the main stock as the work of " The Deuteronomic compiler," of whose hand he finds no traces in the first and third divisions of the book (cf, Introd. 158, 161). But the internal evidence points the other way. In the three obvious divisions of the book an organic connection is manifest. Moreover the operation of the law of retaliation is marked throughout. The events recorded in the appendix are intimately conneteted with the contents and aim of the book generally, though they could not well be introduced into the historic narrative. If the prophetic view of the history, elsewhere prominent, is lacking here, the contents do not furnish an occasion nor supply the material for such treatment : nor are parallels wanting in the main body of the work, where theocratic pragmatism is looked for in vain. Ex ternally, we find the appendix joined to the main stock by the copula "And it came to pass," and there are linguistic links which connect the main body with the appendix, e.g. the phrase Hfi'tiJ D^fi*0 (11. 40 ; 21. 19) ; then again, '^B'tti " to draw along," of a body of troops (4. 6, 7; 20. 37); PJS, "to fall upon, to kill" (8. 21; 15. 12; 18.25); pm, "to be called, gathered together" (6,34,35; 18, 22, 23, and often); y^n th^, (3. 22; 8, 10, 20; 9. 54; 20, 2, 15, 17, 25, 35, 46). (III.) Are the appendices by the same hand as the introduction? (1 — 2. 6). Dr.' Driver compares this early introduction with certain passages in the Book of Joshua, and regards them as excerpts of an original survey of the conquest of Canaan, viewing them as earlier than the appendices in their redactional form. But the identity of the author of the introduction and appendices is indicated by the almost verbal agreement of 20, 18 with 1, 1, 2. Cf. also 1. 1 (the inquiry of the Lord) with 20, 23, 27. "Who shall go up firat" period op the judges. 199 (1, 1; 20, IB); mn^3 h^l^7 (1, 1; 20, 23, 27, along with the sunilar reply, 1, 2 and 20. 18); T\^^h '?Jjt?, (1, 27, 35; 17, II: cf.19.6); ^^^ nW' (1-8; 20.48); inp| >^^ ^27^, {1. 8, 25 ; 20. 48);T3 |n5 (1,2; 18, 10; 20. 28). (IV.) Is the introduction written by the author of the main body of the work ? WeUhausen has noticed the formal connection between 1. 16 and 4, II whilst peculiar expressions are common to introduction, main body and appendices, thus : — njn D1*ri *TS? (1. 21, 16; 6. 24; 10, 4; 15, 19; 19, 30); T5 |m (1. 2; 2. 14, 23; 6. I; 7, 7; 13, I; 15, 12; 18. 10; 20. 28). ' In fact, criticism on the question of homogeneity is purely sub jective. One has only to compare the internecine notions of Budde, Bertheau, Bohme, Cornill, Knobel, Schrader, Stahelin, and Kittel in proof of this contention.* Nor are the critics any more at one as to the sources from which the compiler drew. Bertheau and the last named writer, last also in date, assign the Book mainly to one author. Cf. Stud, und Krit., 1892. * E.g., 3. 15 ff. is assigned by Stade to the Elohist; by Schrader and Budde (1890) to the Jehovist; by Bertheau (1883) to the final Redactor; and by Kittel {Stud, und Krit., 1892, 60 f.) to the Second Deuteronomist. ' VI. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. J. J. LIAS, VI. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. Cum dicerent [Manichsei] Scripturas Novi Testamenti falsatas fuisse a nescio quibus, qui Judseorum legem inserere Christianse fidei voluerunt, atque ipsi incorrupta exemplaria nulla proferrent. — Aug. Conf, v. 11. rriHE late Professor Robertson Smith says in the Preface to -*~ the first edition of his Old Testament in the Jewish Church, that " criticism is a reality and a force, because it unfolds a living and consistent picture of the Old Dispensation; it is itself a living thing which plants its foot on realities." And he adds,* " the critical study of ancient documents means nothing else than the careful study of their origin and mean ing in the light of history." I desire to speak of this great departed scholar with the deepest respect. I do not question the sincerity of his Christian convictions. I admire the extra ordinary range of his erudition, and I recognise in his volume by far the ablest, fairest, and most reasonable statement of the critical case in regard to Jewish history that has as yet appeared. If I venture to make some observations on the passage I have quoted, it is because therein the position of the critical school is so felicitously described. A few remarks upon it, therefore, wiU be the most suitable possible intro duction to what I have to say. The first point which strikes one as remarkable is that the critic claims something like * P. 16 (2nd ed.). 204 LEX MOSAICA, infallibility for himself. It is not " criticism when directed by a sound judgment and supported by indisputable facts-," but criticism in the abstract, which unfolds the "living and con sistent picture " of the thing criticised, and which " plants its foot on realities." There is surely somewhat of an assump tion here. There is criticism and criticism ; criticism which is just and sound, and criticism which is radically unjust and unsound; and it is only by subjecting criticism to criticism that we can distinguish the one from the other. 1 have no intention of saying a word against criticism in itself, nor of contending that it may not safely be applied to the Old Testa ment narrative. It is quite possible that critical research, when properly conducted, may tend to give a yet more " living and consistent picture " of the facts than the histories as they stand. It may undoubtedly "plant its foot on realities," and the more completely it does so, the more life-like will the picture become. But it is surely a little too much to assume that criticism must of necessity do all this simply because it is criticism. There may be good criticism, and there may be bad criticism. It is altogether unreasonable to suppose that the mere pulling of the Old Testament Scriptures to pieces, and putting them together again, must of necessity add a vast deal to our comprehension of their contents. This tacit assumption that criticism, as criticism, without any particular reference to the principles on which it is conducted, must of necessity be a benefit to the student, seems to underlie everything that has gone of late by the name of the " higher criticism." Against such an assumption it is necessary, at the outset, to caution the inquirer. No doubt, so far as it does enable us to form the " living and consistent picture " it professes to exhibit ; so far as it does " plant its foot on realities," criticism not only demands, but has a right to demand, our acceptance. But whether this is so or not is the very point we have to decide. Criticism is not a result, it is a process ; and until the results of that process have been very carefully tested, they cannot claim to take their place among demonstrated facts. The impatience displayed by the critics, their eagerness to force upon us their conclusions before they have imdergone a suffi cient examination, are not only a little unreasonable in them selves, but are calculated to evoke a corresponding impatience A THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL, 205 on the other side, and to infuse a certain amount of acerbity into a controversy which should be a simple attempt to ascer tain where the truth actually lies.* But not only is the true position occupied by criticism somewhat overstated in the words we have cited, but there seems also to be some misconception as to the actual functions of the critic. For the critic is surely nothing more or less than a judge. His business is not merely to " study ancient documents in the light of history," it is to decide whether those documents really are history, or whether they are not. But the moment he quits that task for the task of recon struction, whether he constructs "in the light of history" or not, he is no longer a critic, but has become a historian. And it is this tendency to confound two functions essentially distinct which has made Old Testament criticism, as carried on by many at the present moment, so very unsatisfactory to the minds of many among us. For it is one thing to destroy; it is quite another to build up. It is one thing to point out discrepancies; it is quite another to explain their causes. The first is an easy task; the second is one of im mense difficulty and uncertainty. Modem critics have been too ready to imagine that when they have invented a theory to ac count for the difiiculties they have pointed out, they have solved the problem to which they have addressed themselves. They should have remembered that what they have before them is, to use the language of mathematics, an indeterminate equation with a vast number of unknown quantities. And as every stu dent of mathematics knows, the number of solutions of such an equation is largely in excess of the number of unknown quan tities it contains. Professor Eobertson Smith himself tells us that while " in the study of the New Testament we are assisted in the work of historical interpretation by a large contemporary literature of profane origin, we have almost no contemporary helps for the study of Hebrew antiquity, beyond the books which were received into the Jewish canon."t But he does not seem * " Matters are treated as conclusively proved that are only negatively mooted, and the true suspensive attitude of real criticism is superseded by the assumption that everything requires to be re-stated and re-proved." — ^Bishop of Oxford, Second Charge, p. 9. t 0. T. in the Jewish Church, p. 11. 206 LEX MOSAICA, to see, nor in fact do any of his school seem to see, that this adds a thousandfold to the difficulty of the problem with which they have to deal, and makes the tone of con fident assertion to which they are unfortunately addicted as absurd as it is unfair to the unlearned reader.* So long as they are content to point out the difficulties and discrepancies in their authorities, the variations in their texts, the possi bility that some of these difficulties, some of these variations, may not unreasonably suggest the idea of different, sometimes of discordant, sources of our present narrative, they are on ground absolutely unassailable. But when they represent themselves as having settled these difficulties, explained these variations, ascertained these sources, they go further than they have a right to go. Historical and literary critics of proved competence have asserted that any authoritative and final solution of problems like these is impossible, and that the best we can do is to suggest solutions more or less prob able. It were to be wished that the critics were more accus tomed to show signs that they recognised the immense difficulty of the task before them — a difficulty complicated by the fact that the question with which they have to deal is no mere matter of historical disquisition, but one which * Professor Sayce, in his The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, remarks on this tone of confident assertion. In his preface (p. vi.) he refers to an attempt on the part of the critics to invalidate the evidence of a seal, because it tended to cast doubt on their assertion that the Song of Solomon was post-exilie. On p. 6 he remarks "there are popes in the 'higher criticism' as well as in theology." It is beside the point to contend, as some "higher critics" have done, that Professor Sayce adopts some of their conclusions. He denies point blank on p. 60 the only one of their conclusions which the present writer has any reason for contesting. For he declares that the " materials the historical boots embody may be contemporaneous with the events recorded in them," at whatever time they may have been east into their present shape. As far as the present writer is con cerned, though he is far more inclined to be sceptical about the whole apparntm of Jehovists, Elohists, Deuteronomists, and authors of the Priestly Code than are Professors Sayce and Eobertson (the former, however, is not quite consistent with himself on the point; cf. pp. 169, 170 with p. 661, in which he says that the "literary analysis" of the critics "must be revised"), the only point on which he cares to insist is that in the Hebrew records in their present shape, we have history, and not myth or fiction. And though our English critics have not categorically asserted that the art of writing was almost, if not altogether, unknown to the Israelites in the time of Moses — a proposition which Professor Sayce has shown to be untenable, — ^yet they have accepted conclusions first maintained by those who start with this assumption. See for instance, WeUhausen's Eitt. of Israel, p. 464. ^ THE TIMES OF SAMUEL ANB SAUL, 207 is also inextricably bound up with the, interests of revealed religion.* We have further to inquire what is meant by examining the ancient literature of Israel "in the light of history." For, as we have already seen, there is very little history beyond that literature itself in the light of which to examine it. True, the researches of archaeologists are beginning to pro vide us with some of this light. But, as Professor Sayce has very justly complained, the " higher criticism " has ignored what little light is obtainable from this source. The critics, as a rule, have taken no notice whatever of recent archaeological discoveries. If they have studied ancient documents, it has not been in the light of history, but by the light of nature.. They have discovered discrepancies, signs of compilation, and the like, and they have set about to explain them. But where the history itself is at variance with their explanation, they have not explained the contradiction, they have explained the contradictors away. Plain statements of their authori ties, as will be shown repeatedly in the course of this volume, implying that not only certain laws and customs, but certain documents which contained them, were in existence at a cer tain epoch, are flatly denied. The history, we are told, has been re-written at a later period, and these details have been introduced, some say with a purpose, and others under a mistaken impression. Anyhow, the history, in the opinion of the critics, has been falsified, or at least revised, under the influence of a dominating idea. But this is not to study documents "in the light of history," it is to study them in the light of historical speculation. The conclusions may be true, or they may be false, but they rest, not on historical evidence, but on deductions drawn from that evidence. One of the objects of this enquiry will be to examine these deduc tions, and to determine whether they are sufficiently incontro vertible to justify us in rejecting the testimony of our only ancient authorities. Such a wholesale rejection is certainly a ¦* " In such matters the theologian must be more than the mere lawyer or the mere logician. Souls are at stake, and no man can deceive himself with the belief that want of sympathy and care for others can be excused by the finesse of the advocate and the assumed impartiality of the impetuous critic." — ^Bishop of Oxford's Charge, p. 10, 208 LEX MOSAICA. strong and unusual measure in itself, and is not usually adopted by the best historical scholars. Still, it may be necessary in this case. Yet if it be found, as I believe it will be found, to be the fact that the hypothesis involves us in greater diffi culties than those which it has been invented to explain, it will be necessary for us to examine modern documents "in the light of history," and, if necessary, to reject their account of the facts. Professor Robertson Smith, whose view of the early history of Israel exhibits the latest and most logical form in which the conclusions of modern criticism present them selves, appears to think that there is no middle course be tween the position he holds and that of a narrow and obstinate conservatism. This is far from being the case. There are many who cannot accept his conclusions who are perfectly willing to allow the documents to be subjected to the most searching criticism possible. If their statements fail to satisfy the test applied to them ; if the Old Testament narrative, as we now have it, can be ascertained to have been re-fashioned in the light of the convictions of later ages ; if we are com pelled, in the face of invincible facts, to invert the order in which that narrative represents them to have occurred;— many of us are ready frankly to accept the position. But we are at least entitled to ask that such conclusions should have been carefully tested before they are admitted. This would be necessary in any case ; it is ten thousand times more necessary in the case with which we are dealing. We have no right to forget the gravity of the question which confronts us. In a matter such as Homeric criticism, or the history of Greece or Eome, the publication or the acceptance of rash and unsound theories does no harm to anybody. It does not matter to us whether Theseus, Homer, Romulus, or Servius TuUius ever existed or not. It does not matter whether the story of Brutus and Lucretia, of the Horatii and Curiatii, is fact or fiction. But the story of the Old Testament is indissolubly bound up with the most important set of events that can affect mankind. It professes to give us an account of the manner in which God was pleased to reveal His ineffable perfections to His creatures. It is obvious that the premature publica tion, as the unquestioned and unquestionable discoveries ot THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL, 209 modem scientific criticism, of theories which may tum out in the end to have been crude and ill-founded, may give an utterly needless shock to faith, and, produce evil results which it may take ages to repair. By aU means let critical inquiry proceed. By all means let the questions it raises be fully and freely discussed. But let inquirers at least state their conclusions with caution and deference. Let them be careful not to prejudge the grave question before them, and above all let them not only be, ready, but anxious, to submit their con clusions to the most searching investigation before they venture to represent them as established. One further preliminary consideration must be urged before proceeding with our inquiry. We have contended that criti cism, in order to be scientific, must be modest. All inquirers who possess the true scientific spirit admit that scientific in quiry consists of two parts, — first, the establishment of facts, and next, their explanation. They also admit that in purely critical inquiries it is by no means so easy to establish . facts as in those sciences where facts are established by simple observation. And further, it is impossible to deny that in the explanation of facts which have been established we are on ground far less sure than when collecting the evidence for them. If this be so, we ought to be specially careful in critical researches what methods we employ. If there is no possibility of applying them to a given case, it is obvious that we cannot be quite certain that they are sound. But if there be such a possibility, we ought to be exceedingly careful not to neglect it. In the present inquiry very large use is made of the principle which is supposed to have been established, that Hebrew histories were composed by a very simple method of compilation, consisting in the juxtaposition of extracts from various documents without any attempt at harmonising their statements,* and that from the obvious discrepancies in "' This principle is thus expressed by Professor Driver, Introduction, p. 3, "The authors of the Hebrew historical books — except the shortest, as Euth and Esther — do not, as a modem historian would do, re-write the matter in their own language ; they excerpt from the sources at their disposal such passages as are suitable to their purpose, and incorporate them into their work, sometimes adding matter of their own, but often (as it seems) introducing only such modifications of form as are necessary for the purpose of fitting them together, or accommodating them to their plan." S 1063. 0 210 LEX MOSAICA. those statements we can without difficulty assign the different parts of the narrative to their several sources. Now it so happens that the Old Testament supplies us with one instance ¦ in which an earlier document which has come down to us has been used by a later writer. And although the higher critics, from De Wette downwards, have made the most furious on slaughts upon the writer of Chronicles because his statements are entirely at variance with their most cherished conclusions, not one of them has taken the trouble to examine carefuUy what method he pursued. Before, therefore, we enquire into the details of the narrative before us, as re-arranged by the. critics, we will endeavour to make amends for their neglect, and enquire how far the mutual rqjations of the Chronicler and of the authors of the Books of Samuel and Kings tend antecedently to strengthen or to weaken the critical case. An examination of the Chronicler's method yields the following results: — Usually, no doubt, he takes the narrative in the Books of Samuel or Kings and incorporates it bodily into his own. But although we are told that this is what the Hebrew compiler always does, we find, on examination of the documents before us, that it is far from being in variably the case. Sometimes the Chronicler re-writes the narrative in his own words, using the material he haa before him in the books above mentioned, as in 2 Chron. 2 (cf. 1 Kings 5, 7) ; 3 (cf. 1 Kings 6, 7) ; 23. 5-9 (cf. 2 Kmgs 8, 28—9. 37) ; 24. 1-14 (cf. 2 Kings 12), etc. Sometimes, in order to give liveliness or point to his account, he adds a few details to his narrative from other sources at his disposal, or a few touches of his own, as in 2 Chron. 2. 3-10, 17; 3. 6 ; 4. 9 ; 6. 13 ; 22. 9 ; etc. Sometimes, while incorporating the former narrative in general, he leaves out circumstances which appear to him unnecessary for the purpose he has in view, such as are found in 1 Kings 7. 27-38; 12. 20, 25 ff.* Sometimes he inserts passages from other portions of the earlier narrative, as in 2 Chron. 3. 17 ; 4. 7 ; 9. 25. Sometimes, as Professor Robertson Smith tells us, he flatly contradicts his authorities, as in 2 Chron. 14. 5; 17. ^ " The Chronicler here substitutes matter from other sources. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 211 (cf. 1 Kings 16. 14; 22. 43).* His narrative is, of course, largely supplemented from other sources, considerable por tions of which he no doubt inserts in extenso.'^ Occasionally he introduce^ details which throw light on the earlier narra tive, as in 2 Chron. 4. 1 (cf. 2 Kings 16. 14) ; U. 21, 22. As an instance of this we may take the joint campaign of Jehoshaphat and Jehoram related in 2 Kings 3. We find in 1 Chron. 20 an explanation of the fact that no resistance appears in the narrative of 2 Kings to have been offered to the progress of the joint armies of Israel and Judah. The rebellion had already been practically crushed by a great vic tory obtained by Jehoshaphat over the allied forces of Moab and Ammon. Then again we find the history of Jehu's re bellion, so far as it concerns Ahaziah, entirely re-written from the materials given in the earlier history. Finally, the Chroni cler mentions the authorities he uses, which the writers in Samuel and Kings never do.| It is necessary for the purposes of the present essay to enter minutely into these details, although the authenticity * Strict accuracy, however, is necessary on such points as these, and it some times appears as though the higher critics, in their haste to depreciate the Chronicles., treat it more unfairly than the orthodox critics are charged with treating Kings. For in his present text the Chronicler not only contradicts Kings, but himself as well. See 2 Chron. 15. 17. And note the speech of Jehu the son of Hanani in 2 Chron. 19. 3, where he speaks of the removal, not of the high places, but of the Asheroth. This would apparently point to the insertion of the word Bamoth in 2 Chron. 14. 5 ; 17. 6 by some too zealous copyist. It is remarkable that no suggestion for amendment of the Hebrew text' is permitted by the critics, save when it tends to support the critical theories. But, apart from this consideration, the fact that the Chronicler has here contradicted himself shows that he did not intentionally attempt to deceive his hearers. t Professor Driver {Introduction, p. 498) tells Us that if they Were excerpts from the writings from which they profess to be taken, their style and diction show that they " must have been entirely recast " by the author of Chronicles. But this, he tells us in p. 3, is what " the authors of the Hebrew historical books" never did, with the exception of those of Euth and Esther. If the author of Chronicles recast his matter, why should not the authors of the other books have done so? For this simple reason, that the supposed separate documents from which so many conclusions have been drawn would then have been fused into one, and the various sources of the narrative would elude discovery. But what, in that case, would become of a good deal of the higher criticism ? Even Kuenen himself, in a lecture on "The Five Books of Moses," admits that until historical was added to literary research, the results of criticism were by no means certain. X With one exception. They mention the Chronicles of the kings of Israel and of Judah. 0 2 212 LEX MOSAICA. of the Book of Chronicles does not come within its scope. For we are told on the one, hand that the historians of Judah were mere compilers who copied slavishly from earlier records whatever they set down, and on the other, that of all the Jewish historians the Chronicler is the least to be trusted. It has been shown by what has just been said that even on the critical theory itself the precise opposite of these assertions is the fact. And this has been shown on scientific principles. We have applied the critical theories to a given case, as all scientific inquirers are bound to do, and we find them fail altogether. For, first, it is established that the Jewish historians did not slavishly copy the writings of their predecessors, but revised and re-wrote them when they found it necessary to do so. And, next, it is shown that whatever use the Chronicler may have made of his materials; whatever credit is to be attached to his narrative (a point on which I desire to offer no opinion); — he never, on any single occasion, can be proved to have pieced together his narrative from sources which are inconsistent with each other in the manner in which we are asked to believe that the Jewish historians were accustomed to do.* There is yet another point to be observed, the time at which the Books of Chronicles were written. The critical hypothesis postulates a large reconstruction of documents in the latter half of the seventh century before Christ, and a final com pilation after the return from the Captivity. But we have an object lesson before us of the principles on which post- exilic compilers worked, and it does not fit in with the theories we are asked to accept. Thus the idea of a large post-exilic revision of the documents containing Jewish history on the principles postulated by the higher critics is rendered more doubtful from the example given us of compilation in Chronicles than it is in itself. I do not, of course, profess by this process to have dis proved the critical theories. I have only shown that they * On one occasion, as we have seen, he makes a statement of his own incon sistent with the authority he is following. I say " of his own," because there w no evidence whatever that he is quoting another author, hardly even a bare proea- bility that he is doing so. But of course the passages in question may not Mve been his at all, but interpolations. See p. 211, note.* THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 213 rest, not on scientific principles, but on bare assertions, — assertions, moreover, at variance with such facts as we have before us. We are at least entitled in consequence to ask the inquirer not to dismiss as unworthy of attention the counter assertion that where difficulties occur in the Scrip ture narrative, they are not in every case to be explained by the theory that the compiler combined in one narrative stories which are obviously contradictory, but that in many cases fuller information, such as was before the historian when he wrote, or rather when he abridged his authorities, would enable us to clear up what seems in any way perplexing.* These few preliminary remarks are necessary, in order to ui:\derstand the principles on which the period of history assigned to me will be treated. It is the habit of historians in general to make the most, not the least, of the hints given in the materials before them. Anything like the striking out of whole passages from a historical authority of high antiquity in obedience to the dictates of a preconceived theory — a process we are asked to adopt in Jewish history alone — would in ordi nary history be regarded as quite inadmissible. Such a process of expurgation would only be employed on the most over whelming evidence of the spuriousness of the passage so rejected. Difficulties such as are often found in the course of a narrative are not as a rule solved by the excision of some of its parts, but by the most patient efforts to reconcile seeming contradictions.! It is only when a statement is plainly irreconcilable, not only with probability, but with ascertained facts, that it is set aside. Moreover, as is well known to historical inquirers, in abundance of cases fuller * We have an evidence how fragmentary the narratives in the Old Testament are in 1 Sam. 13. 8. There "the set time "which Samuel had appointed is men tioned, but no account is given of his having appointed it. There are no doubt many such omissions in the narrative which if supplied would reconcile many apparent contradictions. t No one who has read the works of historians like Gribbon, Motley, Freeman, Stubbs, and others would contest this statement. Even writers like Lord - Macaulay and Mr. Froude, who in spite of their acute historical instinct are re garded as being deficient in thorough and painstaking accuracy on points of detail, never dream of treating their authorities as the Hebrew historians are treated. "Conjecture," says the Bishop of Oxford (^Charge, p. 15), "is very alluring when and where the conjecturer is sure that his guess can only be met by another guess, or by the enunciation that guessing is unphilosophical, the old theory being unphilosophical too." 214 LEX MOSAICA. informatipn has established the correctness of statements antecedently improbable, and has sometimes even reconciled statements apparently quite at variance. The present inquiry will be conducted strictly on these lines. The general credibility of Jewish history, as it has been banded down to us, will be assumed, unless there is special ground for questioning it. The idea of any wholesale falsifi cation or reconstruction of the documents for any reason soever will not be entertained. For, first of all, it is most improbable that any such reconstruction was ever attempted. Secondly, if attempted, it is most unlikely that it would ever have found acceptance among the Jewish people. And lastly, to establish the fact of such reconstruction as is alleged, we require some evidence beside the conjectures of critics, and no such evidence is forthcoming. Occasion ally, no doubt, the acumen of a critic has hit upon a solu tion of a historical difficulty which has finally been estab lished on a solid basis of fact. But this is far from having been generally the case. It cannot therefore be as sumed to have been the case in the present instance. Of course, where the author either contradicts himself or some other author on a point of detail, the fact will be accepted as evidence that one or both of the authorities must be wrong. But the mere occurrence of difficulties or improbabilities in a narrative which does not pretend to be complete will not be held to invalidate the accuracy or good faith of the writer, for on such principles it would be impossible to arrive at the early history of any people whatsoever. The principle, moreover, that the absence of evidence for the observance of ecclesiastical regulations is evidence of their non-existence must be regarded as doubtful in itself, and the attempt to support it by the wholesale excision of passages in which such allusions are found must unhesitatingly be rejected. For not only is the assertion that such regular tions were in existence, and yet that they were not observed, continuous throughout the whole history as it stands, and repeated in every book of the Old Testament, but the apph- cation of such a canon, even in our own day, would lead to some singular results. Thus, e.g., it might be contended either that the Epistle of St. James was not at this moment THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 215 in existence, or that it was not acknowledged by the Christian Church as one of its canonical books, because the pew system flourishes undisturbed throughout a large portion of Christen dom, although St. James in his epistle condemns it unequivo cally.* The absence in the writings of the Prophets of frequent reference to the history is another point to which no weight can be attached as casting doubt on the genuineness of the historical details in the Old Testament. For not only is a similar reticence observed in the Epistles in regard to the details of New Testament history, but this reticence is carried so far that an allusion to that history in the Second Epistle of St. Peter has actually been regarded by many as tending to cast doubt on the genuineness of the book in which it appears. With regard to the linguistic features of the narrative, no evidence whatever from the style of various portions of this book has been adduced to support the statement that documents of widely differing dates have been inserted into it. As Professor Robertson has shown, f a literary style, when fixed, has been known to retain its form for a very long period indeed. And the Hebrew literary style of the period preceding the Exile is homogeneous throughout. Under such circumstances it is impossible to fix the date of a pre-exilic document by its style. The idea of any wholesale re fashioning of the histories subsequent to the Exile is also, on aU ordinary principles of literary investigation, quite inadmissible. For the post-exilic writings constantly betray traces of the Captivity, of subjection to Babylonian, and even to Persian rule, whereas the challenge to produce ex pressions of this kind in the literature supposed until lately to be pre-exilic has never been met. Indeed, it may very fairly be said that no one has ever attempted to meet it, unless after the fashion of James IL, immortalised by Macaulay. That monarch, if any statement of his was * Stronger evidence may be adduced for this proposition than for a good many assertions made about Old Testament History. What would not be made by the critics of the fact that some Old Testament teacher as weighty as Luther had applied the phrase " straminea " to, say, the Book of Leviticus ? How impossible that such an epithet could have been applied by a theologian of repute to a book then regarded as a part of the sacred Canon ! t Fkrly Religion of Israel, pp. 493, 494. 216 LEX MOSAICA. questioned, is said to have proved his point by repeating the statement a second time in a louder voice and more vehement manner than before. So the higher critics have demonstrated the post-exilic origin of the Pentateuch, and of such portions of the other narratives as they assert to have been refashioned so as to agree with the Pentateuch, not by pointing out the traces of a post-exilic date in the diction of these passages,* but by the reiteration of the convenient formula, famihar alike to students of both Old and New Testament criticism, that " the critics are agreed " on the point which is called in question.! It is chiefly, however, in the Pentateuch that the theory of a post-exilic redaction meets us. In dealing with the historical books criticism is more moderate, and therefore on firmer ground. But some difficulties meet it even here. * " What used to be regarded as the earliest of the [large] components of the Pentateuch is now, by the prevailing school, made the latest, and the linguistic features have not been considered a bar to either view." — Eobertson, 'Ea/ely Seligion of Israel, p. 493. And again, " the Books of Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah betray their later date by the presence of the so-called Chaldee portions ; and the Book of Ecclesiastes, as Delitzsch has said, must be placed late, else there is no history of the Hebrew language at all. The BooKs of Chronicles indicate their lateness even by the matter. Still, in the great mass of the Hebrew literature there are no sure linguistic landmarks denoting definite literary periods." When, therefore. Professor Sayce speaks of the attempt to separate the Pentateuch into its com ponent parts as resting mainly on philological considerations, he is paying it a compliment which it hardly deserves. It no-* rests on the endeavour, not by any means invariably successful, to separate a bald and formal narrative, once supposed to be the Grundschrift, but now no longer supposed to be such, from the more picturesque and detailed parts of the story. t A striking instance of this attitude of the critical school is found in Pro fessor Eobertson Smith's re-issue of his Old Testament in the Jewish Ckweh. Those who read it would never for a moment imagine that it had been criticised point by point by Professor Watts and Professor Green, of Princeton, U.S.A. I need say nothing in regard to Professor Watts, who will speak for himself in this volume. But Professor Green is a competent Hebraist, and was a member of the American Committee for the revision of the translation of the Old Testament. I do not wish to show any disrespect to the memory of a great scholar, whose acquaintance I had the honour of making. But I must think that it is to be lamented that he took no notice whatever in his Second Edition of the serious objections brought against his position by scholars of repute, and more especiaUy when the question at issue was the historical accuracy of books which the Chris tian Church has believed to be inspired. For criticism is no infallible utterance. Without argument and discussion it cannot exist. And, therefore, we have a right to insist that it shall grapple with its critics, and not affect to disdain them. It is. unfortunate that Professor Green's book, Moses and the Prophets, pubhshed in New York in 1881, is not better known in this country. It will be found by no means a book to be ignored. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL, 217 Thus we are told that the first three chapters of 1 Samuel were written by a later hand than the next four,* and that chaps, 8 — 12 are a combination of two inconsistent narra tives intermingled with one another in a somewhat singular manner. An older story, we are informed, is imbedded in the midst of a later one.f The older story — let the reader specially note this — consists of ch. 9, ch. 10 to v. 16, v. 27&,t ch. U. 1-11 and 15. The later embraces ch. 8, ch. 10. l7-27a, ch. U. 12-14, and ch. 12.§ Moreover, we are told that " it is not quite clear whether 10. 25-27; 11. 12, 13 are also editorial additions (Budde) or fragments of the second narrative." || We shall see presently why this is " not quite clear." At present it is sufficient to remark that this theory of " editorial addi tions," or "fragments of the second narrative," are shifts on the part of the critic, in order to escape from difficulties which arise, not out of the narrative itself, for in it they are natural enough, but out of his own theory of the genesis of the narrative. But if we attempt to examine the linguistic features of these various portions of the history, we find no ground whatever for supposing that they were by different hands. An attempt has certainly been made to point out linguistic peculiarities in the "older narrative" in chaps. S, 10, and 11 of the First Book of Samuel. But they do not amount to much. Certain expressions, it is true, are noticed as rare or unusual. But no attempt is made to prove that they are archaic. And the occurrence of rare or unusual words in this part of the narra tive is certainly no greater than in any other part of Judges or Samuel.1 The authors of all these books display their *- The sole reason apparently is that the Tabernacle worship, as prescribed by the Law, is described in the first three chapters as being already in existence. t WeUhausen, Stade, and Kuenen do not think so, but we are apparently re quired to believe it nevertheless. X What part of the verse constitutes " b " we are left to conjecture. § Driver, Introduction, p. 165 ; Eobertson Smith, 0. T. in the Jewish Church, p. 136. II Eobertson Smith, Ibid. p. 137. t Thus we have JTlUX in 1 Sam. 2. 36 only ; rVH, 1 Sam. 14. 24 (in the Hiphil), signifying to put a person on his oath, which only occurs three times in this sense in the Old Testament; fpH (1 Sam. 15. 6),|in the sense to destroy, only found once again in the historical books in this sense ; T31K, « chest, only found in 1 Sam. 6 ; Iil?3, found only in Deut. 32. 15 and 1 Sam. 2. 29, under circumstances which strongly suggest that the latter passage contains a reference to the former ; KID, in 218 lEX MOSAICA. individuality by a frequent use of words either peculiar to themselves or of rare occurrence. A considerable number of words — more considerable than would probably be supposed make their appearance for the first time in the Second Book of Samuel, and thereby, so far as they go, tend to negative the idea of these books having been largely worked over, either in the reign of Josiah or subsequent to the return from the Captivity. But, as Dr. Kay has pointed out in his Crisis the sense to fatten (1 Sam. 2. 29 only) ; ^E'3, to bring tidings, which occurs in this sense in the two Books of Samuel nearly as often as it occurs in the rest of the Old Testa ment. We might go through the whole of the letters of the alphabet with a similar result, proving that the signs of independent authorship are at least as distinctly marked in the whole Book of Samuel as in the supposed " earlier narrative " of chaps. 9, 10, 11. We will note, however, some few more of the words nearly, if not quite, peculiar to this book. ^S^ in the sense of village, 1 Sam. 6. 6 ; T?n for this, in Judg. 6. 20 ; 1 Sam. 14. 1, and in the so-called second narrative of Saul's introduction to David, and only once elsewhere in the historical books ; n*3n, which does not occur until 1 Samuel, the words previously found being )n'3 and riDII, d73, which occurs once in Judges in the sense put to shame, and does not come into general use till Euth and 1 Samuel. Then we have n3IJ'7, an apa/rtment, which first occuib in } Sam. 9. 22 (this, however, as the critics suppose it to be part of an " older narra tive," is reconcilable with their theory) ; ?13, a bottle, which only occurs in 1 and 2 Samuel and in the Prophets, and which occurs, let us observe, in the " older narra tive" of ch. 10. 3, as well as in 1 Sam. 1. 24 and 35. 18. Then there is the unusual word /JUD, signifying a kind of rampart of waggons, such as was used at Eorke's Drift, which is found, not only in the supposed second narrative of Saul's introduction to David (ch. 17. 20), but in ch. 26. 5, 7. The word is found elsewhere, but not in the same sense. Many other examples might be given, but enough have been adduced to prove that the " earlier narrative " of the critics in 1 Sam. 9 — 11 is not fuller of signs of independence than the rest of the book, and that there are not wanting indications of a common authorship throughout. Such signs, again, of com mon authorship between the " earlier narrative" and the rest of the book ought not to be overlooked as 1in3, in the sense of select, chaps. 9. 2 ; 26. 2. Then we find expressions in ch. 9. 2 quoted nearly word for word in 10. 23, which is supposed to be an entirely independent narrative. 1333, in the sense of honourable, is not of very frequent occurrence, but it is found in 1 Sam. 22. 14, as well as in the "earlier narrative," ch. 9. 6. Professor Driver remarks on the rare word 7fK in ch. 9. 7, but he omits to state that one of the passages in which that rare word occurs again is ch. 20. 19, where it is by no means certain that it is a proper name. (The LXX. seems to have read ntTTI in the last passage.) The use of "ISU in 9. 17, men tioned by Professor Driver, seems to have come from Judg. 18. 7, where it is used of a person inheriting or possessing a restraining power. It happens, however, to be particularly suitable here, referring as it does to the work of welding together by authority the disunited tribes of Israel. Again, Professor Driver has passed over the phrase tTXTIK mi, which is by no means comcmon, and yet occurs not only in ch. 9. 15, but in chaps. 20. 2, 12, 13 ; 22. 8, 17, and 2 Sam. 7. 27. I tave not space to follow out this analysis further. But I have said enough to show that the critical treatment of these supposed earlier or later narratives in 1 Samuel is incomplete, u not one-sided. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 219 Hupfeldiana, the evidence from isolated words is after all of little or no importance. We all of us require a different class of words when dealing with a different class of subjects. The true evidence of style is the recurrence of different turns of expression. And if it could be proved that these different turns of expression were foUnd throughout all the historical books, and that in all cases a particular turn of expression could be identified with a portion of the narrative regarded by the critics as belonging to a particular period, a strong case would no doubt have been made out for the critical theory. But nothing of the kind has been done. The linguistic criticism of the critics is essentially arbitrary. And where there is evidence pointing in the opposite direction to their theories, it seldom receives much attention. We will give an instance of each of these characteristics of the new criticism from the passage with which we are at present dealing. As a specimen of arbitrary methods of deal ing with authorities we will take the following : — We are told that in the older narrative of the choice of Saul, the word T'JJ (prince or leader) is invariably used, whereas in the later we find the word "J^t^ (king), as though there were some opposition between the two. But we are not told that in the older narrative (10. 16) the word T\)J7}2 (kingdom) is applied to Saul's dominion (see also ch. 13. 14), nor are we told that m 1 Kings 1. 35 I^JJ is used as an equivalent to "king," and is applied elsewhere to David, Jeroboam, and others who were at that time holding the kingly office. Moreover, the word "king" is used in the older narrative, ch. U. 15. As a specimen of the way in which facts are "ignored, we may instance the fact that in the First Book of Samuel alone the expression D^7£J' ^libflX occurs for " heretofore," and that it occurs not only in 1 Sam. 4. 7 ; 14. 21 ; 19. 7 (in the two latter cases with the prefix D), but also in the " older narra tive " of ch. 10 (10. 11, with the prefix &). The expression occurs in a different form in 2 Sam. 5. 2. It is not to be found elsewhere.* Surely such an indication of common authorship * 7lBnX occurs alone in Ps. 90. 4 in the sense of "yesterday," and only twice elsewhere in the sense "heretofore." The shorter form, PIDH, is found elsewhere, and also in 1 and 2 Samuel 220 LEX MOSAICA, as this expression affords ought not to be passed over withoul notice by those who profess to rest their case on criticism. And the fact that it has been so passed over as unworthy of notice is also one proof among many that a thoroughly careful and impartial examination of the linguistic features of the writings of the Old Testament is a task as yet unachieved. So again the expression '^2J'S3 Ti occurs in 1 Sam. 1. 26 ; 17, 55, and with the addition HIH'' Tl in 1 Sam. 20. 3; 25. 26; 2 Sam. 4. 9; Ruth 3. 1, 3, and very seldom elsewhere, save in the spirited narratives in 2 Kings 2, 4. Once more, the word 133, in the sense of a loaf of bread, occurs seven times altogether, of which two are in 1 Sam. 2. 36, and in the "older narrative,'' 1 Sam. 10. 3.* We proceed to the question of the LXX. text. In a volume such as the present one, it is obviously outside our province to enter into minute details of textual criticism. But it has been assumed, rather than proved, that where the LXX. omits pas sages which cause difficulty, it represents an older and purer text, and that the passages omitted have been introduced from some different source. Thus, in 1 Sam. 17, 18, certain copies of the LXX. omit 17. 12-31, 41, 50, 55—18. 6a, 8 (part), 9-11, part of 12, 17-19, etc. It is of course inadmissible to represent the explanation of this phenomenon just given as impossible. But when we come to consider the phenomena presented by the LXX. text generally, it certainly is by no means unreasonable to suppose that the. verses in question were omitted because the difficulties they present to the eyes of modem critics were fully as patent to the eyes of ancient ones. There is plenty of evidence in the Books of Samuel, as elsewhere, that the translators of the LXX. dealt pretty freely with their * Chaps. 1 (in the account of the transgressions of Eli's sons), 15, and 17, eon- tain an unusual number of words that occur seldom or never elsewhere. But there are signs of the presence of an eye-witness, and signs of relation as well as of inde pendence in the latter. See note on 7U'D above, p. 218. Professor Driver, in his Introduction, mentions a number of words peculiar to 1 and 2 Samuel. But his hst is not complete, nor does he make any critical use of it. That is to say, he draw from it no inferences as to authorship, nor does he indicate any conclusions wmcn might reasonably be drawn. His note on PIDHN is incomplete. He notes the fact that m'i, in the sense of sudden possession by a spirit, is peculiar to Judges ana 1 Samuel. But he does not invite his reader's attention to the fact that it occurs three times in this sense in the so-called earlier narrative in 1 Sam. 9—11; as weu as in chaps. 16 and 18. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 221 original.* AU, therefore, that the higher critics are entitled to say is that it is possible that in passages such as chaps. 16 and 17, the Hebrew text has been interpolated. But we must bear in mind that from the Exile onward, the Hebrew text was re garded with a rapidly increasing reverence. It soon became impossible even to remove matter apparently inconsistent from the text. It would still sooner have become impossible to supplement it in any way, much more to supplement it from narratives of a decidedly confiicting character. When, there fore, we are told that we "must conclude" that the LXX. contains the true text of 1 Sam. 17 and 18, the genuine his torical critic will be inclined to reserve his opinion, especially when this conclusion depends not even on the LXX. text, but on that of one single Codex only ! f In the same way Professor Robertson Smith has contended that the passage containing the promise of Merab by Saul to David is an interpolation from another narrative, because one copy of the LXX. does not contain it. J We will, however, confine ourselves to the narrative of the slaying of Goliath. The view that this narrative is not genuine is, of course, not * See, for instance, chaps. 1. 3, 3, 23, 25 ; 5. 3, 6 ; 10. 21 ; 14. 41, 42 (in the Alex andrian Version). And when we are told that the LXX. omits part of chaps. 17, 18, it is hardly fair not to add that it is the Vatican Codex which makes the omission. The Alexandrian agrees with the Hebrew. See also chaps. 11.15; 12. 16; 13. 21, and 2 Sam. 4. 6 ; 6. 13, as instances of the free handling of the text by the LXX. trans lators. Many higher critics, e.g., Ewald, dispute the superiority of the LXX. to the Hebrew text in a large number of the passages above cited. It is unfair to represent a point as settled which is stiU subjudice. And it is still more unfair to insist on the superiority of the LXX. when it suits a theory, and to reject it summarily when it does not suit. Thus the LXX. reading in ch. 1. 21 would prove the existence of a law of tithe in Elkanah's time. t This passage is a very striking instance of the strange incapacity on the part of the critics to see more than the one side of the question which at the moment it suits them to press. Professor Eobertson Smith is here {O.T. in the Jewish Church, p. 122) at variance with the whole school of Graf. The latter says (though, it must be confessed, in regard to Jeremiah) that " there can no longer be any doubt that the form of the text yielded by the Greek translator is a mutilated and corrupted one which arose out of the text preserved to us in the Hebrew, and at a much later time." On 1 Sam. 17 aud 1^, Professor Driver writes, "It is doubtful, therefore, whether the LXX., is here to be preferred to the Hebrew. Both WeUhausen and Kuenen agree that either the translators or, as Kuenen supposes, the scribe of the MS. omitted the verses from harmonistic motives, without, however, entirely securing the end desired" {Introduction, p. 170). Yet we "must conclude " that they are all wrong. t Kuenen, in his Seligion of Israel, i. 185, sees no reason to doubt the genuineness of this 1 222 LEX MOSAICA. indefensible in itself, yet we can hardly regard it as conclu sively established. For, first of all, though Saul does not re cognise David after the slaughter of the Philistine, it is to be remembered that when first introduced to David, Saul was not in his right mind. It is quite possible, again, that Abner might never have fallen in with David. Once more, it has been shown by many commentators, that David's appoint ment as armour-bearer by.no means involved constant attend ance upon the monarch. David's return to his sheep, and his return back again to the camp, will surprise no one who has read the history of England under the Heptarchy, or even down to the time of Harold, or the lives of the founders of the Karageorgevich or Obrenovich dynasties in modem Servia. The position of Saul, we must remember, waa that of the first acknowledged chieftain of a simple and pastoral people, not that of an Eastern potentate of the more exalted type. It has been remarked that in ch. 17. 15 the narrative in the previous chapter is referred to. So is the narrative of ch. 17 quoted in chaps. 19. 5 ; 21. 9 ; 22. 10. And Eliab's anger, so far from showing that David, before his encounter with Goliath, was the unknown and undistinguished youth which modem Christian opinion, therein uncritically followmg Mrs. Hannah More in her Sacred Dramas, has been pleased to suppose him, proves exactly the contrary. Eliab knows well that David's heart was not among the sheep-folds, but in the camp, and he dreads lest the brother whose capacity for affairs he knows and dreads, should outshine him in the king's favour.* Still pursuing the subject of the general credibility and early origin of the narrative before us as a whole, we have next to consider some difficulties which have been suggested. As we have seen,! chaps. 8 — 12 are supposed to have been compiled from two narratives, an earlier and a later one, which can be separated from one another without difficulty, * It is not supposed that at this time David was as distinguished a warrior as he afterwards became. But even ch. 17. 28 shews plainly enough that he had abeady some reputation for courage and capacity. As the youngest member of a family of high repute in military matters, he was for the present condemned to remain at home. But it was pretty well understood that, modest and submissive as he was, he felt am- self to be more in his right place in the camp than among the folds. t See above, p. 217. THE TIMES OP SAMUEL AND SAUL. 223 on account of the manifest inconsistency of their contents. The grounds on which the homogeneity of this portion of the history is questioned are as follows : — First of all, m the older narrative, Samuel is simply a seer of acknow ledged reputation in his own neighbourhood, whereas in the later one he has expanded into the acknowledged judge of all Israel.* Next, in the earlier story, the establishment of the kingdom is not man's doing, but God's. In the later, the establishment of the kingdom is regarded as a sin against God, and as an expression of dissatisfaction with His government, and is therefore visited with distinct marks of His displeasure. Thirdly, Saul is simply a private person when, as stated in ch. U, he takes upon himself the de fence of Israel against Nahash the Ammonite, whereas in the latter part of ch. 10 he has already been made king, amidst the acclamations of the whole nation. As we have seen, however, it is not regarded by the critics as clear whrether ch. 10. 25-27 and ch. 11. 12, 13 are editorial additions or fragments of the second narrative. An inquiry into the reasons for these remarkable qualifications of the theory will throw a great deal of light on the true character of these conjectural emendations. The history as it stands is intelligible enough,! if we approach it without critical prepossessions. But the moment we begin to reconstruct it, a host of fresh difficulties present themselves, and are somewhat clumsily solved by the apparatus of " editorial additions," " fragments " of this or that " narrative," and the like. Let us first of all take the history as it stands. The Children of Israel, either disgusted with the misgovemment of Samuel's sons, or apprehensive of an im pending invasion of Nahash the Ammonite (1 Sam. 13. 12) — most probably both — ask Samuel to nominate a king. He dismisses the assembly with words of rebuke, and obviously * The student of sacred literature will not fail to note how a criticism precisely similar applied to the history of Jesus Christ, has discovered that at first he was simply a man deeply respected and lamented by an enthusiastic following among the Jews, who, as they brooded over his beautiful character and undeserved fate, came at length to believe that there was something Divine about Him, a belief which was ultimately embodied in the Nicene formula. t As Professor Sayce reminds us, the general credibility and historical character, and even the early date, of at least a considerable portion of this book is admitted on all hands.— Ke Higher Criticism and the Monuments, pp. 53, 323. 224 LEX MOSAICA, intends to refuse their request. In the meantime God intimates to him that the request is to be granted, and signifies also the person whom He has chosen for the office. In obedience to this command of God, Samuel reassembles the Israelites, and Saul is publicly chosen king, not, however, without some manifestations of dissatisfaction in certain quarters. Saul then goes quietly home, for his position henceforth is rather that of a Highland chieftain than that which is usually associated in our minds with the name of king. A " band of men " accompanies him, and immediately Eifter occurs the siege of Jabesh-Gilead by Nahash the Ammonite. As the recognized head of Israel, Saul sends a peremptory summons to all Israel to assemble and march against Nahash. A great victory is the result, and afterwards the appointment of Saul is solemnly ratified, and Israel, flushed with its success, demands the immediate execution of Saul's opponents. Saul intervenes on their behalf with manly clemency, and then Samuel, after a noble vindication of his consistency and purity of motive, calls for a sign from heaven as a witness to Israel's ingratitude and contempt of the Divine government, and as a warning for the future. In all this there is no contradiction or improbability what ever. The only point which presents any real difficulty is Saul's ignorance of Samuel's position and character. But this meets us equally on any theory of the history, except that which resolves the whole of the earlier chapters of the book into fable. For Samuel, if the Book of Samuel be in any sense veracious history, had been acknowledged as a prophet of Jehovah from his boyhood. He had judged Israel for many years. He had delivered God's people from the yoke of the Philistines. He had won for himself a reputation for integrity and piety, which had gained the confidence of all. But on the hypothesis that we are to regard him in his later years as unknown, except in his own immediate neighbourhood, he practically vanishes from history altogether. The alternative hypothesis of Saul's ignorance would, on all ordinary principles of historical investigation, be preferable to that which regards Samuel, not as a judge, nor a deliverer, nor as a great moral and spiritual reformer, but simply as a successful kind ot fortune-teller. Such ignorance concerning a great man m Israel, at Saul's age, and in the then condition of Israel, was, THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 226 if improbable, at least by no means impossible, especially as Samuel had for some time retired from the active exercise of his judgeship, and Saul's family, though not as insignificant as he represents it to be (ch. 9. 21 : cf. 5. 1), was not likely to know or be known far beyond its immediate neighbourhood. Nor is there any real contradiction between the part of the narrative in which Samuel is represented as reluctant to put an end to the Theocracy of which he had been the most successful ex ponent, and that in which ' he receives the Divine permission to do so. Thus if the history in its present form presents some few difficulties, it is on the whole intelligible and consistent. But on the new critical theory it literally bristles with difficulties. The student of Jewish history must not forget that when he meets among the critics with suggestions of " editorial addi tions," or " fragments of the second narrative," it is invariably a sign that the critic is in straits, and straits of his own manufacture. We will endeavour to make this plain. On the hypothesis that we have here a homogeneous story, the product of one mind, and only one, whatever materials the writer may have used when writing, we shall find continual reference, as the story goes on, to what has been said before. But on the supposition that the supposed redactor is a slavish copyist, unintelligently combining two or more narratives entirely in dependent and inconsistent, no such reference, of course, can possibly be found in one of the narratives to what has been taken from the other. For, by hypothesis, these narratives are entirely independent of each other. But in the story as we have it, not only does narrative B (the later narrative) quote narrative A, which is at least conceivable, but narra tive A (the earlier narrative) quotes narrative B, which by the hypothesis was not as yet in existence. Here is a difficulty which has to be solved, and solved it is, clumsily enough, unless we are to abandon the canons laid down by aU historians of repute, by the hypothesis of an " editorial addition," or, where possible, by that of a " fragment of the later narrative." Ag^in, if narrative B quotes narrative A, as it will be seen presently is the case, then the writer of B must have had A before him. But in this case the narratives are not inde pendent, but B has used A. And if this be so, we have further S 1063. ^ 226 LEX MOSAICA. to inquire why, if B had A before him, he so frequently dis carded it, and substituted a different narrative of his own? why, in fact, he has both used and not used A, for sometimes he quotes A, and sometimes he ignores it? This must be admitted on all hands to be a singular historical, literary, and psychological phenomenon, deserving fuller examination and exposition than it has as yet received. But then comes in the theory of "editorial addition." This will be found to present as many interesting features of historical, literary, and psychological investigation as the perplexing treatment of narrative A by its successor B. For the editor sometimes connects the two narratives before him by inserting in one allusions to the other, and sometimes he places side by side statements palpably at variance, without any attempt at recon ciliation. And if those statements be distinctly at variance in the composite narrative which he has made up from both sources, the two narratives, in their original shape, from which he has extracted them, must have presented these incon sistencies in a yet more pronounced form. Why, then, did he not keep to one, and reject the other ? Or why, if he attempted to harmonise the two at all, did he not carry his harmonising further, and remove the obvious inconsistencies between his authorities ? The whole phenomenon, then, pre sented by the history on the critical theory, is anomalous and even unique. We may ask in vain for instances of 'a similar treatment of history in the case of some other people, and we are at least entitled to inquire why such a mode of treat ment of the facts should meet us in the history of the Jews alone. Considerations of this kind have compelled a candid critic like Professor Driver to abandon, though with evident reluctance, the theory of the independence of the earlier Elohist and the Jehovist. The one narrative presupposes the other m too many places to admit of their absolute independence of each other. They must either have been written by the same person, or, as Professor Driver prefers to believe, have been fused into one narrative at a later date. Careful and candid inquhy will also show that similar difficulties will be found to attend the resolution of other portions of the Old Testament history into their supposed constituent parts. From all these con siderations the student may at least learn to suspend his THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 227 judgment, and if he be sure of anything, at least to be sure of this, that the critical theories which at present hold the field are by no means the ultimate form which critical results will assume. One particular instance may be given where some modification of the critical conclusions may very reasonably be expected. If there be any portion of the narrative in which an impartial critic might be disposed to see a less authentic part of the story of Saul, it would be some of the details of the account of his introduction to Samuel in cL 9. But this account, from whatever source derived, was clearly in the hands of the writer of the book, as is proved by ch. 10. 23. We proceed to examine the critical theories as applied to the story of Saul's appointment as king. Ch. U. 1-11 belongs to the " earlier narrative," which we have called A. Saul, we are told, was not yet appointed king. That appointment is related in ch. 10. 17-27 a, a portion of the later narra tive, which we have called B, somewhat oddly imbedded by the redactor (we are not told why) in the course of A, which embraces ch. 9. 1 — 10. 16. But in U. 1-11, in which we are asked to see a portion of A, we find Saul, a person hitherto entirely imknown (so far as A is concerned) except to Samuel personally, summoning all Israel to follow him in an expedi tion against Nahash. Was there the slightest probability that Israel would follow on an expedition of difficulty and danger a man who was utterly unknown to them, and who had pre viously described himself — in the same narrative. A, remember — as "a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel, and his family the least of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin?"* (1 Sam. 9. 21). And on what authority, they would naturally ask, had he dared to use Samuel's name as well as his own? (ch. U. 7). On the hypothesis that the account before us is homogeneous everything is intelligible. It is only on the hypothesis of " earlier " and " later " narra tives, fabricated out of the exaggeration of discrepancies which, were we in possession of the whole of the facts, would no doubt be easy of explanation, that we find the diffi culties multiply upon us. Thus, again, the first time in which * In narrative B, remember (if it be not an " editorial addition"), there was con siderable opposition to Saul's appointment, even when made in the way described in the history. And this was extremely likely to have been the case. P 2 228 LEX MOSAICA, A speaks of Gibeah as Saul's place of residence is in ch, U. 4. And to all appearance the writer is quoting B (written, we are told, long after), where we have the first mention of Gibeah as Saul's home, for the later narrative (ch. 10. 26) states a fact which the earlier (which here comes after the later) takes for granted. This, it must be admitted, is a singular phenomenon on the critical theory, though intelligible enough on the theory that the work is the production of one author. Then B (10. 23) quotes A (9. 2) in regard to Saul's stature. The state- inent is evidently not made in ch. 10. 23 for the first time. Consequently the probability is that narrator B had narration A before him as he wrote — an additional point which requires some explanation. If he had not A before him, he had some other narrative which agreed with it here — another point in volving some difficulty. Then narrative B refers to objections taken to Saul's election as king (10. 27; 11. 12). And here we have one of those remarkable instances of the division of the narrative into single verses or half -verses which are so characteristic of the confidence with which the new criticism advances to its task, and which are so provocative of scepticism on the part of those who ^ do not find implicit submission to authority quite so easy a task as perhaps they ought to do. Ch. 10. 276, containing the words "But he held his peace," belongs to A. Singularly enough, they form the conclusion of the story of Saul's answer to his uncle.* Why a scrap of narrative B should have been interposed in the middle of a sentence in this strange way we are not told. And to ask us to accept it without a reason savours rather of dogmatism than of rational investigation. But our chief point is that ch. 11. 12 in narrative B follows directly and naturally upon ch. 11. 1-11 of narrative A. It is the success of Saul against Nahash which induces Israel to demand the execution of those who murmured against his appointment. Here, again, the history, as it stands, is intelligible and consecutive. It is the hypothesis of earlier and later narratives which compels us to resort here to the violent theory of "editorial additions as an alternative to that of ch. 10. 25-27, and ch. 11. 12-1* being "portions of the second narrative." It will be seen * See ch. 10. 16. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 229 that the critical hypothesis here is at least not unattended by some special difficulties of its own. Now if the so-called higher critics were accustomed to speak with a certain amount of modesty and reserve, to be content to put forth their hy potheses as possible solutions of difficulties which are admitted on all hands, there would be little reason to be severe on them for an occasional unfortunate suggestion. But there is con siderable ground of complaint, especially when we bear in mind the way in which it has been customary to regard the Sacred Scriptures among us, when such suggestions are put for ward as incontrovertible facts. It is not fair to the ordinary reader of Scripture to be told, as if on the authority of a tri bunal from which there can be no appeal, that in the story of Saul's election to the kingdom " we have two versions of a passage in Saul's history which have been allowed to stand side by side without any attempt [the italics are mine] to work them into unity,'' or that chaps. 8 — 12 " are formed by the com bination of two independent narratives [the italics are not mine] of the manner in which Saul became king, differing in their representations both of Samuel and of his relation to Saul." I may at least be permitted to say for myself that I have not personally the slightest objection to the promulgation of these theories as honest endeavours to solve difficulties by conjecture, but I have the very strongest objection to the way in which the critical treatment of the Old Testament, bristling as it does at every point with difficulties of its own, has been represented — not to scholars, for they are able to take care of themselves, but to the Bible-reading public at large — as established beyond the possibility of doubt* But there are * It would be only fair of a critic like Professor Driver to remove from his Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament such an unwarrantable statement as the following (p. 14) : — " Kor can it be doubted that the same conclusions, upon any neutral field of investigation, would have been accepted without hesitation by all conversant with the subject ; they are only opposed in the present instance by some theologians because they are supposed to conflict with the requirements of the Chris tian faith." As far as the author of the present essay is concerned, he begs to give the most unqualified contradiction to this statement, and he does not doubt that his contradiction will be echoed by others engaged in the production of this work. It is because he believes that the precise contrary is the case — that the methods employed in the treatment of Scripture are not those usuaUy employed in other investigations of the kind — ^that there are abundant signs of haste, of one-sidedne^s, of arbitrary asser tion, on tha part of the critics — ^that he finds himself compelled to reject conclusions 230 LEX MOSAICA. further considerations which tend to justify our scepticism in regard to the correctness of the critical analysis of this history. One reason given for the separation of the two accounts, worthy of notice, is that narrative B is " mechanical and unreal " in comparison with narrative A. There seems absolutely no foun dation for this statement. The precise opposite would be nearer the truth. The earlier part of narrative B is as reasonable and probable as any other story to be met with in history. It represents the Israelites as having become dissatisfied with the government of Samuel's sons, and to have desired the substi tution of kingly government for government by magistrates. This request, we may further remark, synchronises precisely with what was going on among the neighbouring nations. At precisely the same period the Philistines had replaced their lords, or seranim, by a king, as we learn from comparing the early history of Samuel with that of David, who took refuge, we are told, with Achish, king of Gath. We have here very weighty corroborative evidence for the authenticity of narra tive B, so unfairly impugned. Samuel's remonstrances, more over, against the implied censure on himself and on a form of government which had been carried on undet Divine direc tion, are natural and life-like. It is narrative A which, whe;i separated from the rest, may justly be described as "unreal," though " mechanical " it most certainly is not. By itself it is extraordinarily erratic and unaccountable. It describes Samuel, d propos of nothing in particular, and for no reason which ordinary mortals are able to divine, as suddenly re ceiving a Divine communication ordering him to anoint as king over Israel a young man who came to him .on so im portant an errand as the inquiry where his father's asses were, and who had the additional recommendation of being which he would not reject if the evidence for them appeared to him adequate. He certainly would decline to accept similar conclusions, supported by similar arguments, in the field of English history, to which he has given some attention. And here, as will be seen (p. 263, note *), he has the support of so eminent an authority in that d^artment of" research as the Bishop of Oxford. If, therefore, with many others, he laments the tendency to disparage the historical ficcuracy of the Old Testament which has found so much favour of late, it is on the ground that the investigation has been as yet imperfect and very far from impartial, and that it is most unadn*^ able in a subject so closely connected with " the requirements of the Christian Taith that any conclusions should be put forth as authoritative until they have been fully examined, and established beyond fear of contradiction. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 231 ignorant of the very existence of one of the greatest and wisest men Israel has ever possessed. This young man goes home and carefully keeps his secret, and then suddenly, at a moment of supreme difficulty and danger, suggests that all Israel should follow him, though utterly unknown to them, on an expedition against a formidable invader of their country. It is only the rest of the narrative which gives reasonable ness and probability to this portion of the story. One is no longer surprised at the attempt of WeUhausen to convert Samuel into a mere dancing dervish, if he believes that the above is a genuine history of what occurred. For it repre sents Saul and Samuel, and, for the matter of that, all Israel into the bargain, as seized with something very like a sud den aberration of intellect. We could not have a better illus tration of the way in which the critics are accustomed to affix a stigma, without rhyme or reason, on any narrative or portion of a narrative which does not happen to suit them. We now tum to narrative B, and we shall find that it also, apart from A, is somewhat "unreal," at least as regards its later portions, though far less so than A. Samuel dismisses the Israelites, on their request for a king, with a rebuke, and they aU go home again. Suddenly, without any apparent reason — for A, we are told, is a different account, — he summons them once more, repeats his rebuke, and commands lots to be drawn. As a result of this lot-drawing Saul the son of Kish is taken. But we are not informed of the reasons for Samuel's change of front — a very improbable one, except on the grounds mentioned in the history. And we are not informed who Saul the son of Kish was. Now, it is not the manner of authors in general to introduce an important character upon the scene without any previous introduction. Either, there fore, the writer of B had given an account of Saul in keep ing with the rest of his narrative, and the editor has re jected it for one which is in contradiction to it, or A has been embodied in B by the author of the latter, without the inter vention of any editor whatever. Is it not more reasonable to accept the history as it stands, as being more intelligible and consistent than the critical revision of it ? The fact that the narrative, in ch. 12 follows naturally, both upon ch. 8, which is supposed to belong to the later, and upon 282 LEX MOSAICA. ch. 11, which is supposed to be a part of the earlier narra tive, as well as the repeated alternations in the course of the history between the supposed earlier and the supposed later" authority, once more cast considerable doubt upon the theory which we are asked to accept. The history as it is, though it presents some difficulties from the abridged form in which it comes down to us, is, as has already been contended, intelligi ble and consistent. Resolve it into some supposed constituent parts, and it at once becomes a mass of contradictions, and the difficulties it presents to us are indefinitely increased. Some objections have been raised to that portion of the narrative which mentions the recrudescence of the Phihstine power. It has been supposed that this is inconsistent with 1 Sam. 7. 13. But there is no necessary contradiction whatso ever. " All the days of Samuel " need mean no more than all the time of his official, judgeship. The misgovemment of his sons, and the consequent disaffection of Israel, would give the Philistines an opportunity of regaining their power of which they would not be slow to avail themselves. If we are to reject the improbable in history, as the higher critics would some times fain persuade us to do, we should have to reject a good deal. We have only to look at the career of our own Alfred, at one time a fugitive in his own morasses, at another sendmg ships to India and embassies to the East, to find a history far more antecedently improbable than that of 1 Samuel. The his tory of the Heptarchy * displays to us as rapid alternations of prosperity and adversity in the kingdoms which composed it as any in the history of Israel ; or, to take another instance, the career of the Emperor Heraclius, in which a reign, which * Compare, for instance, the sudden collapse of the Northumbrian power after the defeat and death of Edwin, and its equally sudden recovery under Oswald. As this story is related in Lappenberg's History of England, i. 156,, we find in it a precise parallel to the Philistine inroad into Israel in the days of Saul. We are not to snp- pose that 1 Samuel contains a complete history of the period. This is precluded by the fact that, as Keil has observed, some portions of the narrative are in chronicle form, and some are more diffuse. The mention of Jonathan in ch. 1 3. 2, 3 involves a diffi culty which can only be explained on the supposition that Saul was older than is usuaUy supposed! The inroad of the Philistines, again, described in ch. 13, can only be explained on the supposition that they held a certain number of fortified towns in Israel, just as the Turks until lately held a number in Servia, while aUowing a certain autonomy to their vassals. But Jonathan's audacious act in attacking the garrison at Geba would, of course, in the opinion of the overlords, demand prompt chastisement. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 233 begins and closes in contemptible sloth such as nearly sounded the death-knell of his Empire, is illuminated in its midst by a display of skill and bravery rarely surpassed, presents once more improbabilities beside which those presented by the history of Israel under Samuel fade into utter insignificance. We may further ask, if in the history of the choice of Saul as king we are not face to face with genuine history, at what time the history we possess could possibly have been invented? On the supposition that the history is authentic, Samuel's strong opposition to a change of government is in telligible and natural. He would have been sure to pro- 'test, not only against the slight offered to himself, but to the implied reproach against the Divine control, of which he had been the instrument. But there is no period until the return from the Captivity at which this story could possibly have obtained currency, for there is no evidence of the ex istence in Israel, after the time of David, of any feeling hostile to kingly government. Even if it were in truth an invention of post-exilic times, we are still called upon to explain how this anti-monarchical view of the history obtained support enough to supplant, or partially to supplant, the earlier and more accurate narrative, and this at a time when, so far as existing histories supply us with any information, there was an extraordinary eagerness on the part of Israel to cherish most fondly its best and most authentic traditions. Nor is this all the ground we have for acpepting the history as it stands. We find, in the Old Testament, a remarkable corrobo ration of the truth of the so-called "later narrative." And it is to be found in the writings of the prophet Hosea, who is confessed on all hands to be one of the earliest of the prophets, and to have written in the eighth century B.C. The corroboration is all the more remarkable from the fact that, as is well known, the prophets, as a ' rule, make very little reference to the history of Israel. In unmistakable allusion to the account in 1 Sam. 8, Hosea (ch. 10. H) represents Israel as saying, " Give me a king and princes," and God as replying, "I gave thee a king in Mine anger, and took him away in My wrath."* It is scarcely possible, in the face of * It is a question whether Hos. 12. 13 does not refer to Samuel as the preserver, as well as to Moses as the founder, of Israelite institutions. See below, p. 242. 234 LEX MOSAICA. this passage, to deny that not only the " earlier," but the " later narrative " was known to the prophet Hosea, and that in all probability the First Book of Samuel, in its present shape, was known to him, and regarded by him as true history. Whether he or our modem critics are likely to be best informed on the subject is, of course, matter of opinion. But at least we can hardly be required to subscribe the pro position as an article of faith that Hosea was wrong, or even that it is demonstrated that the history, in its present shape, was not in existence in his day. One more point is suggested by a passage in St. Cyprian, De Oratione Dominica, ch. 1. He remarks how Hannah did not address God in loud and noisy petitions, but silently and modestly made her requests known unto Him in the secret of her heart. Compare this with the clamour made by the priests of Baal in their contest with Elijah on Carmel. The contrast, in this respect, between Judaism and Christianity, on the one hand, and heathen religions on the other, is very remarkable. In later times we find musical instruments, cymbals, and dances introduced into the worship of the Jew ish Church, as in the case of David dancing before the Ark, and as we find the adjuncts of worship described in the Psalms. But in the earlier books of the Bible, in which I venture to include the Pentateuch, we find no mention of anything of the kind in religious worship. The cases of Miriam and Jephthah's daughter were cases of public rejoicing after a victory, not of the prescribed ceremonial of the Mosaic Law; and the dancing recorded in Exod. 32. 19 was in the worship of the golden calf, and seems to have excited the indignation of Moses. It seems to have been with Judaism as it was with Christianity. The utmost simplicity of wor ship was observed in the earliest ages, but as time went on a ceremonial bf a more elaborate kind was introduced, not as an essential of religion, but as corresponding to certain very obvious needs of our complex nature. It has now been shown that the critical analysis of this portion of the book introduces more difficulties than it solves, and that it is responsible for far more absurdities than it has discovered in the history as it stands. We will not draw the conclusion, and we repudiate it if attributed to us by THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 235 others, that no documents were used, embodied, combined, or edited by the author of this book. All we say is that criti cism has so far failed to indicate them correctly in the narrative with which we are dealing. Whether it has been more successful in the story of David and Goliath we will not say. It does not fall within our province to do so. There is no antecedent reason why this last story should not have been a combination of various accounts. It is simply a matter of evidence. The only remark we will allow our selves on this branch of the subject is the expression of our conviction that the critical school is as much too prone to see marks of compilation in a plain, straightforward narrative, as the traditional school is to deny that there are or can be any signs of compilation at all. At all events the theory that the history has been, loosely and carelessly edited — pieced together, in fact, from mutually contradictory documents — is not borne out by a careful examination of their contents. Neither their linguistic nor their historical features, when fairly dealt with, involve any conclusions of the kind. The history is reasonable and intelligible as it stands. Its linguistic features are those which are characteristic of the whole pre-exilic literature. In regard to date, therefore, we have no very certain cri teria to guide us. Some indications, however, there are. Thus in ch. 2 we have no record of the fulfilment of the prophecy against the house of Eli.* This supplies us with at least a presumption that the book was written before the beginning of the reign of Solomon, when this prophecy was fulfilled, especially as the narrative in 1 Kings 2. 27 men tions the fulfilment, thereby strengthening the argument for the view that 1 Samuel was already written.t There are also indications in 1 Samuel that some little time had elapsed between the events and their narration. One of these is the * See also ch. 3. 11-14, where the later compiler would almost infallibly have betrayed himself. t In like manner a prophecy in regard to Jericho is recorded, without any men tion of its fulfilment, in Josh. 6. 36. The mention of its fulfilment in 1 Kings 16. 34 supplies us with a presumption that the Book of Joshua was published before 1 Kings. So we find a prophecy in 1 Kings 13. 2, which in all probability was published before the narrative in 2 Kings 23, unless, indeed, we are to accept the dictmn that prophecy is an impossibility. The words " Josiah by name " might, of course, have been originally a marginal note which ultimately found its way into the text. 236 LEX MOSAICA. remark in 1 Sam. 3. 1, that "in those days the word of God was precious ; there was no open vision," implying that in the time of the writer this " open vision " was no longer un known. Chapter 9. 9 is not inconsistent with the theory that this book was composed in the reign of David, for although sufficient time must be allowed for the change in popular nomenclature it mentions to have taken root, yet there is abundant evidence that it must have done so early in the reign of David.* No argument can be founded on the occur rence of the words " unto this day " in chaps. 27. 6 and 30. 25. For, fiirst, it is impossible to say whether they were originally marginal notes or not, and, next, we have no mention of Ziklag in the later history until Neh. H. 28. The expression " from Dan even to Beersheba " (ch. 3. 20), which occurs in Judg. 20. 1, and only elsewhere in the Books of Samuel, and once in Chronicles, may seem to many deserving of some notice. It was hardly likely to have occurred to an author writing between the division of the kingdoms and the return from the Captivity. It may not unfairly be cited as indicating that the narrative was at least compiled from genuine and nearly contemporary materials. Another indication that the book was written later than the Pentateuch as a whole, as well as the Books of Joshua and Judges, and that therefore these books, in almost their present shape, were in the hands of the author or authors of 1 Samuel, is found in the fact that the term "Lord of Hosts," so frequently found in the later books of the Old Testament, never appears until 1 Sam. 1. 3.t If the term were, as ex hypothesi it must * Professor Sayce recognises the history of David in the Old Testament as authentic history. He points out how from the twelfth to the ninth century B.C. both the Egyp tian and Assyrian powers were under an eclipse, and that this gave opportunity for the rise of the Israelitish power under David and Solomon. He adds that it was the hostility of the Philistines which " consolidated the disunited tribes into a single nation," and " made them recognize their common origin, their common centre of worship, and their common national God" {The Higher Criticism and the Mom- ments, p. 313.) Others have noted the temporary eclipse, at this time, of the two mightiest empires of antiquity. We may ask, with Professor Eobertson, what has made the fate of Israel in history so different from that of Philistines, Ammonites, Moabites, and others, but the recognition, to use Professor Sayce's words, of a " com mon national God," such as Jehovah, and the possession, not only of a revelation of His Essence, but of a body of " statutes and judgments " founded on that revelation. t See Oehler, Theology of the 0. T., p. 127. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 237 have been, perfectly familiar to the author of the Priestly Code, he and the redactor, in spite of their frequently bung ling work in piecing together palpable contradictions, must in one sense have rivalled Thackeray in the masterly way in which they have affected an archaic style foreign to their age, avoiding aU anachronisms, not only all the distinctive post- exilic expressions so frequently found in the writers subse quent to the Captivity, but even expressions found from the Books of Samuel onward. It has been necessary, in the first instance, briefly to dis cuss the credibility and probable date of our account, because on this depends the value of its testimony to the existence of Israelitish institutions at an early period. We have found considerable reason to believe that the attempts to cast sus picion on the homogeneity and historic character of the narrative must be regarded as having failed. It is the only account we have of the events ; and the attempts to recon struct it critically are by nO means free from difficulties of their own. There is also no reason to suppose that any very prolonged interval existed between the events recorded and the composition of the history in which they have been handed down to us. On true historical principles, therefore, we have, for the present at least, no alternative but to permit the his torian to tell his own story, and extract from him such in formation as we can concerning the institutions of Israel at the date to which the events recorded belong. The first point which strikes us on the perusal of the his tory of Samuel is the character of the prophet himself.* There * Samuel and the schools of the prophets are thus described by WeUhausen : — " Troops of ecstatic enthusiasts showed themselves here and there, and went about with musical accompaniments in processions which often took the form of wUd dances ; even men of the most sedate temperament were sometimes smitten with the contagion, and drawn into the charmed circle" {History of Israel, p. 449). Stade gives a yet more grotesque exaggeration of the facts. Even Ewald departs from his usual reason ableness on this point. His description is as follows : — Those who approached the prophets with hostile intent " suddenly stood still, spellbound by the music and the solemn dance of the devotees ; then, more and, more powerfully drawn by the same spirit into the charmed circle, broke forth into similar words and gestures; then, flinging away the upper garment, joined in the dance and in the music, and, sinking down in ecstatic quivering, utterly forgot the hostile spirit in which they had come " {History of Israel, iii. 425). Such descriptions are those of men who " draw upon their imagination for their facts." There is not a shred of historical evidence for a 238 LEX MOSAICA. is usually some kind of correspondence between great men and their environment. Even though they tower above their con temporaries, the characteristics of the age and people in which they appear is invariably stamped on them. This is equally true of great conquerors, great authors, great religious or moral reformers. There is no possibility of confounding the Uves of Confucius, Zoroaster', Buddha, Socrates, or Mohammed. Each of these men reflects, even while he purifies and exalts, the ideas of his race and epoch. But as we reflect on Samuel, we are struck by the extraordinary similarity of the religious and moral ideas amid which he grew up to those of our own time. With the exception of the fact that our morality is of a milder kind, there is nothing in the character of Samuel in the least degree out of harmony with our own day. If we go back two centuries, the resemblance is even more striking. He stands before us as the very type of the Covenanter of the seventeenth century. The picture is ahke down to the smallest detail. There is the same rigid and unbending integrity; the same zeal for Jehovah; the same detestation of even the least deviation from His commands; the same intense realization of His Presence; the same sense of consecration to His service ; the same fierce spirit of ven geance against His enemies; the same preference of imphcit obedience to the mere observance of external ordinances of religion ; the same tendency towards vehement and passionate excitement in worship. To what cause is this close similarity to be attributed? Surely to none other than this: that the religious environment of Samuel and that of the Covenanter were in all essential respects identical. One of two conclu sions follows necessarily from these facts. Either Samuel grew from infancy to manhood under the influence of the Mosaic Law in its present shape, or the character the history gives of him was ideally evolved at a time when the institutions of the Jewish Law had received their final touches after the return from the Captivity. We are not entitled to assume description of this kind, save the conduct of Saul, who can hardly be described as a " man of the most sedate temperament." Those who would thus idealise history are misled by the love of paradox into the transference of the dancing dervish of to-day into the history of a distant past. As well might we credit the Corinthian Church of St. Paul's day with the excesses of the Montanists and Flagellants. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 239 that the latter hypothesis is impossible; but we have cer tainly a right to say that the simplicity and naturalness of the history as we have it render it extremely improbable. Moreover, on this hypothesis we have actually no materials whatever for the history of the period in which Samuel lived. The " earlier " and " later " narratives of Professor Driver and Professor Eobertson Smith are alike unhistorical. There is no authentic history of Samuel ; only an ideal picture of an ancient Israelite worthy fashioned on the principles introduced subse quent to the Exile by the author or authors of the Priestly Code. It follows, therefore, that our accounts of Samuel are pure, unmitigated fable. For if, on this hypothesis, such a per son as Samuel ever existed, he could not have been what our present histories represent him to be, because the institutions on which his character, as drawn in those histories, was moulded were not yet in existence. We have, therefore, our choice between dismissing existing accounts of him altogether, and accepting them as authentic* But, if authentic, those accounts postulate an original unity among the tribes of Israel which had been lost, and which it was the work of Samuel to re-establish. They presuppose, as we shall shortly see, a very considerable number of the regulations which the Pentateuch has handed down to us. They display to us the influence on the mind of the prophet of those high and noble moral principles which, until lately, we have been accus tomed to ascribe to Moses as their author. And they, more over, as we shall see, involve the proposition that the tribes of Israel possessed the Law as it has come down to us — at least, in all its essential features, — and that however much they may have rebelled against it, however much they may have allowed it to fade from their memory, yet in their better moments they recognised their obligation to obey its precepts, acknowledged in it a standard which God himself had set up to regulate their conduct. We may also obtain from this history some idea of the way in which the Divine Spirit "^ It will be observed by critics of the acuter class that German criticism here, as in many other cases, is more consistent than English. The former boldly re jects our present accounts as unhistoric. The latter regard their portraiture of Samuel, on the whole, as historic, but cast a number of doubts on their genuine ness and credibility nevertheless. 240 LEX MOSAICA. which inhabited the prophets taught them to develop the principles of the Law which God had given. We shall find grounds for rejecting the theory now in favour of an original unbelief, or no belief, or false belief, from which a mono theistic creed and a high and exalted morality was ultimately — and most inexplicably — evolved. The Book of Samuel ex plains to us the principle on which Mosaic institutions were developed — the cultivation of that prophetic gift which was a speciality of Judaism. To Samuel, evidently, belongs the foundation of the schools of the prophets. By these he m- tended, no doubt, to secure and perpetuate the transmission of the prophetic gift which had become all but extinct since the days of Moses. These supernatural gifts, he appears to have held, might by an educational system be at once fostered and kept under control. The Divine afflatus might, he held, be communicated by personal association with its possessors, and the gift, like all other Divine gifts, was, as St. Paul also held, to be used not in obedience to impulse, but according to the dictates of reason. A certain flavour of religious excitement no doubt, as is not uncommon in the East, might occasionally be discovered in connection with this institution of prophecy, just as we find it exhibited in the Christian Church in the Montanists, the Flagellants, the Revivalists and others, and even, as we learn from 1 Cor. 14, to a slight extent in the Apostolic Church itself. But we should fall into a mistake if we imagined the case of Saul to be any other than an exceptional one, and consequent on the tendency to insanity which is recorded of him, and which, as is so often the case, tended in his instance to produce wild ex travagances when he was brought into an atmosphere of strong religious conviction.* Samuel himself seems to have been habitually and constitutionally calm and composed, and the attempt to represent him as the head of a troop of dancing dervishes t must be dismissed asi a mere travesty of the history. Another feature in the development of Mosaic teaching must not be allowed to escape us. Samuel, like many other leading thinkers in ancient Israel, perceived the * The history of George Fox, Wesley, and Whitefield, not to go further, sup plies us with abundant illustrations of this remark. t See above, p. 237. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 241 superiority of the spirit of the Law to its letter.* We cannot fail to see that the noble outburst, "Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings as in obeying the voice of the Lord?" displays a spirit very little in accord with the narrow literalism which set in after the return from the Captivity,t but falls in with the broader and more liberal spirit in which the prophets, from Samuel to Malachi, were wont to treat the ordinances it was their duty to inculcate and explain — a spirit, we may venture further to assert, which is conspicuously displayed in those ordinances themselves. They manifest absolutely no tendency to that subordination of the spirit to the letter which was the pro duct of a far later age.J The character of Samuel, then, presupposes the existence in his time of a moral and religious atmosphere such as the Mosaic Law, regarded as of Divine authority, was calculated to create. We must either believe that it had already been given in the days of Samuel, or we must believe him to be a character ideally evolved when the Law was finally developed. In the latter case, we may once more ask, What becomes of the historic Samuel ? What infor mation have we concerning his career, character, and objects ? And what becomes of the admission which the critical school itself is disposed to make, that in the accounts of Eli, and Samuel, and Saul, we are, on the whole, face to face with real history ? WTiy, moreover, does the Samaritan Chronicle attri bute all apostasy and depravity to Eli and Samuel, but because of their devotion to the Tabernacle worship, which was the original source of the Temple worship at Jerusalem ? § If there * As Isaiah, ch. 1, David, if we may dare still to regard him as the author of Ps. 61, and Asaph, if he wrote Ps. 50. It is true that modem criticism declares this growth of a preference of the spirit of the Law over Uteralism to be characteristic of the prophetic period. But unless 1 Sam. 15 be legend and not history, this position cannot be conceded. t See Schultz, as cited in next note. J Some of the critics, but by no means all, have regarded Samuel's noble vin dication of obedience in preference to sacrifice as an anachronism. It belongs, they teU us, to the prophetic period, i.e., that of Hosea and Amos. But they neglect to bring any evidence in support of their assertion. I must, on the con trary, maintain that it was the earlier and purer view which the Law taught from the beginning, and that, as Schultz contends {Old Testament Theology, ii. 15, 44, 45), it was in post-exUic times that Israel began to lay so much stress on outward observances. § See Ewald, Hist. Israel, iii., 411. S 1063. Q 242 LEX MOSAICA. had been the least evidence within the reach of the writer of that> chronicle — or even the faintest tradition that there ever had been such evidence — ^that the original history was very different to that which in later times had been represented as such, with what eagerness would a Samaritan author have availed himself of it. But it is not only the cha racter of Samuel, but his place in history which postulates the existence of the Mosaic institutions. Samuel is the first religious reformer in the Jewish Church, just as Josiah was the last.* Ewald compares him to Luther, and declares that without him David would have been impossible, f He more fully corresponds to Alfred in our own history, as Josiah corresponds to Edward VI. J The history of Samuel presupposes an original unity of Israel, which, though it had been seriously imperilled in the disorganization characteristic of the era of the Judges, existed still in the minds of the people, and only needed favourable circumstances to restore it. There is an undesigned coincidence here which, as usual, entirely escapes the higher critic, because he is on the look out for discrepancies, not for evidences of genuineness. Samuel came from Ramah, which was on the borders of Ephraim, and, as is still generally supposed, of a family of Lerites which was connected with the tribe of Ephraim. Thus his leadership gave no offence to the tribe which in time past had so fiercely maintained its claim to the hegemony of Israel, and which afterwards so bitterly resented its trans ference to the rival tribe of Judah. § But if the pohtical * This is the view taken of him in Ps. 99. 6. But as the Psalms are now sup posed to be corrected in the view they take of Israelitish history by later and more authentic information, we had better caU Jeremiah as a witness, who aLso sets him on a level with Moses, as the restorer, as far as possible, of the order of things of which Moses was the founder. See Jer. 15. 1. t Ewald, Hist. Israel, iii. p. 420. t This view of Edward VI. has been vehemently assaUed of late. But the paraUel holds good in every particular save the ultimate success of the Eeforma- tion. § See the treatment of Gideon and Jephthah by Ephraim, the mutual jealousy between Israel and Judah in 2 Sam. 19. 43, and the rebellion under Jero boam, an Ephraimite. The silence of Judges about Judah implies that this tribe had isolated itself from the rest under the Judges, for what reasons w do not know. The blessings of Jacob and Moses, with the prominence they attach to Joseph, can be no " documents of Northern Israel," for no such docu ments would have been introduced into Jewish literature after the schism. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 243 position of Samuel involves an earlier political unity of Israel,* how much more does his religious reformation pre suppose th6 existence of a religious Law ? I venture here to repeat what I said twelve years ago, long before the controversy on the Old Testament history had reached its present acute stage: "The Books of Moses still existed [in the days of the Judges] as a record of the high ideal set before Israel by Jehovah — a record to which His prophets could and did appeal. The distresses and disorders in Israel were the evident results of a disobedience to its warnings. And the national conscience awoke to this fact under the exhortations of Samuel."t And I would further say that we cannot conceive of Samuel's religious reformation without the existence of some body of precepts common to him and to those over whom he presided, to which he might appeal, in order to arouse the national conscience. True, the circum stances of his time were such that he could only carry out the spirit of the Law. The observance of its letter was impossible with a Tabemacle robbed of the symbol of the Divine Presence, and an Ark which remained apart from the necessary adjuncts of Divine worship, because the Divine displeasure appeared to be manifested so strongly against those who attempted to restore it to its place. But at least Samuel had restored the organic unity of Israel, as well as the sense of being under the Divine government. The Is rael of Joshua and the elders that overlived Joshua was re stored. It only remained for a leader to arise who should ensure its permanence. Saul, to Samuel's infinite anxiety and grief, displayed signs of his want of faith in the perpetual they are not what they profess to be, genuine utterances of Jacob and Moses, at least they must have been composed before the revolt of the Ten Tribes, and most pro bably before the commencement of the reign of David, whUe Israel was yet united, and when the tribe of Joseph still held the pre-eminence. * Just as the history of Alfred involves the previous existence of the Bretwalda. t "Commentary on Judges," Cambridge Bible for Schools, Introduction, p. 20. Professor Kirkpatrick, on 1 Samuel, takes a similar view. I do not, of course, assert that the text of the Books of Moses was verbatim et literatim precisely the same as it is now. I do not suppose that the Masorites were already in existence, with their mechanical adherence to the precise letter of a carefuUy ascertained text. AU I would be understood as meaning by what I have said is, that in the days of Samuel the Mosaic Institutions were substantiaUy the same as those we now find in the Pentateuch. Q 2 244 LEX MOSAICA. protection of Jehovah over the Israelite nation, and in the re velation of His Will which He had been pleased to make by His prophet. David, on the other hand, designated by Samuel as Saul's successor, into whatever personal and private errors he might have fallen, never once in his long reign swerved from his original belief in that superintending providence, and in the duty incumbent upon him of carrying out the " commandments and the statutes " on the observance of which Israel's existence depended. He laid the foundation of Israel's greatness, and had his successors trodden in his steps, the em pire of the world would have been theirs. Given the existence of the Mosaic institutions, and the history of Israel is intelli gible and consistent. Eemove them, and the history at once becomes a dissolving view, all that we know is that it is false, and each successive critic has his own peculiar ideas as to how much is fact and how much fable. On two points in the career and character of Samuel, re garded as affected by the general spirit and particular provisions of the Mosaic Law, it may be well to make some more detailed remarks. The first is his hewing Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal. At first sight this act may appear to be an indication of the fierce hatred entertained for other nations by the Israelites, and clearly prescribed by their Law.* But more careful investigation would appear to cast some doubt on this view. There is reason for believing that the commands in Deut. 7. 2 refer to enemies actually taken captive at the time of the invasion. Deut. 20. 15 commands a more lenient treat ment of enemies at a distance. And we moreover find in the case of such strict observers of the Law as David, that the provisions of that Law in regard to individual inhabitants of Canaan were by no means strictly carried out. Such men as Ittai the Gittite and Uriah the Hittite were among the soldiers of David, and, as some think, Cretans and Philistines formed his body-guard, t Similarly we find Doeg the Edomite among the officials at Saul's court. And the treatment of Agag stands * E.g., Deut. 7. 2, 16 ; very unlikely provisions to have been invented in the xeign of Manasseh. It is noteworthy that in P (or H, see Num. 33. 52) the instruction is to drive out the inhabitants of the land. That is to say, the critics attribute the less stringent commands to the period when the refusal to associate with the neatne had become more pronounced. t The Cherethites and Pelethites. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 245 alone in the history of Samuel. It would seem that prolonged intercourse with the natives of Canaan had either somewhat blunted the edge of the national conscience in the matter of the stem command to exterminate them all, or that the com mand in question was intended to be confined to the campaigns of Joshua and his immediate followers. We have no evidence that Samuel himself considered it his duty to exterminate the Philistines, though it is true that they do not form one of the seven nations to whom the command applies. But then neither do the Amalekites. In the case of Agag, therefore, we are thrown back upon the solemn curse pronounced against Amalek to which Samuel refers,* and we must suppose that he regarded himself as bound strictly to fulfil the injunction in Lev, 27. 29, which dealt with the case of men devoted (Din) to destruction. Thus, unless the whole history has been proved to be a later fiction, we find clear evidence here of the historical character of Exod. 17, and of that history having been known not only to the writer of the life of Samuel, but to Samuel himself. We further find pre sumptive evidence, not altogether without force, of the exis tence in Samuel's day of the provision recorded in Lev. 27. 29.t The other passage is the one where Samuel proclaims his in tegrity before the assembled Israelites (1 Sam. 12. 1-5.) If we are entitled to regard this scene as authentic history, and there is no reason whatever on the face of it — certain critical hypothe ses excepted — why we should not do so, we have evidence of the existence of a system of definite moral principles acknow ledged both by the speaker and by those whom he addresses. The narrative as it stands is too life-like to be summarily set aside. It may, however, be contended that Samuel does but lay down some elementary principles of morality. But it is not too much to insist that he expresses those elementary principles in a very different way to that in which they would have been expressed among other nations. And it may fairly be contended that it is our very familiarity with the Bible ' Ch. 16. 2. Cf. Exod. 17. 14; Deut. 25. 17-19. That the Amalekites were little better than a horde of merciless brigands we may gather from Samuel's words to Agag. t Exod. 17. 8-16 is assigned by the critics to E, and is therefore supposed to belong to the eighth or ninth century B.C., three or four hundred years after Samuel. 246 LEX MOSAICA. that hinders us from seeing here a direct appeal to the precepts of the Mosaic Law. Thus his question in ch. 12. 3, " Whose ox have I taken ? Whose ass have I taken ? " recall the precepts in Exod. 23. 4, 5 ; Deut. 22. 1-4. When he goes on, "Whom have I defrauded ? " he not only appears to be quoting Lev. 19. 13, but to be using the technical phrase used m Lev. 6. 2, 4, as constituting an offence for which the trespass offering ought to be offered.* The word translated " oppressed " does not, it is true, occur in any of the provisions of the Mosaic Law, but is found only in Deut. 28. 33 of the condition of the Israelites in captivity. But it is only fair to add that the Mosaic Law does not seem to have anticipated that power would be given to any Israelite to exercise the cruel and crushing oppression the term here used indicates. The next passage, containing as it does a distinct quotation of Deut. 16. 19, affords a strong presumption that this particular precept of the Law was in existence in the days of Samuel in its present form. For not only is it obviously far more probable that Samuel was here appealing to a precept given by an authority admitted equally by all Israel, than that a subsequent writer should have dexterously interwoven the words of Samuel into a statute it was desired to attribute to Moses, but the form of the sentence very strongly suggests the inference that Samuel was quoting Deuteronomy, and that the author of Deuteronomy was not making an allusion to an extant history of Samuel, f We cannot, of course, deny that it is possible that the actual history of Samuel was cast into its present form at a date after the Exile, when the Pentateuch, in its present shape, had come to be recognized as the Law of Israel ; and that the words * Lev. 5. 21, 23 in the Heb., 6. 2, 4 in the English. The EngUsh translation here is " deceived," " deceitfully gotten." Professor Green remarks how ch. 8. 3 quotes Deut. 16. 19, and how 8. 5 ; 10. 24 ; and 12. 14 wiU be seen by a reference to the Hebrew to be quotations of Deut. 17. 14, 16; 9. 23, and 1.43. The last quotation is very marked in the original, and it is obvious that the point of Samuel's rebuke consists in the transgression by Israel of a law already in existence. t Samuel's words are, " Of whose hand have I received any bribe to bUnd mine eyes therewith." The words in Deuteronomy are, " for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise and pervert the words of the righteous." Is it quite inadmissible to hold that Samuel is here referring to Deuteronomy ? Or is it, on the other hand, quite clear that 1 Sam. 12 was written after the reign of Josiah? Samuel's words are not a literal quotation. But they contain a distinct aUusion to the passage in the Law. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 247 here put into Samuel's mouth are entirely those of the his torian.* Yet this is a somewhat large assumption, and it brings down the acceptance of the Canon of- Scripture to a very late date indeed. It is at least permissible to say that there is considerable reason for supposing the First Book of Samuel to have been written in the reign of David, and that if the Mosaic Law, as it has come down to us, were not in existence in all its main features in the days of Samuel, it at least existed as a document a generation or so later. We now tum to the evidence of the existence of the Mosaic Law given incidentally in the course of the narrative. And we must remark in limine that in the case of many of these proofs, they either distinctly prove the existence of the Law in the days of Samuel, or they are deliberate inventions made with the intention of deluding the Jews into the belief that it was then in existence. This will be more clearly seen as we proceed. The narrative opens with an account of a man who went up yearly to "sacrifice to the Lord of Hosts" at Shiloh. One yearly feast, therefore, was kept at the Taber nacle. The Law, it is true, enjoins that three should be kept. But it seems reasonable to suppose that this precept could only be strictly carried out when Israel " had rest from all his enemies,"t and the condition of the country was therefore one of profound peace.J But however this may be, the duty of worshipping, when possible, in " the place which Jehovah thy * A Deuteronomic revision does not meet the requirements of the present case, for Samuel quotes Leviticus as weU as Deuteronomy. We may add that the sketch of the previous history of Israel given in 1 Sam. 12. 6-11, agrees precisely with that given in the Pentateuch, Joshua, and Judges. On aU ordinary principles of literary criti cism, those books were therefore already written. t Deut. 25. 19 : cf. Lev. 26. 6. X We may remark, in passing, that there is strong reason for beUeving thaf. this command, that aU the males should go up to the appointed centre of the worship of Jehovah three times every year, could only have been given before the settlement in the land. It assumes that the Law will have been kept, that the inhabitants of Cen tral Palestine will have been extirpated, and the more distant tribes brought into subjection, and that thus no external hindrance will exist to the observance of this precept. Had the Law been properly kept, this result would have foUowed in due course. But there was no subsequent period in the history when the precept could have been given without provoking comment and opposition on account of the im possibility of fulfiUing it. It is worthy of notice that Zacharias and Elisabeth, who are described (Luke 1. 6) as " walking in aU the ordinances of the Law blameless," are also described, like Elkanah and Hannah, as repairing to Jerusalem once a year. So with our Lord's parents (Luke 2. 41). 248 LEX MOSAICA. God shall choose" (Deut. 12. 5, etc.) is unquestionably recog nised in the book before us. At the moment when the history opens, that place was Shiloh. Thus the accuracy of the Books of Joshua and Judges, though nowhere asserted, is taken for granted.* On all ordinary principles of historic investigation this would be held to prove that the Books of Joshua and Judges were known to the author when he wrote, and were regarded by him as authentic history. The next point is that there was already a priesthood, and one priest, more over, to whom a special pre-eminence was attached. At the time when the narrative commences, Eli held this supreme position, t This, however, is no isolated fact, but the history bears witness to it consistently throughout. Eleazar suc ceeded Aaron in the High Priest's office. J He is followed by Phinehas,§ who as the son and destined successor of Eleazar enjoyed the same sort of pre-eminence in the lifetime of his father which Hophni and Phinehas appear to have enjoyed in the lifetime of Eli.|| We have no mention of the High Priest in the Book of Judges. Nor need this surprise us, for the details in that book are extremely fragmentary, and its apparent object was to record the continual rebellions of the Children of Israel against Jehovah and His Law, and the deliverances vouchsafed to them upon their repentance. What details, therefore, the Book of Judges does contain, circle round the person of the judge, not of the High Priest. But we leam from the history of Eli that in spite of the confusions and disasters of the time, the Tabemacle, its worship, and the persons appointed to carry on that worship, , had through out remained at Shiloh. There had been, for what reason we know not — possibly the minority of a High Priest in the direct line of Phinehas, — a change in the direct order of * Josh. 18. 1 ; 19. 51 ; 21. 2 ; 22. 9, 12; Judg. 18. 31 ; 21. 12. t Eli's judgeship was apparently a mere refereeship, consequent on the respect in which his person and office were held, and was probably confined to Shiloh and the immediate neighbourhood. It must have differed widely from the powers of a judge who -had achieved great military successes and renown. t Num. 20. 25-28 : cf. 26. 1,3,63; 27. 2,21,22; 31.12, 13,21,26,29,31,41,54; 32. 2, 28 ; Josh. 14. 1 ; etc., etc., etc., and observe how consistent the whole narrative is, and how the narrator avoids the pitfalls a writer after a long interval would have been certain ti fall into ; e.g. Num. 26. 63, 64. § Judg. 20. 28, where the mention of Phinehas is quite ipcidental. 11 See Num. 25. 7 ; 31. 6 ; Josh. 22. 13 ; 30-32. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 249 succession.* But there was none apparently in the duties which it was the province of the High Priest to perform. He was "to offer upon Jehovah's altar, to bum incense, to wear an ephod before him."t And those duties, as in the case of Eleazar and Phinehas,J appear to have included the asking judgment by Urim ; for we find Abiah twice performing this function, once for Saul and once for David. § The silence of this oracle is also mentioned in 1 Sam. 28. 6 as a sign of God's displeasure against Saul. After the massacre of the priests David frequently enquires of Jehovah, from which we are apparently justified in inferring that Abiathar had brought the Ephod with him. These passages in the history are certainly written in the belief that the regulations in the Pentateuch are part of the Divine Law. For they assume their existence as a matter of course. We find those regulations in Exod. 28, 39; and Lev. 8. 6-1 2. || These passages contain a reference to the Ephod, and the Urim and Thummim, by which, as we have already seen, the inquiry from Jehovah was to be made.lf But * Eli, we find from 1 Chron. 24. 3, was of the line of Ithamar. See Josephus, Ant. f. 8. t Ch. ii. 28. X Num. 27. 21 ; Judg. 20. 27. § If, that is, as has generaUy been supposed, Ahiah and Abimelech are the same person. See 14. 3, 18, 37 ; 22. 9. Here we should note that the narrative makes no direct mention of David having enquired of Jehovsih. We leam it incidentally from Saul's accusation and Ahimelech's reply. Thus we cannot always infer from the silence of a historian that he " knows nothing " of the fact of which he does not speak. The statement that the Ark of God was with the camp at that time (ch. 14. 18) is probably due to a corruption of the text. The LXX. reads " ephod " for " Ark of Jehovah," and the last two words of the verse in the Hebrew are obviously corrupt. The LXX. reads iJSiP for ''J31. The whole confusion probably originated in a copyist's substitution of JIIK forTlSX. U Some critics have supposed the regulations in Exod. 35 — 40 to be another and, to a certain extent, an independent version of those in chaps. 26 — 31. It is, of course, quite possible that such duplicate copies of the Law might exist, and might vary from one another on minute points of detail. But the existence of such variations, if de monstrated, points to a considerably higher antiquity for the regulations they contain than the period subsequent to the Exile. 1 For incidental references to the High Priest, see Lev. 21. 10 ; Num. 35. 25, 28. It seems highly improbable that the institution of Cities of Eefuge could have been post-exilie. The history agrees remarkably with the provisions of the Law in regard to the High Priest. One of Aaron's descendants was to take his place (Exod. 29. 30 ; Num. 20. 28). But so far as we are told, any of Aaron's sons might do so. And thus the High Priest was sometimes of the line of Eleazar, and sometimes of Ithamar. It is remarkable that though the history does, the Chronicler apparently does not, know of any such, regulations. He speaks (1 Chron. 24. 3) of the High Priesthood 250 LEX MOSAICA. if these latter passages, as modem critics contend, are post- exilic, then the history with which we are dealing must have been considerably later still, for their contents are assumed as well known and established custom. But if so, how can Hosea quote it ? and when could it have been written ? The institution of the Levitieal cities, again, now declared to be post-exilic, seems to have been in existence, for Elkanah, who was apparently a Kohathite, dwelt in Mount Ephraim, where Josh. 21. 20 locates Kohath's descendants. The next thing that meets us is the existence of the Tabemacle, which Wellhausen tells us* was a fiction invented subsequently to the Exile. Once more the higher criticism must either be rejected, or we must relegate this narrative to a period a good deal later than the return from the Cap tivity, and must believe, in addition, that a good deal of it is mere fabricated legend. The term ^yr\ applied to the Taber nacle only in chaps. 1. 9 ; 3. 3, and perhaps in Ps. 5. 7, may, as Professor Kirkpatrick suggests, fix the date of this book to a period subsequent to the consecration of Solomon's Temple. At least it is, like other words and phrases we have discussed above, a sign of independent authorship, as is the fact that our author does not use the term pE'ti, though in ch. 2. 22, he speaks of the lyiib yPlN-t There is a slight undesigned coincidence in the mention of the post, or rather door post, on as being divided between the two houses, as it undoubtedly was in the reign of David ; for what reason we know not. Some have supposed that Zadok acted for Saul after the flight of Abiathar, and that David's policy, at least until the Temple was biult, was to set the two on a level, and to have two centres of worship, one at Gibeon, and the other at Jerusalem, one before the Tabemacle, and the other before the Ark. ¦" Hist. Israel, p. 9. t This phrase occurs a great number of times in the Pentateuch, twice in Joshua, once each in Samuel and Kings, seven times in Chronicles, and nowhere else, though there is an aUusion to it in Isa. 14. 13. On the supposition that the Tabernacle was superseded in the days of Solomon, this is just what we should have expected. The evidence, therefore, points tp the priority of the Pentateuch as it stands. Cf. Isa. 14. 13 with Ps. 48. 3 (Heb.), and this evidence wiU be found to be considerably strengthened. Isaiah indicates by his language the continuity of the Jewish dispensa tion. Gesenius appears very wide of the mark here. He has overlooked the reference to Ps. 48, where the phrase |1QV *n3n* is appUed distinctly to Mount Zion. Isaiah is obviously referring to the boast of the Assyrian monarch in ch. 37. I cannot, with Isa. 48 before me, accept the view that }1DX ^flDT has no reference to Jeru salem, especiaUy when Isaiah calls it ni?1D in. There is no reason why the term in question should not refer to the situation of Jerusalem as viewed from the Kedron VaUey, and that of the sons of Hinnom. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 251 which Eli sat, which indicates that the Tabemacle had been some time at Shiloh, and had been surrounded with buildings to facilitate the due discharge of the duties ordered to be performed there.* The next point which meets us is the offering by Elkanah of a vow at the tabemacle as ordered in Lev. 7. 16. t And that " the bullock," as the original calls it in ch. 1. 25, showing that it was the recognized offering, is prescribed by the Law we find in Num. 15. S.J In fact the whole ritual of Num. 15. 8-10 is scrapulously, followed here by Elkanah. Thus that ritual, though assigned by the critics to P, was known in all its details to the writer of this book, and was in all probability duly observed when Samuel was brought into the temple. The historian is telling a simple tale in a simple manner. There is not the slightest reason to suppose that he would have gone out of his way to introduce ritual details out of his own head. The next evidence we have of the religious customs in ex istence among the Jews in the days of Eli meets us in ch. 2. 13, in the relation of the misconduct of his sons. They " knew not the Lord," we are told. In other words, they did not recognize the directions given by Jehovah's Divine authority for His public worship. The directions in the Book of Leviticus are that the offering should be duly made by the priest accord ing to the prescribed ritual, and that in cases where, as in the peace offering, part of that ritual consisted in the eating the flesh of the victim, the breast and the shoulder (Lev. 7. 31, 32) were to be given to the priest. We are expressly told that it was direct disobedience to these Divine commands, as well as the rapacity which dictated this disobedience, which brought Jehovah's judgment upon these disobedient priests. Before the fat was bumed, a 'rite which we find prescribed in Lev. 3. 3-5, as well as 7. 31, the priest's servant came and took, not merely that which belonged to the priest by right, but as * I am glad to find that Professor Green has., anticipated me here, £is in several other places where we have arrived independently at the same conclusions. See Moses and the Prophets, pp. 90, 91. t See also Lev. 19. 6-8 ; Deut. 12. 17, 18 ; and 16. 11. X Professor Kirkpatrick conjectures that the other two bullocks may have been intended for a burnt offering and a peace offering, which again suggests an acquaint ance on Elkanah's part with Num. 15. 8. The LXX. here represents one bullock as the yearly sacrifice. / 252 LEX MOSAICA. much more as he could obtain by force.* We are told that Le viticus is partly a post-exilic codification of the pre-existing usage, and partly consists of regulations altogether new. But, unless the whole history of Eli and his sons is a roriiance, we here find this usage in existence at or before the time of the birth of Samuel. Thus, if we are to believe the plain state ments in this book, at whatever time the ritual use of Israel was codified, that use, in all its main features, must have been very ancient indeed. Not merely the directions concerning sacrifice, but presumably concerning the place where that sa crifice was to be offered, in other words, concerning the One Sanctuary, were in existence, if this history is to be trusted, at least seven hundred years before the so-called Priestly Code was drawn up. Moreover the phrase used for the women who assembled at the door of the Tabemacle of the congregation, with whom Hophni and Phinehas misconducted themselves, is taken from the supposed post-exilic regulations in Exod. 38. 8. It is quite impossible that a post-exilic writer such as the author of the Priestly Code is assumed to have been would have taken a word which had such scandalous associa tions connected with it in order to denote the office of devout women, engaged in the service of the Tabemacle, as we leam from the use of the same word to designate the work of the Levites in Num. 4. 23 ; 8. 24, 25, though, if it were the weU- known phrase for such service, as indicated in the verses just quoted, its employment in the history is just what might have been expected. Of course it may be contended that such phrases as these are but the later " setting " of the narrative. Yet the. artless way in which they are introduced point rather to their being genuiiie history than to their being an imagina tive invention of details in order to give life to the picture. And some of them, e.g. the nature of the sins committed by Hophni and Phinehas, must of necessity be parts of the narra tive itself, if it have any pretence whatever to be considered historical. Our next point is the statement that Samuel "minis tered as a child before Jehovah, girded with a linen ephod." * Once more I have taken independently exactly the same view as Professor Green {Moses and the Prophets, p. 93). THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL, 253 WeUhausen objects to this that the ephod and me'il, or little coat, which Samuel's mother made for him are priestly vestments.* The objection throws some light on the trust worthiness of Wellhausen as an authority. Not only would such a method of criticism compel us to reject as un historical every account in our English newspapers which represents choir-boys as vested in surplice and cassock, but Wellhausen has apparently omitted the very elementary — and, one would think, necessary — ^precaution of consulting a Hebrew Lexicon before making this statement. The very moderate amount of erudition involved in such reference would have saved him from a very palpable blunder. David, on the memorable occasion of the religious ceremony which took place when the Ark of God was restored to its proper place in the Tabernacle, was "girded with a linen ephod" (2 Sam. 6. 14).t And the m^e'il, as Professor Kirkpatrick — ^no very recondite authority — teUs us in his Commentary, was '' worn by kings (1 Chr. 1 5. 27), prophets (1 Sam. 15. 27), men of position (Job 2. 12), women of rank (2 Sam. 13. 18)." We find it also used of Jonathan's dress (1 Sam. 18. 4). If any supporter of the traditional theory had stumbled into such an error, it would have been repre- seuted as fatal to his reputation as a critic. Yet the critical conclusions in regard to the authenticity of ancient docu ments of the highest importance are, to a very great extent, based on the authority of a writer who takes no more care to verify his statements than WeUhausen has done in the present instance.! "¦ Hist. Israel, p. 43. t The ephod which Samuel, David, and the Levites wore was of white linen. The ephod of the High Priest was of costly and elaborate material. See Exod. 28. 6. Kuenen (Seligion of Igrael, p. 97) admits that there was a special ephod, though he wiU not admit that only the High Priest wore it. X The Speaker's Commentary suggests that this mention of the ephod and me'il, when " taken in connection with his after acts, seenis to point to an extraordinary and irregular priesthood to which he was called by God, in an age when the provisions of the Levitieal Law were not yet in full operation." There seems no reason to suppose from the narrative that during the life of Eli the provisions of the Law were not in fuU operation. So far as we are told, the Law was fully carried out untU the death of EU and his two sons. It was then, apparently, that Samuel stepped in, under Divine guidance, to keep up the Divine worship while the Law was of necessity in abeyance. 254 LEX MOSAICA. The mission of the man of God to Eli, with which the second chapter closes, further emphasizes the witness we have to the existence and observance of the Mosaic institutions, as well as to the history in which, as a framework, the Mosaic Law is set. Eli's forefathers were " in Egypt, in Pharaoh's house," a fact recorded in Exod. 2. God "plainly appeared" (Heb. "plainly revealed himself") to one of his family, as we leam in Exod. 3. And one of his forefathers was chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, whose special functions were : (1) to be God's priest ; (2) to offer on His altar ; (3) to bum incense ; (4) to wear an ephod in the special presence of Jehovah. AU these facts are found, as we have seen, in the Pentateuch,* and unless again this speech is a pure invention or has at least been re- written at a far later period, they were known to the speaker. Moreover, all the offerings made by fire are ordered to be given to the priest, f We further leam that these sacrifices and these offerings were prescribed by Divine command.:]: The above-mentioned details are by no means the only ones which support the view that the regulations of the Law were in existence in their present shape in the days of Eli. The "nJ (lamp or candlestick) commanded in Exod. 27. 20 to be kept burning continually was in the S^Tl (A. V., Temple), though here it is simply said that it had not gone out. But we find from Exod. 27. 21 that it was to be kept burning "from evening till morning." Thus there is the clearest proof that the writer of this narrative was acquainted with this provision as it stands in Exod. 27.§ The light was lighted in the evening, and put out, or aUowed to go out, in the * See above, p. 249. t Lev. 10. 12-16. i Ch. 2. 29. § Professor Driver teUs us {Introd., p. 34) that Exod. 25—31. 18a "form P's account of the instructions given to Moses respecting the Tabernacle and the priesthood." It is a question, he adds, whether "the whole of this group of chapters" does not "belong to the original legislation of P." Some of them have been held to " form part of a secondary and posterior stratum of P, representing a later phase of ceremonial usage" [the italics throughout are mine]. At what period, then, subsequent to the !Exile was the narra,tive in these chapters written? The reader must keep in mind the fact that the "Priestly Code," or "P," con sists, on the critical theory, largely of regulations first promulgated after the Exile. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 255 morning.* And we may further observe that there is no attempt to caU attention to the fulfilment of the precept, as would certainly have been the case had the writer been con cerned in an attempt to introduce and enforce new ceremonies. Nor has it the appearance of a fictitious detail introduced by the author to add life to his narrative. He simply takes the existence of the regulation in question for granted as a matter of established routine, and his language just as certainly proves the regulation to have been the established custom of his day, as the words, "The priest then went back to the altar, and began the Offertory Sentences," would prove the existence at least of that particular part of the Communion Office of the Church of England in its present form in our own day.f In ch. 3. 14, we find the technical word — as technical as the word " absolution " in the Christian Church — for the re mission of sins. The idea of covering in connection with sin — i.e., of hiding it, putting it out of sight — is a remark able feature of the Mosaic Law, one which differentiates it, so to speak, from the conceptions of the pardon of sin enter tained by other peoples. Is it more probable that this marked * Professor Driver admits {Introd., p. 136) that the " lamp of God " is mentioned here, but asserts that there is no proof that the institutions in question "were observed with the precise formalities prescribed in P." [the italics are his]. Mathematical proof, of course, there is not. But it is quite certain that historians and chroniclers seldom stop to detail such formalities. Thus I read in the Guardian of May 2, 1894, how "the annual service and meeting in con nection with the Mackenzie Memorial Mission to Zululand " were held in St. John's, Westminster. "Celebrations of Holy Communion," we learn, were held, and the preacher at the " choral celebration '' is mentioned. But the chronicler does not state whether "the precise formalities prescribed" in the Prayer Book were used. It is true that a historian would not be justified in contending, from these notices alone, that our present Prayer Book was now in use. But at least we learn that histo rians are not in the habit of going out of their way to mention details with which every one is familiar, and that the absence of such details is no evidence that the regulations did not exist at the time referred to. If in the 21st century our pre sent Prayer Book should be found in use, and if there was no direct evidence what ever that it had undergone a revision, a historian would be justified in assuming, in spite of any want of precise information in our accounts, that it is the regu lations of our present Prayer Book to which the narratives he uses refer. In the particular case mentioned in the text, however, there is evidence not only of the "institution in question," but of some of the "precise formalities prescribed" in connection with it. t The usual word for the lamp is mi3D. But the term IJ is frequently used, though usuaUy in the plural, to denote the lights of the lamp or candelabrum, as in Exod. 30. 7, 8 ; Lev. 24. 2, 4 ; etc., etc. 256 LEX MOSAICA. peculiarity of Israelite teaching concerning sin should have been extracted from occasional hints in the history (if, indeed, there were at the Exile any histoty as yet from which to take hints), or that it was imposed on Israel at the first by a master hand, and that its traces meet us from time to time in phrases bear ing witness to the religious conceptions of the people ? * In ch. 4. 4, regarded by Professor Driver as belonging to the earlier portion of the narrative, we have an allusion to God as " dweUing between the cherubim," in obvious refer ence to the passage in Exod. 25. 22, where God is repre sented as promising to meet Moses there. Similar allusions are to be found elsewhere.! But wherever they occur, they prove both the history and special regulations contained in the Pentateuch to have been well known to the writer. For it is scarcely probable that these wordp would have been interpolated into the history at a later date. The higher critics themselves, as a rule, look with a very unfavourable eye upon the theory of interpolation when it is used to mam- tain the antiquity of the Books of Scripture. J And it is scarcely reasonable or logical to make use of a theory when it servers your tum, and to discard it when it fails to do so. Criticism, to be scientific, must be consistent. But if the men tion of God as being throned above the cherubim be not an interpolation, then it assumes the existence, and in aU pro bability the antiquity, of the regulations in Exod. 25. Yet we are told that the regulations in Exod. 25 are of post-exUic origin. Either the critics are mistaken here, or they are mis taken when they regard these chapters of Samuel as among the earliest portions of the narrative. In either case the critical theory is at least proved not to be infallible. The consideration of the conduct of Hophni and Phinehas in bringing the Ark of God into the camp is very pregnant * It is further remarkable that the word translated " cover " does not occur in Genesis of God's, but only of man's anger (Gen. 30, 2 ; 39. 19). t E.g., in 2 Sam. 6. 2 ; Pss. 80. 1 ; 90. 1. With Exod. 26. 22 compare 29. 42, 43; 30. 6, 36 ; Num. 17. 4 (aU part of the " Priestly Code "). Also, Lev. 16. 2, where the Shechinah is spoken of as appearing " upon the mercy-seat." J " In the absence of such proof [that Moses wrote the whole Pentateuch] no one has a right to caU a passage the insertion of an editor without internal evi dence that it is in a different style, or breaks the context."— Robertson Smith, 0. T. in the Jewish Church, p. 325. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 257 with instruction as to the relation between the, spirit and the letter in the early history of Israel. Ewald has pointed out the "remarkable unwiUingness " on the part of Israel to make the dwelling-place of the Tabernacle the place of meeting of the tribes.* Phinehas, it is true, brought the Tabernacle to Bethel (not the "house of God," as in our version) in order that it might be the more easily consulted by Israel in the difficult and delicate task of dealing with the tribe of Benjamin, when giving its open support to some of its members who had been concerned in an outrage of more than usual atrocity. | But he did not take it into the battle. At other times the ecclesiastical and civil govern ment of the land were carefully kept apart, according to the principles laid down in the Pentateuch. Nothing could more clearly show that the spiritual view of the Mosaic Law, so far from being discovered by the prophets, was a principle clearly recognized from the very first. The religion of Israel was to sanctify the daily life of the nation, as well as the individual, not to be a thing apart from it. Yet though the religious and civil life of the community were to go on side by side, the one was not to be confounded with the other. Jehovah, properly worshipped according to the for mularies which He had commanded, was to be spiritually, not locaUy, present with His people in all their ways. It was not the presence of the appointed symbol of the Divine Presence in the camp that would secure victory to the Israelitish arms, but only obedience to the Divine decrees. Therefore, when Hophni and Phinehas, like other irreligious and unspiritual men, conceived of that- sacred Presence as a mere local, in stead of a spiritual, Presence, the displeasure of Jehovah was most signally manifested, f And perhaps in the long sojoum of the Ark in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite, in the judgments inflicted on the men of Bethshemesh, on Uzzah, and on others who presumed to infringe the reverence due ¦* Hist. Israel, iii. 413. t Judg. 20. 26, 27. t The Divine Presence was, as Professor Green points out, regarded as having forsaken the Tabernacle at Shiloh, and he quotes Ps. 78. 56-61 [" He forsook the Tabemacle in Shiloh"] and Jer. 7. 12 in support of his contention. — Moses and the Prophets, pp. 139, 140. S 1063. E 258 LEX MOSAICA. to the. Divine Majesty, we may discern a purpose, namely, to impress upon Israel, in the strongest possible manner, that it were useless to worship Jehovah except in the spirit of obe dience which the whole Mosaic Law so emphatically breathes. What better proof could we have that the doctrine contained in the words, " Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams," was no after-thought of the prophetic age, but a principle handed down from the begin ning, acted on consistently on all occasions by Moses, and vindicated repeatedly, in the most signal and awful manner, by Jehovah Himself. In the history of the restoration of the Ark to Israel we once more find traces of the letter of the Mosaic Law, just as in the history of its capture by the Philistines we learn much of the necessity of being actuated by its spirit. The Levites had already the care of the Ark entrusted to them. The kine behind which it was harnessed found their way to Bethshemesh, a Levitieal city. Although the insti tution of the Levitieal cities is so incontrovertibly post- exilic, we find Levites on the spot in the days of Samuel; and we, moreover, find them prompt to execute a charge which, if we are to believe the critics, they did not receive for centuries after. Our critical friends have been sorely exercised over this passage. Wellhausen, however, with his usual irrepressible infallibility, is more than equal to the occasion. "There is not," he informs us, "a word of truth" in the whole history. It is a "gloss" of a later editor.* And he proceeds to dissect the narrative in his usual airy fashion, showing most conclusively how ridiculous it is to suppose that after the cart was burnt, the Ark was taken out of it and put on the stone where the offerings had just been made. It is, of course, a sad pity that the author of 1 Samuel had the misfortune to live in days before the critic was abroad, and revelling in the exercise of his func tions. Being a simple man, living in a simple age, he tells his story in a very simple way, and so does not observe strict chronological order in his narrative. In one way, how ever, he is less simple than his critics. He takes for granted * Hist. Israel, p. 128. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 259 that they wUl understand that he had just wit enough, if no more, to avoid writing down sheer nonsense. There is no man outside a lunatic asylum who would be capable of making so ridiculous a statement as Wellhausen affects to beUeve the writer of 1 Samuel has made in these pages; and even if there were, it would be somewhat surprising to find' a nation of presumably rational beings including such a work among their sacred writings. One thing, however, he does not say which Wellhausen has attributed to him. He never says that the sacrifices were offered on the "great stone" which he mentions. That is a mistake on the part of the judicious critic. And here most of our English critics wisely decline to follow him. For there is nothing unreason able nor uncritical in the belief that the author is relating plain Uteral fact, and that when they saw the Ark the in habitants of the Levitieal city at once proceeded to exercise the functions which we are told were entrusted to them in Num. 3. 5-10.* The different classes of offerings mentioned in Lev. 1, 3, again, appear to have been perfectly well known to the writer of this book,' for he not only mentions them in ch. 10. 8, but in ch. 13. 9 he appears to think that they are equaUy well known to his readers, f The prohibition of eating the blood in Lev. 17. 10-14 was also known to the author,J though Saul's impulsive resolution to execute the Divine sentence himself was, and was felt by the Israelites to be, going far beyond the letter of the Law.§ Then we have the mention of the festival of the new moon * Cf. 8. 15, 19, 24, 26 ; 18. 3-6. t In the original the words are " the burnt-offering and the peace-offering.'' X But as this prohibition is found in Gen. 9. 4, which is not supposed to be post-exilic, it may have been among the " pre-existing usages." § Professor Robertson Smith {Old Testament in the Jewish Church, p. 345) has a singular way of dealing with this and other arguments which have been adduced in favour of the existence of the Mosaic Law in the days of Samuel. He claims to have established, on other grounds, the fact that the Levitieal Law did not exist, and then appeals to these passages to show what law (or Torah) was in existence. But (1) no investigation is complete which does not first of all enquire, fully and fairly, what traces of the existence of the Levitieal Law we have in the histories ; (2) some laws are mentioned as in existence which the critics afiBrm to be part of the post-exilic legislation ; and (3) many of the critics have themselves treated the subject differently by asserting that the allu sions to laws which they have declared to be post-exilic are of a still later date. E 2 260 LEX MOSAICA. (ch. 20. 5 ; cf. Num. 10. 10 ; 28. 11-15 ; Amos 8. 5).* The law, again, which forbade persons ceremoniaUy unclean from taking part in a religious festival is mentioned in the narrative ae known to Saul, and tberefore a fortiori the precepts of the Law concerning ceremonial uncleanness itself, j Moreover we find in 1 Sam. 16. 5, the technical term " sanctify " used of the ceremonial purification in Exod. 19. 10-14,J thus indicating that this particular regulation was already in force. Nor is this all. We shall presently discuss the reasons which may have caused Samuel to usurp the functions of the High Priest. The fact that he did so seems, however, manifest. And so we find him (ch. 9. 23) possessed of the priest's portion, the leg or (as A. V.) "shoulder" (Lev. 7. 32, 34), and we find the servant, when setting it before Saul, repeating the ceremony which is prescribed in Exod. 29. 24-28 ; Lev. 7. 30-34, at the offer ing of the sacrifices, and is further mentioned in Lev. 9. 21 ; Num. 18. 26-32. § The institution of the shewbread, again, as described in the " Priestly Code " (Lev. 24. 5-9), is known to the High Priest and to David, and the regulations are obviously precisely the same as those in our present copies. There is not the slightest sign that they are introduced for a purpose, for the mention of them occurs quite naturaUy in the course of the narrative. Here, therefore, with its usual versatUity, the new criticism sees no trace of later in terpolation or re-fashioning, but asks us to discern a portion * Amos is regarded by the critics as having prophesied in the eighth cen tury B.C. f These regulations are found only in the "Priestly Code," save as regards the prohibition in Deuteronomy of the flesh of certain animals as food. But no ceremonial regulations are attached to these. X This passage is, however, regarded as pre-exilic. § All these passages are stated to have been written after the return from the Exile, and many of them to have originated at that time. It is worthy of remark that this allusion to the wave-shoulder or leg is found in the "earlier narrative." If this quotes regulations of post-exilic origin, at what time must we suppose the later narrative of Saul's appointment as king to have been written ? Lev. 7. ^2-34 seems to be quoted in the history, for both in Leviticus and in 1 Samuel we have the pitj*, or leg, eaUed the nJD, or portion. • And in Exod. 29 and Lev. 7 we find that the " waving " aud " heaving " were practicaUy the same thing. The breast was "waved," the leg "heaved" or raised up on high. Lev. 9. 21 is not so specific, and so, on the principles of the critical school, must be regarded as a different stratum of the Priestly Code. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 261 of the Torah which was, as that of the Priestly Code as certainly was not, in existence in early times. The process they ask us to follow may be put in an arithmetical form as follows : — From the number of passages in the history which mention any precepts of the Mosaic Law subtract those which, from a priori reasons, or on account of alleged diffi culties, have been asserted to be the insertions or inventions of a later author. The remainder will give you the Torah which was in existence in pre-Deuteronomic times. From this remainder further subtract those which give us precise information qf the details of the observances in question, and the result wiU give you such ordinances of this Torah as may safely be asserted to have existed in a different form from that in which they have been handed down to us in the Pentateuch. This may be excellent arithmetic, but it has no pretension whatever to be called history. The last provision of the Law to which we find allusion made in this narrative is to the prohibition of wizards and those who had familiar spirits, a prohibition which Saul carried out (ch. 28. 3, 9 : cf. Exod. 22. 18 ; Lev. 19. 31 ; 20. 27 ; Deut. 18. 11). The exact words of Lev. 19. 31 are quoted in the allusion made to it here. In Lev. 20. 27; Deut. 18. 11, the same words are used, but in the singular, not in the plural. We will now sum up the provisions of the Law which were in force at the time this narrative was written, and if it be authentic history they were already in existence in the time of Samuel. First of all the existence of the Tabemacle and its furniture, of which we read in Exod. 25 sqq. Next comes the High Priesthood (Exod. 28, 29; Lev. 8). Then the Urim and Thummim, which the High Priest was wont to use when enquiring of the Lord (Exod. 28. 30 ; Lev. 8. 8 ; Num. 27. 21). Then the sacrifices are specified, with the exception of the trespass and sin offerings (Lev. 1, 3). And if the trespass and sin offerings are not mentioned, the peculiar technical word for their effect is perfectly familiar to the writer.* Then aUusions are made to the special ritual (Lev. 3. 7-17) appointed for the peace offering, the * Above, p. 255. 262 LEX MOSAICA. infraction of which is spoken of as a grievous sin.* We need not insist on the fact that there was at least an attempt to keep one of the three appointed Feasts at the place where the Tabernacle was, for this, it must be admitted, was only a partial observance of what the Law had prescribed ; and, on the other hand, the antiquity of the rule itself is by no means universally questioned by the critics. The festival of the new moon (Num. 10. 10), the prohibition of eating blood (Lev. 17. 10-14), the law of ceremonial unclean ness and its disqualifications (Lev. 11 — 15), the shewbread, the condemnation of wizards and those who used familiar spirits (Lev. 19. 31), are all referred to in a narrative of a few short chapters, t On the ordinary principles of historical investigation the existence of the Mosaic Code, at the time when this book was composed, would be held to be demon strated. If any regulations of Mosaic origin on these points were in existence at the time when 1 Samuel was written, the onus probandi clearly falls on those who would assert that they were afterwards abrogated and their place filled by others. It is open, of course, to the critics to contend that the contents of the Israelite literature are so peculiar that it is absolutely necessary to invent new rules of historical investi gation for so remarkable a case. And this is, in reality,. precisely what has been done by a certain class of critics in dealing with so unique a phenomenon as supernatural religion, whether the history be that of Judaism or of Christianity. But though they have actually taken this course, they have vehemently insisted that they have done nothing of the kind. They boldly assert that theirs are the ordinary methods which historians are accustomed to adopt. They have, however, never as yet supported this assertion by producing any historical or literary documents, beside the Hebrew Scriptures, which have been so largely re-constructed on purely critical grounds, nor * It is difficult to understand, if the provisions of the Mosaic Law were not as yet in existence, (1) what was the precise sin of Hophni and Phinehas — sup posing them to have existed and to have committed any. sin — ^which called for so severe a punishment, and (2) if they were fabulous characters, what could have induced a historian who desired to recommend the regulations which had lately been introduced to represent the priests themselves as having so grossly violated those regulations ? t This contribution, it must be remembered, confines itself to the history of Samuel and Saul. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 263 any instance where such attempts at conjectural re-construction of history have met with any wide acceptance by competent historical scholars.* A choice of difficulties is open to them. They can either assert, with the more consistent members of the German school whose results they have adopted, that the history as it stands is so wildly impossible of itself, so full of absurdities, inconsistencies, and contradictions, f that it must be regarded as a fabulous composition which ultimately took shape in an age long subsequent to the period it professes to describe; or they must admit that they have given their sanction to the deliberate invention of altogether new canons of historical investigation by men whose original object was to escape from the necessity of accepting histories which presuppose the miraculous. The last difficulty which confronts us in the history is the apparent neglect by Samuel of the regulations of the Penta teuch in its present shape, which confine the priestly functions entirely to the sons of Aaron. That Samuel fulfilled all the priestly functions is a fact which can hardly be denied. And this was a distinct breach of the provisions of the Mosaic Law, whether Samuel were or were not a descendant of Levi. But that " necessity hath no law '' is a practical principle universally admitted and acted upon. When the ordinary law is for any "¦ "We cannot treat it [Holy Scripture] like any other book, even if it were susceptible of such treatment ; but it is like none other, and indeed it is the fact that it is like no other which has led critics to apply to it methods of arbitrary, wanton, and conjectural criticism, which applied to Greek or Eoman, or even Anglo-Saxon literature would be laughed out of court." — Bishop Stubbs' Charge, p. 11. It should be remembered that the Bishop of Oxford is the highest living authority among us on historical criticism. The writer of this essay may be aUowed to notice the coincidence that he has quite independently used the same phrase as the Bishop in this connection in his Principles of Biblical Criticism, p. 215. t This is a statement which, e.g., WeUhausen repeats in every variety of form, and his brother German critics wiU not be found to be much behind him. In so doing, Wellhausen, it is true, contends that he is only foUowing the ordinary methods in use among historians. Every one knows that the portents and miracles with which early secular history Is full are not accepted by historians. But neither, on the other hand, is their occurrence held to justify the wholesale rejection of the history in which they are found. We do not, e.g., deny the historical character of Livy's narrative on the ground of the prodigies with which he so plentifully bestrews it. Neither do we regard the Battle of Brunanburh as a myth because of the legendary details which the early chroniclers have interwoven vdth it. If we did, the study of early history would simply be a waste of time. 264 LEX MOSAICA. reason in abeyance, extraordinary measures must be adopted to supply its place. Thus, when in times of revolution a king abandons his people, a provisional government, though irregularly appointed, has constantly, with the general consent, occupied his place until the time has arrived to supply it in due form. For instance, when James II. left the English throne vacant, and threw the Great Seal into the Thames, there was a short period of terrible confusion, and then King William, with out the slightest legal authority, undertook the necessaty duty of preserving order. Twice in the history of this country, when there was no responsible government, a Convention took the place of the Parliament, and its acts, though absolutely unauthorized by law, were afterwards recognized as legal. So in ecclesiastical matters. Bills have before now been passed by Parliament to legalize marriages celebrated by persons not in Holy Orders, when the parties thus illegally married had every reason to believe that the person officiating was lawfully ordained ; nor has the Church required such marriages to be repeated. Lay baptism, and even baptism by women, is regarded by a vast majority of authorities as valid in cases of necessity, and the re-baptization of heretics and schismatics is not considered necessary if there be reason to suppose that the proper form has been, observed. Some ancient authorities have contended that in cases of necessity a layman might even take upon himself the administration of Holy Communion. St. Cyprian, again, though protesting against the ordination of Felicissimus by presbyters as altogether irregular, did not think it advisable under the circumstances to re-ordain him. Apply this principle to the position in which Samuel found himself. The High Priest Ahitub, brother of Ichabod, was almost certainly a minor.* The Tabemacle was robbed of its special sanctity by the absence of the Ark. The Ark, though sacred, could hardly be the centre of religious worship apart from the Tabemacle. Under circumstances like these it was in no way surprising if Samuel, who, we are given to understand, was everywhere recognized as having a Divine and prophetic mission, should * We know nothing of the line of Eleazar between Phinehas and Zadok beyond their names. But they must in some way have become disqualified for the sacred office. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 265 undertake the functions of the priesthood during what we may caU the interregnum, and that having once undertaken them, he should continue to fulfil them until his retire ment from pubUc Ufe.* But after Samuel had resigned his position we find the High Priest Ahiah (or Abimelech) resuming his, and enquiring of the Lord and offering sacrifice. As to the locality where Samuel offered sacrifice, we may observe that by sacrificing at a high place he com mitted no direct breach of the Law. The worship of the high places was never condemned on the ground of intrinsic impropriety, but simply when carried on in contravention of the law which enjoined the One Sanctuary. Thus we find worship at a high place carried on under Solomon at Gibeon. This fact has frequently been brought forward as an argument to prove that the law of the One Sanctuary was unknown in his day. But the argument is by no means so conclusive as has been supposed. When David brought the Ark up to Jerusalem we are not told that it was placed in the Tabemacle, but (2 Sam. 6. 17 : cf. 1 Chron. 15. 1 ; 2 Chron. 1.4) in the tabemacle which David had pitched for it. If the Chronicler tells us that the Tabernacle which Moses tke servant of the Lord had made was at that time at Gibeon f (2 Chron. 1. 3), we are certainly not entitled to set his statement contemptuously aside as an invention, for it explains the remark in 1 Kings 3. 4 that " the great high place " in Solomon's days, before the dedi cation of the Temple, was at Gibeon. Moreover, the custom of worshipping in other high places is declared by the writer of 1 Kings (ch. 3. 2) to have grown up while the Tabernacle worship was still of necessity in abeyance. J * It was this Divine mission, as we have seen above (p. 242), wtich causes Samuel to be placed by prophet and psalmist on a level with Moses. t We may observe that this statement is corroborated in the most undesigned manner by 1 Chron. 16. 39 ; 21. 29. How it got there we know not, but probably the Philistine invasions may have been the cause. It was apparently at Nob in 1 Sam. 21. 22. It may have been removed to Gibeon, a strong place, for security's sake. X His words, it is true, are that there was worship at the high places, because the Temple was not yet built. But all we are entitled to conclude from that statement, taken in connection with the rest of the history, is that the Tabernacle worship had fallen into desuetude. See p. 267. 266 LEX MOSAICA. We shall be charged with having made use of the dis credited Book of Chronicles in what has been said. We reply that we are fully justified in doing so. Whether Chronicles be or be not a Book of equal authority with the Books of Samuel and Kings, its wholesale rejection is not only a violent measure in itself, but it deprives us of many valuable side lights on the history contained in the earlier writings of the Old Testament. Moreover it is a question whether on the grounds supposed to have been established by the critics them selves, it is not really more authoritative than the earlier books. For, however little consistent it may be with the conclusions of the critics, yet it is at least, on the whole, consistent with itself. It is not charged, as 1 Samuel is, with deliberately incor porating two or more contradictory narratives into one his tory, although it is charged with the far more serious offence of containing matter which is at variance with conclusions inexorably established on the ordinary principles of literary and historical research. Were it not for this last misfortune no reasonable historian would refuse to' attach considerable importance to its statements. It may be necessary to take them cum grano salis, just as the historian of Anglo-Saxon England makes allowance for the bias of the monastic chronicles of the age of Dunstan in favour of Edgar and against Edwy. But we are no more justified in rejecting such ancient documents en bloc, on account of real or supposed inaccuracies or pre judices, than Mr. Motley would have been in rejecting Dutch or Spanish, Protestant or Romish authorities in his history of the Netherlands. We may further observe, in regard to the worship offered by Samuel in high places, that it is nowhere forbidden in the Pentateuch. The Israelites are commanded to pluck down the high places {Bamoth) of the heathen, but they are nowhere forbidden to worship in high places of their own. Therefore, worship at the high places was forbidden, not because it was in itself undesirable, still less impious, but simply and solely because it conflicted with the injunction to worship only at the place which Jehovah had chosen. When that worship became for any reason impossible, the worship at high places became reasonable and proper. Thus the same reason which compelled Samuel to usurp the functions of THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 267 the High Pripst,, justified him in offering worship in a high place. As we have already stated, we leam, not on the authority of the Chronicler, but on that of the author of 1 Kings 3. 2, that the reason why the Israelites worshipped at the high places was "because there was no house buUt unto the name of the Lord." Writing after the dedication of the Temple, when the original worship of the Tabernacle had become a thing of the past, he naturally attaches little importance to it. But the true explanation of the fact that we hear nothing of the sin of worshipping in high places until after the dedication of the Temple is not that the worship at the One Sanctuary was unknown, but because no other worship of Jehovah had ever been dreamed of, at least until the capture of the Ark by the Philistines. When the Jews sinned during the era of the Judges, it was not by worshipping Jehovah at the wrong place, it was by the worship of other gods beside Him. Until the Ark was taken by the Philistines, and the Tabemacle was thus robbed of the special symbol of the Divine Presence, no one ever thought of worshipping Jehovah except in the place where, and with the rites wherewith. He had prescribed that He should be worshipped. It was only when it ceased to be possible to worship Him in His Tabemacle after the prescribed form that the custom of worshipping in the high places spread among the Israelites. And, once introduced, it became impossi ble to eradicate it.* No doubt another explanation has been given. On the critical theory it is contended that we hear nothing in the earlier days of the sin of worship in high places because there was as yet no central sanctuary. But on the hypothesis that Joshua and Judges have been worked over according to the views of the Deuteronomists, the doctrine of the One Sanctuary must infallibly have been introduced into their narratives, and with it we should of course have been told of the sin of the IsraeUtes in the setting up of an alternative worship, such as is so severely stigma tized in the Books of Kings. The absence of aU such aUusions in Judges, tberefore, tends to show that the book * Precisely as various Christian denominations came into existence after the Eeformation, in spite of the earnest exhortations to unity, and warnings agaiust disunion, in the Christian Scriptures. 268 LEX MOSAICA. has not been subjected to a. Deuteronomic revision, for it makes no mention of the special sin which the Deuter onomist, on the critical theory, was the first to invent, and which, for that reason, he would naturally on all occasions be inclined to magnify. The worship of the high places was thus the direct result of the miserable superstition of Hophni and Phinehas in bringing the Ark of God from the Taber nacle to the camp. Its capture, and the subsequent failure to restore it to its proper place gave rise to this worship, and when the Ark was finally placed in the Temple* this irregular form of Israelitish cult had obtained too strong a hold upon the people to be put down. It was the harder to extirpate because it was not idolatrous, but schismatic. It was not a worship of Baalim and Ashtaroth, but an unauthorised and unsatisfactory worship of Jehovah himself. This is the view taken of it throughout, not by the Chronicler only, but by the author of the Book of Kings. And the more care fully and impartially we examine this view, the more we see that it is the only one which, on any intelligent and consistent treatment of the information before us, can be maintained. We cannot, of course, deny that the speeches which are recorded in the book we have been considering, and from which some of our arguments have been drawn, may have been put into the mouth of the prophet by the writer of the narrative, in the same way as speeches are composed by Thucydides or Livy for the characters introduced in their histories. The same may be said, and is said, concerning many of the details mentioned in the history. But except we resort to the theory of interpolation, it is clear that at whatever time this history was composed, by far the greater part of the regulations of the Book of Leviticus, including the wor ship at the One Sanctuary, were already in existence; and, whether codified at that time in the order in which we at present have them or not, were certainly part of the " pre-existing usage " which we are asked to beUeve was finaUy arranged subsequent to the return from the Cap tivity. We do not, as is sometimes supposed, argue that it * See 1 Kings 8. 1-11 ; 2 Chron. 6. 2-14. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 269 is essentially dangerous and heretical to hold that the ancient legal formularies of Israel may have been re-edited and re arranged at some period subsequent to the ExUe. All we say is, that there is sufficient evidence to support the belief that they were not materially altered or added to at that period. Whatever the particular order in which they were finaUy handed down to posterity, we contend that they were in all their main features the same as they had ever been. But if it be so, cadit qucestio, as far as the "historical criticism," which, when added to "literary," has established, in WeUhausen's opinion, the theory that the Priestly Code is subsequent to the rest of th^ Pentateuch. For this his torical criticism rests entirely on the supposed fact that we have no evidence in the history of the existence or observance of the Law in its present shape. But if we have such evi dence, then the theory of WeUhausen and his followers falls to the ground. As to the only way in which this theory can obtain the slightest support from argument, namely, by striking out all passages in which reference is made to the Law and asserting them to be of later date, we may remark that this mode of demonstration has been felicitously described by Wellhausen himself as " hoisting oneself into the air by one's own waistband." Not only, under this hypo thesis, is a good deal of "setting," as it is called, found to be necessary, so that there is in fact almost more " setting " than genuine history, but there is no ground whatever, linguistic qr otherwise, why we should regard these passages as " setting," except that they conflict with the theory. And so the theory is its own support, and we are required to accept it on no authority but itself. It is true that the whole history may be assigned to a later date than that assigned to the Priestly Code. But not only is this hypo thesis another instance of supporting theory by theory, but it is beset, as we shall presently see, by special difficulties of its own.* And further, what becomes, on this last hypo thesis, of the argument from the silence of the history which is supposed to have established the post-exilic origin of the Priestly Code ? It disappears altogether, and Leviticus and * See pp. 271, 272. 270 LEX MOSAICA. the rest of the Priestly Code are replaced in the position tradition has consistently assigned them, of priority to the historical Scriptures. Thus the less support we find for the assertion of the non-observance — at least, up to the time of Josiah — of what was formerly believed to be the Mosaic Law, the weaker becomes the argument for a later editing. It is weakened, in fact, to such an extent, that those I'who have maintained it will hardly care to insist upon it. The date of the Pentateuch becomes no longer a question of history ; it is a mere matter of textual criticism. And though there are, no doubt, strong linguistic arguments against the post- exilic date of any part of the Pentateuch, it is scarcely worth while to press them. If the whole of the Pentateuch had been recast, and modernized, and rearranged after the Exile it would be a matter of no practical moment to us, just as the modernization of the spelling in the Authorised Version, or in the Prayer-Book, is a matter of no practical moment. It is only a question of purely academic interest, so long as the historic character of its contents is admitted. It is neces sary to insist upon this point, because either by adroit mys tification, or by confusion of thought, two perfectly distinct questions have been mixed up by many who have defended the higher criticism — the question of editorship, order, and arrange ment, and that of substantial historical accuracy. The first is, of course, a question for Hebrew scholars and critics. The second is one on which any reasonable man is competent to form an opinion.* Any theory of authorship which denies the historical accuracy of the narrative as it stands must at least submit to be examined by historical as weU as by Hebrew experts. It is only when the history is thus carefully examined in detaU that we can in any degree realize on what a vast amount of pure assumption the so-called critical theory of the date and composition of the Pentateuch has been based. In the portion of Jewish history to which the present essay is ¦* It has been supposed that the text in ch. 2, 29, 32 is corrupt. There seems no reason for the supposition. The word pi?D. liere applied to God's habita tion, the Tabernacle, is used in the same sense in 2 Chron. 36. 16, and in Ps. 26. 8. The LXX. translator seems to have misread the word, for which he substitutes pU (eye) in v. 29, and as that word makes no sense in v. 32, some copies have omitted the verse altogether. See also Ps. 76. 2. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 271 confined, it seems pretty clear that the principles of the Mosaic Law pervade the narrative as thoroughly and as naturally as the principles of the Christian Revelation pervade the history and literature of the Christian Church. At the very least, we are entitled to contend that there is as much evidence for this view as for any other which has been suggested. Nor is this aU. It has been shown that the post-exilic details of the Mosaic legislation are bound uj/ as inextricably with a history admitted on aU hands to be in the main authentic as those supposed to be of earlier date. The doctrine of a " setting " is thus irrecon cilable with the critical theory of the date of the various por tions of the Pentateuch. The theory of the revision of the entire history by a Deuteronomist, in the interests of the later legislation, is violent enough. But violent as it is, it is not by any means sufficient. The only purely critical hypothesis which can even approximate to an adequate explanation of the facts is • that which supposes the whole history to have been re- written when the provisions of the Law in its present shape were already formulated. And this must have been a considerable time after the return from the Captivity. The Mosaic Law, we are told, consisted of three main strata ; — (1) pre-existing usage of indefinite date, codified after the return from the Captivity ; (2) Deuteronomic legislation, first authoritatively promulgated in the reign of Josiah; and (3) regulations of post-exilic origin. But the narrative we have been examining evidently regards all three as of equal antiquity and obliga tion. Which, therefore, of the proverbial three courses open to us in dealing with this important fact shall we take ? Either the history, as we have it, is fuU of interpolations of later date.* Or the narrative, as it stands, was composed subsequent to the Exile. Or the Mosaic Law in its present shape is of greater antiquity than the critics would have us beUeve. The first hypothesis is not only very difficult, as we have seen, to reconcile with the phenomena before us, but it is energetically repudiated, when it suits them, by the critics theinselves. The second hypothesis is not without serious difficulties of its own. We read, not only of post-exilic * Professor Sayce tells us that interpolation was common in ancient writings {The Higher Criticism, p. 31). But the interpolations were not worked into the substance of the narrative, as the critical hypothesis requires us to suppose. 272 LEX MOSAICA. regulations in the Law, but of " secondary and posterior strata " which bring down its final codification to an indefinitely later date. And then we have an extremely contracted period in which to crowd the composition of our histories, the compo sition of national poetry based upon those histories, the dis appearance of all earlier narratives, and the consequent accept ance of those which took their place as canonical alike in Palestine, in Egypt, and in every other place to which the Jews were scattered ; for there is not the slightest trace of any other Scriptures ever having been accepted by the Jews than those which have come down to us. These, moreover, are not the only difficulties which beset us on this hypothetical reconstruc tion of the history. First of all there is the question of author ship. Scriptures claiming to be canonical must have been written by persons whose words could claim the highest autho rity. Who were these persons, and how did they obtain this authority ? The traditional view is that they were, as a rule, men whose prophetic gifts commanded attention. With what theory do the critics replace this ? Then we have to face the entire disappearance of ancient and authentic documents, as well as the substitution in their place of documents which are neither the one nor the other. On the traditional theory that the histories we have, at whatever time compiled, owe their acceptance to their having been recognized as faithful reproductions of the history handed down from former ages, no such difficulty presents itself. It is only where more modem history is at variance with ancient tradition that the complete disappearance of the former becomes inexplicable. If the Jews had not carried the art of analytical criticism to the perfection which it is supposed to have attained at the present day, at least they were not altogether strangers to the exercise of the intellect. Some of them surely had intelli gence enough to have asked why they were to discard ancient traditions for modern inventions. And there is yet another difficulty which is evaded, not grappled with, by the critics. It is that an age which its extant literature describes as essentially receptive was, in fact, on the contrary, extraordinarily constructive. In no era, the critical theory requires us to be lieve, was the Jewish mind so fertile in imaginative historical fiction and of constructive le^slation, as in the period imme- THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 273 diately succeeding the retum from the Captivity. If the facts appear to be against this theory, then, once more, tant pis pour les fails. We might think that neither imaginative fiction nor ¦ constructive legislation was very much in the line of a hand ful of depressed fugitives who could not add a stone to their temple or to their walls without a firman from an Eastern despot, who wept as they contrasted the former splendour of their ritual with its present poverty, and who needed to be consoled by prophecies which at the time must have seemed extremely unlikely to be fulfilled. We might think again that Ezra and Nehemiah were to be trusted in the accounts they have handed down to us, or which have been handed down in their names. Nothing of the kind, the critics inform us. They did not understand the character of their epoch, nor the past history of the Jewish people.* It was reserved for criticism, viewing facts, if not exactly in the light of history, yet, it must be confessed, with an exceeding ingenuity at explaining away what history tells us, to .disinter, for the first time, the real account of Israelite institutions, and to present it to an admir ing world. We may be justified in suspending our belief in this hypothetical recpnstruction of history, this somewhat patronizing treatment of the authorities with which we have to deal. And we have yet one more argument to add on behalf of our scepticism. We shall find, without taking into account the question of inspiration at all, that the tendency of later historians, even when they are not gifted with the critical faculty, is towards the exclusion of legendary matter from their pages. Thus the period among English chroniclers when the largest amount of legendary matter is found is the age of men like William of Malmesbury and Geoffrey of Mon mouth — a period in our annals which would correspond to that of the early kings of Israel. The period of Hume corresponds to that of Ezra and Nehemiah, when the supernatural retires * The books which go by their name were written, we learn, " long after " the age to which their contents relate (Driver, Introduction, p. 511). They did not always perceive the " true reference of the section " of the history they inserted {ib., p. 515). The Chronicler (who is held to be identical with the writer of a consider able portion of Ezra) " idealised " the past, though " he must not on this account be held to be guilty of a deliberate perversion of history " {ib., p. 501). Ezekiel, in the judgment he has formed of the history of Israel, " is not wholly just to the past, and has transferred to it unconsciously the associations of the present" {ib., p. 261). S 1063. S 274 LEX MOSAICA. into the background. It may be remarked also that the age of criticism, though it throws light on various details, and on the objects of the persons mentioned, leaves the general current of the history unaltered. Thus historical criticism leads to conclusions opposed to, not in conformity with, the " higher criticism " of the Old Testament. People with a literature and a history are not found, as a rule, to invert its order and mistake the steps of its development. The questions, then, which the critics will find themselves compelled definitely to answer before their triumph can either be as final or as complete as they seem to believe it to be, are these : 1. At what date, on the critical theory, did the Mosaic Law actually assume its present shape ? 2. At what date did the reception of the Old Testament as Canonical actually take place, and how long after it had been published in its present form ? 3. How do you account for so universal a reception, if it substituted later and garbled accounts of the facts for earlier and authentic ones, especially when, as many of the higher critics contend, the former were so little regarded as Canonical about 150 B.C. that the Greek translators took liber ties with them in order to harmonize their contradictions ? 4. On whose authority was the Old Testament promulgated as Canonical ? 5. How do you account for the entire disappearance of the earlier and more authentic accounts, especially when, as is clear from the statements of the critics themselves, many of them must still have been in existence after the return from the Captivity ? These questions must receive a satisfactory reply before we can accept the critical theory of the genesis of Mosaic institutions. They cannot be represented as due to the ob- tuseness of theological dogmatists who refuse to examine the facts becauser they have made up their minds that it is presumptuous to do so. They are questions purely critical. They have never yet been faced nor answered. But they must be faced and answered before the critical theory can be regarded THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 275 as established. It is quite a mistake to suppose that the only ground on which the critics are attacked is the supposed danger to the Christian religion, and it is most unfair so to mis represent the question at issue. It is no doubt true enough that if Christianity were not in some measure concerned in the question, many of us would hardly have taken the trouble to discuss it. But even if no question concerning revealed religion were at stake, we should still be unable to accept the theories of the history which criticism presents for our acceptance. / We believe the methods adopted are, if possible, more vulnerable from the point of view of historical investigation than from that of revelation. Those methods may be briefiy described as follows : — The problem before us is how to deal with a collection of writings of great antiquity. AU contemporary literature which might help us to explain these writings is lost. Our task is thus one which demands immense judg ment and care. But it is capable of much simplification. The so-called scientific and critical method removes all obstacles. As practised by critics of the extreme type, it may be thus described. Take every difficulty in a compendious and art less narrative, and magnify it as much as you can. Reject all attempts at explaining it. Insist on the conclusion being drawn that we have in it evidence of the use of two or more irreconcilable sources of information. Meet every difficulty in the way of your own theory by representing .any passage which obstinately refuses to fit in with the theory as a "gloss," or the " addition of a later editor," or of a scribe who was desirous of bringing the history into conformity with the religious ideas prevalent in his own time. Overwhelm your opponents with indignation if they venture to represent any passage as a gloss or the later addition of a copyist. And then your induction is complete, your conclusions unassailable. If you cannot prove them, you can at least challenge anybody to disprove them, for if any credible witness appears, he is at once ordered out of court at the request of the counsel for the prosecution. But a conviction thus obtained reminds one of the custom of packed juries, now so happily obsolete. The evidence may be sufficient to support a foregone conclusion, but it wUl not satisfy an impartial mind. If criticism is to be of any value, it must depend, not on assertions, but on facts. Those facts must not S 2 276 LEX MOSAICA. be wrested into conformity with theories, they must be ra tionally explained. The Gordian knot must be untied, not cut. That is to say, we have no right to set aside the plain state ments of our authorities, or regard them as due to a later revision of the history, simply because our ingenuity has enabled us to point out a few apparent contradictions here and there, which a wider knowledge of the facts, did we but possess it, might enable us to clear up. Still less have we a right to insist on the correctness of our solution of the problem when, as we have seen, it introduces at least half-a-dozen difficulties for eve^y one it professes to remove. We come back, therefore, to the point from which we started.* It is one thing to hazard an explanation ; it is another to establish its correctness. The critics have un doubtedly achieved the first; they only fancy they have achieved the second. If only they were a little more modest, a little less confident, the present controversy would never have arisen. Even now they may be assured that they will meet with but little opposition if they are disposed to admit the magnitude of the task before them, as well as its delicacy; if they will abate a little of their infallibility, and acknowledge that however great their industry and ingenuity, it is possible after all that they may sometimes be mistaken; if they will grant that the criticism of the Old Testament, even in its latest form, is still very far indeed from complete, and that the facts require a far more exhaustive investigation by a great deal than any they have yet received.f And some of us must be pardoned for venturing to express the conviction, which we stiU retain, that when that exhaustive investigation shall have been made ; when the history shall have been ex amined, not only from one or two, but from all possible points of view ; when archaeological research shall have contributed its share to the investigation, and thus shall have enabled us to base our researches, not on theory, or on conjecture, but on * Above p. 205. t " The reason that he [Professor Weissman] gives seems to me insfructive of the great danger scientific research is running at the present time — the acceptance of mere conjecture in the name and place of knowledge — in preference to making frankly the admission that no certain knowledge can be attained."— Marquis of Salisbury, Address before the British Association, Aug. 8thr 1894. THE TIMES OF SAMUEL AND SAUL. 277 fact ; — then it will be found that the Jewish records are, on the whole, as worthy of belief as those of any other people, and that the criticism which charges the Jews with having not only absurdly distorted the whole course of their history, but of having actually inverted the order in which their institu tions were developed, has been based on an insufficient and unsound induction. VIL THE PERIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. F. WATSON. VII. THE PEEIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. THE period of the undivided kingdom in Israel's history is distinguished from aU others by its uninterrupted and abounding prosperity. David raised the nation held in bondage by aU its petty neighbours in turn into an imperial state. Peace, riches, splendour, were the characteristics of Solomon's reign. Though forces making for disruption were working underground, and at times made their presence manifest, the Twelve Tribes formed one nation whose whole energies were at the command of her two great and wise rulers. The promises to the Fathers were at length fulfilled. Israel took a not ignoble place amongst the nations of the earth. For the first time in her history Israel has full freedom of action. Hitherto, whether in the wildemess or in her own land, whether under judges or under her first king, political exigen cies of a stringent character have determined the course of her development. Now free from aU overmastering foreign influ ences she is able to develop her organisation, and to order her Ufe, religious and political, in accordance with her own ideas. As a consequence the problem of Israel's' relations to the Mosaic Law assumes a new phase. When she had not yet come to her rest and inheritance, and was scattered over the Desert of the Wanderings, when there was no king in Israel, and every man did that which was right in his own eyes, when foreign oppression was the constantly recurring experience, when a king reigned whose interests were not religious and whose relations with prophets and priests were strained, then " circumstances of the times " or " poUtical necessity " may be regarded as adequate 282 LEX MOSAICA. explanations of disobedience to Mosaic Laws or neglect of Mosaic Institutions. When David and Solomon reign such excuses fail. After David's victories there is peace, there is settled and strong rule ; and above all, Might is on the side of Right. It would further seem that Israel on the whole does that which is good, and right in the eyes of the Lord her God. Her prosperity proves it. The Old Testament writers agree in asserting that this is Israel's Golden Age. Unless, like many of the critical school, we make gross and wanton assumptions in regard to the readiness of the Jewish historians to suppress aU that was scandalous in their authorities, we must admit that, in David and Solomon's time, Israel's most powerfiU temptations in matters of religion lost their power to lead her astray. There is no trace of the worship of any god but Jehovah untU Solomon's wives introduced the cults of their native countries. For once in Israel's earlier history, monolatry, if not monotheism, was supreme. And, again, there is no trace of the use of images of Asherah, teraphim, pillars, and the like. When we consider the extreme facility with which Israel feU into religious sjmcretism and into idolatry, in the Old Testament times, these must be regarded as noteworthy facts. They sufficiently prove to us that already Israel's religion differed essentially from those of the nations. Still the First and Second Commandments, though of prime importance, do not cover the whole field of the Mosaic Law. What if, on examination, we find that the right which Israel does is not right according to the Mosaic standard ? The argument from the non-observance of the Law to its non existence would then be greatly increased in force. We must, at the outset, fully admit that many of the pro visions of the Mosaic La-yv seem to be systematicaUy disre garded in David's and Solomon's reigns. The separation of the Ark from the Tabernacle, involving substantial anomahes in Israel's worship, is overwhelming proof of this. Further, David and Solomon have a sacerdotal character not in accord ance with the Priestly Code, and two of David's sons are called priests.* * Arguing from the order of names in 2 Sam. 8. 16-18 David's sons are not priests in the same sense as Zadok and Abimelech (Abiathar ?). Cf. also 2 Sam. 20. 26 and 1 Chron. 18. 17. THE PEEIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 283 Assuming the Law's existence, ought we to expect exact obedience to it when good and strong kings Uke David and Solomon were on the throne ? The critics assume that we ought. Neglect by pioils Jews of any of the Law's prominent precepts is regarded as primd facie evidence that these have not come into existence.* There seem to us to be strong reasons to the contrary. In the first place the plea of ignorance must be regarded as having great force. There were great obstacles in the way of knowledge of the Law. It was not in circulation in any sense of the word. Existing possibly in one copy only which was laid by with something of superstitious reverence in the side of the Ark, it was inaccessible to the few who could read. The priests seem utterly to have failed to realise the hope expressed by Moses, "They shall teach Jacob Thy judgments, and Israel Thy Law." The well-known story of Luther's sur prise at the contents of Holy Scripture shows the possibilities of ignorance under circumstances immeasurably more favourable to knowledge. General acquaintance of the Law seems out of the question. Josiah's ignbrance of its precepts can hardly be regarded as isolated and unprecedented. But inevitable ignorance is not our main plea. Analogy shows that there is something in the nature of religious laws which render them specially liable to infraction. In the Divine Kingdom strong coercive administration is out of place and is apt to defeat its own ends. Men cannot be under perceptible supervision in regard to their spiritual duties, and they take advantage of the fact. The punishments of disobedience are neither immediate nor sensible. Their actual infliction is be yond the range of human knowledge, and men readily think they will escape. Moreover difficulties of interpretation are wont to arise. There is a mysteriousness and indefiniteness about Divine Laws which seem to take them out of the prac tical sphere. Do they mean what they appear to mean? Do they apply under the particular circumstances ? Is Uteral obedience possible, and is it even desired by God ? In some cases Uteral and external obedience is known to be insufficient, in some, even abominable in God's eyes. Thus disobedience may * Professor Cheyne {Jeremiah, p. 72) goes further stiU, and argues that wicked Jeroboam's unrestricted priesthood proves that "the Law confining the right of sacrificing to the Tribe of Levi is later than his days." 284 LEX MOSAICA. appear the less dangerous and even more dutiful course to pursue.* In the Divine Codes there are primary and secondary duties, e.gr., God desires mercy and not sacrifice. Conflicts of duty necessarily arise. Custom is always (more especially in the East) stronger than law, and customs contrary to law, in the absence of visible administration, readily arise in religious matters. Though the law be writ plain and all can read it, men persist in doing what their fathers did, or the many do. Desuetude is regarded at the tribunal of the conscience as a vir tual repeal of laws indisputably Divine in origin. The habits of disobedience which necessity forms persist when the necessity is removed. Divine laws are continually in need of new media tors and interpreters. Sentimental and personal considerations weaken their force. The corruptions of their ministers discredit religious institutions beyond the chance of revival for generations. When priests are sons of BeUal priestly codes are abhorred. The reformers who by tbe force of their genius inaugurate new chapters in national histories are unable to cancel the preceding pages; but if they disregard any one of the Divine laws and teach men so, it becomes as nothing in their disciples' eyes. Illustrations of these causes of disobedience abound. The Second Commandment would seem to be a dead letter in impor- tant parts of Christendom. Christians pre-eminent for the holi ness and unselfishness of their lives live and die in neglect of the sacraments. That principle of selection which even strict Church men adopt in regard to canons or rubrics is also widely used in regard to laws which rest directly on Divine sanctions, f Num berless instances prove that to argue from the general practice or beUef of a period to the rules or formularies actually in force or use is precarious in the extreme. Voluminous writings of' eighteenth century divines would show that the Church of England did not hold the distinctive doctrines of the Gospel. The practice of devout Churchmen, and manuals like the Olney Hymns, that she had no system of fasts and festivals. By pressing extreme statements of friends and foes it might be shown that Christianity bad ceased to exist in England when * Cf. here the practice of the majority of Christian people in regard to Holy Communion. t The Apostolic precepts in Jas. 2. 1-3 ; 5. 14, 15 ; and 1 Tim. 2. 12 are illustra tions of this : also the decrees of the First Council at Jerusalem, Acts 15. 28, 29. THE PERIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON., 285 Wesley arose, and that there were no High Churchmen before the Oxford movement. Those who find in disobedience to the law enjoining unity of worship a convincing argument for the late date of the Deuteronomic Code, may be asked what the divided worship of the Christian Church would, on similar prin ciples, prove. Good men of all times, it is plain, are so ready to fall into, and to find plausible excuses for, habits of disobedience that we can allow no validity to the argument : — Non-observ ance of a Divine precept by the pious implies that they are ignorant of it, or that it does not exist. In the case before us there were special and cogent reasons why the religion of David's and Solomon's days should not be of a Levitieal type. There is the desuetude of centuries with its cause. The Divine Providence seemed to have sanctioned general disobedience in the days of the Judges. The Divine origin of the Mosaic Law would be obscured and even totally forgotten in those long ages of non-observance. A law, though it be indisputably Divine in origin, cannot lie by for centuries without losing its vigour. However definite and peremptory its precepts may be, the duty, men argue, which nobody fulfils can not be necessary, and the sin which everybody commits cannot be unpardonable. And there is a still stronger reason than desuetude for gene rations. Samuel was the father of Israel under her kings— the reformer who determined the particular course Israel's religious development should take. Hence it seems almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of the fact that Samuel's earliest years were spent, along with Hophni and Phinehas, under the Tabernacle roof. Corruptio optimi est pessima, and Levitieal institutions were associated in his mind with the grossest abo minations committed by Aaronic priests. Reformers are not wonti to appreciate the value of ancient institutions, or to recognise their divinity when administered by angels of darkness, or to allow its fuU force to the maxim, Abusus non tollit usum. Samuel in his later years seems to hold himself severely aloof from the Aaronic priesthood and the Tabernacle worship. Contrary to the letter of the Law he takes upon himself priestly duties. Neither Tabemacle or Ark is the centre of, or even connected with his reformation. The continued separation of the two would seem to indicate incEifference on his part to either, or even 286 LEX MOSAICA. to a rooted objection to work hand in hand with the priests. He is the founder of a line of teachers which is wont to disparage, at times, perhaps, unduly, the services of the sanctuary. It is he who uplifts the prophetical standard with the legend, " To obey is better than sacrifice." And he uplifts it amongst men whom Hophni and Phinehas had taught to abhor the offering of the Lord. Disgust with the Aaronic priesthood, and affection and respect for Samuel, must, we imagine, have been the factors of supreme importance for determining the character of Israel's religion for many a long day. Prophets become the king's ad visers and write the national records. The High-priestly family is well nigh exterminated, and priests never take a leading part in national affairs. Even in such a matter as building the Temple the king is the doer, the prophet the adviser, the priest has no voice in counsel or part in the work. Spite of the admissions we have made, and the causes for disobedience we have assigned, we are by no means inclined to allow that the Mosaic Law was a dead letter in Israel in the days of David and Solomon. To do this we should have to admit the force of the argument derived from the silence of the sacred writers as to Mosaic institutions. This argument seems to us thoroughly unsound. The silence, it is to be re marked, is confined to one section of the sacred writings ; and the critics offer us the hard alternative: those who are silent do not know, and those who speak are not to be believed. It seems necessary to examine at some length this argument from silence. In certain critical works, paragraphs are wont to begin with the phrase " The author knows nothing." The phrase has the merit or demerit of combining fact with inference. The fact is, "the author says nothing;" the inference is, "he knew nothing, because there was nothing for him to know." The words "know nothing" may be used with very considerable propriety in regard to the Old Testament authors. They are to us ipipersonalities, even more, unknown quantities. We rarely know their names or particular circumstances. We know nothing, comparatively, about their sources of information ; nor, which is more important, of their capacity for using those within their reach. Beyond what we can gather incidentally from their writings, we know nothing about the objects for which they THE PERIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 287 wrote, or about the workings of their minds which would in fluence them in the selection and arrangement- of their facts. But this we know, that the Old Testament Books are but meagre records of the history of a nation during one thou sand years ; that there are considerable and serious gaps in the narratives, and that from our point of view there is great in equality in the treatment of different parts of the subject. There is, besides, a want of completeness in the treatment of subjects treated most fuUy. The history never approaches the form of annals. Many important facts come to us in the shape of in cidental notices. To many historical allusions in Psalms or Prophets we have lost the key. Moreover, the Old Testament method of writing history in vites partiality of treatment. The historical books are, for the most part, narratives, centering sometimes in a judge, sometimes in a prophet, more frequently in a king. It is plain no single institution, or officer, or line of officers, could be true centres of Israel's national life. Everywhere we can see that important facts are lost to record because of their eccentricity. It is not common to find in the histories paragraphs Uke those relating to Elijah and Elisha, i.e. outside the course the historian has marked out for himself. It would indeed be unreasonable to expect much subtilty of planning, or versatility of treatment, or breadth of view in such early writers. Their aims and methods are alike simple. We may wish that they had had higher natural qualification for their work, but it is irrational to argue from its absence. We know that we should have chosen very different Unes, but that does not in the least qualify us for determining the lines likely to be chosen by them. In a word, considering all the circumstances — the remote antiquity of the times dealt with, the meagreness of the extant records, our par tial knowledge practically amounting to ignorance of the Old Testament writers' wishes, objects, qualifications, opportunities, surroundings, — we may venture the statement that the formula "the author knows nothing" has the nature of a suggestio falsi, and that "we know nothing" expresses with consider ably greater exactness the true facts of the case. Bearing these general principles in mind, we pass on to con sider more particularly the authorities for the reigns of David and Solomon. Our main authorities are the Second Book of 288 LEX MOSAICA. Samuel and the earlier chapters of the First Book of Kings. Uncertainty in regard to authorship and date, the indefiniteness and obscurity of the allusions, detract considerably from the value, for illustrative purposes, of the Psalms ascribed to David and the Proverbs compiled by Solomon. We cannot compare them in this respect with the Epistles of St. Paul The posi tion in the Canon, the date, the scope, and the internal charac ter of the Book of Chronicles, all alike tend to make it a secondary authority on matters of Israelitish history. The Books of Samuel and Kings are earlier by hundreds of years ; they regard Israel from a less restricted point of view, and they are less pragmatical in tone. The Second Book of Samuel, which alone concerns us, is a history of David, man and king, rather than a history of Israel. Everything centres in David, his sins, punishments, mercies, policy, victories. David is, we fully admit, an exceptionally good centre of IsraeFs life in all its phases. The musician, poet, prophet, priest, warrior, statesman, king, was in a very wide and comprehensive sense Israel's centre of force and life. But if his picture is drawn with truth, David represents to us " the Israelite indeed," rather than Israel as she actually was.* He seems in his moral greatness and wisdom to dwarf aU who come in contact with him. We may conjecture that David's sons, or Joab and Abishai, represent more accurately ordinary Israelites and Israel as a whole than David himself. The Second Book of Samuel is a fairly complete record of the centre of Israel's life during David's reign, but as a record of its circumference.it is essentially defective. What was Israel's religious character? There is no definite statement on the point. May we infer from the silence of the narrative that both idolatry and the Mosaic Law are unknown ? Both known or both unknown — which alternative will the critics prefer ?t There is, again, nothing which throws light on the ordinary course of Israel's religious life. From the nature of things, it must have taken some course. Israel was not irreUgious, whatever the nature of her religion. But legitimate or iUe- ' " The Israelite indeed " of his own day, but not one born out of due time ; the child of the preceding generations and his own times. t There are no aUusions to the Mosaic Law as a whole, nor to any of its particular precepts ; nor to idolatry in any of its forms, in 2 Samuel. THE PERIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 289 gitimate, pure or corrapt, we know nothing about it. On three occasions only is the offering of sacrifices recorded, twice by David, once by Absalom. We never read of any private individual offerings Uke Elkanah'a Was worship at the high places the popular worship ? From earUer and later history, we must regard this as highly probable, but the Second Book of Samuel does not enable us to say. There are no records of the observance of any of the great national reUgious feasts, nor is the Sabbath mentioned by name. Where was the old Mosaic Tabemacle? Arguing from the silence of 2 Samuel, we should deny its existence. There was a tent pitched by David for the Ark on Mount Zion, but our author " never knew " of any one who went to worship there. David, on more than one occasion, inquires after God, but it is not stated how. We must, it is plain, when estimating the importance of the author's silence with respect to particular institutions, pay due regard to the fact, that, in the reign of David, he passes by nearly aU that might be included under the word " worship " ; and that it is evidently not his purpose to describe the religious condition of the nation Israel in David's time. There is one important exception to the above. The Ark is an object of especial interest to the author of Samuel.* From the notices he gives, it plainly forms a fundamental part of Israel's, or, at the least, David's religion. At the first possible opportunity, David makes an effort to terminate the anomaly which had lasted more than a generation, — to remove the Ark from a private house, and to give it its proper place in the religious life of the nation. A little later he proposes to buUd for it a worthy shrine. He assembles! the chosen men of Israel to aid, as in a great national act, at the translation of the Ark. Everything possible is done by the king, person ally and officially, to mark the importance of the step he is taking. The ceremonies used give us valuable insight to the character of Israel's worship in David's time, and we are able to say that it is neither idolatrous nor superstitious. The Ark, though " called by the Name, even the name of the Lord of Hosts," though the symbol of His Presence, is neither idol nor charm. David evidently feels he cannot pay the Ark too great * Both 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel give sufficient proof of this. t This is the only national convocation summoned by David, recorded in Samuel. S 1063. T 290 LEX MOSAICA. respect. He lays aside his majesty, he doffs his royal robes, and girds himself with a priestly ephod. In the opinion of Michal, who might be supposed to know the court etiquette, he passes the bounds of seemliness in the respect he shows. But there is no pretence for saying David worships the Ark, or offers sacrifices to it, or gives it a quasi-sacramental character. The burnt offerings and peace offerings are offered, not before it, but before the Lord. It is neither the cause nor the instru ment of the blessings and curses which attend its progress; these come from God. In one word, all its honour and glory consist in the fact that it is the place of the manifestation of God's presence and glory. The cherubim which overshadowed it were God's throne. The Ark being no idol, we may infer, with the highest probability, faithful IsraeUtes had none. The utter absence of superstition from David's feeling of reverence for the Ark is even still more noticeable in an in cident of Absalom's rebellion. Valuing the Ark most highly, and reverencing it most deeply, he refuses to take it along with him on his flight from Je^risalem. He could not more clearly show that he knew God's presence and favour were not tied to it. He is willing to leave it, with its mysterious prestige and potency, for a possession to his rebel son. If God will, He can bring David back to His Ark and His habitation (2 Sam. 15. 25). How far removed is he in religious thought from the Israelites who said, " Let us fetch the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord out of Shiloh unto us, that it may come among us, and save us out of the hand of our enemies." Inferences of great importance for our purpose may be drawn from the relations of David to the Ark. His knowledge of Levitieal details is defective, as was natural in a king. On the first stage of the Ark's journey it was placed in a cart, and not, as the law directed, carried by the priests. But he has a very clear idea what the Ark is and what it is not. He has been well instructed in the leading principles of the Mosaic Law. The instruction he has received and digested is not of an obvi ous kind — at least, for the men of his day. Duly to reverence the Ark, without worshipping or putting trust in it, was a some what strait path for his feet, and not a path, most certainly, discernible by the light of nature. Due reverence of sacred things of a material nature, untainted by superstition, is a THE PERIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 291 mark which Christians constantly miss. Our case in respect to the Ark may be put thus: David had learned a difficult lesson, for which he needed careful teaching — teaching which the Mosaic Law or something closely resembling it, must have given. Reverence due, but not inordinate, for the Ark seems to imply a great deal. The Ark — the centre of worship according to the Mosaic Law— is established as such in David's mind. We ask whether, according to the natural order of events, the Ark does not imply the Priestly Code ? The Ark being what it was — a mere chest overlaid with gold, with nothing suggestive in its outward form, conveying for its main idea a negation, i.e., the impossibility of framing any image or likeness of God, — it does not seem probable that the Israelites started with it, and buUt round it a shrine with its inner and outer courts con sisting of institutions of a ceremonial or religious kind. Its importance is derived not from what it is, but from what it contains, i.e. the terms of the Covenant by which Israel belonged to Jehovah and Jehovah to Israel. It directs attention away from itself to the laws and ordinances given on Mount Sinai (speciaUy the Ten Words), and the history of the chosen people with which those laws were intertwined. It would thus seem to be the quintessence— the summing up of the other institu tions, rather than the germ from which they were all developed. If so, the established position of the Ark in David's time implies the Priestly Code, or a considerable part of it. The Ark, if it had existed in naked simplicity, without the sacred wrappings not only of a material shrine, but also of ceremonial institu tions, would not have had such supreme sacredness in David's eyes. Another important argument for the existence of the Mosaic Law in David's time may be drawn from his very remarkable character. We have fully admitted that many things are done in Israel and by David which could not be justified by the Mosaic Law. But there is David himself; how is he to be accounted for ? We want, we believe, something like the edu cation of the Mosaic Law to do this satisfactorily. It is David's vivid personality which gives the circumstances of his life, stir ring as they are, their unique fascination for us. Those who are inclined to assign the greater part of David's words and acts to T 2 292 LEX MOSAICA. the principle, " He that hath to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance," must be reminded that the greatest wonder in David's life is David hiihself. He is not like many characters of history — an ass in a lion's skin. The critics are wont to draw contrasts between the David of the history and David the Psalm writer. The leader of bandits, the shedder of blood, the murderer of Uriah, and para mour of Bathsheba, cannot, it is asserted, have conceived and expressed the deep spiritual truths contained in the Psalms. The dark and deep contrasts in David's character must be fully admitted, but they are not created by his authorship of Psalms. Abundant materials for drawing them can be derived from the Book of Samuel, and from those parts of it which the critics reckon to be amongst the most ancient documents of the Old Testament, and to be almost contemporary documents of his life. The most searching critical analysis cannot separate that David who is notorious as a sinner from him who is pre-eminent as a saint.* The point which we are concerned to maintain here is that David, as described in Samuel, could have had no historical existence had Israel's religious ideas up to and including Samuel been, as the critics maintain, essentially rude and imperfect. Like the prophets, David implies a long previous reUgious history of Israel — religious trainipg and education not essen tially differing from that contained in the Mosaic Law. David illustrates, with a power unique amongst Old Testament saints, many lofty spiritual qualities. Spite of his gross sins, spite of the defective moraUty of his standards in regard to truth, human life, marriage, etc., he has very close relations with God. We do not need Ps. 18 to prove that David loved God, or Pss. 32 and 51 that he was a model penitent. Whether the words, "Lord, I have loved the habitation of Thy house, and the place where Thy honour dweUeth," were his or no, they expressed his real feeUngs. Though his conduct to Uriah was more grossly un just than Ahab's to Naboth, nevertheless he had a very true and intense zeal for righteousness. Though he can bear malice silently for years, yet who amongst men, save only our Lord, * Je and Da, reckoned to be of the tenth and ninth centuries B.C. in the analysis of the Books of Samuel made by Kautzsch, comprise nearly the whole of the chapters between and including 1 Sam. 24 and 2 Sam. 20. THE PERIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 293 gives us a better example of patience in extreme affliction, and deferred hope, and gross outrage from inferiors ? He combines in a marvellous way different, we might almost say, contrary virtues. There is in him a mingling of familiarity with and reverence for G|od, of fiery zeal and of patience, of faith and of fear. He was no doubt one of the most inconsistent of men. His Ufe seems to fumisl;i examples not only of all the virtues, but of many of the grossest vices. This splendid inconsistency is not to be wondered at when we consider the rough character of David's times and circum stances, the gigantic character of his temptations, and his isola tion in spiritual things. The outlawed captain of a band of freebooters had to walk in very slippery places. It would be difficult to say how little of his subjects' persons and property would be reckoned to be beyond the rights of an Eastern monarch. How demoralising as conqueror to have the power, and that with a good conscience, to deal with whole nations as absolutely without rights — to be able to pluck them like flowers, or to crush them like wasps. This man of great temp tations was also a man of great natural qualities, and, above all, of great grace. His life was a constant succession of battles with giants, in which he did not always conquer. And he is for the most part a solitary champion of right ; he had not the steadying and the support which comes from fighting in the ranks with those like-minded. Climbing alone in such steep places, with so much to distract him to his ruin, we need not marvel at his fall ; but we may marvel at his recovery. It is, moreover, well worthy of note how undesignedly the depth of David's religious character is revealed to us by the historian. There are not many religious constitutions which would have survived the shock of David's heinous crime. And yet it is in the repentant sinner we most clearly discern the saint. The unique versatility of David's character was without doubt developed by his manifold experiences. But circum stances are only the soil in which character is developed. Whence was the seed ? Whence, that is to say, did David derive the great animating principles of his life ? Who were his teachers? Samuel mainly, we can have little doubt. All great Israelites were Samuel's scholars. But there is an eccle siastical , side to David's character — a revereijce for the Ark 294 LEX MOSAICA. and love for the worship of God in His house — which we can not trace to Samuel. He had a faithful priestly friend in his wanderings — Abiathar, from whom, we may conjecture, he de rived this. If so, he had for his teachers both a prophet and a priest, and each supplied the deficiencies of the other. How ever this may be, the prophetical and priestly elements of Israel's reUgion, existing side by side in the Mosaic Law, but ever tending to separation from one another in the later his tory, are reproduced in their essential features in David. It was the crowning merit of Israel's religion, as we find it for mulated in the Mosaic Law, that zeal for righteousness and religious awe could work hand in hand. David, we infer, as a remarkable example of both, had Moses for his ancestor. The critics seem to us to make this huge mistake, that aU children of the Law of Moses must be of the Ezraic type. And yet it is certain, even from post-exUic history, that the education of the Law did not make Pharisees only. Laws beget laws, but they also beget principles. What we maintain is, David's character — his hopes and ideals and faith — implies some such education as the Mosaic Law would give ; or, rather, some such teachers as the Mosaic Law wOuld educate. From a Pharisaic point of view, he would no doubt be reckoned amongst the people who knew not the Law. But we may trace in him principles of action which the Law might be ex pected to develop. The Law, we think, directly or indirectly, gave him a tone, an ethos— something corresponding to what education in a University does for a man who could not be called a scholar; nay, who might find it difficult to specify any fact in the domain of knowledge which he had learned in his residence there. We now pass on from David to Solomon, and from Samuel to Kings. The Book of Kings in many respects differs con siderably from the Book of Samuel. It is far more ecclesi astical and legal in its tone. Its judgments on men and things are far more frequent. It is less of a narrative, and more of a history. It has something of the nature of a chronicle, and is framed on chronological lines. It is far more systematic in the telling of its story, but there is monotony in the constant repetitions of its formulse of judgment, and its historical frame work. We miss the materials for portraits which are so THE PERIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 295 abundant in Samuel. Where in Kings can we find characters comparable to Samuel, Saul, David, and Jonathan ? * The history of Solomon's life is given at considerable length, but his personality is not clearly defined. The gorgeous array of Solomon's kingdom is a poor substitute for the thrUling vicissi tudes of David's Ufe. The author of Kings takes, perhaps, a deeper interest in institutions than in men. David's line and Solomon's Temple are regarded by him as the only legitimate centres of Israel's political and religious life. His Book supplies a connecting-link, both in substance and spirit, between Samuel and Chronicles. The standpoint of the author of Kings is that styled " Deu teronomic." He is quite clear that David and aU the kings had in their hands a book called the Law of Moses, whose statutes, commandments, and judgments they were bound to keep. He is further clear, in accordance with the Deuteronomic Code, that worship at the high places, though not comparable in guilt with idolatry, though compatible with a considerable share of God's favour, is contrary to God's Law. We are assured that he, though living not very far distant from the times he chronicles, was mistaken, and that, as a matter of fact, Deuteronomy did not see the light till Josiah's reign. He is, however, a sixth century witness to the events of the whole of the preceding four hundred years, his bona fides is unimpugned, he has in his possession and use original contemporary sources which he from time to time names. His testimony cannot be brushed aside by a mere breath. We are here concerned only with the first eleven chap ters, in which he records the magnificent reign of Solomon. Solomon is regarded by him with mixed feelings. He takes delight in describing his wisdom, his riches, his activities, his splendour, his world-wide fame. He would have been less than human if he, a patriotic Israelite, had not boasted in the ancient national glories. Still, he recognised that it was Solomon who, by his worldly policy, was responsible primarily or ultimately for all Israel's misfortunes ; for the disruption with its conse quences, civil and religious ; for the idolatry which corrupted and ruined both kingdoms ; for the destruction of Jerusalem and * Elijah and Elisha may be suggested. The exceptions prove the rule. The author uses special authorities for the stories of their lives. 296 , LEX MOSAICA. her Temple ; and for the dispersion of the chosen people amongst the heathen. There can be no doubt that the judgment which he passes on Solomon is terribly severe. It is commonly maintained that the Law of the kingdom in Deuteronomy so manifestly aUudes to Solomon that it must be, at least in its present form, later in date than his reign To our mind the dangers guarded against in the Law are those into which most Eastern monarchs, and not Solomon only, fell. But assuming that the resemblance of Solomon to the Deuteronomic picture of the king as he should not be, is too close to be unde signed, why, we ask, should the design be attributed to the author of Deuteronomy rather than to the author of Kings ? The historian is fully assured that it is Solomon who is the fons et origo mali. Deeply imbued with the Deuteronomic spirit, might he not make it his aim to show that all Israel's calamities came from a direct violation of a specific Deutero nomic Law ? He took, the critics tell us, a very similar course in regard to the worship at the high places. The coincidences between Solomon and the law of the kingdom would be fully accounted for if he described Solomon's reign with that law in his mind. The reverential feeling which we find in Samuel to be inspired by the Ark is in Kings transferred to the Temple. Wellhausen says : " The culminating point of the whole book is the building of the Temple, almost all that is told about Solomon has reference to it. This at once indicates to us the point of view; it is one which dominates all Judaistic history; the history is that of the Temple rather than that of the Kmg- dom."* It foUows, as a consequence, that the chief point in Solomon's reign we have to consider is the relation of the Mosaic Law to the Temple. The Deuteronomistic standpoint of the author of Kings is admitted : " On the other hand, there are clear signs that the author of the revision was not acquainted with the Priestly Code."t There is, however, a significant exception to this. " In one section only, a section which has been greatly exposed to corrections and interpolations of all kinds, namely, the de scription of the Temple' and its consecration, 1 Kings 6 — 8, do ¦^ History of Israel, p. 281. f ¦^*»''^-i P- 280. THE PERIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 297 we meet with signs of the influence of the Priestly Code."* Whether this is, or is not, the only section, whatever the cor rections and interpolations, it is well worthy of remark that traces of the Priestly Code are confessedly* found just where they might have been expected, or rather just where, if the Code was in existence, they could not have failed to occur. The assertion of corrections and interpolations is a convenient method for getting rid of inconvenient facts. Under the cir cumstances, though proof is weak, disproof may be impossible. The ground for making it seems to be mainly this : The author of Kings could not know anything of the Priestly Code, and therefore any section of his book involving a knowledge must have been tampered with. Details bearing on Priestly ritual are, we admit, rare in the Book of Kings. He inserts them only when he must, for they are not, which is a full and suffi cient reason, after his mind. But we do not rest our case on details which it is so easy to call interpolations. The great fact of the Temple, considered in connexion with all that it involves, seems to us a great proof of the existence of the Priestly Code. Solomon's Temple, it will be generally acknowledged, exer cised a most important influence on the development of Israel's religion. It was not, indeed, for generations, probably never was, Israel's sole shrine. As in the ordinary Jewish mind, Jehovah was not the one God, but rather the greatest amongst gods ; so Jerusalem was the chief, but not the only place of acceptable worship. It was, however, generally recognised to be pre-emi nently the place in which the presence of the God of Israel was vouchsafed. It was Jerusalem's spiritual glory, and, by conse quence, a defence of greater efficiency than her walls and towers. It is further plain that there is no single shrine which, like that of Mount Gerizim in later times, could be called a rival to the Temple of Jerusalem. It was in vain for the various high places to look askance at the mountain which God had desired for His abode. It would seem to follow that there can have been only one legitimate recognised " Use " in Israel. One pre eminent Shrine, one legitimate Use, is the only possible order of things. * WeUhausen says this is less noticeable in the LXX. than in the Massoretie Text. 298 LEX MOSAICA. It is further plain, from the nature of things, that the build ing of the Temple must have introduced or established, one or both, a definite system of worship in Israel. When " every man did that which was right in his own eyes," the priests may have done the same. Whilst the Mosaic Tabemacle was traveUing from place to place, and was separated from the Ark, the anomalous and changing circumstances left the door wide open to eccentricities and variations in ritual. The Tabernacle in the days of the Judges, and, even more, in the days of Samuel and Saul, lost much of its national importance. In private institu tions there is room for the working of individual caprice. But when the Temple was fixed on Mount Zion, it became as a city set on a hill which could not be hid. The national worship must then have been conducted according to fixed rules. The definite, unalterable Shrine thus implied a definite and (in the main) un alterable "Use." Who were the authors of this " Use " ? The Temple was, in the fullest sense of the words, a Royal foundation. The ecclesiastical or semi-ecclesiastical writers of Chronicles and Kings do not attempt to gloss over this fact. Both in regard to the building of the Temple and in regard to its consecra tion, the Eegale somewhat transgresses the bounds of the Pon- tificale. The point to which we have called attention is of great importance in our argument, and we must elaborate it some what.* It is to David the idea of building a permanent Shrine first occurs. It is he also who made abundant preparation for it (1 Chron. 22. 5). It is the princes of Israel whom he commands to help his son (1 Chron. 22. 17). It is the princes and the people who offer willingly for the service of the house of God (1 Chron. 29. 6-9). It is, again, David who, inspired by God, provides in detail and gives to Solomon the pattern of the Temple, and all its offices and vessels (1 Chron. 28. 11-19)- Up to David's death the priests are not recorded to have taken any part in the matter. The actual buUding of the Temple is the , first and chief work of Solomon's reign. Still the priests' work, if any, is unrecorded. Semi-heathen , Huram is of far more * We shall here use Chronicles as well as Kings, because the ecclesiastical bias ot the Chronicler would guard him in attributing too much to the king and too little to the priest. Chronicles is not, however, necessary for our argument. THE PERIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 299 importance than they. There is no corps of priest-buUders as when Herod's Temple was built. Solomon, again, is the chief minister of dedication. The Priests and Levites (so both Kings and Chronicles) take their own place in the ceremony, but Solo mon is the central figure. A temple on whose stones the broad arrow was thus deeply impressed, on all of whose vessels was imprinted the royal mark, might, it seems clear, have received the ritual of its services from the royal hands. Nay ! would infallibly have so received it, had there not been directions given already ; directions, moreover, not dim and mysterious, but defi nite and well known. Solomon, we infer, was not ignorant of the contents of the Book of the Law like Josiah ; otherwise for the Solomonic Temple he would have provided a Solomonic Code. And, as a matter of fact, it is recorded that David drew up important and detailed directions for the Temple service. If these were in truth, as Wellhausen asserts, simply inventions of the sacerdotal Chronicler, he would have fathered them on Moses or on one of the high-priests. The organization of the Tenjiple ministers, the provision of instruments of music, forms of praise and thanksgiving, these and other things are ordered by David. The Chronicler plainly and without hesitation or excuse acknow ledges the existence of what might be called a Davidic Code for the service of the Temple. Such a frank recognition of the Royal Supremacy in ecclesiastical cases inclines us to accept his statements, that over and beyond all these there were rules laid down, not by any king, but according to the commandment of Moses, in regard to the keeping of feasts and the offering of sacrifices (2 Chron. 8. 13). But if we put the Chronicler aside, and suppose he is romancing, both when priestlike he is exalting the priest, and when unpriestlike he is exalting the king ; if we rest our case simply on the statements in Kings, still the facts remain. The Temple implies a definite code and had one. If no fixed rules for worship existed before the building of the Temple, they were at that time made, and probably by David and Solqmon. The fixing and fossilising of the tent of wood and curtains implies a similar process in regard to the sacrificial worship. The kings who planned, built, and consecrated the Temple were, it is plain, competent to fix the order of worship. They would have done so if it had been necessary. If it was not necessary it was 300 LEX MOSAICA. because there was a previous code. The alternative must thus be offered ; — A Priestly Code drawn. up by David or Solomon, or one more ancient far. And we may hazard a conjecture as to its contents. The code enjoined by lawful authority in the first Temple from the beginning can hardly have differed (except in extent) from that now found in the Pentateuch. The current of reform always sets toward David. It is to David's rules and regulations that good kings recur. It is plain a Priestly Code of David's or of Solomon's time and making would be almost as fatal to the critical theory as one made by Moses; for it is part of that theory that almost everything in Israel's worship is fluent and alterable for centuries after 1000 B.C. David, Solomon, and the chosen people generally had, it is plain, the grandest conceptions in regard to the importance of the work of building the Temple. A dwelling place " not for man but for the Lord God " should, they rightly felt, be " ex ceeding magnifical " and " wonderful great." In what sense, we ask, did Israel reckon the Temple to be a habitation for God ? From the answer to the question we shall be able to dis cern whether her religion was material or spiritual in character. We must pass by such expressions as we find in Solomon's prayer of consecration — " Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens 'cannot contain Thee ; how much less this house that I have builded." Not to Solomon or his age, we should be told, but to the author of the narrative do such spiritual conceptions belong. We fasten on the fact that the Ark is the Temple's most sacred thing. It was to bring up the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord from Zion for which Solomon assembled all Israel's elders, the heads of their tribes, and the chief of their fathers, when the work of building was complete (1 Kings 8. 1-6). The Ark thus took that chief place in the Temple which in all other religions would have been occupied by an idol. The right reverence for the Ark which we saw in David is, it is plain, felt also by Solomon and his people. Though most holy and precious in their esteem, it is not regarded super- stitiously, far less is it used as an idol. The narrative plainly indicates that to bring up the Ark into the Temple was not, in Israel's idea, to bring up the Lord there. It is true that when it is placed in the Oracle, the Glory of the Lord appears, but the two acts are not identical, nor, indeed, more closely related THE PERIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 301 than the offering of a gift on the one hand, and its free accept ance on the other. When Israel's pious work is complete, then the appearance of the cloud marks God's entry into the new habitation provided for Him by His people. He thus indicates that, as in the days of old so in the days to come, He will be graciously pleased to be the Lord God of Hosts, who sitteth upon the cherubim. In the Temple, as in the Tabemacle, the Ark will be the place of His manifestation. Thus the narrative gives no cotmtenance to the idea that Jehovah is confined in, or attached to the Ark, so that where it is there He must necessarily be. Kuenen and other representatives of the extreme critical school admit that the Temple contained no idol.* The import ance of this acknowledged fact can hardly be exaggerated, f Though images may haye been commonly used at the high places, though the worship at the Temple was no doubt erroneous and defective in important particulars, though material and formal ideas readily attached themselves to the offering of animal sacrifices, the great fact remains that, except when funda mentally corrupted by wicked kings, the authorised and estab lished national worship at Jerusalem was not idolatrous, for the Deity in Solomon's Temple was not identified with or even represented by any material form. This remarkable fact conclusively proves the Israelitish wor ship to have been spiritual in its essence. A crushing answer is thereby furnished to those statements, hazarded by some, that the religion of Samuel, David, and Solomon did not differ in kind from those of the neighbouring nations. In the early ages a religion without idol might be almost called unnatural ; and, save in Israel, all ancient worship was idolatrous. Centuries later than Solomon, it was the marvel of the conquerors who entered the inner shrine of the Jewish people that they found no image there, and many a foolish fable was current amongst the nations as to the shape of the Jewish God. Later still the Christians, having no sensible object of worship, were reckoned to be atheists. History abundantly shows that Christianity itself was far from uniformly successful in its long and bitter struggle against innate, immemorial, and universal idolatry. Micah's * Kuenen, Hist, of Israel, vol. i., p. 80. t It becomes of infinitely greater importance for our purpose, because we are not aUowed to assume the pre-existence of the Tabernacle. 302 LEX MOSAICA. complaint, " Ye have taken away my gods," is echoed by anthro- pomorphite monks of the fourth century A.D., and in much later times. Nor can it be said that to prefer to worship God without image or likeness was an abnormal peculiarity of the seed of Abraham. Isaiah's testimony, " Their land also is full of idols," would rarely in Old Testament times have been a witness of falsehood. The frequency of the iconoclastic reformations shows how ready was Israel, when the strong hand of the reforming king or prophet was removed, to retum to her idols. More than once an image of Asherah in the Temple court testified to the current feeling that there was something lacking in the worship established there. We are not in the least concerned to deny that many, and even some good Israelites, made use of images in the worship of Jehovah. That Jeroboam's calf worship fol lowed as an immediate consequence on the rebellion against the Davidic line involves us in no difficulty. All such facts are accounted for by the deep, persistent, well nigh universal craving for a sensible object of worship which history shows to be bound up in the heart of man, and which the Old Testament shows to have been felt in its full force by the chosen people. The fact that demands and, in the absence of the Mosaic Law, receives no explanation is the unprecedented,* one might almost say unnatural, absence of an idol in the Temple designed by David and built by Solomon, the great national shrine of the period of the kings. Our case has not yet been stated in its fuU force. We pass on to show that the absence of an idol from the Temple cannot be regarded as an act of simple and unreasoning obedience to the Second Commandment, "j" It is to our mind deeply significant that although there were no idols for worship in the Temple, there were symbolical images. In the very heart of the shrine, overshadowing with their wings the mercy-seat, Israel's highest altar, guarding, as it were, the place of the manifestation of God's presence, stood the Cherubim. Images were thus set up '* Unprecedented if, as is aUeged, the Tabernacle is mythical. t Some who aUow to Moses the authorship of the Ten Words allow him little else. It should, however, be noted that some who do, regard the prohibition of image worship contained in them as a later interpolation. So Kuenen, Hist, of Israel, vol. i., p. 287. The Ten Words can hardly stand alone ; as the kernel of the Mosaic legisla tion they seem to us to imply much more in the way of external shell. THE PERIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 303 at the spot on which religious awe was concentrated. A free, strong, intelligent grasp of the Second Commandment and its spiritual teaching is implied in this. Solomon (we may not say Moses before him) did not need to pay an obedience of scrupu lous literality to that command. He knew the dangers against which it was intended to guard — what it meant as well as what it said. He knew it, in other words, as part of a system, not as an isolated or positive law. There is, in his mind, none of that peril of idolatry in the Cherubim overshadowing the mercy-seat which some have found in the cross or crucifix upon the Chris tian altar. Israel's great teachers, it should be noticed, acquiesced in his action. Though he placed images in the very Holy of Holies, no word of explanation, or apology, or warning, is to be found in the Old Testament records. The Cherubim are never reckoned to be as Nehushtan by any of the reforming kings. Their subsidiary purpose is, in the national mind, too obvious to be mistaken. It is not thus, Israel knows, that the Second Com mand is broken. Such clear discrimination between images and idols implies not merely the constraint of a solitary command, but the education of a religious system. It implies instruction, not only given, but received and assimilated. It gives convinc ing proof of the existence, and more of the active operation, of a strong spiritual force in Israel. That religion had passed its elementary stage in whose shrine images could be used as symbols without fear that any would regard them as idols. The difficulties which WeUhausen's theory solves are indus triously paraded before men's eyes; the difficulties it leaves behind — and, far more, creates — are placed in the background. Amongst the latter is the Mosaic Tabemacle. The subject of the Tabernacle does not fall within our limits, and is treated elsewhere. A passing remark on its relation to the Temple may be aUowed us. Is the Tabernacle to be regarded as " the mythical aftergrowth of the Temple," or " the Temple the his torical sequel to the Tabernacle?" The close connexion be tween the two in regard to plan is undoubted ; the dimensions of the Temple are exactly double those of the Tabernacle. Which suggested which ? The Tabemacle, the Temple for David's practical purpose ; or the Temple, the Tabemacle for Ezra's religious (?) programme ? Did the thought of a central shrine first occur to David ? Is it not much more probable, that 304 LEX MOSAICA. as in England's history unity in the Church brought about unity in the State, so in Israel's history unity of worship produced unity amongst the tribes ? Does not, further, the change from Tabernacle to Temple exactly correspond to the political change from the unsettled days of the Judges to the fixed institutions of the Kings ? Neither David nor Solomon strike us as possess ing creative genius. We should not rank them in this respect with Moses, Samuel, or Isaiah. They are practical statesmen who realise ideas which they have learned from others. The kingdom is a development and an adaptation of previously exist ing institutions in Israel and elsewhere. The critical theory re quires that they should create Israel's religion on its sacrificial side, for the Temple contains all the essential ideas of the Priestly Code in the germ. It is, on the other hand, passing strange if imagination was Ezra's strong point. And yet he must, according to the critics, have been able to imagine an unsubstantial tent * out of the solid stones of the Temples of Solomon and Zerubbabel. The man who is nothing if he is not - practical, who regards Israel's law in a painfully realistic kind of way, idealises, etherialises the Temple into the Tabemacle. Placing the Priestly Code's account of the Tabernacle and the Temple-narratives in Kings and Chronicles side by side, we find the former to be far clearer and more complete — far more nearly corresponding to the description of working plans. What a strange irony of events to be able clearly to conceive the arrangements of the historical Temple only from the imagi nary description of the mythical Tabemacle ! On the whole case, we may adopt Bishop W^estcott's words {Epistle to the Hebrews, p. 233) : " It seems to be an incredible inversion of history to suppose that the Tabernacle was an imaginary ideal constructed either from the Temple of the Monarchy, or the Temple of the Return." We have, up to the present time, avoided making use of the Chronicler,t and for this reason : His authority on matters of history is disputed, or, we might rather say, laughed out of court by most of the critical school. The vehemence of the attack made on him is easily accounted for. If the Chronicler's * A tent, moreover, capable of erection as a tent. f Except in our remarks on the Temple for the reason stated then. THE PERIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 805 version of Israelitish history is approximately true, WeUhausen's theory is false. His record impUes the existence of the Priestly Code in the days of David and Solomon. It seems to be important, though the general subject has been discussed elsewhere, to define our attitude in regard to the Chronicler and his statements. He has, we must confess, cer tain qualities which detract from his value as a historian. He is partial* and one-sided in his interests. He regards Israel's history from David to the ExUe through spectacles coloured by Ecclesiasticism of the post-exUic type. His book is not a his tory of Israel, nor even of Judah, but rather of Jerusalem, and more especially the Temple, 'from a priestly point of view. There would seem to be no sufficient reason for denying the truth of his facts. The discoveries of late years have in some important points confirmed these.t We cannot, however, fairly deny, that, in his book, there has been systematic tampering— when and by whom we know not — with numbers. It must be considered probable that the speeches he puts into the mouth of speakers are expansions of the accounts which came down to him, in his own spirit and with his own colouring. He modified the literary, even as he modified the grammatical forms he found in his authorities. He takes such persistent care that we shall see in the history what he sees, that we cannot doubt we lose much that the history would have taught us if he had let it alone. There is danger lest a priest's view of national affairs should be Umited, and it is a priest's view, pure and simple, that he gives us. To state our indictment in the strongest terms : The Chro nicler taken alone is a misleading guide ; he gives us a very incomplete, and so to all intents and purposes, an incorrect idea of the history of the chosen people. Thus far we go, but no further. There seems to us no suffi cient reason for asserting that Chronicles is no better than an ecclesiastical romance or edifying religious story ; that it is a violation of historical truth throughout, to be dismissed without loss from our consideration when we are considering the history of the kingdom ; a heap of chaff in which it is barely By partial we do not mean that he suppresses the truth, but that he takes a partial or limited view of Israel's history. t Dillmann says : " Chronicles contains a reliable history, being drawn from the official records ; but the point of view is priestly." S 1063. U 306 LEX MOSAICA. possible a grain of wheat may be found ; a Midrash, or imaginary development of a Scripture thought or theme ; a deliberate or unconscious falsification of history. When we find these and similar statements in critical works, we may ask the important but commonly unanswered question, What do you assume ? If WeUhausen's theory is assumed, then in that assumption the historical falsehood of Chronicles is involved. On the other hand, the historical truth of Chronicles must be in all fairness disproved, and this by arguments not involving the truth of WeUhausen's theory, before that theory can be said to be esta blished in any true sense of the word. There are some, perhaps many, who will think that to acknowledge the partial and one-sided character of Chronicles, to admit that if taken alone it would actuaUy mislead, is prac tically to give up all that is worth contending for, and to ascribe to Chronicles a character incompatible with its Divine inspira tion. And yet we believe that we have been only making a particular application of a general principle whose truth wUl be universally acknowledged. In order to arrive at the full truth in any sphere of knowledge it ' is essential that we coUate our sources of information. The Divine Revelation itself, as experience abundantly shows, is not exempt from this elemen tary rule. To arrive at the full truth of its teaching, we must compare Scripture with Scripture, Gospel with Gospel, Apostle with Apostle, the Old Testament with the New. Those who neglect this comparison and rely on single passages or teachers, conceive, all history proves, false ideas of the Divine Teaching. There is no more fruitful source of error than partial grasp of truth. The admission that God's truth cannot be wrapped up in the small parcels of passages of Scripture is now generally made in theory. Proof of doctrines by isolated texts is acknow ledged to be an unscientific method of procedure. The principle is not, however, so readily extended to the larger portions — the several Books of the Sacred Canon. And yet the Four Gospels are remarkable proofs how impossible it was for one teacher, though fully inspired by the Holy Spirit of God, to grasp the manifold lessons to be taught from the Life on earth of the Incarnate Word. We may claim them as four great demonstra tions of the unreasonableness of expecting in Divine things the whole truth, even from witnesses of unexceptionable capacity THE PERIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 307 and opportunity, and imbued with the highest gifts and graces. The Gospels themselves, it must be admitted, considered sepa rately, are partial records tending to lead us into error. We should never think of comparing the Books of Chronicles with the Gospel of St. John in the depth and width of its spiritual teaching ; and yet can it be denied that we should conceive an incorrect idea of the earthly life and teaching of our Lord from the isolated study of that most Divine Gospel ? What is true of the Gospel is a fortiori true of the Old Testament History. With far closer approach to accuracy we may describe Chroni cles as the supplementary history of the Kings, than St. John as the supplementary gospel. It is pretty clearly the main purpose of the Chronicler to supply the deficiencies of the earlier narratives. In all fairness he must be studied along with the narratives he supplements. To take him alone is to constitute him, ipso facto, a false guide. The origin of the falsehood is not in his false statements, but in our false use. We thus regard the Chronicler as furnishing in his par tiality, and more, in consequence of his partiality, a valuable and necessary corrective and supplement to the prophetic his tories. Incomplete in himself, he gives completion to the Canon of Scripture. The LXX. translators, by calling the two Books of Chronicles na/jaX€Hro/*ej/«i' irfffTov, Idrefov, have for once hit upon a far more suitable title than the Massoretes. The Chronicles are not annals, but supplements or postscripts. They describe a phase of Israel's life under the kings which had been passed over in the earlier narratives. These, like Chronicles, are partial in character, though their partiality is not so ob trusive. Due allowance had not been made in them for the working of the ceremonial institutions. The power of the priest in prse-exilic Israel, though inferior to that of the pro phet or the king, was far from being insignificant. This we may infer from the nature of things. Israel was a religious nation, and her religion was essentiaUy sacrificial The chief ministers of religion may have had small share in determining the poUcy of the nation,* but they cannot have faUed to have exercised powerful influence on her religious mind. Judging from the writings of the prophets, Israel's religion contained too '* It was, however, the High Priest Jehoiada who restored David's line when it had been deposed by Athaliah. a 2 308 LEX MOSAICA. much rather than too little of the sacerdotal element. Isaiah describes with disgust the multitude of the sacrifices, the many prayers, the surfeit of burnt offerings of rams and fat of fed beasts, the never-ceasing formal round of new moons and ap pointed feasts, the trampling of the Temple courts — so hateful and wearying to God. The ministers of these superabundant sacrifices and crowded religious assemblies cannot have been unimportant personages in Israel's history. Beyond aU these they were the ministers of the Temple at Jerusalem. We can hardly, as we have already seen, over-estimate the religious importance of the Temple. The glory of that great shrine must have been reflected on its ministers. Now in the pages of Kings we read much about the Temple, but little about the priest. The Temple is regarded from a lay, a patriotic, a national, an exoteric point of view. Celebrations of the sacri fices and feasts are not recorded with frequency or fulness of detail. The author does not take a priestly view even of the Temple, and there was a priestly view to take. Very pro bably he regarded the priests with something of jealousy and dislike. It is, indeed, hardly possible that no jealousy* existed between the priestly and prophetical orders, i.e., between the ministers of God in virtue of their birth, and the same in virtue of a Di-^^ine call, between the ritualists and the preachers of righteousness, between the guardians of Israel's ancient rites and laws and the developers of her reUgion. One cannot imagine, for instance, Isaiah taking the keenest delight in a worship, Divinely ordered though it might be, whose corrup tions were to his mind so gross and palpable. Nor, on the other hand, could we expect that godly priests would acquiesce in Isaiah's sweeping denunciations of the Temple services. In our own day it is rare to find men who will acknowledge with equal justice the claims of the past and of the future, of cere monial and of doctrine, of worship and of righteousness, in the teaching and practice of religion. And yet may we not regard it as the crowning advantage of belonging to this last age of the world's history to be able to harmonise, i.e., to grasp as com ponent parts of a great system, truths which it was the mission of preceding ages or teachers to teach severally ? It would be * Jealousy and rivalry do not necessarily involve essential opposition. THE PERIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 309 impossible, we think, for Israelites living in the sixth, fifth, or fourth centuries B.C. to take a comprehensive view of Israelitish history. All we could expect of them would be an accurate but partial account. Our wisdom would seem to be to recog nise the partiality in the separate narratives emanating from different schools of thought, and to combine them for ourselves. WhUst fuUy acknowledging the partiality of Chronicles, we must not fail to admit and allow for the partiality of Kings. That partiality in religious matters is, as we have seen, beyond aU question.* It is proved by its silence in regard to a most important element of Israel's religion. The erroneous in ference which might have been consequently drawn Chronicles corrects, t The Psalms and the Proverbs, as literature closely connected, in tradition at the least, with the names of David and Solomon remain for our consideration. In doing so it is impossible to avoid the raising of great critical questions, and it is equally impossible to discuss them with any pretence to completeness. The Proverbs, as less important for our purpose, may be considered first. It is obvious that its connexion with Solo mon or his age is in many respects less close than that of the Psalms with David. The personal element is much slighter. Calm reflections and prudent rules do not come from a man's inner being in the same degree as the fervid outpourings of the distressed, or contrite, or thankful. Moreover, there was, we think, more of human nature in the man of God's especial choice. The Proverbs, again, are almost destitute of local or individual colouring, and might be put with equal propriety in the mouth of any wise IsraeUte. Further still, the Israelitish element is so indistinct that a considerable portion of them might be assigned to Eastern sages unconnected with the chosen people. Once more, the Book of Proverbs is a collection almost more than a composition — a collection of the many thoughts * It is also very obvious in political matters. t The erroneous results obtained from arguing from the silence of Kings may be lUustrated in the ease of Jeremiah. He is never mentioned in Kings, and yet Jiis political as weU as reUgious importance in the last days of the Jewish monarchy can hardly be exaggerated. Which, indeed, of the canonical prophets would have had his proper place in our esteem from the notices in the historical books ? " Like prophet Uke priest " may be a correct statement of the case on this point. Chronicles does for the priests that which the prophetical writings do for the prophets. 310 LEX MOSAICA. of many minds rather than the creation of an individual. Thus, for a variety of reasons, the connexion of Proverbs with Israel's history would seem to be ill-defined. In consequence it would be unreasonable to expect from it any considerable contribu tions to the history of Israel's religious thought. When we consider the Proverbs in their relation to the Mosaic Laws, we are at once struck with the proof everywhere presented that highly-developed religious thought and life could exist in Israel, unconnected, so far as appearance goes, with the sacrifices, and ceremonies, and rules of the Law. The Israelites who thought or wrote the Proverbs probably represented a numerically small class of men. W^hether few or many, they were able to wrap up religious ideas in an unsacrificial and un-legal dress. They could so express themselves that we are led to ask the question, Was the Mosaic Law known to them, at least in its paramount claims on their obedience ? When we search a little further we find that these wise men are able to think themselves, so to speak, out of Israel's history and the Temple-worship. Israel had a famous ancient history and a glorious Temple, even if she had no Mosaic Law. If a nation makes a history, history makes a nation. If writers compose history, history creates writers. The writers of Proverbs were created by Israel's history, and yet no traces of the creating hand may be discerned. What is true of the history may be true of the Law. The Proverbs imply that their f ramers had reached a high point in religious development. "The Chokma," we are told, " seeks to look into the very essence of [Divine] trath through the robe of its historical and national manifestation, and then to comprehend those general ideas in which' could already be dis covered the fitness of the religion of Jabve for becoming the world-religion."* Religious thought, so intellectual, so compre hensive, so idealising, cannot be assigned to an early period in the religious history of any nation. Moreover, advance so con siderable in one branch of religious thought implies, we think, a corresponding advance in other branches^ It is obvious that if the natural order is first the Law then the Gospel, it is also first the Law then Wisdom. At whatever point in Israel's history * Dditzsch, axt! Proverbs, Herzog's Seal Encyclopedia. THE PERIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 311 you place the Wisdom literature or its beginnings, you must admit the existence of religious teaching of an elementary type generations further back. Little, indeed, of the Wisdom litera ture can have emanated from the age of Solomon, if, as is asserted, the religious ideas of Samuel and David were of a rude and material type. All proof that its fundamental ideas were established in the days of Solomon tends to show that Israel had in previous times received some such education as that implied in the traditional account of the Law and history. On the critical theory it is most difficult to see how and when Israel received any education at all. The prophets seem to burst fuUy armed and developed from her head. The sayings of the wise are unaccounted for, and seem to be unaccountable. But what proof is there that the Wisdom literature had its beginnings in Solomon ? We can hardly advance beyond the region of probabilities here. The Proverbs must be regarded as fitting very weU with all we know of the Solomonic age. Their quiet reflections are very suitable for an age of peace. In Solomon's reign, perhaps for the first time, Israelites had time to think. Further, they correspond to, and are worthy of, the reputation of the wisest of men. Their width of view may be naturally traced to one whose characteristic was " largeness of heart." It Ulustrates, perhaps, our ignorance of. Israel's worthies and their qualifications to say that we know no Is raelite who could have written the Proverbs save Solomon him self. Again, their comparative worldliness of tone suits a king whose spiritual wisdom was not free from worldly elements, and a time ,when true religion suffered from the corruptions incidental to prosperity. Their unnational character suits a reign in the course of which Israel's hopes and ideas had been widened by contact with many of the nations of the earth. We must go into some dark age of Israel's history before we can imagine a period into which the Proverbs would fit more naturaUy than that of Solomon. The tradition ascribing them to him contains, we must claim, many elements of probabUity. StiU, it would be impossible to maintain that the positive proof is irrefragably strong. We could not argue with certainty from them, as productions of the Solomonic age. Moreover, ia con nexion with our special purpose, the relations between the Wisdom literature generally and the Law are too subtle to 312 LEX MOSAICA. furnish a ground on which can be fought out the battle of the Mosaic origin of Israel's Law. It is almost in despair that we tum to David's Psalms and endeavour to place in compact form the evidence which they may be claimed to furnish for our case. It is plain that the arguments deducible from them are, if their validity can be established, of much greater importance than those from the Proverbs. The individuality of the Sweet Singer of Israel in his Psalms is much more definite than that of the Wise King in the Proverbs. His religious interest is much deeper, for with him reUgion is not a code of rules, but a struggle ; not a philosophy, but a life. The Psalms give us a clearer notion by far of the general character of Israel's religion, for they are far more closely related to the religious life of ordinary men. The wise are few, and their reflections receive very partial- appreciation. Worship is the necessity, struggles against sin and trouble are the constant experience of aU. On the one hand, the tradition as cribing the Psalms to David is supported by evidence of much greater variety and strength ; on the other, the testimony, the Psalms assumed Davidic give to the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, is less subtle and more cogent. It may be too much to say that, if David wrote the Psalms, Moses wrote the Penta teuch, but proof of the one would be a strong argument for a very substantial Mosaic element in the other. , That David was a great poet, is, we should maintain, as satis factorily proved as any fact of ancient history. It is a genuine national tradition which makes him Israel's fount of song. Few traditions satisfy so fully the weU-known criterions of truth. Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus. The " semper " is in this case particularly strong, far stronger than for the Mosaic origin of Israel's laws. We can trace the tradition within a very few generations of David himself. The Book of Samuel is acknowledged to be one of the earliest books of the Bible, and David's poetical powers can be demonstrated from the earliest portions of this very early book. It is the fashion to despise tradition. It goes up in the balances even when weighed against a critical conjecture. The modem critic, though sepa rated from his subject by centuries in time, by gulfs in thought or race, and by the mists which hide from our view ancient events, is notwithstanding able to squash peremptorUy the ver- THE PERIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 313 diets pronounced by generations on men who might for a variety of reasons be caUed their own. It is true that often we cannot see the reasons for the verdicts pronounced. The witnesses have perished. But traditions, Uke, buUdings, are not made without hands. We should accept ancient, well nigh contemporaneous, traditions, or at least try to account for them. They hold the ground in default of evidence to the contrary. They are guides to the truth even when they do not speak truly. They can be disproved only by arguments of solid weight. In the case before us the tradition that David was not only a poet, but a great poet, and indeed Israel's one great poet, fits in with many incidental notices in the historical books. Gifts of sacred song were cultivated in his days in those schools over which Samuel presided, and which it is inferred with the highest probabiUty he founded. What is sacred song but a combination of prophecy with music ? And the prophets who met Saul had, as they prophesied, psalteries, timbrels, pipes, and harps in their hands (1 Sam. ,10. 5). Signs of the poetic gift are discernible in David's boyhood. The minstrel shepherd who charmed away Saul's madness cannot have been destitute of some of the poet's highest qualifications. It is clear also that if David had the irmate capacity for song, the circumstances of his life tended to develop it in an extraordinary degree. We must not press the adage Poeta nascitur, non fit so far as to deny that some circum stances are far more favourable than others to provoke poetic outbursts. David's life is unequalled in its romantic vicissi tudes. Sometimes, in his life, Deep called to Deep, and some times Height to Height. It is the dead levels of prosperity and adversity which are fatal to poetry. It is sharp and sudden changes which stir men's minds to laments or songs. Was it mere good luck or good management that caused Jewish tradi tion to fix on David and his age as the age of poetry; and at least by silence to deny poetic gifts to Solomon and his times ? The truth of the tradition is surely the simplest and most rational explanation of this tmth-likeness. Some traditions, so far as we are able to trace them, rest on a few titles or isolated notices. These, as capable of easy inter polation and pecuUarly liable to corruption, cannot be regarded as witnesses of strength. The proofs of David's poetical powers seem to be intertwined with the history, and meet us at every 314 LEX MOSAICA. tum. His poetical feeling betrays itself in casual remarks, and great events in his own or in the national life are marked by him by a suitable dirge or prayer or thanksgiving. Of no other per son in Israel's history could this be said.* It may be observed that the only occasions to which Psalms are ascribed in the titles are events in David's life. We could not have a stronger recog nition of the peculiarly close relation between David's poems and the national history. The " sweet psalmist of Israel" did not, we are able to see, get his distinctive title for nothing. David is the national poet, and there is absolutely no one to place by his side. Is it rational to deny a pre-eminence in poetical gifts to a man thus marked out by a people's voice to be their one and only lyric poet ? The claim of David to the title of poet can indeed hardly be gainsayed. It is the strength of his claims to a pre-eminent place — a place by himself, on which we wish to insist. Aut David aut nullus is the alternative. That is to say, there is no Israelite on whom we may place David's mantle if it is stripped from him by the critics. Dfivid discredited, — aU Israel's poets died and left no name.f But the crucial question now arises, Did David write the Psalms ascribed to him ? The acknowledgment of his poetical reputation has no value in our eyes or for our present purpose if he can be denied the authorship of the Psalms. There is a theory which admits that David was a great poet, but denies that he was a religious poet, or that he wrote any of the Psalms called by his name. Can this be regarded as probable in any considerable degree ? It seems much more natural to suppose that David's Psalms and David's poetical reputation are bound up in a bundle of life together — each helping to give perma nence to the other, — the same religious and patriotic care pre serving both in Israel's minds and memories and affections. In David's reign Israel arrived at the full consciousness of her national existence ; her national life henceforward is strong and vigorous. The Judges Period with its characteristics never recurs. The value of the national traditions is consequently en hanced. It would be somewhat strange if none of Davids poems was written down at the time. There are abundant * Hezekiah composed a prayer in poetical form. t Asaph would not survive David. It is noticeable that Cheyne, who criticaUy kiUs the real David, is obliged to create an imaginary one a century or two later on. THE PERIOD Of DAVID AND SOLOMON. 315 traces of national literature of other kinds. Not that their pre servation would be dependent on committal to writing. David's Psalms would naturally and without effort be enshrined in the memories of pious Israelites. This, we may be sure, is not the case of a poet neglected in his day and generation who be came famous long after his death. David was a royal poet, and royal poets do not waste their sweetness on the desert air. He was not only a king, but the establisher of the monarchy on a firm base. In him and his line the Divine promises to the nation were concentrated. Such a man's compositions must have been familiar to Israel's mind as household words. The theory we are considering involves, it would seem, two most improbable assumptions : — That the poems David wrote are lost, and that poems not his, and not like his, differing from his essen tiaUy in character and in spiritual grasp, have been universaUy and from very early times ascribed to him. We are not con cerned to deny that some, or even a considerable number, of the " Psalms of David " were written by other men at later times, and got their name because they corresponded to a Davidic type. What we maintain is that Israel cannot have been mis taken as to the essential character of this Davidic type, and so that the Psalter has for its nucleus psalms written by David. But what is the positive evidence connecting David with the Davidic Psalms ? In the first place we have the titles. Now it is needless to say that the information supplied by the titles is not always intelligible or accurate. They contain musical technicalities, and so their meaning is obscure. The relation expressed by " of " in the phrase " Psalm of " is not always that of authorship. From their nature they were speci aUy liable to suffer from the interpolations, or the misplacements, or the corruptions of scribes.* It is easy, the inaccuracy of some few titles being demonstrated, to infer the untrustworthiness of the rest. But it is certain the titles have not one neck which can be cut off at a single blow. The titles, whatever their nature, date, or value, are not systematicaUy prefixed to the * The titles in the LXX. Version prove, however, that these interpolations, etc., were not extensive or substantial in the ages between the insertion of the titles in the Hebrew text and their translation into Greek. The misunderstandings of the LXX. Version, for which time is required, are incomparably more noteworthy than its variations. 316 LEX MOSAICA. Psalms. So far from being able to lay down any one principle which could account for them all, we can rarely discern the principles on which they are prefixed. It would seem certain that they cannot have been prefixed by one hand, and, in con sequence, they do not represent one tradition, but many. The probability that all the titles are wrong is thus immeasurably less than that any single title is wrong. The manifold testi mony of the titles is, therefore, a witness of strength for con necting David with Davidic Psalms generaUy ; though possibly, in connecting him with any Psalm in particular, it may be con fessed to be weak or insufficient. The apparent inappropriateness of the occasions assigned by the titles to the Psalms has often been alleged against their genuineness, but this argument has a double edge. The im- likelihood may, it is true, be the consequence of a mistake; it may also point to ancient tradition as the source of the infor mation given. The titles, being thus apparently inappropriate, cannot have been deductions from the contents of the Psalms. By using these we should, indeed, find it easy, at times, to correct them. The connexion between a poem and its occasion is not unlikely to be subtle in its character, to be undiscemible by men unacquainted witb the workings of the poet's mind — not widely or deeply acquainted with his circumstances when he wrote. It is not as if those who prefixed the titles were under an overpowering necessity to find occasions for the Psahns. In formation on this point is given sparingly, and, we may add, spasmodicaUy and unexpectedly. Under these circumstances, the " inappropriateness " of the titles seems to indicate that they embody traditions and not deductions. The titles are not the only connexion between David and the Psalms called his. The occurrence of one of the Psalms in the Book of Samuel must be regarded as furnishing us with the most powerful argument in support of the national tradition. The exact relations between the Psalm contained in 2 Sam. 22 and Ps. 18 are unimportant for our purpose. It is sufficient for us that they are obviously two editions of one and the same Psalm, witnessing on the one hand to the possibUity of cor ruptions or changes in the Hebrew text; on the other hand, to the substantial accuracy with which it has been handed down. " The incorporation of Ps. 18 in the Book of Samuel," THE PERIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 317 says Professor Kirkpatrick, " as a specimen of David's poetry iUustrating his character and genius, is the strongest evidence in favour of regarding David as the founder of the Psalter; that Psalm is there circumstantially ascribed to David^ and there is no sufficient ground for placing the compUation of the Book of Samuel at so late a date that its evidence on this point can be set aside as a mere tradition which had sprung up in the course of centuries."* "But if Ps. 18 must be ac knowledged to be the work of David," he goes on to say, " important consequences follow." " For depth of devotion, sim- pUcity of trust, joyousness of gratitude, and confidence of hope, not less than for its natural force and poetic beauty, that Psalm has few rivals. It has all the freshness of creative genius. It can hardly have been the solitary production of its author. If such a Psalm could have been written by David, so might many others; and it is reasonable to inquire with regard to those which bear his name, whether they may not actually have been composed by him ? " It is needless to do more than sum up what is stated here. The evidence is strong that David wrote Ps. 18. The conclusion is inevitable that if he wrote Ps. 18, he wrote, or at the least may have written, many of the Psalms entitled his. We may fairly contrast this short, simple, and substantial proof of the Davidic authorship of the Psalms with the long thin line of arguments, or rather of hypotheses and probabilities combined, by which Professor Cheyne, in his Bampton Lectures, proves satisfactorily to himself that there is no sufficient reason for asserting the existence of any prae-exilic Psalm. He argues backward from the later collections to the earlier. Beginning with a later Psahn, he assigns it a date with some considerable probabiUty. Using this "established result" as a basis, he determines the date of another Psahn. He repeats this process through a long series, untU the Psalms supposed to be earUest are reached. These he, considers from the vantage ground of the end of his series of probabilities. Having gone so far, why should we not go further? The titles having been so often proved to be untrustworthy, why trust them in any case ? He forgets that an accumulation of weakness, not strength, attaches * The Psalms, Book I., Introduction, pp. xxxii, xxxiii. 318 LEX MOSAICA. to the last link in a chain of probabiUties. Each point in a long line of argument may have considerable probability, whUe the final result has none. His vantage ground is, in fact, little better than the top of a row of stones piled verticaUy. Each stone added is less capable of giving support to the next, and at last all fall together. We are criticising the general course of Professor Cheyne's argument here, not the arguments them selves. These, we wish to point out, gain a great show of strength, but none in reality, from beginning where the evi dence for Davidic authorship is weakest. Using his methods, but reversing his point of origin, we can plausibly argue that David wrote nearly the whole Psalter. But we should have the advantage of starting from the firm basis of Ps. 18, and the conclusions at which we should arrive from time to time would receive independent support from the national tradition. The character of David as described in the history is re garded by many of the critical school as conclusive proof that he cannot have been the author of the Psalms. We have al ready given reasons to the contrary. The inconsistencies dis cernible in the David of the history are hardly less gross than those derived by comparing the David of the history and the David of the Psalms. There must be further analysis of origi nal documents, and further contemptuous rejection of later (?) traditions, before we can arrive at the David of the critical imagination. Again we may quote Professor Kirkpatrick on our side. "The difference [between the David of the Psalms and the David of the history] is often exaggerated. Not a few of the Psalms iUustrate and are illustrated by the history of David's life ; and in that history, fragmentary and incomplete as it necessarily is, are to be found abundant traces of the religious side of his character ; of the confidence which, in the midst of danger and difficulty, threw itself imperplexed upon God ; of the patience which could wait God's time instead of rushing to revenge ; of the simple faith which ascribed aU success and advancement to God ; of the hope which looked trustingly forward into the unknown future in cahn assurance that God would fulfil His promises ; last, but not least, of the penitence which bumbled itself in unfeigned sorrow for sin.' Yes, the David of the Psalms and of the history are not es sentiaUy different characters. THE PERIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 319 We have now seen how many arguments of a critical kind may be adduced against the critical conclusion, that it was impossible for David, being what he was and living when he did, to have written the Psalms.* We have said nothing of the supernatural aid which the Scriptures assign to him. He says, " The Spirit of God spake by me, and His word was on my tongue." New Testament writers say, " The Holy Ghost spake by the mouth of David." What allowance, we ask, do the critics make for the great fact of Inspiration ? Many, though not all, admit it in terms ; few seem to admit it in fact. Inspira tion, we admit, would not obliterate David's circumstances and fundamentaUy change David's character and ideas. It would not make David as one bom out of due time, but it would surely make him a greater David, with enlarged capacities and higher ideals and hopes. It would thus, surely, diminish the difficulty of ascribing tbe Psalms to him. Delitzsch's words should be borne in mind : " It has been thought strange that the very beginnings of Israel's poetry are so perfect; but Israel's history, also that of her literature, comes under a different law from that of a constant development from a lower to a higher grade." f We claim then, not with certainty, for certainty is unattain able in such remote investigations, but with confidence, David as the great Psalm author. What is the bearing of this con clusion on the Mosaic origin of the Law ? Minute investiga tion into the coimexion between the Psalms and the Law would be out of place, and would lead, we believe, to no decisive results. { But there is one great argument of weight and force which at once presents itself. Like the writings of the prophets three hundred years after, like the Proverbs of Solomon in the succeeding generation, like David himself, Da vid's Psalms imply long and deep reUgious preparation and education. Six generations or so, and barely two hundred and fifty years, separate David from Moses, and much of this time, so far from being favourable to religious development, was a * "Many things combined to make the time of David the golden age [of the Sacred Lyric]." — Delitzsch, art. Psalms, Herzog's Seal Encyclopedia. t DeUtzseh, art. Psalms, Herzog's Seal Encyclopedia. X W'e may, however, notice the aUusions to "judgments" and "statutes" and " ways " of God in Ps. 1 8, which there is such good reason to ascribe to David. 320 LEX MOSAICA. time of religious declension and deterioration. After Joshua and his generation, Samuel is Moses' first true disciple, and David, we must needs assume, sat at Samuel's feet. We most certainly want someone like Moses, someone not far removed from him in time, and something resembling his Law,* to account for David and his Psalms. The religious ideas there in contained are on the other hand incompatible with WeU hausen's theory of Israel's religious development. Its sup porters are becoming more and more conscious of this. Psalms freely ascribed to David by earlier critics are now denied to him. In determining dates, no respect is paid to literary considera tions ; and the force of historical aUusions is evaded. The Davidic element in the Psalter has become small by degrees and beautifully less ; nay ! under Professor Cheyne's auspices has already vanished away. Thus the theory which asserts that Moses was not the giver of Israel's Law has to bear the heavy burden of maintaining that David was not the writer of Israel's Psalms. The end of our task is now come. Some may be disap pointed that we have been unable to find in the periods of David and Solomon more solid, or at least more palpable, support for the Lex Mosaica. They may be reminded that if in Samuel or in Kings, as in Joshua, direct references to the Mosaic Law had been constantly found, the argument as against the critics would not have been advanced a single step. These definite statements would have been assigned to the hand of the late post-exilic editor or redactor. Our object has been to show the incidental undesigned proofs which the narra tives, admitted to be of an early date, afford to the existence of the Law. The Ark and the Temple, David's character and writings, the Wisdom literature of Solomon's reign, are to our mind witnesses faithful and eloquent, and not to be gain said, to the pre-existence of the great teacher and legislator Moses. We see the proofs that there was in active operation a powerful spiritual force, opposing, modifying, and eradicating Israel's natural tendencies, educating individuals and tending to educate the whole nation to a higher standard of truth and righ teousness, and to more spiritual conceptions of Him whom they acknowledged to be their God. As the astronomer inferred the * His Law, i.e. in its main principles. THE PERIOD OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 321 existence of a planet hitherto unknown from the modified orbits of other planets, so we vindicate the ancient claims of the Mosaic Law to existence in the earUest days of the kingdom from the manifest tokens of a spiritual energy drawing Israel to higher and holier things. Israel's reUgion in David's and Solomon's times, we claim to have proved, possesses distinctive peculiari ties ; it may be differentiated on essential points from aU other ancient reUgions. A natural cause for these pecuUarities and differences is to be found in the Mosaic Law. It behoves those who deny its existence in the eleventh century b.c. to provide us with another. S 1063. VIIL THE NORTHERN KINGDOM. J. SHARPE. VIII. THE NOETHERN KINGDOM. THE history of the Northern Kingdom of Israel supplies one main branch of the evidence adduced to prove that the religious system which is put before us in Holy Scripture, as delivered by Moses, is of late origin. It will be convenient to fpUow the practice of Hosea, and to caU the Northern Kingdom Ephraim. It is asserted that the religious belief and ritual of Ephraim represents the original and genuine religion of the famUy of Jacob, and that the Mosaic system only grew up at a late date under the inffuence of the prophets. The chief sources of information are the Books of Kings and the prophets Amos and Hosea. The periods on which they throw light are three. In Kings we have a detailed account of the circumstances wMch led to the Disruption, and of the religious revolution which accompanied it. We have also several detailed narratives of the prophets Elijah and Elisha. Lastly, we have the prophecies of Amos and Hosea, which were de livered under Jeroboam II., and perhaps during the last days of the kingdom of Ephraim. It is allowed on both sides that the Books of Kings were compiled in their present form at a late date and for a special purpose. Modern critics, however, assert that the view which they take of the reUgion of Ephraim is a late , view, and one which was quite unknown at the periods with which they deal On the other hand, it is evident that the judgments set forth in Kings are essentially in agreement with the teaching of the prophets Amos and Hosea. Critics, therefore, assert that the teaching of those prophets was something quite new and un known even to Elijah and Elisha, who lived so short a time before. 326 LEX MOSAICA. As the evidence of Amos and Hosea is of the highest order, and cannot be gainsaid, but is accepted on both sides as genuine, it wiU be convenient to work backwards, and to show (I.) that their evidence is not only genuine, but authentic ; (II.) that they bear witness to the existence of the Mosaic Law ; (III.) that they support the judgments of the compiler of the Books of Kings in regard to the time of Elijah and of Jeroboam I. (I.) The Evidence of Amos and Hosea is Authentic. (1.) The prophecies of Amos and Hosea are universally ac cepted as genuine. They supply contemporary evidence as to the religious condition of the Northem Kingdom of Israel to ward the close of the long and prosperous reign of Jeroboam IL Their evidence cannot be set aside as written from a later stand point, but must be accepted as authentic. For though both prophets write from the standpoint of the religion which had its centre in the Temple at Jerusalem, this is no sufficient ground for rejecting their testimony. It was essential to the success of their mission that they should oppose the actual religious beliefs and practices of Ephraim. To misstate or misrepresent them would have been the height of folly, and they had every means of knowing the truth. (2.) Both Amos and Hosea constantly appeal to history. Their prophecies assume on the part of the hearers or readers a familiar acquaintance with the history of their nation. They did not address an ignorant populace who might be persuaded to accept as ancient and primitive a perfectly new system of religious thought just springing into existence. These bold assertions would have been immediately detected by persons whose knowledge of the past was as extensive and minute as is implied in those who first heard these prophecies. Amos had been brought up as a herdman and a gatherer of sycomore fruit. He was not a prophet by profession, nor had he been educated in the schools of the prophets (7. 14). He may be regarded as a fair specimen of the religious Jew of the less educated classes. What he knew of the past would be known by most. Hosea, again, not only makes direct reference to the history, but is saturated with allusions to the past. Some passages THE NORTHERN KINGDOM. 327 are quite unintelligible, except on the assumption of aUusion to early history. A minute examination of the language of Hosea leaves an irresistible impression that he is quoting written documents : either the Books which we now have, or the ori ginal sources from which those Books were compiled. (3.) These prophets thus addressed' an audience weU ac quainted with history, whose knowledge was not a vague, floating tradition, but minute, accurate, and recorded in written documents. They were also a hostUe audience.- They would at once have exposed any error made by those who denounced them. It would have been useless to have set before them a view of history which was in many points, and those the most essential, a reversal of the truth. There were both priests and prophets opposed to them who would have immediately exposed any error, and effectually have prevented any such sweeping changes in the manner of regarding the reUgious history of the past as Amos and Hosea are supposed to have introduced. (4.) The religious ideas of Hosea and Amos were maintained not only in the face of a hostile audience, but in the teeth of historical facts. There is scarcely a detail of religious usage which Hosea condemns, for which ample justification might not be quoted from history. The numerous altars, the worship on hills and under trees, the teraphim and the pUlar, could all be defended by precedents of patriarchal practice. What had they to allege as the ground for condemning saints and heroes, or for regarding as hateful to God customs hallowed by the most honoured names in the history of Israel ? But if the Mosaic legislation forbade such practices after the Conquest, we have an intelligible explanation of the position taken up by Hosea. (5.) The prophecies of Amos and Hosea afford no evidence that they were the earliest advocates of a new faith or ritual " If anything is clear from their writings, it is that they do not regard themselves as innovators, but as reformers. They are striving to recall the people to their allegiance to Jehovah, and to raise practice to the level of belief. The standard and motive of right conduct is the knowledge of God which the people might have possessed. . . . These prophets are conscious of no discontinuity with the past" (Professor Kirkpatrick, ffar- burton Lectures, p. 26). 328 LEX MOSAICA. Hosea does not merely condemn present practices. He takeis an historical view of the religion of the people, and confidently assumes that what he is now teaching had been taught from the first. He is aware that the sins which he denounces are of no recent origin. They date back as early as the closing year of the wandering in the desert, when Israel quitted Jehovah for Baal-peor (9. 10; 11. 2). "From the days of Gibeah " (10. 9) they have sinned ; and ever since, in spite of His loving kindness, in spite of all teaching by prophets and chastisements by suffering, they have persisted in sinning (6. 6 ; 11. 2, 4). Amos and Hosea refer to prophets who had preceded them, and regard themselves as carrying on the work of their prede cessors. Amos tells how Jehovah had raised up out of Ephraim prophets whom they had refused to hear (2. 11, 12). Men talked lightly of " the day of Jehovah," which impUes a threat of punishment similar to that given by Amos (5. 18). So also Hosea writes : " I have hewn (them) by the prophets, I have slain them by the words of my mouth " (6. 5). (6.) Amos expressly asserts the existence of a law or teach ing and of statutes. He denounces the neighbouring nations for cruelty shown in the many wars of the time, but in dealing with Judah his method changes. Judah is to be punished " because of their rejecting the Law of Jehovah, and His statutes they have not kept, and their lies have caused them to err, after which their fathers walked " (2. 4). He fully recognises the fact that the custom of many years could be pleaded against him. The acts by which Judah merited punishment were no thing new. Yet he confidently asserts that these long-continued practices were contrary to the Law and statutes of Jehovah Even if we should render Torah " teaching " rather than " law," the result is the same. In foreteUing judgment upon Israel, Amos does not directly refer to the Law and statutes of Jehovah, as in the case of Judah. But his language does imply that Israel knew such sins to be contrary to the Law of Jehovah. For otherwise there is no meaning in the emphatic form of the personal pro noun in 2. 9, 10 : " Yet it was I who destroyed the Amorite. . . . Yea, it was I who brought you up from Egypt." Jehovah had rescued them from slavery and given them their land, and THE NORTHERN KINGDOM, 329 yet in spite of these mercies they deliberately did what they knew He had forbidden. In one instance of gross impurity the prophet expressly charges them with the intention of pro faning the name of Jehovah. Purity was the distinctive feature of the worship of Jehovah, that which marked.it off in the most unmistakeable way from the worship of the productive powers of nature, so widely spread throughout the East. In no other way could Israel so profane the revelation which Jehovah had given of His wiU and character, as by besti- aUty. But this express intention and the mode of effecting it imply a known law of Jehovah. How could they be blamed for acting as others, if such acts had never been forbidden, but were now for the first time denounced by Amos ? Hosea constantly appeals to an existing Law (or teaching), to statutes, to knowledge, which Ephraim has forgotten or re jected, or regards as alien (Hos. 4. 6 ; 8. 1, 12). He complains of the transgression of a covenant (Hos. 6. 7 ; 8. 1); of treachery (5. 7 ; 6. 7) ; of the breach of an intimate union like that of marriage (1. 2 ; 2. 2), or the tie which binds parent and child (11. 1). They have forgotten Jehovah (2. 13; 8. 14), quitted Him for idols (2. 7; 4. 12, 17; 8. 4; 13. 2; 14. 8) and their foul worship (4. 14). He never blames the people for shutting their eyes to new truth, but condemns them for quitting a cove nant made with the nation in its infancy. Hosea is perfectly clear as to the time when this union with Jehovah began, when the Covenant was made, when Je hovah commenced to train the youthful nation. The Exodus from Egypt was the time of Israel's youth, when Jehovah loved him, taught him to walk (U. 1, 3), and became his God (12. 9 ; 13. 4). He knows that the Covenant has often been broken, yet He asserts its existence, and that His own teach ing is the same as they had from the beginning. (IL) Witness of Amos and Hosea to the Mosaic Law. (i.) Amos. (1.) The parts of the, Mosaic system which form the subject matter of the discussion are not merely points of ritual law although some of these are touched upon. But the main 330 LEX MOSAICA. points in dispute are the very fundamental ideas of Moses, viz., that Jehovah is the Only God, that His character is moral, that He is not to be represented by an image. On these points the teaching of Amos and Hosea is the teaching of Moses. The religion of Ephraim was clearly opposed to it. Some critics have affirmed that " ethical monotheism " had its rise with the prophets of the eighth century B.c. Wellhausen, however, admits that they were "far from originating a new concep tion of God " (p. 474 *). This point, therefore, is conceded. The two ideas summed up in the term " ethical monotheism " are admitted to have formed a part of the original reUgion of Moses. Both ideas admit of varying degrees of emphasis according to circumstances. The ethical conception of the character of God admits of infinite growth. That it should have made some progress in the centuries which separate Moses from Hosea is natural. But the important fact is that there was no such absolute change in the religion of Israel as was asserted by Kuenen and his school. (2.) But while Amos proclaims Jehovah as Creator of the universe (4. 13 ; 5. 8 ; 8. 9 ; 9. 6), and as Ruler of the world (1. 1 — 2. 6 ; 3. 6 ; 9. 7, 11), he affirms far more frequently that He has a special relation to Israel, both to Ephraim and Judah. The idea of Jehovah as God of Israel has not been lost or diminished. Wellhausen is wrong in asserting that "the ethical element destroyed the national character of the old religion" (p. 476). Wellhausen lays stress on the fact that Amos "caUs Jeho vah God of Hosts, never the God of Israel. The nation as such is no religious conception to him ; from its mere existence he cannot formulate any article of faith" (p. 472*). The precise meaning of this remark is not easy to see, but it illustrates the favourite practice of critics of this school, of building upon too narrow an induction. For Hosea, the contemporary of Amos, calls Jehovah "God of Hosts" only once (12. 5); Isaiah and Micah, never; but all three emphasise the especial tie which binds Israel to Jehovah. Isaiah freely uses the title " God of Israel," Hosea never. "The Holy One of Israel" is a favourite title in Isaiah. * Prolegomena, Eng. trans., 1886. THE NORTHERN KINGDOM. 331 The true explanation of this use of the Divine names lies in the character of Israelite idolatry. The calf worship did not pretend to be worship of Jehovah. While the Northem Kingdom lasted, the " God of Israel " would be understood by the members of that kingdom to mean the calf god. After the destruction of that kingdom, Israel could be freely used as the name of the Covenant people of Jehovah. It became the title of a church rather than of a nation. In addressing nature worshippers such as the northern IsraeUtes, the title "God of Hosts" was most appropriate. It identified Jehovah with the Creator of the heavenly hosts and of the forces of nature (Amos 5. 8). Amos begins his prophecies against the nations with the. words, "Jehovah will roar from Zion, and from Jerusalem wiU give His voice " (1. 2) ; but though He will punish cruelty in the nations around, He will punish Judah for their rejecting the Law of Jehovah (2. 4). The tie formed at the Exodus is not broken, though neglected privilege is now a cause of deeper penalty. "You only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore will I punish you for your iniquities " (3. 1, 2). Cf. "Thy God," 4. 12; 9. 15; "My people Israel," 7. 15 ; 8. 2; 9. 10, 14. (3.) That Jehovah alone is God is also assumed throughout. Each nation may have its own false gods, but the history of each is determined by Jehovah. This is involved in the pro phecies of Amos against Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab, as well as Judah and Ephraim. So in Amos 6. 13, "Who rejoice in a no-thing," i.e. an idol, which has really no existence at aU. Of Judah he says, " Their lies after which their fathers went have led them astray," i.e. their idols, which have as little existence in truth as a lie (2. 4). (4.) Another fundamental principle of the Mosaic Law is the prohibition of image worship. Amos does not mention the calf idol, though he denounces worship at the places which we know to have been scenes of calf worship, Dan (8. 14) and Bethel (5. 5). Amos 5. 26 refers to the worship of images representing the host of heaven. We should probably render, " And you shall bear the shrine of your king and Chiun your images, the star of your gods which you have made for yourselves. And I wiU 332 LEX MOSAICA. carry you away captive," etc. Thus translated the passage bears witness to the worship of stars in the time of Amos. Besides witnessing to these fundamental principles, Amos also witnesses to details of the moral law. (5.) Amos 2. 7, "A man and his father go unto the (same) girl, in order to profane the name of my holiness." This act of incest is said to be done with the express intention of profaning the holy name of Jehovah, which implies that it was well known that Jehovah had forbidden such mixtures. In Lev. 18. 15; 20. 12, it is expressly forbidden. If it be not granted that the girl is a daughter-in-law, then we must infer that the principle which regulates the prohibitions of Lev. 18 had been grasped and applied to other cases than those which are named there. Cf. also 2. 9 with Lev. 18. 24-30. (6.) Amos 2. 8, "And they lay themselves down upon clothes laid to pledge." This censure involves the existence of a law forbidding the holders of pledged garments f roni keeping them through the night. Such a law is found in Exod. 22. 26, part of the law which most critics allow to be Mosaic. (7.) Amos 2. 11, 12, "And I raised up ... of your young men Nazirites : but ye gave the Nazirites wine to drink." This implies such a law as that of Num. 6. 2 ff. We may observe that in this second chapter of Amos we have reference made to the laws of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers; they are referred to as well known and accepted. Two are quoted in close connection. Nothing suggests that they are not aU on the same footing, aU parts of the original covenant. But, according to modem critics, they have come down to us through many and various hands. Exod. 22 is part of the so-called " Book of the Covenant." Though taken from an earlier source, their present form is said to be due to 'the compiler, who united into a whole .the separate narratives of the Jehovist and Elohist.* Lev. 18 is part of the so-caUed "Law of Holiness," and is one of the many strata (of various dates, by various hands) which make up what critics caU the Priestly Code. The Priestly Code used to be thought the oldest element of the Pentateuch : it is now considered the latest, and is dated after the Exile. But '* Driver, Introd., p. 33. THE NORTHERN KINGDOM. 333 it is admitted that the laws may date from a much older time than that of the collector who brought them together. Criti cism therefore leaves us as much in the dark as ever ; it only assures us that we have the work of three hands — the original lawgiver, the compiler, who added the parenetic framework, and the author of the Priestly Code, who incorporated it in his compUation. Num. 6, which contains the law of the Nazirite, is con sidered part of the Priestly Code. Since critics allow that the compilers took their laws from an earlier source, all they can tell us is a few of the hands which the laws have passed through, just as one might trace a banknote through a few hands ; but this leaves untouched the question whether the law be Mosaic, or the banknote genuine. Yet, in reconstructing the history, it is nearly always assumed that a law is not much earlier than the time of the compUation. But though we cannot trace a law beyond a certain date, it is quite unwarrantable to tum the absence of evidence into a positive argument that the law did not exist. So far the Laws of Jehovah, to which Amos alludes directly, relate -to matters of moral conduct, to chastity, kindness, so briety. There are a few passages in which he also refers to a ritual law. (8.) Amos 4. 4, 5, " Come to Bethel and transgress, at Gilgal multiply to transgress, and bring every morning your sacrifices, every three days your tithes. And offer a thank offering from that which is leavened." This passage is quoted by Wellhausen as showing that " no one knows anything at all about a ritual Torah " (p. 56). " In passing sentence of rejection upon the value of the cultus, he (Amos) is in opposition to the faith of his time; but if the opinion had been a current one that precisely the cultus was what Jehovah had instituted in Israel, he would not have been able to say, ' For so ye like.' ' Ye,' not Jehovah ; it is an idle and arbitrary worship." On the contrary, there is in the Hebrew no pronoun " ye '' expressed. The verb " ye have loved " stands in, the place of least emphasis. The emphasis of the sentence is on " so," and the contrast is between the actual ritual which Ephraim loved and the ritual of place and mode which Jehovah had ordained. 334 LEX MOSAICA. The prophet ironicaUy bids them go on sinning as they had loved to do. Jehovah has chastised them in vain, they have not returned to Him. Let them, therefore, fiU up the measure of their iniquity and prepare to meet their God. " Bring your sacrifices every morning." According to Well hausen, he bids them "offer daily instead of, as was usual (1 Sam. 1), yearly at the chief festival " (p. 156). (9.) Amos 4. 4 (A. v.), " Bring your sacrifices every morning, and your tithes after three years '' (or, as KV., " every three days," i.e. an ironical exaggeration for " every third year "). This passage is good evidence for some custom of tithe paying, and is accepted by Wellhausen as evidence of a pay ment considered due every third year. But he is not justified in quoting it as evidence that the tithe did not go to the priests or Levites. It would be equaUy wrong to infer that the priests had no share in the sacrifices. The tithe in the third year is ordered in Deut. 14. 28, and was to be given to the Levite and the poor. It was not to be taken to the central sanctuary, hence this tithe could be retained by Jeroboam, even if he rejected the tithes payable at the Temple. (10.) Amos 4. 5, " And offer (by fire) a thank offering from that which is leavened." This practice was in direct opposition to the law of Lev. 2. H ; though leavened bread was aUowed in two cases where the offering was not by fire (Lev. 7. 13 ; 23. 17). If Amos is denouncing another infraction of the Law of Jehovah, the clause has a suitable meaning : otherwise it is difficult to see the point of the prophet's remark. Wellhausen (p. 156) renders the passage, "and offer with bread pieces of flesh to the flames," evidently altering the text. He infers (p. 69) that " leavened bread was made use of pre cisely at a particularly solemn sacrifice," and quotes this passage as proof that the Priestly Code rule of Lev. 2. 11, which forbids leaven, is in conflict with earlier usage which permitted it; " For under this law of Lev. 2 even the presentation of the shewbread would be inexplicable." But there is no evidence that the shewbread was leavened (Lev. 24. 5) ; and the passages referred to do not prove the use of leaven in sacrifice (Judg. 6. 19 ; 1 Sam. 1. 24; 10. 3). In Lev. 7 he rejects v. 12 as mter- polation, and alters u 13 (omitting " besides "), and so obtains the evidence he requires. THE NORTHERN KINGDOM. 335 (11.) Amos 7. 17, "Thou shalt die upon an unclean soil." This threat would have no meaning unless Amaziah were pre viously aware that the soU was defiled by certain things. In the Mosaic Law we read that the land was defiled by impurity (Lev. 18. 25-28), and by bloodshed (Num. 35. 34), and by an unburied corpse (Deut. 21. 23). So here the prophet says, "Thy wife shall go whoring in the city, and thy sons shall fall by the sword." There is no reason to suppose that he refers to a foreign soil as imclean ; on the contrary, the death of Amaziah on a poUuted soil seems to be contrasted with the fate of Israel who shall go into captivity. (12.) Amos 8. 5, " When will the new moon pass by that we may sell com, and the Sabbath that we may open wheat ? " The primary object of the prophet is to denounce dishonest trading : but their sinful greed is seen more clearly in the fact that they grudge even the brief respite of the new moon and Sabbath. Those feast days were kept free from business. So in the Mosaic Law the Sabbath rest is commanded in the Fourth Word ; and the new moon is to be kept with special solemnity (Num. 10. 10 ; 28. 11), though it is not appointed as a day of rest. (13.) The Mosaic principle of one altar is thoroughly in harmony with the teaching of Amos, although he does not ex pressly state it. {a.) He connects Jehovah with Zion and Jerusalem. He begins his prophecy with saying, " Jehovah will roar from Zion, and from Jerusalem will He utter His voice." And toward the close (9. 11) Jehovah says that He will revive the kingdom of David and its dominion over the neighbouring nations. The phrase " Tabemacle of David " does not refer to the Temple or seat of worship ; but the restoration of David's kingdom carried with it, for those who knew history so weU, the belief that tbe proper site of the worship of Jehovah was upon Mount Zion. (6.) Amos condemns the worship offered at other places, as Dan, Bethel, Gilgal, Beersheba, Samaria. Various attempts have been made to evade the force of his testimony ; but the question is further discussed in connection with Hosea. (ii) Hosea. Hosea regards Jehovah rather in His relation to His people than to the universe or the world generaUy. 336 LEX MOSAilCA. (1.) Jehovah gives or withholds all the increase of the earth, and of man (2. 10 ff., 21, 22 ; 4. 3 ; 9. 14). He determines the history of His people by the rule of His righteous Providence. His relation to other nations is not plainly stated, but it is assumed that they can only carry out His wiU in destroying Ephraim (11. 8), and that He wiU deliver His people when they repent. (2.) Hosea asserts with equal emphasis that Jehovah is especiaUy the God of Israel They are His people (4. 6, 8). And though idolatrous Ephraim has lost the title "My peo ple," yet after repentance and discipline they may regain it (2. 1, 23). Jehovah is the God of His people (2. 23 ; 3. 5 ; 4. 6, 12 ; 5. 4 ; 6. 1 ; 7. 10 ; and often). He has known Ephraim (5. 3 ; 13. 5), and is his Maker (8. 14). He has made a covenant with them which they have broken (6. 7 ; 8. 1). The tie which binds Jehovah and His people is represented by the figure of marriage, and though by her idolatry Ephraim has broken off the conjugal relation, yet it wiU in the future be revived (2. 2, 19 ; 3. 5). Another special relation is that of priesthood (4. 6 ; see below). Again, Israel is Jehovah's son (11. 1). (3.) Hosea states plainly the truth that Jehovah is the Only God. " A God beside Me thou canst not know, and a Saviour there is not except Me " (13. 4). He condemns the worship of other gods than Jehovah (2. 7; 3. 1), and of BaaUm (2. 13 ; 9. 10 ; 11. 2 ; 13. 1). The figure of marriage leads him to speak of such worship as illicit passion (1. 2 ; 2. 4 ; 4. 18 ; 6. 10 ; 8. 9). If they tum away from one idol, as the Baal, they do not retum to Jehovah, but to that which is not a god (7. 16), as when Jehu destroyed the Baal but retained the calf. (4.) Hosea rebukes and derides idolatry (4. 12, 17; 8. 4; 13. 2), especiaUy the calves (8. 5, 6), which he speaks of as female by way of contempt (10. 5). Penitent Ephraim will no longer regard as gods the work of his own hands, and will have no more to do with idols (14. 3, 8). Beside these fundamental agreements, Hosea contains refer ences to special laws corresponding to those in our Law ot Moses. THE NORTHERN KINGDOM. 337 (5.) Hosea 4. 4, " And thy people are like those who contend with a priest." We have here another instance of the fact that the mind of the prophet was saturated with the Law of Moses, and that he expected his hearers and readers to comprehend even obscure allusions. The clause at the end of the verse is in telligible only as a reference to the law of Deut. 17. 8-13. WeUhausen and others fall back upon conjectural emendations of the text. Cases of difficulty were to be brought " to the priests the Levites, and to the judge who shall be in those days " at the place which Jehovah shall choose. It is clearly implied that the decision of the duly appointed priestly judge is to be regarded as a decision by Jehovah himself, for wilful disobedience was to be visited by the extreme penalty of death. " And the man who shaU act with pride, so as not to hearken to the priest who is standing to serve there Jehovah thy God, or to the judge, that man shaU die : and thou shalt consume the evU from Israel, and all the people shaU hear and fear, that they may not act proudly in future." The conduct of those whom Hosea reproved was similar. They replied, " But let not man plead, and let not man reprove," regarding the prophet as speaking in his own person merely, and not as the duly authorised representative of Jehovah. Possibly there is an allusion to the story of Jerubbaal (Judg. 6. 31), and the people say to Hosea, If Jehovah is our God, as you affirm, let Him plead for Himself, let not man plead for Him (Here, however, the word is ish, not adam.) Hosea replies that in rejecting him they are rejecting Jehovah's appointed represen tative, just as if they had rejected the authoritative decision of His priest. (6.) Hosea 4. 6, " And I have rejected thee from being priest to Me." We have here a peculiar use of the Hebrew verb, which finds its explanation only in the promise given to Israel at Sinai as recorded in Exod. 19. 6, " And ye shall be to Me a kingdom of priests." The prophet, speaking in the name of Jehovah, says, " My people have been cut off from lack of the knowledge, for thou hast rejected the knowledge, and I have rejected thee from bemg priest to Me ; and thou hast forgotten the Law of thy God. I will forget thy sons, even I." S 1063. y 338 LEX MOSAICA. The verb " to be priest " is used elsewhere only of Aaron and his sons (and once metaphorically in Isa. 61. 10). The pro noun of the second person is seen from the previous verse (" thy mother "), and from the context generally, to refer to the nation. Jehovah, has rejected the nation from being priest to Him ; for they have not fulfilled the condition on which the promise was made. The rejection is not ascribed to their failure to accept new truth when it was presented to them, but to their rejection of the knowledge and of the Law (or teaching) of Jehovah. Such a reason implies that Hosea's con ception of Jehovah and of His requirements was no new thing. If "ethical monotheism" were a recent discovery the prophet would have known it, and would not have exposed himself to an easy refutation. (7.) Hosea 4. 14, " I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your brides when they commit adultery." This implies that Jehovah will depart from His recog nised rule of action. That He punishes such' uncleanness is stated in Lev. 18. 24 ff. ; 20. 23. Cf. Exod. 20. 5. (8.) Hosea 4. 14, " For (the men) themselves in company with whores play the mule." These last words represent a denominative verb specially formed by Hosea, by a slight variation of a verb in common use, " they separate them selves." Such paronomasia implies that he knew, and that the people knew, how Jehovah had forbidden such mixtures (Lev. 19. 19). (9.) Hosea 4. 14, "And they sacrifice with harlots." The special kind of impurity condemned here is forbidden in Deut. 23. 17. The feminine occurs only there and Gen. 38. 21, 22 ; the masculine is common. In this one chapter of Hosea we have references to laws which are found in the Pentateuch, in passages which modern critics assign to the combined narrative JE, to the Holiness Code, and to the Deuteronomist. The manner of reference is such as implies a thorough knowledge of the laws in. those addressed, and is quite incompatible with the idea that the prophet is putting forward an entirely new conception of Jeho vah and His Law. This involves the existence of the several " sources " of the Pentateuch, or of the originals from which they were compiled. THE NORTHERN KINGDOM. 339 (10.) Hosea 5. 10, " The princes of Judah have been like removers of a boundary." This sin is forbidden in Deut. 19. 14, and with a special curse in Deut. 27. 17. (11.) Hosea 5. 2, " And the revolters are profound to make slaughter." The word rendered by AV. " revolters " is rendered in Targum " turn aside." It occurs only here, and in Pss. 40. 5 ; 101. 3 in a slightly varied form. The verb occurs in Num. 5. 12, 19, 20, 29 of a wife unfaithful to her husband. This is the precise image which is used so often by Hosea to describe the conduct of Ephraim towards Jehovah. We cannot say that Hosea is certainly referring to the Law of Num. 5 ; but it would be quite in his manner, and would add considerably to the force of the passage. (12.) Hosea 9. 4, (Their sacrifices shall be) " like bread of mourners to them : all who eat it will defile themselves." This passage assumes the existence of such a law as that of Num. 19. llff. Mourners were defiled by the touch of a dead body, and were unfit to take part in any religious ceremony. So Ephraim was defiled by the contact with dead idols, and passed on the defilement to aU that she touched (Hag. 2. 13). There is probably an allusion also to Deut. 26. 14, where the man who offers tithe is to say, " I have not eaten thereof in my mourning." (13.) Hosea 2. 14, 15, 19, " Therefore, behold, I am enticing her ,and will lead her to the wilderness, and will speak to her heart. And wUl give her her viheyards from thence .... And I will betroth her to me for ever." There is such a marked resemblance between this passage and certain laws of the Pen tateuch, as to suggest that Hosea had those laws in mind and borrowed from them images to express the renewed and indis soluble union of Ephraim with Jehovah. The original marriage of Jehovah and Ephraim had been dissolved by her unfaithful ness. Jehovah proposes to ruin Ephraim, to humble her com pletely, but eventuaUy to unite her to Himself afresh. As the first union is described as an honourable marriage, the second union is foretold under the imagery of a dishonourable marriage. Jehovah wiU "entice" Ephraim, as in Exod. 22. 16: "If a man entice a full ^own girl who hath not been betrothed " : He will " speak to her heart " as Shechem when he humbled Dinah (Gen. 34. 3). He wUl endow and marry her, according to the Y 2 340 LEX MOSAICA. law of Exod. 22. 16 : "He shall surely endow her to himself for a wife." He will " betroth her to himself for ever," according to the law of Deut. 22. 29 : " And she shall be his wife because he humbled her, he shall not be able to dismiss her for ever." Thus Hosea seeks to confirm belief in his prophecy by an appeal to principles embodied in well-known laws which Je hovah had Himself sanctioned. (14.) With regard to the ritual law, we have seen that Amos regards Jehovah as speaking from Jerusalem, and de nounces the worship of Dan, Bethel, and Beersheba. Hosea in like manner denounces the worship of Gilgal (4. 15 ; 9. 15), and Bethaven (4. 15). He does not verbally connect Jehovah with Jerusalem, but affirms that Judah, in spite of many sins, is still faithful to Jehovah : and foreteUs the reunion of the two king doms under the line of David (11. 12 ; 3. 5). Hosea condemns the method of worship in many details, as the use of pillars, ephod and teraphim, numerous altars, images, kissing the calves, sacrificing on mountains and hills, and under oak, poplar, and terebinth. Like Amos he bears witness to the widespread use of such things, and it is assumed by critics that up till that time no one had protested against them, that no Law of Moses or of any other forbade them. Thus Well hausen {Prol., p. 23) : " The language held by these men was one hitherto unheard of when they declared that Gilgal and Bethel and Beersheba, Jehovah's favourite seats, were an abomination to Him." They did not object to these places " in and by them selves on account of their being more than one or not being the right ones. Their zeal is directed not against the places but against the cultus there carried on, and in fact not merely against its false character as containing aU manner of abuses, but almost more against itself, against the false value attached to it." There is a certain amount of truth in this explanation. Hosea condemns worship on the mountains as accompanied by vile lusts (4. 13). He declares that the favour of Jehovah cannot be won by mere sacrifice apart from repentance (6. 6 ; 8. 13) ; such formal recognition is merely a deceit (11. 12). But the controversy between Jehovah and Ephraim was much more serious. Ephraim had completely rejected Jehovah for other gods and idols. Though recognising Jehovah as a God, and occasionally seeking His favour, Ephraim regarded THE NORTHERN KINGDOM. 341 Jehovah as Gocl of Judah, and refused His claim to be God of Ephraim also, and the only God. Neither the calves nor the other idols were intended to represent Jehovah.* When the sin of Ephraim was so serious, indeed the worst possible, it would be foolish trifling to denounce the harmless accessories of her idolatry. If pillars and teraphim and many altars had been innocently used in the service of Jehovah, and were still being innocently used in Judah, it would only divert attention from the main point to condemn innocent details of ritual. On the other hand, if these things had been expressly forbidden by Jehovah, their condemnation enhances the idea of sin by directing attention to the multiplicity and variety of the ways in which Ephraim had provoked Jehovah. Besides, as has been already said, if the teaching of Hosea and Amos was heretofore " unheard of," what had they to rely upon in attacking the unbroken custom of centuries ? What plea could they advance to set aside practices hallowed by the observance of all the saints and heroes of the nation ? On one point Hosea appeals to a written law : and that is precisely one of the points characteristic of the legislation of Deuteronomy. He condemns the multiplication of altars, and adds, "Though I write for him the great (or, many) principles of My Law, like a strange thing have they been reckoned " (8. 12). Ephraim refused to recognise as binding upon her the written precepts of the Law or teaching of Jehovah ; for Ephraim had rejected Je hovah, and regarded Him as God of her rival Judah and not of her own territory. Thus the prophets Amos and. Hosea hold the great funda mental principles of the Mosaic Law. They refer to statutes generaUy and specifically as parts of the Covenant made at the Exodus, and their character as witnesses requires us to accept their evidence as true. (III.) The Books of Kings are in accord with the Prophets. (i.) Elijah and Elisha. We must now consider the evidence afforded by the history of Elijah and EUsha, and the reasons aUeged for supposing that * The evidence is too long to be produced here ; the reader is referred to the dissertation prefixed to my Notes on Hosea. 342 LEX MOSAICA. their religious belief and practice varied essentially from that of Amos and Hosea. We cannot expect in an historical narra tive to find definite reference to details of law, or such clear statements of belief as in the naturally more dogmatic teaching of the prophets. But the great fundamental beliefs stand out clearly enough. (1.) Jehovah is not definitely said to be the Creator, but He controls all the powers of nature. He gives rain or with holds it (1 Kings 17. 1) ; He rouses the stormy wind, and makes the earth to quake ; He flashes the lightning at His will, and multiplies the fruit of the earth miraculously as a sign that He is the giver of corn and oil (17. 14 ; 19. 11). From Him come health and sickness, and He is the Lord of life and death (1 Kings 17. 22; 19. 4 ; 2 Kings 1, 4). Even chance events, as we deem them, are at His disposal (1 Kings 22. 34). He is Jehovah Sabaoth ; His throne is in heaven and the host of heaven surround it (22. 19). His power is not limited to certain spots, as if He were one of the local gods of Canaan (1 Kings 20. 28) ; nor to His own land, as if He were merely a national God. He is present at Horeb as in the land of Israel; He controls the rain at the Zidonian Zarephath as in Samaria. In harmony with these evidences of belief is the claim of Elijah that Jehovah alone is God, and the recognition of this truth by the people at Mount Carmel. The question put by Elijah involves the belief that there can be but one God ; else the natural answer would be, Why not worship both Baal and Jehovah ? Elijah condemns the worship of other gods, as the Baalim and the Asherah (18. 19); and the local deities such as Baalzebub god of Ekron (2 Kings 1. 3). (2.) Side by side with these universal claims is the truth that Jehovah is especiaUy the God of Israel (17. 1, 14; 18. 36; 2 Kings 1. 3). He has given them commandments (18. 18), and made a covenant with them (19. 10). In connection with this we may note the fact that Elijah flies to Horeb. EUjah's action in building the altar of Jehovah with twelve stones, shows that he held with Hosea that unity of religion alone could secure the unity of the tribes (Hosea 1. 11 ; 3. 5)- (3.) But though especially the God of Israel, Jehovah controls also the affairs of other nations. He gives Benhadad into the hands of Ahab (20. 13) ; He orders Elijah to anomt Hazael king THE NORTHERN KINGDOM. 343 over Damascus (19. 15). Noticeable, also, is the fact that He works miracles for a Gentile woman, the widow of Zarephath. (4.) The character of Jehovah is the same as is in the Pro phets. He rewards the kindness of the widow of Zarephath. She recognises in Him One who punishes sin (17. 18). The cruelty of Jezebel and the greed of Ahab are appropriately punished; yet Ahab is pardoned upon his repentance. Con tempt of Jehovah's power shown towards His prophet meets with startling retribution (2 Kings 1). All these traits of cha racter find a parallel in Hosea. In both periods Jehovah God of Israel is the One God, the God of holiness and of love. (5.) Of legal detail we have but little. Reference is made to the evening offering {minchah) as offered at a certain time (18. 36). Naboth refuses to part with the inheritance of his fathers; but it is doubtful whether this involves a refer ence to the law by which land reverted to the seUer's family at the jubilee. (6.) Amos and Hosea referred to prophets who had preceded them, and we find frequent mention of such in this period (1 Kings 18. 4 ; 19. 10 ; 20. 22 ; 22. 7). They denounce wrong doing (20. 42 ; 21. 19), and foretell the punishment (1 Kings 21.20; 22. 17), and foresee the future (1 Kings 20. 22), as do Amos and Hosea. There was a continuous succession to bear witness to the religion and Law of Jehovah. Whatever be the date of these prophetic stories, they cannot be peremp torily set aside as written from a later standpoint. Amos and Hosea testify that the truths which they taught had been taught by previous prophets, and so far support the substan tial truth of the story of Elijah. (7.) We may notice two of the reasons adduced on the other side. Elijah and Elisha, it is said, protested against the im ported worship of Baal of Tyre, but Were " the actual champions of the Jehovah of Bethel and Dan, and did not think of pro testing against his pictorial representation " (Wellhausen, Prul., p. 283). The only evidence which can be adduced to connect Eli jah with the calf worship is his saying on Mount Carmel, " How long halt ye between tbe two opinions ? " He mentions Jehovah and Baal; whereas, it is said, if the calf worship were not worship of Jehovah, there would be choice of thre& 344 LEX MOSAICA. The answer is supplied us by Hosea. He refers to three ob jects of religion — the Baal, the Calf, and Jehovah (2. 17, 20; 8. 5). But he groups together the Baal and the Calf, and sets them along with all forms of idolatry and worship of other gods, in antagonism to the pure worship of Jehovah. Like Elijah, he divides religion into two branches, the true and the false ; the worship of images and the worship of the God whom no image can represent ; the worship of productive power apart from morality, more or less sensual in character, and the worship of Him whose character is holy, who desires mercy not sacrifice, who is at once the Creator and the Author of the moral law. It is true ^shat the history records no actual protest made by Elijah against the calves ; but the history makes no claim to completeness. It is compiled from several sources, out of which the writer selected just so much as suited his purpose. The argument from silence, always precarious, is here especially so. Micah and Isaiah, also, are silent as to the calf, even when they are reproving the sins of Samaria ; yet it is not pretended that they approved it. But the history does contain indications that the true worshippers of Jehovah did not recognise the calf. Jehoshaphat requested Ahab to consult Jehovah before going up to Ramoth Gilead. Ahab collected the prophets, about four hundred, and was told to go up and Adonai would deliver it. Jehoshaphat refused to accept this unanimous voice of four hundred prophets, and asked, " Is there not here a prophet of Jehovah still, that we may enquire from him ? " We cannot suppose that he was dissatisfied with the number, and that after rejecting four hundred would have been satisfied with four hundred and one. These prophets are not caUed prophets of Jehovah, nor do they as yet claim to speak in the name of Jehovah. Ahab's reply also shows that he recognised some valid distinction between the four hundred and Micaiah. While the prophet of Jehovah is being summoned, the four hundred claim to speak in the name of Jehovah, just as Rabshakeh did in the time of Hezekiah (Isa. 36. 10), and with much the same amount of truth. When Micaiah arrived, he repeated in ridi cule the prophecy of the four hundred, and plainly did not regard them as prophets of Jehovah (" thy prophets," v. 23) ; but when he was adjured to speak truth in the name of Je hovah, he adopted another tone. The four hundred are not THE NORTHERN KINGDOM. 345 called prophets of Baal or of Asherah, as elsewhere. The narrative, therefore, presents us with three forms of worship, such as we find in Hosea. In the same spirit, EUsha, the prophet of Jehovah, is willing to consult Jehovah in the interests of Jehoshaphat, but refuses to do so at the request of Jehoram, king of Israel Elisha bids him consult the prophets of his father and mother, that is the calf-prophets, for it is expressly said that Jehoram put away the Baal, but still adhered to the calf worship (2 Kings 3. 2, 3). The history, therefore, presents Micaiah and Elisha as occu pying the same position as Hosea. They are prophets of Jeho vah, opposed alike to the Baal and to the calf. And we cannot doubt that the position of Elijah was the same. We may add the enormous difficulty of a complete change in the conception of God in so short a time. The maximum interval between the death of Elisha and the teaching of Hosea is sixty-seven years. It may have been even half that time. In any case when Hosea began to teach there were men alive who had been familiar with Elisha, whose fathers would remember Elijah. It is in credible that Amos and Hosea should attempt to palm off as the old religion of the land a new conception of which they were the first exponents. (8.) The question still remains to be answered. If the law of one altar were in existence, how is it that we find an altar of Je hovah upon Mount Carmel ? How is it that Elijah, who does not appear to have been priest or Levite, sacrifices upon it ? In answer to this question, we must observe first of all that the story of Elijah has been recorded and preserved by men who were ardent supporters of the law of one altar. The facts evidently did not appear to them to be fatal to the existence of a Mosaic Law of one altar. In selecting their materials they could easily have omitted the story, or such parts of it as con flicted with the religious views in support of which the Books of Kings were compiled. The same holds good of the acts of David and Solomon. Since they admitted all these facts which critics hold to be fatal to the theory of Mosaic authorship, they must have had some explanation which they deemed satisfactory. The fact is that every law requires certain conditions in order that it may be carried out. Where those conditions do 346 LEX MOSAICA. not exist, some modification of the law is made. The law of the Passover, and, indeed, all the Laws of Moses, are stiU held by the Jews to be binding ; but, as they cannot be carried out, they are in abeyance. No one supposes them non-existent, or infers from the existing Jewish Paschal meal that the Mosaic Law must be different from that which is found in our Pentateuch. When the policy of Jeroboam prevented the worshippers of Jehovah from going up to Jerusalem, the law could not be kept. It would be necessary to adopt one of two courses — either to leave the sacrificial law altogether in neglect, as do the modem Jews, or to carry out such , parts of it as were stiU possible, to sacrifice even though not at the one altar. The worshippers of Jehovah in the Northern Kingdom appear to- have adopted the latter course, until they were prevented by the destruction of their altars and the persecution of their prophets (1 Kings 19. 10). Since they could not carry out the Mosaic system, they reverted to the patriarchal, rather than risk the absorption in idolatry which would be the certain consequence of the abandonment of all external worship of Jehovah. The compiler of the Book of Kings (1 Kings 3. 2) gives as a reason for the worship in high places that there was as yet no house of Jehovah, just as we might worship in any unconse- crated room if there were no church. The Chronicler also points out the irregular state of things which prevailed before the Temple was built (2 Chron. 1. 3, 4). The Ark was at Jerusalem, but the altar was at Gibeon. The law required both to be together, and so soon as he could do so, Solomon brought them together. Meanwhile practical common sense prevaUed Men did not think themselves absolved from all duties of sacri fice because they could not carry out the law in all its detaU. They are severely censured for continuing a temporary expe dient when there was no longer any justification for it, and when the practice carried with it considerable risk of idolatry or worship of other gods. We might defend the sacrifice of Elijah on the ground that, like Samuel, he was specially raised up to be a prophet of Jehovah, and his mission authenticated by indisputable evidence. He would, therefore, be held to act by special appointment of Jehovah when he offered sacrifice, though he was not of the seed of Aaron. But as the law could not be kept in the Northem THE NORTHERN KINGDOM. 347 Kingdom, it is probable that in this respect also men feU back upon patriarchal practice. We may compare the case of a layman conducting public service in the absence of any duly consecrated priest or building. The same line of reasoning wiU apply to the sacrifice of Elisha (1 Kings 19. 21). It will be enough to refer briefly to the evidence offered by the history of Elisha, to show that there was no change of religious beUef in the few years which separate his teaching from that of Amos and Hosea. Jehovah has power over nature in all its details (2 Kings 2. 14, 21 ; 3. 17 ; 4. 41, 43 ; 6. 1 ; 8. 1). He is Lord of life and death, of health and sickness (4. 15 ; 5. 7 ; 8. 8). He is pro claimed by Naaman as the Only God (5. 15). He is Jehovah Sabaoth, and makes use of the powers of heaven (2. 11 ; 6. 17). His holiness is seen in the severe punishment of Ahab's house, of Jezebel, of Gehazi, and of those who scoffed at Him (2. 23 ; 5. 27 ; 7. 2 ; 9. 7) ; suffering is recognised as His judgment (3. 10; 6. 33). His prophets must not get gain (5. 16). His kindness is seen in the relief of the oppressed debtor, and of the Shunammite, in the recovery of the axe-head, the feeding of the prophets, the prohibition of cruelty to cap tives (6. 22). His kindness was extended to Gentiles, as the Syrian troops just mentioned; and to the king of Syria (8. 7) and Naaman. Gentiles also experienced the sterner working of His power, as Moab and Syria (3. 17; 13. 17). Yet He is also especially the God of Israel (9. 6 ; 6. 27). Prophets of Jehovah are numerous and increasing. References to the Law are not many. We find mention of the oblation of the meal offering (3. 20) ; the observance of new moon and sabbath (4. 23). The first fruits are offered to the man of God (4. 42), as they could not be taken to Jeru salem. With the penitential use of sackcloth (6. 30) we may compare the fast of 1 Kings 21. 9. (ii) The Disruption. Lastly, we have to consider the witness to the Mosaic Law which is borne by the narrative of the Disruption. If this narrative is true history, there can be no doi^bt that the Law 348 LEX MOSAICA. of Moses was in existence. The idolatrous acts of Solomon and of Jeroboam are throughout regarded as contrary to the practice of David, and to the statutes and judgments and com mandments of Jehovah and to the Covenant, language which implies a well-known code of laws (1 Kings 11. 4, 11, 33; 14. 8). The Books of Kings judge Jeroboam and his successors by the standard of Deuteronomy. Modern critics affirm that these judgments are historically false, on the ground that the special precepts of Deuteronomy had no existence in the time of the kings of Israel who are condemned. We will therefore test the narrative by the evidence of Amos and Hosea, who had every means of knowing the facts, and no object to serve by an attempt to. pervert them, which would have been imme diately exposed. One preliminary objection arising from the late date of the compilation may be briefly dismissed. The date, authorship, and mode of composition of the Books of Kings are chiefly matters of literary interest and of secondary importance. Modem histories of early times are composed many years after the events they record, and from a great variety of sources. It is regarded as an especial merit of modem historians that they compile their histories from a number of original authorities. We do not on that account set them aside as unauthentic, or as written merely from the standpoint of the nineteenth century. If the Books of Kings were compiled during the Captivity, and, as their style shows, from several earlier authorities, we cannot for that reason alone set their statements aside. If it can be shown that their statements up on the main points agree with early and indisputable evidence, we shall require very clear written evidence to the contrary before their testimony on minor points can be overborne. The contrary view may be seen in the following extracts. Wellhausen maintains that the history of Israel has suffered considerable damage at the hands of the reviser " by positive meddling with the materials as found in the sources " (p. 282). " The most unblushing example of this kind, a piece which for historical worthlessness may compare with Judg. 19 — 21 or 1 Sam. 7 seq., or even stands a step lower, is 1 Kings 13." (p. 285). Such serious charges of deliberately tampering with authorities need to be supported by strong evidence. THE NORTHERN KINGDOM. 349 But on the contrary, the view of the origin and character of the religion of Ephraim set forth in 1 Kings is in accord with the evidence of the prophets. (1.) The Disruption is ascribed to two causes — idolatry and oppression (1 Kings 11. 11 ; 12. 4). These imply an " ethical monotheism " such as Hosea assumes to have been the religion of Israel from the beginning of the nation. The conception of Jehovah is throughout the same as in the prophets. He is the Only God, Creator, Righteous, and yet specially the God of Israel. The worship of other gods is quitting Jehovah, which implies monotheistic belief ; for as far as outward recognition, Solomon always worshipped Jehovah (1 Kings 11. 33). In the story of the disobedient prophet Jehovah is presented as Lord over man and beast (1 Kings 13. 6, 24). The prophet Ahijah represents Him as Lord of life and death, as governing the for tunes of families and of nations (1 Kings 14. 10 ff.). His righteousness is seen in His excepting Jeroboam's son Ahijah from the doom of the family {v.- 13). (2.) The historian represents Jeroboam as setting up a new religion, in order that the separation of tbe kingdoms should be maintained by religious causes of animosity also (1 Kings 12. 26)^ He was sure that the worship of one God at one altar would inevitably restore political union. This is the view taken throughout the sacred narrative of the early history. So in Hosea (1. 11 ; 3. 5), when Ephraim returns to Jehovah, she will unite with Judah under one head of the house of David. (3.) The kingdom of Solomon is not wholly destroyed for the sake of David, whom Jehovah chose (1 Kings U, 34), and with whom Jehovah made a covenant. So in Amos (9. 11) the restoration of the kingdom of David and its dominion over the neighbouring nations is held out as the highest object of hope. The historian also asserts several tinies that David did not fall into the sins which he condemns. He thus denies that the calf worship represented the original religion of Israel, taking up the same position as Hosea. Closely connected with David is David's capital city, Jerusalem, the place which Jehovah has chosen to put His Name there (1 Kings 11. 13, 36). David's line is to be maintained, partly because Jerusalem is the chosen seat of Jehovah. So in Amos (1. 2) Jehovah speaks from Zion ; and in Hosea (11. 12) the independence of Judah is connected with 350 LEX MOSAICA. the presence of Jehovah : " Judah is still ruUng in union with God, and in union with the Holy is faithful " (or sure, lasting). (4.) A promise is given to Jeroboam that his kingdom shall be enduring, if he shall keep the statutes and commandments of Jehovah as David did (1 Kings 11. 38). This agrees with the frequent promises in Hosea that Jehovah will rescue Ephraim from destruction if she will retum to Him. (5.) In regard to the details of Jeroboam's idolatry, the historian agrees with the prophets. Both condemn the calves of Dan and Bethel as a worship of other gods (1 Kings 12. 30 ; 14. 9). Both condemn the high places (1 Kings 12. 31 ; Amos 7. 9), and the priests of the high places (1 Kings 12. 32 ; Hosea 5. 1), though the prophets do not dwell on their not being Levites. The history condemns Jeroboam for appointing a festival corre sponding to the Feast of Tabernacles and putting it in the month following. This is probably the ground of Hosea's rebuke in 9. 1-5 : " What will you be doing on a day of assembly and on a day of a feast of Jehovah ? " * The description of the sanctuary at Bethel given by the priest Amaziah to Amos fully accords with the narrative of 1 Kings 13: "It is the king's sanctuary and a house of a kingdom," i.e. the seat of a national religion where the prophet of another nation, speaking in the name of the God of another nation, can have no right to attend. The title of " king's sanc tuary " agrees with the right claimed by Jeroboam of sacrificing with his own hand (Amos 7. 13). (6.) More important is the fact that though both Ephraim and Judah are guilty of idolatry, yet a distinction is drawn between them by the historian and by the prophets. Solomon combined the worship of other gods with the worship of Jehovah ; Jeroboam wholly rejected Jehovah for other gods (1 Kings 11. 4 ; 14. 9). In his denunciation of coming judgment Amos makes a marked distinction between Israel and Judah. He treats Israel as a heathen nation, but Judah as the worshipper of Jehovah. The reason for punishing the nations around is their breach of the moral law. The same reason is alleged for the punishment of Israel. But the charge against Judah is that they have rejected * See my Notes on Hosea. THE NORTHERN KINGDOM. 351 the Law of Jehovah and failed to observe His statutes. No such charge is brought against Israel. This supports the state ment of the historian that Judah still recognised Jehovah as God, whilst Israel quitted Him for idols. Hosea distinguishes still more clearly between the religion of Judah and that of Israel And this is the more noticeable because Judah had faUen into many of the sins of Israel. Both worshipped idols, both relied on human aid rather than on Jehovah, both had made an outward show of repentance. Both, therefore, should be punished. Yet in spite of this resemblance there was some thing which made a very important difference between them. Judah, though often falling away, was constant to Jehovah as their God ; Israel had abandoned Him for the calf-god. Hosea 1. 6, 7, " Not again will I have pity on the house of Israel that I should go on forgiving them. But on the house of Judah I will have pity, and I will save them by Jehovah their God." The last words give the reason for the difference of treatment. Jehovah is God of Judah. Hosea 1. 11, " And the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel shall be gathered together, and shall appoint for themselves one head." This will take place after they have been called " sons of a Uving God." Difference of religion kept the two kingdoms asunder, as Jeroboam had purposed ; when Israel returned to the living God there would no longer be a barrier to union with Judah. Hosea 4. 15, "If thou art whoring Israel, let not Judah be guilty ; and do not ye come to Gilgal, and do not go up to Beth aven, and do not swear Jehovah liveth." The worship of the calf -god at Bethel and other shrines is incompatible with the recognition of Jehovah as God. Hosea U. 12, " Ephraim hath surrounded me with falsehood, and the house of Israel with deceit ; but Judah is still ruling with God, and with the Holy One he is faithful." Under the influence of the great prophets Elijah and Elisha, the Northem Kingdom had recognised for a brief while the power of Jehovah. The elevation of Jehu had been the tuming point in their his tory. But the influence of the calf worship was too strong, and whUst they regarded Jehovah as a God, the God of Judah (Amos 7. 12), they adhered to the calves. Judah, on the con trary, though frequently falling away to idols, was steadfast in confessing Jehovah as their God. 352 LEX MOSAICA. The foUowing are some of the objections brought against the authenticity of the historical narrative : — {a.) Wellhausen tries to show that 1 Kings 11. 14 contra dicts vv. 21-25 ; for the writer evidently intends us to infer that Hadad and Rezon were the instruments of Jehovah in punishing the idolatry of Solomon's old age, whereas {v. 21) Edom and Damascus " broke away from the kingdom of David immediately after his death " (p. 284). But the sacred historian says nothing of the kind. He does not suggest that Hadad secured tbe independence of his country. He calls him an adversary, and says he wrought evil : but whether by a general revolt or by guerilla warfare, or by secret plotting, does not appear. All that the history requires is that Hadad and Rezon now opposed Solomon with visible success. (6.) Nor is there any contradiction in the story of Jero boam. The sacred historian groups the facts of Solomon's reign. Nothing leads us to suppose that he ceased building after the first half of his reign. On the contrary, the people at Shechem complain of a present burden, not of an oppression which had ceased some twenty years before. Indeed, the narrative does not require us to place the meeting with Ahijah at the time of the buildiiig of Millo, which first brought Jeroboam under the notice of Solomon. " In that time " (11. 29) is quite indefinite. (c.) The main objection brought against the truth of the narrative is the statement that Solomon married women with whom Jehovah had forbidden intermarriage (Deut. 7. 3). But the prohibition to make a covenant with them, or to intermarry occurs also in Exod. 34. 15, 16. This passage may be compared with Exod. 23. 32. On the relation of these passages critics are not agreed. The arbitrary character of criticism is seen in the fact that WeUhausen admits the authenticity of Deut. 17. 17, while denying that of 7. 3. We may compare with this the acceptance of Ahijah's address to Jeroboam, which suits the theory, and the rejection of his address to Jeroboam's wife, which refutes it. According to Wellhausen, "To the original tradition belongs only the mention of the many wives — with out the reprobation attached to it — and the statement about the building of the altars of Chemosh and Milcom, and perhaps Astarte on the Mount of Olives, where they stood tiU the time of Josiah" (2 Kings 23. 13). IX. THE HISTORY OE THE SOUTHERN KINGDOM IN RELATION TO THE LAW OE MOSES. ALEXANDER STEWART. S 1063. IX. THE HISTOEY OF THE SOUTHEEN KINGDOM IN EELATION TO THE LAW OF MOSES. THE Higher Critics aim to effect very great and important changes in our long cherished beliefs in regard to the Bible, and specially in regard to the Books of Moses. If these changes led in the direction of truth, and were established on thoroughly reliable evidence, they should be heartily welcomed by aU. But to many minds the evidence seems utterly in adequate ; and these attempted changes are numerous, and raise many difficulties which are, apparently, absolutely insur mountable. In the theories of the critics much is advanced which can be regarded only as assumption ; and that which is merely assumed cannot be accepted as evidence. It is assumed very generally, that the world and all living creatures upon it have been produced by some evolutional process ; and besides, that all human progress has been carried forward on the same evolutional lines. It is assumed that all nations which have risen to eminence in civilisation have developed from some undefined barbaric semi-human stage of existence, that the reUgions of these nations have arisen out of human conscious ness, by very slow and almost imperceptible stages of advance ment, and that these nations have all, had a period of fetish experience to pass through. These assumptions give a great amount of colouring to the reasonings of the critics, and prevent them from accepting as possible history any record of early monotheistic religion, or well-matured, inteUectual, and moral manifestations in the early history of nations. These very assumptions are made to do service in rejecting the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Z 2 356 LEX MOSAICA. Such assumptions as these, however, must be thrown out of the category of evidence. The evolutional theory itself is at best but a mere hypothesis. Development within the limits of kind may be seen anywhere, but that evolutional doctrine which involves the idea of transmutation of kind, and which is so generally taken for granted, is absolutely without any real sup port. No fact has yet been produced by scientific men which gives it unequivocal support. We must therefore, meanwhile, wholly reject it and refuse the right to use it as a factor for the purpose of reducing many terms and doctrines of the Bible to almost meaninglessness. The leading critics, with whose theories we have to deal, are thoroughly pronounced rationalists. Professor Briggs, recog nising this, says : " We should not allow ourselves to be influenced by the circumstance that many of the scholars who have been engaged in these researches have been rationalistic or semi-rationalistic in their religious opinions." {The Higher Criticism, etc., p. 67.) In regard to certain things, rationaUsts may reason with perfect accuracy ; but they either disregard or deny the element of the supernatural which the Bible announces so very fuUy and frequently. They neither explain nor account for the multitudinous facts and doctrines of the Bible which are embraced in this element of the supernatural They are, indeed, wholly unscientific, inasmuch as they entirely fail by their naturalistic theories to account for great and mani fest realities, which evidently belong to the sphere of the super natural. To be fairly treated, the Bible must be dealt with on its own grounds, and not on the grounds assumed by the critics. The denial of the supernatural, and the making of the monotheistic religion of Israel one in kind with the polytheistic religions of other nations, require that such a book as Deuter onomy, so advanced in literary art, so f uU of intelUgence and matured thought, so decided and pronounced in theological doctrines, so strong in moral and religious sentiments, should be denied to the Mosaic period, and thrown down the ages some eight or nine centuries. According to the theory of the critics, it required all these centuries to afford time for development on naturalistic lines. But to those who accept the supernatural in the Bible, and who take Moses as a man specially endowed and inspired of God, Deuteronomy appears just exactly what would THE SOUTHERN KINGDOM. 357 be most natural in the circumstances ; it fits in perfectly to the historical setting of the Mosaic age, and to no other age. In dealing with the early history and development of na tions the critics have shown not a little inaccuracy. Schultz, e.g., says, regarding the pre-Mosaic age, " It was a time prior to all knowledge of writing." And in regard to the Mosaic age itself, he says, "It is impossible that such men could hand down their family histories, in themselves quite unimportant, in any other way than orally, to wit, in legends. And even when writing had come into use, in the time, that is, between Moses and David, it would be but sparingly used" {Old Test. Theol., I. pp. 25-6). Now, in the light of the Tel el-Amarna literature and the vast amount of other monumental evidence, and espe ciaUy that connected with the very early history of Egypt, how grossly inaccurate are these statements. Apart from the Bible, the early history of Egypt takes us farther back than the history of any other nation. And what do we find during the period, say from two to three thousand years before Christ ? Dp we find men in a semi-human, savage, or fetish condition ? Quite the opposite. That nation at the early dawn of its existence was almost as purely monotheistic in its theology as ever the Hebrew people were, and by litera ture preserved from these remote times, we see that the intellect of men was as strong as now, and their moral sense and moral teachings such as will bear honourable comparison with those of any nation in any age. The analysis of the Pentateuch — or rather, as the critics would have it, of the Hexateuch, thereby including the Book of Joshua along with the Books of Moses — is a work of apparently endless difficulty. The various developments thrbugh which it has passed, the many differences existing among the critics them selves, and the extraordinary refinements to which they are led in their divisions, make the whole process to be one fraught with very grave suspicions. The existence of various documents is assumed. The process of dissection is then carried on as far as possibly may be, yet it is by no means evident that these original documents ever existed ; e.g. it is assumed that in the beginning of Genesis we have two different accounts of Creation patched together, and rather unskilfully, whereas a very easy and natural interpretation regards the so-called narratives as 358 LEX MOSAICA. but organic parts of one continuous account. This interpreta tion we may present in the words of Sir J. W. Dawson : " To many critics the second chapter of Genesis is in part an im perfect repetition of the first, constituting a different version of the Creation, of later date, but found by the redactors among their material and somewhat unskilfully patched in with their work. To a scientific reader, however, it assumes a different aspect, being evidently local in its scope, and relating to con ditions of the introduction of man not mentioned in the general account of Creation. It is as if a writer on primitive man were to precede his special treatment of that subject by a general account of the whole history of the earth ; and, having thus fixed the geological date of the introduction of man, should then proceed to a detailed account of the early anthropic period." — {The Expositor, April 1894, p. 276.) The critics seem to think that by their dissections, their resetting of history, and their reversal of chronological data, they have been able to make the Old Testament instinct with new life. It is to be feared, however, that the life thus pro duced will be more a thing of the imagination than a life from God which will touch the heart and conscience of men. It is assumed, too, that the truth will be aU the same in whatever form or document it may be found. It may, but it may also be greatly reduced in its influence, or destroyed in respect to the purpose for which it was divinely set. We do not take the Bible as a kind of heterogeneous patchwork, but as a great organic unity, bound together by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And this the critics cannot disprove, and those of them who believe in the supernatural element in the Bible will not wish to disprove it. If then the Bible is an organic whole, every historic setting in its own place must be in a measure a revelation of God. In this acceptation it may be said of the Old Testament as Christ said of His own words — " It is spirit and it is Ufe." But if the Bible be broken up as the critics are doing, then its organic unity is destroyed, then its spiritual life must leak out, its divine purposes be thwarted, and its divine setting of truth be almost wholly destroyed. This is already being shown in present-day life. Unchristian men care almost nothing for the Bible the critics produce for them. THE SOUTHERN KINGDOM. 359 To assume that the Bible may be broken up and its com ponent parts dissevered, and then readjusted to each other, without the loss of divine power and life, is an egregious mistake. In an organic whole every part is fitted only for its own place. Separate the parts, and the organic unity wiU disappear. The human body as it comes from the hand of God is a fit habitation for life. But when muscle and artery and vein and nerve and Ugament and bone are separated from each other, the parts may aU exist, and the student of anatomy may get a little informa tion in which he delights, but certainly no life wiU be there. A plant having life in it will gather up inorganic materials and construct them into a living organic whole ; but whenever the organism is broken up and reduced to its inorganic con stituents, life then will certainly have vanished. A house may be very exceUent in its architecture, materials, and workmanship, but take the materials apart, and you will then have destroyed the house, and should they be put together again in a different arrangement, you might have a house, but not the same one, nor the one built by the former builder. The same things differently related to each other organically wUl produce different natures. In chemistry a certain group of atoms wiU produce one kind of nature, and a group of exactly the same atoms or the same kinds of atoms, but differently united to each other, wiU produce a substance with a different nature. What God has joined together, therefore, let no man put asunder. To attempt the- doing of this is to attempt the un doing of what God has done. In the construction of the Bible, " men spake from God being moved by the Holy Spirit." The Old Testament is thus announced to be the work of God, and if its divine setting and arrangement be broken up, it wiU cease to be in any proper sense the work or word of God, and in this dismembered condition wUl not accomplish the wiU of God. Although it were proven, as it is not, that the Hexateuch were a compilation of earlier documents, say by the hand of Moses, as a prophet of God, it would not thereby be proven that these documents had not a divine setting, which would produce a different nature and influence from what any other setting could do. The term " Redactors " points to a class of men which creates a great deal of wonder and inquiry. They must have been very 360 LEX MOSAICA. scholarly men, because they could touch up and retouch up the work of prophets, authors, and editors, whose works had pre ceded theirs. They, too, must have been men of authority, and highly esteemed for their works' sake, for they could alter and amend, and add to the literature which the people of their nation held to be the most sacred of all literature, and appar ently without ever being caUed in question. It seems most re markable that the people who held their sacred writers in such high esteem, and who so proudly cherished their memories, should never have given a place at all in history, or indeed tradition, to even one redactor. The critics of to-day are not altogether unlike the redactors of ancient times. They take large liberties with the word of God, and certainly they and their work will not be unknown to history. But why have the redactors, who seem to have played such an important part with the sacred Scriptures in olden times, been so entirely lost to view ? In the literature of tjbe critics of to-day one feels almost ashamed to see the redactor and his work always tuming up, and yet to be absolutely without any knowledge concerning him. The late Professor Robertson Smith, feeling the great difficulty he had in giving substantial existence to the redactor whose work he assumed, very euphoniously said, " His very name has been lost." But this suggests a prior question, Was his name ever known ? The critics must excuse us, but we feel constrained to say, that in this matter of the redactors they have been too credulous and uncritical, and have drawn too far on their imagi nation. Ezra may have done some editorial work in relation to the Old Testament, but that work as a great probabUity has been well recognised, and his name perpetuated and honoured. But as for these phenomenal redactors, we know nothing of them. And as far as human knowledge goes at present, they must be relegated to the fertile source whence they came — the region of critical subjectivity. The writings of the critics contain many illustrations of loose thinking and iUogical reasoning. To a very large extent they discard objective elements of evidence, and rely mainly on that which is subjective, which latter, of course, does not too readily yield itself to logical formulae. A pertinent example may be taken from Wellhausen. He had committed himself to the idea that the Second Book of Chronicles was in error because THE SOUTHERN KINGDOM. 361 it told the story of the deportation of Manasseh to Babylon, as a captive of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon, the Book of Kings not having told the same story. But the cuneiform inscription of Esarhaddon himself, now in the British Museum, confirms the story as given in the Book of Chronicles. Nevertheless, WeUhausen refuses to accept the correction which he cannot refute, saying, "In truth, Manasseh's temporary deposition is entirely on the same plane with Nebuchadnezzar's temporary grass-eating " {Proleg., p. 207). Such treatment of evidence indicates neither reason nor reverence ; but it indicates more respect for a theory than for truth. " Pitiable is WeUhausen's attempt to disparage the bearing of the inscription on the ques tion here at issue " (Professor M. S. Terry, D.D.). A spirit of apparent unfairness, either consciously or uncon sciously, seems to cling to the work of the critics. Without any reason in himself, the writer of the Books of Chronicles has got into disfavour with the critical school. He is treated with dis respect on the ground that he had copied his materials from the Books of Kings, in many cases "without even verbal alteration." Here it is assumed that he copied from the Kings as if he had no other sources open, and that his copying was done either too faithfully or too slavishly, as the matter may be viewed. Surely, if he did copy, it was better to do it accurately. A quotation made should be made correctly. But the Chronicler gains the disrespect of the critics for this work. Yet, as we have already seen, when he tells the story of Manasseh's captivity, his con version in captivity, his retum to Jerusalem, and his work of reformation, he is despised as a mere fabricator, and mainly because the same story is not found in the Books of Kings. When he gives the same material as is found in the Books of Kings, he is held in disrespect on the ground that he has copied without even verbal alteration or addition. And when he adds anything in the Chronicles which is not found in the Kings, he is blamed and treated as a fabricator. No wonder that the Bible has many faults in the estimation of such critics. Dr. BisseU objects to the work of the critics because, by their proposed breaking up of the Pentateuch, they would reduce it to " a piece of patchwork." To common sense this appears inevit able, but Professor Briggs thinks he repels the objection by adducing what he seems to regard as two parallels. The first 362 LEX MOSAICA. he finds in Professor Osgood's tract, A Eeasonable Hypothesis of the Origin of the Pentateuch. Herein lies the supposed parallel : "In 19 pages treating of Assyria, Egypt, and Syria, he cites at length 25 different writers in 428 lines, and writes himself, counting introduction, conclusion, and seams, 133 Unes " {The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch, p. 138). It is per fectly amazing that Professor Briggs should regard this tract in any sense as a parallel to the critics' representation of the Pentateuch. Professor Briggs being witness, the tract, as a tract, has but one reputed author, to wit. Professor Osgood. And the many quotations are all wrought into one mental unity, and to accomplish one purpose. An architectural structure, because composed of many pieces, might as weU be described as patch work. But suppose we take Professor Briggs on his own ground, and take the tract in question as a piece of patchwork, and then try the effect of disintegration. Let all the quotations be sepa rated out, and assigned to their respective authors. The quota tions would remain the same, but the tract would be destroyed entirely, because the mental unity constructed by the author would be abolished, and the purpose for which the tract was composed entirely defeated. And is not this precisely what the critics would accomplish regarding the Books of Moses, if they could make their disintegrating processes successful? Professor Briggs adopts the selection by Professor George F. Moore of the Diatessaron of Tatian as another parallel of that which the critics would make of the Hexateuch. But in what sense does the Diatessaron of Tatian represent the documentary idea of the critics ? The work of Tatian is entirely outside the canon of Scripture, and no one, inspired or uninspired, is in any way committed to that work. Nothing hangs upon it. And Tatian's name and work are both well known, but where are the many redactors who touch and retouch, alter and add as they please, and yet have never apparently been known at all ? None of these mysterious individuals are at all associated with the work of Tatian. As to the four Gospels themselves, from which Tatian framed his continuous narrative, these were never documents myste riously woven together into one organic whole and finally completed by unknown redactors, and then after two or three THE SOUTHERN KINGDOM. 363 thousand years dissected into four documents with four respective authors. Out of well-authenticated documents Tatian tried to make a harmonious chronological narrative. And many since his day have tried their skill at the same kind of work, but none of them have produced anything that is in any sense entitled to comparison with the Books of Moses. Taking into account the School of Higher Critics since the dawn of its existence, what has it been in the main, we ask, but a scene of divisions ? Even to detail these divisions would be a very serious task. Surely, if there were clear lines of demarca tion within the field of their operations, there would be much more unity. But what are they in the main agreed upon ? First, that Moses wrote very little of the Pentateuch, and that certain portions of the books which bear his name are distinguishable from each other because of the use of some of the Divine names. Beyond this they are all at sea. The very evanescent character of their own central theories ought to open their eyes so as to perceive great inherent weak ness. In their own hands, the one theory has superseded, if not destroyed the other. In the list of theories we have the Docu mentary hypothesis, the Fragmentary hypothesis, the Supple mentary hypothesis, and the Development hypothesis. Several of these are confessed faUures, and who can tell how long the one which now holds the field will remain? Its predecessors had their day, and were in tum applauded. " Eichhom's Higher Criticism swept the field in his day, meeting but feeble opposi tion " (Professor Briggs). But it is long renounced, and what proof have we that the latest hypothesis wiU not share the same fate ? Does this history encourage faith or confidence ? He would be credulous indeed who would accept any one of the critics' hypotheses as final. UntU last century the Books of Moses stood by the unanimous testimony of all intervening time, as the work of the one man. Can any of the critics' hypotheses stand a Uke test ? The kind of evidence in which the critics mainly deal is bound to be ever changing. It does not consist of unchanging objective, to which appeal can always be made ; it consists in matters of opinion. The one scholar opines that the use of the term Elohim indicates a writer who has a special favour for that name, and that the use of the term Yahaveh indi- 364 LEX MOSAICA. cates a writer who has a special favour for that name as in dicating the Divine Being. But another scholar opines that the use of these names gives no indication of diversity of authorship — that it is perfectly befitting, as well as discrimi nating in meaning, for one author to speak of the Divine Being by various names. And the one opinion, as opinion, is as good as the other. Opinion is but another name for sub jective evidence; and as that is found within one's own self, it must necessarily be a varying thing — many men, many minds. And beside all this, the opinion of one mind often changes. Opinion, by itself, is inadequate evidence. Hence the opponents of the Higher Criticism rely on the all but unanimous testimony of history, the testimony also of tradi tional faith, which is no mean element in this case, and, in addition, the evidence of express language in the Word of God. The Higher Critics have no such elements of evidence on which to rely. The critics very generally reach their conclusions without any real basis of proof — e.g., they fix on a number of texts and passages in Deuteronomy for the purpose of establishing its post-Mosaic authorship. But when these texts and passages are looked at in their own light — the assumptions of the critics being discounted — they indicate not even a shadow of evidence that the Book of Deuteronomy had a post-Mosaic authorship. It is also whoUy by assumption that the critics come to the conclusion that the middle Books of the Pentateuch make a sharp distinction ' between the terms " priests and Levites," whereas in Deuteronomy this distinction is practically ignored. (See on these points The Mosaic Authorship of Deuteronomy.) A favourite faUacy of the critics is the argument e silentio. Something has beeii written by one inspired writer, and not mentioned by another who might have mentioned it ; therefore that something is not to be relied on. This is equivalent to saying that writers on similar subjects, or subjects in a certain way related, should have written exactly the same things. Then, if they had, they would have been discredited as slavish copyists. Because the law concerning a king contained in the l7th chapter of Deuteronomy, and which was not intended to be applied till the time of David, the king whom God chose (Deut. 17. 15), was not adhered to — at least in the letter— tiU THE SOUTHERN KINGDOM. 365 the time of application came, it is assumed that Moses could not have written that law, and that it did not exist tiU about the seventh century before Christ. The law concerning the one altar, as given in the 12th chapter of Deuteronomy, is treated in an equaUy faUacious manner. It prescribes that there should be a central place of worship with one altar. But it is assumed that Exod. 20. 24 admits of a pluraUty of altars. But this it certainly does not. (See for evi dence The Mosaic Authorship of Deuteronomy.) It is assumed that disregard of this law up to the time of Josiah is proof that the law had not been written tiU that time, and therefore could not have been written by Moses. But the apparent dis regard in no case proves actual disregard; and though actual disregard or violation were proven, that would no more prove ^l^non-existence of the law than disregard or violation of the PP^ only occurs elsewhere in Josh. 24. 19, a chapter that largely presupposes Pentateuchal history. V. 3, "slow to anger." See Exod. 34. 6; Num. 14. 18. "Will not at all acquit the wicked." The italics of the A.V. show that the object is not expressed in the Hebrew. The same phrase exactly occurs also in Exod. 34. 7 ; Num. 14. 18 ; these three passages being the only cases in the Bible where the Piel of this verb, ^"p^, a fairly common verb, is found with no object expressed. V. 4, " He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry." This may reasonably be claimed as referring to the passage of the Red Sea, Exod. 14. V. 106. Cf. Exod. 15. lb. y. 12, " when he shall pass through," A.V. It is possible, though perhaps not more than possible, that this impUes a knowledge of the "I will pass through the land of Egypt this night," Exod. 12. 12, and of the doom of Egypt that ensued. In the more probable translation adopted by the R.V. this reference would be excluded. V. 13, " I will break his yoke." This metaphor, expressed in the same Hebrew words, occurs also in Lev. 26. 13. »• 15 (2. 1, Heb.), " O Judah, keep thy solemn feasts." Here It is plain that the prophet, whether- living in Assyria or not, and writing at a date earlier than the reforms of Josiah, is cognisant of a system of appointed feasts among the Jews. See Exod. 34. 18 sqq. ; Ff 2 452 LEX MOSAICA. Deut. 16. I sqq. The Hebrew verb J^Hj in a similar context and transitive as here, meets us also in Exod. 12. 14 ; Lev. 23. 39, 41 ; and Num. 29. 12. "Perform thy vows." This, too, recognises part of a reUgious system bound up with the wotship of Jehovah. We may compare Num. 30. 2 (3, Heb.) ; Deut. 23. 21 (22, Heb.). In the latter of these the Hebrew involves the same words. 3. 3, "the bright sword," lit. "flame of [the] sword." Cf. Gen. 3. 24; Deut. 32. 41a. V. 4, "mistress of witchcrafts." Babylon, too, like Nineveh, trusted in its witchcrafts, Isa. 47. 9, 12. The Law of Moses rigidly condemned all such practices, Exod. 22. 18 (17, Heb.) ; Deut. 18. 10. It may be said that these traces are very few and scanty. That is quite true, yet who could fairly expect it otherwise with so absorbing a theme ? It would be as reasonable to look for allusions ,to Christian organisation in the burning visions of the anti-Babylonian chapters (17, 18) of the Apocalypse. Let us now return to the history. After Hezekiah's death ensued Manasseh's long reign of fifty-five years. The extreme youth of the king at his accession was an encouragement to the party of the " princes " to strike hard for the old idolatry. Yet the king is no mere passive tool dragged on by fiercer spirits than himself. He, alone among the kings of Judah, set on foot a persecution, and such a persecution that we may well be justified in calling it one of the most tremendous religious persecutions in history. Possibly, the long reign of the God fearing Hezekiah had strengthened the faith of the worshippers of Jehovah, so that they resisted all the more keenly Manas seh's idolatries — idol-altars in the sanctuary, human sacrifices to Moloch, the foul abominations of the Asherah worship, wherein he "did wickedly above all that the Amorites did." Anyhow, the persecution was sweeping; "he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood fjrom one end to another." The more faith ful the servant of Jehovah, the more sure his fate. No wonder that tradition, rightly or wrongly, puts on his head the murder of Isaiah. No wonder that the Talmud ages after speaks of him as one of the three kings who have no portion in the world to come. Prophets came and declared the news of future woes, at which the ears of the hearers would tingle. Doubt less most of such men paid for their boldness with their lives. If the words of any of these bad been preserved to us, what THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 453 probability is there that they were aught but fierce denuncia tions mingled with pathetic appeals to repentance ? We do not fancy that this would leave much room for reference to the Mosaic Code or ritual. John Wesley was a loyal son and priest of the Church of England till his death, yet his Jour nal, written in that age when the Church began to awake, dweUs almost exclusively on pure evangelistic efibrt and ex periences of personal repentance and faith in Christ It does indeed contain many references to organisation; but it is an organisation not of the Church of England, but of the Methodist "Societies." Quite conceivably it might have con tained hardly any reference to Church organisation at all; and a " critic " might have argued that at that time Methodism was the prominent English regime and the Church an after growth. How long the persecution lasted, and how long a space ensued upon Manasseh's repentance, we cannot here discuss. It has now been shewn from the monuments, that he twice went to do personal homage to his overlords, the kings of Assyria,* and that he was in the fullest sense a vassal of Assyria, a fact in itself of evil portent to the worship of God. It must be remembered that the history of fifty-five years is compressed into eighteen verses, itself a fact of high significance. Beyond the barest record, his annals were to be blotted out. His repentance, whatever space of time it covered, and what ever it did for him personaUy, could not undo the past. The closing years of his reign must have been like a time when, though the storm has ceased to blow, the waves still heave SuUenly. And now we come to an important question. The prophets who stood forth in the height of the storm perished, and their records have perished : how near can we get to the period so as to view the scene ? We shall give our reasons carefuUy for thinking, indeed for feeling convinced, that the prophecy of Habakkuk is to be referred to the closing years of Manasseh's reign. The date to which we assign the prophecy of Habakkuk must mainly hinge on two remarks, both occurring in 1. 5. * Sayce, Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 460 ; cf. pp. 458 sgg. 454 LEX MOSAICA. He declares the doom of the Chaldaean invasion; it is to come, says the Seer, before the generation he addresses shaU have passed away, and — this is his second utterance — his tid ings are to be received with incredulity. Now when, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim (608 B.C.), the\ Egyptian army was shattered at Carchemish by the Chaldseans, it was obvious that Egypt would be invaded in its turn, and Palestine lay in the direct track of the invader. After Carchemish, incredulity is impossible. We assuredly cannot fix the prophecy during the reforming part of Josiah's reign ; no one could say then " the law is slacked." We may not indeed put back the prophecy very far into Manasseh's reign, both because the condition of things when it was written (1. 2-4) pictures but social wrongs and neglect of religion, not bitter persecution, and also because the "in your days" forbids us to go back so far. Both ob jections are met by assigning the prophecy to the closing years of Manasseh's reign, when the persecution had ceased, but the evils it had caused were still patent, Uke, as we have said, to a sea sullenly heaving when the wind had died down. Of course the opening years of Josiah's reign would also suit, but not, we think, the period of Amon, under whom there was more or less a recrudescence of the evils of the preceding reign. If the opening years of Jehoiakim's reign be suggested, one can but say that, for some time before the fall of ^the Assyrian Empire, it must have been clear that it was tottering to its death,* and the corresponding growth of the Chaldsean and Babylonian power must have been evident to a shrewd observer. Babylon had thrown off the Assyrian yoke nearly twenty years before the battle of Carchemish ; surely the young Titan would soon begin to try his strength. In a word, incredulity, impossible- after Carchemish, would be most improbable for some years before it. Thus, Habakkuk might well be the latest of the prophets whom God sent in Manasseh's reign, with the threat of such a doom, that " whosoever heareth of it, both his ears shall tingle." What else can such news have been, but the coming of national ruin ? This conclusion is further con- * See Ewald's remarks on the evidence as to this furnished by Josiah's intrusion into Central Palestine (2 Chron. 34. 6), which would not have been possible had the Assyrian power not become too weak to stop him {Hist, of Israel, vol. iv., 227, Eng. trans.). ' THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 455 firmed by such arguments as those adduced by Delitzsch * to shew on literary grounds the priority of Habakkuk to Zepha niah, who, beyond all doubt, prophesied in the earUer part of Josiah's reign. Moreover, the " discovery " of the Book of the Law in the eighteenth year of Josiah, of which we shall pre sently speak, be it discovery, or be it "pious (or, impious) fraud," would, we cannot doubt, have left deep traces on our book, had it been written at a date after the discovery. What traces, it may be asked, does Habakkuk yield of a knowledge of the Law of Moses ? We have seen that in the earlier prophets the traces are numerous, though incidental. The prophet did not dweU on what did not concern his main purpose, any more than the historian does. A fair illustration of this is given us by Dr. Sayce, who,t speaking of the Sabbath aa a thoroughly Babylonian institution, and the word Sabbath, while a genuine Assyrian (Shemitic) word, as actually traced back to pre-Shemitic and Sumerian origin, yet tells us,J " in the historical inscriptions of Assyria, there is no reference to the Babylonian Sabbath." Historians, and prophets, and preachers, all alike keep their eyes on their main purpose. But if in Hosea and the rest, the allusions, plentiful though they be, are but incidental, what can we think that Habakkuk can give us, writing after a persecution of such terrible inten sity ? Had Mary Tudor's life been prolonged for another twenty years, nothing but the direct help of God could have saved EngUsh Protestantism from extirpation ; and even in her short reign, what amount of literature, secretly printed, do we expect to find of the persecuted Church ? Yet even thus some striking points suggest themselves in Habakkuk. On the first of these we must speak at some Uttle length. 1. 4, "the Law {Torah) is slacked." A student coming to this passage with unbiassed mind, might naturally note that the word was "Law," not merely justice, or right-doing, or love and fear of God. Thus he would see in the word not abstract morality, but in some sense a code, a system, an authoritative shaping of God's law. If so, then Habakkuk, however shadowy his knowledge of the details might be, yet fuUy recognised the existence of a Divinely issued and con crete code. * Ber Prophet Habahuk, pp. iv. sgy. t Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 74. J Ibid., p. 77. 456 LEX MOSAICA. To this Wellhausen gives a contemptuous and sweeping denial. He remarks,* " Isaiah [and therefore presumably the other prophets] uses the word Torah to denote, not the priestly, but the prophetical instruction." Again, "j" " It is foolish to suppose that the prophets expounded the Law. Jeremiah only knows the 'hving command' of Jehovah, and not any testament given once for all." These be brave words. Roma locuta est. Yet it seems to us that this is but to beg the whole question at issue. The presence of the word Torah in Habakkuk is very awkward for Wellhausen, if it reasonably can be viewed as in any sense pointing to the Law of Moses. The " critic's " solution is simple ; absolutely deny any such relevance. It is true that this is to claim just as much creduUty as the supporters of the old behef s are taunted with having ; but, it has been happily remarked, " There are popes in the ' higher criticism ' as well as in theology." We do not of course wish to maintain that the word Torah never has a wider meaning, or to assert that in such passages as those referred to above there is necessarily any reference to the Law concretely viewed, any more than an allusion to the " blessings of the Gospel " necessarily brings into our mind the four Evangelists. What we mean is simply this. When we consider the connotation the word Torah has later, when it is a mere synonym for Pentateuch (sometimes indeed with the name of Moses added, as in Mai. 4. 4 [3. 22, Heb.J ; Neh. 8. I), we claim the right, when we are told that (say) 200 years before it had an absolutely different reference, to demand the most rigid evidence for such an assertion. In the meantime we claim, with Dr. Robertson, that we are warranted in concluding from the whole tone of the prophetical literature, that " some standard of obedience and religious observance was acknowledged as set up for permanent appeal and authority ; " | and further, that this authority is so referred to as to imply " principles of action embodied in concrete recognised laws." Again, § " During even the worst times the prophets have no doubt of the purity and fixity of the priestly Torah. In speaking of the instruction of the priests, they regard it as a thing superior to and binding upon the class and the people." This of itself doubtless does not prove a reference to the Pentateuch, or " to any book in the modern sense," but it certainly excludes the notion of a mere " oral law then in process of being delivered." V. 6. The threat of the Chaldsean invasion, though not charac terised by definite verbal coincidences, may fairly be compared with the threats of Deut. 28. 49, 50. V. 12, "O mighty God." Heb. Eock. The appheation of this word (^!)2f ) to God, familiar to us in the Psalms and Isaiah (cf. the * Prolegomena,, p. 68, Eng. trans. J Early Seligion of Israel, p. 341. t Ibid., p. 399. § Ibid., p. 362. THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 457 phrase "Rock of Ages," Isa. 26. 4), occurs in the song of Moses (Deut. 32) no fewer than five times {vv. 4, 15, 18, 30, 31 ; see also V. 37). V. 16. We may compare for the sentiment Deut. 8. 17. 2. 2, "make it plain." Heb. "1{|$3, occurring only here and in Deut. 1. 5 ; 27. 8. V. 6, "with thick clay." Rather, "with pledges," as R.V. The word occurs only here, and the root is elsewhere only found in Deut. 15 and 24. The verb used in Piel in Joel 2. 7 has a different sense. V. 15 may very conceivably be a reminiscence of Gen. 9. 22. 3. A student of this chapter who will pay careful heed to the constantly fluctuating tenses of the Theophany {vv. 3-15), and will notice how this is combined with the most evident allusions to the earher history, will soon realise that the prophet dwells now on past manifestations of God's mercies, now on his certain assurance of God's future mercies. V. 3a. Here we trace the parallelism with Deut. 33. 2. See also Judg. 5. 4; Ps. 68. 7 X8, Heb). vv. Sb, 4. For the glory manifested on Sinai, refer to Exod. 19. 16-18. V. 4, "Horns." This should be "rays of light." This use of the word, which is literally as A.V., is found only here, but the denominative verb pp, derived from it, "to emit rays," is found in Exod. 34. 29, 30, 35, and nowhere else. V. 5, "burning coals." It is possible that the word f^'^ here means " burning disease " ; if so, we may compare Deut. 32. 24, the only other place in the Bible where the word is used in this sense. V. 6, " everlasting mountains," " perpetual hills." There is a parallel here both with Gen. 49. 26 and Deut. 33. 15, it being remembered that in the former many scholars would read "iy ''^Tl. V. 8, "Thy wrath against the sea," coming in this connection, refers, no reasonable man can doubt, to the passage of the Red Sea, as the word "rivers" is an allusion to the Jordan. V. 9b. We beheve the true translation of the Hebrew to be, " Sworn are the punishments of the solemn decree " (or " of Thy Word").* If this be so, the reference is to the doom pronounced on the inhabitants of Canaan by God in promising their land to Israel. See Gen. 15. 166. The prophet's mind may possibly have turned to the victories over Sihon and Og in Num. 21, and over Midian in Num. 31. gee also Num. 33. 52-56. V. 10a, "The mountains saw, Thee and they trembled." See Exod. 19. 16-18, "The whole mount quaked greatly." The Hebrew verb is not the same, but the parallelism of thought is very suggestive. * See my Psalm of Habakkuk, p. 24. 458 LEX MOSAICA. V. 10b, "This overflowing of the water ..." See again the account of the passage of the Red Sea, e.g., Exod. 14. 22 (of which " the lifting up of the hands on high " seems a poetic representation) and 15. 8. V. 11, "Sun and moon.. . ." Though this, the only later allusion in Scripture to the great miracle at Bethhoron,* is of course not a reference to an event given in the Pentateuch, but in Joshua, or, to use the current diction, in the last book of the Hexateuch, j it is worth while to bring it in here ; seeing that each fresh undoubted allusion does but confirm the belief that in this Psalm the prophet is looking back to the history of the wonders which of old God did for His people. VV. 13-15. In this paragraph the allusion to the Red Sea in v. 15 seems unmistakeable, and we may, with Ewald, J see a reference to Pharaoh and Egypt all through the paragraph. V. 19, " to walk upon mine high places." There seems here a reminiscence of Deut. 32. 13 ; 33. 29. ' To the short evil reign of Amon the reign of Josiah suc ceeds — a bright gleam, unhappily too brief. Of course, Josiah was far too young, for some years after his accession, to be able to exert any real influence on the course of government ; and many of the evUs of the preceding reign must have gone on unchecked until the king became strong enough to grapple with these evils, and, for the time, to crush them. In this earlier part of the reign^ — how early it is impossible to guess — we must undoubtedly fix the prophecy of Zephaniah. Such a state of society as that which he brings before us is hardly conceivable after the twelfth year of Josiah's reign; and, after the climax in the eighteenth year, it is utterly out of the question. As with Habakkuk, so here, we can only expect to find passing allusions, worked up into the text; yet they are, very distinctly worth considering. * Psalm of Habakkuk, pp. 29 sjj. f There is a fair and an unfair use of this word. So far as it is meant to imply that the Book of Joshua may well in thought be associated with the Pentateuch, as the outcome of its history (just as we might view the Acts of the Apostles as the natural outcome of the Third Gospel), well and good. But if it is meant to imply (and it certainly is so in some minds) that there ever was a time when the Law of Moses and the Book of Joshua were viewed as one integral whole, and that it is merely a chance that the Book of Joshua was not permanently combined with the Torah, let us ask for one single piece of objective evidence to favour that view. People use the word Hexateuch- glibly until they begin to fancy it quite an indifferent matter whether we include the Book of Joshua in the great Code or not. J Prophets of the O.T., iii., 47, Eng. trans. THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 459 * 1. 6. In Deut. 4. 29,( we agam have ^0^ and B'")'^, and the same order in both. V. 8, "I wUl punish" {Heb. visit, ^^ ^pS) ; cf. Exod. 32. 34. V. 13, "they shall build houses . . . they shaU plant vineyards . " The parallelism is very close here with Deut. 28. 30. V. 17. The threat of this verse, the groping in the dark hke blind men, recalls Deut. 28. 29. 2. 3. Cf. Deut. 4, 29. V. 7, " shall visit them." Por this use of " visit " (*7pS), used as in the Benedictus (Luke 1. 68), see Gen. 50. 24 ; Exod. 3. 16 ; 4. 31. "Turn away their captivity." Cf. Deut. 30. 3. The verb is in Kal in both cases. V. 9. The reference to Sodom and Gomorrah here, " nettles and saltpits and a perpetual desolation," forcibly recalls Gen. 19. 24, 25. Notice especially the destruction {v. 25) of " that which grew upon the ground." A second parallel meets us in Deut. 29. 23 [22, Heb.], where the land of the Cities of the Plain is spoken of as " brimstone and salt and burning, it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein." V. 11, "Isles of the heathen" (or, Gentiles). This phrase only occurs here and in Gen. 10. 5. 3. 4, "Her priests have polluted the sanctuary" (Ji'nb ^17^11). We have the same, or nearly the same, Hebrew phrase in Lev. 19. 8 ; 21. 23 O^'IDQ) ; 22. 15 ; Num. 18. 32. "They have done violence to [the] Law." We may refer here to our remarks on Hab. 1. 4.- The priests then had a Kodesh (hallowed thing, holy thing, sanctuary) to keep holy, yet they had polluted it : they had a Law to guard as a sacred wafaflij/oj, yet they had overridden and defied its precepts. The two sacred things are spoken of co-ordinately, as something in the hands of the priests, to maintain inviolate or to mar. It is not a case, be it noted, of priestly carelessness or mere false teaching, but of doing despite to a Law which it was theirs to promulgate, as the verb clearly shows. V. 5. Cf. generally Num. 5. 36; Deut. 7. 21. V. 7, "they corrupted all their doings." See Gen. 6. 12, where the Hebrew verb is the same. V. 8, " the fire of My jealousy." See Deut. 4. 24. V. I3&. See Lev. 26. 6. , V. 15. See Deut 7. 21. V. 17, "mighty" (nD5). See Deut. 10. 17. "He will rejoice." See Deut. 30. 9. God's rejoicing over Israel is indicated by the same verb (jj'^jj') in both passages. 460 LEX MOSAICA. V. 19, "I wiU gather her that was driven out." Observe the occurrence of this verb (VSp) with the same participle (Pl'^i) in Deut. 30. 3, 4. VV. 196, 20, "praise and a name" {bis). See Deut. 26. 19. Josiah came to the throne as a chUd of eight years of age. By what influence a child bom of such evil parentage, and amid such evil surroundings, was brought to the true faith and fear of God we cannot say. Something there surely was. We are told that in the eighth * year of his reign, " while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father " (2 Chron. 34. 3), and that in the twelfth year of his reign he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from idolatrous abominations, till, in the eighteenth year, the discovery of the Book of the Law gave a fresh impetus to the reforms, and restored in all its fulness the worship of Jehovah. It will be noticed that the Books of Kings and Chronicles do not put this matter in exactly the same way, in that the former relates the whole work of purging the land as coming after (and therefore it might seem simply as the result of) the finding of the Book of the Law; whereas in Chronicles the work of reformation goes on in the period from the twelfth to the eighteenth year. Yet it is evident, even from 2 Kings 22. 3-7, that the work of reformation had begun before the dis covery, and it is only reasonable to assume that this work was started as soon as the young king, who at the age of sixteen had begun to seek after God, felt strong enough to essay the work. It will be remembered, too, that the prophetic career of Jeremiah began in the thirteenth year of Josiah's reign (Jer. 1, 2). The actual work of reformation begins when Josiah is twenty years old, and goes on for six years, till, by God's bless ing, the discovery of the Law puts fresh life into the work and accentuates the zeal of the king and his helpers. It is, indeed, a commonplace of the " Higher Criticism " that anything which is found in Chronicles only is untrustworthy, and may be dismissed at once ; and that the Book was written * The language of the late Bishop of Bath and WeUs is not one whit too strong when he speaks {Books of Chronicles, p. 17) of WeUhausen's " running fire of profane banter." This critic has remarked of the note of time when Josiah first began to turn to God — " Being at his accession still too young, the eighth year of his reign is, as u, tribute to propriety, selected instead of the eighth year of his life. . . . (Prolegomena, p. 202.) THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 461 from cormpt and selfish motives by members of the priestly party in their own interests. The reason is only too obvious. Grant the true historic character of the Chronicles, and a mass of exceeding weighty evidence is at once obtained for the old belief. That suffices to condemn it. Hinc iUce lacrymce. Patient defenders of the Book, however, are increasingly show ing cause for viewing the Chronicles as a trustworthy history, the writer of which had access to, and made the fullest use of, very ancient national records; and the evidence of the monu ments has given us confirmation on several of the points wherein the story of the Chronicles was at one time asserted to be completely mythical.* The evils which Josiah suppressed are recorded in detaU. We do not read merely of "graven images" and "molten images" being destroyed, but of images and altars of Baal and Asherah ("groves," AV.), and of the Host of heaven, further detailed as Sun, Moon, and " Planets " (nPJtt). The "idolatrous priests" {Ohemarim) were suppressed, and the worship of "the high places," and the priests of the high places were slain upon their altars. We find mention, too, of the suppression of the impure rites of the K'deshim, which had been aUowed in the very precincts of the sanctuary, of the worship of Moloch, and of the idolatries due to Solomon, Jeroboam, and Manasseh. At a later time, mentioned in connection with the prohibitions in the Law, we find the suppression of the workers with famUiar spuits, and wizards, and teraphim (2 Kings 23. 24). It will readily be seen that reforms which, for aught that we can say, may have been gradual, and which doubtless en countered more or less covert opposition, would be stirred into fresh life by the discovery of the Book of the Law in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign, and the sharpest suppression of the old evUs went on with the intensest unity of purpose on the part of the king. Josiah would deserve, if ever ruler did, Strafibrd's famous word, " Thorough." Yet the work is not merely destruction: the Passover is celebrated on the fourteenth day of the first month amid an immense concourse of Jews. No such Passover had been held from the days of Samuel, nor * See on this point some remarks in Dr. Sayce's Higher Criticism and the Monu ments, pp. 457 sgq. ; and, on the question of general credibility, the late Bishop of Bath and 'Welh' Booh of Chronicles in relation to the Pentateuch and the " Higher Criticism." 462 LEX MOSAICA. did any of the kings " keep such a Passover " ; a remark, it will be seen, which fully justifies us in thinking that there must have been other Passovers under the kings besides the only recorded one, that of Hezekiah. For thirteen years the re vival lasted, when it was cut short by the untimely death of Josiah. And now what of the discovery of the Boolt of the Law ? Was it really a discovery of something which had been hidden presumably since the death of Hezekiah, and now, in the Provi dence of God, had been brought to Ught once more ? Or, on the other hand, was it a fraud ? — there is no other word to use, if the first hypothesis is not true. Those who would have us believe that "the Book of the Law" was a copy of Deuter onomy, and that it was a concoction of the reign of Manasseh or Josiah, tell us that the fabricators were actuated by a high .sense of zeal for the worship of Jehovah; while yet, in tbe utterest defiance of the Third Commandment recorded in that Book, they proceed to use the Most Holy Name for the purpose of their forgery. On this view, Deuteronomy, save on the grounds of literary excellence, faUs into the same category as the Apocryphal Gospels and the False Decretals; it is an attempt to bolster up a religious cause (the goodness of the cause is a matter irrelevant) by the free use of false statements, backed up by what profess to be the direct utterances of God. Although differing in details, such as whether we are to take the reign of Manasseh or that of Josiah as the date, it has become an axiom of the "Higher Critics" that the "Book - of the Law" of 2 Kings 22 was Deuteronomy, and that it was a fabrication of this period. Even Ewald, to go back to what is now a far-off time, thinks that it might have been written thirty or forty years before its discovery by an exile in Egypt, who had fled thither from Manasseh's persecutions. Then we are to suppose that it might have been "slowly cir culated, and had reached Palestine by a sort of chance," and so " a copy of it may have been accidentally brought by some priest into the Temple, and there discovered by the High Priest."* This, even if it gets rid of the idea of deliberate fraud, still has to build on a very elaborate chapter of acei- * Hist, of Israel, iv., p. 236 ; cf. p. 221, Eng. trans. THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 463 dents. In Wellhausen we get refreshing plainness of speech as to the state of mind of those who stUl adhere to the old be Uefs : " in all circles where appreciation of scientific results can be looked for at all [the italics are ours], it is recognised that [Deuteronomy] was composed in the same age in which it was discovered."* Eeuss (cited by WeUhausen) f remarks: " Le Deut^ronome (4. 45 — 28. 68) est le livre que les pretres prd- tendaient avoir trouvd dans le Temple du temps du roi Josias." Or, again, let us refer to Kuenen : " If HUkiah found the Book in the Temple, it was put there by the adherents of the Mosaic tendency. Or else HUkiah himself was of their number, and in that case he pretended that he had found the Book of tbe Law. "J In the case of Professor Driver we are, of course, happily free from the irreverence of Kuenen and Wellhausen ; and he rejects as improbable the view that Hilkiah was concerned in the composition of the "Book of the Law," but adopts the theory that it is approximately of the age of Manasseh. That an unbiassed reader will agree with his conclusion § that " Deuter onomy does not claim to be written by Moses," because the author speaks in the third person of what Moses said or did, we can hardly believe; the same argument would rob Caesar of the Commentaries. Perhaps there is no more surprising view than that put forward by Professor Cheyne, who sug gests || that "to the priests and prophets who loved spiritual reUgion Ood had revealed that now was the tirnie to take a bold step forward, and accomplish the work which the noblest ser vants of Jehovah had so long desired " [the italics are ours]. Accordingly, to " ancient laws adapted to present purposes " are added " perfectly new ones framed in the spirit of Moses. . . . It had apparently been placed in a repository beside the Ark, and there . . . Hilkiah professed to Shaphan ... to have found it." Thus oiie of the chances "which mark the interposing hand of God favoured the project of HUkiah"; and so the dinouement came about. Yet Professor Cheyne pro tests indignantly : 1[ "to say that [Hilkiah] was ' the forger of Deuteronomy' is, of course, a gross misrepresentation of my opinion." We faU to see any great amount of misrepresentation ' Prolegomena, p. 9. § Introd. to Lit. of 0. T, p. 83. t Ibid., p. 4. II Founders of 0. T. Criticism, p. 268. X Beligien of Israel, ii., p. 19, Eng. trans. t Ibid., p. 272, note. 464 LEX MOSAICA. ourselves. Anyhow, it has been reserved for an Anglican clergyman to make the Deity Himself an instigator of the fraud, call it by what pleasant euphemism we will It is no part of the duty of the present writer to discuss the positive evidenqe in favour of the belief that, in aU essen tial particulars, Deuteronomy is a true product of the Mosaic age ; but it devolves upon him to consider the negative side, viz., how far Deuteronomy presents the characteristics of a book of the age of Manasseh or Josiah. But first let a preliminary remark be interposed : if Deuteronomy be of that age, then, gloss it by what specious name we will, the Book is a forgery. It again and again professes to be the work of Moses, and again and again brings in the solemn " Jehovah said unto me." If Hilkiah or some priest of his time be the fabricator, what have we here but a forgery, and one of the utterest impiety ? Yet is there anything in the story of the discovery, as it has come down to us, to give any primd facie justification for this ? There is no stray aUusion in either Kings or Chronicles suggestive of any guilty knowledge on Hilkiah 's part* Yet if there were deceit in the matter, Hilkiah, even if not the actual forger, must clearly have been privy to it. It may, indeed, be said that the Book somehow found its way accidentaUy into the Temple; but, to say nothing of the unlikelihood of such an accident, we still come to forgery in the long run, and therefore to the com plicity of the leading members of the priestly party, and so, presumably, of the High Priest. What earthly warrant is there for this ? What should we think of a barrister who in a speech in court should say : " The evidencfe of such and such a witness is, I am convinced, per jured. It is true that I know of no suspicion attaching to his character, but our case breaks down if his witness is accepted. Yet in all circles where appreciation of scientific results can be looked for, it is admitted that our case is undoubted. There fore the witness must have perjured himself " ? Yet wherein does this differ from the assumption that Hilkiah and the priests must have been guilty of this gross act of dishonesty? * It is impossible to estimate the probability of the identity of Hilkiah the High Priest with Hilkiah the father of Jeremiah. There is, at any rate, nothing impossible in the view. It seems hardly conceivable for the father of such a son to have been guilty of an impious forgery. THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 465 Kuenen does indeed say* that "at a time when notions about literary property were yet in their infancy, an action of this kind [i.e., a false ascription of the name of Moses] was not regarded as at all unlawful. Men used to perpe trate such fictions as these without any qualms of conscience." Surely it is fair to demand one undoubted instance of such a phenomenon. Professor Cheyne maintains f that the " only person who is vehemently moved by the perusal " of the Book is the king himself, and contrasts this with the " imperturbability " of HUkiah, Shaphan, and Huldah, adding, " The easiest supposition is that these three persons . . . had agreed together, un known to the king, on their course of action." But surely this is pla)dng with history. The strong emotion of the king is dwelt on by the historians, because this emotion was to lead to such far-reaching consequences. He was the central and most powerful figure in the group ; all the subsequent action sprang from him, while the other figures fall into a naturally subordi nate place. We claim, therefore, that there is no d priori case for maintaining the idea of plot or fraud : whether the book itself shows any characteristics suggestive of Josiah's (or Manasseh's) time may now be briefly considered. (1.) Let any one after studying the history of the period which foUowed the death of Hezekiah, proceed to read the Book of Deuteronomy as a whole, and then ask himself how far it fulfils the conditions we should have a right to expect in a book emanating from the worshippers of Jehovah either during a period of fierce persecution, or one immediately following there on. Here is a book markedly characterised by a kind of mitis sapientia, which yet on the hypothesis is the work of Israelites smarting under a cruel persecution, or the memory of it, and we might surely look for one long-drawn denunciation and threat of doom. Let us try to picture the concentrated wrath of the Israelite, as his thoughts turned on the object of his hate, whether we take the fiery inspired ode of Nahum, or the en venomed and shameless attacks on our Saviour in the Talmud. lake aa a paraUel iUustration some hunted Scotch covenanter sheltering among the hiUs (or, for the matter of that, face to * Op. cit. ii., 18. t Op. cit., p. 267. S 1063. Gg 466 LEX MOSAICA. face with bloody Lauderdale), and ask what his language would be like as he spoke of the enemies of the Lord. Surely it is hard to see why, on the hypothesis we combat, this should not be the animating spirit of Deuteronomy. (2.) So much for the animating spirit which might fairly be looked for. It may be asked next, what traces the course of history, from the time of Moses to that of Josiah (or Manasseh), have left on the Book on the hypothesis of the later date ? What traces are there deep marked into Deuteronomy of the deliverances which God wrought for His people through the judges whom He called up for this purpose, of the rise of the house of David, the glories of the empire of Solomon, the dis ruption of the kingdom, the constant hostility of the two king doms, and the final and utter fall of the Northem Kingdom while that of the house of David was mercifully preserved for nearly another century and a half ? What traces in especial have we of the miraculous deliverance, and that a comparatively recent one, from the Assyrians in the reign of Hezekiah? Surely a Jew writing in the age of Josiah or Manasseh would have evinced a knowledge of such all-important facts as these in so long a Book as Deuteronomy. Yet who will say that there are any certain traces of any of them ? (3.) There are some further things which puzzle us on the hypothesis that Deuteronomy is a late forgery in the interest of the priestly party and of the central shrine at Jerusalem. In 3. 21 sqq. we have the record of the appointment of, and the charge to, Joshua. Surely it is strange that there is a total absence of allusion to any share in the matter on the part of the High Priest, when the occasion would be so obvious a one for bringing him prominently forward. In the parallel passage, Num. 27. 18 sqq., Eleazar, the High Priest, takes a very im portant part. Or again, if the priests of the age of Josiah aimed at the suppression of the local sanctuaries, and at making Jerusalem the one scene of sacrificial worship, then it might have been thought that the fabricators would have put a more definite phraseology into the expression, " in the place which the Lord shaU choose in one of thy tribes . . . " (12. 14). Why was not the name of Jerusalem somehow brought in so as to give to the central shrine the fullest Divine authority ? THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 467 Another iUustration of a somewhat different kind may be given. In the reference to the cities of refuge in Deuteronomy (4. 41-43), the three on the east of the Jordan are named.* In the parallel passage of Numbers, it is ordered that there shaU be six, three on each side of Jordan, but none are named. Yet in Josh. 20 aU the six are named. Surely we may suggest that, as seen in Deuteronomy, the country west of Jordan being un- conquered, no definite choice could be made by Moses : Joshua having conquered the whole land was free to complete the scheme. What reason could there be in Josiah's time for not naming aU six ? A few more points of like kind may be very briefly noticed. Would a Jew of the time of Josiah have been likely to in sert a prohibition of Ammonites or Moabites entering the con gregation of the Lord (23. 3 ; 4, Heb.) ? One would hardly have thought that this was a danger to be guarded against then. In the time of Nehemiah (13. 1) there was a very real danger, and the Law is invoked accordingly. Or, what of the friendly allusion to the Edomite (23. 7 ; 8, Heb.) ? Surely such a passage as Amos 1. 11 shows how utterly Edom had cast away any claim to the title of " brother." Or, is it not something of the nature of an anachronism to put into the mouth of a Jew of Josiah's time such a remark as "A Syrian ready to perish [rather, A wandering Syrian, or Aramaean] was my father " (26. 5) ? Aram would be a very strange, old-world name for Israelites then. Moreover, such a grouping of all the Twelve Tribes as that in 27. 12, 13, seems inconceivable at any date after the disrup tion ; and one cannot but think that the same remark may be made more or less of the presence of the Northem tribes in the blessmg of Moses (ch. 33), that of Joseph (not Ephraim and Manasseh) being so especially prominent. That Joshua might still be called Hoshea at a time when numbers of those who had known him under that name were stiU Uving is inteUigible (32. 44) ; but that this name should be used centuries after seems hardly credible. (4.) We now come to a point of a totally different kind. In Deuteronomy there is a considerable amount of history. Now, * In Deut. 19. 1 sqq. none are named. Gg2 468 LEX MOSAICA. on the hypothesis of the late date, to what end was aU this his tory put in, and whence was it got ? The second question ia answered by a distinguished "Higher Critic" in the usual algebraic style : " as in the laws, so in the history, D is dependent upon JE." Now let us look at the facts. There are, it is true, numerous historic details in Deuteronomy which are found in the other Books of the Pentateuch, and especially in Numbers. These we are bidden to view as borrowed from an assumed JE. What other objective reason is there for this, save that the Books do coincide ? Given two writings A and B with a cer tain amount of matter in common, we refuse to allow that mere coincidence is proof that A has borrowed from B, unless we have irrefragable confirmatory evidence. We will take one example of coincidence. In Deut. 10. 22 we read quite incidentally of the Seventy who originaUy went down into Egypt. This number is also put on record in Gen. 46. 27 ; Exod. 1. 5. Ifow both of these latter passages are found in the so-called P, which we are told belongs " approximately to the period of the Baby lonian captivity," that is, to a date later than Hilkiah's discovery. Therefore the statement in Deuteronomy cannot have been derived from either of the others, but is the oldest existing record of the fact. Yet a student, with no theory to serve, might well view Gen. 46. 8-27 as one of the primary records of the nation, and the curious difficulty in the reckoning is all the more evidence against a late date. Another point may be noticed. The LXX., as is well known, adds five names of the sons and grandsons of Ephraim and Manasseh, doubtless to give a full recognition to the fathers of those two great tribes. If the chapter is really so late, we should quite have expected this addition in the Hebrew as well. But it is simply not true that most of the historic details in Deuteronomy are found in the assumed JE. Take the first three chapters, for example, and see how much historical matter occurs there, which is found nowhere else; or examine the narrative element in chaps. 27, 31. Moreover, besides asking whence these come, we should like to know why priests, guUty of their startling act of forgery, should have brought in aU this historical detail Not only is there far more of it than would be needed to neatly round off the document, but much of it, especially as found in ch. 2, seems on the surface irrelevant and uncalled for. It is impossible to work this out in the space at our command, but let reference be made for example to 1. 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, etc. ; 2. 1-23 THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 469 (of which last the whole is practically matter which occurs nowhere else); 3. 8-11, etc. Again one would ask, whence comes all this, and why is it here at all on the theory of the late date? Apply this for example to 3. 9. We wUl call attention to one curious detail. In Deut. 2. 20 we have one of the aboriginal peoples of the trans-Jordanic country, the Zamzummim. These, in Gen. 14. 5, are called Zuzim. Dr. Sayce* states that the same cuneiform symbol represents M and V (or W), and is therefore indeterminate save in so far as other known facts resolve the ambiguity. On this view the passage in Gen. 14 was drawn directly from the cuneiform tablets, as is shown by the mis spelling; while in Deuteronomy the word is derived from independent knowledge, and is spelt correctly. One would like to ask what the priestly forger of Josiah's time had to do with the Zamzummim at all, or how he would know how to write the name; and if Kuenen be right in saying that Gen. 14 is "a fragment of a post-exilian version of Abram's life " {Hex., p. 324), the misspelling then is puzzling indeed. Some Assyriologists think that the Babylonians pronounced M as V (or W), so that, e.g., shamash (the sun) would be pronounced shawash. In this case, although we should not be dealing with a blunder in spelling, but should only have an exact reproduction of a particular pronunciation, the above difficulty remains unaffected. To this, however, the answer of some of the " Higher Critics " is ready, to wit, that certain chapters of our present Deuter onomy did not belong to the book found by Hilkiah. Thus, as we have seen, Reuss takes this to be Deut. 4. 45 — 28. 68, while Wellhausen f is pleased to say, " Deuteronomy proper (chaps. 12-26) contains scarcely any historical matter." Kuenen again teUs us that Deut. 4. 44 — 26, with 28, " is the Book of the Law found by Hilkiah."J Criticism such as this is the purest subjectivity, and will only win assent from those who are prepared d priori to accept it. Just as the Talmud remarks, " the outcome of a commandment is a fresh commandment, and the outcome of a transgression is a fresh transgression," so here may we not say, " the outcome of a theory when faced with awkward facts is a fresh theory " ? " Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb." In a recently published essay on Old Testament criticism it was remarked, that the fact that a skeleton key could be made to open a certain lock was no evidence that it was the key * Op. cit., p. 160. t Op. cit, p. 369. J Op. cit., ii., 16. 470 LEX MOSAICA. which was originally made for that lock. We have had a good many skeleton keys of late, claiming to open, with more or less profession of success, a certain ancient lock. We venture to think that not a few will still maintain that the old key has never been lost, and that though on occasion the lock may work rather stiffly, the old key fuUy discharges its func tions. (5.) If Deuteronomy be a work of the age of Josiah or Manasseh, how are we to account for the clear references to it in the Book of Kings during the period down to Hezekiah inclusive ? In answer to this, we are told that the Book of Kings was compiled in or soon after the reign of Evil-Merodach, who was king of Babylon, 5C1-559 B.C. ; and this is doubtless time. Therefore it is urged, the Book of Deuteronomy, having been discovered about seventy years before, was of necessity known to the compUer, and he utilized his knowledge by con stantly forcing in allusions to Deuteronomy. It is often notoriously impossible to prove a negative, but we would point out that this suggestion is absolutely a begging of the question. The compiler of the Book of Kings, living, doubt less, in Babylonia, evidently had full access to the older litera ture of his nation. We can quite understand how an educated king like Nebuchadnezzar would carry away a mass of Jewish literature to Babylon, and we can believe that Jewish literati would be generously dealt with. Thus the " Chronicles of the Kings of Israel," and the " Chronicles of the Kings of Judah," and probably many other documents would be at their disposal. Probably, too, our own Books of Chronicles throw a light on the constituent elements of these " Chronicles of the Kings," and shew us Nathan and Ahijah, and Iddo and Shemaiah, and many others, as the actual authors, whose wcarks are compacted into national fasti.* Now, seeing how obviously the Book of Kings is a compila tion, and not a historical treatise built up on materials at the disposal of the writer, such as a modern historian would give us, is it not somewhat reckless to assert as a mere axiom that these references to Deuteronomy are merely insertions of the compiler ? It seems to us to be crediting the compiler with * See some remarks in Sayce's Higher Criticism and the Monuments, pp. 446 sq^. THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 471 a good deal more breadth of literary treatment than there is any warrant for. Moreover, the claim which we combat may be faced by the fact that the language and thoughts of the other Books of the Pentateuch can be found wrought up into the Book of Kings, not indeed so prominently as Deuteronomy, but in a way which we believe to be past dispute. For discussion of this, reference must be made to the preceding essays. (6.) We beUeve, in spite of assertions to the contrary, that there are a certain number of archaisms in Deuteronomy, testi fying against a late date. Thus (a) the personal pronoun NlH is used for the feminine as well as the masculine in Deuter onomy, as in the other Books of the Pentateuch, though pointed by the Masorites as a K7'i perpetuum H'l'H, to suit the later speUing XTI.* It may be noted that, in the Books of the Bible outside the Pentateuch, the form NlH for the feminine occurs as a Cthiv only three times. If the dates of the con stituent elements of the Pentateuch are so widely divergent, why is there uniformity on this point, Deuteronomy displaying the same phenomenon as the other Books ? It may be added that there is no trace of a feminine form N"in in the Book of Joshua. We are quite aware that the late Dr. William Wright denied "the use of XlH for the feminine gender in Hebrew" {Comp. Gram. of Semitic Languages, p. 104) ; but, with the utmost respect to the memory of that great scholar, we fail to see that he has established his point. His argument rests upon the facts that (i) in other Shemitic languages the forms are distinct for the two genders, and (ii) "in old Hebrew MSS. ) and i are very much alike." But to the former we would remark that with the resemblances between Hebrew and the other Shemitic languages there meets us much that is peculiar to the former ; and in that Shemitic language which is virtu ally Hebrew, namely Phoenician, the form XH stands for both genders, where it is absolutely to beg the question to say that we must assume a scriptio defectiva, by which XH could stand both for KIH and N*ri) as might be required. If, as we believe is the case, the Phoenician form is always K/l) why is it not probable that the one spelling was evidence of one sound? As regards the second point, while it is of course true that ) and '> may be easily interchanged, surely we might fairly look to find HT\ * This form is said to occur in the Pentateuch only eleven times (Gesenius, TTies., p. 368a). 472 LEX MOSAICA. standing for XIH, as much as NIH for N*/!, instead of the absolute one-sidedness we see. Dr. Wright refers to Strack's Babylonian MS. of the Prophets, where some eases of XlH for KTl occur ; but we do not deny that chance may operate here and there, though we do deny its likelihood to produce the wide-ranging uniformity we see. It is worth while remarking that ) and * are much more unlike in the older Phoenician character than in square Hebrew, which would tend, one would think, to perpetuate the difference. {b) Although we express no opinion as to the relative priority of date of the forms of the demonstrative pronouns n^Nt and 7N, yet we maintain that the latter may justly be claimed as a very ancient form. A word, eight of whose nine occurrences in the Bible are to be found in the Pentateuch (Gen. 19. 8, 25; 26. 3, 4; Lev. 18. 27; Deut. 4. 42; 7. 22; 19. 11 ; the other passage being 1 Chron. 20. 8), and which, save for a few late examples, is the regular form in Phoenician, cannot, we maintain, be claimed as belonging to a late stratum of the language. It may be noted, that the passages in Genesis all occur in the J of the " Higher Critics," the Leviticus passage in H, and the Deuteronomy passages in D. Thus these three writers indulge in a happy uniformity in so small a thing as the spelling of a pronoun. (c) There occurs in Deuteronomy the archaism of 1J^3 (a girl) for the later H'lVJ (22. 15 {bis), 16, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26 {bis), 27, 28, 29). The only other places where this archaism occurs are Gen. 24. 14, 16, 28, 55, 57 ; 34. 3 {bis), 12. {d) The termination in |^ is undoubtedly older than that in ^ in the third person plural of the preterite, and in the second and third persons plural mascuUne of the future.* The former (pret.) is rare in the Hebrew Bible, occurring only, so far as narrative is concerned, in Deut. 8. 3, 16, and in one poetic passage, Isa. 26. 16. The latter (fut.) is, however, frequently found in Deuteronomy, occurring in it upwards of fifty times. Again, the termination in Jl of the third person singular feminine of the preterite is the older form,t and this occurs twice in Deuteronomy (31. 29 ; 32. 36), where it may be noted that though the latter instance is from the Song of Moses, yet the * See Wright's Comparative Grammar, pp. 168, 184, where the grounds for this statement are laid down. t Ibid., p. 167. THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 473 former occurs in the ordinary narrative.* One more instance of this kind may be given, the forms of the second and third persons plural feminine of the future without the final H (Deut. 21. 15; 31. 21), which, though found elsewhere, are yet speciaUy characteristic of the Pentateuch. (7.) A subject, closely associated with the foregoing, is that of the Vocabulary. If the " traditional " view of the Pentateuch be the correct one, then, while making the fullest allowance for differences of manner, for the presence of secondary, though contemporaneous, agencies (to say nothing of later editorial action), and for the fact of the lapse of *time between the early underlying documents in Genesis and the ultimate code of Deu teronomy, we have a right to expect a considerable amount of coincidence of wording between Deuteronomy and the rest of the Pentateuch, rather than between it and the later histori cal books. To work this out in full detail would require a volume to itself, but we subjoin sufficient examples to show how strong the case is. The name of the first month, Abib,| occurs twice in Deuteronomy, and four times in Exodus, but nowhere else in the Bible. The words 1^'Ki niJJ'K (torrent-bed, ravine) meet us twice in Deuteronomy, once in Numbers, and four times in Joshua, two of the four being the mere echo of the passages in Deuteronomy. 7lii| occurs once in Deuteronomy, and once in Genesis only ; 775 as a preposition, thrice in Deuteronomy, thrice in Genesis, and only four times in the rest of the Bible; i^il, once in Deuteronomy, and thrice in Leviticus only. The verb ^)1, in the phrase "flowing with milk and honey," occurs six times in Deuteronomy, five times in Exodus, thrice in Numbers, and once in Leviticus. Besides these, the phrase occurs once in Joshua (5. 6), twice in Jeremiah (11. 5 ; 32. 22), and once in Ezekiel (20. 6), in all of which there is an undoubted reference to the Law. The form yiZ] is only found twice in Exodus, and twice in Deuteronomy. The form ifl as a past tense (Deut. 4. 42 ; 19. 4) is not found in the narrative outside the Pentateuch, where it occurs eleven times. Vlbn occurring once in Deuteronomy, is found also five times in Exodus, four times in Leviticus, the only other instance being in Amos 4. 5, where the allusion to the Law is plain. HiStjb only occurs twice * The form in n occurs elsewhere in the Pentateuch, Gen. 33. 11 ; Exod. 5. 16 ; Lev. 25. 21 ; 26. 34 ; but is very rarely found outside the Pentateuch in narrative. t The word is also found in Exod. 9. 31 ; Lev. 2. 14, in its primary sense. 474 LEX MOSAICA. in Deuteronomy, and once in Exodus. Again, the root Wy (includ ing the masculine and feminine substantives, and the denominative verb) occurs seven times in Deuteronomy, once in Genesis, and twice in Euth. The form Tl/b* only occurs once in Deuteronomy, and once in Numbers ; the word D'lp* once in Deuteronomy, and twice in Genesis; the verb JJJ'* (to be old) occurs once in Deuteronomy, and twice in Leviticus (always in Niphal) ; the dual D^X/S (hetero geneous) occurs once in Deuteronomy, and thrice in Leviticus only. The word ^^5 (a metathesis for j^lS), occurring in Deut. 14. 4, is not found outside the Pentateuch, where it occurs thirteen times. W]?2 occurs four times in Deuteronomy, eleven times in the rest of the Pentateuch, and only four times in all the rest of the Bible ; the construction ^"IflX N?J3 ("to whoUy follow," Deut. 1. 36) occurs once in Deuteronomy, thrice in Numbers, thrice in Joshua (all with distinct reference to the faithfulness of Caleb and Joshua, as in the earlier books), and once in Kings, where the phrase is an embodiment. The noun SJlf^i^ (an awl) is only found once in Deuteronomy, and once in Exodus, the latter passage containing also the only occurrence of the verb; H'^iStEJ'/? (a kneading-trough) occurs twice in Deutero nomy, and twice in Exodus ; T\V'1'$ (a hornet) is only found once in Deuteronomy, once in Exodus, and once in Joshua (24. 12, the last- named being a reminiscence of the past) ; HPl'lp (fever) occurs once in Deuteronomy, and once in Leviticus only; ftHI (in the sense of hovering or brooding over) only occurs in Gen. 1. 2 ; Deut. 32. 1 1 ; ^XB' (leaven) occurs once in Deuteronomy, thrice in Exodus, and once in Leviticus only ; the denominative verb ^^^ (to buy corn) occurs twice in Deuteronomy, thirteen times in Genesis, and in Isa. 55. 1 ; Amos 8. 5, 6 ; and Prov. 11. 26, but never m the later historical books; "Ijg', ^^^ (offspring) are found four times in Deuteronomy, and once in Exodus only; nSPlB' (leanness) only occurs once in Deuteronomy, and once in Leviticus, and the same may be said of T^^VIS' (hnsey-woolsey). Here, too, we might add the phrase riTn DVPl DVPS (i^ t^^* very day), which is found once in Deuteronomy (32. 48), thrice in Genesis, thrice in Exodus, four times in Leviticus, once in Joshua, the only other cases being two in Ezekiel. For an example or two of another kind, let it be noted that the name " the Great Eiver " is given to the Euphrates only in Gen. 15. 18, Deut. 1. 7, and Josh. 1. 4;* also that the phrase "sea of salt " occurs only in Genesis, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua ; in Joel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah, the Dead Sea is called the "East Sea." * The phrase is applied to the Hiddekel (Tigris) in Dan. 10. 4, a rather signifi cant variety. THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 475 Of course it would not be fair to press any argument on a few cases of this kind ; when there is a considerable number, the argument is a weighty one. The above reasons seem to us an ample disproof of the view that Deuteronomy is simply a fabrication from miscellaneous materials of the age of Josiah or Manasseh. It is true that some " Higher Critics," seeing certain disadvan tages in the position, avoid referring the fabrication of Deuter onomy to HUkiah and his confederates, and express a horror at the word " forgery." StiU, none the less, they assign the Book to the age of Josiah or Manasseh, and it does not seem to us that a forgery is less a forgery because we are unable to name the actual forger, or that the motives which prompted such an action can be brought in as matter relevant to the main issue. We do not know who wrote the False Decretals. Are they therefore one whit the less a shameful imposture ? Moreover, while thus to drop HUkiah gets rid of one or two minor diffi culties, the bulk of the objections, as can be clearly seen, remain unafiected. There is one objection more, which we have left to the last, which is absolutely unafiected by the above-named change of front, but of which, unhappily, not all will allow the validity, the confirmatory authority of the New Testament, and pre eminently of our Lord. We pass over the various citations of Deuteronomy, introduced by the current formula " It is written," and the appeal by both St. Peter and St. Stephen to Moses as foretelling the Prophet whom God would raise up, and call attention to the remarkable coincidence by which, thrice in His Temptation, the Saviour appealed to the Word of God in Deu teronomy against the Tempter. The theory of the so-called Eenosis, where man takes upon himself to rule freely upon one of the profoundest mysteries in the universe, the nature and conditions of the union of the Divine and Human in Christ, is here beside the mark. Knowledge as against not-knowledge IS one thing, the claim to knowledge when that claim is un warranted is quite another. Pass we now one step forward, from the Man of Sorrows to the Risen Lord who had triumphed over death, who, on the road to Emmaus, expounded from " Moses and aU the Prophets " the "things concerning Himself," and who declared to the 476 LEX MOSAICA. wondering Apostles that "aU things must be fulfiUed which were written in the Law of Moses " and in the other Books con ceming Him. Surely no tme theology can urge that the Kenosis can have any application here. Was the Risen Christ only a fallible Rabbi over the Scriptures ? Or, what shall we say of the declaration made a few short weeks later, "All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth " ? These words are either to be taken in their fullest and most literal meaning, or they are not. If the latter is the case, then we Christians are of all men most miserable. If the former, then we may surely include, in so all-reaching a claim, the authority to rule that there were in Moses and the Prophets things Divinely given conceming Himself. Those of us who believe that Hilkiah's discovery was a real and not a pretended one, have the further and more doubtful question to face, of what did the discovery consist, Deuteronomy or the whole Pentateuch ? Before speaking briefly of this, however, let it be remarked that the word "discovery" is used in two senses. There is the discovery of a thing long known by name only and then coming back to the know ledge of men, as well as the discovery of something abso lutely unknown before. There has been a discovery of the electric telegraph, and a discovery (say) of the lost Book of Enoch. It is worth remarking, that if there were, as we believe, a real discovery, then the story clearly points to it as the discovery of something which had been well- known. Hilkiah remarks, " I have found the Book of the Law in the house of the Lord.'' Bishop W^ordsworih pertinently askg how he could know what he had found, unless it had been known that such a thing had existed, and the tradition of it had survived however faintly. There is, indeed, a gap of seventy-five years to bridge over, but we must remember how few links are needed to bridge over a long period. Old President Routh, who died in 1854, had talked to a lady who had seen Charles II. Hilkiah may easily have talked to persons who had known Isaiah, and even Hosea. There is no single allusion in the whole narrative, which would lead us to believe that the Book of the Law was a thing which Josiah and his advisers had never heard of before. THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 477 Now, let it be asked, of how much did the Book consist ? Without wishing to seem unduly positive, we must confess that the arguments put forward to show that it was of Deuteronomy only, appear to us distinctly inadequate. Josiah's Eeforms. — We are told, first, that Josiah's reforms, which resulted from the discovery, are such as naturally spring from the teaching of Deuteronomy. This is perfectly true ; but let us now see how far they can be derived from the other Books of the Pentateuch. Josiah's action was the vigorous sup pression of idolatry, and the renewal of the worship of God. We will now take the points in detail ; we have the suppres sion of (1) the high-places (see Num. 33. 52, and cf. Lev. 26. 30). It may be added, that whUe worship " upon the hills " is re ferred to in Deuteronomy (12. 2), the word Bamah (high-place) does not occur in the Book, save in poetic imagery (32. 13 ; 33. 29). (2) The worship of Baal. Of this form of idolatry, there is not direct prohibition to be found in so many words either in Deuteronomy or in the other Books of the Pentateuch. The Israelites do not appear to have met with it till they came into the Plains of Moab ; yet Num. 25. 3, 5, is indirectly a prohibition of the most sweeping kind. (3) The worship of Asherah ("groves," A.V.), see Exod. 34. 13. (4) The "sun- images," which are cut down, see Lev. 26. 30 ; the word does not occur in Deuteronomy. (5) The worship of the " host of heaven." This is twice prohibited in Deuteronomy (4. 19 ; 17. 3), but there is apparently no reference to it in the rest of the Pentateuch, save in so far as the "sun-images" of Lev. 26. 30 may be taken to have that reference. (6) The worship of Molech, and of the human sacrifices offered to him, see Lev. 18. 21 ; 20. 2-5. Although the custom is referred to in Deu teronomy (12. 31; 18. 10), the prohibition is much less em phatically put, and the name Molech does not occur. (7) The Chemarim, or idolatrous priests. If we are to understand by these, not so much traitorous Levitieal priests, but rather those of altogether unlawful appointment, such as the priests whom Jeroboam made, then, besides the idolatry, their very presence as priests violated the Law as abundantly laid down (see e.g. Num. 3. 10; 8. 5 sqq., or the history of Korah's rebeUion). (8) The impure rites of the K'deshim, see Deut. 23. 17 (18, Heb.). There is no need to suppose that Josiah's action need be referred 478 LEX MOSAICA. to this verse, when he could read in Genesis of God's judgment on the Cities of the Plain, or in Numbers of the plague sent upon Israel for the iniquity of Baal-Peor. (9) The workers with familiar spirits and wizards, see Lev. 19. 31 ; 20. 6, 27. And we have (10) Destruction of the "pillars" {Matstseboth ; " images," 2 Kings 23. 14, A.V.) ; see Lev. 26. 1. Besides all these suppressions, Josiah ordered a solemn Pass over to be kept. For this he could have appealed to a law in Exodus, Leviticus, or Numbers, as well as to one in Deu teronomy ; but it is worthy of note that, while we are specially told that " they killed the passover on the fourteenth day of the first month" (2 Chron. 35. 1), this was a point which could have been gleaned from Exodus (12. 6), or Leviticus (23. 5), or Numbers (9. 3 ; 28. 16), but not from Deuteronomy. We may thus maintain that, while it is indeed tme that Josiah's reforms could be estabUshed from Deuteronomy, yet with the exception of the suppression of the worship of the host of heaven, everything else could be deduced from the other Books. Argument from the Books of Kings. — It is argued in the second place, that the phenomena of the Books of Kings sup port the view that Deuteronomy alone was found. The com pilation of the Books of Kings, as we have already seen, may most probably be assigned to the reign of EvU-Merodach, or thereabouts, that is to say, about seventy years after the dis covery ; and we find therein clear cases of embodiment of the words of Deuteronomy, and even of direct citation- Therefore, it is urged, we have Deuteronomy, and Deuteronomy alone, as the beginning of a Pentateuchal Canon. But it may justly be answered, that in the first place this is to beg the question as to how far these traces of a knowledge of Deuteronomy are due to the earlier records which underUe the compilation, and how far they have merely been sprinkled over the compUation by the compiler, who thus inserted in the earUer records details due solely to his own knowledge ; on much the same principle on which the writers of some religious tales now-a-days assign to their characters of far-off days Christian practices of a later age. Yet the writer of Kings was not an historian in our modem sense, who firsts coUects and then digests his materials, and then recasts them in the form which speciaUy suits him. Rather does he seem to embody wholesale extracts from writers THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 479 who were contemporaneous with the events they record, though the uniform framework and setting, the dates, the parentage, the character, are probably his own. It is doubtless vexatious for a " Higher Critic " to find in the last charge of David to his son Solomon (1 Kings 2. 3) an undoubted reference to Deuteronomy, but it is no disproof of the citation to say that this passage is merely due to the ultimate compUer. Let us have some definite proof of this, and not mere assertion. But it must be remarked secondly, that, while it is true that traces of Deuteronomy are more clearly marked in Kings than are those of the other Books of the Pentateuch (which, indeed, from the nature of the case, was what might have been expected to happen), stUl, no one who will be at the pains to work care fully through the Books of Kings as a whole, can fail to see numerous traces of a knowledge of the other parts of the Pen tateuch. Let 1 Kings 8, in which we have Solomon's dedication of the Temple, be taken as a specimen. The evidence of the earUer period has been discussed in the preceding essays of this volume ; all that needs be said here is that there are undoubted references in the Books of Kings to the four earlier Books of the Pentateuch. Are these part of the original fabric of the narrative, or, are they due to some late compiler or editor ? In this keenly scientific age, we demand something like scientific proof. Grant that the traces are not so numerous or so marked as we could wish, still, how much lies often in the merest pass ing remark. Thus, for example, the opening words of Elijah's prayer, " Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel," are sug gestive of a considerable knowledge, on EUjah's part, of the patriarchal history. Argument from Jeremiah. — The same remark must be made here as in the foregoing section. The Book of Deuteronomy has certainly largely influenced the prophet's writing ; he evi dently studied it and entered into its spirit, as Luther into that of the Epistle to the Romans.* But it would not be true * This must not he understood to mean that there is a similarity in style hetween the Books of Deuteronomy and Jeremiah. The latter shows ample traces of the decadence of the language, it has a less delicate exactness in grammar, and it abounds in words not found in the earlier hooks and in Aramaisms. The contrast on these points with Deuteronomy is very strongly marked. See on this point J. L. Konig, Alttest. Studien, ii., pp. 22 sqq. 480 LEX MOSAICA. to assert that there is, side by side with this, an absence of traces of the rest of the Pentateuch. We shall presently seek to show that there is undoubted evidence of a knowledge of the four earlier books. It is of course admitted, that the traces of Deuteronomy are more clearly marked than those of the other four. Yet there seems nothing to us surprising in this ; for what place would the purely ritual element of the Law bear in Jeremiah's impassioned appeals to repentance ? Who would look in the sermons of some great preacher, bent with aU his heart upon saving souls, for passing references to the rubrics of the Prayer Book ? And further, historical aUusions are clearly alien to Jeremiah's style. Let any one take the trouble to read through Jeremiah, and to notice how few references there are to the period from the death of Moses to that of Josiah ; * he will then cease to wonder at the paucity of aUusions to the period covered by the Pentateuch. Nay, what seems specially surprising is, that there does not appear throughout the Book any clear allusion to Josiah's reforms, which revolutionised the Kingdom of Judah, and which were within Jeremiah's own experience. Isaiah, too, makes no un doubted reference to the reforms of HezekiaL Why are these two prophets silent on such a point? Anyhow, their silence on matters certainly within their own knowledge may be an answer to those who ask why we do not find in them a microcosm of the whole Mosaic system. Argument as to size of Document — The last argument to which we wish to refer seeks to show that Deuteronomy alone was the book produced by Hilkiah, because it was evidently a small one. This is proved, it is maintained, by the story given in Kings, though not by that in Chronicles. WelUiausen re marks:! "Ill 2 Kings the book appears as of very moderate size, but the author of Chronicles figures to himself the whole Pentateuch under that name." Now on what does this assertion * It may be well to put this matter quite definitely. The following are the only references in Jeremiah to the period specified : — The fall of the Sanctuary at Shiloh (7. 12, 14 ; 26. 6, 9) ; Samuel is named (15. 1) ; the throne of David is referred to generally (13. 13, and often) ; the work of Solomon in the Temple is referred to (52. 20) ; au allusion occurs to Asa and Baasha (41. 9) ; Amos 1. 4 is quoted {49. 27) ; Micah 3. 12 is" quoted (26. 18) ; there is a reference to the Assyrian invasion (50. 17); and to the evil wrought by Manasseh (16. 4). t Prolegomena, p. 202. THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 481 rest ? First, on the ground that the Chronicles omit to state that when Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan the latter read it, a fact which might surely be taken for granted, especiaUy considering that the scribe's professional instinct would be sure to lead him to examine the mysterious MS. The other point is, that " He read the book before the king " (2 Kings 22. 10), becomes in 2 Chron. 34. 18, " He read out of the book." The Hebrew for the expression which Wellhausen italicises is liter ally " in it," and we venture to think that it means the same, nothing more, and nothing less, as the paraUel account. In one sense, whein we read a book, whether we read part or whole, we are reading " in it " ; and in such a passage as Jer. 36. 14 the same expression occurs, and obviously refers to the whole document, " the roll which (lit. in which) thou didst read in the ears of the people" (cf. v. 11, "all the words"). UntU there fore better cause is shown, we shall decline to believe that the author of Chronicles has fraudulently tampered with the story to suit his own predUections ; it being further remembered that he had before him not only the Book of Kings, but the older records from which both authors drew. Yet the author even of Kings believes that Josiah turned to the Lord "according to aU the Law of Moses " (2 Kings 23. 25), so that the state ments of Chronicles (2 Chron. 34. 14; 35. 6) do not reaUy make a more definite claim. It is of course impossible that the whole Pentateuch, or, for the matter of that, the whole of Deuteronomy, would be read from end to end by the king, either when it was first given to him, or at the solemn assembly. We are not maintaining that it was certainly the whole Law which was discovered (apart that is from editorial action on, the part of Ezra and others), though the arguments do not seem very cogent which are urged for the contrary. It is possible that Hilkiah gave, m the first instance, only a portion to the king, or, more reason ably, that when the king read " aU the words of the book of the Covenant," he read that portion which bore directly on the mutual relations of God and Israel, and only that. Why should he read the long details of history, or the minutiae of ritual ? We now proceed to note those passages in Jeremiah which testify to a knowledge of the Pentateuch on his part. As, S 1063. H h 482 LEX MOSAICA. however, it is conceded on aU hands that Deuteronomy was certainly known to him, we shaU confine ourselves, in the firet instance, to noting only those passages where one or other of the first four books is referred to ; those which refer to Deuteronomy only, we shall give more summarily afterwards. 1. 5. Cf. Exod. 33. 12, 17. 3. 3, " Israel was hohness ..." Cf. Exod. 19. 6. "The first-fruits of his increase." Here is a suggestion of the law of the first-fruits. See Exod. 23. 19; Lev. 23. 10-14; as well as Deut. 18. 4; 26. 10. Moreover, in the clause "all that devour him shall offend," combined with the reference to the foregoing "holiness," w* have a clear reference to Lev. 22. 10, 16, in which, besides the special use of the word " holiness," we have the same root in " trespass " as in the " offend " of Jer. 2. 3.' v. 6. Here, as often in Jeremiah, is a reference to God's bringing the people up from Egypt. Cf. 7. 22, 25; 11. 4, 7; 16. 14; 23. 7; 31. 32 (31, Heb.) ; 32. 20, 21. V. 1, "ye defiled ..." Cf. Lev. 18. 25, 28. v. 8, "They that handle the Law." The verb "handle" (ji'Sn) can clearly only be explained of a definite written law, of which the priests were the exponents. The use of the verb in such passages as Gren. 4. 2 1 (harp and organ) ; Jer. 46, 9 (shield, bow) ; 50. 16 (sickle) ; Amos 2. 15 (bow), may be noted. It was the busi ness of the priests to teach the people the Law; Deut. 33. 10. See also Jer. 18. 18. V. 34, "I have not found it by secret search." Eather, "Thou didst not find them in the act of breaking in," with a clear verbal coincidence with Exod. 22. 2 (I, Heb.). 3. 3, "The showers have been withholden ..." Cf. Lev. 26. 19; Deut. 28. 23. V. 13, "Acknowledge ..." Cf. Lev. 26. 40. V. 16, "The Ark of the Covenant of the Lord." The Ark was long the sign of the visible manifestation of God's presence, and the centre and symbol of the Mosaic system. Yet as merely a symbol it must pass away " in those days " — ^the days of the Messiah's coming, when God , Himself shall dwell amid His people. The assertion that the Ark was destroyed by Manasseh is contradicted by 2 Chron. 35. 3, though possibly it perished when Jerusalem was taken by the Chaldees. 4. 2, "The nations shall bless themselves in him." Cf. Gen. 12. 3; 18. 18: 22. 18. V. 23, " The earth . . . without form and void." These iden tical words are found in Gen. 1. 2 (in the so-called P), and nowhere else. The words tohu and bohu occur separately, and in another connection, in Isa. 34. 11. 5. 1. The latter half of this verse is suggestive of Gen. 18. 23-33. THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 483 V. 24, " The appointed weeks of the harvest " ; that is, it would seem the seven weeks from Passover to the Feast of Weeks. See Lev. 23. 15 sqq. 6. 10, "Their ear is uncircumcised." We have the similar meta phor of uncircumcised Ups in Exod. 6. 12, 30; Lev. 26. 41. Cf. Jer. 9. 26 (25, Heb.). V. 18, "Congregation." This word (rn^), occurring here and 30. 20, is found as the regular word for the congregation of Israel in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers (never in Deuteronomy in this sense). It occurs in only one other passage of the Prophets, Hosea 7. 12. 7. 9. Perhaps a reference to the Decalogue. vv. 22, 23. (Cf. 11. 4). It has been asserted that this passage is conclusive proof that the laws as to sacrifice did not form part of the original fabric of the Pentateuch, and that their development is due to the time of Ezra. It is sufficient to say that clear allusions to the sacrificial system are to be found in prophets earlier than Jeremiah {e.g. Isa. 1, 11-13; Hos. 9. 4; Amos 5. 21, etc.), and that Jeremiah himself frequently refers to sacrifices. (See esp. 33. 18.) The plain sense is the same as that of 1 Sam. 15. 22 ; sacrifice is indeed a duty, though it was one which constantly drifted into mere formality. The moral law was higher in God's sight than the ceremonial, which was designed as a training for it : " the knowledge of God is more than burnt offerings.'' We may refer to Exod. 19. 5 ; Lev. 11. 45. Jeremiah may probably have thought of the Decalogue, which was the summing up of the whole moral law, and as such was placed in the Ark, though no part of the ceremonial code was so honoured. It is worth noting that Jer. 7. 21-28 is the Haphtarah, or Prophetic Lection, corresponding to the Parashah, or Pentateuchal Lection, Lev. 6-8 ; a very suggestive fact as to the view taken by the Jews as to the true relation between the moral and ceremonial law. V. 29, "Cut off thine hair" (Heb. nezer). This is a clear aUu sion to the Nazarites. See Num. 6. 7, where this same word is used in the same sense. V. 31. Cf. Lev. 18. 21. V. 346. Cf. Lev. 26. 33. 8. 8, "The Law {Torah) of the Loed is with us." Clearly this can mean nothing else than a written law, while the judgment {mishpat) of the foregoing verse is more general. The claim " we are wise " is suggestive of acquired learning. The reference to the " pen of the scribes " loses all its point if, with Ewald, we explain it of collections 01 false prophecies. It is mentioned in close connection with the Law 01 God. Their boast is, we have the Law. Yes ; and their lying pen has made it a lie [or to no purpose]. "• 4 (3, Heb.)^ There is a play here on the name Jacob. See Gen. 27. 36. Hh 2 484 LEX MOSAICA. V. 13 (12, Heb.), " My law which I set." Clearly a codified system, which the people had the chance of obeying. V. 16 (15, Heb.). This is taken from Lev. 16. 33. V. 26 (25, Heb.), " that are in the utmost corners." Eather, " that have the corners of their hair polled," as E.V. This is for- bidden in Lev. 19. 27. 11. 3, " the words of this covenant." It is possible that we have here a reference to Josiah's renewal of the covenant (2 Kings 23. 3) consequent on the discovery of the Book of the Law. V. 4. Cf. Lev. 26. 3, 12 ; also Deut. 4. 20. V. 5, " a land flowing with milk and honey." This phrase occurs fifteen times in the Pentateuch (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), and once in Joshua. It is found nowhere else in the Bible, save twice in Jeremiah, and once in Ezekiel, who wrote after him. It is an essentially Pentateuchal phrase. 14. 12, "fast . '. . burnt offering . . . obktion." This shows clearly the existence of a definite sacrificial system. The " oblation " is the meat-offering {minchah). See Lev. 2. 1 sqq. 15. 1, "Moses and Samuel." These two great prophets had successfully mediated with God in the past, and Jeremiah's hearers would understand the application of this to the present case. For Moses, see Exod. 17. 11; 32. II sqq.; Num. 14. 13 sqq. V. 10, " I have neither lent on usury." The prophet clearly is aware of the law forbidding this. See Exod. 22. 25 (24, Heb.) ; and also Deut. 23. 19 (20, Heb.). 16. 6, " nor cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them." Both these were forbidden in the Law. See Lev. 19. 28 ; 21. 5 ; Deut. 14. 1. 17. 4, " Thou . . . shalt discontinue." The verb here {shamat) is that used of the rest given to the land (Exod. 23. 11), and of the release given by creditors (Deut. 15. 2). It would seem that the neglect by the Jews of the sabbatical year was to be punished in kind upon themselves. V. 22, " hallow ye the Sabbath-day, as I commanded your fathers." Thus the institution of the Sabbath rests on ancient law, yet in the history as given in Samuel and Kings, we have very few mentions of it.* See Exod. 20. 8 ; 23. 12 ; Num. 15. 32, etc. V. 26, " Bringing burnt-offerings ..." Mention is here made of four kinds of offerings : the Olah (the whole burnt-offering) ; the Zebaeh (whereof the offerer partook in part) ; the Minchah (the unbloody offering, a thanksgiving offering) ; and L'bonah (frankin cense), a necessary accompaniment of the Minchah. See Lev. 2. 1. 18. 18, "The Law shaU not perish from the priest." It seemed safe to the conspirators to plot against Jeremiah, for had they not priests with the Law of Moses, besides statesmen with wise counsel, and prophets with "the word"? It will be noticed that this word is brought in in a less prominent manner than " the Law " of the priest. * Strictly speaking, there are no references in these books, save a few in 2 Kings. THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 486 19. 9. Cf. Lev. 26. 29 ; and especiaUy Deut. 28. 53. 20. 16, "the cities which the Lord overthrew and repented not." In this allusion to the overthrow of the Cities of the Plain, we see Gen. 19 as an outcome of 18. 32 ; though God is abundantly merciful, He carries out the doom absolutely. Other references to the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah are found in Jer. 23. 14; 49. 18; 50. 40; where the two latter passages refer also to " the neighbour cities thereof." 22. 13, " that useth his neighbour's service ..." Cf . Lev. 19. 13 ; Deut. 24. 14, 15. 24. 7. Cf. Lev. 26. 12. 26. 19, " The Lobd repented Him ..." See Exod. 32. 14. 30. 21, "And I will cause him to draw near ..." Cf. Num. 16. 5, etc. 31. 5 (4, Heb.), " ShaU eat them as common things.". (" Shall enjoy the fruit thereof," R.V.) The Hebrew verb here primarily means to loose or profane, and so to give up to ordinary use. The reference is to the law set forth in Lev. 19. 23-25 ; cf . Deut. 20. 6 ; 28. 30. According to this law, the fruit borne by a tree in the first three years of its growth was not to be eaten, in the fourth year it was consecrated to God, and in the fifth year the owner was free to use it. V. 9 (8, Heb.), '^Ephraim is My first-born." Cf. Exod. 4. 22. «. 15 (14, Heb.), "A voice was heard in Eamah . . . Eachel weeping for her children." It is no part of our present duty to dis cuss the site of this Eamah. It is sufficient now to notice that Eachel, the ancestress of three tribes, is weeping for the sufferings, deportation or massacre, of her descendants. See Jer. 40. 1. We may also notice the verbal coincidence with Gen. 37. 35; 42. 36. V. 16 (15, Heb.), "Thy work shall be rewarded." Lit. "There is a hire." Cf. Gen. 30. 18. V. 35 (34, Heb.), See Gen. 1. 16. 32. 7, " The right of redemption." For the law as to the redemp tion of land, see Lev. 25. 24 sqq. V. 17, "There is nothing too hard for thee." Cf. Gen. 18. 14. V. 18. See Exod. 20. 6 ; 34. 7. Also for the phrase " the Great, the Mighty God," Deut. 10. 17. VV. 20, 21. These verses refer to the wonders with which Israel was brought out of Egypt. See Exod. 3. 8, 17; 6. 6. V. 27, " God of aU flesh." See Num. 16. 22. V. 35, " To pass through the fire unto Molech." See Lev. 18. 21. 33. 11, "them that shall bring the sacrifice of praise." See above, on 17. 26 ; also Lev. 7. 12. V. 136. See Lev. 27. 32. 'VV. 17, 18. Here we have a clear reference to the work of the priesthood, as laid down in the Law. Into the apparent historic diflSculty we do not enter. V. 20. See Gen. 8. 22. V. 22. See Gen. 13. 16; 15. 5. 486 LEX MOSAICA. V. 26. The names of the three forefathers of the nation would recall to Jeremiah's hearers God's covenant of the past. 34. 8-17. The law regulating the period of servitude of Hebrew slaves is given in Exod. 21. 2 sqq. ; Deut. 15. 12 sqq. By the former, male slaves are freed at the end of six years, and in Deuteronomy the concession is extended to females. [We have nothing to do here with the agrarian code of Lev. 25. 39 sqq."] The present act of manu mission shows very plainly that however imperfectly the law had been kept, the existence of it was fully known. For the phrase " proclaim liberty " (ver. 8), see Lev. 25. 10, where alone in the Pentateuch it occurs. V. 14, " your fathers hearkened not." The Law therefore had been given, badly though it had been observed by the nation. V. 16, " ye . . . poUuted My name." Cf. Lev. 19. 12. vv. 18, 19, "when they cut the calf in twain." Here we have the imagery of Gen. 15. 10. 35. 76. Cf. Exod. 20. 12. 41. 5. See above, 16. 6. The offering is the minchah. See Lev. 2. I sqq. 44. 7, "wherefore commit ye . . . " See Num. 16. 38 (17. 3, Heb.). V. 11, "I wiU set my face ..." See Lev. 17. 10; 20. 3, 5, 6. V. 26, " I have sworn ..." See Gen. 22. 16. 48. 7, " Chemosh shall go forth into captivity." See Num. 21. 29. V. 45, "A fire shaU come forth . . . Sihon." This is an almost exact embodiment of Num. 21. 28. " And shall devour . . tumultuous ones." This is a fairly close reproduction of Num. 24. 17. V. 46, " Woe be unto thee, O Moab ! the people of Chemosh perisheth." See Num. 21. 29. 49. 31, " which dweU alone." See Num. 23. 9 ; also Deut. 33. 28. In the following passages, we have coincidences of language between Deuteronomy and Jeremiah ; and, in some cases, almost verbatim quotations : — Jer. Deut. 2. 6 . . .8. 15. 2. 28 . . . 32. 37, 38. 3. 1 . . .24. 4. 3. 17 . . . 29. 19 (18, Heb.). The word " stubbornness," R.V., besides the, passage in Deuter onomy, occurs eight times in Jeremiah, and only once in the rest of the Bible (Psalms). Jer. Deut. 4. 4 . . 10. 16 ; 30. 6 5. 15 . . 28.49. 5. 23 . . 2L18, 20. 7. 3 . . 7. 12-15. 7. 33 . . 28.26. 8. 19 . . 32.21. 9. 266 See above 4. 4. 10. 16 . . 32. 9. IL 3 . . . 27.26. THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 487 Jer. Deut. Jer. Deut. 11. 4 . . 4. 20; 28. 1; 28. 9 . . 18.22. 29. 13 (12, Heb.). 28. 14 . . 28.48. 11. 5 . . 7. 12, 13. 28. 16 . . 13.5 (6, Heb.) 15. 4 . . . 28.25. 29. 13, 14 . 30.3. 15. 14 . . . 32.22. 32. 21 . . 26.8. 16. 13 . . 4.26-28. 32. 37 . . 30.3. 2L 8 . . 30. 19. 32. 39 . . 4. 10 ; 6. 24. 22. 8,9. . 29.24-26(23- 32. 41 . . 30.9. 25, Heb.). 46. 10 . . 32.42. 22. 29 . . . 32. 1. 48. 40 I 49. 22 J 24. 9, 10 . . 28. 25, 37. . 28.49. It will thus be seen that the influence exercised by the Book of Deuteronomy on Jeremiah is very considerable. We must again, however, repeat emphatically that, largely as he has drawn on Deuteronomy, the style and diction of Jeremiah are essentially his own; numerous words and forms occur which are not found in older and purer Hebrew, and, as might be expected, there are a considerable number of Aramaisms. It is one thing to say that the Book of Deuteronomy has largely influenced Jeremiah ; it is quite another thing to say that the style of the two books is identical, or even similar. There is one point to which we will briefly aUude, the ques tion of the theological standpoint of the prophets of our period. If there has been a primal revelation of the Deity to man, so that the knowledge on man's part of One Supreme King of the the universe goes back to the far-ofi" centuries when the world was young, then our position is simple enough. In spite of this Divinely-implanted revelation, men drifted very far away from origmal righteousness, and, in the special revelation granted to Abraham and his seed, a fresh and brighter light was brought in to co-exist with the foregoing. In the Books which we have been accustomed to view as the earUest in the Bible, the Pentateuch and those which immediately follow it, the great truths of revelation, the nature and attributes of God, the rela tion of God to man, man's duties to God and his neighbour, and the nature of man's future hopes, meet us in simple elementary form. If the teaching of the Old Testament on these points is examined, a marked development is seen in the later Books. For example, the nature of the scheme of Divine Providence as 488 LEX MOSAICA. set forth by Habakkuk, or the picture of the in-gathering of the spiritual Israel as given us by Zephaniah, are what might naturally be looked for in the prophets of a people who had been for centuries the " taught of the Lord." But if the old familiar view is to be entirely discarded, if the earliest part of the Pentateuch is (say) of the age of Uzziah, if Deuteronomy is only of the time of Josiah, and a large portion of th6 other four books is exiUc or post-exilic, if, as we have been lately informed in a certain learned work, none of the Psalms can be assigned to a date before the faU of the monarchy, then let us ask, whence do the prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. get their theology. Think first, what is the idea of God as set forth by the pro phets of our period. God had chosen Israel from among the nations, and had brought them forth from Pgypt through the perils of the wilderness, and settled them in the land flowing with milk and honey. Here He does not " leave Himself with out witness," but continually reveals Himself to His people through ordered means of religion. He dwells among His people, and His land is holy ; but He is no mere national deity, a Baal or a Chemosh; He is Jehovah, the only God, absolute in Holiness and Power. He is King, not only of the forces of nature, but of man ; not oiUy of Israel, but of the nations. Assyria, for example, though it knew it not, was simply His instrument of punishment. Thus the whole course of the moral government of the world is in His hands, and the teaching on this point involves the most rigid and uncompromising monotheism. As being Israel's King, He has made known His will to Israel. Yet it is not the will of a tyrant ; He is kind and tender to His people, and the relation between them is constantly spoken of as the marriage bond. All this, too, is viewed as a thing to be taken for granted, the prophets are merely urging what a man may know, and ought to know. Men on their side are the subjects, and must yield Him ser vice. Public worship and ceremonial are a duty, though mere ceremonial is worthless. The prophets constantly dwell upon the truth of the primary importance of the service of the heart. The signs of Divine government are everywhere, and, if judg ment come not now, yet is there a day of doom in the future. THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 489 The nature of that threat, and the nature of man's future hope, are even yet vaguely defined ; yet even in our prophets there are gleams of the hope that is " fuU of immortality." The King shaU at last reign over a world of obedient and wUling subjects. If it be said that prophets, claiming to be votaries of Jehovah, misused their position, even to " prophesying of wine and strong drink," what is there to be astonished at in that ? Luther and the monks of his time alike called themselves ministers of Christ, yet how widely divergent were the paths which they took. We ask again, if the old foundations be thrown down, whence are we to suppose the prophets derived their knowledge, their views ? Are we to believe that at first the religion of Israel was polytheistic, that Jehovah was a mere tribal god, and that (say) in the eighth century B.c. He gradually emerged from a Pantheon of various national deities, currently viewed as being as Divine as Himself ? It is remarked with much force by Dr. Archibald Scott,* " The origination of the monotheistic concep tion in the prophets of the eighth century, would be as great a puzzle as its origination in the days of Abraham. By no process of development can we evolve any of the Belim into Jehovah, the lofty and Holy One inhabiting eternity, ruling wisely in heaven and justly upon earth. The prophetic writings of the eighth century are unaccountable unless as the outgrowth of a long previous course of reflections upon higher than heathen beUefs. If Hebrew religion started from the idea, however crudely apprehended, of the unity of God, the Creator and Ruler of the world, then the truths proclaimed by Amos and Isaiah, and the clearer perception of these truths expressed by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, are natural developments of the original laith. If otherwise, the prophets are personalities as inexplic able as Abraham himself, and their teaching is indeed ' as great a psychological and moral miracle as any of the miracles recorded in Scripture.' "f We would add one word, in conclusion, on the general ques tion. A remark is made in the introduction to that much abused, but never satisfactorily-answered, book, Paley's Evi dences of Christianity, which is very relevant to the present * Sacrifice, its Prophecy and Fulfilment, p. 182. t Eobertson, The Early Seligion of Israel, p. 165. 490 LEX MOSAICA. controversy. He is referring to Hume's weU-known objection to miracles, and to the "contest of opposite improbabilities," whether it is more unlikely that miracles should be true, or testimony false. On this, Paley makes the very just remark that while, in a certain sense, this may be a fair account of the matter, still there is a want of argumentative justice, for the two disputants are on different planes ; seeing that aU regard to the working of God's Providence is ignored, and the result would stand the same to one who had the fullest faith in the working of Providence, and to one who denied the existence of a Providence altogether. So, too, the matter stands in the present controversy. The array of evidence set forth in the dispute between the WeU hausen School and their opponents is of a kind which, mutatis mutandis, would absolutely fit the case of a discussion of date or integrity of (say) the Vedas or Zend-Avesta. Thus our present controversy becomes altogether one-sided. To the critic who maintains that the Israelites were an obscure Shemitic nation, with a romantic history, and with a varied literature which has happened to come down to us, whose monotheism has somehow been evolved or created from an earUer polytheism, and whose deity Jehovah is merely analogous to the Chemosh of the Moabites — to such a critic the development of the Messianic hope from the earliest Patriarchal ages to the latest prophets, and its fulfilment in the Saviour of the world, is but a matter of poetic fancy on the part of the writers, and of dis torted exegesis on the part of the interpreters. The Incarna tion is now no longer the " One Divine event To which the whole Creation moved " ; the foundations of the faith as set forth by Christ and His Apostles are to be discarded, and more critical lines of treatment adopted in their stead. Surely the difference of the platforms on which the disputants of the two schools stand must show how partial and one-sided are the conditions of argument ; and therefore how incomplete to a believer must be the mere literary argument, however minutely worked out. XII. EZEKIEL AND THE PEIESTLY SCHOOL. p. E. SPENCER. " The self-styled ' higher ' criticism is indeed not high enough, or we should perhaps more appropriately say, not deep enough for the problem before it." — Peofessob J. Eobeetson, The Early Seligion of Israe}, p. 473. XII. EZEKIEL AND THE PEIESTLY SCHOOL. THE Darwinian hypothesis of the rise of the Hebrew litera ture gains much in apparent force from the Protean shapes it may be made to assume. Conclusions which certainly result from it, and which are boldly set forth by its originators, it is considered 'by its advocates possible to ignore. Processes which are essential to its validity take the field. They are shown, "our enemies themselves being the judges," to be un satisfactory and shifting. They amount, when tested by common sense and historical analogy, to a strict reductio ad ahsurdv/m of the whole system.* The same microscopic and one-sided ingenuity applied to other ancient and modern litera tures would resiUt in general historical scepticism. But the test honestly applied is evaded. We are told we do not un derstand. The matter can only be handled by the elect. It is dependent upon delicate historical considerations which it is not for rude minds to enter uponf We are only "Apologists." The grave matter at issue is confused. We are confronted with an attack upon the reality of the historical revelation of the Lord to our fathers, and the genuineness of much that has come down to us of real interest and importance from the an cient world before Herodotus. We endeavour to grapple with it. The assailant vanishes into thin air. He holds the premises, but recedes from the conclusion. You do not understand, he says. Nor is it easy to understand some things which are ad vanced to comfort us withal. Dr. Driver, in his Sermons on Subjects connected with the Old Testament (the prefatory " See Professor Bissell's Genesis Printed in Colours for some proof of this. Cf. Sayce, Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 561 : " Such microscopic analysis is the result of short sight." t Nevertheless, a sure Nemesis awaits supposed scientific methods which none but those who are their advocates can understand. 494 LEX MOSAICA. essay),* holds that " the moral and devotional value of the Old Testament — as, indeed, its religious value generaUy — is un affected by critical questions respecting the authorship or date of its various parts." He extracts, still, ideas of God, and high principles of conduct from it. But there must be a source for ideas — a support for principles. And this source and this sup port surely are affected. The Hebrew writings derive them historically from above ; hypothetical " criticism " evolves them by a process of legend and fiction from the tendencies and growth of the times. The source predicated by the one is Divine, by the other huijian. " Critical questions of author ship and date " may or may not affect the value of a series of writings. It entirely depends upon the kind of critical questions mooted. But to say that the critical questions now in debate amongst us do not affect the religious value of the writings called sacred by us seems to stultify the understand ing. Where we believed we had "the work of the Lord," and ancient history of the first rank of importance for the world, we are given legends. Where we were taught by the Church to find inspired symbols, we are given the fictions of a school. Is there no difference ? What, then, is the meaning of the so-caUed results of " criticism " ? We are reminded of the concluding words , of M. Kenan's Life of Jesus : — " The worship of Jesus will constantly renew its youth, the tale of His life will cause ceaseless tears. His sufferings wiU soften the best hearts, aU the ages wiU proclaim that among the sons of men there is none bom who is greater than Jesus." But the underlying principle of M. Kenan's negative criticism of the Gospels that " a supernatural 'account cannot be admitted as such, that it always implies credulity or Imposture, that the duty of the historian is to explain it, and seek to ascertain what share of truth or error it may conceal," is plainly statedf It is, and has as plainly been stated to be, the underlying principle also of the negative criticism of the Old Testament. It is the only principle that makes the processes resorted to inteUigible — at least to some of us. J Yet the Jesus of M. Renan ' P. 19. t Kenan's Life of Jesus, pp. 311, 30. X " Their representations, to put it in a word, are utterly unhistorical, and there fore cannot have been committed to writing until centuries afterMoses and' Joshua. Kuenen, Historico- Critical Examination, pp. 42, 43. EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 495 can never be " the Lord of the dead and of the living, the only begotten of the Father, head over all things to the Church." So neither can ideas of God, and high principles of conduct derived from the Old Testament, ever be the same as "the work and the Law of the LoED," which fiUs the Hebrew litera ture with its finest melodies. But if a school of criticism at present popular is difficiUt to fix and analyse — if in an honest attempt to do this we are met with a changing front, and with some scorn,* there are some points of contact with historic reality which, being put forward into prominence, it woidd seem difficult to withdraw from direct examination. One of these is the subject before us — the precise connec tion between Ezekiel and the Priestly School, and the evidence — not imaginary, but historic — of there being a Priestly School (the P or Q of the " critics ") in the sense intended by the "critics." Here there is a large area of the subject which is quite firm ground. The date and place in history of the whole Book of Ezekiel's prophecy is not in dispute, f There are no variations of text which can vitaUy affect the issue even sug gested. The writings of Ezekiel stand with some of the other prophets in the same relation to the Old Testament and the Pentateuch that the undisputed Epistles of St. Paul used to stand to the New, and that in a precisely paraUel school of New Testament criticism which does not now hold its head so high. In the midst of so many suppositions it is a pleasure to come across a fact. In the " critical " hypothesis Ezekiel plays a prominent part. This is sketched as follows by Wellhausen {Israel, p. 496) : — " Ezekiel had led the way in reducing to theory and to writing the sacred praxis of his time ; in this he was followed by an entire school ; in their exile the Levites turned scribes. Since then Babylon continued to be the home of the Torah ; and while in Palestine itself the practice was becoming laxer, their literary study had gradually intensified the strictness and dis tinctive peculiarities of Judaism. And now there came to * It is much to be hoped that the time will come when superciliousness will have less value as an argument for Christian men in the discussion of a serious subject. t Though even here Kuenen will not grant us the very definite statements of time which Ezekiel gives us. 496 LEX MOSAICA. Palestine a Babylonian scribe (Ezra) having the law of his God in his hand." Ezekiel is not considered to be original. To quote WeU hausen in his flippant manner, " He had swallowed a book, and gave it out again." His prophecies are prophecies of medita tion on the older prophets. And " in the ExUe tlie conduct of worship* became the subject of the Torah, and in this process reformation was naturaUy aimed at as well as restoration. Ezekiel was the first to take this step. Other priests attached themselves to him, and thus there grew up in the Exile from among the members of this profession a kind of school of people who reduced tp writing and to a system what they had for merly practised in the way of their calling. After the Temple was restored this theoretical zeal still continued to work, and the ritual when renewed was stUl further developed by the action and reaction on each other of theory and practice ; the. priests who had stayed in Babylon took as great a part, from a distance, in the sacred services as their brothers at Jeru salem, who had actually to conduct them. The latter, indeed, lived in adverse circumstances, and do not appear to have con formed with great strictness or accuracy to the observances which had been agreed upon. The last result of this labour of many years is the Priestly Code."f In the same sense, Kuenen — the Adams of this new dis covery, as Wellhausen is the Le Verrier — thus sketches out the idea which is the last result of " criticism " : — " Ezekiel, in a word, is the first designer, so to speak, and in so far the father of Judaism. A band of faithful disciples must have gradu ally gathered round him. Thus rose what we might call ' the school of Ezekiel,' only that we must not think of it as a close and organised body. In this school ' the ordinances, the laws, and the statutes' of Yahveh were reduced to writing, partly in accordance with the scheme drafted by Ezekiel himself, partly in accordance with the oral priestly tradition. From this school there sprang a century after Ezekiel's death the man who was to put his ideas into practice — the priest and scribe, Ezra. Judaic legalism survives to this day in Talmudism. Is it any wonder that our want of admiration for the edifice should be * The italics are WeUhausen's. t WeUhausen's Prolegomena, pp. 403, 404. EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 497 transferred to the architect, and should therefore translate itself mto an unfavourable judgment on Ezekiel ? " * We are invited to consider Ezekiel as in some sense the father of Judaism, the architect of Judaic legalism, the first of the " P " school of scribes. This is not set forth as an obiter dictum — a passing sugges tion of flimsy scholarship — but as the accurate result of the learning bestowed upon it, the brilliant conclusion of an abso lute consensus of " criticism." And this it is our task to try to examine fairly, giving due weight to any modifications of the theory held by its advocates. But it is only just that we should go to the fountain head, especially as, after the keenest application and research, the two inventors of the system are almost verbally agreed. It is not unjust, further, in an inquiry in which some of us believe the vital interests of religion are involved, to notice the spirit of the men who have been re garded as leaders, t It has apparently escaped them both that there is anything high in idea, noble in motive, regenerating in social infiuence, in the literature which they have set themselves to dissect. The nobility of the constitution and the unity of the teaching, which we are invited to* beUeve a series of legends and a priestly invention have attributed to Moses, receive no recognition. The German professor and the Dutch professor, in their own opinion and in their admirers' opinion, are far greater men than the men who at any rate have vitally affected the history of the world. FUppancy is the characteristic of almost every page of WeUhausen's subtle Prolegomena. He is never tired of jeering at the " mecha nical " introduction of sin and righteousness, " the pedantic supranaturalism, the sacred history according to the approved recipe,"{ which have hitherto been regarded as the distinctive greatness of the Hebrew record. And it is a little amusing to observe the superiority which Kuenen finds in himself to such a person as Ezekiel. § It is just possible that Ezekiel in range ¦* Kuenen, in the Modem Seview, October 1884, p. 639. t " Kuenen and Wellhausen are men whose acumen -and research have carried this inquiry to a point, when nothing of vital importance for the study of Old Testa ment religion stiU remains uncertain." — Professor Eobertson Smith, Seligion of the Semites, Preface. t WeUhausen's Prolegomena, p. 235. § Kvienen's" 'Ezekiel," Modern Beview, October 18&i, passim. S 1063. ^ ' 498 LEX MOSAICA. of intellect and learning' and in literary power might run no risk in the comparison that is somewhat forced upon us. But these men have discovered to mankind the fallacy of the reve rence of the ages.* Let us gather up into one view, then, the historical pro positions, the soundness of whicK it is our task to examine, with a glance at any modifications of them which it has been our good fortune to observe. 1. The document or source entitled P or Q, otherwise known as the Book of the Four Covenants {i.e. with Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses), formerly called the Book of Origins, the Elohistic document, or Grundschrift, came into written exist ence after the ExUe by the gradual collaboration of priestly scribes of "the school of EzekieL "f It is mainly a product of Babylonia, but contains Palestinian influences. 2. " The prophets had been the spiritual destroyers of the old IsraeL"t "The priests of the Eoyal Temple had early overshadowed the other sanctuaries." § They had given forth their oral Torah, and introduced customs of worship. || They traced both to Moses by a kind of fiction. These decisions and customs formed the basis upon which P was founded in and after the ExUe.1[ Ezekiel took the first step. In the last part of his work he made the first attempt to record the ritual which was customary in the Temple of Jerusalem.** These were his sources. He also applied negative criticism to the old Israel ; "he expected, and even demanded, an entire breach with it." ft * We gladly recognise, indeed, the changed tone of Professors Eobertson Smith, Driver, Briggs, Eyle, i.e. of the new American and British critical school. But they are not originators. Captivated by the intellectual glamour of the critical theory, they seek to graft it into a new stock. In this Delitzsch led the way. f The completely theoretical character of this proposition is in nothing, perhaps, more clearly evidenced than by the strong disposition of " critics " to call this school "he" (Professors Eobertson Smith {Old Test, in Jewish Church, note P., p. 382), Dillmann in Driver, and Driver himself). P is a critical inference merely. X Wellhausen, Israel, p. 491. § Wellhausen, Prolegomena, p. 420. II Ibid., p. 394 et seq. TT Dillmann holds that the priests wrote down their Toroth even in early times, and thinks it absurd to suppose that they were first vn?itten in the Exile and in Babylon, where there was no worship. Ibid., p. 405. ** P' and Ezekiel have been held to be identical by some critics. tt Kuenen, Modern Seview, Oct. 1884, p. 626. Professor Eobertson Smith con siders Ezekiel's work to be an ideal picture, which ihfluenced the after historical de velopment of the priestly school. — Old Testament in the Jewish Chwrch, p. 382, note F. EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 499 3. The after- work of "the school of Ezekiel," or priestly school, was to write a thin, fictitious history complementary to the legend which JE had already written hundreds of years after the events, and taking advantage of the Deuteronomic Keform. Its object was to give a " sacred " aspect to the legend, and interpret it in a priestly sense.* It was characterised by the dogmatic standpoints of the school f The further work of the priestly party was to embellish their first written record of Temple customs with " the fruit solely of late Jewish fancy " J — the fiction of the Tabemacle as giving Mosaic sanction to the unity of place for worship, the fiction of Aaron's consecration to the High Priesthood to give Mosaic sanction to. the post- exUic hierocracy, the fiction of the Day of Atonement, and other the like.§ This theory is the bed of Procrustes upon which the whole Hebrew literature is stretched. To make way for it the greater part of the Psalter is made post-exilic, and everything directly counter to it in the Hebrew records is excised as proved to be part of a later or post-exUic redaction.! To back up this "¦ "The attitude of Judaism to the old legend is. on the whole negative, but it added some new elements." — Wellhausen, Prolegomena, p. 341. t DiUmann, in Driver's Introduction, p. 121. X Wellhausen, Prolegomena, p. 348. The discovery by Colenso of the purely fictitious character of the Grundschrift was the turning point of Kuenen's defection from the older critical decision concerning it {Historico-Critical Examination of the Hexateveh, p. xxvii.). Professor Driver observes {Introduction, p. 120, note 2) that " P includes elements not, in the ordinary sense of the term, historical." Professor Briggs introduces a distinction Between Biblical history, the history of Israel, and contemporary history. This would,seem to introduce a new use for language. In what sense is his Biblical history historical ? § It may be convenient to indicate briefly the extent of the work attributed to P. (See Driver's Introduction, p. 150). According to the theory, the redactor, who really put together the Pentateuch from the sources before him, supplemented the legend of JE'from Pwith passages, mostly short, throughout Genesis, Exodus, longer pas sages in Numbers, and a very short part of Deuteronomy, while P is wholly respon sible for Exodus 25—31. 18 ; 35—40, the account of the Tabernacle building, and leviticus, of which Book, however, chaps. 17 — 26 are .given to H in the Exile, or a little before. The work of P for Genesis may be seen conveniently in Genesis Printed in Colours, by Professor BisseU. II Surely it is a proceeding utterly unfair, and one to which no legitimate histo rian wiU resort, to say that an otherwise honest and trustworthy history teUs lies when it does not square with a theory of modern times about it. Yet the critical knife is used to the very history upon which the theory is based whenever it in any way contradicts it. To give an instance : the whole living history of Eli — not surely very complimentary to priestly ambition — is made the Deuteronomic concoction of times Uttle before the Exile only because it is dead against the theory .^-Wellhausen, trolegomena, p. 126. Ii 2 500 LEX MOSAICA. priestly handiwork, the "law-crazed fancy of the Chronicler" invented, they say, his " artificial genealogies," * and supple mented with priestly fictions the earlier history of the Books of the Kings. According to this theory the Pentateuch had no existence, as a whole, till the time of Ezra, who is regarded by some critics as the redactor who put it together in its pre sent form more or less. In the view of others he had nothing to do with this. Now it does not fall within the scope of this essay to con sider the value of the historico-critical method which gives life to all this hypothesis. That is truly the centre of the position. All the labour bestowed upon every part of the Hebrew literature falls to the ground if tbe method of inquiry is one which does not admit of trustworthy results, t But it is our business to inquire (1) what direct support Ezekiel, or history after Ezekiel, gives, if any, to the suppositions under review ; ' (2) what conclusion a general view of the book of his prophecy would lead us to take with regard to them ; (3) and, coming a little to detail, what bearing Ezekiel's code or ideal has to the presumed work of P. Ezekiel is the only point of contact with objective history which the theory has. The account which the Hebrew litera ture gives of itself is directly against it. J The statement, affirmed with aU the positiveness of historic certainty, that the priestly writers ' attributed, with innocence and satisfaction, fictions and codes which were the growth of ages to God by the immediate instrumentality of Moses and Aaron, is nothing ¦" WeUhausen's Prolegomeim, pp. 196, 126, note. f The historian, it is conceived, vnll be slow to adopt the method in any inquiry into the age and genuineness of any other political or ecclesiastical document. If we are never to admit the existence of a document until we find the history of the times squares with it, and the literature of the times alludes to all its parts, it would be difficult to establish the existence of any historical writing, but extremely easy, with a little dUigence, to cast doubt on all. X EoseumtiUer, one not guilty of theological prejudices, says, commenting on Leviticus 27. 34, " Itaque satis est verisimile hunc librum, sacerdotibus destinatum, jam conscriptum esse in castris Israelitarum ad montem Sinai " {Scholia in Levitir cum, Preface). EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 501 but a critical inference. The statement that it was the He brew manner of writing history to compound it of little pieces of differing age and tendency, is a critical supposition.* So direct is the statement of these things that they have the air of historic certainty, f That the Chronicler invented gene alogies and history alike is a supposition. But a school of theologians have never existed without leaving traces of them selves outside their work. If this priestly school existed, in the sense supposed, we ought to find some traces of their influ ence and tendency in Ezekiel. We are repeatedly told that there was nothing which the Hebrew mind was ashamed of in these fictitious attributions, nothing not " entirely compatible with the reality of the supernatural enUghtenment vouchsafed to the ancient people of God." J So there was nothing to conceal. This school of Ezekiel should therefore have left some traces of itself in Ezekiel and the after history. The careful reader of Ezekiel will discover that he was a man of wide knowledge and culture, with a clear and competent grasp of all that was going on around him. His writings cover a large field of past and contemporary history and of national life. The victories of the prophets over old Israel, the advance of the priestly idea, taking advantage of the prophetic reformation, the conception of the hierocracy which the priestly school in exile set their minds on founding by at least question able means, all these things could not have escaped him. Was he not, " so to speak, the father of Judaism," " the architect of Judaic legalism ? " What then does a fair and sympathetic § * The reader vrill carefully bear in mind that this is totaUy difierent from the use of written material in writing their history. t Confident assertion it is sometimes well to discount. Bishop Lightfoot writes of another critical conclusion, which " the later Protestant theology without excep tion " is said " to have declared itself for " : " In criticism, as in politics, the voice of the innovators, even though they may not be numerous, cries aloud, and thus gives the impression of numbers ; while the conservative opinion of the majority is unheard and unnoticed" {St. Clement of Some, vol. i., pp. 62, 63, note). t Driver's Introduction, p. 160. § " It is absolutely necessary that the interpreter should place himself entirely within the sphere of thought, the way of thinking, and the &ame of mind of the writers or speakers whose words he has to explain. The interpreter must have entered entirely into, have become spiritually one with, the writer whose work he is considering ; otherwise he is a stranger to him and understandeth not his speech." So writes another Dutch professor, Doedes, in a thoughtful volume on the Her- menentics of the N. T. 502 LEX MOSAICA. consideration of his writings tell us about these things di rectly ? * 1. In the first place, Ezekiel, fairly interpreted and allowed to speak his own language in his own sense, does not " expect and even demand an entire breach with " old Israel. On the contrary, it is the breach with old Israel that he deplores. Jehovah made himself known to a chosen Israel in Egypt, He brought them into the wildemess, and then and there gave them His statutes, and shewed them His judgments. It is the innovation of the Bamoth f and the idols, and the introduction of foreign abominations, and the harlotry of one who has been married, which has brought about national apostacy and na tional ruin (chaps. 20, 16). In the strong figure of Aholah and Aholibah J (ch. 23) there is surely an allusion to the Tabemacle history first in Ephraim, then at Jerusalem (cf. the earliest historical Psalm, 78. 67 : " And He refused the taber nacle or tent of Joseph, and chose not the tribe of Ephraim "), and a strong delineation of the after history as a forsaking by the lure of foreign and neighbouring idolatries of the marriage tie once entered into ("they were mine,'' v. 4). To interpret chap. 16. 3, " Thy birth and nativity is of the land of /Canaan ; thy father is an Amorite and thy mother an Hittite," in a crudely literal sense of old Israel, is to ignore Ezekiel's plainer statements on the same subject and his strong parabolic maimer. § Surely any historic conception of Israel * The Book of Ezekiel may be divided into five parts, homogeneous in themselves, and forming together a well-planned whole. — I. His call, chaps. 1-3., II. Prophecies against his own nation, both in Jerusalem and in exile, for wickedly rebelling against and refusing the statutes and judgments of the Loed, and being estranged from Him by their idols, chaps. 4-24. III. Prophecies concerned with foreign nations, indicat ing much knowledge and culture, chaps. 25-32. I'V. Prophecies to his own nation of restoration and the Kingdom of the Messiah, chaps. 33-39. 'V. The vision of the Temple seen on the very day Jerusalem was smitten, chaps. 40-48. It is obvious that parts II., IV., and V. are those principally concerned with the subject before us. f It is not to be forgotten that there were two orders of Bamoth or high places — those of old time dedicated to idolatry by the ancient races of Canaan (Num. 33. 52), which became sources of corruption to Israel, and the great Bamah of Gibeon and possibly others irregularly dedicated to the worship of Jehovah. There is an his torical cause for the introduction of these irregularities, after patriarchal precedent, in the desolation of the Tabernacle and probably of Shiloh itself and the deportation and desecration of the Ark. Of these things " criticism " takes no notice. X The meaning of the names is " her tent," " my tent in her." § We may be allowed again to refer to the unprejudiced interpretation of this verse by EosenmuUer : " Impura es, ut illse gentes, ut ab ilUs genus ducere videaris, non ab Abrahamo, unde proprie ortus est tibi." EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 503 is of a distinct race not of the ancient inhabitants of Canaan. His meaning is that the chosen race had so forsaken the covenant of their election as to cease to be distinct from the ancient Canaanite idolaters whose land they occupied. The ancient "glory of the Lord" (Exod. 40. 34) departed from the Temple because they did not keep the statutes and the judgments of -the Lord to do them (Ezek. 10, U. 23). 2. If the statutes and the judgments of which Ezekiel speaks were the growth of priestly praxis and oral decisions through the ages, still unwritten in his day, his attitude towards them is, to say the least, disingenuous. Let any un prejudiced reader consider carefully' the 20th chapter. There, in vv. 10, 11, Ezekiel asserts that the Lord gave them His statutes and shewed them' His judgments that they might live in them after He had caused them to go forth out of Egypt and brought them into the wilderness. Nor is there the least hint of any addition to those then given, or to any other source of statutes and judgments than the Divine giving. and shewing once for all in the wilderness.* If it be ques tioned as to what statutes and judgments he intends, and where they are to be found, surely they are to be found where the statutes and judgments are to be found to which Ezekiel is constantly alluding, or which he is constantly quoting. Every part of the supposed P document he quotes or aUudes to. As a priest versed in the Law, he is impregnated with its language.! It seems plain to the ordinary understanding that he would imply to his contemporaries and to us that the whole of the P Code was substantially given in the wilderness. At any rate, the theory of the origin of P which we are examinmg can gain no direct support from the writings of Ezekiel, and what he impUes seems rather a direct negative to it. The isolated expression of ch. 7. 26, " Calamity shall come upon calamity, and rumour upon rumour ; then shall they seek a vision of the prophet, and law or direction shall perish • And is not their writing in the wilderness implied ? "What other mode would carry them down through the ages ? Nay, does not the very Hebrew word for statute (pn. npn) imply a permanent record ? t lists, which do not exhaust the subject of the correspondencies between Ezekiel and the whole of the supposed P, may be found in Driver's Introduction, pp. 139, 140, and leathes' Law in the Prophets, p. 98 et seq. 504 LEX MOSAICA. from the priest, and counsel from the elders," is too sUght a basis to build a theory upon. It must be interpreted to accord with the rest of what we find in Ezekiel. If the connection be considered, it probably refers to the direct guidance in cases of difficulty, the judgment of Urim or Revelation, men tioned in Num. 27. 21, and so has it been understood. 3. Again, the theory of the rising of the idea of the hiero cracy in Babylonia, supported by the fictions of the Taber nacle, the consecration of Aaron, the Day of Atonement, and the rest, receives, it should seem, but scant direct support from the writings of Ezekiel. Ezekiel's position and influence among the elders of Israel * (chaps. 8. 1 ; 14. 1 ; 20. 1) was due to his office as a prophet, not as a priest. His writings are but little concerned with enhancing the dignity and importance of priests. There are to be priests indeed in his ideal temple, with a stricter rule of purity and provision for their maintenance. But in this surely there is nothing new. The principal personage in his renewed polity is not a high priest (of whom no mention is made), but "the Prince" (the Pentateuchal X'^J, not essentially a priestly, but a lay ruler). The ruler of the coming Kingdom was to be the Mes sianic Good Shepherd (ch. 34. 23). Again, the peculiar theological standpoint of the supposed priestly school is but little reflected from Ezekiel. P is said "to have a scrupulous avoidance of anthropomorphism" (cf. Ezek. 8. 2, 3). "He nowhere touches on the deeper problems of theology. On such subjects as the justice of the Divine government of the world, the origin of sin and evU, the in sufficiency of all human righteousness {i.e. he has a Pelagian tendency), he does not pause to reflect." "His style is mea sured and precise." He has no imagination, and yet enough to invent or colour the history of the past.f The attentive reader of Ezekiel is invited to consider how much Ezekiel can be said to be the forerunner of such a school of thought. J * It would appear that local self-government upon the ancient lines was allowed to the children of Israel in the place of their captivity. ¦f Dillmann in Driver's Introduction, p. 121. X When complementary truths are stated side by side, is it not particularly easy to find the work of two parties in a writing so constructed ? But is not the unity of the Biblical idea of God and man made 'up of complementary truths ? EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 505 Compare with this view Ezek. 18 ; 36. 25 to the end ; 37 and passim,. 4. Let us tum next, and briefly, to the after history to find, if possible, traces of this priestly school outside their alleged work, or any traces of their alleged work being conformable to the Hebrew mind in these matters, as we are often told it is. The influences of the Captivity upon the nation are indeed most important — interesting to the student as giving the key to the after development of their history and literature, in teresting to the Christian as a step in the preparation of " the fulness of time " * in all nations, which made ready the way of our Divine Lord. The Captivity impressed its in fluences indelibly. It gave unity once again to the Twelve Tribes of Israel. It abolished idolatry once and for all-t It gave the minds of the returned exiles and their posterity an appreciation and love of their institutions and laws, to which prosperity and evil communications had often blinded them. J This appreciation and love fired the times of the Maccabees, crystalUsed, and died down into Pharisaism and Eabbinism. At the same time, as the result of the influences of the Captivity, men are found to feel after larger conceptions, which indirectly prepared the way for the Christ that was to come.§ But surely we shall find, if we come to them without a theory, nothing in the acknowledged writings of the period to support directly the idea of the Captivity and post-Captivity times which is now popular with some scholars. What evidence outside critical * Galatians 4. 4. t The corruption of this fixed idea of abolishing the old leaven of the past led to the crucifixion of Christ (see Zeeh. 13). X Compare the words of Jeremy Taylor, of a kindred institution and an analogous time : " The Book of Common Prayer was sown in tears and is now watered with tears. Yet never was any holy thing drowned and extinguished with tears. Indeed, the greatest danger that ever the Common Prayer Book had was the indifferency and ludevotion of them that used it but as a common blessing. But when excellent things go away and then look back upon us, as our Saviour did upon Peter, we are more moved than by the nearer embraces of a full and actual possession." § The reversion by Ezra and Neheniiah to the title " God of Heaven," used by the exile Abraham (Gen, 24. 7, the supposed J's account), is worthy of notice as shewing a sense of God's presence not confined to localities. The Divine philosophy of history found in Moses and the prophets is emphasised in the visions of Daniel. The Book of Wisdom and the speculations of Philo indicate the larger scope of religious thought. 506 LEX MOSAICA. inferences is there for the following statement of the time of the Captivity : " Now began the practice of committing to writing, of compiling, of epistolary correspondence. 'Never before had literature possessed so profound a significance for Israel, or rendered such convenient service as at this juncture.' " * What evidence, we may ask, is there that literature had in any sort a beginning and chief significance for or from this time ? The prophets of the post-exilic time are prophets of the silver age of Hebrew literature. The transition is marked by the writings of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. f "The Lord's Song" of Ps. 137 is a song of the past, and its mention by strangers in the strange land is a tribute to the celebrity which the poetic literature and music of the past had attained. Any historical treatment of the records of the Hebrew people wUl mark many epochs of the golden age of its literature ; but as far as our direct evidence goes, the Captivity period was not one of them. % Is it not true that undisputed post- Captivity Psalms, great and beautiful though they are, are of the sUver age of Hebrew style ?§ The literary character given to the age is not borne out by the facts that have come down to us. * Stanley's Jewish Church, vol. iii., p. 15, with a quotation from Ewald. f "Le style de Jeremie est bien moins pur que celui d'Isaie, et Ezekiel, qui pro- phetisa durant I'exil, est le plus incorrect de tons les ecrivains hebreux. Sa maniere de concevoir, comparee ^ celle des poetes de la bonne epoque, reprisente une sorte de romantisme, et signale dej^ le tour nouveau que I'imagination des Hebreux prit sous Taction du genie babylonien et persan " (Eenan, Histoire des Langues Simitiqves, p. 132 — an unprejudiced witness). X The chaUenge of Kuenen (animadverting upon Noldeke's opinion that the post- exilian period was absolutely incapable of producing such a work as P) — " I should be glad to see this conception, against which my Seligion of Israel is one unbroken protest, seriously discussed, or else, if unable to defend its life, honourably buried" — may be met by asking, not about the abstract capacity or incapacity of the age, but what evidence, outside a laboured theory, haTe we that such a work was produced ? The purely theoretic character of Kuenen's " Eesearches " comes out in the following passage {Historico-Critical Examination of the Hexateuch, p. xxiii.). Kuenen observes tbat " The prophetic preaching precedes the priestly legislation, therefore it is likely that prophetic (= Yahvistic) representations of the genesis of the theocracy precede the priestly historiography." " And may we not ask, in passing, whether the problem when so formulated does not almost solve itself ? " he proceeds. The theory fascinates, therefore it is true. § Let it be remembered that the language of the P document, if we are forbidden by authority to find anything archaic or ancient in it, is still allowed to be of the golden age of Hebrew style. EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 507 And let anyone read Ezra and Nehemiah and say whether the entire impression conveyed is not of a restoration.* Its first work of building an altar refers to the written Law of Moses. Ezra, " a ready scribe t in the Law of Moses which the Lord God of Israel had given, had set his heart to seek the Law of the Lord and to do and to teach in Israel statutes and judg ments "(Ezra 3. 2; 7.6,10). The Chronicler's phrase " prepare one's heart to seek " is used * It is important to notice that the argument, from silence and from the after inconsistency of the history, is as valid against P's existence in the time of Nehemiah and Ezra, and the time after them, as for any period before them. Let the foUowing instances be taken : — 1. There are no traces of the Day of Atonement till the time of Josephus and the Epistle to the Hebrews. Philo apparently does not mention it. The ceremony in Josephus and the traditions of the Gemara differ in several particulars from the Levitieal law. Yet other fasts are mentioned. Consider especially the fast on the twenty-fourth day of the seventh month (Neh. 9), after repeated readings of the Torah. " It must be admitted that, if the great Day of Atonement were observed at this time, it is strange that its occurrence in this month was not made use of for the solemn service of confession " (Eyle, Esra and Nehemiah, p. 250). The Levitieal law (P Code) fixes the Day of Atonement for the tenth day of the seventh month (Lev. 16. 29). 2. Is it not probable from the account (compare Ezra'2. 63 and 3. 2 ; Haggai 1.1; and Zechariah 3. 1) that Jeshua or Joshua, son of Jozadak, was consecrated High Priest after the retum from captivity ? There is no allusion to the ceremony, though it would have been an opportunity to glorify the hierocracy. 3. When Nehemiah assuages the outcry of the poor against the rich (Neh. 6), he takes his stand upon general considerations. He makes no allusion to the Levitieal law against usury (Lev. 25. 35 et seq.). One might argue that it did not then exist. The priests, it may be noticed, were among the defaulters. 4. The Levites enter upon their duties at twenty years of age (Ezra 3. 8). The Le- vitical law (Numb. 4. 3 ; 8. 24) gives thirty years for those engaged in the more laborious work of the Tabernacle, twenty-five years for the others. The Levites kill tho passover, which is a duty given by the P document to the heads of households. 6. A third of a shekel (Neh. 10. 32), after the frequent reading of the Torah, is appointed for the service of the House of God, whereas the P document appoints half a shekel as the least offering even for the poor (Exod. 30. 15). Kuenen is logically consistent (Seligion of Israel, iii., p. 6). He says that this third of a shekel entirely shuts out the possibility of the previous existence of the Levitieal precept. So P was not complete in the hands of Ezra. A more easy explanation, perhaps, might be that out of consideration for the general poverty of the returned people, though there were of them who were rich also, the half shekel was reduced to a third for the time being. These are but instances. It seems that a little diligence exercised upon the same hnes upon the post-Captivity period would, on the same principles, prove the continued non-existence of the P Code even unto this day. T " The title of Sopher, or scribe, seems to have been given to Ezra with a new import. It had been used in former times to denote a secular officer who acted as court secretary, ' the king's scribe.' But from the time of Ezra it bore chiefiy a clerical significance " (Etheridge, Hebrew Literature, p. 18, note). 508 LEX MOSAICA. of something established and Divine. Ezra was a student of the Law to apply it practicaUy to the occasions that should arise. The phrase " a ready scribe in the Law of Moses '' surely, on any hypothesis, cannot mean that writing began in this age. It can only mean that writing and guarding the literary treasures of the past assumed a prominence for an age of small origination. It was an age of compUation and of looking back, of preserv ing and of imitation. The imitations and fables of the Apo crypha were the next step of its development. The Talmud reflects, as it exaggerates, its genius. The Levites' acccount of their work is found in Nehemiah (Neh. 9). They ascribe the Torah to Sinai. " Thou cam est down also upon Mount Sinai, and spakest with them from heaven, and gavest them right judgments and true laws, good statutes and command ments : and madest known unto them Thy holy Sabbath, and commandedst them precepts and statutes and laws by the hand of Moses Thy servant." They made a covenant to return to the keeping of these, and to abjure the defections of their fore fathers. There is no trace of the work of the " School of Eze- , kiel." Yet these, if any, were the men who knew of it. The customary law of England is never confounded with the statute law, and the dates of enactments are known. Is it right, good, or necessary to attribute to men carrying on a high and Divine work, at much risk and labour to themselves, an untruthful spirit ? For if the hypothesis of the P document is true, they could have been truthful and stiU carried their point. The former glories of the Temple would have given the customary priestly law a sufficient prestige for their purposes. If, after all our institutions f aU into desuetude, a body of New Zealanders should seek to restore our cathedral services, it would be unnecessary for them to falsify history, and refer their origin to King Arthur or King Alfred. The fables of the Second Book of Maccabees (ch. 2. 13) and the Second (fourth) Book of Esdras (14. 38), of Nehe miah collecting a library (^i^Xioflijxiji') and Ezra dictating from memory or inspiration two hundred and four (Vulgate) or ninety-four books — are they not simply fabulous reminis cences of their united care of the literary treasures of the nation ? Further, there are no traces of the Priestly School in the Apocrypha. Philo attributes all the legislation to EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 509 Moses ;* so does Josephus. And the way in which he regards the subject may be gathered from the foUowing passage : "During so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add anything to our sacred books, to take anything from them, or to make any change in them; but it becomes natural to aU Jews, immediately and from their very birth, to esteem those books to contain Divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and, if occasion be, willingly to die for them. Whereas there are none at aU among the Greeks who would undergo the least harm on that account. No, nor in case all the writings that are among them were to be destroyed ; for they take them to be such discourses as are framed agreeably to the inclinations of those that write them ; and they have justly the same opinion of the ancient writers, since they see some of the present gene ration bold enough to write about such afiairs, wherein they were not present, nor had concern enough to inform themselves about them from those that knew them ; these men put a few things together by hearsay, and insolently abuse the world, and call these writings by the name of histories."t It is evident that Josephus had never heard of the Priestly School. J * He ascribes three " ideas " to the oracles given by the instrumentaUty of the prophet Moses — the making of the world, history, and legislation {Bepraem. etpoenis, 1). t Against Apion, i., § 8. t The Epistle to the Hebrews attributes the P Code' to Moses. It does not appear that the testimony of Josephus is without weight on this question. He was of High Priestly family, and priestly education. If the P Code was of priestly praxis and oral decisions, it would have enhanced the dignity of the priesthood to say so, and four hundred years could not have effaced the tradition. It is difficult to believe that the newly invented term " hierocracy " accurately describes the mode of govern ment in Captivity or post-Captivity times. Disgusted with their kings, the Jews returned to the ideal of a religious republic. The proportion of the priests to the people (about a tenth) gave them prominence in this religious republic and in the Sanhedrim. The Books of the Chronicles justify the religious position of the priests by a reference to ancient precedents. (See Lightfoot's Hors HebraiccB, vol. ii., p. 325 et seq.) But the lay ruler Nehemiah and the prophets had difficulty in making the priests come by their own. In the failure of prophecy and the absence of any lay ruler of eminence, the hereditary succession of the High Priests became of importance. The Maccabean triumphs were brought about by a priestly family, but the Maccabean coins refer not to a High Priestly but to a princely government (" Simon S'tJ'3 of Israel "). The Sanhedrim was the refiection of the seventy elders of Moses' time (see Ezek. 8. 11). The references in the Apocrypha to the priesthood are rather to their religious than to their political significance, with the exception of the splendid eulogy of Simon the son of Onias, who " repaired the House again, and fortified the Temple" and the city (Ecelus. 50. 1). Josephus calls the system of government a "theocracy" {Against Apion, ii., 17). 510 LEX M'OSAICA. IL But if no direct traces are to be found of the " School of Ezekiel," and their supposed work either in Ezekiel or in the after history, it is our business to enquire, in the next place, to what conclusion a general survey of Ezekiel's writings would lead us in this matter. A general comparison between the historical and legisla tive work of the P School and the writings of their leader, father, architect, and forerunner cannot fail to disclose some traces of their underground work, if the P School and their work existed at all. They would be more than human if nothing transpired either through their own writing or through the writing of the founder to indicate something of the mean ing and extent of their influence. Historical experience surely * makes this certain. 1. Now the history of literature is a history of living unities. The algebraical or mathematical method wiU never deal with it satisfactorily.* It must be treated broadly in ac cordance with human experience and analogy. Each writer has an individuality, character, and unity of his own, colouring his views of things entirely, even though insensibly, affected by his environment and experiences, influencing even his choice of words and his modes of expression. But also the age in which he writes has a unity of its own ; for literature is essentially related to the history, character, and occasions of national life. The history of any literature, which is distinctive and creative, groups itself round certain epochs which by stirring the human spirit in the Divine providence called it forth. + The products of one age are different in style, and thought, and language from the products of another. ? It is the merit of Wellhausen to be the leader of a new departure. " Criticism," he says, " has not done its work when it has completed the mechanical distribution ; it must aim further at bringing the various writings when thus arranged into relation with each other, must seek to render them intelligible as phases of a living process, and thus to make it possible to trace a graduated development of the tradition." {Prolegomena, p. 295). t " The lessons to be learned from literature have not been received either com pletely or altogether safely, until we have accustomed ourselves to think of aU its inonuments in their historical relations" (Professor Spalding's History of English Literature, p. 27). EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 511 There is, indeed, so wide a gulf fixed between one age and another that the eflforts of imitation, even at the hands of genius, do but imperfectly bridge it. It may well be supposed that the smallest acquaintance with contemporary writing gives on the whole a more truthful idea of any given epoch than the finest efibrts of modem imagination do without it. Each writer, a living unity in himself, reflects his age, a unity in itself also. It would be as impossible for the poems and prose of the nineteenth century to have been written in the Elizabethan age as for the Elizabethan writers to have Uved in the present time. As the ages change, so the style and modes of thought and expression change with them.* Taking up a writing of the past, a person of education can almost without reference to the title page assign its probable age, can be certain it was not written in his own. It is, therefore, reasonable to ask whether the supposed writings of P and the writings of Ezekiel have the stamp of the same age. And here the question, though a little compUcated, admits of being approached. The P document is the growth of ages ex hypothesi, but it was written down by men of one age. It is the essence of the hypothesis that they did not transcribe the old word for word, but they coloured it with their own ideas — nay, they are suggested to have projected their ideas into the past by means of it. Again, the historical portions of P are short, but they are long enough to have a character of theix own. It is merely begging the question to clear the old world, with which P deals, of the ideas of creation and blessing, of covenant by sacriflce and circumcision, and of an interest in genealogies and the descent of nations, and then to say that such ideas betray the hand of P. There' is no evidence that the age of Ezekiel took special interest in these things. The gene alogies of the chronicler are excerpts from more ancient docu- ments,t to preserve them. There is evidence that these ideas * A few concrete examples at random may make the meaning of what is said plainer. The "In Memoriam" .is an impossible product for the Elizabethan age. Compare it, again, with "Lycidas." Compare the tales of Chaucer vrith the tales of Wordsworth or of Longfellow ; the essays of Bacon and Addison, or Steele aud Macaulay; the biographies of Walton and the biographies of to-day; Bull's sermons and Newman's or WUberforce's. The writers Uve in different worlds. t " They must have been compiled from old genealogical and topographical, lists " (Davidson's Introd. to the O.T., ii., p. 77). 512 LEX MOSAICA. are ancient, the root ideas of the history of Israel, and therefore could have been written down long before the times of the P School. And the interesting, old-flavoured phrases in which these ideas are conveyed are necessary to the ideas. The larger question is, is the world in which P lives the world in which Ezekiel Uves ? If there is no relatively modem tincture in it, if no atmosphere of later history or later aUusion enters into it, the presumption is that a priestly school of Ezekiel's age did not write what is called the P document. If it beara a more ancient cast, it is strong literary evidence that a iriore ancient hand wrote it. The P School were not a school of genius. They did not emerge into history. It was past the powers of genius to transplant themselves, by the help of the material ex hypothesi given them, into an almost forgotten past, and forget all else.* To attribute to the school of Ezekiel the powers of a modem novelist of genius is an anachronism. To attempt, then, a few details of the comparison of the age of Ezekiel and of his supposed disciples. In the first place, the P document is observed to move in a narrower world, with no colouring or complication of later civilizations in it. It is an old world as far as the historical portions are concerned, and the aspect of its legislation is not directed towards relatively modem f times. The interest of the P document in genealogies and the descent of nations stops with the times of Moses. The disputed exception of the genealogy of the dukes of Edom (Gen. 36) would accentuate the rule. Gen. 10 surely has a very ancient reference. The world powers of Egypt, and Assyria and those prominent in Ezekiel's time emerge surely very indistinctly and in their infancy in it. It is not a descent of nations likely to have been written in his time, and the P document strangely is specially jejune. The indistinct traces of the rise of Babylon and Asshur are given to J, supposed to live in the tinies of the divided monarchy in the Southem King- * Compare the manner in which Josephus and the Koran go over the same ground. t The word " modem " refers to the mode or measure of our own times. Its limits are the limits of the age in which we live. It is the instinct of true historical reflec tion which governs the usage of the word aldiv in the LXX. and N. T. The modern of Ezekiel's time would be the circle of later historical influences in which he lived and moved. EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 513 dom, remotest from Assyrian influence. The P School, living in Babylonia, have no interest in it at all. And the whole chapter deals with historical conditions which in Ezekiel's time had been efiaced by many changes.* Is it probable that the P School would have left matters as they stand ? They wrote with a free hand, and many things of changed and later interest sur rounded them. It is, at any rate on this hypothesis, very creditable to their mental power to be so consistent to the age of Moses. And yet their mental power was of a priestly order. They were the founders of Judaic legalism, of which the Tal mud is the fruit. The historical portions of P, again, are nobly consistent with their present context. To take an instance. Gen. 23 and all allusions to it are given to P. The pathetic recital of Abraham as a stranger buying a possession of land from the children of Heth for a place of burial for Sarah, who died " at Kirjath Arba " (" the same is Hebron," runs the note), and for his " possession of a burial place," is finely consistent with the character and history of Abraham. It has a very ancient atmosphere. So with the other historic additions of P. They are confined in their interest to the Mosaic age, or ages earlier, and look forward to the conquest of Palestine. J And then, with regard to the legislation, is it not difficult to believe in its being written down for the first time in Ezekiel's time ? It is closely related in the development of the history with the age of Moses in aU its parts ; it asserts of itself, with a constant and continuous reiteration, that it was given to Moses by in spiration, and to the people by Moses, and in part to Aaron, and that it was given in the wildemess. J Then, coming to the subject matter, it must have required the most splendid exercise of the imagination for the disciples of Ezekiel to get past Ezekiel's aUusions to the contemporary Temple (1 — H), and, on its downfall, his impressive and solemn dream of an ideal temple, and to invent out in a wildemess ¦* The names of the nations in Ezekiel 38 ; 39 are names for the most part found in this chapter. t If it be critical to let an ancient and an honest document speak for itself, and no considerations of poetic or prophetic foresight wiU aUow a past tense to refer to the future, why is it critical to make the future tense refer to the writer's very distant past? X References are scarcely necessary, for every part of the P Code is fuU of these things ; but see, for instance, Exod. 39. 42, 43 ; Lev. 26. 46 ; 27. 34; Num. 36. 13. S 1063. K k 514 LEX MOSAICA. free from modem influences and later desecrations* the ideal picture of the " tent of meeting, or tent of the Testimony or Law." It was an effort of imaginative genius unique in an tiquity, unsurpassed in modern times, but of it or of the begin ning of it there are no traces in Ezekiel, the father of the school, t The P School would further seem, if they existed at all, to have been rather a school of antiquaries than of writers of codes. Codes are drawn to meet present or future conditions. They adapt ancient legislation to the times. But the P School wrote down elaborate definitions of the duties of the Levites, and arrangements for their cities or colleges to be scattered up and down the land, when the Levites had ceased to be of im portance, and when, on that account, the synagogue system, where ten men of leisure were to be found, and the teaching of the Rabbis were destined to supersede their function as teachers of the people, and the Ark had ceased to exist. Whether be cause of the animadversions of Ezekiel (ch. 44. 9-13) or for some other cause, the number of Levites that returned was rela tively insignificant: 341, as against 4,289 priests, returned at the first (Ezra 2). Ezra, apparently with some difficulty, brought 38 more (Ezra 8. 18, 19). The P Code has in view 23,000, and appoints 48 cities for their residence, six of which are to be cities of refuge from the retribution of the 6oel, an institution of primitive society which had quite died away in the times of Ezekiel's school. Ezekiel himself clusters the Levites in the immediate neighbourhood of the Temple (ch. 45). On the other hand, the P Code takes no account of the Nethinim, and the children of Solomon's servants, who outnumbered the Levites in the census of the Return, and who were reckoned among the servants of the Temple J (Ezra 7. 24). Nor does the P School mention " the singers " as a class. Further, all the * The ideal legislation of Ezekiel is full of aUusions to these later desecrations ; see chaps. 43 ; 44. t The only allusions to the Tabernacle in Ezekiel are : 41. 1, The breadth of his Temple was the breadth of " the tent '' ; and 34. 27, "My Tabernacle (pC5»D) sliaU be with them" ; and in the names Aholah and Aholibah. J The Nethinim were of foreign extraction, and traditiqnally supposed to be the descendants of Gibeon, whom Joshua gave to be servants to the , Levites in menial works (Josh. 9. 27). The children of Solomon's servants are similarly understood to be the children of the foreign labourers, whom Solomon employed to build the Temple (1 Kings 5. 13). EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 515 precedents from which the laws of the P Code arise are pre cedents of the Mosaic age, and in particular the precedent of the daughters of Zelophehad (Num. 27), which defined more clearly the law of inheritance, is concerned with the tribe of Manasseh, though those who returned were in the main Jews. The legislation of the P Code against idolatry is directed agamst the worship of " he-goats " (Lev. 17. 7), molten images, graven images, figured stones, and stones set up {^anvXta), and sun unages. There is no allusion to more modem forms of idolatry, and specially none to the pictured waUs, the weep ing for Tammuz (Adonis), and worship of the sun " toward the east" of Ezek. 8; or the cakes for the queen of heaven of Jer. 7. 18. Again, they must have been curious codifiers, and curious redactors. They have simplified nothing, cleared no apparent difficulty or inconsistency, not attempted even to reduce the corpus of the legislation to logical sequence. On the contrary, they appear to have gone out of their way to make things less systematic than they found them. They appear to have made the Law of Holiness (H) have a less "definite plan" than they found it have.* What a singular insinuation is that of the law of fringes (Num. 15. 37 to end), an excerpt from H out of its place. A satisfactory explanation of this want of a later logical method would be, if a reverence for the work of the Mosaic age had left things scrupulously as the Mosaic age had left them. Again the P School, if they existed, invented not only the Tabemacle, but the whole vocabulary with which they described its parts in the main, and they passed by words of later usage which Ezekiel employs in his description of the Temple,t and the Kings and Chronicles use of Solomon's Temple. " When the collection existed as a complete whole, the different subjects which it embraced were no doubt treated in accordance with a definite plan ; at present only excerpts exist which show what some of the subjects included in it were, but do not enable us to determine what principle of arrangement was followed in it." — Driver's Introduction, pp. 54, 55. t Whatever be the meaning of it, the fact cannot be disputed that the majority of the words and terms used of the various parts of the Tabernacle are peculiar to the Pentateuch. They are just like many of the terms and words used by the A. V. in translating the Tabemacle account, of archaic flavour, and, it is contended, have the same meaning. Analogy makes them point to the age of the document in which they occur. On the other hand, it is difficult to understand how the P School could have Kk 2 516 LEX MOSAICA. Finally, the age of the P School was an age of pure legis lation. They gave the Law. And they gave it for the Twelve Tribes with no mention of the Temple at Jerusalem. ¦ The writings of Ezekiel are the writings of an age full of reflection upon the Law (ch. 18),* and upon the various ways in which it had been transgressed through ages of default, when the unity of the Twelve Tribes had been broken (ch. 37. 15 to the end), and Jemsalem was the central interest. There is no tinge in the P document of that "incorrect" style and "sorte de romantisme" which Renan, a good judge of style, finds in Ezekiel, and attributes to Babylonian influences. The primd facie view, then, of the two writings, P and Ezekiel, would on any rule of literary analogy place them ages wide apart. And it would appear, afid is contended, that the primd facie view has many satisfactory reasons, which are cumulative and converge, for setting the P document ages before the times of Ezekiel. P and Ezekiel do not Uve in the same worlds, t 2. But let us proceed to press this comparison of the P document and the writings of Ezekiel a step further into detaU. It is to be observed, as far as the eflfects of his age and sur roundings are to be traced, that the influences which appear in Ezekiel are those of the Babylonian Captivity. J As an edu- naturally avoided words ready to their use in Kings, Chronicles, and Ezekiel (for instance, the word T31, oracle or shrine, used in Kings and Chronicles for the Holiest place; Qm, south, where Exodus has 2ii; ]'lT\nT\>^°^^^ '< 7''K> poster support; and other expressions characteristic of Ezekiel). * Be it considered that the reflections on the Law found in Deuteronomy are of a different order. They are reflections of the Lawgiver setting forth and impressing the spirit of his laws, not reflections of the people in a later age. f It is well to bear in mind that this primd facie view in any other literary history is regarded as of first importance, and taken as a trustworthy indication of the date and tendency of literary remains. X His diction is " mixed with Aramaean words, or corrupted by Aramsean forms ' (Davidson, Introduction, iii. 146, where examples are given). He makes use of a clay brick to draw upon (iv. 1). It is possible that the thirtieth year of i. 1. is dated from the eponym of the King Nabopolassar's accession, B.C. 625. The imagination of an inspired prophet is influenced by his surroundings not in the way of imitation but suggestion. May not the Assyrian ideal of kingly activity in a chariot carrying on religious war with the symbol of Deity above him, the winged creatures of com posite type, the character of Ishtar, have coloured to some extent the " vision of the chariot," and the comparison of his people to a voluptuous woman. The Egyptian kingly idea had more of repose and majesty in it. Possibly Ezekiel's more frequent mention of Eden may be a mark of similar inifluence. Our divine Lord's parables are coloured from the circumstances and occasions which surrounded Him. EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 517 cated man and as a prophet he rises above these influences, but they are discernible, and in accord with the known conditions of Captivity times, and his own place in them. Yet, from the indi cations, it is probable that the exiled colonists, amongst whom he Uved on the banks of the Khabour 200 miles north of Babylon, were a good deal secluded to themselves. One can scarcely, however, faU to be struck with the large ness of the world in which Ezekiel, in common with the later prophets, Uves. We see the influences of commercial inter course with the nations, and an age of some culture, upon a man of education. But if Ezekiel had ever been in Tyre, his graphic allusions to which might indicate more of personal ex perience, surely when he treats of Egypt the impression derived is that his information comes from books and by report. We find accurate geographical and historical allusion, but scarcely the style of a man who knows a country and a people from personal intercourse with it. Compared with his treatment of Tyre, there is even less evidence of personal knowledge. Like the trace of Scythian invasion found probably in chaps. 38, 39, it would appear that Ezekiel's knowledge of Egypt was derived from study. It was even less likely, therefore, that the "school of Ezekiel" should have extended knowledge of Egyptian civUisation and Egyptian modes. They wrote in Babylonia.* Their only other centre of influence was Palestine ex hypothesi. We should probably be right in expecting to find some indications of their Babylonian surroundings. We should have expected them to be speciaUy full on such subjects as the garden of Eden, the Flood, the first occupation of the land of Shinar, and Chaldean his tory. But on these subjects, according to the critical hypothesis, they either knew nothing or wrote nothing, with the exception of the Flood, to the account of which they added. But the essential resemblances to the Chaldean account of the Flood J wrote. At the same time we are confronted by a fact which seems not to square with the critical hypothesis. What really characterises the P document is contact with Egypt and the Peninsula of Sinai. Accuracy of local reference "Ezekiel sketched his ideal of the theocracy in Babylonia. What is more natural than that such work as P^ should also have been written in the land of the Captivity ? "—Kuenen, Historico-Critical Examinaiion, p. 306. 518 LEX MOSAICA. is not to be looked for in the work of old world imagination. It is evidence rather of historic reality. Even the modem imagination picturing the past is apt to betray itself. Like the Stations of the Cross to be observed in Antwerp Cathedral in Flemish costume, and Keble's rhododendrons, inaccuracy of local reference surely is almost certain to betray itself in a work of imagination of any extent picturing the very distant past. And this is certainly d fortiori for the old world imagination. For the P School of Ezekiel's disciples, too, there are to be observed several pitfalls. Babylonia was a corn country, a good deal destitute of trees. The palm only was cultivated.* The cypress was abundant in some regions. We find in Ezekiel mention of the cedar, the cypress or pine tree,t the oak, and the terebinth. The woods used in the building of the Temple and the construction of its furniture were, according to the Kings and the Chronicles, the cedar, the cypress or pine, the almug or algumj tree (brought from Ophir, but also to be found in Lebanon) and, used in the holiest place, the oil or olive tree. Mention is also made, but not with reference to the Temple, of the sycamore fig of the lowlands, a tree of which the Egyptians made extensive use for furniture, doors, boxes, and mummy cases. These trees, then, were ready to the hand of the " school of Ezekiel," but they picture the " tent of meeting " as made of none of them, but of shittim or acacia wood, the only wood found, and at one time plentifully found, in the Peninsula of Sinai suitable for this purpose. Again, the Chronicler teUs us (1 Chron. 4. 21) of " the fami lies of the house of them that wrought fine linen." § In this we have very possibly an historical glimpse of the revival of an ancient Palestinian industry of the times when flax or cotton was spread on Rahab's roof (Josh. 2. 6). Of this byssus, the Chronicler tells us, were made the robe of David, when he wore also an ephod of linen, || and in the building of Solomon's Temple, the "vaU," and the dress of the singers. (Possibly Solomon * Herodotus i., 93. t ti'lin. These trees are not spoken of as of native grovrth in Babylonia. X Probably some kind of sandal wood. § yi^. II Possibly of native manufacture. 1 Chron. 15. 27 ; 2 Chron. 3. 14 ; 5. 12. EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 519 brought up also " linen yarn " * from Egypt!) But the Priestly School avoid this snare also. They do not use this byssus in the construction of the tent of meeting, but " fine linen with em broidery from Egypt" (Ezek. 27. 7), "the fine twined linen" (Exod. 26. 1) t for which Egypt was so celebrated. Ezekiel (27. 7, 16) makes the clearest difference between these two kmds. He makes the " linen " worked with threads of varie gated colours or embroidery to be of Egyptian manufacture, and the byssus to be a commercial product of Aram, which term may include Mesopotamia. But the byssus is the only material at aU spoken of as used in the construction of the Temple. We conceive, therefore, that there must be some difference between these materials, and the " school of Ezekiel " must have gone out of their way to choose the arcbaeologically correct material for a people just come out of Egypt. If the usage of another two words be carefully regarded, there seems to be also a difference between the linen (or cotton ?) garments of Ezekiel's priests and the linen garments of the Levitieal Code. J Small things these, the reader may say. But it is just archaeological accuracy in small things which is not to be looked for in a late ideal or imaginative work projecting later ideas into a distant past. Again, in 1 Chron. 28. 18 we observe the singular phrase, " the chariot of the cherubim that spread out and covered the Ark of the Covenant of Jehovah " used by one who must have been a member of the Priestly School, if there was such a school. It is a noticeable phrase, for it indicates apparently the influence of Ezekiel's vision of the cherubim, the " vision (so caUed) of the chariot.'' It may, perhaps, be an endeavour of the Chronist to harmonise Ezekiel's new vision of the glory of the LORD, or at any rate to add its , idea to the old conception. But the symboUsm of the supposed J (Gen. 3. 24) is of cherubim caused * NIpDi 1 Kings 10. 28. There are some reasons for believing that the A. V. has rendered rightly. t "ITt^D B>B'' Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, ii., 75 et seq. We are quite aware that byssus is the word used also of Egyptian linen by Herodotus, but its use in the text is simply for distinction, it being nearest in sound to the Hebrew word y)^. Ihe LXX. use ^iatros generally. t Ezekiel clothes his priests in garments of DTICQ (4*- ^7). DHl is the clothing of the angels in his visions (9. 2). D^riB'SH is used in Lev. 13. 47 et seq. of ordinary lay attire. ^•^ is used for the priestly and High Priestly garments (see speciaUy Exod. 39. 28, and Lev. 6. 3 ; 16 passim). x 520 LEX MOSAICA. to dwell or abide to guard the tree of life. There is no mention of their number. The symbolism of the Ark of Jehovah was as of a throne, the residence or abiding place of the glory of Jehovah, who " dwelt between the cherubim " and " inhabited the praises of Israel." It is conceived that the.jcare- ful reader will discover that Solomon added two cherubim of olive wood (" trees of oil," a strange expression), overlaid with gold, of larger size, and looking a different way in the sanctuary or shrine of the Temple (1 Kings 6. 23-28). These cherubim of Solomou's, which seem to be intended as symbolic guardians of the Ark, " spread their wings towards the place of the Ark," while the original cherubim of smaller size, and entirely of gold, " covered over the Ark, and over its staves from above " (1 Kings 8. 7). These were the cherubim of "the mercy seat,"* and this was the " house of the mercy seat " (1 Chroa 28. 11). The staves of the Ark were pulled forward as a sign that its travelling days of tent dwelling were over (1 Kings 8. 8). So there were four cherubim in Solomon's shrine. And it would appear that these cherubim that spread out and covered the Ark the Chronicler, influenced by the vision of the four " living creatures " of Ezekiel, calls " the chariot of the cheru- bim."t Ezekiel's vision was something new. It was a moving glory bright in the midst of fiery storm clouds of wrath. The symbol of the mercy seat with its two overshadowing cherubim (Exod. 25. 18-22) was the symbol of an abiding resident presence. It is become evident, then, that the later Jewish fancy of the school of Ezekiel, who had probably never seen the Ark, ¦might readily have been led astray in their first written de scription of it. But they were arcbseologically correct. They retained the number two. The attitude of the cherubim was facing one another from the ends of the mercy seat (not like Solomon's cherubim, " standing upon their feet and their faces towards the house " 2 Chron. 3. 13) and with their heads bent * The Ark involves the Day of Atonement. The Capporeth was the means of atonement. The most perfect expiation was effected upon it (LXX. i\aa'Tiipio»). It was "the throne of grace." See Kurtz's Sacrificial Worship of the Old Testament, p. 47 et seq. t The expression in Ps. 18. 11, " He rode upon a cherub and did fiy, yea, he flew swiftly upon the wings of the wind " (1 Sam. 22. 2 " was seen " would appear to be a false reading, it being tamer in idea, and many MSS. in Samuel retaining K1*V ^^ De Rossi in loc.) is a transition of poetic thought towards Ezekiel's vision. EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 521 downwards over the mercy seat (Exod. 37. 9). They associated no idea of a chariot with them. The mercy seat, symbolicaUy kept by the two resident cherubim, was the throne of an abiding presence. And the pattern of the Ark was archseo- logically accurate to the pattern of Egyptian arks, from which it was derived. For undoubtedly — and naturally to people and leaders and artificers just come from Egypt — the pattern was Egyptian (see Wilkinson, i., 267 et seq.), though the idea was Divine. Archaeological accuracy to Egypt* and the Sinaitic Penin sula is the pervading character of the P Legislative Code, against, as we see, temptations to the contrary in many instances, if it were a composition as far as the Tabernacle is concerned of free fancy in Babylonia. The supposed school of Ezekiel live in the atmosphere of tbe wildemess, fis those just come from Egypt and her modes and fashions.! There are two other indications of the historical sur roundings of the writer or writers of the Priestly Code which seem worthy of notice. Lev. 13, 14 are taken up with elaborate regulations as to the reUgious treatment of skin disease (the Lepra Mosaica, not the * We give a list of some of the particulars and references to Wilkinson's Ancient Egi/ptiam (BmaU. edition) — 1. Pine twined linen (as above); 2. The women making and dyeing yarn, — the men making damask and weaving with variegated colours, — after the Egyptian fashion (Exod. 25, 26, 35 ; Wilkinson, ii., p. 79, 85, 86) ; the use of gold thread in embroidery (Exod. 39. 3 ; Wilkinson, ii., 82). 3. Overlaying wood with gold (WUkinBon, ii., 145). 4. The working of metals and precious stones and engrav ing (Wilkinson, ii., 67, 158, 159). 5. The linen dress of the priests, and the fringes, and the blue (indigo) (Wilkinson, ii., 74, 91). 6. The XJrim and Thummim, the insignia of the High Priest, like the jeweUed image of Justice round the neck of the Egyptian judge (Wilkinson, ii., 205). 7. To these may be added the character and position of the Tabernacle, the regulations for priests and judges, vows, the long hair of the Nazarites, the companies of sacred women (Exod. 38. 8), distinction of meats, the sacred use of oil for anointing to oflSee and dedicating to sacred uses (Wilkinson, i., 275), the association of the red colour with sin offering, and other the hke. t Surely the so-called priestly itinerary (Num. 33) is not so far from identification as to be regarded as untrue to the desert. The use of the skins of marine animals from the Red Sea for (he outer covering of the Tabernacle (the skin of the B»nn. probably the dugong or seal or other marine animal) was a good archseological guess for the Priestly School. Ezekiel did not help them to it. He speaks of the B'nn^skin, and of the blue coloir as used for the shoes and dress of the rich. It is to be ques tioned, too, whether hyssop (caper) or the coriander seed were known in Babylonia. They were known in Sinai and Egypt. 522 LEX MOSAICA. later disease of the Middle Ages or to-day). Now we have some real ground for supposing that this leprosy was a prominent dis order of Mosaic times. The Egyptian popular tradition pre served by Manetho and Chaeremon speaks of the chUdren of Israel as a good deal composed of leprous persons. They were, so the tale runs, expelled from Egypt on this ground among others. Singularly enough, their number as given roughly corresponds to the 600,000 which the " critic " judges " utterly unhistorical." They are asserted to have been a mixed multi tude (see Davidson's Introduction to the Old Testament, i., 243, 244). The probabilities of skin disease in slaves badly or im properly fed and hardly worked are strong! There is confirma tory evidence that skin disease was prevalent in Egypt. But there does not seem any evidence that this leprosy was a prominent feature amongst the returned exiles or in the age or society of the Priestly School. There is no mention of it in any Old Testament writing as belonging to their time, nor at all in the Apocrypha. In writing for the first time these elaborate regulations for its treatment, it must be conceived again that the Priestly School had something of an antiquarian interest, for the conditions of their surroundings did not justify so great a prominence of leprosy in their legislation. And it was a singular piece of free imagination to fix upon Bezaleel of the tribe of Judah and Aholiab of the tribe of Dan* as the artificers of the Tabernacle. Why did the Priestly School fix upon Dan ? It was Tyrian art which they knew of as being employed in the Temple of Solomon. It is Tyrian art that Ezekiel speaks of mostf Is it at all likely that the pure work of " later Jewish fancy " would have gone so far afield to find its artificers ? The names are a mark rather of historical reaUty. Now we are perfectly aware that observations of this kind may be met by the rejoinder that " the chief ceremonial insti tutions of Israel were in their origin of great antiquity, but that the laws respecting them were gradually developed and elaborated, and in the shape in which they are formulated in the Priests' Code that they belong to the exilic or early post- * Exod. 36. 30 to the end. t 1 Kings 6 — 7, specially 7. 13 ; Ezekiel 26. 27. EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 523 exilic period." * But we also conceive that the rejoinder is logicaUy impossible for anyone who holds the theory Wellhausen or Kuenen are the accepted authors of. It is the essence of the hypothesis that P had a free hand to introduce something new. If they had not, what becomes of the observation tbat "the pre-exilic period shows no indications of the legislation of P as being in operation," or that "Hebrew antiquity shows abso lutely no tendencies towards a hierocracy " ? t The theory must mean something or nothing. It cannot mean both something and nothing. The idea that the old history of Israel before it received its priestly colouring was " rude and colourless " { is entirely dependent upon the theory that the Tabemacle was the fruit of "late Jewish fancy," as Wellhausen puts it, was ideal and not strictly historical, as Driver puts it. With the historical character of the Tabernacle the theory coUapses all along the line. Now with the Priestly School working thus with a free hand, and giving the reins to their fancy, as this theory de mands, it would be quite unnatural not to find in their writing some trace of the influence of Ezekiel, and the influence of Babylonia and their exilic and post-exilic surroundings ; equally unnatural to find continuous traces of quite other and different and more ancient surroundings in the very work which is due to their pure imagination. A study of their supposed writing has been shown to indicate in very prominent particulars no traces of Ezekiel or Babylonia, but distinct traces of Egypt and the desert. Is it too much to say that, as far as we have gone, the theory in examination appears eminently improbable ? The "Mosaic theocracy" is not "a perfect fit for post-exUian Ju daism," and has not " its actuality only there." § 3. But let us proceed one step further. Ezekiel himself had acquaintance with this so-called Priestly Code — a good * Driver's Introduction, p. 135. The italics are his. There are some things " too vague and indefinite to be capable of disproof," as Canon Cook says in the " Introduction to Exodus " {Speaker's Commentary, p. 244). t Driver's Introduction, p. 129 ; WeUhausen's Prolegomena, p. 6. X Wellhausen, Introduction to the Prolegomena, p. 13. § WeUhausen, Prolegomena, p. 151. 524 LEX MOSAICA. acquaintance. " However doubtful it may be whether Ezekiel ' pre-supposes the completed Priests' Code," says Professor Driver, "it is difficult not to conclude that he presupposes parts of it."* This saying introduces a new principle of dealing with literary history. It has never been supposed that a writer has to quote or show knowledge of the whole and every part of an earUer book that has Qome down to us to form decisive evidence of its pre-existence as a whole. A characteristic aUu sion is held in ordinary literary history to be sufficient to establish that any given writer knew the book as a whole which he is seen to allude to. It is, at any rate, a right pre sumption on broad principles of historical analogy. But there is an additional difficulty in this case. There is, on WeU hausen's own showing, no evidence to prove that Ezekiel did or did not know P as a whole, derived from the contemporary or later history of the times. Ezekiel is the only evidence of the matter at all outside supposition. Wellhausen says that the returned priests of Jerusalem, in the post-exilic time, " Uved in adverse circumstances, and do not appear to have conformed with great strictness or accuracy to the observances which had been agreed upon"f — i.e., there is no evidence of the Priests' Code in its entirety, or accurately in its parts, having been put into practice in post-exUic times. And as there are no Uterary remains which have any relation to the subject in the time of the Exile but the writings of Ezekiel, Ezekiel is the only evi dence we possess. AU the rest is supposition. It is of importance to notice, therefore, the manner and ex tent of Ezekiel's acquaintance with the Priests' Code (so caUed), and to gather its meaning upon fair principles of literary analogy. Now it is observable that in proportion as a book is very well known, there is a tendency not to allude to it at length or in a laboured manner. A slight and a short reference to it is enough to point an argument or to impress the mind of the reader. It is also clear that the chances of allusion in current Uterature to technical rules of the legislature, or to codes of reUgious ritual in every-day practice, are even less. ¦* Introduction, p. 138. f WeUhausen, Prolegomena, p. 405. EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 525 The every-day practice brings these matters sufficiently be fore men's minds. The laws and ritual codes themselves are there. They are more or less the ground of the customary legal or religious practice. And they are left a good deal in the hands of those whose duty it is to expound them. The historian or author wiU tend to pass these things by, unless some reason, some anomaly, or some controversy draws atten tion to them. It is conceived that the most extravagant and the most absurd conclusions might with a Uttle diUgence be collected from the current religious and secular writings of the nineteenth century as to the secular and religious laws of modern England,* if in the considering the subject we were to aUow ourselves to be guided solely by the allusions to them. The object of the author or historian is to draw attention, not to plagiarise. The silence of history means that ordinary life, influenced on every hand by law and religious observance, goes on its customary way. Slight allusions to well-established and weU-known things are enough to prove their existence at the time of any given writer. But Ezekiel and Jeremiah were priests as weU as prophets. They show accordingly greater study of the Levitieal Code, or Levitieal praxis, but their object was not to reproduce it, but to point out where it had been broken, to emphasise its spirit and meaning. Granted the ex istence of the Code, their silence would rather be in favour of its observance. The literary presumption of their full aUu sions to the " Priests' Code," coupled with the absence of any external evidence that its legislation was a growth, is that they referred to it as a whole, and a well-known whole. There was, perhaps, a reason why Ezekiel should allude to it even more fuUy. He was in exile. Both he and the better sort in exile with him sighed for the Temple and its services. They would rather have let their right hand forget its cunning than they forget Jerusalem (Ps. 137)- It was natural that the priest in exile should study the Torah the more, and endea vour to impress its principles the more, when he was unable to teach his people by his practice. It is so that a priestly stand point colours his prophecy, nay, even dominates his ideas. The "" Similarly, Archbishop Whateley's Historic Boubts Selative to Napoleon Buona parte is a weU-known jeu d'(sprit, which it has been found by some difficult to refute. The more absurd the supposition, the more difficult would it be to refute it. 526 LEX MOSAICA. source of this dominant influence is the Levitieal Code, or Le- vitical praxis. He, and he alone among the Hebrew writers, is found to use a great number of the characteristic expres sions of the "Priests' Code." And the manner in which he alludes to it is very noteworthy. It is often the maimer of a man who does not quote contextually, but rather thinks in the ideas of a document long time pondered over. It would seem, therefore, to indicate a more extended acquaintance with the Code than the bare use of its terminology conveys. Not only the recurrence in Ezekiel of the characteristic phraseology of the Priestly Code is of significance, but the manner of it also. Ezekiel's quotations are not only to be numbered, but to be weighed. A few instances wUl show the drift of this observa tion. Two of them are to be found in Ezek. 4. Verses 4-6 are an allusion to the writing of the supposed P (Num. 14. 26-38). The number of the days in which the spies searched the land of Canaan is given in P as a day for a year in which they " should bear their iniquities " (a characteristic P phrase), " even forty years, and ye shall know my breach of promise," i.e., the disallowance or denial of my vow of deUverance (as appears from the use of the verb Num. 30. 6, 9 in P's law of vows). As a sign to the houfee of Israel, Ezekiel is to lie on his left side 390 days, a day for a year, to bear the iniquity of the house of Israel, and 40 days, a day for a year, to bear the in iquity of the house of Judah. Without going into the diffi culties of the interpretation,* it is evident that we have a complex and implicit reference to the writing of P in several places of the Pentateuch. A reference (390-i-40) to the 430 years of Egyptian bondage of Exod. 12. 40 (P), and the 40 years of wUdemess punishment, while the distinctive phrases of P refer us to Num. 14. 34, and the meaning of the sign is the same — ^the repudiation or denial of Jehovah's vow. The sign being for the people would seem to argue a familiarity witb the writing of the supposed P general to them too. There is here, then, a reference to the ideas, as well as words and statements, of the supposed P, covering some ground, and implying that those ideas and statements were the common property of the prophet and the house of Israel. The tum * For them, see Pairbairn at some length, aud the Speaker's Commentary. EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 527 that the reference takes makes it extremely improbable that it is a reference to anything but to an existing writing well known. Again, in vv. 6 to the end, we have another complex refer ence, not only to the words, but to the ideas of the Priests' Code. The prophet is to make bread of wheat, barley, beans, lentUs, millet, and spelt in one vessel. He is to bake it with ordure, afterwards with dung. He is to eat this defiled or ceremonially unclean bread, about a pound a day with about a pint and a half of water. His protest is that from his youth up until now he has been ceremonially undefiled, and that neither from what has died of itself (a carcase), nor of what beasts have torn, nor of flesh of abomination, has he ever eaten. Now it is to be noticed that the ceremonial defilement of this bread arose from the admixture of seeds "in one vessel," ac cording to the aversion to mixtures which characterises the Priests' Code (Lev. 19. 19), as weU as from the manner of its baking.* It is next to be noticed that the ceremonial defile ment of these two ideas calls up in Ezekiel's mind a sense of his previous priestly purity in other different ceremonial matters. He had not eaten of what has died of itself (Lev. 5. 2 ; 7. 24 ; 11. 8 ; 17. 15), or been tom by beasts (Lev. 17. 15 ; 22. 8), or flesh of "abomination" ("JlJS, a word peculiar to Lev. 7. 18 and 19. 7, of eating the sacrificial meal of the peace offering on the third day, when there would be danger of putrefaction). And the priestly or ceremonial cast of the whole symbolical action, not to be literaUy enacted, is clinched by the use of the strong metaphor, " Behold I am about to break the staff of bread in Jerusalem," a strong metaphor recurring twice again in Eze kiel, derived from Lev. 26. 26,t where it is evidently original, as Ezekiel's eating the bread " by weight " is an implicit refer ence to the same place. It is to be carefully noticed further that the whole passage, so LeviticaUy coloured, gains its force from The ceremonial and sanatory treatment of ordure, human or animal, is a marked feature of the Levitieal Code (cf. Mai. 2. 3). It is to be bumed in the sacrifices "Tiithoutthecamp" (Exod. 29. 14; Lev. 4. 11, 12; 8.17; 16.27). It is worthy of notice, however, that Ezekiel does not use the Levitieal word for dung, but a later word, D(3>{. This is not the manner of one who is in any sense the father of such legislation in its written form. T The idea, in different wording, occurs Isa. 3. 1, and the expression itself in Ps. 105. 16 only elsewhere in the 0. T. 528 LEX MOSAICA. the prophecy in it of the desecration or unhallowing and affiic- tion of a ceremonially consecrated people, Jehovah's treasure. In other chapters of Ezekiel (16, 20, 23) this consecration of the people is in parable and direct statement asserted to date from the Mosaic age. It is the very purpose of Wellhausen and Kuenen's theory to deny this idea to " old Israel." This consecration of the people is the underlying motive of the Le- vitical Code. So here again we have an instance of Ezekiel not only using the expressions of the Priests' Code, but thinking in its ideas as one impregnated with them, and his reference is not only to what may be called the more general Levitieal precepts, but to the remoter and more recondite. And it is of the essence of the sign to " the house of Israel " that it should be intelligible. Therefore, these Levitieal ideas must have been familiar and well known to the people addressed, a property common to Ezekiel and them. The characteristic phrases sug gest that this common property was a written document. A precisely similar remark is due to the following chapter (5). Ezekiel's symbolic action of shaving his head and beard is significant of the profaning of his priestly office, and refers to Lev. 21. 4-6, and it is set forth as a prophecy of the like profaning of the people. It would have been quite unmeaning to a people that were not imbued with the same ideas. And in the conclusion of the prophecy there is another aUusion, both indirect and direct, to Lev. 26. An instance perhaps still more characteristic of the manner in which Ezekiel thinks in the ideas of the supposed P occurs in ch. 28, in the prophecy against "the prince or leader* of Tyre." He accuses him of usurpation against God : " Thou hast said I am God, I have dwelt in the dwelling of God (or sat in the seat of God) in the heart of the seas. Behold, thou art wiser than Daniel ; no secrets are hid from thee " (where note a characteristically short reference to a contemporary, implying much). Because of this impiety they shall bring him down to the pit dead of many wounds in the heart of the seas. "And they shall profane thy splendour." Ezekiel then goes on to a lamentation. The prince of Tyre, being only a man, has made himself God. The dwelling or seat of God has '* A word later than the Pentateuch. EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 529 recaUed its associations. He proceeds, "Thou art a seal of simUitude* (compare Exod. 28. 21), full of wisdom and per fect in beauty," like the first man in Eden {v. 13) in the image of God (an allusion to Gen. 1. 26, the writing of the supposed P). But again his " dwelling in the dweUing of God " (u 2) recalls the associations of that dwelling. The prince of Tyre dwells in Eden, decked with precious stones, as the High Priest in the holiest place of God's dwelling,! or, with change of image, Uke " the anointed cherub that over shadows" in the holiest place (reference Exod 37. 6-10 and sup posed P passim, and for the anointing of the Ark, Exod. 30. 26). Then, with characteristicaUy rapid change of figure, Ezekiel proceeds, comparing him to the High Priest of Solomon's Temple : " Thou wast in the midst of the holy mount of God ; in stones of fire {i.e. flashing, splendid stones) didst thou walk to and fro there," as the High Priest with sparkling breast-plate, or, as the verb recaUs, the saints of old with God. From these positions of eminence shall the prince of Tyre be " profaned " and thrown down by the judgment of God, like the fall of the first man {v. 15). From this instance, then, we observe how Ezekiel's mind is saturated with the ideas and expressions of the Priests' Code, so that its ideas come out into imagery used of what at first sight is an entirely different subject, and also — and this is important to consider — how he combines naturaUy, and in an equal manner, the supposed J with the supposed P in the same reference.! H' is to be remembered that, according to the theory of " criticism," the combination of J with P into one account was many years from achievement in Ezekiel's time, and P was not written. It is again worthy of notice ¦* Others, "one sealing exactness," but LXX. ah airoa^piyurim d/iouiia'eas ; Vulg., Tu signaculnm similitndinis ; Syr. ; Jerome expressly ; some MSS., see De Eoesi. Does not this reading best accord with the context, and the other introduce something quite alien from it ? t That the reference is to the High Priest's breast-plate is likely : (1) because the stones occur in the order of Exod. 28. 17-30, though only nine ; (2) because out of the nine, four occur only here and in Exodus ; (3) because the LXX. evidently so inter preted, supplying the twelve as in Exodus ; (4) because it is precisely in the manner of Ezekiel's other aUusions, and agrees with the context. In the latter part of t;. 13 (Ezekiel) there is probably an obscure aUusion to the "male and female," Gen. 1. 27 (P). t Is it not possible too that in this ideal reference to the first man we may see the foreninner of the exaggerated ideal of later Hebrew thought ? S 1063. LI 630 LEX MOSAICA. that this being a public prophecy against Tyre and its king, there is strong probabiUty that Ezekiel was using imagery which would be plainly inteUigible to the educated part of his audience, and referring to a writing * which was a property common to them with him. From this consideration of the subtlety and natural imme- diateness of Ezekiel's allusions to the Priests' Code, as of one who falls at once into such allusion from being imbued with its ideas and phrases, we are now in a better position to ap preciate justly his allusions to the Tabernacle. We see that aUusions of implication, even slight and sometimes remote, not always at first sight in the line of his subject, are natural to Ezekiel's mind, because by long pondering he has made the Priests' Code colour his mode of thinking. From this cause we consider that it is not extravagant to see a clear refereiice to the outer covering of the Tabemacle and to its ornamentation in the broidered work, the tachash skin,t the fine linen, and the hair-woven stuff J of Ezek. 16. 10. The people of Israel is in this chapter personified in the figure of a woman whom Jehovah rescued and took to wife, and it is their history that is treated of under this figure. The chapter abounds in that, so to speak, covert historical allusion, which is eminently in Ezekiel's manner. There is in v. 7, " I gave thee to multiply as the springing up or produce of the field, and thou didst increase and wax great," a reference to the increase and waxing mighty of the children of Israel in Egypt (Exod. 1). There is a reference in vv. 7 and 8 to Jehovah's making Israel His chosen people (Exod. 19. 5), in v. 9 to the ceremonial ablution of the people for sanctification before the giving of the Commandments (Exod. * Surely a writing. The verbal resemblances, the cfrder of the precious stones the same as in Exodus, sufficiently indicate this on -any principles of literary analogy. t tJTin. the skin of some marine animal, whether seal, dugong, or halicore, to be obtained from the Red Sea. There is historical evidence that such skin was used to cover tents with, and by the Arabs to make sandals. The word occurs only in this one place of Ezekiel, and in the Pentateuchal accounts of the Tabernacle, in the O.T. It is rendered erroneously " badgers' skin " in A.V. X EJ'B', the Egyptian linen and embroidery, of which Ezekiel speaks only once again, in eh. 27. 7. There seems no sufficient reason for translating the last word of this verse "sUk." The word means some stuff finely drawn. It is translated in the LXX. Tfixiinif, woven of hair; Vulgate, subtilibus. It occurs only in this place of Ezekiel. EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 581 19. 10, 14), and the after consecration of anointing oU of repre- Bentative persons and things (in the later chapters of Exodus). Later came "the prospering into a kingdom" of v. 13. Then surely come in the list of idolatrous forsakings of Jehovah allusions to the idolatries of Solomon, " every one that passed by," to the idolatrous bamoth, to the Baal worship,* and the passmg the children through the fire to Moloch. In the midst of aU these historical allusions we come upon the weU-known expressions used in the supposed Priestly Code of the Taber nacle building and priestly dress, and here only; those expres sions being used which were adaptable to a woman's dress to carry out the figure {vv. 10-13). They are spoken of as the religious covering and adornment given to the people upon their becoming chosen by Jehovah, and as given by Him. If we duly weigh Ezekiel's manner and the known work ing of his mind, it becomes, we think, quite clear that his aUusion in this place is certainly to the Tabernacle, and to the Egyptian and desert material of which it was constructed. And, again, it is to be regarded that in a public prophecy to his people he is recalling their minds to well-known histori cal facts. His allusions to the Tabemacle are in the same manner as, and side by side with, the other clear historical aUusions of the chapter. In ch. 41. 1 it seems for the same reasons equaUy clear that he refers to the dimensions of the Tabernacle. The measurement pf his Temple proper corre sponded to "the breadth of the Tent." f His Temple proper, after passing the porch, was twelve cubits broad We gather from Exod. 26. 22, 23, 25 that the breadth of the "Tabernacle" was eight boards broad, each board being a cubit and a half in breadth {ihid., v. 16). The breadth of the Tabemacle would then be twelve cubits broad, correspondent to the breadth of Ezekiel's Temple proper, as he says. And Ezekiel recalls the attention of his reader or hearer to the similarity to a well- known historical fact, a similarity of much significance. Again, m Ezek. 37. 25 to the end, there is a reference to the meaning * "The images of a male" oi v. 17 is surely an aUusion to Baal worship; compare 2 Kings 3. 2. It is an indirect allusion in just Ezekiel's manner. T There is no difference of reading. The LXX. omits. Vulgate, latitudinem taber- naculi. We know that some treat "tent" as having some unusual technical meaning, for which there is no parallel, but the commonly accepted meaning yields the best sense. LI 2 532 LEX MOSAICA. and position of the Tabemacle, clearly aUuding to Exod. 25. 8, 9 and Lev. 26. 11, 12, while the manner of the allusion as clearly indicates that the places in Exodus and Leviticus (both the sup posed P) are original there.* The meaning of the Tabemacle was as a visible symbol of God living and moving amongst His people as their God and consecrating them; its place was "in their midst," not either in the Northem or Southern Kingdom of later days. It may be asked, if this is not a plain historical allusion to something well known by the people, but an aUu sion to a work of " late Jewish fancy," not yet achieved by a priestly school of Ezekiel's disciples, what possible significance of prophetic comfort could it have for them ? The drift of the prophecy is the retum of what used to be. But again there would appear, if we duly consider the manner of Ezekiel's historical allusions, an equally clear reference to the history of the Tabemacle in ch. 23.t The chapter is a bold historical condemnation of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, and of Judah also. The name of Samaria is given first as Aholah, i.e. her Tent or Tabernacle, and then that of Jerusalem, AhoUbah, my Tent or Tabernacle in her. It is to be observed that these names are set forth as significant, and historically significant, because the rest of the chapter is so. What possible significance, it may be asked, could there be for the people other than a covert but easily understandable reference to the history of their worship and religious fealty, which is the subject — a reference, namely, first to the Tabemacle in Shiloh, which Jehovah "refused" (the same word for Tabemacle, Ohel, Ps. 78. 67), and which afterwards became the pretext for schismatical unauthorised worship of Samaria's own, and next, to the Tabemacle at Jerusalem, which Jehovah " chose," and which afterwards be came in its permanent form the centre of the legitimate cultus. * The word for "sanctuary " is a " priestly" word occurring only in the Priests' Code, so caUed, in the Pentateuch with one exception. The reference to the " Taber nacle " is in such a way as only to be an aUusion to the historic Tabemacle. The substitution in Ezekiel {v. 27) of a different phrasing from Leviticus {v. 11) is a sUght indication, among many others, that Ezekiel is not the author of the ideas. t Consider carefully the manner of the other historical references of the chapter, specially to the recrudescence of Egyptian forms of corrupt worship introduced into the Northern Kingdom by Jeroboam, jost come from Egypt, in v. S. EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 533 And if any one, after duly pondering these historical references of Ezekiel — which are all the more forcible because covert, as implying things well known to the people, to which a slight aUusion was sufficient to caU up the history — should con sider that there is in them any support to the theory that the Tabemacle was " the fruit solely of late Jewish fancy," credat Judaeus Apella, non ego. We conceive them, on the contrary, to offer strong support to the ordinary and time-honoured his torical view of the Tent of Meeting of Mosaic age. But if the study of Ezekiel shows him from long pondering over the written Priests' Code to have a mind so full of its ideas and phrases as to be full * of indirect references to it, there is no want of direct reference to it as to the Law of the people. Take the instance of the ideal of righteousness set forth in ch. 18. The whole chapter meets a perversion bf the doctrine of original sin, and children suffering for their fathers' default (of which the supposed Priests' Code is full ; compare Gen. 5. 3 ; 6. 13 ; specially Lev. 26. 39 ; Num. 16. 27 ; 31. 1-3 (32. 14 JE, be tween two pieces of P), the second commandment, and the prac tical disappearance of the tribe of Simeon, of which the sup posed E in Gen. 49. 5-7 and the supposed P in Num. 25. 6-18 give the cause) by emphasising the complementary truth of per sonal responsibility under conditions of greater or less privUege (of which truth the Priests' Code is also full ; witness the con stantly recurring priestly phrase, " bear his, her, or their iniquity," a phrase of which Ezekiel too makes frequent use). But to bring home and to illustrate this point Ezekiel puts for ward an ideal of righteousness, which is also the ideal of the people's conscience — else he might as well have spoken in a foreign tongue, and would have made a perplexity darker — ^but an ideal which is entirely coloured from the supposed Priests' Code. He begins by asserting the equal relation of every one of the people to Jehovah as belonging to Him by right of redemp tion, which is a thought which underlies the whole priestly legislation (see Exod. 13. 1-3, the supposed P). He proceeds to the ideal of righteousness and judgment. They consist, from the negative and positive sides severally, in not eating upon the mountains {i.e. sacrificiaUy on idolatrous high places, an implicit * The passages we have been considering are only instances which might be vastly increased in number if space allowed. 534 LEX MOSAICA. reference to Lev. 26. 30 ; Num. 33. 52, both P ; compare Exod. 32. 6), not lifting up his eyes to the " idols " of the house of Israel (another reference to Lev. 26. 30, to which passage there is critical probability that the word is original, if the derisive cast of the peculiar expression " your carcases upon the carcases of your round blocks or logs," and the frequent use of the same word " idols or logs " by Ezekiel, whose writing is much im pregnated by the phrases of Lev. 26, be duly considered), nor defiling his neighbour's wife (the word " defile " a peculiarly priestly expression, signifying an offence against the consecra tion of a chosen people, pervading the Priests' Code), not coming near a menstruous woman (Lev. 15. 19 to the end, the technical word quoted), nor oppressing any (a word peculiar to the Priestly Code with three exceptions ; the law referred to is Lev. 19. 33 ; 25. 14, 17), but restoring to the debtor his pledge (wording peculiar to Ezekiel, but reference to Exod. 22. 25-27, the so-caUed " Book of the Covenant," where notice that P and the so-called older legislation are treated on an equal footing by Ezekiel in an appeal to the popular conscience), not spoiling any by violence (pi'^j^J Si J. the words of Lev. 5. 23, 21 (A.V. 6. 2, 4), a phrase only occurring there and here), but giving bread to the hungry, and covering the naked with a garment (a reference to the spirit of Deut. 15. 7, 8, but not verbal, again indicating the equal treatment of P and the so-called older legislation), not giving forth upon usury (Lev. 25. 36, 37), nor taking any increase {ibid. 25. 36 ; the word occurs only in this place of Leviticus, once Prov. 28. 8, and in Ezekiel), but with drawing his hand from iniquity (verbal reference to Lev. 19. 15 > 35), and executing true judgment between man and man (a general reference to the fairness and kindness insisted upon in the Priests' Code and older legislation so-caUed alike, in such passages as Lev. 6. 2-5 ; 25 ; Deut. 1. 16, 17 ; and through out). And then Ezekiel sums up the ideal generally as " walk ing in Jehovah's statutes (the word impUes they were written), and keeping Jehovah's judgments to do what is true and right eous " (the word " keep " implies they were given). Then follows the picture of the wicked son, a violent and unright eous person, of a man who should have done this judgment, and righteousness. He is " a shedder of blood " (a phrase recalling Gen. 9. 6 ; Lev. 17. 4 ; Num. 35. 33, aU the. supposed P, and EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 535 possibly of larger reference than to the crime of murder only, implying great disregard of the Law also), " and doeth the like to any one of these forbidden things ( TVHb "IhK&j ^ phrase both in words and sense recalling Lev. 4. 2, njn& nnND» ^^^ characteristicaUy different, Uke Ezek. 14. 8, "I wUl cut him off' from the midst of his people,'' a priestly phrase from Lev. 17. 10 and elsewhere, but in which Ezekiel substitutes *]')nto for the Levitieal y\pQ *), but doeth not any of those duties." Then foUow the same catalogue of sins, with addition of the Levitieal phrase in the Levitieal sense, " committeth abomination " (Lev. 18. 29 ; 20. 13), and the passage ends with a Levitieal quota tion, "his blood shaU be upon him " (Lev. 20. 9). And again in V. 18, in the words " cruelly oppressed," there is another verbal reference to Lev. 6. 4 (5. 23, Heb.), frpm which passage comes once again " spoUed his brother with violence," thus clinching the certainty of a reference to a document. And the concluding phrase of the verse, " shall die in his iniquity," is the equivalent of the Levitieal phrase often recurring, " bear his inquity." In u 24, " in the trespass which he hath trespassed " (compare the full phrase with " against me," 17. 20) refers to Lev. 26. 40. It is a priestly phrase. In fine, the word translated " ruin " in V. 30, elsewhere translated " stumbUngblock," probably may have some colour of its significance from Lev. 19. 14, where the same word occurs (compare Isa. 6. 10). Thus we see without doubt that Ezekiel sets forth an ideal of righteousness and judgment famiUar to the conscience of the people, derived almost entirely from the so-called Priests' Code. There can also be no doubt that from the manner of his references it is to a famiUar docu ment he aUudes, unless we are to revolutionise all the principles of Uterary analogy which historians are accustomed to go upon; and of which common observation supports the trustworthiness It remains rapidly to summarise some other of Ezekiel's refer ences in order to give some idea of the scope and extent of them. It will be convenient to take them in the order of the sub jects of the Levitieal Code. (1.) We have seen the references to the meaning and ma terial of the Tabernacle, and to the High Priest's breastplate and "¦ These resemblances and differences show, amongst many other things that show the same, that Ezekiel was in no sense the author of the legislation. 536 LEX MOSAICA. implicitly of his presence on the Day of Atonement before the Shekinah enthroned between the anointed cherubim. Besides these there is a clear allusion to the High Priest's " mitre" (Ezek. 21. 26 (31); Exod 28.4). The word translated "diadem "in Ezekiel is the technical term used only of the High Priest's mitre in the Priests' Code and in this place of Ezekiel in the 0. T. There is also characteristic allusion to the " bonnets " of the priests,* an allusion to the office of Aaron's sons to " sprinkle the blood " upon the altar (Ezek. 43. 20 ; Exod. 29. 20, and elsewhere in Priests' Code), and other famiUar phrases; an allusion (with characteristic differences, to which we desire to refer later) to their duties as teachers and judges (Ezek. 44. 23, 24, quotation Lev. 10. 10; Deut. 17. 8, 9), to the laws that regulate a priest's life (Lev. 21 ; Ezek. 44), and to the public support of priests and Levites (" I am thy portion and thy inheritance," Num. 18. 20, quoted with characteristic difTerence Ezek. 44. 28), and specifically to the High Priest's mot allowing his hair to grow long (Lev. 21. 10 ; Ezek. 44. 20 ; compare Num. 6. 5, yiS, apparently technical in this sense). So Driver ; or if we keep to the rendering of A.V., " uncover his head,"t the allusion would be in Ezekiel to Num. 6. 5, to the long hair of the Nazarites. There is also an allusion (Ezek. 1. 26, " as the appearance of a sapphire stone ") to the theophany which preceded the Tabernacle (Exod. 24. 10, supposed E), coupled in u 28 with an aUusion to th£ meaning of the rainbow (Gen. 9. 13, supposed P), showing an equal treatment of E and P. (2.) Ezekiel alludes to the kinds of sacrifice, i.e. by the terms which denote the principles underlying them, thie details of ritual being presupposed as found in the writing to which he refers. It is the return to former usages with a mysterious diflference which forms the subject of chapters 40 — 48. The references occur, generally speaking, in the order of the Priests' Code. After the cleansing and sanctifying of the altar, as in '* Ezek. 44. 18 DTIK'O n^?Q. not the i*}^ ni?35)On nXQ of Exod. 39. 28, the technical terra translated " bonnets " in Exodus only occurring in the Priests' Code. Ezekiel alludes to their other distinctive dress also. t This translation is supported by the LXX. tV Ki(pa\^v ovk iitoKiSapiiaei, shall not take off his mSapis or " mitre '' and by the Vulgate, non discooperiet ; in Ezekiel, LXX. tAs ie6iias avrHv oi i((i\t6(rou(r£, " make bald," a repetition ; Vulgate, neqne comam nutrient. EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 537 Exod. 29 (Ezek. 43. 18 to the end), come the burnt offer ing (Lev. 1 ; Ezek. 43. 27), the peace offering (out of its order Lev. 3 ; Ezek. 43. 27), the meal offering (Lev. 2 ; Ezek. 44. 29 ; compare 46. 14, where the technical expression "fine flour," j-^^Q occurs), the sin offering, the guilt offering (Lev, 4. 5 ; Ezek. 44. 29), the free-will bumt off'ering or free-will peace offer ing (Ezek. 46. 12; Lev. 7. 11-22; in Leviticus differently differentiated into the praise offering, the vow, the voluntary offering, but compare Lev. 22. 17-21), the priest's "heave offering " (Ezek. 44. 30 ; Lev. 7. 28-34 ; but singularly enough the " wave offering " is not mentioned in Ezekiel, though " every oblation of aU, of every sort,'' implies it, and the word " heave offering," translated " oblation," is used pecuUarly of land (48. 8-10) with the addition " holy," surely in a way not classical to the times of Moses or to the style of P.*). " The salt of the covenant of God " may be an innovation cast upon the burnt offering (Ezek. 43. 24), but it is a reminiscence of Lev. 2. 13 ; comp. Num. 18. 19. t The expression " my bread " in Ezek 44. 7 recalls Lev. 22. 25 and other places, while the words " fat and blood " surely imply the principles of the sacri ficial ritual of the Priests' Code (comp. also Ezek. 46. 19-24 with Lev. 2. 4 ; 6. 20, 21). The priest's share of the offerings is men tioned Ezek. 44. 29, though possibly in a larger sense ; the use of oU and incense 16. 18. The distinction between clean and unclean food (Lev. 11) is alluded to in Ezek. 44. 23, where the priests are evidently set forth as the interpreters to the people of a code of instructions, recalling Lev. 10- 10, 11. The allusion in Ezek. 36. 17 recalls by its technical terms chaps. Lev. 12, 15. To the ceremonial of the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16) there are several allusions in Ezek. 43, 44. To the' law of the ceremonial holiness of the chosen people (Lev. 17 — 26) there are so many aUusions, direct and indirect and idiomaticj in Ezekiel as to raise the question of his authorship of this code, which, however, is found by reason of the differences to be a critical absurdity. Especially * The word nDllfl means surely, in its classical sense, something lifted cere monially heavenwards. t A similar novelty is the name Ariel ("lion of God," probably) given to the focus ofthealtar(43. 16, 16). X The recurrence of idiomatic expressions and refrains peculiar to Leviticus indicates reference to a document. Of this document Ezekiel was not the author. 538 LEX MOSAICA. are the references noticeable to Lev. 26, upon which (Lev. 26. 25, 37), amongst many other references to it, the prophecy of " the sword " (Ezek. 21) is based. The feasts and holy days of the Hebrew nation are mentioned, not exhaustively, but in the manner of Lev. 23, with addition or alteration of direction, but the alterations were not carried out by the returned exiles, as is evidenced in Ezra and Nehemiah.* In Ezek. 44. 29 is an allusion to " things devoted " (D*)n), as in Lev. 27 and Num. 18. 14. There is an allusion to the year of liberty (Lev. 25. 10 '^1*^^ quoted) and the law of inalienable inheritance, and inheritance apportioned by the law (Ezek. 46. 17 ; 48. 14 [the use of the word " suburbs " in the following verses recalls the Levitieal suburbs of Num. 35] ; and 47 — 48). In 45. 10 is an allusion to the j;ust balances of Lev. 19. 35, 36, and V. 12 is a quotation of Exod. 30. 13 of the value of the shekel ; compare Lev. 27. 25 ; Num. 18. 16. Now this rapid survey of some of the allusions of Ezekiel to the Priestly Code is not intended in any sense to be exhaustive, but rather to indicate their scope and extent. It is conceived that it may be asserted, with some degree of probability^, that the law of leprosy and of Levitieal duties towards the bearing of the Ark f are the only parts of the Priests' Code to which Ezekiel does not make direct aUusion, or allusion of such sort as on any ground of literary probability to imply acquaint ance, and familiar acquaintance, with the remainder not specifi cally alluded to. What, then, do these allusions mean ? It is not suggested by any sane critic that Ezekiel is the author of the Priests' Code, because together with the aUusions are specific differences of atmosphere and language which put them far apart. But it is put forward as a critical certainty that a school of Ezekiel put it into writing, of whom he was ihe father, though the only evidence we have is that they did not carry out his instructions on their return to Palestine, and of whose existence; again. * It would appear that in Lev. 23. 39 there is some, but not certain, ground for supposing an insinuation of later custom in the " eighth day " of the feast — an insinuation remarkable as probably the only one of which any proof can be given. Exceptio probat regulam. t The Ark is not mentioned, but acquaintance with its anointing is implied in Ezek. 28. Leprosy is not mentioned. EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 539 there is not the slightest historical trace outside a theory. But, as we have seen, it is the essence of the theory that they had a free hand to introduce something new, and to exercise their " late Jewish fancy " in inventing the Tabernacle account, and inventing aU the "parts of the history of their nation which wiU not square with the theory. Dr. Driver gets rid of the clear evidences of the ancient aspect of the Levitieal Code and of the clear evidence of aUu sions to it in the Hebrew literature by asserting that "they attest the existence of certain institutions ; they do not at test the existence of the particular document (P) in which the regulations touching those institutions are now codified." Again, " the principal institutions of P are not the creation of the exilic period, but they existed in Israel in a more rudi mentary form from a remote period." '' P is based upon pre existing Temple usage." " It is probable that the completed Priests' Code is the work of the age subsequent to Ezekiel."* It should seem, however, that such subtleties do not corre spond to the facts which we have been considering. (1.) It is admitted, with some reluctance, that Ezekiel " pre supposes parts " of the Priests' Code. An imperfect survey of the evidence shows that his allusions and references are fairly co-extensive with the whole of P. The verbal and idiomatic nature of his references make it certain that he refers to a written document; so they would be conclusively regarded in any other literary history. Further, the observed character of the working of Ezekiel's mind implies more than the bare enumeration of passages gives as an absolute result. We have proof that Ezekiel was a profound and daily student of the Torah of the so-caUed Priestly Code, saturated, so to say, with a sense of its Divine value. AU the principles which move in the Priests' Code, and are the cause of its precepts, are involved m Ezekiel's references to it, as well as the actual details repro duced. According to all laws, therefore, of that literary analogy which we commonly and satisfactorily apply to like cases, the inference is on certain ground that Ezekiel's references to a * Driver's Introd., pp. 136, 144, 135. The principal reason given for the date of P being later than Ezekiel is the distinction between priests and Levites. This point we hope to consider later. There is a certain irony about it, as, if so, the Hebrew church formulated the distinction when it ceased to be of importance. 540 LEX MOSAICA. document are to the document that has come down to us, and not to something else of which we have neither trace nor evidence.* The literary presumption, amounting for the historian to prac tical certainty, is that he refers to a whole, not to " parts." f (2.) But, again, we have proved that Ezekiel's allusions are to a public document having immediate and binding force upon the consciences of the better sort of the people. The doctrine of the ancient roots of P, and of its being a transcript of Temple usages, wiU not sufficiently account for this, and does not suffi ciently reckon with it. Mere traditionary custom with a mix ture of late legends, both a growth of many years, do not reach to the conscience. Such things have no Divine authority. The theory fails to account for the facts in the greater significance of them. (3.) And, in conclusion, the theory necessarily involves an inference abhorrent to our sense of justice. Ezekiel was a man of great and lofty sentiments ; his prophecies were ful filled in a marvellous and literal manner as to detail, and, as to subject, preach the loftiest ideal attainable to man. There is evidence of a Divine inspiration of the man which set him higher than his age. But by direct assertion and manifold im plication of many kinds, he discredits the theory of "ancient roots and Temple customs." He says of the Priestly Code, with which his writings are saturated, speaking in the person of Je hovah, " Wherefore I caused them to go forth out of the land * We have proved that the argument from historical silence and the inconsis- . tency of after events is quite i as valid against the existence of P in the age after Ezekiel as for the ages before Ezekiel. It may be employed with stiU greater force against Ezekiel himself being the author of his so-called legislation. t If the subtle principles of the critical theory are valid, they are valid for all literary history. There is an opening for some very curious and learned treatises. We venture to suggest one or two subjects from English history. " Shakespeare's Bible, its different limits and varying doctrines from the Bible now current." It is evident that he alludes to parts of it, but not to the completed Bible. It is clear, for ' instance, that Shakespeare's Bible did not contain the Second Epistle of St. Peter. The man that wrote in his last days — "Like the baseless fabric of this vision — The doud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces. The solemta temples, the great globe itself — Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve," could not have seen 2 Peter 3. 7. He refers to a dissolution rather by water, or perhaps vapour. Again another subject, stUl more attractive from the opportunities presented, " The Prayer Book first written by the Tractarian School at Oxford." Again another, " Gibbon's history the work of two or more authors." EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 541 of Egypt, and brought them into the wilderness. And I gave them My statutes, and shewed them My judgments, which if a man do, he shall even live in them." * Further, it becomes certain from this that the constantly recurring references of the Priestly Code referring its precepts to God by the media tion of Moses were in his copy of them, as in ours. Ezekiel knew the facts thoroughly. If the theory of "ancient roots and Temple customs" is true, he was practically dishonest, and his school were too. Consider his character ; consider the character of the Torah. Is it likely? IIL We are told that Ezekiel "was the first to take the step of making the conduct of worship the subject of the (written) Torah." After came amongst the priests "a kind of school of people who reduced to writing and to a system what they had formerly practised in the way of their caUing." Hence was gradually evolved the Priests' Code as we have it. What is the relation which Ezekiel's "first step" or "first draft" bears to the Priests' Code, so called, as we now have it ? We have seen some of the relations which Ezekiel bears to the Priests' Code, but there is something specific in this which deserves to be further considered. Now we observe in the first place that the Book of Eze kiel's prophecy begins with a "vision" ("the heavens were opened, and I saw the visions of God," 1. 1). It also ends with one (" the hand of Jehovah was upon me " ; " In the visions of God brought He me into the land of Israel," 40. 1, 2). It is certain that chaps. 40 — 48 are these "visions of God." * Ezek. 20. 10-27. The whole passage absolutely precludes any idea of a growth in its main principles and main practices of the Levitieal Code. Let the attentive reader judge. The "I gave them also (Qji) statutes not good, and judgments whereby they should not live" of w. 25 refers surely to the ancient customs which Moses regulated, but did not sanction, because of "the hardness of their hearts." They were not intrinsically good. It is difficult to understand how the charge of imposture can be met upon the critical theory. The Bishop of London says of our Divine Lord, " The moral and spiritual evidence is His own character, which intentionally overshadows all the rest, &nd it is inconceivable that He should have made a false claim " {Bampton Lectures, 1884, p. 216). So is it the task of " criticism " to show how " Judaism," a mass of legends and pious frauds, was sufficient to create or to portray the characters of the saints of the Hebrew church. Water does not rise above its highest level. 542 LEX MOSAICA. These chapters are entirely bound together both by manner and subject. Moreover, it is certain that to these chapters the names " first step " and " first draft " are applied by WeUhausen and Kuenen respectively. To no other part of Ezekiel could they be applied with any degree of vraisemblance. It is weU, therefore, before going further, to have a clear idea of the He brew conception of a vision in the first place, and then, in the second place, of a vision of God. For it is evident that in accordance with their conception of visions of God, so would the Hebrews have regarded this "first draft" of Ezekiel. The vision* is closely aUied to a dream in sleep (Dan. 2. 28 ; 7. 2), and is mediated by the working of the brain (Dan. 4. 5 (2); 7. l).t It is the later counterpart of the dreams of Joseph and of Pharaoh. Hence it has some of the character istics of a dream. This observation is justified by the contents of the vision, as it is by the contents of the earlier dreams. We see the recurrence of images and thoughts impressed upon the brain in the waking hours. The train of fixed thought and visual conception is continued. We see the so to speak natural combination of the possible and the impossible. The brain is set free from the logical sequences and matter of fact condi tions of ordinary waking life. We see also the trammels which limit human imagination. Though the subject may be trans cendent, its representation takes the form of a combination of things at some time seen and pondered upon. The brain is set free for great variety of combination, but it is combina tion still, as in an act of waking fancy or poetic intuition; it is not invention of something entirely new. It follows that the vision and the dream alike are symboUcaL If they were hardly literal, where were the need of an interpreter? By striking images well remembered they suggest rather than convey. Such is the Hebrew conception of the vision, judged alike by the way in which it is treated, and by its contents. * The derivatives of ntH ^i^ of HN") e^'e used of the vision. To the derivatives of nX"l and the word ,ini itself, as possibly conveying a greater sense of objective reality, both Ezekiel and Daniel give on the whole the preference. t It is to be observed that no considerations as to the date and authorship of Daniel will at all affect the evidence of the book to the Hebrew conception of a vision. It should seem also clear that there is a broad distinction between the use of the word "vision'' of a whole book of prophecy as being a Divine intuition and the vision proper difi'erently described, which is akin to a dream. EZEKipL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 543 And the visions of God are prophetic. They convey in the symbols of what is allied to a dream teaching as to the cha racter, glory, thought, design of the Most High in His dealings with men and nations, and in the unsearchable greatness of His own nature. The dream character remains. We see in them the same strong impression of the waking thoughts of the prophet, the same so to say natural combination of the possible and the impossible, the same limitations of the human imagination. It is difficult not to see in the visions of God with which the Book of Ezekiel opens the effect impressed upon the prophet's mind and brain of strong wind storms, of refiection upon the Assyrian kingly ideal, of the idea of cherubim common to the earliest traditions, of the composite winged creatures of Assyria, of Solomon's great brazen laver for the priests in the Temple court, which Ezekiel had doubt less seen, and of pondering upon the four cherubim of the Temple, upon the sacred writings of his people, and upon the vision of God in Exod. 24. 9, 10 and Isa 6. 1-8. We see also in the moving chariot of Jehovah something great, splendid, and invested with the highest art of the imagi nation, but whose actuality is probably impossible of concep tion.* But though the ideas are transcendent, we see the hmitations of the human imagination also. The representation is a splendid combination of what the prophet had seen or thought ; perhaps it would have no meaning for us else. The same characteristics belong also to the great concluding vision of the Temple. " On the very day when the city was smitten " t (40. 1), there arises in the visions of God before the mind of the prophet another temple. Phoenix like, as from its ashes. Its dimensions are all fixed and settled, as the dimensions of the Tabemacle in Moses' day were fixed and settled, " according to the pattern which he saw (in vision) in the mount " (Exod. 25.40; the prophet himself was upon "an exceeding high moun tain"). AU its order, fixed and determinate, has its affinity with the Torah, which the prophet, by long pondering, has made his own. The glory of God retums to it ; and round its stately * " Omnia Dei magnitudinem spirant." — Doederlein in RosenmiiUer. t Literally " the bone of that day," a peculiarly Pentateuchal expression. Com pare also with the way in which Ezekiel speaks of " the city " the way in which he speaks of the Tabemacle, as " the tent " — i.e. the well-known city, the weU-known tent. 544 LEX MOSAICA. pile gathers a renewed state and its prince, the regulations for which have their affinity with the ideal of the Torah, and the name of the city, risen again from its ashes and its sorrows, is "Jehovah is there." Nothing can be more striking. In Jerusalem all is turmoil, all sorrow — the agony of conquest, the agony of defeat, the apparent end in blood and ruin of the Hebrew nation and their worship alike ; but in the prophet's eye the self -same day arises* another Temple as it had been without hands, another worship, another state with the same righteous, holy laws, with healing and medicine in its midst both for nature and for man (47). He sees no end of nation or of worship ; he sees their purification and enlargement in a kingdom to come. In the midst of terror and foreboding, " men's hearts failing them for fear," his mind is calm with the peace of God. The future rises up before him, determinate and settled, solemn and calm, as by the " determinate counsel and foreknow ledge of God." The name of the city is from the day in which Jehovah causes his glory to inhabit it, " Jehovah is there." But again, we see the dream-like combination of the possible and the impossible. The chief dimensions of the Tabernacle and Temple are kept as sacred in themselves and as symbols of continuance, but, not like the dimensions of Moses' clearer vision, face to face, its whole area is an impossible area. The dimensions of the "holy oblation" are impossible dimensions. The river, with its living waters and healing trees, which issues from " the threshold of the House," is an impossible river. The distribution of the land to the Twelve Tribes is an impossible distribution, bearing also no relation to their numbers and requirements. But in the third place, though tbe vision is transcendent, we see the same limitations of the human imagination. It is a representation entirely arising from what the prophet has seen, read, and pondered over. His ideal of fertility, and life, and heaUng, is a river like the river of Egypt or the rivers of Mesopotamia, which were the source of the greatness, prosperity, and peace of nations. Thus " the visions of God," which obtain in the evolution of Hebrew history and literature an increased significance for '* Like the city of God did before Augustin in another hour of the shaking of aU things. EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 545 the times of Ezekiel and the Book of Daniel, are akin to the dreams of earlier times. They were inspired dreams, prophetic, suggestive, needing interpretation, not likely to be read by the educated Hebrew in a sense rigidly literal. But there is one feature common to the opening and con cluding vision of Ezekiel. They both introduce a new view of the sublime subject of which they treat. The moving chariot of the four cherubim and mystic wheels with its throne of brightness, with " the likeness as the appearance of a man upon it," with " as the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain " shining " round about," introduces a change of conception. The symbols change because the conception is changing. The conception of Jebovah in the likeness of a man * (naturally abhorrent to a priestly mind), moving in the midst of wrath, yet surrounded with the symbol of a covenant of peace and security (a symbol of the supposed P), is something new.f So, too, is the vision of the Temple infused throughout with the secret chemistry of mysterious changes. The "new order " is to have its roots in the old, but to be different also. It is, then, nothing but an easy confidence in the pliability of facts which finds in this vision of the Temple either a " first step " or a " first draft." It is not a " first step," because it is full of certain references to a document which existed before it. It is not a "first draft," for both its character and contents show it not to be a draft at all. No educated Hebrew would have so regarded it. It is full of the dream-like symbolism of the visions of God. But it is our good fortune to be favoured with an explana tion, at some length, of how Professor Robertson Smith supposes Ezekiel to have affected the after history of the Retum, and there is much made by every critic of what is the locus clas- sicus of the theory (Ezek. 44. 6-16) in which Ezekiel treats of the difference between priests and Levites. These, with some other things, remain to be considered. It wiU be noticed in the sequel that consideration of the first * The iv SfiouifMTi dvepiiinev yevSiievos ¦ Kal axhl^"''"- ^"Pf^cls &s 6.v6pamos of Phil. 2. 7 recalls the LXX. of this place of Ezekiel, btwlaiia iis liSos dvepiirov (Ezek. 1. 26). t The anthropomorphism is unlikely in the father of P. The interpretation of Irenaeus of the Incarnate one, borne about the world iipon the throne of the four Gospels, may be strained in detail, but it indicates the direction of the change (Irenasus, Against Heresie^^ii:; 11. 8). S logs:' M m 546 LEX MOSAICA. subject involves treatment of the second. Professor Robertson Smith's observations will be found under the heading, " The Development of the Ritual System between Ezekiel and Ezra."* Now, again, the reader's careful attention is drawn to the fact that outside a " critical " theory there exists no evidence at all upon this matter but the Book of Ezekiel and the documents and prophecies of the Retum. These are the only firm evidence at all which can be adduced. The exceeding certainty with which the theory is advanced has a clear argumentative advan tage. It raises the presumption that these learned men have other sources from which they draw their " facts." But there are no such sources. If there was a development of the ritual system between Ezekiel and Ezra and the men of his time, Ezekiel was thoroughly aware of its beginning ; Ezra and the men of his day were thoroughly aware of its results. We must look for the evidence of it in them, and there is no other source of information conceming it. A theory is only deserving of confidence when the facts correspond to it, and are harmonised by it. Professor Robertson Smith and those with him aim to be above all things historical. History is the record of facte, not a spinning of theories. With this proviso, let us look at the details of this supposed development. The late learned Professor begins by defining Ezekiel's so- called legislation as an ideal picture. It is no longer a " first step " or a " first draft." It is an ideal. Now this, though thoroughly inaccurate to the facts we have just been observing, and involving an initial fallacy alien from Hebrew thought, does not wander so far from the region of fact as the definitions of his masters, who have " left nothing of vital importance for the study of Old Testament religion remaining uncertain." And partly under the influence of this ideal, and partly with a freer hand, the development of the Ritual System (we imagine in part by the supposed Priestly School) is traced in the follow ing particulars. We imagine, also, that under the first numbers are grouped the details in which the influence of Ezekiel's ideal are supposed to predominate :^ 1. The distinction between the priests and the Levites to be found in Neh. 7 is the first article of this d»v»lQpment. We * Old Testament in the Jewish Church, note F, p. 382. EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 547 are favoured with interesting historical phases of this develop ment. " This is a distinction," proceeds the Professor, " which is indeed older than Ezekiel, for it is at bottom merely the dis tinction between the Temple priests and the priests of the high places." But before Ezekiel the distinction was not so sharply drawn. The written law of the Restoration was the Deuter onomic Code, and there is observed to be no distinction drawn between them in Malachi. Further, Ezekiel's influence is observed in the stone platform Which served as an altar in the second Temple, in Zech. 3. 7, and in the idea of concentric circles of holiness. 2. The spontaneous service of the people fell into the back ground behind the stated representative ritual. This is one of the most characteristic points of Ezekiel's Torah. 3. The monarchy of the High Priest was one of the results of this development. 4. There was a greatly increased provision for the clergy. 5. There was the innovation of the Day of Atonement, the crowning stone of the priestly edifice ; and 6. A stricter observance of the Sabbath. With the remark that " the priestly aristocracy were the chief opponents of Ezra " — a result which, on the hypothesis, seems scarcely what we should have anticipated — he proceeds : " The Priestly Code has too many points of contact with the actual situation at Jerusalem to lend plausibility to the view that it was an abstract system evolved in Babylonia, but on the other hand, its author * must have stood (whether by his circumstances, or by his strength of mind and firm faith in the principles on which his work is based) outside the petty local entanglements that hampered the Judsean priests." And we are told that Ezra, being a man of action, had no personal share in the shaping of the Pentateuch. Now we conceive that these last observations are the most instructive possible as to the purely theoretic and imaginary character of the critical hypothesis we have been endeavouring to examine, and also as to the way in which it is given the attributes of historical certainty which it does not possess. WeUhausen theorises that "Judaism" is such-and-such, and * The italics are ours. Mm 2 548 LEX MOSAICA. that out of Judaism the principal documents of Hebrew litera ture grew. The theory may have its intellectual fascinations, but we observe that theories applied to history are in danger of being false just in proportion to their subtlety. One fact is stronger than the subtlest theory. We have unquestioned docu ments and records of the age when " Judaism " began and flourished. It is not reason to make the theory prove itself. The theory of Judaism must be squared with its acknowledged records, not its acknowledged records with the theory. The inquiry as to whether " Judaism " was a possible seed-field for the choicest treasures of Hebrew literature must, on all principles of justice to the past, be conducted separately. The exercise of free fancy may be pleasant, and in a sense instructive, but it is not legitimate in an historian. But the above quotation shows that, however to an ine briated imagination nothing of vital importance has been left uncertain, the theory in its vital points is not yet even consis tent with itself. It requires readjustment in the hands of its advocates. And that it does so proves the insecurity of dts foundations. We find, on the one hand, two learned men devoting, so to say, the work of a life-time to the elaboration of an account of how the Priests' Code grew. They say it was the work of a school through ages, chiefly in Babylonia, following on the example of EzekieL On the other hand, another learned man, who takes them as guides, says in a treatise the fruit of his ripest meditation on the subject, that one man wrote it not in Babylonia, but in view of the every-day practice of Jerusalem, with which practice, however, he had nothing to do. Ezra, with the Priests' Code " in his hand," had as his chief opponents " the priestly aristocracy," the very men whose position, dignity, emoluments, and aspirations it is its sujiposed motive to support. And the supposed author of the Priests' Code, whose only hope of receiving public acceptance for the greater exactions and burdens ex hypothesi introduced by it was in the authority of the Judsean priesthood, stood apart and out of sympathy " with their petty local entanglements."* Upon such a knife-edge does * It is plainly seen that the priests of the Return needed instruction in the Law, and that inaccuracies aud inconsistencies in reference to the P Code are as plainly discoverable in the Jerusalem of the Retum as in the old Jerusalem. EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 549 the force of perceived facts upon an able mind poise one who was hypothetically the greatest genius of his era. We are entitled to ask whether this is even a plausible account of the written origin of the P document and the rise of that Judaism of which it must, on this supposition, have been either the introduction or the concomitant. But let us proceed to the facts. The first is the most inter esting and important. For it has to do with a passage of Ezekiel which is in need of careful interpretation, and which in the hands of the " critics " assumes large proportions as a central buttress of their system. It is to be considered that one of the greatest symbols of the vision of Ezekiel is the greater sanctity of his Temple. It emerges, as out of the fire of the nation's trial, purified from ancient stains. It is the purpose of his vision in this way to point the moral of the sorrows of the smitten city. God brings good out of evil. It is so that the greatest prophetic stress is laid upon the greater purity of the visionary Temple that is seen to rise greatly and silently out of the ashes of the first. The former Temple had been defiled, at least ideally, by the grossest idolatries, at the north gate by the image of jealousy, in the very precincts by the abominations of Ezek. 8. The visionary Temple is entered by the eastern gate by the glory of Jehovah, and the gate is shut that nothing else may enter, whUe from the same north gate where the image of jealousy once defiled the view is seen the glory of Jehovah only, filling the house of Jehovah (44. 1-6, evidently a contrast with the vision of 8. 1-7, which it recalls). " The prince " and the people shaU stand to worship at the threshold of the east gate, opened only on the Sabbath (46. 1-8). The precincts shall be sacred to true worshippers only (46. 9-15). The whole Temple inount, not only the shrine, shaU be a Holy of Holies (43. 12). Possibly the neighbourhood of the Temple bad been formerly defiled by the burial of evU kings there (2 Kings 21. 18, 26).* From this, as from the spiritual fornications of their kings, the visionary Temple is free (Ezek. 43. 7). In a line with all this, the priesthood is ideally purified of its ancient historic stains * It would be probably a better interpretation, however, of Ezek. 43. 7 to see an aUusion in the "carcases of their kings" to Lev. 26. 30, "the idol carcases" — a reference to their idolatries and to their idols alike. 550 LEX MOSAICA. (44. 4-16). No actual or spiritual straoger (44. 9) shall enter into the sanctuary. The irregularities are abolished which pro bably had arisen in time^ such as the times of Manasseh, of almost universal apostacy, or as in the times of Jeroboam, who made him " priests of the lowest of the people which were not of the children of Levi"* to serve at his "high places," and probably Solomon's Temple slaves are taken into account. The members of the tribe of Levi also who may conceivably (as in the times of the Judges, Judg. 17, even a relation of Moses did) have given their services for hire to ritual that was idolatrous or evil are degraded. The priests the Levites in the faithful line are honoured. Thus, as in MaL 3. 3, the children of Levi " are purified and purged as gold and sUver in the fire of trial," or, as in 2 Chron. 30. 15 ; 29. 34, are " ashamed and sanctified, and offer the burnt sacrifices of the house of Jehovah." In this passage we are invited to find the first instance of the distinction between the priests and the Levites being " sharply drawn," and on this ground to discard every state ment throughout the whole Hebrew literature, which speaks of this distinction as existing before, as being a post-exilian pro jection of specific " Judaism " into a past in which it existed only in embryo. Before proceeding to so large and really por tentous an inference, it will be well to be sure of our premisses. Now it will be observed that the whole question turns upon the meaning of the phrases in w. 13 : " They shall not come near unto Me, to do the office of priest unto Me, to come near with regard to any of My holy things to the Most Holy : and they shall bear their shame and their abominations which they did." Note first, however, the bearing of the previous verses. The Levites who went astray in idolatry with the people in the days gone by are degraded to the obscurer offices of the house of Jehovah, and to be ministers to the people {v. 11) in slaying the victims for sacrifice, which is a duty given in the Levitieal Code (Lev. 1. 1-5) to the layman who brings the oflfering. But in the same Levitieal Code (Num. 18. 2, P) we find the renewed * Possibly not even of the children of Israel. The phrase (1 Kings 12. 31) is curious, literaUy "from the extremities of the people." These lowest of the people might readily have been not of pure Israelite blood. Compare the gift of Solomon to tho king of Tyre of twenty cities in that region of the Northern Kingdom which Isaiah caUed afterwards Galilee of the nations (1 Kings 9. 11 ; Isaiah 9. 1). EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 551 institution of the Levites spoken of thus: "And also thy brother, the tribe of Levi, the tribe of thy father, draw thou near with thee, and he shall be joined closely to thee* and shall nunister unto thee, and {i.e. as well as) thou and thy sons before the tent of the testimony." The office of the Levites was that of assistant priests. They were joined with the priests of Aaron's line and family as the officers of a representative wor ship. Spoken of as the body of the clergy, these two orders were called the priests the Levites. The reader is asked care fully to note that in Hosea 4. 6 the same word " to do the office of a priest to me " is used of the whole people as representatives of the worship of the true God in the world. And that the word is used of the Levites as ministers of a representative worship with the priests proper in this passage of Ezekiel is plain both from the context and from the words which follow and define its limits. The definition of their office is " as com ing near to me " (the same word is used of the laity Num. 8. 19) and " coming near the most holy things " (the same word is used in Num. 4. 4 of the duties of the Levites) in the exer cise of any holy function. Far other are the expressions used by Ezekiel of the distinctive duties of the priests proper of Aaron's line in vv. 15, 16 : " they shall draw near (another word signifying a more intimate drawing near) to serve Me, and shall stand before Me to bring near fat and blood (the distinctive office of the Aaronic priesthood ; see Leviticus passim), saith the Lord Jehovah : they shall go into My sanctuary, and they shall draw near to My table and to serve Me,, and they shall keep (not the charge of the house, but) My charge." Thus the sense of the passage is, we think, if it be duly weighed and not hastily scanned, perfectly clear in its main drift, t The Levites are in the visionary Temple degraded because of their ancient defilement, not from the distinctive duties of the priests of Aaron's Une, which they never rightly had, but from their near association with the priests proper in representative worship to less honourable functions. They are no longer to be what the * A word used of the close relation and cleaving together of man and wife in Gen. 29. 34. t May there not be an allusion in the expression, " who kept the charge of my sanctuary when the children of Israel wandered away from me," to the persecution and dishonour that faithful priests suffered in those days ? 552 LEX MOSAICA. Levitieal Code gives them to be, ministers to the priests, but ministers to the people. There is no evidence in the passage that the Levites had to do with the distinctive service of the altar at any time. Further, it is evident that this is not to be taken of necessity in a literal way.* It is one out of the many points which impress propheticaUy the greater purification of Ezekiel's visionary Temple, j It has been thoroughly purged from its ancient stains. It is plain also that the same ideal purpose is to be seen in Eze kiel's reference to the "children of Zadok," as though it was exhaustive of the Aaronic line. Th^ priestly houses of the Retum were certainly not all of Zadok 's posterity. But the visionary priests of the visionary Temple are children of Zadok, because in the name is recalled a purification of the Temple service from the defilements of Eli's sons (1 Kings 2. 27). Now that this is a locus cla,ssicus of latter-day criticism is clear from the fact that WeUhausen quotes it at length (and inaccurately) as does Professor Driver (but accurately). They both treat it at some length. J Kuenen, in an unwonted mo ment, even waxes merry over it. Wellhausen says: "With Deuteronomy as a basis'' (in which, according to WeUhausen, the priests and Levites are identical), " it is quite easy to understand Ezekiel's ordinance, but it is absolutely impossible if one starts from the Priestly Code." He goes on to prove to his own satisfaction that on this ground P comes later than EzekieL " The distinction between priest and Levite, which Ezekiel introduces and justifies as an innovation, according to the Priestly Code has always existed." In the same line of argument says Kuenen : " If by reason of their birth it was impossible for the Levites to become priests, then it would be more than strange to deprive them of the priesthood on account of their faults, much as if one were to * It is very probable that this passage of Ezekiel accounts in some measure for the reluctance of the Levites to return, observed in Ezra, and their small numbers, but there is no evidence that it affected their ritual position. Their kiUing the pass- over for the people, contrary to the Priestly Code, seems rather to arise from the gradual modification of the law from considerations of practical convenience (see Eyle's Ezra, p. 85). f Compare the greater strictness of the priestly marriage law in v. 22, as com pared with the Levitieal Code. X WeUhausen's Prolegomena, p. 122; Driver's Introduction, p. 132. EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 553 threaten the Commons with the punishment of disqualification to sit or vote in the House of Lords." And so, largely on the strength of this passage, we are in vited to believe in the total invention of Num. 16, where this very distinction, with other causes, produced a dangerous re bellion, and where the historicity of the record is strongly borne up by undesigned coincidences of its internal evidence. On the sariie grounds we are invited to believe that P was foolish enough to invent all the elaborated regulations of Levitieal ser vice round the Ark for a time when the Ark did not exist, and bad enough to invent throughout the Pentateuch a Divine origin for what was simply a post-exilian order. Says Wellhausen, "That the prophet (Ezekiel) should know nothing about a priestly law with whose tendencies he is in thorough sympathy admits of only one explanation — that it did not exist." A triumphant and a certain conclusion ! But the foundations are not strong enough to bear up so great a superstructure. Far from Ezekiel knowing nothing about this priestly law, it is its very technical language which he uses. Far from degrading the Levites from distinctively priestly duties from which, according to the Priestly Code, their very birth disqualified them, he degrades them from those duties of close association with the priests proper which the Priests' Code in express terms assigns. The whole critical hypothesis, with its enormous deductions, proceeds upon a false interpre tation of the word " to do the office of priest unto me "—an interpretation which we have shown that the context that goes before, and the definition given in the words foUowing, prove to be inadmissible. It is further proved to be a false interpretation by the usage of Ezekiel himself in 40. 45, 46. He there distinguishes between the priests the keepers of the charge of the house, and the priests the keepers of the charge of the altar, but he calls them both priests. From hence it follows that the words " priest, to do the office of a priest," do not exclusively connote the dis- tmctive Aaronic service of the altar (Num. 18. 7) in the writings of EzekieL The degradation of the Levites in Ezek. 44. 9-14 consists in their being excluded from the service of the holy and the holiest things which the Priestly Code gives them (Num. 4. 4), and from their close association with the priest- 554 LEX MOSAICA. hood proper which the Priests' Code gives them also, and rele gated to humbler offices about the gates of the house, and to be ministers to the people, no longer to the priests, when the people come to do sacrifice. With this interpretation falls Ezekiel's support to WeUhausen's fancy about the chief sanctuary priests and the priests of the high places. * It may be possible to consider the other points of ritual de velopment between Ezekiel and Ezra, which Professor Robertson Smith has given us, in less detail. It may or may not be good to find traces of Ezekiel in the stone platform which served as an altar in the time of the Retum, or in Zech. 8. 7 ; but it is difficult to constitute these things into a ritual development. The idea of concentric circles of holiness in Ezekiel, whose ideal plans are manifestly based upon the idea of a square, is a little associated with difficulty. But if it be intended that Ezekiel's Temple plans, with the offices of the priests and the grouping of the Levitieal oblation, form a rough sketch which fulminated the pure imagination of P to draw out his invention of the Tabernacle and its surroundings, nothing can be more unlikely. It is rather the task of " criticism " to show how, on any principles of ordinary likelihood, the supposed P got free from the predominance of Ezekiel his father to sketch out of his own imagination things so very different. It is, indeed, true that the spontaneous service of the people, derived from patriarchal times, seen in the recognised priest hood of father and eldest son, leaving its traces in the Priests' Code and after practice, fell into the background behind the stated representative ritual. But to trace its rise to Ezekiel, or its development to times of the Captivity, is to make purely baseless assertions, and to repudiate every historical document of the Hebrew nation in favour of them. What becomes in this view of the " ancient roots " of the Priests' Code ? A good deal is made by Wellhausen of the monarchy of the High or Chief Priest and the Day of Atonement, which is an innovation, together the crowning stones of the priestly edifice (WeUhausen, Prolegomena, pp. 110, 148). It is not within our province to prove the merits of the * It has been pointed out already that the insignificance of the number, and later infiuence of the Levites of the Return, makes it singularly unlikely that P should elaborate so great a system for them (p. 514). EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 555 historico-critical treatment of the Hebrew writings which pro duces these two ideas, deeply involved with the root conceptions of the Torah and with the significance of the name of the Ark covering, as inventions of the post-exilic times. But it is within our scope to inquire what evidence outside the theory there is of these being parts of a ritual development from Ezekiel to Ezra. Now it is certain that Ezekiel did not begin this de velopment. When treating of the priests he discovers plain allusions to the regulations guiding the High Priest in the Le- vitical Code, but his Temple is without a High Priest. Also, in the same place, are allusions to parts of the ceremonial of the Day of Atonement ; but in his list of feasts and solemni ties it is absent, and it is not alluded to elsewhere. The Day of Atonement is conspicuous by absence from the documents of the Retum. The first allusions to the High Priest are most un natural but as to a position perfectly familiar to the Hebrews. There is no hint of its novelty. It is certain that in the re public of the Retum, and with the absence of kings, the priests, by reason of their large proportionate numbers, and the High Priests because of their hereditary rank, assumed a greater pro minence, but we find it difficult to perceive how this makes for the theory of P. The changed conditions account for this, without imagining the inventions of P to be the cause. The splendid panegyric of Simon, son of Onias, the High Priest (in Ecelus. 50), contains a fine description of the public worship of Israel in his time, and of the High Priestly blessing which con cluded it, but there is no allusion to the Day of Atonement. Of the stricter observance of the Sabbath there are abso lutely no traces in Ezekiel or in exilic or post- exilic times such as will lend themselves to the idea that that stricter observance proceeded from the promulgation for the first time of P. Was not the Sabbath law given in the Fourth Commandment, ex hypothesi before P ? It is true that the Captivity had made the better sort of the Jews value their institutions, and that IS sufficient to account for such traces aa we find in the Book of the Maccabees of honour to the Sabbath giving advantages in warfare to the enemy. One further observation we should like to make in conclusion. We find that in the supposed evolution of P Ezekiel is given a leading and initial part. His was the first step, the first 556 LEX MOSAICA. draft, the first ideal in the ritual development from Ezekiel to Ezra, and after Ezra. We have proved that this conception of Ezekiel's vision is thoroughly erroneous. He was a prophet, not a legislator. But if this hypothesis is held by the critics to be a scientific one, we are entitled to press the further difficulties with which it is involved, to treat it for the moment, and for the purposes of argument, as though it were so, and to observe what results. It would seem, then, with Ezekiel as the first written draft of WeUhausen's temple praxis and Driver's ancient roots, that it is abundantly provable that the work of P is not in Une with it, and cannot legitimately be considered its development. The mysterious changes, which are seen propheticaUy to symbolise a changing order in what is to come, in the view that Ezekiel's legislation is the first glimpse we get of the really his torical worship developed in the RoyaJ Sanctuary, are an obstacle in the way of the supposed P. He had so much to supply, so much to alter. 1. With regard to tKe language, Ezekiel's language is not strictly classical. The language of P is classical, and in a large degree quite different. Where Ezekiel, in the use of P's idioms and in referring to P, reproduces " his " language, as he is con stantly doing, there is an accompanying difference. The legis lation which enlarges a first draft would naturally follow the expressions of the first draft. But P does not do this. 2. Ezekiel's Temple is empty of the Ark, the table of shew bread, the candlestick,* the vail, the cherubim, and other the like. The worship of P centres round the Ark, and is distinctly associated with the other omitted things. The description of the altar of bumt ofifering in Ezekiel varies from that of P, and diflfers in measurement (43. 13-18). f 3. The Sabbath worship of the prince, in which he is the * The word used exclusively of the table of shewbread in the P Code, and abso lutely "the table," occurs in Ezekiel of four "tables" in the porches of the gates, where the flesh of the offering was prepared (40. 43), and fs used of an altar of wood, supposed by some the altar of incense, though it is not said so (41. 22). The word is that which is used of a sacrificial altar, and it is to be of wood only. The word used exclusively in the plural in P of the branches of the candlestick is used in Ezekiel only in the singular of a measuring reed or rod. f Why do not the words Harel and Ariel (Mount of God and Lion of God, sig nificant, like the names of the piUars Jachin and Boaz, of Solomon's Temple) recur in the P Code 1 They are used by Ezekiel of parts of the altar of burnt offering. EZEKIEL AND THE PRIESTLY SCHOOL. 557 principal figure (Ezek. 46), disappears in P. The regulations for sacrifices and priests differ in detail, and in one or two P is less strict and less distinct. The distribution of the land in Ezekiel differs from that of P. There is an equal inheritance of the stranger with the Jew of which P knows nothing. It appears that Ezekiel's altera tions had no effect upon the practice of the Return. The High Priest and Day of Atonement are omitted in Ezekiel. 4. But, most important, the whole atmosphere of Ezekiel is entirely different from that of P. The task that " criticism " has set itself is to explain how a Code the work of an unknown author or authors so predomi nated over the work of Ezekiel as to be adopted as authoritative in its place, and in its stead to be sent forth to posterity authen ticated as the inspired legislation of Moses. The answer to the two questions. When this was done, and What influence between Ezekiel and the time of the LXX. and the Samaritan Pentateuch gave the Code of the supposed P the authoritative position and unquestioned prerogative it has ever since at least possessed, has not yet been given. XIIL THE POST-EXILIC PEEIOD. ROBERT WATTS. I PREEATOEY NOTE. 1. Statement of the chief critical question raised by the higher critics in relation to this Period, viz., the question of the authorship of the Levitieal Torah — whether it is to be ascribed to Moses or to Ezra? 2. Can its authorship be ascribed to Ezra until the claims of Moses have been disproved ? 3. Can the claims of Moses to be the author be negatived in face of the concurrent testimony of both Testaments, with out denying the Scripture doctrine of Inspiration? 4. The economic effects of the denial of the Mosaic authorship of this Torah, from the bearing it must have upon the Way of Life during the Pre-Exilic Period, and upon the question regarding the Unity of the Church under all the dispensations of the Covenant of Grace. 5. Can its authorship be ascribed to Ezra despite the united testimony of himself, the Chronicler, Nehemiah, and that of the Post-Exilic prophets, endorsed by the New Tes tament, in which the Mosaic authorship is affirmed again and again, whereas no such claim, or hint of a claim, is advanced on behalf of Ezra or any other ? 6. The attempt to discredit the claims of Moses and es tablish a counter claim for Ezra, in spite of such united, con current testimony, justifies an inquiry as to the claims of the higher critics to recognition, as authorities within the sphere of Scientific Biblical Criticism. S 1063. N n 562 LEX MOSAICA. 7. Their claims put to the test by an examination of some specimens of their critical conclusions, and of the methods by which they have reached them. 8. Evidence of their unscientific reversal of the relation between facts and theories, showing that their theories are not deduced from an analysis of the facts, but, on the con trary, that the facts are constrained to conform themselves to their theoretical a priori conclusions. XIII. THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD. THIS Period has recently assumed an altogether unique position in the domain of criticism. The higher critics, or, as they may be more correctly called, the Biblical recon- structionists, contend that the leading characteristic legisla tion of the Mosaic Economy belongs to this Period, and should no longer hold the place which tradition has assigned it in the middle books of the Pentateuch. The gravity of this contention is manifest. If the Levitieal Torah, as these critics allege, had no existence prior to the Babylonish Cap tivity, and was unknown to the exiles of the Restoration untU Ezra came to Jerusalem from Babylon "with the Law of his God in his hand," it must follow that the central ordi nances of the economy, hitherto regarded as Mosaic, including those connected with the Sanctuary, the Priesthood, the Ritual, and the Calendar, were, as these critics contend, the enactments of a post-exilic legislation. Such is the position assumed by those who reject, and treat with ill-concealed contempt, the traditional theory which ascribes, as has been done for thou sands of years, the enactment of these ordinances to Moses as the Divinely-appointed Lawgiver of the chosen people. Now as the traditional theory of these ordinances rests upon the account given of their enactment amid the most marveUous manifestations of the Divine Majesty, in the sight of the whole people at the foot of Sinai, it is not unreason able to demand of these critics, that they specify the time and the place of the enactment of the so-caUed Esdrine Torah, and the evidences by which Ezra satisfied his brethren of the ExUe that the Law he is alleged to have brought in his hand from Babylon to Jerusalem, was really and truly the Law of his God. In view of the grave requirements of this N n 2 564 LEX MOSAICA. Law, and the dread sanctions by which they were to be enforced, it is manifest that the evidence on which the de mand for submission to it was based must have been such as to place its Divine authority beyond question. The critics themselves seem to concede as much, for in order to invest the Law which Ezra is said to have brought with him from Babylon, with the necessary authority, they claim for it the 3,uthority of the great Lawgiver of Israel. They are greatly perplexed how to give plausibility to this claim ; and it is no wonder they are, for the environment of Ezra did not furnish the necessary conditions. There was no Mount Sinai in the land of Israel's Exile, and Ezra was not the man to simulate its thunderings, and lightnings, and voices. The late Prof. W. Robertson Smith has tried to justify this ascription to Moses of what he never wrote, if we are to credit this school of critics, by reference to the use-and-wont of ancient writers. Professor Bruce's apology is, that " the true authors " of the Deuteronomic and Priestly Codes " ascribed them to Moses, not so much as author, but as authority " {Apologe tics, p. 221). This is one of the volumes of the International Theological Library, intended to form a series of text-books for students of theology, and to " furnish- a record of theo logical inquiry up to date." We may assume, therefore^ that this is the latest and best apology that the higher critics can devise to save the ethical credit of the alleged " true authors " of the Pentateuchal Torah ! There does not seem to be much room for choice between these two solutions of this grave ethical problem. The ethical difficulty abides, whether the authorship or the authority of Moses be claimed for what he never wrote. If the writings in question were, as the theory teaches, post-Mosaic and post-exilic, how could their "true authors," without a breach of the Decalogue itself (which even Dr. Bruce admits is Mosaic), ascribe them to Moses in either sense — as author or authority — except he had left on record his views on the all-important subject of ritual legislation? Without a full outline of his ritualistic programme before them, they could have had no warrant for connecting either the name or the authority of Moses with the minute elaborate ceremo nial system they are alleged to have introduced to Israel hundreds of years after the great' Lawgiver was dead. THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD. 565 Indeed, Professor Bruce himself closes the door against any righteous reference of the Deuteronomic or Priestly Codes to the name or the authority of Moses. " We must," he says, "on no account conceive of that great man as a person of priestly spirit, or even as belonging to the genus scribe, whereof Ezra is the most respectable representative. We must ever think of him as in spirit and vocation the Prophet. And to vindicate for him that character, we must strenuously insist that the Decalogue, not the ritual law, is his charac teristic contribution." He emphasises this view of the case (p. 220), and teaches that it was necessary that a man occu pying his position should keep himself aloof from matters of ritual, as if they were not in his line, to be almost ostentatiously careless about them, and to leave them to be attended to by other and smaller men, priests by profession (pp. 221-2). In a word, the theory is that Moses was the prophet, and nothing but a prophet, and every statement inconsistent with this theory, by whomsoever placed on record, must be as cribed to other and smaller men, priests by profession. It is truly painful to find a Christian Professor compeUed by the exigency of his critical theory to exclude from the sphere of the Mosaic legislation the only ordinance foreshadowing the atoning work of Christ. Moses may prefigure the prophetic and the kingly functions of Christ's mediatorial office, but as to all " matters of ritual, as if they were not in his line," he must "be almost ostentatiously careless about them, and leave them to be attended to by other and smaller men, priests by profession." Whatever else Moses may have to do with, he must keep himself aloof from priesthood and all that savours of it. Truly, as Dr. Cave has weU said, "The great inteUectual struggles of the modern world are essentially battles over STANDPOINTS." Professor Bruce's standpoint, as these quota tions show, is such as to divest Moses of aU relation to that which constitutes the essence of that economy which bears his name. It is, we are to understand, beneath the dignity of so great a man as Moses was to stoop to "matters of ritual" Such is the theory, and yet, as if insensible to what was becoming to his dignity as "the prophet," we find him inaugurating an economy in which sacrifice and priesthood 566 LEX MOSAICA. are the leading characteristic elements. If we accept the testimony of the middle books of the Pentateuch, we must beUeve that Moses did not regard it as a lowering of his dignity, or as an assumption of a function that did not pertain to his office as Israel's lawgiver, to legislate on all matters connected with the expiation of sin. This, according to both Testaments, is the all-absorbing , theme of the Mosaic legislation. It was in the exercise of a faith that had as its warrant a Divine appointment that " he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, lest He that destroyed the first born should touch them" (Heb. 11. 28). He not only kept the Passover himself, but he issued the Paschal Law render ing the observance of it imperative for all Israel. This law as enacted by him enters into the minutest ritualistic details, accompanied hy a very grave penal sanction in case of disobedience (Exod. 12. 15). Professor W. Robertson Smith, as the writer has shown in his Newer Criticism, p. 204, " has tried, by an unwarrantable limitation of the Hebrew word 'bashal,' to represent the Paschal victim as non-sacrificial, although he had to do so in direct contravention of the history of the institution, and of the express teaching of our Lord Himself and His apostles." The more one studies the Mosaic history, thQ more manifest does the groundlessness of the theory become. Moses did not consider it inconsistent with the proper function of his office to commission young men of the Children of Israel to oflFer burnt-offerings and sacrifice "peace-ofFerings of oxen unto the Lord, nor did he look upon it as beneath his official dignity to receive from them the blood of the victims, and, with his own hand, to sprinkle it upon the altar and upon the people as the blood of the covenant which was thereby ratified between God and Israel. Now, as the history proves, this sprinkling of the blood, whether as enjoined in the in stituting of the Passover to be performed by the heads of families, or as executed by Moses himself in that federal trans action at Sinai, was the culminating act in a sacrificial ritual. Hence on the Great Day of Atonement, when the sacrifices of the year were completed, the High Priest's official functions were not fuUy accompUshed until he carried the blood of Atonement within the veil and sprinkled it upon and before THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD. 567 the mercy-seat seven times, symbolising the necessity of a perfect propitiation. Indeed, one cannot but feel as if he owed an apology to the Christian public for entering formally upon a defence of Moses in relation to priesthood. If we accept Professor Bruce's limitations of his functions, we must regard him as acting under an entire misapprehension, not only of his own office, but also of the rights and prerogatives of another office from which he was bound to keep himself aloof — an office jealously safe-guarded by pains and penalties against aU intrusionists. Instead, however, of keeping himself strictly to his prophetic functions, and recognising the Decalogue as the Magna Charta of his legislative prerogatives, we find him not only invading the august office of the priesthood, but actually inaugurating an order pf priests by acts clearly priestly — acts which he did not "leave to be attended to by other and smaller men, priests by profession." Nor is this aU ; not only did he es tabUsh the Aaronic priesthood, setting Aaron and his sons apart by sacrificial acts which he performed in person, but, in conformity with the pattern shown him in the mount, he furnished Israel's priesthood with a Tabemacle expressly de signed for the execution of priestly functions, and also with their official costumes adapted to the various exercises of their priestly ministrations. AU this he did, and yet, if we are to believe this representative of " The International Theological Library," which has been organised to report critical progress up to date, he provided them with no Torah to guide them in the execution of the duties of their office, although, as the case of Nadab and Abihu proved, an act of will-worship was sure to be visited by the .dire penalty of death! Some men may regard this as advanced critical thought, but men who regard the Scriptures as the Word of God , wiU look upon it in a very different light. According to this theory, then, the Law of God which Ezra brought in his hand from Babylon to Jerusalem was not written or issued by Moses. Such is the position, and yet we are told (p. 276) that the peremptory judgments of the inspired teachers of the Christian faith were pronounced on the traditional understanding that the whole law of the Pen tateuch was Mosaic. 568 LEX MOSAICA. "The supposed late origin of the Levitieal Law as a written code," he says, " does not in the least detract from the validity of these New Testament verdicts, but rather strengthens it. If they hold good as against a Law ema nating from Moses, a fortiori they hold good against a Law which came into force nearly a millennium later, and at the Christian era might still be regarded as a compara tive upstart. The important principle enunciated by Paul, that the Law was subordinate to the promise, and came in after it, and between it and the promise, obviously holds on the critical hypothesis. It receives under that hypothesis a double exemplification. The Mosaic legislation came in after the call of Abraham, and the Le\'itical legislation came in after the promise of a new covenant with its law written on the heart. And there were two experiments to be made. One was to try whether a model state could not be built up on the foundation of the Decalogue. That experiment went on till the time of Jeremiah, when it had become clear to his prophetic eye that it had ended in failure. On the footing of a law written on stone tablets, a righ teous nation he saw could not be looked for; what was wanted was a law written on the heart. But this was not to come all at once. Jeremiah was six centuries in advance of his time. Men were not going to accept his conclusion without a convincing proof that there was no other way of it. And so the exiles returned from Babylon not with a simple spiritual law written on their hearts, but with an elaborate sacrificial and ceremonial law written in a hook. Ezra appears with the Priestly Code in his hand — ^the fruit of much toil, carried on through years spent in compiling, redacting, editing, and supplementing the Torah relating to worship and kindred matters. On the basis of that Torah a new experiment was to be made. The first experiment aimed at a righteous nation, the second at a holy church. The second experiment was a more ghastly failure than even the first. The result was Rabbinism and Pharisaism — a people technicaUy and outwardly holy, reaUy and inwardly altogether unholy. By a prophet that might have been foreseen from the first. But the foresight of the wise does not render superfluous the age-long experiments THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD. 569 whereby tmth is made patent to aU the world. Rabbinism had to be evolved before men could perceive the full sig nificance of Jeremiah's oracle of the law written on the heart" (pp. 276, 277). The points to which the reader's attention is now caUed are: 1. That the author of the Apologetics holds, and has tried to prove, that Moses is not the author of the Pen tateuchal Torah. 2. That he admits that, according to the traditional theory, Moses was the recognised author of it. 3.' That he acknowledges that the New Testament teachers of the Christian Faith accepted the traditional theory, and delivered their peremptory judgments on the assumption that the whole Law of the Pentateuch was Mosaic. 4. That he admits that these New Testament teachers were inspired 5. That he admits that the Apostles did not share the modem critical views in regard to the late human origin of the system, and therefore did not give as their reason for the aboUtion of it that it was not of Moses or of God, but the work of Ezra and other unknown priests in Babylon. 6. As Christ Himself was certainly one of the teachers of the Christian Faith, and as our author does not expressly exclude Him from the category of its expounders, it is not unfair to assume that, even in the opinion of Dr. Bmce, He held the same view as His Apostles in regard to the Mosaic authorship of the whole Law of the Pentateuch. Of course, this is no mere assumption, but, on the contrary, the doctrine of our Saviour, avowed again and again through out His ministry. There is one pleasant characteristic of these higher critics. They are among the most accommodating of all controver sialists. In fact, they are almost invariably sure to furnish a reviewer with abundant material for their own refutation. In the present case, the author not only supplies the mate rial, but arranges it so admirably that his critic has nothing to do but to point out the cogency and conclusiveness of his argument against his own central critical position. Having set the battle in array against the traditional theory that Moses is the author of the whole Law of the Pentateuch, he surrenders unconditionally, and concedes that Christ and His inspired Apostles do not share his critical views, but, 570 LEX MOSAICA. on the contrary, hold with the traditionalists, and proceed upon "the traditional understanding that the whole Law of the Pentateuch was Mosaic ! " Well, with Christ and His Apostles on their side, the traditionalists may possess their souls in peace, being persuaded that the Levitieal Torah, against whose antiquity the higher critics wage incessant war, sustains too close a typical and symbolical relation to the mediatorial work of Christ ever to be displaced from the position assigned it in the inspired history of Redemption. But there is one of Dr. Bruce's statements in the above quotation which merits special notice. "The Mosaic legisla tion," he says, "came in after the call of Abraham, and the Levitieal legislation came in after the promise of a new covenant with its law written in the heart." For this statement he claims the authority of Paul; but when we turn to what Paul says on the subject, we find that in stead of teaching that the Levitieal legislation came in after the promise of a new covenant made, as Dr. Bruce aUeges, through the Prophet Jeremiah, nearly a millennium later than the Mosaic legislation, he is not speaking of the pro mise of a new covenant made through Jeremiah at all, but of the promise made to Abraham. His language is : " Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He saith not. And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy Seed, which is Christ. And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the Law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, can not disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect" (Gal. 3. 16, 17). To deprive the Levitieal legislation of its claim to antiquity, Dr. Bruce represents Paul, in this pass age, as speaking of the promise of a new covenant made through Jeremiah, whereas Paul is speaking of the promise made to Abraham already, when God entered into covenant with him. This passage, moreover, specifies the time which elapsed between the covenant and the Levitieal legislation, and reduces Dr. Bruce's millennium to four hundred and thirty years, thus bringing the Law in question within the period of the Mosaic legislation. Nor is there any warrant for representing the covenant mentioned by Jeremiah (31. 31-34) as standing out in soU- THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD, 671 tary isolation from the Abrahamic covenant. That covenant, as the passage in Galatians shows, had reference to the Seed of Abraham, and pre-eminently to Christ. It embraced Him, and, in Him, all His people ; for if we be Christ's, then are we Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. It was for the redemption of the pledge . given in that covenant that God came down to deliver Israel from Egyptian bondage (Exod. 2. 23-25), and it was in ful filment of it He sent forth His beloved Son to redeem His people from spiritual bondage. As Zacharias puts it: He came " to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember His holy covenant ^^ the oath which He sware to our father Abraham " (Luke 1. 72, 73). Now, why all this toil and trouble to relegate the enact ment of the covenant referred to by the Apostle, in this passage, to a period nearly a millennium after the time specified by the Apostle? The reason is obvious. Wishing to reduce the Mosaic legislation to the narrow limits of the Decalogue, it was necessary to exclude from it all Levitieal enactments. With a period of almost a millennium between Moses and the Levitieal Law, the inventors of the theory might deem themselves comparatively safe in their conten tion that the Decalogue was his " characteristic contribution." This attempt to sever the ceremonial or Levitieal system from the Moral Law betrays a singular unacquaintance with the structure and essential principles of the economy of Re demption as set forth in the Sacred Scriptures. The economy as therein revealed recognises no such severance. The pro blem to be solved in the economy is the august one, how God can be just, and yet justify the transgressors of His holy Law. According to Dr. Bruce, the problem to be solved was a very different one, viz., "to try whether a model state could not be built up on the foundation of the Decalogue. That experiment," he tells us, "went on till the time of Jeremiah, when it had become clear to his prophetic eye that it had ended in failure. On the footing of a Law written on stone tablets, a righteous nation he saw was not to be looked for; what was wanted was a law written on the heart. But this was not to come all at once." It is difficult to believe that these sentences have flowed from 572 LEX MOSAICA. the pen of a professor in one of the colleges of the once glorious Free Church of Scotland. If we are to beUeve the author of these sentences, God was engaged for almost a millennium in an experiment trying to build up a holy nation on the foundation of the Decalogue. The end He was aim ing at was the production of a holy nation, and the sole in strumentality employed was a law written on stone tablets ! Such was the end, and such was the instrument employed, and it required a millennium to make it patent, even to God Himself, that the instrument was inadequate to the attain ment of the end. But one of the strangest of all the singular elements of our author's account of these two experiments is the distinc tion he draws between Israel as a nation and Israel as a church. For nearly a thousand years the experiment which was carried on was designed to build up a holy nation, and the instrument by which this end was to be achieved was the Ten Commandments, written and engraven on stone tablets. For the period stretching from Ezra to the Christian era, or nearly 500 years, the end aimed at was the erection of a holy church, and the instrument was the ceremonial law. It would be interesting to have from the author of this distinction a definition of each of these institutions, showing wherein the one differs radically from the other. Evidently the Apostle Peter had not in his day got hold of this distinction. In his first Epistle, ch. 2. 9, he manifestly regards these terms as interchangeable, for, addressing members of the Church, he designates them a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a pecuUar people. Those thus addressed are, in the immediately preceding context, spoken of as a spiritual house, an holy priesthood. In tbe opening verses of this Epistle they are described as " elect, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit unto obe dience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ." Surely those thus addressed constituted, in the view of the Apostle, a church — and that, too, a holy church; and yet he is so obUvious — or, perhaps, so ignorant — of our author's distinc tion, that he does not hesitate to ignore it altogether, and pronounces this holy church a holy nation. With him the church is a holy nation, and ^ such a nation is a holy chwrch. THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD. 573 But under the experiment described by Dr. Bruce, how could the nation become a holy nation ? Holy it could not become save through the impartation to the great mass of its citizens of holiness as a subjective personal moral quality. He was not a Jew who was one outwardly, neither was that cir cumcision which was outward in the flesh ; but he was a Jew who was one inwardly; and circumcision was that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise was not of men, but of God (Rom. 2. 28, 29). This was Paul's idea of a genuine Jew, and it was as true of the Jews under the Old Testament as of the Jews in the time of Paul. The holiness of men was not the holiness of kids, or lambs, or oxen, set apart and kept apart for sacrifice, or the holiness of priestly garments or symbolic unguents. In the case of men, whatever else it embraced, the distinctive characteristic was spiritual. Those possessing it were regarded as adorned with the grace of moral purity. Here, then, the theory encounters a grave difficulty. How could this subjective quality of holiness be engendered or im parted through the instrumentality of the Moral Law, not writ ten, be it observed, in the heart, but on tablets of stone ? and our author mentions no other instrumentality employed in this experiment for almost one thousand years. The theory, there fore, breaks down, just as he alleges the other experiment did. Through the operation of the Moral Law, apart from the re medial economy, the ingeneration of holiness was then, as it is now, impossible. In the unregenerate it simply works wrath. It is the law of sin and death to aU such, and although holy and just and good, it furnishes the occasion, of which sin takes advantage, to work in the unrenewed all manner of concupiscence. For without the Law sin was dead. The idea of a holy nation being built up by the instrumentality of such a law is one which none, save the men of the Inter- Tiational Theological Library, could invent or venture to place before the Christian public. The Scriptures not only lend no countenance to this dis tinction of two diverse institutions of a quasi religious nature, the one national and the other ecclesiastical, with diverse species of subjective spiritual qualities, but ignoring all such incongmous notions — incongruous with each other and with 574 LEX MOSAICA. the essential principles of the one and only way of life — they assert the unity of the people of God as one elect whole, united to the One Living Head, and constituted with Him joint heirs of the one inheritance. So closely are the two in stitutions related, that membership in the Church was an in dispensable condition of citizenship in the nation; and when an Israelite was cut off from the Church, he lost his status as a citizen of the commonwealth of Israel. Such is the doctrine of both Testaments. The people of God, under what dispensation soever they live, are viewed as constituting one body. This 'is evidently the doctrine of our Saviour, as indicated in His remarks on the faith of the centurion (Matt. 8. 11, 12). The faith of the centurion had exceeded anything He had found in Israel, and, struck by it, He observes that it is a foretaste of what is to come. " I say unto you. That many shall come from the East and West, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven: but the children of the king dom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shaU be weeping and gnashing of teeth." By passing from the Old Dispensation to the New, the members of the Church do not get rid of Abraham. " If ye be Christ's, then a,re ye Abra ham's seed, and heirs according to the promise" (Gal. 3, 29). He, and Isaac, and Jacob were citizens of the one true king dom of God, and members of the one holy Catholic Church, long before Dr. Bruce's imaginary experiments are assumed to have been inaugurated. The Abrahamic covenant not only em braced the periods covered by those alleged experiments, but, reaching forward through all subsequent dispensations, secured, and still guarantees, to the heirs of the promise, whether Jews or Gentiles, " the blessing of Abraham." The Abrahamic covenant of itself sets aside for ever the New Apologetic and its false ecclesiology and incoherent soteriology. The attempt to dissociate Moses from ritual and priesthood is, therefore, a palpable failure. The severance cannot be effected without doing violence to the most unchallengeable facts in the hi^ory of Israel. If there is any part of that history to be accepted, it is certainly that which informs us of the action of Moses in the inauguration of the Aaronic priesthood, and the consecration of Aaron and his sons to the THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD. 675 priestly office. As we have already seen, his ministrations on the occasion involved, on his part, the execution of priestly functions which were performed in strict accordance with a Divinely-appointed ritual It is just as true that the Aaronic priesthood was ordained by Moses as that the Moral Law was given by him. It were as easy to prove that he held aloof from the delivery of the Decalogue as to prove that he left the enactment of the Priests' Code to "smaller men, priests by profession." The principles on which the so-called higher criticism proceeds are just as avaUable for the one achieve ment as for the other, and, as a matter of fact, have been so employed by critics who have not hesitated to carry these principles to their logical consequences. But this, though bad enough, is not the worst feature of the attempt to sever Moses from ritual and priesthood. It is bad enough to frame and try to establish a theory which in volves the rejection of the best authenticated facts of the Old Testament history; but, bad as this is, there is worse to fol low. The severance of Moses from ritual and priesthood, and the restriction of his functions as the Lawgiver of Israel to the delivery of the "Ten Words," carries with it, and of pur pose carries with it, the severance of the Moral Law from the CeremoniaL The attempt to effect this severance reveals an utter misapprehension of the way of Ufe as foreshadowed under the Old Testament, and brought clearly to light under the New. No one having a right conception of the Gospel would for a moment think of separating Christ's work from the Moral Law. He is the end of the Law for righteousness to every one that beUeveth, and He is so because He has met , the entire claims of that Law, both preceptive and penaL Apart from that Law His work was unnecessary, and pre sents an ethical problem which is absolutely unsolvable. Surely in view of this great redemptive fact we might expect that this relation of Christ's work to the Moral Law would be foreshadowed in the typical economy under which the men of the Old Testament found the way of life, and walked in it with acceptance before God. This one having right views of the way of Ufe would expect, and this is just what we find. When God comes down on Mount Sinai to shadow forth the remedial economy. He proceeds in a way that shows its 576 LEX MOSAICA. relation to the Moral Law. He does not at once call Moses up to the Mount and instruct him in regard to the Taber nacle and its symbolic furniture, its priesthood and its sacri fices. On the contrary. He prepares Israel for the remedial economy by showing them the necessity of it. For this pur pose He employs the Moral Law. Such are God's homiletics, and the course adopted secures the end aimed at. When Israel heard the voice of God uttering that fiery Law amid the thunders an'd lightnings and smoke of Sinai, they with drew and stood afar off, and invoked the mediation of Moses. " Speak thou with us and we will hear, but let not God speak with us lest we die," is their cry. This is the result God intended, and He there and then appoints Moses a mediator through whom He would carry on intercourse with them. Having prepared Israel by showing them their need of it. He calls Moses up to the Mount to receive instructions in regard to the remedial economy. Now mark the position He gives the Moral Law in that economy. The very first vessel He instructs Moses to make, of all the vessels of the Taber nacle, is a vessel, to hold that Law; that vessel, entitled the Ark, the Ark of the Testimony, the Ark of the Covenant, He directs him to place in the Holy of Holies. Around that Ark all the ceremonies of the Mosaic dispensation revolve. Its lid becomes a mercy-seat, and there God holds communion with Israel through an appointed priesthood, who, through their chief, on the Great Day of Atonement, approach that seat of fellowship, and sprinkle it with atoning blood, in re cognition of the expiation which the Law it contains demands. From the institution of the economy, therefore, the relation of the Ceremonial Law to the Moral, is shown to be an essen tial part of the Divine plan, and designed to foreshadow the way in which the claims of the Moral Law were to be met by the atoning death of the sin-atoning Lamb. The severance of the Moral Law from the Ceremonial, therefore, would dis joint the entire Mosaic legislation and eviscerate that sacrificial system which revolved around the Ark of the Testimony, in which the Moral Law was enshrined, of any typical signifi cance whatever, and erase all traces of the way of life from that typical dispensation so gloriously fulfilled in the media tion and death of Christ. THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD. 577 No marvel that critics holding such views of the old typical economy should hold, along with them, the Socinian view of the Way of Life, and teach that, up to the time of Ezra at least, the way to attain to life was "to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God " (Micah 6. 8). In a word, for three thousand years of the world's history, salvation by atonement, expiating the guUt of sin and reconcUing men to God, had no place in the Divine administration. Whereas, an inspired commentary (the Epistle to the Hebrews) covering this same period, testifies that "without shedding of blood is no remission" (ch. 9. 22). Besides, this same passage in Micah, on which they so con fidently rely, presupposes a federal relation as already existing between God and those who walk in fellowship with Him. This relation is implied in the prophet's use of the possessive pronoun "thy." The prophet does not call upon those ad dressed " to do justly, or to love mercy, and to' walk humbly ¦ with God ' "' — a form of expression which might be interpreted as specifying the terms on which the sinner enters, for the first time, into communion with God. On the contrary, he adopts the federal formula, " thy God," assuming that the person addressed has been .already admitted into covenant re lationship, and is entitled to regard God as his God. The foregoing review of the Mosaic economy may be suffi cient to show the vast issue that must flow from the proposed projection of the Pentateuchal Levitieal Torah forward into the post-exilic period, as an Esdrine institution with whose enactment Moses had nothing to do. It would rifle the Pen tateuch and the whole pre-exilic period of any knowledge of the way of salvation; it would leave the people of God, whom He, in sovereign grace, had chosen as the custodians of the saving knowledge of Himself, and as the channels through which that knowledge should ultimately be made known to aU the families of the human race, to walk in the darkness and hopelessness of the covenant of works, by which no flesh living can be justified before God ; it would make the Holy One of Israel, in whose name, and by whose au thority, the Levitieal system was instituted under the hand of Moses, the author and patron of one of the most disgrace ful frauds ever perpetrated within the domain of human S 1063. Co 578 LEX MOSAICA. literature ; and, finally, it would leave the New Testament dispensation, which claims to be the antitype and fulfilment of that old typical economy, without any type or symbol to which it could appeal in confirmation of the central facts and doctrines of the Redemption purchased by Christ, thus leav ing the New Testament preacher no alternative but that adopted by Dr. Bushnell in his book on the Vicarious Sacri fice, viz., to abandon the anti-sacrificial theory and revert to the forms of the altar, and speak of Christ as if He were a real, veritable atoning sacrifice and priest. This were certainly a sad alternative, as it implies that the object of saving faith is what the critics of this school themselves regard as " a legal fiction." But passing from these unquestionable consequences, which are graven on the very face of the theory which tries to sever Moses from the Levitieal system, and which ascribes that system to Ezra and his companions of the Exile, let us hear what the Chronicler and other post-exilic writers have to" say on this subject. If, as the destructive critics contend, the Levitieal Torah had no existence prior to the post-exilic period, it must foUow that the restoration of the ExUes was not set on foot or carried forward in pursuance of its require ments, or in compliance with its enactments. The conjoint testimony of the Chronicler, of Ezra, of Nehemiah, and other post-exilic writers, if credit is to be given to their testimony, should certainly set this question at rest. The testimony of the Chronicler; of course, comes first in order. Before entering upon it, however, it is but proper that some notice, even though but brief, should be taken of a charge preferred against him by the higher critics. From the prominence which the Chronicler gives to the priesthood and ritual observances, and the connection he traces between the national neglect of religious ordinances and the national humiliations wherewith this neglect was chastised, the critics conclude that the writer was of the priestly party and wrote in its interest with the design of exalting the priesthood above all other institutions. Dr. Driver, for example, speaking of the Chronicler, says : " Incidentally in these chapters, more de cidedly in 9. 1-34, the interest of the writer betrays itself : his notices have constantly a bearing, direct or indirect, upon THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD. 579 the organisation and ecclesiastical institutions of the post-exiUc community " {Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testa ment, p. 485). Such criticisms are unworthy of serious refu^ tation. They proceed upon the assumption that the sacred writers wrote, not as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, but as they were moved by the spirit of party, an assumption which is certainly not in harmony with the Apostle Peter's view of the prophecies of Scripture. He did not regard the sacred writer as drawing his inspiration ab intra. He lays it down as a canon applicable to the whole record, " that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation." It is thus he introduces the law that ruled throughout the his tory of prophecy, setting in contrast with this ab intra theory of the critics the Divine Canon for all critics and for all time, that " the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man ; but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" (2 Pet. 1. 20, 21). By using the term "betray" in his criticism of the Chronicler, Dr. Driver betrays his own interest as a leader of the higher criticism, which, while pro fessing faith in the inspiration of Scripture, is ever on the alert to seize upon any incident or feature of the record which, by any process of textual torture, may be made to give a plausible colouring to their own anti-inspiration theory. But let us examine this charge of priestly bias so freely launched against the Chronicler. While the term " betray " is not the word which a reverent critic would employ, the fact it covers is nevertheless a characteristic of the entire sacred record. The whole Bible has constantly a bearing, direct or indirect, upon the organisation and ecclesiastical institutions, not only of the post-exilic community, but upon the Way of Life, whose centre is the priesthood of Christ, of which all these institutions were but types and shadows. From the hour of man's FaU, Redemption by the Seed of the woman through His sufferings and sacrificial death pervades the re velation. In conformity with this radical thought, the Chroni cler gives us an account of the Divine chastisements of Israel for neglecting the maintenance of institutions which fore shadowed this redemptive work, and the writers of the post- exiUc period bear testimony to the place it holds in the Divine economy by the returning favour of God as manifested in the Oo 2 580 LEX MOSAICA. redemption of Israel from Babylonish bondage, the restoration of the Temple, and the re-inauguration of the priesthood and its services. Both these features of the Divine administration are illustrated throughout the history of the Chosen Race, and are presented in close causal relation in the closing words of the Chronicler. He tells us the reason why Israel was banished from their own land, the House of God and the city of Jeru salem pUlaged and laid in ruins, and, at the same time, informs us that God's purpose, notwithstanding the sins of His people, who had lost sight of the great object aimed at in their voca tion, is not to be frustrated by the will of man. Having chastised them for their sin — and especiaUy for this sin — He proceeds, through the instrumentality of a heathen prince, to restore them to the land and city of their fathers; and the great aim of their restoration is the re-inauguration of those institutions and services which the higher critics regard as the offspring of an ambitious priestly caste. They were sent into captivity because "all the chief of the priests and the people transgressed very much after all the abominations of the heathen, and polluted the House of the Lobd which He had hallowed in Jerusalem." As the God of their fathers, that is, as their covenant God, " He sent to them by His mes sengers, rising up betimes and sending ; because He had com passion on His people, and on His divelling place. But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised His words, and misused His prophets, untU the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, tiU there was no remedy. Therefore, He brought upon them the king of the Chaldees," etc., etc. (2 Chron. 36. 14-21). In a word, they were driven into exile because of the abuse and neglect of those ordinances for which the higher critics can find no higher authority than what was inspired by the partisan policy of an ambitious priestly caste ! The concluding verses of the last chapter of the Chronicles raise a problem which these critics wiU find it difficult to solve. If the Chronicler merely gratified the ambitious pre tensions of his order, how is it that God conformed His ad ministration so as to harmonise with this ambitious design? How is it that He squared His procedure, both in the eviction and the restoration of His people, with the sinister, partisan THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD. 681 purpose of the Chronicler and his sacerdotal associates ? That God has done this, that He has acted in the one case and in the other, on the assumption that the Chronicler had rightly interpreted His purpose in Israel's vocation, is beyond question ; and the problem hence emerging is, of itself, subversive of the fundamental principle which is ever revealing itself by its antagonism to the facts of the sacred history, partitioning them, as the particular critic may list, among the ever-shifting, ever-changing series of Elohists, Jehovists, firs-t, or second, or final redactors. Despite aU this uncritical, unscientific dissec tion of the sacred history, the Lex Mosaica abides as the key to the Divine history of God's deaUngs with His chosen people. The prime mover in the Restoration, according to these witnesses, was a heathen prince, Cyrus, King of Persia, who, as Isaiah (ch. 45) foretold 176 years before, was ordained to render this service to the captives in Babylon. Cyrus claims the authority of God for his action in issuing the decree of liberation. " Thus saith Cyrus, King of Persia, The Lord God of heaven hath' given me aU the kingdoms of the earth ; and He hath charged me to build Him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all His people ? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of Israel (He is the God) which is in Jerusalem. And whosoever re maineth in any place where he sojoumeth, let the men of his place help him with silver, and with gold, and with goods, and with beasts, beside the free-wiU offering for the house of God that is in Jerusalem." Such was the original royal decree, and when the chief of the fathers of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites rose up in response to it, Cyrus, we are told, "brought forth the vessels of the house of the Lord, which Nebuchad nezzar had brought forth out of Jerusalem, and had put them in the house of his gods : even those did Cyms, King of Persia, bring forth by the hand of Mithredath the treasurer, and numbered them unto Sheshbazzar, the prince of JudaL . . All the vessels of gold and of silver were five thousand and four hundred. AU these did Sheshbazzar bring up with them of the Captivity that were brought up from Babylon to 582 LEX MOSAICA. Jerusalem " (Ezra 1). All this, be it observed, took place before Ezra's day — certainly before he was capable of issuing a Levitieal, or any other Torah. And yet the existence of a priestly Torah and arrangements for the execution of its pro visions, including the Temple and its vessels of service, are implied throughout the entire transaction. Then follows a list of the names of those " whose spirit God had raised to go up to build the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem," under the hand of Sheshbazzar (which seems to have been the Persian name for Zerubbabel). "The whole congregation together was forty and two thousand three hundred and three score, beside their servants and their maids, of whom there were seven thousand and three hundred thirty and seven: and there were among them two hundred singing men and singing women" (Ezra 2. 64, 65). Counting five to a family, if we may look upon the numbers as represent ing families rather than individuals, the company that went up with Zerubbabel from Babylon to Jerusalem was a very large one, probably over 200,000. But while the question of the numbers that responded to the call of Cyrus is not to be overlooked, as it may be re garded as an index to the measure and extent of the linger ing attachment of the exiles to faith and fatherland, there are other facts and features of the case brought out by the decree, and the means adopted for the execution of it, of much greater moment in this controversy, and whose bearing upon the question of the post-exilic origin of the Levitieal Torah must be absolutely decisive against the theory of the more advanced school of the higher critics. In the first place, we have the testimony of Ezra himself that Cyrus was not ignorant of some of the chief elements of that Torah which the critics would have us believe he and his companions of the Exile had brought forth as " the fruit of much toil carried on through years spent in compiUng, re dacting, editing, and supplementing." For example, Cyrus knew that there had been a house of the Lord God of Israel in Jerusalem ; he knew that at that house offerings were made to Israel's God, including the freewill offering; he knew that the service of that house was very elaborate and very costly. The first question, therefore, which the advocates of the post- THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD. 583 exiUc theory have to face is. Whence did Cyrus obtain the knowledge of these facts revealed in the decree ? Was it by supernatural revelation, or were there materials ready to his hand which impUed all that the decree sets forth? Unques tionably Cyrus lays claim to a Divine communication. He claims that he had the authority of the Lord God of heaven for issuing the decree — ^a claim confirmed, as we have already seen, by the Prophet Isaiah (ch. 45), who tells us that he had been ordained of God to build Jerusalem and to let His cap tives go. But apart from such communication, Cyrus was in possession of the records of the wars carried on by Nebuchad nezzar, and of the devastation he had wrought at Jerusalem. He knew that he had despoiled Judah's sanctuary of its vessels of service, and had carried them to Babylon, and had bestowed them in the house of his gods. He had, therefore, no need to make search in the Torah, which, the critics allege, was compiled by Ezra and his companions in Babylon, in order to become acquainted with these great and aU-determining facts. Indeed, it is questionable whether Ezra, the alleged author of this Torah, was then bom. The archives of Babylon — attested by the vessels of the house of God which Cyrus brought forth and numbered unto Sheshbazzar the prince of Judah, even all the vessels of gold and of silver, five thousand and four hun dred — these archives, thus attested, prove not only that there had been a house of God at Jerusalem with an elaborate ritual, but that both the house and the services carried on in it were of long standing. To assume — as the critics, to be consistent, must assume — that such a house and such services were only provided with a sacrificial and ritualistic Torah by Ezra and his companions of the Exile, when the house had been laid in ruins, and its services therefore rendered impossible, is to make a rather large draft upon our intelli gence. But the difficulties of the post-exilic theory multiply as Ezra's narrative progresses. Ezra not only gives an account of the numbers that went up with Zerubbabel, but he classi fies them according to their cities, and is careful to inform his readers that the company embraced both priests and Le vites. In connection with this item there occurs an account of an incident which proves that the ancient Torah regulating 584 LEX MOSAICA. the succession to the priesthood was still in force, and recog nised as an existing institution. " Of the chUdren of the priests : the children of Habaiah, the children of Koz, the chU dren of Barzillai; which took a wife of the daughters of Bar- zillai the Gileadite, and was called after their name : These sought their register among those that were reckoned by genealogy, but they were not found; therefore were they, as polluted, put from the priesthood. And the Tirshatha said unto them, that they should not eat of the most holy things, till there stood up a priest with Urim and with Thummim." (Ezra 2. 61-63.) Now this incident proves that the succession to the priest hood and participation in its sacred perquisites were safe guarded by a law of registration, and that in accordance with that law a register had been kept and was available for re ference when doubtful cases occurred. The existence of such register at the time when the children of Habaiah claimed rights peculiar to the priesthood is expressly stated in the narrative, and, acting upon it, the claim is refused, because those making it were not found registered "among those that were reckoned by genealogy." The absence of their names from the register was regarded as sufficient to justify their expulsion, as polluted, from the priesthood. This expulsion, however, was not absolute, but simply provisional and condi tional. Scribes are not infaUible, and the absence from the genealogical roll of the names in question may have been owing to an oversight on the part of a copyist. The state ment of the Tirshatha implies a doubt about the case, and he intimates that the decision is not final, and may be reversed when there should arise a priest with Urim and with Thum mim; which, however these mysterious terms may be inter preted, is all one with saying that the case must await the re sult of a reference to the judgment of God Himself Here, then, we have evidence of the existence of a law regulating the rights and prerogatives of the priesthood, and, in addition to this, evidence of a Divinely appointed method of ascertaining the mind of God in doubtful cases, which method was no longer avaUable, as the oracular Urim and Thummim had ceased from Israel. They had a High Priest in the person of Jeshuah — i.e., Joshuah (Zech. 3), — but in the THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD. 585 absence of that mystic oracle he was not in a position to settle the question now raised by an appeal to the Divine judgment. Now the question arises, whence did Zembbabel and those who accompanied him in the march to Jerusalem, find out aU these things about the priesthood and about that ancient in stitution of inquiry by Urim and Thummim ? It was certainly not from that Book of the Law of his God which Ezra some 78 years afterwards brought from Babylon to Jerusalem? Ezra, if we are to accept the theory of the critics who claim to bring matters up to date, had, at the time of Zembbabel's expedition, not entered upon his alleged work of compiling, and supplementing, and redacting the Book which he after wards carried as the Law of his God in his hand. Indeed, it is very probable that Ezra, at the time of the application of the law by which the chUdren of Habaiah or of Koz were expelled from the priesthood as polluted, if he had being at aU, was a mere schoolboy, not yet entered upon his " teens." Certainly he could not have acquired, at this early stage in history, such renown as a Levitieal legislator as to lead his fellow exiles, whether in Babylon or in Jerusalem, to ascribe to him the authorship of the Pentateuchal Levitieal Torah. As we have now seen, the facts recorded by Ezra prove that the movement originated by Cyrus at the command of Israel's God, and conducted by Zerubbabel and his associates, was regu lated throughout by an existing Levitieal Torah with which Ezra could have had nothing whatever to do, either as to composition or authorization. He himself bears witness to its existence as a Law recognized and applied before his day. This position, now clearly established by the record pre sented in the first and second chapters of Ezra's narrative, receives emphatic confirmation by the facts mentioned in the third chapter. In this chapter, we are informed that "when the seventh month was come, and the children of Israel were in their cities, the people gathered themselves together as one man to Jerusalem." The object of this unanimous movement in this particular month is soon made manifest. They came together to arrange for the celebration of the Feast of Taber nacles, as written in the Law of Moses, the man of God. It does not appear that Joshua or Zerubbabel had issued a cir cular convening such an assembly. All we are told is that 586 LEX MOSAICA. when the seventh month came the Children of Israel, now dis tributed in their cities, came together as one man to Jerusa lem. The advent of the seventh month — a notable month in the Mosaic legislation — ^was all that was needed to remind Israel of her duty. Every arrangement was made in strict accordance with the Law of Moses. "They builded the altar of the God of Israel, to offer burnt offerings thereon accord ing to its requirements; they set the altar upon his bases; for fear was upon them because of the people of those countries : and they offered burnt offerings thereon unto the Lord, even bumt offerings morning and evening. They kept also the Feast of Tabemacles, as it is written, and offered the daily bumt offerings by number, according to the custom, as the duty of every day required, and afterward offered the continual bumt offering, both of the new moons, and of all the set feasts of the Lord that were consecrated, and of every one that wil lingly offered a free-will offering unto the Lord. From the first day of the seventh month began they to offer burnt offer ings unto the Lord. But the foundation of the Temple of the Lord was not yet laid " (ch. 3. 1-6). The narrative then proceeds to inform the reader of the measures adopted for the execution of the work to which Cyrus had called them, viz., the building of "the house of the Lord God of Israel" Even in the work of preparation they acted in conformity with precedent. They did in the prepara tion for the restoration of the Temple of Solomon, what Solo mon had done in providing materials for its original erection. He entered into negotiations with Hiram, King of Tyre, to have cedar trees hewn by the Sidonians in Lebanon, and brought by sea to Joppa. They had no need of the autho rization of a local Hiram, as Cyrus, whose authority extended over all Sidonia and over the ruins of Tyre, had made grant to them of all the rights and privileges which Solomon had obtained from Hiram. The stipulations, so far as the work men were concerned, were the same as in the case of those who wrought for Solomon. "They gave meat, and drink, and oil to them of Sidon, and to them of Tyre, to bring cedar trees from Lebanon to the sea of Joppa." (Comp. 1 Kings 5.) The preparations must have made rapid progress, for in the second month of the second year of their coming unto THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD. 587 the house of God at Jerusalem, they were in readiness to set forward the work of the house of the Lord. And when they entered upon the work, everything was done in accordance with precedent and Torah. " When the builders laid the foun dation of the Temple of the Lord, they (Jeshua, Kadmiel, and his sons) set the priests in their apparel with tmmpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the Lord, after the ordinance of David, King of Israel And they sang together by course in praising and giving thanks unto the Lord ; because He is good, for His mercy endureth for ever toward Israel." Taking into account the grand refrain of the 118th Psalm, and its appropriateness throughout to the occasion, the writer is inclined to think that it was in exis tence, and was the one selected to give voice to Israel's thanksgiving when they saw that the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But while there was exuberant joy — for all the people shouted with a great shout as they united in that song of thanksgiving — there mingled with that shout of exultant joy accents of sadness. "Many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men that had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice ; and many shouted aloud for joy: so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people, for the people shouted with a loud shout, and the noise was heard afar off" (ch. 3. 8-13). In these sections of the narrative we have, what we have had all along, evidence unchallengeable of recognised Torahs, and recognised precedents of dates antecedent, and antecedent for periods which must have extended over centuries prior to the events placed on record by Ezra as occurring in connec tion with the return of the exUes from Babylon. Prepara tions for rebuilding the Temple were made after the example set by Solomon, and when the actual work of building was set forward, the arrangements of the priests and Levites in courses, with their garniture and instruments, to praise and give thanks unto the Lord, were such as to show that Jeshua and Kadmiel were well acquainted with the Torahs regulating the official costumes and the instruments of those 588 LEX MOSAICA. who were appointed by them to take part. They recognised the Torah regulating the mutual relations of priests and Le vites from the time of the institution of the Aaronic order, by which the duties of each of these two classes of the sons of Levi had been defined, and the addition made to that Torah by the ordinance of David, King of Israel. As the late Prof. Henry Wallace has shown, the Torah, if we are to judge of it by the practice observed, assigned the trumpets to the priests, and the kelay shir, instruments of song, to the Levites, as pertaining to prophecy, not to priesthood. It does not appear that this rule, after the institution of the service of song, was ever violated ; and it is certainly a significant fact, that it was strictly adhered to on this memorable occasion. Jeshua and Kadmiel had not the Book of the Law of his God which Ezra subsequently brought in his hand from Babylon to Jerusalem, out of which to draft this ceremonial programme. As we have already seen, Ezra had not as yet acquired dis tinction among his fellow exiles as a scribe skilled in the Law of God. Indeed, as he did not conduct the second colony from Babylon to Jerusalem until B.C. 458, or nearly 80 years after the first colony led by Zerubabbel had been settled in their cities, and after the incidents now described had been enacted, it is probable that he had not been born when the colony, under the leadership of Zerubbabel, set out on their march to Jerusalem. If his birth had taken place at that time, he must have been about 80 years of age when he undertook the task of conducting the second colony to the home of their fathers. Adding to this the 13 years that elapsed before the advent of Nehemiah, and the 12 years of their subsequent joint activity, Ezra must have attained to a round old age before the completion of his mission, and must have had marveUous physical vigour to have borne the toil and travail of a nation's moral reformation. Surely it is more reasonable to assume — what the history of the case proves to be no mere assumption — that the Law under which the first colony was organised, conducted to Jerusalem, and settled in their cities, was the Law of Moses, and not the conjoint com position of Ezra and his fellow exiles, which they had the unethical hardihood to issue in the name of Israel's ancient Lawgiver. THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD. 689 Passing now to the account given of the second colony, conducted by Ezra, our attention is arrested at the very out set of the narrative by the terms in which Ezra is introduced. He is described as " a ready scribe in the Law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given " (Ezra 7. 6). In the same chapter, verse 10, he is said to have "prepared his heart to seek the Law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments." The terms here employed are not such as a writer who held the post-exilic theory of the origin of the Levitieal Torah would have used. He introduces Ezra simply as a scribe and not as a lawgiver. He was a ready scribe, but his function was correlative to " the Law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given." As we see after wards, his functions embraced exposition as well as transcrip tion ; but whether he acted as a transcriber, or as an expositor, the Law with which he had to do was the Law, not of Ezra,, but of Moses, given long before by the Lord God of Israel In the course of the narrative (chaps. 9 and 10), as in the history of the first colony, we have evidence of the ac quaintance not only of Ezra, but of the exiles who had been previously settled in the cities of Judah, with the Law of Moses. No sooner had he delivered hiS' commission than the princes came to him, saying, " The people of Israel and the priests and tiie Levites have not separated themselves from the people of the lands, doing according to their abominations. .... For they have taken of their daughters for themselves and for their sons : so that the holy seed have mingled them selves with the people of those lands : yea, the hand of the princes and rulers hath been chief in this trespass." At this announcement Ezra is overwhelmed, so that he rends his garmeilt and his mantle, plucks off the hair of his head and of his beard, and sits down astonied. Having done this, at the time of the evening sacrifice (an old institution stiU re cognised even amid the general religious decadence) he makes confession of Israel's sins, embracing in his confession their fathers, their kings, and their priests. In making this con fession he recounts the Law against which the sins confessed had been committed; not as a law of his own devising, or as an enactment of yesterday, but as a law commanded by God and revealed through His servants the prophets, which 590 LEX MOSAICA. was in existence in the days of the kings of Israel, and had been set at naught by her kings and priests. It will be observed that up to this time there is no evidence that Ezra appealed to the Book of the Law, which he carried in his hand from Babylon, in justification of the social and religious revolution he inaugurated He proceeded on the assumption that the Law which the people of Israel, and the priests, and the Levites had transgressed, and which he was now enforcing, was a weU-known law. It is manifest that the princes who preferred the charge against these classes knew it, and were persuaded that the violators of it were well aware of its existence. Had these latter not been cognisant of its existence and conscious of their guilt as transgressors of it, they had not so readily agreed to put away their wives in compliance with its requirements, nor offered a trespass offering in ex piation of their sin. The conclusion is, that the theory which assigns the Levitieal Torah to the post-exilic period, and ascribes the authorship of it to Ezra, is discredited by the testimony of Ezra himself This conclusion receives emphatic confirmation in the Book of Nehemiah. When Nehemiah learns through Hanani and certain men of Judah who came to him the great affliction and reproach that had befallen the remnant that were left of the Captivity there in the province, and that the wall of Jeru salem was broken down, and the gates thereof burned with fire, he wept and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. In his prayer he makes confession of the sins of the children of Israel, of his own sins, and the sins of his father's house. This confession does not run on the lines of the higher critics. The sins confessed are not sins against a post-exilic law, but against the Law of Moses. The language of the prayer is: "We have dealt very corruptly against Thee, and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the judgments, which Thou commandedst Thy servant Moses. Remember, I beseech Thee, the word that Thou commandedst Thy servant Moses, saying. If ye transgress, I will scatter you abroad among the nations; but if ye tum unto Me, and keep My command ments, and do them ; though there were of you cast out unto the uttermost part of the heaven, yet will I gather them from thence, and will bring them unto the place that I have chosen THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD. 691 to set My name there " (Neh. 1 ; comp. with Deut. 28. 64 ; 30. 4). Before these critics can find any support for their post- exilic theory in this confession of Nehemiah's, they must bring out an expurgated edition of it, substituting the name of Ezra for that of Moses. Neither Ezra nor his Book was within . reach of Nehemiah, when, on his knees before God, he breathed this prayer on behalf of his brethren of the Captivity. Ezra at the time was absent at Jerusalem, and Nehemiah was in Shushan the palace, holding office as cup-bearer to the King Artaxerxes. When we have the testimony of such a man, who on his knees ascribes the Law in question to Moses, and not to Ezra, we must regard the theory that would substitute Ezra for Moses as admissible only where historical scepticism has sub verted confidence in all testimony, whether human or Divine. In cL 8 Nehemiah gives an account of a transaction which of itself is sufficient to settle the question of Ezra's relation to the Book which he brought in his hand from Babylon. He tells us that in that historic seventh month all the people gathered themselves together as one man into the street that was before the water gate; and they spake unto Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded to Israel Ezra at once compUed, and brought the Law before the congregation both of men and women, and all that could hear with understanding, upon the first day of the seventh month. And he read therein from a pulpit of wood made for the purpose from the morning untU mid day, and the ears of all the people were attentive unto the Book of the Law. So Ezra read in the Book in the Law of God distinctly, and his assistants gave the sense, and caused the people to understand the reading. On the second day the chief of the fathers of aU the people, the priests, and the Levites were gathered together unto Ezra the scribe, even to understand the words of the Law. And they found written in the Law tuhich the Lord had commanded Moses that the children of Israel should dwell in booths in the feast of the seventh month. This Law, whose binding authority they at once recognised, they proceeded to obey. And they kept the feast seven days, and on the eighth day was a solemn assembly according unto the manner. Also day by day, from the first day unto the last, Ezra read in the Book of the Law of God. 592 LEX MOSAICA. Now if historical facts, recorded on the authority of the Spirit of Inspiration, are to have their proper critical weight, surely those above cited must settle the question of author ship as between Moses and Ezra, as between the pre-exilic and the post-exilic theories of the origin and date of the Le- vitical ToraL Every fact mentioned not only assumes, but asserts, so far as facts can testify, that the Law contained in the Book out of which Ezra read was the Law of Moses — the Law which the Lord had commanded to Israel by Moses. As soon, therefore, as Ezra brings forth the Book, which the critics would have us believe consisted of laws hitherto un known in Israel, and which he and his fellow exUes — ^who, it is assumed, were, as Dr. Bruce aUeges, "the true authors" of the Levitieal Torah — had manufactured in Babylon, the critical illusion is dispelled. Neither Ezra nor his auditors, by word or act, give any countenance or sanction to the con tention of the higher critics that the Book from which he read was a post-exilic publication. The action taken by the people and their leaders after the contents of that Book were expounded is sufficient proof that the laws recorded in it were not of yes terday. On the twenty and fourth day of that same seventh month the Children of Israel were assembled with fasting, and with sackcloth and earth upon them. And the seed of Israel separated themselves from all strangers, and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. And they stood up in their place, and read in the Book of the Law of the Lord their God one-fourth part of the day ; and another fourth part they confessed, and worshipped the Lord their God Then follows an account of a wondrously comprehensive prayer, conducted by the Levites Jeshua, Kadmiel, and others, of which, after recounting the distinguishing favours vouch safed to Abraham and his seed, the leading theme and burden of it is the .confession of Israel's sins. The confession alter nates with the reading in the Book of the Law of the Lord their God, and as the confession embraces the sins of tbeir kings, their princes, their priests, their prophets, and their fathers not only since the times of the kings of Assyria, but from the time of their rebeUion in the wilderness, the Law against which these sins had been committed must have reached back over the entire period of Israel's transgression, from the THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD. 693 Exodus to the Babylonish Captivity. Having confessed their sins and the sins of their fathers throughout their history, they enter into covenant "to walk in God's Law, which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do aU the commandments of the Lord their God, and His judg ments and His statutes " (chaps. 9, 10). Now throughout these solemn transactions there is not a word about a post-exilic Law given by Ezra. He brings forth the Book of the Law and reads it, but the Law is the Law of Moses, not the law of Ezra. It is an ancient Law, against which Israel had sinned throughout their generations, and for the transgression of which they had been punished again and again through the instrumentality of their enemies, into whose hand they were delivered, that they might be arrested in their mad career of rebellion, and restored to the favour of their long-suffering covenant God. This Law, regulating and giving cast and character to Israel's confession and fresh federal engagement, is not to be rifled of the Levitieal element as if Israel's priests were not in the transgression prior to post-exilic times, or had no need of an authoritative Torah to guide them in their ministrations. The arraignment, whether as given by Ezra or by Nehemiah, leaves out no class. Israel's priests and prophets, as well as her kings, and princes, and people, are sisted before the tribunal of this ancient Law as transgressors, and, as their confession proves, they all recognise the Law as a Law binding on them, and acknowledge the justice of the Divine procedure in visiting their transgression of it with the dire penalty of expulsion from the good land given to their fathers, and the degradation to which they had been reduced under the yoke of Babylon. The priests were in the trans gression, and the Law they had transgressed, if we are to credit their confession, was the Law prescribed by Moses a miUennium before Ezra was born. But it may be asked. If the Law read by Ezra was not a new law, but an old historic law, how is it that, as he read, his assistants had to give the sense and cause the people to understand ? It is not difficult to answer this question. Take the paraUel case of the Reformation. The reformers had to do exactly as Ezra and his assistants did. They read in pubUc the Word of God, and expounded it to the people as S 1063. Pp 694 LEX MOSAICA. they read it. Surely no reasonable person would think of framing from their doing so an argument against the antiquity of the Bible. The charge of priestly bias preferred by the higher critics against the Chronicler might just as well be urged against the post-exilic prophet Haggai His two chapters proceed on the same lines. He rebukes the exiles, who had been restored to their own land for the express purpose of rebuilding the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, for settling down and Uving at ease in their own ceUed houses while this house was allowed to lie waste. His rebuke he enforces by an appeal to the Divine chastisements wherewith they had been visited, pointing out the relation of the chastisement to their sin against the claims of the house of God. Having traced this relation of chastisement to sin, he encourages Zerubbabel and Joshua the High Priest to set about the work of rebuilding the house, by a promise that if they go up to the mountain and bring wood and buUd the house, the Lord of Hosts will take pleasure in it and be glorified. And still more expressly he adds : " Consider now from this day and upward, from the four and twentieth day of the ninth month, even from the day that the foundation of the Lord's Temple was laid . . . from this day will I bless you." Whereas He had smitten them with mildew and with hail in all the labours of their hands for neglecting the work for which they had been redeemed from Captivity; yet from the day that the foundation of the Lord's Temple was laid, from that day — even specifying the month and the day of the month that they might take note of it — He promises to bless them. In a word. His attitude toward them is to be in accord with their attitude toward His house. As that house was the concrete expression of the great truths embodied in the Levitieal Torah, it is manifest that God's treatment of His peo ple according to their treatment of His house was an express recognition of that Levitieal Law. His jealousy for the house and its services was unquestionably jealousy for the Law by which the services of that house were regulated, which was no other than the Law of Moses, the man of God — a Law not recently enacted, as the critics would have us believe, by Ezra and his companions of the Exile, but an ancient Law recog nised by God as the rule of Israel's obedience in pre-exiUc THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD. 595 times, and for the violation of which they had been banished from their own land, and given into the hand of the king of the Chaldees. It is not necessary to dweU at length on the testimony of Zechariah. Ezra (ch. 5. 1, 2) couples his name with that of the Prophet Haggai, and represents their prophesying as having such effect upon Zerubbabel and Joshua that they "began to buUd the house of God which is at Jerusalem." And as their prophesying stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel and his asso ciates to begin to build, so did it stimulate and help them in the building tiU the house was finished. "And the Elders of the Jews buUded, and they prospered through the prophesying of Haggai and Zechariah the son of Iddo, and they builded and finished it, according to the commandment of the God of Israel, and according to the commandment of Cyrus, and Darius, and Artaxerxes, King of Persia " (Ezra 6. 14). The themes of both these prophets are the same — the house of God and the priesthood, the sins of the priests and the people, the chastise ments wherewith those sins were visited, and the wondrous sovereign grace of their fathers' covenant God, in restoring them to their own land, rebuilding their city and temple, and reviving the ancient priesthood with its sacrificial Torah, which stamped with such momentous emphasis the solemn truth, that " without shedding of blood is no remission," a doctrine of both Testaments, kept before Israel's faith under the Old by types, and realised by the sacrifice of the great Antitype under the New. Neither the house nor the priesthood is regarded by these prophets as a new institution In the remarkable vision described with graphic power by Zechariah (ch. 3), the High Priest Joshua does not appear as a hitherto unheard-of office bearer. The prophet assumes that those addressed are famiUar with the distinctions of the Aaronic order, of which the High Priest was the head and representative. The account given of the condition of Joshua's vestments is simply a figurative por trayal of the low estate to' which Israel's priesthood had simk during the Exile, and the change of raiment promised by the angel, coupled as it was with the removal of the High Priest's iniquity and the adornment of his brow with a fair mitre, symbolises the restoration of the priesthood to its ancient original ideal, and is not to be interpreted as the primary Pp 2 596 LEX MOSAICA. inauguration of a priestly caste. In his concluding chapters Zechariah passes from sins and chastisements to the more con genial subject of benediction. Whereas the Lord of Hosts had been jealous for Zion with great jealousy and with great fury. He is now returned unto Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem : and Jerusalem is to be called a city of truth; and the mountain of the Lord of Hosts, the holy mountain. Israel's fasts are to be transformed into feasts, and so glorious wUl Jerusalem become under her renovated and restored Temple services, that not only shall many of the cities of Judah provoke one another, saying, Let us go speedUy to pray before the Lord and to seek the Lord of Hosts, but many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of Hosts in Jerusalem and to pray before the Lord. So glorious shall Jerusalem become because of her inhabitation by her reconciled God, that men of all nations and languages shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you. This entire glowing glorification of Zion and Jerusalem as the Divine residence, and the chosen centre of Divine worship, would be altogether anomalous, and, indeed, unintelligible, apart from the Lex Mosaica as Divinely interpreted and illus trated throughout the history of its administration. That Law, among the Minor Prophets, does not appear as the device of a priestly caste, but as the Law of God for Israel, ordained of Him by the hand of His servant Moses. Despite the reformation wrought by Ezra, Zerubbabel, and Nehemiah, aided by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, a century has not passed until Israel has again rebelled against God, profaned His Name, and provoked Him to jealousy. Such is the occasion, and such is the burden, of Malachi's message. The charge preferred by the hand of Malachi is the old charge, that they have transgressed the Levitieal Torah. In this transgression the priests have been the leaders, and they are singled out as the head and front of the offending. They are charged with despising the Name of the Lord of Hosts, and when they demand proof of their despite, the answer is, "Ye offer polluted bread upon Mine altar ... ye say the table of the Lord is contemptible. And if ye offer the blind for sacriflce, is it not evil? And if ye offer the lame and sick, THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD. B97 is it not evil ? . . . Who is there even among you that would shut the doors for nought ? neither do ye kindle fire on Mine altar for nought. I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of Hosts, neither wUl I accept an offering at your hand " (MaL 1. 7, 8, 10). Such is the charge dwelt on and repeated at great length throughout the prophecy. The Law transgressed is not an Esdrine enactment, devised in the land of Israel's captivity. The law prohibiting the offering of the blind or the lame, or anything having blemish, is on record, Deut. 15. 21 and Lev. 22. 20, and these priestly transgressors are charged with cor rupting the covenant of Levi As the relapse of the people into their former state of spiritual decadence and moral cor ruption began with, and was promoted by the priests, so their reformation is to be effected through a renovated priesthood. The Lord whom they were seeking is to be the author of their restoration from the bondage of sin. This is the Mes siah, before whose face the Lord's messenger (John Baptist) is to prepare the way. He is like a refiner's fire and like f uUer's soap ; and he will begin with the priests who have led the way in the violation of the Levitieal Torah and have broken the covenant of Levi " He shaU purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and sUver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness." And as if to emphasize the great antiquity of the Law in question, it is added, "Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord, as in the days of old {kimay olam), and as in former years {keshanim kadmonioth) " (MaL 3. 3, 4). He would certainly be a bold critic who would interpret these Hebrew terms as designating the brief lapse of time which had transpired from the Esdrine reformation to the days of Malachi. The Hebrew forbids such uncritical, temporal shrinkage, and wUl not accommodate itself to the theoretical exigency of the post-exUic hypothesis of the Levitieal Torah. They are freighted with the burden of the Lex Mosaica from its delivery at Horeb tiU the close of the Old Testament Canon by the hand of Malachi; and in conformity with this temporal com prehension is the language with which the prophecy closes. It sounds like an admonitory valedictory address. " Remember ye the Law of Moses, My servant, which I commanded unto Him in Horeb for aU Israel, with the statutes and judgments. 5S3 LEX MOSAICA. Behold, I wUl send you EUjah the Prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord ; and he shaU tum the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the chUdren to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse " (MaL 4. 4-6). In a word, the Mosaic legislation, with its statutes and judgments, has regulated the Divine procedure throughout the chequered history of the Chosen Race, and the last of the prophets proclaims it as the regulative principle of God's rule, not only in his days and the days of old, but as stretching forward in its momentous claims even to the advent of the Messiah Himself And when He appears. He appears not to destroy the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfil. Its priest hood, and Temple, and sacrifices were but types of Him ; and when He says in His inaugural on the mountain side, that one jot or tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law till aU be fulfilled. He must be regarded as embracing, along with the Decalogue, that Law which foreshadowed that atoning work by which He was to fulfil and satisfy the claims of both. In striking accord with these claims of the Levitieal Torah is the teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in which we are carried back to the Tabernacle in the wilderness and its sym bolic furniture and services, and informed, on the authority of the Holy Spirit, that Christ was the great Antitype of aU, " a minister of the sanctuary, and of the true Tabemacle, which the Lord pitched and not man " (Heb. 8. 2). From that Epistle the Levitieal Torah cannot be severed without eviscerating it of all symbolic import, and thus marring one of the most con vincing proofs of Christ's Messianic claims. While that Epistle holds its place in the inspired Canon, the higher critics must fail to discredit the claims of Moses as the author of the Levitieal legislation of the middle books of the Pentateuch, for it bears testimony to his commission to make the Tabemacle, and to the strictness of his instructions ; " For see," saith He, " that thou make all things according to the pattern showed to thee in the mount " (Heb. 8. 5). Such were his instructions, and they manifestly embrace a large commission. The Tabemacle and its furniture implied a service impossible without a priesthood, and a priesthood without a Torah would be utterly unable to conduct the complex services of such a sanctuary. The inevi table conclusion is that the Author of the Tabemacle is the THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD. 599 Author of the Torah, and that the Tabemacle and Torah are Coeval institutions. As the writer has said already, he feels as if he owed an apology to the Christian public for entering formaUy upon the discussion of the question raised by the Biblical reconstruc- tionists regarding the post-exiUc period of Israel's history. The mere statement of their position would seem to be aU that is necessary to justify its rejection. How anyone who believes the Bible to be a Divine revelation, recorded by men Divinely inspired, can read it and conclude that there was no Levitieal Torah prior to the Babylonish Captivity, and that the Levitieal Torah found in the middle books of the Penta teuch was framed by Ezra and not by Moses, is a problem which the writer is not competent to solve. It would seem that this position involves those who assert and advocate it in a labyrinth of problems of which there can be no possible solution which does not involve the denial of the veracity of the sacred writers only, but of the Holy Spirit, under whose inspiration they spoke and wrote. Suffice it to say — and this is all that there is any need of saying in refutation of the post-exilic theory of the origin of the Pentateuchal Levitieal Torah — that it is impossible to hold it and, at the same time, to believe that there was a Tabernacle in the wildemess, or at Shiloh, or a Temple erected by Solomon, or a Divinely appointed priesthood ministering in holy things, according to a prescribed ritual, prior to the days of Ezra. These institutions imply the existence, from the days of Moses, of the Torah, which the critics contend had no existence until Ezra brought it in his hand from Babylon. This method of settling the question may be regarded by the critics as too simple to merit their attention, or to justify them in drawing upon their scholarly Biblical apparatus in order to its refutation, but the writer claims that until they reconcile their post-exilic theory of the origin of the Levitieal Torah with the existence of the above institutions in pre-exiUc times, their theory is not only placed in peril, but absolutely subverted. To put the reader upon his guard against a too ready ac ceptance of the critical conclusions of the school of the higher criticism referred to in the foregoing discussion, it may not be out of place to caU attention to Professor Driver's critical 600 LEX MOSAICA. labours on the early chapters of the Book of Genesis. In his recent book, entitled, An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, which has been published as the first volume of The International Theological Library, he aUeges that there is a discrepancy between the first and the second chapter of Genesis, in regard to the order observed in the creation of man and the creation of vegetable organisms. In the second chapter he avers that the order is man first and vegetation second; whereas in the first chapter the order is, vegetation first and man second. Of course the question here raised must be settled by an appeal to the record itself. The ques tion is simply a question of fact. What does this second chapter say on this point of order? Does it represent man as created before plants, or trees, or herbs ? On the contrary, the statement is that " in the day that the Lord God made' the earth and the heavens," He made " every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew; for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into, his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living souL" Here the order is precisely the same as in the first chapter. Vegetation pre cedes the creation of man, and in order that it may be traced to the creative act of God alone, the writer is careful to point out the absence of rain and of man. The origin of plant-life cannot be ascribed to tbe meUowing influence of rain, for as yet there had been no rain: nor can it be ascribed to the agency of man, for as yet there was not a man to till the ground. Here, then, is the testimony of this second chapter regarding the question of order raised by Dr. Driver, and the account it gives is precisely the same as that stated in the first chapter. Now as the harmony of the two chapters on the question of order is manifest, one is curious to discover how our critic has managed to make out, with any show of plausibility, a charge of discrepancy. WeU, the method adopted is very simple. He mixes up the general account of the crea tion of plant Ufe and the creation of man with the account given immediately afterwards of the special arrangement of a^ THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD, 601 Specially prepared residence for the man. Having, as we have seen, placed the creation of man after the creation of plants and herbs, the sacred writer proceeds to inform us of a special act of Providence exercised toward man after he was created. God did not send him forth to range the primeval forests, which, at the time, must have been all but impenetrable in their pristine luxuriance. In the exercise of His loving kind ness as Adam's Father, and in harmony with Adam's dignity as His son, He prepared for hiin not a forest, or a jungle, but a garden. It is of this garden the writer speaks, and not of the earth and its flora generally, when he says, "out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food ; the Tree of Life also in the midst of the garden, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and EviL" Having made provision for the watering of the- garden, and having stocked it with the choicest trees suitable to Adam's wants. He took him and put him into it, to dress it and keep it, asserting His own sovereign authority over both the man and the garden by licence on the one hand, and limi tation on the other. The inventory of Adam's heritage em braced aU the trees of the garden save one. Of their fruit he may eat, but of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil he may not eat upon pain of death. The story of Eden, therefore, and the preparation of it for the previously created man, cannot, with any proper regard to the principles of Biblical interpretation, be cited in proof of the general order of Creation, and as indicating the writer's view regarding the general question of the priority or the posteriority of the creation of man to the creation of the flora of our world. The narrative is limited to an account of a particular locality, described as lying " eastward in Eden," and recounts a special providential procedure by which it was prepared for the recep tion of our first father. Nothing but the exigencies of a theory could lead anyone to seek for the key to the general order of Creation in what is manifestly an episode in the general history Dr. Driver finds further evidence of discrepancy between the first and the second chapter in the diverse accounts they give of the order observed in the creation of man and the creation of the lower animals. In the first chapter the order is, the lower animals first, whereas in the second chapter, he 602 LEX MOSAICA. alleges, the order is man first and the animals afterwards. This charge of discrepancy he bases on the language of ch. 2. 18-23 : " And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone ; I will make him an help-meet for him. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air ; and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them : and whatsoever Adam caUed every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to aU cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field ; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof ; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made He a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh : she shaU be caUed Woman, be cause she was taken out of Man." On this account Dr. Driver founds his charge of discrepancy. The charge is twofold. 1. That contrary to the order set forth in the first chapter, the second chapter represents man as created before the lower animals. 2. That the second chapter places the creation of the lower animals between the creation of the man and the creation of the woman. This, Dr. Driver holds, is evidently opposed to the order indicated in the first chapter. It is unnecessary to say that Dr. Franz Delitzsch was a competent authority in regard to the tenses of the Hebrew verb and the Scripture mode of writing history. Well versed in both, he has no hesitation in dissenting from the charge preferred against this portion of the sacred narrative by the higher critics. In the passage in question he regards it as consonant to Hebrew usage to give wa/yitzer a backwaird refer ence to the creation of animals, mentioned in chapter first. That is, instead of translating " the Lord God formed every beast," etc., etc., Dr. Delitzsch would translate, " the Lord God had formed every beast," etc., etc. This rendering of this verb leaves the higher critics without a vestige of foundation for the charge of discrepancy, in so far as the first element of the charge is concerned. In a footnote (p. 7) Dr. Driver says: "The rendering 'had formed ' is contrary to idiom." Well, Rabbi Leeser, of Phila- THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD. 603 delphia, who was as well acquainted with Hebrew idiom as Dr. Driver, so renders this verb in this passage, adding his testimony to that of Dr. Delitzsch. Besides, we have the authority both of King James's translators and of the late revisers of their translation for rendering the imperfect with wavj conversive by the English pluperfect. In the last two verses of Isa. 38 they so render the imperfect of the Hebrew verb amar. Dr. Driver has tried to discount the argument from this instance and to weaken its force by simply asserting that the rendering is not legitimate, but he does so in violation of the ultimate law propounded in his own little book on " The Hebrew Tenses." After all he has said in that book, and despite the mystery wherewith he has invested the use of the perfect and imperfect, he has to confess that in dealing with " passages on which some degree of uncertainty must rest, the conditions imposed by the context, interpreted in the light of parallel constructions, wUl usually reduce it within narrow limits " (Preface, p. 6). This is simply to confess that there are difficulties arising out of the peculiarities of the Hebrew tenses that his book on the tenses cannot solve, and that the remedy in such cases is to be sought "in the conditions im posed by the context, interpreted in the Ught of parallel con structions." This is common sense superseding grammatical pedantry. Now applying this rule to the two instances in Isaiah, there is no room for a second opinion on the subject. The context which recites the story of Hezekiah's recovery, and the song he composed in celebration of God's mercy therein, necessitates the rendering of wayomer in the pluperfect in both verses; for surely Isaiah did not tell the attendants of the king to put a lump of figs on the boil in order to effect his re covery, after he had recovered and had composed a song of thanksgiving for his restoration. Nor does Dr. Driver mend the matter by reminding his readers that wayomer has been transferred from its proper context in the Second Book of Kings. This reference to the original context simply confirms the rule that the context must determine the tense the translator is to employ ; for in Kings wayomer is translated by the EngUsh imperfect ' said,' and could not, owing to its historic setting, be otherwise 604 LEX MOSAICA. rendered ; whereas in the altered environment, in Isaiah, it is rendered, and must, be rendered, by the EngUsh pluperfect ' had said.' Dr. Driver may say such rendering is not legitimate. The reply is obvious : it is impossible to render it otherwise according to his own ultimate canon, which takes account of "the conditions imposed by the context, and the light of parallel constructions." With regard to the question raised by the separation made between the creation of the man and the creation of the woman. Dr. Driver himself admits that if the narrative stood alone, it might be reasonably explained upon the supposition that chapter second describes in detail what is stated succinctly in chapter first. Well, what is there in the latter narrative to shake confidence in this explanation ? This explanation is perfectly natural In chapter first we are told, in general terms, that God created man in His own image, and, it is added, " male and female created He them." It is not said that the female was created at the same time as the male. The second chapter informs us that they were not created simultaneously and that whereas the man was formed from {he dust of the ground, the woman was not formed directly from dust, but, as the race was to spring from one fontal source, she was formed out of a rib taken from the man. Where is there any ground on which to found a charge of discrepancy in this case ? On the contrary, if the woman was formed out of a rib taken from the man, there must have been an interval between the two creative acts. That interval is beautifully and suggestively filled up by the assembling of the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air before Adam to receive from him their names, and to do homage to him as their future lord. It may be said " suggestively filled up," for as those creatures passed in review before him, each male with his female, the tendency was to make Adam feel that he alone, though lord of all, was without a help-meet. The narrative is exquisitely beautiful in its native simplicity, and the Uterary taste that tries to fix upon it these traditional charges of discrepancies, handed down from one critic to another, is certainly not of a high literary or critical order. How strange that the Apostle Paul, who had both these chapters before him, did not perceive this discrepancy, but assuming their harmony, based an argument against the woman THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD. 605 usurping authority over the man upon the fact that "Adam was first formed, then Eve " (1 Tim. 2. 13). But then we must remember that Paul was not a Higher Critic. It is difficult in reviewing these' charges against the sacred Record and its authors to avoid the impression — an impression ever deepening the more thoroughly the charges are investi gated — that the critics, instead of analysing the facts with which they profess to deal, and deducing from the analysis their theories, enter upon their task under the bias of foregone conclusions, to which the facts must be made to conform. Hence the critical exigency and necessity of a reconstructed, or rather an expurgated Bible, if their theories are to have even the semblance of justification. If men of science were to frame their theories after this fashion they would become a laughing stock to the scientific world. And the writer is persuaded that when the glamour of literary renown, with which these theories have been emblazoned before a too credulous public, shaU have been dispelled, as is being done by a riper scholarship, their authors, if heard of at all, will occupy a very humble position in the domain of Biblical literature, whether of the Old Testa ment or the New. XIV. SUMMAEY. HENRY WACE. XIV. SUMMARY. THE preceding essays are designed to exhibit, step by step, the evidence afforded in the Books of the Old Testament in support of those views of its origin and history which, it is admitted, were from the earliest times entertained respecting them in the Christian Church, and which it is also admitted were received by the Christian from the Jewish Church, out of which it sprung. According to this ancient tradition the Old Testa ment is the production of a series of inspired men, beginning with Moses and ending with Malachi, Ezra, and Nehemiah. The five books of Moses, called the Law, were believed to be the foundation of the whole literature, and to describe the events and the legislation which lay at the basis of the national life. From those events and with that institution the people of Israel started on their career ; their history is one of suc cessive divergence from the ideal thus set before them and recurrence to , it ; and their history closes in the fulfilment of their fundamental law in a Person, a Life, a Death, and a spiritual Kingdom to which all their experience had pointed. Of late years, however, a school of criticism has obtained preponderance in Germany, and acceptance by influential authorities in this country, which flatly denies this traditional belief It alleges that the appearance presented by the Old Testament to Jews and Christians of the last two thousand years is completely delusive ; that Moses is not the author of any considerable part, if of any part, of the books which have hitherto been assigned to him ; that the greater part of the so-called five books of Moses are really about the latest portion of the Hebrew Scriptures ; that the Book of Deuteronomy was not promulgated untU about 620 B.C., in the reign of King S 1063. Q q 610 LEX MOSAICA. Josiah, and the remainder of the Pentateuch nearly 200 years later still, under Ezra and Nehemiah. These books may contain some ancient and Mosaic traditions ; but they exhibit radically false representations of Mosaic ordinances and of early Jewish legislation. They allege that certain observances were prescribed by Moses and Aaron under Divine authority at the commencement of Jewish history, which were never prescribed by them at all, and which were introduced in the last period of Jewish history in consequence of the influence of the prophets. In support of this .allegation — an allegation which seems wholly incompatible with the truthfulness, to say nothing of the inspiration, of the authors — it is urged that, throughout the historical books of the Old Testament, there is no evidence of the laws prescribed in the so-called books of Moses having been observed, or even known, until the late date in question, or of the language of the books themselves being familiar to the prophets who appeared before that date. It is further asserted that the first five or six books of the Old Testament can be shown to be a composite production, made up of three or four documents, partly narrative, partly legislative, supple mented by an indefinite number of minor pieces, all artificially tesselated and cemented together by editors, or redactors, who were concerned to give the authority of Moses to the new institutions they desired to consolidate. These • various docu ments, it is alleged, can be distinguished, even to the extent of parts of verses embedded in the rest, by linguistic tests, and can be assigned with probability to definite periods in the history, and even to definite districts, although their authors are un known and have never been heard of. r It is evident this theory involves, to say the least, a complete revolution in the be lief hitherto entertained in the Christian Church respecting the authority of the Old Testament. Some of its advocates in this country consider that it is not inconsistent with admitting what they understand by the Inspiration of the Scriptures ; but an entirely new meaning would have to be assigned to that word — a meaning which is in great measure independent of the truth or falsehood of the writings so inspired. As an obvious practical consequence, it must follow that the Bible is no longer a book which ordinary men and women can read with simple confidence in the plain tale it seems to teU. SUMMARY. 611 Scarcely any part of it, except some of the writings of the prophets, are what they seem to be, or state narrative^ which can be trusted. Moses and Aaron did not say or do most of the things they are described as saying and doing, and above aU God did not make the communications to them which He is said to have made. It is doubtful, even, how far such familiar parts of the history as those which narrate the life of David can be trusted ; and one important historical work, at all events, the Books of the Chronicles, is entirely untrustworthy, or to quote what is no doubt intended to be a mild statement of the case, " in these representations there is certainly much that cannot be strictly historical; but the Chronicler must not on this account be held guilty of a deliberate perversion of history." * The assertion remains that he did pervert it, and that successive generations of Jews and Christians have been influenced by his perversions. Now it will be acknowledged that the writers of the present volume are not wrong in regarding the issue thus raised as most momentous in its import, not only to our belief in the Old Testament, but to the general truth of Christianity. It has already involved grave questions respecting the limits of our Lord's authority and knowledge, and it must entail not less grave questions respecting the authority and the inspiration of the Apostles and Evangelists. Of course its truth or falsehood cannot be decided by any appeal to dogmatic authority. If, indeed, as many are convinced, the authority of the Christian religion would be fatally affected if the new views could be established, they must be all the more carefully and candidly examined. Criticism is simply the application of reason to its subject matter, and the famous saying of Bishop Butler applies to this, as much as to other questions of theological controversy : "Let reason be kept to; and if any part of the Scripture account of the redemption of the world by Christ can be shown to be really contrary to it, let the Scripture, in the name of God, be given up."t But in proportion to the gravity of the issues actually, or even possibly, involved, will be the responsi bUity for any hasty application of critical processes, or for any prejudiced conclusions. The present writers have therefore * Driver's Introduction, p. 501 ; 3rd ed. \ Analogy, Part IL, ch. V. Qq2 612 LEX MOSAICA. endeavoured to subject the questions at issue to a fresh and thorough historical investigation. They have mainly conflned themselves to this branch of the subject, leaving the literary analysis of the texts of the Scriptures to others. There are two considerations which render it desirable to approach the question from this side. One is that the linguistic tests are in too great a degree a matter on which Hebrew experts can alone satisfactorily enter, and which general readers could not well follow. The other is that, according to the critics themselves, the linguistic tests are inconclusive of themselves, and it is the historical considerations which are decisive of the main , issues. Thus the late Professor Robertson Smith says* that " the theory of the Old Testament dispensation which orthodox theologians derive from the traditional view as to the date of the Pentateuch . . . has only one fault. The standard which it applies to the history of Israel is not that of the contemporary historical records, and the account which it gives of the work of the prophets is not consistent with the writings of' the prophets themselves." This is a broad issue of which any inteUigent reader may judge, and to this, therefore, in the main, the dis cussions in the present volume are directed. An endeavour is made to show that the traditional view of the Old Testament books, and the orthodox view of the Old Testament dispensa tion, do correspond with the historical records and with the writings of the prophets; that the Law of Moses is pre-supposed throughout the history, and the influence of the books of Moses is implied in the books of the prophets ; and, conversely, that the view put forward by the new school of criticism is incon sistent alike with the language of the prophets and with the facts of the history. The argument thus developed is one of which the value is in great measure dependent on particulars of proof, and of which the reader must therefore judge by attention to its details ; but its total force depends on the accumulation of these particulars, and on its continuity. It is believed that the various writers have shown that every period of Jewish history, and each successive contemporary record bears traces of the truth of the old tradition; and this continuous and unbroken chain of * Old Testament in the Jewish Church, p. 233 ; 2nd ed. SUMMARY. 613 evidence must carry, if it can be estabUshed, overwhelming weight. To one preliminary consideration, however, special im portance must be attached. The new critical view obviously and confessedly involves the supposition that written docu ments, if not unknown, were at least rare and precarious, in the days of Moses, and still more so before him. This is expressly assumed by critics of the school in question. In the introduction, for instance, to Dr. Kautsch's recent and useful German transla tion of the Old Testament, it is expressly stated that there was not, and could not be, much writing in the early days of Jewish history, but that Jewish literature began, like that of other nations, with popular songs. and ballads, such as those which are found in the early .books of the Old Testament. Such a suppo sition would seem, indeed, indispensable to the theory. If the practice prevailed, in and before the time of Moses, of making permanent records ; if any considerable literature or literary communications existed, it is extremely improbable that no records of the acts and legislation of so important a person as Moses were preserved; and if they were preserved, and the records were handed down, it is inconceivable that they would be so completely falsified as to render it possible for a totally in correct account of his work to be put forward by his official successors in the government of the Jewish people. Now it is shown in the first essay in this volume that recent archaeological discoveries prove the existence both in Egypt and in Western Asia of an extensive literature, which goes back to a much earlier period than that of Moses. It is now certain that the Israelites, when they left Egypt, were in the midst of a society of readers and writers ; that Canaan, to which they were led, was the centre of great literary activity ; that schools, libraries, and archive chambers existed there, fiUed with books inscribed on imperishable clay ; and that even in the desert they were in con tact with people who could both read and write. " The age of Moses was a literary age ; the lands which witnessed the Exodus and the conquest of Canaan were literary lands ; and literature had flourished in them for numberless generations before." This fact, as is said in the essay, does not preclude the suppo sition that the ancient Hebrew records may have undergone some revision in the course of the centuries through which they were handed down to the time of Ezra ; but it renders it 614 LEX MOSAICA. highly probable that some adequate records of the Mosaic, and even pre-Mosaic, period were made and preserved, and in the highest degree improbable that books should have been subse quently foisted upon the Jewish people and the Jewish authori ties, containing grave misrepresentations of the Mosaic legisla tion and of subsequent Jewish history. There is, in a word, every reason to believe that the authors of all the early books of the Bible had access to contemporary documents, even if many of such documents be not actually incorporated in those books ; and consequently a theory of Jewish history which radically in verts the history as given in those books must be improbable and precarious in the extreme. It should be borne in mind in this connection that no archaeological discovery has yet been made which is substantially, inconsistent with any record of either the Old or the New Testament, but many which have confirmed those records ; so that an immense burden of proof, apart from all questions of inspiration, lies upon those who charge those records with containing " much that cannot be strictly his torical." When we pass from these preliminary but vital considera tions to the books themselves, we find in the first place, as is sho-wn in the second and third essays, that both the Levitieal Code and the Deuteronomical Code correspond, alike in their cha racter and in their form, to the circumstances of Moses and his time; that their prescriptions would be gross anachronisms at any subsequent time; that, for instance, there is something strictly preposterous in supposing that the Tabernacle and the minute regulations concerning it are a fiction of nearly a thousand years later ; that there are strong refiections of Egyptian life ; and that in Deuteronomy in particular many detaUs are such as harmonize exactly with the circumstances traditionally believed, but could not have been introduced at a later date without a most deliberate and ingenious fiction. No adequate answer has yet been made to the weighty observations of Dean Milman on this point in his History of the Jews : * " Strange if a late ima ginative writer, or even compiler, should preserve this singular accuracy — if I may so say, this naturalness of detail. . . . Read the Book of Deuteronomy and fairly estimate the difficulties * Vol. i., p. 208 ; iih ed. See also a brief and striking argument on The Author ship of Beuteronomy, by Sir William Muir, just published by the S.P.C.K. SUMMARY. 615 which occur— and that there are difficulties I acknowledge then read it again, and endeavour to assign it to any other period in the Jewish Annals, and judge whether difficulties do not accumulate twentyfold. In this case, how would the signs of that period have inevitably appeared, anachronisms, a later tone of thought, of incident, of manners ! " The Book of Joshua is acknowledged on aU hands to be intimately connected with the five books of Moses, and the main question, therefore, with respect to that book is whether it can be accepted as ancient and trustworthy. " All the authorities whom the disintegrators claim as having had a share in the Pentateuch are concerned in the matter. The pre-exUic J, E, and JE, and the exilic P, H, and D, are freely, indiscriminately, and unceremoniously used by the writer of Joshua without respect of persons. Thus the whole critical theory of the Pentateuch vanishes like smoke if the Book of Joshua is the product of the , pre-regal age." But the book bears no mark of modernness or of fiction. Recent archaeological discoveries tend to confirm its representations of the state of Canaan at the time, and it seems scarcely credible that its vivid and circumstantial narratives should be due to the late compilers and romancers to whom the Pentateuch is assigned by the new critical theories. In the Book of Judges, it is shown that the Tabernacle, the Ark, the High Priest, the position of Levites, the Sacrificial Sys tem, the Great Feasts are all recognized. There, as well as else where, the current criticism does not hesitate to pronounce inconvenient passages to be interpolations ; but the text as it stands implies the existence of the great features of the Mosaic legislation and ritual It is alleged, indeed, that here, and in the succeeding period of Samuel, plain violations of the Mosaic pre scriptions are recorded. But the inference deduced, that the Mosaic law was not known, is palpably invalid. The Book of the Judges is confessedly a record of a period of general lapse, when " every man did that which was right in his own eyes," and in various degrees this is the case with the whole subse quent history. The history of the Jews is the history of con tinuous lapses from a great ideal, and of continuous recoveries. It finds too close a parallel in this respect to the his tory of the Christian Church. But " throughout the book are ever interspersed recollections of a Mosaic past ; the Mosaic 616 LEX MOSAICA. system is everywhere presupposed ; Mosaic injunction is carried out ; . . . Mosaic prophecy is in course of fulfilment. . . . The impression derived from a close study of the book is that the writer knew, and knew thoroughly, the Pentateuch. His mind was saturated with it. A single thought often embodies two, three, even four passages from the Pentateuch." Similar re sults are obtained by a careful examination of the Books of Samuel and of Kings ; and it would seem that the mere fact of the establishment of the Temple worship under David and Solomon is enough to show that a Priestly Code Uke that of the Pentateuch must then have been in existence, and have been authoritative. AU these considerations depend on detailed evi dence, of which the reader must judge ; but if, as is believed, they are adequately supported, they destroy the supposition on which the new critical theory mainly rests — ^of the absence in the historical books of any recognition df the legislation of the Pentateuch. The argument from the prophets is of a stiU stronger and clearer character. The supposition of the critics in question is that the Pentateuch is about three centuries later than the earlier prophets ; but strong evidence will be found adduced to the fact of their language containing numerous allusions to it, and coincidences with it; and the only way in which the natural inference from this fact can be evaded is by assuming that the references are only to ancient laws or customs, or to fragments of ancient documents subsequently incorporated in the Pentateuch. But references to passages in a known book are primd facie evidence of the existence of that book, especiaUy where, as in this case, the reference can be shown to be not merely to facts, but to turns of language and to characteristic ex pressions. Sceptical writers on the New Testament have similarly endeavofured to evade the evidence afforded by quotations of the Gospels in the early Fathers; but the attempt has been felt to be a mere evasion. Not only the writers in the present volume, but other learned writers Uke Professor Robertson, have shown the strongest reason to beUeve that the early prophets — such as Hosea, Amos, Micah, and Jeremiah — imply, in their appeals to the people of their day, a knowledge of both the history and the Law of the Pentateuch; and elaborate explanations, and some violence to texts, have to be resorted to, in order to explain SUMMARY. 617 away the force of this fact. A new and valuable argument appears to be presented in the essay on Ezekiel in the present volume. It is supposed by the critics in question that the "Priests' Code" is immediately due to a priestly school founded by Ezekiel. But it is urged with great force not only that no direct traces are to be found of such a school, either in Ezekiel or in the subsequent history, but, moreover, that he himself was well acquainted with that Code. It is, indeed, admitted by the critics in question, that his writings " pre-suppose parts of it " ; and, once again, it is in accordance with all ordinary methods of reasoning to conclude from his knowledge of parts to his know ledge of the whole. Unless he quoted the greater part of the Code, there could be no actual demonstration of his knowing the whole ; but his writings afford the evidence which would be satisfactory in any other literary question of his acquaintance with the Pentateuch as we now have it. The position of Ezekiel is a crucial one in the theory in question, and the argu- . ments adduced in the present essay on this point will be found very difficult to answer. The critical supposition respecting the part played by Ezra, in the series of transactions which led to the establishment of the Levitieal Legislation, appears at least equally improbable, and inconsistent with the evident existence of legislation resembling the Mosaic before Ezra's time ; and thus history and prophecy alike, both before and after the Exile, combine to support the old belief that the books of Moses sub sisted, in substance, through all Jewish history, and that the ancient belief respecting them is substantially true. It seems reasonable to add, that if these essays had done no more than show the extremely precarious and speculative character of the new critical theories, their main purpose would have been sufficiently accomplished. The origin and composition of the Pentateuch according to those theories is of so unexampled and extraordinary a character, that the most positive historical evidence would be required to justify our acceptance of such an account of it. There is no instance of an ancient book of history being composed like a tesselated pavement, in which several imknown sources are dovetailed into one another, some times in the most minute pieces. Still less is there any instance of an elaborate historical and legislative work having been composed with the object of confusing, if not perverting, a 618 LEX MOSAICA. nation's traditions of its own history and its ancient laws ; still less of such a work succeeding in the attempt. If such a scheme were difficult with any nation, it would be tenfold more difficult in the case of the Jews, one of whose chief characteristics, at once their strength and their danger, is their intense tenacity, and who were always, for good or for harm, " a stiff-necked people." But it is impossible not to add that, most incredible, if not most monstrous, of all, is the supposition that such a pious fraud was committed at the instigation of the God of truth, and that the books which are its record and its instrument can be regarded as inspired by Him. INDICES. INDEX OE LITERATURE QUOTED. INDEX OE TEXTS. INDEX OE SUBJECTS. mDEX OF LITERATrEE QUOTED. Addis, W. E., The Bocuments of tlie Hexateuch, 148, 186. Aids to Faith, 36. Alford, Greek Test., 49, 50. Ambros, ad Luc., 49. An Universal History, 390, 393. Auberlen, Studien und Kritiken, 161. Augustine, Be Genes., 47. Confessions, 203. Be Trinitate, 49. Barry, Bp., Some Lights of Science on the Faith (Bampton Lecture, 1892), 186. Basil, 42. Bertheau, Kwrzgef. Exeget. Handb., 148, 155, 196. Biicher der Chronik, 153. Biblical Archceology (Transactions of the Soc. of), 182. Birch, Egypt from the Earliest Times, 25. Bishop of London, Bampton Lectures (1884), 541 75. Bishop of Oxford, 51, 213 n., 230 n. Second Charge, 206. BisseU, Prof. E. C, Pentateuch, 27, 34, 183, 361, 369 (Psalms), 375 (Ps.). Genesis Printed in Colours, 493, 499. Bleek, Introd. to 0. Test., 171. BUss, F. J., Quarterly Statement, Pal. Explor. Fund, 117. Blomfield, Bp., The Old Test, and ihe New Criticism, 183. Blunt, Prof. J. J., Undesigned Coinci dences, 162. Bohlen, Von, Einleitung, 148. Book by Book, 174. Briggs, Prof., The Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch, 125, 160, 356, 361 #.,376, 381. Bruce, Prof., Apolegetics {Intemat. Theol. Library), 564, 567, 568, 570. Budde, Bie Biicher Bichter und Samuel, 170, 196. Burckhardt, Notes on tlie Bedouins, 26, 29. Cassel, Prof. (Lange on Judges), 161, 177. Care, Principal A., Inspiration of the 0. Test., 136, 149. Cheyne, Prof., Founders of the Old Te.it. Criticism, 186, 463, 465. Jeremiah, 283 n. Hampton Lectures (Psalms), 317, 366 bis, 367, 368. Chaeremon (Josephus, Contr. Ap.), 28. Chronicon of Alexandria, 143. Chronicon Samaritanum, 143, 241, 242. Chrysostom, 42. ad Matt., 49. Horn, in Phil., 50. Clement, F^. ad Cor., 44. Colenso, Bp., Lectures on the Pentateuch, 140. Conder, C. E., The Tel el-Amama Tablets, 115. Tent Work in Palestine, 111. Cooke, Gr. A., Hist, and Song of Beborah, 177. Curtiss, Levitieal Priests, 135, 142. Cyprian, 264. Be Orat. Bominica, 234. Daumer, Feuer-und Molochdienst, 160. Davidson, Introduction to the O.T., 511, 516 n., 522. Davidson, A. B. {Expositor 25, p. 49), 129. Dawson, Sir J. W. {Expositor 1894, p. 276), 358. Delitzsch, Prof. (Pref. to Levitieal Priests), 135. 622 INDEX OF LITERATURE QUOTED. Delitzsch, Prof. {Proverbs in Herzog's Seal-Encyclop.), 310. {Psalms, ib.), 319. Ber Prophet Habakuk, 455. De Konge, Sit. Fun4raires, 182. De Rossi on Ezekiel, 229, 520. Dfe Wette, Critical and Historical Introd., 127, 140. Dillmann, Prof. A. (in Briver's Introd.), 305,498/., 504. Diodorus Siculus, 24. Doedes, Hermeneutics qf the NT., 501. Douglas, Principal G. C. M., Judges, 161. Driver, Prof., Intr. to the Lit. of the Old Test., 38, 39, 57 nn. 2, 3, (Deut.); 58, 60 n., 63, 64, 66, 67 n., 70 n., 71, 73 »., 90 and m.f, 91-95, 120, 126-, 129, 132, 134, 135, 138, 140, 146, 159, 164, 167, 175, 177, 188, 192, 194, 197, 198, 209, 211 n., 217, 229, 254, 256, 273 •«., 332, 365 bis (Psalms), 367 (Ps.), 376 (Pent.), 402 (Chr.), 463 (Deut.), 499 nn., 501, 603, 604, 515, 523, 524, 539, 552, 578, 600. Sermons on Subjects connected with the O.T., 493. {Contemp. Sev., 1890), 164. Etheridge, Hebrew Literature, 507. Eupolemus, Fragm. Hist. Grcec, 40. Evrald, Hist, of Israel, 165, 173, 236 »., 241 n., 242 n., 257, 460, 464 n., 462. Prophets of the O.T., 450, 458. Gesenius, Prof. W., Thesaurus, 471 n. Giles, Dr., Hebrew Secords, 163. Gladstone, Impregnable Bock of Holy Scripture, 22, 29. Gore, Canon, Bampton Lectures, 46-49. Graetz, Prof. H., Hist, of the Jews, 157. Gramberg, Geschichtz der Selig. Idee, 140. Green, Prof., Hebrew Feasts, 140. Moses and the Prophets, 216, 251, 252, 257. .. Psalms and Modern Criticism, 370. Hecatseus, Fragm. Hist. Grcec, 41. Hengstenberg, Genuineness of the Penta teuch, 161. Herodotus, 24, 27. Hervey, Bp. Lord A. C, Pulpit Com ment., 142. The Book of Chron. in Belat. to the Higher Criticism' 153, 398, 460 71. Hugo, Victor, Les Misirables, 131. Ignatius, F^. ad Sm., 44. Irenaeus, 42. Against Heresies^ 545. Josephus, Antiq., 143 (High Priests in time of Judges), 390 (Book found in Temple). — ¦— c. Ap., 509 and n. Juvenal, Sat., 27, 41. Kautzsch, Samuel, 292. Kay, Dr., Crisis Hupfeldiana, 132, 140, 218. Keil, Introd. to the Old Test., 127, 391. Keil and Delitzsch, Judges, 149, 161. Biblical Archceology, 159. Kirkpatrick, Prof. {Judges, Camb. Ser.), 145, 250, 253. Samuel, 243 n., 251 n., 253. Warburton Lectures, 327. The Psalms, 317. Kittel, Studien und Krit., 199. Kuenen, Seligion of Israel, 37. 38, 139, 140, 142, 176, 176, 177, 221, 253 n., 450 n., 463, 465, 469, 606, 507. Origin and Compos, of ihe Hexa teuch,, 137, 182, 494, 499, 506, 517. History of Israel, 301, 302 n. {Eeekiel in Modern Beview, 1884), 497, 498. Kurz, Sacrificial Worship of the 0. T., 169, 520. Lappenberg, History of England, 232 n. Laurie, S. S., Sise and Constit. of the Universities, 132. Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, 26. Leathes, Prof. S., The Law in the Pro phets, 384, 387./; 425, 429, 503. Lenormant, Anc. Hist, of the East, 182. Les Premieres Civilisations, 1S2. -. La Bivination, 182. Chaldean Magic, 182. INDEX OF LITERATURE QUOTED. 623 Lias, J. J., Principles of Biblical Criti cism, 140, 171. Commentary on Judges (Cambr. Bible for Schools), 243 n. Lightfoot, Bp., HorcB Hebraic/^, 509. St. Clement of Some, 501. Longinus, 41. Lysimachus, ap. Josephus, c. Ap., 41. Maimonides, More Nevoochim, 159. Maine, Prof., Ancient Law, 22. Manetho, ap. Joseph., Contr. Apion., 28. Fragm. Hist. Grcec, 41. Maspero, Hist. Anc., 182. Menzies, National Seligion, 139. More, Mrs. Hannah, Sacred Bramas, 111. Moore, Aubrey, Scienee amd the Faith, 140. Names and Places in 0. and N. T. and Apocrypha (Pal. Expl. Fund), 111. Naville, Agypt. Todtenbvch, 182. Nicolas of Damascus, 41. Oehler, Theology of the 0. T, 236. Paley's Evidences of Christianity, 489. Pentaur, Poems of, 181. Perowne, Bp., Psalms, 371, 372. Philo, 157, 645 n. Be Vita Mosis, 40. Be Prcem. and Poenis, 509. Philo Byblius, 17. Petrie, Prof. F., A Mound of Many Cities, 117. Pulpit Commentary, 142, 379, 385, 394, 396. Pusey, Prof., Baniel, 190. Qua/rterly Seview, 40, 42, 49. Eawlinson, Herodotus, 24. Egypt, 24. Seligions of the Ancient World, 182. Canon, Present Bay Tracts, No. 71, 368. Secords of the Pastt 24, 182. Eeinke, Ueberdas Gelubde Jepht., 161. Eenan, Life of Jesus, 494. Histoire des Langues Simitiques, 506. ' Renouf, L. Le P. (Proceedings of Soc. of Bibl. Arch.), 26. Eeuss, L'Histoire Sainte et la Loi, 127. Eiehm, Gesetzgehung , Mosis im Lande Moab, 172. Eobertson, Prof. J., Seligion of Israel 145, 183. Early Seligion of Israel, 215, 216 n., 449, 456, 489, 492. Baird Lecture, 382, 383 its. Eobiou, Croyances de VEgypte, 182. Eosenmiiller, 543. Scholia in Leviticum, 500. Eyle, Prof., Canon of Old Test., 393, 433. Higher Criticism, 402. Ezra and Nehemiah, 507, 552. Salisbury, Marquis of. Address, ^c, 276 n. Sanday, Prof., Bampton Lectures, 1893, 187. Sayce, Prof., Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments, 27, 29, 181, 236 75. The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, 152, 174, 206, 223, 271 75., 453, 455, 469, 470, 493. Hibbert Lectures (Ancient Baby lonians), 182. Ancient Empires, 182. Schulz, Old Test. Theology, 168, 241 7j., 357, 368. Scott, Dr. A., The Sacrifice, its Prophecy and Fulfilment, 489. Selden, Be Successione in Pontifie, 143. Septuagint, Codex Vaticanus, 221 75. Sinker, Prof. E., Psalm of Habakkujc, 457, 458. Smith, Prof. Eobertson, The Old Test, in the Jewish Church, 38, 126, 134, 138, 140, 203, 205, 216 7*., 217, 221, 266 76., 259 75., 498 bis, 546. Seligion of the Semites, 168, 159, 497. The Prophets of Israel, 383. Encyclop. Britann., Joel, 423. Smith's Bictionary of the Bible, 384. Spalding, Prof., History of Engl. Litera ture, 610. Speaker's Commentary, 38, 39, 263 75., 398, 623. Spencer, F. E., Bid Moses write the Pen tateuch after alii 135, 393. 624 INDEX OF LITERATURE QUOTED. Stahelin, Krit. Untersuchungen, 161, 196. Stanley, Dean, Jewish Church, 22, 23, 172, 177, 606. Stnart, Prof. M., Old Test. Canon, 392, 394. Stuart, A., The Mosaic Authorship of Beut., 364, 366, 380. Studer, Bas Buch der Sichter, 156, 158. Student's Commentary on the Bible, 373. Stubbs, Bp., Cha/rge, 263 75. Tacitus, 41. Talmud, 166, 462, 469. Taylor, Jeremy, 605. Terry, Prof. M. S., Moses and his recent Critics, ed. by T. W. Chambers, 361, 403. Tertullian, 42. Theodoret, 60. Theophylact, Com. in Phil., 50. Tiele, Outlines of the Hist, of Selig., 182. Toy, Prof. C. H., Judaism amd Chris tianity, 129. Transactions of the Soc. of Bibl. Archceol., 29. Tylor, ISarly Hist, of Mankind, 158. Warington, G., When was the Penta teuch Written] 181. i Waterland, Scripture Vindicated, 161. Watson, Dr. F., The Book Genesis, 147. Watson, R. A. (in Expositor's Bible — Judges), 129. Watts, Prof. E., Newer Criticism, 566. Westcott, Bp., Epistle to the Hebrews, 304. Wright, Dr. W., Comp. Grammar of Sem. Languages, ill, 472. Whateley, Archbp., Historic Boubts relative to Napoleon Buonaparte, 526. Wellhausen, Prolegomena, 126, 128, 160, 161, 163, 164, 171, 172,175,177, 196, 198, 330, 334, 348, 352, 361, 399-403, 456, 463, 469, 480, 490, 498, 499,500, 510 75., 523 bis, 624, 552. History of Israel, 134, 136, 140, 206, 236 75., 250, 263, 258, 259, 296, 297, 496, 498. Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, 519, 621. Wilson, Egypt of the Past, 181. Wordsworth, Greek Test., 49. Xenophon, Memor., 143. Zockler (Lange, Bibel-Werk), 153. INDEX OE TEXTS. GENESIS. Ch. Ver. Vage Cft. Ver. Fai)e Ch. Ver. Page 34. 14, 16, 28, 6c , 5? 472 2. - 254 1, 2. - ... 435, 600-605 35. 28 ... 420 12 ... 26 1 2 .. 474 28. 3,4 ... 472 23-25 671 26 ... 529 24,25 ... 81 3. - 254 27 ... ... 52975. 34, 35 ... 162 5 ... 103 2. 4ff. ... 358 37. 40 ... 426 8 ... 166 18-23 602 46 ... 162 16 ... ... 172, 459 3. 18 ... 449 28. 9 ... 162 17 ... 166 24 ... 452 17, 22 ... 72 4. 14 ... .., ... 87 24 ff. .. 358 29. 34 55175. 22, 23 429 5. 3 ... 633 30. 31 421)5. 5. 16 ... ... 47375. 6. 12 ... 459 3L 29, 60 ... 424 6. 2-8 ... 166 13 ... 533 54 ... 152 9. 31 ... 47375. 8. 18 ... 420 33. 12 ... 416 10. 9 ... 418 21 ... 412 20 25675. 13. - 5975. 9. 4 ... 25975. 24-28 ... 420 2 ... 103 6 ... 634 33. 11 47375. 6 ... 16675. 13 ... 536 18 ... 105 6 ... 47875. 22 ... .... ... 467 20 ... 84 9 ... 151 10. - ... 512 34. - ... 162 12 ... 451 5 ... 459 3 339, 472 14 ... 452 6, 8, 9 15 12 ... 472 15 ... 666 16 ... 109 35. 7 ... 81 17, 18 103 19 ... 420 21 ... 425 21 ... 6575. 12. 6-8 ... 81 36. - ... 512 22 ... 84 13. 4 ... 81 31 ... 16 40 ... 506 18 ... 81 38. 21, 22 338, 418 41,48 103 14. 6 ... ... ... 469 4L 62 ... 421 13. 1-3 ... 533 15. 14-16... 166 46. 1 ... 152 8, 9, 14- -16 ... 57 16 ... 467 4 ... 166 15 ... 91 18. ... 474 8-27 ... 468 14. - ... 451 18-20 110 48. 21 ... 166 15. 1 ... 417 17. - ... 162 49. 1 ... 418 7 ... 451 18. 6 ... 150 5-7 ... 533 8 ... 458 19. 8 ... 472 22 ... 421 15 ... 103 24 ... 459 26 , ... 457 22 ... 468 26 ... ... 459, 472 50. 24 166, 469 17. - ... 246 2L 8 ... 152 6 ... ... ... 172 22. 17 ... 416 EXODUS 8-16... ... 24675. 23. - ... 613 1. - ... 530 14-16... ... 59, 71 24. 7 ... 50675. 6 ... 458 14 ... 245». S 106 3. E J.- 626 INDEX OF TEXTS. Ch. Ter. Page Ch. Ver. Page 17. 15 ... ,, . ... 81 26. 22, 23, 25 531 LEVITICUS. 18. 7, IS . ... 134 27. 20,21 254 Ch. Ter. Page 19. 5 ... . 166, 630 28, 39.-. 261 1-3. 537 6 ... . 86, 337 28. - . ... 142, 144 1. - ... 259, 261 10 ... ., . ... 103 2-43 23 1-5 .. 550 10-14 . 260, 531 4 .. 536 3. - 334 16 ... . ... 167 6 144, 249, 25375. 11 .. 334 16-18 . 457 bis. 17-30 529 13 .. 537 22, 24 . ... 87 39. - 637, 26975. 14 .. 473 20. - ... . ... 426 14 .. . ... 52775. 3. _ ... 259, 261 5 ... 33S , 418, 461 20 .. 536 3-5 .. 251 8 ... „ . ... 418 30 .. . ... 24975. 7-17 261 10 ... . 57,413 38-44 38 17 .. ... ... 82 23 ... . ... 32 42,43 266 4. 2 .. 535 24 81-8£ , 162, 365 46, 46 81 5 .. 537 31-33. - . ... 60 30. 6 . . ... 26675. 11, 12 52775. 21. 2-6 ... . 67, 93 7, 8.. 437 5. 2 .. ... 418,527 7-11 . ... 93 16 .. . ... 50675. 6. 2,4 .. 246, 411, 634 22. - ... . ... 332 26 .. 629 2-5 .. 634 4,6 ... . ... 246, 36 .. . ... 25675. 3 .. 51975. 16 ... . 339, 340 32. 6 .. 534 4 .. ... 424, 535 18 261, at , 427, 452 11, 12 106 20, 21 537 21 ... . ... 166 19 .. 234 28 .. 150 23 ... ., .- ... 425 26-29 87 7. 12, 13 334 24 ... . 80, 425 34 .. . ... 418, 469 13 .. 411 26 ... 335 , 411,450 33. 7 .. 134 15 .. 251 27,28 . ... 104 11 .. 105 20 .. 419 29 ... . ... 166 34. - . ... 60, 426 22-27 82 32 ... . ... 166 6 .. . ... 427, 451 28-34 537 33 ... . 104, 167 7 .. . ... 426, 451 30-34 260 23. 6 ... . ... 412 11, 12, 13, 15 ... 166 31, 32 261 13 ... . ... 417 12-17 167 32-34 ... 90, 260 14-19 .. . ... 83 13 . . 425, 438, 477 8. - 142 15, 17 . ... 428 14 .. 461 2-13 23 19 ... ,, . ... 72 16, 16 352 6-12 249 24 ... . ... 438 16 .. . ... ... 162 8 .. 261 31-33 . ... 7075. 18 .. 451 17 .. . ... 52775. 32 ... ,. . ... 362 18-26 83 31 .. 150 24. 1 ... . ... 172 20,23 , 428 9. 21 260 3 ... ,, . 94, 107 23-26 84 10. 10 .. 536 7 ... . ... 387 26 .. 72 10, 11 537 9 ... . ... 642 29, 30, 35 467 12-15 264 10 .. . 536, 542 35-40 (P) 24975., 49975. 36,37 534 13 ... .. . ... 104 37. 6-10 629 11-15. .. 262 16 ... .. . ... 82 9 , 521 11. - 537 35-31. 18 24 975., 25475., 38. 8 . 252 8 .. 627 261, 49975. 39. - . 249 44,45 428 25. 8 .. . ... 82 28 . . 519»., 536». 13, 15,16 637 8,9 ... . ... 532 42,43 51375. 12. 3 .. 162 18-22 . ... 520 40 34 . 603 13,14. . . ... 28, 521 22 ... . ... 256 35 . 82 13. 45 .. 460 40 ... 26. . ... 643 . ... 619 15 47ff. . 19 .. . ... 61975. 634 INDEX OF TEXTS. 627 Ch. Ter. Page Ch. Ter. Page Ch. Ter. Page 16. 1-17 83 21. - 536 26. 46 ... 61375. 2 ... . 26675. 1 419 27. - •• 538 16 ... 82 4- 3 .. 528 25 ... 538 27 ... . 62775. 8 428 29 ... 245 29 ... . 507?5. 10 24975., 536 34 ... 500, 57375. 17-26. (H) 146 ,49975., 637 23 469 17. 1-7 ..• 91 22. 2 410 2-14 259 8 527 NUMBERS. 3-7 ... .. 82, 83 15 459 1. 37 ... 197 4 ... 634 17- 21 537 47-64 87 6-7 ... 83 20 697 2. 3 ... 174 7 .. 515 26 537 3. 6-10 259 10 ... 535 32 410 10 ... 477 10-14 262 33. - 638 12, 13 87 10-16 82 5 478 39-49 87 15 ... .. 332, 627 17 334 4. 3 ... 60775. 17, 18, 26, 27 ... 83 30 152 4 ... ... 551,653 18. 3 ... 181 34 38 16 ... 103 5 ... 43 39, 41 452 23 ... 252 8 ... 411 24. 5 334 5. 3S ... 459 17 ... 418 5- 9 . 260 6. - 87, 169, 160, 333 21 ... 477 25 - 634 1-21 167 24 ff. ... .. 338, 527 10 538 2ff. ... ... 332, 384 25-28 335 13- 43 93 3 ... 384 26 ... 425 14, 17 534 6 ... 536 27 ... 472 18, 19 417 8. 6 ... 477 29 ... 535 21 473 19 ... 651 31 ... ... 261, 262 23 . ... 92,93 24 ... 50775. 19. 2 ... 428 32, 33 146 24, 25 252 6-8 ... 25175. 34 104 9. 1-5, 6- 14 5975. 7 ... 527 35 . ... 50775. 2-5 .. 84 8 ... 459 26 1 . ... 438, 478 3 .. 478 13 ... ... 246, 411 2- 13 395 10,11 440 14 ... 635 5 . 413, 422 15-22 82 15 ... 634 6 247?5., 417, 459 10. 10 260 262, 335, 413 19 ... ... 338,627 8 104 11-28 82 23-25 157 Off. . 63 13, 14 174 24 ... 422 11, 12 ... 422, 532 22 .. 105 31 ... 478 13 422, 451 33-36 '82 33,35 534 14 418 36 .. ... 135, 191 35, 36 538 15 384,411 U. 14-16 172 36 ... 413 22 420 16 .. 134 20. 2-5 ... 477 25 538 18 .. 103 3 ... 410 26 418, 527 28,29 105 6 ... 413 30 477, 534, 549». 13. 7 .. 72 6 ... 478 31 412 13. Iff... 96 7 ... 428 33 413 8 .. 105 9 ... 635 34 473«. 29 .. ... ... 110 12 ... 332 37 538 14. 11 .. 428 13 ... 535 39 533 13-19 106 16 ... 428 40 535 18 .. 451 23 ... 338 43 384, 411 23 .. 428 27 ... ... 261, 478 44 166 24 .. 104 E r 2 628 INDEX OF TEXTS. Ch. Ter. Page Ch. Ter. Page Ch. Ter Page 14. 26-38 526 27. 21 69,143,24975., 261 4. 1 ... 69, 418 '34 .. 526 28. 11 ... 335 2 59, 137, 182 44 .. 140 11-15 ... 28, 260 4 441 15. 8-10 251, 39. 12 ... 452 13 419 37 .. 515 13-38 38 19 ... 418, 477 16. - .. ... 96,553 30. 2 ... 462 24 426, 451, 459 13, 14 416 6,9... 626 29 459 27 .. 533 31. - 457 29, 30 418 30 .. 428 1-3 ... 633 39 106 40 .. 437 6 ... 144 41- 15 467 17. 1-8 .. 88 49 ... 197 42 ... 472, 473 4 .. 25675. 33. 14 (JE) 633 46 , 384 18. 2(P) 560 19 ... 95 5. 6 103 2-4 .. 88 42 ... 424 9 ... 426,451 7 .. 553 33. - ... ...' 52175. 14, 16 67 8-24 89 52 72 24475., 477, 21 424 14, 16 538 60275., 634 32 101 18 .. 91 62-66 457 6. 1,2 .. ... ... 418 19 .. 537 64 ... 32 3- 9 ... 67 20 .. ... 147, 536 55 ... ... 104, 166 7 418 26-32 260 3.5. - 538 15 451 32 .. 459 i-8 ... 92 7. 2 70, 166, 244 19. 11 ff. .. 339 2 ... 104 3 352 20. 21 .. . 170«., 17175. 2-8 ... 87 5 ,, 79?5., 94, 166, 26-28.. 24875., 24975. 11-33 26 425, 4^38 28 .. . , 142 11, 12 104 7 ,. 110 31. - .. 457 25-28 24975. 16 167, 24475. 4 .. 169 30 ff. ... 522 16- 18 70 9 .. 438 31,32 412 20 104 11-13, 21-25 ... 169 33 ... 534 21 459 13-26 110 34 ... 335 22 ... 70,472 16 .. 478 35 ... 146 24 104 24, 25 384 36. 1-12 5975. 26 ,, 102 26 .. 170 13 ... 513 8. 2 ... 384, 442 28 .. 72 3, 16 472 23. 41 23. 24 .. 72 424 DEUTERONOMY. 17 9. 7- 11.. 467 57 24. 14 .. 418 1. 6 ... ... 68,467 22 57 14-21 ... 168, 169 7 ... 474 23 . ... 24675. 21 . 427 9-17 67 25- ¦29 106 35. 3 .. . ... 386, 419 16,17 534 10. 6 142 3,4 . 477 22 ... 95 8, 9 .. 87 6-18 533 36 ... ... 104, 474 16 163 13 . 142 43 ... 24675. 17 469 26. 21 . 504 2. 7 ... 384 20 , 441 33 . 6975. 8 ... 71 22 468 55 . 32 9,19 168, 11. 6 96 57-62 87 20 ... 469 18- -22 67 37. - . 515 33,34 384 22 441 1-7. 32 3 12-16 102 24 25 101 1-11 69?5. 21 ... 466 12-26. - . 469 18 . 105 4 44-26, & 28. 12. - .81,83,85,354 18 ff.. 466 1-68 ... 463, 469 2 . 436, 438, 477 INDEX OF TEXTS. 629 Ch. Ter Page Ch. Ter. Page Ch. Ter Page 12. 3 94,166,425,438 17. 18 .. ... 87 26. 6 .. 467 4 474 18. 1 .. ... 87 11- 13 87 5 248 1-8 .. 86,89 12- 15 90 6 91 2 .. ... 147 14 . ... 339, 419 10 181,417 3 ., ... 9.0 19 460 11 .. 84,133,419 6-8 .. 87, 92' and 75., 27. - ... 418, 419 12 87 146, 147 6- 14 102 14 466 10 426 427, 452, 477 8 467 15 82, 90 11 .. ... 261 9 .. 87 16, 17 102 15-22 ... 62 12, 13 467 18 103 19. Iff... 467?5. 12, 14 87 17- 19 87,90,91,26175. 4 .. ... 473 31 467 20, 21 73 8 .. ... 73 60 412 30 79 11 .. ... 472 28. 3, 6 .. 87 31 79,477 14. .. ... 418 15 418 32 69,137 19-21 ... 94 20 428 13. 1- 5 62 30. - 60, 80 21- 24 412 4 .., 441 2 .. ... 144 29, 30 459 17 416 6 .. ... 422 30 . ... 412, 422 14. 4 474 16 .. ... 244 32 .. 424 22- 29 90 3L 1-9 .. ... 80 33 . ... 246,418 23 84 5 .. ... 87 39 412 24 73 10-14 ... 80 41 420 27, 29 87 15-21 ... 80 49 419 28 334 15 .. ... 473 49, 50 456 15. 7, 8 634 22 .. ... 80 64 591 12- 18 ... 6775., 93 23 32, 80 102, 335 64, 65 420 19, 20 91 33. 1-4 .. ... 246 68 ,, 419 21 597 13-21 ... 80 29. 9 102 24 467 15-29(11;;) ... 472 18 412 16. - ... 443 29 .. tl* ... 340 23 . ... 420,469 1, 2 ' 15575. 23. 1-8 .. 71,79 30. 3 . ... 469, 460 1- 8 6975., 84 9-14 ... 80 4 . 427, 460, 591 1- 17 79 10 .. ... 148 9 469 7 161 15,16 ... 79 20 441 11 .. 84, 87, 25175. 17 .. 338 418, 477 31. 7, 8 . 101 14 87 18 .. 72, 419 9 . ... 87, 379 15 354 21 .. 427,452 9- -13, 24-30 59,60m. 16 427, 428 24,25 ...7975. 11 . 428 18 173 24. 1-4 .. ... 80 14 106 19 246, 412 7 .. ... 79 16 428 21, 22 ...7975., 438 8 .. ... ... 87 17 420 22 94 8,9 .. 5775., 79 18 417 17. 1 79 10-25 ...5775. 20 . ... 417, 428 3 477 14 .. ... 411 21 473 6 416 16 .. ... 80 23 106 8 337, 636 27 .. ... 412 24- -26 389 9 .. 87, 173, 536 25. 1-10 ... 80 29 . ... 418, 472 12 418 14 .. ... 413 32. - 428, 457 (Eock) 13 337 14-16 ... ... 425 1 . ... 424, 425 14- 20 73 17-19 24575. 2 176 14, 16 24675. 19 .. 24775. 11 474 17 362 26. 2 .. ... ... 84 13 72, 43675., 458,477 630 INDEX OF TEXTS. Ch. Ter. Page Ch. Ter. Page Ch. Ter. Page 32. 16 217 8. 22 ... 178 34. 11 110 18 418,419 28,29 102 12 474 21 43 31,34 .. 30, 32 14 179 24 425 9. ... . .. ... 120 19 ... 42672., 461 36 472 1 ... . 110 26 108 41 452 14 ... . 143 29 119 48 474 27 ... ..84,51475. 32 106 33. _ 467 10. 14 ... 106 33 142 2 ._ 467 27 ... . 102 8- 12 11 88 417 40 ... . 42 ... . 110 106 JUDGES. 15 457 11. 1 ... . 114 1. - 114, 175 28 417 1-3 ... . 110 1-2. 6 ,.. 198 29 72, 43675., 468, 477 20 ... . 106 1. 1 143, 176 44 467 13. 7 ... . 102 1,2 198, 199 34. 5 119 14. 1 ... . 24875. 8,16,21,25-29,35 199 9 105 4, 8, 9 . 14 ... . 104 113 2. 1-4 165 6-16 198 15. 1 ... . 174 8 119 JOSHUA. 7 ... . 8 ... 416 .. 108, 113 11 416 11, 12 190 1. 1 119 20, 59, 63 . 112 3. 7,8 189 3 100 16. ... . 112 15 199 4 474 2 ... 113 22 198 5- 9 101 10 ... 189 4-8. - 189 7, 8 ... 30, 32, 390 17. 3-6 ... . 5975. 4. 2 189 8 ... 104, 372, 387 4 ... 142 6, 7 198 10, 14 103 18. 1 ...84, 113, 24875. 11 199 13- 15 36 4 ... . 112 5. - 167 15 ..• 119 13 ... 113 4 467 2. 6 ..> 518 22 ... 112 8 196 9, 24 103 19. 1 ... 176 14 16 3. 6 103 2-8 ... 113 30 189 10 ... .. 109, 110 61 ... 142, 24875. 6. 1 199 10, 11,13 106 20. - 467 8-10 167 4. 11- 19 120 21. - .. 92, 114 17-21 148 14 69 2 ... 104, 24875. 19 160, 334 19 103 11,12 113 24 ... 81, 189,. 199 5. 1 ... .. 110, 119 20 ... 250 25 136 2 103 22. 6 ... .. 32,441 31 337 4 30 9 ... 113, 24875. 32 190 6 ... 473 12, 13 24875. 34, 35 198 9 ... 162 17 ... 104 7. 7 199 10, 11,15 103 30-32 248?5. U 103 6. 2 106 23. 4 ... 102 26 189 18 102 6,7 .. 30, 32 8. 10,20, 21 198 36 235 8 ... 441 22 167 7. 6 143 9, 10 104 9. 6 104, 108 6- 9 ... 106 13 ... .. 104, 166 27 157 13 .. 32, 103 34 - 104 10 4 189, 199 24, 26 416 1 ... 172 7, 10, 15 189 26- -28 108 6-18 167 11. - 114, 171 8. - ... 118 7 ... 30 14-21, 26 168 INDEX OF TEXTS. 681 Ch. Ter. Page Ch Ter. Page Ch Ter. Page 11. 40 . 198 21 19 . 133, 156 8 _ 233 13. - . 159 25 ... 196 3,5 . . ... 246». 1 . 199 11-17 7375. 16-23 ... 148, 149 16, 19, 24, 26 ... 259 20 . . ... 81,'l90 RUTH 9 1-10. 16 227 14. 3 . 162 3 1, 3 ... 220 9-11. - . . ... 22075. 15. 12 . 198 9 _ 227 18 . 19 . 162 . ... 189, 199 1 SAMUEL. 1 2 . 227 . ... 218, 228 17-21. - . 196 1. - ... 22075., 334 6,7, 6, 17 ... 218 (1), 17, 18 175 1 ... 93 9 . 236 17. - • 650 3 ... 236 21 . . 198, 225, 227 6 . 144 21 (LXX.).. 22175. 22 . 218 6* . . 136, 190, 196 22 ... 429 10. - 223 7 . 146 24 136, 150 , 218, 334 3 .. . ... 220, 334 7-9 . . ... 9275., 93 26 ... 261 6 .. 313 11 . 199 26 ... 220 8 .. . ... 84,259 13 . 148 2. - ... 236 16-27a .... 219, 227 30, 31 190 12-17 ... 91 23 .. . 218, 227, 228 18. 1 . 196 13 ... 251 24 .. . ... 24675. 4,6 . 144 14, 15 150, 161 25 .. . ... 7375. 7 . 218 18 ... 144 25-27 223 10 . 199 22 133, 136 26 .. 228 14 . 145 27 ... 142 27 .. 228 17,18 14575. 28 142, 145, 24975. 11. - . ... 197, 223 22-25 198 29 218, 270 1-11 227 30 . 88 29, 36 ... 217 4 .. . .'.. ... 228 31 113, 133, 24875. 32 ... 270 12 .. 228 19, 20. - .. 420 36 ... 220 12, 13 223 19-21. - .. 348 3. 1 ... 236 12-14 228 19. 1 .. 92?». 3 ... 133 14 .. 84 6 .. 199 11-14 ... 235 15 .. . ... 84-219 18 .. 147 17, 18 ... 60 12. - . ... 24675. 30 .. . ... 189, 199 20 190, 236 1-6 .. 246 20. - .. 128 21 .„ 190 3 .. 246 1 .. . ... 176, 236 4. 4 ... 266 6-11 24775. 2 .. 198 6-8 ... 141 9-11 189 9 .. 197 7 ... 219 13 .. 218 16,17 198 10 ... 191 14 .. 2467*. 18 143 , 174, 198, 199 22 ... 420 13. 8 .. 213 23 .. 143 5. _ ... 225 9 .. 269 25 .. 198 6. ... 217 12 .. 223 26 .. 162 1 ... 85 14 .. 219 26-28 82, 84, 139, 6 ... 218 24 .. 217 144, 267 14 ... 87 14. 1 .. 218 27 198, 199, 24975., 267 20 ... 191 3 .. 144 28 141 143,199,24871. 7. seq ... 348 18, 19 144 36, 37, 46 198 1.2 ... 86 21 .. 219 48 .. 199 2-4 ... 191 32-35 837.. 2L 2-4 .. 82 3-12 ... 84 36,37 144 4 .. 162 13 ... 232 41 .. 1447». 7 .. 162 8-12. - 217, 21875., 222, 1 47 .. 71 12 .. 113, 24875. 229, 231, 232 1 15. - .. 22071., 240b. 632 INDEX OF TEXTS. Ch. Ver. Page Ch. Ter. Page Ch. Ter. Page 15. 2 24575. 5. 2 .. 219 U. 7,8 ... 86 3, 7, 8, 18, 26' 71 6. 2 .. 25675. 11,13 848, 349 27 253 14 .. ... 144, 253 14, 21-25, 29 ... 352 16. - 22075., 221 17 .. 265 33-36 348-349 5 260 7. - ... 192, 193 38 ... 360 26 162 1 .. 165 12. 164, 192 17, 18. - .. 220, 221 & 75. 6 .. 136 4 ... ,349 17. - 22075., 221, 222 27 .. 218 7 ... 195 15 222 8. 16-18 ... 28275. 20, 26 ff. ... ... 210 20 218 11. 21 .. 190 26 ... 349 28 22275. 13. 18 .. 253 30-32 ... 350 18. 3-6 2'59 15. 25 .. 290 13. 348, 350 4 263 19. 41-43. 242.«., 373 2 ... 236 19. 5 222 20. - . ... 29275. 6, 24 ... 349 7 219 26 .. . ... 28275. 14. 6 ... ... ... 144 20. 2 218 31. 2 .. 108 8 ... 348 3 220 32. 316 9 .. 360 6 ..- 260 34,43 374 lOff. ... 349 19 218 34, - . 192, 194, 195 23 ... 436 21. 1 85 18 .. 81 15. 14 ... 437 4-6 87 20 ... 188 9 222 16. 14 ... 210 22. - 26575. 1 KINGS. 34 107, 236 2 62675. 1. 35 .. ... ... 219 17. 1, 14 ... 342 8 218 2. 2 .. ... 109, 394 18 ... 343 9 85 3 .. 394 22 ... 342 10 144, 222 27 .. . ... 236, 552 18. 4 ... '... ... 343 . 13 144 3. 2 .. . 265, 267, 346 17, 18 ... ... 108 14 ... 218 4 .. . ... 265, 267 18, 19, 36 ... 342 16 144 5. 13 . . ... 61475. 19. 4 ... 342 17 218 5-7. - • .210, 622, 686 10 ... 342 343, 346 18 144 6-8. - . . ... 210, 296 11 ... 342 19 ... 85 6. 23-28 620 15 ... 343 23. 2,4 6, 9 . 144, 145 7. 13 .. 622 21 ... 347 24. - 29275. 27-38 210 20. 13,22,28,42 342, 343 35. 26 220 8. 1-6 .. 300 21. 9 ... 347 26. 2,6, 7 218 1-11 268 19, 20 ... 343 19 86, 412 4 136 33 5 ... 144 27. 6 236 7,8 . 520 7 ... 343 28. 3,9 261 12-61 37 8 ... 144 6 14475., 249 37 . 412 17 ... 343 9 ... 191 53 . 396 19 ... 342 29. 6-9 73?5. 66 . . ... 108, 395 34 ... ... 210 30. 7,8 ... 144, 145 57 . 108 43 210, 436 24 138 62ff. . 400 25 138, 236 9. 11 . ... 65075. 31. 4 162 16 423 2 KINGS. 35. 18 218 I 16 . 189 1 . ... 343 24 . 400 3,4 . ... 343 - 10 . 28 . . ... 51975. 2 4. - . ... 220 2 SAMUEL. 111 400 2 3 ... . . ... 479 3. 14 417 1 4 . . ... 348, 360 11, 14,21, 23 ... 347 4. 9 220 1 7 . 46 3 . - ... . . ... 211 t^ rf.. CO bO to CO w «o 00 h- r\ ' -r . . " . . 33 : : : : OZ : i : : : O r =g : : : : Hi o CO ^* ^ ^- rfk l-i H- CO 00 to ta M to I-. H- OS CO CO L.S [ O 00 00 CO lo h^ 0 c» T^P^S'^^ ^ ^ ^ ticDpo ?-*bObO»— ^ h-ibObO »-'. 1 COH-OStOtOOsrf^CO-^l rfi.COCoOS-^1 t* ^ "^ I-. J3S 00 >- is. . . . " . L. . . : * • : • • 0 • : : • ¦ • • ¦ Oi rf^ -9.37 7 ... 00 ^ O) C7I ^ CO ^ I tO^OiCn-viH-OtO^ to H-" bO bO . J^ c« w o . . . • • bs H- rf^ : : * r^ OS i-i . . '^ I . . . . . CO t.a rf>. . . . ¦ * o i^ CO • • • M M . ^ . rfi. rf^ I-' rf^ bO 00 OS Ol -^ 01 H-" I-l CO 00 to CO bO OS --'rf».-^rf»-rf».rf^rf*.rf^rf». rfi.--'^^tOh-h-.i-'t-'rf.. cnoxooootoor 001—0 000000^0 to I-. CO CO 00 to to ^ ^ H- to rf.. cooo-rcooococDcpoaoor ooooi-.'Oo*^ i-. rf^ to CD -~I >-' CH ta t— ^ to S .f* .5' 05 ,_. H-' ^ ? rf^ CO TO CO CO cocoCO !-' CO o to to to CO ~a TO to ta to ta 1^ eo to O CO 0 OS en bo , rf^ CO >-- CJi 1 OS OS o> . CO . . m ! N 33 : > OS I COChrf^OSCoOiCO CO bo 10 -^ t^. OS h-" OOOiCOCTiCOOOOStO I I CO t-- CO NI ,_, t-i cr» 1— I ,_. ^ OS 00 CO hl^ •^ rf^ Ol en ^J bo 00 >(^ CO ^ M (-1 h-l t-^ .s Ol tf>» CO 0 CO ^ bS ^ to 1 Ol CD Ol 1 -M I ;t Ol Ol 514 108 584 Ol nn 00 Oi bO to rf^ rf^ rf»- CO CO .** 0 rf^ 00 -^ 00 CD Oi 0 H-* 00 0 OS Ol rfa.rfi.OlOiCOrfi.COO0000— iO--|SD eo ,_, CO . OlOl rf^ bo 0 .¦¦ 01 CO 0 rfi- rf^ bo rfi. rf>. O ^ CO O Ol O OS ^_ hO to h-l to i-' (-¦ Oi OS -^ 0 ^ ^ 0 rf^ ^ bO rf^ rf^ rf^ rf>^ rf>. rf*. l_> bO hl^ 1—' 1—1 CO »-' CO CO 0 t-* CO CO CO CD CD to H- OS OS —J --1 -^ by >-' 0 bO Ol '-^i? Iz! a H oH 1-9OQ Oi05CO 634 INDEX OF TEXTS. Ch. Ter. Page Ch. Ter. Page Ch. Ver. Page 5. 1,2 595 76. 2 ... 27075. 18. 1 24875. 6. 14 596 78. 6,7 532 19. 61 24876. 18 38 55-57 188 21. 2 24875. 7. 6 607, 589 66-61 ... 26775. 20 260 10 507 61 ... 191 22. 5 441 24 ... 514 80. 1 ... 25676. 9,12,13,30-32 24875. 8. 2 142 82. 6 ... 173 23. 8 441 18, 19 614 83. 9-11 188 24. 6 387 9, 10. - 589 90. - ... 374 14 179 9. 1 110 1 ... 25675. 26. 4 457 9 184 4 ... 21975. 16 472 95. - ... 371 29. 18 387 NEHEMIAH. 96. - ... ... 191, 371 30. 8 439 99. 6 ... ... 85,242 36. 10 344 1. - 591 103. - ... 374 37. - 23075. 5. - 50775. 105. - ... 371 38. 8 442 7. - 546 16 ... 527 9 439 8. - 591 106. - ... 142 45. - 581, 683 1 39,466 34-36 188 47. 9, 12 462 14 38 108. 28 ... 420 48. - 25075. 9. - 50775., 508, 693 114. - ... 107 19 416 13 38 118. - ... 687 50. - 287 10. - 593 132. 8 ... 191 52. 7 426 29 38 137. - ... ... 606, 625 9 422 ,32 60775. 55. - 474 11. 28 13. 1 236 39,467 PROVERBS. 61. 10 63. 11 338 37 11. 26 ... 474 65. 10 108,416 JOB. 22. 28 ... 418 2. 2 253 23. 10 ... 30. 6, 6 ... 418 69 JEREMIAH. 24. 2 418 1. 2 7, 460 17 60 ISAIAH. 7. 9 12 158 PSALMS. 1. - ... 24176. ...84,133,26775. 2. - 371 4 428 12- 15 ... 85, 480 5. 7 260 9 ... 387 11. 5 473 9. 14 424 11-13 412 13. 13 48075. 18. - ...292, 316, 317, 14 ... 387 15. 1 86, 24275., 48075. 31975.', 366, 373 3. 1 ... ... 5277*. 4 48076. 11 62075. 5. 24 ... 387 16 446 19. - 372 G. 1-8 ... 543 23. 28, 30-32 60 22. 19 48 9-12 428 26. 6, 9 85,48075. 24. - 374 10 ... 636 18 48076. 32. - 292 8. 1 ... 439 30. 18 116 37. 31 372 16,20 387 31. 5 422 40. 7, 8 ... 372, 387 31 ... 372 33. 22 473 9, 10 60 9. 1 .-. 188, 66075. 36. 14 481 42. 3 429 3,4... 189 38. 4, 5 3775. 45. - 367,368 10. 19 ... 439 41. 9 48071. 51. - 24175., 292 22 ... 416 48. 7 130 60. - 370 26 ... 189 49. 27 48075. 68. 7 467 14. 1 ... 248«. 50. 17 48075. 16- 18 84 13 ... 25075. 52. 20 48071. INDEX OF TEXTS. 635 Ch. Ter. Page Ch. Ver. Pag'* EZEKIEL. 43. 13 ,. 556 4. 14 .. 329, 418 Ch. Ver. Page 15-24,27 636,537&?i'.. 16 .. ... 340 m. - .. 613 18 556 17 .. 329, 336 1. 1 .. 541 44. 1-16 549, 550, 551 18 .. ... 336 26 . . 636, 64671. 6-16 546 5. 1 .. ... 350 28 .. 636 7 537 2 .. 339, 418 4. 4-6 .. 526 9-13 514 3,4 ,. ... ... 336 7. 26 .. 603 17 51975. 6 .. ... 418 8. 1-3 .. 504 18 63675. 7 .. ... 329 1-7 .. . ... ... 549 20-30 ... 536, 537 10 .. 339, 418 8 .. 516 45. - 514 11,15 .. ... 418 • 11 .. . ... 50976. 46. 12,14 537 6. 1 .. ... 336 9. 2 . . ... 61975. 19-24 537 6 .. ... 340 10. 11, 23 503 20 150 7 .. 329, 336 13. 2,3,6 7 60 48. 8-10 537 9 .. ... 418 14. 604 10 .. ... 336 8,18, 24 535 7. 10 .. 336, 418 16. - .. . ... 502, 528 DANIEL. 12 .. ... 418 3 .. 502 3. 28 542 13 .. ... 419 7-10 630 4. 6 542 16 .. ... 336 10-13 531 7. 12 542 8. 1 .. 329 336, 419 18 .. 637 9. 11-13 37 4 .. 329, 336 17. 20, 30 536 5 .. ... 344 18. - .. . 505, 516, 533 10-13 ... 419 20. - .. ... 602, 528 HOSEA. 12 .. 329 341, 386 1 .. 504 1. 2 ... 329, 336, 414 13 .. 340, 386 6 .. 473 6,7 351 14 .. 329, 336 7 .. 179 10 416 9. 1 ... 339 10-27 54175. 11 342,349,351,416 1-6 .. ... 350 10,11 503 3. 1 336 4 .. 339, 419 21. - .. 638 2 329, 336 6,6 .. ... 336 26,31 636 4 336 9 .. ... 176 23. - .. ... 502, 528 7 329, 336 10 .. 336, 386 28. - .. 628 10 ff. 336 17 .. ... 420 13, 15 529 13 ... 329, 336, 416 10. 4 .. ... 420 34. 23 .. 504 14 339,416 5 .. 336, 420 27 .. . ... 51475. 15 ... 198, 339, 416 8 ... 420, 449 36. 17 .. 537 17 344,417 9 ... ... 176 26 .. 506 18 417 11 ... ... 233 37. - .. 606 19 ... 336, 339, 417 11. 1 329 ,336 386, 420 15 .. 816 20 344 2 ... ... 336 26 .. 631 21-3 336 3 ... ... ... 329 38,39. .. 51375., 517 3. 1 336, 417 6 ... ... 386 40-48. - 541 4 ... 14675., 417 8 ... 336, 429 40. 1 .. ... 541,543 6 336, 340, 342, 349 12 ... 340 349, 351 2 .. 641 4. 3 336 15 ... ... 336 43 .. 66675. 4 337 12. 3 ... ... 420 46,46 553 6 329,336,337,385, 9 ... ... 329, 420 48 ... 636 418,419,561 12 ... ... ... 420 41. 1 ... 531, 51475. 8 336 13. 1 ... ... 336 22 .. 56675. 9,10 418 2 ... 329, 336 43, 44. - 51475., 637 12 329,336 4 ... 329, 336, 386 43. 7, 12 649 13 349 6 ... ... 336 636 INDEX OF TEXTS. 7i. Ver. Page Ch. Ver. Page Ch. Ver. Page 3. 8 ... 329 8. 2 ... ... 331 1. 12 4.56 15 ... 421 3,7... ... ... 412 16 467 6 ... 260, 335, 413 2. 2,6, 16 467 JOEL. 6,6... 9 ... ... 474 ... 330 3. 3,4 452, 457 5-lOa 457 3. 6 ... 426 14 ... ... 331 lOi 458 7 ... 467 9. 4 ... 384,413 11 108 9 ... 423 6 ... ... 330 11,13,14,16,19 458 26 ... 422 7.11 ... 330 1. 1. 3. AMOS. 1—3.6 330 1 410 2 331, 349 4 480)5. 11 467 4 331 iis 4, 7,8,9, 10,12 384 7 410 7, 8,9, 11, 12... 332 10. 11. 12. 3. 10 328 10, 14 331 11 335, 349 13 413 15 331 9 328 2,4 328 5 330 OBADIAH. 4 427 1. 2. 3. 1. 2. ZEPHANIAH. 6, 8, 13, 17 ... 459 3, 7,9,11 ... 459 4, 5, 7, 8, 13i., 16, 17 . . 459 19,20 460 HAGGAI. 1 50775. 13 339 17 412 8 ... ... 9, 10 ... 450 ... 328 JONAH ZECHARIAH. 11 ... 160 4. 2 ... ... 427 3. - 584, 595 11,12 328, 384 *" 1 507». 3. 1 ... 410 7 647, 554 4. 1,2 6 9 12 1 ... 331 ... 330 ... 411 ... 160 ... 411 1. 2. MICAH 5, 10 13, 16 1,2 ... 424 ... 424 ... 424 13. 1. - 60575. MALACHI. 7,8,10 597 1,12 ... ... 410' 3. 1,5,9 . . 424 10,11 81 2, 11,12... ... 412 7 ... ... 450 3. 1-9 88 4, 5 ... 333, 334, 384 12 ... 48075. 3 52771. 6 411,473 4. 8 ... ... 425 3. 3 550 7, 9, 10 .. ... 412 13 ... ... 106 3,4 597 11 ... 428 5. 25 ... ... 426 7-10 90 12 ... 331 6. 1,2,6 ... 424 4. 4 37, 77, 138, 466 l3 ... 330 4 ... ... 37 4-6 598 6. 7 (& 6. 12) ... 412 8 ... ... 577 5. 1 8 12,21, 22... 18 ... 410 330 f. ... 384 ... 328 1. NAHUM. 4, 10, 12, 13, 16 iis 426 1. 7. 1 ESDRAS. 6,11 40 6 40 26 ... 331 3. 4, 18... ... 427 6. 5 bis 328, 412 2 ESDRAS. 7. 13 14 9 ... 350 ... 331 ... 412 410,413 1. HABAKKUK. 2-4 461,454 14. 38 608 44 ... 42 13 14 ... 350 ... 326 4 ... 5 ... ... 456, 469 ... 463 ECCLESIASTICUS. 15 ... 331 6 ... ... ... 456 24 23 40 17 ... 336 10-15 ... 461 ,45 5 40 INDEX OF TEXTS. 637 Ch. Ver. Page LUKE. 1 CORINTHIANS. 50. - 1 . ... 655 60975. Ch. Ver. 1. 6 Page 24775. Ch. 1. Ver. Page 2 81 68 ... 459 14. 240 BARUCH. 72,73 ... 571 2. 28 . ... 40 2. 40 41 ... 51 24775. 2 CORINTHIANS. 1 MACCABEES. 47 .. 51 11. 32,33 95 5. 14 ... 45 2. - . ... 142 7. 9 ... 47 GALATIANS. 4. 46 . 144 & 76. 8. 30 16. 29 14. 4 . 144 & 75. ... 47 ... 45 3. 16,17 470 23 77 29 574 2 MACCABEES. 19. 43,44 20. 28-38 ... 51 ... 62 2. 13 . ... 608 24. 14,44 .. 46 PHILIPPIANS. 7. 30 . ... 40 JOHN. 2. 7 46 MATTHEW. 1. 17,45 .. 43 1 TIMOTHY. 1. 5 . ... 107 47,48 .. 51 5. 18 . ... 45 3. 19-21, 24, 26 .. 51 3. 3-8 81 8. 4 . ... 46 4. 18 .. 61 12 28475. 10 . ... 47 19 .. 81 13 605 11,12 . ... 574 26 .. 81 9. 3,4 . ... 51 29 .. 51 2 TIMOTHY. 15. 27 . ... 446 5. 46 45,62 3. 16 368 17. 27 . ... 51 6. 6 .. 47 18. 20 . ... 81 64 51 19. 7,8 . 46, 62 7. 14 .. 46 HEBREWS. 20. 19 , ... 61 15 .. 61 1. 8,9 367 22 ... 49 19 45,62 5. 1 142 34 ... 51 22 ... 62, 78 , 16275. 7. 5,9,11,14 ... 88 22. 3,4 . ... 87 23 .. 46 8. - 577 24. 4-31 .. . ... 51 11. 34 .. 47 2,6 598 36 ... 49 16. 30 .. 60 9. 19 ... 43 26. 39 ... 48 18. 4 .. 51 22 577 27. 1 ... 61 21. 17-19 ... .. 60 28 43 27. 46 ... 48 11. 28 566 16,17.- 43 MARK THE ACTS. 1. 44 ... 45 1. 5 .. 51 JAMES. 6. 6 ... 47 3. 22 .. 43 2. 1-3 28475. 38 ... 47 7. 22 ., 23 5. 14, 15 ... 28476. 7. 10 ... 46 8. 38,44 ... . .. 43 8. 5 ... 47 9. 23-25 ... . .. 95 1 PETER. 31 9. 21 ... 48 ... 47 15. 21 28,29 .. 43 .28475. 3. 9 672 31 ... 48 10. 3,6 2 PETER. ... 46 ROMANS. 32-34 48,49,51 1. 20,21 579 12. 15 ... 51 2. 28,29 ... . ,, 573 .. 77 .. 77 26 ... 46 3. 2 REVELATION. 13. 14 ... 51 9. 4 32 ... 48 10. 5 .. 43 22. 18,19 59 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. Note.— 'H.C. H.C.s Higher Criticism. The Higher Critics. Abel's sacrifice, 149. Abiathar, 86. Abnormal; histories record chiefly the abnormal, 130. Accretions. See Additions. Achan, 108. Additions and Alterations (by editors, redactors, copyists), 131, 21175., 212 76., 217, 223, 225, 226, 228, 275, 297. See also Tesrt. Agag, 244. Agricultural feasts, 153. Ahaz, his idolatry, 184. Ahiah, Abimelech, 265. Altar service, 87. Altar of earth, 81. of Gideon, 81 ; of Saul, 83 ; at Bethel, 84; of Samuel, 84, 86, 141, 266; of David (Gibeon), 85, 86, 87 75. ; of Elijah, 345 ; in Ezekiel, 536. Altars, patriarchal, 81, 149, 346. plurality of, 83. Amalekites, 245. Ames and Hosea, authentic, 326, 348. their dates, standpoint, «i. their prophetic teaching (torah) not new, — they appeal to earlier teachers for it, 326 f., 343. their religious ideas identical with those of Elijah, 342 f. their very words, borrowed from ancient books, testify to the existence of the latter, Hosea, 326 f., 385 (cp. 413, 449); Amos is tesselated with quota tions from all "Codes," 413, 449. they appeal to bygone history as well known, 326 f., 449. Amos and Hosea — cont. they postulate throughout Moses' laws, 326 ff. they appeal to ancient law, 326 ff., 348. their evidence of Pentateuchal laws specified : of Amos, 329— 336, 410-414; of Hosea, 325- 342,414-421. See under 'Rbsea.. Analogies ; ritual laws and codes con temporaneous with Pent., 27, 29. from modern or historical facts or phrases : 283 (pious Levites' igno rance of Scripture), 283 (wide spread infraction of acknowledged laws and rites in religious com munities), 303 f. (Church and State), 333 (passing through hands), 346, 347 (Paschal meal, unconsecrated rooms, naval and army officers officiating), 359 (dissection), 391 {Books of Pent.), 392 (reading (175) the Bible), 605 n. (Common Prayer), 568 (Decalogue and PC), 306, 434 (inspired vpriters), 455 (persecu tion of books and rituals), 456 {law), 469 (key), 462, 475 (False Decretals), 476 (living links of tradition), 478 (anachronisms), 489 (ministers). from critical treatment of the N.T., 495. from critical treatment of general literature, 6, 58, 59, 197, 213 & 75. 2, 226, 229 75., 348, 426, 54075.t, 564 (spurious authorship) 611 71., 612 76. *(literary ages and individuality), 525 (H.C. applied to modern events, books, codes), 76, 77, 214, 215, 223 »., 234, INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 639 Analogies — cont. 238 71., 240 & 75., 242, 243 75.*, 256 & 71., 263 75., 264, 266, 267 76., 270, 273, 284 & 7575., 285, 361- 363, 452, 453, 466, 508, 616 76. Angelophany, 81, 87, 136. Anonymous books, 99. " Eedactors," 360. Antisupernatural view. See Rationalism. Appendices to Judges, 198. Arabian ancient literature, 12. Archaeology confounds H. C, 7. See "Writing; Tablets. Archaisms. See Language. Ark of Noah, 17. Ark of the Covenant : pure views of it, 290, 300 (302f.) superstitious views of it, 290. in battle, 140, 141, 144, 249 76. §, 256, 267. a centre of Eeligion in David's time, and a voucher for the pre-exist ence of Moses and his law, 289, 291. separated from the Tabernacle. See the above articles, and 27, 31, 35, 82, 85, 86, 88, 100, 103, 133, 139, 140 ff., 183, 191, 243, 267, 282, 286, 289, 346, 482, 538 76., 676. Asherah, 79, 95. See Heathen worship. Assemblies, 360, 429. Assyrian parallels to Moses' laws, 27. Astarte, 184. See Heathen worship. Atonement for sins by sacrifice, 256, 577. "Day of Atonement," 536, 537, 554 f., 566. See also Redemption. Authority for the " Word of God," aspect of canonicity, 43, 433 f., 444 f., 640 (2), 564. Authors of Biblical books, 99. Authorship, Mosaic, of the Pentateuch and its several parts, — a matter of testimony, 36. an unbroken line of such testi mony, 36-44, 389, 390-398 (of the whole Pent.) & 403-406 ( Chron.) continued in the Chris tian Church, 43, 567, 569. that line wrongly aUeged to be interrupted, 42. testimony of Jesus, 44, 569 f. answers to that testimony met , (kenosis, ct:.), 45 f., 187, 475. Authorship, &p. — cont. testimony of Josephus, 391. of " Levitieal Code " proved by its primitive character, 22; by both Egyptian and Arabian ele ments being united in its ritual, 24 ff. by the interlacing of laws with contemporaneous events (some times in close connection), 22. of Beuteronomy vindicated, 55 ff. 80, 121. See also Law of Moses ; the Law ; Beuteronomy ; Leviti eal Code ; P ; etc. Baal, Baalim, 190, 191, 344 f., 416. BaalBerith, 172. Baal Peor, 419. Bamoth, 86, 265, 266-268, 502 75.t (two fold aspect). Barak, 180. Beasts, clean and unclean, 27. See Clean. Benjamite war, 176. Bethel, 183, 350. Bethlehemite, Levite, 93. Bethshemesh, 258. Bias, alleged, of Biblical authors, — in Chronicles, 578. See Chronicles. in Haggai, 694. See also Ten dency. of Higher Critics. See Higher Criticism ; Chronicles ; etc. BisseU, Dr., 361. Bliss, F. J., his researches, 12, 116, 117. Blood, law concerning, 83. Bloodfeud, law concerning it, 26. Bochim, 183, 184. " Book of the Law," The, aud the tale of finding it in the Temple ; the tale critically reviewed, 32, 63, 372, 378, 387, 389, 390-397, 441-443, 452 f., 460, 462-466. in special, — the record is authentic, 392. parallels to extinction of sacred books through persecution of the Church, 392, 462, 455. discovery and tradition, 476. fraud, pious or otherwise, in admissible on diverse grounds : negative, 381, 391 (not de nounced by Jeremiah) ; on other 640 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. " Book of the Law," The grounds, 23, 60, 63-66, 76, 214, 379, 380, 389, 463 f. the Higher Critics object in vain to the charge of impiety and dishonesty, 444, 475, 541?6., 540 " (3)," 541. the term " Book of the Law " im plies its pre-existence as a definite and written Code, and its having been known, 379, 390, 476. its identity with the " Book of the Law" which Moses urrote traced, 390. it was in the hands of David and Solomon, 295, 299. its probable contents, 63, 389 f., 393 f. (443 f.), 462, 469, 476, 480 f. that it was Beuteronomy only is improbable, on linguistic grounds, 466-470 ; other argu ments, 470-476. no evidence for Beuteronomy from Josiah's reforms, 477 ; from Kings, 478 ; from Jere miah, 479, 480, 482 ff. argument from the size of the book found met, 480, 481. the H. C.s evidently measure the honesty and piety of Hilkiah, Ezekiel, the Chronicler, etc. altogether by their own, for it is they who " tamper with the witnesses," alter the records to suit their preconceived theories, and create suppositi tious " Codes," and deal with them freely, 382. See further : Authorship, Mosaic ; Law, Mosaic ; Ezekiel ; P ; Beuteronomy ; etc. Book of the Bead, 25. Breastplate, 629. See Urim. Burlesque of worship is evidence of its original, 146, 157, 179. Burnt offering, 149. Calf worship, 191, 302 (Jeroboam), 343- 345 (in Elijah's and Hosea's times). Canaanites, in Monuments, 115. Canonicity. See Authority. " Captivity of the land," 191. Carmel. See Elijah; Altar; Central Sanctuary. Central Sanctuary: centralisation of worship, 64 & 75., 72, 74, 76, 80- 86, 126, 241, 260, 265, 267, 268, 297 ("use"), 298, 303 f. (unity of worship the cause of unity of the nation), 331, 336 {Hosea and Amos) ; 346 f. (Elijah's altar of twelve stones), 365, 419, 441 (Sennacherib, threefold record cannot be broken}, 300 f. (a lever for Monotheism). See also Tab ernacle ; Temple ; Altar. " Cheeks and Maw," 90. Chemosh, 129 f., 170. Cherubim, 256, 302; ib. & 303 (sym bolic images, but not idols). Cheyne on David, 314 75. Chronicles, the Book of, — ita date, 212, 398, 440 {Amos), 481. how composed, 210. its character and method (especially in its comparison with Samuel and Kings), 295, 298 (ecclesias tical), 305-307, 398. its trustworthiness vindicated, 113, 138, 163, 154, 164, 194 f., 210- 212, 266, 298 75., 305-307, 360 f., 398-404. why attacked with exceptional ve hemence, 398, 399, 402 f., 461. WeUhausen's onslaughts related and repulsed, 399-403. WeUhausen's theory self-contradic tory and iUogical, 403 f. alleged illegitimate priestly bias, 678 ff. ; this touches the prophets Haggai and Zechariah equaUy, 594-596. Circle; the H. C.s argue in a circle (build theories on assumptions . and support them by theories, modify and shift the evidence to suit their everchanging theories, and prove the alteration by the theory, etc.), 126, 269, 382 f., 511 et passim. See Criticism. Circulation of copies of the Law, 283. Circumcision, 32, 103, 161, 183. Cities of refuge, 32, 79. of Levites, 89-93, 114, 538. INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 641 Clean and unclean food, 527, 637 ; beasts, 27. Codes; dissection of the Pentateuch into its supposed component Codes; synopsis, 376, 498 ff. the theory discussed, 4, 6, 18, 60, 107, 126, 217, 221, 223, 226, 228, 338 (JE, H, and Dt in Hosea), 358 (those codes had never any " separate existence "), 376, 451 {Hosea), 461 (Josiah), 417-429, 435 (J and E), 471 {Kings), 472 (i), 529. Comparison of Codes, 165 & 75. See further, the various titles of Codes ; ind Beuteronomy; Ezekiel; Book of the Law ; Covenant Code. Coincidences, undesigned, 27 (103), 242. Comparative Eeligion, 61. Conder, Major R. C, 110, 115-117. Congregation, 176, 418, 483. Connection between the Biblical Records. See Continuity. Continuity, 171, 250 75. of constitution, 172. of tribal precedence, 173. of national unity, 175. of worship, 179. of High Priest's office, 248, cp. 142 75. of historical records, 99-102, 106, 121, 247 75. *, 248, 416 ff., 421. of institutions, 101-103. Contradictions. See Inconsistencies. Covenant, of Jeremiah, 570 (668). Code, 376, 382. Court of Appeal, 173. Creation, 16,435, 600 ff. Criticism, Higher: — the term is justifiable and correct, but abused by the H.C.s, 45875. its principles and methods stated, 61, 376, 493-499, 665-567. See Codes, synopsis. criticised, 4, 6, 30, 41, 58, 60-62, 70 ?5., 76,111,120, 126, 134, 136, 137, ib. & 75., 140, 160, 158-160, 163, 170, 175, 195 75., 203-210, 211, 7675. 1 & 2, 212, 213-216, 216 75., 219 f., 223, 226-227, 234, 237, 239, 250, 258, 259 & 75., 260, 262, 270, 272-276, 297, 305 f. {Chron.), S 1063. 303, 318, 320, 325, Criticism, Higher— 0075;;. 332, 334, 356, 358, 382, 410 (dis section), 414, 415, 430, 466-470, 492 ff. (not high enough, yet too high for common sense), 493 & 71., 497-499 & 7571., 499 7675. t & II, 605. in special, 359 (late " Redaction " il logical), 360 (loose reasoning, WeUhausen defies a monument), 361-363 ("Eedactors"), 364 (opinion is not evidence), 499 (historical history ?). self and mutuaUy destructive, 76, 187, 199, 217 75.t, 22176.1. 229, 318, 363 ; Hosea and Amos make the H.C.s forget their theory of evolution, 383 ; 363, 388 (Isaiah), 430, 500 & 75.t, 604, 548, 565 (Passover), 669, 603 (Driver's arbitrary, 361, 495 (abusive), 499 n.\\. biassed, 366 (preconceptions), 282, 283 75., 286 (where an awkward fact is not mentioned this proves that it did not exist ; where it is recorded, that the record is un reliable). 205 (a critic is not a historian), 207, 355 ff. (H.C. neglects arehseo- logy; hyper-critical). its theory highly improbable, tradi tion fully reliable, 357, 410 ff., 426, 548, 554, 672 et passim. contradicts records, 234, 258, 262, 410, in fact the whole range of O.T. literature, 500 f. the stones from the wall cry out against it, 8, 16, 115 ff., 118, 356, 357, 360. its theories built on misunderstood passages, 553 (P), 570 (legislation after promise). its theories built on mere assumptions {e.g. that legislation cannot be contemporaneous with ethical, i.e. prophetic teaching, 506 76. J, 570 ; or that of late use of writing), 4, 6, 11, 66, 79, 125, 203, 204, 21 1 71., 220 f. & 76)5., 365, 357, 364- 367, 393 (theories used as evi dence). See (fallacy of the) Circle. its theories built on -the scantiness of extant literature, no vantage S s 642 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. Criticism, Higher — cont. ground, 5, 7, 56, 61, 70, 90, 91, 96, 107, 114, 216, 276, 287. it has no records to rely on, 382. it is a condition of life for H.C. that it should be- able to prove any thing at wiU, 389. its weakness hidden by « tone of un justifiable self-assurance, 206 & 76., 229 & 75.*, 234, 258, 262, 402, 456 (infallibility), 497 (newer American school is more calm, 498 75.) its weakness shown by its -constant shifting, 186, 226, 363, 493, 495, 648 (even in its vital points), re markable shifts 176 extremis, 159, 423, 469, 548 et passim. it is doomed to be ever shifting by its own fundamental principle, 363 ; and by the self-created difficul ties resulting from every new hypothesis, 223, 229, 234, 271, 272, 303, 360 (Biblical histori cal characters exchanged for shadowy and shady anonymous "Eedactors"), 368, 376, 377, 378- 380 (Hilkiah), 410, 425, 436. the H.C.s sometimes seem to feel, as they allege of Biblical writers, "that now or never" they have " to gain' their end," and there fore seek to overcome an awkward fact in their path by a daring feat, e.g., 360, 361 (Wellh.), 368 (Cheyne), 380 (Kuenen). with it lies the onus of proof, not with us, 16, 29, 58, 65, 121. See Negative Proof. its springs of thought, 7, 61 ; anti- supernatural. See Rationalism. it endangers faith, 207, 208, 216 71, 223 75, 230 76, 368, 494. scientific reaction against it, 3, 4, 187. attacks repulsed, in detail {see above : criticised), 210, 211 & jiti., 217 & ?5.t, 219, 220 & 75., 221 & 7676., 222 & 75., 223-226, 227, 228, 230-233, 260 & 75., 261, 253-258, 259 (arbitrary), 266, 267, 274, 283, 303 f., 318 (self-destruc tive, Davidic Psalms), 326-329 (Hosea and Amos), 329-336 (Amos and the Law), 336 f. •Criticism, Higher — cont. (Hosea's monotheism), 336-341 (Hosea and the Law), 341 ff., 345 ff. (Elijah and Elisha mono- theists), 348-352 (ffi?5^s a reliable record), 364 (law of kingship), 366 (central altar, Davidic Psalms in general), 367 (Ps. UO), 369- 371 (headings of Psalms), 371-376 (testimony of Psalms to Mosaic Law), 410 (same of Amos), 511, 639 ff. {Ezekiel and P), 390 ff. (finding of the Book), 398-444 {Chronicles). quotations from its advocates, 126, 203, 209 75., 230, 283 75., 296, 348, 352, 356, 367, 365, 376, 377, 381, 410, 463, 465, 469, 480, 494 (Driver, Renan, Kuenen), 495 f. (WeUh. on Ezekiel), 604, 539 . (P), 646 (P), 652 (Wellh., Kue nen), 663, 665, 567. See also Codes, etc. legitimate methods, 61, 204, 206,208, 214,216 (date), 2681, 274-276, 348 (reliability of Kings &c.), 366, 429-432, 433 (inspiration), 436 (creation), 501 ?6. §, 510 f., 612 (true test of date), 612-525 (ff.), (sound methods applied to a comparison of P with Ezekiel). Cumulative evidence, 417, 449, 476. Cuneiform syllabary, 9 ; c. inscriptions, 116. Cush, 16. D = symbol for Deuteronomic Code, 376, etc. D or Dt. = Deuteronomist, the author or authors of the Deuteronomic Code, 107, 128 f., 247 76. *, 295 ; in Kings, 296 ; in Hosea, 238 ; in Jeremiah, 486. (Dr. Driver uses Dt. also for Beuteronoma/.) Damascus, 115. Dan, the tribe of, 191. Baniel, Book o/, 433. Date ; tests for the date of a book, 215, 612. See the various books. Day of Atonement. See Atonement. David, his personality and his religion, 282, 288, 290, 291 ff., 404. his relation to "the Law," 85, 87, 244, 289-292. INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 643 David — cont. infractions of the Law, 295. service of song, 138, 439, 440 (Hezekiah and Amos). in history, 221 f., 244, 288, 314 76. marks an epoch for religion, 282. a pupil of both Samuel and Moses, 293, 294. his relation to priests, 294, 298 f. See also Psalms. Deborah, 180, 196 (her muster-roU). her song, 167, 174, 177, 189. Decalogue, 302 n., 365, 667 f., 572, 575. , Deluge, 16. Beuteronomy, H. C.s' hypothesis stated, 463. its critical aspect, 55, 60, 61, 366. prima fkicie genuine book, 66; no necessity to assume that it is not, 58. its characteristics (not a code, but a prophetical book ; its tendency : love, both of God and man), also style and sequence point to its rhetorical character, 66-58, 62, 84, 91, 95; 465 (love). This is the cause of many omissions and variations: — laws omitted, 57, 58, 62 ; other omissions, 57, 65 7i., 71, 72, 79, 96, 133; variations, 67, 61, 96, 96 ; new laws, 72, 79. its date, 133, 163. iate date impossible, 70 f., 84, 467. negative evidence for Mosaic authorship, 464 ff. Jerusalem not mentioned, 466. the historical narrative not de pendent on JE, 468 f. Josiah's reform not based on it, 477. comparison with Levitieal Code, 79, 89-96, 147, 364, 365. its (liturgical) ceremonial, 181. presupposed by Samuel, 246. See Book of the Law, its con tents. Development of religious idea or legisla tion, 29, 68, 77, 78, 82, 125, 132, 171, 303 f. (images and idols), 356, 366 (evolution of Mosaism), 433, 488 f. the Biblical record of it is natural, the critical representation un natural, 304, 320, 487-490 (391, Development of religious idea or legis lation — cont, 505), 522 (P), 541 75., 546, 552 & 7671. (Temple, Levites, Passover). Difficulties, especially inconsistencies, partly arise from difference of ages, or modes of thought, or from want of material or of knowledge, (211), 213. Discoveries, modern, topographical, 111, 115. &e Tablets. Disproof. See Negative proof. Disruption of the kingdom, 72, 347 ff. an evidence of the " Law," 348. caused by heathen worship, 348- 361. Documents, dissection of Pentateuch into. See Codes. Driver, Prof., modifies his views, 226. Dues. See Priests' dues. E = Elohistic narrative in the Pen tateuch, 107 ; it is 760< indepen dent of J, 226, 245 75. f. Editorial additions. See Additions. Editors. See Redactors. Edom ; its monuments, 14 ; its relations toward Israel, 71 ; kings of, an authentic record, 14. Edomites, 244. Egypt, 71, 73, 116. its influence.in Pentateuch, 23, 1 16, 167. Elders of Joshua, 243. Eleazar, 99, 143. Eli, 248, 260 f. his history declared fictitious, 49976. Elijah and Elisha, their Monotheism pure, 326, 341 ff., 343 ff. aud the " Law," 343 ; in special : " seekjng the Lord " on sabbath and new moon (2 Kings 4. 23), li. ; altar on Carmel, 345 f. ; Elisha's supposed sacrifice, 347. Elkanah, 93, 180, 250. Enquiry of Jehovah, 142, 143, 249. Ephod, 87 & 76., 144, 145, 146, 249, &71.§. Ephraim, a predominant tribe, 242. a term for the Northern Kingdom, 825. Ephraimites. See Elkanah. Esther, Book of: its canonicity, 433. Eve's temptation, 183. S s 2 644 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. Evolution. See Development. Exilic redaction inadmissible, 272. See Eedactors ; P ; Ezekiel ; etc. Explorations of Dr. Glaser, 12, 13. Ezekiel, Book of: its date and text of no moment to the question, 495. in H. Criticism, as defined by Well hausen, 495 f. in H. Criticism, as defined by Kuenen, 496 f. as we find it, 502. 1, no breach with the past, 502. 2, disingenuous ? 603. 3, an exilic hierocracy an unsub stantiated fiction ; the Prince, 604 ; theological standpoint, ib: 4, no evidence for H. C. theory in the after history, 505-608. the library of Ezra in the Apocrypha, 508. Ezekiel and P : Ezekiel and the "finding of the Book," 501. Ezekiel and his school cannot be the authors of P by the literary character the H. C.s ascribe to them, 504,512, 513. belong to widely different ages, 1, on negative grounds, 512-616 {see below). 2, on positive grounds, for P dis plays Egyptian ; Ezekiel, Baby lonian, surroundings (2), 516 & 76., 523. H. C. admit that Ezekiel presupposes only part of P, and that there is no evidence outside Ezekiel, 524. but in another way Ezekiel does pre suppose the whole of P, 539. similarities between Ezekiel and P, not signs of common authorship, but of a revival of Mosaic religion, 502, 505, 410. for the same cause Ezekiel uses the archaisms and language of the Law (archaisms borrowed from P, 615, & 75., 526, 530 7575., 534 ff., 543 76.), but uses the lan guage of his time as well (later terms used instead of Mosaic), 527 71., 528 75., 630 75., 532 76.," 635 75., 537 «.t. Ezekiel and P — cont. these differences side by side with similarities prove that Ezekiel is not the author, nor contempo raneous with P; this is con firmed by dissimilarities beside similarities in legal matters, e.g. in the Temple ritual, 656 ; in Priests' law, 552. not contemporaneous, for the hints to laws in P, though covert and abundant, are readily understood, together with their symbolism, by the people, 630, 633, 539, 640 ( (1), (2) ) ; this points to a tra ditional written book ; instances 526-631, 633 ff., 535-538. Ezekiel's Temple, called by H. C.s a first draft of P, is not a draft, nor original, 541-546. Priestly legislation, especially the aUeged new difference drawn be tween Priests and Levites, 545- 565. ideal of righteousness and redemp tion, 533. lofty character, a sufficient defence, 540 (3). attitude toward Deuteronomy, 64. Ezra, 303 f., his relation to the P school (Wellhausen, Kuenen), 496, 497. his literary activity (library of the Apocrypha), 508. Ezra and Nehemiah, Books of, assume Mosaic authorship of the " Law,' 692. FaUacy of the circular argument. See Circle. Fasting, 27. Feasts, yearly, 156, 247, 426, 538. sacrificial, 91 ; agricultural, 153. the "Great Feasts," 152; "Feast of Tabernacles," 419, 420. Assemblies, 350, 429 ; " Solemn Feasts," 451. Festivals, heathen, 185. See Heathen worship. Finding of the Book of the Law. See Book, etc. Firstborn, 27 ; Firstfruits, 482 ; First lings, 91. Forgery; Fraud, "pious" {see Book of the Law), inadmissible, 23, 60, 63, INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 645 Forgery — cont. 214, 463 f. ; the charge of impiety and dishonesty remains, 444, 475, 54175., 540 (3), 541. Gaza, 10. Gentiles. See Nations. Gezer, 10, 116, 189. Gibeon. See Altar. Gibeonites, 15, 108. Gideon, 81, 87, 145, 148, 167, 168, 179 {cp. Altar). H., term for the " Law " or " Code of Holiness," 107, 146, 244 >6.*, 338 (Hosea); 410 (Amos). Habakkuk, 460, date of, a study, 453 ff. Hair offerings, 188. Hannah, 181. Havet, 74. Hazor, 110, 115. Headings ot Psalms, 369 ff. Heathen feasts, 185. wives, 162, 179 75., 352. worship. Mosaic laws against it, 79 ; the same are unsuited to later ages, 615. worship of Micah, 88 ; before or after David's time, 282 ; Cheru bim no indication of it, 302 f. worship denounced by the author of Judges, 179 ; especially by the satire on the lawlessness of the period (Micah and Dan) (Judg. 17. 6 ; 18. 1), 145. worship denounced by Amos, 329- 333 ; by Hosea, 336 ; by Ezekiel, 502. worship in the time of Solomon, 184, 282, 348 ff.; in the time of Jeroboam, 86, 191, 348; in the time of Manasseh, 452, 461, 477. worship is a new thing in the time of Jeroboam, and presupposes Monotheism, 348 ff. worship ceases in the Exile, 505. Hexateuch, 67, 68, 120. the term justifiable if not carried to the extreme of H. C.s, 46871. See " Josh/ua," related to Pent. Hezekiah, 96, 396-397, 437-438. his reform, 438-443. his death marks the beginning of the decUne, 449-460. Hierarchy; its alleged rise in Exile denied, 512. Higher Criticism. See Criticism, Higher. High places, 86, 265, 266-268, 437 f., 602 & 7i.t (twofold character). See also Bamoth ; Heathen wor ship ; Elijah ; etc. High priest, 31, 141, 142, 248, 249, 629, 554, 684. See also Priests ; Urim. Hilkiah, 63, 378, 464 & 7i. See also Book, etc. Hillulim, 157. Hittites, 10, 115. Holiness, Law of. See H. Holy lives, 159 & 75.t, 180. Hommel, Prof., researches of, 12, 13. Homogeneity (linguistic and historic), oi Judges, 127, 196. of Samuel, linguistic, 217ff. ; historic, 221-223. Hophni and Phinehas, 267, 268. Hosea, tlie Book of: its testimony to Mosaic law specified, 335-341. e.g. : heathen worship, 336, 340, 341. priests teaching law, 337. whoredom denounced, 338. removing boundary, 339. uncleanness, 339, etc. ritual law, 340. further evidence, 414 ff. testifies to the existence, in his time, of JE, H, Dt, 338. See further under "Amos and Hosea." Hostof Heaven, 330 ff. Houses of Levites, 93. Hume objects to miracles, 273, 490. Ideal of righteousness and redemption of Ezekiel, 533. Idols. See Images. Ignorance of Mosaic laws and institu tions in Biblical authors, argued from their sUence of them. See Criticism, Higher, criticised ; Si lence. Images, of Micah and Dan (89), 146, 157, 179; others, 302, 330, 341. See Cherubim ; Teraphim ; Heathen Worship. Inconsistencies, aUeged and explained in Beuteronomy, 57, 61, 80, 89- 96, 103. 646 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. Inconsistencies — 00751!. in Joshua 111, 112 (iv.), 113 (v.), 126, etc., 150, 151. in Chron. 210, 211; in Samuel, 221 ff ; 293 (David). sometimes a mark of faithful pre servation of an ancient text, 112 (compare 194, copyist). Infractions of Mosaic laws, by leaders in religion, or general, 125, 243 (Samuel), 244 (David), 263, 266 (high places), 281-286, 345, 346 (Elijah on Carmel, two pleas), 347 (Elisha's supposed sacrifice) ; they arise out of the H. C.s' theories and increase in number (and vanish) with the latter, 366. Inspiration, 4, 128 ff., 216 76.2, 306,433, 569 (4), 679. Institutions, continuity of, 101-103. Intermarriages, 162, 179 ?6., 352. Interpolations. See Text. Isaiah, the Book of, 94, 386 ff. and the Law, 387 ff., 427-429. Israelites, their invasion of Canaan, 10. were always in contact with litera ture, 12ff. J, term for "Jehovistic" narrative, 107. not independent of E, 226, 338 (Hosea), 438. JE, term for the supposed combination of the J and E codes, 107, 120. not certainly composite, 226. certainly 760i; composite, 226, 338 (Hosea), 438. Jabesh, 198. Jabin, 110, 116. Jasher, the Book of, 108, 131. " Jealous," said of the Lord, 451. Jebusites, 189. " Jehavah" and " Elohim,'' 435. Jehovah's speech, 165. Jephthah's vow, 160. Jeremiah, the Book of, 76. a silent witness to the Mosaic Law, 391. its testimony to the Priestly Law, 482 ff. its relation to Beuteronomy, 479, 480 & 75., 486, 487. Jericho, 107, 117. Jeroboam, 86, 191, 348. Jerubbaal, 190. Jerusalem, 85, 115, 260 & 75.; not named in Beuteronomy, 466. See alio Central Sanctuary. Jesus Christ testifies to the " Law," 44, 61, 367, 475 ;' the attempts to ex plain this fact away met, 44-52, 475. an immoral heathen accepted in His place, 367. Joel, its date and evidence of " the Law,'' 422, 460. Jonathan, the false priest, 146. Jordan, crossing of the, 107. Joshua, 62 ; his mission, 69 ; as author, 99; his personality and work, 104 ff. Joshua, the Book of: its date and authorship, 106, 107. it is closely related to the Pentateuch by its history, language, and archaeology, 100-106, 109, 110, 117 (iii., iv.). written by an eye-witness, 118, 119. its faithfulness confirmed by monu ments, 115, 118. the term Hexateuch admissible, 458 71. its theology, 106. pre-supposed in later writings, 107, 108. Josiah, 75, 86, 95, 397, 404, 441. his reform, 460 ff. ; the same not based upon Beuteronomy (alone), 477. his Passover, 153, 154, 462. Jubile, 93. Judah, a prominent tribe, 174, 242 7i.§. Judges, the Book of, 127 ff. its dates, 127, 188 ff.; homogenity, 126, 196 ff. an authentic record, 180 ; its " ten dency," 128-132. fuU of testimony to the Law ; the Tabernacle, 133 ; the Ark, 139 ; High Priest, 141 ; Ephod, 144; Levites, 146; Sacrifices, 148; Feasts, 152-157; Vows, 157 ; Intermarrying with Ca naanites, 162 ; continuity of Mo saic Institutions, 171 ff. Kassites, 16. Kenosis, 187, 476. Kings in Edom before Israel, 190. INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 647 Kings, the First Book of: its date, method, character, 298 ; WeUhausen's estimate, 296. Kings, the Books of, 325. . date and method, 470, 478, 479. their value as witness, 348, 389. denounced as worthless by Well hausen, 348. the prophets prove Kings true, 349-351. other attacks of WeUhausen met, 352. the " finding of the Book," 389-395. evidence of the Mosaic Law, 395- 397, 417-444. Engship, law of, 73, 168, 296, 365. time of its rise, 233 (190). Kirjath-jearim. See Ark. Kirjath-sepher = Booktown, 1 1 . Korah, 88, 96. Lachish, 12, 116. Language and style, Hebrew, dark, the literature being limited, therrfore linguistic arguments only hypo thetical, 6, 7, 61,90, 91. of pre-exilic books on the whole homogeneous, therefore single phrases offer insufficient proof for fixing a date, 126, 216, 216 & n., 217 & 75., 219 (ep., however, 61175., 61275."') ; peculiar phrases, 103-105, 126, 218 (2 Sam.), 410- 430, especiaUy 430 ; cumulative evidence, 417, 449, 475. rise and fall of words as evidence of age, 418 (congregation), 416 (Baalim) ; archaisms, 471-476, 515 & 75., 526 {Ezekiel), 630 7575. 534 ff., 643 75. ; AramaismS, 479 75. of Beuteronomy and Jeremiah com pared, 479 75.; the same oi Ezekiel. See Archaisms. grammatical arguments of Dr. Driver, 600. Law, the Mosaic {also Mosaic Author ship, Mosaism). See also Book of the Law, Authorship : its antiquity, 22, 29. interlaced -with history, 22. wilderness surroundings, 22, 25, 26, 29, 139, 247?i.t, 514, 515-622; this partly admitted by H.C, 381. Egyptian influence, 23, 29, 56. Law, the Mosaic — cont. Egyptian surroundings (618-) 621& »i. Midianite influence, 26. postulated and enacted throughout the later books, 30 ff., 100, 244 f. (1 Sam.), 247-268, 271, 278, 288 f . (not in detail in 2 Sam., but yet present), 291, 291 f. (David), 293-298, 294 f. (Solomon), 320. postulated by — the whole tone of the prophets, 456. Elijah and Elisha, 347. See also Monotheism {Elijah). the history of the disruption of the kingdom, 348-361. finding the Book of the Law, 379. the familiarity of Ezekiel's audience with its laws, their phraseology, and their symbolism, 626-538. traditions in Ezra's time (Cyrus 582 f.), 584-591. its very existence (Mosaism diffi cult to sustain, limited circula tion of copies), 283. having given rise to the Temple, 298 f. absence of idol in the Temple, 302. the development of the religious idea, 304. as evidenced in — Samuel and his time, 239, 241, 243, 257, 258, 271, 282, 286. David's time, 281, 282, 289, 290, 293, 294. Solomon's time, 294 f., 298. evidence of Mosaic legislation and principles (espec. of PC) in — Samuel, 244-294. Kings, 294-351, 389, 390-397, (437-444). Chronicles (398-)404-406, 436-444. Psalms, 319, 371-375. Isaiah, 387 ff., 427-429. Jeremiah (479), 482 ff. Ezekiel, 526-538. Hosea, 326, 335-340, 385, 414-421, 449 f. Joel, 442. Amos, 326-329-335, 384, 410-414, 449 f. Micah, 423-425. Nahum, 426, 451, 452. Habakkuk, 455, 45^. Zephaniah, 459, 460. 648 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. Law, the Mosaic — cont. infractions by leaders, 182-185. exilic redaction inadmissible, 272 f. its unity, 36, 182. existed in written form, (418), 419, 482 (Jer. 3. 8), 483, 603 76.*, cp. 529 f, 640 (authority). Law, the Law, 379, 384-387, 394-397, 418, 419, 465, 456 (WeUh.), 459. See also Law, Mosaic ; Torah ; Levitieal Law ; etc. Law of the Priest, 484, 485 (Jer.) See Torah ; Development ; Prophet and Priest. in Zephaniah, 459 ; Haggai, 594. identical with Mosaic Law, 697 ff., Malachi (days of yore). Laws concerning : additions to the Law, 60. circumcision, 32, 103, 161, 183. cities of Levites, 90-93, 114, 638. cities of refuge, 32, 79. clean and unclean beasts, 27. food. 527, 537. firstlings, etc., 27, 91, 482. fringes, 575. intermarrying vrith Canaanites (pre supposed in a narrative admitted ancient by H.C), 162. inheritance, 615. leaven in offerings (Amos), 334. priests and Levites, 86-93, 583, 684. priests' dues. See Tithes ; Cheeks and maw, 90. firstlings, 91. wave breast, 91, 637. See also Altar; Central Sanc tuary ; Kingship ; Leprosy ; Priest ; Priestly Levites ; Sab bath ; Slaves ; Tithes. Leaven. See under Laws. Legendary matter, 273. Legislation, Mosaic. See Law, etc. non-Mosaic, e.g. by Samuel, David, Ezekiel, Nehemiah, 137, 138. Leprosy,. 28, 67, 79, 522, 538 71. Levite. See Ephraimite ; Elkanah. Levites, 31, 86, 87, 89-93, 146, 495 (in ExUe). not a merely secular tribe, 147. return to Jerusalem, 554 & 7i. and the provisions of P, 514. Levitieal cities, 638. Levitieal Code. See P. Torah. See Torah ; Law of the Priest. Limited state of Biblical literature ex- tant, and of our knowledge of its history, language, archseology, etc., 6, 7, 61, 90, 91, 278, 287, etc. Linguistic arguments. See Language. Lists, not fictitious, of towns, 111-113, 116 ; of nations, 110. Literary analysis. See Codes. Literary activity in Pentateuchal times, 9, 14, 116, 357, 382; proved by that of Amos and Hosea, 383. aUeged, in Babylonian exile, 470, 506 ; no evidence for the latter in contemporary or subsequent records, 506-609. aUeged of Ezra (in Apoeryphal, 608. Lot, the land apportioned by it, 32. Love, the basis of Beuteronomy, 51 n. Luz, 189. Ma'in. See Minseans. Makd,rib, high priest of Saba, 13. Manasseh, 397, 405. See Book, etc. Manetho, 11, 452. Manna, 100. Manoah, 87, 149. Marriages, prohibited, 162, 179 7i., 352. Mazzevah, 438. Me'U, 253. Messianic reftrences, 367. Melchizedek, contemporaneous record possible, 6. Methods of Biblical writers. See the various books. Micah, 148, 190. See Image ; Heathen worship. Micah, evidence of the Law, 423-426. Micaiah the prophet, 344, 346. Midian, monuments of, 14. Minseans, monuments of, 12, 14. Minchah, 149, 484. Miracles. See Rationalism. Mitre, 636. Moab, conquered by Eameses II., 14. Moloch. See Heathen worship; Josiah's reform. Monotheism, ethical, 181 ; difficult to engender and to sustain, 282; 283 (ignorance of pious Levites), 301, 302. INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 649 Monotheism — cont. David's time a turning point, 282. pure in the period of David and Solomon, 289, 290, 300. pure, fostered by the central posi tion of the Ark, 300, 301. pure, shown by Hosea and Amos to be ancient, 325 ff., (349) ; their chief principles of Monotheism, 330, 331 ; of Elijah identical with theirs, 341 ff., 343 ff.; of Elisha the same, 347. its neglect a cause of the disrup tion of the Kingdom, 348 ff. is not a matter of evolution, 356. contemporary of the Egyptians was almost pure, 367. See also Moral, etc. Monuments. See Tablets ; Tell. Moral (ethical) and Ceremonial Laws, their original union denied, 571 ; and vindicated, 675, 576. Moses : an exceptionally commanding person ality, standing out from the back ground of history, 65, 56, 62, 65, 139, 565, 566. at the same time prophet, priest, and lawgiver, 62, 565, 566, 674, 575. his blessing, 147. his descendants, 88. imbued with Egyptian ideas, 23, 66. Music, 72 ; service of song, 138, 439, 440. Nahum, evidence of the "Law" (scanty), 426, 450-452. " Nation " and " Church " are synony mous for Israel, 572 ff. Nations of Canaan, 110, 245 ; no ficti tious lists, 110. National unity of Israel. See Unity. Nazarite vow, 157, 160, 636. Negative proof {see also Silence), 86, 88 ; Solomon and high places, 296 ; Elijah and calf worship (a moun tain suspended from a hair), 343 ; finding the " Book," 381, 501 ; Mosaic authorship of Beuter onomy, 464. H. C theories, e.g., that of P, rest almost solely on negative evi dence, 606 71., 607 76. * et passim. See Criticism, Higher. Negative proof — cont. difficult to adduce, even to disprove absurdities, 470, 525 & 75. no trace of the aUeged rise of a hierarchy and a literature, 505- 509. no evidence of late date in P, 512. See also Non-observance. New moons, 335, 413. Noah's ark, 17. Nob. See Tabernaole. Non-observance, no proof for non-exist- ance, or even ignorance, 285. Numbers, Book of, 170. Numbers, incredibly large, 177, 196. Offerings and sacrifices, 91, 148 ff., 152, 259, 484, 536. See Altar ; Hea then worship ; Paschal. Officers, civil, 26, 31 ; ' Nasi ' or Prince, 504. Old Testament, parallel ancient litera- ' ture among Oriental nations, 6. « Olah," 152. Omissions. &e Silence; Inconsistencies; Onias, 74. Ophrah, 136, 183. Origins of the Jewish nation, 68. Othniel, 174. P, PC, or Q, term for Priests' or Leviti eal Code, 21, 93, 95, 107, 120, 134, 137, 141, 166, 244, 268, 269, 270, 332, 432. P, also term for Priestly School of Scribes, 495. P =: Priests' Code : its compass, 21, 499 75. §. hypercritically minute, 28, 493 76. must anyhow be ancient, 300. in Judges, 157, 159, 183. in Samuel, 250, 251, 260. in Kings, 296, 300. by Elijah's Minchah, 343. by ChronicUs, 396, 403. by Isaiah, 388. by Hosea, 386. by Amos, 332, 333, 384. contains no traces of later ages, 612 ff. a code without application, 514. its provisions for the Levites, and status of the latter, 614, 539 71., 554 75., 684. 650 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. P = Priests' Code— cont. no provision for circumstances of later ages (Nethinim, Singers, etc.), 514. its ordinances against idolatry and others out of date and stale, 515. already combined with J and written before Ezekiel's time, 529, 530. the same of P vrith E, 636. the H.C.s' hypothesis based upon a false interpretation, 653. Ezra not its author ; Egyptian, not Babylonian, environments, 664. Ezekiel's " first draft of P," 641 ff. division into Priests and Levites, 645 ff.; and succession through birth traditional, 583-685. See also Ezekiel ; Criticism ; Priests. Paschal meal, 154, 162, 346 ; has a semi- sacrificial character, 565, 666. Passover, 31, 84, 103, 152, 154, 156. of Judges, 164, 155. of Josiah, 152, 156. of Hezekiah, 438 ff. Patesis, high priest of Assur, 13. Paul, 570. Peace offering, 152. Persian period, 75. Petrie, Prof. Flinders, 117. Pharaoh, of the oppression, 10. Philistine cities unconquered, 10. Phinehas, 100, 141, 142. Pilgrimages {see Feasts, yearly), 247 &75. Pillar, patriarchal, and heathen, 94. Pinches, Mr., of the British Museum, 116 71. Pledges, law of (Amos), 332. Pomegranates, 27. Portion in the land. See Laws concern ing Priests, etc.' Priests to be distinguished from Levites, and their succession by birth, not an exilic innovation, 639 76., 546- 655, 583-586. Priests and Levites, 86-88, 364; in Ezekiel's law, 6. Priests and Prophets. See Prophets. Priests, their influence, 307, 308 ; of little influence in the time of Samuel, 286. Priestly garments, 27, 253, 629 ; breast plate, mitre, etc., 536. See also Ephod ; Urim. PrieMy functions, 87 (83-87) & nn., 88 (Dan), 142, 251, 254, 636 (teaching). assumed by non-priests, 87, 683 ; David, Solomon (David's sons), 282, 289; Samuel, 286. See Elijah and Elisha. Priestly School of Scribes (^P) and Ezekiel, 496, 496. treated as a -person by the H.C.S, 498 75. Priests' dues, 537 ; cheeks and maw, 90 ; wave breast, 91 ; firstlings, 91. Prophets, 62. their schools, 237 75., 240, 286. their spirit and activity (Samuel), 240, 286. versus Priests, prophetical and Levitieal Law or Torah, i.e. ethi cal or ceremonial law: Samuel's seeming neglect of priests and ritual, and its infiuence on Israel, 286, 286, 308 ; Jeremiah's denun ciation of sacrifices (7. 22 f.), 483. their theological standpoint, 487. of Baal, 344. Proverbs, Boek of, shews high standard of religious views, 309, 310. its age, 311. Psalms, Book of , and Mosaism, 312, 313. Davidic origin discussed, 312 ff., 365-370, 439, 440 (Amos) ; posi tive evidence in favour is scant but strong, 315, 316 ; negative evidence against is natuaUy abundant, but flimsy, 317, 318 ; negative evidence in favour, 371. . and the Law, 319, 371-375. the headings ancient, 369-371. service of song in the First Temple testified to by Amos, 411, 440. Eainbow, 536. Eameses IL, 10. Eationalism, 61, 77, 273, 365, 356, 433, 434, 489 (Paley v. Hume), 494. Eecords, historic and official, earlier than or coeval with Abraham, 9, 13. official, 99, 111,113. Eedactlon. See Text ; P. Redactors, 359, 391. Redemption, Ezekiel's ideal of it, 633. — — its principles misunderstood by H.C.S, 571. INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 651 References to utterances of Joshua — to Beuteronomy, 100-102. to other books of Pent., 103 ff. Release. See Slaves. ReUgion. See Monotheism, Revivals. Revelation, Divine, 434. Revivals of Religion, 179, 243, 605 & 75., 525. Righteousness, Ezekiel's ideal of it, 533. Ritual law, 181. Buth, 180. Saba, Sheba, its monuments, 12. Sabbath, 26, 484, 566. in Amos, 335. not borrowed, 455. Sacerdotal. See Priestly. Sacrifices. See Offerings. Sacrificial system, 148 ff. Jeremiah 14. 12 ; 16. 26 ; 484. pre-supposed by Ezekiel, 536 ; in Samuel, 251. Samson, 160, 163. Samuel, a reformer indifferent to sacer dotalism, 286 ; the influence of > this on Israel, 286, 308. in history, 231, 237 n., 238-243. his sacrifice, 346. Samuel, the Books of, 73, 85, 99, 141, 223 ff., 231; aXlasions to Judges, 189 ; their date, 220 75., 223 & 71., 236-237, 247; homogeneity lin guistic, 217, 220 ; peculiar ex pressions, 217 ff. & 7675. ; a homogeneous record, 221-223 ; their final redaction, 246. and the Law, 239, 244, 245, 264. First Book of, 288 ; an authentic record, 220 71., 223, 235; pre supposes Pent, and Judges, 247, 248. Second Book of, 288 ff. ; compared, in its method, with Kings and Chronicles, 294. Saul, 83, 85, 144, 223. elected king, 228-230. Schools of Prophets, 237 75., 240, 286. Scribes, in Canaan in Moses' time, 8-16, 116. Semitic language in Monuments, 115. Separation into two kingdoms (see Dis ruption), 72. Septuagint, 112, 150, 151, 193 ff., 226 ff., 315 76. S eptuagint — cont. headings of the Psalms, 370. ¦ its evidence of textual criticism, 220 ff. Sheba, monuments of, 12. Shechem, 81, 82, 108. Shelamim, 152. Shewbread, 27, 87. Shiloh, 84, 85, 113 75., 133, 136, 155, 248, 250, 251. Silence, argument from, 75, 84 (Jerusa lem), 93 (land, jubilee, ritual), 125, 130 (silence of the normal in historical record natural), 133 & 75., 142 & 75. (Shiloh), 154 n., 176, 176, 183, 213 & 75. 1, 214, 215, 2S5n.f, 233 (of prophets concerning contemporary history), 242 {Judges regarding Judah and high priests), 248, 249 76. §, 269, 286 ff., 288 (works both ways ; cp. 507 75. *), 309 & 75., 333, 343, 344, 364, 391, 480 (Isaiah's and Jeremiah's silence of Josiah's reform, etc.), 484 (Sabbath), 505- 509, 514, 640 75. See also Nega tive proof. Sin, original, in Ezekiel, 533. Sin, offering, 159. Slaves, fugitive, 79. release, 93, 486. Solomon, 86 ; his history, 295. and idolatry, 184, 282, 348. and the Law, 294, 295, 404, 406. and priests, 298 ff. Speeches, fictitious in profene literature, 59, 60 (but cp. 268). various standards of truthfulness 60 (268). veracity of, 163, 164, 192. Spies, 96. Standpoints of the H.C.s and traditional, 665. theological, of prophets, 483 (on Jer. 7. 22 ff.), 487; of critics, 490. See Monotheism. Starworship, 331, 332. Strangers, laws about, 71. Style. See Language. Sunworship, 24. Supernatural. See Rationalism. Superstitious and pure views of the Ark, 290. See also Cherubim. Syncretistic worship, 179, 282. 652 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. Tabernacle, or Tent of Meeting, 23, 31, 35, 82, 86, 100, 133-136, 156, 217, 241, 602 71., 613, 514 & ?5., 515, 530 ff. (Ezekiel). provision for itinerant, an ana chronism at any late epoch, 23. at Gibeon, 86, 86, 346. without the Ark {see Ark), 282, 346. seemingly ignored by Samuel, 285. and Temple, 241, 250 & ?i. Tabernacles, Feast of, 420, 421. Tablets, of Sargon, Tel el-Amarna, etc., 8-16, 115. Tel el-Amarna, Tel el-Hesy, 116. TeU es Sultan, 117-118. Temple of Solomon, 133, 241, 296-298; not a creation of priests, but of the Law, 298 ; absence of idol postulates pure Mosaism, 302. in Ezekiel, chaps. 1-11 ; 513-515. Tendency, 56, 128 ff., 149, 207, 465-467. See Bias ; Criticism. Tent of Meeting. See Tabernacle. Moses, 134, 260 ; not mentioned in P, 516. Ten Words {see Decalogue), 456 (WeUh.), 597 (Malachi). Teraphim, 145. Terms, ambiguous, or abused {see under Criticism, Higher ; Bias ; Hexa teuch) : Discovery defined, 476. Bamoth „ 602. " Modern " „ 512. Oral tradition. See there. Text, defective, a mark of antiquity, 112(m.), 193ff., 249 71. §. explanatory notes, a mark of anti quity, 112. early reverence for the, 194, 221, 516. interpolations, 221 {bis), 225, 297. of Pentateuch, 243 76.t, 246, 269 ff. of Samuel, final redaction, 246. Theocracy, 85. Tiglath-pileser III., 13. Tithes, 89, 90. of patriarchs, 90 75. of the third year, 334. Titles of Biblical books, none, 99. Torah, priestly; prophetic, 379, 384, 386, 387, 396. Tradition, oral, differentiated, 6, 7, 61, 434. of Mosaic authorship, 80. of Mosaic authorship, the natural, 141. respect due to literary, 131. of Mosaic institutions living in Ezra's time, 683-590. Transmigration, 25. Tribe. See Levites ; Judah ; Ephraim. Tribes of Israel, 100. See Unity. Trumpets (jubUee), 100. Truthfulness, standard of. See Speeches. Unclean soil (Amos), 335. bread (Hosea), 339. beasts, 27. food, 527, 637. Unfolding of Truth. See Development. Uniqueness of Mosaic Eeligion, 130. Unity of Mosaic Law, 36, 182. of books, 74, 76, 99. national, of Tribes, 176, 178, 239, 242, 243, 281, 510; caused by unity of worship, 303, 304; in ExUe, 505. " Unto this day " ; " at that time," 96, 119. Urim, 88, 143, 144, 249 (531), 584. " Use " of Temple worship, 297 ff. Variations. See Inconsistencies. Verne, 74, 76. Village communities, 172. Vows, 167, 251, 426, 452. Warren, 117. Wave breast, 91. WeUhausen, 128 ff., 134, 250, 253, 334 (fabricates evidence), 360 (eludes a monument), 399-404 {Chron.), 495 ff. {Ezekiel). Wives, for Benjamites, 162. Wordsworth, Bp., 476. Worship. See Altar ; Offerings ; Hea then. Writing, an ancient art {see First Essay), 112, 357. Zadok, 86. Zephaniah, 450, 468; evidence of the " Law," 469, 460. Zorah, 183. HER MAJESTY'S PRINTERS' THE STUDENT'S HANDBOOK TO THE PSALMS. THE BIBLE STUDENT'S LIBRARY. SPECIAL EDITIONS OF THE HOLY BIBLE. SPECIAL EDITIONS OF THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. &c. &c. EYRE & SPOTTISWOODE, ^er ^ajcsfp's printers : LONDON — GREAT NEW STEEET, FLEET STEEET, E.C. EDINBURGH, GLASGOW, MBLBOURNB, SYDNEY, AND NEW YOEK. (&0vet:ntnsnt ^ttttblicaitotte ^ale fflffice : East Haeding Stbeet, London, E.C. CONTENTS. The Stttdbnt's Handbook to the Psalms ..... The Queen's Peintees' ^U«le ^iutietxi'e Siimctvtst — Vol. I. The Foundations of the Bible .... Vol. II. The Law in the Peophbts . . . . Vol. III. 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Beenard (lUustrated) .... Old . Bibles : an Account of the Various Vehsions of the English Bible ........ The Battle op tihe Standpoints 20 21 21 2223 23 2424 242424 §pedal publications JTT8T FUBlLiISSEP. STUDENT'S HANDBOOK TO THE PSALMS. Late Felloio qf CJirist College, Cambridge. Size, small 3to., cloth, bevelled boards, gilt top, price 12/- rriHIS Handbook aims at treating the poetry and theology of the Psalms in such a manner as shall benefit not only the student of the Hebrew, but also the English reader who fakes an intelligent interest in the con troversies of the da^, and finds in the Psalms the daily food of devotion. The authenticity of the traditional ascriptions and headings to the Psahns is supported by new lines of argument ; more especially the Psabns ascribed to David are shewn to possess peculiarities of style which mark them off from the other Psalms. The growth of doctrine is shewn to favour the view, that the Psalms are arranged practically in the order in which they were written. Among the theological topics dealt with, are, The Name and attributes of God as depicted in the Psalms ; The Messianic Hope ; The hope of Life Eternal ; The Moral Teaching of the Psalms, with a full description of the objections frequently brought against the so-called Imprecatory Psalms. The Inspiration of the Psalms is defended from the charge recently made, that they exhibit a lower or secondary degree of inspiration. An appendix treats in detail the several passages from the Psalms which are quoted in the New Testament. The work will be of use to students for theological degrees, and to all who adopt the purpose of St. Paul : " I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the understanding also." — 1 Cor. 14. 15. RETAIL OF ALL BOOKSELLERS. E7BE Sr BFOTTIBWOOBB. Special "g'ublicafions. THE BIBLE STUDENT'S LIBRARY. Cloth Boards, Red Edges. Demy Svo. Price 3s. 6d. Volumes I.-III. Others in preparation. FOURTH EDITION, REVISED. Volurae I. THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE BIBLE: STUDIES IN OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. BY R. B. GIRDLESTONE, M.A., Hon. Canon of Christ Cliurch; late Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford., so:me: opinions. Guardian. — " "Written in a reverent spirit." Theological monthly. — "Any.one who takes up the book will be led, we think, to peruse and ponder till he arrives at a sound conclusion on what is, and must remain, one of the most important matters within human ken." Church Review. — " An invaluable work." Bock. — " Canon Girdlestone as an expert gives us the results of his own personal research. "We are taken into the very workshop and shown the methods and processes by which the final results have been attained." Churchman.—" It is worthy to become a text-book in a theological assembly." 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RETAIL OP ALL BOOKSELLERS. EYBE Sf SFOTTLSWOOBE, gpecial '^ubltcttftons. THE BIBLE STUDENT'S UBRARV—conlmued. "VoI"urQ.e II. THE LAI IN THE PROPHETS. Rev. STANLEY LEATHES, U.U., Professor of Hebrew, King's CoUege, London; Prebendary of St. Paul's ; Author of " The Structure of the Old Testament " ; '• The Seligion of the Christ " {Bampton Lecture) ; " Christ and the Bible," c&c, &c. EXTRACT FROM THE PREFACE. ' The late Dr. Liddon wrote : " How I wish you could see your " way to "writing a book on, say, ' The Law and the Prophets,' " putting the Law back into the chronological and authoritative " place from which the new criticism would depose it, and so " incidentally reasserting in the main, and with the necessary " reservations, the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch." This book is partly the result of that suggestion. SOIVCE OriNIONS. 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THE PROFESSIONAL STUDENT of the original texts will find in this con spectus a more careful selection of critical data, especially as regards the Old Testament and authorities, than is elsewhere accessible. He will have at hand the very essence of textual criticism, extracted from the most reliable sources, ancient and modern. De. "WESTCOTT (Lokd Bishop op Dueham) says : " I constantly use the Old Testament, and find it a great help to have at hand a brief and trust worthy summary of facts and results. Nothing could be better done than the Psalms." He also informed the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Conference at Lambeth that he considered that this VARIORUM Edition of the Authorised Version "was much the best edition of the Und." RETAIL OF ALL BOOKSELLERS. GREAT NEW STBEET, LONDON, E.G. 12 Special "^ubltcttiions. NEW EDITION (1894), WITH REVISED AIDS TO BIBLE STUDENTS. EYRE & SPOTTISWOODE'S TEACHER'S BIBLES (¦With. APOCRYPHA). Por details see pages 7 to 15. FIFTEEN EDITIONS. Prices from 3s. to £2 2s. In this series of Editions of the Authorised Version — several of ^hem page for page — are combined — I. — The Queen's Printers' 'Reference Sc ©ctvfjxjntnt 'Reference ^Ibles- II.— The Queen's Printers' " AI DS to Hje S^tufeent of iljB Sola giWe." The "^ids to the Bible Student" is a compendium of Biblical information admitted to be not only the largest and fullest work of the kind, but also the best. The most competent judges have drawn attention to the compass and thoroughness of the "Aids" — none of which are anonymous, — and to the eminence and authority of the contributors. Special Subjects. HISTORY OF BIBLE. MUSIC. POETRY. MONEY. ETHNOLOGY. BIBLEc&MONUMENTS. Authors. SWETE." BOSCAWEN. LUMBY.* CHEYNE.* MADDEN. GIRDLESTONE. MASKELYNE GREEN. SANDAY. HOLE. SAYCE.* HOOKER. STAINER LEATHES.* WRIGHT. TRISTRAM. Special Subjects. PLANTS. METALS, &c. ANIMAL CREATION. PROPER NAMES. CHRONOLOGY. HISTORICAL EPITOME. ' Members of Old Testament Be-riajon Committee. The /\IDS, now approaching their 20th year of publication, have once again been thoroughly revised to date and enlarged. The work of the "Westminster Revisers has been duly collated, and their iden tifications of words relating to th& "ANIMAL CREATION IN THE BIBLE," and "PLANTS OP THE HOLY LAND," have been criticised by the Rev. Dr. Teisteam, F.R.S. "THE SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS OP THE BOOKS OP THE OLD TESTAMENT" has been revised and extended by the Rev. Canon R. B. Giedlbstone, and "THE REFERENCES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT TO PASSAGES IN THE OLD" by the Rev. Dr. H. B. Swete. Amongst other Additions are the following Articles: — THE BIBLE: ITS HISTORY. By Rev. Dr. H. B. Swete, Regius Prc^essor of Divinity, Cambridge. HEBRB"W POETRY. By Rev. Canon R. B. Giediestoke, M.A. THE TESTIMONY OP THE MONUMENTS TO OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. By "W. St. Chad Bosoawen, Esq. EYBE If SPOTTISWOODE, Special publications. 13 EYRE & SPOTTISWOODE'S TEACHER'S BIBLES- continued. SPECIMENS OP TYPES. Fi. 112 0. Dkd. 4. 27. 3C<)r.9.9,ia. |0i, wttA. Bom. la. B. I Or, (owt nor a Inmnf ro PEARL 24mo. TAKE heed that 7e do not rour U alms before men, to be seen of them : otherwise ye have no reward II of your Father which is in heaven. 2 Tlierefore ** when thou doest ttiTW alma, I do not snund a truni- Set before thee, as the hypocrites 0 in the BynagoKUes and in the streets, tliat they may have glory of men. Verily I say milio you, They have their rewara. I Or, Drat. 24. 18.Pi 112. 9. Sui. 4. 27. a Cor. 9. 9, 10. lOi.toiM. aIhiiiLl2. (Size, si x 4^ x i| inches.) RUBY Svo. TAKE heed that ye do not your II ahns before men, to be seen of them : otherwise ye bave no reward U of your Fatber wnicb is in beaven. 2 Tberefore ° wben tbou doest thine alms, II do not sound a trum pet before thee, as tbe bypocrites do in fcbe synagogues and in the streets, tbat they may bave glory of men. Yerily I say unto you, Tbey bave their reward. (Size, 6i x 5f x i| inches.) tOT, right- eoustuss.Deut. 24. 13.Ps. 112. 9. Dan. 4. 27. 2 Cor. 9. 9, 10.8 Or, with. a Bom. 12. ANNO DOMINI 31. 'Ecclea.:.:.•IKingBlS. MINION Svo. TAKE heed that ye do not your 2 alms before men, to be seen of them : otherwise ye have no reward s of your Father which is in heaven. 2 Therefore "when thou doest thine alms, * do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the syna gogues and in the streets, that they (Size, 7! x 54 x li inches.) BREVIER Svo. Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. 7 But when ye pray, *use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: "for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. 8 Be not ye therefore like unto them : for your Father knoweth (Size, 8i x 6 x 2 inches.) ABRIDGED PRICE LIST. Pearl 24mo. Euby Svo. .. Minion Svo. Brevier Svo. Cloth. 2/6 4/6 6/- 9/6 16/6 Turliey Morocco. r/- 9/- M/- 21/9 Turkey Morocco, Circuit. 9/- 12/- 18/9 27/- Levant Morocco, lined CaU, with flaps. 11/3 16/- 19/9 28/3 Best Levant, lined Calf, with flaps and Focltet for MSS. 17/3 22/6 30/- 37/- THE LARGE TYPE AIDS. VARIORUM EDITION, WITH SPECIAL GIaOSSARY (see p. 15) . Bourgeois 8vo., 388 pages. {Separately.) s. d. Cloth, bevelled boards, red edges SO Paste Grain Roan, gilt edges 8 3 Morocco, gilt edges, gold roll inside cover 12 6 RETAIL OF ALL BOOKSELLERS. GBEAT NEW STEEET, LONDON. E.C. 14 gpecttti ¦g'ubltcafions. THE AIDS TO BIBLE STUDENTS JUST COMPLETED Forms the Second Part of the VARIORUM and other Queen's Printers' Teacher's Bibles. THE Queen's Printers were the Pibbt to Issue what was known as the Sunday School Teacher's Bible in May, 1875. It was not until 16 months aftebwaebs that a Bible issued from the Oxford University Press, bearing on its title page "The S. S. Teacher's Edition," and closely following the modql of the Queens Printers' Teacher's Bible i this brief statement is necessary to remove misunder standings. The success which attended the publication of the Queen's Printers' Teacher's Bible has been unprecedented. Over One Million Copies have been sold. This is no doubt due to the fact that "Ki)t aiUs lo JSiiilE StuBcntB" were from the outset prepared with the utmost care, in order that the Student might haye at his disposal the Best and Sukest information from the pen of the most Eminent Authority on each of the various subjects treated. The cordial approval of the principle and contents of former editions by eminent Biblical Scholars, and by the representatives of all classes of Teachers throughout the World, has led to the enlargement of each successive issue, in order to give to the Student The Best, Most Reliable, and Most Recent information that could be obtained. In the present issue, very considerable improvements and additions have been made. The Articles have undergone a careful and thorough revision, and, pursuant to recent discoveries, new matter has been added and the whole volume brought up to date. The aiiB will therefore be found more than ever Practically Useful, Exhaustive in Teeatment, and Complete in their character. Several new Articles have been added. The Publication of the VARIORUM Bible, and of the Revised Version which followed it. called popular attention to the sources from which we have received the Sacred Text, and the quotations in the VARIORUM Notes of Manuscripts, Versions, Ancient Fathers, etc., have aroused a spirit ot enquiry as to their relative importance. To meet this, the Rev. Professor Swete has written for these AIDS a new Article entitled.The Bible : its History.— In this Article, the Rev. Professor Swete places before the Student a summary of the most important results which have been reached by competent enquirers on such questions as the formation and transmission of the original Text, its Versions, Ancient and Modern, etc., etc. The Bible and its Contents :— Old Testamektt, a valuable summary and analysis of each Book by the Rev. Professor Stanley Leathes, has been further expanded by Canon Girdlestone. The Apocrypha has been summarised and analysed by the Rev. Dr. Wright. The New Testament Article by Prof. "W. Sanday will be found to contain the best results of modern New Testament Scholarship, and his Analyses of the Gospels and Epistles are simply invaluable. EYBE 8r SPOTTISWOODE, Special 'g'ubKcaltons. 15 AIDS TO BIBLE STUDEUTS-conlmued Among other important additions may be mentioned: — SeferencciS in the New Testament to Passages in the Old, revised and extended by the Rev. Dr. Swete. Hebrew Poetry, by Canon Girdlestone. The Testimony of the Monuments to Old Testament History, by Mr. W. St. Chad Boscawen, who traces from the earliest times many corroborations of Bible History from the Ancient Monuments. Metals and Precious Stones, by Professor N. Story Maskelyne, P.R.S. Plants and Animals : — Criticisms of their Identifications in the Revised Version, - by the Rev. Canon Tristram, D.D., F.R.S. Ethnology of the Bible. — This Article, treated in four parts, corresponding to four periods in Bible history, viz., the Patriarchal, the Davidic, of the Captivity, and of Christ and His Apostles, as well as the succeeding Article on The Bible and the Monuments, or the Hebrews in their relations with the Oriental Monarchies, have been revised by the Rev. Professor Sayce. The Epitome of Bible History has been minutely revised and extended by the Editor. It is now grouped under four divisions : — 1. The Period of the Promises ; 2. The Period ot Expectation, or Between the Testaments ; 3. The Promises fulfilled; 4. The Establishment of the Kingdom of Christ, or the Apostolic History. The Tables alongside the Epitome give the dates of the events, and the references in Scripture. The Glossary of Bible Words, in the Variorum Edition, has been revised and enlarged, and will be found very complete. It refers to the Authorised and Revised Ver sions, with their marginal readings, and to the Variorum Notes; also to the Apocrypha. It also includes particular names of Plants, Animals, Metals, &c., which formerly appeared under their individual articles, but are now inserted m the Glossary for ready reference. The Supplementary Contents, or Key to Subjects, which indexes the names and words not treated alphabetically else-sphere, will be found of very great use to Teachers. The Concordance (40,000 references) is added, also an Atlas of new Maps, with Index, revised and brought to most recent surveys. A List of some of the Contributors to the AIDS: Rev. PROFESSOR SWETE, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity, Cambridge. Rev. PROFESSOR STANLEY LEATHES, D.D., Professor of Hebrew, King's College, London, &c. Rev. C. H. H. WRIGHT, D.D., Examiner in Hebrew, Universities of Oxford, Durham, and London. Rev. PROFESSOR W. SANDAT, D.D., LL.D., Dean Ireland's Professor of Exegesis, Oxford. Rev. PROFESSOR CHEYNE, D.D., Oriel Professor of Interpretation, Oxford; Canon of Rochester. Rev. canon GIRDLESTONE, M.A., Hon. Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. Rev. PROFESSOR SAYCE, M.A., LL.D., Professor of Assyriology, Oxford. Rev. canon TRISTRAM, D.D., LL.D., F.R.S., Durham. Rev. S. G. GREEN, D.D., Co-Editor of the Revised English Bible. Rev. C. H. HOLE, M.A., Co-Editor of " Smith's Dictionary of Christian Bio graphy," t&c. PROFESSOR N. STORY MASKELYNE, M.A., F.R.S., Professor of Mineralogy in the University of Oxford; Hon. Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. W. ST. CHAD BOSCAWEN, F.B.H.S. Sir j. STAINER, M.A., Mus. Doc, Professor of Music in the University of Oxford. F w' MADDEN, M.R.A.S., Author of " History of Jewish Coinage," &c. \ &c. c&c. &c. RETAIL OF ALL BOOKSELLERS. GBEAT NEW STBEET, LONDON, EC. ®;ite ^ttcett^s Printers* YARIORDM and ote TEACHER'S BIBLES. OPINION'S Oin THK Cr..ElRGY. The Aeohbibhop of Canterbury (Db. Benson) :— The Archbishop said, at a Diocesan Conference : — '' I should like to call the atten tion of the Convocation to the New Edition of the ' Variorum Reference Bible/ published by Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode. I will just read an account of what it contains. The whole book has been revised. It was laid, I may say, before the Lambeth Conference — the promise of it — and now it is finished. The old edition forms the basis of the new edition; it is printed in larger type; and eveiy passage which has been disputed by great scholars as to its correct translation or rendering, is marked by a figure before and after the sentence or word, these figures referring to the foot-notes, which give the alternative renderings or readings, together with the authorities for the same, abbreviated to save space. The collection of these notes from 69 commentators for the Old Testament, and 73 for the New, has occupied many years close study and preparation. The New Edition is much amplified as com pared 'with the old one, and you may like to know that the opinion of Dr. Westcott is that it is much the best edition of the kind that has appeared." The late Archbishop of York (Dk. Thomson) : — "The names of the authors guarantee its excellence. A miniature library of illustrative matter. If such a book is carefully and generally used, there must be a great improvement in Bible knowledge in this generation. The critical matter at the foot of the columns is remarkably complete. The last feature gives it special The late Archbishop of Abmaoh:— ' "I have carefully examined the 'Variorum Teacher's Bible' published by Eyre and Spottiswoode. The varied and valuable amount of information it contains is most remarkable. There are few subjects connected with the Bible left un- elucidated. The Student of the Bible will find the Variorum Edition a treasury replete with instruction." The Bishop of Durham (Dr. Westcott) :— "Admirably done. I constantly use it." The Bishop of Limerick: — " The Variorum (Teacher's) Bible, with ita References, Concordance, Various Read ings and Renderings, and supplemented by its Aids to Students, serves as a Biblical Bncyclopsedia, useful by its compactness and the value of its contents, to Biblical Students of all grades.' The Bishop of Exeter (Dr. Bickebsteth) :— " I am much gratified with it . . . eminently fitted for teachers, and all who desire in a clear and compendious form very full information respecting the sacred Scriptures. "A most valuable work, aud will greatly enrich the library of Biblical Students." The Bishop of Llandaff:— "An immense amount of information, a great help to Teachers, and to Bible readers generally. " The names guarantee the value of the information. I trust it will be largely circulated." The Bishop of St. David's (De. W. Basil Jones) :— "I have delayed . . . until I could find more time to look into the volume; it contains so large an amount and variety of matter in a very small space. But its contents appear to me of the highest value and admirable in arrangement. I would refer especially to the various Readings and Renderings in the foot-notes." EYBE 8f SPOTTISWOODE, Special '^xtblications. 17 The Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol — ear^^stlt^dlnt"!!^^^ "''"¦*¦ ''^" '"**'* ''"' *'"''^ ""^ '^^'"^ " *' designed, and for all The Bishop of Liverpool:— s„Ji7h,™=™'^T 'I Tf^ ^^a\ ^^ ^'"^"^ ^* » ""St valuable edition of the Holy Scriptures. I shall be glad to recommend your work." The Bishop op Wakefield (Db. Walsham How) :— •pJJ„^^™«„Tt'^''^"^/''™'i"V* the (Variorum) Teacher's Bible published by Messrs. te'^=1t=^°^'°r°f*'^' f^ I consider It a most valuable work. Believing that the Bible .IS Its own best interpreter, I am sure that the aids to an intelligent under- standmg of the text itself, together with the assistance given to students who desire to have an aoourate conception of the purest form of that text, will prove of inestimable service to all Bible readers." , r ^ ,uooi,,uia,k,ic The Bishop of Down and Connor:— "I ,consider the Variorum Teacher's Bible highly useful both to Teachers and Students. The various readings m the foot-notes largely increase its usefulness, placing before the professional Student an amount of information and research which to many would otherwise be inaccessible." The Bishop of Cork:— "The eminent names of those who have contributed Articles to the Teacher's Aids are a guarantee for the accuracy of the information, which will be found most valuable to those who wish to understand or teach, or first to understand and then to teach, and help to provide that skilled and acciu'ate teaching, which is not only the rue antidote to prevalent unblief, but the great preventive of it." The Bishop of Killaloe (Dr. Fitzgerald) :— "I find it to be a most perfect compendium of information on almost every Biblical matter that could be comprised within such a compass, and it seems marvellous how much has been introduced and how varied the topics. It will, I am sure, prove a most important aid to Clergymen, Sunday School Teachers, and many others, and I hope to avail myself of it yet in that direction." The Bishop op Tuam: — " I admire greatly the most valuable contents." The Bishop of Kilmoee (Dr. Daelet) ;— " I have looked through it carefully ... a most valuable edition of the sacred Scriptures. The Variorum foot-notes represent much critical research, very carefully arranged ; the Aids to Bible Students contain a mass of interesting information in a convenient form ; useful alike to Teachers and Students." The Bishop of Ossort:— "I feel pleasure in bearing my testimony. "An invaluable aid both to Clergymen and Teachers, and a marvel of cheapness. I "5°?® ^ ^^™ examined it, the more thoroughly have I been satisfied and The Risht Rev. Bishop Barry:- "For the study of the Text is invaluable." The Dean of Salisbury:- "I am fully sensible of the great boon you have put within the reach of Bible students aud it will be my endeavour to promote the knowledge of this valuable edition." The Dean of Ely:— "I hope to make use of it, with its various adjuncts of Notes, Readings," &c., &c. The Dean of Lincoln :— "The work will be extremely useful." The Dean of Rochester (late Master of Balliol College, Oxford) :— "A great achievement of toil and thought." GBEAT NEW STBEET, LONDON, E.G. The (late) Dean of St. Paul's (Dr. Church) :— "A wonderful digest of learning. The names of the various scholars are, of course, warrant of care and accuracy, and certainly nothing so complete and com prehensive, in such a compass, has ever before been attempted." The Dean of Peterboroush ;— "Tour Bible strikes me as admirable in every respect. The Various Renderings considerably enhance the value of the work. It will give me very great pleasure to do aJl in my power to promote the circulation. I know of no one volume to be compared to it for the amount of information it conveys." The Dean of Norwich (Dr. W. Lefrot, D.D.) :— "There is no work of the kind comparable to this work. It is invaluable." The Vert Rev. Dk. Vaughan, Dea» of Llandaff, and (late) Master of the Temple':— "I use the Variorum Teacher's Bible with pleasure and profit." The Dean of Lichfield:— "I am both surprised and delighted at the fulness and accuracy of information to be found in it. „ " I will gladly mention it with the approbation which it so well deserves. The Vert Rev. Dr. Butler, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge .— "A great achievement." The Ven. Archdeacon Farrak:— " It lies always on my desk. I place a high value upon it." The late Ven. Archdeacon Hesset:— " Students of the sacred volume will owe a deep debt to the projectors and producers." The Rev. Canon Body:— " Very well done." The Rev. Canon Knox Little :— "Most useful and helpful." The Rev. Dr. Wace, of King's College ;— "A work of incalculable usefulness." The late Rev. Dr. Edeksheim :— " It is certainly the best, most complete and useful which has hitherto appeared." The Rev. Dr. Samuel G. Green ;— "As a companion to the Revised Version it is invaluable.*' Dr. S almond, of Free College. Aberdeen :— " 1 trust it may secure a very wide circulation. The former edition has come to be a familiar book among our students." The Rev. Hugh Price Hughes :— "Incomparable and invaluable." Dr. Greenwood, Victoria University (Owen's College), Manchester: — " Its merits and remarkable features are already known to me." The Rev. Joseph PARkER, D.D.:— "I have examined your Bible with great care. It is quite as valuable for preachers and hearers as for Teachers and scholars. " It is almost a library in itself, containing everything that is immediately needed for the elucidation of the sacred text." The Bishop of Ontario:— "My opinion of it is nothing so good has hitherto appeared. It is admirably adapted for its purpose of assisting Teachers, and cannot fail to be appreciated by all who are really anxious to find the best instruction in the sacred volume." The Rev. J. H. Vincent, of Chautauqua ;— " The book is indeed a marvel, a library of learning, a book of books, concerning tie "Book of Books,' and deserves a wide circulation in Europe and America." EYBE Sf SPOTTISWOODE, Special '^ubKcattons. 19 SPECIAL EDITION (Lessons Marked in Eed), Persian Levant, handsomely tooled, bevelled boards, red under gold edges, £1 16s. net. C5e ittaritetr Htcttvn ^Mt. The Boyal Ato. Bible and Apocrypha, with Marginal Marhs, printed in red, indicating the Svmday, Holy-day, cmd Daily Lessons. The Lessons proper for Sundays are mwrJeed thus, in red. L. 1st Sunday in Advent. Morn. J The Lessons proper for Holy-days ajre marhed thus, in red. \j„ St. Michael, 1st Lesson. Morn. ,^,^,^,^,^,^,»^x*v»x~<**>»»^x^wJ The Baily Lessons are marked thus, in red. [_ Januaiy 9. Even. ' / A Calendar to correspond, shows (also at a, glance) the pages on which the Lessons occur, thus rendering mistake impossible. '¦^"re™]' '" ^^^^ SYSTEM of MARKING LEAVES THE TEXT UNTOUCHED. rrr £¦5 6 " >¦ s. P § ^ ¦ NOW after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord it came to pass, that the Lord spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' minister, saying, 2 Moses my servant is dead ; now there fore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land vrhich I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. 3 Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses. 4 From the wilderness and this Leba non even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going ffi^wn for »«tmin»ttr i^bfatg ; ftbU Cnllegt, ®«f»A ; anb 1800 (E^tttt^s anb €ni^thmh. Bound in Calf, Morocco, or Levant, prices £3 and upwards. 6 g P"^ GBEAT NEW STBEET, LONDON, E.C. 20 gpccttti 'g'ubltcafiotts. THE Family Bible WITH COMMENTARY, §n ^ttC 'Volume. {Siee, 13 x n x 3 inches.) lith MARGINAL REFERENCES, CONCOPANCE, and INTRODUCTION. This work is designed to supply the information needful to an intelligent study of the Holy Scriptures. In Nineteen Thousand Concise Notes IT GIVES, IN LARGE TYPE, I. — A selection from the Various Readings and Translations of the Text. II. — Explanations of the difficult Words, Phrases, and Passages. III. — Illustrations, archseologieal, historical, topographical, from Oriental customs, &c. IV. — Homiletical comments, original, and selected from Matthew Henry's and similar Commentaries ; , AND CONTAINS TWELVE STEEL ENGRAVINGS Of the Principal PLACES OF INTEREST in tie HOLY LAND. PXCXCESS. s. d. CB 0. Cloth, gilt edges .. .. 21 0 CB 2. Leather, gilt sides and back 31 6 CB 12. Turkey Morocco 47 6 CB 14. Turkey Morocco, bevelled boards, best, flexible back, red under gold edges 60 0 CB 16. Best Levant, cushioned boards, solid red under gold edges . . 70 0 RETAIL OF ALL BOOKSELLERS. EYBE 8r SPOTTISWOODE, POPULAR EDITION OF THE STANDARD BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, 1662. THE ANNEXED BOOK IN TYPE, An exact copy, in type, of the Manuscript Book of Common Prayer livhich was annexed, as the authoritative record, to the Aet of Uniformity of 1662. In 1891, by special permission of the House of Lords (now the. custodians of the MS. Book), H.M. Printers produced by photolithography a facsimile of this "Annexed Book," but the work was necessarily too costly for the majority of Churchmen. To the Type-Edition are appended (I.) A List of Erasures and Corrections in the MS. Book. (II.) A Collation of the MS. Book with " the Convocation Copy " from which it purports to be fairly written. (III.) A Collation with the Authorised Version of Quotations therefrom inserted in the Annexed Book. Royal 8vo., Cloth, Bevelled Boards, Red Burnished Edges, price 10s. 6d. THE HISTORICAL PRAYER BOOK: BEING THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER WITH THE SOURCE OF EACH COMPONENT PART AND THE DATE AT WHICH IT WAS INCORPORATED IN THE BOOK STATED IN THE MARGIN. Edited by the Eev. JAMES COENPORD, 1I.A., Lecturer at the London College of Divinity. SPECIALLY PBEPAEBD FOR THE USE OF STUDENTS AND ALL MBMBBES OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. Oloth., Red. Edges. 5/- SOIWCE OFIN^IONS. Globe.—" The system adopted is excellent." Guardian.—" The work has been done most carefully." Record.-"'Weloome to the student ot the Prayer Book, or to the average Churchman." ^ leeds Mercury.— "The edition will be of great use. ' Commended also by The Times, &c., &c. RETAIL OF ALL BOOKSELLERS. GBEAT NEW STBEET, LONDON, E.C. S 1063. Uu 22 gpectat publications. FIFTEENTH EDITION. THE Queen's Printers' Teacher's Prayer Book: BEING THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, with INTRODUCTIONS, ANALYSES, NOTES, and a COMMENTARY UPON THE PSALTER. Right Rev. ALFRED BARRY, I>.U,, Canon of Windsor, Late Bishop of Sydney and Metropolitan Primate qf Australia and Tasmania; AHD A GLOSSARY by the Rev. A. L. MAYHEW, M.A, The " ^cacljcv'-a ^Jfixjjer i^ack," now so well known, is the only work of the kind published in a popular form at popular prices. It is issued in two sizes, 24mo. and 16mo., and in various bindings {see School Edition and Prices below). In the arrangement of the work the most simple plan has been adopted, the Prayer Book and its explanation being interpaged throughout; and the work of Dr. Barey as Editor makes it of such standard value as to entitle it to rank as a companion volume to the Queen's Printers' " Teacher's Bibles." _ 24mo. 16mo. EDITIOH". EDITIOir. s. d. s. d. Cloth boards, red edges 36 .. 60 Leather, limp, gilt edges .. 4 6 .. 7 6 Leather, round corners, red under gold edges, and gold roll inside cover 56 .. 84 Polished Persian Calf, limp, round corners, red under gold edges, and gold roll inside cover 58 .. 90 Morocco, limp, gilt edges 66 .. 90 Morocco, boards, gilt edges 70 .. 96 Morocco, circuit 8 0 . . 12 0 Morocco, limp, round corners, red under gold edges, and gold roll inside cover , . . . 7 6 . . 12 0 SCHOOL EDITION (without Commentary on Psalter and Glossary), price 2/6. RETAIL OP ALL BOOKSELLERS. EYBE Sf SPOTTISWOODE, Special l^ublications. 23 A SELECT aLOSSA.RY of Bible Morb0 Morbs anb pbraees in tbe prater Booft. "With References to the Text and Illustrative Passages from English Classical Authors, containing obsolete expressions, especially in Psalms, as well as Theological, Ecclesiastical, and Liturgical Terms, with Explanations and Etymologies, BY Rev. a. L. MAYHEW, M.A., Chaplain of Wadham College, Oxford. Cloth, gilt edges ... 2/. Paste Grain Roan, gilt edges - 3;. Morocco, limp, gilt edges . r^ /g LARGE TYPE. For the Aged and Infirm. THE PSALTER litli COMMENTARY, gvDnt Hye ©eacjjev'a ^vax(sv ^^^v \ '''^ t^ r>'>'' .¦ftlK