w ^ { n f THE GIFT OF Alfred €. Barnes* 3i mmmmmmt^mm^ ^2.0. /v£f_ Date Due fl" r$ 0, '— ^ ^•"^n-^ i 1 1 ! PRINTED IN U. =>. A. (ttj MO. 23233 BS1171 .|g5«" ""'-«^«'*y Library "° nffiiimiiijiSi^fll,, 3,!?^,. ,!^?.„ P.r,each'ng of th olln 3 1924 029 278 962 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029278962 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMEN By GEORGE ADAM SMITH D.D., LL.D. The Book of Isaiah. 2 vols. Vol. I., Chapters I. -XXXIX. Vol. II., Chapters XL.-LXVI. Per volume, ^1.50. The Book of the Twelve Prophets, Commonly Called the Minor. Vol. I., Amos, Hosea, and Micah. Vol. II., Zeph- aniah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Obadiah, Haggai, Zachariah I.-VIII., Malachi, Joel, Zechariah IX.-XIV., and Jonah. Per volume, ^1.50. The above four 'volumes are contained in the ** Expositor's Bible.'' The Historical Geography of the Holy Land. Especially in relation to the History of Israel and of the Early Church. With Scripture Index and six colored Maps, specially prepared^ Octavo, cloth, 720 pages, ^4.50. A New Topographical and Physical Map of Palestine. Compiled from the Latest Surveys and Researches, showing all identified Biblical Sites, with Modern Place- Names. By J. G. Bartholomew and Prof. George Adam Smith, LL.D., D.D. With complete Index. On cloth, and in cloth case, with Index, $3.50 net. Mounted on Rollers and Varnished, with Index, ^6.00 net. **That it will supersede all maps in existence there can be no doubt. Prof. Smith and Mr. Bartholomew have evidently given immense care to its production." — Exposi- tory Times. A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON NEW YORK MODERN CRITICISM AND THE PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT Eight Lectures on the Lyman Beecher Foundation^ Tale University BY GEORGE ADAM SMITH, D.D., LL.D. PROFESSOR OF OLD TESTAMENT LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE UNITED FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND GLASGOW COLLEGE THIRD EDITION NEW YORK A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON 3 & 5 West iSt^ Street, near 5th Avenue MCMII Copyright, igoi, by A. C. Armstrong fef Son UNIVERSITY PRESS JOHN WILSON AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. TO THE REV. TIMOTHY DWIGHT, D.D. PRESIDENT OF YALE UNIVERSITY, 1886-1899 THE REV. GEORGE P.FISHER, D.D. DEAN OF THE DIVINITY SCHOOL, 1895-I90I AND THE REV. CHARLES RAY PALMER, D.D. ONE OF THE FELLOWS OF THE UNIVERSITY THIS VOLUME OF LECTURES DELIVERED WHILE THEY WERE IN OFFICE IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED PREFACE The Eight Lectures in this volume — or at least as much of each as it was possible to read within the time allotted — were delivered before Yale University in 1899. I have thought it best to leave them as Lectures : that is, in the style of spoken discourse. With one exception they are printed as they were prepared for delivery, but I have worked into four of them — 11., III., IV. and VI. — some materials from books which have appeared since they were spoken : Canon Driver*s Essay on Hebrew Authority in Authority and Archeology ^ Sacred and Profane, edited by Mr, Hogarth ; Professor Budde's Lectures on the Religion of Israel before the Exile; and Professor Charles' Jowett Lectures, entitled A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life. Lecture VII, on the Preaching of the Prophets to viii PREFACE their own Times has been wholly rewritten in order to introduce a detailed account (of which only a brief summary could be spoken) of the Influence of the Prophets upon the Social Ethics of Christendom. In the Introduction and in Lectures i., III., IV. and VII. there are some paragraphs from an address on The Preaching of the Old Testament to the Age, delivered in 1892, and now out of print. The objects of the Lectures are, in the main, three: a statement of the Christian right of criticism ; an account of the modern critical movement so far as the Old Testa- ment is concerned ; and an appreciation of its effects upon the Old Testament as history and as the record of a Divine Revelation. Obviously eight Lectures can- not provide an exhaustive treatment of these themes ; but the Lectures contain, I trust, enough to serve their purely practical aim, and to exhibit to students and preachers the religious effects of the critical inter- pretation of the larger half of the Scriptures PREFACE ix of the Church. In the Fourth Lecture the line of argument is intended for believers in the Christian doctrine of Revelation. I have always felt that for those who believe in the Incarnation the fact of a Divine Revelation through the religion of early Israel, as critically interpreted, ought not to be unintelligible. If we recognise that God was in Christ revealing Himself to men and accomplishing their redemption, it cannot be difficult for us to understand how at first, under the form of a tribal deity — the only conception of the Divine nature of which at the time the Semitic mind was capable — He gradually made known His true character and saving grace. In connection with the subject of Lecture v., 'The Spirit of Christ in the Old Testa- ment,' I desire to acknowledge my indebted- ness to the late Principal Patrick Fairbairn's The Typology of Scripture (2 vols., 6th edition, Edinburgh 1876). It is a work distinguished not less by sagacious criticism b X PREFACE of the older theories of typology than by original insight into the ethical virtue of the institutions of Israel. Although constructed upon lines not followed by the critical in- terpretation of the Old Testament, it not seldom anticipates methods and ideas which have only recently passed into acceptance. GEORGE ADAM SMITH. CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE, Vii INTRODUCTION, I LECTURE I THE LIBERTY AND DUTY OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM AS PROVED FROM THE NEW TESTA- MENT, 5 LECTURE II THE COURSE AND CHARACTER OF MODERN CRITICISM, 29 L The General Course of Modern Criticism, . 31 II. The Criticism of the Old Testament mainly Historical, 46 III. Criticism and Archseology, 56 LECTURE III THE HISTORICAL BASIS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT, . 73 LECTURE IV THE PROOF OF A DIVINE REVELATION IN THE OLD TESTAMENT^ 1 10 xii CONTENTS LECTURE V PAGE THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT, . I4S I. From the Earliest Times to David, . . . 148 II. The Prophets, 158 LECTURE VI THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY IN THE OLD TESTA- MENT, 177 I. The Old Testament Data, 178 11. The Historical Explanation, 191 in. The Use to Our Own Day, 209 LECTURE VII THE PREACHING OF THE PROPHETS TO THEIR OWN TIMES: WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF • THEIR INFLUENCE UPON THE SOCIAL ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM, 21 5 I. The Influence of the Prophets on the Christian Church and Civilization, . . 216 II. The Political and Social Preaching of the Prophets, 265 III. Other Features of the Prophets' Preaching, 274 LECTURE VIII THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER AND THE BOOKS OF WISDOM, 283 INTRODUCTION To follow the long succession of men who have filled this lectureship, and to attempt — in re- sponse to your call — some addition to their numerous illustrations of the genius and office of the preacher, involves an adventure which can be justified only by one or other of the following considerations. First, that of so wide a field as that of the Christian pulpit, there is some portion which, though not altogether neglected by my prede- cessors, has received from none of them a parti- cular or exclusive treatment. Or secondly, that, in some department of the subject the materials have passed through those furnaces of criticism which our generation has so zealously fired, and have there undergone changes that render im- perative some new appreciation of them for the purposes of practical religion. I believe that for the subject I have chosen, not only one but both of these reasons are urgent. None of my predecessors has attempted a full exposition of the material which the Old Testament offers to the Christian preacher. 2 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE This fact alone might have determined the sub- ject of the following course ; but at the same time, as every one is aware, there is no part of the preacher's field or material which has been the object of more industrious research or of more unsparing criticism than the several Books of the Old Testament, and the national history of which they form the record. For over a cen- tury every relevant science, every temper of faith, and, one might add, almost every school of philosophy, have shot across this narrow field their opposing lights : under which there has been an expenditure of individual labour and ingenuity greater than has been devoted to any other litera- ture of the ancient world, or to any other period in the history of religion. No memory or institu- tion of Israel, no chapter or verse of her sacred texts has escaped this strenuous revision: nor, with the exception of the New Testament, is there any field on which such revision could have raised questions of more moment for the practical re- ligion with which the duty of the preacher is identified. Beyond the problems of integrity and authenticity, in the narrower sense of these terms ; beyond the greater question how much actual history has been left to us in the Old Testament by the processes of criticism, there remains the most important interest of all : Can we still receive the Old Testament as the record of a genuine revelation from God ? But indeed PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 3 your own experience more than any words of mine will have convinced you of the practical value, at this time, of some attempt to appreciate the effects of criticism upon the inspiration and material for preaching which the Christian Church has always drawn from the larger half of her canonical Scriptures. Before we begin, it is well that we should impress ourselves with the sacredness of the task which we propose. This is no common ground we are to be treading. It is not some outlying province of the Kingdom of God, some questionable frontier of our fatherland, which we are called to debate ; but (if I may continue the figure) it is that country of which our Redeemer was Himself a native ; whose character He defined in absolute contrast to the rest of the world ; whose history He interpreted as the Divine preparation for His own Advent ; whose laws He fulfilled as the expression of the everlasting righteousness of God ; and much of whose language He perpetuated in the wider Kingdom He came to found. In short, it is with Christ's Bible we have to do ; the larger part of the Scriptures be- queathed to His Church; and we have to do with this not simply in its historical interest but in its religious value for living men. The Old Testament, one cannot too often re- member, lies not under but behind the New, It 4 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE is not the quarry of the excavator or arcbseologist — a mere foundation packed away out of sight beneath the more glorious structure which has been reared upon it. Far rather — if I may borrow a metaphor from the political geography of the day — far rather is the Old Testament the * Hinterland' of the New: part of the same continent of truth, without whose ampler areas and wider watersheds the rivers which grew to their fulness in the new dispensation could never have gained one-tenth of their volume or their influence. And upon that vast Hinterland the Gentile Church of Christ, passing to it across the New Testament, has settled and been at home for centuries ; has found in it her school and her sanctuary ; has met with her God, has breathed the air of His righteousness and heard His words, as powerful as when they were first uttered, to move men to repentance and faith in God and the hope of an endless life. It is upon all this — Christ's Bible and the Church's Bible, Christ's Fatherland and the Church's Fatherland — that we are called to estimate the effect of one of the most thorough intellectual processes of our time. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 5 LECTURE I THE LIBERTY AND DUTY OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM AS PROVED FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT Few realise that the Church of Christ possesses a higher warrant for her Canon of the Old Testa- ment than she does for her Canon of the New. The New Testament Scriptures were selected and defined, no man exactly knows how, except that it was the Church herself which did the work. The formal decrees of Councils^ appear to have been only confirmatory of the common use and practice of the Church under the guidance of her Lord's Spirit. This practice had risen gradually and with differences in different parts of Christendom. The Church was the recipient of a number of writings, some anonymous, but the most bearing the name of an apostle or of a disciple of the apostles. From these a selection was slowly efTected, partly by the spiritual taste and insight of the various 1 The Canon was discussed and defined by the great Coun- cils of the fourth century. The Third Council of Carthage, 397 A.D., recognised our present New Testament. 6 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE congregations, partly on the strength of tradition, and partly by the opinions and discussions of the doctors of the Church.^ That is to say, the New Testament Canon was a result of criticism in the widest sense of the word. But what the Church thus once achieved, the Church may at any time revise. As a matter of fact she has never renounced her liberty to do so, and it has not been heretics alone who have disputed the rights of certain books to belong to the New Testament. To mention but a few instances, Gregory and Zwingli both rejected the Apocalypse, and Luther the Epistle of St. James. Augustine testifies that all the authorities of his time were not agreed as to the Canon,^ and even Calvin appears to leave the question still open.^ These are enough to recall to us, that what was the decision of the Church's criticism at the beginning is not beyond the Church's criticism now, unless indeed we have ceased to believe in that education of the Spirit which Christ promised to His people, and refuse to employ the finer ^ The most summary evidence of the gradual criticism and selection which led to the formation of the New Testament Canon is found in Eusebius, Hist. Ecd. (325 A.D.), bk. iii. 25: where the undisputed books are distinguished from the disputed and the spurious. Among the still disputed books, Eusebius places James, Jude, 2nd Peter, 2nd and 3rd John, Hebrews, and the Apocalypse. He himself appears to question the Apocalypse. 2 De Doctrina Christiaiia. 8 Antidote to the Council of Trent: 4th Session. Cf. Institut, iv. 9, § 14. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 7 instruments of criticism which God's providence has put into their hands to-day. So it was with the growth of the Canon of the New Testament, and what I wish to emphasise is that — with one important exception — the Canon of the Old Testament came to us in no other way. We are ignorant of vast stretches of its history; but we know enough to be sure that the theory of its origin which lately prevailed among Protestants, and which ascribed the Canon of the Old Testament to a single decision of the Jewish Church in the days of her inspiration, is not a theory supported by facts. The growth of the Old Testament as a Canon was very gradual.^ Virtually it began in the reign of King Josiah in 621 B.C., with the acceptance by all Judah of the Book of Deuteronomy as the divine law of their life, and its first stage was completed by the similar adoption of the whole Law, or first five Books of the Old Testament, under Nehemiah in 445 B.C. When the other two divisions were added is somewhat uncertain : the Prophets ^ pro- bably before 200 B.C., and the Hagiographa^from 1 The text-book in English on the subject is that by Professor Ryle of Queen's College, Cambridge, The Canon of the Old Testament. See also the article by Professor Budde in The EncydopeEdia Biblica, vol. i, 2 That is, according to the division of the Hebrew Bible, Joshua, Judges, Books of Samuel and Kings ; Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Book of the Twelve Prophets. ^ The Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles. 8 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE a century to two centuries later. The strict definition of the third division was not complete by the time of Christ, nor was the selection of the whole twenty-two (or twenty-four) Books eflfected either before or after that time by a miraculous decree from Heaven, or by any decision of a Jewish Council. The only decision of the kind which is known to history is that said to have been made by a Synod of Jamnia in 90 A.D., and this Synod appears to have provided merely a few puerile reasons for con- firming the canonicity of certain Books, which had already for nearly two centuries enjoyed the reverence of the people. In contrast to this tardy and partial influence of a Council, it is very probable that what secured to the Prophets and the Hagiographa their canonical rank, was their inherent worth and vitality as tested by popular use. True, it may have been necessary that, before the authority of some of these Books was recognised, they should be proved to be ancient, and should wear, like the Law, the name of some great Prophet in Israel; and it is also true that this notion may have led to errors about their date and authorship, which we are only now able to correct. But it was not the famous names they wore which buoyed these Books upon the reverence of the Church ; for other writings, which we know, wear the same names, but have not therefore been lifted into PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 9 the Canon. Nor was the alleged antiquity of the Books indispensable or conclusive. The early collections of Israel's songs have not sur- vived; while the Maccabean Psalms must have been received into the Canon at a date at which their recent origin was still remembered. But the Maccabean Psalms were associated with a great deliverance of His people by God; and all the rest of the literature, which was really ancient, had won the proof of its divinity either by the vindication of its predictions by history, or by the power it evinced of living and giving life from age to age. Without such effects and testimonies in the experience of the nation, no name, whether it really belonged to a book or had been thrust upon it, no ascription of antiquity and no official decree could have availed to bestow canonical rank. Not learned discussion by scribes and doctors, whose reasons, so far as they have come down to us, are all afterthoughts and mostly foolish ones, but proof beneath the strain of time, persecution, and the needs of each new age — these were what proved the truth of a Book,enforced its indispensableness to the spiritual life of God's people, or to their national discipline, and declared the will of Providence regarding it. In short, we see the same processes at work for the formation of the Canon of the Old Testament as we do for that of the New. Yet, as I have said, the Old Testament Canon 10 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE is accredited in addition by an authority, of which the New Testament is devoid. This is the authority of Jesus Christ Himself. In the days of our Lord, the Scriptures of the Jewish Church were practically the same which form our Old Testament, arranged as they still are in the Jewish Bible in the three divisions of Law, Prophets, and Hagiographa, beginning with Genesis and ending with Chronicles. The New Testament writers take for granted that there is a well-known and definite body of Scriptures, which is quoted by Christ Himself as the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms.^ We do not indeed know the exact contents of that third division, to which Christ gave the name of its most con- spicuous member. On the one hand, the Book of Daniel — with the exception of certain Psalms, the latest Book of all — is frequently acknow- ledged by New Testament writers ; and Christ Himself seems to testify to the limits of the Hebrew Canon, exactly as they now lie in Genesis and Chronicles.^ But, on the other hand, neither our Lord nor the Apostles make any quotation from Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Canticles or Ecclesiastes, the three last of which Books were not yet recognised by all the Jewish schools. This possible deduction, however, is insignifi- cant, and we do not exaggerate if we say that the 1 Luke xxiv. 44. 2 Matt, xxiii. 35, compared with Gen. iv. and 2 Chron. xxiv. 21. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT ii Bible of the Jews in our Lord's time was practi- cally our old Testament. For us its supreme sanction is that which it received from Christ Himself. It was the Bible of His education and the Bible of His ministry. He took for granted its fundamental doctrines about creation, about man and about righteousness ; about God*s Providence of the world and His purposes of grace through Israel. He accepted its history as the preparation for Himself, and taught His dis- ciples to find Him in it. He used it to justify His mission and to illuminate the mystery of His Cross. He drew from it many of the examples and most of the categories of His gospel. He re-enforced the essence of its law and restored many of its ideals. But above all, He fed His own soul with its contents, and in the great crises of His life sustained Himself upon it as upon the living and sovereign Word of God. These are the highest external proofs — if indeed we can call them external — for the abiding validity of the Old Testament in the life and doctrine of Christ's Church. What was indispensable to the Redeemer must always be indispensable to the redeemed. But while we look to Christ as the chief Authority for our Old Testament, we must never forget that He was also its first Critic. He came to a people, who lived under a strict and literal enforcement of the Law; and whose religious 12 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE leaders at the time aggravated the strictness and complexity of the Law by a mass of tradi- tional precepts. Not only did Jesus reject these traditions. He equally rejected some parts of the Law itself, and directed His own conduct in sovereign indifference to many other parts. This statement is not contradicted by the well-known verses : Think not that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets ; I caine not to destroy but to fiilfiL For verily I say unto you, Till Heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law till all he accomplished} If, as most critics allow, the second of these verses be a genuine utterance of our Lord, its words must be interpreted by His own definition of what the Law was. Christ effected that definition in various ways. Upon more than one occasion He extracted the ideal or essential part of the Law and defined it as the whole : Whatsoever ye wish that men should do to you, so also do ye to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets ; ^ and again : Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy hearty and thy soul^ and thy mind^ and thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hangeth all the law? Sometimes He took special precepts of the Law, like the sixth and seventh Commandments, and enforced a fulfilment of them far beyond their ' Matt. V. 17, 18, 2 Matt. vii. 12. s Matt. xxii. 40. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 13 literal meaning.^ Or He took the rigorous precept, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, or the statement which is not found in the Old Testament in so many words, but which ex- presses the temper of much of the Law: Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy;" and He reversed them. Or He took the law of divorce and declared it to have been temporary, granted to a rude age of the nation's develop- ment and now to be abrogated.^ Or He ascribed the character of transitoriness to the whole of the Old Testament: the law and the pi^ophets were till John; from that time the kingdom of heaven is preached,^ That is to say, a new dispensation had opened, in which the older revelation enjoyed no longer the same rank or significance. Jesus, it is true, rendered obedience to many of the formal statutes. He paid the Temple- tax,^ and commanded the Leper whom He cured/ to show himself to the priest and offer the gifi which Moses commanded,^ But these and other details He enforced on the ground not of principle but of expediency, and in order to prevent needless scandals in the way of others.^ The expediency was due to the circumstances of His own time, and with these would pass away. 1 Matt. V. 21 £f. anger; 27 ff. lust. 2 Matt. v. 38 ff., 43 ff. ** Matt. V. 31 fif., and elsewhere. 4 Matt. xi. 12 ff. ; Luke xvi. i6, ^ Matt. xvii. 24-27. s Matt. viii. I-4. ' Matt. xvii. 27. 14 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE To many other observances of the Law, Christ showed, by His neglect of them, or by His positive transgression, a high superiority. He touched the Leper and did not feel Himself unclean ; ^ He reckoned all foods as lawful ; ^ He broke away from the literal observance of the Sabbath Law.^ He left no commands about sacrifice, the temple-worship, or circumcision, but on the contrary, by the institution of the New Covenant, He abrogated for ever these sacraments of the Old. Thus, as Professor Denney remarks,^ Christ 'presents a positive new standard of life, from which legalism has disappeared, a standard of love exhibited either in His own example or in that of His heavenly Father by which all men are to be judged. . . . All these modes of con- ceiving the standard of disciple-life, though not annulling the Law but fulfilling it, are neverthe- less indifferent to it, either as a historic document or as a national institution/ ^ Let us now pass to the Apostles. From the first the Apostles employed the Old Testament in all their preaching, whether apologetic or practical. Even those of them who emphasise 1 Matt. viii. 1-4. 2 Mark vii. 15; Luke xi. 37 ; cf. x. 7. 8 Matt. xii. 1-12 ; Luke xiii. 10-17; xiv. 1-6; John v. 1-17. * Messrs. Clark's Bible Dictionary^ art. ' Law in the New Testament.' ^ On the whole subject see especially Robert Mackintosh, Christ and the Jewish Law. London, 1886. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 15 the exhaustion of the old dispensation are ready, like the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, to draw from its Scriptures declarations of the character and will of God, examples of faith, and directions both for conduct and worship. Paul affirms that, while the Gentile has not been left without a revelation of God, it has been the glory of the Jew to possess a definite and authoritative expression of God's will in the Scriptures. To the Jew have been intrusted the oracles of God ; ^ which reveal His character,^ and the purposes of His Providence both with regard to Israel ^ and other nations, as well as His statutes. for man's daily life. Paul even includes the cere- monial Law^ within this divine endowment of his people. Moreover, the Scriptures of the Jews are prophetic, the history and the institu- tions recorded in them are typical, of the new dispensation itself.^ In every way the Old Testament is of significance to the Church of Christ. Whatsoever things were written afore- timey were written for our learningy that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope,^ Now all these things hap- pened unto Israel by way of figure ; and they ^ Rom. iii. 2. 2 Rom. iii. 4 (Ps. 11. 4) ; Rom. ix. 15, 17, 20 (Exod. xxxiii. 19; Isa. xlv. 9, 10) ; Rom. xi. 34 (Isa. xl. 13) ; i Cor. ii. 16, etc. 2 Rom. iv. 3 (Gen. xv. 6), 17 {Gen. xvii. 5) ; ix.-xi., etc. * Aarpefo, Rom. ix. 4. ^ I Cor. x. i ff., etc. ^ Rom. XV. 4. i6 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE are written for our admonition^ tipon whom the ends of the world are come} But we must go further and notice that these opinions of the abiding validity of the Old Testa- ment were held by the Apostles along with a very strict belief in the inspiration of its text.^ In the inspiration of the letter of the Old Testament the Apostles sometimes appear to have as ex- plicit a confidence as the Jewish doctors of their time. Not only is it God's Spirit who, according to them, speaks by the mouths of prophets and psalmists, but every word which they quote — however detached from its context and however much in their application of it they may change its meaning from that which it plainly bears in the original — is in their belief a word of God. At first sight this apostolic testimony seems to exclude modern criticism from every right or claim to apply its methods to the Old Testament. A little observation, however, will show us that the very opposite is the case; and that the treat- ment of the Old Testament by the Apostles, so far from silencing critical questions, raises these in a somewhat more aggravated form than the Old Testament by itself does. For, in the first place, let me remind you, the apostolic writings nowhere define the Hmits of the Old Testament Canon. ^ I Cor, X. u. 2 Compare 'Kt.\x^%, History of the Canon of the Holy Scriptures^ trans, by Hunter, pp.* 12 f£. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 17 On the contrary, their employment of what the Church now regards as extra-canonical writings,^ and their appeal to questionable traditions as if these were of equal validity with writings which we regard as canonical, seems to indicate that the Apostles fixed no such hard lines round the Scriptures as the Jewish, and some parts of the Christian, Church afterwards fixed. Again, let us take a still more significant fact. For the most part the writers of the New Testament, whether in the Gospels or the discourses of the Book of Acts or the Epistles, draw their Old Testament citations from the Greek version or * Septuagint.' Not only does that version contain a number of Books which the Hebrew Canon excludes ; ^ but in the Books which it has in common with the latter we can see that the Hebrew text, from which the translation was made, sometimes varied substantially from the canonical Hebrew text ; and even where the text has been the same, the Greek version often gives a different meaning from that of the original. And although in some of these differences between the Hebrew and the Greek, the latter ^ I Cor. ii. 9 ; Heb. xi. 37 ; Jude 9, 14 £., where the Book of Enoch is directly quoted. For other New Testament passages which it has influenced, see Encyc. Biblica, i. p. 225, § 32. 2 Which fact, taken along with the Apostles' use of apocry- phal writings as * Scripture ' or as true history, seems to imply that the Apostles accepted the wider Canon of the Hellenist Jews rather than the Hebrew one. But this is not certain. B i8 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE has the sounder reading and enables us to correct the former, yet in other cases it is clear either that the translators' reading of the text was wrong or that they were mistaken in their ren- dering of it into Greek. Of these discrepancies between the Greek and the Hebrew there are instances among the citations made from the Old Testament by New Testament writers. Paul himself, while proving his acquaintance with the Hebrew original,^ quotes from the Greek even where this differs from the Hebrew. In one pas- sage the Greek enables him to quote some words of Hosea in an opposite sense from that in which the Prophet employed them.^ And in general, indifference is shown about the exact words of the citations. They are quoted loosely, as if from memory; different passages are mingled and even at one point,^ under the Scriptural formula, as it is written, an apocryphal writing is fused with one from the Book of Isaiah. Nor is that all, for when we pass from the quota- tion of the Old Testament text by the Apostles to their interpretation of it, we find much more that raises questions. In his exegesis of the Old Testament, Paul, upon several occasions, follows the allegorising methods of the Jewish ^ E.g. I Cor. XV. 54, quoting from Isa. xxv. 8 : the LXX. in which passage makes Death triumph. Paul follows the Hebrew sense, while adopting a slightly different reading. ^ I Cor. XV. 55. ^ I Cor. ii. 9. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 19 schools of his time ; ^ in one instance he calls the literal meaning of an Old Testament passage impossible and substitutes for it a metaphorical application of his own, although there can be no doubt that the literal meaning was that of the original author.^ We have now before us the essential facts in the use of the Old Testament by Christ and His Apostles. What conclusions may we draw from them? The first is that of the abiding value of the Old Testament for the life and doctrine of the Christian Church. That which was used by the Redeemer Himself for the sustenance of His own soul can never pass out of the use of His redeemed. That from which He proved the divinity of His mission, and the age-long pre- paration for His coming, must always have a principal place in His Church's argument for Him. Not less than His Apostles will His Church see revealed in the Old Testament the character of God; while some of His attributes — ^ 2 Cor. iii. 13 ff. ; Gal. iv. 22 ff. ^ Deut. XXV. 4 forbids the muzzling of the ox which treads out the com. In i Cor. ix. 9 Paul denies that this can be the intention of the Holy Spirit. ' Z>ot/i God,' he says, * ^a^e care for oxen ? Or doth He say it altogether for our sakes ? ' The latter, he asserts, in spite of the fact that one of the most beautiful traits of the Book of Deuteronomy is the tenderness with which it makes provision for animals. Professor Findlay's attempt to prove that Paul is merely extracting the moral essence of the Deutero- nomic injunction, fails to explain the very definite language of the verse {Expositor's Greek Testament^ ii. p. 848). 20 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE such as His Creative Power and His Providence- are there illustrated to an extent for which the brief space of the New Testament leaves no room. Not less than the Apostles will the Church con- tinue to find faith and every virtue exemplified in the heroes of Israel. But along with this warrant of the permanent religious value of the Old Testament, Christ and His Apostles have nowhere bound the Church either to obedience to all its laws, or to belief in all its teaching. On the contrary, our Lord Himself has set us the example of a great Dis- crimination. He came not only to do the Law, but to judge the Law, and while there are parts of it which He renounced by simply leaving them silently behind Him, there are other parts upon which He turned with spoken condemnation. He did not allegorise or spiritualise them as has always been the manner of some of His followers, bound to the letter of Scripture and seeking to escape the consequences of their bondage by thus compromising with the truth ; but He strictly condemned them. And this Discrimination of our Lord between what was binding in the Law and what was not, has for us consequences not merely moral but intellectual as well. For the judgement, which both He and His Apostles often emphasised, that in Old Testament laws and institutions, ideals and tempers, there is very much which was rudimentary and therefore of PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 21 transient worth and obligation, opens up the whole question of the development of revelation and justifies what is so large a part of nnodern criticism, — ■ the effort, namely, to fix the historical order of the Old Testament writings and to define the stages by which the primitive reve- lation of God to men was carried onward and upward to its summit in Christ Himself. Besides, Christ's attitude to the Law reminds us that similar opposition exists within the Old Testament itself, between the ethical teach- ing of the Prophets and the priestly concep- tions of religion. The determination of these two conflicting tendencies in the development of Israel's faith is another of the offices of Criticism. But the Apostles go further. Although unable to free themselves from the strict views of inspira- tion which the Jewish schools enforced and which seem to preclude all liberty of criticism, their practical use of the Old Testament only serves to suggest how clamant the need of criticism is — and that in every department of criticism which the modern Church has developed. Is it the question of the Canon ? The New Testament writers bequeath that question to the Church ; making it by their quotations from extra-canon- ical writings a more difficult one than it is with the Jewish doctors themselves. Is it the question of the Text ? Their use of the Septuagint raises 22 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE that question in every possible detail. Is it the question of the interpretation of the Text ? Some of their interpretations, as we have seen, are a direct challenge to our sense of truth to discover what the Old Testament writers actually intended, apart from the meanings, which tem- porary and often false fashions of exegesis put upon their words. In short, the New Testament treatment of the Old not only bequeaths to the Church the liberty of Criticism, but along many lines the need and obligation of Criticism : not only delivers us once for all from bondage to the doctrine of the literal inspiration and equal divinity of all parts of the Old Testament, but prompts every line of research and discussion along which the modern criticism of the Old Testament has been conducted. The task, therefore, of the following Lectures is a double one : to inquire, first, whether this criticism has been true to the liberty which the New Testament sanctions, and serviceable in solving the problems which the New Testament raises ; and second, whether, in this loyalty and in this service, modern criticism has conserved or has imperilled that permanent religious value of the Old Testament which Christ and His Apostles so fully enforced. In other words, we have to examine how far the freedom and thoroughness of Criticism during this century have affected our belief in the Old Testament as the revelation of PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 23 God, the prophecy of Jesus Christ, and the example and proof of faith. Before we begin this inquiry some preliminary recollections are necessary. The Christian Church has twice over forgotten the liberty wherewith Christ has made her free; and in two directions has attempted to enforce the literal acceptance of the Old Testament, with results, in both cases, disastrous to the interests of re- ligion. We are all aware that at various periods in the history of Christendom a spirit arose amongst its leaders not very different from that which moved so large a party in the primitive Church, and even some of the Apostles themselves, to insist upon the letter of the Law of Moses as binding upon all Christians. In later ages the representatives of this spirit did not propose, as those Jewish Christians did, to enforce circum- cision, sacrifice and other items of the Mosaic ritual; but in the same temper of literal obedience to the Old Testament they effected what was even worse. They revived many of the rigours of the Law, and quoted the most cruel tempers of the old dispensation, as the sanction of their own bigotries and persecutions. No branch of the Church has been innocent of this disloyalty to her Lord. If the tyrants and inquisitors of 24 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE the Roman Church, in the days of its imperial power, have claimed the relentlessness of the old law as authority for their unspeakable cruelties to those whom they deemed heretics, our own Puritan fathers, on both sides of the Atlantic, have not hesitated to defend their intolerance of opinions which differed from their own, their purchase and holding of slaves, their harshness to criminals, and their torture and murder of witches by an appeal to the laws and customs of Israel. One is not sure whether the evil is even yet dead. A mitigated but very pregnant expres- sion of it has just been uncovered in a letter by John Henry Newman of date 1875. Speaking of the cruelties of the Inquisition he says : 'As to Dr. Ward in the Dublin Review, his point (I think) was not the question of cruelty, but whether persecution, such as in Spain, was unjust; and with the capital punishment prescribed in the Mosaic Law for idolatry, blasphemy, and witchcraft and St. Paul's transferring of the sword to Christian magistrates, it seems difficult to call persecution (so-called) unjust. I suppose in like manner he would not deny, but condemn the craft and cruelty and the wholesale character of St. Bartholomew's massacre ; but still would argue in the abstract in defence of the magistrate's bearing of the sword and of the Church's sanctioning of its use in the aspect of justice, as Moses, Joshua, and Samuel might use it against heretics, rebels, and cruel and crafty enemies/ ^ 1 Contemporary Review^ Sept. 1899, p. 362 : A letter from John Henry Newman to J. R. Mozley, of date April 4, 1875. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 25 The spirit, then, lives, though the flesh be weak ! Taking this remarkable docun:ient along with the utterances of Protestant divines of forty years ago in the Southern States in defence of slavery, we may partly understand why — not the Old Testament, as Professor Goldwin Smith has ignorantly judged but — the Hteral enforcement of the Old Testament, in disloyalty to Christ, should be called ' a millstone about the neck of Christianity.' From the first generation of the Church to the last but one, the theory of the equal and lasting divinity of the Jewish Scriptures has been fertile in casuistry, bigotry and cruel oppression of every kind. But while all that is now mainly a matter of historical interest, we have suffered in our own generation, and to a high degree still suffer, from the enforcement of the same spirit, operating in another direction. The advocates and agents of Biblical Criticism have often been charged with the creation of sceptics, and we may fully admit that where criticism has been con- ducted in a purely empirical spirit and with- out loyalty to Christ, it has shaken the belief of some in the fundamentals of religion, dis- tracted others from the zealous service of God, and benumbed the preaching of Christ*s gospel. Yet any one who has had practical dealings with the doubt and religious bewilderment of his day can testify that those who have been 26 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE led into unbelief by modern criticism are not for one moment to be compared in number with those who have fallen from faith over the edge of the opposite extreme. The dogma of a verbal inspiration, the dogma of the equal divinity of all parts of Scripture, the refusal to see any development either from the ethnic religions to the religion of Israel, or any develop- ment within the religion of Israel itself — all these have had a disastrous influence upon the religious thought and action of our time. They have not only produced confusion in some of the holiest minds among us. They have not only paralysed the intellects of those who have adopted them, as every mechanical conception of the truth must do. But they have been the provocation to immense numbers of honest hearts to cast off re- ligion altogether. Men have been trained in the belief that the holiest elements of our creed, nay the assurance of the existence and love of God Himself, are bound up with the literal acceptance of the whole Bible, of which the Old Testament forms by much the greater part; so that when- ever their minds awoke to the irreconcileable discrepancies of the Old Testament text, or their consciences to the narrow and violent temper of its customs, and they could no longer believe in it, as the equal and consistent message of God to men, their whole faith in Him, suspended from their earliest years upon this impossible PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 27 view of it, was in danger of failing them, and in innumerable cases did fail them for the rest of their lives. Like every man who has read a little and thought a little, I was aware of this great and tragic commonplace of our day. But during the last year I have come across so many instances of it — each the story of a human soul — that it has become vivid and burning in my mind. It h^-s been my privilege to go carefully through the correspondence of one, who probably more than any of our contemporaries, was consulted by persons of the religious experience which I have described. Many address him from the silence and loneliness of those far margins of our world where men have not yet largely settled, and the few who come have leisure and detachment enough to think freshly upon the old ways in which they have been trained ; but others are residents of the centres of civilisation, and their words are heavy with what I feel to be the greatest pathos of our life — the hunger of souls starving unconsciously within reach of the food they need. One and all tell how the literal acceptance of the Bible — the faith which finds in it nothing erroneous, nothing defective, and (outside of the sacrifices and Temple) nothing temporary — is what has driven them from religion. Henry Drummond was not a Biblical scholar ; he was not an 28 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE authority on the Old Testament. But the large trust which his personality and his writings so magically produced, moved men and women to address to him all kinds of questions. It is astonishing how many of these had to do with the Old Testament : with its discrepancies, its rigorous laws, its pitiless tempers, its open treat- ment of sexual questions, the atrocities which are narrated by its histories and sanctioned by its laws. Unable upon the lines of the teaching of their youth to reconcile these with a belief in the goodness of God, the writers had abandoned, or were about to abandon, the latter ; yet they eagerly sought an explanation which would save them from such a disaster. I know no sadder tragedy than this innumer- ably repeated one, nor any service which it were better worth doing than the attempt to help men out of its perplexities. I firmly believe that such an attempt must lie along the lines indicated by Christ and His Apostles, and followed by the textual and historical criticism which takes its charter from Christ Himself. And if I am right, then we shall find in the task on which we have entered with this lecture, interests and responsibilities which are not merely scholastic or historical, but thoroughly evangelical — concerned with faith, and the assistance of souls in darkness, and the equipment of the Church of Christ for her ministry of God's Word. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 29 LECTURE II THE COURSE AND CHARACTER OF MODERN CRITICISM We have seen that the treatment of the Old Testament by the New leaves us with a double result. In the first place, our Lord and His Apostles use the Hebrew Scriptures, and commit them to us as the living Word of God: the Revelation of His Nature and Providence, in- cluding in the latter His choice of Israel to be His * Servant' to the world, His preparation for the advent of Christ, and His purposes of grace to all mankind. But in the second place, our Lord makes a great discrimination in His judge- ment of the Law and its ethical tempers, and teaches us to read the Old Testament as the record of a progressive revelation ; while the Apostles bequeath to the Church unsolved all other problems of criticism, whether textual or historical. We must clearly recognise that our Lord did not count the whole of the Old Testa- ment as equally Divine; that He set us an example of liberty in judging the facts which 30 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE it presents to us; and that the Criticism with which we have to deal — whether it be the Lower Criticism or the Higher — is not the product of the modern mind, looking at the Old Testament alone, but that some of the problems arise in Christ's own treatment of the Hebrew Scriptures, and that others leave the hands of His Apostles in an even more acute form than that in which they issue from the Old Testament itself. Starting, then, from these our chief authorities, the task of the following lectures is a double one. We have to inquire : firsty how far Modern Criticism, in the use of the liberty which Christ exemplified, has succeeded in solving the pro- blems bequeathed to the Church; and seco7td^ whether in solving them Modern Criticism tends to impair or to fortify our belief that the Old Testament contains a real revelation of God. For us preachers the latter is the cardinal question ; but the former is preliminary and in- dispensable to it. In this lecture I propose to give an account of the general course of Biblical Criticism during the last century. The best way of doing this will be by the examination of certain charges which have recently been made against the general methods of Criticism. In discussing these, I fear that I must describe a number of things which have been often de- scribed, and are well known to many of you; but the ignorance of them, which is still shown PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 31 in some quarters, makes their repetition, however trite, an inevitable duty. The charges made against modern criticism may be summed up under three heads. Firsty that the modern criticism of the Old Testament is a movement of recent growth, and that its results are, therefore, precarious. Secondj that Old Testament criticism proceeds only on linguistic and literary evidence, which, being estimated by modern tastes and standards, must be largely subjective and uncertain. Third, that critics ignore the evidence of archaeology, geography and the allied sciences ; and that this is hostile to their conclusions. I. The General Course of Modern Criticism. Many of the opponents of Old Testament criticism have represented the movement as if it were but the growth of yesterday, with results so hastily and arbitrarily reached that they are certain to be reversed by the discoveries and debates of to-morrow — like Jonah's gourd, the son of a night, in a night they shall perish ! If this were so we might at once abandon the task we have set ourselves. It would not be worth our attention to examine the effect of a move- ment so sudden and precarious upon the Church's age-long attitude to the greater part of her sacred writings. But the science of Old Testament 32 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE criticism is not the thing of yesterday which its assailants pretend. Even within its modern development — which is all we have got to do with just now — it covers a period of more than two hundred years. It has achieved a career, that is to say, as long as those of many of the historical and physical sciences. Nor, within the last century at least, has it been served by a less constant succession of able experts; while its methods have been equally without dogmatic bias, and so far as their materials go, as trust- worthy and exact. Consequently the progress of the science has resembled that of every other intellectual movement of our time which has issued in generally accepted results. It has been slow, gradual and severely contested. It has suffered from digressions, pedantries, extrava- gancies. It has been forced to abandon some positions which it had previously occupied with confidence: and upon innumerable details it still exhibits among its supporters difference of opinion. But with few or no preconceptions, it has started from facts easily ascertained within the sacred text itself; each step forward which it has taken has been planted on other facts in the same field or upon reasonable inferences from these. It has suffered from, and has benefited by, the personal jealousies and ambitions of its agents, who have left few fresh proposals or dis- coveries undisputed ; and it has issued in a large PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 33 and increasing agreement upon certain main lines of conclusion. Let us look for a little at the details.^ The modern criticism of the Old Testament may be said to have begun in 1680. In that year a French priest called Simon drew attention to the fact that within the Book of Genesis the same event is often described in different words. He emphasised especially the two accounts of the Creation, which he side by side in the opening chapters, and the two accounts of the Flood which are fused together in chapters vi-ix. For these Simon suggested different authors, whose writings Moses had put together. Such was the beginning of the criticism of the Pen- tateuch. You will observe not only how simple it is and how easily verified, but that also, so far from its motive being a prejudice against the Mosaic authorship of the first Book of the Bible, it took this for granted. Notice particularly that it starts from tke fact of two accounts of the same events. It is on the presence of many such ' doublets ' in the Hexateuch and historical books that the modern criticism of the Old Testament is based. Seventy years after Simon another Frenchman, 1 The English reader will find full accounts of these in Cheyne's Foutiders of Old Testament Criticism^ or in a more summary form so far as Hexateuchal criticism is concerned in the introductions to Addis's Documents of the Hexateuch : Nutt, London, vol. i. 1892, vol. ii. 1898. C 34 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE Astruc, published his Conjectures on the Original Memoirs of which it appears Moses made use in composing the Book of Genesis?- That is the full title of his work, and it also proves how in- dependent was the literary criticism of Genesis of any desire to deny the Mosaic, or ancient origin of the Book. After dividing the two narratives of the Creation as Simon had done, Astruc pointed out that each of them had a distinguishing mark. The first, Genesis i,-ii. 4a always speaks of the Creator as Elohim, the Hebrew term for God; the second, Genesis ii. 45-iii. calls Him Jahweh or Jahweh-Elohim, the name of Israel's national deity. Again we have a simple fact which any reader can test for himself. Had this difference between the Divine Names stood by itself, its discovery would have led to nothing but confusion ; because the texts have often been copied, and, as any one may see from a comparison of the most ancient versions with the Hebrew, the copying scribes sometimes substituted the one Divine Name for the other. Besides, there were occasions in the course of the narrative, which usually employs the national name Jahweh, to substitute for this the more general title Elohim, as for instance when the writer is treating of the essential character of God or is introducing the statements of persons 1 Brussels, 1753 : a. and 525 pages i2mo. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 35 who were not Israelites and who did not know God as Jahweh. The distinction, therefore, be- tween the Divine Names is too precarious to determine a distinction of authorship. But shortly before 1780 Eichhorn, a German Hebraist, who had arrived independently at Astruc's con- clusion, confirmed and corrected its results by another discovery. He showed that the difference in the name of the Deity was accompanied by several other linguistic variations. The passages which use Elohim speak of Him as creating the world, and talk of the beasts of the earth ; the passages which usually employ the name Jahweh speak of Him as makiiig or forming the world, and talk of the beasts of the field. These are but two instances out of many : Eichhorn had struck a line of differences too numerous and too dis- tinctive to prove fallacious. This, however, was not final : a few years later, in 1798, Ilgen, an- other German, observed that within those parts of Genesis in which Elohim was used there are also double accounts of the same event, which can be distinguished from each other by differences of style and vocabulary. Ilgen is therefore called the discoverer of the Second Elohist. Now it was natural that since the main dis- tinction among these documents lay in the name of the Deity used by each, that distinction should not at first have been explored beyond the sixth chapter of Exodus where God reveals Himself 36 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE under the name Jahweh, for up to this point there is an obvious reason why the Elohist documents should refrain from using the name Jahweh. But another and independent line of criticism had already been started which was carrying the dis- crimination of the documents farther on. One of the representatives of this — perhaps the originator — was a Roman Catholic priest, a Scotsman, called Geddes.^ That remarkable man did not work on the lines laid down by the critics I have mentioned. Where they, struck by the different names for Deity, dis- tinguished two or three documents, Geddes, confused by the presence of a large variety of differences and discrepancies, which he did not stop to classify, rushed to the conclusion that these were proofs of a great number of in- dependent sources. This Fragmentary Hy- pothesis, as it was called, was taken up in Germany by Vater. So far as it affirmed the presence of many documents it did not at the time contribute to the progress of criticism in that direction,'^ but because the boldness of its authors did not confine it to Genesis and the first six chapters of Exodus it opened the way ^ See his Life^ etc., by John Mason Good ; London, 1863. His O. T. work is entitled The Holy Bible . . . faithfully translated from corrected texts of the originals^ with various Readi?igSy Motes^ and Critical Re?narks ; two vols., London, 1792-97. Critical Re- marks Oft the Hebrew Scriptures : vol. i., Pentateuch, 1800. ^ Yetthe justness of much of the reasoning connected with this hypothesis has been proved by more recent scholars; see below. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 37 to the analysis of the rest of the Pentateuch and even of Joshua.^ From 1805 onwards De Wette demonstrated the singularity of Deuteronomy both as regards its doctrine and its style; a singularity so con- spicuous even to the tyro in Hebrew that the absence of an earlier discovery of it now seems astonishing. Not only the favourite phrases and formulas, the favourite interests and ideals, of this Book, but its treatment of the same events, and its laws for the same matters are so different from those of preceding parts of the Pentateuch,^ as to prove beyond all doubt difference of author- ship and date. Here, then, is a fourth document. Next, Bleek, who had been partly anticipated by Geddes, proved that the Book of Joshua forms an indispensable supplement to the Pentateuch by carrying on the history and enforcing the legislation of the latter — not on one line but to different degrees on all the lines, sometimes con- flicting, of the four documents. Then from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Joshua the attempt was made to disentangle these docu- ments by Ewald. And ultimately — to pass over several intermediate confirmations of the main ^ For Geddes's share in extending the process to Joshua, see article 'Joshua' by the present -writer in Hastings's Bible Dictionary. 2 For details I must refer the reader to the introduction to Driver's Commentary; Moore's article in ^% Encyclopcedia Bib- lica ; and Ryle's in Hastings's Bible Dictionary. ^S MODERN CRITICISM AND THE lines of analysis — Hupfeld ^ arrived independently at Ilgen*s conclusions about the two Elohists, and established them upon a sounder basis. He took, for instance, the well-known double accounts of the origin of the names Bethel and Israel. One of these (Gen. xxxv. 9-15) relates that Elohim appeared to Jacob as he came out of Padan-aram, and that, therefore, Jacob called the name of the place Beth-el or Aouse of God; but the other (Gen. xxviii. 10-22) relates that God appeared to Jacob at the same place on his departure for Padan-aram, and that it was at this earlier time that the place was named Bethel: in conformity with which God, when He appears to Jacob in Padan-aram, calls Himself the God of Bethel (Gen. xxxi. 13). Again, ac- cording to Genesis xxxii. 23-33, the name Israel was first given to Jacob when he wrestled with the Unknown on the banks of Jabbok; and it was then said : thou shalt no more be called Jacob? But in Genesis xxxv. 9-15 the origin of the name Israel is dated at Bethel on Jacob's return from Padan-aram. These are only two of several variations, not only of style but of substance, which prove the presence in the story of Jacob ^ In The Sources of Genesis {Die Quellen d. Genesis), 1S50. 2 It is not quite certain whether this narrative is from the Elohist or the Jahwist. The divine name is Elohim, but there are other parts in the style which lead many to attribute it to the Jahwist. See below on the acknowledged impossibility of always discriminating between the Jahwist and Elohist. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 39 of two documents both using the name Elohim. Hupfeld made an even more important observa- tion. He remarked that these two Elohist docu- ments are not so closely related to each other as one of them is to the Jahwist. This one, which he calls the Second Elohist, differs from the Jahwist generally only in details — though also in certain conceptions of the Deity — and is so inter- woven with the latter that the two are often indistinguishable and were evidently combined before being attached either to the First Elohist or to the Deuteronomic writer. The First Elohist, on the other hand, has a character all its own. Of the bulk of the Hexateuch it supplies by far the greater part; of the plan which runs through the Hexateuch ^ it is the upholding frame. Hence it has been called the Grundschrift or Basal Document; but because it contains the larger part of the legislation, and that part is distinguished from the rest by an elaboration of laws concerning the priesthood and ritual, it is now more usually called the Priestly, while the name Elohist is reserved for Hupfeld's Second Elohist. Before the middle of the century, then, the main lines of the analysis of the Hexateuch were laid down, and all the effect of subsequent criti- cism has been to confirm and develop them. The evidence that there are four main documents 1 This is more true of Genesis to Deuteronomy than of Joshua. 40 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE has been revised and the conclusion corroborated by a large number of independent scholars in several countries and schools of Christendom. Kuenen and others in Holland ; Graf, Well- hausen, Noldeke, Dillmann, Kautzsch, Stade, Budde, Holzinger and others in Germany; West- phal and others in France; Robertson Smith, Cheyne, Driver, Addis, Bennett, Ball, Ryle, Estlin Carpenter and Harford-Battersby in Great Britain ; Briggs and Bacon in America, have all made detailed analyses of the whole or of parts of the Hexateuch ; and their conclusions have been adopted, or independently verified, by others who have not published detailed analyses but have studied and written on the subjects contained in the Hexateuch : as for instance a large band of contributors to H3iStings*s Btdle Dictionary ^ RXid to the Encyclop(Bdia Bihlica, It cannot be of chance nor by arbitrariness that among so large a majority of experts, working independently of each other, and in face of continual criticism from scholars on the other side, there should result an agreement of opinion so strong, so surely growing, and so widely based on the phenomena of the sacred text itself. Every position asserted has in turn been contested : in every case the evidence has been several times analysed ; and one by one conservative scholars like Delitzsch, who had at first resisted 1 See especially the article ' Hexateuch ' by F. H. Woods. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 41 the conclusions, have in the end expressed their adherence to them. From the nature of the materials much uncertainty, of course, must pre- vail. Purely philological evidence, where it alone is available, is often ambiguous : but as we shall see in the next section of this Lecture, the philo- logical is only one department of the evidence. Difference of style or of language is in most cases accompanied by difference of substance, and the judgements which arise on the latter cannot be due to modern literary tastes or standards. We have seen ^ that the theory of the composi- tion of the Hexateuch from four documents had one rival, the theory of composition from many fragments. There was also another theory, that of expansion ; or the enlargement of a small kernel of tradition by successive additions and revisions from later stages of the national memory and religious development. Both of these theories have received some justification from the more recent elaboration of the documentary theory. For within each of the four documents further examination has discovered certain smaller varia- tions of language, but still more of substance, which make it probable that the documents con- tain later additions in the style characteristic of each, and that thus they represent not the work of the same author so much as that of the same 1 Above, p. 36. 42 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE school of tradition and religious conception.^ Then, as there are four documents, and as it is evident that two of them, the Jahwist and Elohist, were combined before the others were added, this implies more than one editor, whose additions and modifications are to be expected and, where possible, distinguished. Of the presence of such minor distinctions, the present state of the text affords many clear signs; and that the process of revising and adding continued a very long time is proved by a comparison of the Hebrew with the oldest versions into other languages. Here the work of the critic is necessarily ex- tremely delicate, and the results are often un- ^ To go into the details of this more delicate and therefore pre- carious criticism of recent years is impossible in the limits of a single lecture. But some particulars may be given in a note. For fuller details the English reader may be referred to the article * Hexateuch * in Hastings's Bible Dictionary; and, so far as Deuter- onomy is concerned, to Driver's introduction to his Commentary and to the forthcoming edition by the present writer of the text and translation of that book in Haupt's Sacred Books of the Old Testa- ment. In the Jahwist document the stories of early humanity and the growth of civilisation contain some discrepancies which betray different sources. — In Deuteronomy there haslong been adivision of opinion as to how much, if any, of the prefatory introductions, i-ii, belong to the same author as that of the legal codes ; and within the latter parallel and slightly differing laws are found on the same subject. In the year 1894 the analysis of Deuteronomy took a new direction on the publication of Stark's and Steuerna- gel's investigations into the use of the singular and plural forms of address in that Book. In some passages Israel is addressed as thouy in some as you. The data are extremely puzzling because the text is often uncertain where those pronouns occur, and be- cause the Hebrew idiom permits the same writer or speaker to pass from the one to the other. But where the change coincides with PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 43 certain. But the uncertainties do not involve more than the fringes of the four main documents and their principal constituents. Upon these, by facts which are obvious to every student, by methods that are thorough and exact, through much debate and jealous revision, there has gradually been produced among critics a most remarkable unanimity. So much for the analysis of the first six Books of the Old Testament. The Historical Books stand next in order. Some of them, for example the Books of Kings, explicitly assert that they have been composed from several sources ; all of them present on the surface the same features as other changes in the style or religious conception, there is mani- festly a strong reason for supposing a difference of author. Not only is such coincidence frequent in Deuteronomy both in the hortatory sections and the laws, but while both the passages in the singular address and those in the plural have terms and con- ceptions in common, they have some consistently different terra for the same event or object, and each in addition has a list of words peculiar to itself and a list of favourite interests different from that of the other. It seems to me, therefore, that the case for two sources in Deuteronomy, thus distinguished, is, if not proved, very probable ; and that it will supplant the older distinction between the hortatory and legal sections on which critics were always divided. But Stark and Steuernagel, while striking on a true distinction, have not corrected their analysis of it in Deuteronomy by comparison with its appearance in the contemporary Jeremiah and other writers. The same objection seems to me to be valid against Mitchell's simpler analysis in the American Journal of Biblical Literature for 1899. — In the Priestly Legislation, Lev. i. 17-26 has long been regarded by critics as distinct in character and style from the rest of the code. (See Driver, Introd. to Lit. of Old Testament^ 49 ff.) : and in the latter many obviously later additions appear. 44 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE the Hexateuch: that is to say, not only differ- ences of style but the presence of double accounts of the same event. In the Books of Samuel this latter feature is present to a still greater degree than in the narratives of the Hexateuch; but it is not so possible to discern in the Books of Samuel all the main documents which run through the history from beginning to end. What is clear is, that the historical Books contain many records and traditions, some of them treating the same events with differences both of style and substance.^ Equally evident is the hand of the editor or editors who compiled them, and who not only added various statistics and recurrent formulas designed to frame them into a continuous history, but placed the whole of that history under a certain moral judgement, to which expression is given in language distinct from that of the materials he employed.^ And again, as in the case of the Hexateuch, these conclusions have been reached only as the result of long research and debate by many critics, who, differing in details, have gradually approached unanimity upon the main lines just indicated. The analysis of the prophetical and of the poetical Books presents us with greater diffi- culties. The process is not so old nor quite so ^ E.g. the accounts o£ the institution of the Kingdom, of the meeting of Saul and David, and of the end of Saul. 2 See further below, pp. 65 f. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 45 thorough as in the case of the Hexateuch, and upon some of the results there is a still wider divergence of opinion. Within the last ten years the dissection of several prophetical books has been carried to an extent which represents rather the in- genuity of a few critics than the settled consensus of the majority. But, excepting these latest pro- posals as still under judgement, we observe the same tendency in criticism as we have already noted: the steady approximation to the belief that many of the larger books of prophecy are compilations from several sources. For this the evidence is partly that of language and style — it has become very clear that many terms and grammatical forms were not in use till towards the Exile — but the most cogent proofs are drawn from the expression of opposite religious tempers. Both in the larger and smaller prophecies there are obvious interpolations. Generations sub- sequent to the original prophet made qualifica- tions of, or additions to, his oracles, in order to adapt them to the changed circumstances or altered tempers of the people, and so to per- petuate their religious significance. To this subject we shall return in a later Lecture. The critical analysis of the Old Testament is therefore not only a movement of considerable age, and pursued by a long and varied succession of experts; but by rational methods and upon 46 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE intelligible evidence, derived from the sacred text, it has produced certain large results on which the vast majority of critics are more and more approaching to unanimity. There is, there- fore, no ground either for those who attack the science of Old Testament criticism as hasty and its conclusions as raw; or for those who predict a reaction from the conclusions as certain as the reaction which arose in New Testament criticism against the theories of the extreme Tubingen school. The Tubingen theories were largely deductions from the prin- ciples of a certain philosophy of history. But the proofs of Old Testament criticism are not d, priori : the argument is inductive and the facts are furnished by the Old Testament itself.^ 11. The Criticism of the Old Testament mainly Historical. The criticism of the Old Testament, however, is not merely literary ; and here we have to meet the second charge which its opponents have preferred against it.^ In their recent writings Professors Sayce and Hommel have, with con- ^ It is indeed striking that the attempt to prove the late date of the Levitical legislation from principles of the Hegelian philoso- phy, which Vatke made in 1833, should have been ignored in the history of criticism ; and that that late date should not have been accepted till Graf and others proved it by inductive evidence in 1866 and following years. 2 See above, p. 31, PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 47 siderable persistence, represented the Higher Criticism as if it were only the analysis of the text of the Old Testament into different docu- ments upon the evidence of language and style. And they assert that the evidence alleged cannot but be precarious, because estimated by scholars with very different tastes and standards from those of the people among whom the Old Testa- ment arose. Nothing could be further from the truth. Look at what we have already seen with regard to the discrimination of the documents. We have seen that this depends not only upon differences of vocabulary, phrase and idiom, but still more upon differences of fact and substance in narratives which relate the same events. Take the different stories of the origin of the name of Bethel.^ It is impossible to believe that these came from the same hand. Or take the Book of Joshua. Throughout its chapters there are visible two differing accounts of the conquest of Western Palestine by the Israelites. One of them represents the conquest and division of the land to have been thorough and effected in one generation by the whole people acting to- gether; the other represents it as the work of the tribes acting separately, and as being far from complete. Here are differences of fact, which are not dependent for their distinction upon differences of phrase and idiom; yet are corro- 1 See above, p. 38. 48 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE borated by these, for the parts of the Book which represent the Conquest as complete under Joshua are composed in the language of the Deuterono- micand Priestly writers,^ while those who report it to have been incomplete are written in the style of the Jahwist.2 But that is not all. I have already said that a linguistic analysis is often unable to distinguish between the Jahwist and the Elohist, and this is especially the case in the Book of Joshua. All the more striking therefore are certain differences of fact in this double docu- ment. For instance, in the story of the crossing of the Jordan, as told in Joshua iii. and iv., there are two accounts of the monument set up to commemorate the passage. One of them builds it at Gilgal on the west bank with stones taken from the river-bed by the people;^ the other builds it in the bed of the river with twelve stones set there by Joshua.^ Similarly, in chap- ter vi. two stories have been interwoven, but are still distinguishable : one which relates how Israel marched round Jericho on seven successive days, the first six they marched in silence, but on the seventh they shouted at the word of 1 E.g. X. 28-43, xi. 2, 3, 6, 9-12, 14-23, xii. xiii. 2-12, 14, xxi. 43-45, xxii. 1-15, xxiii. — Deuteronomic: and xiv. 1-5, xv. (except 13-19 and ^-^y xvi. 4-8, xvii. itz, 3-7, 9 (partly), 10, xviii. ii«, 12-28, xix. 1-46, 48, 51 — Priestly. ^ XV. 63, xvi. 10, xvii. 11-18, with which agrees the account of a partial conquest in Judges i. 8 iv. i-S, 20. 4 iv. 9. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 49 Joshua and the walls fell ; ^ and another which relates that a portion of the armed men marched round the city seven times on the same day, having in their midst the ark, and that on the seventh round the people shouted at the signal of the trumpets and the walls fell.^ Similarly in chapter viii. we find two accounts of the ambush against Ai, according to one of which the ambush consisted of 30,000 men and was despatched to its position by Joshua either from Gilgal or soon after the main army left Gilgal; while according to the other the ambush con- sisted of 5000 men and was not detached from the army till the latter had arrived in the neigh- bourhood of Ai.^ The existence of all these * doublets ' is not, I repeat, proved by differences of vocabulary or of style, for we are generally unable to say which is from the Jahwist and which from the Elohist ; it is proved by difference of facts in the substance of the narrative. Hitherto I have dealt only with the proofs of the presence of different documents in the 1 Verses 3, "ja^ 10, 11 (partly), 14, 15^2, and it came to pass , . . manner, i^d, 20, and the people shouted. 2 Verses 4 (partly), 5, nb, 8, 9, parts of 13 and 15, 163, zob, Cf. especially verses 16 and 20 : in the latter the people shout both before and after the trumpets, though verse 16 enjoins on them not to shout till the trumpets give the signal. Wellhausen was the first to point out the distinction. 8 The first account can be traced in verses 3-9 ; the second in verses 10-14. For the analysis of the two accounts through the rest of the chapter, see Bennett's *Joshua*in Haupt's Sacred Books of the Old Testament, D 50 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE Hexateuch. But now let us look at the problem of the dates of these documents. Here again the evidence for the critical solution is not alto- gether that of language and style. On the con- trary, historical evidence has been predominant at every step of the argument ; and in particular has decided almost by itself the principal change of opinion which criticism has made on this subject. At first the Jahwist-Elohist and the Deuteronomic documents were assigned, on ac- count of their historical allusions, to a date after the beginning of the Monarchy; but the Priestly Document, which has many archaic features and which betrays no allusion to the later history, was considered the earliest of the four. It was the introduction of other phenomena, historical in character, which forced critics to abandon this opinion and to seek for the Priestly Document a much later date. The change came about upon two lines of reasoning. The first was this. When the collections of laws which the documents contain were compared, it was seen that they exhibited different stages of what was fundamentally the same legislation ; the simplest of these stages is found in the Jahwist-Elohist,^ the next in Deuteronomy,^ the most complex and elaborate in the Priestly Writing.^ Or, as this way of putting the matter does scant justice |1 Ex. xx.-xxii., xxxiv., 14-26. 2 Deut. xii.-xxvi. 8 Ex. xxv.-xxxi., Levit., Num. i.-xix. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 51 to the differences, we may say that while the legislation in the Jahwist-EIohist is suited to a purely agricultural people, the Deuteronomic meets the necessities of a community more highly organised and equipped, with foreign relations and subject to religious temptations to which in the days of the early kings Israel was not exposed ; while, besides, there is in Deuteronomy's modi- fication of the Jahwist-EIohist laws evidence of the influence of the eighth-century prophets. The Priestly Legislation on the other hand cannot be understood in many of its provisions except in the light of the Exile, and of the greater influence which the priesthood assumed in Israel after the return from Babylon. On the subjects of sacrifice, the priesthood, the gifts due to the priests and kindred matters, there is an almost perfectly consistent increase of elaboration and rigour from the laws of the Jahwist-EIohist, through those of Deuteronomy to those of the Priestly Legislation.^ I am not now defending the conclusion to which most critics adhere, that therefore the Jahwist-EIohist is the earliest of the Documents, and the Priestly the latest, Deuteronomy coming in between : I am only showing that critics reached that conclusion on historical evidence. Again, critics remarked the 1 For details see Driver's Commentary on Deuteronomy, chaps, xii.-xxvi. ; or the present writer's notes to the same chapters in Haupt's Sacred Books of the Old Testament. 52 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE fact that the early history of Israel exhibited no traces of the influence or existence of any of the three legal codes, but that, on the contrary, the religious leaders of Israel from Gideon to Elisha behaved as if there were no such laws in existence as those (at least) of Deuteronomy and the Priestly code. Again I have no room to go into the detailed proof,^ and my purpose is simply to point out the character of the evidence of which it consists. On both these lines of proof for the date of the documents, the evidence, therefore, is his- torical and is supplied by the Old Testament itself It is, of course, supported by philological evidence. The language and the style of the Jahwist-Elohist are earlier than that of Deutero- nomy; and both the ordinary vocabulary and the lists of proper names in the Priestly Writing exhibit many traces of a late date.^ But all this is only corroboratory of a conclusion reached independently and upon the evidence of the sacred history itself. Let me repeat, this prin- cipal conclusion of modern criticism, — that the written Law of Israel, in the three forms in which we possess it, cannot have been the work of Moses or of the Mosaic, or immediately post- Mosaic, age, but must be assigned to a much 1 See the introductions to Driver's Commentary on Deutero- nomy, and to Addis's Documents of the Hexateuch. ^ G. B. Gray, Studies in Hebrew Proper Names: London, 1896. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 53 later date, — has been reached not by the methods of literary analysis, but on lines of historical evi- dence furnished by the earlier chronicles of Israel themselves. Let us now take a similar instance from the prophets. The opponents of criticism have often alleged that the conclusion, by which Isaiah xl. and following chapters are taken from Isaiah himself and assigned to a prophet on the eve of the Return from Exile, is due to a dogmatic prejudice against the capacity of Isaiah himself to predict events so far beyond his own time, and is supported mainly upon grounds of language and style. Neither of these allegations is correct. What has compelled critics to date Isaiah xl. and following chapters from the close of the Baby- lonian Captivity has been the historical evidence furnished by the chapters themselves. These chapters nowhere claim to be by Isaiah, and do not present a single reflection of his time. But they plainly set forth, as having already taken place, certain events which happened from a century to a century and a half after Isaiah had passed away : the Babylonian Exile and Cap- tivity, the ruin of Jerusalem and the devastation of the Holy Land. Israel is addressed as having exhausted the time of her penalty, and is ex- horted to leave Babylon, because the door of her deliverance is immediately to open, and as if her return to the Holy Land depended now upon 54 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE herself. Cyrus is named as her deliverer, and is described as already called upon his career and blessed with victory by Jahweh. Nor is all this predicted as if from the standpoint of a previous century; but it is taken for granted as the very basis of the prophet's argument. Cyrus him- self is not merely represented to be above the horizon and upon the flowing tide of victory, as a prophet might possibly realise him to be before he actually appeared. But he and his victories are appealed to as the unmistakeable proof that former prophecies of Israel's deliverance from Babylon are at last being fulfilled. Would it have been possible for the prophet to make such an appeal, either to Israel or to the heathen, un- less Cyrus had been within the ken of them both? Unless Cyrus and his early victories were already historical facts, the whole argument in Isaiah xl.- xlviii. is unintelligible. You observe, then, that all this criticism which assigns these chapters to the eve of the Return from Exile is historical, and is independent of the literary analysis of the text, which, however, greatly corroborates it. Moreover, except for the date of Cyrus, which is determined by the cuneiform inscriptions, the historical evidence in question is drawn entirely from the Bible itself. Let us take from the historical books one other example of the same method. There is no Book in the Old Testament, whose place in the Canon PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 55 and whose value as a record of historical fact have been rendered more precarious by criticism than the Books of Chronicles. These two books, which are really one, include the same period, whose history is related in the Books of Saniu< 1 and of Kings. They treat many of the same episodes and of the same personalities. But they treat these with a great difference. For the details I must refer you to the article by Professor Francis Brown in Hastings's Bible Dictionary} For our present purpose it is sufficient to point out that, when the parallel narratives in Samuel-Kings and in Chronicles are compared, it is found that the Chronicler has increased the numbers of the troops en- gaged in the campaigns described, of the men slain, and of the slaves, the cattle and the objects of value taken captive or brought as tribute to the victors; that he has enhanced the characters of some of the leading person- alities, like David and Solomon; and that he has imputed to the period of the Monarchy the establishment and elaboration of all the ritual and the law enforced by the Priestly Document. This comparison with Samuel-Kings makes it at once evident that we cannot accept the Chronicler as an authority for the pre-exilic history of Israel, but must consider his Book * See also the article in the Encyc. Biblica ; and Robertson Smith, The Old Testament in the Jewish Churchy pp. 140 ff. 56 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE as a homiletic treatment of that history from the standpoint of generations after the Exile, when the Priestly Legislation had so long been in force that it was impossible to imagine any part of Israel's history as without it.* These are such fundamental and such obvious instances of the results of modern criticism upon the Old Testament that I am almost ashamed to bring them before you. But the repetition of them is rendered necessary, not only by the common opinion of a large portion of the Church, but by the assertions of scholars I have named and of a number of other writers, that modern criticism is mainly dependent upon the preca- rious methods of literary analysis. How amply the instances quoted disprove this, and how fully they discover the main conclusions of critics to be based upon historical evidence derived from the Old Testament itself, I do not require further to demonstrate. III. Criticism and Archceology, Hitherto we have looked only at the evidence which criticism finds within the sacred records of Israel. But our century has been one not only of Biblical research, but of the discovery and exami- nation of the histories and religions of the peoples who surrounded Palestine and who were one 1 Cf. Robertson Smith, op. cit.y p. 140. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 57 with ancient Israel in blood, custom and mental equipment. Sixty or seventy years ago almost our sole record for the history of the world, of which the kingdom of Israel formed a small province, was the Old Testament. But now — in Babylonia, Egypt and Phoenicia; in Bashan, Moab, Edom and Sinai; in Central and Southern Arabia — there have been unearthed and de- ciphered a vast multitude of monuments which not only afford us the most ample material for testing the chronology of the Old Testament, and defining the exact nature of many of the historical events in it, but which have uncovered to us the civilisation and religion of the tribes who were Israel's neighbours and Israel's kinsmen according to the flesh. With all this evidence we can compare, in Arabia and Syria, the still current life of tribes of the same race in the same natural environment. It will be obvious how all this archeology and ethnology must enable criticism to attack the chief of the problems bequeathed by the New Testament: the problem of tracing throughout the Old Testament a progressive re- velation. That, however, forms the subject of another lecture; and I will now consider only the general attitude of recent criticism to all the historical and archaeological evidence which has been gathered from fields outside the Old Testa- ment. Of recent years the conclusions of the Higher 58 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE Criticism have been attacked in the name of archaeology, and by none with more persistence than the two eminent scholars I have named: Professor Sayce and Professor HommeL They have asserted that * archaeology is on the side of tradition and not of the critics/ ^ upon the cardinal question of the Old Testament : the dates and composition of the Hexateuch. And, as proof of this, they have alleged what they call * the re- luctance of the critics to accept the discoveries of the archaeologists.' Let us inquire what grounds there are for these charges. Criticism, as we have seen, has discovered four main documents in the Hexateuch, which it has assigned to various dates from the ninth or eighth to the sixth or fifth centuries before Christ. Professor Sayce's argument appears to be that this conclusion is largely due to the critics' belief that the art of writing was not practised in Israel till about David's time, or the end of the eleventh century before Christ, and that till then legisla- tion and tradition were only oral. In disproof of such a belief Professor Sayce appeals to the so-called Tell el Amarna letters. These clay tablets, which date from about 1400 e.g., or more than a century before the commonly received date of the Exodus, represent a frequent and detailed correspondence between the court ot Egypt on the one hand and its representatives '^ Sayce, Cont. Rev.y vol. Ixx., 1896, p. 730. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 59 in Palestine and the rulers of the kingdoms of Mesopotamia on the other. The writing is in the cuneiform character, and the language that of Babylonia. The tablets, therefore, prove that some of the culture of Babylonia, perhaps even including its literature, had spread across the whole of Western Asia, at least a century before the Exodus. From this Professor Sayce infers that the Israelites, when in the land of Goshen and upon their wanderings through the Desert, must have known how to read and write, must have been acquainted with Babylonian literature, and must have been able to appreciate and make use of Babylonian documents, the translation of some of which he thinks can be identified in portions of the Book of Genesis. Now, in the first place, it is necessary to note that the Tell el Amarna letters are only the docu- ments of high Egyptian or Mesopotamian officials, and of chiefs of settled tribes in Palestine ; and that to argue from their habits to those of a semi-nomadic race, such as Israel were still in Goshen and the Desert, is not very safe.^ But 1 As has often been pointed out, the tribes which live to-day on the borders of Egypt and Canaan, half-settled and half-nomadic, do not, for all their contact with the civilised and half-civilised populations of these lands, learn to read and write. Reading and writing are arts, of which the Bedawee tribes do not see the need, and frequently despise. From the culture and habits of corre- spondence of the court of Egypt and its representatives in Canaan, it is very little less difficult to infer that the Israelite shepherds could write, than to employ the existence of the postal system 6o MODERN CRITICISM AND THE suppose we admit that the chiefs of Israel were in official contact with the Egyptian authorities during Israel's residence in Goshen, and that they did learn from their employment in the building operations of Pharaoh the arts of reading and writing which were so highly developed in Egypt. Suppose that we grant (and I for one am not inclined to deny this) that there were leaders in Israel at the time of the Exodus who could write, or have writings made for them, just as Abd-hiba of Jerusalem and other petty chieftains of Palestine did. We have not, therefore, proved that the docu- ments which compose the Pentateuch were written in the time of Moses. We have not secured one iota of evidence to counterbalance the proofs, derived from the history of Israel itself, that the Pentateuchal legislation was not in existence in the time of the Judges or of the earlier Kings. Few critics have committed themselves to the absolute negative, that early Israel did not know how to write; nor do any of the arguments for the late date of the Hexateuch rest upon a reason which, even if it were probable, is so impossible to prove. The other discoveries of archaeologists which have to do with the Pentateuch are the Baby- lonian tablets — with stories of the Creation and and telegraph in the Turkish Empire and the dominions of the Khedive to illustrate the culture of the nomads in the deserts which lie on their borders. .PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 6i Flood, • or with annals which cover the events described in Genesis xiv. — and the Egyptian monuments which depict the conditions of life reflected in the story of Joseph. We have not now to consider how far the evidence furnished by all these proves the historical value of the Pentateuch. That question will come up in next Lecture. Our present inquiry is, how far the Babylonian and Egyptian monuments affect the conclusions of critics with regard to the dates of the Pentateuchal documents. The Babylonian stories of the Creation and Flood were probably in existence by a very early date.^ At the Oriental Congress in Paris in 1897 it was announced that Father Scheil had discovered on a tablet from Sippara of date about 2250 B.C. a recension of the Babylonian story of the Flood. This has evidently been copied from a still older tablet, for here and there the scribe has inserted the word 'lacuna.' The story of the Flood may, therefore, be carried back as far as 3000 b.c. But however early be its date or the dates of the various versions of the Creation-Epos, it is evident that they can ^ In the British Museum we find them on tablets from the Royal Library at Nineveh of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. See the newly issued Guide to the Babylonian and Assyrian Collec- tions (190Q), pp. 36 £f. For translations see Records of the Past^ new series, vol. i. 122 £f., by Prof. Sayce; Gunkel's Schopfungu. Chaos, pp. 401 ff. by Zimmern; a.nd Authority and Archaolo^^ ed. by D. G. Hogarth (London, 1899), pp. 10 ff. 62 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE have no bearing on the question of the dates of the Hebrew documents, — whether the Jahwist- Elohist or the Priestly, — which contain accounts of the Creation and Flood founded on the Baby- lonian. We are ignorant of the time at which the Hebrews received these stories ; while in their Biblical form they exhibit so many differences from the Babylonian as to make it probable that the materials were used by the writers of the Pentateuchal documents only after long tradition within a Hebrew atmosphere. Nor in the light which the monuments throw upon Genesis xiv. is there any evidence as to when that chapter was written. We are still with- out the proof that its accounts of Babylonian campaigns are confirmed by Babylonian annals dealing with the same events; and even if we had this proof, there would remain the possi- bility, for which there is some evidence, that Genesis xiv. is a Hebrew fragment from the Exile based on Babylonian materials. In ^ny case this chapter cannot be used in the discussion of the critical conclusions as to the date of the four main constituents of the Hexateuch, for it lies outside them all.^ Again, the portrait of Egyptian life presented by the story of Joseph in the Jahwist-Elohist ^ Full statements and discussions of the Babylonian evidence as to the names, etc., in Gen. xiv. will be found in Driver's Authority and Arckteology, pp. 39 ff., and in article ' Chedorlaomer ' in the Encyclopedia Biblica. See below, p. lOO. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 63 document has been appealed to, as proof that the writer lived at a time when Israel, from their long residence in Goshen, were still familiar with Egypt. But the life, which the story of Joseph portrays, was the life of Egypt not only in Joseph's time. In the same moulds it persisted for centuries after the Exodus, and under the Monarchy Israel had many opportunities of be- coming acquainted with it. So that the vivid and accurate descriptions of Egypt, which surround the figure of Pharaoh's Hebrew vizier, are no conclusive proof of the ancient origin of the document which tells the story. On the contrary, the only Egyptian data in that story to which archaeologists can attach an approximate age, appear to offer some confirmation of the late period to which critics have assigned the Jahwist-Elohist document. The Egyptian names Zaphenath-Pa'aneah, Potipherah, and Asenath belong to types of names which do not appear, or are not frequent, on the Egyptian monu- ments till some centuries after the Exodus.^ 1 The type to which Zaphenath-Pa'aneah belongs occurs first under the Twentieth Dynasty in the thirteenth century B.C., and is frequent only under the Twenty-second in the tenth century. The type to which Potipherah belongs appears in one instance under the Eighteenth Dynasty, though not then attached to a native Egyptian, and otherwise occurs first under the Twenty- second Dynasty, but is not frequent till the Twenty-sixth, 664-525 B.C. The type to which Asenath belongs has a few early in- stances, but is frequent only under the Twenty-first Dynasty, in the eleventh century and later. 64 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE From these facts, reached in complete indepen- dence of criticism, the Egyptologists ' Steindorff, Brugsch, and Ebers all agree in inferring that the names in question did not originate before the Ninth Century B.C.* ^ But if this be so, the only archaeological evidence which proves anything with regard to the dates of the Hexateuchal documents points in the same direction as the critical arguments which assign the Jahwist-Elohist to the ninth or the eighth century. Before we leave the Hexateuch let me call your attention to the fact that the critical theory of its compilation from several sources receives one strong confirmation from the archaeological side. Professor Sayce himself admits that such a compilation is * fully in accordance with the teachings of Oriental archaeology/ which has shown us that the ancient writings of the neigh- bours and kinsfolk of Israel were also of a com- posite character. Let me quote his own words : ' The composite character of the Pentateuch, therefore, is only what a study of similar con- temporaneous literature brought to light by modern research would lead us to expect.' ^ And it is remarkable that Professor Sayce, who has so strenuously assailed the conclusions of critics with regard to the Pentateuch, should admit that 1 Driver, article 'Joseph' in Hastings's Bid/e Dicfwnary, ii. 775. 2 Monuments^ pp. 31, 34; cf. History of the Hebrews^ p. 129. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 65 the Book of Joshua, the supplement and appendix of the Pentateuch, is a composite document with conflicting accounts of the conquest and settle- ment of Canaan.^ Beyond the Hexateuch there is little necessity to follow the critics in their attitude to archae- ology. The critics cannot be charged with neglecting the long series of Assyrian annals which bear upon the history of the Kings of Israel and Judah, from Omri to Zedekiah. I need only point out how far these annals confirm the critical estimate of the Books of Kings. The earliest Hebrews named on the Assyrian monuments are Omri and Ahab; from them onwards we have among others the names of Ben-hadad, Ahab*s Syrian contemporary, of Jehu, Hazael, Pekah, Ahaz and Hezekiah. Pestilences and eclipses are recorded, the tremors of which vibrate through the early prophetical books. We have an account of the invasion of Palestine by Tiglath Peleser, when he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtaliy by the way of the sea across Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles ; the overthrow of Samaria by Sargon ; Sennacherib's invasion of Syria, his appearances before Jerusalem, the tribute he exacted, and his disappearance north- wards. But criticism has never doubted those ^ History of the Hebrews^ ch. iv. ; see above in this Lecture, pp. 47 f. 66 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE names or these facts. It has recognised that the Books of Kings were compiled from true and in many cases contemporaneous annals. What critics have judged to be late and pro- bably of less historic value has been certain narratives, for which archaeology has no evidence to offer, as well as the framework, in whit.h the editor has bound the whole history and supplied, out of a general scheme, a chrono- logy, and, from the standpoint of a later age, a religious sentence on each monarch's reign.i Now, remarkably enough, archaeology has con- firmed this judgement of criticism on the Books of Kings, so far as regards the chronology. For while testifying to the reality of Omri, Ahab, Jehu, and some of their successors, as well as of the leading events of the history, it has shown from the contemporary Assyrian data that the chronology, approximately correct so far as the distance of one man or event from another is concerned, has been placed by the editor from one dozen to twenty years too early — obviously in order to fit it into the general system, adopted by the Hebrew editors, of reckoning the years from the Exodus to the fall of the first Temple and the Return from Exile.^ ^ For this chronology see next Lecture. The moral and religious judgements of each reign are from the standpoint of Deuteronomy, which, as we have seen, did not come into force in Israel till 621 B.C. under King Josiah. * ^Q^'K.2in\^ih?L\xsQnyChronologie der hebraischt'jtlCdnigey 1883; Robertson Smith, Prophets, pp. 144 fi. PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 67 So much for archaeology and its relations to criticism. * The fact is/ as Professor Driver says/ 'the antagonism which some writers have sought to establish between criticism and archaeology is wholly factitious and unreal. Criticism and archaeology deal with antiquity from different points of view, and mutually supplement one another. Each in turn supplies what the other lacks ; and it is only by an entire misunder- standing of the scope and limits of both that they can be brought into antagonism with one another. What is called " the witness of the monuments " is often strangely misunderstood. The monuments witness to nothing which any reasonable critic has ever doubted. ... A great deal of the illustration afforded by the monu- ments relates to facts of language, to ideas, institutions, and localities; but these as a rule are of a permanent nature; and until they can be proved to be limited to a particular age their occurrence, or mention, in a given narrative is not evidence that it possesses the value of con- temporary testimony.' The alleged refutation of criticism by archaeo- logy may therefore be dismissed, and we pass to another which has been drawn from the sphere of geography. It is often maintained that the accuracy of the topographical data on the Book of Genesis is proof of the truthfulness of the ^ Authority mui Archeology ^ p. 150 f. 68 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE narratives in which they appear. ' But/ as I have said elsewhere/ ' that a story accurately reflects geography does not necessarily mean that it is a real transcript of history — else were the Book of Judith the truest man ever wrote instead of being, what it is, a pretty piece of fiction. Many legends are wonderful photographs of scenery, and there- fore let us at once admit that while we may have other reasons for the historical truth of the patri- archal narratives, we cannot prove this on the ground that their itineraries and place-names are correct.' On the other hand, for the same reason — that the topography of Palestine changed so little during the course of the history of Israel — it will be obvious that geography cannot be of much use in the support of the critical conclusions as to the dates of the documents. The only cases in which it can afford any evidence of these, are where documents, judged by critics to be late on other grounds, contain geographical names, or applications of geographical names, which are themselves of a late origin. For instance, the mountains of Moab are called in the Priestly Document, which recent critics date after the Exile, the mountains of the Abarini, Abarim means ' the men or things on the other side,' and there is some evidence that before the Exile the name was applied to the whole mountain-range 1 HistprUal QcQgraphy of the Holy Land, p. lo8, PREACHING OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 69 east of Jordan.^ But the post-Exilic writer limited it to the mountains of Moab, because in his day these were the only part of the eastern range which was opposite the shrunken territory of his people. Again, it appears that the name Euphrates occurs first in the writings of Jere- miah ; 2 in the historical and prophetical books before his time we hear only of * the River.' ^ Now look at the documents of the Hexateuch. In the Jahwist and Elohist, which critics date before Jeremiah, the stream is called * the River ' ; in Deuteronomy (from Jeremiah's time) and in the Priestly Writing^ (from the time of the Exile) it is called Euphrates. Such is the kind of small symptoms, which geography supplies, of the truth of the critical conclusions as to the date of the Hexateuchal documents. With regard to the literary analysis of these documents, the geographical evidence, though still not large, is quite as decisive. The same localities are called in the different documents by different names, 1 Jer. xxii. 20, R. V. ; Ezek. xxxix. 1 1 (reading with Hitzig and others 'Abarim* for ' Oberim'). See further article ' Abarim ' by the present writer in the EncyclopvfT€Q}S TvpavvlZa iK TToWov TOV weplovTos vTrepTjKdj/- TL(Ta.u . , , KoX yhp oh^^u oStois iirir-^Seiov els dpxv^ aXpcaiv ojs ^vxh 40, 52 n.y 105 «., 106 n. Alexandria, School of, 226, 231. Allegorising interpretation of the Old Testament by the Christian Church, Lecture 'V 11. passim. Ambrose, 231. America, criticism of the Hexa- teuch, 40; Semitic scholarship in the seventeenth and eigh- teenth centuries, 250. Anthropomorphisms in the Old Testament, 175. Antioch, School of, 227, 231. Apostolic Constitutions^ 224 n. Aquinas, Thomas, 235. Arabs, pre-Mohammedan litera- ture of, 116, 125. Archaeology and modern criticism, 31, 56 £f. ; archaeology and the Pentateuch, 58, 90 ff., 99 £f. ; and the Prophets, 65, 217 f. Arnold, Matthew, 149. Arnot, William, 75; Laws from Heaven for Life on Earth, 221 «., 303 n. Assizes of yerusalem, 253 n. Astruc, Conjectures, etc.-, 34, 248 n. Augustine, 6, 231 £E. ; works of, 232 K., 233 n.; De Civitate Dei^ 252 f. Authority and Archisology^ 61 «., 67. Baalim, worship of, 119 f. Babel, Tower of, 91. Babylonia, discoveries in, 90 ; lit- erature, 91 ; monuments, 116, 118; tablets, 60. Babyl. Expedition of the Univ. of Pennsylvania^ 91 n. Bacon, Professor, 40. Ball, 40. Baumgartner, Professor, 240 n. Beecher, Henry Ward, 75. Beersheba, 105. Begg, Dr. James, 221 n. Bell, Capt. Henrie, 257 n., 293 n. Bennett, Prof., 40, 49 n. Bernard of Clairvaux, 235. Bethel, 47, 105; origin of name, 38- Bethpeor, 70 n. Beugnot, Le Comte, 253 n. Beza, 240 n. Bible Dictionary, Hastings*. 37 «., 40, 42, 55, 64 n.y 103 «., 107, III, 161 K., 174 n., 184 «., 185, etc. Blaikie, Dr. W. G., 221 «. Bleek, 37. Bochart, Samuel, 249 n. Book of the Twelve Prophets (Ex- positor's Bible), 85, 88 f., 103 3i6 INDEX Boston, Thomas, 250. Briggs, Professor, 40. Bright, John, 218 n. British Museum, Guide to the Babylonian and Assyrian Col- lections^ 61 ?z., 90 f. «. Brown, Professor Francis, 55. of Wamphray, 250. Brugsch, 64. Buchanan, George, 252, 260 f. Budde, Professor, 7 «., 40, 114 K., 115 -n., 132 «., 138 «., 151 n.y 161 n. ; Biblische Urgeschichte , 97 «■ Butler, Bishop, 75. Buxtorf, 248 n, Calvin, 6; as exegete, 146; 240 £f. ; political use of Old Testament, 252, 258 ff. Candlish, Dr. Robert, 75. Canon of the New Testament, 5 ff. of the Old Testament, the history of its formation, 7 ff. ; in Christ's day, 10; the testimony of the Apostles, 16 f. Carlyle, Thomas, 267 ; CromwelPs Letters and Speeches, 244 n, Chalmers, Thomas, 221. Charles, Prof., Critical History cf the Doctrine of the Future Life^ 184 ?/. See also Preface. Chedorlaomer, 62 «., 100. Cheyne, Canon, 40, 80 n. ; Founders of Old Testament Criticism, 33 n. ; Origin of the Psalter, 87 «., 88 «. ; In- troduction to the Book of Isaiah, 161 «. Christianity, Semitic source of, T17. Ckrojticles, Books of their char- acter, 55 f. Chronology, Babylonian, 90 f. 71. \ Biblical, 66, 90 f. Chrysostom, 227 ff. Clement of Rome, Ep. to the Corinthians, 226 n. Coccejus, 245 71. Colenso, Bishop, 76. Collins, 248 n. Cornill, Der Israelitische Prophet- ismus^ 107 n., 222 n. Council of Carthage, 5. Councils of the Church, 5, 8. Covenant, the Idea of, 137 ff., 245 ff. Creation, dates of, 90, Cunaus, 249 n. Cyprian, 224 n. Dante, De Monarchia, 236 ?i.j 252, 254. David, his history, 78 ff.; and the Psalms, 86 ff. ; his character, 155 ff. ; his Dirge upon Saul, 155 ff., 182 f. See also 256. Davidson, Professor A. B., in «., 114 «., 184 K., 185 n., 220, 268 n., 286, 291 «., 293 «., 297 «■, 2>o^ n. Deborah, Song of, 142 ff. De Dieu, 248 n. Delitzsch, 40. De Montfaucon, 229 «., 230 n. Denney, Professor, 14. Deuteronomisls, the, 37, 42 «.• their view of the conquest of Palestine, 47 f. ; their date, 50 f, 58 ff. , 69 1; their references to death, 180 n. 7. Deuteronomy, 7 ; its use by our Lord, IT, 163; its place in the evangelical preparation, 162 f.; its religion purely national, 7^. ; its civic teaching, 273 f. ; its INDEX 317 influence on the Books of Wisdom, 287. De Wette, 37. Dickson (on the Psalms), 250 n. Didron, 256 11. Diestel, Geschichte des Alien Tes- tamentes in der Christlicken Kirche^ 224 «., 225 «., 229 «., 231 «., 235, 240, 243, 253 n. Dillmann, 40, 180 n, Diodorus of Tarsus, 227. Dods, Marcus, Genesis (Exposi- tor's Bible), 97 n. ' Doublets ' in the Old Testament histories, 33, 35, 38, 44, 47 ff., 78. Doubt and speculation in the Old Testament, 283, 295 f. Doughty, Arabia Deserta, 184 «., 192 «., 193 n. Driver, Canon, 37 «., 40, 43 k., 51 «., 52 w., 62 w., 64 «., 67, 87 «., 91 ?2., 100 «., 103 «., 107 «., 161 «., 180 w. Drummond, Prof. Henry, 27 f. Duhm, Professor, 161 n. Ebers, 64. Edom, 103. Edwards, Jonathan, 251 n. Egyptian discoveries, 61 ff., 90 f., 100. Eichhorn, 35. Eisenmenger, 249 n. Elohist Writers, the, 35, 38. See under Jahwist. E7icyclop<2dia Bibliea, 7 «., 17, 37, 40. 55 «M 62 n., 69 «., etc. Encyclopedia Britannica., 286 /*., 303 «■ Epic of Ishtar, 196 n, Erpenius, 248 n. Estliu Carpenter, 40. Euphrates, 69, 99. Eusebius, 6 n. Ewald, 37, 220. Expository 115 «,, 242 «., 268 n. Farrar, Dean, 220, 220 n. Federal Theology, 245 ff. Filmer, Sir Robert, Patriarcha, 262. Findlay, Professor, Expositor's Greek Testament^ 19 n. Foster, John, 75. ' Fragmentary Hypothesis,' 36. Free Church of Scotland (General Assembly of 1881), 221. Frey, 184 n. Future Life, attitude of Old Tes- tament writers to, Lecture v.. Sections i. and 11. The uses of their doctrine to our own day, Section lil. Geddes, Father, 36 f. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 225 n. Gilgal, 105. Gladstone, W. E., 218 «. Goldwin Smith, Professor, 25. Golius, 248 n. Goodwin {Moses and Aaron), 249 «. , Puritan preacher, 244. Goshen, 100. Graf, 40, 46 n. Gray, G. B., 52 n. Gregory, 6. Grotius, 248 n. Guide to the Bab. and Assyrian Room (British Museum), 61 //., 91 n. Gunkel, Sch'dpfung und Chaos, 61 n. Guthrie, Dr., 221 n. 3i8 INDEX Hackmann, Zukunftserwartung des Jesaia^ i6i n. Harford-Battersby, 40. Harran, position of, 99 n. Hasselquist, 249 », Haupt, Sacred Books of the Old Testament, 42, 49 k., 51 w., 78 n, Hebrew Proper Names^ 52 n. Heine, 245 «. Henry, Matthew, 147, 156. Herzog, Real-Encyclopddie^ 240 n. Hexateuch, composition of, chaps. \\. and III. High Priest, the, 172 £E. Hilary of Poitiers, 231 n. Hilprecht, 91 n. Histoire du Peuple d^ Israel, 118 «. Histoire Gcnerale des Langties Semitiqucs (Renan), 118 //. Historical Review, 105 ». Historical Geography of the Holy Land, 68, 1 52, 224 n. Historical Books of Old Testa- ment, composition of, 43 f. Hitzig, 69 K. Hobbes, 248 n. Holzinger, 40. Hommel, Professor, 46, 58. Hooker, 262. Horeb, 70 n. Horton, Dr., 203 n. Hugo St. Victor, 172. Hupfeld, Sources of Genesis, 38. Hutchison (on Minor Prophets), 250 n. Ilgen, 35. Immortality, the Hope of, in the Old Testament, Lecture v. ; the belief in, to-day, 209 ff. ; 'corporate immortality,' 212 ff. Incarn ation, true prophecy of, 174 f. Inquisition, 24, 253. Islam, Semitic source of, 116. Israel. For a sketch of the early history of the religion : its Semitic origins, its contrast with other Semitic religions, its ethical uniqueness, and the factors of this, see Lecture iv. For the development of the Ideas of Grace, Service, Sacri- fice, see Lecture v. ; national character, 102 f. Jahwist and Elohist Writers, the, 34, 39 ; their view of the conquest of Palestine, 48; their date, 50 f., 58 f., 62 f., 69 f., 105 ; their references to death and Sheol, 180 n. 7. James I., 252, 262. Jamieson, 250. Jamnia, Synod of, 8. Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia, 195 «. Jeremias, Die Bab. Assyr. vom Leben nach dem Tode, 194 ff. Jerome, 234. Job, the Book of. Lecture viii. ; its attitude to a future life, 193, 207. Joshua, composition of Book of, 47- Judaism, Semitic source of, 116. Kautzsch, 40, 78 n. Kent, Professor Foster, 303 n, Ker, Dr. John, 279. Kingsley, Charles, 75, 2x9. Kirkpatrick, Professor, 161 «. Knox, 252, 260 f. Kostlin, 239, Kuenen, 40, 136, 151; GesamiJielte Abhdndlungeni 115 «• INDEX 319 Lamech, Song of, 96 f. Le Bas and Waddington, 224 n. Licinius Rufinus, Lex Dei, 225 11. Lightfoot, 249 «. Lindsay, Prof. T. M., 242 n. Livingstone, John, 250. Locke, John, 262. Luther, 6, 237, 243; Table Talk, zy^ n. ; political use of Old Testament, 252, 257 f., 293 «. Mackintosh, Robert, Christ and the Jewish Law, 14 n. Mai, A., Nova Patro. Bibl., 228 «. Marti, Geschichte der Israel. Re- ligion, i6l /*. Mather, Cotton, 251 k, Maundrell, 249 n. Maurice, F. D., 75, 219, 264, Mazziiii, 267, 303. Meier, E., 151 n. Melanchthon, 237. Merenptah, 100 n. Messiah, the, 159 ff., 174 f. Messianic Prophecy, 146 f. Migne, Patrologia GrcBca, 228 «. Milton, 252, 262. Mitchell, Prof., 42 n, Mizpeh, 105. Moab, 70 «. Mohammed (on resurrection), 192. Monotheism among the Semites, 117 ff.; rise of, 131 ff., 143. Moody, D. L., 217 n. Moore, Professor G., 37, 40 ; on American Old Testament Scholarship in Zeitschrift fUr A. T. Wissenschaft, 250 w., 251. Moreh, terebinth of, 105. Miiller, W. M., Asien und Europay 100 n. Nebo, 70 «. Nehemiah, 7. A^ew England's First Fruits^ 250 n. Newman, John Henry, 75 ; a letter on punishment of heretics, 24. Nikolaus of Lyra, 236 n. Noldeke, 40. Old Testament Criticism, history of, 33 ff- Oriental Congress (Paris 1S97), 6i. Origen, 226 ff., 231, 237 n. Patriarchal narratives: archseo- logical evidence, 99 £f. Pentateuch, composition of, 33 ff. ; date of its constituent docu- ments, 50 fE. ; and archasology, 58 ff., 68 ff. ; historical basis in, 90 ff. ; attitude to a future life, 1 78 ff. ; Luther on its authorship, 238. Persecutions by the Church, 23 f. Pilgrim Fathers, scholarship of, 250. Pisgah, 70 n. Pococke, 249 n. Poetical Books of Old Testament, composition of, 44. Polytheism among the Semites, 119 ff.; in Israel, 129 n. Priestly Writers, the, 39; their view of the conquest of Pales- tine, 47 f. ; their date, 50 ff., 58 ff., 69 f. ; their references to death, 180 n. 7. Prophetical Books of Old Testa- ment, composition of, 44 ; effects of modern criticism upon, 45, 320 INDEX 53; archasology and criticism, 65, 217 ff. Prophets, the, their preaching to their own times, with its influ- ence on the social ethics of Christendom, Lecture vili. , their testimony to Israel's earlier history, 137, 265 ff.; the Spirit of Christ in them, 158 ff. ; their attitude to a future life, 185 f., 197 ff., 202 ff. ; their revival in the modern pulpit, 218 ff. ; their ministry defined by Chrysostom, 230; neglected by the Medi- aeval Church, 235 f. ; the Re- formers' use of them, 237 ff. ; the use of them in the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries, 244 ff. ; their influence on the political ideals of Christendom, 252 ff. ; contrasted with the Apostles, 263 f. ; their double patriotism, 265 ff. ; four features of their civic teaching, 272 f . ; their attitude to miracles, 274 ff. ; their predictions, 277 ; their style, 279, and inspiration, 281 ; their influence on the Wise Men, 285, 287; contrasted with the Wise Men, 288 ff. Psalms, their titles, dates and historic circumstance, 86 f. ; their attitude to a future life, i86 ff., 199 ff., 204 ff. ; Macca- bean Psalms, 9. Records of the Past, 61 «,, 194. Reland, 249 n. Renan, 105 ;/., 118, 120, 149. Reproof and criticism, its uses according to Proverbs, 304 ff. Reuchlin, 236 «. Reuss, 6. Revelation, its meaning, 11 1 f . ; A. B. Davidson on, iii «., 297 ; not coincident with history, 74, 89, 92, 108 f., 293 ff. ; its conditions, 140, 143 f. See also Preface. in the Old Testament; its proof, Lecture iv. ; the Old Testament teaching about it, III ff. ; the only explanation of the ethical uniqueness of Israel's religion, 126 f; assured by modern criticism, 115 ff. ; con- sistent with the tribal character of early Israel's God, 143 f. See also Lecture i. : 2, 11, 15, 19. Robertson, Professor James, Poetry and Religion of the Psahns, 87 «. of Brighton, 75. Ruskin, John, Praterita, 300. Rutherford, Samuel, 252, 260, 262. Ryle, Professor, 37 Jt., 40; Canon of the Old Testament, 7 n. ; Early Narratives of Genesis, 97 n. Sacrifice, Old Testament doc- trine of, 169 ff. ; Levitical sacrifices, 170; their relation to Christ, 171 f. See also under Vicarious. Sacrifices to the dead, 183 ff. , places of, in the eighth cen- tury, 105. Salmasius, 252, 262. Savonarola, 236. Sayce, Professor, 46, 58 f., 64 f. Scaliger, 249 n. Scheil, Father, 61. INDEX 321 Schleiermacher, 279. Schultens, 249 «. Schultz, Old Testament Theology^ 170 «. Schwally, Lebe^t nach dem Tode^ 184 n. Selden, 249 k. Semitic Race, the, their religious qualities, 116 f . ; Kenan's as- sertion that they are naturally monotheists, 118; their poly- theism, 118 f. ; the opportunity for monotheism in their religion, 121 f. ; influences aiding this, 122 fF. ; Israel's exceptional monotheism, 126 ; Israelis Semitic character, 127 fE. ; their attitude to a future life, 192 ff. ; its reasons, 193 f. ; their de- mand for physical signs in attestation of moral truth, 274 f. Scholarship in the eighteenth century, 248 ff. * Septuagint,' 17 f. Shaftesbury, Lord, 218 «., 273 n. Sheol, 177; in the Pentateuch, 179 f. ; in the historical Books, 183 ; in Babylonian literature, 194 f. ; in the Psalms, 199 ff. Sieffert, 147 «., 228 «. ' Signs and wonders,' 274 ff. Simon (the critic of the Penta- teuch), 33, 240 re., 248 n. Sinai, 70 n. Skinner, Professor, i6i «. Smith, Henry, 244. , Professor H. P., 78 n. , W. Robertson, 40 ; on Renan, 105 n.\ Old Testament and the Jewish Churchy 55 «,, 56 «,, 87 «., 88 «., 112 «., 115 «. ; Religion of the Semites^ 121, 124, 184 n.\ Prophets of Israel^ 221 ; articles in Encyclopedia Britannica^ 221 ; his trial and its results, 221. Social ethics of Christendom as affected by the Prophets, Lecture Vli. Teaching of the Old Testa- ment, Lecture vil. passim ; with Jeremiah, 166; in Proverbs^ 302 ff . Spencer, J , 249 n. Spinoza, 248 n. Spirit, the Old Testament doctrine of the Divine, in ff., 255 f. of Christ in the Old Testa- ment, Lecture v. Spurgeon, 75. St. Paul on the Old Testament, Stade, 40 ; Geschichte des Volkes /sr., 184 «. Stanley, Dean, Lectures on the Jewish Church, 219. Stark, 42 «. Steindorff, 64, 100 n. Sterne, 74, 75. Steuernagel, 42 n. Suffering and effort imputed to God, 174 f. Sufferings of the Righteous. See * Vicarious suffering.' Tell-el-Amarna letters, 58. Teraphim, 183 f. Textual Criticism of the Old Testament : its problems in- creased by Old Testament quotations in New Testament, 17, 21 f., 29. Theodore of Mopsuestia, 147 ?*., 217 K. ; his critical theories, 227 f. Theodoret of Kyros, his works on 322 INDEX the Old Testament, and critical theories, 229. Tholuck, 240 «. Tillemont, 229 n. Toy, Professor, on Proverbs, 287, 303 «■ Tubingen School of critics, 46. Typology, 145 ff, Ur of the Chaldees, position of, 99. Ussher, 249 «. Valeton, J. J. P., Amos en Hosea, 222 n. Vater, -^d. Vatke, 46 n. Vicarious suffering in the Old Testament: with Jeremiah, 167 ; Isaiah lii.-liii., 167 ff. ; the truth of it, the fruit of ex- perience, 168 f. ; the Suffering Servant of Jahweh and Christ, 171. Vol z, Paul , Vorexil - Prophetie und der Messias, 161 /*. Walker, Dr. James, Theology and Theologians of Scotland^ 246 f. Warburton, Divine Legation of Moses y igr. Wellhausen, 40, 49 n, \ Reste arab. Heidentumes, 125, 192, 275- Westphal, 40. Wildeboer, 285. Winter, 151 n. Wisdom, the tiebrew, and the Christian Preacher, Lecture vrii. ; the figure of Wisdom in Proverbs and her character, 308 ff. . Books of, 283 ff . ; their practical uses, 293 ff. Wise Men, the, their history in Israel, 284 ff.; what they owed to the Prophets, 287 f. ; con- trasted with the Prophets, 289 ff. Woods, F. H., 40. ZiMMERN, 61 n. Zwingli, 6, 238. INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES Genesis, Book of, lo, 90 £f. Gen. i.-iii. 33; i.-xi. 97 k. ; ii. 14, 6gn.; iii. 129 «.; iii, 19, 180 «.; iv. 10 «., 95 «. ; V. 23, 24, 180 «. ; vi. ff., :i2, 95 «. ; vi. 6, 172 «. ; xi. 95 n. ; xiv. 6l f., 100 ; xv. I ff., 179 K., 180 ?/. ; XV. 18, 69 «. ; XV. 4, 6, 15 «. ; xvii. 5, 15 «. ; xxiii. 180 «. ; xxiii. 8, 179 «. ; xxiv. 10, 99; XXV. y, 17, 180 «., 181 «. ; xxviii. 10- 22, 38; xxxi. 13, 38; xxxi. 21, 69 «. ; xxxi. 30, 183 «. ; xxxii. 23-33» 38 ; XXXV. 9-15, 38 ; XXXV. 19, 180 «. ; XXXV. 29, 180 «., 181 «. ; xxxvii. 105 «. ; xxxvii. 35, 180 n., 183 n. ; - xxxviii. 104 «. ; xxxix. 9, 134; xlii. 38, 180 «., 183 «. ; xliii. 18, 134; xliv. 31, 180 n.; xlviii. 21, 179 «., 180 «. ; xlix. 105, 179 «., 180 «., 181 «. ; 1. I2j 13, 181 «. ; 1. 34, 180 ?z. ; I. 24-26, 180 n. ; li. 180 «. Exod. xx.-xxii. 50 «. ; xxi. 2-6, 184 «. ; xxiii. 31, 69 n. ; xxv.- xxxi. 50 «. ; xxxiii. 11, 180 «. ; xxxiii. 19, 15 «. ; xxxiv. 6, 151 ; xxxiv. 14-26, 50 n. Lev. 50 «. ; X. 2, i8i «. ; xx. 27, 185 n. ; xxi. 5, 184 n. Num. i.-xix. 50 «. ; xx. 22 ff., 181 «. ; XX. 24, i8r n. ; xxi. '3-20, 70 71.; xxi. 20, 70 «.; xxii. 5, 69 «. ; xxiii. 14, 70 «.; xxiii. 21, 248 ; xxxiii. 44-49, 70 ?/. Deuteronomy 7, 10, Lect. ll. ; 163, 273- Deut. i. 7, 69 n.; iii. 17, 27, 70 n. ; iii. 23, 180 «. ; iii. 29^ 70 n. ; iv. 17, 129 «., 164 n. iv. 22, 180 n.; iv. 34, 154 iv. 46, 70 n. ; iv. 49, 70 «. vi. 13, 16, 163 «.; viii. 3, 163 «. X. 20, 163 «. ; xi. 24, 69 «. xii.-xxvi., 50 n.; xiv., 184 «. XXV. 4, 19 «. ; xxvi. 14, 184 «. xxxi. 14, 16, 180 «. ; xxxii. 48 181 «. ; xxxii. 50, 181 «. xxxii. 52, 180 n. ; xxxiii., 105 xxxiii. 2, 70 «. ; xxxiv., i8i k. xxxiv. I, 70 n.; xxxiv. 4, 5, 180 n. ; xxxiv. 6, 70 n. Joshua, Book of, 7 «., 37. Josh. i. 4, 69 K.; iii., iv., vi., viii.j 48 ; xii. 3, 70 K. ; xiii. 20, 70 «. ; xxiv. 2, 69 «■ ; xxiv. 29 f., 180 «, Judges, Book of, 7 n. Judg. V. 15^18, 153, 154; V. 3i«, 151 ; vi.-ix., 77 n. ; vi. ir, 151 ; ix., 77 7z.; xvii. 5, 183 «. ; xix.-xxi., 77 «. ; xviii., 77 «. ; xviii. 14, 183 n. Ruth, 7 K. Samuel, Books of, 7 «., 44 324 INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES 1 Sam. XXV. 29, 183 «. ; xxvi. 19, 128 «. ; xxviii. 3, 9, 185 «. ; xxviii. 7 ff., 181 ft.; xxviii. 7, 185 K. ; xxviii. 13, 16, 184 «. 2 Sam. V. 23, 129 «. ; viii. 3, 69 «. ; X. 16, 69 n.\ xii. 23, 183 «. Kings, Books of, 7 «., 43. [ Kings ii. 2-9, 80; iv. 21, 24, 69 n.\ xvii.-xix., 81; xvii. 17, 182 n. ; xviii. 27, 84 n. ; xix., 70 re., 83 11 ; xxi., 81 ; xxii., 135; xxiii. 29; xxiv. 7, 69 n. 2 Kings i. ii., 82; ii. 11, 181 n. ; iv. 32 ff., 182 n. ; xiii. 14, 84 n. Chronicles, Books of, 7 «., 55. 2 Chron. xxiv. 21, 10 «. Ezra, Book of, 7 «., 10. Nehemiah, Book of, 7 «., 10. Esther, 7 «., 10. Job, Book of» 7 «., 133, ch. viii. Job iii. 17-19, 196; xvii. 12-16, 196; xix. 23, 193; xix. 25 ff., 189 ; xix. 25-27, 207. Psalms, Book of, 7 «,, 86 £E. Ps. vi. 5, 188 n.\ xvi. 8-11, 205; xviii. 29, 33, 34, 35, 155; xix. Ill; XXX. 9, 188 ; xxxix, 12, 188; xxxix. 12, 13, 200; Ii., 88 f. ; Ii. 4, 15 n. \ Ixxiii., 187; Ixxiii., 205 f. ; Ixxxviii. 11, 188 ; xc, 189, 200 ff., 214 ; xciv., 5 ff., Ill ; cxv. 17, 188. Proverbs, Book of, 7 n. ; Lect. VIII. Prov. iii. ii, 12, 294 «. ; viii., 133- Ecclesiastes, Book of, 7 «., 10; Lect. VIII. Canticles, 7 «., 10. Isaiah, 7 k. ; i. 18, 162 «. ; v. i ff., 162 «., 266; vii. 276; vii. 14, 160 «. ; vii. 20, 69 n. ; ix. 7, 162 n. ; xi. 1-5, 160 n,, 161 «. ; vi. I ff., 162 n. 'y viii. 19, 20, 185 n.y 270 ; ix. 6 f., 160 «., 161 n. ; xiv. 32, 162 «. ; xix, 112 ; xxiii. 112 ; xxiv.-xxvii. 186 «. ; XXV. 8, 18 n. ; xxviii. 278; xxviii. 287; xxviii. 6, 23- 29, 112 ; xxix. 4, 185 n.\ xxxiii. 21, 22, 174 n. ; xxxvi., 162 n. \ xxxvii., 162 n. ; xxxviiL 18, 200 ; xl.-xlviii., 53 f. ; xl.-lv.^ 294 H. ; xl.-lxvi., 175 n.\ xl. 25 ff., Ill ; xlu. 13-17, 175 «. ; xl. 13, 15 «. ; xlii. 6, 268 ; xlii. ig, 169 n. ; Ixiii. 1-7, 175 //. ; xlv. 9, 10, 15 K. ; Iii. 13, 169 «.; Iv. II, 277; Ivii. 15, 203; Iviii. 272; Ixiii. 16, 89 n. Jeremiah, 7 «. ; i. 5, 166 «. ; ii., 266 ; ii. 18, 69 n. ; vii. 22, 164 «. ; viii. 8, 284 /*. ; ix. 2, 166 n. ; ix. 22, 284 «. ; xii. 1-3, 167 ; xiii. 4-7, 69 n. ; xv. 18, 167 ; xviii. 18, 284 n. ; xx. 7, 167; xxii. 20 (R. v.), 69 «. ; xxxiii. 16, 174 n. ; xxxvii. 13 ff., 166 «. ; xxxviii. 2, 164 k. ; xl. 4 ff., 166 «.; xlv. 164 ?z. ; xlvi. 2, 6, 10, 69 «. ; Ii. 6'^^ 69 «. Lamentations, 7 «., 10; v. 7, 168. Ezekiel, 7 n. ; iii. 18 ff., 89 «. ; xiv. 14, 286 «., 293 «.; xxi. 21, 183 K. ; xxxvii. 186 «. ; xxxix. II, 69 «. Daniel, 7 «. , 10 ; xii. 2, 3, 189. Hosea, Book of, 18; i.-iii. 158; ii. 8, 14 ff., 266; ii. 15 and xi. I, 98 K.; iii. 4, 183 «. ; iv. 6, 159 «.; V. 15-vi. 6, 158 «.; vi., 269; vi. I f., 186 «. ; vi. 6, INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES 325 159 «• ; vu. I, 14, 158 «. ; XI. I, 160 «., 266; xi. 3-4, 159 «. ; xi. 7 &., 158 K. ; xii. 3-5, 98 «., 266; xii. 6, 158 «. ; xii. 12, 13, 98«.; xiii. 4, 159 «. ; xiii. 7, 158 K. ; xiii. 14, 186 K. ; xiv. 158 «. Amos ii. 9, 98 «. ; ii. 9-1 1, 266; iii. 7, 276; iv. 21, 266; V. 3, 277 ; V. 22-24, 270; viii. 5, 272 ; ix. 7, 98 «., 267. Jonah, Book of, 86, 89. Micah vii., 69 «. Haggai, 173. Zechariah iii. 173 ; viii. 4, 186 n.^ X. 2, 183 «. Malachi iii. 20, 70 n. Matthew i. 22, 23, 160 «. ; ii. 15, 160 «.; iv. 4, 7, 163 «. ; V. 17, 18, I2«. ; V. 21 ff., 13 «. ; V. 31 £f„ 13 «.; V. 38, 43, 13 «. ; vii. 13, I2«. ; xi. 12 ff., i3«. ; viii. 1-4, 13 «., 14 k. ; xi. 12 ff., 13 «. ; xii. 1-2, 14 «. ; xvi. 13, 163 «. ; xvii. 24-27, 13 «. ; xxii. 32, 183 n. ; xxii. 40^ 12 «. ; xxiii. 35, 10 «. ; xxiv. 27, I3«.; xxvii. 9, 241. Mark vii. 19, 14 n.; xii. 27, 183 «. Luke iv. 48, 163 «. ; x. 7, 14 «. ; xi. 37, 14 «. ; xiii. 2, 294 «., 10-17, 14 «. ; xiv. x-6, 14 K.; xvi. 16, 13 «. ; XX. 38, 183 «. ; xxiv. 44, 10 «. John iv. 48, 275 ; v. 1-17, 14 «. ; vii. 294 K. ; viii. 33 ff., 89 «. Acts, Book of, 17 ; viii. 16, 241. Romans iii. 2, 15 «. ; iii. 4, 15 «. j iv. 3. 17* IS«-; ix-4, 15. I7» 20, 15 «., ix.-xi., 15 «. ; xi. 34, 15 H.; XV. 4, 15 «. 1 Cor. i. 22, 274 ; ii. 9, 17 «. ; ii. 9, i8 n. ; ii. 16, 15 «. ; ix. 8, 241; ix. 9, 18 7j. ; X. II, i6«. ; xii. 9, 241 ; xiv. 6, 241 ; xv. 54, 55' 18 «. 2 Cor. iii. 13 ff., 19 «. Gal. iv. 22 ff., 19 «. Hebrews, Epistle to, 6 «., 15, 173 ; xi. 37, 17 «. James, 6. 2 Peter, 6 n. 2 John, 6 «. 3 John, 6 «. Jude, 6 ;/. ; ix. 14, 17 «. By GEORGE ADAM SMITH, D.D., LL.D. The Historical Geography of the Holy Land Seventh Edition. With Scripture Index and Six Colored Maps, specially prepared. 8vo, cloth, 730 pages, $4.50 . . . No one work has ever before embodied all this variety of material to illustrate the whole subject. His geographical statements are pen-pictures. We are made to see the scene. No important problem is untouched. With- out question it will take its place at once as a standard work, indispensable to the thoroughgoing student of the Bible. — Sunday-School Times, . . . An exhaustive collection of material lay outside the plan of the author. His intention is rather to show how the history of the land is conditioned by its physical structure. It is thus the idea of Karl Ritter which rules the treat- ment and presentation. Very comprehensive sections are concerned, not with the history, but with the nature oi the land. . . . The author pays special attention to the military operations. One could sometimes imagine that an officer is writing, who, above all, regards the land from the point of view of the military strategist. In this connection especially the history of Israel in its chief crises in Old Testament times receives striking illumination. Large pas- sages are frequentlv quoted from the Old Testament in order to explain them by the exhibition of their geographical background. In addition the author lias a special gift of vivid reijresentation. He makes the history transact itself before the eye of the reader in dramatic form. One sees, everywhere, that the landscapes which he describes stand before his own eyes. Thus the book is an extremely valuable means of aid to the understanding of the history, espe- cially of the Old Testament. — Prof. SchUrbr, of Kiel, in the TfuoL Litera' tur-Zeit-ung. The book is too rich to summarize. . . . The language is particularly well chosen. Few pages are without some telling phrase happily constructed to attract attention and hold the memory, and we often feel that the wealth of imagery would be excessive for prose were it not that it is cho<;en with such appropriateness and scientific truth. . . . To the reader much of the pleasure of perusing the volume comes from its luxurious typography, and the exquisite series of orographical maps prepared by Mr. Bartholomew from the work of the Survey. These maps alone are more suggestive and enlightening than many treatises, and they are destined, we trust, to enliven many a sermon, and turn the monotony of the records of Israelitish wars into a thriUing romance. — Speaker. A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON 3 and 5 W. tSth Street, New York By GEORGE ADAM SMITH, P.P., LL,D. The Book of Isaiah In Two Volumes. Crown 8vo, cloth, $1.50 each. Volume I. Chapters I.— XXXIX. Volume II. Chapters XL. — LXVI. This is a noble volume of a noble series. Isaiah will ever be the cream of the Old Testament evangelistic prophecy, and as the ages go on will supply seed-thought of the Holy Ghost which grow into flowers and fruits, vines and trees, of divine truth for the refreshment and nourishment of the intellect, heart, character, and life. Nov) can. any pastor or instructor of the public, young or old, afford to be ivithout such aids ? — Baltimore Methodist. Prof. George Adam Smith has such a mastery of the scholarship of his subject that it would be a sheer impertinence for most scholars, even though tolerable Hebraists, to criticise his translations ; and cenainly it is not the intention of the present reviewer to attempt anything of the kind, to do which he is absolutely incompetent. All we desire is to let English readers know how very lucid, impressive — and, indeed, how vivid — a study of Isaiah is within their reach ; the fault of the book, if it has a fault, being rather that it iinds too many points of connection between Isaiah and our modem world, than that it finds too few. In other words, do one can say that the book is not full of life. — spectator. It would be difEcult to say how highly we appreciate the work, or how useful we believe it will be. — Church Bells. He writes with great rhetorical power, and brings out into vivid reality the historical position of his author. — Saturday Review. Mr. Smith gives us models of expositions; expositions for cultivated con- gregations, no doubt, but still expositions which may have been largely preached in church. They are full of matter, and show careful scholarship throughout. We can think of no commentary on Isaiah from which the preacher will obtain scholarly and trustworthy suggestions for bis sermons so rapidly and so pleasantly as from this. — Record. The Book of the Twdve Pfophets COMMONLY CALLED THE MINOR In Two Volumes. Crown 8vo, cloth, $1.50 each. Vol. I. — Amos, Rosea and Micah. Seventh Edition. Vol. II. — Zephaniah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Obadiah, Haggai, Zechariah I. — VIII., "Malachi," Joel, "Zechariah''IX.— XIV., AND Jonah. Fourth Edition. In Dr. Smith's volumes we have much more than a popular exposition of the minor Prophets. We have that which will satisfy the scholar and the stu- dent quite as much as the person who reads for pleasure and for edification. ... If the minor Prophets do not become popular reading it is not because anything more can be done to make them attractive. Dr. Smith's volumes present this part of Scripture in what is at once the most attractive and the most pro6table form. — Dr. Marcus Dods, in the British Weekly. Few interpreters of the Old Testament to-day rank higher than George Adam Smith. He is at home in criticism, in geographical and archaeological cjuestions, and in philology. . . . Hardly any commentator of the present day is more successful than he in putting the student at once into the heart of an Old Testament problem. — 6". S. Times. The above four volumes are contained in "The Eoepositor'a Bible,*' and, are subject to special sub- scription rates in connection ivith tluit series* Descriptive circular on application* A. C ARMSTRONG & SON 3 and 5 "W. J8th Street, New York