THE | WITNESS | OF ISRAEL cage ee tae | WILFRID J. | MOULTON, M.A.) SND NM ETT TLL OED ATR ATI NTN K “a BY 7 The 39th Fernley Lecture THE WITNESS OF ISRAEL BY WILFRID J. MOULTON, M.A. TUTOR IN OLD TESTAMENT LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE, HEADINGLEY COLLEGE, LEEDS NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS CINCINNATI; JENNINGS & GRAHAM PREFATORY NOTE THE Lecture as delivered was made up of extracts from various parts of the book. For valuable help in the reading of the proof- sheets I am greatly indebted to my friends the Rev. J. Hope Moulton, D.D., of Didsbury, and the Rev. J. Anderson Dawson, of Newton Stewart. W. J. M. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION BOOK I PREPARATION CHAPTER I. Basyionia II. Tue Patriarcnat PeRiop . Ill. Ecyrr anp THE Work or Moses ey PaLEsTINE AND ITS INFLUENOES BOOK II ANTICIPATION I. Tse Beeinnines oF PRoPpHEcY II. THe Comine oF THE ASSYRIANS . Ill. Tue Ace or Manasseu IV. Tue Ace or JEREMIAH V. PRopwets oF THE EXILE VI. PropHets oF THE RETURN VII. THe Comine oF THE GREEKS VIII. Tue Ace or THE MaccaBees PAGE 37 58 81 101 117 132 159 187 211 226 vi IT. Contents BOOK III REALIZATION INTRODUCTION Ovr Lorp’s Witness To HIMSELF Tue Apostolic WITNESS Tur Horr oF THE FUTURE. PAGE 257 . 259 276 302 INTRODUCTION John Wesley on the Bible—Modern perplexity created by (a) Archaeology, (6) Comparative religion, (c) Historical criticism —Acceptance of these results and interpretation of them two different things—Two illustrations of unsatisfactory in- terpretation: (a) by Marti; (6) by Winckler—Two ways of meeting these interpretations—Dr. Orr challenges the critical results—The better path to frankly accept them, but to seek a different interpretation of them—So the essential core of Wesley’s words may still be retained. NE of the noblest passages in all John Wesley’s writings is that in which he calls himself ‘a man of one book.’ He writes— I have thonght, I am a creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow through the air. Iam a spirit come from God, and returning to God: just hovering over the great gulf; till, a few moments hence, I am no more seen ; I drop into an unchangeable eternity! I want to know one thing—the way to heaven; how to land safe on that happy shore. God Himself has condescended to teach the way: for this very end He came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! I have it; here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri. Here, then, I am, far from the busy ways of men. [I sit viii Introduction down alone: only God is here. In His presence I open, I read His book ; for this end, to find the way to heaven.’ The Christian believer of the present day must often ask whether he can still make those words his own. Bewildered by the differing voices that reach his ears from every side, some bidding him at all cost hold fast in all its details to the faith of his childhood, others commanding him in the sacred name of truth to give up much of what he counts most precious, he misses the calm, clear note of authority that Wesley heard, and would fain be back again in the simpler ages of unquestioning trust. In relation to the Bible, there are three main sources from which the new ideas proceed which call so loudly for interpretation—Archaeology, Comparative Religion, and Historical Criticism. 1. Archaeology has forced us to rewrite the early history of civilized man. Once it was possible to read the Old Testament, and to think that the oldest records of the human race lay before us. The boast of Josephus against the Greek historians that all other writings were but of yesterday as compared with the imme- morial age of the Scriptures seemed unchallengeably true. The giant figures of the patriarchs towered aloft in lonely grandeur. In their simple nomad life men saw the first beginnings of civilization, and traced to their experiences the sacred institutions that made the 1 Preface to Sermons. Introduction ix Israel of later days. Now all is changed. Abraham stands only midway between the first civilization that we know and the coming of Christ. The code of a great lawgiver, living as far behind the time of Moses as the age of Alfred the Great is behind us, speaks of the complex laws of property and public and private duty that are the surest signs of a long-established state. Behind this king there stretches back a long line of rulers and priests pointing to periods far more remote than the historians of half a century ago ever recog- nized. Innumerable parallels to the morning stories of the Old Testament—the Creation, the Deluge —have been found on tablets of baked clay and cylinders, or on blocks of stone, that have lain hidden for millenniums. How stands it with the Bible in this new light? Some adjustment of our views has become absolutely necessary. 2. The same conclusion meets us when we turn to survey the widening field of knowledge opened out to us by Comparative Religion. From one point of view the results of this study are pure gain. It is being recognized more and more clearly that religion is a universal fact. As a recent writer puts it— Wherever the surging roar of life has been loudest, and wherever human life has been most profoundly moved in struggle and conflict, religion has been the cause.’ Whilst it is unhappily true that at present large 1 Bousset, What is Religion ? p. 6. x Introduction sections of the people are separated from any outward expression of religion, and that the indifference of the masses is one of the great problems of the Churches, it is none the less a fact that in all the higher circles of thought there is a new interest in religion, and a deeper recognition of its rights and value. So Bousset says again: ‘ There never has been, and never will be, a civilization which is progressive and vital unaccom- panied by religion.’ Of great significance is the remark of the editor of the Religio-Historical Books for the People, a series which is being sold by scores of thousands in Germany, seeking to disseminate the views of advanced liberalism in theology. He says: ‘To-day among the German people estrangement from religion is no longer received as “ progress.” Religion is again a vital problem for the people and its leaders.’ Similar conclusions can be drawn from the works of writers such as William James, who examine the phenomena of religion from the standpoint of psy- chology, and demonstrate the right of the facts of religious experience to consideration and interpretation. Such writers, for the most part, recognize in the whole history of the religious life of mankind the handiwork of God; through all imperfect expressions and crude and barbarous institutions they seek to find the strivings of the human spirit in its ceaseless upward movement towards the divine Father of all. Modern missionary enterprise is permeated with 1 Op. cit. p. 3. Introduction xi this spirit, and strives, by a sympathetic understanding of the stage to which other peoples have attained, to equip itself for the task of leading them up to higher levels. But while all this is solid gain, leaving behind for ever the arid materialism of a generation ago, it is manifest that the Christian apologist, who seeks to define the relation of his religion to the other religions of the world, has a new and complex task presented to him. Can we still draw the old distinction between the one religion of revelation and all other religions of nature? Can we be loyal to truth and yet at the same time claim that in the Bible we have a unique revelation of God, that still there is none other name to set beside that of Jesus, the Saviour of the world? It is manifest that here again we must be ready to state the grounds of our assured faith that this is still true. 3. In the third place, Christian thought has to define its attitude to the results of Historical Criticism as applied to the books of the Bible. That criticism has proved, with overwhelming force, that some of the older views as to the way in which the sacred books were written were altogether defective. It has taken away the picture of the nation of Israel starting on its career endowed by Moses with a completely developed system of laws, adequate for all the needs of the future. Instead of that it has shown that, like the laws of other peoples, the laws of Israel grew with the life of xii Introduction the nation, and were supplied to meet each successive demand as it arose. Corresponding to the three main codes of law which it discovers in the Pentateuch, it is able to point to the three periods of history during which these codes were active. It shows first the time when in every Israelitish town and village there was a sanctuary to Jehovah, when Samuel went from place to place to offer sacrifice, when Elijah indignantly repaired the ruined altar on Mount Carmel. Then it shows Josiah, in his noble zeal for the purity of the religion of Jehovah, destroying all that were left of these very sanctuaries, and concentrating all the worship at Jerusalem. Finally it shows, corresponding to the latest priestly code of laws, the stately full-grown legalism of post- exilic days. Such results do not contradict a reasonable faith. They bring home the constant presence of God in the hife of the people. Once it was thought that God gave in one man’s lifetime all the laws that were needful for the many centuries of the nation’s life. Now we can see that it was not so. Step by step He walked with them. The supply of interpreters never failed who sought to express His will in each new crisis. If that be so, criticism shows that the life of Israel was fuller of God than was ever dreamed of before. It is plain that this result is in harmony with what we know of the general growth of nations. To understand Introduction xiii all the laws of England means to know the whole history of the country. Criticism says that the same is true of Israel. But it is clear once more that the bearing of all these facts upon the Christian faith calls for the most earnest consideration. It cannot, however, be too strongly urged that while we must loyally and honestly welcome all new knowledge, from whatever source it comes to us, we are in no sense bound to all the interpretations of this knowledge which are offered to us to-day. It is some- times forgotten that the history of institutions is not the history of ideas. Lord Acton’s weighty words should be remembered— The history of institutions is often a history of decep- tion and illusion; for their virtue depends on the ideas that produce and on the spirit that preserves them, and the form may remain unaltered when the substance has passed away.! To learn the historical sequence of the institutions of Israel, and to trace the analogies between them and those of other nations, is illuminating and valuable ; but we must not assume that when that has been done, the work of explaining the origin of its ideas is over. We may take two illustrations of what appear to be, in this way, defective interpretations of the ascer- tained facts, one from the side of historical criticism, and one from archaeology. (a) From the side of criticism Dr. Karl Marti, 1 History of Freedom, p. 2. ts ae a es xiv Introduction after successfully editing a series of commentaries on the complete Old Testament, containing some of. the finest exegetical work of the last decade, proposes in his book, Zhe Religion of the Old Testament; its Place among the Religions of the Nearer East, to summarize the conclusions reached by himself and his fellow workers as to the incomparable value of the religion of Israel. This author discards altogether the traditional view as to the residence of the early ancestors of the people in Mesopotamia, and begins with a picture of a number of Bedouin tribes living in North Arabia and in the regions south of Palestine. The religion of these peoples may be best described as polydaemonism, i.e. the belief in a multitude of spiritual powers manifesting themselves in stones and trees, in springs and animals. Mount Sinai was the central place of assembly, and the common place of worship of different Semitic tribes who sojourned in the regions round it. The God of this mountain was called Jahweh (Jehovah), and was conceived as the God of the higher sphere, as the God of the air and storms, in distinction from the divine powers of the earth more properly so-called. Moses, living amongst these peoples, received a divine revelation that this God was the God of Israel, and had chosen Israel for His own people. Accordingly he went among some of the tribes which had migrated into Egypt, as the messenger of Jehovah, and led them out again to Sinai. There and at Kadesh he welded them with their kindred Introduction XV tribes into one people, united by a faith that was social and ethical in its spirit. By his emphasis on the one God who claimed Israel’s undivided allegiance, he thus laid the foundation of the whole magnificent structure of the Old Testament religion. From this starting-point Marti proceeds to sketch in turn the peasant religion, held by the Israelites on their first settlement in Canaan, the religion of the prophets, the religion of the law, and the fulfilment in Jesus. Whilst there are many strong and beautiful sayings in this book, it seems to fall far short as an explanation of the facts which it presents, and to be seriously defective both at the beginning and the end. It appears unwarrantable to cut away so completely the traditional stories of the patriarchs. Moses appears to need a far deeper background than is given to him here. Moreover, in ignoring the great religious move- ments in Babylonia, it begins so far down the stream of history as to miss the crowning Christian thought of the great purpose of redemption running through the whole life of man upon the earth. At the close of the exposition it is freely granted that all the various features of the prophetic ideal were concentrated in Jesus, and coalesced into one single harmonious whole, so that He realized perfectly the religion which the prophets taught. But there seems to be no room left for the doctrine of the Incar- nation, for the thought that all through the ages God had been preparing for that event, and at last, in the xvi Introduction fullness of the times, poured. out Himself in His Son. Hence the significance of the constant anticipation of the prophets of a brighter future is not firmly grasped, and Jesus becomes an Exemplar, but not in the full sense of the word the Redeemer of the world. We cannot rest content with such a statement as this. (0) Turning to the side of archaeology, we find Marti’s position very severely criticized by another author of great eminence, Dr. Hugo Winckler, one of the most famous Assyriologists now living. Winckler entirely rejects the suggestion that the religion of Israel developed from a nomad stage. Steeped in the know- ledge of the ancient records of Babylonia, he maintains that the teaching and civilization which streamed out from Mesopotamia had, long before the age of Moses, covered the whole world of the East. He bids us go back into the dim past, and become students there. To him the religion of the Bible is only that of a sect cut off from the great world-embracing culture and teaching of Babylon. It is there we must seek for all the roots of the great conceptions of the future. With great insistence be claims that no one who has not submitted himself to the discipline necessary to attain _ to this knowledge of the past, and read for himself its countless records, is fit to express a judgement on these matters. Winckler’s position is even less weleome to us than Marti’s. In one direction, it is true, his investigations are of great value. He appears to have proved that Babylon cannot possibly be ignored in any Introduction XVii account of the religion of Israel before Moses. But he repudiates altogether the thought of a chosen people and of a special revelation in its history. Quite apart, therefore, from his efforts to reduce to mythological figures many personalities whose real existence seems as certain as anything in human history, we find in his exposition no basis whatever for the Christian faith as we hold it. If, then, we reject these two representative in- terpretations of the facts before us, it is possible to move in either of two directions. Dr. Orr, in his Problem of the Old Testament, and other writings, attempts to refute scholars of the school of Marti by attacking the results of the literary analysis of the Bible. He appears to hold that there is a necessary connexion between these results and the theological views of some of those who profess them. In this he is surely not justified. No man is forced to decide between rejecting altogether the teaching of Evolution, or accepting the materialistic views of certain scientific writers. Nor does the fact that a Christian teacher accepts in the main Wellhausen’s dating of the component parts of the Pentateuch, compel him to believe in that scholar’s statement of a non-miraculous 1 Winckler’s criticism of Marti’s book is contained in a pamphlet called Religionsgeschichtler und geschichtlicher Orient. His views in general are expressed in a multitude of writings of various kinds. A much more moderate statement of the same theory is found in the writings of Jeremias, whose chief work, Das Alte Testament im Lichte des Alien Orients, is referred to in the next chapter of this book, cited henceforth as ATAO. xviii Introduction Christianity. Whilst we most cordially recognize the great value of Dr. Orr’s theological writings, and owe much to their teaching, we are convinced, for reasons which are partially given in the course of this book, that in this instance his fire is misdirected. In their broad outlines the results of modern criticism have secured the allegiance of nearly all the scholars of all the Protestant Churches, and seem to be impregnable. The task of the future will be much more to interpret than disprove these results. We have, therefore, chosen in this book to take -another path. Accepting frankly and fully all that a reasonable criticism seems to demand, we desire to show that the claim of Israel to be a unique people with a unique mission can still be abundantly, and, in fact, the more clearly and rationally, justified. Be- lieving that history culminated in Jesus Christ, the Word of God, we wish to trace the formation of the people from whom He came, and to show how, through their eventful history, the hope of His coming was always being presented in many changing forms. We believe that the universal phenomena of religion afford a proof that God is everywhere, seeking to make men know and understand Him. Nature, with its signs of mysterious forces, has one message from Him; all the vague stirrings of moral thoughts and sentiments have another. Here and there great souls, in what we call heathen lands, have caught true messages from Him, and have partially understood Him. But there runs Introduction xix through human history one line, along which the clearest knowledge of God has come, and that line is the one which runs through the history of the people of Israel, and terminates in Jesus Christ. Changing the metaphor, we may say that a great river has many tributaries. They, too, rise up among the hills, and each as it enters the central stream makes it fuller and more fruitful. But we do not mistake the tributaries for the river. So it is in God’s revelation of Himself to man. The stream had its source far back in the remote past, beyond the keenest human vision. It flows, now rapid and stormy, now calm and broad, sometimes turbid, bearing with it - masses of soil from the banks between which it flows, fed here and there by smaller brooks and rivulets, pouring itself at last into the great deep. Israel’s religion is the river, the river of God bringing life wherever it goes, the only river broad and deep enough to fertilize the whole earth. Every true and high conception of duty or of God is a tributary meant to feed the great stream. But in the full sense of belonging to the central river the writings of the Bible stand alone, and have a special inspiration in which no other books in universal literature can share. If such a thesis can be maintained, we may continue to hold all that is essential in the quotation from Wesley, with which this chapter started, and own that to us, as to him, the Bible is still the Book of books. The present lecture is offered as a slight contribution to that proof. xx Introduction Believing that the meaning and interpretation of the acorn is found in the oak, of the bulb in the flower, we seek to demonstrate the value of the Scriptures by showing the actual wealth of their contents, and the goal towards which they tend. The book is divided into three sections— 1. Preparation. A survey of the world of thought from which the founders of the nation of Israel came, and an account of the settlement of the people in Palestine, with some study of the essential and differentiating features of their ancestral faith. 2. Anticipation. An exposition and discussion of the hopes for the future which filled the minds of the great teachers and prophets of Israel, as they were developed in Israel’s history. 3. Realization. An examination of the way in which these hopes have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. BOOK I PREPARATION CHAPTER I BABYLONIA Early conditions and history of Babylonia—Sumerian and Semitic populations—Babylon becomes centre of a kingdom—Place of religion in public life—Spread of Babylonian culture—Impor- tance of this fact—Religion considered under three aspects: (a) Astral view of the universe. World-Ages. Tendencies towards monotheism. (6) Exaltation of deities of important towns. [Illustration from Marduk of Babylon. Monotheistic tendencies here. (c) Expressions of personal religion. The Penitential Psalms. Contrast with Bible teaching. In all, absence of the conception of God as a Person, A system of thought in travail. Need of a great creative personality, ETWEEN the Tigris and the Euphrates lies B the land from which come our earliest written records of the human race. To-day for the most part it is barren and marshy. The two rivers, flowing between avenues of ruins, sweep away dykes, once reared to curb the power of these mighty streams, tear down their banks, once lined with palaces, riot at their will through channels made by their own irresistible waters, and bring with them the deposits of the mountain sides to enrich the soil of their deltas. But in the ancient times a splendid system of canals 1 Goodspeed, History of the Babylonians and Assyrians, p. 12. 4 The Witness of Israel carrying the waters to every field made the rich alluvial soil the most fertile in the world, Herodotus, after saying that this territory is of all that we know the best by far for producing grain, and speaking of the great size of the blades of wheat and barley, refrains from giving the measurements of the millet and sesame there grown, because he knows his readers will not believe him. It is easy, then, to understand why, millenniums before the age of Herodotus, the nomad tribes, pasturing their flocks in Arabia on the south, or on the steppes of Russia beyond the Caucasus on the west, or on the uplands of Asia on the north and east, cast longing eyes on this land of promise, and, driven on by hunger, pressed in to fight for its possession. The origin and history of the first inhabitants of this region lie far back in the distant past, too remote for us ever to hope to recover it. The ambition of modern discovery, despite all its marvels, must have its limits somewhere. But we are now able to speak definitely of a highly civilized - people settled there at __ least_as_early as 4000- -5000 B.c. This people, known _ as the Sumerian, were the inventors of that wonderful system of wedge-shaped or or cuneiform writing in which all the Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions were composed. Their own language was preserved after the race had passed away, being used by the priests of later times for their religious texts. It enjoyed (says Winckler) the dignity accorded to Latin as the tongue of the learned and of the Church in Babylonia 5 the Middle Ages and in more modern times, and main- tained itself in this réle for a period more than twice as long.? This ‘ oldest language of civilization’ remains as the chief witness of the stage of culture to which these predecessors of the Babylonians must have attained. The chief records from this region that we possess, whilst written in the wedge symbols, belong, however, to the Semitic group of languages. The term ‘Semite” springs from the division of the peoples given in the tenth chapter of Genesis, and signifies properly descent “from Shem. The distribution of peoples there made seems to be given with reference to political history and civilization rather than language. Certainly the Canaanites, judged by their speech, were closely allied to the Hebrews, and widely separated from the descen- dants of Ham. But it is enough for our purpose to understand by the Semites the chief inhabitants of South-west Asia, who came, in ‘all probability, from a ~— At the earliest period to which our present records reach, this country appears to have been divided into a large number of city-states. The names of some of these cities—Eridu, Schirpurla, Nippur, Ur, Larsa, in the south; Kisch, Agade, Sippar, and Babylon, in the north—have been preserved. Which of these was the oldest cannot yet be determined. Their history, so far as we can trace it, consisted in a series 1 History of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 12. 6 The Witness of Israel of struggles for supremacy, the rulers of one city exercising from time to time a suzerainty over others. Some of the names of these ancient kings have sur- vived. In the famous city of Ur, so familiar to Bible students as the home of Abraham, it is possible to trace a succession of four different dynasties, extending from about 3900 to 2600 B.c. At last, about 2000 B.c.,! the rulers of Babylon succeeded in establishing their supremacy, and in uniting North and South under one rule. The sixth king of this dynasty was the well- known Hammurabi, the lawgiver whose recently dis- covered code sheds so much light upon the social conditions of his period. Long before his time the culture of the Euphrates valley had been developed. Mighty temples, boasting already an antiquity of many centuries, stood proudly in the cities; giant blocks of stone, quarried in many lands, had been shaped into statues by artists who would take high rank even to-day ; a carefully organized priesthood directed the ritual and sought to control the life of the people; the system of writing in use had already reached its last stage of development. Babylon became the heir of a great past, without itself contributing much that was new. But as Jastrow, from whom the preceding sentences have been largely drawn, says— With him (Hammurabi) begins a new epoch of history. 1 Mr. L, W. King in his Chronicles Concerning Early Babylonian Kings seems to prove decisively that Hammurabi’s date has been put too early by most writers, and that he was reigning about 1950 B.c, Babylonia 7 Henceforth the supremacy of Babylon remains undisputed, and the other old centres, after the loss of their political power, retained a certain importance only through their sanctuaries, to which pilgrimages were made as before, and through their commercial activity, which, with the union of the different Babylonian districts, now became more vigorous.’ All the records of these two thousand years are permeated with religion. Religion was the mainspring of intellectual activity ; literature centred round the temples; priests were the leaders in all departments of thought. It is therefore of supreme interest for us to inquire how far these earliest teachers received ‘authentic tidings of invisible things,’ how far there was in the world even then a praeparatio evangelica. In the first place, it must be observed that the influence of the systems of thought that arose in the Euphrates valley extended far beyond Western Asia. One of the most enthusiastic students of these records claims that behind them there lies a conception of the universe, and a teaching corresponding thereto, which spread out over Egypt and Arabia, over Persia, China, India, Mexico, over Greece and Spain, and les at the roots of the myths and legends which meet us in those lands. This teaching inquires after the origin of things, and comprises the coming into being of the universe from the first beginnings out of a chaos into the present world, and its further development in future ages up to the renewing 1 Jastrow, Die Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens, p. 37. 8 The Witness of Israel of the world. It is essentially a religious doctrine, and that in the sense of a latent monotheism. Its characteristic is the expectation of adeliverer going forth from the Godhead, who in the course of ages overcomes the powers of darkness.’ So sweeping a conclusion cannot be said to be warranted by the evidence before us. It is, at least, arguable that the similarities in the myths of such widely separated peoples can be accounted for more naturally by explaining them as the outward expression of elemental desires and needs common to man every- where.? But the striking fact that, as late as the 15th century B.c., the kings of Egypt corresponded with their vassals in Canaan in Babylonian script and language, shows how widespread the influence of the Euphrates lands was. To-day, Western Asia is governed by the conceptions of Islam; its intellectual and religious life lies altogether under the rule of the " Ptophet. It is not too o much to say that in the age of Abraham, and long afterwards, ‘Babylon was the world’s spiritual centre ntre, just as Rome was in the eyes of a monk of the Middle Ages. Consequences of the utmost importance result from such a statement. The often-painted picture of the ancestors of the Hebrew people as rough Bedouins of the desert, with crude animistic, religious ideas, from which gradually the purer teaching of the prophets emerged, begins to fade, It belongs to the days before the voice of the ancient 1 Jeremias, ATAO, p. 5. ? Cf. Oesterley, Evolution of the Messianic Idea, Babylonia 9 Kast had been understood, and is out of date. Before it can be repainted, the deeper faith which underlies the phenomena now brought to light, just as the Arab’s faith in one God lies underneath his supersti- tious terror of demons and jinns, must be considered and understood. As we turn and consider the religious texts that archaeology has now translated for us, the first impres- sion is one of hopeless confusion. Gods of the sky, gods of the earth, gods of the deep, families of gods— fathers and mothers, sons and daughters—local gods of cities and hills, gods directing and involved in all the processes of nature, confront and bewilder us. The whole effect is that of a crass polytheism, full of degrading superstition. But as we look closer, there are two directions at least along which we can move with less confusion. The first is that of the considera- tion of the relation of the heavens and heavenly bodies to human life. The second is found in the tendency to raise to supreme rank the chief gods of a ruling city or state. (Qs. a+ (a) It is not easy for a modern town-dweller to © cA Buy realize how much the aspect of the skies meant to men © .7/) of former days. For us the gas-lamps have put out My the stars, and the average cultivated man of to-day is _ tnd all but entirely oblivious of the commonest appearances \— of the heavens. But it was far different with those-< Le who lived millenniums ago on the great plains of | /~ Babylonia. They had marked the fact that the sky : Vi Se a 10 The Witness of Israel is crossed by a broad belt, called the zodiac, outside of which sun and moon and planets never stray. They had noted that each month as the moon rises the same girdle'of stars surrounds us in the great vault of heaven. Upon the zodiac they had marked the twelve constel- lations through which the sun passes month by month, the year beginning with the spring equinox. A ; knowledge of these familiar signs of the zodiac can be traced back far behind the age of Hammurabi. One other fact had been observed which is of great significance. Owing to the gradual change that is going on in the direction of the earth’s axis, the sun does not rise from year to year in exactly the same place in the heavens. Seeing that this slow movement is completed in about 26,000 years, at the end of which the sun is in the same position again, it is plain that at the beginning of each twelfth part of this period —i.e, roughly speaking, every 2,200 years—the sun stands at the spring equinox in a fresh sign of the zodiac. Then began, according to the old astronomers, a new world-age. One such world-age began in the 8th century B.c., and was marked in Babylon by the framers of the calendar, who began their dates afresh from that period. That was the age of the Ram, lasting till the 15th century of our era. According to this measure of time, we live to-day in the era of Pisces, the Fish. But in Babylonia our most ancient records take us back to the age of the Twins, whilst somewhere about 3700 B.c. the age of the Bull began. Babylonia 11 It has been pointed out that that age began with the dynasty of Sargon I, the great conqueror who boasts that he led his armies westwards to the Mediterranean, and whose son styled himself ‘King of the Four (world-) Regions.’ 4 Let us now look at the universe as conceived by these ancient thinkers. They looked far above them into the northern heavens, towards the pole star, and counted that part of the sky the first division. The zodiac formed the central division, and the southern depths the third. This threefold division was reflected on the earth itself by the air and sky, the solid earth, and the watery deeps. At the head of their pantheon the priests placed the famous triad of gods, Anu, Bel, and Ea—Anu, god of the northern sky; Ea, of the depths; Bel, of the zodiac. This same threefold division was repeated in the zodiac itself, where Moon, Sun, and Venus, the evening star, were seats of the deities Sin, Samas, Istar, Into the innumerable com- plexities into which the conceptions of these great gods and their relationships pass, it is not possible for us to enter. It must suffice for us to note that in the movements of these heavenly bodies men sought to trace out the divine will and the plan of human destiny. What concerns us most is the question how far the thought of one supreme God rose above this 1 On this see the article by Jeremias on ‘Ages of the World,’ in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. i. Recent dis- cussions as to the age of these calculations do not appear to have shaken this writer’s position. The Witness of Israel confusion. The answer is not doubtful. Anu, repre- . sented as ‘the lofty God,’ designated as early as_ Hammurabi’s days simply