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THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 IN THE ! 
 
 JEWISH CHURCH 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 IN THE 
 
 JEWISH CHURCH 
 
 TWELVE LECTURES ON BIBLICAL CRITICISM 
 
 By W. EOBERTSON SMITH, M.A, 
 
 SIETE vol ACCORTI, 
 CHE QUEL DI RETRO MTTOVE CIO CHE TOCCA " 
 cost NON SOGLION FARE I Pife DE' MORTL 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 1881 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The Twelve Lectures now laid before the public had 
 their origin in a temporary victory of the opponents of 
 progressive Biblical Science in Scotland, which has 
 withdrawn me during the past winter from the ordi- 
 nary work of my Chair in Aberdeen, and in the invita- 
 tion of some six hundred prominent Free Churchmen in 
 Edinburgh and Glasgow, who deemed it better that the 
 Scottish public should have an opportunity of under- 
 standing the position of the newer Criticism than that 
 they should condemn it unheard. The Lectures were 
 delivered in Edinburgh and Glasgow during the first 
 three months of the present year, and the average 
 attendance on the course in the two cities was not less 
 than eighteen hundred. The sustained interest with 
 which this large audience followed the attempt to lay 
 before them an outline of the problems, the methods, 
 and the results of Old Testament Criticism is suffi- 
 cient proof that they did not find modern Biblical 
 Science the repulsive and unreal thing which it is often 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 represented to be. The Lectures are printed mainly 
 from shorthand reports taken in Glasgow, and as nearly 
 as possible in the form in which they were delivered in 
 Edinburgh after final revision. I have striven to make 
 my exposition essentially popular in the legitimate sense 
 of that word — that is, to present a continuous argument, 
 resting at every point on valid historical evidence, and 
 so framed that it can be followed by the ordinary English 
 reader who is familiar with the Bible and accustomed 
 to consecutive thought. There are some critical pro- 
 cesses which cannot be explained without constant use 
 of the Hebrew Text ; but I have tried to make all the 
 main parts of the discussion independent of reference 
 to these. Of course it is not possible for any sound 
 argument to adopt in every case the renderings of the 
 English Version. In important passages I have indi- 
 cated the necessary corrections ; but in general it is to 
 be understood that, while I cite all texts by the English 
 chapters and verses, I argue from the Hebrew. 
 
 The appended notes are designed to complete and 
 illustrate the details of the argument, and to make the 
 book more useful to students by supplying hints for 
 further study. I have made no attempt to give com- 
 plete references to the modem literature of the subject. 
 Indeed, as the Lectures have been written, delivered, 
 and printed in three months, it was impossible for me 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 to reconsult all the books which have influenced my 
 views, and acknowledge my indebtedness to each. My 
 effort has been to. give a lucid view of the critical argu- 
 ment as it stands in my own mind, and to support it in 
 every part from the text of Scripture or other original 
 sources. It is of the first importance that the reader 
 should realise that Biblical Criticism is not the inven- 
 tion of modern scholars, but the legitimate interpretation 
 of historical facts. I have tried therefore to keep the 
 facts always in the foreground, and, where they are 
 derived from ancient books not in every one's hands, I 
 have either given full citations, or made careful reference 
 to the original authorities. 
 
 The great value of historical criticism is that it 
 makes the Old Testament more real to us. Christianity 
 can never separate itself from its historical basis on the 
 Religion of Israel ; the revelation of God in Christ can- 
 not be divorced from the earlier revelation on which our 
 Lord built. In all true religion the new rests upon the 
 old. No one, then, to whom Christianity is a reality can 
 safely acquiesce in an unreal conception of the Old 
 Testament history; and in an age when aU are in- 
 terested in historical research, no apologetic can prevent 
 thoughtful minds from drifting away from faith if the 
 historical study of the Old Covenant is condemned by 
 the Church and left in the hands of unbelievers. 
 
viu PREFACE. 
 
 The current treatment of the Old Testament has 
 produced a widespread uneasy suspicion that this his- 
 tory cannot bear to be tested like other ancient histories. 
 The old method of explaining difficulties and recon- 
 ciling apparent contradictions would no longer be tole- 
 rated in dealing with other books, and men ask them- 
 selves whether our Christian faith, the most precious 
 gift of truth which God has given us, can safely base its 
 defence on arguments that bring no sense of reality to 
 the mind. Yet the history of Israel, when rightly 
 studied, is the most real and vivid of all histories, and 
 the proofs of God's working among His people of old 
 may still be made, what they were in time past, one of 
 the strongest evidences of Christianity. It was no blind 
 chance, and no mere human wisdom, that shaped the 
 growth of Israel's religion, and finally stamped it in these 
 forms, now so strange to us, which preserved the living 
 seed of the Divine word till the fulness of the time 
 when He was manifested wiio transformed the religion 
 of Israel into a religion for all mankind. 
 
 The increasing influence of critical views among 
 earnest students of the Bible is not to be explained on 
 tlie Manichciean theory that new views commend them- 
 selves to mankind in proportion as they ignore God. 
 The living God is as present in the critical construction 
 of the history as in that to which tradition has wedded 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 us. Criticism is a reality and a force because it unfolds 
 a living and consistent picture of the Old Dispensation ; 
 it is itself a living thing, which plants its foot upon 
 realities, and, like Dante among the shades, proves its 
 life by moving what it touches. 
 
 ** CosJ non soglion fare i pife de' morLi." 
 
 W. ROBEKTSON SMITH. 
 
 Aberdeen, A'pril 4, 1881. 
 

 o 
 
 JOL 
 
 1881 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Criticism and the Theology of the Reformation , 1 
 
 LECTURE IL 
 
 Christian Interpretation and Jewish Tradition . 30 
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 The Scribes . . . . . ,55 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 The Septuagint . . . . .84 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 The Septuagint (continued) — The Canon 
 
 LECTURE VL 
 
 The History of the Canon 
 
 LECTURE VIL 
 The Psalter . . . . . . 176 
 
xu 
 
 CONTENTS, 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 PAOE 
 
 The Traditional Theory of the Old Testament 
 
 History ...... 208 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 
 The Law and the History of Israel before the 
 
 Exile . . . . . .241 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 
 The Prophets . . . . .268 
 
 LECTURE XL 
 
 The Pentateuch : The First Legislation . . 305 
 
 LECTURE XIL 
 
 The Deuteronomic Code and Levitical Law . . 343 
 
 Notes and Illustrations .... 339 
 
 Index ....... 443 
 
LECTUEE I. 
 
 CRITICISM AND THE THEOLOGY OF THE REFORMATION. 
 
 I HAVE undertaken to deliver a course of lectures to 
 you, not with a polemical purpose, but in answer to 
 a request for information. I am not here to defend 
 my private opinion on any disputed question, but to 
 expound as well as I can the elements of a well- 
 established department of historical study. Biblical 
 criticism is a branch of historical science ; and I hope 
 to convince you as we proceed that it is a legitimate 
 and necessary science, which must continue to draw the 
 attention of all who go deep into the Bible and the reli- 
 gion of the Bible, if there is any Biblical science at all. 
 It would be affectation to ignore the fact that in 
 saying so much I at once enter upon ground of con- 
 troversy. The science of Biblical Criticism has not 
 escaped the fate of every science which takes topics 
 of general human interest for its subject matter, 
 rid advances theories destructive of current views 
 upon things with which every one is familiar and 
 in which every one has some practical concern. 
 You remember the early struggles of the astronomy 
 
2 SOURCES OF HOSTILITY lect. i. 
 
 of Galileo and Newton. The evidence for the dis- 
 coveries of these great philosophers was the clearest 
 that has ever been offered in support of a new truth. 
 But the resistance which they elicited had nothing 
 to do with the clearness of the evidence. It gained 
 its strength from the fact that the astronomers dealt 
 with very familiar phenomena, with such things as 
 the rise of the sun and the immovableness of the 
 earth, which form part of every man's daily experience. 
 About these phenomena they gave a theory inconsistent 
 with all current ideas, with the idioms of human speech, 
 and even, as it seemed, with the daily observations of 
 sound common sense. They seemed to destroy the 
 very conditions of human life. If the sun did not rise 
 morning by morning, if the earth, instead of being 
 stable under men's feet, was never in the same place 
 when you opened your eyes in the morning as you had 
 left it in when you went to bed, a gigantic element of 
 uncertainty appeared to be introduced into the most 
 valuable and practical convictions of mankind. Views 
 so radical seemed to be necessarily irreligious. Not 
 only the Church of Kome, but respected Puritans like 
 John Owen {Works, vol. xix. p. 310), were convinced 
 that the Newtonian philosophy was " built on fallible 
 phenomena and advanced by many arbitrary presump- 
 tions against evident testimonies of Scripture." 
 
 We are not so much wiser than our forefathers, 
 and our theologians are not so much superior to John 
 Owen, that we should think it impossible for suspicions 
 
LECT. I. TO BIBLICAL CRITICISM 3 
 
 equally unfounded to attack a new science in our days, 
 especially a science like that of Biblical Criticism, which 
 conies far closer than anything in astronomy to the 
 familiar and cherished opinions of lovers of the Bible. 
 It would argue indifference rather than enlightenment, 
 if the great mass of Bible-readers, to whom scientific 
 points of view for the study of Scripture are wholly 
 unfamiliar, could adjust themselves to a new line of 
 investigation into the history of the Bible without 
 passing through a crisis of anxious thought not far 
 removed from distress and alarm. 
 
 The deepest practical convictions of our lives are 
 seldom formulated with precision. They have been 
 learned by experience rather than by logic, and we are 
 content if we can give them an expression accurate 
 enough to meet our daily wants. And so when we 
 have to bring these convictions to bear on some new 
 question, the formula which has suf&ced us hitherto is 
 very apt to lead us astray. For in rough practical 
 formulas, in the working rules, if I may so call them, 
 of our daily spiritual life, the essential is constantly 
 mixed up with what is unimportant or even incorrect. 
 We store our treasures of conviction in earthen vessels, 
 and the broken pipkin of an obsolete formula often 
 acquires for us the value of the treasure w^hich it 
 enshrines. To return for a moment to the astronomical 
 analogy : the fundamental physical truth of the alter- 
 nation of night and day was embodied in the formula 
 of the sun's daily journey round our globe. Accurate 
 
THE WORD OF GOD lect. i. 
 
 enough for the ordinary affairs of human toil, this for- 
 mula was thoroughly false for the purposes of astronomy. 
 This did not prevent outraged common sense from rising 
 to condemn the astronomers for challenging a truth 
 which had its evidence in every man's experience. 
 And yet as a matter of fact the evidence of experi- 
 ence, w^hen taken as a whole, bore out the Newtonian 
 astronomy, and did not agree with the old view. 
 
 The persuasion that in the Bible God Himself speaks 
 words of love and life to the soul is the essence of the 
 Christian's conviction as to the truth and authority of 
 Scripture. This persuasion is not, and cannot be, de- 
 rived from external testimony. No tradition as to the 
 worth of Scripture, no assurance transmitted from our 
 fathers, or from any who in past time heard God's 
 revealing voice, can make the revelation to which they 
 bear witness a personal voice of God to us. The ele- 
 ment of personal conviction, which lifts faith out of the 
 region of probable evidence into the sphere of divine 
 certainty, is given only by the Holy Spirit still bearing 
 witness in and mth the Word. But then the Word to 
 which this spiritual testimony applies is a written word, 
 which has a history, which has to be read and explained 
 like other ancient books. How we read and explain the 
 Bible depends in great measure on human teaching. 
 The Bible itself is God's book, but the Bible as read and 
 understood by any man or school of men is God's book 
 ])lus a very large element of human interpretation. In 
 our ordinary Bible-reading these two things, the divine 
 
LECT. I. AND HUMAN INTERPRETATIONS. 5 
 
 book and the human understanding of the book, are not 
 kept sharply apart. We are aware that some passages 
 are obscure, and we do not claim divine certitude for 
 the interpretation that we put on them. But we are 
 apt to forget that the influence of human and traditional 
 interpretation goes much further than a few obscure pass- 
 ages. Our general views of the Bible history, our way 
 of looking, not merely at passages, but at whole books, 
 are coloured by things which we have learned from 
 men, and which have no claim to rest on the self- 
 evidencing divine Word. This we forget, and so, tak- 
 ing God's witness to His Word to be a witness to our 
 whole conception of the Word, we claim a divine cer- 
 tainty for opinions which lie within the sphere of 
 ordinary reason, and which can be proved or disproved 
 by the ordinary laws of historical evidence. We 
 assume that, because our reading of Scripture is suffi- 
 ciently correct to allow us to find in it the God of 
 redemption speaking words of grace to our soul, those 
 who seek some other view of the historical aspects of 
 Scripture are trying to eliminate the God of grace from 
 His own book. 
 
 A large part of Bible-readers never come through 
 the mental discipline which is necessary to cure preju- 
 dices of this kind, or, in other words, have never been 
 forced by the necessities of their life to distinguish be- 
 tween the accidental and the essential, the human con- 
 jectures and the divine truth, which are wrapped up 
 together in current interpretations of Scripture. But 
 
6 VALUE AND DEFECTS lect. i. 
 
 those who are called in providence to make systematic 
 and scholarly study of the Bible the work of their lives 
 inevitably come face to face with facts which force them 
 to draw those distinctions which, to a practical reader, 
 may seem superfluous. 
 
 Consider what systematic and scholarly study in- 
 volves in contradistinction to the ordinary practical use 
 of the Bible. Ordinary Bible-reading is eclectic and de- 
 votional. A detached passage is taken up, and attention 
 is concentrated on the immediate edification which can 
 be derived from it. Very often the profit which the 
 Bible-reader derives from his morning or evening portion 
 lies mainly in a single word of divine love coming 
 straight home to the heart. And in general the real 
 fruit of such Bible-reading lies less in any addition to 
 one's store of systematic knowledge than in the privi- 
 lege of withdrawing for a moment from the thoughts 
 and cares of the world, to enter into a pure and holy 
 atmosphere, where the God of love and redemption 
 reveals Himself to the heart, and where the simplest 
 believer can place himself by the side of the psalmist, 
 the prophet, or the apostle, in that inner sanctuary 
 where no sound is heard but the gracious accents of 
 divine promise and the sweet response of assured and 
 humble faith. Far be it from me to undervalue such 
 use of Scripture. It is by this power of touching the 
 heart and lifting the soul into converse with heaven 
 that the Bible approves itself the pure and perfect Word 
 of God, a lamp unto the feet and a light unto the path ' 
 
LECT. I. OF ORDINAR V BIBLE - BEADING. 7 
 
 of every Christian. But, on the other hand, a study 
 which is exclusively practical and devotional is neces- 
 sarily imperfect. There are many tilings in Scripture 
 which do not lend themselves to an immediate practical 
 purpose, and which in fact are as good as shut out from 
 the circle of ordinary Bible-reading. I know that good 
 people often try to hide this fact from themselves by 
 hooking on some sort of lesson to passages which they 
 do not understand, or which do not directly touch any 
 spiritual chord. There is very respectable precedent 
 for this course, which in fact is nothing else than the 
 method of tropical exegesis that reigned supreme in 
 the Old Cathohc and Mediaeval Church. The ancient 
 fathers laid down the principle that everything in Scrip- 
 ture which, taken in its natural sense, appears unedify- 
 ing must be made edifying by some method of typical 
 or figurative application.^^^ In principle this is no longer 
 admitted in the Protestant Churches (unless perhaps for 
 the Song of Solomon), but in practice we still get over 
 many difficulties by tacking on a lesson which is not 
 really taken out of the difficult passage, but read into it 
 from some other part of Scripture. People satisfy them- 
 selves in this way, but they do not solve the difficulty. 
 Let us be frank with ourselves, and admit that there are 
 many things in Scripture in which unsystematic and 
 merely devotional reading finds no profit. Such parts 
 of the Bible as the genealogies in Chronicles, the de- 
 scription of Solomon's temple, a considerable portion of 
 Ezekiel, and not a few of the details of ritual in the 
 
8 VALUE AND LIMITATIONS lect. i. 
 
 Pentateuch do not serv^e an immediate devotional pur- 
 pose, and are really blank pages to any other than 
 systematical and critical study. And for a different 
 reason the same thing is true of many passages of the 
 prophetical and poetical books, where the language is so 
 obscure, and the train of thought so difficult to grasp, 
 that even the best scholars, with every help which 
 philology can offer, will not venture to affirm that they 
 possess a certain interpretation. Difficulties of this sort 
 are not confined to a few comers of the Bible. They 
 run through the whole volume, and force themselves on 
 the attention of every one who desires to understand any 
 book of the Bible as a whole. 
 
 And so we are brought to this issue. We may, if 
 we please, confine our study of Scripture to what is 
 immediately edifying, skimming lightly over all pages 
 which do not serve a direct purpose of devotion, and ig- 
 noring every difficulty which does not yield to the faculty 
 of practical insight, to the power of spiritual sympathy 
 with the mind of the Spirit, which the thoughtful 
 Christian necessarily acquires in the habitual exercise 
 of bringing Scripture to bear on the daily needs of his 
 own life. This use of Scripture is full of personal profit, 
 and raises no intellectual difficulties. But it does not 
 do justice to the whole Word of God. It cannot ex- 
 haust the whole mind of the Spirit. It is limited for 
 every individual by the limitations of his own spiritual 
 experience. Reading the Bible in this way, a man comes 
 to a very personal appreciation of so much of God's 
 
LECT. I. OF UNCRITICAL STUDY. 9 
 
 triitli as is in immediate contact with the range of liis 
 own life. But he is sure to miss many trutlis which 
 belong to another range of experience, and to read into 
 the inspired page things from his own experience which 
 involve human error. In this way he becomes narrow, 
 and full of prejudices, which prevent him from seeing 
 that the Bible is larger than his knowledge of it, and 
 that other men whose needs are different from his may 
 be quite in the right in getting things out of Scripture 
 which he does not know, does not need, and is inclined 
 to call false or dangerous. Of course, in proportion as 
 a man's spiritual experience widens, and his Christian 
 life becomes more deep, he will rise superior to such 
 prejudices. But no man's spiritual life is so large, so 
 perfectly developed, in a word, so normal, that it can be 
 used as a measure of the fulness of the Bible. The 
 absolute value of the Bible as the manual of the 
 spiritual life lies in the fact that it is the mirror of all 
 normal religious experience. In other words, the in- 
 spired writers were so led by the Spirit that they per- 
 fectly understood, and perfectly recorded, every word 
 which God spoke to their hearts. But the ripest 
 Christian appropriates the perfect record in an imper- 
 fect way, and with a certain admixture of positive error, 
 which comes out as soon as he attempts to ex]3ress in 
 his own words the truths he has learned from Scripture. 
 The Church, therefore, which aims at an all-sided and 
 catholic view, cannot be content with so much of truth 
 as has practically approved itself to one man, or any 
 
10 SYSTEMATIC BIBLE-STUDY lect. i. 
 
 number of men, all fallible and imperfect. What she 
 desires to obtain is the sum of all those normal views of 
 divine truth which are embodied in the experience of 
 the inspired writers. She must try to get the whole 
 meaning of every prophet, psalmist, or apostle, — not by 
 the rough and ready method of culling from a chapter 
 as many truths as at once commend themselves to a 
 Christian heart, but by taking up each piece of Biblical 
 authorship as a whole, realising the position of the 
 writer, and following out in its minutest details the 
 progress of his thought. And in this process the Church, 
 or the trained theologian labouring in the service of the 
 Church, must not be discouraged by finding much that 
 seems strange, foreign to current experience, or, at first 
 sight, positively unedifying. It will not do to make 
 our notions the measure of God's dealings with His 
 people of old. The systematic student must first, and 
 above all, do justice to his text. When he has done 
 this, the practical use will follow of itself. 
 
 I am anxious that you should at the very outset 
 form a clear conception of the purpose and utility of 
 this kind of study. Observe that the exhaustive and 
 all-sided knowledge of the meaning of the Bible which 
 we are now contemplating is something quite distinct 
 from a complete knowledge of the system of theological 
 doctrine. Systematic theology, the sort of theology of 
 which the Westminster Confession and the Thirty-nine 
 Articles are compends, may be called the abstract theory 
 of the truths of religion. It tries to refer the facts and 
 
LECT. I. AND SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. 11 
 
 experiences of the religious life, and the whole method 
 of revelation and redemption, to general principles, and 
 to explain all details under these principles in a philo- 
 sophical and logical sequence. In doing this systematic 
 theology goes beyond the Bible, although it builds upon 
 it. The abstract terms which it uses, the philosophical 
 notions which it develops, are often not Biblical. The 
 Bible did not need them, because, for the most part, it 
 abstains from systematic and philosophic discussions, 
 and treats of the relations of God to man and of the 
 work of redemption in a directly experimental manner. 
 For example, you will not find in the Bible any exposi- 
 tion of the doctrine of the Trinity, any definition of 
 person and substance and essence, and all the other 
 terms of which the chapter about the Trinity in every 
 theological system is full. Nor will you find any dis- 
 cussion as to the theory of the Person of Christ, or any 
 of those definitions as to the two natures, the two wills, 
 the communicatio idiomatum, and all the other points 
 which arise when we attempt to give a theory of the 
 Person of our Lord. In place of such abstract and 
 theoretical discussion, the Bible sets before us the living 
 Christ in experimental manifestation, as He actually 
 lived and taught, suffered and rose again ; it sets before 
 us the Father, Son, and Spirit as revealed in the actual 
 work of redemption, and in that multiplicity of relations 
 to man which forms the experimental basis of all dog- 
 matic speculation on the Divine Being. 
 
 Now up to the time of the Reformation the only 
 
12 THE BIBLE AND lect. i. 
 
 kind of theological study whicli was thought worthy of 
 serious attention was the study of dogma. People's 
 daily spiritual life was supposed to be nourished, not by 
 Scripture, but by the Sacraments. The experimental 
 use of Scripture, so dear to Protestants, was not recog- 
 nised as one of the main purposes for which God has 
 given us the Bible. The use of the Bible was to furnish 
 proof texts for the theologians of the Church, and the 
 doctrines of the Church as expressed in the Creeds 
 were the necessary and sufficient object of faith. The 
 believer had indeed need of Christ as well as of a creed, 
 but Christ was held forth to him, not in the Bible, but in 
 the Mass. The Bible was the source of theological 
 knowledge as to the mysterious doctrines of Eevelation, 
 but the Sacraments were the means of grace. 
 
 The Eeformation changed all this, and brought the 
 Bible to the front as a living means of grace. How did 
 it do so ? Not, as is sometimes superficially imagined, 
 by placing the infallible Bible in the room of the infal- 
 lible Church, but by a change in the whole conception 
 of faith, of the plan and purpose of Eevelation, and of 
 the operation of the means of grace. 
 
 Saving faith, says Luther, is not an intellectual 
 assent to a system of doctrine superior to reason, but a 
 personal trust on God in Christ, appropriation of God's 
 personal word and promise of redeeming love. God's 
 grace is just the manifestation of His redeeming love, 
 and the means of grace are the means which He adopts 
 to bring His word of love to our ears and to our hearts. 
 
LECT. I. THE REFORMATION. 13 
 
 All means of grace, all sacraments, have value only in 
 so far as they bring to us a personal Word, that Word 
 which is^ contained in the gospel and incarnate in our 
 Lord. The supreme value of the Bible does not lie in 
 the fact that it is the ultimate source of theology, but in 
 the fact that it contains the whole message of God's 
 love, that it is the personal message of that love to me, 
 not doctrine but promise, not the display of God's meta- 
 physical essence but of His redeeming purpose, in a word, 
 of Himself as my God. Filled with this new light as to 
 the meaning of Scripture, Luther displays profound con- 
 tempt for the grubbing theologians who treated the 
 Bible as a mere storehouse of proof texts, dealing with 
 it, as he says of Tetzel, " like a sow with a bag of 
 oats." The Bible is a living thing. The Middle Ages 
 had no eye for anythiug but doctrinal mysteries, and 
 where these were lacking saw only, as Luther com- 
 plained, bare dead histories " which had simply taken 
 place and concerned men no more." ISTay, say the 
 Reformers. This history is the story of God's dealings 
 with His people of old. The heart of love which He 
 opened to them, is still a heart of love to us. The great 
 pre-eminence of the Bible history is that in it God speaks 
 — speaks not in the language of doctrine but of personal 
 grace, which we have a right to take home to us now, 
 just as it was taken home by His ancient people/^^ 
 
 In a word, the Bible is a book of Experimental 
 Religion, in which the converse of God with His people 
 is depicted in all its stages up to the full and abiding 
 2 
 
14 THE BIBLE AND lect. i. 
 
 manifestation of saving love in the person of Jesus 
 Christ. God has no message to the believing soul 
 which the Bible does not set forth, and set forth not in 
 bare formulas but in living and experimental form, by- 
 giving the actual history of the need which the message 
 supplies, and by showing how holy men of old received 
 the message as a light to their own darkness, a comfort 
 and a stay to their own souls. And so to appropriate 
 the divine message for our wants, we need no help of 
 ecclesiastical tradition, no authoritative Churchly exe- 
 gesis. All that we need is to put ourselves by the 
 side of the psalmist, the prophet, or the apostle, to enter 
 by spiritual sympathy into his experience, to feel our 
 sin and need as he felt them, and to take home to us, as 
 he took them, the gracious words of divine love. This 
 it is which makes the Bible perspicuous and precious to 
 every one who is taught of the Spirit. 
 
 The history of the Eeformation shows that these 
 views fell upon the Church with all the force of a new 
 discovery. It was nothing less than the resurrection 
 of the living Word, buried for so many ages under the 
 dust of a false interpretation. Now we all acknowledge 
 the debt which we owe to the Eeformers in this 
 matter. We are agreed that to them we owe our open 
 Bible ; but we do not always understand what this gift 
 means. We are apt to think and speak as if the 
 Reformation had given us the Bible by removing artifi- 
 cial restrictions on its translation and circulation among 
 the laity. There is a measure of truth in this view. 
 
LECT. I. THE REFORMATION. 15 
 
 But, on the other hand, there were translations in the 
 vulgar tongues long before Luther. The Bible was never 
 wholly withdrawn from the laity, and the preaching of 
 the Word was the characteristic office of the Friars, and 
 the great source of that popidar influence which they 
 strained to the uttermost against the Reformation. 
 
 The real importance of Luther's work was not that 
 he put the Bible into the hands of the laity, but that he 
 vindicated for the Word a new use and a living interest 
 which made it impossible that it should not be read by 
 them. We are not disciples of the Eeformation merely 
 because we have the Bible in our hands and appeal to 
 it as the supreme judge. Luther's opponents appealed 
 to the Bible as confidently as he did. But they did 
 not understand the Bible as he did. To them it was a 
 book revealmg abstract doctrines. To him it was the 
 record of God's words and deeds of love to the saints of 
 old, and of the answer of their inmost heart to God. 
 This conception changes the whole perspective of 
 Biblical study, and, unless our studies are conformed to 
 it, we are not the children of the Pieformation. 
 
 The Bible on the Eeformation view is a history, the 
 history of the work of redemption, from the fall of man 
 to the ascension of the risen Saviour and the mission of 
 •the Spirit by which the Church still lives. But the 
 history is not a mere chronicle of supernatural deeds and 
 revelations. It is the inner history of the converse of 
 God with man that gives the Bible its peculiar worth. 
 The story of God's grace is expounded to us by the 
 
16 THE BIBLE AS THE RECORD lect. i. 
 
 psalmists, prophets, and apostles, as they realised it in 
 their own lives. For the progress of Eevelation was not 
 determined arbitrarily. No man can learn anything 
 aright about God and His love, unless the new truth 
 come home to his heart and grow into his life. What is 
 still true of our appropriation of revealed truth was 
 true also of its first communication. Inspired men 
 were able to receive and set down new truths of Eeve- 
 lation as a sure rule for our guidance, because these 
 truths took hold of them with a personal grasp, and 
 supplied heartfelt needs. Thus the Eecord of Eevela- 
 tion becomes, so to speak, the autobiography of the 
 Church — the story of a converse with God, in which the 
 saints of old actually lived. 
 
 Accordingly, the first business of the Eeformation 
 theologian is not to crystallise Bible truths into doctrines, 
 but to follow, in all its phases, the manifold inner his- * 
 tory of the religious life which the Bible unfolds. It is 
 his business to study every word of Scripture, not merely 
 by gTammar and logic, but in its relation to the life of 
 the writer, and the actual circumstances in which God's 
 Word came to him. Only in this way can we hope to 
 realise the whole rich personal meaning of the Word of 
 grace. For God never spoke a word to any soul that 
 was not exactly fitted to the occasion and the man. ■ 
 Separate it from this context, and it is no longer the 
 same perfect Word. 
 
 Now the great goodness of God to us, in His gift of 
 the Bible, appears very specially in the copious material 
 
LECT. I. OF THE COURSE OF REVELATION. 17 
 
 He has supplied for our assistance in this task of histo- 
 rical exegesis. There are large passages in the Bible, 
 especially in the Old Testament, which, taken apart 
 from the rest of the book, would appear quite deficient 
 in spiritual instruction. Crude rationalism often pro- 
 poses to throw these aside as mere lumber, forming no 
 integral part of the Eecord of Eevelation. And, on the 
 other hand, a narrowly timid faith sometimes insists 
 that such passages, even in their isolation, must be 
 prized as highly as the Psalms or the Sermon on the 
 Mount. Both these views are wrong, and both err in the 
 same way, by forgetting that a Bible which shall enable 
 us to follow the inner life of the course of Eevelation 
 must contain, not only words of grace and answers of 
 faith, but as much of the ordinary history, the everyday 
 life, and the current thoughts of the people to whom 
 Eevelation came, as will enable us to enter into their 
 circumstances, and receive the Word as they received it. 
 From this point of view we can recognise the hand of a 
 wise Providence in the circumstance that the Old Testa- 
 ment contains, in far larger proportion than the Xew, 
 matter of historical and archaeological interest, which 
 does not serve a direct purpose of edification. For, in 
 the study of the New Testament, we are assisted in the 
 work of historical interpretation by a large contemporary 
 literature of profane origin, whereas we have almost no 
 contemporary helps for the study of Hebrew antiquity, 
 beyond the books which were received into the Jewish 
 Canon.^'^ 
 
18 THE HUMAN SIDE lect. i. 
 
 The kind of Bible study which I have indicated is 
 followed more or less instinctively by every intelligent 
 reader. Every Christian takes home words of promise, 
 of comfort, or of warning, by putting himself in the 
 place of the first hearers of the Word, and uses the Bible 
 devotionally by borrowing the answer spoken by the 
 faith of apostles or psalmists. And the diligent reader 
 soon learns that the profit of these exercises is propor- 
 tioned to the accuracy with which he can compare his 
 situations and needs with those underlying the text 
 which he appropriates. But the systematic study of 
 Scripture must rise above the merely instinctive use of 
 sound principles. To get from the Bible all the instruc- 
 tion which it is capable of yielding, we must apprehend 
 the true method of study in its full range and scope, 
 obtain a clear grasp of the principles involved, and 
 apply them systematically with the best help that 
 scholarship supplies. Let us consider how this is to be 
 done. 
 
 In the Bible, God and man meet together, and hold 
 such converse as is the abiding pattern and rule of all 
 religious experience. In this simple fact lies the key to 
 all those puzzles about the divine and human side of the 
 Bible with which people are so much exercised. We 
 hear many speak of the human side of the Bible as 
 if there were something dangerous about it, as if it 
 ought to be kept out of sight lest it tempt us to forget 
 that the Bible is the Word of God. And there is a wide- 
 spread feeling that, though the Bible no doubt has a 
 
LECT. I. OF THE BIBLE, 19 
 
 human side, a safe and edifying exegesis must confine 
 itself to the divine side. This point of view is, however, 
 thoroughly unprotestant and unevangelical — a survival 
 of the mediaeval exegesis which buried the true sense of 
 Scripture. Of course, as long as you hold the mediaeval 
 view — that the whole worth of Eev elation lies in abstract 
 doctrines supernaturally communicated to the intellect 
 and not to the heart — the idea that there is a human 
 life in the Bible is purely disturbing. But if the Bible 
 sets forth the personal converse of God with man, it is 
 absolutely essential to look at the human side. The pro- 
 phets and psalmists were not mere impassive channels 
 through whose lips or pens God poured forth an abstract 
 doctrine. He spoke not only through them, but to them 
 and in them. They had an intelligent share in the 
 Divine converse with them; and we can no more 
 understand the Divine Word without taking them into 
 account than we can understand a human conversation 
 without taking account of both interlocutors. To try to 
 suppress the human side of the Bible, in the interests of 
 the purity of the Divine Word, is as great a folly as to 
 think that a father's talk with his child can be best re- 
 ported by leaving out everything which the cliild said, 
 thought, and felt. 
 
 The first condition of a sound understanding of Scrip- 
 ture is to give full recognition to the human side, to 
 master the whole situation and character and feelings of 
 each human interlocutor who has a part in the drama 
 of Revelation. Nay^ the vjIioU business of scholarly 
 
20 THE HISTORICAL lect. i. 
 
 exegesis lies with this human side. All that earthly study 
 and research can do for tlie reader of Scripture is to put 
 him in the position of the man to whose heart God first 
 spoke. "What is more than this lies beyond our wisdom. 
 It is only the Spirit of God which can make the Word 
 a living word to our hearts, as it was a living word to 
 him who first received it. This is the truth which the 
 Westminster Confession expresses when it teaches, in 
 harmony with all the Eeformed Symbols, that our full 
 persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and 
 divine authority of Scripture is from the inward work 
 of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the 
 Word in our hearts. 
 
 And here, as we at once perceive, the argument 
 reaches a practical issue. We not only see that the 
 principles of the Eeformation demand a systematic 
 study of Scripture upon lines of research which were 
 foreign to the Church before the Eeformation ; but we 
 are able to fix the method by which such study must 
 be carried on. It is our duty as Protestants to in- 
 terpret Scripture historically. The Bible itself has 
 a history. It was not written at one time, or by a 
 single pen. It comprises a number of books and 
 pieces given to the Church by many instrumentali- 
 ties and at various times. It is our business to separate 
 these elements from one another, to examine them one 
 by one, and to comprehend each piece in the sense 
 which it had for the first writer, and in its relation to 
 the needs of God's people at the time when it was 
 
LECT. I. STUDY OF SCRIPTURE. 21 
 
 written. lu proportion as we succeed in this task, the 
 mind of the Revealer in each of His many communica- 
 tions with mankind will become clear to us. We shall 
 be able to follow His gracious converse with His people 
 of old from point to point. Instead of appropriating at 
 random so much of the Word as is at once perspicuous, 
 or guessing darkly at the sense of things obscure, we 
 shall learn to understand God's teaching in its natural 
 connection. By this means we shall be saved from 
 arbitrariness in our interpretations. For of this we may 
 be assured, that there was nothing arbitrary in God's 
 plan of revelation. He spoke to the prophets of old, as 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us, " in many parts and 
 in many ways." There was variety in the method of 
 His revelation ; and each individual oracle, taken by 
 itself, was partial and incomplete. But none of these 
 things was without its reason. The method of revela- 
 tion was a method of education. God spake to Israel 
 as one speaks to tender weanlings (Isa. xxviii. 9), giving 
 precept after precept, line upon line, here a little and 
 there a little. He followed this course that each pre- 
 cept, as He gave it, might be understood, and lay a 
 moral responsibility on those who received it (verse 
 13) ; and if our study foUows close in the lines of the 
 divine teaching, we too, receiving the Word like little 
 children, shall be in the right way to understand it in 
 aU its progress, and in all the manifold richness of its 
 meaning. But to do so, I again repeat, we must put 
 ourselves alongside of the first hearers. What was 
 
22 PROTESTANT AND CRITICAL lect. i. 
 
 clear and plain enougli to the obedient heart then is 
 not necessarily clear and plain to us now, if we re- 
 ceive it in a difiPerent attitude. God's Word was de- 
 livered in the language of men, and is not exempt 
 from the necessary laws and limitations of human 
 speech. Now it is a law of all speech, and especi- 
 ally of all speech upon personal matters, that the 
 speaker expresses himself to the understanding of his 
 hearer, presupposing in him a certain preparation, a 
 certain mental attitude, a certain degree of familiarity 
 with and interest in the subject. When a third person 
 strikes into a conversation, he cannot follow it unless, as 
 the familiar phrase has it, he knows where they are. 
 So it is with the Bible. And here historical study 
 comes in. The mind of God is unchangeable. His 
 purpose of love is invariable from first to last. The 
 manifold variety of Scripture, the changing aspects of 
 Bible truth, depend on no change in Him, but wholly 
 on the varying circumstances and needs of the men 
 who received the Eevelation. It is with their life and 
 feelings that we must get into sympathy, in order to 
 understand what God spoke to them. We must read 
 the Bible as the record of the history of grace, and as 
 itself a part of the history. And this we must do with 
 all patience, not weary though om- studies do not at 
 each moment yield an immediate fruit of practical 
 edification, if only they conduct us on the sure road to 
 edification by carrying us along the actual path trodden 
 by God's people of old ; and, opening to us their needs, 
 
LECT. I. METHODS IDENTICAL. 23 
 
 their hopes, their trials, even their errors and sins, 
 enable our ears to receive the same voice which they 
 heard behind them, saying, " This is the way ; walk ye 
 in it " (Isa. xxx. 21). It is the glory of the Bible that 
 it invites and satisfies such study, — that its manifold 
 contents, the vast variety of its topics, the extraordi- 
 nary diversities of its structure and style, constitute an 
 inexhaustible mine of the richest historical interest, in 
 which generation after generation can labour, always 
 bringing forth some new thing, and with each new 
 discovery coming closer to a full understanding of the 
 supreme wisdom and love of Him who speaks in all 
 Scripture. 
 
 And now let us come to the point. In sketching 
 the principles and aims of a truly Protestant study of 
 Scripture I have not used the word criticism, but I 
 have been describing the thing. Historical criticism 
 may be defined without special reference to the Bible, 
 for it is applicalDle, and is daily applied without dispute, 
 to every ancient literature and every ancient history. 
 The critical study of ancient documents means nothing 
 else than the careful sifting of their origin and meaning 
 in the light of history. The first principle of criticism 
 is that every book bears the stamp of the time and 
 circumstances in which it was produced. An ancient 
 book is, so to speak, a fragment of ancient life ; and to 
 understand it aright we must treat it as a living thins, 
 as a bit of the life of the author and his time, which we 
 shall not fully understand without putting ourselves 
 
24 THE OBJECTS lect. i. 
 
 back into the age in which it was written. People 
 talk of destructive criticism as if the critic's one delight 
 were to prove that things which men have long believed 
 are not true, and that books were not written by the 
 authors whose names they bear. But the true critic 
 has for his business, not to destroy, but to build up. 
 The critic is an interpreter, but one who has a larger 
 view of his task than the man of mere grammars and 
 dictionaries, — one who is not content to reproduce the 
 words of his author, but strives to enter into sympathy 
 with his thoughts, and to understand the thoughts as 
 part of the life of the thinker and of his time. In 
 this process the occasional destruction of some tradi- 
 tional opinion is a mere incident. 
 
 Ancient books coming down to us from a period 
 many centuries before the invention of printing have 
 necessarily undergone many vicissitudes. Some of them 
 are preserved only in imperfect copies made by some 
 ignorant scribe of the dark ages. Others have been 
 disfigured by editors, who mixed up foreign matter with 
 the original text. Very often an important book fell 
 altogether out of sight for a long time, and when it 
 came to light again all knowledge of its origin was 
 gone ; for old books did not generally have title-pages 
 and prefaces. They often lay in libraries with no note 
 of the author's name save some words on a slip or 
 tablet easily detached. And when such a roll was 
 again brought into notice, with its title gone, some half- 
 informed reader or copyist was very likely to give it a 
 
OF CRITICISM. 25 
 
 new title of his own devising, which was handed down 
 thereafter as if it had been original. Or again, the true 
 meaning and purpose of a book often became obscure in 
 the lapse of centuries, and led to false interpretations. 
 Once more, antiquity has handed down to us many 
 writings which are sheer forgeries, like some of the 
 Apocryphal books, or the Sibylline oracles, or the famous 
 Epistles of Phalaris, which formed the subject of Bent- 
 ley's great critical essay. In all such cases the his- 
 torical critic must destroy the received view, in order to 
 establish a true one. He must review doubtful titles, 
 purge out interpolations, expose forgeries ; but he does 
 so only to manifest the truth, and put the genuine 
 remains of antiquity on their true footing. A book that 
 is really old and reaUy valuable has notliing to fear from 
 the critic, whose labours can only put its worth in a 
 clearer light, and estabKsh its authority on a surer basis. 
 
 In a word, it is the business of the critic to trace 
 back the steps by which any ancient book has been 
 transmitted to us, to find where it came from and who 
 wrote it, to examine the occasion of its composition, and 
 search out every link that connects it with the history of 
 the ancient world and with the personal life of the author. 
 
 Now this is just what Protestant principles direct 
 us to do with the several parts of the Bible. We have 
 got to go back step by step, and retrace the history of 
 the sacred volume up to the first origin of each separate 
 writing which it contains. In doing this we must use 
 every light that can be brought to bear on the subject. 
 
26 THE METHOD OF lect. i. 
 
 Every fact is welcome, whether it come from Jewish 
 tradition, or from a comparison of old MSS. and versions, 
 or from an examination of the several books with one 
 another and of each book in its own inner structure. 
 It is not needful in starting to lay down any fixed rules 
 of procedure. The ordinary laws of evidence and good 
 sense must be our guides. And these we must apply to 
 the Bible just as we should do to any other ancient 
 book. That is the only principle we have to lay down. 
 And it is plainly a just principle. For the transmission 
 of the Bible is not due to a continued miracle, but to a 
 watchful Providence ruling the ordinary means by which 
 ancient books have all been handed down. And finally, 
 when we have worked our way back through the long 
 centuries which separate us from the age of Eevelation, 
 we must, as we have already seen, study each writing 
 and make it speak for itself on the common principles 
 of sound exegesis. We must not be afraid of the 
 human side of Scripture. It is from that side alone 
 that scholarship can get at any Biblical question. The 
 common rules of interpretation tell us to read the book 
 as nearly as we can from the standpoint of the author, 
 and always to keep our eye fixed on his historical posi- 
 tion, realising the fact that he wrote out of the experi- 
 ence of his own life and from the standpoint of his own 
 time. And this, as has been shown, is the very rule 
 which Protestant principles conduct us to. In this 
 department of intellectual life science and faith have 
 joined hands. There is no discordance between the 
 
LECT. I. BIBLICAL CRITICISM, -27 
 
 religious and the scholarly methods of study. They 
 lead to the same goal; and the more closely our 
 study fulfils the demands of historical scholarship, 
 the more fully will it correspond with our religious 
 needs. 
 
 Now I know what is said in answer to all this. 
 We have no objection, say the opponents of Biblical 
 criticism, to any amount of historical study, but it is 
 not legitimate historical study that has produced the 
 current results of Biblical criticism. These results, 
 say they, are based on the rationalistic assumption that 
 the supernatural is impossible, and that everything in 
 the Bible which asserts the existence of a real personal 
 communication of God with man is necessarily untrue. 
 My answer to this objection is very simple. We have 
 not got to results yet ; I am only laying down a method, 
 and a method, as we have seen, which is in full accord- 
 ance with, and imperatively prescribed by, the Eeforma- 
 tion doctrine of the Word of God. We are agreed, it 
 appears, that the method is a true one. Let us go on 
 and apply it ; and if in the application you find me call- 
 ing in a rationalistic principle, if you can show at any 
 step in my argument that I assume the impossibility 
 of the supernatural, or reject plain facts in the inte- 
 rests of rationalistic theories, I will frankly confess 
 that I am in the wrong. But, on the other hand, you 
 must remember that all truth is one, that God who 
 gave us the Bible has also given us faculties of reason 
 and gifts of scholarship with which to study the Bible, and 
 
28 THE METHOD OF lect. i. 
 
 that the true meaning of Scripture is not to be measured 
 by preconceived notions, but determined as the result 
 of legitimate research. Only of this I am sure at the 
 outset, that the Bible does speak to the heart of man in 
 words that can only come from God — that no historical 
 research can deprive me of this conviction^ or make less 
 precious the divine utterances that speak straight to 
 the heart. For the language of these words is so clear 
 that no readjustment of their historical setting can con- 
 ceivably change the substance of them. Historical 
 study may throw a new light on the circumstances in 
 which they were first heard or written. In that there 
 can only be gain. But the plain, central, heartfelt 
 truths that speak for themselves and rest on their own 
 indefeasible worth will assuredly remain to us. No 
 amount of change in the background of a picture can 
 make white black or black white, though by restoring 
 the right background where it has been destroyed the 
 harmony and balance of the whole composition may be 
 immeasurably improved. 
 
 So it is with the Bible. The supreme truths which 
 speak to every believing heart, the way of salvation 
 which is the same in all ages, the clear voice of God's 
 love so tender and personal and simple that a cliild can 
 understand it — these are thini^s which must abide with 
 us, and prove themselves mighty from age to age apart 
 from all scientific study. But those who love the truth 
 will not shrink from any toil that can help us to a 
 fuller insight into all its details and all its setting ; and 
 
LECT. I. BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 29 
 
 those whose faith is firmly fixed on the things that 
 cannot be moved will not doubt that every new pro- 
 gress in Biblical study must in the end make God's 
 great scheme of grace appear in fuller beauty and 
 glory. 
 
30 PROTESTANT VERSIONS lect. ii. 
 
 LECTUEE II. 
 
 CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION AND JEWISH TRADITION. 
 
 At our last meeting, I endeavoured to convey to you a 
 general conception of the methods and objects of Bibli- 
 cal criticism, and to show that the very same rules for 
 the prosecution of this branch of Biblical study may be 
 derived independently from the general principles of 
 historical science and from the theological principles 
 of the Protestant Keformation. We ended by seeing 
 that it was the duty of criticism to start with the Bible 
 as it has been delivered to us, and as it now is in our 
 hands, and to endeavour to trace back the history of its 
 transmission, and of the vicissitudes through which it 
 has passed, up to the time of the original authors, so 
 that we may be able to take an historical view of the 
 ori<?in of each individual writino- of the Old Testament, 
 and of the meaning which it had to those who first 
 received it and to him who first wrote it. 
 
 For this purpose, in speaking to a general audience, 
 it is necessary for me to begin with the English Bible. 
 The English Bible which we are accustomed to use 
 gives us the Old Testament as it was understood by 
 
LECT. II. OF THE BIBLE, 31 
 
 Protestant scholars at the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century. It is not necessary for our present purpose 
 that I should dwell upon the minor differences which 
 separate the Authorised Version from other English 
 versions made about the same period or a Httle earlier. 
 Some of these, particularly the Geneva Bible, are per- 
 haps in certain respects preferable, while in others they 
 are certainly inferior, to the translation of 1611. Speak- 
 ing broadly, it is sufficient to say that the Authorised 
 Version represents in a very admirable manner the un- 
 derstanding of the Old Testament which had been 
 attained by Protestant scholarship at the beginning of 
 the seventeenth century. We are now to look back 
 and inquire what are the links connecting that Eng- 
 lish version of ours with the original autographs of the 
 sacred writers. 
 
 The Protestant versions, of which our Bible is one, 
 were products of the Eeformation. To a certain extent 
 they were products of the controversy with the Church 
 of Eome. In other words, there were at that time two 
 main views current in Europe, and among the scholars 
 of Europe, as to the proper way of dealing with the 
 Bible — as to the canon of Scripture, the authentic text, 
 and the method of interpretation. We have to consider 
 the differences that separated Protestant and Catholic 
 exegesis. The Catholic exegesis, with which the Pro- 
 testants had to contend, was the natural descendant of 
 the exegesis of the Old Catholic Church, as it was formed 
 in opposition to the heretics, as far back in part as the 
 
32 EXEGESIS OF THE lect. ii. 
 
 second century after Christ. At the time of Luther, as 
 we have already seen, there was no dispute between 
 Protestants and Catholics as to the authority of Scrip- 
 ture ; both parties admitted the supreme authority, but 
 they were divided on the question of the true meaning, 
 of Scripture. According to the Old Church, on which 
 the Catholic party rested, the Bible was not clear and 
 intelligible by its own light like an ordinary book. It 
 was taken for granted that the use of the Bible lies in 
 those doctrines higher than reason, those noetic truths, 
 as they were called, of a divine philosophy, which it 
 contains. But the earliest fathers of the Catholic 
 Church already saw quite clearly that those supposed 
 abstract and noetic truths did not lie on the surface of 
 Scripture. To an ordinary reader the Bible appears 
 something quite different from a body of supernatural 
 mysteries and abstract pliilosophic doctrines. This ob- 
 servation was made by the earliest fathers, but it did 
 not lead them, nor did it lead the Gnostic heretics, with 
 whom they were engaged in controversy, to anticipate 
 the great discovery of the Eeformation, and to see that 
 the real meaning of the Bible must just be its natural 
 meaning. The fathers of the Church were not led to see 
 in the Bible nothing more than it really contains — 
 nothing more than a living, perspicuous message of 
 divine truth. On the contrary, the orthodox and the 
 Gnostics alike continued to look in the Bible for mys- 
 teries concealed under the plain text of Scripture — 
 mysteries which could only be reached by some form of 
 
LECT. II. OLD CATHOLIC CHURCH. 33 
 
 allegorical interpretation. Of course, the allegorical 
 exegesis yielded to every party exactly those principles 
 which that party desired. The orthodox found in the 
 Bible the orthodox system of truth, the heretics found 
 in it their own peculiar views ; and so the controversy 
 between the Gnostics and the Catholic Church could 
 not be decided on the ground of the Bible alone, which 
 both sides interpreted in an equally arbitrary manner. 
 To tell the truth, it would have been very difficult in- 
 deed for Christian theologians in those days to reach a 
 sound and satisfactory exegesis, conducted upon prin- 
 ciples which we could now accept. Very few of the 
 theologians in the churches of the Gentiles possessed the 
 linguistic knowledge necessary to understand the ori- 
 ginal text. Hebrew scholars were few and far between, 
 and the Doctors of the Church were habitually de- 
 pendent upon the Alexandrian Greek translation, called 
 the Septuagint or Version of the Seventy. To this trans- 
 lation w^e shall have to advert at greater length by- 
 and-by. At present it is enough to say that it was a 
 version composed in Egypt and current among the 
 Jews of Alexandria a considerable time before the 
 Christian era, and that it spread contemporaneously with 
 the preaching of the Gospel through all parts of Christen- 
 dom where Greek was understood. In many parts of 
 the Old Testament, this translation was very obscure, 
 and really did not yield to a natural method of exegesis 
 any clear sense. But indeed, apart from the disadvan- 
 tage of being thrown back upon the Septuagint, the 
 
34 THE ECCLESIASTICAL lect ii. 
 
 Christians could not have hoped to understand the Old 
 Testament better than their Jewish contemporaries. 
 Even if they had set themselves to study the original 
 text, they would have required to take their whole 
 knowledge of the Hebrew Bible from the Jews, who 
 were the only masters that could then have instructed 
 them in the language ; and in fact, while the Western 
 churches were mainly dependent on the Septuagint, and 
 struck out an independent line of interpretation on the 
 basis of that version, the exegesis of the Oriental 
 churches continued to be largely guided by the teach- 
 ing of the Synagogue. In Syria and beyond the river 
 Euphrates, the Bible was interpreted by Christian 
 scholars who spoke Syriac — a language akin to Hebrew 
 — upon the methods of the Jewish schools ; but by this 
 time the Jews themselves had fallen into an abyss of 
 artificial Eabbinical interpretation, from which no true 
 light could be derived for the understanding of Scrip- 
 ture. The influence of the Jewish interpretation 
 which ruled in the East can be traced, not only in the 
 old Syriac translation called the Peshito, but in the 
 writings of later Syriac divines. In the Homilies of 
 Aphraates, for example, which belong to the fourth 
 century, we find clear evidence that the Biblical training 
 and exegetical methods of the author, who, Hving in the 
 far East, was not a Greek scholar, were largely derived 
 from the Jewish doctors ; and the operation of the same 
 influences can be followed far down into the Middle 
 Aires. ^^^ 
 
LECT. II. CANON, 35 
 
 Accordingly, in the absence of a satisfactory and 
 scientific interpretation, the conflict of opinions between 
 the orthodox and the heretics was decided on another 
 principle than that of exegesis. The apostles, it was 
 said, had received the mysteries of divine truth from 
 our Lord, and had committed them in plain and living 
 words to the apostolic churches. That is a point to 
 which the ancient fathers always recurred. The written 
 word, they say, is necessarily ambiguous and difficult, 
 but the spoken word of the apostles was clear and 
 transparent. In the apostolic churches, then, the sum 
 of true doctrine has been handed down in an accurate 
 form ; and the consent of the apostolic churches as to the 
 mysteries of faith forms the rule of sound exegesis. Any 
 interpretation of Scripture, say the fathers, is necessarily 
 false if it differs from the ecclesiastical canon — that was 
 the technical term which they used — if it differs, that 
 is, from the received doctrinal testimony of the great 
 apostolic churches, such as Corinth, Eome, and Alexan- 
 dria, in which the word of the apostles was still held to 
 live handed down by oral tradition. ^^^ 
 
 These were the principles of exegesis to w^hich the 
 Catholic Church adhered up to the time of the Eefor- 
 mation. iN'ew elements were added from time to time 
 to the body of ecclesiastical tradition, and in particular 
 a very great change took place with regard to the re- 
 ceived edition of the Old Testament. When the theory 
 of the ecclesiastical canon was first formed, the churches 
 of Europe read either the Greek translation of the Sep- 
 
36 THE VULGATE. 
 
 tuagint or Latin versions formed from the Septuagint ; 
 but about the year 400 a.d., Jerome, a Hebrew scholar, 
 and a very remarkable scholar indeed for that age, formed 
 a new translation under the direct influence of Jewish 
 tradition. His Hebrew learning he derived from the 
 Jews, and resting on their teaching he made a new 
 version direct from the Hebrew, which was greatly 
 assailed at the time as a dangerous innovation, but 
 which by-and-by came to be accepted in the Latin 
 churches as the authentic and received edition of the 
 Bible. When I say that Jerome's version was received 
 by the Western churches, it is proper to observe that it 
 was not received in all its purity, and that this Vulgate 
 or received version (the word vulgate means " currently 
 received"), as it actually existed in the Middle Ages 
 and at the time of the Eeformation, was not the pure 
 text of Jerome, but was Jerome's version considerably 
 modified by things which had been carried over from 
 the older Latin translations taken from the Greek. Still, 
 the Catholic Church supposed itself to receive the ver- 
 sion of Jerome as the authoritative and vulgate version, 
 and this new Vulgate replaced the old Vulgate, the 
 Greek Septuagint translation made by the Jews in 
 Egypt before the time of Christ. 
 
 Now the Eeformers, who were well read in church 
 history, sometimes met their opponents by pointing out 
 that the ecclesiastical tradition on which the Catholics 
 relied as the proper norm or rule of interpretation had 
 itself undergone chan^sje in the course of centuries, and 
 
LECT. II. THE DECREES OF TRENT. 37 
 
 they often appealed with success to the earliest fathers 
 against those views of truth which were current in their 
 own times. But Luther's fundamental conception of 
 revelation made it impossible for the Protestants to 
 submit their understanding of the Bible even to the 
 earliest and purest form of the ecclesiastical canon. The 
 ecclesiastical canon — the rule of interpreting everything 
 according to the consent of the apostolic churches — had, 
 as we have seen, been first invented in order to get over 
 the ambiguities of the allegorical method of interpreta- 
 tion. When Luther taught the people that the Bible 
 can be understood like any other book, that the true 
 meaning of its w^ords is the natural sense which appeals 
 to ordinary Christian intelligence, it was plain that for 
 him this whole method of ecclesiastical tradition as 
 the rule of exegesis no longer had any meaning or 
 value. 
 
 The Church of Eome, after the Eeformation arose, 
 took up a definite and formal battle-ground against Pro- 
 testantism in the Decrees of the Council of Trent. The 
 positions laid down by the Doctors of Trent in opposi- 
 tion to the movement headed by Luther were these : — 
 
 I. The supreme rule of faith and life is contained in 
 the written books and the unwritten traditions of Christ 
 and his Apostles dictated by the Holy Spirit and handed 
 down by continual succession in the Catholic Church. 
 That was the way in which they expressed the authority 
 of ecclesiastical tradition. 
 
 II. The canonical books are those books in all their 
 
 3 
 
38 THE AUTHORITY OF lect. ii. 
 
 parts wliicli are read in the Catholic Church and con- 
 tained in the Latin Yulgate version, the authenticity of 
 which is accepted as sufficiently proved by its long use 
 in the Catholic Church. 
 
 III. The interpretation of Scripture must be con- 
 formed to the tenets of Holy Mother Church and the 
 unanimous consent of the Fathers. 
 
 The Keformers traversed all these three positions; 
 for, firstly, as we have seen, they denied the validity of 
 unwritten tradition; secondly, they refused to admit 
 the authority of the Vulgate, and appealed to the original 
 text ; thirdly, they denied the existence and still more 
 the authority of the consent of the Fathers, and admitted 
 no principle for the interpretation of the Bible that would 
 not be sound if applied to another book. They affirmed 
 that the reader has a right to form his own private judg- 
 ment on the sense of Scripture ; by which, of course, 
 they did not mean that one man's judgment is as good 
 as another's. They meant no more than that the sense 
 of a controverted passage must be decided by argument 
 and not by authority. The only rule of exposition 
 which they laid down as possessing any authority for 
 the Church was this, — that in a disputed point of doc- 
 trine the sense of an obscure passage must be ruled by 
 passages which are more plain. And that, as you will 
 easily observe, is, strictly speaking, not a rule of inter- 
 pretation but a principle of theology. It rather tells us 
 which passage we are to choose for the proof or dis- 
 j)roof of any doctrine than helps us to get the exact 
 
LECT. ir. THE VULGATE VERSION. 39 
 
 sense of a disputed text. All that it really means is 
 this — " Form your doctrines from plain texts, and do 
 not be led astray from the teacliing of plain passages 
 by a meaning which some one may extort from an 
 obscure one." So far as the principle is exegetical, it 
 simply means that an all-wise Author cannot contradict 
 Himself. 
 
 I do not require to say more upon the first and third 
 positions of the Council of Trent ; but the second posi- 
 tion, as to the claims of the standard Vulgate edition, 
 is a point which requires more attention. In making the 
 Vujgate the standard edition, the Council of Trent implied 
 two things : — (1) that the Vulgate contains all the ca- 
 nonical books, and none other, and that it presents these 
 books in their true text ; and (2) that the translation, if 
 not perfect, is exempt from errors affecting doctrine. The 
 Eoman Catholics, of course, did not mean to assert that 
 the Vulgate edition did in every particular represent the 
 exact text and meaning of the original writers. In justice 
 to them, we must say that for their contention that was 
 not necessary, because all along what they wished to get 
 at was not the meaning of the original writers, but the 
 body of doctrine which had the seal of the authority of 
 the Church ; and therefore, from their point of view, the 
 authenticity of the text of the Vulgate was sufficiently 
 proved by the fact that the infallible Church had long 
 used that text without finding any ground of complaint 
 against it; and the authority of the translation, in like 
 manner, was sufficiently supported by the fact that theo- 
 
40 JEROME AND lect. ii. 
 
 logians had always been able to deduce from it the re- 
 ceived doctrines of the Church. That, no doubt, was what 
 they meant. Nevertheless, the two theses that they laid 
 down were very curiously at variance with what Jerome, 
 the author of the Vulgate version, had once and again said 
 about the value of his own labours. They affirmed that 
 the Vulgate contained all the canonical books and none 
 else, and that it contained those books in the true text. 
 Jerome, on the contrary, in that prologue to part of his 
 translation which is generally called the Prologus Galea- 
 /2(s, regards all books as apocryphal which he did not trans- 
 late directly from the Hebrew; and, following this rule, he 
 excludes from the canon the Book of Wisdom, Ecclesi- 
 asticus, Judith, Tobit, Baruch, and also the two books of 
 the Maccabees, although he had seen the first of these in 
 Hebrew. The Council of Trent accepts all these books 
 as canonical, and not only these books, but various 
 additions to other books — to Ezra, Daniel, and Esther 
 — which are not found in the Hebrew text.^-^ 
 
 The second position of the doctors of Trent also 
 reads curiously in the light of Jerome's own remarks. 
 Accordincj to the Council of Trent, the whole translation 
 of Jerome is accurate for all purposes of doctrine, but 
 Jerome in his prefaces makes a very different claim for 
 his version. What he says is this : " If you observe my 
 version to vary from the Greek or Latin copies in your 
 hands, ask the most trustworthy Jew you can find, and 
 see if he does not agree with me." ^"^^ Once and again 
 Jerome claims this, and only this, for his version, that 
 
LECT. II. HIS TEACHERS. 41 
 
 it agrees with the best Jewish tradition; in other words, 
 Jerome sought in his version to correct the current 
 Bibles of his day according to the Hebrew text, as the 
 Jews of his time received it, and to give an interpreta- 
 tion on a level with the best Jewish scholarship. He 
 did this partly by the aid of earlier translations from 
 the Hebrew into the Greek (Aquila, Theodotion, but 
 especially Symmachus) made after the time of Christ, and 
 more in accordance than the Septuagint with the later 
 Rabbinical scholarship ;^^^ and partly by the help of 
 learned Jews. On one occasion, he tells us, he brought a 
 famous Rabbi from Tiberias to instruct him. At another 
 time he brought a Jewish scholar from Lydda; and in 
 particular he speaks of one called Bar Anina, a teacher 
 who came to him by night for fear of his co-religion- 
 ists, while the translator resided in Jerusalem and Beth- 
 lehem. ^'^ 
 
 Kow, in their argument with the Roman Catholics, 
 the Protestants simply fell back upon these facts. They 
 quoted Jerome against the Council of Trent, as is done, 
 for example, in the sixth of the Articles of the Church of 
 England. ^'^ They quoted Jerome, and therefore adopted 
 his definition that all books which wxre not extant in 
 Hebrew and admitted to the canon of the Jews in the 
 day of Jerome are apociyphal and not to be cited in 
 proof of a disputed doctrine. I ask you specially 
 to note that that was all the Protestants in their 
 earlier controversies did. They simply fell back upon 
 Jerome. They said — " You find that great doctor, the 
 
42 CALVIN. LECT. II. 
 
 most learned of his day, and other Fathers along with 
 him, refusing to admit as canonical, and authoritative for 
 the Church as proof of doctrine, any book which was 
 not part of the Hebrew canon of the time." Beyond 
 that they did not care to press the question of the 
 canon. There were differences among themselves as to 
 the value of the Apocrypha on the one hand, and as to 
 the canonicity of Esther and some other books of the 
 old canon upon the other. But it was enough for the 
 Protestants in controversy with Eome to be aljle to 
 refuse a proof text drawn from the Apocryphal books, 
 upon the plain ground that the authority of these books 
 was challenged even by many of the fathers. Calvin, in 
 his Antidote, to the Council of Trent is willing to leave 
 the question of the canon open, contenting himself with 
 the observation that the intrinsic qualities of the 
 Apocryphal books display a manifest inferiority to the 
 canonical writings.^^^ That, I say, was all that the Pro- 
 testants at first cared to lay down on this subject. 
 
 On the question of the true interpretation of Scrip- 
 ture they had much more to say. The revival of 
 letters in the fifteenth century had raised a keen 
 interest in ancient languages, and scholars who had 
 mastered Greek as well as Latin were ambitious to add 
 to their knowledge a third learned tongue, viz., the 
 Hebrew. At first this ambition met with many ditfi- 
 culties. The original text of the Old Testament was 
 preserved only among the scholars of the Synagogue. 
 It was impossible to learn Hebrew except from Jewish 
 
LECT. II. JOHN REUCHLIN. 43 
 
 teachers ; and orthodox Jews refused to teach men who 
 were not of their own faith. Gradually, however, these 
 obstacles were surmounted. Towards the close of the 
 fifteenth century, Hebrew Bibles began to be printed, 
 and some knowledge of the Hebrew tongue became 
 disseminated to a considerable extent ; and at length, in 
 the year 1506, John Eeuchlin, the great supporter of 
 Hebrew studies north of the Alps, put forth in Latin 
 his Rudiments of the Hebrew language. This Latin 
 work, which was something of the nature of both gram- 
 mar and dictionary, was almost entirely taken from the 
 Hebrew manuals of the famous Jewish scholar and 
 lexicographer, Eabbi David Kimhi, who flourished about 
 the year 1200 A.D. As soon as Christians were furnished 
 in this way with text-books, the new learning spread 
 rapidly. It ran over Europe just at the time when 
 the Eeformation was spreading, and the Eeformers, 
 always keenly alive to the best and most modern learn- 
 ing of their time, read the Old Testament in the original 
 Hebrew, and often found occasion to differ from Jerome's 
 version. Observe, they agreed with Jerome in principle. 
 They, like him, aimed only at rendering the text as the 
 best Hebrew scholars would do, and to them, as to him, 
 the standard of scholarship was that of the most learned 
 Jews. But when Jerome wrote, there was no such 
 thing in existence as a Hebrew grammar and dictionary ; 
 there were no written commentaries to which a Christian 
 scholar had access. The Eeformers had the text-book 
 of Eeuchlin, the grammar and lexicon of Kimhi, the 
 
44 THE SCHOLARSHIP OF lect. ii. 
 
 commentaries of many Eabbis of the Middle Ages, with 
 other helps denied to Jerome, and therefore they knew 
 that their new learning put them in a position to 
 criticise his work. Often, indeed, they undervalued 
 Jerome's labours, and this ultimately led to contro- 
 versies between Protestants and Catholics, which were 
 fruitful of instruction to both sides. But, on the whole, 
 the Eeformers were right. They did know Hebrew 
 better than Jerome, and their versions, including our 
 English Bible, approached much more nearly than 
 his to the ideal common to both, — which was to give 
 the sense of the Old Testament as it was understood 
 by the best Jewish scholars. Of course, the Jewish 
 authorities themselves sometimes differed from one 
 another. In such cases, the Protestants leant some- 
 times on one authority, sometimes on another. Luther 
 takes a great deal from a commentator who has been 
 called the RosenmuUer of the Jews in the Middle Ages, 
 R. Solomon of Troyes, generally called Piashi, who died 
 A.D. 1105. Our Bible is mainly guided by the grammar 
 and lexicon of the later scholar, E. David Kimhi of 
 JSTarbonne, who has already been mentioned as the 
 author of the most current text-books of the Hebrew 
 language. But the point which I wish you to observe 
 is that the Eeformers and their successors, up to the 
 time when all our Protestant versions w^ere fixed, were, 
 for all purposes of learning, in the hands of the Eabbins. 
 Upon principle they stood with Jerome against the 
 Council of Trent, alike as to the question of the canon 
 
LECT. II. THE REFORMERS. 45 
 
 and as to the question of interpretation. Their object 
 in the sixteenth century, like his in the fourth, was 
 simply to give to the \^gar the fruit of the best Jewish 
 learning, applied to the translation of the Scriptures as 
 they were received among the Jews from the time of 
 Jerome downwards. 
 
 It may be asked why the Reformers stopped here. 
 But the answer is clear enough. They stopped at that 
 point because the learning of their time also stopped 
 there. They went as far as the scholarship of the age 
 would carry them. Luther, it will be remembered, first 
 saw the practical value of philological study, when he 
 was puzzling over the expression pcenitentiam agite, 
 "do penance," which the Vulgate uses for the Greek 
 word that in the English translation is rendered 
 " repent." Was it possible, he said to himself, that Christ 
 and the Apostles could really bid men do penance ? 
 Did the New Testament really stand on the side of his 
 opponents, and of all the gross corruptions which the 
 doctrine of penance had introduced ? Melanchthon solved 
 this difficulty by showing to Luther that the Greek 
 word fi€ravo€LT€, which Jerome had translated " do pen- 
 ance," really and etymologically meant "change your 
 mind." From that moment the Reformation entered 
 into a conscious alliance with the new learning, to which 
 it was already akin in its independent love of truth, its 
 rebellion against human authority, and its interest in 
 the Bible as a real living book. Accordingly, all that 
 early Protestantism did for the Old Testament, beyond 
 
46 HEBREW SCHOLARSHIP lect. ii. 
 
 the rejection of authoritative traditional interpreta- 
 tions and the allegorical sense, was to read it by the 
 best light which scholarship then offered. All sound 
 Hebrew scholarship then resided with the Jewish 
 doctors, and so the Protestant scholars became their 
 disciples. 
 
 But it would be absurd to suppose that the men 
 who refused to accept the authority of Christian tradi- 
 tion as to the number of books in the canon, the best 
 text of the Old Testament, or the principles upon wdiich 
 that text is to be translated, adopted it as a principle of 
 faith that the Jewish tradition, the unchristian tradition, 
 upon all these points is final. Luther again and again 
 showed that he submitted to no such authority ; and if 
 the Eeformers and their first successors did practically 
 accept the results of Jewish scholarship upon all . these 
 questions, they did so merely because these results were 
 in accordance with the best light then attainable. It 
 was left for a later generation, which had lost the courage 
 of the first Eeformers because it had lost much of their 
 clear insight into divine things, to substitute an authori- 
 tative Jewish tradition for the authoritative tradition of 
 the Catholic Church — to swear by the Jewish canon and 
 the Massoretic text as the Eomanists swore by the Tri- 
 dentine canon and the Yulgate text. The Eeformers 
 had too much reverence for God's AVord to subject it to 
 the bondage of any tradition. They would gladly have 
 accepted any further light of learning, carrying them 
 back behind the time of Eabbinical and unbeliev- 
 
LECT. II. AMONG THE JEWS. 47 
 
 ing Judaism to the first ages of the Old Testament 
 writings. 
 
 Scholarsliip moved onwards, and as research was 
 carried farther it gradually became plain that it was 
 possible for Biblical students, with the material still 
 preserved to them, to get behind the Jewish Eabbins, 
 upon whom our translators were still dependent, and 
 to draw from the sacred stream at a point nearer its 
 source. I have now to explain how this was seen to 
 be possible. 
 
 From the time when the Old Testament was written, 
 down to the sixteenth century, there was no continuous 
 tradition of sound Hebrew learning except among the 
 Jews. The little that Christians knew about the Old 
 Testament at first hand had always come from the 
 Eabbins. Among the Jews, on the contrary, there was 
 a continuous scholarly tradition. The knowledge of 
 Hebrew and the most received ways of explaining the 
 Old Testament were handed down from generation to 
 generation along with the original text. I ask you to 
 understand precisely what this means. Long before the 
 time of Christ, the Jews had ceased to speak Hebrew. 
 In the New Testament, no doubt, we read once and 
 again of the Hebrew tongue as spoken and understood 
 by the people of Palestine ; but the language which is 
 called Hebrew in the New Testament was a dialect as 
 unlike to the Hebrew of the Bible as German is to 
 English — a different language, although a kindred one. 
 This language is called Hebrew because it was spoken 
 
48 THE METURGEMAN, lect. ii. 
 
 by the Hebrews, just as the Spanish Jews in Constan- 
 tinople at the present day call their Spanish jargon 
 Hebrew. It was a kind of Syriac or Aramaic, which 
 the Jews had gradually learned in place of Hebrew, 
 after their return from captivity, when they found them- 
 selves a small handful living in the midst of nations 
 who spoke Aramaic, and with whom they had constant 
 dealings. In those days Aramaic was the language of 
 business «,nd of government, just as English is in the 
 Highlands of Scotland, and so the Jews forgot their own 
 tongue, and learned Aramaic, as the Scottish Celts 
 are now forgetting Gaelic for English. This process had 
 already gone on to a great extent before the latest books 
 of the Old Testament were completed. Such writers as 
 the authors of Chronicles and Ecclesiastes write Hebrew 
 in a way which shows that their thoughts often ran not 
 in Hebrew but in Aramaic. They use Aramaic words 
 and idioms which would have puzzled Moses and David, 
 and in some of the later Old Testament books, in Ezra 
 and in Daniel, although not in those parts of the former 
 book which are autobiographical and written by Ezra 
 himself, there actually are inserted in the Hebrew long 
 Aramaic passages. Before the time of Christ, people 
 who were not scholars had ceased to understand Hebrew 
 altogether ;^^^ and in the synagogue, when the Bible was 
 read, the Meturgeman, as he was called, that is a " drago- 
 man," or qualified translator, had to rise and give the 
 sense of the passage in the vulgar dialect. The Penta- 
 teuch was read verse by verse, or in lessons from the 
 
LECT. II. JEWISH SCHOOLS, 49 
 
 Prophets three verses were read together, and then the 
 Meturgeman rose, and did not read, but gave orally in 
 Aramaic the sense of the original/^^^ Hebrew then, by 
 this time, was a learned language, acquired not in com- 
 mon life but in the school. In order to learn Hebrew, 
 the young Jew had to go to school, but he had no gram- 
 mar or lexicon, or other written help, to assist him. It 
 was not possible for him therefore to study the language 
 of the Old Testament as we study Latin or Greek Every- 
 thing was done by the oral instruction of the teacher, 
 and by dint of sheer memory, without any scientific 
 principle. In the first place, the pupil had to learn to 
 read. In our Hebrew Bibles now, the pronunciation 
 of each word is exactly represented. This is done by 
 a double notation. The letters proper are the conson- 
 ants, and the vowels are indicated by small marks placed 
 above or below the line of the consonants. These smaU 
 marks are a late invention. They did not exist in the 
 time of Christ, or even four hundred years after his time, 
 at the time of Jerome.^"^ Before this invention the proper 
 pronunciation of each difficult word had to be acquired 
 from a master. "WTien a pupil had learned to read a 
 phrase correctly, he was taught the meaning of the 
 words, and by such exercises, combined with the practice 
 of constantly speaking Hebrew, which was kept up in 
 the Jewish schools, as the practice of speaking Latin 
 used to be kept up in our grammar schools, the pupil 
 gradually got a practical command of the Hebrew tongue. 
 It is easy to understand what kind of knowledge of 
 
50 UNPOINTED TEXT. lect. ii. 
 
 Hebrew this sort of study produced. The student ac- 
 quired a certain practical fluency in speaking or writing 
 '* the language of the wise " as it was called. The lan- 
 guage of the Bible itself was called " the holy tongue." 
 The Hebrew as it was spoken in the schools, varying as 
 we shall presently see to some considerable extent from 
 the Hebrew of the Bible, was called " the language of 
 the wise." We have many volumes of the composition 
 of these scholars, chiefly legal works, with some old mid- 
 rashiyn, as they are called, or sermonising commentaries 
 on Scripture. These books no doubt are Hebrew in a 
 certain sense, but they are as unlike to the Biblical 
 Hebrew as a lawyer's deed is to a page of Cicero. The 
 men who wrote such a jargon could not have any deli- 
 cate perception for the niceties of the old classical lan- 
 guage, especially as it is written in the most ancient 
 books ; and when they came to a difficult passage they 
 could only guess at the sense, unless they possessed an 
 interpretation of the hard text, and the hard words it 
 contained, handed down to them from some older 
 scholar. 
 
 Now let me ask you once more to realise precisely 
 how these scribes, at and before the time of Christ, pro- 
 ceeded in dealing with the Bible. They had nothing before 
 them but the bare text denuded of its vowels, so that 
 the same words might often be read and interpreted in 
 two different ways. A familiar example of this is given 
 in Heb. xi. 21, where we read of Jacob leaning upon 
 the top of his " staff ; " but when we turn to our Hebrew 
 
LECT. II. ORAL TEACHING. 61 \ 
 
 1 
 i 
 
 Bible, as it is now printed (Genesis xlvii. 31), we there ! 
 
 find nothing about the " staff;" we find the "bed." WeU, 
 
 the Hebrew for " the bed " is " HaMMiTTaH," while the 71^ ^ 
 
 Hebrew for " the staff" is " HaMMaTTeH." The con- p^ y, 
 
 sonants in these two words are the same ; the vowels • ; - 
 
 are different; but the consonants only were written, and 
 
 therefore, it was quite possible for one person to read j 
 
 the word as " bed," as is now the case in our English \ 
 
 Bible, following the reading of the Hebrew scribes, and 
 
 for the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, on the | 
 
 other hand, to understand it as a " staff," following the | 
 
 interpretation of the Greek Septuagint, 
 
 Beyond the bare text, which in this way was often \ 
 
 ambiguous, the scribes had no guide but oral teaching. 1 
 
 They had no rules of grammar to go by ; the kind of ! 
 
 Hebrew which they themselves wrote often admitted \ 
 
 grammatical constructions which the old language for- \ 
 
 bade, and when they came to an obsolete word or idiom, 
 they had no guide to its meaning, unless their masters \ 
 
 had told them that the pronunciation and the sense 
 were so and so. Now, beyond doubt the Jewish scholars i 
 
 were most exact and retentive learners, and their mas- 
 ters spared no pains to teach them all that they knew. We 
 in the West have little idea of the precision with which 
 an Eastern pupil even now can take up and remember 
 the minutest details of a lesson, reproducing them I 
 
 years afterwards in the exact words of his master. But ' 
 
 memory, even when cultivated as it is cultivated in 1 
 
 the schools of the East, is at best fallible ; and even if i 
 
52 THE TRADITION lect. ii. 
 
 we could suppose that the whole of the Bible had been 
 taught word by word in the schools, in unbroken suc- 
 cession from the day on which each book was first writ- 
 ten, it would still have required a continued miracle to 
 preserve all these lessons perfectly and without writing 
 through long generations. But in point of fact the 
 traditional teaching of the Jews was neither complete, 
 nor continuous, nor uniform. 
 
 It was not complete ; that is, there never was an 
 authoritative interpretation of the whole Bible. It was 
 not continuous ; that is, many interpretations, which at 
 some time had general currency and authority, were 
 figments of the Eabbins which they had not received 
 by unbroken tradition from the time when Hebrew 
 became a dead language, much less from the time when 
 the passage was first written — interpretations not received 
 by original tradition but devised by the Eabbins out of 
 their own heads. And finally, the Eabbinical tradition 
 was not uniform; that is, the interpretation and even 
 the reading of individual texts w^as often a subject of 
 controversy in the schools of the Scribes, and at differ- 
 ent times we find different interpretations in the 
 ascendant. The proof of these propositions lies partly 
 in the records of Jewish learning still preserved in the 
 Eabbinical literature ; partly it lies in the translations 
 and interpretations made at various times by Jewish 
 scholars or under their guidance. 
 
 So long as the transmission and interpretation of the 
 Bible were left to the unregulated labours of individual 
 
LECT. II. OF THE SCRIBES. 53 
 
 scholars or copyists, it is plain that individual theories 
 and individual errors would have some influence on the 
 work. The Bible had to be copied by the pen. Let us 
 suppose then that the copyist, without any special in- 
 struction or guide, simply sat down to make a transcript, 
 probably writing from dictation, of the MS. which he 
 had bought or borrowed. In the first place, he was 
 almost certain to make some slips, either of the pen or 
 of the ear ; but besides this, in all probability the volume 
 before liim would contain slips of the previous copyist. 
 Was he to copy these mistakes exactly as they stood, 
 and so perpetuate the error, or would he not in very 
 many cases tliink himself able to detect and correct the 
 slips of his predecessor ? If he took the latter course, it 
 was very possible for him to overrate his own capacity 
 and make a new mistake. And so bit by bit, if there 
 were no control, if each scribe acted independently, and 
 without the assistance of a regular school, errors were 
 sure to be multiplied, and the text would be certain to 
 present many variations. Thus we know that even in 
 recent times the Gaelic version of the Old Testament 
 contains certain alterations upon the original text made 
 in order to remove seeming contradictions. Much more 
 were such changes to be anticipated in ancient times, 
 when there was a far less developed sense of responsi- 
 bility with regard to the verbal transcription of old 
 texts. A uniform and scrupulous tradition, watching 
 over the reading and the meaning of the text in all parts 
 of the Jewish world, could only be transmitted by a 
 
54 PHARISEES AND SADDUCEES. lect. ii. 
 
 regular school of scholars, or, as the Jewish records 
 call them, a school of Scribes, that is, men of the book — 
 men who were professionally occupied with the book of 
 the law. 
 
 We are all familiar with these Scribes, or professed 
 Biblical scholars, as they appear in the New Testament. 
 Their principles at that epoch, as we know, were those 
 of the Pharisees; in fact, the Pharisees were nothing else 
 than the party of the Scribes, in opposition to the Sad- 
 ducees or aristocratic party. To the Sadducees, or 
 aristocratic party, the higher priestly nobility belonged. 
 To the Pharisees, or party of the Scribes, belonged the 
 great mass of Jewish scholars who were not closely 
 associated with the higher ranks of the priesthood, 
 together with many who, without being scholars, were 
 eager to obey the law as the Scribes interpreted it. Those 
 Scribes were the men who had in their hands the trans- 
 mission and interpretation of the Old Testament ; and 
 our next task, in endeavouring to understand the steps 
 by which the Old Testament has been handed down to 
 us, must be to obtain a clear vision of their methods and 
 objects, and of the work which they actually did upon 
 the Old Testament as we now possess it. This subject 
 will occupy our attention in next Lecture. 
 
LECT. III. THE SCRIBES. 55 
 
 LECTUEE IIL 
 
 THE SCRIBES/^^ 
 
 The subject with wliich we are to be occupied to-day is 
 the part that was played by the Scribes iu the preserva- 
 tion and transmission of the Old Testament. At the 
 close of last Lecture we looked for a moment at the 
 Scribes as they appear in the New Testament in asso- 
 ciation with the Pharisees. At that time, as one sees 
 from the Gospels and the Acts, they constituted a party 
 long established, and exercising a great and recognised 
 influence in the Jewish state. In fact they go back as 
 far as the later times of the Old Testament. Their 
 father is Ezra, " the Scribe," as he is called far excellence, 
 who came from Babylon to Judaea with the law of God 
 in his hand (Ezra vii. 14), and with a heart " prepared 
 to study the law of the Lord, to do it, and to teach in 
 Israel statutes and judgments" (Ezra vii. 10). Ezra 
 accomplished this task, not immediately, but with ulti- 
 mate and complete success. He did so with the support 
 of the Persian king, and with the immediate assistance 
 of Nehemiah, who had been sent by Artaxerxes as 
 governor of Jerusalem. At a great public meeting 
 convened by Nehemiah, of which we read an account 
 
56 THE SCRIBES lect. hi. 
 
 in chapters viii. to x. of the book which bears his name, 
 the Law was openly read before the people at the Feast 
 of Tabernacles, and, with confession and penitence, the 
 Jews entered into a national covenant to make that law 
 henceforth the rule of their lives. Now I do not ask at 
 present what were the relations of the people to the 
 Law before the time of Ezra. That question must come 
 up afterwards ; but any one who reads with attention 
 the narrative in the book of Nehemiah must be satisfied 
 that this work of Ezra, and the covenant which the * 
 people took upon them to obey the Law, were of epoch- 
 making importance for the Jewish community. It was 
 not merely a covenant to amend certain abuses in 
 detailed points of legal observance ; for the people in 
 their confession very distinctly state that the Law had 
 not been observed by their ancestors, their rulers, or 
 their priests, up to that time (Neh. ix. 34) ; and in par- 
 ticular it is mentioned that the Feast of Tabernacles 
 had never been observed according to the Law from the 
 time that the Israelites occupied Canaan under Joshua, 
 — that is, of course, never at all (Neh. viii. 17). Ac- 
 cordingly this covenant must be regarded as a critical 
 epoch in the history of the community of Israel. From 
 that time forward, with the assistance and under the 
 approval of the Persian king, the Law — that is, the 
 Pentateuch or Torah, as we now have it (for there can 
 be no doubt that the Law which was in Ezra's hands 
 was practically identical with our present Hebrew 
 Pentateuch) — ^became the religious and municipal code 
 
LECT. III. AND THE TORAH. 57 
 
 of Israel. Now, as soon as the Torah was accepted as 
 a practical code, the work of the Scribes became indis- 
 pensable. For the Pentateuch, viewed as a code, is 
 such a book as imperatively calls for a class of trained 
 lawyers to be its interpreters. I do not ask at present 
 whether, as most critics suppose, there are real contra- 
 dictions between the laws given in different parts of the 
 five books of Moses. At all events, it is a familiar fact 
 that those who maintain that all the Pentateuchal laws 
 can be reconciled, differ very much among themselves 
 as to the precise method of reconciliation. No two 
 commentators who attempt to digest all parts of the 
 Pentateuch into a harmonious body of precepts agree in 
 all their interpretations. In such an ambiguity of the 
 Law it is manifest that the Scribes had an indispensable 
 function as guides of the people to that intei-pretation 
 which was in actual use in the practical administration 
 of the code. Accordingly, by-and-by, in the time of 
 the Chronicles (1 Chron. ii. 55), we find them organised 
 in regular " families," or, as we should now say, " guilds," 
 an institution quite in accordance with the whole spirit 
 of the East, which forms a guild or trades-union of 
 every class possessing special technical knowledge.^"^ 
 
 We see, then, that before the close of the Old 
 Testament Canon the Scribes not only existed, con- 
 tinuing the work of Ezra, but that they existed in the 
 form of guilds or regular societies. What were their 
 objects ? There can be no doubt that from the first the 
 objects of the Scribes were not philological, not scien- 
 
58 HA LAC HA AND HAG GAD A. lect. hi. 
 
 tific, but practical. Ezra's object was so. He came to 
 make the Law the practical rule of Israel's life, and so it 
 was still in later ages. The wisdom of the Scribes con- 
 sisted of two parts, which in Jewish terminology were 
 respectively called " Halacha " and " Haggada." " Hal- 
 acha " was legal teaching, systematised legal precept ; 
 while " Haggada " was doctrinal and practical admoni- 
 tion, mingled with parable and legend. But of these 
 two parts the " Halacha," — that is, the system of rules 
 applying the Pentateuchal law to every case of practice 
 and every detail of life, — was always the chief thing. 
 The difference between the learned theologian and the 
 unlearned vulgar lay in knowledge of the Law. You 
 remember what the Pharisees say in John vii. 49 — 
 " This people, wliich knoweth not the law, are cursed." 
 The Law was the ideal of the Scribes. Their theory of 
 the history of Israel was this. — In time past Israel had 
 been chastised by God's wrath ; the cause of this chas- 
 tisement was that the people had neglected the Law. 
 Forgetting the Law, Israel had passed and was still pass- 
 ing through many tribulations, and was subjected to the 
 yoke of a foreign power. What was the duty of the 
 Jews in this condition of things ? According to the 
 Scribes, it was not to engage in any political scheme 
 whatever for throwing off the foreign yoke, but to 
 establish the Law in their own midst, — to apply them- 
 selves, not only to obey the whole Torah, particularly 
 in its ceremonial precepts, but so to develop these pre- 
 cepts that they might embrace every minute detail of 
 
LECT. III. PHARISAISM. 69 
 
 life. Then, wlien by this means Israel had become a 
 law-obeying nation in the fullest sense of the word, 
 Jehovah Himself, in His righteousness, would inter- 
 vene, miraculously remove the scourge, and establish the 
 glory of His law-fulfilling people. These were the prui- 
 ciples of the Scribes and the Pharisees, the principles 
 spoken of by Paul in writing to the Piomans, when he 
 tells us that Israel, following after the law of righteous- 
 ness, did not attain to the law of righteousness ; that 
 they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going 
 about to establish their own righteousness, did not sub- 
 mit themselves unto the righteousness of God (Eom. 
 ix. 31 ; X. 3). 
 
 Now, all that the Scribes did for the transmission, 
 preservation, and interpretation of the Old Testament, 
 was guided by these legal aims. In the first instance, 
 they were not scholars, not preachers, but " lawyers " 
 iyoyuiKo'C), as they are often called in the New Testament. 
 In their juridical decisions they were guided partly by 
 study of the Pentateuch, but partly also by observation of 
 the actual legal usages of their time, by those views of the 
 Law which were practically acknowledged, for example, 
 in the ceremonial of the temple and the priesthood. 
 There was thus, in the wisdom of the Scribes, an element 
 of use and wont, — an element of common law, which 
 of course existed in Jerusalem as in every other living 
 community side by side with the codified written law ; 
 and this element of common law, or use and wont, was 
 the source of the theory of legal tradition familiar to all 
 
60 GROWTH OF THE lect. hi. 
 
 of us from allusions in the New Testament. According 
 to this theory, Moses himself had delivered to Israel an 
 oral law along with the written Torah. The oral law 
 was as old as the Pentateuch, and had come down in 
 authentic form through the prophets to Ezra. The 
 conception of an oral law, as old and venerable as the 
 written law, necessarily influenced the Scribes in all 
 their interpretations of Scripture. It introduced into 
 their handling of Scripture an element of uncertainty 
 and falsity, upon which Jesus Himself, as you will 
 remember, put His finger, with that unfailing insight 
 of His into the unsound parts of the religious state of 
 His time. Through their theory of the traditional law 
 the Scribes were led into many a departure from the 
 spirit, and even from the letter of the written Word 
 (Matt. xii. 1-8 ; xv. 1-20 ; xxiii.) 
 
 To the Scribes, then, the whole law, written and 
 oral, was of equal practical authority. What they 
 really sought to preserve intact, and hand down as 
 binding for Israel, was not so much the written text of 
 the Pentateuch as their own rules, — partly derived from 
 the Pentateuch, but partly, as we have seen, from other 
 sources, — which they honestly believed to be equally an 
 expression of the mind of the Eevealer, even in cases 
 where they had no basis in Scripture, or only the 
 basis of some very strained interpretation. Now, you 
 can readily conceive that the traditional interpretation 
 of the law could not be stationary. In fact, we know 
 that it was not so. The subject has been gone into 
 
LECT. III. TRADITIONAL LA W. 61 
 
 with great care by Jewish scholars, who are more inter- 
 ested than we are in the traditional law ; and they have 
 been able to prove, from their own books and written 
 records of the legal traditions, that that law underwent, 
 from century to century, not a few changes. This was 
 no more than natural. So loner as a nation has a 
 
 o 
 
 national life, lives and develops new practical necessi- 
 ties, there must also from time to time be changes in the 
 law and its application. In part, then, the growth of 
 the traditional law was owing to changes and new 
 necessities of the national life. It would doubtless, 
 from this source alone, have grown and changed very 
 much more, but for the fact, that between Ezra and the 
 time of Christ the Jews were almost continuously under 
 foreign domination, so that they had not perfect freedom 
 of civil or even religious development. At the same 
 time, they always retained a certain amount of muni- 
 cipal independence ; and so long as the municipal life 
 remained active, the law necessarily underwent modi- 
 fications from time to time. 
 
 But there was another reason for continual changes 
 in the traditional law. The party headed by the Scribes, 
 which finally developed into the Pharisees, were led by 
 their exaggerated conceptions of the importance of legal 
 and ceremonial righteousness as the one source of felicity 
 in Israel — they were led, I say, by this exaggerated con- 
 ception of legality to make, as they called it, a hedge 
 round the Law — that is, constantly to expand the com- 
 pass of legal precept ; to extend the sphere of ceremonial 
 4 
 
62 THE SANHEDRIM, lect. hi. 
 
 observances outside of wtiat lay in the Pentateuch and 
 in the oldest form of tradition, so that it might be im- 
 possible for a man, if he observed all their traditional 
 rules, to come even within sight of a possible breach of 
 the Law. Now the Scribes and Pharisees who developed 
 this tendency were not the governing class in Judaea. 
 The governors of the nation in its internal matters were 
 the priestly aristocracy, with the high priest at their 
 head as a sort of hereditary prince over Israel. Never- 
 theless the great Eabbins of the party of Scribes were 
 men whose legal ability gained for them a commanding 
 position and influence ; while the mass of the Pharisees, 
 by their claim of special sanctity and special legality, 
 also acquired great weight with the common people ; 
 and in consequence of this the authority of the party 
 ultimately became so great that, as we learn from 
 Josephus, the priestly aristocracy, who were the civil 
 as well as the religious heads of the Jews, and who 
 themselves were no more inclined than any other 
 aristocracy to make changes that were not for their 
 own personal profit, yet found themselves compelled by 
 the pressure of public opinion to defer in almost every 
 instance to the doctrines of the Scribes.^^^ The municipal 
 and legal administration took place by means of councils 
 bearing the name of Synedria or Sanhedrin. There was 
 a central council with judicial and administrative author 
 rity — the Great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem — and there were 
 local councils in provincial towns. These councils were 
 mainly occupied by Sadducees, or men of the aristocratic 
 
LECT. III. THE MISHNA. C3 
 
 party ; but ultimately the Scribes, as trained lawyers, 
 gained a considerable proportion of seats in them ; and 
 during the latter time of the Maccabees under Queen 
 Salome, and still more after the fall of the Hasmonean 
 dynasty, when it w^as the policy of Herod the Great 
 to crush the old nobility and play off the Pharisees 
 against them, the influence of the Scribes in the national 
 councils of justice came greatly to outweigh that of the 
 aristocratic Sadducees. In this w^ay, as you will observe, 
 the interpreters of the law gained a very important place 
 in the practical life of Israel ; and they continued active, 
 developing and applying their peculiar system, until the 
 overthrow of the city by Titus in the year a.d. 70 de- 
 prived the law of much of its national importance. 
 When the Temple was destroyed, and when the Jewish 
 nationality was crushed, a great part of the public or- 
 dinances decreed by the Scribes fell into desuetude, 
 though private and personal observances of ceremonial 
 righteousness were still insisted upon. Further deve- 
 lopment became impossible, or was limited to a much 
 narrower range; and after the last desperate struggle 
 of the Jews for liberty under Hadrian, a.d. 132 to 135, 
 the Scribes, no longer able to find a practical out- 
 let for their influence in the guidance of the state, 
 devoted themselves to systematising and writing down 
 the traditional law in the stage which it had then 
 reached. This systematisation took shape in the col- 
 lection which is called the Mishna, which was completed 
 by Eabbi Judah the Holy about A.D. 200.^"^^ 
 
G4 THE POLL-TAX lect. hi. 
 
 I have directed your attention to the history of the 
 traditional law because its transmission was inseparably 
 bound up with the transmission of the text of the Bible. 
 As we have seen, the whole law, written and oral, was 
 one in the estimation of the Scribes. The early ver- 
 sions and the early Jewish commentaries show us that 
 the interpretation of the Pentateuch was guided by 
 legal much rather than by philological principles. The 
 Bible was understood by the help of the Halacha quite 
 as much as the Halacha was based upon the Bible ; 
 and so, as the traditional law underwent many changes, 
 these reacted upon the interpretation and even to a 
 certain extent upon the reading of the text of the 
 Pentateuch. Let me take an example of this from what 
 we find in the Bible itself. In Neh. x. 32 we read that 
 the people made a law for themselves, charging them- 
 selves with a yearly poll-tax of one-third of a shekel 
 for the service of the Temple. In the time of Christ 
 this tribute of one-third of a shekel had been increased 
 to half a shekel {didraclima ; Matt. xvii. 24, margin)-, 
 and the impost which in the time of Nehemiah was a 
 tax voluntarily taken upon themselves by the people 
 without any written warrant, was in this later time 
 supposed to be based upon Exodus xxx. 12-16. This 
 view of the matter, indeed, is already taken by the 
 Chronicler; for he speaks of a yearly Mosaic impost 
 for the maintenance of the Temple (2 Chron. xxiv. 5, 6), 
 and therefore even in his time the passage in the 30th 
 chapter of Exodus must have been held to be the basis 
 
LECT. III. AND THE TITHES. 65 
 
 of the poll-tax. Yet that tax was a new tax ; it was 
 first assumed in the time of Nehemiah ; and it is only 
 an afterthought of the Scribes to base it upon the 
 Pentateuch. This example illustrates one way in which 
 the conception of the law changed in the hands of the 
 Scribes. In other cases they actually took it upon 
 themselves to alter Pentateuchal laws. For example, 
 the tithes were transferred from the Levites to the 
 priests, and the use of the liturgy prescribed in Deu- 
 teronomy xxvi. 12-15 on occasion of the tithing, which 
 was not suitable after that change had been made, was 
 abolished by John Hyrcanus, the Hasmonean prince 
 and high priest.^""^ These are but single examples out of 
 many which' might be adduced, but are enough to 
 show that so long as the development of the oral law 
 was running its course, the written law was treated by 
 the Scribes with a certain measure of freedom. 
 
 Their real interest, I repeat, lay not in the sacred 
 text itself, but in the practical system based upon it. 
 That comes out very forcibly in repeated passages of 
 the Eabbinical writings, in which the study of Scripture 
 is spoken of almost contemptuously, as something far 
 inferior to the study of the traditional legislative system. 
 
 Now, people often think of the eTews as entirely 
 absorbed, from the very first, in the exact grammatical 
 study and literal preservation of the written Word. 
 Had this been so, they could never have devised so 
 many expositions which are plainly against the idiom 
 of the Hebrew language, but which flowed naturally and 
 
GQ RISE OF A lect. hi. 
 
 easily from the legal positions tlien current. The early 
 Scribes had neither the inclination nor the philological 
 qualifications for exact scholarly study, and when they 
 did lay weight upon some verbal nicety of the sacred 
 Text, they did so in the interest of some legal theory of 
 their own, and upon principles to which we can assign 
 no value. No doubt the Scribes and their successors 
 in the Talmudic times (a.d. 200 to 600) must them- 
 selves have been quite aware that the meanings which 
 they forced upon texts, in order to carry out their legal 
 system, were not natural and idiomatic renderings. But 
 this did not greatly trouble them, for it was to them an 
 axiom that the oral and traditional laws were one 
 system, and, therefore, they were bound to harmonise 
 the two at any sacrifice of the rules of language. The 
 objections to such an arbitrary exegesis did not come to 
 be strongly felt till long after the Talmudic period, 
 when a new school of Jewish scholars arose, who had 
 grammatical and scientific knowledge, mainly derived 
 from the learning of the Arabs. When in the Middle 
 Ages these Eabbins introduced a stricter system of 
 grammatical interpretation, it soon came to be felt that 
 the Talmudic way of dealing with Scripture was often 
 quite forced and unnatural, and so it was found neces- 
 sary to draw a sharp distinction between the traditional 
 Talmudic interpretation of any text, which continued to 
 have the value of an indisputable legal authority, and 
 the grammatical interpretation or P'shat, representing 
 that exact and natural sense of the passage which the 
 
LF.CT. III. GRAMMATICAL EXEGESIS. 67 
 
 more modern study had enabled men to determine ^yith 
 sharpness and precision. 
 
 The mediaeval Eabbins concentrated their atten- 
 tion on the plain grammatical sense of Scripture, and 
 their best doctors, who were the masters of our Protest- 
 ant translators, rose much above the Talmudical exegesis, 
 although they never altogether shook off the false prin- 
 ciple that a good sense must be got out of everything, 
 and that if it cannot be got out of the text by the rules 
 of grammar, these rules must just give way. Even our 
 own Bible, wliich rests almost entirely upon the better 
 or grammatical school of Jewish interpretation, does, 
 in some passages, show traces of the Talmudical weak- 
 ness of determining to harmonise things, and get over 
 difficulties, even at the expense of strict grammar ; but 
 this false tendency was confined within narrow limits ; 
 and, on the whole, the influence of the Talmudists was 
 almost completely conquered in the Protestant versions, 
 though it is still felt in the harmonistic exegesis of the 
 anti-critical school.^"^ 
 
 A much more serious point is raised by the consider- 
 ation that although we are able to correct the interpret- 
 ations of the ancient Scribes, we have the text of the 
 Hebrew Old Testament as they gave it to us ; and we 
 must therefore inquire whether they were in a position 
 to hand down to us the best possible text. Let me 
 illustrate the significance of this question, by referring 
 to the history of the text of the New Testament. The 
 books of the New Testament circulated in manuscript 
 
68 THE TEXT OF THE lect. hi. 
 
 copies, and it is by a comparison of such old codices as 
 still remain to us that scholars adjust the printed texts 
 of their modern editions. The comparison shows that 
 the old copies often differ in their readings. Some of the 
 variations are mere slips of the transcriber, which any 
 Greek scholar can correct as readily as one corrects a 
 slip made in writing a letter ; but others are more serious. 
 Those of you who have not access to the Greek Testa- 
 ment, will find sufficient examples either in the small 
 English New Testament, published by Tischendorf in 
 1869, which gives the readings of three ancient MSS., or 
 in that very convenient book, Eyre and Spottiswoode's 
 Sunday School Centenary Bible, which, on the whole, 
 is the best edition of the English version for any one 
 who wishes to look below the surface. Now if you 
 consult such collections of various readings as are given 
 in these works, you w^ill find that, in various MSS., 
 words, clauses, and whole sentences are inserted or 
 omitted, and sometimes the insertions change the whole 
 meaning of a passage. In one or two instances a com- 
 plete paragraph appears in some copies, and is left out 
 in others. The titles in particular offer great variations. 
 The oldest MSS. do not prefix the name of Paul to the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, and they do not put the words 
 " at Ephesus," into the first verse of the first chapter of 
 Ephesians. Such changes as these show that the copy- 
 ists of these times did not proceed exactly like law 
 clerks copying a deed. They made additions from 
 parallel passages, they wrote things upon the margin 
 
i.ECT. III. HEBRE W BIBLE, 69 
 
 which afterwards got into the text ; and, when copying 
 from a blotted page, they sometimes had to make a guess 
 at a word. In these and other ways mistakes came in 
 and were perpetuated ; and it takes the best scholarship, 
 combined with an acuteness developed by long practice, 
 to determine the true reading in each case, and to 
 eliminate all corruptions. 
 
 Now, of course the ancients were quite aware that 
 such variations existed among copies, and in later times 
 they did their best to correct the text; but hardly any 
 one will affirm that the shape which the New Testa- 
 ment ultimately took in the hands of the scholars of 
 Constantinople, is as near to the first hand of the 
 Apostles as the text which a good modern editor is able 
 to make by comparing the oldest MSS. which are still 
 preserved to us. Such is the state of the New Testa- 
 ment text, and such are the methods by which this text 
 is corrected, through comparison of the most ancient 
 MSS. But what is the state of things as regards the 
 Old Testament ? All MSS. of the Hebrew Bible (and 
 we have none older than the ninth century after Christ) 
 i:epresent one and the same text. There are slight vari- 
 ations, but these are, almost without exception, such as 
 might have been made even by a careful copyist acting 
 under fixed rules, and do not affect the general state of 
 the text. But we can go farther. We may say that 
 the text of the Hebrew Old Testament w^hich we now 
 have is the same as lay before Jerome 400 years 
 after Christ ; the same as underlies certain translations 
 
70 SUSPENDED LETTERS. lect. in. 
 
 into Clialdee called Targums, wliicti were made in Baby- 
 lon in the third century after Christ ; indeed the same 
 text as was received by the Jewish doctors of the second 
 century, when the Mishna was being formed, and when 
 the Jewish proselyte Aquila made liis translation into 
 Greek. I do not affirm that there were no various read- 
 ings in the copies of the second or even of the fourth cen- 
 tury, but the variations were slight and easily controlled, 
 and such as would have occurred in MSS. carefully tran- 
 scribed from one standard copy.^^^ 
 
 The Jews, in fact, from the time when their 
 national life was extinguished, and their whole soul 
 concentrated upon the preservation of the monuments 
 of the past, devoted the most strict and punctilious 
 attention to the exact transmission of the received text, 
 down to the smallest peculiarity of spelling, and even 
 to certain irregularities of writing. Let me explain 
 this last point. We find that when the standard 
 manuscript had a letter too big, or a letter too 
 small, the copies made from it imitated even this, 
 so that letters of an unusual size appear in the same 
 place in every Hebrew Bible. Nay, the scrupulous- 
 ness of the transcribers went still further. In old 
 MSS., when a copyist had omitted a letter — there was 
 no running hand, it was a sort of printing with the 
 pen, so that a letter might easily fall out, — and, 
 when the error was detected, as the copy was revised, 
 the reviser inserted the missing letter above the 
 line as we should now do with a caret. If, on the 
 
LECT. III. KERI AND KETHIB. 71 
 
 other hand, the reviser found that any superfluous letter 
 had been inserted, he cancelled it by pricking a dot 
 above it. Now, when such corrections occurred in the 
 standard MS. from which our Hebrew Bibles are all 
 copied, the error and the correction were copied to- 
 gether, so that you will find, even in printed Bibles (for 
 the system has been carried down into the printed 
 text), letters suspended above the line to show that 
 they had been inserted with a caret, and letters 
 " pointed " with a dot over them to show that they form 
 no proper part of the text.^^^ This shows with what 
 punctilious accuracy the one standard copy was fol- 
 lowed. In a few cases, however, it was thought neces- 
 sary to suggest a correction on the reading of the text. 
 There were some words, for example, which it was not 
 thought decorous to use in public reading in the syna- 
 gogue, and for this and other reasons, a few modifica- 
 tions were prescribed in the reading of the text. But 
 the rule was laid down that you must not on that 
 account change the text itself. The reader simply 
 learned to pronounce, in reading certain passages, a 
 different word from that wliich he found written ; and 
 in many MSS. a note to this effect was placed on the 
 margin. These notes are called Kcris, the word Keri 
 being the imperative " read 1 " while the expression 
 actually written in the text, but not uttered, is called 
 Ketliih (written). Now it is plain that such a system of 
 mechanical transmission could not have been carried 
 out with precision if copying had been left to unin- 
 
72 MASSORETS. lect. hi. 
 
 structed persons. The work of preserving and trans- 
 mitting the received text became the specialty of a 
 guild of technically trained scholars, called the Masso- 
 rets, or " possessors of tradition," that is, of tradition as 
 to the proper way of writing the Bible. The Massorets 
 laboured for centuries; their work was not completed 
 till at least 800 years after the time of Christ ; and they 
 collected many orthographical rules and great lists of 
 peculiarities of writing to be observed in passages where 
 any error was to be feared, which are still preserved 
 either as marginal notes and appendices to MSS. of the 
 Bible, or in separate works. Besides this, the scholars 
 of the period after the close of the Talmud — that is, after 
 the sixth Christian century, or thereby — devoted them- 
 selves to preserving not only the exact writing, but the 
 exact reading and pronunciation of the Bible, accord- 
 ing to the rules of the synagogal chanting. The final 
 result of this labour was a system of vowel points and 
 musical accents, which enable the trained reader to give 
 exactly the correct pronunciation, and even the correct 
 chanting tone of every word of the Hebrew Old Testament. 
 The development of all these precautions was the 
 work of centuries, and had a history many parts of 
 which are involved in obscurity. But the question 
 that interests us, is to know where the text so care- 
 fully guarded came from. We have seen that all 
 MSS. were scrupulously conformed to one standard copy ; 
 but where and when was that copy written, and haw 
 did it come to acquire such exceptional authority ? All 
 
LECT. III. SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH. 73 
 
 the evidence of variations and quotations later tlian the 
 first Christian century points to the received text as 
 abeady existing practically as we have it, but we can- 
 not follow its history beyond that time. On the con- 
 trary, there is abundant evidence that in earlier ages 
 Hebrew MSS. differed as much as, or more than, MSS. of 
 the New Testament. We shall have to look at the 
 proof of this in some detail by-and-by. For the pre- 
 sent, it is enough to point out some of the chief sources 
 of the evidence. The Samaritans, as well as the Jews, 
 have preserved the Hebrew Pentateuch, writing it in a 
 peculiar character. Well, the copies of the Samaritan 
 Pentateuch, which they received from the Jews for the 
 first time about 430 B.C., differ very considerably from 
 our received Hebrew text. Some of the variations are 
 corruptions wilfully introduced in favour of the schisma- 
 tic temple on Mount Gerizim ; but others have no pole- 
 mical significance, affecting such points as the ages 
 assigned to the patriarchs.^'^^ Then, again, the old Greek 
 version, the Alexandrian version of the Septuagint, 
 which, in part at least, was written before the middle of 
 the third century B.C., contains many various readings, 
 sometimes omitting large passages, or making consider- 
 able insertions ; sometimes changing the order of chap- 
 ters and verses ; sometimes making only smaller 
 changes, more similar to those with which we are 
 familiar in Greek MSS. Nay, even among learned 
 Jews who read Hebrew, the text was not fixed up to 
 the first century of our era. For the Book of JuUlees, a 
 
74 ADOPTION OF A lect. hi. 
 
 Hebrew work which was written apparently but a few 
 years before the fall of the Temple, agrees with the 
 Samaritan Pentatench in some of the numbers in the 
 patriarchal chronology, and in other readings/^^^ 
 
 Now, observe the point to wliich we are thus 
 brought. After the fall of the Jewish state, when the 
 Scribes ceased to be an active party in a living common- 
 wealth, and became more and more pure scholars, 
 gathering up and codifying all the fragments of national 
 literature and national life that remained to them, we 
 find the text of the Old Testament carefully conformed 
 to a single archetype. But we cannot trace this text 
 back through the centuries when the nation had still a 
 life of its own. Nay, we can be sure that in these 
 earlier centuries copies of the Bible circulated, and were 
 freely read even by learned men like the author of the 
 Book of Jubilees, which had great and notable variations 
 of text, not inferior in extent to those still existing in 
 New Testament MSS. In later times every trace of 
 these varying copies disappears. They must have been 
 suppressed, or gradually superseded by a deliberate effort, 
 which has been happily compared, by the German scholar 
 Noldeke, to the action of the Caliph Othman in destroy- 
 ing all copies of the Koran which diverged from the 
 standard text that he had adopted. There can be no 
 question who were the instruments in this work. The 
 Scribes alone possessed the necessary influence to give 
 one text or one standard MS. a position of such supreme 
 authority. Moreover, we are able to explain how it 
 
LECT. III. STANDARD TEXT. 76 
 
 came about that the fixing of a standard text took place 
 about the Apostolic age, or rather a little later than 
 that date, and not at any earlier time. We have al- 
 ready glanced at the political causes, which made the 
 power of the Scribes greater in the time of Herod than 
 it had ever been before. The doctors of the Law wielded 
 a great authority, and were naturally eager to consoli- 
 date their legal system. In earlier times the oral and 
 written law went independently side by side, and each 
 stood on its o\\ti footing. Therefore, variations in the 
 text did not seriously affect any practical question. 
 But under Eabbi Hillel, a contemporary of Herod the 
 Great, and the grandfather of the Gamaliel who is 
 mentioned in the fifth chapter of Acts, a great change 
 took place. It was the ambition of Hillel to devise a 
 system of interpretation by which every traditional 
 custom could be connected with some text from the 
 Pentateuch, no matter in how arbitrary a way. This 
 system was taken up and perfected by his successors, 
 especially by Eabbi Akiba, who was a prominent figure 
 in the revolt against Hadrian.^^^^ The new method of exe- 
 gesis laid weight upon the smallest word, and sometimes 
 even upon mere letters of Scripture ; so that it became a 
 matter of great importance to the new school of Eabbins 
 to fix on an authoritative text. We have seen that 
 when this text was fixed, the discordant copies must 
 have been rigorously suppressed. The evidence for this 
 is only circumstantial, but it is quite sufficient. There 
 is no other explanation which will account for the facts, 
 
76 AQUILA, LECT. in. 
 
 and the conclusion is confirmed by what took place 
 among the Greek-speaking Jews with reference to their 
 Greek Bible. The Bible of the Greek-speaking Jews, 
 the Septuagint, had formerly enjoyed very great honour 
 even in Palestine, and is most respectfully spoken of 
 by the ancient Palestinian tradition ; but it did not suit 
 the newer school of interpretation, it did not correspond 
 with the received text, and was not literal enough to 
 fit the new methods of Rabbinic interpretation, while 
 the Christians, on the contrary, found it a convenient 
 instrument in their discussions with the Jews. There- 
 fore it fell into disrepute, and early in the second cen- 
 tury, just at the time when, as we have seen, the new 
 text of the Old Testament had been fixed, we find its 
 use superseded among the Greek-speaking Jews by a 
 new translation, slavishly literal in character, made by 
 a Jewish proselyte of the name of Aquila, wdio w^as a 
 disciple of the Eabbi Akiba, and studiously followed 
 his exegetical methods. ^^^^ 
 
 This, then, Was what the Scribes did. — They chose 
 for us the Hebrew text which we have now got. Were 
 they in a position to choose the very best text, to pro- 
 duce a critical edition which could justly be accepted 
 as the standard, so that we lose nothing by the suppres- 
 sion of all divergent copies ? Now, this at least we can 
 say, — that if they fixed for us a satisfactory text, the 
 Scribes did not do so in virtue of any great critical skill 
 which they possessed in comparing MSS. and selecting 
 the best readings. They worked from a false point of 
 
LECT. III. THE SCRIBES AS CRITICS, 77 
 
 view. Their objects were legal, not philological. Tlieir 
 defective philology, their bad system of interpretation, 
 made them bad critics ; for it is the first rule of criticism 
 that a good critic must be a good interpreter of the 
 thoughts of his author. This judgment is quite con- 
 firmed by the accounts which are given in the Tal- 
 mudical books of certain small and sporadic attempts 
 made by the Scribes to exercise something like criticism 
 upon the text. For example, in one passage of the Tal- 
 mud, we read of three MSS. preserved in the Court of the 
 Temple, each of which had one reading which the other 
 MSS. did not share. The Scribes, we are told, rejected 
 in each case the reading which had onl}^ one copy for 
 it and two against it.^^^^ Now, every critic knows that to 
 accept or reject a reading merely according to the 
 number of MSS. for or against it is a method which, if 
 applied on a large scale, would lead to a very bad text 
 indeed. Then the early Scribes are related to have made 
 certain changes in the text, apparently without manu- 
 script authority, and merely in order to remove expres- 
 sions which seemed irreverent or indecorous. We have 
 seen that in later times, after the received text was 
 fixed, the Jewish scholars did not venture to make such 
 a change. They permitted themselves to make a change 
 in the reading but not a change in the writing ; but in 
 earlier times, according to the statement of the Eabbi- 
 nical books, a certain small nuniber of alterations, 
 chiefly on dogmatical grounds, was made even upon 
 the writing of Scripture. These changes are called the 
 
78 TIKKUNE SOPHERIM. lect. hi. 
 
 iS Tikhitne Sopherim (corrections or determinations of 
 the Scribes). Thus in Job vii. 20, where the present 
 text reads, " I am a burden to myself," the tradition ex- 
 plains that the original reading was, " I am a burden 
 upon thee," that is, a burden upon Jehovah. That was 
 corrected because it seemed to be a somewhat irreverent 
 expression. Again, in Genesis xviii. 22, where our ver- 
 sion says, " Abraham still stood before tlie Lord," tradi- 
 tion says that this was a change of the Scribes, the 
 original reading being, "The Lord still stood before 
 Abraham." Again, in Habakkuk i. 12, where our ver- 
 sion and the present Hebrew text read, " Art thou not 
 from everlasting, Jehovah my God, my Holy One? 
 "We shall not die," the tradition tells us that the original 
 reading was, " Thou canst not die," which was changed 
 because it seemed irreverent to mention the idea of 
 God dying, even in order to negative it. Others of the 
 eighteen cases recorded in the Jewish books as having 
 been corrections of the Scribes are more doubtful, and a 
 different explanation is more plausible, but on the whole 
 it can hardly be questioned that the tradition expresses 
 a fact, viz. — That the early guardians of the text did 
 not hesitate to make small changes in order to remove 
 expressions which they thought unedifying.^^*^ ISTo doubt, 
 such changes were made in a good many cases of which 
 no record has been retained. For example, in our text 
 of the Books of Samuel, Saul's son and successor is 
 called Ishbosheth, but in 1 Chronicles viii. 33 he is 
 called Eshbaal. Eshbaal means '* Baal's man," a proper 
 
LECT. III. THE NAME ISHBOSHETH. 79 
 
 name of a well-known Semitic type, precisely similar to 
 such Arabic names as Imrau-1-Cais, "the man of the 
 god Cais." We must not, however, fancy that a son of 
 Saul could be named after the Tyrian or Canaanite Baal. 
 The word Baal is not the proper name of one deity, but 
 an appellative noun meaning lord or owner, which the 
 tribes of the Northern Semites applied each to their own 
 cliief divinity. In earlier times it appears that the 
 Israelites did not scruple to apply the title of Baal to 
 their national God Jehovah. Thus the golden calves 
 at Bethel and Dan, which were certainly worshipped 
 under the supposition that they represented Jehovah, 
 were called Baalim by their devotees ; and Hosea, when 
 he prophesies the purification of Israel's religion, makes 
 it a main point that the people shall no longer call 
 Jehovah their Baal (Hosea ii. 16, 17 ; comf, xiii. 1, 2). 
 This prophecy shows that in Hosea's time the use of 
 the word was felt to be dangerous to true religion ; and 
 indeed there is no question that it led the mass of the 
 people to confound the true God with the false Baalim 
 of Canaan. And so in process of time scrupulous 
 Israelites not only desisted from applying the title of 
 Baal to Jehovah, and confined it to the Tyrian and 
 Canaanite sun god, but taking literally the precept of 
 Exod. xxiii. 13, " Make no mention of the name of other 
 gods," they were wont, when they had occasion to refer 
 to the false deity, to call him not Baal but Bosheth, " the 
 shameful thing," as a euphemism for the hated name 
 Tliis is how the name of "Eshbaal" was ultimately 
 
80 AGE OF THE lect. hi. 
 
 changed by scrupulous copyists or readers into " Ishbo- 
 sbeth," but we may be very certain that no king would 
 ever have consented to bear such a name in his own 
 lifetime as " The man of the shameful thing." 
 
 These, then, are specimens of the changes wliich we 
 can still prove to have been made by early editors, and 
 they are enough to show that these guardians of the 
 text were not sound critics. Fortunately for us, they 
 did not pretend to make criticism their main business. 
 It would have been a very unfortunate thing for us in- 
 deed, if we had been left to depend upon a text of the 
 Hebrew Bible which the Scribes had made to suit their 
 own views. There can be no doubt, however, that the 
 standard copy which they ultimately selected, to the 
 exclusion of all others, owed this distinction not to any 
 critical labour which had been spent upon it, but to 
 some external circumstance that gave it a special repu- 
 tation. Indeed, the fact, which we have already referred 
 to, that the very errors and corrections and accidental 
 peculiarities of the MS. were kept just as they stood, 
 shows that it must have been invested with a peculiar 
 sanctity ; if indeed the meaning of the so-called extra- 
 ordinary points — that is, of those suspended and dotted 
 letters, and the like — had not already been forgotten 
 when it was chosen to be the archetype of all future 
 copies. 
 
 Now, if the Scribes were not the men to make a 
 critical text, it is plain that they were also not in a 
 position to choose, upon scientific principles, the very 
 
LECT. III. ARCHETYPE. 81 
 
 best extant MS. ; but it is very probable that they 
 selected an old and well-written copy, possibly one of 
 those MSS. which were preserved in the Court of the 
 Temple. Between this copy and the original auto- 
 graphs of the Sacred Writers there must have been 
 many a link. It may have been an old manuscript, but 
 it was not an exorbitantly old one. Of that there are 
 two proofs. In the first place, it was certainly written 
 with the " square " or " Chaldean " letters used in our 
 modern Hebrew Bibles ; but these letters are of Aramaic 
 origin, and in old times the Hebrews used the quite dif- 
 ferent character called Phoenician. According to Jewish 
 tradition, which ascribes everything to Ezra which it has 
 not the assurance to refer to Moses, the change on the 
 character in which the sacred books were written was 
 introduced by Ezra ; but we know that this is a mistake, 
 for the Samaritans, who did not possess the Pentateuch 
 until fifty years after Ezra, received it in the old 
 Phoenician letter, which they retain in a corrupted form 
 down to the present day. It is very doubtful whether 
 there were any MSS. written in the Aramaic character 
 before the third century B.C., and that therefore would 
 be the earliest date to which we can refer the archetype 
 of our present Hebrew copies. Another proof that the 
 copy was not extraordinarily old lies in the spelling. 
 In Hebrew, as in other languages, the rules of spelling 
 varied in the course of centuries, and it is not impos- 
 sible to say which of two orthographies is the older. 
 Now, it can be proved that the copies which lay before 
 
82 DESTRUCTION OF BIBLES lect. hi. 
 
 the translators of the Septuagint in the third, and per- 
 haps in the second, century B.C., often had an older style 
 of spelling than existed in the archetype of our present 
 Hebrew Bibles. ^^^-^ It does not follow of necessity that 
 those older MSS. were also better and nearer to the 
 original text; but certainly the facts which we have 
 been developing give a new importance to the circum- 
 stance that the MSS. of the LXX. often contained 
 readings very different from those of our Hebrew^ Bibles, 
 even to the extent of omitting or inserting passages of 
 considerable length. 
 
 In this connection there is yet another point worth 
 notice. In these times Hebrew books were costly and 
 cumbrous, written on huge rolls of leather, not even 
 on the later and more convenient parchment. Copies 
 therefore were not very numerous, and, being much 
 handled, were apt to get worn and indistinct. For not 
 only was leather an indifferent surface to write on, but 
 the ink was of a kind that could be washed off, a preju- 
 dice existing against the use of a mordant. ^^^^ No single 
 copy therefore, however excellent, was likely to remain 
 long in good readable condition throughout. And we 
 have seen that collation of several copies, by which 
 defects might have been supplied, was practised to but 
 a small extent. Often indeed it must have been diffi- 
 cult to get copies to collate, and once at least the whole 
 number of Bibles existing in Palestine was reduced to 
 very narrow limits. For Antiochus Epiphanes (b.c. 
 ] G8) caused all MSS. of the Law, and seemingly of the 
 
LECT. III. BY ANTIOCHUS, 83 
 
 other sacred books, to be torn up and burnt, and made 
 it a capital offence to possess a Pentateuch (1 Mac. i. 
 56, 57 ; Josephus, Ant. xii. 5). The text of books pre- 
 served only in manuscript might very readily suffer in 
 passing through such a crisis, and it is most providential 
 that the Septuagint version, translated at an earlier 
 period and current in regions where Antiochus had no 
 sway, stiU exists to carry our knowledge of the state of 
 the text back beyond his time, confirming the substan- 
 tial accuracy of our Hebrew Bibles, while at the same 
 time it shows them to be not immaculate, and gives 
 valuable help towards the correction of such errors 
 as exist. 
 
84 THE SEPTUAGINT. lect. iv. 
 
 LECTUEE lY. 
 
 THE SEPTUAGINt/^^ 
 
 We have passed under review the vicissitudes of the 
 Hebrew Text, as far back as the days of Antiochus 
 Epiphanes. We have found that the absence of im- 
 portant various readings from the Hebrew MSS. now 
 in existence does not prove that the text which they 
 present is absolutely perfect and authoritative. The 
 phenomena of the text prove, indeed, that all our MSS. 
 go back to one archetype. But the archetype was not 
 formed by a critical process which we can accept as 
 conclusive. It was not so ancient but that a long 
 interval lay between it and the first hand of the Bibli- 
 cal authors ; and the comparative paucity of books in 
 those early times, combined with the imperfect mate- 
 rials used in writing, and the deliberate attempt of 
 Antiochus to annihilate the Hebrew Bible, exposed the 
 text to so many dangers that it cannot but appear a 
 most welcome and providential circumstance that the 
 Greek translation, derived from MSS. of which some at 
 least were presumably older than the archetype of our 
 present Hebrew copies, and preserved in countries 
 beyond the dominions of Antiochus, offers an independ- 
 
LECT. IV. KEIL. 85 
 
 ent witness as to the early state of the Biblical books, 
 
 vindicating the substantial accuracy of the transmission 
 
 of these records ; while, at the same time, it displays 
 
 a text not yet fixed in every point of detail, exhibits a 
 
 series of important various readings, and sometimes 
 
 indicates the existence of corruptions in the received 
 
 Hebrew recension — corruptions which it not seldom 
 
 enables us to remove, restoring the first hand of the 
 
 sacred authors. 
 
 Nevertheless, there have been many scholars who 
 
 altogether reject this use of the Septuagint. One of 
 
 the few living representatives of this party is Keil, 
 
 from whose Introduction (Eng. Trans., vol. ii. p. 306) 
 
 I quote the following sentences : — 
 
 " The numerous and strongly marked deviations [of the Sep- 
 tuagint] from the Massoretic text have arisen partly at a later 
 time, out of the carelessness and caprice of transcribers. But in 
 so far as they existed originally, almost in a mass they are 
 explained by the uncritical and wanton passion for emendation, 
 which led the translators to alter the original text (by omissions, 
 additions, and transpositions) where they misunderstood it in 
 consequence of their own defective knowledge of the language, 
 or where they supposed it to be unsuitable or incorrect for 
 historical, chronological, dogmatic, or other reasons ; or which, 
 at least, led them to render it inexactly, according to their own 
 notions and their uncertain conjectures." 
 
 If this judgment w^ere sound, we should be deprived 
 at one blow of the most ancient witness to the state of 
 the text ; and certainly, at one time, the opinion advo- 
 cated by Keil was generally current among Protestant 
 scholars. We have glanced, in a previous Lecture 
 {sujpra, p. 43), at the reasons which led the early Pro- 
 5 
 
8G MORINUS AND lect. iv. 
 
 testants to place themselves, on points of Hebrew 
 scholarship, almost without reserve in the hands of the 
 Jews. They accepted the received Hebrew text as 
 transmitted in the Jewish schools, and they naturally 
 viewed with distrust the very different text of the 
 Septuagint. However, the question of the real value of 
 the Greek version was stirred early in the seventeenth 
 century mainly by two French scholars, one of whom 
 was a Catholic, John Morinus, priest of the Oratory, the 
 other a Protestant, Ludovicus Cappellus. 
 
 The controversy raised by the publication of the 
 Exerdtationes BiUicce of Morinus (Paris, 1633) was 
 unduly prolonged by the introduction of dogmatic 
 considerations which should have had no place in a 
 scholarly argument as to the history of the Biblical 
 text. These considerations lost much of their force 
 when all parties were compelled to admit the value of 
 the various readings of MSS. and versions for the study 
 of the New Testament ; and, since theological prejudice 
 was overcome, it has gradually become clear to the vast 
 majority of conscientious students that the Septuagint 
 is really of the greatest value as a witness to the early 
 state of the text. 
 
 It is very difficult to convey, in a popular manner, 
 a sufficiently clear idea of the arguments by which this 
 position is established. Even the few remarks which I 
 shall make may, I fear, seem to you somewhat tedious ; 
 but I must ask your attention for them, because it is 
 not a slight matter to inquire whether, in tliis version. 
 
LECT. IV. CAPPELLUS. 87 
 
 older than tlie time of Antioclius Epiphanes, we have or 
 have not a valuable testimony to the way in which the 
 Old Testament has been transmitted, an independent 
 basis for a rational and well-argued belief in the general 
 soundness of the Hebrew text, and a measure of the 
 degree of uncertainty which affects its readings in 
 detail. 
 
 In judging of the Septuagint translation, we must 
 not put ourselves on the standpoint of a translator in 
 these days. We must begin by realising to ourselves 
 the facts brought out in Lecture II., that Jewish 
 scholars, before the time of Christ, had no grammar 
 and no dictionary ; that all their knowledge of the 
 language w^as acquired by oral teaching; that their 
 exegesis of difficult passages was necessarily traditional; 
 and that, where tradition failed them, they had for 
 their guidance only that kind of practical knowledge of 
 the language which they got by the constant habit of 
 reading the sacred text, and speaking some kind of 
 Hebrew among themselves in the schools. We must 
 also remember that, when the Septuagint was composed, 
 the Hebrew language was either dead or dying, and 
 that the mother -tongue of the translators was either 
 Greek or Aramaic. It seems, indeed, that the work was 
 done by persons who knew both Aramaic and Greek. 
 In consequence of this, we must not be surprised to 
 find that, when tradition was silent, the Septuagint 
 translators made many mistakes. If they came to a 
 difficult passage, say of a prophet, of which no tradi- 
 
88 METHODS OF THE lect. iv. 
 
 tional interpretation had been handed down in the 
 schools, or which contained w^ords the meanings of 
 which had not been taught to them by their masters, 
 they could do nothing better than make a guess, — some- 
 times guided by analogies and similar words in the 
 Aramaic, sometimes perhaps by the Arabic, sometimes 
 by other considerations. The value of the translation 
 does not lie in the sense which they put upon such 
 passages, but in the evidence that we can find as to 
 what Hebrew w^ords lay in the MSS. before them. 
 
 Now, apart from the natural limitation of scholar- 
 ship derived entirely from tradition, we find that the 
 Septuagint sometimes varies from the older text for 
 reasons which are at once intelligible when we under- 
 stand the general principles of the Scribes at the time. 
 We have already seen, for example, that the Scribes in 
 Palestine did not hesitate occasionally to make a dog- 
 matic correction, removing from the writing, or at least 
 from the reading, of Scripture some expression which 
 they thought it indecorous to pronounce in public. We 
 need not, therefore, be surprised to find, and indeed we 
 do find, that the translators of the Septuagint did the 
 same thing, and that they sometimes changed a phrase 
 which they thought likely to be misunderstood, or to be 
 used to establish some false doctrine. Thus, in Exodus 
 xxiv. 10, the Hebrew text reads, " And they (that is, 
 the leaders of Israel who went up towards Sinai with 
 Moses) saw the God of Israel." This anthropomorphic 
 expression, it was felt, could not be rendered literally 
 
LECT. IV. LXX. TRANSLATORS. 89 
 
 without lending some countenance to the false idea that 
 the spiritual God can be seen by the bodily eyes of 
 men, and offering an apparent contradiction to Exodus 
 xxxiii. 20. The Septuagint therefore changes it, and 
 says, " They saw the place where the God of Israel had 
 stood." 
 
 Again, we have already seen that the interpretation 
 of the Scribes was largely guided by the Halacha, that 
 is, by oral tradition ultimately based upon the common 
 law and habitual usage of the sanctuary and of Jerusa- 
 lem. The same influence of the Halacha is found in 
 the Septuagint translation. Thus, in Lev. xxiv. 7, 
 where the Hebrew text bids frankincense be placed on 
 the shewbread, the Septuagint makes it " frankincense 
 and salt," because salt, as well as frankincense, was 
 used in the actual ritual of their period. 
 
 Such de%dations of the Septuagint as these need 
 not seriously embarrass the critic. He recognises the 
 causes from which they came. He is able to estimate 
 their extent approximately by what he knows of 
 Palestinian tradition, and he is not likely, in a case of 
 this sort, to be misled into the supposition that the 
 Septuagint had a different text from the Hebrew. Once 
 more, we find that the translators allowed themselves 
 certain liberties which were also used by copyists of the 
 time. Their object was to give the thing Tvdth perfect 
 clearness where they understood it. Consequently they 
 sometimes changed a "he" into "David" or "Solomon," 
 or whoever the person might be who was alluded to ; and 
 
90 VARIATIONS lect. iv. 
 
 they had no scruple in adding a word or two to com- 
 plete the sense of an obscure sentence, or supply what 
 appeared to be an ellipsis. Even our extant Hebrew 
 MSS. indicate a tendency to make additions of this 
 description. The original and nervous style of early 
 Hebrew prose was no longer appreciated, and a diffuse 
 smoothness, with constant repetition of standing phrases 
 and elaborate expansion of the most trifling incidents, 
 was the classical ideal of composition. The copyist or 
 translator seldom omitted anything save by accident; 
 but he was often tempted by his notions of style to 
 venture on an expansion of the text. Let me take a 
 single example. In passages in the Old Testament 
 where we read of some one eating, a compassionate 
 editor, as a recent critic humorously puts it, was pretty 
 sure to intervene and give him somethmg to drink. 
 Sometimes we find the full reading in the Septuagint, 
 sometimes in the Hebrew text. In 1 Samuel i. 9 the 
 Hebrew tells us that Hannah rose up after she had 
 eaten in Shiloh and after she had drunk, but the Sep- 
 tuagint has only the shorter reading, "After she had 
 eaten." Conversely, in 2 Samuel xii. 21, where the 
 Hebrew text says only, " Thou didst rise and eat bread," 
 the Septuagint presents the fuller text, "Thou didst 
 rise and eat bread, and drink." In cases of this sort, the 
 shorter text is obviously the original. There was no 
 motive for leaving out the drinking, but a copyist who 
 loved completeness of statement naturally understood 
 that a man would not eat without drinking likewise. 
 
LECT. IV. OF THE LXX. 91 
 
 We must, tlien, put aside for our present purpose 
 these tliree classes of variations. We have to put aside 
 the cases where the translators misunderstood the text, 
 and could not but misunderstand it because they had 
 no tradition to guide them. We must not say that they 
 were ignorant or capricious, because they were not able 
 to make a good grammatical translation of a passage at 
 a time when such a thing as grammar did not exist even 
 in Palestine. 
 
 In the next place, we must put on one side the 
 cases where their interpretation was influenced by 
 exegetical considerations derived from the dogmatic 
 theology of their time or from the traditional law. And, 
 thirdly, we can attach no great importance to those 
 variations in which, without changing the sense, the 
 translator, or perhaps a copyist before him, gave a slight 
 turn to an expression to remove ambiguity, or gain the 
 diffuse fulness which he loved. 
 
 But after making every allowance for these cases a 
 large class of passages remains, in which the Septuagint 
 presents important variations from the Massoretic text. 
 The test by which the value of these variations can be 
 determined is the method of retranslation. A faithful 
 translation from Hebrew into an idiom so different as 
 the Greek cannot fail to retain the stamp of the original 
 language. It will be comparatively easy to put it back 
 into idiomatic Hebrew, and even the mistakes of the 
 ti-anslator will often point clearly to the words of the 
 original which he had before him. But where the 
 
92 VARIOUS READINGS lect. iv. 
 
 translator capriciously departs from his original, the 
 work of retranslation will at once become more difficult. 
 For the capricious translator is one who substitutes his 
 own thought for that of the author, and what he thinks 
 in Greek will not so naturally lend itself to retroversion 
 into the Hebrew idiom. The test of retranslation gives 
 a very favourable impression of the fidelity of the Alex- 
 andrian version. With a little practice one can often 
 put back whole chapters of the Septuagint into Hebrew, 
 reproducing the original text almost word for word. 
 The translation is not of equal merit throughout, and it 
 is plain that different parts of the Bible were rendered 
 into Greek by men of varying capacity ; but in general, 
 and under the limitations already indicated, it is safe 
 to say that the translators were men of competent scho- 
 larship as scholarship then went, and that they did 
 their work faithfully and in no arbitrary way. IS'ow as 
 we proceed with the work of retranslation, and when all 
 has gone on smoothly for perhaps a whole chapter, in 
 which we find no considerable deflection from the pre- 
 sent Hebrew, we suddenly come to something which the 
 practised hand has no difficulty in putting back into 
 Hebrew, which indeed is full of such characteristic 
 Hebrew idiom that it is impossible to ascribe it to the 
 caprice of a translator thinking in Greek, but which, 
 nevertheless, diverges from the Massoretic text. In 
 such cases we can be morally certain that a various 
 reading existed in the Hebrew MS. from which the 
 Septuagint was derived. Nay, in some passages, the 
 
LECT. IV. OF THE LXX. 93 
 
 moral certainty becomes demonstrative, for we find tliat 
 the translator stumbled on a word which he was unable 
 to render into Greek, and that he contented himself 
 with transcribing it in Greek letters. A Hebrew word 
 thus bodily transferred to the pages of the Septuagint, 
 and yet differing from what we now read in our Hebrew 
 Bibles, constitutes a various reading which cannot be 
 explained away. An example of this is found in 1 Sam. 
 XX., in the account of the arrangement made between 
 Jonathan and David to determine the real state of 
 Saul's disposition towards the latter. In the Hebrew 
 text (ver. 19) Jonathan directs David to be in hiding 
 "by the stone Ezel;" and at verse 41, when the plan 
 agreed on has been carried out, David at a given signal 
 emerges "from beside the Negeb." The Negeb is a 
 district in the south of Judea, remote from the city of 
 Saul, in the neighbourhood of which the events of our 
 chapter took place; and the attempt of the English 
 version to smooth aw^ay the difficulty is not satisfactory 
 either in point of grammar or of sense. But the Sep- 
 tuagint makes the whole thing clear. At verse 19 the 
 Greek reads "beside yonder Ergab," and at verse 41 
 " David arose from the Ergab." Ergab is the transcrip- 
 tion in Greek of a rare Hebrew word signifying a cairn 
 or rude monument of stone, which does not occur else- 
 where except as a proper name (Argob). The trans- 
 lators transcribed the word because they did not under- 
 stand it, and the reading of the Massoretic text, which 
 involves no considerable change in the letters of the 
 
94 VARIOUS READINGS lect. iv. 
 
 Hebrew, probably arose from similar lack of knowledge 
 on the part of Palestinian scholars. 
 
 The various readings of the Septuagint are not always 
 so happy as in this case ; but in selecting some further 
 examples, it will be most instructive for us to confine our- 
 selves to passages where the Greek gives a better reading 
 than the Hebrew, and where its superiority can be made 
 tolerably manifest even in an English rendering. It must, 
 however, be remembered that complete proof that the 
 corruption lies on the side of the Hebrew and not of the 
 Greek can be offered only to those who understand these 
 languages. Our first example shall be 1 Sam. xiv. 18. 
 
 Hebrew. Septuagint. 
 
 And Saul said to Ahiah, And Saul said to Ahiah, 
 
 Bring hither the ark of God. Bring hither the ephod, for 
 
 For the ark of God was on he bare the ephod on that day 
 
 that day and [not as E. V. before Israel, 
 with] the children of Israel. 
 
 The Authorised Version smooths away one difficulty 
 of the Hebrew Text at the expense of grammar. But 
 there are other difficulties behind. The ark was then 
 at Gibeah of Kirjath-jearim (1 Sam. vii. 1 ; 2 Sam. vi. 3), 
 quite a different place from Gibeah of Benjamin ; and 
 its priest was not Ahiah, but Eleazar ben Abinadab. 
 Besides, Saul's object was to seek an oracle, and this 
 was done, not by means of the ark, but by the sacred lot 
 connected with the ephod of the priest (1 Sam. xxiii. 6, 9). 
 This is what the Septuagint actually has got, and there 
 can be no doubt that it is the right reading. The 
 changes on the Hebrew letters required to get the one 
 
LECT. IV. 
 
 IN SAMUEL, 
 
 95 
 
 reading out of the other are far less considerable than 
 one would imagine from the English. 
 
 Another example is the death of Ishbosheth (2 Sam. 
 iv. 5, 6, 7) :— 
 
 Septuagint. 
 They came to the house of 
 Ishbosheth in the hottest part 
 of the day, while he was taking 
 his midday siesta. And lo, the 
 woman who kept the door of 
 the house was cleaning wheat, 
 and she slumbered and slept, 
 and the brothers Kechab and 
 Baanah got through unobserved 
 and came into the house as 
 Ishbosheth lay on his bed, etc. 
 
 Hebrew. 
 [The assassins] came to the 
 house of Ishbosheth in the 
 hottest part of the day, while 
 he was taking his midday siesta. 
 (6) And hither they came into 
 the midst of the house fetching 
 wheat, and smote him in the 
 fiauk, and Rechab and Baanah 
 his brother escaped. (7) And 
 they came into the house as he 
 lay on his bed, . . . and smote 
 him and slew him, etc. 
 
 In the Hebrew there is a meaningless repetition m 
 verse 7 of what has already been fully explained in the 
 two preceding verses. The Septuagint text gives a clear 
 and progressive narrative, and one which no " capricious 
 translator" could have derived out of his own head. As 
 in the previous case, the two readings are very like one 
 another in the Hebrew letter. 
 
 Another reading, long ago appealed to by Dathe as 
 one which no man familiar with the style of the trans- 
 lator could credit him with inventing, is found in 
 Ahithophel's advice to Absalom (2 Sam. xvii. 3) : — 
 
 Septuagint. 
 I will make all the people 
 turn to thee as a bride turneth 
 
 Hebrew. 
 I will bring back all the 
 people to thee. Like the re- 
 turn of the whole is the man 
 whom thou seekest. All the 
 people shall have peace. 
 
 to her husband. Thou seekest 
 the life of but one man, and 
 all the people shall have peace. 
 
96 VARIOUS READINGS lect. iv. 
 
 The cumbrousness of the Hebrew text is manifest. The 
 Septuagint, on the contrary, introduces a graceful simile, 
 thoroughly natural in the picturesque and poetically- 
 coloured language of ancient Israel, but wholly unlike 
 the style of the prosaic age when the translator worked. 
 You will observe that the examples which I have 
 selected are all from the Books of Samuel, and this has a 
 reason. In some parts of the Old Testament, and notably 
 in Samuel and other early historical books, variations of 
 the kind which I have illustrated are numerous; and there 
 is often reason to conclude that the true reading is pre- 
 served in the Septuagint, or, at least, can be reached with 
 its aid. In other books, and particularly in the greater 
 part of the Pentateuch, the Septuagint deflects but little 
 from the Hebrew text, and its variations seldom give a 
 better reading. This is just what we should expect, for 
 from a very early date the Pentateuch was read in the 
 synagogues every Sabbath day (Acts xv. 21) in regular 
 course, the whole being gone through in a cycle of three 
 years. The Jews thus became so familiar with the words 
 of the Pentateuch that copyists were in great measure 
 secured from important errors of transcription ; and it is 
 also reasonable to suppose that the rolls written for the 
 synagogue were transcribed with special care long before 
 the full development of the elaborate precautions which 
 were ultimately devised to exclude errors. Sections 
 from the prophetic books were also read in the syna- 
 gogue (Acts xiii. 15), but not in a complete and system- 
 atic manner. At the time of Christ, indeed, it would 
 
LECT. IV. IN SAMUEL. 97 
 
 seem that the reader had a certain freedom of choice in 
 the prophetic lessons (Luke iv. 17). Such books as 
 Samuel had little place in the synagogue service, but 
 the interest of the narrative caused them to be largely 
 read in private. This use of the books gave no such 
 guarantee against the introduction of various readings 
 as was afforded by use in public worship. Private 
 readers must no doubt have often been content to pur- 
 chase or transcribe indifferent copies, and a student 
 might not hesitate to make on his own copy notes or 
 small additions to facihtate the sense, or even to add a 
 paragraph which he had derived from another source, a 
 procedure of which we shall find examples by and by. 
 Under such circumstances, and in the absence of official 
 supervision, the multiplication of copies opened an easy 
 door to the multiplication of errors ; which might, no 
 doubt, have been again eliminated by a critical collation, 
 but might very easily become permanent when, as we 
 have seen, a single copy without critical revision acquired 
 the position of the standard manuscript, to which all 
 new transcripts were to be conformed. 
 
 In general, then, we must conclude, first, that many 
 various readings once existed in MSS. of the Old 
 Testament which have totally disappeared from the 
 extant Hebrew copies ; and, further, that the range and 
 distribution of these variations were in part connected 
 with the fact that all books of the Old Testament had 
 not an equal place in the official service of the syna- 
 gogue. But the force of these observations is sometimes 
 
98 ORIGIN 
 
 met by an argument directed to depreciate the value 
 of the Septuagint readings. It is not denied that 
 the MSS. which lay before the Greek translators 
 contained various readings ; but it is urged that these 
 ]\ISS. were presumably of Egyptian origin, and that 
 the Jews of Egypt had probably to content them- 
 selves with inferior copies, transmitted and multiplied 
 in the hands of scholars who were neither so learned 
 nor so scrupulous as the Scribes of Jerusalem. Upon 
 this view we are invited to look upon the Septuagint as 
 the witness to a corrupt Egyptian recension of the text, 
 the various readings in which deserve little attention, 
 and afford no evidence that Palestinian MSS. did not 
 agree even at an early period with the present Mas- 
 soretic text. 
 
 Now, we have already seen that this view is at any 
 rate exaggerated, for we have had cases before us in 
 which no sober critic will hesitate to prefer the so-called 
 Egyptian reading. But it is to be observed further that 
 the whole theory of a uniform Palestinian recension is a 
 pure hypothesis. There is not a particle of evidence 
 that there was a uniform Palestinian text in the sense 
 in which our present Hebrew Bibles are uniform — or, 
 in other words, to the exclusion even of such variations 
 and corruptions as are found in MSS. of the New 
 Testament — before the first century of our era. Nay, 
 as we have seen, the author of the Booh of Juhilees, 
 a Palestinian scholar of the first century, used a 
 Hebrew Bible which often agreed with the Septuagint 
 
LECT. IV. OF THE LXX. 99 
 
 or the Samaritan recension against the Massoretic text 
 (supra, p. 73). 
 
 But let us look at the history of the Greek transla- 
 tion, and see what ground of fact there is for supposing 
 that it was made from inferior copies, and could pass 
 muster only in a land of inferior scholarship. The 
 account of the origin of the Septuagint which was cur- 
 rent in the time of Christ, and may be read in Josephus 
 and Eusebius, is full of fabulous embellishments, designed 
 to establish the authority of the version as mii-aculously 
 composed under divine inspiration. The source of these 
 fables is an epistle purporting to be written by one 
 Aristeas, a courtier in Alexandria under Ptolemy Phila- 
 delphus.^^^ This epistle is a forgery, but the author seems 
 to have linked on his fabulous stories to some element 
 of current tradition; and there is other e^ddence that 
 in the second century B.C. the uniform tradition of 
 the Jews in Egypt was to the effect that the Greek 
 Pentateuch was written for the first or second Ptolemy, 
 to be placed in the royal library collected by Demetrius 
 Phalereus. This tradition is not w^hoUy improbable, 
 and at all events the date to which it leads us has 
 generally commended itself to the judgment of scholars. 
 That is, the Pentateuch was translated in Egypt j 
 before the middle of the third century B.C. The/ 
 other books were translated later, but they probably 
 followed pretty fast. The author of the prologue to the 
 Apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, who wrote in Egypt 
 about 130 B.C., speaks of the law, the prophets, and the 
 
100 HELLENISTS lect. iv. 
 
 other books of the fathers, as current in Greek in his 
 time. The Septuagint version, then, was made in Egypt 
 under the Ptolemies. Under these princes the Jewish 
 colony in Egypt was not a poor or oppressed body; 
 it was very numerous, very influential. Jews held 
 important posts in the kingdom, and formed a large 
 element in the population of Alexandria. Their wealth 
 was so great that they were able to make frequent pil- 
 grimages and send many rich gifts to the Temple at 
 Jerusalem. They stood, therefore, on an excellent foot- 
 ing with the authorities of the nation in Palestine, and 
 there is not the slightest evidence that they were 
 regarded as heretics, using an inferior Bible, or in any 
 way falling short of all the requisites of true Judaism. 
 There was, indeed, a schismatic tample in Egypt, at 
 Leontopolis ; but that temple, so far as we can gather, 
 by no means attracted to it the service and the worship 
 of the greater part of the Greek-speaking Jews in Egypt. 
 Their hearts still turned towards Jerusalem, and their 
 intercourse with Palestine was too familiar and frequent 
 to suffer them to fall into the position of an isolated 
 and ignorant sect. In fact, we have the testimony of 
 the author of the prologue to Ecclesiasticus that, when 
 he came from Palestine to Egypt, he found there no 
 small measure of learning and discipline in matters of 
 religion. 
 
 All this makes it highly improbable that the Jews 
 of Egypt would have contented themselves with a 
 translation below the standard of Palestine, or that 
 
LECT. IV. AND PALESTINIANS. 101 
 
 they would have found any difficulty in procurino- 
 manuscripts of the approved official recension, if such 
 a recension had then existed. But the argument may be 
 carried further. In the time of Christ there were many 
 Hellenistic Jews resident in Jerusalem, with synagogues 
 of their own, where the Greek version was necessarily 
 in regular use. We find these Hellenists in Acts vi. 
 living on the best terms with the religious authorities of 
 the capital. Hellenists and Hebrews, the Septuagint 
 and the original text, met in Jerusalem without schism 
 or controversy. Yet many of the Palestinian scholars 
 were familiar with Greek, and Paul cannot have 
 been the only man born in the Hellenistic dispersion, 
 and accustomed from infancy to the Greek version, who 
 afterwards studied under Palestinian doctors, and became 
 equally famihar with the Hebrew text. The divergences 
 of the Septuagint must have been patent to all Jerusalem. 
 Yet we find no attempt to condemn and suppress this 
 version till the second century, when the rise of the 
 new school of exegesis, and the consequent introduction 
 of a fixed official text, were followed by the discrediting 
 of the old Greek Bible in favour of the new translation 
 by Aquila. On the contrary, early Eabbinical tradition 
 expressly recognises the Greek version as legitimate. 
 In some passages of the Jewish books mention is made 
 of thirteen places in wliich those who "wrote for 
 Ptolemy" departed from the Hebrew text. But these 
 changes, which are similar in character to the " correc- 
 tions of the Scribes " spoken of in last Lecture, are not 
 
1 02 JE WISH ESTIMA TE lect. iv. 
 
 repreliended ; and in one form of the tradition they are 
 even said to have been made by divine inspiration. 
 The account of these thirteen passages contains mis- 
 takes which show that the tradition was written down 
 after the Septuagint had ceased to be a familiar book 
 in Palestine. It is remarkable that the graver varia- 
 tions of the Egyptian text are passed over in absolute 
 silence, and had apparently fallen into oblivion. But 
 the tradition recalls a time when Hebrew scholars knew 
 the Greek version well, and noted its variations in a 
 friendly spirit of tolerance. These facts are entirely 
 inconsistent with the idea that the Egj^ptian text was 
 viewed as corrupt. To the older Jewish tradition its 
 variations appeared, not in the light of deviations from 
 an acknowledged standard, but as features fairly witliin 
 the limits of a faithful transmission or interpretation of 
 the text. And so the comparison of the Septuagint with 
 the Hebrew Bible not merely furnishes us with fresh 
 critical material for the text of individual passages, but 
 supplies a measure of the limits of variation which were 
 tolerated two hundred years after Ezra, when the version 
 was first written, and indeed from that time downwards 
 until the apostolic age. For in the times of the ISTew 
 Testament the Greek and Hebrew Bibles were current 
 side by side ; and men like the apostles, who knew both 
 languages, used either text indifferently, or even quoted 
 the Old Testament from memory, as Paul often does, 
 with a laxness surprising to the reader who judges by a 
 modern rule, but very natural in the condition of the 
 
LECT. IV. OF THE SEPTUAGINT. 103 
 
 text which we have just characterised. It may be 
 observed in passing that these considerations remove a 
 great part of the difficulties which are commonly felt to 
 attach to the citations of the Old Testament in the 
 New/'^ 
 
 \Ylien we say that the readings of the Septuagint 
 afford a fair measure of the limits of variation in the 
 early history of the text, it is by no means implied that 
 the Greek version, taken as a whole, is as valuable as 
 the Hebrew text. A translation can never supply the 
 place of a manuscript. There is always an allowance 
 to be made for errors of translation and licences of 
 interpretation ; and even if we possessed the Septuagint 
 in its original form it would be necessary to use it with 
 great caution as an instrument of textual criticism. 
 But in reality this use of the Septuagint is made greatly 
 more difficult and uncertain by many corruptions which 
 it underwent in the course of transmission. The text 
 of the Septuagint was in a deplorable state even in the 
 days of Origen at the close of the second Christian 
 century. In his Hexaplar Bible, in which the Hebrew, 
 the Septuagint, and the later Greek versions were 
 arranged in parallel columns, Origen made a notable 
 attempt to purify the text, and indicate its variations 
 from the Hebrew. But the use made of Origen's labours 
 by later generations rather increased the mischief, and 
 in the present day it is an affair of the most delicate 
 scholarship to make profitable use of the Alexandrian 
 version for the confirmation or emendation of the 
 
104 TEXTUAL AND lect. iv. 
 
 Hebrew. The work has often fallen into incompetent 
 hands, and their rashness is a chief reason why cautious 
 scholars are still apt to look with unjustifiable indiffer- 
 ence on what, after all, is our oldest witness to the 
 history of the text of the Old Testament, a valuable 
 evidence for the general purity of the Hebrew Bible, 
 and an important guide towards those corrections which 
 can never be wholly unnecessary in a book transmitted 
 from so early a date, on what is practically the authority 
 of a single manuscript. 
 
 For our present purpose it is not necessary that I 
 should conduct you over the delicate ground which 
 cannot be safely trodden save by the most experienced 
 scholarship. My object will be attained if I succeed in 
 conveying to you by a few plain examples a just concep- 
 tion of the methods of the ancient copyists as they stand 
 revealed to us in the broader differences between the 
 Hebrew and the Septuagint. It will conduce to clear- 
 ness if I indicate at the outset the conclusions to which 
 these differences appear to point, and the proof of which 
 will be specially contemplated in the details which I 
 shall presently set before you. I shall endeavour to 
 show that the comparison of the Hebrew and Greek 
 texts carries us beyond the sphere of mere verbal 
 variations with which textual criticism is generally 
 busied, and introduces us to a series of questions affect- 
 ing the composition, the editing, and the collection of 
 the sacred books. This class of questions forms the 
 special subject of the branch of critical science which 
 
LECT. IV. HIGHER CRITICISM, 105 
 
 is usually distinguished from the verbal criticism of the 
 text by the name of Higher or Historical Criticism. 
 The value of textual criticism is now admitted on all 
 hands. The first collections of various readings for the 
 New Testament excited great alarm, but it was soon 
 seen to be absurd to quarrel with facts. Various read- 
 ings were actually found in MSS., and it was necessary 
 to make the best of them. But while textual criticism 
 admittedly deals with facts, the higher criticism is often 
 supposed to have no other basis than the subjective 
 fancies and arbitrary hypotheses of scholars. When 
 critics maintain that some Old Testament writinojs, 
 traditionally ascribed to a single hand, are really of 
 composite origin, and that many of the Hebrew books 
 have gone through successive redactions, — or, in other 
 words, have been edited and re -edited in different ages, 
 receiving some addition or modification at the hand of 
 each editor, — it is often supposed that these are mere 
 theories devised to account for facts which may be 
 susceptible of a very different explanation. It is thought 
 incredible that inspired books should have been sub- 
 jected to such treatment ; and, following the Newtonian 
 rule that every hypothesis must have a basis in demon- 
 strable fact, conservative theologians refuse to accept 
 the critical theories till external evidence is produced 
 that editors and compilers actually dealt with parts of 
 the Bible in the way which critics assume. Here it is 
 that the Septuagint comes in to justify the critics, and 
 provide external evidence of the sort of thing which to 
 
106 METHODS OF lect. iv. 
 
 the conservative school seems so incredible. The varia- 
 tions of the Greek and Hebrew text reveal to ns a time 
 when the functions of copyist and editor shaded into 
 one another by imperceptible degrees. They not only 
 prove that Old Testament books were subjected to such 
 processes of successive editing as critics maintain, but 
 that the work of redaction went on to so late a date 
 that editorial changes are found in the present Hebrew 
 text which did not exist in the MSS. of the Greek trans- 
 lators. The details of the evidence will make my 
 meaning more clear, but in general what I desire to 
 impress upon you is this. The evidence of the Septua- 
 gint proves that early copyists had a very different view 
 of their responsibility from that which we might be apt 
 to ascribe to them. They were not reckless or indif- 
 ferent to the truth. They copied the Old Testament 
 books knowing them to be sacred books, and they were 
 zealous to preserve them as writings of Divine authority. 
 But their sense of responsibility to the Divine word 
 regarded the meaning rather than the form, and they 
 had not that highly-developed sense of the importance 
 of preserving every word and every letter of the original 
 hand of the author which seems natural to us. When 
 we look at the matter carefully, we observe that the 
 difference between them and us lies, not in any reli- 
 gious principle, but in the literary ideas of those ancient 
 times. From our point of view a book is the property 
 of the author. You may buy a copy of it, but you do 
 not thereby acquire a literary property in the work, or 
 
LECT. IV. EARL V COP YISTS. 107 
 
 a right to tamper with the style and alter the words 
 of the author even to make his sense more distinct. 
 But this idea was too subtle for those ancient times. 
 The man who had bought or copied a book held it to be 
 his own for every purpose. He valued it for its con- 
 tents, and therefore would not disfigure these by arbi- 
 trary changes. But, if he could make it more convenient 
 for use by adding a note here, putting in a word there, 
 or incorporating additional matter derived from another 
 source, he had no hesitation in doing so. In short, 
 every ancient scholar who copied or annotated a book 
 for his own use was very much in the position of a 
 modern editor, with the difference that at that time there 
 was no system of footnotes, brackets, and explanatory 
 prefaces, by which the insertions could be distinguished 
 from the original text. 
 
 In setting before you some examples of the evidence 
 which enables us to prove this thesis, I shall begin with 
 the question of the titles which are prefixed to some 
 parts of the Old Testament. A large proportion of the 
 books of the Old Testament are anonymous. The Pen- 
 tateuch, for example, bears no author's name on its front, 
 although certain things in the course of the narrative are 
 said to have been written down by Moses. All the 
 historical books are anonymous, with the single excep- 
 tion of one of the latest of them, the memoirs of Nehe- 
 miah, in which the author's name is prefixed to the first 
 chapter. This fact is characteristic. Why do the authors 
 not give their names ? Because the literary public was 
 
108 ANONYMOUS BOOKS. lect. iv. 
 
 interested in the substance of the book, but was not con- 
 cerned to know who had written it. That is the only 
 conceivable reason. The idea of literary property, of 
 the book belonging to the author instead of to the man 
 who had bought the copy, did not exist then, or at least 
 was very little developed. 
 
 This remark applies with full force only to works 
 like the Historical Books, which were products of the 
 study, and did not derive their value from their con- 
 nection with the author's public life. It is not equally 
 applicable to lyric poetry, where, as in the case of 
 David's elegy on Saul and Jonathan, the interest of the 
 poem frequently depends on the authorship. Least of 
 all could the law of anonymity apply to the written 
 collections of the sermons of the prophets, which were 
 summaries of a course of public activity in which the 
 personality of the prophet could not be separated from 
 his words. Thus, while the historical books are habitu- 
 ally anonymous, and poetical pieces only sometimes bear 
 an author's name, it is the rule that each group of pro- 
 phecies, and often each individual oracle, has the name 
 of the author attached. There are, indeed, a certain 
 number of prophetic writings which have no title ; but 
 these, in all probability, are prophecies which were never 
 spoken, which were composed in solitude, and circu- 
 lated from the first in writing. They fall, therefore, 
 under the general law of the anonymity of books which 
 are not directly connected with a public interest attach- 
 ing to the author's life. 
 
LECT. IV. ISAIAH XL.—LXVL 109 
 
 The chief example of fin anonymous prophecy is 
 
 that which fills the last twenty -seven chapters of 
 
 Isaiah. It is true that we have been accustomed by 
 
 tradition to assume that this prophecy is the work of 
 
 Isaiah, — or, in other words, that the title which stands 
 
 at the beginning of the book of Isaiah covers the last 
 
 twenty-seven chapters also. This seems a natural and 
 
 plausible assumption from our point of view, and from 
 
 our habits with regard to the use of title-pages stating 
 
 everything that a volume contains; but no one who 
 
 has been personally occupied with old Eastern MSS., 
 
 and has observed the way in which copyists, on account 
 
 of the scarcity and costliness of writing material, were 
 
 accustomed to fill up blank pages at the end of a book 
 
 by writing in some other work or passage which they 
 
 wished to preserve, and that without any note or title 
 
 whatever, will for a moment venture to affirm that the 
 
 title at the beginning of the book must necessarily apply 
 
 to the whole contents of the volume. And in old times, 
 
 we must remember, the book of Isaiah was a volume. 
 
 It was still a separate volume in the time of Christ, as 
 
 we learn from Luke iv. 17. I do not at present press 
 
 this point further, or attempt to decide whether these 
 
 chapters are really the work of Isaiah, or whether, as 
 
 modern criticism holds, they proceed from a later 
 
 prophet. In either case, they form a distinct literary 
 
 work; for those who uphold the traditional view of 
 
 their authorship are agreed that they date from the 
 
 latest times of Isaiah's life, and are not part of his 
 6 
 
no TITLES OF LECT. iv. 
 
 public teaching directed to the immediate needs of his 
 own age, but a sort of testament left for the consolation 
 of the Babylonian exiles/^^ Even on this view, the fact 
 that they have no separate title demands an explana- 
 tion, which seems to flow naturally from the considera- 
 tion that products of the study were in those days 
 habitually anonymous. 
 
 It is easy to perceive, however, that as soon as a 
 beginning was made with the custom of prefixing the 
 author's name to a book — and we find this done at any 
 rate by Nehemiah — the use of titles would grow, and 
 readers would become curious to have the author's 
 name in every case. It therefore becomes important to 
 ask whether all the titles now found in the Old Testa- 
 ment go back to the original authors, or whether some 
 of them are the conjectures of later copyists. This 
 question is naturally suggested by what we find in 
 manuscripts of the New Testament, many of which 
 prefix the name of Paul to the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 although it is quite certain that the oldest copies left 
 the Epistle anonymous. The Septuagint enables us to 
 answer the question. The part of the Old Testament in 
 which the system of titles has been carried out most 
 fully is the Book of Psalms. The titles to the Psalms 
 are to a large extent directions for their liturgical per- 
 formance in the service of the Temple music ; but they 
 also contain the names of men — David, the Sons of 
 Korah, and so forth. Are we to suppose that there is 
 no title of a psalm in the Hebrew Bible which does not 
 
LECT. IV. THE PSALMS, 111 
 
 go back to the author of the psalm ? Let us consult 
 the Septuagint, and what do we find ? We find, in 
 the first place, that the Septuagint has the words " of " 
 or " to David " in a number of psalms where the 
 Hebrew has no author's name (Psalms x., xxxiii., xliii., 
 Ixvii., Ixxi., xcL, xciii. to xcix., civ., cxxxvii.); and, con- 
 versely, it omits the name of David from four, and the 
 name of Solomon from one, of the Psalms of Degrees 
 (Psalms cxxii., cxxiv., cxxxi., cxxxiii, cxxvii.). Now 
 the large number of cases in which the Septuagint 
 inserts the name of David is evidence of a tendency to 
 ascribe to him an ever -increasing number of psalms. 
 That tendency, we know, went on, till at length it 
 became a common opinion that he was the author of the 
 whole Psalter. We cannot therefore suppose that the 
 Greek version, or the Hebrew MSS. on which it rested, 
 would omit the name of David in any case where it 
 had once stood ; and the conclusion is inevitable that 
 at least in four cases our Hebrew Bibles have the 
 name of David where it has no right to be, and that the 
 insertion was made by a copyist after the time when 
 the text of the Septuagint branched off. But if this be 
 so, it is impossible to maintain on principle that the 
 titles of the Psalms are throughout authoritative ; and if 
 there is no principle involved, it is not only legitimate, 
 but an absolute duty, to test every title by comparing 
 it with the internal evidence supplied by the poem 
 itself. 
 
 Similar variations, leading to similar conclusions, 
 
112 EDITORIAL lect. iv. 
 
 are found in other parts of the Old Testament, and even 
 in the prophetical books. In Jer. xxvii. 1 the Hebrew 
 has a title which the Septuagint omits, and which 
 every one can see to be a mere accidental repetition of 
 the title of chap. xxvi. Tor the prophecy which the 
 title ascribes to the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim 
 is addressed in the most explicit way to Zedekiah, king 
 of Judah (verses 3, 12). So again the Septuagint 
 omits the name of Jeremiah in the title to the prophecy 
 against Babylon (chaps. 1., li.), which, for other reasons, 
 modern critics generally ascribe to a later prophet. 
 Here, it is true, chap. li. 59-64 may seem to be a sub- 
 scription establishing the traditional authorship. But 
 a note at the end of the chapter in the Hebrew 
 expressly says that the words of Jeremiah end with 
 " they shall be weary," — the close of ver. 58. This note 
 is the real subscription to the prophecy, and it is also 
 omitted by the Septuagint. ^^^ 
 
 I now pass to an example of editorial redaction, 
 involving a series of changes running through the whole 
 structure of a passage. For this purpose I select the 
 twenty-seventh chapter of Jeremiah, the Hebrew title 
 of which has already been shown to be an editorial 
 insertion. We are now to see that the hand of an 
 editor has been at work all through the chapter. Let 
 me say at the outset that the example is a somewhat 
 unusual one. There are not many parts of the Old 
 Testament where the variations of the Greek and 
 Hebrew are so extensive as in Jeremiah; but it is 
 
LECT. IV. REDACTION. 113 
 
 necessary to choose a well-marked case in order to 
 convey a distinct conception of the limits of editorial 
 interference. To facilitate comparison, I print a trans- 
 lation of the Hebrew text, putting everything in italics 
 which is omitted by the Septuagint. The Greek has 
 some other slight variations, which are not of conse- 
 quence for our present purpose. The essential differ- 
 ence between the two texts is that the Hebrew, without 
 omitting anytliing that is in the Greek, has a number 
 of additional clauses and sentences. 
 
 In the reign of King Zedekiah a congress of am- 
 bassadors from the neighbouring* nations was held at 
 Jerusalem, to concert a rising against Nebuchadnezzar. 
 The prophets and diviners encouraged this scheme ; but 
 Jeremiah was commanded by the Lord to protest 
 against it, and declare that the empire of Nebuchad- 
 nezzar had been conferred on him by Jehovah's de- 
 cree, and that it was vain to rebel. The prophetic 
 message delivered in the name of the God of Israel ran 
 thus : — 
 
 Jer. xxvii. 5. — I have made the earth, fhe man and the beast 
 which are upon the face of the earthy by my great power and out- 
 stretched arm, and give it to whom I please. (6.) And now I 
 have given all these lands [LXX. the earth] into the hand of 
 Nebuchadnezzar. . . . (7.) And all nations shall serve him and 
 his son and his son's son, till the tiine of his land come also, and 
 mights/ nations and great Jciiujs malce him their servant. (8.) And 
 the nation and kingdom which will not serve him, Nebnchad- 
 nezzar, king of Babylon, and put their neck under the yoke of the 
 king of Babylon, will I punish, saith the Lord, with the sword, 
 and with famine, and icith pestilence, till I have consumed them 
 by his hand. (9.) Therefore hearken ye not to your prophets, 
 
114 TEXT OF LECT. IV. 
 
 . . . wliich say ye shall not serve the king of Babylon. (10.) 
 For they prophesy lies to you to remove you from your land, 
 and. that I should drive you out and ye should perish. . . . 
 
 (12.) And to Zedekiah, king of Judah, I spake with all these 
 words, saying. Bring your neck under the yolce of the king of Baby- 
 lon, and serve him and his people, and live. (13.) Why will ye 
 die, thou and thy people, by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence, 
 as the Lord hath spoken against the nation that will not serve the 
 king of Babylon? (14.) Therefore hearken not unto the words of 
 the prophets who speak unto you, saying. Serve not the king of 
 Babylon; for they [emphatic] prophesy lies unto you. (15.) For | 
 
 I have not sent them, saith the Lord, and they prophesy lies in • 
 
 my name. ... ' 
 
 (16.) And to the priests and to all this people [LXX. to all i 
 
 the people and the priests] I spake saying, Thus saith the Lord 
 Hearken not to the. words of your prophets who prophesy to : 
 
 you, saying, Behold the vessels of the house of the Lord shall be 
 brought back from Babylon now quickly, for they prophesy a lie \ 
 
 unto you. (17.) Hearken not unto them, [LXX. I have not sent 
 them], serve the king of Babylon, and live ; wherefore should this j 
 
 city be laid waste 1 (18.) But if they are prophets, and if the j 
 
 word of the Lord is with them, let them intercede with the Lord i 
 
 of Hosts [LXX. with me], that the vessels which are left in the j 
 
 house of the Lord, and the house of the king of Judah, and in j 
 
 Jerusalem, come not to Babylon. (19.) For thus saith the Lord ^ 
 
 of Hosts concerning the pillars and the sea and the bases, and the i 
 
 rest of the vessels left in this city, (20.) Which Nebuchadnezzar i 
 
 king of Babylon took not when he carried Jeconiah son of \ 
 
 Jehoiakim king of Judah captive from Jerusalem to Babylon, and j 
 
 all the nobles of Judah and Jerusalem; (21.) For thus saith the \ 
 
 Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, concerning the vessels left in the i 
 
 house of God, and in the house of the king of Judah and Jerusalem ; \ 
 
 (22.) They shall be taken to Babylon, and there shall they be \ 
 
 unto the day that I visit them, saith the Lord ; then will I bring i 
 
 them up and restore them to this place. \ 
 
 ,1 
 
 Throughout these verses the general effect of the ■} 
 omissions of the Septuagint is to make the style ; 
 simpler, more natural, and more forcible. At verses | 
 
LECT. IV. JEREMIAH XXVII. 115 
 
 8, 10, 12, 13, 17, the additional matter of the Massoretic 
 text is mere repetition of ideas fully expressed in the 
 shorter recension ; and at ver. 14 the omissions of the 
 Septuagint give the proper oratorical value to the 
 emphatic " they " of the original, which the prophet, in 
 genuine Hebrew style, must have spoken with a gesture 
 pointing to the false prophets who stood before the 
 king. It is not to be thought that a later copyist 
 added nerve and force to the prophecy by pruning the 
 prolixities of the original text. Jeremiah is no mean 
 orator and author, and the prolixities are much more in 
 the wearisome style of the later Jewish literature. 
 
 But in some parts the two recensions differ in 
 meaning as well as language. At verse 7 the Hebrew 
 text inserts in the midst of Jeremiah's exhortation to 
 submission a prophecy that the Babylonians shall be 
 punished in the third generation. No doubt Jeremiah 
 does elsewhere predict the fall of Babylon and the 
 restoration of Israel. He had done so at an earlier 
 date (xxv. 11-13). But is it natural that he should 
 turn aside to introduce such a prediction here, in the 
 very midst of a solemn admonition, on wliich it has no 
 direct bearing? And is this a thing which a copyist 
 would be tempted to omit ? Much rather was it natural 
 for a later scribe to introduce it. Again, at verse 16, 
 the Hebrew text modifies the prediction of the restora- 
 tion of the sacred vessels made by the false prophets, by 
 the insertion of the words now quickly. There was no 
 motive for the omission of these words, if they are 
 
116 TEXT OF LECT. IV. 
 
 original. But a later scribe, reflecting on the fact that 
 the sacred vessels were restored by Cyrus, might well 
 insert these words to deprive the false prophets of any 
 claim to have spoken truly after all. In reality it does 
 not need these words to prove them liars ; for their pre- 
 diction, taken in the context, plainly meant that the 
 alliance should defeat Nebuchadnezzar and recover the 
 spoil. But the words " now quickly" stand or fall with 
 the prediction put into Jeremiah's mouth, in verse 22, 
 that the vessels of the temple and the palace, including 
 the brazen pillars, sea, and bases, should be taken indeed 
 to Babylon, but be brought back again in the day of 
 visitation. This is plainly the spurious insertion of a 
 thoughtless copyist, who had his eye on chapter lii. 17. 
 For it is true that the pillars, the sea, and the bases 
 were carried to Babylon, but they were not and could 
 not have been brought back. These huge masses could 
 not have been transported entire across the mountains 
 and deserts that separated Judea from Babylon. And 
 so we are expressly told in chapter lii. that they were 
 broken up and carried off as old brass, fit only for the 
 melting-pot. Jeremiah and his hearers knew well that 
 they could not reach Babylon in any other form, and in 
 his mouth the prediction which we read in the Hebrew 
 text would have been not only false, but palpably ab- 
 surd. That such a prediction now stands in the text 
 only proves what the thoughtlessness of copyists was 
 capable of, and makes the reading of the Septuagint 
 absolutely certain. 
 
LECT. IV. JEREMIAH XXVIL 117 
 
 We conclude, then, from a plain argument of physical 
 impossibility, that Jeremiah did not predict the restora- 
 tion of the spoils of the Temple. And by this result 
 we remove a serious inconsistency from his religious 
 teaching. For the restoration to which Jeremiah con- 
 stantly looks is not the re -establishment of the old 
 ritual, but the bringing in of a spiritual covenant when 
 God's law shall be written on the hearts of the people 
 (chap. xxxi.). No prophet thinks more lightly of the 
 service of the Temple (chap. vii.). He denies that God 
 gave a law of sacrifice to the people when they left 
 Egypt. They may eat their burnt-offerings as well as 
 the other sacrifices, and God will not condemn them 
 (vii. 21, 22). Even the ark of the covenant is in- his 
 eyes an obsolete symbol, wliich in the day of Israel's 
 conversion sliall not be missed and not be remade (iii. 
 16). To the false prophets and the people who followed 
 them, the ark, the temple, the holy vessels, were all in 
 aU. To Jeremiah they were less than nothing, and their 
 restoration was no part of his hope of salvation. ^^^ 
 
118 JEREMIAH AND lect. v. 
 
 LECTUEE V. 
 
 THE SEPTUAGINT {continued) — THE CANOIS. 
 
 In last Lecture we began to examine those features of 
 the Septuagint which bear witness to the kind of labour 
 that was spent on the text by ancient editors. We 
 have seen how editors or copyists sometimes added titles 
 to anonymous pieces, and how by a series of small 
 redactional changes, running from verse to verse through 
 a chapter, the form and even the meaning of an im- 
 portant passage were sometimes considerably modified. 
 
 We now come to another branch of the subject, 
 in which we have not to deal with mere arbitrary 
 additions and corrections made by editors out of their 
 own head, but with features of the text wliich illus- 
 trate the composite character of some of the Biblical 
 books which we have been wont to look upon as con- 
 tinuous unities. 
 
 I begin with the transpositions of the Septuagint 
 text, and choose as my first example the chapters 
 comprising Jeremiah's prophecies against the heathen 
 nations. In our Bibles, and in the Hebrew Bible, 
 these prophecies occupy chapters xlvi. to li. In the 
 Septuagint they foUow the 13 th verse of the twenty-fifth 
 
LECT. V. THE NATIONS. 119 
 
 chapter, and appear in a different order. In the 
 Hebrew the sequence is Egypt, Philistines, Moab, 
 Amnion, Edom, Damascus, Kedar and Hazor, Elam, 
 Babylon. The Septuagint sequence is Elam, Eg}^pt, 
 Babylon, Philistines, Edom, Ammon, Kedar and Hazor, 
 Damascus, Moab. Can we then assume that in this case 
 the translator of the Septuagint version, having before 
 him a fixed and certain order of all Jeremiah's oracles, 
 took the liberty to shift the prophecies against the nations 
 through one another, and to put them in an entirely 
 different part of the book ? From what we have seen 
 already as to the general way in which these transla- 
 tors acted, such an assumption is highly improbable. 
 Eather we are to suppose that in their copy these pro- 
 phecies already occupied a different place from what 
 they hold in the Hebrew Bible. 
 
 What does that lead us to conclude ? Variations in 
 the order of the individual places may veiy weU happen 
 in collected editions of writings originally published 
 separately, but not in a single book of one author. And 
 that is just what the facts lead us otherwise to suppose, 
 for we know that Jeremiah's prophecies were not all 
 written down at one time, or in the order in which 
 they now stand. We learn from chap, xxxvi. that a 
 record of the first twenty-three years of his prophetic 
 ministry was dictated by the prophet to Baruch in the 
 fourth year of Jehoiakim. But this book does not 
 correspond with the first part of the present book of 
 Jeremiah, in which prophecies later than the reign of 
 
120 JEREMIAH XLVL—LI. lect. v. 
 
 Jehoiakim — such as chap. xxiv. — precede others which 
 must have stood in the original collection (chap. xxvi.). 
 Jeremiah's book, then, as we have it, is not a continuous 
 record of his prophecies, which he himseK kept con- 
 stantly posted up to date, but a compilation made up 
 from several prophetic writings originally published 
 separately. In this compilation the natural order is 
 not always observed, for it is plain that chap, xlv., con- 
 taining a brief prophecy addressed to Baruch, " when 
 he wrote these words in a book at the mouth of Jere- 
 miah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim " (ver. 1), must 
 originally have stood at the close of the collection 
 spoken of in chap, xxxvi. It is easy then to under- 
 stand that, when several distinct books of Jeremiah's 
 words and deeds were brought together into one volume, 
 there might be variations of order in different copies of 
 the collection, just as modern editions of the collected 
 works of one author frequently differ in arrangement. 
 
 It is very doubtful whether this group of pro- 
 phecies appears just as they were first published, either 
 in the Septuagint or in the Hebrew. The order of the 
 individual prophecies seems to be more suitable in the 
 Hebrew and English texts; for chap. xxv. 15 se^. con- 
 tains a sort of brief summary or general conspectus of 
 Jeremiah's prophecies against the nations, and here 
 the order agrees very closely with that in our present 
 Hebrew text as against the Septuagint; but then, on 
 the other hand, the summary of Jeremiah's prophecies 
 against the nations is found in the twenty-fifth chapter, 
 
LECT. V. THE PROVERBS. 121 
 
 whereas in our present edition the details under this 
 general sketch begin at chap. xlvi. Much more natural 
 in this respect is the arrangement of the Septuagint, 
 placing all the details in immediate juxtaposition with 
 the general summary ; so that here we seem to have a 
 case in which neither edition of Jeremiah's prophecies 
 is thoroughly satisfactory and in good order. But the 
 general conclusion is that the transpositions give us a 
 key to the way in which the book came together, show- 
 ing that it was not all written in continuous unity by 
 Jeremiah himself as one book, but has the character of 
 a compilation, or collected edition, of several writings. 
 We observe, also, that the compilers did not execute 
 their work with perfect skill ; and so it would plainly 
 be unreasonable to accuse every critic of rationalism 
 who ventures to judge on internal or other evidence 
 that the collection may possibly contain some chapters, 
 such as 1. li., which are not from the hand of Jeremiah 
 at all. 
 
 Another example of the important inferences that 
 may be drawn from the transpositions of the Septua- 
 gint occurs in the Book of Proverbs. I presume that 
 many of us have been accustomed to think of the 
 Proverbs as a single composition, written from nrst to 
 last by Solomon. But here again we find such transpo- 
 sitions as indicate that the book is not so much one 
 continuous writing as a collected edition of various 
 proverbial books and tracts. For example, the first 
 fourteen verses of Proverbs xxx.. containmg the words 
 
122 THE PROVERBS. 
 
 of Agur, are placed in the Septuagint collection after 
 the 22d verse of chap. xxiv. Then immediately upon 
 that follows chap. xxiv. 23-34, a little section which in 
 the Hebrew has a separate title, — " These also are 
 [words] of the wise." After that comes chap. xxx. 15. 
 In our English Bible this verse does not appear to open 
 a new section : we translate it — " The horseleach hath 
 two daughters, crying, Give, give," an obscure and 
 enigmatical expression, which has puzzled all comment- 
 ators. Most probably the translation "horseleach" is 
 incorrect. The verse begins — [""Words] of Alukah. 
 ' There are two daughters of ' Give, give,' " — that is, two 
 iQsatiable things, — " yea, three that are never satisfied," 
 etc. The words of Alukah are followed in the Septua- 
 giQt, as in the Hebrew, by the words of Lemuel 
 (xxxi. 1-9). Then comes the collection of Salomonic 
 proverbs formed by the scholars in the service of King 
 Hezekiah (xxv.-xxix.) ; and the book closes with the 
 description of the virtuous woman (xxxi. 10-31). You 
 see how the fact that these several small collections 
 of proverbs are grouped in such different order in the 
 Septuagint and in the Hebrew respectively makes it 
 probable that they originally existed as separate books ; 
 so that, when they came to be collected into one volume, 
 differences of order might readily arise, which could 
 hardly have happened if the whole had been the 
 original composition of Solomon alone. And that is 
 quite the conclusion to which critics have been drawn 
 by evidence of another sort, — that the Proverbs are 
 
LECT. V. BOOKS OF KINGS, 123 
 
 not all of one date, that the book no doubt contains 
 proverbs of Solomon, but embraces in addition to them 
 a variety of matter derived from other sources/^^ 
 
 Let us now pass to a similar example in the his- 
 torical books. Many of you have probably observed the 
 way in which the history of the reigns subsequent to 
 Solomon in the Books of Kings is made up. There is 
 what critics are accustomed to call the framework of 
 the history, and there are details within the framework. 
 The framework is precisely similar in form for each 
 reign, consisting of notices of the accession and death 
 of the king, with certain stated particulars under each 
 head, including a reference to the royal chronicles of 
 Judah or Israel, as the case may be, for full details of 
 the reign. These notices form the chronological frame- 
 work which binds the whole narrative together. But 
 the details within the framework do not in themselves 
 form a continuous story, and are plainly not all written 
 by one hand, or constructed on a uniform plan. One 
 reign is full of rich episodes and picturesque narrative, 
 another is comparatively barren in detail, as well as in 
 style; and sometimes we find sections which, in addition 
 to variety of style and phrase, show marked peculiarities 
 of grammatical form. From a closer examination of 
 these phenomena, critics have been led to distinguish, 
 on the one hand, a brief epitome of public ajBfairs, with 
 moral judgments on each sovereign, which runs through 
 the whole work in close connection with the chrono- 
 logical framework, and appears to be based on the royal 
 
124 THE BOOKS lect. v. 
 
 annals constantly cited as the original authority for the 
 history ; and, on the other hand, a variety of episodes 
 which are but loosely connected with the general plan, 
 and which in many cases cannot have been excerpted 
 from any collection of official records. The official 
 chronicles of the kings of Samaria, for example, could 
 not have contained much of the history of Elijah and 
 Elisha. We naturally ask whether this view, based on 
 observation of the internal features of the book, finds 
 any support of external evidence from the oldest version. 
 The answer is that it does. In the Septuagint certain 
 episodes of the history are removed to another place, or 
 even exist in a somewhat different form, as if, at the 
 time when this version was made, they still stood, so to 
 speak, apart from the general structure of the narrative. 
 For example, the first twenty verses of 1 Kings xiv., 
 containing an account of the death of Abijah, and of 
 his mother's journey to the prophet Ahijah, when he 
 predicted the ruin of the house of Jeroboam, are not 
 found in the Septuagint, but a somewhat different 
 narrative of the same events is inserted in chapter xii. 
 There are other transpositions of a similar kind else- 
 where. For example, the history of the death of Naboth 
 (1 Kings xxi.) stands in the Septuagint before chapter 
 XX., so that the narrative of Ahab's Syrian wars is made 
 continuous. It is easy to see that this gives a more 
 natural order, and that the history of Naboth is really 
 a distinct episode in Ahab's life. But, without pressing 
 these transpositions beyond what they manifestly bear, 
 
LECT. V. OF KINGS. 125 
 
 it is at least safe to say that they are most readily ex- 
 plained in accordance with the view, otherwise probable, 
 that the framework of the Books of Kings is filled up 
 by narratives from several distinct sources, which were 
 not worked up by the editor into a strictly continuous 
 story, but retained so much of their original independ- 
 ent form that their precise order was to some extent 
 a matter of indifference. This conclusion may not 
 appear to have a very immediate practical importance. 
 It does not change the substance of the record ; but it 
 teaches us to look on the historical books as to some 
 extent composite in structure, a fact which has more 
 important bearings on many questions of interest than 
 one might at first sight be apt to suppose. 
 
 We come now to passages omitted or inserted in one 
 or other form of the text. One of the most familiar and 
 instructive of these is the story of David and Goliath 
 (1 Sam. xvii.) The story, as it appears in our English 
 Bible, presents inextricable difficulties. In the previous 
 chapters we are told how David is introduced to the 
 court of Saul, and becomes a favourite with the king. 
 Then suddenly we have the account of a campaign, and 
 we learn, without any explanation, that David, although 
 he was Saul's armour-bearer, did not follow him to the 
 field. He returns to his father Jesse, and is sent by 
 Jesse to his elder brothers in the camp, who treat him 
 with a degree of petulance not likely to be displayed 
 even by elder brothers to a youth who already stood well 
 at court. But, in fact, it appears from the close of the 
 
126 DAVID AND lect. v. 
 
 chapter that David is utterly unknown at couit. 
 Neither Saul nor Abner seems ever to have seen him 
 before. Every one has been puzzled by these apparent 
 contradictions. But in the Septuagint, verses 12 to 
 31, and then the verses from the 65th onwards to the 
 5th of the next chapter, are omitted, and when these 
 are removed we get a perfectly consistent and natural 
 account. We find David in the camp and in attendance 
 on Saul, just as we should expect. He volunteers 
 to fight Goliath, is victorious in the contest, and 
 returns to his natural place in attendance on Saul's 
 person. There is only one objection that can be 
 raised to this shorter form of the text. It may be 
 said that the story, as we have it in the Hebrew, is 
 so puzzling that the Septuagint may have deliberately 
 omitted the difficult verses in order to harmonise the 
 narrative. But when we take the verses which are 
 found in the Hebrew and not in the Septuagint and put 
 them together, we find that they are fragments of an 
 independent account of the affair, according to which 
 David never had been at court, but was a mere shepherd 
 boy, who, having been sent by his father to the camp 
 with provisions for his brethren, volunteered to fight the 
 Pliilistine. The unknown lad thus leaped into sudden 
 fame. He was retained at court, and Jonathan, with 
 impulsive generosity, at once received him as his dearest 
 friend. It is not credible that, if the Septuagint trans- 
 lators had set themselves arbitrarily to cut down a 
 narrative originally homogeneous, the verses which they 
 
LECT. V. GOLIATH. 127 
 
 omit would have palpably hung together as bits of a 
 different and self-consistent account of the whole story. 
 On the contrary, we are forced to conclude that the text 
 of the Septuagint is complete in itself, and that the 
 additions of the Hebrew are fragments of another 
 account, a popular and less accurate version of the 
 story, wliich must once have been current in a separate 
 book. The story fell in this form into the hands of 
 some ancient reader, who engrossed in his copy of the 
 Books of Samuel as much of it as seemed to offer matter 
 of fresh interest ; and in this way the interpolation ulti- 
 mately became fixed in the text of our Hebrew Bibles. 
 At first sight this conclusion may appear startling. We 
 do not like to think that the English or the Hebrew 
 Bible can contain an interpolated narrative of inferior 
 authenticity. But that is only one side of the case. 
 The providence wliich permitted the interpolation has 
 preserved to us the Greek version in evidence of the 
 original state of the text, enabling us even at this day 
 to restore the true form of an important narrative, and 
 remove difficulties which have been a stumbling-block 
 in the way of all thoughtful readers. To shut our eyes 
 to the evidence of the Septuagint, or to refuse to w^eigh 
 it by the ordinary methods of sound common sense, 
 would be an act of timidity, not of reverence ; and it is 
 well to learn by so plain an example that He who gave 
 us the Scriptures has suffered them to contain some 
 difficulties which cannot be solved without the applica- 
 tion of critical processes. 
 
128 SAUL AND lect. v. 
 
 An equally striking example is found in the account 
 
 given in the very next chapter of the gradual progress 
 
 of Saul's hostility to David. When the women came 
 
 out and praised David above Saul — 
 
 1 Sam. xviii. 8. — ^aul was very wroth and the saying dis- 
 pleased him [LXX. Saul], and he said, They have ascribed unto 
 David myriads, and to me they have ascribed thousands, and 
 wJiat can he have more but the Jcingdom? (9.) And Saul eyed 
 David from that day, and forward. (10, 11.) Next day Saul casta 
 a javelin at David. (12.) And Saul was afraid of David, because 
 the Lord was with him and ivas departed from Saul. (13.) And 
 Saul removed him from his person, and made him his captain 
 over a thousand, and he went out and in before the people. 
 (14.) And David was successful in all that he undertook, and 
 the Lord was with him. (15.) And when Saul saw that he was 
 so successful, he dreaded him. (16.) But all Israel loved David, 
 because he went out and came in before them. (17-19.) Saul 
 promises Merah to David, hut disappoints him. (20-27.) Michal 
 falls in love with David, and Saul avails himself of this oppor- 
 tunity to put him on a dangerous enterprise in the hope that he 
 will fall. David, however, succeeds, and marries Michal.* (28.) 
 And when Saul saw, and knew that the Lord was with David, 
 and that Michal the daughter of Saul (LXX. all Israel) loved him, 
 he came to fear David still more, and Jutted David continually. 
 (29, 30.) Thereafter David again distinguishes himself in war. 
 (xix. 1.) Saul proposes to his son and servants to kill David. 
 
 The words and verses printed in italics are omitted in 
 
 the Septuagint. Eead without them the progress of the 
 
 narrative is perspicuous and consistent. Saul's jealousy 
 
 is first roused by the praises bestowed on David, and he 
 
 can no longer bear to have him constantly attached to 
 
 his person. Without an open breach of relations, he 
 
 removes him from court by giving him an important 
 
 * The words iu 21 and 26, which refer to the incident of Merab, 
 are not in LXX. 
 
LECT. V. DA VID. 129 
 
 post. David's conduct, and the popularity he acquires 
 in his new and more independent position, intensify 
 Saul's former fears into a fixed dread. But there is still 
 no overt act of hostility on the king's part ; he hopes 
 to lead David to destruction by stimulating his ambi- 
 tion to a desperate enterprise ; and it is only when this 
 policy fails, and David returns to court a universal 
 favourite, with the new importance conferred by his 
 alliance with the royal family, that Saul's fears wholly 
 conquer his scruples, and he plans the assassination of 
 his son-in-law. The three stages of this growing hostility 
 are marked by the rising strength of the phrases in 
 verses 12, 15, 28. The additions of the Hebrew text 
 destroy the psychological truth of the narrative. Saul's 
 fears reach the highest pitch as soon as his jealousy is 
 first aroused, and on the very next day he attempts to 
 slay David with his own hand. In the original narra- 
 tive this attempt comes much later, and is accepted by 
 David as a warning to flee at once (xix. 10). The other 
 additions are equally inappropriate, and the episode of 
 Merab is particularly unintelligible. It seems to hang 
 together with xvii. 25, that is, with the interpolated part 
 of the story of Goliath ; and in 2 Sam. xxi. 8, Michal, 
 not Merab, appears as the mother of Adriel's children. 
 In that passage the English version has attempted to 
 remove the difficulty by making Michal only the foster- 
 mother, but the Hebrew will not bear such a sense. 
 
 Here, then, we have another case where all proba- 
 bility is in favour of the Greek text, and a fresh example 
 
130 ARRANGEMENT OF lect. v. 
 
 of the principle alluded to in last Lecture, that, where 
 there are two recensions of a passage, the shorter version 
 is almost always to be recognised as that which is nearest 
 to the hand of the original author. Sometimes, indeed, we 
 meet with an insertion which is valuable because derived 
 from an ancient source, such as the quotation from the 
 Book of Jashar, preserved in the Septuagint of 1 Kings 
 viii. 53. But seldom indeed did a copyist, unless by 
 sheer oversight, omit anything from the copy that lay 
 before him.^^^ 
 
 These examples must suffice as indications of what 
 can be learned from the Septuagint with regard to the 
 way in which the Biblical books were compiled and 
 edited. I pass to another point of difference between the 
 Greek and Hebrew Bibles, which raises the question, 
 what books were accepted by the Jews as sacred Scrip- 
 tures ; at w^hat date the list of canonical books was 
 closed ; and what were the principles on which the list 
 was formed. 
 
 The Hebrew Bible has twenty-fom' books, arranged 
 in three great sections — the Law, the Prophets, and the 
 Hagiographa. The first section is the Pentateuch, or, as 
 the Hebrews call it, the " Five Fifths of the Law." The 
 second section has two subdivisions, the prophetical 
 histories, or "Earlier Prophets," and the prophetic 
 books proper, which the Hebrews call the " Later 
 Prophets." Each of these subdivisions contains four 
 books ; for the Hebrews count but one book of Samuel 
 and one of Kings, and the Twelve Minor Proj^hets are 
 
LECT. V. THE HEBREW BIBLE. 131 
 
 reckoned as one book. Tlie third section of the Hebrew 
 Bible consists of what are called the Hagiographa, or 
 " Ketubim," that is [sacred] writings. At the head of 
 these stand three poetical books, — Psalms, Proverbs, and 
 Job. Then come the five small books of Canticles, 
 Euth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther, which the 
 Hebrews name the Megilloth, or " rolls." They have 
 this name because they alone among the Hagiographa 
 were used on certain annual occasions in the service of 
 the synagogue, and for this purpose were written each 
 in a separate volume. Last of all, at the end of the 
 Hebrew Bible, stand Daniel, Ezra with Nehemiah 
 (forming a single book), and the Chronicles. As the 
 contents of these books are historical and prophetical, 
 we should naturally have expected to find them in the 
 section of Prophets. The reason why they hold a 
 lower place will fall to be examined later. This 
 number of twenty-four books, and the division into the 
 Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa, were perfectly 
 fixed during the Talmudic period, that is, from the 
 third to the sixth century of our era. The order in 
 each division was to some extent variable. The number 
 of twenty-four books is first found in the Second (or 
 Fourth) Book of Esdras, towards the close of the first 
 Christian century. ^^^ 
 
 Another division into twenty-two books is adopted 
 in the earliest extant list of the contents of the Hebrew 
 Bible, that given by Josephus in his first book against 
 Apion, chap. viii. The same scheme appears to have 
 
132 CANON OF THE lect. v. 
 
 been adopted in tlie Book of Jubilees, and was still 
 familiar in the time of Jerome, who prefers to reckon 
 twenty-two books, joining Euth to Judges, and Lament- 
 ations to Jeremiah ; although he knows also the 
 Talmudic enumeration of twenty-four books, and a 
 third scheme which reckons twenty- seven, dividing 
 Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and Ezra-Nehemiah, as is 
 done in our modern Bibles, and separating Jeremiah 
 from Lamentations. It is proper to observe that the 
 scheme of twenty -two books is conformed to the 
 number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Jerome 
 draws a parallel between this arrangement and the 
 alphabetical acrostics in the Psalms, Lamentations, and 
 Proverbs xxxi. 9-31, and there can be little doubt that 
 it is artificial.^"^^ 
 
 It is often taken for granted that the list of Old 
 Testament books was quite fixed in Palestine at the 
 time of our Lord, and that the Bible acknowledged by 
 Jesus was precisely identical with our own. But it 
 must be remembered that this is only an inference back 
 from the list of Josephus published at the very end of 
 the first century. Before this date we have no cata- 
 logue of the sacred books. The nearest approach to one 
 is the panegyric on the famous men of Israel in Eccle- 
 siasticus xliv.-L, in which authors are expressly in- 
 cluded. The writer takes up the Pentateuch, Joshua, 
 Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and 
 the twelve Minor Prophets in order. He also mentions 
 the psalms of David, and the songs, parables, and pro- 
 
LECT. V. OLD TESTAMENT. 133 
 
 verbs of Solomon. Daniel and Esther are passed over 
 in silence, and Nehemiah is mentioned without Ezra. 
 Neither Philo nor the New Testament enables us to 
 make up a complete list of Old Testament books, for 
 there are some of the Hagiographa (Esther, Canticles, 
 Ecclesiastes) which are quoted neither by the apostles 
 nor by their Alexandrian contemporary. On the other 
 hand, there is no reason to believe that any books were 
 received in the time of Christ which have now fallen 
 out of the Canon. 
 
 When we turn to the Septuagint we find, in the 
 first place, a very different arrangement of the books. 
 There is no division into Law, Prophets, and Hagio- 
 grapha ; but the Law and the historical books come first, 
 the poetical and didactic books follow, and the prophets 
 stand at the end as in our English Bibles. But there 
 is another difference. Interspersed through the books 
 of the Hebrew Canon, MSS. and editions of the Septua- 
 gint contain certain additional writings which w^e call 
 Apocrypha. The Apocrypha of the Septuagint are 
 not precisely identical with those given in the English 
 Authorised Version. The apocal}^tic book called Second 
 (or Fourth) Esdras is not extant in Greek. The Prayer 
 of Manasseh is not in all editions of the Septuagint, but 
 is found in the collection of hymns or canticles which 
 some MSS. append to the Psalms. All our MSS. of 
 the LXX. are of Christian origin, and these Canticles 
 comprise the Magnificat and other New Testament 
 hymns. On the other hand, the Septuagint reckons 
 
 r 
 
134 APOCRYPHA. lect. v. 
 
 four books of Maccabees, while the English Apocrypha 
 have only two. 
 
 The additional books contained in the Septuagint 
 may be divided into three classes : — 
 
 I. Books translated from the Hebrew. Of these 
 1 Maccabees and Ecclesiasticus were still extant in 
 Hebrew in the time of Jerome, and the books of Tobit 
 and Judith were translated or corrected by him from 
 Aramaic copies. Baruch, in his day, was no longer 
 current among the Hebrews. 
 
 II. Books originally composed in Greek by Hellen- 
 istic Jews, such as the Second Book of Maccabees, the 
 principal part of which is an epitome of a larger work 
 by Jason of Gyrene, and the Wisdom of Solomon, which, 
 though it professes to be the work of the Hebrew 
 monarch, is plainly the production of an Alexandrian 
 Jew trained in the philosophy of his time. 
 
 III. Books based on translations from the canonical 
 books, but expanded and embellished with arbitrary 
 and fabulous additions. In the Greek book of Esther 
 the " Additions " given in the English Apocrypha are 
 an integral part of the text. Similarly, the Septua- 
 gint Daniel embodies Susanna, the Song of the Three 
 Children, and the Story of Bel and the Dragon. 1 Esdras 
 is based on extracts from Chronicles, Ezra, and ISTehe- 
 miah, but treats the text with great licence, and adds 
 the fabulous history of Zerubbabel. 
 
 The style of literature to which this third class of 
 Apocrypha belongs is perfectly familiar to students of 
 
LECT. V. MIDRASH. 135 
 
 the later Jewish literature. We possess many Jewish 
 books of similar character containing popular reproduc- 
 tions of the canonical books interwoven with fabulous 
 additions. This kind of literature is a branch of the 
 Midrash, or treatment of the sacred books for purposes 
 of popular edification. It seems to have had its origin 
 in the Synagogue, where the early Meturgemans and 
 preachers did not confine themselves to a faithful repro- 
 duction of Bible teaching, but added all manner of 
 Haggada, ethical and fabulous, according to the taste of 
 the time. But in Palestine the Uaggadic Midrash was 
 usually kept distinct from the text, and handed down 
 either orally or in separate books. In Alexandria, on 
 the contrary, the Jews seem to have been content, in 
 certain instances, to receive books through a Midrash 
 without possessing an exact version of the original 
 text. 
 
 From the fact that the Apocrypha stand side by side 
 •^^ith the canonical books in the MSS. and editions of 
 the Septuagint, some have leaped to the conclusion that 
 the Canon of the Alexandrian Jews contained all these 
 books, or, in other words, that they were recognised in 
 Alexandria as being divine and inspired in the same 
 sense as the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. That 
 conclusion, however, is a very hasty one. There are 
 several reasons which prevent us from drawing such 
 a rapid inference. In the first place, we observe that 
 the number of Apocrjrphal books is not identical in aU 
 copies, and that some of the books are found in two 
 
136 FLUCTUATIONS lect. v. 
 
 recensions with very considerable variations of form/''^ 
 This is a proof that there was no fixed canon upon the 
 subject, and establishes a parallel between the place of 
 the Apocrypha in MSS. of the Old Testament and the 
 occurrence in New Testament MSS. of a varying number 
 of such books as the Shepherd and the Epistles of 
 Barnabas and Clement, which never enjoyed undisputed 
 canonical authority in the Christian Church, though 
 they had a certain ecclesiastical position in particular 
 districts. In the second place, all our manuscripts of 
 the Septuagint are of Christian origin. The presence 
 of an Apocryphon in a Christian MS. shows that it had 
 a certain measure of recognition in the Church, but does 
 not prove that full canonical authority was ascribed to 
 it in the Synagogue. Again, in the third place, the 
 books must have been current one by one before they 
 were collected into a single volume. We learn from 
 the prologue to Ecclesiasticus and the subscription to 
 the Apocryphal book of Esther that some of them at 
 least were translated by private enterprise without 
 having any official sanction. Whatever position, then, 
 they ultimately attained, they were not translated as 
 part of an official Canon. And finally, Philo, the greatest 
 of Jewish Hellenists, who flourished in the time of our 
 Lord, knew the Apocrypha indeed, for he seems some- 
 times to borrow the turn of a phrase from them, but he 
 never quotes from them, much less uses them for the 
 proof of doctrine as he habitually uses most of the 
 books in our Old Testament. There are, then, sufficient 
 
LECT. V. IN THE CANON. 137 
 
 reasons for hesitating to believe that the Alexandrian 
 Jews received all these books as authoritative, in the 
 same sense as the Law and the Prophets. But, on the 
 other hand, we are bound to explain how such books 
 ever came to stand so closely associated with the canoni- 
 cal books as they do in our Greek copies. If the line of 
 demarcation between canonical and uncanonical books 
 had been sharply fixed, it is hard to see how they could 
 have got into the Septuagint at all. And how did it 
 come to pass that certain of the Hagiographa were not 
 used in Alexandria in their canonical form, but only in 
 the shape of Haggadic reproductions, like the Greek 
 Esther and Daniel ? These phenomena point to a time 
 when the idea of canonicity was not yet fixed, and when 
 certain books, even of the Hebrew canon, were only 
 pushing their way gradually towards universal recog- 
 nition. The state of the case is best illustrated by the 
 fact already referred to, that some of the oldest MSS. of 
 the New Testament contain, in addition to the books now 
 received, such writings as the Shepherd and the Epistles 
 of Barnabas and Clement. Before the canon of the 
 New Testament was fixed, several such books enjoyed 
 considerable authority in different Churches. They 
 were not accepted books, which, all over the Church, 
 were undoubtedly received as authoritative, like the 
 Gospels and the great Epistles of Paul; but they had a 
 certain respect paid to them, and in some parts of the 
 Cliristian Church were read at the public meetings for 
 worship. Something of the same sort, surely, must 
 
138 VALUE OF lect. v. 
 
 have existed in the time when the Septuagint was 
 formed; otherwise these books, not admitted over the 
 whole Jewish world, would not have occurred in ancient 
 copies alongside of books of undoubted authority. But, 
 again, at the period when books like the Epistle of 
 Barnabas had not been definitely relegated to a lower 
 place, certain New Testament books now held as canoni- 
 cal were still more or less disputed. In Alexandria, in 
 like manner, such a book as Esther cannot have been 
 accepted as beyond dispute, for instead of a proper 
 translation we find only a Midrash, circulating in two 
 varying recensions, and not claiming by its subscription 
 to be more than a private book brought to Alexandria 
 in the fourth year of Ptolemy and Cleopatra by one 
 Dositheos, who called himself a priest. 
 
 These facts force us to inquire upon what principles 
 the Jews separated the sacred writings from ordinary 
 books. But, before doing this, let me ask you rather to 
 look at the Apocrypha as they appear to us in the light 
 of modern historical research. All the books of the 
 Apocrypha are comparatively modern. There is none 
 of them, on the most favourable computation, which can 
 be supposed to be older than the latest years of the 
 Persian empire. They belong, therefore, to the age 
 when the last great religious movement of the Old 
 Testament under Ezra had passed away — when pro- 
 phecy had died out, and the nation had settled down to 
 live under the Law, looking for guidance in religion, 
 not to a continuance of new revelation, but to the 
 
LECT. V. THE APOCRYPHA. 139 
 
 ^vTitten Word, and to the interpretations of the Scribes. 
 To place these books on the same footing with the Law 
 and the Prophets, as is done by the Church of Rome, is 
 quite impossible to the historical student. We receive 
 the Bible as the record of revelation. Now, if we look 
 at revelation, not from its Divine side, but from a 
 human point of view, as a phenomenon in history, we 
 may lay down the principle that revelation manifests 
 itseK among men in the production of new religious 
 truths and original spiritual experiences. The record 
 of revelation, then, is the record of the period in which 
 the religion of Israel continued to grow, and develop 
 new principles — to gain new insight into the ways of 
 God with man. This growth continued during the 
 long centuries in which spiritual truth, in the hands of 
 the prophets, struggled for mastery against the heathen- 
 ism of the great mass of the nation — against the con- 
 stant inclination of the whole people to mingle with 
 the Gentiles around them, and fall back into their false 
 worship. After the time of Ezra, the battle was over, 
 and the victory was won. The religious life of Israel 
 became stereotyped, and no fresh religious start was 
 made, unless, perhaps, in a very modified sense, at the 
 rising under the Maccabees against the attempt of the 
 Syrian Greeks to substitute heathenism for the religion 
 of Israel. The spiritual religion could make no further 
 progress so long as it was limited by national forms 
 and a local attachment to the earthly temple. Further 
 revelation, wliich should be an Old Testament revela- 
 
140 CLOSE OF THE AGE lect. v. 
 
 tion, was simply impossible. The spirit of prophecy 
 could not reappear until Christianity broke through the 
 national barrier of the old covenant, and transformed 
 the religion of Israel into a religion for all mankind, 
 freed from every limitation of place and of nationality. 
 y Let me guard this argument against a possible mis- 
 conception. When I say that the record of revelation 
 is the record of the age of religious productivity that 
 closed with the thorough establishment and general 
 acceptance of the reform of Ezra which made relapse 
 into heathenism impossible, and with the rise of the 
 Scribes who taught as mere interpreters of the past, 
 and not as men having authority, we are not necessarily 
 to conclude that a book written after this date has no 
 claim to be part of the historical record of revelation. 
 For example, the book of Nehemiah, or, as we have 
 now learned to call it, in accordance with the Hebrew 
 usage, the joint book of Ezra and Nehemiah, which in all 
 probability was also one book with Chronicles, carries 
 down the list of high priests as far as Jaddua, who was 
 in office at the time of Alexander (Neh. xii. 11). The 
 book, therefore, was written, at the earliest, at the very 
 end of the Persian period, though it incorporates earlier 
 documents, such as the autobiography of Ezra and the 
 memoir of Nehemiah. In its present form, then, the 
 book may be as late as some of the earliest Apocrypha. 
 But the account which it gives us of the reforms of 
 Ezra and Nehemiah is a necessary part of the history 
 of the last great step in the victory of spiritual religion 
 
LECT. V. OF REVELATION. 141 
 
 in Israel, without which the record of revelation would 
 not be complete. No such thing can be said in favour 
 of the Apocrypha. They were not only written after 
 the end of the living progress of the Old Testament reve- 
 lation, but their contents add nothing to our knowledge 
 of that progress, and therefore, on a purely historical 
 argument, and without going into any knotty theological 
 questions as to the precise nature of inspiration, we 
 can say on broad grounds of common sense that these 
 books must not be included in the Bible record, but 
 that their value is simply that of documents for the 
 histoiy of the connection of the Old and the New Testa- 
 ment. They belong to a new literature which rose in 
 Judaea after the cessation of prophetic originality, when 
 the law and the tradition were all in all, when there was 
 no man to speak with authority truths that he had 
 received direct from God, but the whole intellect of 
 Israel was either concentrated on the development of 
 legal Halacha, or, in men of more poetical imagination, 
 exercised itself in restating and illustrating the old 
 principles of religion in ethical poetry, like that of 
 Ecclesiasticus, or in romance and fable of a religious 
 complexion, like the books of Judith and Tobit. Hal- 
 acha, Midrash, and Haggada became the forms of all 
 literary effort ; or if any man tried a bolder flight, and 
 sought for his work a place of higher authority, he did 
 so by assuming the name of some ancient worthy. This 
 last class of pseudepigraphic works, as they are called, 
 consists largely of pseudoprophetic books in apocalyptic 
 form, like 2 (4) Esdras.^'^ 
 
142 CESSATION OF lect. v. \ 
 
 We have satisfied ourselves, then, by historical argu- 
 ments, that there is a distinct line of demarcation between 
 the Apocrypha and the books which present the record 
 of that living progress of revelation which came to rest 
 in the work of Ezra. But how far was this understood \ 
 
 by those who separated out the books of our Hebrew 
 Bible as canonical, and rejected all others ? The Jews \ 
 
 had a dim sort of consciousness after the time of Ezra i 
 
 that the age of revelation was past, and that the age of 
 tradition had begun. The feeling that new revelation 
 had almost ceased is found even in the latest prophecies i 
 
 of the Old Testament. In Zechariah xiii. the prophet | 
 
 predicts the near approach of a time when every one | 
 
 who calls himself a prophet, and puts on a prophet's 
 garment, shall be at once recognised as a deceiver, and 
 his own father and mother shall be the first to denounce 
 the imposture. And in the last verse of Malachi — the : 
 
 last echo, as it were, of the prophetic literature of the j 
 
 Old Testament — Malachi does not look forward to a con- ' 
 
 stant succession of prophets, such as is foretold in 
 Deuteronomy. He sees no hope for the corrupt state \ 
 
 of his times, except that the old prophet Elijah shall 
 return to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, j 
 
 and the hearts of the children to the fathers, lest God i 
 
 come and smite the earth with a curse. As time rolled i 
 
 on, the feeling that there was no new revelation among j 
 
 the people became still more strong. In 1 Maccabees | 
 
 ix. 27 we read that " there was great sorrow in Israel, , 
 
 such as there had not been since the days that no pro- j 
 
LECT. V. PROPHECY. 143 
 
 phet had appeared among them;" and, according to 
 Josephus, the strict succession of prophets ended in 
 the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus. The Scribes 
 thoroughly sympathised with this view. Even when 
 they made innovations, they always professed to do so 
 as mere interpreters, claiming nothing more than to re- 
 store, to expound, or to fence in, the law given by Moses. 
 Their position is aptly described in the phrase of the 
 New Testament, where Jesus is said to teach " as one 
 having authority, and not as the scribes." But, while 
 the Jews had a general feeling that the age of revelation 
 w^as past, they had no such clear perception of the 
 reason of the change as we can have in the light of the 
 New Testament; for they continued to look, not for a 
 new revelation superseding the old covenant, but for the 
 reappearance of prophets working in the service of the 
 law and its ritual. In 1 Maccabees iv. 46 they put 
 aside the stones of the polluted altar, not knowing what 
 to do with them, but waiting till a prophet shall arise in 
 Israel to tell it ; and again (chap. xiv. 41), they agree to 
 make Simon high priest until such time as a true prophet 
 shall appear. The revival of prophecy was still looked 
 for, but the idea of the function of prophecy was nar- 
 rowed to things of no moment. Malachi had looked for 
 a prophet to turn the hearts of the fathers to the child- 
 ren, and the hearts of the children to the fathers, lest 
 God come and smite the earth with a curse. In the days 
 of the Maccabees the true nature of prophecy had been 
 so far forgotten that it was thought that the business of 
 
144 JEWISH THEORY lect. v. 
 
 a prophet was to tell what should be done with the 
 stones of a polluted altar, or which family was to hold 
 the dignity of the high priesthood. Where the meaning 
 of prophecy was so superficially conceived, it is not sur- 
 prising that a sporadic reappearance of prophets was 
 not thought impossible. Josephus, in a curious passage 
 of his Jewish War, says that John Hyrcanus was the 
 only man who united in his person the three highest 
 distinctions, being at once ruler of his nation, and high 
 priest, and gifted with prophecy ; " for the Divinity so 
 conversed with liim that he was cognisant of all things 
 that were to come" {B. J., Bk. i. chap. ii. 8 ; compare the 
 similar expressions of John xi. 51). Moreover, although 
 the Scribes in general did not consider that they had 
 the spirit of revelation, we find the author of Ecclesias- 
 ticus (chap. xxiv. 31, 32) claiming for his book an almost 
 prophetic authority : "I w^ill yet make instruction to 
 shine as the morning, and will send forth her light afar 
 off. I will pour forth doctrine as prophecy, and leave 
 it unto eternal generations" (comp. i. 30, li. 13 seg). 
 The author is fully conscious that his whole wisdom 
 is derived from the study of the law (xxiv. 30). He 
 does not pretend that he or other scholars are the 
 vehicles of new truths of revelation (chaps, xxxviii. 
 xxxix.); but he is evidently not conscious that this 
 circumstance constitutes an absolute difference between 
 the teaching which, by his own admission, was nothing 
 more than an enforcement of the principles of the law 
 of Moses, and the old creative prophecy of Isaiah or 
 
LECT. V. OF RE VELA TION. 1 45 
 
 Jeremiah. This uncleamess of view rests upon an error 
 which not only was fatal to the Jews, but has continued 
 to exercise a pernicious influence even on Christian 
 theology down to our own day. The Jews, as we have 
 already seen, identified religion with the Law, and the 
 Law with the words of Moses. 
 
 All revelation was held to be comprised in the 
 Torah. According to the Son of Sirach, the sacred 
 Wisdom, created before the world and enduring to all 
 eternity, which is established in Sion and bears sway in 
 Jerusalem, the all-sufficient food of man's spiritual life, 
 is identical with the book of the Covenant of God most 
 High, the Law enjoined by Moses (Ecclesiasticus xxiv.). 
 The secrets of this law are infinite, and all man's wis- 
 dom is a stream derived from this unfailing source. 
 This doctrine of the pre-existent and eternal Law, 
 comprising within itself the sum of all wisdom and 
 all possible revelation, runs through the whole Jewish 
 literature. It is brought out in a very interesting way 
 in the old Jewish commentaries on Deut. xxx. 12: — 
 " The law is not in the heavens." " Say not," says the 
 commentary, " another Moses shall arise and bring 
 another law from heaven : there is no law left in 
 heaven;" that is, according to the position of the 
 Jews, the law of Moses contained the whole revelation 
 of God's goodness and grace which had been given 
 or which ever could be given.^'^ 
 
 What place then was left for the Prophets, the 
 Psalms, and the other books? They were inspired and 
 
146 THE TO RAH AND lect. v. 
 
 authoritative interpretations and applications of the law 
 of Moses, and nothing more. They were, therefore, 
 simply the links in tradition between the time of Moses 
 and the time of Ezra and the Scribes. And so clearly 
 was this the Jewish notion, that the same word — 
 Kcibhala, doctrine traditionally received — is applied 
 indifferently to all the books of the Old Testament 
 except the Pentateuch, and to the oral tradition of the 
 Scribes. The Pentateuch alone is Mikra, " reading," or, 
 as we should call it, "Scripture." The Prophets, the 
 Psalms, and the rest of the Old Testament, in common 
 with the oral tradition of the Scribes, are mere Kab- 
 bala or traditional doctrine. From these premisses it 
 necessarily follows that the other books are inferior to 
 the Law. This consequence was drawn with full logi- 
 cal stringency. The Law and the Prophets were not 
 written on the same roll, and, in accordance with a 
 legal principle which forbade a less holy thing to be 
 purchased with the price of one more holy, the Mishna 
 directs that a copy of the other books may no more be 
 bought with the price of a Pentateuch than part of a 
 street may be bought with the price of a synagogue.^^'^ 
 
 I need not interrupt the argument to prove at 
 length that this is a view which cannot be received by 
 any Christian. It was refuted, once for all, by the 
 apostle Paul when he pointed out, in answer to the 
 Pharisees of his time, that the permanent value of all 
 revelation lies, not in Law, but in Gospel. Now, it is 
 certain that the prophetical books are far richer than 
 
LECT. V. OTHER SCRIPTURES. 147 
 
 the Law in evangelical elements. They contain a much 
 fuller declaration of those spiritual truths which consti- 
 tute the permanent value of the Old Testament Eevela- 
 tion, and a much clearer indication of the nature of the 
 New and Spiritual Covenant under which we now live. 
 There is more of Christ in the Prophets and the 
 Psalms than in the Pentateuch, with its legal ordinances 
 and temporary precepts adapted to the hardness of the 
 people's hearts ; and therefore no Christian can for a 
 moment consent to accept that view of the pre-eminence 
 of the Law which was to the Jews the foundation of 
 their official doctrine of the canon. What then is the 
 inference from these facts ? We found, in Lecture IL, 
 that the early Protestants, for reasons very intelligible 
 at their time, were content simply to accept the Canon 
 as it came to them through the hands of the Jews. 
 But it appears that, in defining the number and limits 
 of the sacred books, the Jewish doctors started with a 
 false idea of the test and measure of sacredness. Their 
 tradition, therefore, does not conclusively determine the 
 question of the Canon ; and we cannot permanently 
 acquiesce in it without subjecting their conclusions to 
 a fresh examination by sounder tests. 
 
 And here let me say, in one word, anticipating the 
 fuller discussion to follow in the next Lecture, that, as 
 we find it a matter of thankfulness that the Scribes did 
 not attempt to make a critical text of Scripture, so it is 
 a matter of thankfulness for us that they did not, till a 
 very late date, set themselves to establish an authorita- 
 
us HISTORY OF lect. v. 
 
 tive Canon of Scripture. A Canon, deliberately franied 
 on the principles of the Scribes and Pharisees, could 
 hardly have been satisfactory ; but in reality the 
 essential elements in the Canon were not determined by 
 official authority. The great mass of the Old Testament 
 books gained their canonical position because they com- 
 mended themselves in practice to the experience of the 
 Old Testament Church and the spiritual discernment of 
 the godly in Israel. For the religious life of Israel was 
 truer than the teaching of the Pharisees. The Old 
 Testament religion was the religion of revelation ; and 
 the highest spiritual truths then known did not dwell 
 in the Jewish people without producing, in practical 
 life, a higher type of religious experience, and a truer 
 insight into spiritual things, than was embodied in the 
 doctrines of the Scribes. 
 
 The judgment which theological prejudice might 
 pass on the several books of the record of revelation 
 was controlled by the practical experience of those who 
 found in the Scriptures food for their own daily life : 
 and so, in God's providence, a result was attained which 
 rested on sounder principles than those of the schools. 
 Throughout the history of the Church, it has always 
 been found that the silent experience of the pious 
 people of God has been truer, and has led the Church 
 in a safer path, than the public decrees of those who 
 claim to be authoritative leaders of theological thought. 
 
i-ECT. VI. THE CANON, 149 
 
 LECTUEE VI. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE CANON. 
 
 In resuming the subject of the Old Testament Canon, I 
 must again direct your attention to the testimonies 
 cited in last Lecture which mark the epoch at which tlie 
 Bible of the Jews in Palestine had attained the fixed 
 dimensions in which w^e now possess it. The Fourth (or 
 Second) Book of Esdras speaks of twenty-four publicly 
 acknowledged books, and the Book of Jubilees, accord- 
 ing to Syncellus and Cedrenus, reckoned twenty-two. 
 These testimonies, however, are not certain. The extant 
 text of the Jubilees does not contain a reference to the 
 twenty-two books in the context where the Byzantines 
 claim to have read it, and the number of the sacred books 
 is lacking in some recensions of the text of Esdras.^^^ 
 The first unambiguous evidence as to the close of the 
 canon is contained in the list of Josephus, composed 
 towards the close of the first century. We can affirm 
 with practical certainty that the twenty -two books of 
 Josephus are those of our present Hebrew Canon ; but 
 the force of this evidence is disguised by the controver- 
 sial purpose of the writer, which leads him to put his 
 facts in a false light. The aim of Josephus in his work 
 
150 yOSEPHUS AND lect. vi. 
 
 against Apion is to vindicate the antiquity of the Hebrew 
 nation, and the credibility of its history as recorded in 
 his own Archmology. In this connection he maintains 
 that the Oriental nations kept official annals long before 
 the Greeks, and that the Jews in particular charged 
 their chief priests and prophets with the duty of pre- 
 serving a regular record of contemporary affairs, not 
 permitting any private person to meddle in the matter. 
 This official record is contained in the twenty-two books 
 of the Old Testament. The older history, communi- 
 cated by revelation, is found in the Pentateuch along 
 with the legal code. The other books, with the excep- 
 tion of four containing hymns and precepts of life, which 
 may be identified with the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, 
 and the Song of Solomon, are made to figure as a con- 
 tinuous history written by an unbroken succession of 
 prophets, each of whom recorded the events of his own 
 time, down to the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus, when 
 the succession of prophets failed, and the sacred annals 
 stopped short. As Josephus places Ezra and Nehemiah 
 under Xerxes, and identifies his son Artaxerxes with the 
 Ahasuerus of Esther, he no doubt views Esther as the 
 latest canonical book. The number of thirteen pro- 
 phetico-historical books from Joshua to Esther is made 
 up by reckoning Job as a history. As the Song of 
 Solomon figures as a didactic book, it must have been 
 taken allegorically.^^^ 
 
 According to Josephus, the close of the Canon is 
 distinctly marked by the cessation of the succession of 
 
LECT. VI. THE CANON. 151 
 
 prophets in the time of Artaxerxes. On this view there 
 never was or could be any discussion as to the number 
 and limits of the canonical collection, which had from 
 first to last an official character. Each new book was 
 ^vritten by a man of acknowledged authority, and simply 
 added to the collection as a new page would be added 
 to the royal annals of an Eastern kingdom. It is plain 
 that this view is not in accordance with facts. The 
 older prophets were not official historiographers working 
 in harmony with the priests for the regular continuance 
 of a series of Temple annals ; they were often in oppo- 
 sition to the sacred as well as the civil authorities of 
 their nation. Jeremiah, for example, was persecuted 
 and put in the stocks by Pashur the son of Immer, 
 priest and chief governor of the Temple. Again, it is 
 clear that there was no regular and unbroken series 
 of sacred annals officially kept up from the time of 
 Moses onwards. In the time of Josiah, the Law, 
 unexpectedly found in the house of the Lord, appears 
 as a thing that had beeai lost and long forgotten. 
 Even a glance at the books of the Old Testament is 
 enough to refute the idea of a regular succession of 
 prophetic writers, each taking up the history just 
 where the last had left it. In fact, Josephus in this 
 statement simply gives a turn, for his own polemical 
 purposes, to that theory of tradition wdiich was current 
 among the Pharisees of his time and is clearly ex- 
 pressed at the beginning of the treatise of the Mishna 
 called PirM Ahoth. In it we read that "Moses re- 
 
152 HOMOLOGOUMENA lect. vi. 
 
 ceived the Torah from Sinai and delivered it to Joshua, 
 Joshua delivered it to the elders, the elders to the 
 prophets, and the prophets to the men of the Great 
 Synagogue," from whom it passed in turn to the Zugoth, 
 as the Hebrews called them, — that is, the pairs of great 
 doctors who, in successive generations, formed the heads 
 of the Scribes. This whole doctrine of the succession 
 of tradition is a dogmatical theory, not an historical fact ; 
 and in like manner Josephus's account of the Canon is a 
 theory, and a theory inconsistent with the fact that we 
 find no complete formal catalogue of Scriptures in earlier 
 writers like the son of Sirach, who, enumerating the 
 literary worthies of his nation, had every motive to 
 give a complete list, if he had been in a position to do 
 so ; inconsistent also with the fact that questions as to 
 the canonicity of certain books were stiU undecided 
 within the lifetime of Josephus himself. 
 
 But the clearest evidence that the notion of can- 
 onicity was not fully established till long after the 
 time of Artaxerxes lies in the Septuagint. The facts 
 discussed in last Lecture are not to be explained 
 by saying that there was one fixed Canon in Palestine 
 and another in Alexandria. That would imply such a 
 schism between the Hellenistic and Palestinian Jews, 
 between the Jews who spoke Greek and those who 
 read Hebrew, as certainly did not exist, and would 
 assign to the Apocrypha an authority among the for- 
 mer which there is no reason to believe they ever 
 possessed. The true inference from the facts is, that 
 
LECT. VI. AND ANTILEGOMENA. 153 
 
 the Canon of the Old Testament was of gradual forma- 
 tion, that some books now accepted had long a doubtful 
 position, while others were for a time admitted to a 
 measure of reputation which made the line of demarca- 
 tion between them and the canonical books uncertain 
 and fluctuating. In short, we must suppose a time 
 when the Old Testament Canon was passing through 
 the same kind of history through which we know the 
 Xew Testament Canon to have passed. In the early 
 ages of the Christian Church we find the books of the 
 New Testament divided into the so-called Homologou- 
 mena, or books universally acknowledged, and the 
 Antilegoinena, or books acknowledged in some parts 
 of the Church but spoken against in others. The 
 Homologoumena included those books which, either 
 from their very nature or from their early and wide 
 circulation, never could be questioned — books of ad- 
 mitted and undoubted apostolic authority, such as the 
 Gospels and the great Epistles of Paul. The Anti- 
 legomena consisted of other books, some of which are 
 now in our New Testament, but which for some reason 
 were not from the first broadly circulated over the 
 whole Church. Along with these, there were other 
 books, not now held canonical, which in some parts of 
 the Church were read in public worship, and received 
 a certain amount of reverence. The history of the 
 Canon unfolds the gradual process by which the num- 
 ber of AntilegomeTia was narrowed; either by the 
 Church, through all its length and breadth, coming to be 
 
i 
 154 EZRA AND lect. vi. | 
 
 persuaded tliat some book not at first undisputed was yet 
 worthy to be universally received as apostolic, or, con- 
 versely, by the spread of the conviction that other books, 
 which for a time had been used in certain churches, were 
 not fit to be put on a level with the Gospels and the 
 great Epistles. We must suppose that a similar process 
 took place with regard to the books of the Old Testa- 
 ment. About many of them there could be no dispute. 
 Others were Antilegomena — books spoken against — 
 and the number of such Antilegomena, which were 
 neither fully acknowledged nor absolutely rejected, was 
 naturally a fluctuating quantity up to a comparatively 
 late date, when such a measure of practical agreement 
 had been reached as to which books were really of 
 sacred authority, that the theological heads of the 
 nation could, without difficulty, cut short further dis- 
 cussion, and establish an authoritative list of Scriptures. 
 The reason why a greater number of books of disputed 
 position is preserved in Greek than in Hebrew is that the 
 Kabbins of Palestine, from the close of the first century, 
 when the Canon was definitely fixed, sedulously sup- 
 pressed all Apocrypha, and made it a sin to read them. 
 This account of the origin of the Canon is natural 
 in itself and agrees with all the facts, especially with 
 the circumstance that the canonicity of certain books 
 was a moot point among Jewish theologians till after 
 the fall of the Temple. This fact gave no trouble to the 
 Jews, who accepted the decision of E. Akiba and his 
 compeers as of undisputed authority. But Christian 
 
THE CANON. 155 
 
 theology could not give weight to Rabbinical tradition, 
 and it is thus very natural that many attempts have 
 been made to prove that an authoritative Canon was 
 fixed in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah while the last 
 prophets still lived. 
 
 Among the ancient fathers it was a current opinion 
 that Ezra himself rewrote by inspiration the whole 
 Old Testament, which had been destroyed or injured at 
 the time of the Captivity. The source of this opinion is 
 a fable in 2 (4) Esdras xiv. Esdras, according to this 
 story, prayed for the Holy Spirit that he might rewrite 
 the law that had been burned. His prayer was granted ; 
 and, retiring for forty days, with five scribes to write to 
 his dictation, he produced ninety -four books. "And 
 when the forty days were completed, the Most High 
 spake, saying. Publish the first books which thou 
 hast written, that the worthy and the unworthy may 
 read them ; but conserve the last seventy, and deliver 
 them to wise men of thy people." To imderstand what 
 this means, we must remember that this book of Esdras 
 professes to be a genuine prophecy of Ezra the scribe. 
 The author was aware that when he produced his book, 
 which was not written till near the close of the first 
 Christian century, it would be necessary to meet the 
 objection that it had never been known before. Ac- 
 cordingly he and other forgers of the same period fell 
 back on the assertion that certain of the sacred writings 
 had always been esoteric books, confined to a privileged 
 circle. The whole fable is directed to this end, and is 
 
156 THE GREAT lect. vi. 
 
 plainly unwortliy of the slightest attention. We have 
 no right to rationalise it, as some have done, and read 
 it as a testimony that Ezra may at least have collected 
 and edited the Old Testament. But no doubt the cur- 
 rency wliich Fourth Esdras long enjoyed helped to fix 
 the impresssion on men's minds that in some shape 
 Ezra had a part in settling the Canon, and drove them 
 to seek arguments for this view in other quarters. 
 
 Accordingly we find that a new form of the theoiy 
 started up in the sixteenth century, and gained almost 
 undisputed currency in the Protestant Churches. Ac- 
 cording to this view, the Canon was completed by a 
 body of men known as the Great Synagogue. The 
 Great Synagogue plays a considerable part in Jewish 
 tradition ; it is represented as a permanent council, 
 tinder the presidency of Ezra, wielding supreme author- 
 ity over the Jewish nation ; and a variety of functions 
 are ascribed to it. But the tradition never said that the 
 Great Synagogue fixed the Canon. That opinion, current 
 as it once was, is a mere conjecture of Elias Levita, a 
 Jewish scholar contemporary with Luther. Not only 
 so, but we now know that the whole idea that there 
 ever was a body called the Great Synagogue holding rule 
 in the Jewish nation is pure fiction. It has been proved 
 in the clearest manner that the origin of the legend of 
 the Great Synagogue lies in the account given in Neh. 
 viii.-x. of the great convocation which met at Jerusalem 
 and subscribed the covenant to observe the law. It 
 was therefore a meeting, and not a permanent authority. 
 
LECT. VI. SYNAGOGUE. 157 
 
 It met once for all, and everything that is told about it, 
 except what we read in Nehemiah, is pure fable of the 
 later Jews/"^ 
 
 Two, then, of the traditions which seem to refer the 
 whole Canon to Ezra and his time break down ; but a 
 third, found in 2 Maccabees, has received more atten- 
 tion in recent times, and has frequently been supposed, 
 even by cautious scholars, to indicate at least the first 
 steps towards the collection of the Prophets of the 
 Hagiographa : — 
 
 2 Mac. ii. 1 3. — The same things were related in the records, 
 and in the memoirs of Nehemiah, and how, founding a library, 
 he collected the narratives about the kings and prophets 
 [according to another reading, the books of the prophets], and the 
 [writings] of David, and the letters of kings concerning sacred 
 offerings. (14.) In like manner Judas collected the books 
 scattered in consequence of the war that came on us, and we 
 have them by us ; of which, if ye have need, send men to fetch 
 them. 
 
 This passage stands in a spurious epistle, professedly 
 addressed to the Jews in Alexandria by the Palestinian 
 Jews. The epistle is full of fabulous details, which 
 claim to be taken from written sources. If this claim 
 is not pure fiction, the sources must have been apocry- 
 phal. The Memoirs of Nehemiah to which our pas- 
 sage appeals are one of these worthless sources, con- 
 taining, as we are expressly told, the same fables, and 
 therefore altogether unworthy of credence. But, in 
 fact, the transparent object of the passage is to palm 
 off upon the reader a whole collection of forgeries 
 8 
 
158 EZRA AND lect. vi. 
 
 by making out that the author and his friends in 
 Palestine possess, and are willing to communicate, 
 a number of valuable and sacred books not known 
 in Egypt. Literary forgery had an incredible attrac- 
 tion for a certain class of writers in those ages. 
 It was practised by the Hellenistic Jews as a regular 
 trade, and it is in the interests of this fraudulent busi- 
 ness that our author introduces the story about Nehe- 
 miah and his library. Even if Nehemiah did collect 
 a library, which is likely enough, as he could not but 
 desire to possess the books of the ancient prophets, that 
 after all was a very different thing from forming an 
 authoritative Canon. 
 
 Scholars have sometimes been so busy trying to 
 gather a grain of truth out of these fabulous traditions, 
 that they have forgotten to open their eyes and simply 
 look at the Bible itself for a plain and categorical 
 account of what Ezra and Nehemiah actually did foi 
 the Canon of Scripture. From Neh. viii.-x. we learn 
 that Ezra did establish a Canon, that is, that he did lead 
 his people to accept a written and sacred code as the 
 absolute rule of faith and life ; but this Canon of Ezra 
 was the Pentateuch. The people entered into a cove- 
 nant to keep the Law of Mos^s, which Ezra brought 
 with liim from Babylon (Ezra vii. 14). That was the 
 establishment of the Pentateuch as the canonical 
 and authoritative book of the Jews, and that is the 
 position which it holds ever afterwards. So we have 
 seen that to the author of Ecclesiasticus the Pentateuch, 
 
LECT. vr. THE CANON. 159 
 
 and no larger Canon, is the book of the Covenant of 
 God most high, and the source of all sacred wisdom; 
 while, to all Jewish theology, the Pentateuch stands 
 higher than the other books in sanctity, and is viewed 
 as containing within itself the whole compass of possible 
 revelation. In the strictest sense of the word the 
 Torah is not merely the Canon of Ezra, but remained 
 the Canon of the Jews ever after, all other books being 
 tested by their conformity with its contents. 
 
 That does not mean that the Divine authority of 
 the Prophets was not recognised at the time of Ezra. 
 Undoubtedly it was recognised, but it was not felt to 
 be necessary to collect the prophetic books into one 
 authoritative volume with the Law. Indeed, Ezra and 
 Nehemiah could not have undertaken to make a fixed 
 and closed collection of the Prophets, unless they had 
 known that no other prophets were to rise after their 
 time ; and we have no reason to believe that they 
 had such knowledge, which could only have come to 
 them by special revelation. The other sacred books, 
 after the time of Ezra, continued to be read and to 
 stand each on its own authority, just as the books of 
 the apostles did in the times of early Christianity. 
 To us this may seem highly inconvenient. We are 
 accustomed to regard the Bible as one book, and it 
 seems to us a-n awkward thing that there should not 
 liave been a fixed volume comprising all sacred writ- 
 ings. The Jews, I apprehend, could not share these 
 feelings. The use of a fixed Canon is either for the 
 
160 CANON OF lect. vr. 
 
 convenience of private reading, or for the limitation of 
 public ecclesiastical lessons, or for the determination 
 of appeals in matter of doctrine. And in none of these 
 points did the Jews stand on the same ground with us. 
 In these days the Bible was not a book, but a whole 
 library. The Law was not written on the same skins 
 as the Prophets, and each prophetical book, as we learn 
 from Luke iv. 17, might form a volume by itself. In 
 one passage of the Talmud, a volume containing aU 
 the Prophets is mentioned as a singularity. Very few 
 persons, it may be presumed, could possess aU the 
 Biblical books, or even dream of having them in a 
 collected form.^^^ 
 
 Then, again, no part of the canonical books, except 
 the Pentateuch, was systematically read through in the 
 Synagogue. The Pentateuch was read through every 
 three years. Lessons from the prophetical books were 
 added at an early date, but up to the time of the 
 Mishna this was not done on a fixed system, while the 
 Hagiographa had no place in the Synagogue service 
 until a comparatively late period, when the book of 
 Esther, and still later the other four Megilloth, came to 
 be used on certain annual occasions.^^^ And, finally, in 
 matters of doctrine, the appeal to the Prophets or 
 Hagiographa was not sharply distinguished from 
 appeal to the oral law. Both alike were parts of the 
 Kahhala, the traditional and authoritative interpreta- 
 tion of the Pentateuch, which stood as the supreme 
 standard above both. 
 
LECT. VI. THE PROPHETS, 161 
 
 It is true that the whole doctrine of oral tradition 
 arose gradually and after the time of Ezra. But the 
 one-sided legalism on which it rests could never have 
 been developed if the books of the prophets, from the 
 time of Ezra downwards, had been officially recognised 
 as a part of public revelation, co-ordinate and equally 
 fundamental with the law of Moses. The Prophets, in 
 truth, with the other remains of the old sacred literature, 
 were mainly regarded as books of private edification. 
 Wliile the Law was directly addressed to all Israel in 
 all ages, the other sacred writings had a private origin, 
 or were addressed to special necessities. Up to the 
 time of the Exile, the godly of Israel looked for guidance 
 to the living prophetic word in their midst, and the 
 study of written prophecies or liistories, which, according 
 to many indications, was largely practised in the circles 
 where the living prophets had most influence, was 
 rather a supplement to the spoken word than a sub- 
 stitute for it. But in the time of the Exile, when the 
 national existence with which the ancient religion of 
 Israel was so closely intertwined was hopelessly 
 shattered, when the voice of the prophets was stilled, 
 and the public services of the sanctuary no longer called 
 the devout together, the whole continuance of the 
 spiritual faith rested upon the remembrance that the 
 prophets of the Lord had foreseen the catastrophe, and 
 had shown how to reconcile it with undiminished trust 
 in Jehovah, the God of Israel. The written word 
 acquired a fresh significance for the religious life, and 
 
162 CANON OF lect. vi. 
 
 the books of the prophets, with those records of the 
 ancient history which were either already framed in the 
 mould of prophetic thought, or were cast in that mould 
 by editors of the time of the Exile, became the main 
 support of the faithful, who felt as they had never felt 
 before, that the words of Jehovah were pure words, silver 
 sevenfold tried, a sure treasure in every time of need. 
 
 The frequent allusions to the earlier prophets in the 
 writings of Zechariah show how deep a hold their words 
 had taken of the hearts of the godly in Israel ; but the 
 very profundity of this influence, belonging as it did to 
 the sphere of personal religion rather than the public 
 order of the theocracy, made it less necessary to stamp 
 the prophetic series with the seal of public canonicity. 
 These books had no need to be brought from Babylon 
 with the approval of a royal rescript, or laid before the 
 nation by the authority of a Tirshatha. The only form 
 of public recognition which was wanting, and which 
 followed in due course, was the practice of reading from 
 the Prophets in the public worship of the synagogue. 
 It required no more formal process than the natural use 
 made of this ancient literature, to bring it little by little 
 into the shape of a fixed collection, though, as we have 
 seen in the example of Jeremiah, there was no standard 
 edition up to a comparatively late date. In the time of 
 Daniel we already find the prophetic literature referred 
 to under the name of " the books " or Scriptures (Dan. 
 ix. 2). The English version unfortunately omits the 
 article, and loses the force of the phrase. 
 
LECT. VI. THE PROPHETS. 1G3 
 
 The ultimate form of the prophetic collection is con- 
 tained in the Earlier and Later Prophets of the Hebrew 
 Bible, to which perhaps we must add Euth and Lament- 
 ations, wliich, on the old scheme of twenty-two books, 
 go with Judges and Jeremiah respectively, while the 
 book of Joshua, on the other hand, appears to have stood 
 originally in close connection with the Pentateuch. 
 The authority of this collection, which was inextricably 
 interlaced with the profoundest experiences of the 
 spiritual life of Israel, was practically never disputed, 
 and its influence on the personal religion of the nation 
 was doubtless in inverse ratio to the preference assigned 
 to the Pentateuch as the public and official code of 
 Ezra's theocracy. ^^^ 
 
 Equally undisputed was the position of the Psalter, 
 the hymn-book of the second Temple. The Psalter, as 
 we shall see in a future Lecture, has a complicated 
 history, and, along with elements of great antiquity, 
 contains many pieces of a date subsequent to the Exile, 
 or even to Ezra. In its finished form the collection is 
 clearly later than the prophetical writings. But no part 
 of the Old Testament appeals more directly to the 
 believing heart, and none bears a clearer impress of 
 inspiration in the individual poems, and of divine guid- 
 ance in their collection. That the book containing: the 
 subjective utterance of Israel's faith, the answer of the 
 believing heart to the word of revelation, continued to 
 grow after the prophetic voice was still, and the wiitten 
 law had displaced the living word, was natural and 
 
164 THE LAW, THE PROPHETS, lect. vi. 
 
 necessary. In the Psalter we see how the ordinances of 
 the new theocracy established themselves in the hearts 
 of the people, as well as in the external order of the 
 community at Jerusalem, and the spiritual aspects of the 
 Law which escaped the legal subtilty of the Scribes are 
 developed in such Psalms as the 119th, with an im- 
 mediate force of personal conviction which has supplied 
 a pattern of devotion to all following ages. 
 
 Thus three great masses of sacred literature, com- 
 prising those elements which were most immediately 
 practical under the old dispensation, and make up the 
 chief permanent value of the Old Testament for the 
 Christian Church, took shajDC and 'attained to undis- 
 puted authority on broad grounds of history, and through 
 processes of experimental verification, which made it 
 unnecessary to seek complicated theological arguments 
 to justify their place in the Canon. The Law, the 
 Prophets, and the Psalms were inseparably linked 
 with the very existence of the Old Testament Church. 
 Their authority was not derived from the schools of 
 the Scribes, and needed no sanction from them. And, 
 though the spirit of legalism might mistake the true 
 connection and relative importance of the Law and 
 the other books, no Pharisaism was able to undermine 
 the influence of those evangelical and eternal truths 
 which kept true spirituality alive in Israel, while the 
 official theology was absorbed in exclusive devotion to 
 the temporary ordinances of the Law. 
 
 The Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms are the 
 
LECT. VI. AND THE PSALMS, 1C5 
 
 substance and centre of the Old Testament, on wliicli 
 the new dispensation builds, and to which our Lord 
 Himself appeals as the witness of the Old Covenant 
 to the New. The rationalising exegesis which in- 
 sists, against every rule of language, that the Psalms 
 in Luke xxiv. 44 mean the Hagiographa as a whole 
 misses the point of our Lord's appeal to the preceding 
 history of revelation, and forgets that Ecclesiastes, 
 Canticles, and Esther are not once referred to in the 
 New Testament, and were still antilegomena in the 
 apostolic age. 
 
 The Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, form an 
 intelligible classification, in which each element has a 
 distinctive character. And this is still the case if we 
 add to the Psalter the other two poetical books of Job 
 and Proverbs, which stand beside the Psalms in our 
 Hebrew Bibles. But the collection of the Hagiographa, 
 as a whole, is not homogeneous. "Why does not Daniel 
 stand among the later prophets, Ezra and Chronicles 
 among the historical books ? Why is it that the Hagio- 
 grapha were not read in the synagogue ? With regard 
 to the Psalms tliis is intelligible. They had their place, 
 not in the synagogue, but in the Temple service. So, 
 too, the books of Job and Proverbs, which belong to 
 the philosophy of the Hebrews, and were specially 
 adapted for private study, might seem less suitable for 
 public reading — Job, in particular, requiring to be 
 studied as a whole if one is to grasp its true sense. 
 But this explanation does not cover the whole Hagio- 
 
166 THIRD SECTION lect. vi. 
 
 graplia. Their position can only be explained by the 
 lateness of their origin, or the lateness of their recog- 
 nition as authoritative Scriptures. The miscellaneous 
 collection of Hagiographa appended to the three great 
 poetical books is the region of the Old Testament anti- 
 legomena, and in them we no longer stand on the ground 
 of undisputed authority acknowledged by our Lord, and 
 rooted in the very essence of the Old Testament dis- 
 pensation. 
 
 The oldest explicit reference to a third section of 
 sacred books is found in the prologue to Ecclesiasticus, 
 written in Egypt about B.C. 130. The author speaks of 
 " the many and great things given to us through the 
 Law and the Prophets, and the others who followed 
 after them ;" and again, of " the Law and the Prophets, 
 and the other books of the fathers," as the study of his 
 grandfather and other Israelites, who aimed at a life 
 conformed to the Law. 
 
 When the other books of the fathers are said to 
 have been written by those who followed after the 
 prophets, the sense may either be that their authors 
 were later in time, or that they were subordinate com- 
 panions of the prophets. In either case the author 
 plainly regards these books as in some sense secondary 
 to the prophetic writings ; nor does it appear that in 
 his time there was a distmct and definite name for this 
 collection, or perhaps that there was a formal collection 
 at aU. The overplus of God-given literature, after the 
 Law and the Prophets are deducted, is an inheritance 
 
LECT. VI. OF THE CANON, 1G7 
 
 from the fathers. We must not infer from this state- 
 ment that all ancient books not comprised in the Law 
 and the Prophets were accepted without criticism as a 
 gift of God, and formed a third class of sacred literature. 
 The author of Chronicles had still access to ancient 
 books which are now lost ; and the book of Ecclesiastes 
 warns its readers against the futility of much of the 
 literature of the time, and admonishes them to confine 
 their attention to the words of the wise, the teacliings 
 of the masters of assemblies, i.e. the sages met in coun- 
 cil, " the experienced circle of elders " praised in Ecclesi- 
 asticus xii. 11. There were many books in those days 
 which claimed to be the work of ancient worthies, and 
 such of them as we still possess display a very different 
 spirit and merit from the acknowledged Hagiographa. 
 There must have been a sifting process applied to this 
 huge mass of literature, and the Hagiographa are the re- 
 sult. But it is not so easy to explain how this sifting took 
 place and led to the collection which we now receive. 
 
 One thing is clear. The very separation of the 
 Hagiographa from the books of cognate character which 
 stand in the second section of the Hebrew Canon proves 
 that the third collection was formed after the second 
 had been closed. And since the prophetic collection 
 was itseK a gradual formation, fixed, not by external 
 authority, but by silent consent, this brings the collec- 
 tion of the Hagiographa down long after the time of 
 Ezra. With this it agrees that some of the books of the 
 Hagiographa did not originate till the very end of the 
 
168 THE CANON 
 
 Persian period at earliest. The genealogies in Chronicles 
 and ISTehemiah give direct proof of this fact, and the book 
 of Ecclesiastes can hardly be dated before the Chronicles ; 
 while even so conservative a critic as Delitzsch now 
 admits that Daniel probably did not exist in its present 
 form till the time of the Maccabees. Neither Esther 
 nor Daniel, nor indeed Ezra, is alluded to in the list of 
 worthies in Ecclesiasticus. Again, the book of Psalms 
 seems to have been long confined to use in the Temple. 
 At least the Septuagint translation was made from a 
 copy which shared many graphical errors of our present 
 Hebrew. Both therefore must go back to one arche- 
 type, which seems to prove that copies were not multi- 
 plied till a pretty late date. 
 
 The determination of the collection of the Hagio- 
 grapha must therefore have taken place at an epoch 
 when the tradition of the Scribes was in full force, and 
 we cannot confidently assert that their false theories 
 had no influence on the work. If they had a share in 
 determining the collection, we can tell with tolerable 
 certainty what principles they acted on. For to them 
 all sacred writings outside the Torah were placed on one 
 footing with the oral law. In substance there was no 
 difference between written books and oral tradition. 
 Both alike were divine and authoritative expositions 
 of the law. There was traditional Halacha expanding 
 and applying legal precepts, but there was also tradi- 
 tional Hag^Gjada, recomised as a rule of faith and life, 
 and embracing doctrinal topics, practical exhortation. 
 
LECT. VI. AND TRADITION. 1G9 
 
 embellishments and fabulous developments of Bible nar- 
 ratives/^^ The difference between these traditions and 
 the sacred books lay only in the form. Tradition was 
 viewed as essentially adapted for oral communication. 
 Every attempt to reduce it to writing was long dis- 
 couraged by the Scribes. It was a common possession 
 of the learned, which no man had a right to appropriate 
 and fix by putting it in a book of his own. The 
 authority of tradition did not lie with the man who 
 uttered it, but in the source from which it had come 
 down ; and any tradition not universally current and 
 acknowledged as of old authority had to be authenti- 
 cated by evidence that he who used it had heard it 
 from an older scholar, whose reputation for fidelity was 
 a guarantee that he in turn had received it from a sure 
 source. The same test would doubtless be applied to a 
 written book. Books admittedly new had no authority. 
 Nothing could be accepted unless it had the stamp of 
 general currency, or was authenticated by the name of 
 an ancient author dating from the period antecedent to 
 the Scribes. All this, as we see from the pseudepi- 
 graphic books, offered a great temptation to forgery, 
 but it offered also a certain security that doubtful books 
 would not be admitted till they had passed the test of 
 such imperfect criticism as the Scribes could apply. 
 And, besides all this, the ultimate criterion to which 
 every book was subjected lay in the supreme standard 
 of the Law. Nothing was holy which did not agree 
 with the teaching of the Pentateuch. 
 
170 OLD TESTAMENT lect. vi. 
 
 For some of the Hagiographa the test of old cur- 
 rency was plainly conclusive. It does not appear that 
 the book of Job was ever challenged, and the only trace 
 of a discussion about the Proverbs is found in a late 
 Jewish book, and in a form which commands little 
 credence/^^ The same thing holds good of the Lamenta- 
 tions, which, indeed, in the time of Josephus, seem to 
 have passed as an appendix to Jeremiah. Ruth, in like 
 manner, is treated by Josephus as an appendix to Judges. 
 The case of the other books is not so clear, and for all 
 of them we have evidence that their position was long 
 disputed, and only gradually secured. 
 
 The book of Ezra-Nehemiah has a special value for 
 the history of the Old Covenant, and contains informa- 
 tion absolutely indispensable, embodying contemporary 
 records of the close of the productive period of Israel's 
 history. Yet we find that the Alexandrian Jews were 
 once content to receive it in the form of a Midrash, 
 with many fabulous additions and a text arbitrarily 
 mangled. The Chronicles, according to all appearance, 
 were once one book with Ezra and Nehemiah, from 
 which they have been so rudely torn that 2 Chron. 
 now ends in the middle of a verse, which reappears 
 complete at the beginning of Ezra. But the Chronicles 
 now stand after Ezra-Nehemiah, as if it were an after- 
 thought to admit them to equal authority. When the 
 Greek book of Esdras was composed of extracts from 
 Chronicles, as well as from Ezra and Nehemiah, the 
 three books were probably still read as one ^ork.^^^ 
 
LECT. VI. ANTILEGOMENA. 171 
 
 With regard to Daniel, two facts point to late 
 admission. Daniel is not mentioned among the worthies 
 in Ecclesiasticus, and here again the ancient Greek Bible 
 has a text encumbered with Haggadic additions. 
 
 The authority of the book of Esther, which is not 
 used by Philo or the New Testament, is necessarily 
 connected with the diffusion of the feast of Purim. 
 Now, the book contains two ordinances on this head — 
 the observance of the feast proper (Esther ix. 22), 
 and the celebration of a memorial fast preceding it 
 (Esther ix. 31). According to Jewish usage, the fast 
 falls on the 13th of Adar. But this was the day when 
 Judas Maccabaeus defeated and slew Nicanor in the 
 battle of Bethhoron, and was kept as a joyful anniversary 
 in Palestine from that time onward (1 Mac. vii. 48). 
 The day of Nicanor is still placed among the anniver- 
 saries on which fasting is forbidden in the Megillath 
 Ta'anith after the death of Trajan. In Palestine, there- 
 fore, at the time of our Lord, the fast of Purim was not 
 observed, and it may well be doubted whether even 
 the subsequent feast was universally acknowledged. 
 The Palestinian Talmud still contains traditions of 
 opposition to its introduction. And here, again, it is a 
 notable circumstance that the book is so freely handled 
 in the two Greek recensions of the text, and that even 
 the Aramaic Targums use an unwonted licence of purely 
 romancing additions. 
 
 The book of Esther was not undisputed in the early 
 Christian Church ; and, according to Eusebius, Melito, 
 
172 ECCLESIASTES lect. vi. 
 
 Bishop of Sardis in the middle of the second century, 
 journeyed as far as Palestine to ascertain the Jewish 
 Canon of his time, and brought back a list, from which 
 Esther was excluded/^^^ 
 
 The last stage in the history of the Jewish Canon is 
 most clearly exhibited in the case of Ecclesiastes and 
 the Song of Solomon, which were still controverted up 
 to the very end of the first Christian century. In 
 earlier times, as we have seen, no urgent necessity was 
 felt to determine the precise compass of the sacred 
 books. But in the apostolic age more than one circum- 
 stance called for a definite decision on the subject of 
 the Canon. The school of Hillel, with its new and 
 more powerful exegetical methods, directed to find a 
 Scripture proof for every tradition, was naturally busied 
 with the compass, as well as the text, of the ancient 
 Scriptures. E. Akiba, a rigid spirit averse to all com- 
 promise, would admit no middle class between sacred 
 books and books which it was a sin to read. " Those 
 who read the outside books have no part in the life to 
 come."^^^^ Such books were to be buried — thrust away 
 in the rubbish room to which condemned synagogue rolls 
 were relegated. But the immediately practical call for 
 a precise definition of the compass of the sacred books 
 arose from the circumstance that this question came to 
 be necessarily associated with a point of ritual obser- 
 vance. The Eabbins, always jealous for the ceremonial 
 sanctity of sacred things, were concerned to preserve 
 MSS. of the Scriptures from being lightly handled or 
 
LECT. VI. AND CANTICLES. 173 
 
 used for common purposes. They therefore devised, in 
 accordance with their principle of hedging in the law, 
 a Halacha to the effect that the sacred books communi- 
 cate ceremonial uncleanness to hands that touch them, 
 or to food with wliich they are brought in contact. This 
 ordinance was well devised for the object in view, for it 
 secured that such books should be kept in a place by 
 themselves, and not lightly handled. But it now be- 
 came absolutely necessary to know which books defile 
 the hands. The Mishna contains a special treatise on 
 " hands " {ladaim), and here we find authentic informa- 
 tion on the controversies to which the ordinance gave 
 rise. Two books were involved. The schools of 
 Shammai and Hillel were divided as to Ecclesiastes. 
 But there was also discussion as to the Song of Solo- 
 mon, and this point came up for special consideration at 
 a great assembly held in lamnia, about a.d. 9D, where 
 B. Akiba took a commanding place. Some of the 
 doctors maintained that the canonicity of Canticles 
 was a moot point. But Akiba struck in with his 
 wonted energy, and silenced all dispute, " God forbid ! " 
 he cried. " No one in Israel has ever doubted that the 
 Song of Solomon defiles the hands. For no day in the 
 history of the world is worth the day when the Song of 
 Solomon was given to Israel. For all the Hagiographa 
 are holy, but the Song of Solomon is a holy of the 
 holies. If there has been any dispute, it referred only 
 to Ecclesiastes." ^^^^ 
 
 In the cliaracteristic manner of theological partisan- 
 
174 AKlBA AND lect. vi. 
 
 ship, Akiba speaks with most confident decision on the 
 points where he knew his case to be weakest. So far 
 was it from being true that no one had ever doubted the 
 canonicity of Canticles that he himself had to hurl an 
 anathema at those who sung the Song of Solomon with 
 quavering voice in the banqueting house as if it were a 
 common lay. The same tendency to cover the historical 
 weakness of the position of disputed books by energetic 
 protestations of their superlative worth appears in what 
 the Palestinian Talmud relates of the opinions of the 
 Doctors as to the roll of Esther. Wliile some Eabbins, 
 appealing to Deuteronomy v. 22, maintained that a day 
 must come when the Hagiographa and the Prophets 
 would become obsolete, and only the Law remain; 
 nay, says Eabbi Simeon, Esther and the Halachoth 
 can never become obsolete (Esther ix. 28).^^^^ 
 
 In speaking of these Old Testament Antilegomena I 
 have confined myself to a simple statement of facts that 
 are not open to dispute. It is matter of fact that the 
 position of several books was still subject of controversy 
 in the apostolic age, and was not finally determined 
 tiU after the fall of the Temple and the Jewish state. 
 Before that date the Hagiographa did not form a closed 
 collection with an undisputed list of contents, and there- 
 fore the general testimony of Christ and the Apostles 
 to the Old Testament Scriptures cannot be used as 
 certainly including books like Esther, Canticles, and 
 Ecclesiastes, which were still disputed among the or- 
 thodox Jews in the apostolic age, and to which the 
 
LECT. VI. THE CANON. 175 
 
 New Testament never makes reference. These books i 
 have been delivered to us; they have their use and I 
 value, which are to be ascertained by a frank and 
 reverent study of the texts themselves ; but those who 
 insist on placing them on the same footing of undisputed 
 authority with the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, ; 
 to which our Lord bears direct testimony, and so make | 
 the whole doctrine of the Canon depend on its weakest / 
 part, sacrifice the true strength of the evidence on which 
 the Old Testament is received by Christians, and com- 
 mit the same fault with Akiba and his fellow Eabbins, 
 who bore down the voice of free inquiry with anathemas 
 instead of arirument. 
 
176 THE PSALTER: lect. vii. 
 
 LECTUEE VII. 
 
 THE PSALTEr/^^ 
 
 Up to tliis point we have . been occupied with general 
 discussions as to the transmission of the Old Testament 
 among the Jews, and the collection of its books into a 
 sacred canon. In the remaining part of our course we 
 must deal with the origin of individual books ; and as it 
 is impossible in six lectures to go over the whole field 
 of the Old Testament literature, I shall confine myself 
 to the discussion of some cardinal problems referring 
 to the three great central masses of the Old Testament, 
 the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. The present 
 Lecture will deal with the Book of Psalms. 
 
 The Psalter, as we have it, unquestionably contains 
 Psalms of the Exile and the new Jerusalem. It is also 
 generally admitted to contain Psalms of the period of 
 David, thus embracing within its compass poems extend- 
 ing over a range of some five hundred years. How did 
 such a collection come together ? How was it formed, 
 and how were the earlier Psalms preserved up to the 
 date when they were embodied in our present Psalter ? 
 
 In discussing this question, let us begin by looking 
 at the nature and objects of the Psalter. The Book of 
 
LECT. VII. ITS PURPOSE. 177 
 
 Psalms is a collection of religious and devotional poetry. 
 It is made vip mainly of prayers and songs of praise. 
 But it is not a collection of all the religious poetry of 
 Israel. That is manifest from the circumstance that, of 
 the poems preserved in the historical books, only one is 
 repeated in the Psalter. That one is the 18th Psalm, 
 corresponding to 2 Samuel xxii., and even this excep- 
 tion is perhaps more apparent than real. We are 
 already familiar with the fact that the historical books 
 contain elements introduced at different times from 
 different sources. JSTow 2 Sam. xxiv. 1 reads as if it 
 had once followed on chap. xxi. 14, so that the Psalm 
 belongs to a section of later insertion. With this it 
 agrees that this Psalm and the last words of David are 
 not placed in connection with the events of David's life 
 to which they refer, and so it is very possible that these 
 pieces were not found in the Book of Samuel when the 
 first section of the Psalter was collected. But, be this 
 as it may, the other specimens of religious poetry of 
 the Hebrews preserved in the historical books are not 
 repeated in the Psalter, so that the Book of Psalms 
 cannot have been meant to include everything of sacred 
 poetry that was known to exist. Again, the collection 
 is not formed with an historical object. It is true that 
 there are some titles which contain historical notes, but 
 on the other hand there are many Psalms whose con- 
 tents naturally suggest an inquiry as to the historical 
 situation in which they were composed, but where we 
 have no title or hint of any sort to answer that ques- 
 
178 LITURGICAL PURPOSE lect. vii. 
 
 tion. Again, although the Psalms represent a great 
 range of individual religious experience, it is to be 
 noticed that they avoid such situations and expressions 
 as are of too unique a character to be used in the 
 devotion of other believers. The feelings expressed in 
 the Psalms are mainly such as can be shared by every 
 devout soul, if not in every circumstance, yet at least 
 in circumstances which frequently recur in human life. 
 Some of the Psalms are manifestly written from the first 
 with a general devotional purpose, as prayers or praises 
 which can be used in any mouth. In others again the 
 poet seems to speak, not in his private person, but in the 
 name of the people of God as a whole ; and even the 
 Psalms more directly individual in occasion have so 
 much catholicity of sentiment that they have served 
 with the other hymns of the Psalter as a manual of 
 devotion for the Church of all ages in both dispen- 
 sations. 
 
 The Psalms, then, are a collection of religious poetry, 
 chosen with a special view to the edification of the Old 
 Testament Church. But further, the purpose immedi- 
 ately contemplated in the collection is not the private 
 edification of the individual Israelite, but the public 
 worship of the Old Testament Church in the Temple, — 
 that is, necessarily (since some of the Psalms are later 
 than the Exile), in the second Temple. Tliis appears 
 most clearly in the latter part of the book, where we 
 meet with many Psalms obviously composed from the 
 first for liturgical use. Some are doxologies ; others are 
 
LECT. VII. OF THE PSALTER. 179 
 
 largely made up of extracts from earlier Psalms, in a 
 way very natural in a liturgical manual of devotion, 
 but not so natural in a poet merely composing a hymn 
 for liis personal use. The liturgical element is specially 
 prominent in the Hallelujah Psalms, for these are 
 hymns used in the part of the Temple service called 
 the hallel, which, as we learn from the Chronicles 
 (2 Chron. v. 12, 13), was associated with the trumpet- 
 blowing of the priests. Again, throughout the Psalms, 
 the Temple, Zion, the Holy City, are kept in the fore- 
 ground. Once more, the same destination appears in 
 the titles. The musical titles are full of technical terms 
 which occur again in the Book of Chronicles in descrip- 
 tions of the Levitical Psalmody of the Temple. The 
 proper names in the titles have a similar reference. 
 The sons of Korah were a guild of Temple musicians ; 
 Asaph was the father and patron of a similar guild ; 
 Heman and Ethan are named in the Chronicles as Temple 
 singers of the time of David. Finally, the very name 
 of the Psalter in the Hebrew Bible leads to the same 
 conclusion. The Psalms are called Tehillim, hymns, 
 from the same root as Hallelujah, and with the same 
 allusion to the Temple service of praise. ^^^ 
 
 The fact that the Psalter is a hymnal at once 
 elucidates some important features in the book and 
 suggests certain rules for its profitable use and study. 
 The liturgical character of the Psalms explains their 
 universality, and justifies the large use made of them 
 in the Christian Church. As a liturgical collection. 
 
180 PERMANENT USE lect. vii. 
 
 tlie Psalter expresses the feelings and hopes, the faith, 
 the prayers and the praises of the Old Testament 
 Church, their sense of sin, and their joyful apprehension 
 of God's salvation. These are the subjective elements 
 of religion, the answer of the believing heart to God. 
 And precisely in these elements the religion of aU ages 
 is much alike. The New Testament revelation made 
 a great change in the objective elements of religion. 
 Old ideas and forms passed away, and new things took 
 their place ; but through all this growth of the objective 
 side of revelation, the devotion of the faithful heart to 
 God remains essentially one and the same. Our faith, 
 our sense of sin, our trust upon God and His salvation, 
 the language of our prayers and praises, are still one 
 with those of the Old Testament Church. It is true 
 that not a little of the colouring of the Psalms is 
 derived from the ritual and order of the old dispensa- 
 tion, and has now become antiquated ; but practical 
 religion does not refuse those bonds of connection with 
 the past. The believing soul is never anxious to 
 separate its own spiritual life from the spiritual life of 
 the fathers. Eatlier does it cling with special affection 
 to the links that unite it to the Church of the Old 
 Testament ; and the forms which, in their literal sense, 
 are now antiquated, become to us an additional group 
 of figures in the rich poetic imagery of the Hebrew 
 hynmal. 
 
 But the Psalter and the Old Testament in general 
 are to us not merely books of devotion but sources of 
 
LECT. VII. OF THE PSALTER. 181 
 
 study for the better knowledge of the whole course of 
 God's revelation. It is a law of all science that, to know 
 a thing thoroughly, we must know it in its genesis and 
 in its growth. To understand the ways of God with 
 man, and the whole meaning of His plan of salvation, 
 it is necessary to go back and see His work in its 
 beginnings, examining the rudimentary stages of the 
 process of revelation; and for this the Psalms are 
 invaluable, for they give us the first answer of the 
 believing heart to God under a dispensation where the 
 objective elements of revelation were far less fully 
 developed, and where spiritual processes were in many 
 respects more naive and childlike. While the simple 
 Christian can always take up the Psalm-book and use 
 it for devotion, appropriating those elements which 
 remain the same in all ages, those who are called upon 
 to study the Bible systematically, and who desire to 
 learn all that can be learned from it, will also look at 
 the Psalms from another point of view. Piecognising 
 the fact that many of them have an historical occasion, 
 and that they express the life of a particular stage of 
 the Old Testament Church, they will endeavour to 
 study tlie history of the collection, and ascertain what 
 can be learned of the epoch and situation in which each 
 Psalm was written. 
 
 In entering upon this study, it is highly important 
 to carry with us the fact that the Psalms are preserved 
 to us, not in an historical collection, but in a hymn- 
 book specially adapted for the use of the second Temple. 
 
182 TEXT OF lect. vii. 
 
 The plan of a hymn-book does not secure that every 
 poem shall be given exactly as it was written by the 
 first author. The practical object of the collection 
 makes it legitimate and perhaps necessary that there 
 should be such adaptations and alterations as may 
 secure a larger scope of practical utility in ordinary 
 services. 
 
 In a book which contains Psalms spreading over a 
 period of 500 years, such a period as that which extends 
 between Chaucer and Tennyson, or between Dante and 
 Manzoni, changes of this kind could hardly be avoided ; 
 and so in fact we do find not a few variations in the 
 text and indications of the hand of an editor retouch- 
 ing the original poems. Between Psalm xviii. and 2 
 Samuel xxii. there are some seventy variations not 
 merely orthographical. The Psalter itself repeats 
 certain poems with changes. Psalm liii. is a copy of 
 Ps. xiv. with variations of text ; Psalm Ixx. repeats 
 Ps. xL 13-17; Ps. cviii. is verses 7-11 of Ps. Ivii., 
 followed by Ps. Ix. 5-12. Another clear sign that 
 we have not every Psalm in its original text lies in 
 the alphabetical acrostics, Psalms ix.-x. xxv. xxxiv. 
 xxxvii. cxi. cxii. cxix. cxlv., in which the initial letters 
 of successive half verses, verses, or larger stanzas make 
 up the alphabet. It is of the nature of an acrostic to be 
 perfect. An acrostic poem which misses some letter or 
 puts it in a false place is a failure; and therefore when 
 we fijid that some of these acrostics are now imperfect, 
 we must conclude that the text has suffered. In some 
 
LECT. VII. THE PSALMS. 183 
 
 cases it is still easy to suggest the slight change neces- 
 sary to restore the original scheme. Elsewhere, as in 
 the beautiful acrostic now reckoned as two Psalms 
 (ix. and x.), the corruption in the text, or possibly the 
 intentional change made to adapt the poem for public 
 worship, is so considerable that the original text cannot 
 be recovered. ^^^ 
 
 In general, then, we conclude that the oldest text of 
 a sacred lyric is not always preserved in the Psalter. 
 And so, again, we must not suppose that the notes of 
 authors' names in a hymn-book have the same weight 
 as the statements of an historical book. In a liturgical 
 collection the author's name is of little consequence, 
 and the editors who altered the text of a poem cannot 
 be assumed a 'priori to have taken absolute care to pre- 
 serve a correct record of its origin. But to this subject 
 we shall recur presently 
 
 Let us now look at the collection somewhat more 
 closely ; and, in the first place, note that in the Hebrew 
 text the Book of Psalms is divided into five books, each 
 of which has a separate heading not translated in our 
 English Bible/'*^ But another sign of the fivefold divi- 
 sion of the Psalms can be followed in the English, for 
 each of the books ends with a doxology. The scheme 
 of the whole is as follows : — 
 
 Book I. Psalms 1-41. — Psalms ascribed to David, except 1, 
 2, 10 [which is part of 9], 33. Doxology. — Blessed be 
 Jehovah, God of Israel, from everlasting and to everlasting. 
 Amen and Amen. 
 
184 THE FIVE BOOKS lect. vii. 
 
 Book II. Psalms 42-72. — 42-49, Korahite [43 being part of 42] ; 
 50, Asaph ; 51-71, David, or anonymous ; 72, Solomon. 
 Doxology. — Blessed be Jehovah God, the God of Israel, who 
 alone doeth wondrous things. And blessed be His name 
 of glory for ever : and let the whole earth be filled with 
 His glory ; Amen and Amen. 
 
 Suhscri'ptwn. — The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended. 
 
 Book HI. Psalms 73-89.-73-83, Asaph ; 84, 85, 87, 88, 
 Korahite ; 86, David ; 88, Heman ; 89, Ethan. Doxology. 
 — Blessed be Jehovah for ever. Amen and Amen. 
 
 Book IV. Psalms 90-106.— 90, Moses; 101, 103, David. 
 Doxology. — Blessed be Jehovah, God of Israel, from ever- 
 lasting and to everlasting. And let all the people say, Amen : 
 Hallelujah. 
 
 Book V. Psalms 107-150.— 108-110, 122,* 124,* 131,* 133,* 
 138-145, David; 127,* Solomon; 120-134, Pilgrimage 
 songs. Ends with a doxological Psalm. 
 
 The cloxologies, with the exception of that in Book 
 IV., plainly form no part of the Psahns to which they 
 are attached, but mark the end of each book after the 
 pious fashion, not uncommon in Eastern literature, to 
 clos^ the composition or transcription of a volume with 
 a brief prayer or words of praise. In Psalm cvi. the 
 case is different. The doxology includes a liturgical 
 direction that all the people shall say, " Amen, Halle- 
 lujah," which seems to imply that this doxology was 
 actually sung at the close of the Psalm. But the other 
 doxologies mark actual subdivisions in the Psalm-book, 
 and it naturally occurs to us to inquire whether these 
 subdivisions are not the boundaries of earlier collec- 
 tions, of which the first three books of our present 
 Psalter are made up. 
 
 * Not so in LXX 
 
LECT. VII. OF PSALMS. 185 
 
 A closer examination confirms this conjecture. 
 The first book, Psalms i.-xli., is all Davidic, every 
 Psalm bearing the title of David except Psalms i. ii. 
 X. xxxiii. Now Psalm i. is clearly a preface to the 
 collection. But in Talmudic times Psalm ii. was 
 reckoned as forming one section with Psalm i., and 
 so it is actually cited as the first Psalm in the correct 
 text of Acts xiii. 33. • Again, Psalm x. is the second 
 part of the acrostic Psalm ix., and Psalm xxxiii. is 
 certainly a late piece, and probably came into this part 
 of the Psalter afterwards. The first book, therefore, is 
 a formal collection of Psalms ascribed to David. So, 
 again, in the second book, the Psalms ascribed to David 
 form a connected group apart from the Korahitic and 
 Asaphic Psalms, though including some anonymous 
 pieces, and Psalm Ixxii., which is entitled " of Solomon," 
 but was perhaps viewed, as our version takes it, as a 
 prayer of David for his son. In Book III. only Psalm 
 Lxxxvi. bears the name of David, and this title is un- 
 questionably a mistake, for the Psalm is a mere cento 
 of reminiscences from older parts of Scripture, and the 
 prayer in verse 11, " Unite my heart to fear thy name," is 
 based on the promise (Jer. xxxii. 39), " I will give them 
 one heart ... to fear me continually." It is the 
 law of the religious life that prayer is based on promise, 
 and not conversely. ^^^ It cannot be accident that has 
 thus disposed the Davidic Psalms of Books I.-III. in 
 two groups. But if the final collector had gathered 
 these poems together for the first time, he would surely 
 
186 THE ELOHISTIC lect. vii. 
 
 have made one group, not two. Nor can lie have 
 added the subscription to Psalm Ixxii., " The prayers of 
 David are ended," unless, indeed, we suppose that the 
 titles ascribing Psalms of the fourth and fifth books 
 to David are all additions of later copyists after the 
 collection was closed. We conclude, then, that the 
 first book once existed as a separate collection, and 
 that the subscription to Psalm l^xii., with the doxology, 
 marks the close of another once separate collection of 
 Davidic Psalms. 
 
 Another evidence that the first three books of the 
 Psalter contain collections formed by more than one 
 editor lies in the names of God. Books I. IV. and V. 
 of the Psalter use the names of God in the same way as 
 most other parts of the Old Testament, where Jehovah 
 is the prevailing term, and other names, such as Elohim 
 (God), occur less frequently. But in the greater part 
 of Books II. and III. (Psalms xlii.-lxxxiii.) the name 
 of Jehovah is rare, and Elohim takes its place even 
 where the substitution reads very awkwardly. For 
 example, a common Old Testament phrase is " Jeho- 
 vah my God," " Jehovah thy God," based upon Exodus 
 XX. 2, where, in the preface to the ten commandments, 
 we have, " I am Jehovah thy God." Some later writers 
 seem to have avoided the name Jehovah, in accord- 
 ance with a tendency which ultimately became so pre- 
 valent among the Jews that they now never pronounce 
 the word Jehovah (Jahwe), but read Adonai (Lord) in 
 its place. Such writers avoid the phrase " Jehovah 
 
LECT. VII. PSALM BOOK. 187 
 
 my God," and sftiiply say, "my God." But in tlie 
 Elohim Psalms, and nowhere else in the Old Testa- 
 ment, we find the peculiar phrase " God my God," 
 with Elohim in place of Jehovah. And so, even in 
 Psalm 1. 7, where the words of Exodus xx. 2 are actually 
 quoted, we read "I am God thy God." Clearly this is 
 no accident. The Psalms in which the name Elohim, 
 and not Jehovah, is habitually used hang together. 
 And, when we look more closely at the matter, we see 
 that they not only hang together, but that the pheno- 
 menon of the names of God is due, not to the original 
 authors of the Psalms, but to the collector himself; for 
 some of these Elohim Psalms occur also in the earlier 
 Jehovistic part of the Psalter. Psalm liii. is identical 
 with Psalm xiv. ; Psalm Ixx. with part of Psalm xl. ; 
 and here, among other variations of text, we find 
 Jehovah six times changed to Elohim, and only one 
 converse change. That is a clear proof that the Elohim 
 Psalms have been formed by an editor who, for some 
 reason, preferred to suppress, . as far as possible, the 
 name Jehovah. 
 
 Now let us look a little more closely at this Elohistic 
 collection. It fonns the main part of the second and 
 third Psalm Books. The Psalms that remain look like 
 an appendix, containing some supplementary Korahite 
 Psalms, and one Psalm ascribed to David, which we 
 have seen to be late, and which may fairly be judged to 
 be no part of the original Davidic collections. If we 
 set the appendix on one side we find in Books II. and 
 
188 LEVITICAL PSALMS. lect. vii. 
 
 III. a single Elohistic collection with a well-marked 
 editorial peculiarity running through it. This Elohistic 
 Psalm Book consists of two kinds of elements. It con- 
 tains, in the first place, Levitical Psalms, — that is. Psalms 
 ascribed to Levitical choirs, the sons of Korah and Asaph, 
 and, further, a collection of Davidic Psalms marked off 
 as a distinct section by the subscription at the end of 
 Psalm Ixxii. and the accompanying doxology. As now 
 arranged, the Davidic collection is wedged in between 
 two masses of Levitical Psalms, and even separates the 
 Asaphic Psalin 1. from the body of the Asaphic collection, 
 Psalms Ixxiii.-lxxxiii. It is not probable that this was 
 the original order, for if we simply take Psalms xli.-L, 
 and lift them into the place between Psalms Ixxii. and 
 Ixxiii., we get a complete and natural arrangement. We 
 thus have a book containing, first, a collection of Davidic 
 Psalms with a subscription, and then two collections 
 of Levitical Psalms, the first Koraliitic and the last 
 Asaphic. We may fairly accept this as the original 
 order, which possibly was changed by the final collector 
 in order that he might show by a distinct mark that the 
 two Davidic collections in his work were originally 
 separate. Perhaps, also, he may have been influenced 
 by the fact that Psalms 1. and li. are both suitable for 
 the service of sacrifices of praise. Such is the account 
 it seems reasonable to give of Books II. and III. 
 
 We come next to Books lY. and V. They also are 
 really one book, for the doxology of Psalm cvi. belongs 
 to the Psalm, and there is no clear mark of difference in 
 
LECT. VII. AGE OF THE PSALMS. 189 
 
 subject, character, or editorial treatment in the Psahns 
 which precede and follow it. But, taken as a unity, 
 Books IV. and V. are marked by a liturgical character 
 more predominant than in the other books. They are 
 also of later collection than the Elohistic Psalm-book, 
 for Psalm cviii. is made up of two Elohim Psalms, 
 retaining the predominant use of Elohim, although the 
 other Psalms of the last two books are Jehovistic. As 
 the Elohim Psalms got their peculiar use of the names 
 of God from the collector, and not from their authors, 
 we may safely affirm that Books II. and III. existed in 
 their collected form before Psalm cviii. was composed. 
 
 Thus the five books of the Psalms reduce themselves 
 for us to three books, the second one having a sub- 
 division. The first book, which from every point of 
 view proclaims itself the oldest, consists of Davidic 
 Psalms; the second book, now our second and third, 
 consists (except in the appendix) of Elohistic Psalms, 
 and these again are subdivided into a collection of 
 Davidic Psalms and a twofold series of Levitical 
 Hymns ; and finally, the fourth and fifth books contain 
 the latest Psalms, mainly written from the first with a 
 liturgical purpose, and not merely adapted for liturgical 
 use like many of the poems in the earlier part of the 
 collection. 
 
 We come next to inquire into the age of these three 
 collections. Most of the Psalms in Books IV. and V. 
 are certainly late, not only in collection, but in author- 
 ship. Observe, in the first place, the discontinuance 
 
190 MUSICAL TITLES. lect. vii. 
 
 of the musical titles. Such titles as "To the chief 
 musician (?) upon Neginoth," " upon Sheminith," and 
 so forth, are frequent in the first three Psalm Books, but 
 are not found in the last two. Now these titles were the 
 technical terms of the Temple music, still recognised as 
 such by the Chronicler, but which had become unknown 
 and unintelligible in the time of the Septuagint. It 
 seems as if they had already gone out of use when 
 Books IV. and V. were collected, and this again would 
 imply that by that time the national music of Israel 
 had undergone a revolution, which can hardly have been 
 due to anything else than the influence of foreign art. 
 One naturally thinks of the great change on the whole 
 civilisation and art of the East which was caused by the 
 introduction of Greek influence. Can we suppose that 
 the Psalter was completed so late ? Many scholars 
 answer in the negative, but there are good names and 
 strong reasons on the other side, and at any rate the 
 matter is not so certain as to forbid us to suggest such 
 an explanation. ^^^ A curious and interesting feature in 
 the musical titles in the earlier half of the Psalter is 
 that many of them indicate the tune to which the 
 Psalm was set, by quoting phrases like Aijeleth hash- 
 shahar, or Jonath elem rechokim, which are evidently 
 the names of familiar songs. Of the song which gave 
 the title Al-taschith, "Destroy not," a trace is still 
 preserved in Isa. Ixv. 8. "When the new wine is 
 found in the cluster," says the prophet, men say, " De- 
 stroy it not, for a blessing is in it." These words in the 
 
LECT. VII. PILGRIMAGE SONGS. 191 
 
 Hebrew have a distinct lyric rhythm. They are the 
 first line of one of the vintage songs so often alluded to 
 in Scripture. And so we learn that the early religious 
 melody of Israel had a popular origin, and was closely 
 connected with the old joyous life of the nation. In 
 the time w^hen the last books of the Psalter were com- 
 posed, the Temple music had passed into another phase, 
 and had differentiated itself from the melodies of the 
 people, just as we should no longer think of using 
 as church music the popular airs to which Psalms 
 and hymns w^ere set in Scotland at the time of the 
 Keformation. 
 
 In the fifth Psalm Book a special group consists of 
 the Songs of Degrees, or more literally, " Songs of 
 Ascent."^' ^ To ascend is the Hebrew technical term for 
 going up to Jerusalem on pilgrimage. The songs of 
 ascent, therefore, can hardly be anything else than a 
 collection of hymns to be sung by pilgrims to the 
 sanctuary ; and with this interpretation the contents of 
 the collection harmonise, some of the Psalms either 
 directly alluding to the pilgiimage (cxxii.), or express- 
 ing such sentiments as would rise to the lips of 'the 
 pilgrims when the mountains of Zion and the Temple 
 first presented themselves to their gaze (cxxi. cxxviii.). 
 The custom of going up to the feasts at Jerusalem with 
 music and song is ancient (Isa. xxx. 29), but the pil- 
 grimage Psalms of our Psalter are plainly, in part, later 
 than the Exile, for they speak of captivity and deliver- 
 ance. They are, therefore, Psalms of the second Temple. 
 
192 DAVIDIC PSALMS lect. vii. 
 
 Nay, rsalin cxxii. is later than the work of Ezra and 
 Nehemiah, for it speaks of " Jerusalem the rebuilt, like 
 a city well knit together." This language could not be 
 used before the time of Nehemiah, when the walls were 
 fallen and great part of the area of the city waste 
 (Neh. ii. 17, vii. 4). From the English version it seems 
 as if the Psalm were written under the dynasty of 
 David, but in w. 4, 5 the correct translation is " went 
 up," " were set." 
 
 On all these grounds we are led to refer the col- 
 lection Psalms xc.-cl., and even the origin of many of 
 the pieces it contains, to a date subsequent to the 
 reorganisation of the theocracy by Ezra and Nehemiah, 
 Avhen we know that the Temple service of song was 
 specially provided for. It does not follow that the 
 collection contains no ancient songs which had been 
 passed over in the earlier collections of Books I.-III. 
 Yet on more than one ground it is difficult to attach 
 much weight to the titles referrinsj seventeen of its 
 Psalms to David. In the earlier half of the Psalter 
 the Davidic Psalms form two well-marked groups wliich 
 contain internal evidence that they were once separate 
 collections. It is indeed hard to see how ancient poems 
 could be preserved for long centuries without being so 
 collected. But m Books lY., Y. there is no trace of a 
 third collection of Davidic Psalms. Nay, they occur 
 sporadically up and down the books, which could hardly 
 have occurred had the collector found these Psalms with 
 their titles. Acrain, we have seen in Lecture III. that 
 
LECT. VII. IN BOOK V. 193 
 
 the pilgrimage Psalms ascribed to David did not bear 
 his name in the Septuagint, though the tendency at 
 that time was all in the direction of ascribing to David 
 as many- poems as possible. In Psalm cxxii. the title 
 appears to have been suggested by the name of David 
 occurring in ver. 5, though that verse, which speaks of 
 the tln^ones of the house of David as a recollection of the 
 past, really bears clear evidence that the title is false. 
 So again in Psalm cxliv. 10 the singer says, "Thou that 
 givest deliverance to kings, who didst save David from 
 the hurtful sword, save me." Here David is dis- 
 tinguished from the Psalmist, yet the mere name of 
 David was enough to suggest the title to some copyist. 
 Such facts not only break down the authority of the 
 titles, but show how very hasty were the inferences on 
 which they were adopted. Similar arguments apply 
 to other Psalms, and in particular the argument of 
 language, of which Psalm cxxxix. is a peculiarly strong 
 case. Tliis Psalm belongs to the period when Hebrew 
 was being largely superseded as a vernacular by 
 Aramaic. It contains at least four Aramaic forms 
 which are not such loan-words as one nation may 
 borrow from another to enrich its vocabulary, but 
 Aramaic pronunciations of roots also found in the 
 Hebrew. The differences and affinities between Ara- 
 maic and Hebrew are similar to those between English 
 and German. By the rule known as Grimm's law, old 
 English words beginning with T correspond to German 
 words with Z, so that English ten is German zchn, and 
 
194 PSALMS OF lect. vii. 
 
 English to German zu. Now, if we find a man speaking 
 or writing English who puts zit for to or zelin for ten, 
 we know at once that German, not English, is his ver- 
 nacular. His English is imperfect; he is not merely 
 using a loan-word like Zeitgeist or any other German 
 term which Englisli writers borrow for a definite pur- 
 pose. So it is in Psalm cxxxix. The Psalmist pro- 
 nounces words with a guttural ('Ayin) when the Hebrew 
 form has a sharp S (^ade); and thus he declares himself 
 a man whose vernacular was Aramaic, as clearly as the 
 Ephraimites revealed their tribe by saying Sibholeth. 
 
 Let us now turn back to the middle section, con- 
 sisting of the second and third Psalm Books, and let us 
 take up first the Levitical part of that section. It con- 
 sists partly of songs entitled, " Of the sons of Korah." 
 That does not necessarily mean songs composed by the 
 sons of Korah. The sons of Korah were a guild of 
 Temple singers, and the Psalms belonging to this guild 
 are simply a collection of Psalms wliich they were 
 accustomed to sing. 
 
 The second collection of Levitical Psalms bears the 
 title of " Asaph." The sons of Asaph were also a guild 
 of singers. According to the Chronicles they had their 
 name from an Asaph who lived in the time of David. 
 He is not mentioned in the earlier books, and the only 
 interest attaching to him lies in the guild that bore his 
 name. In Semitic idiom " sons of Asaph " means no 
 more than the guild of Asaph, and the guild taken col- 
 lectively might also be simply called Asaph, just as 
 
LECT. VII. ASAPH AND KORAH. 195 
 
 Jiidah means the sons of Judah. That the title " of 
 Asaph " does not imply that David's Asaph wrote all 
 the Psalms so named is universally admitted, for some 
 of these are certainly late poems. The Asaphic Psalms 
 are on the same footing with those of the sons of Korah, 
 formmg a second Levitical collection in the hands of a 
 different guild. 
 
 These two collections have a curious general feature 
 in common. They contain no confession of sin. In 
 some of them Israel appears as divided into a righteous 
 class to whom the singer belongs and a wicked class 
 against whom he prays. Elsewhere, the whole nation 
 seems to speak with one voice, and claims to be 
 righteous, and suffering not for its own sin. Whenever 
 sin is acknowledged in those Psalms, it is the sin of a 
 former generation. Now it is manifest that this refers 
 us to a very peculiar historical position. Before the 
 time of Ezra and Nehemiah, it is impossible that the 
 really godly could have held such language. Previous 
 to the Exile, the prophets and aU the deeper religious 
 hearts of Israel knew well that all national sufferinj]^ 
 was chastisement for national sin. No Israelite before 
 the Exile could say what is said in Psalm xliv., and prac- 
 tically repeated elsewhere, that the people, in spite of 
 tlieir afflictions, have not forgotten God or been false to 
 His covenant, that they have not stretched out their 
 hands to a strange god, that they are persecuted not for 
 sin, but for God's sake, and because of their adherence 
 to Him. Individuals like Jeremiah and other righteous 
 
196 MACCABEE lect. vii. 
 
 men complained of persecution in the old time, but 
 tlien that persecution proceeded from the godless mass 
 of the nation ; whereas here the complaint is that the 
 whole nation has been chastised — that its armies have 
 been defeated, that Jerusalem has been taken, and that 
 the blood of God's saints has been shed like water round 
 its walls, where their corpses lie unburied, not for sin, 
 but for their adherence to God's covenant. And with 
 these go other marks of a late date. The synagogues 
 are mentioned in Psalm Ixxiv. as burned, but there were 
 no synagogues before the Exile ; and prophecy is spoken 
 of as having failed. Now the first trace of the feeling 
 that Israel suffers, not for sin, but in spite of its 
 obedience to God, appears in the propliet Malachi ; and 
 there the prophet rebukes it and points out in the 
 clearest way that in reality the Israelites were punished 
 for their sin. But here, you observe, we have a perse- 
 cution for religion. That must be later than Ezra and 
 Nehemiah — later than the time when Israel became a 
 law-abiding people. At what time then ? The defile- 
 ment of the Temple and the destruction of its 
 beauty referred to in Psalms Ixxiv. and Ixxix. cannot, so 
 far as our knowledge of the history goes — it .must be 
 admitted that we know but little of the history after 
 the time of Nehemiah — refer to any earlier date than 
 the reign of Artaxerxes II., when the Persian general 
 Bogoses defiled the Temple ; but some of the features, 
 and particularly the fact that the calamities befalling 
 Israel are ascribed to religious persecution, point rather 
 
LECT. VII. PSALMS f 197 
 
 to the time when the Greek kings sought to put down 
 the spiritual religion of Israel by force, and to restore 
 the worship of false gods. This conclusion, indeed, is 
 refused by many scholars, and I do not put it forth 
 categorically. What appears to be certain is that the 
 Levitical Psalms, as we now have them, cannot refer to 
 any calamity that fell on the nation before the work of 
 Ezra and Nehemiah. 
 
 On the other hand, the Korahite collection certainly 
 embodies older Psalms. Psalm xlv. in particular, which 
 is the epithalamium of a king of Israel, must be older 
 than the Exile, and perhaps was omitted from the 
 earlier collections because its religious use depends on 
 a typical application to the Messiah. 
 
 We have still to consider the two Davidic collec- 
 tions. The second of these, as we now have it, is 
 incorporated in the Elohistic collection which, as we 
 have just seen, was formed after the time of Ezra. The 
 first Davidic collection stands by itself as a separate 
 Psalm Book, in which, with the exceptions already 
 explained, every Psalm is referred to David. It is 
 plain that, under these circumstances, the titles in the 
 first Psalm Book have quite a different value from the 
 scattered titles in the latter part of the Psalter. They 
 form a system, and cannot be referred to the arbitrary 
 insertions of successive copyists. Only two views seem 
 to be possible. One of these is that the collector of Psalms 
 i-xli. may have deliberately confined himself to Psalms 
 which he knew to be David's. In that case two possi- 
 
198 TRANSMISSION OF lect. vir. 
 
 bilities arise. The Psalms may have been known as 
 David's because they already existed in writing with 
 titles to that effect. Or, on the other hand, the col- 
 lector having satisfied himself that they were Davidic 
 may have added the titles himself. 
 
 But a different view is also possible. The collection 
 may not have been framed from the first exclusively 
 with an eye to Davidic poems. But in process of time 
 it may have come to be called " Psalms of David " 
 because it contained some of his poems, just as all the 
 proverbs are now called " Proverbs of Solomon." And 
 thus, when the first Psalm Book was taken up into a 
 larger collection, each Psalm may have received a title 
 derived from the current name of the book in which it 
 was found. 
 
 The question between these several possibilities 
 would be decided, if we could show reason to suppose 
 that David wrote down all his own Psalms, and prefixed 
 his name to them one by one. This, however, not only 
 cannot be proved, but is highly improbable for many 
 reasons. We have seen that the Psalms of Books IV. 
 and v., and also the Korahite and Asaphic collections, 
 are mainly anonymous, and that many of the titles 
 which do name an author are certainly erroneous 
 additions of copyists. Can we suppose that later psalm- 
 ists habitually omitted their names, but that David as 
 habitually used his? But again, it is not in accordance 
 with Eastern usage to suppose that the early poets of 
 Israel wrote down their compositions at all. Poems 
 
LECT. VII. EASTERN POETRY. 199 
 
 were published, not in writing, but by being sung or 
 recited. In the books of Samuel, David is said to have 
 spoken, not written, the pieces there given as his. That 
 is the regular practice of the East. The songs of the 
 Arabian poets circulated exclusively by word of mouth, 
 and the oldest pieces of Arabic poetry now extant were 
 not written down for a century and a half, when the 
 scholars of Islam collected them for philological pur- 
 poses. ^^^ It is often assumed, in connection with the 
 account given in Chronicles of the institution of tlie 
 Levitical service of song, that David wrote down his 
 poems for the Levites. But this is mere assumption. 
 All Eastern analogy, and the unquestionably late date 
 of the extant Psalm Books of Asaph and the sons of 
 Korah, lead us to suppose that the Temple singers, like 
 the Arabian BdwU, long preserved their songs by word 
 of mouth, and sang without book. Beyond question, 
 the earliest written collections of poetry, like the Book 
 of Jashar and the Book of the Wars of the Lord, were 
 historical, not liturgical. 
 
 These are general presumptions against the supposi- 
 tion that the Psalms were first published with their 
 titles. But the conclusive arcrument is that the first 
 
 o 
 
 Psalm Book contains pieces which David certainly did 
 not write. Psalms xx. and xxi. are not spoken by a 
 kmg, but addressed to the king by his people. So 
 viewed, they are a natural and beautiful expression of 
 Israel's faith. But to suppose that David wrote for the 
 people the words in which they should express their 
 
200 DA VIDIC PSALMS lect. vii. 
 
 feelings towards his throne is to sacrifice the fresh spon- 
 taneity of the Psalms to mere theory. Again, in Psalm 
 xxxiv. the title speaks of Abimelech as king of Gath 
 in the time of David. In reality Abimelech was a con- 
 temporary of Abraham, and the king in David's time 
 was named Achish. Again, several of the Psalms of the 
 first book not only speak of Zion as God's holy moun- 
 tain, which David might do after he had brought the 
 ark to Jerusalem, but allude to the Temple, in w^hich the 
 singer of Psalm xxvii. desires to live continually. But 
 the House of God at Zion, in David's time, was not a 
 temple but a tent. There had been a temple at Shiloh, 
 but it was destroyed. And in Psalm xxvii. 10, the 
 words, " My father and my mother have forsaken me, 
 but Jehovah taketh me up," are quite inappropriate 
 to David. These are individual difficulties, but argu- 
 ments equally strong and of wider scope can be drawn 
 from the general situation of many of the Psalms. The 
 singer in Psalms ix.-x. writes after Zion had become 
 God's dwelling-place. But he lives in an evil time, 
 when Israel is oppressed by the heathen established in 
 the land. Under this oppression, God's people are 
 represented as poor and needy. The weak and the 
 orphan suffer from their tyranny and pride, and God's 
 help has been so long withdrawn that they openly scoff 
 at His majesty. There are many other Psalms in 
 the collection which presuppose a similar situation, 
 where the psalmist identifies himself with the poor 
 and needy, with the oppressed righteous people of 
 
LECT. VII. IN BOOK I. 201 
 
 God suffering in silence at the hands of the wicked, 
 who are strong and prosperous in the land, so that 
 their victims have no hope but to wait in patient 
 endurance for the interposition of Jehovah (xii., xxxv., 
 xxxvii., xxxviii., etc.). Most of these Psalms are re- 
 ferred by the defenders of the titles to the time when 
 David w^as pursued by Saul. But it is quite unhistorical 
 to represent Saul as a man who persecuted and spoiled 
 all the quiet and godly souls in Israel ; even David and 
 his friends were never helpless sufferers — the quiet or 
 timid in the land (xxxv. 20), dumb amidst all oppres- 
 sion (xxxviii. 13, 14). And such a Psalm as xxxvii., 
 where the Psalmist calls himself an old man, must, on 
 the traditional view, be spoken by David late in his 
 prosperous reign ; yet here we have the same situation — 
 the wicked rampant, the righteous suffering in silence, 
 as if David were not a king who sat on his throne doing 
 justice and judgment to all his people (2 Sam. viii. 15). 
 If Psalms ix., x., xxxvii. represent the state of things in 
 the time of David, the Books of Samuel are the most 
 partial of histories, and the reign of the son of Jesse 
 was not the golden age which it appeared to all subse- 
 quent generations. 
 
 These considerations forbid us to accept the titles as 
 an authoritative part of the text. They represent a 
 tradition which may be as old as the first collection of 
 Psalms i.-xli., but may equally well and more probably 
 have grown up round that collection during the time 
 when it circulated as a separate book. The tradition 
 
202 THE SECOND lect. vii. 
 
 separates the first Psalm Book from the properly Levitical 
 collections, and doubtless expresses the fact that these 
 are the oldest Psalms, belonging to the early ages of 
 Hebrew psalmody from David downwards ; but in 
 assigning any individual psalm to David we must be 
 guided by other arguments than those of the titles. 
 The date at which the collection was formed can hardly 
 be assigned with precision. The later books were col- 
 lected after the time of Ezra, but this contains no poem 
 which demands so recent a date. Psalm xxxi. presents 
 great affinities to the thought and language of Jeremiah, 
 and may be the work of that prophet. Psalm xiv. is 
 most naturally referred to the Babylonian Exile. The 
 collection can hardly be thought to fall much later. 
 We have seen with what affection the godly of Israel 
 clung to the words of the prophets and their associates 
 when the captivity deprived them of the outward means 
 of grace. In such a time the old Psalms of Zion would 
 acquire a new value, and there was every motive to 
 bring them together in as fuU a collection as possible. 
 The prayer for the redemption of Israel, which stands 
 as a supplementary verse at the close of the acrostic 
 Psalm xxv., may be read with great probability as a 
 prayer of the Captivity. ^^^ 
 
 We have still to look at the second Davidic col- 
 lection contained in the Elohistic Psalm Book. This 
 collection is later than Book I., Psalm liii. being a 
 repetition of Psalm xiv., and Psalm Ixx. an extract from 
 Psalm xl. The titles, therefore, have still less authority 
 
LECT. VII. DA VIDIC COLLECTION. 203 
 
 for us than those in the earlier book. In many cases 
 they are unquestionably incorrect, as appears most 
 clearly where they refer to special events in David's 
 life. Psalm lii. is said to refer to Doeg. It actually 
 speaks of a rich and powerful man, an enemy of the 
 righteous in Israel, whom God will lay low, while the 
 psalmist is like a green olive tree in the house of God, 
 whose mercy is his constant support. Now David had 
 nothing to fear from Doeg. The danger was all for the 
 priests of Nob. How could the psalmist in such a case 
 confine himself to thanking God for his own deliverance, 
 and not express in a single w^ord his sympathy with the 
 unhappy priests who perished for the aid they gave 
 him? Psalm liv. is said to be spoken against the 
 Zipliites. In reality it speaks of strangers and tyrants, 
 standing Old Testament names for foreign oppressors. 
 In Psalm Iv. the singer Kves among foes in a city whose 
 walls they occupy with their patrols, exercising constant 
 violence within the town, from which the psalmist would 
 gladly escape to the desert. The enemy is in alliance 
 with one who had once been an associate of the psalmist, 
 and joined with him in the service of the sacred feasts. 
 Hence the Psalm is often applied to Ahithophel ; but 
 the whole situation is as different as possible. In Psalm 
 lix. we are asked to find a psalm composed by David 
 when he was watched in his house by Saul. In reality 
 the singer speaks of heathen foes besieging the city — 
 i.e., Jerusalem — whom God is prayed to cast down, that 
 His power, may be manifest over all the earth. It is 
 
204 EARL V PSALMOD V lect. vii. 
 
 impossible to attach authority to a group of titles so 
 full of palpable incongruities; and, apart from the titles, 
 it is difficult to find sufficient ground for ascribing a 
 single psalm of the second collection to David. Even 
 Delitzsch, the able defender of the general correctness of 
 the headings, admits that David was not the author of 
 Psalms Ixv. and Ixix., and hesitates as to some of the 
 others/'^^ 
 
 The general result of this discussion is not purely 
 negative. We are unable to accept the titles as our 
 guide to the historical study of the Psalms, because they 
 are often inconsistent with the far more valuable evi- 
 dence of the sacred poems themselves. The titles would 
 be authoritative if they were as old as the Psalms; 
 but in fact some of them are the mere conjectures of 
 individual copyists, and even in the two great collec- 
 tions of poems ascribed to David there is no proof 
 that they express a tradition earlier than the formation 
 of these collections. But it is noteworthy that the 
 earliest Psalm Book was received in the Jewish Church 
 as a Davidic hymnal. This opinion was not based on 
 authentic knowledge that every Psalm in the collection 
 is really David's ; for some of the Psalms are certaraly 
 of later date. But the tradition expresses a conviction 
 that David was closely connected with the early 
 psalmody of Israel. There is little direct evidence in 
 the old Hebrew literature to support this conviction. 
 In the Books of Samuel the king is never lost in the 
 psalmist, as is the case in the current conception of 
 
LECT. VII. IN ISRAEL. 205 
 
 David's life; and when we observe that the two hymns 
 in 2 Sam. xxii., xxiiL appear to be foreign to the original 
 context of the narrative, it may appear doubtful whether 
 the oldest story of his life set forth David as a psalmist 
 at all. It is very curious that the book of Amos (vi. 5) 
 represents David as the chosen model of the dilettanti 
 nobles of Ephraim, who lay stretched on beds of 
 ivory, anointed with the choicest perfumes, and 
 mingling music with their cups in the familiar manner 
 of oriental luxury. Yet we know that David tool?: a 
 personal part in the procession which brought the ark 
 up to Jerusalem with music and dance (2 Sam. vi.). 
 Dancing, music, and song are in early times the united 
 expression of lyrical inspiration. Sacred melody was 
 accompanied by dances in the days of Miriam, and 
 even in the time of the latest Psalms (cxlix. 3, cl. 4). 
 We have every right to conclude that the lyrical talents 
 of Israel's most gifted singer were devoted to the service 
 of Jehovah, which King David placed high above all 
 considerations of royal dignity (2 Sam. vi. 21). But 
 the passage makes it clear that in those days religion 
 was not separated from ordin-ary life, and that the 
 gladness of the believing heart found natural uttemnce 
 in sportful forms of unconstrained mirth. At a much 
 later date, as we have seen, melodies of the Temple 
 service were borrowed from the joyous songs of the 
 vintage, and so it was possible that David should give 
 the pattern alike for the songs of the sanctuary and for 
 the worldly airs of the nobles of Samaria. The sacred 
 10 
 
206 TYPOLOGY OF lect. vii. 
 
 music of Israel was of popular origin, and long retained 
 its popular type (Amos v. 23; Isa. xxx. 29; Jerem. 
 xxxiii. 11). On tlie solemn feast days the Temple 
 resounded with clamours like those of a conquering 
 army (Lam. ii. 7). A sacred poetry of such popular 
 origin must necessarily reflect the religious life, not of 
 one or two great poets, but of Israel as a nation in all 
 the vicissitudes of a long history; and a judicious 
 criticism learns to seek in the Psalter, not merely the 
 autobiography of David, but a long and weighty 
 chapter in the life of the Old Testament Church. 
 
 That this standpoint enables us to expound many 
 Psalms with far more force and truth than the tradi- 
 tional exegesis can only be proved in a detailed com- 
 mentary. I allude, in closing, only to two points. 
 
 Christian theology has always been largely occupied 
 with the typical references of the Psalms, following the 
 authority of our Lord Himself, who read in the Psalter 
 the pattern of His own experience as the founder of the 
 New Dispensation. So long as the primary reference 
 of so large a part of the Psalms was confined to the 
 experiences of David's life, the typical interpretation 
 often seemed arbitrary. It was not possible to estab- 
 lish a principle of real connection between the events 
 of David's life and the experiences of our Lord which 
 they foreshadowed. But the newer exegesis observes 
 that in many of these typical Psalms the primary 
 reference is not to events of an individual life, but to 
 the experience of God's people as a whole, who speak 
 
LECT. VII. THE PSALMS. 207 
 
 by personification with a single voice. And thus tlie 
 typical reference becomes easy and natural. For our 
 Lord as the Head of the Church, the Captain of the 
 faithful, who takes on Him the whole burden of His 
 people, and stands as their representative before the 
 Father, can appropriate to Himself the whole experience 
 of the Old Testament Church, in so far as the life of 
 that Church is a part of the life of the Church 
 Universal of which He is the Head. 
 
 Another point in which criticism removes a serious 
 difficulty is the interpretation of the imprecatory 
 Psalms, ^vhich can never be explained as having a 
 private reference to David without introducing an 
 element of personal vindictiveness of a kind greatly 
 calculated to give offence. The injuries done to David 
 by Ahithophel and others, to whom these Psalms are 
 currently supposed to refer, were largely personal. 
 David could not say that he was persecuted as the 
 representative of God's cause in Israel, and without sm 
 on his part. On any interpretation, these Psalms bear, 
 more than most others, the impress of the limitations of 
 the Old Covenant ; but at least the element of personal 
 vindictiveness disappears when we assign them, as we 
 have every right to do, to later times of persecution, 
 when the fortunes at stake were not those of an indivi- 
 dual, but of the cause of God's truth against treachery 
 within and persecuting heathenism without. 
 
208 TRADITIONAL VIEW lect. viii. 
 
 LECTUEE Vin. 
 
 THE TRADITIONAL THEORY OF THE 
 OLD TESTAMENT HISTORy/^^ 
 
 The book of Psalms has furnished us with an example 
 of what can be learned by critical study in a subject 
 of limited compass, which can be profitably discussed 
 without any wide digression into general questions of 
 Old Testament history. The criticism of the Prophets 
 and the Law opens a much larger field, and brings us 
 face to face with fundamental problems. 
 
 We know, as a matter of historical fact, that the 
 Pentateuch, as a whole, was put into operation as the 
 rule of Israel's life at the reformation of Ezra, with a 
 completeness which had never been aimed at from the 
 days of the conquest of Canaan {sujpra, p. 56). Erom 
 this time onwards the Pentateuch, in its ceremonial 
 as well as its moral precepts, was the acknowledged 
 standard of Israel's righteousness (Neh. xiii.; Mai. i. 7, 
 seq. ; iii. 8, seq.^ iv. 4 ; Acts xv. 5). According to the 
 theory of the later Jews, which has passed into current 
 Christian theology, it had always been so. The whole 
 law of the Pentateuch was given in the wilderness, 
 or on the plains of Moab and Moses conveved to the 
 
LECT. VIII. OF THE LA W. 209 
 
 Israelites before they entered Canaan, everything that 
 it was necessary for them to know as a revelation from 
 God. The law was a rule of absolute validity, and 
 the keeping of it was the whole of Israel's religion. 
 No religion could be acceptable to God which was not 
 conformed to the legal ordinances. On this theory the 
 ceremonial part of the law must always have been the 
 prominent and most characteristic feature of the Old 
 Covenant. In the Levitical legislation, the feasts, the 
 sacrificial ritual, the ordinances of ceremonial purity, are 
 always in the foreground as the necessary forms in 
 which alone the inner side of religion, love to God and 
 man, can find acceptable expression. Not that religion 
 is made up of mere forms, but everything in religion is 
 reduced to rule and has some fixed ceremonial expres- 
 sion. There is no room for religious spontaneity. 
 
 According to this theory, it is not possible to dis- 
 tinguish between ceremonial and moral precepts of the 
 law, as if the observance of the latter might excuse 
 irregularity in the former. The object of God's covenant 
 with Israel was to maintain a close and constant bond 
 between Jehovah and His people, different in kind from 
 the relations of mankind in general to their Creator. 
 Israel was chosen to be a holy people. Now, according 
 to the Pentateuch, holiness is not exclusively a moral 
 thing. It has special relation to the observances of 
 ritual worship and ceremonial purity. " Ye shall dis- 
 tinguish between clean beasts and unclean, and not 
 make yourselves abominable by any beast, fowl, etc., 
 
210 SYSTEM OF lect. viii. 
 
 whicli I have separated from you as unclean. And ye 
 shall be holy unto me : for I Jehovah am holy, and 
 have severed you from the nations to be mine" (Lev. 
 XX. 25, 26). If a sacrifice is eaten on the third day, "it 
 is abominable ; it shall not be accepted. He that eateth 
 it shall bear his guilt, for he hath profaned Jehovah's 
 holy thing : that soul shall be cut off from his people " 
 (Lev. xix. 8). " That which dieth of itself, or is torn of 
 beasts, no priest may eat to defile himself therewith. I 
 am Jehovah; and the)'" shall keep my ordinance and 
 not take sin on themselves by profaning it and die 
 therein. I Jehovah do sanctify them " (Lev. xxii. 8, 9). 
 No stronger words than these could be found to de- 
 nounce the gravest moral turpitude. 
 
 The whole system is directed to the maintenance of 
 holiness in Israel, as the condition of the benefits which 
 Jehovah promises to bestow on His people in the land 
 of Canaan. And therefore every infringement of law, 
 be it merely in some point of ceremony which we might 
 be disposed to think indifferent, demands an atonement, 
 that the relation of God to His people may not be 
 disturbed. To provide such atonement is the great 
 object of the priestly ritual which culminates in the 
 annual ceremony of the day of expiation. Atonement 
 implies sacrifice, the blood or life -of an offering pre- 
 sented on the altar before God. " It is the blood that 
 atones by the life that is in it" (Lev. xvii. 11 ; Hebrews 
 ix. 22). But the principle of holiness demands that the 
 sacrificial act itself, and the altar on which the blood 
 
LECT. VIII. PRIESTLY ATONEMENT, 211 
 
 is offered, be hedged round by strict ritual pre- 
 cautions. At the altar, Jehovah, in His awful and 
 inaccessible holiness, meets with the people, wliich is 
 imperfectly holy and stands in need of constant for- 
 giveness. There is danger in such a meeting. Only 
 the priests, who live under rules of intensified cere- 
 monial purity, and have received a peculiar consecration 
 from Jehovah Himself, are permitted to touch the holy 
 tilings, and it is they who bear the sins of Israel before 
 God to make atonement for them (Lev. x. 17). Between 
 them and Israel at large is a second cordon of holy 
 ministers, the Levites. It is death for any but a priest 
 to touch the altar, and an undue approach of ordinary 
 persons to the sanctuary brings wi'ath on Israel (Num. 
 i. 53). Accordingly, sacrifice, atonement, and forgive- 
 ness of sin are absolutely dependent on the hierarchy 
 and its service. The mass of the people have no direct 
 access to their God in the sanctuary. The maintenance 
 of the Old Testament covenant depends on the priestly 
 mediation, and above all on that one annual day of expia- 
 tion when the high priest enters the Holy of Holies and 
 " cleanses the people that they may be clean from all 
 their sins before Jehovah " (Lev. xvi. 30). The whole 
 system, you perceive, is strictly knit together. The 
 details are necessary to the object aimed at. The inter- 
 mission of any part of the ceremonial scheme involves 
 an accumulation of unforgiven sin, with the conse- 
 quence of divine wrath on the nation and the with- 
 draw^al of God's favour. 
 
212 SYSTEM OF lect. viii. 
 
 To complete this sketch of the theory of the Penta- 
 teuch it is only necessary to add that the hierarchy had 
 no dispensing power. If a man sins, he has recourse to 
 the sacramental sacrifice appointed for his case. The 
 priest makes atonement for him, and he is forgiven. 
 But knowingly and obstinately to depart from any 
 ordinance is to sin against God with a high hand, and 
 for this there is no forgiveness. " He hath despised the 
 word of the Lord and broken his commandment : that 
 soul shall be cut off in its guilt" (Num. xv. 30, 31). 
 
 Such is the system of the law as contained particu- 
 larly in the middle books of the Pentateuch, and 
 practically accepted from the days of Ezra. It is not 
 strange that the later Jews should have received it as 
 the sum of all revelation, for manifestly it is a com- 
 plete theory of the religious life. Its aim is to provide 
 every tiling that man requires to live acceptably with 
 God, the necessary measure of access to Jehovah, the 
 necessary atonement for all sin, and the necessary 
 channel for the conveyance of God's blessing to man. 
 It is, I repeat, a complete theory of the religious life, to 
 which nothing can be added without an entire change 
 of dispensation. Accordingly, the Jewish view of the 
 law as complete, and the summary of all revelation, has 
 passed into Christian theology, with only this modi- 
 fication that, whereas the Jews think of the dispensation 
 of the law as final, and the atonement which it offers as 
 sufficient, we have learned to regard the dispensation as 
 temporary and its atonement as typical, prefiguring the 
 
LECT. VIII. THE LA IV. 213 
 
 atonement of Christ. But this modification of the 
 Jewish view of the Torah does not diminish the essen- 
 tial importance of the law for the life of the old 
 dispensation. The ceremonies were not less necessary 
 because they were typical; for they are still to be 
 regarded as divinely appointed means of grace, to which 
 alone God had attached the promise of blessing. 
 
 Now, as soon as we lay down the position that the 
 system of the ceremonial law, embracing, as it does, the 
 whole life of every Jew, was completed and prescribed 
 as an authoritative code for Israel before the conquest of 
 Canaan, we have an absolute rule for measuring the whole 
 future history of the nation and the whole significance 
 of subsequent revelation under the Old Testament. 
 
 On the one hand, the religious history of Israel can 
 be nothing else than the liistory of the nation's obedi- 
 ence or disobedience to the law. Notliing could be 
 added to the law and nothing taken from it till the 
 time of fulfilment, when the type should pass away 
 and be replaced by ihe living reality of the manifesta- 
 tion of Christ Jesus. So long as the old dispensation 
 lasted, the law remained an absolute standard. The 
 Israelite had no right to draw a distinction between the 
 spirit and the letter of the law. The sacrifices and 
 other typical ordinances might not be of the essence of 
 religion. But obedience to God's word undoubtedly 
 was so, and that word had in the most emphatic manner 
 enjoined the sacrifices and other ceremonies, and made 
 the forgiveness of Israel's sins to depend on them. The 
 
214 THE PROPHETS lect. viii. 
 
 priestly atonement was a necessary part of God's covenant. 
 " The priest shall make atonement for him, and he shall be 
 forgiven." To neglect these means of grace is, according 
 to the Pentateuch, nothing less than the sin committed 
 with a high hand, for which there is no forgiveness. 
 
 Again, on the other hand, the position that the whole 
 legal system was revealed to Israel at the very begin- 
 ning of its national existence strictly limits our concep- 
 tion of the function and significance of subsequent 
 revelation. The prophets had no power to abrogate 
 any part of the law, to dispense with Mosaic ordinances, 
 or institute new means of grace, other methods of 
 approach to God in lieu of the hierarchical sacraments. 
 For the Old Testament way of atonement is set forth in 
 the Pentateuch as adequate and efficient. According to 
 Christian theology, its efficiency as a typical system was 
 conditional on the future bringing in of a perfect atone- 
 ment in Christ. But for that very reason it was not to 
 be tampered with until Christ came. The prophets, 
 like the law itself, could only point to a future atone- 
 ment ; they were not themselves saviours, and could do 
 nothing to diminish the need for the temporary pro- 
 visions of the hierarchical system ; and, as a matter of 
 fact, the prophets did not abolish the Pentateuch or any 
 part of the Levitical system. Nay, it is just as their 
 work closes that we find the Pentateuchal code solemnly 
 advance to a position of public authority under Ezra 
 which it had never held before. 
 
 Hence the traditional view of the Pentateuch neces- 
 
LECT. VIII. AND THE LA W. 215 
 
 sarily regards the prophets as ministers and exponents 
 of the law. Their business was to enforce the observ- 
 ance of the law on Israel and to recall the people from 
 backsliding to a strict conformity with its precepts. 
 According to the Jewish view, this makes their work less 
 necessary and eternal than the law. Christian theo- 
 logians avoid this inference, but they do so by laying 
 stress on the fact that the reference to a future 
 and perfect atonement, which lay implicitly in the 
 typical ordinances of the ceremonial law, was unfolded 
 by the prophets in the clear language of evangelical 
 prediction. We view the prophets, therefore, as ex- 
 ponents of the spiritual elements of the law, who showed 
 the people that its precepts were not mere forms but 
 veiled declarations of the spiritual truths of a future 
 dispensation which was the true substance of the 
 shadows of the old ritual. This theory of the work of 
 the prophets is much more profound than that of the 
 Eabbins. But it implies, as necessarily as the Jewish 
 view, that the prophets were constantly intent on en- 
 forcing the observance of the ceremonial as well as the 
 moral precepts of the Pentateuch. Neglect of the 
 ritual law was all the more culpable when the spiritual 
 meaning of its precepts was made plain. 
 
 I think that it will be admitted that in this sketch 
 I have correctly indicated the theory of the Old Testa- 
 ment dispensation which orthodox theologians derive 
 from the traditional view as to the date of the Penta- 
 teuch. I ask you to observe that it is essentially the 
 
216 CRITICISM AND lect. viii. 
 
 Eabbinical view supplemented by a theory of typology ; 
 but I also ask you to observe that it is perfectly logical 
 and consistent in all its parts. It is, so far as one can 
 see, tbe only theory which can be built on the premisses. 
 It has only one fault. The standard which it applies 
 to the history of Israel is not that of the contemporary 
 historical records, and the account which it gives of the 
 work of the prophets is not consistent with the writings 
 of the prophets themselves. 
 
 This may seem a strong statement, but it is not 
 lightly made, and it expresses no mere personal opinion, 
 but the growipg conviction of an overwhelming weight 
 of the most earnest and sober scholarship. The dis- 
 crepancy between the traditional view of the Penta- 
 teuch and the plain statements of the historical books 
 and the Prophets is so marked and so fundamental that 
 it can be made clear to every reader of Scripture. It 
 is this fact which compels us, in the interests of prac- 
 tical theology — nay even in the interests of Christian 
 apologetic — to go into questions of Pentateuch criticism. 
 For if the received view which assigns the whole Penta- 
 teuch to Moses is inconsistent with the concordant 
 testimony of the Earlier and Later Prophets, we are 
 brought into this dilemma : — Either the Old Testament 
 is not the record of a self-consistent scheme of revela- 
 tion, of one great and continuous work of a revealing 
 and redeeming God, or else the current view of the 
 origin of the Pentateuch must be given up. Here it is 
 that criticism comes in to solve a problem which in its 
 
LECT. VIII. THE LA IV. 217 
 
 origin is not merely critical, but springs of necessity 
 from the very attempt to understand the Old Testament 
 dispensation as a whole. For the contradiction which 
 cannot be resolved on traditional assumptions is at once 
 removed when the critic points out within the Penta- 
 teuch itself clear marks that the whole law was not 
 written at one time, and that the several documents of 
 which it is composed represent successive developments 
 of the fundamental principles laid down by Moses, 
 successive redactions of the sacred law of Israel corre- 
 sponding to the very same stages in the progress of 
 revelation which are clearly marked in the history and 
 the prophetic literature. Thus the apparent discordance 
 between the several parts of the Old Testament record 
 is removed, and we are able to see a consistent divine 
 purpose ruling the whole dispensation of the Old Cove- 
 nant, and harmoniously displayed in every part of the 
 sacred record. To develop this argument in its essential 
 features, fitting the several parts of the record into their 
 proper setting in the history of revelation, is the object 
 which I propose for our discussion of the Law and the 
 Prophets. Of the critical or constructive part of the 
 argument I can give only the main outlines, for many 
 details in the analysis of the Pentateuch turn on nice 
 questions of Hebrew scholarship. But the results are 
 broad and intelligible, and possess that evidence of 
 historical consistency on which the results of special 
 scholarship are habitually accepted by the mass of 
 intelligent men in other branches of historical inquiry. 
 
218 THE LA W AND lect. viii. 
 
 Such, then, is the plan of our investigation ; and, 
 first of all, let us compare the evidence of the Bible 
 history with the traditional theory already sketched. 
 In working out this part of the subject I shall confine 
 your attention in the first instance to the books earlier 
 than the time of Ezra, and in particular to the histories 
 in the Earlier Prophets, from Judges to Second Kings. 
 I exclude the book of Joshua because it in all its parts 
 hangs closely together with the Pentateuch. The diffi- 
 culties which it presents are identical with those of the 
 Books of Moses, and can only be explained in connection 
 with the critical analysis of the law. And, on the other 
 hand, I exclude for the present the narrative of Chron- 
 icles, which was written long after the reformation of 
 Ezra, and has not the character of a primary source for 
 the earlier history. The earlier historical books from 
 Judges to Kings bring down the history in continuous 
 form to the Captivity, and attained their final shape 
 soon after that event. But the great mass of the records 
 which they embody is much earlier. We have already 
 seen {supra, p. 123 seq^.) that they are in part based on 
 official annals, while in great part they are made up in 
 accordance with the system already explained, on which 
 Hebrew historians were wont verbally to incorporate 
 older documents in their narratives. Thus in substance 
 they are vastly older than the Chronicles, and possess 
 many essential characteristics of contemporary histories. 
 It is the rule of aU historical study to begin with the 
 records that stand nearest to the events recorded, and 
 
LECT. vm. THE HISTORY. 219 
 
 are written under the Kving impress of the life of the 
 time described. Many features of the old Hebrew life, 
 which are reflected in lively form in the Earlier Pro- 
 phets, were obsolete long before the time of the 
 Chronicler, and could not be revived except by archaeo- 
 logical research. The whole life of the old kingdom 
 was buried and forgotten ; Israel was no longer a nation, 
 but a municipality and a church. No theory of inspir- 
 ation, save the theory of the Koran, which boasts that 
 its fabulous legends were supernaturally conveyed to 
 Mohammed without the use of documents or tradition, 
 can deny that a history written under these conditions 
 is but a secondary source for the study of the life of the 
 ancient kingdom. ^^^ It is manifest that the Chronicler, 
 writing at a time when the institutions of Ezra had 
 universal currency, had no complete knowledge of the 
 greatly different praxis of Israel before the Exile. And 
 therefore, when his statements seem to present the 
 history in a somewhat different light from those of the 
 earlier books, we must no more take him as our com- 
 mentator than we take S. Paul as our guide to the Old 
 Testament chronology. We must let the earlier books 
 speak for themselves, and the right understanding of 
 the statement of the Chronicles must then be considered 
 as a separate question. I do not now speak of indi- 
 vidual details, in which the later history may often 
 preserv^e some useful notice derived from sources no 
 longer extant. Our present concern is with the general 
 picture of the life and worship of ancient Israel pre- 
 
220 THE DISOBEDIENCE lect. viii. 
 
 sented in the historical books ; and here the only rule of 
 sound study is to begin with the sources which draw 
 from the life. 
 
 Every reader of the Old Testament history is familiar 
 with the fact that from the days of the Judges down 
 to the Exile the law was never strictly enforced in 
 Israel. The history is a record of constant rebellion 
 and shortcomings, and the attempts at reformation made 
 from time to time were comparatively few and never 
 thoroughly carried out. The deflections of the nation 
 from the standard of the Pentateuch come out most 
 clearly in the sphere of worship. In the time of the 
 Judges the religious condition of the nation was admit- 
 tedly one of anarchy. The leaders of the nation, 
 divinely appointed deliverers like Gideon and Jephthah, 
 who were zealous in Jehovah's cause, were as far from 
 the Pentateuchal standard of righteousness as the mass 
 of the people. Gideon erects a sanctuary at Ophrah, 
 with a golden ephod — apparently a kind of image — 
 which became a great centre of illegal w^orship (Jud. 
 viii. 24 se,q})\ Jephthah offers his own daughter to 
 Jehovah ; the Lord departs from Samson, not when he 
 marries a daughter of the uncircumcised, but when his 
 Nazarite locks are shorn. 
 
 The revival imder Samuel, Saul, and David was 
 marked by great zeal for Jehovah, but brought no 
 reform in matters of glaring departure from the law. 
 Samuel sacrifices on many high places, Saul builds 
 altars, David and his son Solomon permit the worship 
 
LECT. VIII. OF ISRAEL. 221 
 
 at the high places to continue, and the historian recog- 
 nises this as legitimate because the Temple was not yet 
 built (1 Kings iii. 2-4). In Northern Israel this state 
 of things was never changed. The high places were an 
 established feature in the kingdom of Ephraim, and 
 Elijah himself declares that the destruction of the altars 
 of Jehovah — aU illegitimate according to the Penta- 
 teuch — is a breach of Jehovah's covenant (1 Kings xLx. 
 10). In the Southern Kingdom it was not otherwise. 
 It is recorded of the best kings before Hezekiah that the 
 high places were not removed by them ; and in the 
 eighth century B.C. the prophets describe the worship 
 of Ephraim and Judah in terms practically identical. 
 Even the reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah were im- 
 perfectly carried through; and important points of 
 ritual, such as the due observance of the Eeast of 
 Tabernacles, were still neglected (Neh. viii. 17). These 
 facts are not disputed. The question is how we are to 
 interpret them. 
 
 The prophets and the historical books agree in 
 representing the history of Israel as a long record of 
 disobedience to Jehovah, of which captivity was the 
 just punishment. But the precise nature of Israel's sin 
 is often misunderstood. We are accustomed to speak 
 of it as idolatry, as the worship of false gods in place 
 of Jehovah; and in a certain sense this corresponds 
 with the language of the sacred books. In the judg- 
 ment of the prophets of the eighth century the mass of 
 the Israelites, not merely in the Northern Kingdom but 
 
222 WORSHIP IN THE lect. viii. 
 
 equally in Judali, had rebelled against Jehovah, and did 
 did not pay Him worship in any true sense. But that 
 was far from being the opinion of the false worshippers 
 themselves. They were not in conscious rebellion 
 against Jehovah and His covenant. On the contrary, 
 their religion was based on two principles, one of which 
 is the fundamental principle of all Old Testament reve- 
 lation, while the second is the principle that underlies 
 the whole system of ritual ordinance in the Pentateuch. 
 The first principle in the popular religion of Israel, 
 acknowledged by the false worshippers as well as by 
 the prophets, was that Jehovah is Israel's God and 
 Eedeemer, and that Israel is the people of Jehovah 
 in a distinctive sense. And with this went a second 
 principle, that Israel is bound to do homage to its God 
 in sacrifice, and to serve Him diligently and assiduously 
 according to a fixed ritual. 
 
 Let me explain this point more fully. There is no 
 doubt that the worship of Baal, Ashtoreth, Moloch, and 
 other gods of the heathen peoples of Canaan was not 
 uncommon in Israel ; and once at least, in the time of 
 Ahab, there was an attempt to give such worship a 
 national character ; but as a rule such worship took a 
 secondary place, and those who fell into it did not do 
 so to the exclusion of the worship of Jehovah as the 
 great God of Israel. And the attempt of Ahab was 
 purely transitory. It was put down by a great revolu- 
 tion under Jehu ; and even Ahab himself, as we learn 
 from 1 Kings xxii., never entirely broke with the 
 
LECT. VIII. OLD COVENANT. 223 
 
 prophets of Jehovah. The national sin was not denial 
 that Jehovah is Israel's God, with a paramount claim to 
 the service and worship of the nation. On the contrary, 
 the prophets represent their contemporaries as full of 
 zeal for Jehovah, and confident that they have secured 
 His help by their great assiduity in His service (Amos 
 iv. 4 st^., V. 18 s^. ; Hosea vi. ; Isa. i. 11 seq^.\ Micah 
 iii. 11 ; Jer. vii.). 
 
 To obtain a precise conception of what this means, 
 we must look more closely at the notion of worship 
 under the Old Testament dispensation. To us worship 
 is a spiritual thing. We lift up our hearts and voices 
 to God in the closet, the family, or the church, per- 
 suaded that God, who is spirit, will receive in every 
 place the worship of spirit and truth. But this is 
 strictly a New Testament conception, announced as a 
 new thing by Jesus to the Samaritan woman, who raised 
 a question as to the disputed prerogative of Zion or 
 Gerizim as the place of acceptable worship. Under 
 the New Covenant neither Zion nor Gerizim is the 
 mount of God. Under the Old Testament it was other- 
 wise. Access to God — even to the spiritual God — was 
 limited by local conditions. There is no worship with- 
 out access to the deity before whom the worshipper 
 draws nigh to express his homage. We can draw near 
 to God in every act of prayer in the heavenly sanctuary, 
 through the new and living way which Jesus has con- 
 secrated in His blood. But the Old Testament wor- 
 shipper sought access to God in an earthly sanctuary 
 
224 THE POPULAR lect. viii. 
 
 which was for him, as it were, the meeting place of 
 heaven and earth. Such holy points of contact with the 
 divine presence were locally fixed, and their mark was 
 the altar, where the worshipper presented his homage, 
 not in purely spiritual utterance, but in the material 
 form of an altar-gift. The promise of blessing, or, as we 
 should now call it, of answer to prayer, is in the Old 
 Testament strictly attached to the local sanctuary. 
 " In every place where I set the memorial of my name, 
 I will come unto thee and bless thee " (Exod. xx. 24). 
 Every visible act of worship is subjected to this con- 
 dition. In the mouth of Saul, " to make supplication to 
 Jehovah " is a synonym for doing sacrifice (1 Sam. xiii. 
 12). To David, banishment from the land of Israel and 
 its sanctuaries is a command to serve other gods (1 Sam. 
 xxvi. 19; compare Deut. xxviii. 36, 64). And the 
 worship of the sanctuary imperatively demands the 
 tokens of material homage, the gift without which no 
 Oriental would approach even an earthly court. " None 
 shall appear before me empty " (Exod. xxiii. 15). 
 Prayer without approach to the sanctuary is not recog- 
 nised as part of the "service of Jehovah;" and for him 
 who is at a distance from the holy place, a vow, such as 
 Absalom made at Geshur in Syria (2 Sam. xv. 8), is the 
 natural surrogate for the interrupted service of the 
 altar. The essence of a vow is a promise to do sacrifice 
 or other offering at the sanctuary (Deut. xii. 6; Lev. 
 xxvii. ; 1 Sam. i. 21. Compare Gen. xxviii. 20 seq^). 
 This conception of the nature of divine worship is 
 
LECT. VIII. WORSHIP, 225 
 
 the basis alike of the Pentateuchal law and of the 
 popular religion of Israel described in the historical 
 books and condemned by the prophets. The sanctuary 
 of Jehovah, the altar and the altar-gifts, the sacrifices 
 and the solemn feasts, the tithes and the free-will 
 offerings, were never treated with indifference (Amos 
 iv. 4, viii. 5; Hosea viii. 13; Isa. i. 11 scq^.\ Jer. vii.). 
 On the contrary, the charge which the prophets con- 
 stantly hurl against the people is that they are wholly 
 absorbed in affairs of worship and ritual service, and 
 think themselves to have secured Jehovah's favour by 
 the zeal of their external devotion without the practice 
 of justice, mercy, and moral obedience. 
 
 The condition of religious affairs in Northern Israel 
 is clearly described by the prophets Amos and Hosea. 
 These prophets arose under the dynasty of Jehu, the 
 ally of Elisha and the destroyer of Baal-worship, a 
 dynasty in which the very names of Ihe kings denote 
 devotion to the service of Jehovah. Jehovah was wor- 
 shipped in many sanctuaries and in forms full of irregu- 
 larity from the standpoint of the Pentateuch. There 
 were images of Jehovah under the form of a calf or 
 steer in Bethel and Dan, and probably elsewhere. The 
 order of the local sanctuaries, and the religious feasts 
 celebrated at them, had much in common with the 
 idolatry of the Canaanites. Indeed many of the high 
 places were old Canaanite sanctuaries. Nevertheless 
 these sanctuaries and their worship were viewed as the 
 fixed and normal provision for the maintenance of 
 
226 THE POPULAR lect. viii 
 
 living: relations between Israel and Jehovah. Hosea 
 predicts a time of judgment when this service shall be 
 suppressed. " The children of Israel shaU sit many days 
 ■^ without sacrifice and without maggeba, without ephod 
 • and teraphim." This language expresses the entire de- 
 struction of the religious order of the nation, a period of 
 isolation from all access to Jehovah, like the isolation of 
 a faithless spouse whom her husband keeps shut up, not 
 admitting her to the privileges of marriage (Hos. iii.)/^^ 
 It appears, then, that sacrifice and maggeba, ephod and 
 teraphim, were recognised as the necessary forms and 
 instruments of the worship of Jehovah. They were 
 all old traditional forms, not the invention of modern 
 will-worship. The maggeba , or consecrated stone, so 
 often named in the Old Testament where our version 
 unfortunately renders " image," is as old as the time of 
 Jacob, who set up and consecrated the memorial stone 
 that marked Bethel as a sanctuary. It was the neces- 
 sary mark of every high place, Canaanite as well as 
 Hebrew, and is condemned in the Pentateuchal laws 
 against the high places along with the associated 
 symbol of the sacred tree or pole (Ashera, E. V. grove), 
 which was also a feature in the patriarchal sanctuaries. 
 (The oak of Moreh, Gen. xii. 6, 7; the tamarisk of 
 Beersheba, Gen. xxi. 33 ; Gen. xxxi. 45, 54 ; Gen. xxxiii. 
 20, with XXXV. 4 ; Jos. xxiv. 26 ; Hos. iv. 13.) The ephod 
 is also ancient. It must have been something very 
 different from the ephod of the high priest, but is to be 
 compared with the ephods of Gideon and Micah (Jud. 
 
LECT. VIII. WORSHIP. 227 
 
 viii. 2*7, xvii. 5), and with that in the sanctuary of Nob 
 (1 Sam. xxi. 9). Finally, teraphim are a means of 
 divination (Ezek. xxi. 21 ; Zech. x. 2) as old as the time 
 of Jacob, and were found in Micah's sanctuary and 
 David's house (1 Sam. xix. 13 ; E. V. image)}'^^ 
 
 It appears, then, that the national worship of 
 Jehovah, under the dynasty of Jehu, was conducted 
 under traditional forms which had a fixed character 
 and general recognition. These forms were ancient. 
 There is no reason to think that the worsliip of the 
 northern sanctuaries had undergone serious modifica- 
 tions since the days of the Judges. The sanctuaries 
 themselves were of ancient and, in great part, of patri- 
 archal consecration. Beersheba, Gilgal, Bethel, Shechem, 
 Mizpah, were places of. the most venerable sanctity, 
 acknowledged by Samuel and earKer worthies. Of the 
 sanctuary at Dan we know the whole origin and history. 
 It was founded by the Danites who carried off Micah's 
 Levite and holy things ; and the family of the Levite, 
 who was himself a grandson of Moses, continued in 
 office through the age of David and Samuel down to 
 the Captivity (Jud. xviii. 30). It was a sanctuary of 
 purely Israelite origin, originally instituted by Micah 
 for the service of Jehovah, and equipped with every 
 regard to the provision of an acceptable service. " Now 
 I know," said Micah, "that Jehovah will do me good, since 
 I have got the Levite as my priest." This trait indi- 
 cates an interest in correct ritual which never died out. 
 In truth ritual is never deemed unimportant in a re- 
 
223 DEFECTS OF THE lect. viii. 
 
 ligion so little spiritual as that of the mass of Israel. 
 All worships that contain heathenish elements are 
 traditional, and nothing is more foreign to them than 
 the arhitrary introduction of forms for which there is 
 no precedent of usage. 
 
 That this traditional service and ritual was not 
 Le\dtically correct needs no proof. Let us rather con- 
 sider the features which marked it as unspiritual and 
 led the prophets to condemn it as displeasing to God. 
 
 In the first place, we observe that though Jehovah 
 was worshipped with assiduity, and worshipped as the 
 national God of Israel, there was no clear conception of 
 the fundamental difference between Him and the gods of 
 the nations. This appears particularly in the current 
 use of images, like the golden calves, which were sup- 
 posed to be representations or symbols of Jehovah. It 
 is not easy to say how far image- worship was essential 
 to the popular religion. Amos, in his preaching at 
 Bethel, makes no mention of the golden calves, though 
 he speaks of images of the star gods, Moloch and Chiun 
 (Keiwan or Saturn). But the whole service is repre- 
 sented by the prophets as gross, sensual, and unworthy 
 of a spiritual deity (Amos ii. 7, 8 ; Hosea iv. 13, 14). 
 We know that many features in the worship of the 
 high places were practically identical with the abomi- 
 nations of the Canaanites, and gave no expression to the 
 difference between Jehovah and the false gods. Thus 
 it came about that the Israelites fell into what is called 
 symretism in religion. They were unable sharply to 
 
LECT. VIII. POPULAR WORSHIP. 229 
 
 distinguish between the local worship of Jehovah and 
 the worship of the Canaanite Baalim. The god of the 
 local sanctuary was adored as Jehovah, but a local 
 Jehovah was practically a local Baal. This confusion 
 of thought may be best illustrated from the local 
 Madonnas of Eoman Catholic shrines. Every Madonna 
 is a representation of the one Virgin; but practically 
 each Virgin has its own merits and its own devotees, so 
 that the service of these shrines is almost indistinsfuish- 
 able from polytheism, of which, indeed, it is often an 
 historical continuation. In Phoenicia one still sees 
 grottoes of the Virgin Mary which are old shrines of 
 Ashtoreth, bearing the symbols of the ancient worship 
 of Canaan. So it was in those days. The worship of 
 the one Jehovah, who was Himself addressed in old 
 times by the title of Baal or Lord {sfiiiwa, p. 79), practi- 
 cally fell into a worship of a multitude of local Baalim, 
 so that a prophet like Hosea can say that the Israelites, 
 though still imagining themselves to be serving the 
 national God, and acknowledging His benefits, have 
 reaUy turned from Him to deities that are no gods. 
 
 In this way another fault came in. The people, whose 
 worship of Jehovah was hardly to be distinguished from 
 a gross polytheism, could not be averse to worship other 
 gods side by side with the national deity. Thus we find 
 that the services of Ashtoreth, Tammuz, or other deities 
 which could not even in popular conception be identi- 
 fied with Jehovah, obtained a certain currency, at least 
 in sections of the nation. This worship was always 
 11 
 
230 POPULAR WORSHIP lect. viii. 
 
 secondary, and was put down from time to time in 
 movements of reformation which left the high places of 
 Jehovah untouched (1 Sam. vii. 3; 1 Kings xv. 12 se^.\ 
 2 Kings X. 28, 29, xi. 18). 
 
 This sketch of the popular religion of Israel is 
 mainly drawn from the Northern Kingdom. But it is 
 clear from the facts enumerated that it was not a mere 
 innovation due to the schism of Jeroboam. Jeroboam, 
 no doubt, lent a certain Mat to the service of the royal 
 sanctuaries, and the golden calves gave a very different 
 conception of Jehovah from that which was symbolised 
 by the ark on Zion. But the elements of the whole 
 worship were traditional, and were already current in 
 the age of the Judges. Gideon's golden ephod and the 
 graven image at Dan prove that even image-worship 
 was no innovation of Jeroboam. And it is certain that 
 the worship of the Judsean sanctuaries was not essen- 
 tially different from that of the northern shrines. The 
 high places flourished undisturbed from generation to 
 generation. The land was full of idols (Isa. ii.). 
 Jerusalem appears to Micah as the centre of a corrupt 
 Judsean worship, which he parallels with the corrupt 
 worship of Samaria (Micah i. 5, iii. 12, v. 11 se^., 
 vi. 16). 
 
 Where then did this traditional worship, so largely 
 diffused through the mass of Israel, have its origin, and 
 what is its historical relation to the laws of the Penta- 
 teuch ? No doubt many of its corrupt features may be 
 explained by the influence of the Canaanites ; and from 
 
LECT. VIII. IN JUDAH. 2-31 
 
 the absolute standard of spiritual religion applied by 
 the prophets it might even be said that Israel had for- 
 saken Jehovah for the Baalim. But from the stand- 
 point of the worshippers it was not so. They still 
 believed themselves loyal to Jehovah. Their great 
 sanctuaries were patriarchal holy places like Bethel and 
 Beersheba, or purely Hebrew foundations like Dan. 
 With all its corruptions, their worship had a specifically 
 national character. Jehovah never was a Canaanite 
 God, and the roots of the popular religion, as we have 
 already seen, were that acknowledgment of Jehovah as 
 Israel's God, and of the duty of national service to 
 Him, which is equally the basis of Mosaic orthodoxy. ^^^ 
 These are principles which lie behind the first beginnings 
 of Canaanite influence. But in the Pentateuch these 
 principles are embodied in a ritual altogether diverse 
 in system and theory, as well as in detail, from the tradi- 
 tional ritual of the high places. The latter service is not 
 merely a corrupt copy of the Mosaic system, with ele- 
 ments borrowed from the Canaan ites. In the Levi- 
 tical ritual the essentials of Jehovah-worship are put 
 in a form which made no accommodation to heathenism 
 possible, which left no middle ground between the pure 
 worship of Jehovah, as maintained by the Aaronic 
 priesthood in the one sanctuary, and a deliberate rejec- 
 tion of Israel's God for the idols of the heathen. 
 
 To understand this point we must observe that 
 according to the Levitical system God is absolutely 
 inaccessible to man, except in the priestly ritual of 
 
232 THE ONE TRUE lect. viii. 
 
 the central sanctuary. Controversial writers on the 
 law of the one sanctuary have often been led to over- 
 look this point by confining their attention to the law 
 of the sanctuary in Deuteronomy, wliich speaks of the 
 choice of one place in Canaan where Jehovah will set 
 His name as a practical safeguard against participation 
 in the worship of Canaanite high places. But if the 
 whole Pentateuch is one Mosaic system, the law of 
 Deuteronomy must be viewed in the light of the legis- 
 lation of the Middle Books. Here the theory of the one 
 sanctuary is worked out on a basis independent of the 
 question of heathen shrines. According to the Old 
 Testament, worship is a tryst between man and God in 
 the sanctuary, and the question of the legitimate sanc- 
 tuary is the question of the place where Jehovah has 
 promised to hold tryst with His people, and the condi- 
 tions which He lays down for this meeting. The 
 fundamental promise of the Levitical legislation is 
 Exod. xxix. 42 ug. The place of tryst is the Tent of 
 Tryst or Meeting, incorrectly rendered in the Authorised 
 Version, " The tabernacle of the congregation." " There 
 will I hold tryst with the children of Israel, and it shall 
 be sanctified by my glory. And I will sanctify the 
 tent of meeting and the altar, and I will sanctify Aaron 
 and his sons to do priestly service to me. And I will 
 dwell in the midst of the children of Israel, and will be 
 their God." The tent of meeting is God's mishhan, His 
 dwelling-place, which He sets in the midst of Israel 
 (Lev. xxvi. 11). The first condition of divine blessing 
 
LECT. VIII. SANCTUARY, 233 
 
 in Lev. xxvi. is reverence for the sabbath and the 
 sanctuary, and the total rejection of idols and of the 
 maggeba which was the mark of the high places./ There 
 is no local point of contact between heaven and earth, 
 no place where man can find a present God to receive 
 his worship, save this one tent of meeting, where the ark 
 with the Cherubim is the abiding symbol that God is in 
 the midst of Israel, and the altar stands at the door of 
 the tabernacle as the legitimate place of Israel's gifts. 
 This sanctuary with its altar is the centre of Israel's 
 holiness. It is so holy that it is hedged round by a 
 double cordon of sacred ministers. For the presence of 
 Jehovah is a terrible thing, destructive to sinful man. 
 The Old Testament symbol of Jehovah's manifestation 
 to His people is the lightning flash from behind the 
 thunder cloud, fire involved in smoke, an awful and 
 devouring brightness consuming all that is not holy. 
 Therefore the dreadful spot where His holiness dwells 
 may never be approached without atoning ritual and 
 strict precautions of ceremonial sanctity provided for 
 the priests, and for none other. Even the Levites may 
 not touch either ark or altar, lest both they and the 
 priests die (Num. xviii. 3). StiU less dare the laity draw 
 near to the tabernacle (Num. xvii. 13 [28]). It is only 
 the sons of Aaron who, by their special consecration, 
 can bear with impunity " the guilt of the sanctuary " 
 (xviii. 1) ; and so every sacred offering of the Israelite, 
 every gift which expresses the people's homage, must 
 pass through their hand and do toll to them (Num. xviii. 
 
234 THE POPULAR lect. viii. 
 
 8 seq^. Thus the access of the ordinary Israelite to 
 God is very restricted. He can only stand afar off 
 while the priest approaches Jehovah as his mediator, 
 and brings back a word of blessing. And even this 
 mediate access to God is confined to his visits to the 
 central sanctuary. The stated intercourse of God with 
 His people is not the concern of the whole people, but 
 of the priests, who are constantly before God, offering 
 up on behalf of the nation the unbroken service of the 
 continual daily oblations. This is a great limitation of 
 the freedom of worship. But it is no arbitrary restric- 
 tion. On the Levitical theory, the imperfection of the 
 ordinary holiness of Israel leaves no alternative open. 
 For the holiness of God is fatal to him who dares to 
 come near His dwelling-place. 
 
 On this theory the ritual of the sanctuary is no arti- 
 ficial scheme devised to glorify one holy place above 
 others, but the necessary scheme of precaution for every 
 local approach to God. Other sanctuaries are not simply 
 less holy, places of less solemn tryst with Jehovah ; they 
 are places where His holiness is not revealed, and there- 
 fore are not, and cannot be, sanctuaries of Jehovah at 
 all. If . Jehovah were to meet with man in a second 
 sanctuary, the same consequences of inviolable holiness 
 would assert themselves, and the new holy place would 
 again require to be fenced in with equal ritual precau- 
 tions. In the very nature of the covenant, there is but 
 one altar and one priesthood through which the God of 
 Israel can be approached. 
 
LECT. VIII. SANCTUARIES, 235 
 
 The popular religion of Israel, with its many sanc- 
 tuaries, proceeds on a theory diametrically opposite. 
 Opportunity ^of access to Jehovah is near to every 
 Israelite, and every occasion of life that calls on the 
 individual, the clan, or the village, to look Godwards is 
 a summons to the altar. In the family every feast was 
 an eucharistic sacrifice. In affairs of public life it was 
 not otherwise. The very phrases in Hebrew for " making 
 a covenant " or " inaugurating war " point to the sacri- 
 ficial observances that accompanied such acts. The 
 earlier history relates scarcely one event of importance 
 that was not transacted at a holy place. The local 
 sanctuaries were the centres of all Hebrew life. How 
 little of the history would remain if Shechem and Bethel, 
 the two Mizpahs and Ophra, Gilgal, Eamah, and Gibeon, 
 Hebron, Bethlehem, and Beersheba, Kadesh and Maha- 
 naim, Tabor and Carmel, were blotted out of the pages 
 of the Old Testament !^^^ 
 
 This different and freer conception of the means of 
 access to God, the desire which it embodies to realise 
 Jehovah's presence in acts of worship, not at rare inter- 
 vals only but in every concern of life, cannot be viewed 
 as a mere heathenish corruption of the Levitical system. 
 This fact comes out most clearly in the point whicli 
 brings out the contrast of the two systems in its com- 
 pletest form. 
 
 In the traditional popular Jehovah-worship, to slay 
 an ox or a sheep for food was a sacrificial act, and the 
 flesh of the victim was not lawful food unless the blood 
 
236 ALL FEASTS ARE lect. viii. 
 
 or life had been poured out before Jehovah. The cur- 
 rency of this view is presupposed in the Pentateuchal 
 legislation. Thus in Lev. xvii. it appears ^s a perpetual 
 statute that no animal can be lawfully slain for food, 
 unless it be presented as a peace-offering before the 
 central sanctuary, and its blood sprinkled on the altar. 
 One has no right to slay an animal on other conditions. 
 The life, which lies in the blood, comes from God and 
 belongs to Him. The man who does not recognise this 
 fact, but eats the flesh with the blood, "hath shed 
 blood, and shall be cut off from liis people " (verse 4 ; 
 comp. Gen. ix. 4). In Deuteronomy this principle is 
 presupposed, but relaxed by a formal statute. Those 
 who do not live beside the sanctuary may eat flesh with- 
 out a sacrificial act, if they simply pour out the blood 
 upon the ground (Deut. xii. 20 seq). The old rule, it 
 would seem, might still hold good for every animal slain 
 within reach of the holy place. Now, under the condi- 
 • tions of Eastern life, beef and mutton are not everyday 
 food. In Canaan, as among the Arabs at this day, milk 
 is the usual diet (Prov. xxvii. 26, 27 ; Jud. iv. 19). The 
 slaughter of a victim for food marks a festal occasion, 
 and the old Hebrew principle modified in Deuteronomy 
 means that all feasts are religious, that sacred occasions 
 and occasions of natural joy and festivity are identical. ^^^ 
 Under the full Levitical system this principle was obso- 
 lete, or at least could assert itself only in the vicinity 
 of the sanctuary, and in connection with the three great 
 festive gatherings at Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast 
 
i.ECT. VIII. SACRIFICIAL. 237 
 
 of Tabernacles. But in the actual history of the nation 
 the principle was not yet obsolete. Thus in 1 Sam. 
 xiv., when the people, in their fierce hunger after the 
 battle of Michmash, fly on the spoil and, slaying beasts 
 on the ground, eat them with the blood — i.e., as we see 
 from Lev. xvii., without offering the blood to Jehovah — 
 Saul rebukes their transgression, erects a rude altar in 
 the form of a great stone, and orders the people to kill 
 their victims there. A feast and a sacrifice are still 
 identical in the book of Proverbs, which speaks the 
 ordinary language of the people. Compare Prov. xv. 
 17 with xvii. 1, and note the inducement offered to the 
 foolish young man in chap. vii. 14. In Hosea ii. 11 all 
 mirth is represented as connected with religious cere- 
 monies. But the most conclusive passage is Hosea ix. 
 3 seq., where the prophet predicts that in the Exile all 
 the food of the people shall be unclean, because sacrifice 
 cannot be performed beyond the land of Israel. They 
 shall eat, as it were, the unclean bread of mourners, 
 " because their necessary food shall not be presented in 
 the house of Jehovah." In other words, all animal food 
 not presented at the altar is unclean ; the whole life of 
 the people becomes unclean when they leave the land 
 of Jehovah to dwell in an " unclean land " (Amos vii. 
 1*7). We see from this usage how closely the practice 
 of sacrifice in every corner of the land was interw'oven 
 with the whole life of the nation, and how absolute 
 was the contrast between the traditional conception of 
 sacrificial intercourse between Jehovah and His people 
 
238 THE PSALMS AND lect. viii. 
 
 and that whicli is expressed in the Levitical law. 
 But we see also that the popular conception is not a 
 new thing superadded to the Levitical system from a 
 foreign source, but an old traditional principle of Jeho- 
 vah-worship prior to the law of Deuteronomy. When 
 did this principle take root in the nation ? Not surely 
 in the forty years of wandering, when, according to the 
 express testimony of Amos v. 25, sacrifices and offerings 
 were not presented to Jehovah. 
 
 But let this pass in the meantime. We are not now 
 concerned to trace the history of the ordinances of wor- 
 ship in Israel, but only to establish a clear conception 
 of the essential difference between the old popular wor- 
 ship and the finished Levitical system. The very found- 
 ation of revealed religion is the truth that man does not 
 fii-st seek and find God, but that God in His gTacious 
 condescension seeks out man, and gives him such an 
 approach to Himself as man could not enjoy without 
 the antecedent act of divine self-communication. The 
 characteristic mark of each dispensation of revealed 
 religion lies in the provision which it makes for the 
 acceptable approach of the worshipper to his God. 
 Under the Levitical dispensation all approach to God is 
 limited to the central sanctuary, and passes of necessity 
 through the channel of the priestly mediation of the 
 sons of Aaron. The worshipping subject is, strictly 
 speaking, the nation of Israel as a unity, and the func- 
 tion of worship is discharged on behalf of the nation by 
 the priests of God's choice. The religion of the indivi- 
 
LECT. VIII. THE SANCTUARY. 239 
 
 dual rests on this basis. It is only the maintenance of 
 the representative national service of the sanctuary 
 which gives to every Israelite the assurance that he 
 stands under the protection of the national covenant 
 with Jehovah, and enables him to enjoy a measure of 
 such personal spiritual fellowship with God as can 
 never be lacking in true religion. But the faith with 
 w^hich the Israelite rested on God's redeeming love had 
 little direct opportunity to express itself in visible acts 
 of homage. The sanctuary was seldom accessible, and 
 in daily life the Hebrew believer could only follow with 
 an inward longing and spiritual sympathy the national 
 homage which continually ascended on behalf of him- 
 self and aU the people of God in the stated ritual of the 
 Temple. Hence that eager thirst for participation in 
 the services of the sanctuary which is expressed in 
 Psalms like the forty-second : " My soul thirsteth for God 
 the Living God ; when shall I come and appear before 
 the face of God?" "Send forth thy light and thy 
 truth ; let them guide me ; let them bring me to thy 
 holy mountain, even unto thy dwelling-place." This 
 thirst, seldom satiated, which fills the Psalter with 
 expressions of passionate fervour in describing the joys 
 of access to God's house, was an inseparable feature of 
 the Levitical system. After the Exile, the necessity for 
 more frequent acts of overt religion was partly supplied 
 by the synagogues ; but these, in so far as they provided 
 a sort of worship without sacrifice, were already an indi- 
 cation that the dispensation was inadequate and must 
 
240 CONCLUSION. lect. viii. 
 
 pass away. All these experiences are in the strongest 
 contrast to the popular religious life before the Captivity. 
 Then the people found Jehovah, and rejoiced before Him, 
 in every corner of the land, and on every occasion of 
 Hfe. 
 
 This contrast within the Old Testament dispensa- 
 tion presents no difficulty if we can affirm that the 
 popular religion was altogether false, that it gave no 
 true access to Jehovah, and must be set on one side in 
 describing the genuine religious life of Israel. But it is 
 a very different thing if we find that the true believers 
 of ancient Israel — prophets like Samuel, righteous men 
 like David — placed themselves on the standpoint of the 
 local sanctuaries, and framed their own lives on the 
 assumption that God is indeed to be found in service 
 non-Levitical. If the whole Pentateuchal system is 
 really as old as Moses, the popular worship has none of 
 the marks of a religion of revelation ; it sought access to 
 God in services to which He had attached no promise. 
 And yet we shall find, in next Lecture, that for long 
 centuries after Moses, all the true religion of Israel 
 moved in forms which departed from the first axioms 
 of Levitical service, and rested on the belief that Jehovah 
 may be acceptably worshipped under the popular sys- 
 tem, if only the corruptions of that system are guarded 
 against. It was not on the basis of the Pentateuchal 
 theory of worship that God's grace ruled in Israel during 
 the age of the Judges and the Kings, and it was not on 
 that basis that the prophets taught. 
 
LECT. IX. RETROSPECT. 241 
 
 LECTUEE IX. 
 
 THE LAW AND THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL BEFOKE 
 THE EXILE. 
 
 In last Lecture I tried to exhibit to you the outlines of 
 the popular worship of the mass of Israel in the period be- 
 fore the Captivity, as sketched in the books of Kings and 
 in the contemporary prophets. In drawing this sketch 
 I directed your attention particularly to two points. On 
 the one hand, the popular religion has a basis in common 
 with the Pentateuchal system : both alike acknowledge 
 Jehovah as the God of Israel, who brought His people 
 out of the land of Egypt ; both recognise that Israel's 
 homage and worship are due to Jehovah, and that the 
 felicity of the people in the land of Canaan is de- 
 pendent on His favour. But along with this we found 
 that between the popular worship and the system of the 
 Pentateuch there is a remarkable contrast. In the 
 Levitical system access to God is only to be attained 
 through the mediation of the Aaronic priests at the 
 central sanctuary. The whole worship of Israel is 
 narrowed to the sanctuary of the ark, and there the 
 priests of God's consecration conduct that representative 
 service which is in some sense the worship of the 
 
242 THE LA W AND lect. ix. 
 
 whole people. The ordinary Israelite meets with God in 
 the sanctuary only on special occasions, and during the 
 great part of his life must be content to stand afar off, 
 following with distant sympathy that continual service 
 which is going on for him at Jerusalem in the hands of 
 the Temple priests. In the popular religion, on the 
 contrary, the need of constant access to God is present 
 to every Israelite. Opportunities of worship exist in 
 every corner of the land, and every occasion of import- 
 ance, whether for the life of the individual or for the 
 family, village, or clan, is celebrated by some sacrificial 
 rite at the local sanctuary. We saw, further, that, as 
 these two types of religion are separated by a funda- 
 mental difference, so also it is impossible to suppose 
 that the popular worship is merely a corruption of 
 the Levitical theory under the influence of Canaanite 
 idolatry. It is indeed very natural to suppose that the 
 system of the Law, the distance that it constitutes be- 
 tween Jehovah and the ordinary worshipper, was too 
 abstract for the mass of Israel. It can well be thought 
 that the mass of the people in those days could not be 
 satisfied with the kind of representative worship con- 
 ducted on their behalf in the one sanctuary, and that 
 they felt a desire to come themselves into immediate 
 contact with the Deity in personal acts of service 
 embodied in sacrifice. But if the Levitical theory was 
 the starting-point it is pretty clear that this would 
 rather lead the unspiritual part of Israel to worship 
 other gods side by side with Jehovah, local and inferior 
 
LECT. IX. THE HISTORY, 243 
 
 deities, just as in the Eoman Catholic Church the 
 distance between God and the ordinary layman leads 
 the mass of the people, who have no boldness of access 
 to God the Father or God the Son, separated from them 
 in the sacred mystery of the mass, to approach the saints 
 and address themselves to them as more accessible 
 deities. But that is not what we find in Israel. We 
 do not find that a sense of the inaccessibility of 
 Jehovah, as represented in the system of the Penta- 
 teuch, led Israel for the most part to serve other 
 gods, although that also happened in special circum- 
 stances. They held that Jehovah Himself could be 
 approached and acceptably worshipped at a multitude of 
 sanctuaries not acknowledged in the system of the Law, 
 and at which, according to that system, God had given 
 no promise whatever to meet with His people. It can 
 hardly be questioned that the idea of meeting with 
 Jehovah at the local sanctuaries and of doing accept- 
 able service to Him there had survived from a time 
 previous to the enactment of the law of the middle 
 books of the Pentateuch. This is confirmed by the 
 fact that the lineaments of the popular religion as dis- 
 played in the historical books have much that is akin 
 to the worship of the patriarchs, and in particular that 
 many of the sanctuaries of Israel were venerated as 
 patriarchal shrines. 
 
 Nevertheless, if Moses left the whole Levitical 
 system as a public code, specially intrusted to the 
 priests and leaders of the nation, that code must have 
 
244 yOSIAH'S LECT. ix. 
 
 influenced at least the elite of Israel. Its provisions 
 must have been kept alive at the central sanctuary, and, 
 in particular, the revealing God, who does not contra- 
 dict Himself, must have based upon the law His further 
 communications to the people, and His judgment upon 
 their sins spoken through His prophets. He cannot 
 have stamped with His approval a popular system entirely 
 ignoring the fundamental conditions of His intercourse 
 with Israel. And the history must bear traces of this. 
 God's word does not return unto Him void without 
 accomplishing that which He pleaseth, and succeeding 
 in the thing whereto He sends it (Isa. Iv. 11). 
 
 Now it is certain that the first sustained and 
 thorough attempt to put down the popular worship, 
 and estabhsh an order of religion conformed to the 
 written law, was under King Josiah. An essay in the 
 same direction had been made by Hezekiah at the close 
 of the eighth century B.C. (1 Kings xviii. 4, 22). Of the 
 details of Hezekiah's reformation we know little. It 
 was followed by a violent and bloody reaction under 
 his successor Manasseh, and in Josiah's time the whole 
 work had to be done again from the beginning. Heze- 
 kiah evidently acted in harmony with Isaiah and his 
 fellow -prophets ; but neither in the history nor in 
 tlieir writings is anything said of the written law as the 
 rule and standard of reformation. In the case of Josiah 
 it was otherwise. The reformation in his eighteenth 
 year (B.C. 521) was based on the Book of the Law found 
 in the Temple, and was carried out in pursuance of a 
 
LECT. IX. REFORMATION, 245 
 
 solemn covenant to obey the law, made by the king 
 and the people in the house of Jehovah. This is an act 
 strictly parallel to the later covenant and reformation 
 under Ezra. But it did not amount, like Ezra's refor- 
 mation, to a complete establishment of the whole ritual 
 system of the Pentateuch. The book of Nehemiah 
 expressly says as much with respect to the Feast of 
 Tabernacles. And the same fact comes out in regard to 
 the order of the priestly ministrations at the Temple. 
 For, while Josiah put to death the priests of the high 
 places of Ephraim, he brought the priests of tlie Judoean 
 high places to Jerusalem, where they were not allowed 
 to minister at the altar, but " ate unleavened bread in 
 the midst of their brethren " (2 Kings xxiii. 8, 9). The 
 reference here is to the unleavened bread of the Temple 
 oblations, which, on the Levitical law, was given to the 
 sons of Aaron, to be eaten in the court of the sanctuary 
 (Lev. vi. 14-18 ; Xum. xviii. 9). It appears, then, 
 that the priests of the local high places were recognised 
 as brethren of the temple priests, and admitted to a 
 share in the sacred dues, though not to full altar privi- 
 leges. This was unquestionably a grave Levitical 
 irregularity, for, though it appears from Ezek. xliv. 10 
 seq^. that the priests of the high places were Levites, it 
 is not for a moment to be supposed that they were all 
 sons of Aaron (compare Keh. vii. 63 seq^j, Tliis point 
 wiU come up again along with other indications 
 that the worship in the Temple at Jerusalem was not 
 established by Josiah in full conformity with the Levi- 
 
246 JOSIAH. LECT. IX. 
 
 tical system. All that I ask you to carry with you at 
 present is that Josiah's reformation, although based 
 upon the law, and explicitly taking it as the standard, 
 did not go the whole length of that Pentateuchal system 
 which we now possess. In truth, when we compare 
 the reformation of Josiah, as set forth in Second Kings, 
 with what is written in the Pentateuch, we observe 
 that everything that Josiah acted upon is found writ- 
 ten in one or other part of Deuteronomy. So far as the 
 history goes, there is no proof that his '* Book of the 
 Covenant " was anything more than the book of Deuter- 
 onomy, which, in its very form, appears to have once 
 been a separate volume. ^^^ 
 
 No one can read 2 Kings xxii., xxiii. without observ- 
 ing how entirely novel was the order of things which 
 Josiah introduced. Before the Book of the Law was 
 read to him, Josiah was interested in holy things, and 
 engaged in the work of restoring the Temple. But the 
 necessity for a thorough overturn of the popular sanctu- 
 aries came on him as a thing entirely new. It is plain, 
 too, that he had to consider established privileges and 
 a certain legitimate status on the part of the priests of 
 the high places. There was in Judaea a class of irregular 
 priests called Kemarim, instituted by royal authority 
 (E. V. idolatrom priests, 2 Kings xxiii. 5), whom he 
 simply put down. But the priests of the popular high 
 places were recognised priests of Jehovah, and, instead 
 of being punished as apostates, they received support 
 and a certain status in the Temple. We now see the 
 
LECT. IX. y EH 01 AD A. 247 
 
 full significance of the toleration of the high places 
 by the earlier kings of Judah. They were tolerated 
 because they were not known to be any breach of the 
 religious constitution of Israel. Even the Temple priests 
 knew of no such constitution. The high places were 
 not interfered with by King Jehoash when his conduct 
 was entirely directed by the high priest Jehoiada (2 
 Kings xii. 2, 3). Yet Jehoiada had every motive for 
 suppressing the local sanctuaries, which diminished the 
 dues of the central altar, and he could hardly have 
 failed to move in this direction if he had had the law at 
 his back. It seems, however, that the written covenant 
 of Jehovah with Israel, preserved in the Temple, was 
 not yet identical with Josiah's Book of the Covenant 
 (2 Kings xxiii. 2). In the account of the dedication 
 of the Temple (2 Kings viii. 9, 21), the covenant is 
 identified with the two tables of stone preserved in 
 the ark. 
 
 These facts do not mean, merely, that the law was 
 disobeyed. They imply that the complete system of 
 the Pentateuch was not known in the period of the 
 kings of Judah, even as the theoretical constitution of 
 Israel. No one, even among those most interested, 
 shows the least consciousness that the Temple and its 
 priesthood have an exclusive claim on aU the worship 
 of Israel. And the local worship, which proceeds on a 
 diametrically opposite theory, is acknowledged as a part 
 of the established ordinances of the land. 
 
 Here, then, the question rises. Was the founding of 
 
248 THE TEMPLE lect. ix. 
 
 the Temple on Zion undertaken as part of an attempt to 
 give practical force to the Levitical system ? Was this, 
 at least, an effort to displace the traditional religion and 
 establish the ordinances of the Pentateuch ? The whole 
 life ot Solomon answers this question in the negative. 
 His royal state, of which the Temple and its service were 
 a part, was never conformed to the law. He not only 
 did not abolish the local sanctuaries, but built new 
 shrines, which stood till the time of Josiah, for the gods 
 of the foreign wives whom, like liis father David (2 Sam. 
 iii. 3), he married against the Pentateuchal law (1 Kings 
 xi. ; 2 Kings xxiii. 13). And when the book oi Deut- 
 eronomy describes what a king of Israel must not be, 
 it reproduces line for line the features of the court of 
 Solomon (Deut. xvii. 16 seq^. Even the ordinances of 
 Solomon's Temple were not Levitically correct. The 
 two brazen pillars which stood at the porch (1 Kings 
 vii. 21) were not different from the forbidden ma^ceba, 
 or from the twin pillars of Hercules, from which their 
 Tyrian artist probably copied them;^^^ and 1 Kings ix. 25 
 can hardly bear any other sense than that the king offi- 
 ciated at the altar in person three times a year. That 
 implies an entire neglect, on his part, of the strict law 
 of separation between the legitimate priesthood and lay- 
 men ; but the same disregard of the exclusive sanctity 
 of the Temple priesthood, and of that twofold cordon of 
 Aaronites and Levites which the law demands to protect 
 the Temple from profanation, reappears in later times, 
 and indeed was a standing feature in the whole history 
 
LECT. IX. OF SOLOMON. 249 
 
 of Solomon's Temple. The prophet Ezekiel, writing after 
 the reforms of King Josiah, and alluding to the way in 
 which the Temple service was carried on in his own time, 
 complains that uncircumcised foreigners were appointed 
 as keepers of Jehovah's charge in His sanctuary (Ezek. 
 xliv. 6 seq.)P Who were these foreigners, uncircumcised 
 in flesh and uncircumcised in heart, by whom the sanctity 
 of the Temple was habitually profaned ? The history 
 still provides details to make this quite clear to us. 
 
 There was one important body of foreigners in the 
 service of the kings of Judah from the time of David 
 downwards. David instituted a bodyguard of Kerethim 
 and Pelethim, or rather of Cretans and Philistines 
 (2 Sam. XV. 18), to whom the Hebrew of 2 Sam. xx. 23 
 adds a name which has been obliterated in our English 
 version, the Carians. These foreign soldiers were a 
 sort of janissaries attached to the person of the sove- 
 reign, after the common fashion of Eastern monarchs, 
 who deem themselves most secure when surrounded by 
 a band of followers uninfluenced by family connections 
 with the people of the land. The constitution of the 
 bodyguard appears to have remained unchanged to the 
 fall of the Judaean state. The Carians are again men- 
 tioned in the Hebrew text of 2 Kings xi. 4, and the 
 prophet Zephaniah, ^Titing under King Josiah, still 
 speaks of men connected with the court, who were clad 
 in foreign garb and leaped over the threshold. To leap 
 over the threshold of the sanctuary is a Philistine cus- 
 tom (1 Sam. V. 5); and when the prophet adds that these 
 
250 THE UNCIRCUMCISED lect. ix. 
 
 Philistines of the court fill their master's house with 
 violence and fraud, vre recognise the familiar characters 
 of Oriental janissaries (Zeph. i. 8, 9). 
 
 The foreign guards, whom we thus see to have con- 
 tinued to the days of Zephaniah, are unquestionably 
 identical with the uncircumcised foreigners whom Eze- 
 kiel found in the Temple. For the guard accompanied 
 the king when he visited the sanctuary (1 Kings xiv. 28), 
 and the Temple gate leading to the palace was called 
 "the gate of the foot-guards" (2 Kings xi. 19). Nay, 
 so intimate was the connection between the Temple and 
 the palace that the royal bodyguard were also the 
 Temple guards, going in and out in courses every week 
 (2 Kiogs xi. 9). It was the centurions of the Carians 
 and the footguards who aided Jehoiada in setting King 
 Jehoash on the throne; and 2 Kings xi. 11, 14, pictures 
 the coronation of the young king wliile he stood by a 
 pillar, " according to custom," surrounded by the foreign 
 bodyguard, who formed a circle about the altar and the 
 front of the shrine, in the holiest part of the Temple 
 court (compare Joel ii. 17).^^^ Thus it appears that as 
 long as Solomon's Temple stood, and even after the 
 reforms of Josiah, the function of keeping the ward of 
 the sanctuary, which by Levitical law is strictly confined 
 to the house of Levi, on pain of death to the stranger 
 who comes near (Num. iii. 38), devolved upon uncircum- 
 cised foreigners, who, according to the law, ought never 
 to have been permitted to set foot within the courts of 
 the Temple. From this fact the inference is inevitable, 
 
LECT. IX. IN THE TEMPLE. 251 
 
 that under the first Temple the pnncii)les of Levitical 
 sanctity were never recognised or enforced. Even the 
 high priests had no conception of the fundamental im- 
 portance which the middle books of the Pentateuch 
 attach to tlie concentric circles of ritual holiness around 
 and within the sanctuary, an importance to be measured 
 by the consideration that the atoning ritual on which 
 Jehovah's forgiving grace depends presupposes tlie 
 accurate observance of every legal precaution against 
 profanation of the holy things. This being so, we can- 
 not be surprised to find that the priests of the Temple 
 were equally neglectful, or rather equally ignorant, of 
 the correct system of atoning ordinances which form 
 the very centre of the Levitical Law to which all other 
 ordinances of sanctity are subservient. The sin offering 
 and the trespass offering are not once mentioned before 
 the Captivity. On the contrary, we read of an estab- 
 lished custom in the time of the high priest Jehoiada 
 that sin money and trespass money were given to the 
 priests (2 Kings xii. 16; comp. Hos. iv. 8; Am. ii. 8). This 
 usage, from a Levitical point of view, can be regarded as 
 nothing but a gross case of simony, the secularising for 
 the advantage of the priests of one of the most holy and 
 sacred ordinances of the Levitical system. Yet this we 
 find fixed and established, not in a time of national 
 declension, but in the days of the reforming high priest 
 who extirpated the worsliip of Baal. 
 
 In truth the first Temple had not that ideal position 
 which the law assigns to the central sanctuary. It 
 
252 THE KING AND lect. ix. 
 
 did not profess to be tlie one lawful centre of all 
 worship, and its pre-eminence was not wholly due to 
 the ark, but lay very much in the circumstance that it 
 ^vas the sanctuary of the kings of Judah, as Bethel, 
 according to Amos vii. 13, was a royal chapel of the 
 monarchs of Ephraim. The Temple was the king's 
 shrine ; therefore his bodyguard were its natural ser- 
 vants, and the sovereign exercised a control over all its 
 ordinances, such as the Levitical legislation does not 
 contemplate and could not approve. We find that King 
 Jehoash introduced changes into the destination of the 
 Temple revenues. In his earlier years the rule was that 
 the priests received pecuniary dues and gifts of various 
 kinds so different from those detailed in the Pentateuch 
 that it is impossible for us to explain each one; but, 
 such as they were, the priests appropriated them subject 
 to an obligation to maintain the fabric of the Temple. 
 King Jehoash, however, found that wdiile the priests 
 pocketed their dues nothing was done for the repair of 
 the Temple, and he therefore ordained that all moneys 
 brought into the Temple should be paid over for the 
 repaii's of the house, with the exception of the trespass 
 and sin money, which remained the perquisite of the 
 priests. Such interference with the sacred dues is in- 
 conceivable under the Levitical system, wdiich strictly 
 regulates the destination of every offering. 
 
 But, indeed, the kings of Judah regarded the trea- 
 sury of the Temple as a sort of reserve fund available 
 for political purposes, and Asa and Hezekiah drew upon 
 
LECT. IX. THE TEMPLE 253 
 
 this source when their own treasury was exhausted 
 (1 Kmgs XV. 18; 2 Kings xviii. 15). 
 
 With this picture before us, we are no longer sur- 
 prised to find that Urijah, or Uriah, the priest and 
 friend of Isaiah, whom the prophet took with him as a 
 faithful witness to record (Isa. viii. 2), co-operated 
 with King Ahaz in substituting a new altar, on a 
 pattern sent from Damascus, for the old brazen altar of 
 Solomon, and in general allowed the king to regulate 
 the altar service as he pleased (2 Kings xvi. 10 scq). 
 The brazen altar, which, according to the book of Num- 
 bers, even the Levites could not touch without danger 
 of death, was reserved for the king to inquire by. 
 
 The force of these facts lies in the circumstance 
 that they cannot be explained as mere occasional devia- 
 tions from Levitical orthodoxy. The admission of 
 uncircumcised strangers as ministers in the sanctuary 
 is no breach of a spiritual precept which the hard heart 
 of Israel was unable to follow, but of a ceremonial ordi- 
 nance adapted to the imperfect and unspiritual state of 
 the nation. An interest in correct ritual is found in 
 the least spiritual rehgions, and there is ample proof 
 that it was not lacking in Israel, even in the barbarous 
 times of the Judges. The system of ceremonial sanctity 
 was calculated to give such Hat to the Temple and its 
 priesthood that there was every motive for maintaining 
 it in force if it was known at all. But in reality it was 
 violated in every point. All the divergences from Levi- 
 tical ritual lie in this direction. The sharp line of dis- 
 12 
 
254 PERIOD OF lect. ix. j 
 
 ) 
 
 tinction between laymen's privileges and priestly func- ! 
 
 tions laid down in the Law has its rationale in the 
 theory and practice of atonement. In the Temple we 
 find irregular atonements, a lack of precise grades of 
 holiness, incomplete recognition of the priestly preroga- 
 tive, subordination of the priesthood to the palace 
 carried so far that Abiathar is deposed from the priest- 
 hood, and Zadok, who was not of the old priestly family 
 of Shiloh, set in his place by a mere fiat of King Solo- 
 mon/""^ And, along with this want of clear definition in 
 the inner circles of ceremonial holiness, we naturally 
 find that the exclusive sanctity of the nation was not 
 understood in a Levitical sense ; for not only Solomon 
 but David himself intermarried with heathen nations, 
 and Absalom, the son of a Sjrrian princess, was the 
 recognised heir to the throne on account oi his mother's 
 dignity, and became, through his daughter, the progeni- 
 tor of the later kings of Judah. All these facts hang 
 together ; they show that the priests of the Temple, and 
 righteous kings like David, were as ignorant of the 
 Levitical theory of sanctity as the mass of the vulgar 
 and the unrighteous kings. 
 
 The Temple of Solomon never stood contrasted with 
 the popular high places as the seat of the Levitical 
 system, holding forth in their purity the typical ordi- 
 nances of atonement which the popular worship ignored. 
 The very features which separate the religion of the 
 ritual law from the traditional worship of the high 
 places are those which the guardians of the Temple 
 systematically ignored. 
 
LECT. IX. THE JUDGES. 255 
 
 Let us now go back beyond the age of Solomon to 
 the period of the Judges, and the age of national revival 
 which followed under Samuel, Saul, and David. We 
 need not again dwell on the fact that the whole religion 
 of the time of the Judges was Levitically false. Even 
 the divinely chosen leaders of the nation knew not the 
 law (supra, p. 220). What is important for our argument 
 is to observe that breaches of the law were not confined 
 to times of rebellion against Jehovah. From the stand- 
 point of the Pentateuchal ritual, Israel's repentance was 
 itself illegal in form. Acts of true worship, which 
 Jehovah accepted as the tokens of a penitent heart and 
 answered by deeds of deliverance, were habitually asso- 
 ciated with illegal sanctuaries. At Bochim the people 
 wept at God's rebuke and sacrificed to the Lord (Jud. ii. 
 5). Deborah and Barak opened their campaign at the 
 sanctuary of Kedesh. Jehovah Himself commanded 
 Gideon to build an altar and do sacrifice at Ophrah, and 
 this sanctuary still existed in the days of the historian 
 (Judges vi. 24). Jephthah spake all his words " before 
 the Lord" at Mizpah or Eamoth Gilead, the ancient 
 sanctuary of Jacob, when he went forth in the spirit of 
 the Lord to overthrow the Ammonites (Jud. xi. 11, 
 29 ; Gen. xxxi. 45, 54), and his vow before the campaign 
 was a vow to do sacrifice in Mizpah. 
 
 We are accustomed to speak of the sacrifices of 
 Gideon and Manoah as exceptional, and, no doubt, they 
 were so if our standard is the law of the Pentateuch. 
 But in that case all true religion in that period was 
 
256 THE TEMPLE lect. ix. 
 
 exceptional; for all God's acts of grace mentioned in 
 the book of Judges, all His calls to repentance, and all 
 the ways in which He appears from time to time to 
 support His people, and to show Himself their living 
 God, ready to forgive in spite of their disobedience, are 
 connected with this same local worship. The call to 
 repentance is never a call to put aside the local sanc- 
 tuaries and worship only before the ark at Shiloh. On 
 the contrary, the narrator assumes, without question, the 
 standpoint of the popular religion, and never breathes a 
 doubt that Jehovah was acceptably worshipped in the 
 local shrines. In truth, no other judgment on the case 
 was possible ; for through all this period Jehovah's 
 gracious dealings with His people expressed His accept- 
 ance of the local worship in unambiguous language. If 
 the Pentateuchal programme of worship and the rules 
 which it lays down for the administration of the dis- 
 pensation of grace existed in these days, they were at 
 least absolutely suspended. It was not according to 
 the law that Jehovah administered His grace to Israel 
 during the period of the Judges. 
 
 Nevertheless the fundamental requisites for a prac- 
 tical observance of the Pentateuchal worship existed in 
 these days. The ark was settled at Shiloh ; a legitimate 
 priesthood ministered before it. There is no question 
 that the house of Eli were the ancient priesthood of the 
 ark. It was to the clan, or father's hoii,se, of Eli, accord- 
 ing to 1 Sam. ii. 27 seq., that Jehovah appeared in 
 Egypt, choosing him as His priest from all the tribes of 
 
LECT. IX. A7 SHILOH. "ihl 
 
 Israel. The priesthood was legitimate, and so was the 
 sanctuary of Shiloh, which Jeremiah calls Jehovah's 
 place, where He set His name at the first (Jer. vii. 
 12). Here therefore, if anywhere in Israel, the law must 
 have had its seat; and the worship of Shiloh must have 
 preserved a memorial of the Mosaic ritual. 
 
 We have an amount of detailed information as to 
 the ritual of Shiloh, which shows the importance attached 
 to points of ceremonial religion. Shiloh was visited by 
 pilgrims from the surrounding country of Ephraim, not 
 three times a year according to the Pentateuchal law, 
 but at an annual feast. This appears to have been a 
 vintage feast, like the Pentateuchal Feast of Tabernacles, 
 for it was accompanied by dances in the vineyards ( Jud. 
 xxi. 21), and according to the correct rendering of 1 Sam. 
 i. 20, 21, it took place when the new year came in, that 
 is, at the close of the agricultural year, which ended with 
 the ingathering of the vintage (Exod. xxxiv. 22). It had 
 not a strictly national character, for in Judges xxL 19 
 it appears to be only locally known, and to have the 
 character of a village festival. Indeed a quite similar 
 feast was observed at Shechem (Jud. ix. 27).^^^ 
 
 There was, however, a regular sacrifice performed 
 by each worshipper in addition to any vow he might 
 have made (1 Sam. i. 21), and the proper due to be paid 
 to the priests on these offerings was an important ques- 
 tion. The great offence of Eli's sons was that they 
 " knew not Jehovah and the priests' dues from the 
 people." They made irregular exactions, and, in parti- 
 
258 THE TEMPLE lect. ix. 
 
 cular, would not burn the fat of the sacrifice till they 
 had secured a portion of uncooked meat (1 Sam. ii. 
 12 sc^.). Under the Levitical ordinance this claim 
 was perfectly regular ; the worshipper handed over the 
 priest's portion of the flesh along with the fat, and j)art 
 of the altar ceremony was to wave it before Jehovah 
 (Lev. vii. 30 scg-., x. 15). But at Shiloh the claim was 
 viewed as illegal and highly wicked. It caused men to 
 abhor Jehovah's offering, and the greed which Eli's 
 sons displayed in this matter is given as the ground of 
 the prophetic rejection of the whole clan of priests of 
 Shiloh (1 Sam. ii. 17, 29). 
 
 The importance attached to these details shows how 
 essential to the religion of those days was the obser- 
 vance of all points of established ritual. But the ritual 
 was not that of the Levitical law. Nay, when we look 
 at the worship of Shiloh more closely, we find glaring 
 departures from the very principles of the Pentateuchal 
 sanctuary. The ark stood, not in the tabernacle, but in 
 a temple with doorposts and folding-doors, which were 
 thrown open during the day (1 Sam. i, 9, iii. 15). Access 
 to the temple was not guarded on rules of Levitical 
 sanctity. According to 1 Sam. iii. 3, Samuel, as a 
 servant of the sanctuary who had special charge of the 
 doors (ver. 15), actually slept " in the temple of Jehovah 
 where the ark of God was." To our English translators 
 this statement seemed so incredible, that they have 
 ventured to change the sense against the rules of the 
 language. One can hardly wonder at them, for, accord- 
 
AT SHILOH. 259 
 
 ing to tlie Law, the place of the ark could be entered 
 only by the high priest once a year, and with special 
 atoninf]^ services. And, to make the thinoj more sur- 
 prising, Samuel was not of priestly family. His father 
 was an Ephrathite, and he himself came to the Temple 
 by a vow of his mother to dedicate him to Jehovah. 
 By the Pentateuchal law such a vow could not make 
 Samuel a priest. But here it is taken for granted that 
 he becomes a priest at once. As a child he ministers 
 before Jehovah, wearing the ephod which the law con- 
 fines to the high priest, and not only this, but the high 
 priestly mantle {mcU, E. V. coat, 1 Sam. ii. 18, 19). 
 And priest as well as prophet Samuel continued all his 
 life, sacrificing habitually at a variety of sanctuaries. 
 These irregularities are sufficiently startling. They pro- 
 fane the holy ordinances, which, under the Law, are 
 essential to tlie legitimate sanctuary. And, above all, 
 it is noteworthy that the service of the great day of 
 expiation could not have been legitimately performed in 
 the temple of Shiloh, where there is no awful seclusion 
 of the ark in an inner adyton, veiled from every eye, and 
 inaccessible on ordinary occasions to every foot. These 
 things strike at the root of the Levitical system of 
 access to God. But of them the prophet who came to 
 EU has nothing to say. He confines himself to the 
 extortions of the younger priests. 
 
 The Law was as little known in Shiloh as among 
 the mass of the people, and the legitimate priesthood, 
 the successors of Moses and Aaron, are not judged by 
 
260 THE AGE lect. ix. 
 
 God according to the standard of the Law. Where, 
 then, during this time was the written priestly Torah 
 preserved ? If it lay neglected in some comer of the 
 sanctuary, who rescued it when the Philistines destroyed 
 the Temple after the battle of Ebenezer ? "Was it car- 
 ried to Nob by the priests, who knew it not, or was it 
 rescued by Samuel, who, in all his work of reformation, 
 never attempted to make its precepts the rule of reli- 
 gious life ? 
 
 The capture of the ark, the fall of Shiloh, and the 
 extension of the Philistine power into the heart of 
 Mount Ephraim were followed by the great national 
 revival successively headed by Samuel, Saul, and David. 
 The revival of patriotism went hand in hand with zeal 
 for the service of Jehovah. In this fresh zeal for reli- 
 gion, affairs of ritual and worship were not neglected. 
 Saul, who aimed at the destruction of necromancy, was 
 also keenly aHve to the sin of eating flesh with the 
 blood (1 Sam. xiv. 33) ; the ceremonially unclean might 
 not sit at his table (1 Sam. xx. 26) ; and there are other 
 proofs that ritual observances were viewed as highly 
 important (l Sam. xxi. 4 seq^. ; 2 Sam. xi. 4), though the 
 details agree but ill with the Levitical ordinances. The 
 religious patriotism of the period finds its main expres- 
 sion in frequent acts of sacrifice. On every occasion of 
 national importance the people assemble and do service 
 at some local sanctuary, as at Mizpah (1 Sam. vii. 6, 9), 
 or at Gilgal (x. 8, xi. 15, xiii. 4, 9, etc.). The seats 
 of authority are sanctuaries, Piamah, Bethel, Gilgal 
 
LECT. IX. OF SAMUEL. ^ 261 
 
 (vii. 16, 17, comp. x. 3), Beersheba (viii. 2, comp. 
 Amos V. 5, viii. 14), Hebron (2 Sam. ii. 1, xv. 12). 
 Saul builds altars (1 Sam. xiv. 35). Samuel can make 
 a dangerous visit most colourably by visiting a local 
 sanctuary like Bethlehem, with an offering in his hand 
 (1 Sam. xvi.) ; and in some of these places there are 
 annual sacrificial feasts (1 Sam. xx. 6). At the same 
 time the ark is settled on the hill (Gibeah) at Kirjath-' 
 jearim, where Eleazar ben Abinadab was consecrated 
 its priest (1 Sam. vii. 1). The priests of the house of 
 Eli were at Nob, where there was a regular sanctuary 
 with shewbread, and no less than eighty-five priests 
 wearing a linen ephod (1 Sam. xxii. 18). 
 
 It is quite certain that Samuel, with aU liis zeal for 
 Jehovah, made no attempt to bring back this scattered 
 worship to forms of legal orthodoxy. He continued to 
 sacrifice at a variety of shrines ; and his yearly circuit 
 to Bethel, Gilgal, and Mizpah, returning to Eamah, 
 involved the recognition of all these altars (1 Sam. x. 3, 
 xi. 15, vii. 6, 9, ix. 12). 
 
 In explanation of this it is generally argued that 
 the age was one of religious interregnum, and that 
 Jehovah had not designated a new seat of worship to 
 succeed the ruined sanctuary of Shiloh. This argu- 
 ment might have some weight if the law of the one 
 sanctuary and the one priesthood rested only on the 
 book of Deuteronomy, which puts the case as if the 
 introduction of a strictly unified cultus was to be 
 deferred till the peaceful occupation of Palestine was 
 
262 SAMUEL AND ' lect. ix. 
 
 « 
 
 completed (Deut. xii. 8 sec[). But in the Levitical 
 legislation the unification of cultus is not attached to a 
 fixed place in the land of Israel, but to the movable 
 sanctuary of the ark and to the priesthood of the house 
 of Aaron. All the law of sacrificial observances is 
 given in connection with this sanctuary, and on the 
 usual view of the Pentateuch was already put into force 
 l)efore the Israelites had gained a fixed habitation. In 
 the days of Samuel the ark and the legitimate priest- 
 hood still existed. They were separated, indeed, — the 
 one at Kirjath-jearim, the other at Nob. But they might 
 easily have been reunited ; for the distance between 
 these towns is only a forenoon's walk. Both lay in that 
 part of the land which was most secure from Philistine 
 invasion, and formed the centre of Saul's authority. 
 For the Philistines generally attacked the central moun- 
 tain district of Canaan from the north by the easy roads 
 leading into the heart of the land from the plain of 
 Jezreel, and the country south of the gorge of Michmash 
 was the rallying ground of Hebrew independence. Yet 
 it is just in this narrow district, which a man might 
 walk across in a day, that we find a scattered worship, 
 and no attempt to concentrate it on the part of Samuel 
 and Saul. There was no plea of necessity to excuse 
 this if Samuel knew the Levitical law. Why should he 
 go from town to town making sacrifice in local high 
 places from which the sanctuary of Nob was actually 
 visible ? The Law does not require such tribute at the 
 hands of individuals. Except at the great pilgrimage 
 
LECT. IX. THE HIGH PLACES. 263 
 
 feasts the private Israelite is not called upon to bring 
 any other sacrifice than tlie trespass or sin offering 
 when he has committed some offence. But Samuel's 
 sacrifices were not sin offerings ; they were mere peace 
 offerings, the material of sacrificial feasts which under 
 the law had no urgency (1 Sam. ix., xvi.). What was 
 urgent on the Levitical theory was to re-establish the 
 stated burnt-offering and the due atoning ritual before 
 the ark in the hands of the legitimate priesthood and 
 on the pattern of the service in the wilderness. But in 
 place of doing this Samuel falls in with the local wor- 
 ship as it had been practised by the mass of the people 
 while Sliiloh still stood. He deserts the legal ritual for 
 a service which, on the usual theory, was mere will- 
 worship. The truth plainly is that Samuel did not 
 know of a systematic and exclusive system of sacrificial 
 ritual confined to the sanctuary of the ark. He did not 
 know a model of sacred service earlier than the choice 
 of Shiloh, which could serve the people when Shiloh 
 was destroyed. His whole conduct is inexplicable 
 unless, with the prophet Jeremiah, he does not recog- 
 nise the Levitical law of stated sacrifice as part of the 
 divine ordinances given in the time of Moses (Jer. 
 vii. 22). Grant with Jeremiah that sacrifice is a free 
 expression *of Israel's homage which Jehovah has not 
 yet regulated by law, and at once the conduct of 
 Samuel is clear, and Jehovah's acceptance of his ser- 
 vice intelligible. 
 
 At length, in the reign of David, the old elements of 
 
264 THE AGE lect. ix. 
 
 the central worship were reunited. The ark was brought 
 up from Kirjath-jearim to Jerusalem, and Abiathar, the 
 representative of the house of Eli, was there as priest. 
 Israel was again a united people, and there was no 
 obstacle to the complete restitution of the Levitical 
 cultus, had it been recognised as the only true expres- 
 sion of Israel's service. But still we find no attempt 
 to restore the one sanctuary and the exclusive privilege 
 of the one priesthood. According to the Law, the con- 
 secration of the priesthood is not of man but of God, 
 and Jehovah alone can designate the priest who shall 
 acceptably approach Him. The popular religion has 
 another view. To offer sacrifice is the privilege of every 
 Israelite. Saul though a layman had done so, and if 
 his sacrifice at Gilgal was a sin, the offence lay not in 
 the presumption of one who was not of the house of 
 Aaron, but in the impatience which had moved without 
 waiting for the promised presence of the prophet (1 
 Sam. xiii. 8 seq^. ; compare xiv. 35). The priest there- 
 fore was the people's delegate; his consecration was 
 from them not from Jehovah (Jud. xvii. 5, 12 ; 1 Sam. 
 vii. 1). In tliis respect David was not more orthodox 
 than Saul. When he brought up the ark to Jerusalem he 
 wore the priestly ephod, offered sacrifices in person, and, 
 to make it quite clear that in all this he assumed a 
 priestly function, he blessed the people as a priest in the 
 name of Jehovah (2 Sam. vi. 14, 18). Nor were these 
 irregularities exceptional; in 2 Sam. viii. 18 we read that 
 David's sons were priests. This statement, so incredible 
 
LECT. IX. OF DA VID. 265 
 
 on the traditional theory, has led our English version, 
 following the Jewish tradition of the Targum, to change 
 the sense, and substitute " chief rulers " for priests. 
 But the Hebrew word means priests, and can mean 
 nothing else. Equally irregular was David's relation to 
 the high places. His kingdom was first fixed at the 
 sanctuary of Hebron, and long after the ark was brought 
 up to Jerusalem he allowed Absalom to visit Hebron in 
 payment of a sacrificial vow (2 Sam. xv. 8, 12). But 
 in fact the book of Kings expressly recognises the 
 worsliip of the high places as legitimate up to the 
 time when the Temple was built (1 Kings iii. 2 seq). 
 The author or final editor of the history, who carries the 
 narrative down to the Captivity, occupied the standpoint 
 of Josiah's reformation. He knew how experience had 
 shown the many high places to be a constant temptation 
 to practical heathenism ; and though he is aware that 
 de facto the best kings tolerated tlie local shrines for 
 centuries after the temple was built, he holds that the 
 sanctuary of Zion ought to have superseded all other 
 altars. But before the temple the high places were in 
 his judgment legitimate. This again is intelligible 
 enough if he was guided by the law of Deuteronomy, 
 and understood the one sanctuary of Deuteronomy to be 
 none other than the temple of Jerusalem. But it is not 
 consistent with the traditional view of the Levitical 
 legislation as a system completed and enforced from the 
 days of"the wilderness in a form dependent only on the 
 existence of the Aaronic priesthood and the ark. And 
 
266 CONCLUSION lect. ix. 
 
 so we actually find that the author of Chronicles, who 
 stands on the basis of the Levitical legislation and the 
 system of Ezra's reformation, refuses to accept the simple 
 explanation that the high places were necessary before 
 the temple, and assumes that in David's time the only 
 sanctuary strictly legitimate was the great high place 
 of Gibeon, at which he supposes the brazen altar to have 
 stood (1 Chron. xvi. 39 seq., xxi. 29 seq. ; 2 Chron. i. 3 
 scq!) Of all this the author of Kings knows nothing. 
 From his point of view the worship of the high places 
 had a place and provisional legitimacy of its own with- 
 out reference to the ark or the brazen altar. ^'^ 
 
 The result of this survey is that, through the whole 
 period from the Judges to Ezekiel, the Law in its 
 finished system and fundamental theories was never the 
 rule of Israel's worship, and its observance was never 
 the condition of the experience of Jehovah's grace. 
 Although many individual points of ritual resembled the 
 ordinances of the Law, the Levitical tradition as a whole 
 had as little force in the central sanctuary as with the 
 mass of the people. The contrast between true and 
 false worship is not the contrast between the Levitical 
 and the popular systems. The freedom of sacrifice 
 which is the basis of the popular worship is equally the 
 basis of the faith of Samuel, David, and Elijah. The 
 reformers of Israel strove against the constant lapses of 
 the nation into syncretism, or the worship of foreign 
 gods, but they did not do so on the ground of the 
 Levitical theory of Israel's absolute separation from the 
 
LECT. IX. FROM HISTORY. 2G7 
 
 nations or of a unique holiness radiating from the one 
 sanctuary and descending in widening circles through 
 priests and Levites to the ordinary Israehte. The history 
 itself does not accept the Levitical standard. It accords 
 legitimacy to the popular sanctuaries before the founda- 
 tion of the temple, and represents Jehovah as accepting 
 the offerings made at them. With the foundation of the 
 temple the historian regards the local worship as super- 
 seded, but he does so from the practical point of view 
 that the worship there was in later times of heathenish 
 character (2 Kings xvii.). Nowhere does the condemna- 
 tion of the popular religion rest on the original consecra- 
 tion of the tabernacle, the brazen altar, and the Aaronic 
 priesthood as the exclusive channels of veritable inter- 
 course between Jehovah and Israel. 
 
 A dim consciousness of this witness of history is pre- 
 served in the fantastic tradition that the Law was lost 
 and restored by Ezra. In truth the people of Jehovah 
 never lived under tlie law, and the dispensation of 
 Divine grace never followed its pattern till Israel had 
 ceased to be a nation. The history of Israel refuses to 
 be measured by the traditional theory as to the origin 
 and function of the Pentateuch. In next Lecture we 
 must inquire whether the prophets confirm or modify 
 this result. 
 
268 DISCIPLINE lect. x. 
 
 LECTUEE X. 
 
 THE PKOPHETs/^^ 
 
 A SPECIAL object of the finished Pentateuchal system, £is 
 enforced among the Jews from the days of Ezra, was to 
 make the people of Jehovah visibly different from the 
 surrounding nations. The principle of holiness was a 
 principle of separation, and the ceremonial ordinances of 
 holiness, whether in daily life or in the inner circles of 
 the temple worship, were so many visible and tangible 
 fences set up to divide Israel, and Israel's religion, from 
 the surrounding Gentiles and their religion. Artificial 
 as this system may appear, the history proves that it 
 was necessary. The small community of the new 
 Jerusalem was under constant temptations to mingle 
 with the " people of the land." Intermarriages, such as 
 Ezra and Nehemiah suppressed by a supreme effort, 
 opened a constant door to heathen ideas and heathen 
 morality. The religion of Jehovah could not be pre- 
 served intact without isolating the people of Jehovah 
 from their neighbours, and this again could only be done 
 through a highly developed system of national customs 
 and usages, enlisting in the service of religious purity 
 the force of habit, and the natural conservatism of 
 
LECT. X. OF THE LA W. 2G9 
 
 Eastern peoples in all matters of daily routine. Long 
 before the time of Christ the ceremonial observances 
 had so grown into the life of the Jews that national 
 pride, inborn prejudice, a disgust at foreign habits 
 sucked in with his mother's milk, made the Israelite a 
 peculiar person, naturally averse to contact with the 
 surrounding Gentiles, and quite insensible to the 
 temptations which had drawn his ancestors into con- 
 tinual apostasy. The hatred of the human race, which, 
 to foreign observers, seemed the national characteristic 
 of the Jews under the Eoman Empire, was a fault 
 precisely opposite to the facility with which the 
 Israelites, before the Captivity, had mingled with the 
 heathen and served their gods. This change was un- 
 doubtedly due to the discipline of the Law, the strict 
 pedagogue, as St. Paul represents it, charged to watch 
 the steps of the child not yet fit for liberty. Without 
 the Law the Jews would have been absorbed in the | 
 nations, just as the Ten Tribes were absorbed andj 
 disappeared in their captivity. ' 
 
 But we have seen in the last two Lectures that this 
 legal discipline of ceremonial holiness was not enforced 
 in Israel before Josiah, nor, indeed, in all its fulness, at 
 any time before Ezra. The ordinary life of Israel was 
 not guarded against admixture with the nations. David 
 married the Princess Maacah of Geshur ; Solomon took 
 many strange wives ; Jehoram, in his good father's life- 
 time, wedded the half-heathen Athaliah. The 45th 
 Psalm celebrates the marriage of a king, the anointed of 
 
270 ISRAEL AND THE NATIONS lect. x. 
 
 Jehovah, with a daughter of Tyre, and people of lower 
 estate were not more concerned to keep themselves 
 apart from the Gentiles. Great sections of the nation 
 were indeed of mixed blood. The population of 
 Southern Judah was of half- Arab origin, and several 
 of the clans in this district bear names which indicate 
 their original affinity with Midian or Edom ; while we 
 know that in the time of the Judges and later many 
 cities like Shechem were half Israelite and half 
 Canaanite. This mixture of blood asserted itself in 
 social customs inconsistent with the Pentateuchal law, 
 and precisely identical with the usages of the heathen 
 Semites. Marriage with a half-sister, a known practice 
 of the Phoenicians and other Semites, had the precedent of 
 Abraham in its favour, was not thought inadmissible in 
 the time of David (2 Sam. xiii. 13), and was still a 
 current practice in the days of Ezekiel (xxii. 11). I 
 choose this instance as peculiarly striking, but it is not 
 an isolated case. There is ample proof in other ways 
 that relics of the system of female kinship, and peculiar 
 laws of marriage and succession proper to the heathen 
 Semites, lingered in Israel down to a late date.^^^ The 
 social system of the nation was not yet consolidated on 
 distinctive principles. Even in the practices of worship 
 the sanctuaries of Jehovah had much in common with 
 heathen shrines, and this holds good, not merely of the 
 local high places, but, as we saw in last Lecture, of the 
 Temple of Solomon itself, where the ceremonial of 
 Levitical exclusiveness was never enforced according to 
 
LECT. X. BEFORE THE EXILE. 271 
 
 the Pentateuch. I am now speaking of pmctice, not of 
 theory, and I apprehend that even those who maintain 
 that the whole Pentateuch was then extant as a theoreti- 
 cal system must admit that before the Exile the peda- 
 gogic ordinances of that system were not the practical 
 instrument by which the distinctive relation of Israel 
 to Jehovah was preserved, and the people hindered from 
 sinking altogether into Canaanite heathenism. 
 
 It was through an instrumentality of a very different 
 kind that Israel, with all its backslidings, was prevented 
 from wholly forgetting its vocation as the people of 
 Jehovah, that a spark of higher faith was kept alive in 
 all times of national declension, and the basis laid for 
 that final work of reformation which at length made 
 Israel the people of the Law not only in name but in 
 reality. That instrumentality was the word of the 
 prophets. 
 
 The conception that in Jehovah Israel has a national 
 God and Father, with a special claim on its worship, is 
 not in itself a thing peculiar to revealed religion. Other 
 Semitic tribes had their tribal gods. Moab is the people 
 of Chemosh, and the members of the nation are called 
 sons and daughters of the national deity even in the 
 Israelite lay, Numbers xxi. 29 (compare Malachi ii. 
 1 1). All religion was tribal or national. " Thy people," 
 says Euth, " shall be my people, and thy God my God " 
 (Euth i. IG). "Hath any nation changed its god?" 
 asks Jeremiah (ii. 11). Jehovah Himself, according to 
 Deut. iv. 19, has appointed the heavenly host and other 
 
272 STANDPOINT OF lect. x. 
 
 false deities to the heathen nations, while He conversely 
 is Himself the "portion of Jacob" (Jer. x. 16; comp. 
 Deut. xxix. 26). In the early times, to be an Israelite 
 and to be a worshipper of Jehovah is the same thing. 
 To be banished from the land of Israel, the inheritance 
 of Jehovah, is to be driven to serve other gods (1 Sam. 
 xxvi. 19). 
 
 These are ideas common to all Semitic rehgions. 
 But in Semitic heathenism the relation between a nation 
 and its god is natural. It does not rest on choice either 
 on the nation's part or on the part of the deity. The 
 god, so far as we can judge, appears to have been con- 
 ceived as father of his people in a physical sensa At 
 any rate, the god and the worshippers formed a natural 
 unity, which was also bound up with the land they 
 occupied. It was deemed necessary for settlers in a 
 country to " know the manner of the god of the land " 
 (2 Kings xvii. 26). The dissolution of the nation 
 destroys the national religion, and dethrones the national 
 deity. The god can no more exist without his people 
 than the nation without its sod. 
 
 The mass of the Israelites hardly seem to have risen 
 above this conception. The Pentateuch knows the 
 nation well enough to take it for granted that in their 
 banishment from " the land of Jehovah," where He can 
 no longer be approached in the sanctuaries of the 
 popular worship, they will serve other gods, wood and 
 stone (Deut. xxviii. 36 ; comp. Hosea ix.). Nay, it is 
 plain that a great part of Israel imagined, like their 
 
LECT. X. THE PROPHETS. 273 
 
 heatlien neighbours, that Jehovah had need of them as 
 much as they had need of Him, that their worship and 
 service could not be indifferent to Him, that He must, 
 by a natural necessity, exert His power against their 
 enemies and save His sanctuaries from profanation. 
 This indeed was the constant contention of the prophets 
 who opposed Micah and Jeremiah (Micah iii. 11 ; Jer. 
 vii. 4 seq., xxvii 1 seq^ ; and from their point of view, 
 the captivity of Judah was the final and hopeless 
 collapse of the religion of Jehovah. The religion of the 
 true prophets was very different. They saw Jehovah's 
 hand even in the fall of the state. The Assyrian and 
 the Babylonian were His servants (Isa. x. 5 scci. ; Jer. 
 xxvii 6), and the catastrophe which overwhelmed the 
 land of Israel, and proved that the popular religion was 
 a lie, was to the spiritual faith the clearest proof that 
 Jehovah is not only Israel's God, but the Lord of the 
 whole earth. As the death and resurrection of our 
 Lord are the supreme proof of the spiritual truths of 
 Christianity, so the death of the old Hebrew state and 
 the resurrection of the religion of Jehovah in a form 
 independent of the old national life is the supreme 
 proof that the religion of the Old Testament is no mere 
 natural variety of Semitic monolatry, but a dispensation 
 of the true and eternal religion of the spiritual God. 
 The prophets w^ho foresaw the catastrophe without 
 alarm and without loss of faith stood on a foundation 
 diverse from that of natural religion. They were the 
 organs of a spiritual revelation, who had stood, as they 
 
274 THE PROPHET lect. x. 
 
 themselves say, in tlie secret counsel of Jehovah (Amos 
 iii. 7; Jer. xxiii. 18, 22), ard knew the law of His 
 working, and the goal to which He was guiding His 
 people. It was not the law of ordinances, but the living 
 prophetic word in the midst of Israel, that separated the 
 religion of Jehovah from the religion of Baal or Chemosh, 
 and gave it that vitality which survived the overthrow 
 of the ancient state, and the banishment of Jehovah's 
 people from His land. 
 
 The characteristic mark of a true prophet is that he 
 has stood in the secret counsel of Jehovah, and speaks 
 the words which he has heard from His mouth. " The 
 Lord Jehovah," says Amos, " will not do anything with- 
 out revealing his secret to his servants the prophets. 
 The lion hath roared, who will not fear ? The Lord 
 Jehovah hath spoken, who can but prophesy?" But 
 the prophets do not claim universal foreknowledge. 
 The secret of Jehovah is the secret of His relations to 
 Israel. " The secret of Jehovah belongs to them that 
 fear him, and he will make them know his covenant " 
 (Psalm XXV. 14). " If they have stood in my secret 
 counsel, let them proclaim my words to my people, that 
 they may return from their evil way " (Jer. xxiii. 22). 
 The word secret or privy counsel {sod) is that used of a 
 man's intimate personal circle. The prophets stand in 
 this circle. They are in sympathy with Jehovah's 
 heart and will, their knowledge of His counsel is no 
 mere intellectual gift but a moral thing. They are not 
 diviners but intimates of Jehovah. Balaam, in spite of 
 
LECT. X. JEHOVAH'S INTIMATE. 275 
 
 his predictions, is not in the Old Testament called a 
 prophet. He is only a soothsayer (Josh. xiii. 22). 
 
 Why has Jehovah a circle of intimates within 
 Israel, confidants of His moral purpose and acquainted 
 with what He is about to do ? The prophets them- 
 selves supply a clear answer to this question. There 
 are personal relations between Jehovah and His people, 
 analogous to those of human friendship and love. 
 " Wlien Israel was a child I loved him, and called my 
 son out of Egypt. ... I taught Ephraim to go, holding 
 them by their arms. ... I drew them with human 
 bands, with cords of love " (Hosea xi. 1). " You alone 
 have I known," says Jehovah through Amos, " of all the 
 families of the earth" (Amos iii. 2). This relation 
 between Jehovah and Israel is not a mere natural, unin- 
 telligent and physically indissoluble bond such as 
 unites Moab to Chemosh. It rests on free love and 
 gracious choice. As Ezekiel xvi. G puts it, Jehovah 
 saw and pitied Jerusalem, when she lay as an infant 
 cast forth to die, and said unto her. Live. The relation 
 is moral and personal, and receives moral and personal 
 expression. Jehovah guides His people by His word, 
 and admits them to the knowledge of His ways. But 
 He does not speak directly to every Israelite (Deut. 
 xviii. 15 scq^). The organs of His loving and personal 
 intercourse with the people of His choice are the 
 prophets. " By a prophet Jehovah brought Israel out of 
 Egypt, and by a prophet he was preserved " (Hosea 
 xii. 13). "I brought you up from the land of Egypt, 
 
276 PROPHECY AND lect. x. 
 
 and led you in the wilderness forty years to possess the 
 land of the Amorites. And I raised up of your sons for 
 prophets, and of your young men for Nazarites. Is it 
 not even thus, ye children of Israel ?" (Amos ii. 10, 11). 
 The prophets, you perceive, regard their function as an 
 essential element in the national religion. It is they 
 who keep alive the constant intercourse of love between 
 Jehovah and His people which distinguishes the house of 
 Jacob from all other nations ; it is their work which 
 makes Israel's religion a moral and spiritual religion. 
 
 To understand this point we must remember that 
 in the Old Testament the distinctive features of the 
 religion of Jehovah are habitually represented in con- 
 trast to the religion of the heathen nations. It is taken 
 for granted that the religion of the nations does in a 
 certain sense address itself to man's legitimate needs. 
 The religion of Israel would not be the aU-sufiicient 
 thing it is, if the nation did not find in Jehovah the 
 true supply of those wants for which other nations turn 
 to the delusive help of the gods who are no gods. Now, 
 in all ancient religions, and not least in Semitic 
 heathenism, it is a main object of the worshipper to 
 obtain oracles from his god. The uncertainties of 
 human life are largely due to man's ignorance. His 
 life is environed by forces which he cannot understand 
 or control, and which seem to sport at will with his 
 existence and his happiness. All these forces are 
 viewed as supernatural, or rather — for in these ques- 
 tions it is important to eschew metaphysical notions 
 
LECT. X. DIVINATION, 277 
 
 not known to early thinkers — they are divine beings, 
 with which man can enter into league only by means 
 of his religion. They are to be propitiated by offerings, 
 and consulted by enchantments and soothsayers. In 
 Semitic heathenism the deity whom a tribe worships 
 as its king (Moloch) or lord (Baal) is often identified 
 with some supreme power of nature, with the mighty 
 sun, the lord of the seasons, or with the heavens that 
 send down rain, or with some great planet whose 
 stately march through the skies appears to regulate 
 the cycles of time. These are the higher forms of 
 religion. In lower types the deity is a sort of fetich or 
 totem more immediately identified with earthly objects, 
 — animals, trees, or the like. But in any case the god 
 is a member of the chain of hidden natural agencies on 
 which man is continually dependent, and with which 
 it is essential to establish friendly relations. Such 
 relations are attainable, for man himself is physically 
 connected with the natural powers. They produced 
 him ; he is the son of his god as well as his servant ; 
 and so the divinity, if rightly questioned and carefully 
 propitiated, will speak to the worshipper and aid him 
 by his counsel as weU as his strength. In all this 
 there is, properly speaking, no moral element. The 
 divine forces of nature seem to be personified, for they 
 hear and speak. But, strictly speaking, the theory of 
 such religion is the negation of personality. It is on 
 the physical side of his being that man has relations to 
 the godhead. Readers of Plato will remember how 
 13 
 
278 PROPHECY AND lect. x. 
 
 clearly tliis comes out in the Timoeus, where the 
 faculty of divination is connected with the appetitive 
 and irrational part of man's nature. ^ Tliat, of course, is 
 a philosophical explanation of popular notions. But it 
 indicates a characteristic feature in the religion of 
 heathenism. It is not as an intellectual and moral 
 being that man has fellowship with deities that are 
 themselves identified with physical powers. The 
 divine element in man through which he has access 
 to his god lies in the mysterious instincts of his lower 
 nature ; and paroxysms of artificially produced frenzy, 
 dreams, and diseased visions are the accepted means of 
 intercourse with the godhead. 
 
 AccoTdingly an essential element in the religion of 
 the heathen Semites was divination in its various forms, 
 of which so many are enumerated in Dent, xviii. 10, 11. 
 The diviner procured an oracle, predicting future events, 
 detecting secrets, and directing the worshipper what 
 choice to make in difficult points of conduct. Such 
 oracles were often sought in private life, but they were 
 deemed altogether indispensable in the conduct of the 
 state, and the soothsayers were a necessary part of the 
 political establishment of every nation. The Old 
 Testament takes it for granted that Jehovah acknow- 
 ledges and supplies in Israel the want which in other 
 nations is met by the practice of divination. The 
 place of the soothsayer is supplied by the prophets of 
 Jehovah. " These nations, which thou shalt dispossess, 
 hearken unto soothsayers and diviners ; but as for thee, 
 
LECT. X. DIVINATION. 279 
 
 Jehovah thy God siiffereth thee not to do so. A 
 prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like 
 unto me, will Jehovah thy God raise up unto thee ; 
 unto liim shall ye hearken " (Deut. xviii. 14 seq^. 
 
 In the popular religion, where the attributes of 
 Jehovah were not clearly marked off from those of the 
 heathen Baalim, little distinction was made between 
 prophet and soothsayer. The word prophet, nab%\ is not 
 exclusively Hebrew. It appears to be identical with 
 the Assyrian Nebo, the spokesman of the gods, answer- 
 ing to the Greek Hermes. And we know that there 
 were prophets of Baal, whose orgies are described in 
 1 Kings xviii., where we learn that they sought access 
 to their god in exercises of artificial frenzy carried so 
 far that, like modern fanatics of the East, they became 
 insensible to pain, and passed into a sort of temporary 
 madness, to which a supernatural character was no 
 doubt ascribed, as is still the case in similar religions. 
 This Canaanite prophetism then was a kind of divination, 
 based, like all divination, on the notion that the irra- 
 tional part of man's nature is that which connects him 
 with the deity. It appears that there were men calling 
 themselves prophets of Jehovah, who occupied no higher 
 standpoint. Saul and his servant went to Samuel with 
 the fourth part of a shekel as fee to ask him a question 
 about lost asses, and the story is told as if this were 
 part of the business of a common seer. In the time of 
 Isaiah, the stay and staff of Jerusalem, the necessary 
 props of the state, included not only judges and warriors 
 
280 PROFESSIONAL AND lect. x. 
 
 but prophets, diviners, men skilled in presages, and such 
 as understood enchantments (Isa. iii. 2, 3, Heb.). Simi- 
 larly Micah iii. 5 seq^, identifies the prophets and the 
 diviners, and places them alongside of the judges and 
 the priests as leaders of the nation. " The heads there- 
 of give judgment for bribes, and the priests give legal 
 decisions for hire, and the prophets divine for money ; 
 yet they lean upon Jehovah and say. Is not Jehovah 
 among us ? none evil can come upon us." You observe 
 that this false i)rophecy, which is nothing else than 
 divination, is practised in the name of Jehovah, and has 
 a recognised place in the state. And so, when Amos 
 appeared at Bethel to speak in Jehovah's name, the 
 priest Amaziah identified him with the professional 
 prophets who were fed by their trade (Amos vii. 12), 
 and formed a sort of guild, as the name " sons of the 
 prophets " indicates. 
 
 With these prophets by trade Amos indignantly 
 refuses to be identified. " I am no prophet," he cries, 
 " nor the member of a prophetic guild, but an herdsman, 
 and a plucker of sycomore fruit. And Jehovah took 
 me as I followed the flock, and said unto me. Go, pro- 
 phesy unto my people Israel." These words of the 
 earliest prophetic book clearly express the standpoint 
 of spiritual prophecy. With the established guilds, the 
 official prophets, if I may so call them, the men skilled 
 in enchantment and divination, whose business was a 
 trade involving magical processes that could be taught 
 and learned, Amos, Isaiah, and Micah have nothing in 
 
LECT. X. TRUE PROPHETS. 281 
 
 common ; tliey declaim against the accepted prophecy 
 of their time, as they do against all other parts of the 
 national religion which were no longer discriminated 
 from heathenism. They accept the principle that pro- 
 phecy is essential to religion. They admit that Jeho- 
 vah's guidance of His people must take the form of 
 continual revelation, supplying those needs which drive 
 heathen nations and the unspiritual masses of Israel to 
 practise divination. But the method of true revelation 
 has nothing in common with the art of the diviner. 
 " When they say unto you, Consult the familiar spirits 
 and wizards that peep and mutter : should not a people 
 consult its God ? shall they go to the dead on behalf of 
 the living?" (Isa. viii 19). Jehovah is a living God, a 
 moral and personal being. He speaks to His prophets, 
 not in magical processes or through the visions of poor 
 phrenetics, but by a clear intelligible word addressed to 
 the intellect and the heart. The characteristic of the 
 true prophet is that he retains his consciousness and 
 self-control under revelation. He is fiUed with might 
 by the spirit of Jehovah (Micah iii. 8). Jehovah 
 speaks to him as if He grasped him with a strong hand 
 (Isa. viiL 11). The word is within his heart like a 
 burning fire shut up in his bones (Jer. xx. 9), so that he 
 cannot remain silent. But it is an intelligible word, 
 winch speaks to the prophet's own heart and conscience, 
 forbidding Isaiah to walk in the way of the corrupt 
 nation, filling Micah with power to declare unto Jacob 
 his transgression, supporting the heart of Jeremiah with 
 
282 RELIGIOUS FUNCTION lect. x. 
 
 an inward joy amidst all his trials (Jer. xv. 16). The 
 first condition of such prophecy are pure lips and a 
 heart right with God. Isaiah's lips are purged and his 
 sin forgiven before he can go as Jehovah's messenger 
 (Isa. vi.) ; and to Jeremiah the Lord says, " If thou 
 return, then wiU I bring thee back, and thou shalt stand 
 before me : and if thou take forth the precious from the 
 vile, thou shalt be as my mouth : let them — the sinful 
 peox^le — turn to thee, but turn not thou to them " (Jer. 
 XV. 19). Thus the essence of true prophecy lies in 
 moral converse with Jehovah. It is in this moral con- 
 verse that the prophet learns the divine will, enters into 
 the secrets of Jehovah's purpose, and so by declaring 
 God's word to Israel keeps alive a constant spiritual 
 intercourse between Jehovah and His people. 
 
 According to the prophets this spiritual intercourse 
 is the essence of religion, and the " word of Jehovah," 
 in the sense now explained, is the characteristic and 
 distinguishing mark of His grace to Israel. When the 
 word of Jehovah is withdrawn, the nation is hopelessly 
 undone. Amos describes as the climax of judgment on 
 tlie Northern Kingdom a famine not of bread but of 
 hearing Jehovah's word. Men shall run from end to 
 end of the land to seek the word of Jehovah, and shall 
 not find it. In that day the fair virgins and the young 
 men shall faint for thirst, and the guilty people shall 
 fall to rise no more (Amos viii. 11 se^.). Conversely 
 the hope of Judah in its adversity is that " thine eyes 
 shall see thy teacher, and thine ears shall hear a word 
 
LECT. X. OF PROPHECY. 283 
 
 behind thee saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when 
 ye turn to the right hand or the left " (Isa. xxx. 20). 
 And so the function of the prophet cannot cease till the 
 days of the new covenant, when Jehovah shall write His 
 revelation in the hearts of all His people, when one man 
 " shall no more teach another saying, Know Jehovah : 
 for they shall all know me from the least of them unto 
 the greatest of them, saith Jehovah : for I will forgive 
 their iniquity, and remember their sin no more" (Jer. 
 xxxi. 33 scq}). When we compare this passage with 
 Isaiah vi., we see that under this new covenant the 
 prophetic consecration is extended to all Israel, and the 
 function of the teacher ceases, because all Israel shall 
 then stand in the circle of Jehovah's intimates, and see 
 the king in His beauty as Isaiah saw Him in prophetic 
 vision (Isa. xxxiii. 17). The same thought appears in 
 another form in Joel ii. 28, where it is represented as a 
 feature in the deliverance of Israel that God's spirit 
 shall be poured on all flesh, and young and old, freemen 
 and slaves, shall prophesy. But nowhere is the idea 
 more clear than in the last part of the book of Isaiah, 
 where the true people of Jehovah and the prophet of 
 Jehovah appear as identical. " Hearken unto me, ye 
 that know the right, the peo]jle in whose hearts my reve- 
 lation dwells ; fear ye not the reproach of man, neither 
 be ye afraid of their revilings. . . . I have put my words 
 in thy mouth, and I have covered thee in the shadow of 
 my hand, planting the heavens and laying the founda- 
 tion of the earth, and saying to Zion, Thou art my 
 people" (Isa. li. 7, 16). 
 
284 THE PROPHET AND lect. x. 
 
 We see then that the ideal of the Old Testament is 
 a dispensation in which all are prophets. " Would that 
 all the people of Jehovah were prophets," says Moses 
 in Num. xi. 29, " and that Jehovah would put his spirit 
 upon them." If prophecy were merely an institution 
 for the prediction of future events, this wish would be 
 futile. But the essential grace of the prophet is a heart 
 purged of sin, and entering with boldness into the inner 
 circle of fellowship with Jehovah. The spirit of Jeho- 
 vah, which rests on the prophet, is not merely a spirit 
 of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and 
 might, but a spirit to know and fear the Lord (Isa. xi. 
 2). The knowledge and fear of Jehovah is the sum of 
 all prophetic wisdom, but also of all religion ; and the 
 Old Testament spirit of prophecy is the forerunner of 
 the New Testament spirit of sanctifi cation. That this 
 spirit, in the Old Covenant, rests not upon all the faithful 
 but only upon chosen organs of revelation corresponds 
 to the limitations of the dispensation, in which the 
 primary subject of religion is. not the individual but the 
 nation, so that Israel's personal converse with Jehovah 
 can be adequately maintained, like other national func- 
 tions, through the medium of certain chosen and repre- 
 sentative persons. The prophet is thus a mediator, who 
 not only brings God's word to the people but conversely 
 makes intercession for the people with God (Isa. xxxvii. 
 4; Jer. xiv. 11, xv. 1, etc.). 
 
 The account of prophecy given by the prophets them- 
 selves involves, you perceive, a whole theory of religion, 
 
LECT. X. THE PRIEST. 285 
 
 pointing in the most necessary way to a New Testament 
 fulfilment. But the theory moves in an altogether 
 different plane from the Levitical ordinances, and in no 
 sense can it be viewed as a spiritual commentary on 
 them. For under the Levitical system Jehovah's grace 
 is conveyed to Israel through the priest; according to 
 the prophets it comes in the prophetic word. The 
 systems are not identical; but may they at least be 
 regarded as mutually supplementary ? 
 
 In their origin priest and prophet are doubtless 
 closely connected ideas. Moses is not only a prophet 
 but a priest (Deut. xviii. 15 ; Hos. xii. 13 ; Deut. xxxiii. 
 8 ; Psalm xcix. 6). Samuel also unites both functions ; 
 and there is a priestly as well as a prophetic oracle. In 
 early times the sacred lot of the priest appears to have 
 been more looked to than the prophetic word. David 
 ceases to consult Gad when Abiathar joins liim with the 
 ephod. (Compare 1 Sam. xiv. 18, xxii. 10, xxiii. 9, 
 xxviii. 6 with xxii 5.) Indeed, so long as sacrificial acts 
 were freely performed by laymen, the chief distinction 
 of a priest doubtless lay in his qualification to give an 
 oracle. The word which in Hebrew means priest is in 
 old Arabic the term for a soothsayer (Jcohcn, kdhin), and 
 in this, as in other points, the popular religion of Israel 
 was closely modelled on the forms of Semitic heathenism, 
 as we see from the oracle in the shrine of Micah (Jud. 
 xviii. 5. Comp. 1 Sam. vi. 2 ; 2 Kings x. 19).^^^ Tlie 
 official prophets of Judah appear to have been connected 
 with the priesthood and the sanctuary until the close of the 
 
286 THE PRIESTS AND lect. x. 
 
 kingdom (Isa. xxviii. 7; Jer. xxiii. 11, xxvi. 11; comp. 
 Hosea iv. 5). They were in fact part of the establish- 
 ment of the temple subject to priestly discipline (Jer. 
 xxix. 26, XX. 1 seq^). They played into the priests' 
 hands (Jer. v. 31), had a special interest in the affairs of 
 worship (Jer. xxvii. 16; swpra, p. 114 se^.), and appear 
 in all their conflicts with Jeremiah as the partisans of 
 the theory that Jehovah's help is absolutely secured by 
 the temple and its services. 
 
 But the prophecy which thus co-operates with the 
 priests is not spiritual prophecy. It is a kind of 
 prophecy which the Old Testament calls divination, 
 which traffics in dreams in place of Jehovah's word 
 (Jer. xxiii. 28), and which, like heathen divination, 
 presents features akin to insanity that require to be re- 
 pressed by physical constraint (Jer. xxix. 26). Spiritual 
 I prophecy, in the hands of Amos, Isaiah, and their 
 successors, has no such alliance with the sanctuary and 
 its ritual. It develops and enforces its own doctrine of 
 the intercourse of Jehovah with Israel, and the conditions 
 of His grace, without assigning the slightest value to 
 priests and sacrifices. The sum of religion, according to 
 the prophets, is to know Jehovah, and obey His precepts. 
 Under the system of the law enforced from the days of 
 Ezra onwards an important part of these precepts are 
 ritual. Malachi, prophesying in or after the days of 
 Ezra, accepts this position as the basis of his prophetic 
 exhortations. The first proof of Israel's sin is to him 
 neglect of the sacrificial ritual. The language of the 
 
LECT. X. THE PROPHETS. 287 
 
 older prophets up to Jeremiah is quite different. " What 
 are your many sacrifices to me ? saith Jehovah : I 
 delight not in the blood of bullocks, and lambs, and he- 
 goats. When ye come to see my face, who hath asked 
 this at your hands, to tread my courts ? Bring no more 
 vain oblations . . . my soul hateth your new moons 
 and your feasts ; they are a burden upon me ; I am 
 weary to bear them" (Isa. i. 11 scq^. " I hate, I de- 
 spise your feast days, and I will not take pleasure in 
 your solemn assemblies. Take away from me the noise 
 of thy songs, and let me not hear the melody of thy 
 viols. But let justice flow as waters, and righteousness 
 like a perennial stream " (Amos v. 21 seq.). It is some- 
 times argued that such passages mean only that Jehovah 
 wiU not accept the sacrifice of the wicked, and that they 
 are quite consistent with a belief that sacrifice and ritual 
 are a necessary accompaniment of true religion. But 
 tliere are other texts which absolutely exclude such a 
 view. Sacrifice is not necessary to acceptable religion. 
 Amos proves God's indifference to ritual by reminding 
 the people that they offered no sacrifice and offerings to 
 Him in the wilderness during those forty years of 
 wandering which he elsewhere cites as a special proof 
 of Jehovah's covenant grace (Amos ii. 10, v. 25).^'^ 
 Micah declares that Jehovah does not require sacrifice ; 
 He asks nothing of His people, but "to do justly, and love 
 mercy, and walk humbly with their God " (Micah vi. 8). 
 And Jeremiah vii 21 seq. says in express words, " Put 
 your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat flesh. For 
 
288 RELIGION OF lect. x. 
 
 I spake not to your fathers and gave them no command 
 in the day that I brought them out of Egypt concerning 
 burnt offerings or sacrifices. But this thing commanded 
 I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, 
 and ye shall be my people, etc." (Compare Isa. xliii. 23 
 seq?) The position here laid down is perfectly clear. 
 When the prophets positively condemn the worship of 
 their contemporaries, they do so because it is associated 
 with immorality, because by it Israel hopes to gain God's 
 favour without moral obedience. This does not prove 
 that they have any objection to sacrifice and ritual in 
 the abstract. But they deny that these things are 
 of positive divine institution, or have any part in 
 the scheme on which Jehovah's grace is administered in 
 Israel. Jehovah, they say, has not enjoined sacrifice. 
 This does not imply that He has never accepted sacri- 
 fice, or that ritual service is absolutely wrong. But it is 
 at best mere form, which does not purchase any favour 
 from Jehovah, and might be given up without offence. 
 It is impossible to give a flatter contradiction to the 
 traditional theory that the Levitical system was enacted 
 in the wilderness. The theology of the prophets before 
 Ezekiel has no place for the system of priestly sacrifice 
 and ritual. 
 
 AU this is so clear that it seems impossible to mis- 
 understand it. Yet the position of the prophets is not 
 only habitually explained away by those who are 
 determined at any cost to maintain the traditional view 
 of the Pentateuch, but is still more seriously misunder- 
 
LECT. X. THE PROPHETS. 289 
 
 stood by a current rationalism not altogether confined 
 to those who, on principle, deny the reality of positive 
 revelation. It is a widespread opinion that the prophets 
 are the advocates of natural religion, and that this is the 
 reason of their indifference to a religion of ordinances 
 and ritual. On the naturalistic theory of religion, ethical 
 monotheism is the natural belief of mankind, not, indeed, 
 attained at once in all races, but worked out for them- 
 selves by the great thinkers of humanity, continually 
 reflecting on the ordinary phenomena of life and history. 
 It is held that natural religion is the only true religion, 
 that the proof of its truth lay open to aU men in all 
 countries, and that Christianity itself, so far as it is true, 
 is merely the historical development, in one part of the 
 world, of those ideas of ethical monotheism wliich other 
 nations than Israel might have worked out equally well 
 on the basis of their own experience and reflection. 
 From this point of view the prophets are regarded as 
 advanced thinkers, who had not yet thrown aside all 
 superstition, who were hampered by a belief in miracle 
 and special revelation, but whose teaching has abiding 
 value only in proportion as it reduced these elements to 
 a subordinate place and struck out new ideas essentially 
 independent of them. The prophets, we are told, 
 believed themselves to be inspired. But their true 
 inspiration was only profound thinking. They were 
 inspired as all great poetic and religious minds are 
 inspired ; and when they say that God has told them 
 certain things as to His nature and attributes, this only 
 
290 THE INSPIRATION lect. x. 
 
 means that they have reached a profound conviction of 
 spiritual truths concealed from their less intelligent 
 contemporaries. The permanent truths of religion are 
 those which spring up in the breast without external 
 revelation or traditional teaching. The prophets had 
 grasped these truths with great force, and so they were 
 indifferent to the positive forms which made up the 
 religion of the mass of their nation. This theory has 
 had an influence extending far beyond the circle of those 
 who deliberately accept it in its whole compass. Even 
 popular theology is not indisposed to solve the apparent 
 contradiction between the Prophets and the Pentateuch, 
 by saying that the former could afford to overlook the 
 . positive elements of Israel's religion, because their hearts 
 were filled with spiritual truths belonging to another 
 sphere. 
 
 But the prophets themselves put the case in a very 
 different light. According to them it is their religion 
 which is positive, and the popular worship which is 
 \ largely traditional and of human growth. That Jehovah 
 is the Judge, the Lawgiver, the King of Israel, is a pro- 
 position which they accept in the most literal sense. 
 Jehovah's word and thoughts are as distinct from their 
 own words and thoughts as those of another human 
 person. The mark of a false prophet is that he speaks 
 " the vision of his own heart, not from Jehovah's mouth " 
 (Jer. xxiii. 16). The word of Jehovah, the command- 
 ments and revelations of Jehovah, are given to them 
 niter n ally, but are not therefore identical with their 
 
LECT. X. OF THE PROPHETS. 291 
 
 own reflections. They have an external authority, the 
 authority of Him who is the King and Master of Israel. 
 This is not the place for a theory of revelation. But it 
 is well to observe, as a matter of plain fact, that the 
 inspiration of the prophets presents phenomena quite 
 distinct from those of any other religion. In the crasser 
 forms of religion the supernatural character of an oracle 
 is held to be proved by the absence of self-conscious 
 thought. The dream, the ecstatic vision, the frenzy of 
 the Pythoness, seem divine because they are not intelli- 
 gent. But these things are divination, not prophecy. 
 Jeremiah draws an express contrast between dreams 
 and the word of Jehovah (Jer. xxiii. 25-28). And the 
 visions of the prophets, which were certainly rare, and 
 by no means the standard form of revelation, are dis- 
 tinguished by the fact that the seer retains his con- 
 sciousness, his moral judgment, his power of thinking 
 (Isa. vi.). On the other hand, the assertion so often 
 made that the prophets identify the word of Jehovah 
 with their own highest thoughts, just as tlie Vedic poets 
 do, ignores an essential difference between the two cases. 
 The prophets drew a sharp distinction between their 
 own word and God's word, which these poets never do. 
 Nor is spiritual prophecy, as other scholars liold, a 
 natural product, of Semitic religion. Semitic religion, 
 like other religions, naturally produces diviners; but 
 even Mohammed had no criterion apart from his 
 hysterical fits to distinguish his own thoughts from the 
 revelations of Allah. ^^^ 
 
292 MEANING OF lect. x. 
 
 According to tlie prophets, all true knowledge of 
 God is readied, not by human reflection, but by the 
 instruction of Jehovah Himself. Keligion is to know 
 Jehovah, to fear Him and obey His commandments, as 
 one knows, fears, and obeys a father and a king. The 
 relations of Jehovah to Israel are of a x>erfectly matter- 
 of-fact kind. They rest on the historical fact that He 
 chose the people of Israel, brought them up from Egypt, 
 settled them in Canaan, and has ever since been present 
 in the nation, issuing comD^ands for its behaviour in 
 every concern of national life. In every point of con- 
 duct Israel is referred, not to its own moral reflections 
 and political wisdom, but to the Word of Jehovah. 
 
 According to the traditional view, the Word of 
 Jehovah is embodied in a book-revelation. The Torah, 
 instruction, or, as we should say, revelation of God, 
 is a written volume deposited with the priests, which 
 gives rules for all national and personal conduct, and 
 also provides the proper means for regaining God's 
 favour when it has been lost through sin. But to the 
 prophets the Torah has a very different meaning. 
 
 The prophets did not invent the word Torah. It is 
 a technical term of the current traditional religion. A 
 Torah is any decision or instruction on matters of law 
 and conduct given by a sacred authority. Thus m&reh, 
 or giver of Torah, may mean a soothsayer. The oak of 
 the Torah-giver (Gen. xii. 6) is identical with the sooth- 
 sayers' oak (Jud. ix. 37). You remember, in illustration 
 of this name, that Deborah gave her prophetic judgments 
 
LECT. X. THE WORD TORAH. 293 
 
 under " the palm-tree of Deborah " between Eamah and 
 Bethel. More frequent are allusions to the Torah of 
 the priests, which in like manner denotes, not a book 
 which they had in their hands, but the sacred decisions 
 given, by the priestly oracle or otherwise, in the sanc- 
 tuary, which in early Israel was the seat of divine judg- 
 ment (Exod. xviii. 19, xxi 6, where for tlie judges read 
 God; 1 Sam. ii. 25). Thus in Deut. xxxiii. 10 the busi- 
 ness of the Levites is to give Torah to Israel and to offer 
 sacrifice to God. In Jer. xviii. 18 the people give as a 
 ground of their security against the evils predicted by 
 Jeremiah that Torah shall not perish from the priest, 
 counsel from the wise, and the word from the prophet. 
 The priests are " they that handle the Torah " (Jer. ii. 
 8). Micah complains that the priests give Torahs or 
 legal decisions for hire (Micah iii. 11). In these pass- 
 ages the Torah is not a book but an oral decision, and 
 this the grammatical form of the word, as an infinitive 
 of the verb " to give a decision or instruction," shows to 
 be the primitive sense. 
 
 We have seen how spiritual prophecy branched off 
 and separated itself from the popular prophecy which 
 remained connected with the sanctuary and the priests. 
 In doing so it carried its own spiritual Torah with it. 
 When God bids Isaiah " bind up the testimony, seal 
 the Torah among my disciples," the reference is to the 
 revelation just given to the prophet himself (Isa. viii. 
 16). To this Torah and testimony, and not to wizards 
 and consulters of the dead, Israel's appeal for Divine 
 
294 SPOKEN AND lect. x. 
 
 guidance lies (verse 20). The Torali is the living pro- 
 phetic word. " Hear the word of Jehovah," and " Give 
 ear to the Torah of our God," are parallel injunctions 
 by which the prophet demands attention to his divine 
 message (Isa. i. 10). The Torah is not yet a finished 
 and complete system, booked and reduced to a code, 
 but a living word in the mouth of the prophets. In 
 the latter days the proof that Jehovah is King in Zion, 
 exalting His chosen hill above aU the mountains of the 
 earth, will still be that Torah proceeds from Zion and 
 the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem, so that all 
 nations come thither for judgment, and Jehovah's 
 word establishes peace among hostile peoples (Isa. ii. 2 
 seq^.; Micah v. 1 seq?). It is this continual living in- 
 struction of Jehovah present with His people which the 
 prophets, as we have already seen, regard as essential 
 to the welfare of Israel No written book would satisfy 
 the thirst for God's Word of which Amos speaks. The 
 only thing that can supersede the Torah of the prophets 
 is the Torah written in every heart and spoken by every 
 lip. " This is my covenant with them, saith Jehovah : 
 my spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I 
 have put in thy mouth shall not depart out of thy 
 mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the 
 mouth of thy seed's seed, saith Jehovah, from hence- 
 forth and for ever " (Isa. lix. 21). God's Word, not in 
 a book but in the heart and mouth of His servants, is 
 the ultimate ideal as well as the first postulate of 
 prophetic theology. 
 
LECT. X. WRITTEN TORAH. 295 
 
 How then did tins revelation, which is essentially 
 living speech, pass into the form of a written word such 
 as we still possess in the books of the Old Testament ? 
 To answer this question as the prophets themselves 
 would do, we must remember that among primitive 
 nations, and indeed among Eastern nations to this day, 
 books are not the foundation of sound knowledge. The 
 ideal of instruction is oral teaching, and the worthiest 
 shrine of truths that must not die is the memory and 
 heart of a faithful disciple. The ideal state of things is 
 that in which the Torah is written in Israel's heart, and 
 all his children are disciples of Jehovah (Isa. liv. 13). 
 But this ideal was far from the actual reality, and so in 
 religion, as in other branches of knowledge, the written 
 roll to which truth is committed supplies the lack of 
 faithful disciples. This comes out quite clearly in the 
 case of the prophetic books. The prophets write the 
 words which their contemporaries refuse to hear. So 
 Isaiah seals his revelation among the disciples of 
 Jehovah ; that is, he takes them as witnesses to a 
 document which is, as it were, a formal testimony 
 against Israel (Isa. viii. 1 seq^.^ 16). So Jeremiah, after 
 three-and-twenty years spent in speaking to a rebellious 
 people, writes down his prophecies that they may have 
 another opportunity to hear and repent (Jer. xxxvi.). 
 Jehovah's Word has a scope that reaches beyond the 
 immediate occasion, and a living force which prevents 
 it from returning to Him without effect ; and if it is 
 not at onae taken up into the hearts c-f the people, it 
 
296 WRITTEN PROPHECY. lect. x. 
 
 must be set in writing for future use and for a testi- 
 mony in time to come. Thus the prophets become 
 authors, and they and their disciples are students of 
 written revelation. One passage of an older seer is 
 cited as the text of further prophetic discourse both in 
 Isaiah ii. and in Micah v. ; and the prophecy against 
 Moab (Isa. xv., xvi.) is followed by the note of a later 
 prophet. " This is the word which Jehovah spake 
 against Moab long ago. But now Jehovah speaks, say- 
 ing, Within three short years the glory of Moab shall be 
 abased " (Isa. xvi. 13, 14). Thus we see how the begin- 
 nings of prophetic literature in the eighth century coin- 
 cide with the great breach between spiritual prophecy 
 and the popular religion. Elisha had no need to write, 
 for his word bore immediate fruit in the overthrow of 
 the house of Omri and the destruction of the worship- 
 pers of Baal. The old prophecy left its record in social 
 and political successes. The new prophecy that begins 
 with Amos spoke to a people that would not hear, and 
 looked to no immediate success, but only to a renova- 
 tion of the remnant of Israel to foUow on a completed 
 work of judgment. When the people forbid the pro- 
 phets to preach, they begin perforce to write (Amos ii. 
 12, vii. 12, 13 ; Micah ii. 6 ; Jer. xxxvi. 5 seq)). 
 
 But, though the properly prophetic literature begins 
 in the eighth century B.C., do not the prophets, it may be 
 asked, base their teaching on an earlier written revela- 
 tion of another kind? They certainly hold that the 
 religion of Israel is as old as the Exodus. They speak 
 
LECT. X. MOSES. 297 
 
 of Moses. "By a prophet," says Hosea, "Jehovah brought 
 Israel out of Egypt." " I brought thee up out of the 
 land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of 
 bondage," says Micah ; " and I sent before thee Moses, 
 Aaron, and Miriam." Do not these references pre- 
 suppose the written law of Moses ? This question re- 
 quires careful consideration. 
 
 There is no doubt that the prophets regard them- 
 selves as successors of Moses. He is, as we see from 
 Hosea, the first prophet of Israel. But the prophets 
 of the eighth century never speak of a written law 
 fff Moses. The only passage which has been taken to 
 do so is Hosea viii. 12. And here the grammatical 
 translation is, " Though I wrote to him my Torah in ten 
 thousand precepts, they would be esteemed as a strange 
 thing." It is simple matter of fact that the prophets 
 do not refer to a written Torah as the basis of their 
 teaching, and we have seen that they absolutely deny 
 the existence of a binding ritual law. But, on the other 
 hand, it is clear that the Torah is not a new thing in the 
 eighth century. The false religion of the mass of the 
 nation is always described as a corruption of truths 
 which Israel ought to know. " Thou hast forgotten the 
 Torah of thy God," says Hosea to the priests (Hos. iv. 6). 
 It cannot fairly be doubted that the Torah whicli the 
 priests have forgotten is Mosaic Torah. For the pro- 
 phets do not acknowledge the priests as organs of reve- 
 lation. Their knowledge was essentially traditional. 
 Such traditions are based on old-established law, and 
 
298 MOSAIC LECT. x. 
 
 they themselves undoubtedly referred then- wisdom to 
 Moses, who, either directly or through Aaron, — for our 
 argument it matters not which, — is the father of the 
 priests as well as the father of the prophets (Deut. 
 xxxiii. 4, 8 seq. ; 1 Sam. ii. 27 seq). That this should be 
 so lies in the nature of the case. Jehovah as King of 
 Israel must from the first have given permanent laws 
 as well as precepts for immediate use. What is quite 
 certain is that, according to the prophets, the Torah of 
 Moses did not embrace a law of ritual. Worship by 
 sacrifice, and all that belongs to it, is no part of the 
 divine Torah to Israel. It forms, if you will, part df 
 natural religion, which other nations share with Israel, 
 and which is no feature in the distinctive precepts given 
 at the Exodus. There is no doubt that this view is in 
 accordance with the Bible history, and with what we 
 know from other sources. Jacob is represented as pay- 
 ing tithes; all the patriarchs build altars and do 
 sacrifice; the law of blood is as old as Noah ; the con- 
 secration of firstlings is known to the Arabs; the 
 autumn feast of the vintage is Canaanite as well as 
 Hebrew ; and these are but examples which might be 
 largely multiplied. 
 
 The true distinction of Israel's religion lies in the 
 character of the Deity who has made Himself personally 
 known to His people, and demands of them a life con- 
 formed to His spiritual character as a righteous and for- 
 giving God. The difference between Jehovah and the 
 gods of the nations is that He does not require sacrifice, 
 
LECT. X. TO RAH. 299 
 
 but only to do justly, and love mercy, and walk luiml)ly 
 with God. This standpoint is not confined to the 
 prophetic books ; it is the standpoint of the ten com- 
 mandments, which contain no precept of positive 
 worship. But according to many testimonies of the pre- 
 exilic books, it is the ten commandments, the laws 
 written on the two tables of stone, that are Jehovah's 
 covenant with Israel. In 1 Kings viii. 9, 21 these 
 tables are identified with the covenant deposited in the 
 sanctuary. And with this the book of Deuteronomy 
 agrees (Deut. v. 2, 22). Whatever is more than the 
 words spoken at Horeb is not strictly covenant, but 
 prophetic teaching, continual divine guidance addressed 
 to those needs which in heathen nations are met by 
 divination, but which in Israel are supplied by the 
 personal word of the revealing God ministered through 
 a succession of prophets (Deut. xviii. 9 seci). Even Ezra 
 (ix. 11) still speaks of the law which forbids intermar- 
 riage with the people of Canaan as an ordinance of the 
 prophets (plural). Yet this is now read as a Penta- 
 teuchal law (Deut. vii.). 
 
 To understand this view, we must remember that 
 among the pure Semites even at the present day the 
 sphere of legislation is far narrower than in our more 
 complicated society. Ordinary affairs of life are always 
 regulated by consuetudinary law, preserved without 
 writing or the need for trained judges, in the memory 
 and practice of the family and the tribe. It is only in 
 cases of difficulty that an appeal is taken to the judge — 
 
300 PROPHETIC DOCTRINE lect. x. 
 
 the Kadhi of tlie Arabs. It was not otherwise in the 
 days of Moses. It was only hard matters that were 
 brought to him, and reierred by him, not to a fixed code 
 of law, but to Divine decision (Exod. xviii. 19-26), 
 which formed a precedent for future use. Of tliis state 
 of things the condition of affairs under the Judges is the 
 natural sequel. But Moses did more than any Kadhi. 
 He was a prophet as well as a judge. As such he 
 founded in Israel the great principles of the moral 
 religion of the righteous Jehovah. All else was but a 
 development of the fundamental revelation of Horeb, 
 and from the standpoint of prophetic religion it is not 
 of importance whether these developments were given 
 directly by Moses, or only by the prophets his succes- 
 sors. But all true Torah must move in the lines of the 
 original covenant. The standard of the prophets is the 
 moral law, and because the priests had forgotten this 
 they declare them to have forgotten the law, however 
 copious their Torah, and however great their interest in 
 details ol ritual. Forgotten or perverted by the priests 
 (Hos. iv. 6 ; Zeph. iii. 4), the true Torah of Jehovah is 
 preserved by the prophets. But the prophets before 
 Ezekiel have no concern in the law of ritual. They 
 make no effort to recall the priests to their duty in this 
 respect, except in the negative sense of condemning such 
 elements in the popular worship as are inconsistent with 
 the spiritual attributes of Jehovah. 
 
 From the ordinary presuppositions with which we 
 are accustomed to approach the Old Testament, there is 
 
LECT. X. OF FORGIVENESS. 301 
 
 one point in this position of the prophets which still 
 creates a difiiculty. If it is true that they exclude the ^ 
 sacrificial worship from the positive elements of Israel's 
 religion, what becomes of the doctrine of the forgive- 
 ness of sins, which we are accustomed to regard as mainly 
 expressed in the typical ordinances of atonement ? It 
 is necessary, in conclusion, to say a word on this head. 
 The point, I think, may be put thus. When Micah, for 
 example, says that Jehovah requires nothing of man but 
 to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with 
 God, we are apt to take this utterance as an expression 
 of Old Testament legalism. According to the law of 
 works, these things are of course sufficient. But sinful 
 man, sinful Israel, cannot perform them perfectly. Is it 
 not therefore necessary for the law to come in with its 
 atonement to supply the imperfection of Israel's obe- 
 dience ? I ask you to observe that such a view of the 
 prophetic teaching is the purest rationalism, necessarily 
 aUied with the false idea that the prophets are advocates 
 of natural morality. The prophetic theory of religion 
 has nothing to do with the law of works. Religion, 
 they teach, is the personal fellowship of Jehovah with 
 Israel, in which He shapes His people to His own ends, 
 impresses His own likeness upon them by a continual 
 moral guidance. Such a religion cannot exist under a 
 bare law of works. Jehovah did not find Israel a holy 
 and righteous people ; He has to make it so by wise 
 discipline and loving guidance, which refuses to be 
 frustrated by the people's shortcomings and sins. The 
 14 
 
302 PROPHETIC DOCTRINE lect. x. 
 
 continuance of Jehovah's love in spite of Israel's trans- 
 gressions, which is set forth with so much force in the 
 opening chapters of Hosea, is the forgiveness of sin. 
 
 Under the Old Testament the forgiveness of sins is 
 not an abstract doctrine but a thing of actual experience. 
 The proof, nay the substance, of forgiveness is the con- 
 tinued enjoyment of those practical marks of Jehovah's 
 favour which are experienced in peaceful occupation of 
 Canaan and deliverance from all trouble. This prac- 
 tical way of estimating forgiveness is common to the 
 prophets with their contemporaries. Jehovah's anger 
 is felt in national calamity, forgiveness is realised in the 
 removal of chastisement. The proof that Jehovah is a 
 forgiving God is that He does not retain His anger for 
 ever, but turns and has compassion on His people 
 (Micah vii. 18 seq^. ; Isa. xii. 1). There is no meta- 
 physic in this conception, it simply accepts the analogy 
 of anger and forgiveness in human life. 
 
 In the popular religion the people hoped to influence 
 Jehovah's disposition towards them by gifts and sacri- 
 fices (Micah vi. 4 seq), by outward tokens of penitence. 
 It is against this view that the prophets set forth the 
 true doctrine of forgiveness. Jehovah's anger is not 
 caprice but a just indignation, a necessary side of His 
 moral kingship in Israel. He chastises to work peni- 
 tence, and it is only to the penitent that He can extend 
 forgiveness. By returning to obedience the people 
 regain the marks of Jehovah's love, and again experi- 
 ence His goodness in deliverance from calamity and 
 
LECT. X. OF FORGIVENESS, 303 
 
 happy possession of a fruitful land. According to the 
 prophets, this law of chastisement and forgiveness works 
 directly, without the intervention of any ritual sacra- 
 ment. Jehovah's love is never withdrawn from His 
 people, even in their deepest sin and in His sternest 
 chastisements. " How can I give thee up, Ephraim ? 
 How can I cast thee away, Israel ? My heart burns 
 within me, my compassion is all kindled. I will not 
 execute the fierceness of my wrath ; I will not turn to 
 destroy thee : for I am God and not man, the Holy One 
 in the midst of thee" (Hos. xi. 8). This inalienable 
 Divine love, the sovereignty of God's own redeeming 
 purpose, is the ground of forgiveness. " I, even I, am he 
 that blotteth out thine iniquity for mine own sake" 
 (Isa. xliii. 25). And so the prophets know, with a cer- 
 tainty that rests in the unchangeable heart of God, that 
 through all chastisement, nay through the ruin of the 
 state, the true remnant of Israel shall return to Jehovah, 
 not with sacrifices, but with lips instead of bullocks, as 
 Hosea puts it, sajdng, Take away all iniquity and receive 
 us graciously (Hos. xiv. 2). All prophetic prediction is 
 but the development in many forms, and in answer to 
 the needs of Israel in various times, of this supreme 
 certainty, that God's love works triumphantly in all His 
 judgments; that Israel once redeemed from Egypt shall 
 again be redeemed not only from bondage but from sin ; 
 that Jehovah will perform the truth to Jacob, the mercy 
 to Abraham, which He sware to Israel's fathers from the 
 days of old (IVIicah vii. 20). Accordingly, the texts 
 
304 PENITENCE AND SACRIFICE, lect. x. 
 
 which call for obedience and not sacrifice (Micah vi. ; 
 Jer. vii. etc.), for humanity instead of outward tokens 
 of contrition (Isa. Iviii.), come in at the very same point 
 with the atoning ordinances of the ritual law. They do 
 not set forth the legal conditions of acceptance without 
 forgiveness, but the requisites of forgiveness itself. 
 According to the prophets, Jehovah asks only a penitent 
 heart and desires no sacrifice ; according to the ritual 
 law, He desires a penitent heart approaching Him in 
 certain sacrificial sacraments. The law adds something 
 to the prophetic teaching, something which the prophets 
 do not know, and which, if both are parts of one system 
 of true revelation, was either superseded before the pro- 
 phets rose, or began only after they had spoken. But 
 the ritual law was not superseded by prophecy. It 
 comes into full force only at the close of the prophetic 
 period in the reformation of Ezra. And so the conclu- 
 sion is inevitable that the ritual element which the law 
 adds to the prophetic doctrine of forgiveness became 
 part of the system of God's grace only after the prophets 
 had spoken. ^^^ 
 
LECT. XI. THE PENTATEUCH. 305 
 
 LECTUEE XL 
 
 THE PENTATEUCH : THE FIRST LEGISLATION. 
 
 The results of our investigation up to this point are 
 not critical but historical, and, if you will, theological. 
 The Hebrews before the Exile knew a twofold Torah, 
 the Torah of the priests and that of the prophets. 
 Neither Torah corresponds with the present Pentateuch. 
 The prophets altogether deny to the law of sacrifice the 
 character of positive revelation ; their attitude to ques- 
 tions of ritual is the negative attitude of the ten com- 
 mandments, content to forbid what is inconsistent with 
 the true nature of Jehovah, and for the rest to leave 
 matters to their own course. The priests, on the con- 
 trary, have a ritual and legal Torah which has a 
 recognised place in the state, but neither in the old 
 priestly family of Eli nor in the Jerusalem priesthood 
 of the sons of Zadok did the rules and practice of the 
 priests correspond with the finislied system of the 
 Pentateuch. 
 
 These results have a much larger interest than the 
 question of the date of the I'entateuch. It is more 
 important to understand the method of God's grace 
 in Israel than to settle when a particular book was 
 
306 THE LA W lect. xt. 
 
 written ; and we now see that, whatever the age of the 
 Pentateuch as a written code, the Levitical system of 
 communion with God, the Levitical sacraments of 
 atonement, were not the forms under which God's 
 grace worked, and to wdiich His revelation accom- 
 modated itself, in Israel before the Exile. 
 
 The Levitical ordinances, whether they existed before 
 the Exile or no, were not yet God's word to Israel at 
 that time. For God's word is the expression of His 
 practical will. And the history and the prophets alike 
 make it clear that God's will for Israel's salvation took 
 quite another course. 
 
 The current view of the Pentateuch is mainly con- 
 cerned to do literal justice to the phrase **The Lord 
 spake unto Moses, saying " thus and thus. But to save 
 the literal " unto Moses " is to sacrifice the far more 
 important words '* The Lord spake.'* The time when 
 these ritual ordinances became God's word — that is, 
 became a divinely sanctioned means for checking the 
 rebellion of the Israelites and keeping them as close to 
 spiritual religion as their imperfect understanding and 
 hard hearts permitted — was subsequent to the work of 
 the prophets. As a matter of historical fact, the Law 
 continues the work of the prophets, and great part of the 
 Law was not yet known to the prophets as God's word. 
 
 The ritual law is, strictly speaking, a fusion of 
 prophetic and priestly Torah. Its object is to provide 
 a scheme of worship, in the pre-Christian sense of that 
 word, consistent with the unique holiness of Jehovah, 
 
LECT. XI. OF MOSES. 307 
 
 and yet not beyond the possibility of practical realisa- 
 tion in a nation not yet ripe to enter into present 
 fruition of the evangelical predictions of the prophets. 
 From the time of Ezra downwards this object was prac- 
 tically realised. But before the Captivity it not only 
 was not realised, but was not even contemplated. 
 Ezekiel, himself an exile, is the first prophet who pro- 
 poses a reconstruction of ritual in conformity with the 
 spiritual truths of prophecy. And he does so, not like 
 Ezra by recalling the nation to the law of Moses, but 
 by sketching an independent scheme of ritual, which 
 unquestionably had a great influence on the subsequent 
 development. Jeremiah, like Ezekiel, was a priest as 
 well as a prophet, but there is nothing in Jeremiah 
 w^hich recognises the necessity for such a scheme of 
 ritual as Ezekiel maps out. 
 
 When the Levitical law first comes on the stage of 
 actual history at the time of Ezra, it presents itself as 
 the Law of Moses. People w^ho have not understood 
 the Old Testament are accustomed to say, with the 
 usual presumption of unhistorical rationalism, that this 
 is either literally true or a lie. The Pentateuch is 
 either the literary work of Moses, or it is a barefaced 
 imposture. The reverent and thoughtful student, who 
 knows the complicated difficulties of the problem, will 
 not willingly accept this statement of the question. I f 
 w^e are tied up to make a choice between these two 
 alternatives, it is impossible to deny that all the 
 historical evidence that has come before us points in 
 
308 MEANING OF lect. xi. 
 
 the direction of the second. If our present Pentateuch 
 was written by Moses, it was lost as completely as any 
 book could be. The prophets know the history of 
 Moses and the patriarchs, they know that Moses is the 
 founder of the Torah, but they do not know that com- 
 plete system which we have been accustomed to sup- 
 pose his work. And the priests of Shiloh and the 
 Temple do not know the very parts of the Torah 
 which would have done most to raise their authority 
 and influence. At the time of Josiah a book of the 
 Law is found, but it is still not the whole Pentateuch, 
 for it does not contain the full Levitical system. Prom 
 the death of Joshua to Ezra is, on the usual chronology, 
 just one thousand years. Where was the Pentateuch 
 all this time, if it was unknown to every one of those 
 who ought to have had most interest in it ? 
 
 It is plain that no thinlving man can be asked to 
 accept the Pentateuch as the literal work of Moses 
 without some evidence to that effect. But evidence a 
 thousand years after date is no evidence at all, when 
 the intervening period bears unanimous witness in a 
 different sense. By insisting that the whole Pentateuch 
 is one work of Moses and all of equal date, the tradi- 
 tional view cuts off all possibility of proof that its 
 kernel is Mosaic. Por it is certain that Israel, before 
 the Exile, did not know all the Pentateuch. Therefore, 
 if the Pentateuch is all one, they did not know any 
 part of it. If we are shut up to choose between a 
 Mosaic authorship of the whole five books and the 
 
LECT. XI. MOSAIC TORAH. 309 
 
 sceptical opinion that the Pentateuch is a mere forgery, 
 the sceptics must gain their case. 
 
 It is useless to appeal to the doctrine of inspiration 
 for help in such a strait ; for all sound apologetic 
 admits that the proof that a book is credible must pre- 
 cede belief that it is inspired. 
 
 The true way of escape from the sceptical con- 
 clusions must be sought in another direction. We 
 must ask whether the facts of the case do shut us up 
 to the dangerous alternative, so eagerly pressed by the 
 enemies of revelation and so naively accepted by 
 light-hearted advocates of the traditional view. 
 
 The Pentateuch is known as the Law of Moses in 
 the age that begins with Ezra. What is the sense which 
 the Jews themselves, from the age of Ezra downwards, 
 attach to this expression ? In one way they certainly 
 take a false and unhistorical sense out of the words. 
 They assume that the law of ordinances, or rather the 
 law of works, moral and ceremonial, was the principle 
 of all Israel's religion. They identify IMosaism with 
 Pharisaism. That is certainly an error, as the History 
 and the Prophets prove. But, on the other hand, the 
 Jews are accustomed to use the word Mosaic quite in- 
 differently of the direct teaching of Moses and of pre- 
 cepts drawn from Mosaic principles and adapted to later 
 needs. According to a well-known passage in the Tal- 
 mud, even the Prophets and the Hagiograplia were 
 implicitly given to Moses at Sinai. So far is this idea 
 carried that the Torah is often identified with the Deca- 
 
310 MEANING OF lect. xi. 
 
 logue, in which all other parts of the Law are involved. 
 Thus the words of Deut. v. 22, which refer to the Deca- 
 logue, are used as a proof that the five books of Moses 
 can never pass away/^^ The beginnings of this way of 
 thought are clearly seen in Ezra ix. 11, where a law of 
 the Pentateuch is cited as an ordinance of the prophets. 
 Mosaic law is not held to exclude post-Mosaic develop- 
 ments. That the whole law is the Law of Moses does 
 I not necessarily imply that every precept was developed 
 in detail in his days, but only that the distinctive law 
 of Israel owes to him the origin and principles in which 
 all detailed precepts are implicitly contained. The 
 development into explicitness of what Moses gave in 
 principle is the work of continuous divine teaching in 
 connection with new historical situations. 
 
 This way of looking at the Law of Moses is not an 
 invention of modern critics ; it actually existed among 
 the Jews. I do not say that they made good use of it ; 
 on the contrary, in the period of the Scribes, it led to a 
 great overgrowth of traditions, which almost buried the 
 written word. But the principle is older than its abuse, 
 and it seems to offer a key for the solution of the serious 
 difficulties in which we are involved by the apparent 
 contradictions between the Pentateuch on the one hand 
 and the historical books and the Prophets on the other. 
 
 If the word Mosaic was sometimes understood as 
 meaning no more than Mosaic in principle, it is easy to 
 see how the fusion of priestly and prophetic Torah in 
 our present Pentateuch may be called Mosaic, though 
 
LECT. XI. MOSAIC TO RAH. 311 
 
 many things in its system were unknown to the history 
 and the prophets before the Exile. For Moses was 
 priest as well as prophet, and both priests and 
 prophets referred the origin of their Torah to him. In 
 the age of the prophetic writings the two Torahs had 
 fallen apart. The prophets do not acknowledge the 
 priestly ordinances of their day as a part of Jehovah's 
 commandments to IsraeL The priests, they say, have 
 forgotten or perverted the Torah. To reconcile the pro- 
 phets and the priesthood, to re-establish conformity 
 between the practice of Israel's worship and the spiritual 
 teachings of the prophets, was to return to the stand- 
 point of Moses, and bring back the Torah to its original 
 oneness. Whether this was done by bringing to light 
 a forgotten Mosaic book or b}' recasting the traditional 
 and consuetudinary law in accordance with Mosaic 
 principles is a question purely historical, which does 
 not at all affect the legitimacy of the work. 
 
 It is always for the interest of truth to discuss his- 
 torical questions by purely historical methods, without 
 allowing theological questions to come in till the histori- 
 cal analysis is complete. This indeed is the chief reason 
 why scholars indifferent to the religious value of the 
 Bible have often done good service by their philological 
 and historical studies. For though no one can thoroughly 
 understand the Bible without spiritual sympathy, our 
 spiritual sympathies are often bound up with theological 
 prejudices which have no real basis in Scripture ; and 
 it is a wholesome exercise to see how the Bible history 
 
312 FUNCTION OF lect. xi. 
 
 presents itself to men who approach the Bible from an 
 altogether different point of view. It is easier to correct 
 the errors of a rationalism with which we have no 
 sympathy, than to lay aside prejudices deeply inter- 
 woven with our most cherished and truest convictions. 
 
 In strict method, then, we ought now to prosecute 
 the question of the origin of the Pentateuch by the 
 ordinary rules of historical inquiry ; and only when a 
 result has been reached should we pause to consider 
 the theological bearings of what we have learned. But 
 we have all been so much accustomed to look at the 
 subject from a dogmatical point of view that a few 
 remarks at this stage on the theological aspect of the 
 problem may be useful in clearing the path of critical 
 investigation. 
 
 Christian theology is interested in the Law as a 
 stage in the dispensation of God's purpose of grace. As 
 such it is acknowledged by our Lord, who, though He 
 came to supersede the Law, did so only by fulfilling it, 
 or, more accurately, by filling it up, and supplying in 
 actual substance the good things of which the Law pre- 
 sented only a shadow and unsubstantial form. The 
 Law, according to the Epistle to the Hebrews, was weak 
 and unprofitable ; it carried nothing to its goal, and must 
 give way to a better hope, by which we draw near to 
 God (Heb. vii. 18, 19). The Law on this view never 
 actually supplied the religious needs of Israel ; it served 
 only to direct the religious attitude of the people, to pre- 
 vent them from turning aside into devious paths and 
 
LECT. XI. THE LA W. 313 
 
 looking for God's help in ways that might tempt them 
 to forget His spiritual nature and fall back into 
 heathenism. For this purpose the Law presents an 
 artificial system of sanctity, radiating from the sanctuary 
 and extending to all parts of Israel's life. The type of 
 religion maintained by such a system is certainly in- 
 ferior to the religion of the prophets, which is a thing 
 not of form but of spirit. But the religion of the pro- 
 phets could not become the type of national religion 
 until Jehovah's spiiit rested on all his people, and the 
 knowledge of Him dwelt in every heart. This was not 
 the case under the old dispensation. The time to which 
 Jeremiah and Isaiah xl.-lxvi., look forward, when the pro- 
 phetic word shall be as it were incarnate in a regenerate 
 nation, did not succeed the restoration from Babylon. 
 On the contrary, the old prophetic converse of Jehovah 
 with His people flagged and soon died out, and the word of 
 Jehovah, which in old days had been a present reality, be- 
 came a memory of the past and a hope for the future. It 
 was under these circumstances that the dispensation of 
 the Law became a practical power in Israel. It did not 
 bring Israel into such direct converse with Jehovah as 
 prophecy had done. But for the mass of the people it 
 nevertheless formed a distinct step in advance, for it 
 put an end to the anomalous state of things in which 
 practical heathenism had filled the state, and the pro- 
 phets preached to deaf ears. The legal ritual did not 
 satisfy the highest spiritual needs, but it practically ex- 
 tinguished idolatry. It gave palpable expression to the 
 
314 FUNCTION OF lect. xi. 
 
 spiritual nature of Jehovah, and, around and within the 
 ritual, prophetic truths gained a hold of Israel such as 
 they had never had before. The book of Psalms is the 
 proof how much of the highest religious truth, derived 
 not from the Law but from the Prophets, dwelt in the 
 heart of the nation, and gave spiritual substance to the 
 barren forms of the ritual. 
 
 These facts, quite apart from any theory as to the 
 age and authorship of the Pentateuch, vindicate for the 
 Law the position which it holds in the teaching of 
 Jesus and in Christian theology. That the Law was a 
 divine institution, that it formed an actual part in the 
 gracious scheme of guidance which preserved the reli- 
 gion of Jehovah as a living power in Israel till shadow 
 became substance in the manifestation of Christ, is no 
 theory but an historical fact, which no criticism as to 
 the origin of the books of Moses can in the least degree 
 invalidate. On the other hand, the work of the Law, as 
 we have now viewed it, was essentially subsidiary. As 
 S. Paul puts it in Eom. v. 20, the Law came in from 
 the side {vofxo^i Be TrapetarjXdev). It did not lie in the 
 right line of direct development, which, as the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews points out, leads straight from Jeremiah's 
 conception of the New Covenant to the fulfilment in 
 Christ. Once more we are thrown back on S. Paul's 
 explanation. The Law was but a pedagogue, an usher 
 to accompany the schoolboy in the streets, and lead him 
 to the appointed meeting with his true teacher. 
 
 This explanation of the function of the Law is that of 
 
LECT. XI. THE LA W, 315 
 
 the New Testament, and it fits in with all the historical 
 facts that we have had before us. But current theology, 
 instead of recognising the historical proof of the divine 
 purpose of the Law, is inclined to stake everything on 
 the Mosaic authorship of the whole system. If the Law 
 is not written by Moses, it cannot be part of the record 
 of revelation. But if it could be proved that Moses 
 WTote the Law, what would that add to the proof that 
 its origin is from God ? It is not true as a matter of 
 history that Pentateuch criticism is the source of doubts 
 as to the right of the Law to be regarded as a divine 
 dispensation. The older sceptics, who believed that 
 Moses wrote the Pentateuch, attacked the divine lega- 
 tion of Moses with many arguments which criticism 
 has deprived of all force. You cannot prove a book to 
 be God's word by showing that it is of a certain age. 
 The proof of God's word is that it does His work in the 
 world, and carries on His truth towards the final revela- 
 tion in Christ Jesus. This proof the Pentateuch can 
 adduce, but only for the time subsequent to Ezra. In 
 reality, to insist that the w^hole Law is the w^ork of 
 Moses is to interpose a most serious difficulty in the 
 way of its recognition as a divine dispensation. Before 
 the Exile the law of ceremonies was not an effectual 
 means to prevent defection in Israel, and Jehovah 
 Himself never dispensed His grace according to its pro- 
 visions. Is it possible that He laid down in the wilder- 
 ness, wdth sanctions the most solemn, and with a 
 precision which admitted no exception, an order of 
 
316 THE THREE lect. xr. 
 
 worship and ritual which has no further part in Israel's 
 history for well-nigh a thousand years ? 
 
 But I do not urge this point. I do not desire to 
 raise difficulties against the common view, but to show 
 that the valid and sufficient proof that the Law has a 
 legitimate place in the record of Old Testament revela- 
 tion, and that history assigns to it the same place as it 
 claims in Christian theology, is derived from a quarter 
 altogether independent of the critical question as to the 
 authorship and composition of the Pentateuch. This 
 being premised, we can turn with more composure to 
 inquire what the Pentateuch itself teaches as to its com- 
 position and date. 
 
 The Pentateuch, as we have it, is not a formal law- 
 book, but a history beginning with the Creation and 
 running on continuously into the book of Joshua. The 
 Law, or rather several distinct legal collections, are 
 inserted in the historical context. Confining our atten- 
 tion to the main elements, we can readily distinguish 
 three principal groups of laws or ritual ordinances in 
 addition to the ten commandments. 
 
 L The collection Exod. xxi.-xxiii. This is an in- 
 dependent body of laws, with a title, " These are the 
 judgments which thou shalt set before them." It is 
 inserted in immediate connection with the fundamental 
 revelation of the ten commandments on Horeb, and 
 contains a very simple system of civil and religious 
 polity, adequate to the wants of a primitive agricultural 
 people. I shall call this the First Legislation. 
 
LECT. XI. CROUPS OF LA IVS. 317 
 
 II. The Law of Deuteronomy. The book of Deutero- 
 nomy contains a good deal of matter rather hortatory 
 than legislative. The Deuteronomic code proper begins 
 at chap, xii., with the title, " These are the statutes and 
 judgments which ye shall observe to do," etc. ; and 
 closes with the subscription (Deut. xxvi. 1 6 seq.), " This 
 day Jehovah thy God hath commanded thee to do these 
 statutes and judgments," etc. The Deuteronomic Code, 
 as we may call Deut. xii.-xxvi., is not a mere supple- 
 ment to the First Legislation. It is an independent 
 reproduction of its substance, sometimes merely repeat- 
 ing the older laws, but at other times extending or 
 modifying them. It covers the whole ground of the old 
 law, except the law of treason (Exod. xxii 28) and the 
 details as to compensations to be paid for various in- 
 juries. The Deuteronomic Code presupposes a regular 
 establishment of civil judges (Deut. xvi. 18), and the 
 details of compensation in civil suits might naturally 
 be left in their hands. ^^^ 
 
 III. Quite distinct from both these codes is the Levi- 
 tical Legislation. The Levitical ordinances, including 
 directions for the equipment of the sanctuary and priest- 
 hood, sacrificial laws, and the whole system of threefold 
 sanctity in priests, Levites, and people, are scattered 
 through several parts of Exodus and the books of Levi- 
 ticus and Numbers. They do not form a compact code; 
 but, as a whole, they are clearly marked off from both 
 the other legislations, and might be removed from the 
 Pentateuch without making the rest unintelligible. The 
 
318 THE THREE 
 
 First Legislation and the Code of Deuteronomy take the 
 land of Canaan as their basis. They give directions for 
 the life of Jehovah's people in the land He gives them. 
 The Levitical Legislation starts from the sanctuary and 
 the priesthood. Its object is to develop the theory of a 
 religious life which has its centre in the sanctuary, and 
 is ruled by principles of holiness radiating forth from 
 Jehovah's dwelling-place. The first two Legislations 
 deal with Israel as a nation ; in the third Israel is a 
 church, and as such is habitually addressed as a " con- 
 gregation" (^edah), a word characteristic of the Levitical 
 Law. 
 
 These three bodies of law are, in a certain sense, 
 independent of the historical narrative of the Penta- 
 teuch in which they now occur. For the first two Legisla- 
 tions this is quite plain. They are formal codes which 
 may very well have existed as separate law books before 
 they were taken up into the extant history. The Levi- 
 tical Legislation seems at first sight to stand on a different 
 footing. Individual portions of it, such as the chapters 
 at the beginning and end of Leviticus, have a purely 
 legal form ; but a great part of the ordinances of law or 
 ritual takes the shape of narrative. Thus, the law for 
 the consecration of priests is given in a narrative of 
 the consecration of Aaron and his sons. The form is 
 historical, but the essential object is legal. The law 
 takes the form of recorded precedent. There is nothing 
 suq^rising in this. Among the Arabs, to this day, 
 traditional precedents are the essence of law, and the 
 
LECT. XI. GROUPS OF LAWS. 319 
 
 Kadbi of the Arabs is he who has inherited a know- 
 ledge of them. Among early nations precedent is par- 
 ticularly regarded in matters of ritual ; and the oral 
 Torah of the priests doubtless consisted, in great 
 measure, of case law. But law of this kind is still 
 essentially law, not history. It is preserved, not as a 
 record of the past, but as a guide for the present and 
 the future. The Pentateuch itself shows clearly that 
 this law, in historical form, is not an integral part of 
 the continuous history of Israel's movements in the 
 wilderness, but a separate thing. For in Exodus xxxiii. 
 7, which is non-Levitical, we read that Moses took the 
 tabernacle and pitched it outside the camp, and called 
 it the tent of meeting. But the Levitical account of 
 the setting up of the tabernacle, with the similar circum- 
 stance of the descent of the cloud upon it, does not 
 occur till chap. xL (comp. Num. ix. 15). Again, in 
 Numbers x. we have first the Levitical account of the 
 fixed order of march of the Israelites from Sinai with 
 the ark in the midst of the host (w. 11-28), and im- 
 mediately afterwards the historical statement that when 
 the Israelites left Sinai tlie ark was not in their midst 
 but w^ent before them a distance of three days' journey 
 (vv. 33-36).^'^^ It is plain that though the formal order 
 of march with the ark in the centre, which the author 
 sets forth as a standing pattern, is here described in 
 the historical guise of a record of the departure of 
 Israel from Sinai, the actual order of march on that 
 occasion was different. The same autlior cannot have 
 
320 THE WRITINGS lect. xi. 
 
 written both accounts. One is a law in narrative form ; 
 the other is actual history. These examples are forcible 
 enough, but they form only a fragment of a great chain 
 of evidence which critics have collected. By many 
 marks, and particularly by extremely well-defined pecu- 
 liarities of language, a Levitical document can be sepa- 
 rated out from the Pentateuch, containing the whole 
 mass of priestly legislation and precedents, and leaving 
 untouched the essentially historical part of the Penta- 
 teuch, all that has for its direct aim to tell us what befell 
 the Israelites in the wilderness, and not what precedents 
 the wilderness offered for subsequent ritual observances. 
 As the Pentateuch now stands, the two elements of law 
 and history are interspersed, not only in the same book, 
 but often in the same chapter. But originally they 
 were quite distinct. ^^^ 
 
 The Pentateuch, then, is a history incorporating at 
 least three bodies of law. The history does not profess 
 to be written by Moses, but only notes from time 
 to time that he wrote down certain special things 
 (Exod. xvii. 14, xxiv. 4, xxxiv. 27 ; Num. xxxiii. 2 ; 
 Deut. xxxi. 9, 22, 24). These notices of what Moses 
 himself wrote are so far from proving him the author 
 of the whole Pentateuch that they rather point in the 
 opposite direction. What he wrote is distinguished 
 from the mass of the text, and he himself is habitually 
 spoken of in the third person. It is common to explain 
 this as a literary artifice analogous to that adopted by 
 Caesar in his Commentaries. But it is a strong thing to 
 
LECT. XI. OF MOSES. 321 
 
 suppose that so artificial a way of writing is as old 
 as Moses, and belongs to the earliest age of Hebrew 
 authorship. One asks for proof that any Hebrew ever 
 wrote of himself in the third person, and particularly 
 that Moses would write such a verse as Numbers xii. 
 3, "The man Moses was very meek above all men 
 living." 
 
 The idea that Moses is author of the whole Penta- 
 teuch, except the last chapter of Deuteronomy, is 
 derived from the old Jewish theory in Josephus that 
 every leader of Israel wrote down by Divine authority 
 the events of his own time, so that the sacred history 
 is like a day-book constantly ^\Titten up to date. No 
 part of the Bible corresponds to this' description, and 
 the Pentateuch as little as any. For example, the last 
 chapter of Deuteronomy, which on the common theory 
 is a note added by Joshua to the work in which 
 Moses had carried down the history till just before his 
 death, cannot reaUy have been written till after Joshua 
 was dead and gone. For it speaks of the city Dan. 
 Now Dan is the new name of Laish, which that town 
 received after the conquest of the Danites in the age of 
 the Judges, when Moses's grandson became priest of 
 their idolatrous sanctuary. But if the last chapter of 
 Deuteronomy is not contemporary history, what is tlie 
 proof that the rest of that book is so ? There is not an 
 atom of proof that the hand which wrote the last 
 chapter had no share in the rest of the book. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the Pentateuch al history was 
 
322 AGE OF THE lect. xi 
 
 written in the land of Canaan, and if it is all by one 
 hand it was not composed before the period of the 
 kings. Genesis xxxvi. 31 seq. gives a list of kings who 
 reigned in Edom " before there reigned a king of the 
 children of Israel." This carries us down at least to 
 the time of Saul ; but the probable meaning of the pass- 
 age is that these kings ruled before Edom was subject 
 to an Israelite monarch, which brings us to David at 
 any rate. Of course this conclusion may be evaded by 
 saying that certain verses or chapters are late additions, 
 that the list of Edomite kings, and such references to 
 the conquest of Canaan as are found in Deut. ii. 12, 
 iv. 38, are insertions of Ezra or another editor. This 
 might be a fair enough thing to say if any positive 
 proof were forthcoming that Moses wrote the mass of 
 the Pentateuch ; but in the absence of such proof no 
 one has a right to call a passage the insertion of an 
 editor without internal evidence that it is in a different 
 style or breaks the context. And as soon as we come 
 to this point we must apply the method consistently, 
 and let internal evidence tell its whole story. That, as 
 we shall soon see, is a good deal more than those who 
 raise this potent spirit are willing to hear. 
 
 The proof that the Pentateuch was written in Can- 
 aan does not turn on mere isolated texts which can be 
 separated from the context. It lies equally in usages 
 of language that cannot be due to an editor. There 
 has been a great controversy about Deut. i. 1 and other 
 similar passages, where the land east of the Jordan is 
 
LECT. XI. PENTATEUCH, 323 
 
 said to be across Jordan, proving that the writer lived '*\*^V' 
 in Western Palestine. That this is the natural sense of 
 the Hebrew word no one can doubt, but we have elabo- ' 
 
 rate arguments that Hebrew was such an elastic language 
 that the phrase can equally mean "on this side Jordan," , 
 
 as the English Version has it. The point is really of no \ 
 
 consequence, for there are other phrases which prove \ 
 
 quite unambiguously that the Pentateuch was written I 
 
 in Canaan. In Hebrew the common phrase for " west- 
 ward " is " seaward," and for southward *' towards the 
 Negeb." The word Negeb, which primarily means "Hill 
 " parched land," is in Hebrew the proper name of the 
 dry steppe district in the south of Judah. These ex- j 
 
 pressions for west and south could only be formed ! 
 
 within Palestine. Yet they are used in the Pentateuch, j 
 
 not only in the narrative but in the Levitical descrip- | 
 
 tion of the tabernacle in the wilderness (Exod. xxvii.). I 
 
 But at Mount Sinai the sea did not lie to the west, and ! 
 
 the N^geb was to the north. Moses could no more call \ 
 
 the south side the Negeb side of the tabernacle than a 
 Glasgow man could say that the sun set over Edinburgh. 
 The answer attempted to this is that the Hebrews miglit 
 have adopted these phrases in patriarchal times, and never \ 
 
 given them up in the ensuing four hundred and thirty 
 years ; but that is nonsense. When a man says " towards ; 
 
 the sea " he means it. The Egyptian Arabs say seaward ' 
 
 for northward, and so the Israelites must have done when 
 they were in Egypt. To an Arab in Western Arabia, 
 on the contrary seaward means towards the Pied Sea. 
 
324 SOURCES OF lect. xi. 
 
 Again, the Pentateuch displays an exact topographical 
 knowledge of Palestine, but by no means so exact a 
 knowledge of the wilderness of the wandering. The 
 narrator knew the names of the places famous in the 
 forty years' wandering ; but for Canaan he knew local 
 details, and describes them with exactitude as they were 
 in his own time {e.g., Gen. xii. 8, xxxiii. 18, xxxv. 19, 
 20). Accordingly, the patriarchal sites can still be set 
 down on the map with definiteness ; but geographers 
 are unable to assign with certainty the site of Mount 
 Sinai, because the narrative has none of that topo- 
 graphical colour which the story of an eyewitness is 
 sure to possess. Once more, the Pentateuch cites as 
 authorities poetical records which are not earlier than 
 the time of Moses. One of these records is a book, the 
 Book of the Wars of Jehovah (Num. xxi. 14) ; did 
 Moses, writing contemporary history, find and cite a 
 book already current containing poetry on the wars of 
 Jehovah and His people, which began in his own times ? 
 Another poetical authority cited is a poem circulating 
 among the Moshelim or reciters of sarcastic verses (Num. 
 xxi. 27 seq.). It refers to the victory over Sihon, which 
 took place at the very end of the forty years' wandering. 
 If Moses wrote the Pentateuch, what occasion could he 
 have to authenticate his narrative by reference to these 
 traditional depositaries of ancient poetry ? 
 
 The Pentateuch, then, was not written in the wilder- 
 ness ; but moreover it is not, even in its narrative parts, 
 a single continuous work, but a combination of several 
 
LECT. XI. THE PENTATEUCH, 325 
 
 narratives originally independent. The first key to the 
 complex structure of the history was found in the use 
 of the names of God in Genesis. Some parts of Genesis 
 habitually speak of Jehovah, others as regularly use the 
 word Elohim ; and as early as 1753 the French physician 
 Astruc showed that if the text of Genesis be divided 
 into two columns, all the Elohim passages standing on 
 one side, and the Jehovah passages on the other, we 
 get two parallel narratives which are still practicall}^ 
 independent. This of course was no more than a hint 
 for further investigation. In reality there are two in- 
 dependent documents in Genesis which use Elohim. 
 A third uses Jehovah, and the process by which the 
 three were finally interwoven into one book is somewhat 
 difficult to follow. Astruc supposed that these docu- 
 ments were all older than Moses, and that he was the 
 final editor. But later critics have shown that the same 
 documents can be traced through the whole Penta- 
 teuch, and even to the end of the book of Joshua. To 
 prove this in detail would occupy several lectures. I 
 can only give one or two illustrations to prove that 
 these results are not imaginary. 
 
 A modern writer, making a history with the aid of 
 older records, masters their contents and then writes a 
 wholly new book. Tliat is not the way of Eastein 
 historians. If we take up the great Arabic historians — 
 say Tabary, Ibn el Athir, Ibn Khaldun, and Abulfeda — 
 we often find passages occurring almost word for word in 
 each. All use directly or indirectly the same sources, 
 15 
 
326 METHOD OF lect. xi. 
 
 and copy these sources verbally as far as is consistent 
 with the scope and scale of their several works. Thus 
 a comparatively modern book has often the freshness 
 and full colour of a contemporary narrative, and we can 
 still separate out the old sources from their modern 
 setting. So it is in the Bible, as we have already seen 
 in the case of the books of Kings. It is this way of 
 writing that makes the Bible history so vivid and in- 
 teresting, in spite of its extraordinary brevity in compari- 
 son with the vast periods of time that it covers. Think 
 only what a mass of veracious detail we were able to 
 gather in Lecture IX. for the state of ritual in ancient 
 Israel. No compend on the same scale written on 
 modern principles could have preserved so much of the 
 genuine life of antique times. It stands to reason that 
 the Pentateuch should exhibit the same features, and 
 the superciliousness with which traditionalists declare 
 the labours of the critics to be visionary is merely the 
 contempt of ignorance, which has never handled old 
 Eastern histories, and judges everything from a Western 
 and modern standpoint. 
 
 Every one can see that, when we have this general 
 key to the method of ancient Eastern historians, it is 
 quite a practical undertaking to try to separate the 
 sources from which a Hebrew author worked. It will 
 not always be possible to carry the analysis out fully ; 
 but it is no hopeless task to distribute the main masses 
 of the story between the several authors whose books 
 he used. Marked peculiarities of language, of which 
 
LECT. XI. EASTERN HISTORIANS. 327 
 
 the use of the names of God is the most celebrated but \ 
 
 not the most conclusive, are a great help ; and along i 
 
 with these a multitude of other indications come in, in 
 the process of analysis. 
 
 A very clear case is the account of the flood. As it 
 now stands the narrative has the most singular repeti- 
 tions, and things come in in the strangest order. But 
 as soon as we separate the Jehovah and Elohim docu- I 
 
 nients all is clear. The first narrative tells that Jehovah 
 saw the wickedness of men and determined to destroy 
 them. But Noah found grace in His eyes, and was 
 called to enter the ark with a pair of all unclean beasts, 
 and clean beasts and fowls by sevens ; for, he is told, 
 after seven days a forty days' rain will ensue and 
 destroy all life. Noah obeys the command, the seven 
 days elapse, and the rain follows as predicted, floating 
 the ark but destroying all outside of it. Then the rain 
 ceases and the waters sink. As soon as the rain is over 
 Noah opens the window of the ark, and sends out the 
 dove and the raven. After fourteen days the dove, sent 
 out for the third time, does not return, and Noah re- 
 moving the covering of the ark finds the ground dry, 
 builds an altar and does sacrifice, receiving the promise 
 that the flood shall not again recur and disturb the 
 course of the seasons. The parallel Elohistic narrative 
 is equally complete. It also relates God's anger with 
 mankind. Noah receives orders to build the ark and 
 take in the animals in pairs (there is no mention of the 
 sevens of clean beasts). The flood begins when Noah 
 
328 THE SOURCES lect. xi. 
 
 is six hundred years old, and he enters the ark. The 
 fountains of the great deep are broken up, and the 
 windows of heaven opened ; but on the same day, 
 Noah, his family, and the pairs of animals enter the 
 ark. The waters rise till they cover the hills, and swell 
 for a hundred and fifty days, when they are assuaged 
 by a great wind, and the fountains of the deep and the 
 windows of heaven are closed, and so just five months 
 after the flood commenced the ark rests on a point in 
 the mountains of Ararat. After the one hundred and 
 fifty days the waters fail, and continue to decrease for 
 two months and a half, till the tops of the mountains 
 are seen. In other three months the face of the earth 
 was freed of water, but it was not till the lapse of a full 
 solar year that Noah was permitted to leave the ark, 
 when he received God's blessing, the so-called Noachic 
 ordinances, and the sign of the bow. These two accounts 
 are plainly independent, and each is complete in itself. 
 It is impossible that the work of one author could so 
 divide itself into two narratives, and have for each 
 narrative a different name of God.^^^ 
 
 The proof that the same variety of hands runs through 
 to the end of the book of Joshua would carry us too 
 far, and is the less necessary because the fact will hardly 
 be denied by those who admit the existence of separate 
 sources in the Pentateuch at all. For those who cannot 
 follow the details of the original text it is more profit- 
 able to concentrate attention on the legal parts of the 
 Pentateuch. What has been said is enough to show 
 
LECT. XI. OF GENESIS. 329 
 
 that tlie Pentateuch is a much more complex book than 
 appears at first sight, and that in its present form it was 
 written after the time of Moses, nay after that of Joshua. 
 It is now no longer permissible to insist that the refer- 
 ence to the kingship of Israel over Edom and similar 
 things are necessarily isolated phenomena. We cannot 
 venture to assert that the composition of the Pentateuch 
 out of older sources of various date took place before 
 the time of the kings. How much of it is early, how 
 much comparatively late, must be determined by a 
 wider inquiry, and for this the laws give the best 
 starting-point. 
 
 The post-Mosaic date of the narrative does not in 
 itself prove that the laws were not all written by 
 Moses. Two of our three legislative Corpora are 
 independent of the history. The third is at least inde- 
 pendent of the main thread of the narrative, and deals 
 with history only for legal and ritual purposes. But 
 does the Pentateuch represent Moses as having written 
 the legal codes which it embodies? So far as the 
 ritual of Levitical legislation is concerned, we can 
 answer this question at once with a decisive negative. 
 It is nowhere said that Moses wrote down the descrip- 
 tion of the tabernacle and its ordinances, or the law of 
 sacrifice. And in many places the laws of this legisla- 
 tion are expressly set forth as oral. Moses is com- 
 manded to speak to Aaron or to the Israelites, as the 
 case may be, and communicate to them God's will. 
 This fact is significant when we remember that the 
 
330 IVHA T DID lect. xi 
 
 Torali of the priests referred to by the prophets is 
 plainly oral instruction. There is nothing in the Pen- 
 tateuch that does not confirm the prior probability that 
 ritual law was long an affair of practice and tradition, 
 resting on knowledge that belonged to the priestly 
 guild. But the priests, according to Hosea, forgot the 
 Torah, and we have seen that neither at Shiloh nor in 
 Jerusalem did the ritual law exist in its present form, 
 or even its present theory. Thus we are reduced to 
 this alternative : — either the ritual law was written 
 down by the priests immediately after Moses gave it to 
 them, or at least in the first years of residence in 
 Canaan, and then completely forgotten by them ; or 
 else it was not written till long after, when the priests 
 who forgot the law were chastised by exile, and a 
 new race arose who accepted the rebukes of the pro- 
 phets. The former hypothesis implies that a book 
 specially meant for the priests, and kept in their 
 custody, survived many centuries of total neglect and 
 frequent removals of the sanctuary, and that too at 
 a time when books were written in such a way that 
 damp soon made them illegible. Yet the text of 
 this book, which the priests had forgotten, is much 
 more perfect than that of the Psalms or the books 
 of Samuel. These are grave difficulties ; and they 
 must become decisive when we show that an earlier 
 code, contradicting the Levitical legislation in import- 
 ant points, was actually current in early times as the 
 divine law of Israel. 
 
LECT. XI. MOSES WRITE ? 331 
 
 While the Pentateuch does not make Moses the 
 author of the Levitical code, it tells that he wrote 
 down certain laws. He wrote down the words of 
 Jehovah's covenant with Israel (Exod. xxxiv. 27, 28 ; 
 Exod. xxiv. 4, 7). In the former passage the words 
 of the covenant are expressly identified with the Ten 
 Words on the tables of stone. In the latter passage 
 the same thing seems to be meant ; for, though at first 
 sight the *' words of Jehovah " in Exod. xxiv. 4 may be 
 thought to include the "judgments," or code of civil 
 and other laws, we observe at ver. 3 that the " words of 
 Jehovah" — the commandments spoken from Sinai — are 
 distinguished from the "judgments." Indeed, details 
 of damages for civil injuries and the like, with the law 
 of blood-revenge, common to the Hebrews with their 
 Arab cousins, could hardly be reckoned as part of the 
 covenant on which Jehovah's relation to Israel was 
 permanently based. 
 
 Till we come to the book of Deuteronomy, then, we 
 find no statement that Moses wrote down more than 
 the ten commandments. In Deut. xxxi. 9, 24, on the 
 other hand, the account of Moses's last address to the 
 people is followed by the statement that he wrote " the 
 words of this law " in a book, which he deposited with 
 the Levites to be preserved beside the ark. Now Deut. 
 xxxi., which speaks of Moses in the third peisoii, is dis- 
 tinct from the code in which he speaks of himself in the 
 first person. Do the words of this chapter imply that the 
 person — not Moses — who wrote it had before him the 
 
332 WHAT DID lect. xi. 
 
 Deuteron^mic code as a book which lie knew to have 
 existed separately, and accepted as the actual writing of 
 Moses ? It may be so, but the inference is not certain. 
 The narrative certainly implies that the present Deutero- 
 nomic code answers to what Moses wrote, that it is the 
 divine Torah as the narrator was guided to present it 
 to his readers. But then we must remember that there 
 is, as we have seen, an elasticity about the phrase 
 Torah. Among the later Jews it may mean something 
 as narrow as the ten commandments, or it may mean 
 something much wider, and yet the summary and the 
 expansion are not viewed as two Torahs, but as the 
 same Torah in two forms. It was already so in the days 
 of Deuteronomy. Tor, according to Deut. xxvii. 8, 
 " all the words of this law " are to be written on the 
 plaistered stones of Mount Ebal ; and here, as Calvin 
 points out, we can^_onlj u nderstand the sum and sub- 
 stance of the law. In view of this elasticity of the^ 
 word Torah, it cannot be thought certain that the 
 author of Deut. xxxi. means to convey, as an historical 
 fact, that the very code of Deut. xii.-xxvi., in all 
 its fulness, was written down word for word by Moses. 
 It must be remembered that even the speeches intro- 
 ducing and closing the code are not an exact transcript 
 of Moses's words as taken down by a shorthand reporter. 
 They are plainly a free reproduction of the spirit of 
 what he had to say to Israel — the only thing that 
 ancient historians, who had no Hansard to refer to, could 
 possibly give in the case of speeches which they had not 
 heard, or even, in general, of such as they had heard. 
 
LECT. XI. MOSES WRITE f 333 
 
 There is notliing in tliese statements of tlie Penta- 
 teuch, when looked at fairly, which does not leave it 
 quite an open question when and by what stages the 
 divine Torah, of which Moses was the originator, 
 assumed the form it has in the extant written codes. 
 
 Now it is a very remarkable fact, to begin witli, 
 that all the sacred law of Israel is comprised in the 
 Pentateuch, and that, apart from the Levitical legisla- 
 tion, it is presented in codified form. On the traditional 
 view, three successive bodies of law were given to 
 Israel within forty years. Within that short time 
 many ordinances were modified, and the whole law of 
 Sinai recast on the plains of Moab. But from the days 
 of Moses there was no change. Witli his death the 
 Israelites entered on a new career, which transformed 
 the nomads of Goshen into the civilised inhabitants of 
 vineyard land and cities in Canaan. But the Divine 
 laws given them beyond Jordan were to remain 
 unmodified through all the long centuries of develop- 
 ment in Canaan, an absolute and immutable code. I 
 say, with all reverence, that this is impossible. God no 
 doubt could have given, by Moses's mouth, a law fit for 
 the age of Solomon or Hezekiah, but sucli a law could 
 not be fit for immediate application in the days of Moses 
 and Joshua. Every historical lawyer knows that in the 
 nature of things the law of the wilderness is different 
 from 'the law of a land of high agriculture and popu- 
 lous cities. God can do all things, but He cannot 
 contradict Himself, and He who shaped the eventful 
 
334 THE DIVINE lect. xi. 
 
 development of Israel's liistory must have framed His 
 law to correspond with it. 
 
 It is no conjecture, but plain historical fact stated in 
 Exod. xviii., that Moses judged his contemporaries by 
 bringing individual hard cases before Jehovah for deci- 
 sion. This was the actual method of his Torah, a 
 method strictly practical, and in precise conformity 
 with the genius and requirements of primitive nations. 
 The events of Sinai, and the establishment of the cove- 
 nant on the basis of the Ten Words, did not cut short 
 this kind of Torah. On the contrary, there is clear proof 
 that direct appeal to a Divine judgment continued to be 
 practised in Israel. The First Legislation (Exod. xxi. 6, 
 xxii. 8) speaks of bringing a case to God, and receiving 
 tlie sentence of God, where our version has " the judges." 
 The sanctuary was the seat of judgment, and the deci- 
 sions were Jehovah's Torah. So still, in the time of EK, 
 we read that, if man offend against man, God gives 
 judgment as daysman between them (1 Sam. ii. 25). 
 Jehovah is in Israel a living judge, a living and present 
 lawgiver. He has all the functions of an actual king 
 present among his people (Isa. xxxiii. 22). So the 
 prophets still view Jehovah's law as a living and growing 
 thing, communicated to Israel as to weanlings, " precept 
 upon precept, line upon line, here a little and there a 
 little " (Isa. xxviii. 9 scq^) ; and their religion, drawn 
 direct from Jehovah, is contrasted with the traditional 
 religion, which is "a command of men learned and 
 taught " (Isa. xxix. 13). A code is of necessity the final 
 
LECT. XI. TO RAH, 335 
 
 result and crystallised form of such a living divine 
 Torali, just as in all nations consuetudinary and judge- 
 made law precedes codification and statute law. The 
 difference between Israel and other nations lay essenti- 
 ally in this, that Jehovah was Israel's Judge, and there- 
 fore Israel's Lawgiver. This divine Torah begins with 
 Moses. As all goes back to his initiative, the Israelites 
 were not concerned to remember the precise history of 
 each new precept; and, when the whole system de- 
 veloped under continuous divine guidance is summed 
 up in a code, that code is simply set down as Mosaic 
 Torah. We still call the steam-engine by the name of 
 Watt, though the steam-engine of to-day has many parts 
 that his had not. 
 
 The Bible has not so narrow a conception of revela- 
 tion as we sometimes cling to. According to Isaiah 
 xxviii. 23 sec[. tlie rules of good husbandry are a *' judg- 
 ment " taught to the ploughman by Jehovah, part of 
 Jehovah's Torah (verse 26). The piety of Israel re- 
 cognised every sound and wholesome ordinance of daily 
 and social life as a direct gift of Jehovah's wisdom. 
 " This also cometh forth from Jehovah of hosts, whose 
 counsel is miraculous, and His wisdom great." Accord- 
 ingly Jehovah's law contains, not only institutes of direct 
 revelation in our limited sense of that word, but old 
 consuetudinary usages, laws identical with those of other 
 early peoples, which had become sacred by being taken 
 up into the God-given polity of Israel, and worked into 
 harmony with the veiy present reality of His redeeming 
 
336 THE FIRST lect. xi 
 
 sovereignty. We shall best picture to ourselves what 
 the ancient Hebrews understood by divine statutes, by 
 a brief survey of the manner of life prescribed in the 
 First Legislation. 
 
 The society contemplated in this legislation is of 
 very simple structure. The basis of life is agricultural. 
 Cattle and agricultural produce are the elements of 
 wealth, and the laws of property deal almost exclu- 
 sively with them. The principles of civil and criminal 
 justice are those still current among the Arabs of the 
 desert. They are two in number, retaliation and 
 pecuniary compensation. Murder is dealt with by the 
 law of blood-revenge, but the innocent manslayer may 
 seek asylum at God's altar. With murder are ranked 
 manstealing, offences against; parents, and witchcraft. 
 Other injuries are occasions of self-help or of private 
 suits to be adjusted at the sanctuary. Personal injuries 
 fall under the law of retaliation, just as murder does. 
 Blow for blow is still the law of the Arabs, and in 
 Canaan no doubt, as in the desert, the retaliation was 
 usually sought in the way of self-help. The principle of 
 retaliation is conceived as legitimate vengeance, xxi. 20, 
 21, margin. Except in this form there is no punishment, 
 but only compensation, which in some cases is at the 
 will of the injured party (who has the alternative 
 of direct revenge), but in general is defined by law. 
 
 Degrading punishments, as imprisonment or the 
 bastinado, are unknown, and loss of liberty is inflicted 
 only on the thief who cannot pay a fine. The slave 
 
LECT. XI. LEGISLA TION. 337 
 
 retains defiuite rights. He recovers his freedom after 
 seven years, unless he prefer to remain a bondman, and 
 to seal this determination by a symbolical act at the 
 door of the sanctuary. His right of blood-revenge 
 against his master is limited, and, instead of the lex 
 talionis, for minor injuries he can claim his liberty. 
 Women do not enjoy full social equality with men. 
 Women slaves were slaves for life, but were usually 
 married to members of the family or servants of the 
 household. The daughter was her father's property, 
 who received a price for surrendering her to a husband ; 
 and so a daughter's dishonour is compensated by law as 
 a pecuniary loss to her father. The Israelites directly 
 contemplated in these laws are evidently men of inde- 
 pendent bearing and personal dignity, such as are still 
 found in secluded parts of the Semitic world under a 
 half - patriarchal constitution of society where every 
 freeman is a small landholder. But there is no strong 
 central authority. The tribunal of the sanctuary is 
 arbiter, not executive. No man is secure without his 
 own aid, and the widow or orphan looks for help, not 
 to man, but to Jehovah Himself. But if the executive is 
 weak, a strict regard for justice is inculcated. Jehovah 
 is behind the law, and He will vindicate the right. He 
 requires of Israel humanity as well as justice. The 
 Ger, or stranger living under the protection of a family 
 or community, has no legal status, but he must not be 
 oppressed/*^^ The Sabbath is enforced as an ordinance of 
 humanity, and to the same end the produce of every 
 
338 THE FIRST 
 
 field or vineyard must be left to the poor one year in 
 seven. The precepts of positive cultiis are simple. He 
 who sacrifices to any God but Jehovah falls under the 
 ban. The only ordinance of ceremonial sanctity is to 
 abstain from the flesh of animals torn by wild beasts. 
 The sacred dues are the firstlings and first fruits : the 
 former must be presented at the sanctuary on the 
 eighth day. This, of course, presupposes a plurality of 
 sanctuaries, and in fact Exodus xx. 24, 25, explains 
 that an altar of stone may be built, and Jehovah 
 acceptably approached, in every place where He sets a 
 memorial of His name. The stated occasions of sacrifice 
 are the feast of unleavened bread, in commemoration of 
 the exodus, the feast of harvest, and that of ingathering. 
 These feasts mark the cycle of the agricultural year, 
 and at them every male must present his homage before 
 Jehovah. The essential points of sacrificial ritual are 
 abstinence from leaven in connection with the blood of 
 the sacrifice, and the rule that the fat must be burnt 
 the same night. 
 
 You see at once that this is no abstract divine 
 legislation. It is a social system adapted for a very 
 definite national life. On the common view, many 
 of its precepts were immediately superseded by the 
 Levitical or Deuteronomic code, before they ever had a 
 chance of being put in operation in Canaan. But this 
 hypothesis, so dishonouring to the Divine Legislator, 
 who can do nothing in vain, is refuted by the whole 
 tenor of the code, which undoubtedly is as living and 
 
LECT. XI. LEGISLA TION. 339 
 
 real a system of law as was ever written. The details 
 of the system are almost all such as are found among 
 other nations. The law of Israel does not yet aim at 
 singularity ; it is enough that it is pervaded by a con- 
 stant sense that the righteous and gracious Jehovah is 
 behind the law, and wields it in conformity with His 
 own holy nature. The law, therefore, makes no pre- 
 tence at ideality. It contains precepts adapted, as our 
 Lord puts it, to the hardness of the people's heart. The 
 ordinances are not ideally perfect, and fit to be a rule of 
 life in every state of society, but they are fit to make 
 Israel a righteous, humane, and God-fearing people, 
 and to facilitate a healthy growth towards better things. 
 The important point that reference to Jehovah and 
 His character determines the spirit rather than the 
 details of the legislation cannot be too strongly accen- 
 tuated. The civil laws are exactly such as the conipara- 
 tive lawyer is familiar with in other nations. Even the 
 religious ordinances are far from unique in their formal 
 elements. The feast of unleavened bread has a special 
 reference to the deliverance from Egypt, which is the 
 historical basis of Israel's distinctive religion. But 
 even this feast has also an agricultural reference ; and 
 the two others, which are purely agricultural, are quite 
 analogous to what is found in other nations. The 
 Canaanite vintage feast at Shechem is a close parallel 
 to the feast of ingathering (supra, p. 257). The sacred 
 dues have also their analogies outside Israel. It is 
 enough to refer to the offering of a firstling sheep or 
 
340 THE FIRST lect. xi. 
 
 camel observed by the heathen Arabs under the name 
 of fard. The distinctive character of the religion 
 appears in the laws directed against polytheism and 
 witchcraft, in the prominence given to righteousness 
 and humanity as the things which are most pleasing to 
 Jehovah and constitute the true significance of such an 
 ordinance as the Sabbath, and, above all, in the clear- 
 ness with which the law holds forth the truth that 
 Jehovah's goodness to Israel is no mere natural relation 
 such as binds Moab to Chemosh, that His favour to His 
 people is directed by moral principles and is forfeited 
 by moral iniquity. In this code we read already the 
 foundation of the thesis of Amos that just because 
 Jehovah knows Israel He observes and punishes the 
 nation's sins (Amos iii. 2 ; Exod. xxii. 23, 27, xxiii. V). 
 Now, we have seen that before the Exile the most 
 characteristic features of the Levitical legislation, and 
 so the most prominent things in our present Pentateuch, 
 had no influence on Israel, either on the righteous or 
 the wicked. This result involved us in great perplexity. 
 For, if the traditional view of the age of the Pentateuch 
 is correct, there was through all these centuries an abso- 
 lute divorce between God's written law and the practical 
 workings of His grace. And the perplexity was only 
 increased when we found that, nevertheless, there was 
 a Torah in Israel before the prophetic books, to which 
 the prophets appeal as the indisputable standard of 
 Jehovah's will. But the puzzle is solved when we 
 compare the history with this First Legislation. It did 
 
LECT. XI. LEGISLATION. 341 
 
 not remain without fruit in Israel, and it, as we have 
 just seen in the case of Amos, affords a firm footing for 
 the prophetic word. There is abundant proof tliat the 
 principles of this legislation were acknowledged in 
 Israel. The appeal to God as judge appears in 1 Sam. 
 ii. 25 ; the law of blood-revenge administered, not by a 
 central authority, but by the family of the deceased, 
 occurs in 2 Sam. iii. 30, xiv. 7, etc. ; the altar is the 
 asylum in 1 Kings i. 50, and elsewhere ; the thief taken 
 in the breach (Exod. xxii. 2) is alluded to by Jer. ii. 34 ; 
 and so forth. The sacred ordinances agree with those 
 in the history, or, if exceptions are noted, they are stig- 
 matised as irregular. The plurality of altars accords 
 with this law. The annual feasts — at least that of the 
 autumn, which seems to have been best observed — are 
 often alluded to ; and the night service of commemora- 
 tion for the exodus appears in Isa. xxx. 29. The rule 
 that the pilgrim must bring an offering was recognised 
 at Shiloh (1 Sam. i. 21). So, too, the complaint against 
 Eli's sons for their delay in burning the fat is based on 
 the same principle as Exod. xxiiL 18. The use of 
 leavened bread with the sacrifice is rebuked by Amos 
 iv. 5, and seems to have had some symbolical signifi- 
 cance of a purely Canaanite character.^' ^ The prohibition 
 to eat blood, which is essentially one with the prohibi- 
 tion of torn flesh, is sedulously observed by Saul, and 
 Saul also distinguishes himself by suppressing witch- 
 craft. The proof that this law was known and acknow- 
 ledged in all its leading provisions is as complete as the 
 
342 THE FIRST lect. xi. 
 
 proof that the Levitical law was still unheard of. This 
 result confirms, and at the same time supplements, our 
 previous argument. We have now brought the history 
 into positive relation to one part of the Pentateuch, and 
 the critical analysis of the Books of Moses has already 
 filled up one of those breaches between law and history 
 which the traditional view can do nothinp^ to heaL 
 
LECT. XII. LEGISLA TION. 343 
 
 LECTUEE XIL 
 
 THE DEUTERONOMIC CODE AND THE LEVITICAL LAAV. 
 
 In the First Legislation the question of correct ritual 
 has little prominence. The simple rules laid down are 
 little more than the necessary and natural expression 
 of that principle which we saw in Lecture VI I L to be 
 the presupposition of the popular worship of Israel, 
 even when it diverged most widely from the Levitical 
 forms. Jehovah alone is Israel's God. It is a crime, 
 analogous to treason, to depart from Him and sacrifice 
 to other gods. As the Lord of Israel and Israel's land, 
 the giver of all good gifts to His people, He has a mani- 
 fest claim on Israel's homage, and receives at their hands 
 such dues as their neighbours paid to their gods, such 
 dues as a king receives from his people (comp. 1 Sam. 
 viii. 15, 17). The occasions of homage are those seasons 
 of natural gladness which an agricultural life suggests. 
 The joy of harvest and vintage is a rejoicing before Je- 
 hovah, when the worshipper brings a gift in his hand, 
 as he would do in approaching an earthly sovereign, 
 and presents the choicest first-fruits at the altar, just 
 as his Canaanite neighbour does in the house of Laal 
 (Jud. ix. 27). The whole worship is spontaneous and 
 
344 THE EIGHTH lect. xii. 
 
 natural. It has hardly the character of a positive legis- 
 lation, and its distinction from heathen rites lies less in 
 the outward form than in the different conception of 
 Jehovah which the true worshipper should bear in his 
 heart. To a people which " knows Jehovah," this un- 
 ambitious service, in which the expression of grateful 
 homage to Him runs through all the simple joys of a 
 placid agricultural life, was sufficient to form the visible 
 basis of a pure and earnest piety. But its forms gave 
 no protection against deflection into heathenism and 
 immorality when Jehovah's spiritual nature and moral 
 precepts were forgotten. The feasts and sacrifices might 
 still run their accustomed round when Jehovah was 
 practically confounded with the Baalim, and there was 
 no more truth or mercy or knowledge of God in the 
 land (Hosea iv. 1). 
 
 Such, in fact, was the state of things in the eighth 
 century, the age of the earliest prophetic books. The 
 declensions of Israel had not checked the outward zeal 
 with which Jehovah was worshipped. Never had the 
 national sanctuaries been more sedulously frequented, 
 never had the feasts been more splendid or the offerings 
 more copious. But the foundations of the old life were 
 breaking up. The external prosperity of the state 
 covered an abyss of social disorder. Profusion and 
 luxury among the higher classes stood in startling con- 
 trast to the misery of the poor. Lawlessness and open 
 crime were on the increase. The rulers of the nation 
 grew fat upon oppression, but there was none who was 
 
LECT. XII. CENTUR V. 345 
 
 grieved for the wound of Joseph. These evils were 
 earliest and most acutely felt in the kingdom of Ephraim, 
 where Amos declares them to be already incurable under 
 the outwardly prosperous reign of Jeroboam II. Witli 
 the downfall of Jehu's dynasty the last bonds of social 
 order were dissolved, and the Assyrian found an easy 
 prey in a land already reduced to practical anarcliy. 
 The smaller realm of Judah seemed at first to show 
 more hopeful symptoms (Hosea iv. 15). But the sepa- 
 ration of the kingdoms had not broken the subtle links 
 that connected Judah with the greater Israel of the 
 North. At all periods the fortunes and internal move- 
 ments of Ephraim had powerfully reacted on the South- 
 ern Kingdom. Isaiah and Micah describe a corrup- 
 tion within the house of David altogether similar to 
 the sin of Samaria. "The statutes of Omri were 
 kept, and all the works of the house of Ahab " (^licah 
 vi. 16). 
 
 The prominence which the prophets assign to social 
 grievances and civil disorders has often led to their 
 being described as politicians, a democratic Opposition 
 in the aristocratic state. This is a total misconception. 
 The prophets of the eighth century have no political 
 views, they propose no practical scheme of political 
 readjustment, and they give only the indirectest hints 
 of the causes which were so rapidly dissolving the body 
 politic of Israel The work of the prophets is purely 
 religious ; they censure what is inconsistent with the 
 knowledge and fear of Jehovah, but see no way of 
 
346 THE DECADENCE lect. xii. 
 
 remedy save in the repentance and return to Him of 
 all classes of society, after a sifting work of judgment 
 has destroyed the sinners of Jehovah's people without 
 suffering one grain of true wheat to fall to the ground 
 (Amos ix. 9 seq^. ; Isa. vi., etc.). But to the prophets the 
 observance of justice and mercy in the state are the first 
 elements of religion. The religious subject, the wor- 
 shipping individual, Jehovah's son, was not the indi- 
 vidual Israelite, but the nation qua nation, and the Old 
 Testament analogue to the peace of conscience which 
 marks a healthy condition of spiritual life in the Chris- 
 tian was that inner peace and harmony of the estates 
 of the realm which can only be secured where justice 
 is done and mercy loved. The ideal of the prophets in 
 the eighth century is not different from that of the 
 First Legislation. In the old law the worship of feasts 
 and sacrifices is the natural consecration, in act, of a 
 simple, happy society, nourished by Jehovah's good 
 gifts in answer to the labour of the husbandman, and 
 cemented by a regard for justice and habits of social 
 kindliness. When the old healthy harmony of classes 
 was dissolved, when the rich and the poor were no 
 longer knit together by a kindly sympathy and patri- 
 archal bond of dependence, but confronted one another 
 as oppressor and oppressed, when the strain thus put 
 on all social relations burst the weak bonds of outer 
 order and filled tlie land with unexpiated bloodshed, the 
 pretence of homage to Jehovah at His sanctuary was 
 but the crowning proof that Israel knew not his God. 
 
LECT. XII. OF ISRAEL, 347 
 
 " When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine 
 eyes from you ; yea, when ye make many prayers I will 
 not hear : your hands are full of blood" (Tsa. i. 15). 
 
 The causes of the inner disintegration of Israel were 
 manifold, and we cannot pause to examine them fully. 
 But in this, as in all similar cases which history ex- 
 hibits, the strain which snapped the old bands of social 
 unity proceeded mainly from the effects of warlike 
 invasion reacting on a one-sided progress in material 
 prosperity, to which the order of the state had not been 
 able to readjust itself. The luxury of the higlicr 
 classes, described by Amos and Isaiah, shows that the 
 nobles of Israel were no longer great farmers, as Saul 
 and Nabal had been, living among the peasantry and 
 sharing their toil. The connection with Tyre, which 
 commenced in the days of David, opened a profitable 
 foreign market for the agricultural produce of Palestine 
 (Ezek. xxvii. 17), and introduced foreign luxuries in 
 return. The landowners became merchants and fore- 
 stallers of grain (Amos viiL 5 ; IIos. xii. 7). The intro- 
 duction of such a commerce, throwing the Hebrews into 
 immediate relations with the great emporium of inter- 
 national traffic, necessarily led to accumulation of 
 wealth in a few hands, and to the corresponding im- 
 poverishment of the class without capital, as exportation 
 raised the price of the necessaries of life. In times of 
 famine, or under the distress wrought by prolonged and 
 ferocious warfare with Syria, the once independent 
 peasantry fell into the condition now so universal in 
 
348 THE DECADENCE lect. xii. 
 
 the East. They were loaded with debt, cheated on all 
 hands, and often had to relinquish their personal liberty 
 (Amos ii. 6, 7 ; Micah iii. 2 stq^., vi. 10 seq^., etc.). The 
 order of the state, entirely based on the old precom- 
 mercial state of things when trade was the affair of the 
 Canaanites — Canaanite, in old Hebrew, is the word 
 for a trader — was not able to adjust itself to the new 
 circumstances. How entirely commercial avocations 
 were unknown to the old law appears from the circum- 
 stance that the idea of capital is unknown. It is 
 assumed in Exod. xxii. 25 that no one borrows money 
 except for personal distress, and all interest is conceived 
 as usury (comp. Psalm xv. 5). In proportion, there- 
 fore, as the nation began to share the wealth and luxury 
 of the Canaanite trading cities of the coast, it divorced 
 itself from the old social forms of the religion of 
 Jehovah. The Canaanite influence affected religion in 
 affecting the national life, and it was inevitable that 
 the worship of the sanctuary, which had always been in 
 the closest rapport with the daily habits of the people, 
 should itself assume the colour of Canaanite luxury 
 and Canaanite immorality. This tendency was not 
 checked by the extirpation of professed worship of the 
 Tyrian Baal. Jehovah Himself in His many shrines 
 assumed the features of the local Baalim of the Can- 
 aanite sanctuaries, and those horrible orgies of unre- 
 strained sensuality, of which we no longer dare to speak 
 in unveiled words, polluted the temples where Jeho- 
 vah still reigned in name, and where His help was 
 
LECT. XII. OF ISRAEL. 349 
 
 confidently expected to save Israel from Damascus and 
 Assyria. 
 
 The prophets, as I have already said, never profess 
 to devise a scheme of political and social reformation to 
 meet these evils. Their business is not to govern, but 
 to teach the nation to know Jehovah, and to lay bare 
 the guilt of every departure from Him. It is for the 
 righteous ruler to determine how the principles of 
 justice, mercy, and God-fearing can be made practically 
 operative in society. Thus the criticism of the prophets 
 on established usages is mainly negative. The healing 
 of Israel must come from Jehovah. It is useless to 
 seek help from political combinations, and it is a mis- 
 take to fancy that international commerce and foreign 
 culture are additions to true happiness. This judgment 
 proceeds from no theories of political economy. It 
 would be a fallacy to cite the prophets as witness that 
 commerce and material civilisation are bad in them- 
 selves. All that they say is that these things, as they 
 found them in their own time, have undone Israel, and 
 that the first step towards deliverance must be a judg- 
 ment which sweeps away all the spurious show of 
 prosperity that has come between Jehovah's people and 
 the true knowledge of their God (Isa. ii. ; Micah v.). 
 Israel must again pass through the wilderness. All the 
 good gifts of fertile Canaan must be taken away by a 
 desolating calamity. Then the valley of trouble shall 
 again become a gate of hope, and Jehovah's covenant 
 shall renew its course on its old principles, but with far 
 16 
 
350 REFORMATION lect. xii. 
 
 more perfect realisation (Hos, ii.). The prophetic 
 pictures of Israel's final felicity are at this tinie all 
 framed on the pattern of the past. The days of David 
 shall return under a righteous king (Micah v. 2 sc(i. ; 
 Hos. iii. 5 ; Isa. xi. 1 seq?), and Israel shall realise, as 
 it had never done in the past, the old ideal of simple 
 agricultural life, in which every good gift is received 
 directly from Jehovah's hand, and is supplied by Him 
 in a plenty that testifies to His perfect reconciliation 
 with His people (Hos. ii. 21 sec^. ; Amos ix. 11 seq, ; 
 Micah iv. 4, vii. 14 ; Isa. iv. 2). 
 
 This picture is ideal. It was never literally fulfilled 
 to Israel in Canaan, and now that the people of God 
 has become a spiritual society dissociated from national 
 limitations and relation to the land of Canaan, it never 
 can be fulfilled save in a spiritual sense. The restora- 
 tion of Israel to Palestine would be no fulfilment of 
 prophecy now, for the good things of the land never had 
 any other value to the prophets than that of an expres- 
 sion of Jehovah's love to the people of His choice, which 
 is now much more clearly declared in Christ Jesus, and 
 brought nigh to the heart by His spirit. But the ideal 
 supplied a practical impulse. It did not provide the 
 sketch of a new legislation which could cure the deeper 
 ills of the state without the divine judgment which the 
 prophets foretold, but it indicated evils that must be 
 cleared away, and with wdiich the old divine laws were 
 unable to grapple. 
 
 One point, in particular, became thoroughly plain 
 
LECT. XII. IN JUDAH. 351 
 
 The sacrificial worsliip was corrupt to the core, and 
 could never again be purified by the mere removal of 
 foreign elements from the local high places. The first 
 step towards reformation must lie in the abolition of 
 these polluted shrines, and to this task the adherents of 
 the prophets addressed themselves. 
 
 At this point in the history the centre of interest is 
 transferred from Ephraim to Judah. In Ephraim the 
 sanctuaries perished with the fall of the old kingdom, 
 or sank, if possible, to a lower depth in the worship of 
 the mixed populations introduced by the conqueror. In 
 Judah there was still some hope of better things. The 
 party of reform was for a space in the ascendant 
 under King Hezekiah, when the miraculous overthrow 
 of the Assyrian vindicated the authority of the prophet 
 Isaiah and justified his confident prediction that Jehovah 
 would protect His sacred hearth on Mount Zion. But 
 the victory was not gained in a moment. Under 
 Manasseh a terrible reaction set in, and the corrupt 
 popular religion crushed the prophetic party, not with- 
 out bloodshed. The truth was cast down, but not over- 
 thrown. In Josiah's reign the tide of battle turned, 
 and then it was that "the book of the Torah" was 
 found in the Temple. Its words smote the hearts of 
 the king and the people, for though the book had no 
 external credentials it bore its evidence within itself, 
 and it was stamped with the approval of the prophetess 
 Huldah. The Torah was adopted in formal covenant, 
 and on its lines, — the lines of the Deuteronomic Code, 
 
352 DEUTERONOMY AND lect. xii. 
 
 as we have already seen {supra, p. 246), — the reforma- 
 tion of Josiah was carried out. 
 
 The details of the process of reformation which cul- 
 minated in the eighteenth year of Josiah are far from 
 clear, but a few leading points can be established with 
 precision. The central difference between the Deuter- 
 onomic Code, on which Josiah acted, and the old code 
 of the First Legislation, lies in the principle that the 
 Temple at Jerusalem is the only legitimate sanctuary. 
 The legislator in Deuteronomy expressly puts forth this 
 ordinance as an innovation, "Ye shall not do, as we do 
 here this day, every man whatsoever is right in his own 
 eyes" (Deut. xii. 8). Moreover, it is explained that 
 the law which confines sacrifice to one altar involves 
 modifications of ancient usage. If the land of Israel 
 becomes so large that the sanctuary is not easily access- 
 ible, bullocks and sheep may be eaten at home, as 
 game is eaten, without being sacrificed, the blood only 
 being poured on the ground. We have already seen 
 that the earlier custom here presupposed, on which every 
 feast of beef or mutton was sacrificial, obtained long 
 after the settlement of Israel in Canaan, on the basis of 
 the principle of many altars laid down in Exod. xx. 24, 
 and presupposed in the First Legislation. But further, 
 the book of Deuteronomy, which reproduces almost 
 every precept of the older code, with or without modi- 
 fication, remodels the ordinances which presuppose a 
 plurality of sanctuaries. According to Exod. xxii. 30, 
 the firstlings are to be offered on the eighth day. This 
 
LECT. XII. THE HIGH PLACES. 353 
 
 is impracticable under the law of one altar ; and so in 
 Deut. XV. 19 seq^. it is appointed that they shall be 
 eaten year by year at the sanctuary, and that meantime 
 no work shall be done with the firstling bullock, and 
 that a firstling sheep shall not be shorn. Again, the 
 asylum for the manslayer in Exod. xxi. 12-14 is 
 Jehovah's altar, and so, in fact, the altar was used in 
 the time of David and Solomon. But under the law 
 of Deuteronomy there are to be three fixed cities of 
 refuge (Deut. xix. 1 seq}). 
 
 The law, then, is quite distinctly a law for the 
 abolition of the local sanctuaries, as they are recognised 
 by the First Legislation, and had been frequented under 
 it without offence during many centuries in the land of 
 Canaan. The reason for the change of law comes out 
 in Deut. xii. 2 seq. The one sanctuary is ordained to 
 prevent assimilation between Jehovah-worship and the 
 Canaanite service. The Israelites in the eighth century 
 did service on the hill-tops and under the green trees 
 (Hos. iv. 13 ; Isa. i. 29), and in these local sanctuaries 
 practically merged their Jehovah-worship in the abomi- 
 nations of the heathen. The Deuteronomic law designs 
 to make such "syncretism" henceforth impossible by 
 separating the sanctuary of Jehovah from all heathen 
 shrines. And so, in particular, the old marks of a 
 sanctuary, the maqqeba and ashera (supra, p. 226), which 
 had been used by the patriarchs, and continued to 
 exist in sanctuaries of Jehovah down to the eighth 
 century, are declared illegitimate (Deut. xvi. 21 ; Josh. 
 
354 ISAIAH AND lect. xii. 
 
 xxiv. 26; 1 Sam. vi. 14, vii. 12; 2 Sam. xx. 8 ; 1 
 Kings i. 9 ; Hosea iii. 4 ; 1 Kings vii. 21). This de- 
 tail is one of the clearest proofs that Deuteronomy was 
 unknown till long after the days of Moses. How could 
 Joshua, if he had known such a law, have erected a 
 maggeba or sacred pillar of unhewn stone under the 
 sacred tree by the sanctuary at Shechem? Nay, this 
 law was still unknown to Isaiah, who attacks idolatry, 
 but recognises maggeba and altar as the marks of the 
 sanctuar^^ of Jehovah. "In that day," he says, pro- 
 phesying the conversion of Egypt, "there shall be an 
 altar to Jehovah within the land of Egypt, and a 
 maggeba at the border thereof to Jehovah" (Isa. xix. 19). 
 Isaiah could not refer to a forbidden symbol as a maggeba 
 to Jehovah. He takes it for granted that Egypt, when 
 converted, will serve Jehovah by sacrifice (ver. 21), and 
 do so under the familiar forms which Jehovah has not 
 yet abrogated. 
 
 This passage gives us a superior limit for the date 
 of the Deuteronomic Code. It was not known to 
 Isaiah, and therefore the reforms of Hezekiah cannot 
 have been based upon it. Indeed the prophets of the 
 eighth century, approaching the problem of true worship, 
 not from the legal and practical side, but from the 
 religious principles involved, never get so far as to 
 indicate a detailed plan for the reorganisation of the 
 sanctuaries. Micah proclaims God's wrath against the 
 maggebas and asheras; but they perish in the general fall 
 of the cities of Judah with all their corrupt civilisation 
 
LECT. XII. THE HIGH PLACES. 355 
 
 (Micah V. 10 8cq^. Even Jerusalem and the Temple of 
 Zion must share the general fate (chap. iii. 12). Such 
 a prediction offers no occasion for a plan of reformed 
 worship. In the prophecies of Isaiah again, where the 
 ma^^eba is still recognised as legitimate, the idols of 
 the Judoean sanctuaries are viewed as the chief element 
 in the nation's rebellion, and the mark of repentance is 
 to cast them away (Isa. xxx. 22, xxxi. 6 scq., ii. 7, 20). 
 It does not seem impossible that Isaiah would have 
 been content with this reform, for he never proclaims 
 war against the local sanctuaries as he does against 
 their idols. He perceives indeed that not only the 
 idols but the altars come between Israel and Jehovah, 
 and lead the people to look to the work of their own 
 hands instead of to their Maker (Isa. xvii. 7 seq). Yet 
 even here the contrast is not between one altar and 
 many, but between the material and man-made sanctu- 
 ary and the Holy One of Israel. The prophetic thought 
 seems to hesitate on the verge of transition to the 
 spiritual worship of the New Covenant. But tlie time 
 was not yet ripe for so decisive a change. J>^ 
 
 To Isaiah, Jehovah's presence with His people is 
 still a local thing. It could not, indeed, be otherwise, 
 for the people of Jehovah was itself a conception geo- 
 graphically defined, bound up with the land of Canaan, 
 and having its centre in Jerusalem. In the crisis of 
 the Assyrian wars, the fundamental religious thought 
 that Jehovah's gracious purpose, and therefore Jehovah's 
 people, are indestructible, took in Isaiah's mind the 
 
355 THE HOLINESS lect. xii. 
 
 definite form of an assurance that Jerusalem could not 
 fall before the enemy. " Jehovah hath founded Zion, 
 and the poor of his people shall trust in it " (Isa. 
 xiv. 32). Jehovah, who hath his fire in Zion, and his 
 furnace in Jerusalem, will protect his holy mountain, 
 hovering over it as birds over their nest (Isa. xxxi. 5, 9). 
 Zion is the inviolable seat of Jehovah's sovereignty, 
 where He dwells as a devouring fire, purging the sin of 
 His people by consuming judgment, but also asserting 
 His majesty against all invaders (Isa. xxxiii. 13 scc[., 
 iv. 4 seq}). Tliis conception is nowhere specially con- 
 nected with the Temple. Eather is it the wdiole plateau 
 of Zion (chap. iv. 5) which is the seat of Jehovah's pre- 
 sence with His people. But, according to the whole 
 manner of thought in the Old Testament, the seat of 
 Jehovah's presence to Israel, the centre from which His 
 Torah goes forth (Isa. ii. 3), the mountain of Jehovah 
 and Jehovah's house (Isa. xxx. 29, ii. 2), the hearth of 
 God {Ariel, Isa. xxix. 1), the place of solemn and festal 
 assembly (Isa. iv. 5, xxxiii. 20), must be the place of 
 accej)table sacrifice, if sacrifice is to continue at all. 
 Isaiah, perhaps, was not concerned to draw this infer- 
 ence. His thoughts were rather full of the spiritual 
 side of Jehovah's presence to His people, the word of 
 revelation guiding their path (xxx. 20, 21), the privilege 
 of dwelling unharmed in the fire of Jehovah's presence, 
 and seeing the King in His glory, which belongs to the 
 man that walketh in righteousness, and speaketh up- 
 right w^ords ; who despiseth the gain of oppression, 
 
LECT, XT I. OF ZION. 357 
 
 shaking his hands from the holding of bribes, stopping 
 his ears from the hearing of blood, and shutting his 
 eyes from looking on evil (xxxiii. 14 seq^). But a prac- 
 tical scheme of reformation, resting on these premisses, 
 and deriving courage from the fulfilment of Isaiah's 
 promise of deliverance, could hardly fail to aim at the 
 unification of worship in Jerusalem. Hezekiah may at 
 first have sought only to purge the sanctuaries of idols. 
 But the whole worship of these shrines was bound up 
 with their idolatrous practices, while the Temple on 
 Zion, the sanctuary of the ark, might well be purged of 
 heathenish corruptions, and still retain in this ancient 
 Mosaic symbol a mark of Jehovah's presence palpable 
 enough to draw the homage even of the masses who had 
 no ears for the lofty teaching of Isaiah. The history in- 
 forms us that Hezekiah actually worked in this direction. 
 We cannot tell the measure of his success, for what he 
 effected was presently undone by Manasseh ; but, at 
 least, it was under him that the problem first took prac- 
 tical shape. 
 
 It is very noteworthy, and, on the traditional view, 
 quite inexplicable, that the Mosaic sanctuary of the 
 ark is never mentioned in the Deuteronomic Code. 
 The author of this law occupies the standpoint of 
 Isaiah, to whom the whole plateau of Zion is holy ; or 
 of Jeremiah, who forbids men to search for the ark or 
 remake it, because Jerusalem is the throne of Jehovah 
 (Jer. iii. 16, IV). But he formulates Isaiah's doctrine 
 in the line of Hezekiah's practical essay to suppress the 
 
358 THE OLD lect. xii. 
 
 high places, and he develops a scheme for fuller and 
 effective execution of this object with a precision of de- 
 tail that shows a clear sense of the practical difficulties 
 of the undertaking. It was no light thing to overturn 
 the whole popular worship of Judah. It is highly 
 probable that Hezekiah failed to produce a permanent 
 result because he had not duly provided for the prac- 
 tical difficulties to which his scheme would give rise. 
 The Deuteronomic Code has realised these difficulties, 
 and meets the most serious of them by the modifications 
 of the old law already discussed, and by making special 
 provision for the priests of the suppressed shrines. 
 
 The First Legislation has no law of priesthood, no 
 provision as to priestly dues. The permission of many 
 altars, which it presupposes, is given in Exodus xx. 
 24-26 in a form that assumes the right of laymen to 
 ofter sacrifice, ^^^ as we actually find them doing in so 
 many parts of the history {supra, p. 264). Yet a closer 
 observation shows that the old law presupposes a priest- 
 hood, whose business lies less with sacrifice than with 
 the divine Torah w^hich they administer in the 
 sanctuary as successors of Moses. For the sanctuary is 
 the seat of judgment {supra, p. 334), and this implies 
 a qualified personnel through whom judgment is given. 
 According to the unanimous testimony of all the older 
 records of the Old Testament, this priesthood, charged 
 with the Torah administered at the sanctuary, is none 
 other than the house of Levi, the kinsmen or descend- 
 ants of Moses, who already in his time were the body- 
 
LECT. XII. PRIESTHOOD. 359 
 
 guard of the ark, and so the guardians of the sanctuary 
 at wliich lie dispensed Divine judgments. (See 
 especially Deuteronomy xxxiii. 8 ; 1 Samuel ii. 27 sc*/.). 
 The history of the Levites after the Conquest is veiled 
 in much obscurity. The principal branch of the family, 
 which remained with the ^rk, is known to us as the 
 house of Eli, which lost its supremacy in fulfilment of 
 the prophecy in 1 Samuel ii., wdien Solomon deposed 
 Abiathar and set Zadok in his place (1 Kings ii. 26, 
 27). According to the prophecy just alluded to, Zadok 
 did not belong to the priestly family originally chosen 
 by Jehovah, but he was the head of a body of Levites 
 (2 Samuel xv. 24). Another Levitical family which 
 claimed direct descent from Moses held the priesthood 
 of the sanctuary of Dan, and in the later times of the 
 kingdom all the priests of local sanctuaries w^ere viewed 
 as Levites. Whether this implies that they were all 
 lineal descendants of the old house of Levi may well be 
 doubted. But in early times guilds are hereditary 
 bodies, modified by a right of adoption, and it was un- 
 derstood that the priesthood ran in the family to which 
 Moses belonged. In the time of Ezekiel the Jerusalem 
 priesthood consisted of the Levites of the guild of 
 Zadok. The subordinate ministers of the Temple were 
 not Levites, but, as we have already seen, the foreign 
 janissaries, and presumably other foreign slaves, the 
 progenitors of the Kdhinim, who appear in the list of 
 returning exiles in Ezra ii. with names for the most 
 part not Israelite. The Levites who are not Zadokites 
 
360 DEUTERONOMY AND lect. xii. 
 
 are by Ezekiel expressly identified with the priests of 
 the high places (Ezek. xliv. 9 seg.; supra, p. 249 and 
 note). These historical facts — for they are no con- 
 jecture, but the express testimony of the sacred record 
 — are presupposed in the Code of Deuteronomy. The 
 priests, according to Deuteronomy xxl 5, are the sons 
 of Levi ; "for them hath Jehovah thy God chosen to 
 minister to him and to bless in his name, and accord- 
 ing to their decision is every controversy and every 
 stroke." Deuteronomy knows no Levites who cannot be 
 priests, and no priests who are not Levites. The two 
 ideas are absolutely identical But these Levites, 
 w^ho are priests of Jehovah's own appointment, were, in 
 the period when the code was composed, scattered 
 through the land as priests of the local sanctuaries. 
 They had no territorial possessions (Deut. xviii. 1), 
 and were viewed as Gerim, or strangers under the 
 protection of the community in the places where they 
 sojourned (verse 6). Apart from the revenues of the 
 sanctuary, their position was altogether dependent 
 (xiv. 27, 29, Q%c)P 
 
 In the abolition of the local sanctuaries it was 
 necessary to make provision for these Levites. And this 
 the new code does in two ways : it provides, in the first 
 place, that any Levite from the provinces who chooses 
 to come up to Jerusalem shall be admitted to equal 
 privileges with his brethren the Levites who stand 
 there before Jehovah — not to the privilege of a servant 
 in the sanctuary, but to the full priesthood, as is ex- 
 
LECT. XII. THE LEVITES, 361 
 
 pressly conveyed by the terms used. Thus ministeriDg, 
 he receives for his support an equal share of the priestly 
 dues paid in kind (Deut. xviii. 6 scc[). Those 
 Levites, on the other hand, who remain dispersed 
 through the provinces receive no emolument from the 
 sanctuary, and, having no property in land (xviii. 1), 
 have a far from enviable lot, which the legislator 
 seeks to mitigate by recommending them in a special 
 manner, along with the widow and the orphan, to the 
 charity of the landed classes under whose protec- 
 tion they dwell (xii. 12, 18; xiv. 27, 29; xvi. 11, 14; 
 XX vi. 11 sec[). The method of such charity is to 
 some extent defined. Once in three years every 
 farmer is called upon to store up a tithe of the 
 produce of his land, which he retains in his own 
 hands, but must dispense to the dependents or Levites 
 who come and ask a meal. The legislator, it is plain, 
 aims at something like a voluntary poor-rate. The 
 condition of the landless class, with whose sufferings 
 the prophets are so often exercised, had become a social 
 problem, owing to the increase of large estates and 
 other causes (Isa. v. 8 ; Micah ii.), and demands a 
 remedy; but it is not proposed to enforce the assess- 
 ment through the executive. The matter is left to 
 every man's conscience as a religious duty, of which 
 he is called to give account before Jehovah in the 
 sanctuary (xxvi. 12 5c^.). And tlie bond between 
 charity and religion is drawn stiU closer by the pro- 
 vision that the well-to-do landholder, when he comes 
 
362 DEUTERONOMY NOT lect. xii. 
 
 vip to the sanctuary to make merry before God, feasting 
 on the firstlings, tithes, etc., must bring with him his 
 dependents and the Levite who is within his gates, 
 that they too may have their part in the occasions of 
 religious joy. This law of charity appears to supersede 
 the old rule of leaving the produce of every field to the 
 poor one year in seven, which is obviously a more 
 primitive and less practical arrangement. In place 
 of this, the Deuteronomic Code requires that, at the 
 close of every seven years, there shall be a release of 
 Hebrew debtors by their creditors (xv. 1 seq?). 
 
 I return to the Levites, in order to point out that 
 the comparison of Deut. xviii. with 2 Kings xxiii. 8 
 sGg. effectually disproves the idea of some critics that 
 the Deuteronomic Code was a forgery of the temple 
 priests, or of their head, the high priest Hilkiah. The 
 proposal to give the Levites of the provinces — that is, 
 the priests of the local sanctuaries — equal priestly rights 
 at Jerusalem could not commend itself to the temple 
 hierarchy. And in this point Josiah was not able to 
 carry out the ordinances of the book. The priests who 
 were brought up to Jerusalem received support from 
 the temple dues, but were not permitted to minister at 
 the altar. This proves that the code did not emanate 
 from Hilkiah and the Zadokite priests, whose class 
 interests were strong enough to frustrate the law which, 
 on the theory of a forgery, was their own work. 
 
 Whence, then, did the book derive the authority 
 which made its discovery the signal for so great a 
 
LECT. XII. FORGED BY HILKIAII. 3G3 
 
 reformation 1 How did it approve itself as an expres- 
 sion of the Divine will, first to Hilkiah and Josiah, and 
 then to tlie whole nation ? To this question there can 
 be but one answer. The authority that lay behind 
 Deuteronomy was the power of the prophetic teaching 
 which half a century of persecution had not been able 
 to suppress. After the work of Isaiah and his fellows, 
 it was impossible for any earnest movement of reforma- 
 tion to adopt other principles than those of the pro- 
 phetic word on which Jehovah Himself had set His 
 seal by the deliverance from Assyria. What the Deu- 
 teronomic code supplied was a clear and practical 
 scheme of reformation on the prophetic lines. It 
 showed that it was possible to adjust the old religious 
 constitution in conformity with present needs, and this 
 was enough to kindle into new flame the slumbering 
 fire of the word of the prophets. The book became the 
 programme of Josiah's reformation, because it gathered 
 up in practical form the results of the great movement 
 under Hezekiah and Isaiah, and the new divine teach- 
 ing then given to Israel. It was of no consequence to 
 Josiah — it is of equally little consequence to us — to 
 know the exact date and authorship of the book. Its 
 prophetic doctrine, and the practical character of the 
 scheme which it set forth — in which the new teaching 
 and the old Torah were fused into an intelligible unity 
 — were enough to commend it. 
 
 The law of the one sanctuary, which is aimed against 
 assimilation of Jehovah -worship to the religion of 
 
364 HOLINESS OF lect. xii. 
 
 Canaan, and seeks entirely to separate the people from 
 tlie worship of Canaanite shrines, is only one expression 
 of a thought common to the prophets, that the unique 
 religion of Jehovah was in constant danger from inter- 
 course between Israel and the nations. Isaiah com- 
 plains that the people were always ready to "strike 
 hands with the children of strangers," and recognises a 
 chief danger to faith in the policy of the nobles, who 
 were dazzled with the splendour and courted the alliance 
 of the great empires on the Nile and the Tigris (Isa. 
 ii. 6, XXX. 1 seq. ; compare Hosea vii. 8, viii. 9, xiv. 3). 
 The vocation of Israel as Jehovah's people has no points 
 of contact with the aims and political combinations of 
 the surrounding nations, and Micah looks forward to a 
 time when Israel shall be like a flock feeding in solitude 
 in the woods of Bashan or Carmel. Isaiah expresses 
 this unique destiny of Israel in the word holiness. 
 Jehovah is the Holy One of Israel, and conversely His 
 true people are a holy seed. The notion of holiness is 
 primarily connected with the sanctuary and acts of 
 worship. The old Israelite consecrated himself before a 
 sacrifice. In the First Legislation the notion of Israel's 
 holiness appears only in the law against eating flesh 
 torn in the field, of which the blood had not been duly 
 offered to God on His altar. But Isaiah raises the 
 notion beyond the sphere of ritual, and places Israel's 
 holiness in direct relation to the personal presence of 
 Jehovah on Zion in the centre of His people as their 
 living Sanctuary, whose glory fills aU the earth (Isa. 
 
LECT. XII. ISRAEL. 365 
 
 VL 3, iv. 3 seq^. The Code of Deuteronomy appropriates 
 this principle ; but in its character of a law, seeking 
 definite practical expression for religious principles, it 
 develops the idea of unique holiness and separation 
 from the profane nations in prohibitive ordinances. 
 The essential object of the short law of the kingdom 
 (xvii 14 seq^ is to guard against admixture with 
 foreigners and participation in foreign policy. Other 
 precepts regulate contact with the adjoining nations 
 (xxiii. 3 se^'.), and a vast number of statutes are directed 
 against the immoralities of Canaanite nature-worship, 
 which, as we know from the prophets and the books of 
 Kings, had deeply tainted the service of Jehovah. Not 
 a few details, which to the modern eye seem trivial or 
 irrational, disclose to the student of Semitic antiquity 
 an energetic protest against the moral grossness of 
 Canaanite heathenism. These precepts give the law a 
 certain air of ritual formalism, but the formalism lies 
 only on the surface, and there is a moral idea below. 
 The ceremonial observances of Deuteronomy are inver- 
 sions of heathen usages. A good example lies in the 
 list of forbidden foods. We know as a fact that some 
 of the unclean animals were sacramentally eaten in 
 certain heathen rituals (Tsa. Ixvi. 17, Ixv. 4, Ixvi. 3), and 
 in general the rules as to eating and not eating certain 
 animals among the heathen Semites, as in other primi- 
 tive nations, were directly connected with the worship 
 of animal deities, the totems of certain races or families. 
 The worship of unclean animals is mentioned in Ezekiel 
 
366 CIVIL LA WS 
 
 viii. 10, 11, in a form that indicates the existence of 
 family totems within Israel; and it is impossible to 
 doubt that the laws of clean and unclean beasts are 
 aimed at heathen usages connected with this worship. 
 Just so our own prejudice against the use of horse flesh 
 is a. relic of an old ecclesiastical prohibition framed at 
 the time when the eating of such food was an act of 
 worship to Odin/^^ 
 
 This constant polemical reference to Canaanite wor- 
 ship and Canaanite morality gives to the element of 
 ritual and forms of worship a much larger place in 
 Deuteronomy than these things hold in the First Legis- 
 lation. In points of civil order the new law still moves 
 on the old lines. Its object is not legislative innova- 
 tion, but to bring the old consuetudinary law into 
 relation to the fundamental principle that Jehovah is 
 Israel's Lawgiver, and that all social order exists under 
 His sanction. 
 
 Thus we still find some details which bear the 
 stamp of primeval Semitic culture. In chap. xxi. 10 
 scg. we have marriage by capture as it was practised by 
 the Arabs before Mohammed, and even the detail as to 
 the paring of the nails of the captive before marriage is 
 identical with one of the old Arabic methods of break- 
 ing widowhood. 
 
 But in general we see that the civil laws of Deutero- 
 nomy belong to a later stage of society than the First 
 Legislation. For example, the law of retaliation, which 
 has so large a range in the First Legislation, is limited 
 
LECT. XII. IN DEUTERONOMY. 3G7 
 
 in Deut xix. 16 5c^. to the case of false witness. And 
 with this goes the introduction of a new punishment, 
 which, in the old law, w^as confined to slaves. A man 
 who injures another may be brought before the judge 
 and sentenced to the bastinado (xxv. 1 seq^). The intro- 
 duction of this degrading punishment in the case of 
 freemen indicates a change in social feeling. Among 
 the Bedouins no sheikh would dare to flog a man, for he 
 would thereby bring himself under the law of retali- 
 ation; and so it was in Israel in the old time. But 
 Eastern kingship breaks down this sense of personal 
 independence, while, at the same time, it modifies the 
 strict law of revenge. In general, the executive system 
 of Deuteronomy is more advanced. The sanctuary is 
 still the highest seat of law, but the priest is now asso- 
 ciated with a supreme civil judge (xvii. 9, 12), who seems 
 to be identical with the king ; and even the subordi- 
 nate judges are not merely the natural sheikhs, or elders 
 of the local communities, but include officers appointed 
 with national authority (xvi. 18). Again, the law of 
 manumission undergoes an important modification. On 
 the old law a father could sell his daughter as a slave, 
 and the bondwoman was absolute property ; the master 
 could wed her to one of his servants, and retain her 
 when the servant left. In Deuteronomy all this has 
 disappeared, and a Hebrew woman has a right to manu- 
 mission after seven years, like a man (xv. 12, 17). A 
 similar advance in woman's rights appears in the change 
 on the law of seduction. By the old law this case was 
 
368 CIVIL LA WS lect. xii. 
 
 treated as one of pecuniary loss to the father, who must 
 be compensated by the seducer purchasing the damsel as 
 wife for the full price (mohar) of a virgin. In Deutero- 
 nomy the law is removed from among the laws of pro- 
 perty to laws of moral purity, and the payment of full 
 mohar is changed to a fixed fine (Exod. xxii 16, 17; 
 Deut. xxii. 28 seq). 
 
 In other cases the new code softens the rudeness of 
 ancient custom. In Arabic warfare the destruction of 
 an enemy's palm-groves is a favourite exploit, and fertile 
 lands are thus often reduced to desert. In 2 Kings 
 iii. 19 we find that the same practice was enjoined on 
 Israel by the prophet Elisha in war with Moab ; every 
 good tree was to be cut down. But Deut. xx. 19 seq. 
 forbids this barbarous destruction of fruit-trees. Still 
 more remarkable is the law of Deut. xxii. 30. It was a 
 custom among many of the ancient Arabs that a man 
 took possession of his father's wives along with the pro- 
 perty (his own mother, of course, excepted). The only 
 law of forbidden degrees in the Deuteronomic Code is 
 directed against this practice, which Ezekiel xxii. 10 
 mentions as still current in Jerusalem. But in early 
 times such marriages were made without offence. The 
 Israelites understood Absalom's appropriation of David's 
 secondary wives as a formal way of declaring that his 
 father was dead to him, and that he served himself his 
 heir (2 Sam. xvi.) ; and when Adonijah asked the hand 
 of Abishag, Solomon understood him as claiming the 
 inheritance (1 Kings ii.). The same custom explains 
 
LECT. XII. IN DE UTERONOM V. 36!) 
 
 the anger of Ishbosheth at Abner (2 Sam. iii. 7). The 
 new code, you perceive, marks a growth in morality 
 and refinement ; it is still no ideal law fit for all time, 
 but a practical code largely incorporating elements of 
 actual custom. But the growth of custom and usage is 
 on the whole upward, and ancient social usages which 
 survived for many centuries after the age of Josiah 
 among the heathen of Arabia and Syria already lie 
 behind the Deuteronomic Code. With all the hardness 
 of Israel's heart, the religion of Jehovah had proved 
 itself in its influence on the nation a better religion 
 than that of the Baalim. ^^^ 
 
 From Josiah's covenant to the fall of the Jewish 
 state the Code of Deuteronomy had but a generation to 
 run. Even in this short time it appeared that the 
 reformation had not accomplished its task, and that the 
 introduction of the written law was not enough to avert 
 the judgment which the prophets had declared inevit- 
 able for the purification of the nation. The crusade 
 against the high places was most permanent in its 
 results. In the time of Jeremiah popular superstition 
 clung to the Temple as it had formerly clung to the 
 high places, and in the Temple the populace and the 
 false prophets found the pledge that Jehovah could 
 never forsake His nation. This fact is easily under- 
 stood. The prophetic ideas of Isaiah, which were the 
 real spring of the Deuteronomic reformation, had never 
 been spiritually grasped by the mass of the people, 
 though the eclat attending the overthrow of Sennacherib 
 
370 JEREMIAH AND lect. xii. 
 
 had given tliem a certain currency. The conception of 
 Jehovah's throne on Zion was materialised in the 
 Temple, and the moral conditions of acceptance with 
 the King of Zion, on which Isaiah laid so much weight, 
 were forgotten. Jehovah received ritual homage in lieu 
 of moral obedience ; and Jeremiah has again occasion 
 to declare that the latter alone is the positive content 
 of the divine Torah, and that a law of sacrifice is no 
 part of the original covenant with Israel. In speaking 
 thus the prophet does not separate himself from the 
 Deuteronomic law ; for the moral precepts of that code 
 — as, for example, the Deuteronomic form of the law of 
 manumission (Jer. xxxiv. 13-16) — he accepts as part 
 of the covenant of the Exodus. To Jeremiah therefore 
 the Code of Deuteronomy does not appear in the light 
 of a positive law of sacrifice ; and this judgment is 
 undoubtedly correct. The ritual details of Deuter- 
 onomy are directed against heathen worship ; they are 
 negative, not positive. In the matter of sacrifice and 
 festal observances the new code simply diverts the old 
 homage of Israel from the local sanctuaries to the central 
 shrine, and all material offerings are summed np under 
 the principles of gladness before Jehovah at the great 
 agricultural feasts, and of homage paid to Him in 
 acknowledgment that the good things of the land of 
 Canaan are His gift (xxvi. 10). The firstlings and the 
 first-fruits and tithes remain on their old footing as 
 natural expressions of devotion, which did not begin 
 with the Exodus and are not peculiar to Israel. Even 
 
LECT. XII. DEUTERONOMY, 371 
 
 the festal sacrifices retain the character of " a voluntary 
 tribute " (Dent. xvi. 10), and the paschal victim itself 
 may be chosen indifferently from the flock or the herd 
 (xvi. 2), and is still, according to the Hebrew of xvi. 7, 
 presumed to be boiled, not roasted, as is the case in all 
 old sacrifices of which the history speaks. Deuter- 
 onomy knows nothing of a sacrificial priestly Torah, 
 though it refers the people to the Torah of the priests 
 on the subject of leprosy (xxiv. 8), and acknowledges 
 their authority as judges in lawsuits. In the Deuter- 
 onomic Code the idea of sin is never connected with 
 matters of ritual. A sin means a crime, an offence to 
 law and justice (xix. 15, xxi. 22, xxii. 26, xxiv. 16), 
 an act of heathenism (xx. 18), a breach of faith tow^ards 
 Jehovah (xxiii. 21, 22), or a lack of kindliness to the 
 poor (xxiv. 15). And such offences are expiated, not 
 by sacrifice, but by punishment at the hand of man or 
 God. This moral side of the law, which exactly corre- 
 sponds to prophetic teaching, continued to be neglected 
 in Judah. Oppression, bloodshed, impurity, idolatry, 
 filled the land ; and for these things Jeremiah threatens 
 a judgment, which the Temple and its ritual can do 
 nothing to avert (Jer. vii.), 
 
 In all this Deuteronomy and Jeremiah alike still 
 stand outside the priestly Torah. As far as Deuter- 
 onomy goes, this is usually explained by saying that it 
 is a law for the people, and does not take up points 
 of ritual which specially belonged to the priests. But 
 the code, which refers to the priestly law of leprosy, says 
 
372 RITUAL TORAH lect. xii 
 
 nothing of ordinances of ritual atonement and stated 
 sacrifice, and Jeremiah denies in express terms that a 
 law of sacrifice forms any part of the divine commands 
 to Israel. The priestly and prophetic Torahs are not 
 yet absorbed into one divine system. 
 
 Nevertheless there can be no doubt that there was 
 at this time a ritual Torah in the hands of the priests, 
 containing elements which the prophets and the old 
 codes pass by. In the time of Ahaz there was a daily 
 burnt offering in the morning, a stated meat offering 
 in the evening (2 Kings xvi. 15). There was also an 
 atoning ritual. In the time of Jehoash the atonements 
 paid to the priests were pecuniary — a common enough 
 thing in ancient times. But atoning sacrifice was also 
 of ancient standing. It occurs in 1 Sam. iiL 14, — " The 
 guilt of the house of Eli shall not be wiped out by 
 sacrifice or oblation for ever." The idea of atonement 
 in the sacrificial blood must be very ancient, and a 
 trace of it is found even in the book of Deuteronomy 
 in the curious ordinance which provides for the atone- 
 ment (wiping out) of the blood of untraced homicide by 
 the slaughter of a heifer. Along with these things we 
 find ancient ordinances of ceremonial holiness in the 
 sanctuary at Nob (1 Sam. xxi. 4), and all this necessarily 
 supposes a ritual law, the property of the priests. Only, 
 we have already seen that the details still preserved to 
 us of the temple ritual are not identical with the full 
 Levitical system. They contained many germs of that 
 system, but they also contained much that was radically 
 
LECT. XII. IN THE TEMPLE. 373 
 
 different. And in particular the Temple worship itself 
 was not stringently differentiated from everything 
 lieathenish, as appears with the utmost clearness in 
 the admission of uncircumcised foreigners to certain 
 ministerial functions, in the easy way in which Isaiah's 
 friend Urijah accepted the foreign innovations of King 
 Ahaz, and in the fact that prophets whom Jeremiah 
 regards as heathen diviners still continued to be attached 
 to the Temple up to the last days of the state, while 
 worshippers from Samaria made pilgrimages to Jerusa- 
 lem with heathenish ceremonies expressly forbidden in 
 Deuteronomy as well as in Leviticus (Jer. xli. 5 ; Lev. 
 xix. 27, 28 ; Deut. xiv. i ; Isa. xv. 2). AVe see, then, 
 that even Josiah's reformation left many things in the 
 Temple which savoured of heathenism, and the presence 
 of the priests of the high places was little calculated to 
 improve the spirituality of the observances of Jehovah's 
 house. In all this there was a manifest danger to true 
 religion. If ritual and sacrifice were to continue at all, 
 it was highly desirable that some order should be taken 
 with the priestly ritual, and an attempt made to re- 
 organise it in conformity with the prophetic conception 
 of Jehovah's moral holiness. But no effort to complete 
 Josiah's work in this direction seems to have been made 
 in the last troublous years of Jerusalem. On the con- 
 trary, Ezekiel describes the grossest heathenism as 
 practised at the Temple, doubtless not without the 
 countenance of the priests (Ezek. viii.). 
 
 The Temple and its worship fell with the destruc- 
 
 ir 
 
374 EZEKIEUS lect. xii. 
 
 tion of the city, fourteen years later, Ezekiel, dwelling 
 iu captivity, had a vision of a new Temple, a place of 
 worship for repentant Israel, and heard a voice com- 
 manding him to lay before the people a pattern of re- 
 modelled worship. " If they be ashamed of all that 
 they have done, show them the form of the house . . . and 
 all its ordinances, and all the Torahs thereof: and write 
 them before them that they may keep all the form 
 thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and do them " 
 (Ezek. xliii. 10, 11). 
 
 A great mystery has been made of this law of 
 Ezekiel, but the prophet himself makes none. He 
 says in the clearest words that the revelation is a 
 sketch of ritual for the period of restoration, and again 
 and again he places his new ordinances in contrast with 
 the actual corrupt usage of the Eirst Temple (xliii. 7, 
 xliv. 5, se^., xlv. 8, 9). He makes no appeal to a pre- 
 vious law of ritual. The whole scheme of a written 
 law of the house is new, and so Ezekiel only confirms 
 Jeremiah, who knew no divine law of sacrifice under 
 the First Temple. It is needless to rehearse more than 
 the chief points of Ezekiel's legislation. The first that 
 strikes us is the^ degradation of the Levites. The 
 ministers of the old Temple, he tells us, were uncircum- 
 cised foreigners, whose presence was an insult to 
 Jehovah's sanctuary. Such men shall no more enter 
 the house, but in their place shall come the Levites 
 not of the house of Zadok, who are to be degraded from 
 the priesthood because they officiated in old Israel 
 
LECT. xii. TO RAH. 375 
 
 before the idolatrous shrines (xliv. 5 s<?^.). This one 
 point is sufficient to fix the date of the Levitical law as 
 later than Ezekiel. In all the earlier history, and in 
 the Code of Deuteronomy, a Levite is a priest, or at 
 least qualified to assume priestly functions ; and even 
 in Josiah's reformation the Levite priests of the high 
 places received a modified priestly status at Jerusalem. 
 Ezekiel knows that it has been so in the past ; but he 
 declares that it shall be otherwise in the future, as a 
 punishment for the offence of ministering at the idola- 
 trous altars. He knows nothing of an earlier law, in 
 which priests and Levites are already distinguished, in 
 which the office of Levite is itself a high privilege 
 (Num. xvi. 9). 
 
 A second point in Ezekiel's law is a provision for 
 stated and regular sacrifices. These sacrifices are to be 
 provided by the prince, who in turn is to receive from 
 the people no arbitrary tax, but a fixed tribute in kind 
 upon all agricultural produce and flocks. Here again 
 we see a reference to pre-Exilic practice, when the 
 Temple was essentially the king's sanctuary, and the 
 stated offerings were his gift. In the old codes the people 
 at large are under no obligation to do stated sacrifice. 
 That was the king's voluntary offering, and so it was at 
 first after the Exile. The early decrees of Pei^sian 
 monarchs ii^ favour ot the Jews provide for regular 
 sacrifice at the king's expense (Ezra vi. 9, vii. 17) ; and 
 only at the convocation of Nehemiah do the people 
 agree to defray the stated offering by a voluntary 
 
376 EZEKIELS lect. xii. 
 
 charge of a third of a shekel (Neh. x. 32). It is dis- 
 puted whether, in Exod. xxx. 16, "the service of the 
 tabernacle," defrayed by the fixed tribute of half a 
 shekel, refers to the continual sacrifices. If it does so, 
 this law was still unknown to Nehemiah, and must be a 
 late addition to the Pentateuch. If it does not, it is still 
 impossible that the Levitical ordinance of stated offer- 
 ings could have preceded the existence of a provision 
 for supplying them. Again we are brought back to 
 Jeremiah's words. The stated sacrifices were not pre- 
 scribed in the wilderness. 
 
 A third point in Ezekiel's law is the prominence 
 given to the sin offering and atoning ritual. The altar 
 must be purged with sin offerings for seven consecutive 
 days before burnt sacrifices are acceptably offered on it 
 (xliii 18 seq}). The Levitical law (Exod. xxix. 36, 37) 
 prescribes a similar ceremony, but with more costly 
 victims. At the dedication of Solomon's Temple, on the 
 contrary (1 Kings viii. 62), the altar is at once assumed 
 to be fit for use, in accordance with Exod. xx. 24, and 
 with all the early cases of altar building outside the 
 Pentateuch. But, besides this first expiatory ceremonial, 
 Ezekiel appoints two atoning services yearly, at the 
 beginning of the first and the seventh month (xlv. 19, 
 20, LXX.), to purge the house. This is the first appear- 
 ance, outside of the Levitical code, of anything cor- 
 responding to the great day of atonement in the seventh 
 month, and it is plain that the simple service in 
 Ezekiel is still far short of that solemn ceremony. 
 
LECT. XII. TORAH. 317 
 
 The day of atonement was also a fast day. Now, in 
 Zech. vii. 5, viii. 19, the fast of the seventh month is 
 alluded to as one of the four fasts commemorating the 
 destruction of Jerusalem, which had been practised for 
 the last seventy years. The fast of the seventh month 
 was not yet united with the " purging of the house " 
 ordained by Ezekiel. Even in the great convocation of 
 Neh. viii.-x., where we have a record of proceedings 
 from the first day of the seventh month onwards to 
 the twenty-fourth, there is no mention of the day of ex- 
 piation on the tenth, which thus appears as the very 
 last stone in the ritual edifice. 
 
 I pass over other features of Ezekiel's legislation. 
 The detailed proof that in every point Ezekiel's Torali 
 prepares the way for the Levitical law but represents a 
 more elementary ritual may be read in the text itself 
 with the aid of Smend's Commentaiy. The whole 
 scheme presents itself with absolute clearness as a first 
 sketch of a written priestly Torah, resting not on the 
 law of Moses but on old priestly usage, and reshaped so as 
 to bring the ordinances of the house into due conformity 
 with the holiness of Jehovah in the sense of the pro- 
 phets and the Deuteronomic Code. The thought that 
 underlies Ezekiel's code is clearly brought out in xliii. 
 7 seq. To Ezekiel, who is himself a priest, the whore- 
 dom of Israel, their foul departure from Jehovah after 
 filthy idols, appears in a peculiarly painful liglit in con- 
 nection with the service of the sanctuary, the throne of 
 Jehovah, the place of the soles of His feet, where He 
 
378 PRINCIPLE OF lect. xir. 
 
 dwells in the midst of Israel for ever. In time past the 
 people of Israel have defiled Jehovah's name by their 
 abominations, and for this they have suffered His wrath. 
 The new law is a gift to the people on their repentance 
 — a scheme to protect them from again falling into like 
 sins. The spontaneous unregulated character of the old 
 service gave room for the introduction of heathen 
 abominations. The new service shall be reduced to a 
 divine rule, leaving no door for what is unholy. But 
 so long as worship takes place with material ceremonies 
 in an earthly sanctuary, the idea of holiness cannot be 
 divested of a material element. Erom the earliest times 
 tlie holiness of God's worship had regard to provisions 
 of physical purity, especially to lustrations and prin- 
 ciples of cleanness and uncleanness, which in their origin 
 sprang from natural feelings of propriety, but gradually 
 became more complex, as we find them in Deuteronomy, 
 from the desire to exclude all that savoured of heathen 
 grossness. From the priestly point of view, material 
 and moral observances of sanctity run into one. Ezekiel 
 finds equal fault with idolatry in the Temple and with 
 the profanation of its plateau by the sepulchres of the 
 kings (xliii. 7). And so his ritual, though its funda- 
 mental idea is moral, branches out into a variety of 
 ordinances which, from our modern point of view, seem 
 merely formal, but which were yet inevitable unless the 
 principle of sacrifice and an earthly sanctuary was to be 
 altogether superseded. If the material sanctuary was 
 to be preserved at all, the symbolic observances of its 
 
LECT. XII. EZEKIEDS TORAH. 379 
 
 holiness must be made stringent, and to this end the 
 new ordinance of the Levites and Ezekiel's other pro- 
 visions were altogether suitable 
 
 In proportion, now, as the whole theory of worship 
 is remodelled and reduced to rule on the scheme of an 
 exclusive sanctity, Avhich presents, so to speak, an armed 
 front to every abomination of impure heathenism, the 
 ritual becomes abstract, and the services remote from 
 ordinary life. In the old worship all was spontaneous. 
 It was as natural for an Israelite to worship Jehovah, 
 as for a Moabite to worship Chemosh. To worship God 
 was a holiday, an occasion of feasting. Eeligion, in its 
 sacrificial form, was a part of common life, which no 
 one deemed it necessary to reduce to rule. Even in 
 Deuteronomy this view predominates. The sacrificial 
 feasts are still the consecration of natural occasions of 
 joy ; men eat, drink, and make merry before God. 
 The sense of God's favour, not the sense of sin, is what 
 rules at the sanctuary. But the unification of the 
 sanctuary already tended to break up this old type of 
 religion. Worship ceased to be an everyday thing, 
 and so it ceased to be the expression of everyday 
 religion. In Ezekiel this change has produced its 
 natural result in a change of the whole standpoint from 
 which he views the service of the Temple. The offer- 
 in cjs of individuals are no lonoer the chief reason for 
 which the Temple exists.. AU weight lies on the stated 
 service, which the prince provides out of national funds, 
 and which is, as it were, the representative service of 
 
380 RELIGION AFTER lect. xii. 
 
 Israel. The individual Israelite who, in the old law, 
 stood at the altar himself and brought his own victim, 
 is now separated from it, not only by the double cordon 
 of priests and Levites, but by the fact that his personal 
 offering is thrown into the background by the stated 
 national sacrifice. 
 
 The whole tendency of this is to make personal 
 religion more and more independent of offerings. The 
 emotion with which the worshipper approaches the 
 Second Temple, as recorded in the Psalter, has little to 
 do with sacrifice, but rests rather on the fact that the 
 whole wondrous history of Jehovah's grace to Israel is 
 vividly and personally realised as he stands amidst the 
 festal crowd at the ancient seat of God's throne, and 
 adds his voice to the swelling song of praise. The daily 
 religion of the Eestoration found new forms. The Scrip- 
 tures, the synagogue, the practice of prayer elsewhere 
 than before the altar, were all independent of the old 
 idea of worship, and naturally prepared the way for the 
 New Testament. The narrowing of t]ie privilege of 
 access to God at the altar would have been a retrograde 
 step if altar- worship had still remained the form of all 
 religion. But this was not so, and therefore the new 
 ritual was a practical means of separating personal 
 religion from forms destined soon to pass away. The 
 very features of the Levitical ordinances which seem 
 most inconsistent with spirituality, if we place them 
 in the days of Moses, when all religion took shape 
 before the altar, appear in a very different light in the 
 
LECT. XII. THE EXILE, 381 
 
 age after the Exile, when the non-ritual religion of the 
 prophets went side by side with the Law, and supplied 
 daily nourishment to the spiritual life of those who 
 were far from the sanctuary. 
 
 With all this there went another change not less im- 
 portant in the way of preparation for the work of our 
 Lord. In the old ritual, sacrifice and offering were 
 essentially an expression of homage, and the element 
 of atonement held a very subsidiary place. But the 
 idea of sacrificial homage lost great part of its force when 
 the sacrifices of the sanctuary were so much divorced 
 from individual life, and became a sort of abstract re- 
 presentative worship. In Ezekiel, and still more in the 
 Levitical legislation, the element of atonement takes a 
 foremost place. The sense of sin had grown deeper 
 under the teaching of the prophets, and amidst the 
 proofs of Jehovah's anger that darkened the last days 
 of the Jewish state. Sin and forgiveness were the main 
 themes of prophetic discourse. The problem of accept- 
 ance with God exercised every thoughtful mind, as we 
 see not only from the Psalms and the prophets of the 
 Exile and Restoration, but above aU from the book of 
 Job, which is certainly later than the time of Jeremiah. 
 The acceptance of the worship of the sanctuary had 
 always been regarded as the visible sacrament of Jeho- 
 vah's acceptance of the worshipper, " when He came to 
 him and blessed him." And now more than in any 
 former time, the first point in acceptance was felt to be 
 the forgiveness of sin, and the weightiest element in the 
 
382 THE LEVITICAL lect. xir. 
 
 ritual was that which symbolised the atonemeut or 
 *' wiping out" of iniquity. The details of this symbol- 
 ism cannot occupy us here. It is enough to indicate 
 in one word that the ritual of atoning sacrifice was so 
 shaped by Divine wisdom that it supplied to the New 
 Testament a basis intelligible to the Hebrew believers 
 for the explanation of the atoning work of Christ. Not 
 indeed that the blood of bulls and goats ever took away 
 sin. The true basis of forgiveness, in the Old Testa- 
 ment as in the New, lies, not in man's offering, but in a 
 work of sovereign love. It is Jehovah, for His own 
 name's sake, who blots out Israel's transgressions and 
 will not remember his sin. But the atoning ritual ever 
 held before the people's eyes the mysterious connection 
 of forgiving love with awful justice, and pointed by its 
 very inadequacy to the need for a better atonement of 
 Jehovah's own providing.^^^ 
 
 The Levitical legislation in our present Pentateuch 
 is the practical adaptation^ of these principles to the 
 circumstances of the Second Temple, when Jerusalem 
 was no longer the seat of a free state, but only the 
 centre of a religious community possessing certain 
 municipal privileges of self-government. Its distinctive 
 features are all found in Ezekiel's Torah — the care with 
 which the Temple and its vicinity are preserved from 
 the approach of unclean things and persons, the cor- 
 responding institution of a class of holy ministers in 
 the person of the Levites, the greater distance thus 
 interposed between the people and the altar, the con- 
 
LECT. XII. LEGISLATION. 383 
 
 centration of sacrifice in the two forms of stated repre- 
 sentative offerings (the tamul) and atoning sacrifices. 
 In all these points, as we have seen, the usage of the 
 Law is in distinct contrast to that of the First Temple, 
 where the temple plateau was polluted by the royal 
 sepulchres, where the servants of the sanctuary were 
 uncircumcised foreigners, the stated service the affair of 
 the king, regulated at will by him (2 Kings xvi.), and the 
 atoning offerings essentially fines paid to the priests of 
 the sanctuary (2 Kings xii. 16). That Ezekiel in these 
 matters speaks, not merely as a priest recording old 
 usage, but as a prophet ordaining new Torah with 
 Divine authority, is his own express claim, and 
 appears in the clearest way in the degradation of 
 the non - Zadokite priests, which is actually carried 
 out in the Levitical legislation, with the natural 
 consequence that, on the return from captivity, very 
 few Levites in comparison wdth the full priests cared to 
 attach themselves to the temple (Neh. vii. 39, seq.).^*'^ 
 
 The development of the details of the system falls 
 therefore between the time of Ezekiel and the work of 
 Ezra ; and the circumstance already referred to, that the 
 culminating and most solemn ceremony of the great 
 day of expiation was not observed in the year of Ezra's 
 covenant, shows that the last touches were not added to 
 the ritual until, through Ezra's agency, it was put into 
 practical operation. But, while the historical student 
 is thus compelled to speak of the ritual code as the law 
 of the Second Temple, it would be a great mistake to 
 
384 OLD AND NEW lect. xii. 
 
 think of it as altogether new. Ezekiel's ordinances are 
 nothing else than a reshaping of the old priestly Torah, 
 and a close study of the Levitical laws, especially in 
 Lev. xviL-xxvi., shows that many ancient Torahs were 
 worked up, by successive processes, into the complete 
 system as we now possess it. In Lev. xxiv. 19 seq^., for 
 example, we find the old law of retaliation for injuries 
 not mortal, which is already obsolete in the Deuter- 
 onomic Code. The preservation of such a Torah shows 
 that the priests did not give up their old traditional 
 law for the written Code of Deuteronomy. They 
 doubtless continued till the time of Ezra to give oral 
 Torahs, as we see from Haggai i. 11. The ana- 
 logy of all early law makes this procedure quite intel- 
 ligible to us. Nothing is more common than to find an 
 antique legislation handed dQwn in the mouth of a 
 priestly or legal guild in certain set forms of words. 
 
 To trace out in detail how much of the Levitical 
 legislation consists of such old Torahs handed down 
 from time immemorial in the priestly families, and how 
 much is new, is a task which we cannot now attempt, 
 and which indeed has not yet been finally accomplished 
 by scholars. The chief interest of this inquiry lies in 
 its bearing on the early history of Israel. It is for the 
 historian to determine how far the Levitical law is mere 
 law, of which we can say no more than that it was law 
 for the Second Temple, and how far it is also history 
 which can be used in describing the original sanctuary 
 of the ark in the days of Moses. But in following out 
 
LECT. XII. TORAHS. 385 
 
 this inquiry we cannot assume that every law which is 
 called a law of Moses was meant to be understood as 
 literally given in the wilderness. For it is a familiar 
 fact that in the early law of all nations necessary modi- 
 fications on old law are habitually carried out by means 
 of what lawyers call legal fictions. This name is some- 
 what misleading ; for a legal fiction is no deceit, but a 
 convention which all parties understand. But it is 
 found more convenient to present the new law in a 
 form which enables it to be treated as an integral part 
 of the old legislation. Thus in Eoman jurisprudence 
 all law was supposed to be derived from the Laws of 
 the Twelve Tables (Maine, Ancient Law, p. 33 seq)^ 
 just as in Israel all law was held to be derived from 
 the teaching of Moses. In neither case was any false- 
 hood meant or conveyed. The whole object of this 
 way of treating the law was to maintain the continuity 
 of the legal system. But legal fiction has much more 
 curious developments. In old English law many writs 
 give a quite imaginary history of the case, alleging, for ex- 
 ample, that the plaintiff is the king's debtor, and cannot 
 pay his debts by reason of the default of the defendant. 
 This instance is not directly parallel to anything in the 
 Old Testament ; but it shows how impossible it would 
 be to explain any system of ancient law on the assump- 
 tion that every statement which seems to be plain 
 narrative of fact is actually meant to be so taken. It 
 would be the highest presumption to affirm that what 
 is found in all other ancient laws cannot occur in the Old 
 
386 LEGAL lect. xii. 
 
 Testament. The very universality of these conventions 
 shows that in certain stages of society they form the 
 easiest and most intelligible way of introducing neces- 
 sary modifications of law ; and the Israelites had the 
 same habits of thought with other primitive nations, 
 and doubtless required to be taught and to think things 
 out on the same lines. In our state of society legal 
 fictions are out of date ; in English law they have long 
 been mere antiquarian lumber. But Israel's law was 
 given for the practical use of an ancient people, and 
 required to take the forms which we know as a matter 
 of fact to be those wliich primitive nations best under- 
 stand. 
 
 If we find, then, by actual comparison of different 
 parts of Scripture, that some points of law and ceremony 
 are related in historical form, as if based on Mosaic pre- 
 cedent, but that there is other evidence, as in the case 
 of the march from Sinai {swpra, p. 319), that the thing 
 did not happen so in Moses's own time, we have not 
 hit on a self-contradiction in the Bible, but only on a 
 case of legal convention ; for one well-known type of 
 this is to relate a new law in the form of an ancient 
 precedent. Let me illustrate this by an example from 
 Sir H. Maine's Village Communities, p. 110. In India, 
 when tha Government brings a new water supply into 
 a village, the village authorities make rules for its use 
 and distribution ; but " these rules do not purport to 
 emanate from the personal authority of their author or 
 authors ; there is always a sort of fiction under which 
 
LECT. xii. FICTIONS. 387 
 
 some customs as to the distribution of water are supposed 
 to have existed from all antiquity, although, in fact, no 
 artificial supply had been even so much as thought of." 
 In the same way the new laws of the Levitical code are 
 presented as ordinances of Moses, though, when they 
 were first promulgated, every one knew that they wxre 
 not so, — though Ezra himself speaks of some of them as 
 ordinances of the prophets. 
 
 A peculiarly clear case of this occurs in the law of 
 war. According to 1 Sam. xxx. 24, 25, the standing 
 law of Israel as to the distribution of booty was enacted 
 by David, and goes back only to a precedent in his 
 war with the Amalekites who burned Ziklag. In the 
 priestly legislation the same law is given as a Mosaic 
 precedent from the war with Midian (Num. xxxi. 27).^'^ 
 
 To the indolent theologian the necessity of dis- 
 tinguishing between these quasi-historical precedents, 
 which were meant to be taken only as laws, and the 
 actual history, which was meant to be taken literally, 
 is naturally unwelcome ; but to the diligent and rever- 
 ent student it affords the key for the solution of many 
 difficulties, and the natural removal of contradictions, 
 which, on the current exegesis, present a constant 
 etumblingblock to faith. 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Lecture L 
 
 KoTE 1, p. 7. — According to Origen, Princip., Bk. iv. p. 173, 
 the literal sense of Scripture is often impossible, absurd, or 
 immoral, — and this designedly, lest, cleaving to the letter alone, 
 men should remain at a distance from the dogmata, and learn 
 nothing worthy of God. Augustine in his hermeneutical treatise, 
 De Dodrina Christiana (Bk. iii. c. 1 0), teaches that " "V^Tiatever 
 has no proper bearing on the rule of life or the verity of faith 
 must be recognised as figurative." A good example of the 
 practical application of these principles will be found in the 
 preface to Jerome's Commentary on Hosea, 
 
 Note 2, p. 13. — See, in particular, the first part of the 
 Freiheit eines Christenmenschenj and the preface to Luther's 
 German Bible. On Tetzel see Freiheit des liermons vom Ahlass 
 (Werhe, ed. Irmischer, vol. xx\di. p. 13). Compare Calvin's 
 Institution Bk. iii. chap. 2 — " The Word itself, however it be 
 conveyed to us, is like a mirror in which faith beholds God." 
 
 Note 3, p. 1 7. — The Old Testament writers possessed Hebrew 
 sources now lost, such as the Book of the Wars of the Lord, the 
 Book of Jashar, and the Annals of the Kings of Israel and 
 Judah. But Josephus, and other profane historians whose writ- 
 ings are still extant, had no authentic Hebrew sources for the 
 canonical history, except those preserved in the Bible. 
 
 Within the last few years the decipherment of the monu- 
 ments of Assyria and Babylonia has supplied contemporary 
 evidence as to the relations of the Hebrews with Eiistern 
 powers ; not merely elucidating perplexed points in the historical 
 books, such as the chronology of the Books of Kings and the 
 political relations of the Northern Kingdom under the djTiasty 
 of Jehu, but throwing most important light on the historical 
 
390 REGULA FIDEL lect. ii. 
 
 basis of the new prophecy of the eighth century B.C. The 
 recently published Inscriptions of Cyrus {Journal of Royal 
 Asiatic Soc, 1880, pp. 70-97 ; Trans. Soc. Bib. Arch., vol. vii. 
 pp. 139-176) seem to be not less instructive. Compare Pro- 
 fessor Sayce in the Academy, Oct. 16, 1880 ; M. Halevy in the 
 Revue des Etudes Juives, No. 1, pp. 9-31 ; and Mr. Chejme's 
 Isaiah, vol. ii. pp. 264-270 (London, 1881). 
 
 Not second in importance to the cuneiform inscriptions is 
 the stone of King Mesha of Moab, now in the Louvre. The 
 Egyptian monuments have helped us little. When the external 
 aids for the study of the period of revelation are so scanty, and 
 of such recent discovery, we must recognise a supreme wisdom 
 in the Providence which prevented the formation of the Old 
 Testament Canon from being limited by those narrow dogmatic 
 principles by which the Bible is still often measured. 
 
 Lecture IL 
 
 Note 1 , p. 34. — See, especially, the Arabic catena on Genesis 
 published by Professor Lagarde in his Materialien zur Kritik 
 mid Geschichte des Pentateuchs (Leipzig, 1867) from a Carshunic 
 MS. of the sixteenth century. This compilation of a Syriac scribe 
 is full of Jewish traditions, and even in form, as the editor 
 observes, is quite of the character of a Jewish Midrash. 
 
 Note 2, p. 35. — On the Regula Fidei, and its connection 
 with the ambiguity of the allegorical interpretation, so keenly 
 felt in controversy with heretics, compare Diestel, Geschichte des 
 alten Testaments in der Christlichen Kirche, p. 38 (Irenseus, 
 Tertullian), p. 85 (Augustine). The principle is clearly laid 
 down by Origen : " Many think that they have the mind of 
 Christ, and not a few differ from the opinions of the earlier 
 Christians ; but the preaching of the Church, handed down in 
 regular succession from the Apostles, still abides, and is present 
 in the Church. Therefore, the only truth to be believed is that 
 which in no point departs from ecclesiastical and apostolical 
 tradition." (Princip., Praef., § 2.) 
 
 Note 3, p. 40. — Prologus Galeatus. — " This prologue may fit 
 all the books which we have translated from the Hebrew. 
 Books outside of these are apocryphal. Therefore the so-called 
 Wisdom of Solomon, the book of Jesus son of Sirach, Judith, 
 
LECT. II. APOCRYPHA. 391 
 
 Tol)it, and The Shepherd are not canonical. The first book of 
 Maccabees I found in Hebrew, the second is Greek, as may be 
 proved from its very idiom." 
 
 Praef, in Jeremiam, — "We have passed by the book of 
 Baruch, Jeremiah's amanuensis, which the Hebrews neither read 
 nor possess." 
 
 Praef. in Esdram et Nehemiam. — " Let no one be offended 
 that we have given but one book, nor let him delight in the 
 dreams of the apocryphal third and fourth books [that is. First 
 and Second Esdras of the English Apocrypha] ; for among the 
 Hebrews the words of Ezra and Nehemiah are united in a single 
 volume, and what is not found with them is to be rejected." 
 
 Praef. in Lihrum Esther. — "The Book of Esther has un- 
 questionably been vitiated by various translators. I have 
 translated it word for word as it stands in the Hebrew 
 archives." 
 
 Pra^f in Danielem. — " The story of Susanna, the Song of the 
 Three Children, and the fables of Bel and the Dragon are not 
 found in the Hebrew Daniel ; but as they are current through- 
 out the world we have added them at tlie end, marking them 
 with an obelus, lest the ignorant should fancy us to have excised 
 a great part of the volume." Jerome adds an interesting 
 account of arguments against the additions to Daniel, which he 
 had heard from a Jewish doctor, leaving the decision to his 
 readers. 
 
 Note 4, p. 40. — The quotation is from the Prologvs Galeatus. 
 Compare the preface to Chronicles addressed to Domnio and 
 Rogatianus : " Let him who would challenge aught in this ver- 
 sion ask the Jews, consult his own consciousness, examine the 
 text and context of the passage ; then let him find fault with my 
 work if he can. So wherever you find an asterisk in this 
 volume, you are to recognise an addition from the Hebrew not 
 found in Latin copies. Conversely, an obelus or transverse line 
 prefixed to a passage denotes an addition made by the Septua- 
 gint interpreters, either for the improvement of the style, or by 
 the authority of the Holy Spirit, though it is not read in the 
 Hebrew." 
 
 Note 5, p. 41. — Tlie version of Aquila, a Jewish proselyte 
 and disciple of the famous Eabbi Akiba, was made expressly in 
 the interests of Jewish exegesis, and reproduced with scrupulous 
 accuracy the received text of the second Christian centufy. Sym- 
 
392 ORIGEN'S HEXAPLA, lect. ii. 
 
 machus and Theodotion followed later, but still in the second 
 century. The former, according to Eusebius and Jerome, was 
 an Ebionite, one of the sect of Jewish Christians who still held 
 to the observance of the law, like the opponents of Paul. It is 
 uncertain whether Theodotion was an Ebionite (Jerome), or a 
 proselyte (Irenteus). Aquila, says Jerome, sought to reproduce 
 the Hebrew word for word ; Symmachus aimed at a clear expres- 
 sion of the sense ; while Theodotion rather sought to give a 
 revised edition not very divergent from the Greek of the Septua- , 
 gint. These versions were arranged in parallel columns in the 
 Hexapla of Origen, composed in the first half of the third century. 
 The fragments of them which remain in Greek MSS. of the 
 Septuagint, in the Patristic literature, or in the Syriac transla- 
 tion of the fifth column of the Hexapla made by Paul of Tela, 
 in Alexandria, a.d. 618, are collected in Dr. Field's edition, 
 Orujenis Hexaplonim quae supersunt (Oxford, 1867-1875). All 
 that is known about these versions is put together in the prole- 
 gomena to Dr. Field's work. 
 
 Note 6, p. 41. — Praef. in Lihrum Job. — "To understand 
 this book I procured, at no small cost, a doctor from Lydda, who 
 was deemed to hold the first place among the Hebrews." 
 
 Praef. in Chron. ad D. et R. — " When your letters reached 
 me, asking a Latin version of Chronicles, I got a doctor of 
 Tiberias, in high esteem among the Hebrews, and with him col- 
 lated everything, as the proverb goes, from the crown of the 
 head to the tip of the nails. Thus confirmed, I have ventured 
 to comply with your request." Bar Anina is named in Epist. 
 84. Jerome never gained such a knowledge of Hebrew as gave 
 him confidence to dispense with the aid of the Jews. 
 
 Note 7, p. 41. — The passage quoted in Art. VI. is from 
 Praef. in libros Salomonis. — " As the Church reads Judith, Tobit, 
 and the books of Maccabees, but does not receive them among 
 tlie canonical Scriptures, so let her read these two books 
 [Ecclesiasticus and the Wisdom of Solomon] for the edification 
 of the laity, but not to confirm the authority of ecclesiastical 
 doclrines." 
 
 Note 8, p. 42. — "On their proniiscuous acceptance of all 
 books into the Canon, I will say no more than that herein 
 they depart from the consensus of the early Church. For it is 
 known what Jerome reports as the common judgment of the 
 ancients. . . . I am not unaware, however, that the decree 
 
LECT. II. VOWEL POINTS. 393 
 
 of Trent agrees with the third (Ecumenical Council, which 
 Augustine follows in his book De Dodr. Cliristiana. But as 
 Augustine testifies that all were not agreed upon the matter in 
 his time, let this point be left open. But if arguments are to be 
 drawn from the books themselves, there are many proofs, besides 
 their idiom, that they ought to take a lower place than the 
 fathers of Trent award to them, etc." Compare the statement, 
 Institute iv. 9, § 14. 
 
 Note 9, p. 48. — See the evidence of this from the Rabbini- 
 cal literature in Zunz's Gottesdiemtliche Vodrdge der Jiiden, p. 7 
 (Berlin, 1832). Our Lord upon the cross quoted Ps. xxii. in a 
 Targum. 
 
 Note 10, p. 48. — Mishna, Megilla, iv. 4. — "He who reads 
 in the Pentateuch must not read to the Meturgeman more than 
 one verse, and in the prophets three verses. If each verse is a 
 paragraph, they are read one by one. The reader may skip in 
 the prophets, but not in the law. How long may he spend in 
 searching for another passage ? So long as the Meturgeman 
 goes on speaking." The practice of oral translation into Ara- 
 maic led ultimately to the formation of written Targums or 
 Aramaic paraphrases ; but these were long discouraged by the 
 Scribes. 
 
 Note 11, p. 49. — The structure of the Semitic languages 
 makes it much easier to dispense with the vowels than an 
 English reader might suppose. The chief difficulty lay with 
 vowels, or still more with diphthongs, at the end of a word, and 
 was met at a very early date by the use of weak consonants to 
 indicate cognate vowel-sounds {e.g. W = au, u ; Y = ai, i). This 
 use of the- vowel -con.sonants is found even on the stone of 
 Mesha, and has been adopted in various measure, not only in 
 Hebrew, but in Syriac and Arabic. But in all these languages 
 the plan of marking every vowel-sound by points alx)ve or 
 below the line came in comparatively late, was developed slowly, 
 and never extended to all books. In Arabic, the vowel-points 
 are hardly ever used except for the Koran, or in difficult poetry, 
 and in philological books. The testimonies of the Talmudists 
 and of Jerome are quite express to show that at their time the 
 true vocalisation of ambiguous words was known only by oral 
 teaching. Jerome, for example, says that in Hab. iii. 5 the 
 Hebrew has only D, B, and R, without any vowel, which may 
 be read either as dxi^jar, " word/' or deber^ " plague." A supposed 
 
394 PHARISEES lect. hi. 
 
 interest, of orthodoxy long led good scholars like the Biixtorfs 
 to fight for the antiquity and authority of the points. There 
 is now no question on the subject ; for MSS. brought from 
 Southern Russia and Arabia, containing a different notation for 
 the vowels, prove that our present system is not only compara- 
 tively recent, but is the outcome of a gradual process, in which 
 several methods were tried in different parts of the Jewish 
 world. The rolls read in the synagogue are still unpointed, a 
 relic of the old condition of all MSS. 
 
 Lecture III. 
 
 Note 1, p. 55. — On the history of the period covered by this 
 Lecture the English reader may consult with advantage Ewald's 
 History of Israel, Bd. iv. (Eng. Trans., vol. v. London, 1874), 
 and the later chapters of Kuenen's Religion of Israel (Eng. Trans., 
 vol. iii. London, 1875). In French the most important recent 
 work, and the best contribution of Jewish scholarship to the 
 history of the period of the Second Temple, is Derenbourg's 
 Essai sur Vhistoire et la ge'ographie cle la Palestine : Premiere 
 Partie (Paris, 1867). The most recent state of research, not 
 fully represented in any English book, is to be found in 
 Schiirer's Lehrbuch der neutestamentlichen Zeitgeschichte, Leipzig, 
 1874, and Wellhausen's admirable monograph, Die Pharisder 
 und die Sadducaer, Greifswald, 1874. For the theology of the 
 Scribes see Weber's System der altsynagogalen paladinischen 
 Theologie, Leipzig, 1880. The oldest and most important tradi- 
 tions about the early Scribes are collected in the treatise of the 
 Mishna called PirlcS Aboth, edited in Hebrew and English in 
 Mr. C Taylor's Sayings of the Jewish Fathers, Cambridge, 1877. 
 
 Note 2, p. 57. — From the genealogy of the descendants of 
 Zerubbabel, in 1 Chron. iii. 19 seq., it seems to follow that the 
 Chronicler lived at least two generations after Ezra. See the 
 article " Chronicles " in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica, and Bertheau's Commentary. But the Chronicles 
 were originally one book with Ezra and Nehemiah, and there- 
 fore cannot have been written till the very close of the Persian 
 period. Supra, p. 140, p. 170 and note. 
 
 Note 3, p. 62. — Zo^e^hw?,, Antiquities, xiii. 10, § 6: "The 
 Sadducees had only the well-to-do classes on their side. The 
 populace would not follow them; but the Pharisees had the 
 
LECT. III. AND SADDUCEES. 395 
 
 multitude as their auxiliaries." Ihxd. xviii. 1, § 4 : "The Sadclucees 
 are the men of highest rank, but they effect as good as nothing, 
 for in affairs of government they are compelled against their 
 will to follow the dicta of the Pharisees, as the masses would 
 otherwise refuse to tolerate them." 
 
 The best account of the relative position of the Scribes and 
 the governing class at different periods is given in Wellhausen's 
 monograph on the Pharisees and Sadducees cited above. In 
 addition to the works named in the first note to this Lecture, 
 Geiger's Urschrift und Uebersetzungen (Breslau, 1857) deserves 
 special notice ; but this book must be read with great caution, 
 and has been too closely followed by several recent writers. 
 On the position of the two parties in the Sanhedrin, Kuenen's 
 essay Over de samenstelling van het Sanhedrin^ in the Proceedings 
 of the Eoyal Society of Amsterdam, 1866, is conclusive. On 
 this topic, and on the whole meaning of the antithesis of the 
 Pharisees and Sadducees, older scholars went astray by follow- 
 ing too closely the unhistorical views of later Jewish tradition. 
 When Judaism had ceased to have a national existence, and was 
 merely a religious sect, the Schoolmen naturally became its 
 heads ; and the tradition assumed that it had always been so, 
 and that the whole history of the nation was made up of such 
 theological and legal controversies as engrossed the attention of 
 later times. (See Taylor's Sayings of the Fathers, Excursus III.). 
 This view bears its condemnation on its face. Before the fall 
 of the state the party of the Scribes was opposed, not to another 
 theological sect, but to the aristocracy, which had its centre in the 
 high priesthood, and pursued practical objects of political and 
 social aggrandisement on very different lines from those of 
 scholastic controversy. That the Sadducees are the party headed 
 by the chief priests, and the Pharisees the party of the Scribes, 
 is plain from the New Testament, especially from Acts v. 17. 
 The higher priesthood was in spirit a very secular nobility, 
 more interested in war and diplomacy than in the service of the 
 Temple. The theological tenets of the Sadducees, as they appear 
 in the New Testament and Josephus, had a purely political 
 basis. They detested the doctrine of the Resurrection and the 
 fatalism of the Pharisees, because these opinions were employed 
 by their adversaries to thwart their political aims. The aristo- 
 cracy suffered a great loss of position by the subjection to a 
 foreign power of the nation which they had ruled in the early 
 
396 MISHNA, lect. hi. 
 
 Hasmonean period when the high priest was a great prince. 
 But the Pharisees discouraged all rebellion. Israel's business 
 was only to seek after the righteousness of the law. The re- 
 demption of the nation would follow in due time, without man's 
 interference. The resurrection would compensate those who 
 had suffered in this life, and the hope of this reward made it 
 superfluous for them to seek a present deliverance. 
 
 Note 4, p. 63. — The word Mishna means instruction, literally 
 repetition, inculcation. From the same root in Aramaic form 
 the doctors of the Mishna bear the name of Tanna, teacher 
 (repeater). After the close of the Mishna the collection and 
 interpretation of tradition was carried on by a new succession cf 
 scholars whose contributions make up the Gemara (decision, 
 doctrine), a vast and desultory commentary on the Mishna. There 
 are two Gemaras, one Palestinian, the other Babylonian. The 
 name for a doctor of the Gemara is Amora, speaker. Mishna 
 and Gemara together make up the Talmud. The Babylonian 
 Gemara was not completed till the sixth century of our era. 
 
 The whole Mishna was published, with a Latin translation 
 and notes, by G. Surenhusius, in 6 vols, folio (Amsterdam, 1698- 
 1703). There is a German translation by Rabe (1760-1763), 
 and another printed in Hebrew letters by Jost (Berlin, 1832- 
 1834). Tliere is no complete English version, but eighteen 
 treatises, still important for the daily life of the Jews, were 
 translated by Raphall and De Sola (London, 1845). Another 
 selection is given by Dr. Barclay, now Bishop of Jerusalem, in 
 his work, T]ie Talmud (London, 1878). 
 
 Note 5, p. 65. — Mishna, Mactser Sheni, v. 15 (ed. Surenh., vol. i. 
 p. 287). On the change in the law of redemption, introduced by 
 Hillel, which is another example in point, see Derenbourg, lib. city 
 p. 188. Compate also Zunz, Gottesdienstliche Vortrage der Juden, 
 pp. 11, 45 (Berlin, 1832). 
 
 Note 6, p. 67. — The point in which the grammatical exegesis 
 of the Mediaeval Jews was most defective was that they always 
 assumed it to be possible to translate what lay before them, and 
 would not recognise that many difficulties arise from corrup- 
 tion of the text. In a book of profane antiquity, a passage that 
 cannot be construed grammatically is at once assumed to be cor- 
 rupt, and a remedy is sought from MSS. or conjecture. The 
 Jews, and until recently the great majority of Christian scholars, 
 refused to adnjit this principle for the Hebrew Scriptures. The 
 
LECT. III. ARCHETYPE. 397 
 
 Septuagint proves the existence of corruptions in the Hebrew 
 text, and often supplies the correction. Yet in such cases tlie 
 translators of 1611, and many of their successors, prefer to cling 
 to the Hebrew text, and force a sense out of it in defiance of the 
 laws of grammar. This method has filled Hebrew grammars 
 with false rules, or exceptions to rules, and has caused the 
 Hebrew prophets and poets to be charged with many confused 
 and enigmatic utterances, nay, with much absolute nonsense, 
 which is really due to corruptions of text 
 
 Till commentators on the Old Testament frankly accept the 
 principles undisputed among other interpreters, and are content 
 to confess that there are passages and phrases in the Hebrew 
 Bible which cannot be understood without emendation from 
 the versions, or from conjecture where the corruption is older 
 than the LXX., it cannot be said that the evil influence of Tal- 
 mudic exegesis has been thoroughly overcome. An English- 
 Bible marking the places where no good sense can be got out of 
 the text is much wanted. Messrs, Cheyne and Driver's notes in 
 the Variorum and Centenary Bibles, published by Messrs. Eyre and 
 Spottiswoode, supply the want in part ; but their plan does not 
 embrace all that is required. Compare on this subject the re- 
 marks of J. Olshausen in the preface to his German Commentary 
 on the Psalms (Leipzig, 1853), a book far too little known in 
 our country. Examples of the few cases where the Authorised 
 Version has been misled by dogmatical or historical preposses- 
 sions will be found supra, pp. 258, 265. See also Ezra ix. 4, 
 5, " sacrifice " for " meat-offering," infra, p. 421. 
 
 Note 7, p. 70. — In last century great hopes were entertained 
 of the results to be derived from a collation of Hebrew MSS. 
 The collections of Kennicott (1776-1780) and De Rossi (1784- 
 1788) showed that all MSS. substantially represent one text, and, 
 so far as the consonants are concerned, recent discoveries have 
 not led to any new result. On the text that lay before the 
 Talmudic doctors compare Strack, Prolegomena Critica in Vetus 
 Testamentum Hebraicum (Lei-pzig, 1873). On Aquila see Lecture 
 II., note 5. On the Targums consult Deutsch's article in Smith's 
 Dictionary oj the Bible, Schiirer, oj). cit., p. 475 seq., and infra, 
 note 12. 
 
 Note 8, p. 71. — Tlie proof that all copies of the Hebrew 
 text go back to one archetype, and the explanation of the so- 
 called " extraordinarv points," were given independently bv 
 IS 
 
398 SAMARJTANS. lect. iii. 
 
 Olsliausen in liis commentary on tlie Psalms (1853), and La- 
 garde in liis Anmerhungen zur Griechiaclieii Uebersetzung der Pro- 
 verhien (1863). The result has been accepted by Noldeke 
 (whose remarks in Hilgeiifeld's Zeitschrift, 1873, pp. 444 seq., 
 are worthy of notice), and by other scholars. I know of no 
 attempt to refute the argument. 
 
 Note 9, p. 73. — Up to the time of Nehemiah's second visit 
 to Jerusalem, there was still a party, even among the priests, 
 which entertained friendly relations with the Samaritans, 
 cemented by marriages. Nehemiah broke up this party ; and 
 an unnamed priest, who was Sanballat's son-in-law, was driven 
 into exile. This priest, who would naturally flee to his father- 
 in-law, is plainly identical with the priest Manasseh, son-in-law 
 of Sanballat, of whom Josephus {Antiq. xi. 8) relates that he 
 fled from Jerusalem to Samaria, and founded the schismatic 
 temple on Mount Gerizim, with a rival hierarchy and ritual. 
 The account of Josephus is confused in chronology and untrust- 
 worthy in detail ; but the main fact agrees with the Biblical 
 narrative, and it is clear that the establishment of the rival 
 temple was a natural consequence of the final defeat of the 
 Samaritans in their persistent efforts to establish relations with 
 the Jewish priesthood and secure admission to the temple at 
 Jerusalem. This determines the age of the Samaritan Penta- 
 teuch. The Samaritans cannot have got the law before the 
 Exile through the priest of the high place at Samaria mentioned 
 in 2 Kings xvii. 28. For the worship of Jehovah, as practised 
 at Samaria before the fall of the Northern Kingdom, was remote 
 from the ordinances of the law, and up to the time w^hen the 
 books of Kings were written the Samaritans worshipped images, 
 and did not observe the laws of the Pentateuch (2 Kings xvii. 
 34, 41). The Pentateuch, therefore, was introduced as their 
 religious code at a later date ; and it could not be accepted ex- 
 cept in connection with the ritual and priesthood which they 
 received from Jerusalem through the fugitive priest banished by 
 Nehemiah. 
 
 Note 10, p. 74. — On the Book of Jubilees, see especially H. 
 Eonsch, Das Buch der Jubildeii (Leipzig, 1874), and Schiirer, 
 op. cit., p. 459 seq. On the various readings of the book, 
 Ronsch, PI). 196, 514. 
 
 Note 1 1 , p. 7 5. — On Hillel and his school, see especially Deren- 
 bourg, op. cit. chap, xi ; and on the development of his system by 
 
LECT. III. AKIBA. 399 
 
 R Ishmael and R. Akiba, ihid.^ chap, xxiii. " Akiba adopted, 
 not only the seven rules of Hillel, but the thirteen of Ishmael ; 
 even the latter did not suffice him in placing all the halachoth or 
 decisions of the Eabbins under the shield of the word of the 
 Pentateuch. His system of interpretation does not recognise the 
 limits established by the usage of the language, and respected 
 by Ishmael ; every word which is not absolutely indispensable 
 to express the intention of the legislator, or the logical relations 
 of the sentences of a law and their parts, is designed to enlarge 
 or restrict the sphere of the law, to introduce into it the addi- 
 tions of tradition, or exclude what tradition excludes. No par- 
 ticle or conjunction, be it augmentative or restrictive, escapes 
 this singular method of exegesis." Thus the Hebrew prefix eth^ 
 which marks the definite accusative, agrees in form with the- 
 preposition with. Hence, when Deut. x. 20 says, " Thou shalt 
 fear e//i- Jehovah thy God," Akiba interprets, " Thou shalt fear 
 the doctors of the law along with Jehovah." So Aquila, the dis- 
 ciple of Akiba, translates the mark of the accusative by auv. See 
 Field, Proleg., p. xxii. 
 
 Note 12, p. 76. — The progress of the stricter exegesis, and 
 its influence on the treatment of the text, may also be traced in 
 the history of the Targums or Aramaic paraphrases. Targum 
 means originally the oral interpretation of the Meturgeman in 
 the synagogue (supra., p. 48). The Meturgemanim did not keep 
 close to their text, but added paraphrastic expositions, practical 
 applications, poetical and romantic embellishments. But there 
 was a restraint on individual liberty of exegesis. The trans- 
 lators formed a guild of scholars, and their interpretations 
 gradually assumed a fixed type. By and by the current form of 
 the Targum was committed to writing ; but there was no fixed 
 edition, and those Palestinian Targums which have come down 
 to us belong to various recensions, and contain elements added 
 late in the Middle Ages. 
 
 This style of interpretation, in which the text was freely 
 handled, and the exposition of the law did not stand on the 
 level of the new science of Akiba and his associates, fell into dis- 
 favour with the dominant schools, just as the Septuagint did. 
 The Targum is severely censured in the Rabbinical Amtings ; 
 and at length the orthodox party took the matter into their own 
 hands, and framed a literal Targum, which, however, did not 
 reach its final shape till the third century a.d., when the chief 
 
400 TARGUMS. lect. hi. 
 
 seat of Jewish learning had been moved to Babylon. The 
 Babylonian Targum to the Pentateuch is called the Targum of 
 Onkelos, i.e. the Targum in the style of Aquila (Akylas). The 
 corresponding Targum to the prophets bears the name of Jona- 
 than. As Jonathan is the Hebrew equivalent of Theodotion, 
 this perhaps means only the Targum in the style of Theodotion. 
 At any rate, these Targums are not the private enterprise of 
 individual scholars, but express the official exegesis of their age. 
 The Targums to the Hagiographa have not an official character. 
 Comp. Geiger, op. cit.,-p. 163 seq., 451 seq. Latin translations of the 
 Targums (not quite complete) in Walton's Polyglott. English 
 translations of the Targums to the Pentateuch, by J. W. 
 Etheridge (London, 1862-64). 
 
 Note 13, p. 77. — Geiger, ojj. a7., p. 232. J/a.^secJiet SSpherhn^ 
 vi. 4. A copy of the law was carried away by Titus among the 
 spoils of the Temple ; Joseph., B. J., Book vii. cap. 5, § 5. 
 
 Note 14, p. 78. — The oldest list of the TikkitnS Sojjhertm is 
 in the Mechilta, a work of the second century, which gives only 
 eleven passages. Other lists in Geiger, p. 309 seq.; the full 
 list in Ochla w'ochla, ed. Frensdorff, No. 168 (Han., 1864). 
 In some cases the so-called old reading is certainly wrong, e.g. 
 2 Sam. XX. 1, "gods" for "tents." Ncildeke, in Gmt. Gel.Anz., 
 1869, p. 2001 seg., advances the plausible hypothesis that, the 
 tradition merely expresses, in no very accurate form, the recol- 
 lection that old copies sometimes varied from the later official 
 text. 
 
 Note 15, p. 82. — A convenient conspectus of the forms of 
 the Semitic alphabet at different times is given in Euting's 
 Table, attached to the English translation of Bickell's Hebrew 
 Grammar (1877). See also the plates from an Egyptian Ara- 
 maic Papyrus (Br. Mus. Papyrus CVI*), in the Oriental Series of 
 the Palseographic Society, Pt. ii. (1877), pi. xxv. xxvi. which is 
 probably of Jemsh origin, and late Ptolemaic or early Roman. 
 The most instructive monument for the old orthography is the 
 stone of Mesha as compared with later Jewish inscriptions. 
 Compare Wellhausen, in Bleek's Einleitung, § 296 (4th Edn., 
 1878) ; Lagarde, Proverbien, p. 4 ; Wellhausen, Bilcher Samuelis, 
 pp. 17 seq. (Guttingen, 1871). 
 
 Note 16, p. 82. — That the old Hebrew ink could be washed 
 off appears from Numb. v. 23, Exod. xxxii. 33, etc. From the 
 former passage is derived the Rabbinic objection to the use of a 
 
LECT. IV. SEPTUAGINT. 401 
 
 mordant in ink. See SSpherim, i. 5, 6, and the notes in Miiller's 
 edition (Leipz., 1878) ; Mislma Sola, ii. 4, and Wagenseil's Com- 
 mentary (Surenli., iii. p. 206 seq.). The Jews laid no value on 
 old copies, but in later times prized certain MSS. as specially 
 correct. A copy in which a line had become obliterated, or 
 which was otherwise considerably defective, was cast aside into 
 the Gentza or lumber-room {Soplienm, iii. 9). There was a dif- 
 ference of opinion as to touching-up faded letters (Ibid. 8, and 
 Miiller's note). Compare Harkavy in MSm. de VAcad. de S. Ptters- 
 bourg, xxiv. p. 57, etc. 
 
 Lecture IY. 
 
 Note 1, p. 84. — On the subject of this lecture compare, in 
 general, Lagarde, Anmerlauujen zur Griechischen Uebersetzung der 
 Proverbien (Leipz., 1863) ; AVellhausen, Der Text der Biicher 
 Samiielis (Gott., 1871). To these two books, the most impoitant 
 recent contributions to a sound use of the LXX. for the criticism 
 of the Hebrew text, may be added the excellent brochure of J. 
 Hollenberg, Der Character der Alexandrlnischtn Uebersetzung des 
 Buches JosKa (Moers, 1876). Less satisfactory in method and 
 execution, though valuable in many respects, are the works of 
 Scholz, Merx, Sinker (Cambridge, 1879), and others. On the 
 relation of the Septuagint to the Palestinian tradition compare 
 Geiger, op. cit., and Frankel, Ueber den Einfluss der paladinischen 
 Exegese auf die Alexandrinische Hermenentik {Le\-pzv^y 1851). 
 
 Note 2, p. 99. — Critical edition of the text of the letter of 
 Aristeas to Philocrates, by M. Schmidt, in Merx's Archiv, i 241 
 seq. (Halle, 1870). It is unnecessary to sketch its contents, for 
 which the English reader may turn to the translations of Ease- 
 bius and Josephus. What basis of truth underlies the fables 
 depends mainly on the genuineness of the fragments of Aristo- 
 bulu.s. See on the one side Wellhausen-Bleek, §279, on the 
 other Kuenen's Religion of Israel, note 1 to chap. xi. 
 
 Note 3, p. 103. — Compare Morinus, Exerciiatio viii. In 
 Mishna, Megilla, i. 8, we read, " The Scriptures may be written 
 in every tongue. R. Simeon b. Gamaliel says they did not 
 suffer the Scriptures to be written except in Greek." On this 
 the Gemara observes, " R. Judah said, that when our Rabbins per- 
 mitted writing in Greek, they did so only for the Torah, and 
 hence arose the translation made for King Ptolemy, etc." So 
 
402 JEREMIAH. lect. iv. 
 
 Joseplms, tliougli an ortlioclox Pharisee, makes use of the LXX., 
 even where it dei^arts from the Hebrew (1 Esdras). The thirteen 
 variations are given in the Gemara, ut sujjra, and in Sophemn, i. 
 9. In both places God is said to have guided the seventy-two 
 translators, so that, writing separately, all gave one sense. Side 
 by side with this favourable estimate, Soph.^ i 8, follo^sdng the 
 glosses . on Mecjillath Taanlth, gives the later hostile tradition, 
 which it supposes to refer to a different version. " That day 
 was a hard day for Israel — like the day when they made the 
 golden calf," because the Torah could not be adequately trans- 
 lated. See further on the gradual growth of the prejudice 
 against the Greek translation, Milller's note, op. ciL, p. 11. Jerome, 
 following the text supplied by Jewish tradition, w411 have it 
 that the LXX. translators purposely concealed from Ptolemy the 
 mysteries of faith, especially the prophecies referring to the 
 advent of Christ. See Quaest. in Gen., p. 2 (ed. Lagarde, 1868), 
 and Praef. in Pent. 
 
 Note 4, p. 1 1 0. — Delitzsch, the ablest modem advocate of 
 the Jesaianic authorship, says that " Isaiah left this deep and 
 rich bequest to the church of the Exile and the church of the 
 subsequent future, till the time of the New Jerusalem and the 
 new earth. . . . It is a thoroughly esoteric book, left to be 
 understood by the church in the future." 
 
 Note 5, p. 112. — It is argued by those who ascribe chaps, 
 l.-li. to Jeremiah, that the expression "all these words" in 
 chap. li. 60 necessarily refers to the context immediately pre- 
 ceding. But the order of Jeremiah's prophecies is greatly dis- 
 turbed (supra, p. 120). No one w^ll argue that " these words" 
 in chap. xlv. 1 refer to chap. xliv. ; yet the argument is as good 
 in the one case as in the other. Compare Budde, Ueber die 
 Capitel L. und LI. des Buches Jeremia in Jahrh. f. D. TheoL, 
 vol. xxiii. pp. 428 seq., 529 seq. 
 
 Note 6, p. J 17. — There is one passage in Jeremiah, as we 
 read it, w^hich appears inconsistent with the view I have ven- 
 tured to take of the prophet's attitude to the temporary elements 
 of the Old Testament ritual. In Jer. xxxiii. 14-26 it is pre- 
 dicted that the Levitical priesthood and its sacrifices shall be 
 perpetual as the succession of day and night. This passage is 
 also wanting in the Septuagint. No reason can be suggested for 
 its omission ; for we know from Philo that even those Jew^s of 
 Alexandria who sat most loosely to the ceremonial law^ regarded 
 
LECT. V. PROVERBS. 403 
 
 the Temple and its service as an essential element in religion 
 {Be Migr. Abra., cap. xvi.). If taken literally, the eternity of 
 Levitical sacrifices, as expressed in xxxiii. 18, seems quite in- 
 consistent with all else in Jeremiah's prophecies. Taken typi- 
 cally the verse only fits the sacrifice of the mass, to which 
 Eoman Catholic expositors refer it ; for the sacrifices are to be 
 offered continually in all time. 
 
 Lecture V. 
 
 Note 1, p. 123. — The earlier part of the book of Proverbs 
 also falls into several sections : — (1) chap. i. 1-6, general title ; 
 (2) chap. i. 7-ix. 18, poetical admonitions in praise of wisdom, 
 morality, and religion, not proverbial in form ; (3) chap. x. 1 - 
 xxii. 16, "Proverbs of Solomon;" (4) chap. xxii. 17-xxiv. 22, 
 — a collection of "Words of the Wise," as appears from the 
 special title to this section, xxii. 17-21. Thus the book con- 
 tains two collections of Salomonic proverbs, of which the second 
 was copied out in the reign of Hezekiah, two anonymous collec- 
 tions of words of the wise, and several minor pieces, the whole 
 prefaced by a poetical or rhetorical introduction. That the two 
 Salomonic collections were formed independently, and not by 
 the same hand, appears most clearly from the many ca^es in 
 which the same proverb appears in both (see the Introduction to 
 Delitzsch's Commentary, § 3). Even these parts of the book then 
 were not collected by Solomon himself, and the title in chap. i. 1 
 is not from his hand, but was added by some collector or editor. 
 Hence there is no reason to suppose that Solomon is the author 
 of chaps, i.-ix. any more than of the " Words of the Y/ise." The 
 whole book bears the name of Solomon's Proverbs, because the 
 two great Salomonic collections are the leading element in it. 
 There are close analogies between the composition of the Book 
 of Proverbs and that of the Psalter. See Lecture VII. 
 
 Note 2, p. 130. — The insertion of the Septuagint in 1 Kings 
 viii. 53 deserves special notice for its intrinsic interest. In 
 1 Kings viii. 12, 13, the Hebrew text reads, "Jehovah hath 
 determined (said) to dwell in darkness. I have built a house of 
 habitation for thee, a place for thee to dwell in eternally." 
 These verses are omitted in LXX., but at ver. 53 we find instead 
 a fuller form of the same words of Solomon. In the common 
 editions of the LXX. the words run thus : — " The sun he made 
 
404 BOOK OF J ASH AR, lect. v. 
 
 known in heaven : the Lord hath said that he will dwell in 
 darkness. Build my house, a comely house for thyself to dwell 
 in newness. Behold, is it not written in the book of song V 
 The variations from the Hebrew text are partly mistakes. The 
 word " comely " is a rendering elsewhere used in the LXX. for 
 the Hebrew word 7iaiveh, w^hich in this connection must rather 
 be rendered " house of habitation," giving the same sense as the 
 Hebrew of ver. 1 3, with a variation in the expression. Then the 
 phrase "in newness" at once exhibits itseK to the Hebrew 
 scholar as a mistaken reading of the Hebrew word " eternally." 
 Again, " build my house " differs in the Hebrew from " I have 
 built " only by the omission of a single letter. We may correct 
 the LXX. accordingly, getting exactly the sense of the Massoretic 
 text of ver. 1 2 ; or conversely, we may correct the Hebrew by the 
 aid of the Septuagint, in which case one other letter must be 
 changed, so that the verse runs, " Build my house, an house of 
 habitation for me ; a place to dwell eternally." We now come to 
 the additions of the LXX. " The sun he made known in heaven " 
 gives no good sense. But many MSS. read, " The sun he set in 
 heaven." These two readings, iyvcopia-ev and ecTTrjcrev have no 
 resemblance in Greek. But the corresj)onding Hebrew words 
 are p^H and p^H respectively, which are so like that they could 
 easily be mistaken. There can be no doubt that the latter is 
 right ; and the error in the common Septuagint text shows that 
 the addition really was found by the translators in Hebrew, not 
 inserted out of their own head. We can now restore the whole 
 original, divide it into lines as poetry, and render — 
 
 Jehovah created the sun in the heavens, 
 But he hath determined to dwell in darkness. 
 Build my house, an house of habitation for me, 
 A place to dwell in eternally. 
 
 Or on the other reading : — 
 
 I have built an house of habitation for thee, 
 A place to dwell in eternally. 
 
 The character of the expression in these lines, taken with the 
 circumstance of their transposition to another place in the LXX., 
 would of itself prove that this is a fragment from an ancient 
 source, not part of the context of the narrative of the chapter. 
 But the LXX. expressly says that the words are taken from " The 
 
LECT. V. BAB A BA THRA. 405 
 
 Book of Song." There miglit perhaps be an ancient book of 
 that name, as we have in Arabic the great historical and poetical 
 collection of El Lsfahany, called " The Book of Songs." But the 
 transposition of a single letter in the Hebrew converts the un- 
 known Book of Song into the well-known Book of Jashar. This 
 correction seems certain. The slip of the Septuagint translator 
 was not unnatural ; indeed, the same change is made by the 
 Syriac in Josh. x. 13. 
 
 Note 3, p. 131. — The scheme of the Hebrew Canon may 
 be put thus : — • 
 
 I. The five fifths of the Law 5 
 
 II. The Prophets- 
 Earlier Prophets : Joshua, Jutl., Sam., Kings . . 4 
 Later Prophets : Isaiah, Jer., Ezek., The Twelve . . 4 
 
 III. Hagiographa or Ketubim — 
 
 Poetical Books : Psalms, Pio verbs, Job ... 3 
 
 The Megilloth : Canticles, Ruth, Lamen., Eccles., Esther .^ 
 
 Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles .... 3 
 
 24 
 
 The fundamental passage in the Babylonian Gemara, Baha 
 Bathra, ff. 14, 15, says, "The order of the prophets is Joshua 
 and Judges, Samuel and Kings, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Isaiah 
 and the Twelve. Hosea is the first because it is written, ' the 
 beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea ' (Hos. i. 2). . . . 
 But, because his prophecy is written along with the latest pro- 
 phets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, he is counted with them. 
 Isaiah is earlier than Jeremiah and Ezekiel. . . . But because 
 Kings ends with destruction and Jeremiah is all destruction, 
 while Ezekiel beginning with destruction ends in consolation 
 and Isaiah is all consolation, destruction is joined to destruction 
 and consolation to consolation. The order of the Hagiographa is 
 Ruth and Psalms and Job and Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, 
 and Lamentations, Daniel and Esther, Ezra and Chronicles." 
 Compare Miiller's note on Sopherim, iii, 5. Isaiah follows 
 Ezekiel in some ^ISS. (Lagarde, Symmicta, i. 142, Gottingen, 
 1877) and the order of the Hagiographa v aries considerably. 
 On 2 Esdras xiv. 44, 46, see Lect. VI. p. 149 and note. 
 
 Note 4, p. 132. — See the three enumerations in Jerome, 
 Prol. Galecd. His order for the Hagiographa is Job, David, 
 Proverbs, Eccles., Canticles, Daniel, Chron., Ezra, Esther. On 
 
406 THE LA W ETERNAL. lect. v. 
 
 the Canon of Josepliussee Lect. VI. p. 150 and note. Twenty- 
 two books are reckoned by Origen in Eusebius, K. E. vi. 25, and 
 by Epipbanius De Mens, et Pond. c. 4 (ed. Lagarde, p. 156). 
 
 Note 5, p. 136. — Two Greek recensions of Esther and Tobit 
 exist, and are printed in 0. F. Fritzsche's Libn Aiiocryiihi V. T. 
 Greece (Leipzig, 1871). Compare the commentaries of the same 
 author on these books in Kurzgef. Handhich z. d. Aiooc. (Leipzig, 
 1851, 1853). 
 
 Note 6, p. 141. — The line between the old literature and 
 the new cannot be drawn with chronological precision. The 
 characteristic mark of canonical literature is that it is the record 
 of the progress of fresh truths of revelation, and of the immedi- 
 ate reflection of these truths in the believing heart. The Psalms 
 are, in part, considerably later than Ezra, but they record the 
 inner side of the history of his work of reformation, and show us 
 the nature of the faith with which Israel apprehended the 
 Law and its institutes. This is a necessary and most precious 
 element of the Old Testament record, and it would be arbitrary 
 to attempt to fix a point of time at which this part of Old 
 Testament Scripture must necessarily have closed. But the 
 direct language of faith held by the psalmists is intrinsically 
 different from such artificial reflection on the law, in the manner 
 of tlie schools, as is found in Ecclesiasticus. The difference can 
 be felt rather than defined, and a certain margin of uncertainty 
 must attach to every determination of the limits of what is 
 canoiiicaL But, on the whole, the instinct that guided the 
 formation of the Hebrew Canon was sound, because the theories 
 of the schools affected only certain outlying books, while the 
 mass of the collection established itself in the hearts of all the 
 faithful in successive generations, under historical circumstances 
 of a sifting kind. The religious struggle under the Maccabees, 
 which threw the people of God upon the Scriptures for comfort 
 when the outward order of the theocracy was broken, doubtless 
 was for the later books of the Canon a period of proof such as 
 the Captivity was for the older literature. Compare Lecture VI. 
 Note 7, p. 145. — Midrash Rahha, p. 529 (Leipz., 1864). 
 For the law as everlasting, see Baruch, iv. 1. The pre-existence 
 of the law (Ecclus. xxiv. 9) follows from its being identified with 
 wisdom as described in Prov. viii. Compare further Weber ojj. cit. 
 p. 18 seg. 
 
 Note 8, p. 146. — On the term Kahhala see Zunz, op. cit. p. 44, 
 
LECT. VI. FOURTH ESDRAS, 407 
 
 where the evidence from Jewish authorities is carefully collected. 
 Compare Weber, <yp. cit p. 79 seq. Mishna, Megilla^ iii. 1. — " If 
 the men of a town sell a Torah they may not buy with its 
 price the other books of Scripture ; if they sell Scriptures they 
 may not buy a cloth to wrap round the Torah ; if they sell such 
 a cloth they may not buy an ark for synagogue rolls ; if they 
 sell an ark they may not buy a synagogue ; nor if they sell a 
 synagogue may they buy a street (an open ground for devotion, 
 Matt vi. 5)." 
 
 Lecture VI. 
 
 Note 1, p. 149. — The Latin text of Fourth Esdras xiv. 44, 
 46 does not state the number of canonical books, which, how- 
 ever, ought to be got by subtracting the 70 esoteric books of 
 ver. 46 from the whole number in ver. 44. The latter number, 
 however, is hopelessly corrupt. It has been proved by Professor 
 Gildemeister and Mr. Bensly {Hie Missing Fragmunt of 4 Ezra, 
 Camb., 1875) that, with the exception of the Amiens MS. (A), 
 unearthed by the latter scholar, all copies hitherto known are 
 derived from the Cod. Sangermanensis (S) and have no critical 
 value. Through the kindness of Mr. Bensly I am able to give 
 
 ngenti septuaginta quatuor 
 
 the folloTvdng readings. A has DCCCCLXXIIIL ; S. C. 1. 
 3. 5. 8. 9. 11. 12. C. 15 ( = Add. 1848 Univ. Libr. Camb.) D. T. 
 read DCCCCIIII. Other readings are XCIIII. (C. 4), octingenti 
 Illlor (C. 10), ducenti quatuor (C. 2). The Edinburgh MS., 
 the only one which I have been able to consult personally, 
 agrees with S. In this ambiguity of the Latin we must rely on 
 the Eastern versions ; some of which give 94 in ver. 44, and 
 also add in ver. 45 the express statement that there were 24 
 
 books published. But even 
 
 here there 
 
 is 
 
 great vari 
 
 ation. 
 
 
 Total 
 
 
 
 
 Canonical 
 
 Esoteric 
 
 
 books. 
 
 
 
 
 books 
 
 books. 
 
 Ceriani's Syriac (1867) 
 
 94 
 
 
 
 
 24 
 
 70 
 
 Ewald's Arabic (1863) 
 
 94 
 
 
 
 
 24 
 
 70 
 
 Gildemeister' s Arabic 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 (1877) 
 
 
 
 Gives 
 
 no 
 
 nnmbere. 
 
 
 The Aethiopic . 
 
 94 (with 
 
 variation^ 
 
 >) 
 
 not stated 
 
 not stated 
 
 The Armenian . 
 
 94 
 
 
 
 
 not stated 
 
 not stated 
 
 Further, though the fragment of an Arabic translation from 
 
408 JOSEPHUS. LECT. vi. 
 
 the Syriac given by Professor Gildemeister (p. 41) agrees with 
 the published Syriac, Jacob of Edessa, in his thirteenth epistle, 
 published by Professor W. Wright {Journ. Sac. Lit, 1867, p. 
 439), says that Ezra wrote 90 books. One cannot therefore feel 
 confident that 94 is original any more than the explicit 24 of 
 Syr. and Ar. E\v. The early Syriac church at least was too 
 much influenced by Jewish tradition not to know the Talmudic 
 enumeration. Besides, if 94 is original, it is still possible that 
 70 = 72 (as in the case of the LXX. translators), leaving 22 
 canonical books. More evidence is required to give a sure 
 result 
 
 On the supposed enumeration of 22 books in the Jubilees, 
 as read by Syncellus and Cedrenus, see Eonsch, op. cit, p. 527 
 seq. 
 
 Note 2, p. 150. — Josephus, Co7itra Ajn'on., Lib. I. cap. vii. § 
 5. — " Not every one was permitted to write the national records, 
 nor is there any discrepancy in the things written ; but the 
 prophets alone learned the earliest and most ancient events by 
 inspiration from God, and wrote down the events of their own 
 times plainly as they occurred. 
 
 " (viii. 1). — For we have not myriads of discordant and contra- 
 dictory books, but only two and twenty, containing the record 
 of all time, and rightly believed to be divine. (2) And of these 
 five are the books of Moses, comprising the laws, and the 
 tradition of the early history of mankind down to his death. . . . 
 But from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes, king 
 of Persia, Avho succeeded Xerxes, the prophets compiled the 
 history of their own times in thirteen books. The other four 
 contain hymns to God and precepts of life for men. (3) But 
 from Artaxerxes to our times all events have indeed been 
 written down ; but these later books are not deemed worthy of 
 the same credit, because there has been no exact succession of 
 prophets." 
 
 The allegorical interpretation of Canticles, Israel being 
 identified with the spouse, first appears in 2 (4) Esdras, v. 24, 
 26 ; vii. 26. 
 
 Note 3, p. 157. — On the legend of the Great Synagogue, 
 Kuenen's essay Over de Mannen der Groote Synagoge, in the pro- 
 ceedings of the Royal Society of Amsterdam, 1876, is conclusive. 
 An abstract of the results in Wellhausen-Bleek, § 274. Kuenen 
 follows the arguments of scholars of last century, and 
 
LECT. VI. THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE. 409 
 
 especially Rail's Diatribe de Synagoga Magna (Utrecht, 1725); 
 but lie completes their refutation of the Rabbinical fables by 
 utilising and placing in its true light the important observa- 
 tions of Krochmal, as to the connection between the Great 
 Synagogue and the Convocation of Neh. viii.-x., which, in the 
 hands of Jewish scholars, had only led to fresh confusion. See, 
 for example, Graetz {Kohelet, Anh. i. Leipz., 1871) for a model of 
 confused reasoning on the Great Synagogue and the Canon, 
 Krochmal's discovery that the Great Synagogue and the Great 
 Convocation are identical rests on the clearest evidence. See 
 especially the Midrash to Ruth. " What did the men of the 
 Great SjTiagogue do ? They \^Tote a book and spread it out in 
 the court of the temple. And at dawn of day they rose and 
 found it sealed. This is what is written in Neh. ix. 38 " 
 (Leipzig ed, of 1865, p. 77). According to the tradition of the 
 Talmud, Baba Batlira, ut mpra, the men of the Great Sjmagogue 
 -WTote Ezekiel, the Minor Prophets, Daniel, and Esther ; and Ezra 
 A\Tote his o^\Ti book and continued the genealogies of Chronicles. 
 This has nothing to do with the Canon ; it merely expresses an 
 opinion as to the date of these books. Further, the Aboth of 
 Rabbi Nathan (a post-Talmudic book) says that the Great Syna- 
 gogue arose and explained Proverbs, Canticles, and Ecclesiastes, 
 which had previously been thought apocrj-phal. Such is the 
 traditional basis for the famous conjecture of Elias Levita in his 
 Massoreth hammassoreth (Venice, 1538), which took such a hold 
 of public opinion that Hottinger, in the middle of the seven- 
 teenth century, could say : " Hitherto it has been an unquestioned 
 axiom among Jews and Christians alike, that the Canon of the 
 Old Testament was fixed, once and for all, with Divine autho- 
 rity, by Ezra and the men of the Great Synagogue" {Thes. Phil., 
 Ziirich, 1649, p. 112). At p. 110 he says that this is only 
 doubted by those quibus jjro cerebro fungus est. 
 
 Note 4, p. 160. — In the Talmudic times it was matter of 
 controversy whether it was legitimate to write the Law, the 
 Prophets, and the Hagiograplia in a single book. Some went 
 so far as to say that each book of Scripture must form a separate 
 volume. See Sojpherim, iii. 1, and Miiller's note. It appears 
 that the old and predominant custom was in favour of separa- 
 tion. Boethos, whose copy of the eight prophets in one volume 
 is referred to in Baba Bathra and Sopheiim, iii. 5, lived about 
 the close of the second Christian century. Some doctors denied 
 
410 EZEKIEL, lect. vi. 
 
 that liis copy contained all the books " joined into one." So- 
 'pkerim, iii. 6, allows all the books to be united in inferior copies 
 written on the material called diphthera, but not in synagogue 
 rolls ; a compromise pointing to the gradual introduction in 
 post-Talmudic times of the plan of treating the Bible as one 
 volume. 
 
 Note 5, p. 160. — For the want of system in the public les- 
 sons from the Prophets in early times, see Luke iv. 17, and 
 Lect. II,, Note 10. According to Sopherim, xiv. 18, Esther was 
 read at the feast of Purim, Canticles at the Passover, Ruth at 
 Pentecost. The reading of Lamentations is mentioned, ibid. 
 xviii. 4. It is noteworthy that there is still no mention of the 
 use of Ecclesiastes in the Synagogue. Compare further Zunz, 
 op. cit, p. 6. 
 
 Note 6, p. 163. — The only book as to which any dispute 
 seems to have occurred was Ezekiel. The beginning of this 
 book — the picture of the Merkaha, or chariot of Jehovah's 
 glory (1 Chron. xxviii. 18j — has always been viewed as a great 
 mystery in Jewish theology, and is the basis of the Kahhala or 
 esoteric theosophy of the Rabbins. The closing chapters were 
 equally puzzling, because they give a system of law and ritual 
 divergent in many points from the Pentateuch. Compare 
 Jerome's Ep. to Paulinus : — " The beginning and end of Ezekiel 
 are involved in obscurities, and among the Hebrews these parts, 
 and the exordium of Genesis, must not be read by a man under 
 thirty." Hence, in the apostolic age, a question was raised as to 
 the value of the book ; for, of course, nothing could be accepted 
 that contradicted the Torah. We read in the Talmud (Hagiga, 
 1 3a) that " but for Hananiah, son of Hezekiah, they would 
 have suppressed the Book of Ezekiel, because its words contra- 
 dict those of the Torah. AVhat did he do ? They brought up 
 to him three hundred measures of oil, and he sat down and ex- 
 plained it." Derenbourg, op. cit. p. 296, with Graetz, Geschichte, 
 vol. iii. p. 561, is disposed to hold that the scholar who recon- 
 ciled Ezekiel with the Pentateuch at such an expenditure of 
 midnight oil was really Eleazar son of Hananiah. 
 
 Note 7, p. 169. — It is sometimes said that the Haggada had 
 no sacred authority. So Zunz, op. cit. p. 42 ; Deutsch's Remains, 
 p. 17 ; but compare, on the other hand, Weber, op. cit. p. 94 seq. 
 Certain Haggadoth share with the Halacha the name of Midda, 
 rule of faith and life. 
 
ESTHER. 411 
 
 Note 8, p. 170. — Ahoth of R. Nathan, c. 1. — "At first they 
 said that Proverbs, Canticles, and Ecclesiastes are apocryphal. 
 They said they are parabolic writings, and not of the Hagio- 
 grapha. So they prepared to suppress them, till the men of the 
 Great Synagogue came and explained them." 
 
 Note 9, p. 170. — The most palpable argument for the ori- 
 ginal unity of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah is that mentioned 
 in the text. But the parts of Ezra-Xehemiah which are not 
 extracts from documents in the hands of the editor display all 
 the characteristic peculiarities of the Chronicles in style, lan- 
 guage, and manner of thought. See De Wette-Schrader, Ein- 
 leitung, §§ 235-237. The identity of the author of Ezra and 
 Chronicles is admitted by Keil, but it is impossible to accept 
 his theory that Ezra wrote both books ; for the genealogies, and, 
 indeed, the whole character of the work, bring us down to a 
 much later time. In Neh. xii. 22 Darius the Persian is Darius 
 Codomannus. 
 
 Note 10, p. 172. — Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. Lih. iv. cap. 26. It 
 is certainly very hard to understand what Jewish authorities 
 could omit Esther at so late a date, but the statement of Euse- 
 bius is precise. In the fourth century Athanasius and Gregory 
 of Nazianzus still omit Esther from the Canon. There is no 
 doubt that the feast of Purini was first observed, not in Pales- 
 tine, but in the far East. Lagarde has advanced a very power- 
 ful argument to connect both name and thing with the Persian 
 feast Furdigan {Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 161 seq.). The 
 ordinance of the fast of Purim (Esther ix. 31), which we see 
 not to have been observed in Palestine in the time of Christ, is 
 lacking in the Greek text of Esther. — On the Megillath Taanith, 
 or list of days on which the Jews are forbidden to fast, consult 
 Derenbourg, p. 439 seq. 
 
 Note 1 1, p. 172. — Mishna, Sanhedrin, xi. 1 (ed. Suren., vobiv. 
 p. 259). " All Israelites have a share in the world to come, ex- 
 cept those who deny the resurrection of the dead, those who 
 say that the Torah is not from God, and the Epicureans. R. 
 Akiba adds those who read in outside books, and him who 
 whispers over a wound the words of Exod. xv. 26," — a kind of 
 charm, the sin of which, according to the commentators, lay in 
 the fact that these sacred words were pronounced after spitting 
 over the sore. Compare on the " outside books " Geiger, p. 
 200 seq. 
 
412 AKIBA. LECT. VII. 
 
 Note 12, p. 173. — Mishna, ladaim, iii. 5. — " All the Holy 
 Scriptures defile tlie hands : the Song of Solomon and Ecclesi- 
 astes defile the hands. R, Judah says, The Song of Solomon 
 defiles the hands, and Ecclesiastes is disputed. E. Jose says, 
 Ecclesiastes does not defile the hands, and the Song of Solomon 
 is disputed. R. Simeon says, Ecclesiastes belongs to the light 
 things of the school of Shammai, and the heavy things of the 
 school of Hillel [i.e., on this point the school of Shammai is less 
 strict]. R. Simeon, son of Azzai, says, I received it as a tradi- 
 tion from the seventy-two elders on the day when they enthroned 
 R. Eliezer, son of Azariah [as President of the Beth Din at 
 lamnia, Avhich became the seat of the heads of the Scribes after 
 the fall of Jerusalem], that the Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes 
 defile the hands. R. Akiba said, God forbid ! No one in Israel 
 has ever doubted that the Song of Solomon defiles the hands. 
 For no day in the history of the world is worth the day when 
 the Song of Solomon was given to Israel. For all the Hagio- 
 grapha are holy, but the Song of Solomon is a holy of the holies. 
 If there has been any dispute, it referred only to Ecclesiastes. 
 ... So they disputed, and so they decided." 
 
 Eduiot, V. 3. — "Ecclesiastes does not defile the hands according 
 to the school of Shammai, but does so according to the school of 
 Hillel." 
 
 For the disputes as to Ecclesiastes, compare also Jerome on 
 chap. xii. 13, 14. "The Hebrews say that this book, which 
 calls all God's creatures vain, and prefers meat, drink, and pass- 
 ing delights to all else, might seem worthy to disappear with 
 other lost works of Solomon ; but that it merits canonical autho- 
 rity, because it sums up the whole argument in the precej)t to 
 fear God and do His commandment," 
 
 Note 13, p. 174. — Akiba's anathema in Tosef. SanJiedrin, c. 
 12 ; R. Simeon's utterance in Talmud Jer. Megilla, i. 5 (Kroto- 
 schin ed. of 1866, f. 70b). 
 
 Lecture VII. 
 
 Note 1, p. 176. — On the Psalter in general, the most in- 
 structive discussion is still that in Ewald's Dichter des alien 
 Biindes (vol. i., 2d ed., Gottingen, 1866 ; Eng. TransL London, 
 1881). Ewald admits Davidic Psalms, and denies that there 
 are any as late as the Maccabees. Against the existence of 
 
LECT. vir. THE PSALTER. 413 
 
 Davidic Psalms see especially Kuenen, Historisch-kritisch Onder- 
 zoek, vol. iii. (Leiden 1865) ; for the existence of Maccabee 
 
 Psalms see Olshausen in his Commejitar, which certainly goes | 
 
 too far, and Knenen, •who is much more guarded ; against them j 
 Ehrt, Ahfassungszeit und Ahschluss des Faalters (Leipzig, 1869). 
 The strongest current argument against placing any Psalms so 
 late is supposed to follow from the history of the Canon, and 
 hardly possesses force. Older 's\Titers did not feel this difficulty, 
 
 and were not insensible to the internal evidence which refers < 
 some poems to the Maccabee period. See, for example, Calvin 
 
 on Psalms xliv. and Ixxiv. Of commentaries essentially conser- [ 
 
 vative on the subject of the titles, the best is that of Delitzsch ; j 
 
 but it is not unfair to say that his exegesis, based on accept- \ 
 
 ance of the titles, often appears precarious to himself, as in Pss. ! 
 
 Iii., Iv. I 
 
 Note 2, p. 179. — On the hallel see especially Lagarde, I 
 
 Orientalia, ii. p. 13 seq. Lagarde makes the interesting obser- I 
 
 vation that after the fall of the Temple worship, when the Psalms \ 
 
 passed over to the use of the synagogues, they ceased to be | 
 
 TehiUim and became Mazdmtr, MazmHre^ as the Arabs and j 
 
 Syrians call them, after the Heb. Mizmor^ found in the titles of i 
 
 many Psalms. j 
 
 Note 3, p. 183. — Another case where one Psalm has been j 
 
 made two is xlii.-xliii., where, by taking the words " my ■ 
 God " from the beginning of xlii. 6 to the end of the previous 
 
 verse, and making a single change on the division of the words, ' 
 we get a poem of three stanzas, with an identical refrain to 
 
 each. I 
 
 Note 4, p. 183. — The five books of Psalms are mentioned ' 
 
 by Epiphanius, De Mens, et Pond. cap. v. (ed. Lagarde, p. 157), j 
 
 and by Jerome in the Prologus Galeatus. The scheme is no i 
 
 doubt, as Epiphanius suggests, an artificial imitation of the Pen- { 
 
 tateuch. But this does not prove that the doxologies were added \ 
 and the division made by the collector, for Books IV. and V. 
 
 are originally one book. \ 
 
 Note 5, p. 185. — Sources of Psalm LXXXVL \ 
 
 1, Incline, O Lord, thine 1. a. Usual invocation, Is. xxxvii. 17 ; 
 ear, answer me : for I am Ps. xvii, 6, etc. j 
 
 poor and needy. h. Ps. xl. 1 7. — " I am poor and needy ; " i 
 
 Ps. XXV. 16 ; 
 
414 
 
 PSALM LXXXVI. 
 
 2. Preserve my soul for I 
 am holy : thou, my God, 
 save thy servant that trusteth 
 in thee. 
 
 3. Be gracious to me, 
 Lord : for unto thee I cry 
 continually. 
 
 4. Make glad the soul of 
 thy servant : for to thee, 
 Lord, do I lift up my soul. 
 
 5. For thou, Lord, art good 
 and forgiving : and abundant 
 in mercy unto all that call 
 upon thee. 
 
 6. Give ear, Lord, unto 
 my prayer : and hearken to 
 the voice of my supplica- 
 tions. 
 
 7. In the day of my dis- 
 tress I call on thee : for thou 
 wilt answer me. 
 
 8. There is none like thee 
 among the gods, Lord : and 
 there is nought like thy 
 works. 
 
 9. All nations whom thou 
 hast made shall come and 
 worship before thee, Lord : 
 and shall glorify thy name. 
 
 10. For thou art great and 
 doest wonders : thou, God, 
 alone. 
 
 11. Teach me thy way, O 
 Jehovah ; let me walk in thy 
 truth : unite my heart to fear 
 thy name. 
 
 12. I Avill praise thee, 
 Lord my God, with all my 
 heart : and I will glorify thy 
 name for ever. 
 
 13. For great is thy mercy 
 towards me : and thou hast 
 delivered my soul from deep 
 Sheol (the place of the dead). 
 
 14. God, proud men are 
 risen against me, and an as- 
 sembly of tyrants seek my 
 
 2. Ps. XXV. 20. — " Preserve my soul and 
 deliver me : let me not be ashamed, for I 
 take refuge with thee. " 
 
 3. Current phrases ; e.g. Ps. xxx. 8. — 
 "To thee, Jehovah, I cry;" ver. 10 — 
 ** Hear, Jehovah, and be gracious to me." 
 
 4. a. Ps. xc. 15. — "Make us glad;" 
 li. 8. — "Make me hear joy and gladness," 
 etc. 
 
 h. Ps. XXV. 1. — "Unto thee, Jehovah, 
 I lift up my soul." 
 
 5. Modification of Exod. xxxiv. 6, 7. — 
 " Abundant in mercy . . . forgiving ini- 
 quity." 
 
 6. Ps. V. 
 Jehovah . 
 cry. " 
 
 2. — " Give ear to my words, 
 hearken to the voice of my 
 
 7. Ps. cxx. 1. — **I called to Jehovah in 
 my distress, and he answered me ; Ixxvii. 
 2. — "In the day of my distress I sought 
 the Lord." 
 
 8. Ex. XV. 11. — '*Who is like thee 
 among the gods, Jehovah ?" Dent. iii. 
 24. — " Who is a God that can do like thy 
 works ?" 
 
 9. Ps. xxii. 27.— "All ends of the earth 
 shall . . . return unto Jehovah, aud be- 
 fore thee shall all families of the nations 
 worship." 
 
 10. Ex. XV. 11.— "Doing wonders." 
 
 11. a, Ps. xxvii. 11. — "Teach me thy 
 way, Jehovah;" xxv. 5. — "Guide me 
 in thy truth. " 
 
 6. Jer. xxxii. 39. — " I will give them one 
 heart, and one way to fear me continually." 
 
 12. Ps. ix. 1. — "I will praise thee, 
 Jehovah, with all my heart," etc. 
 
 13. a. Ps. Ivii. 10. — " For thy mercy is 
 gi'eat unto the heavens." 
 
 h. Ps. Ivi. 13.— "For thou hast deli- 
 vered my soul from death." 
 
 14. Ps. liv. 3. — "For strangers are 
 risen against me, and tyrants seek my life 
 who have not set God before them. [In 
 
LECT. VII. ARABIC POETS. 41; 
 
 life : and have not set tliee Hebrew, ** proud men " ZeDIM and stran- 
 
 before them. gers ZaRIM, differ by a single letter, and 
 
 D and R in the old character are often not 
 
 to be distinguished.] 
 
 15. But thou, Lord, art a 15. Quotation from Ex. xxxiv. 6, word 
 God merciful and gracious, for word. 
 
 long-sutfering, and plenteous 
 in mercy and truth. 
 
 16. Turn unto me and be 16. a. Vs. xrv. 16. — "Turn unto me, 
 gracious to me : give thy and be gracious to me." 
 
 strength unto thy servant, h. God the strength (protection) of his 
 
 and save the son of thy hand- people, as Ps. xxviii. 8, and often ; Ps. 
 
 maid. cxvi. 16. — "I am thy servant, the son of 
 thy handmaid. " 
 
 17. Work with me a token 17. Ps. xl. 3. — "Many shall see it and 
 (miracle) for good : that they fear;" Ps. vi. 10. — "Let all mine ene- 
 which hate me may see it and mies be ashamed and sore vexed," etc. 
 be ashamed : because thou, etc. 
 
 Lord, hast holpen me and 
 comforted me. 
 
 Note 6, p. 190. — No one can doubt that Psalm cxlix. is a 
 late piece. But can verses 6 seq^. suit any situation between the 
 Exile and the Maccabee wars ? 
 
 Note 7, p. 191. — The Hebrew Slur ham-ma al 6th cannot 
 have been originally prefixed to each psalm, for it does not 
 mean " a song of ascents " but " the song of ascents." Gramma- 
 tically the title can only be explained as a singular, not very 
 correctly formed, from a previous collective title Shire ham- 
 ma aloth. Of this again the proper translation is not " the 
 songs of ascents " (pi.), but " the songs of ascent " (sing.). It is 
 important to observe in this instance how individual titles are 
 derived from an earlier collective title. The same thing, no 
 doubt, applies to the Davidic collections. — See p. 198. 
 
 Note 8, p. 199. — Keil has the courage to assert that the 
 genuineness of the titles is confirmed by the practice of Arabian 
 poets to prefix their names to their songs ; Introduction, Eng. Tr., 
 vol. i. p. 457. But let us hear Ahlwardt, the recognised master 
 of this branch of Arabic literature, in his Bemerhunrjen iiber die 
 Aechtheit der alien Arabischen Gedichte,-p. 1 seq. (Greifswald, 1872). 
 " Every one who opens the collections of old poems, or looks 
 through books dealing -with the oldest Arabic literature, will 
 find that a great many ancient poems are ascribed now to this 
 author now to that. It is undeniable that in this respect great 
 uncertainty prevails, and this is easily understood when we 
 
416 PSALM LL lect. vii. 
 
 consider, in general, that tlie use of WTiting for larger poems was 
 certainly not yet current in tliose days ; tliat the distance between 
 the time of the poets and the time when their works were col- 
 lected and written down may be 150 years or more. . . . Even 
 in later times, when writing was fully developed and literature 
 sedulously practised, there were doubts as to the authorship of 
 many poems." The whole discussion is worth notice in its 
 bearing on the Psalter. 
 
 Note 9, p. 202. — In connection with this acrostic and the 
 similar case of Psalm xxxiv,, Professor de Lagarde suggests that, as 
 in later Jewish acrostics, the supernumerary verses may indicate 
 the names of the authors, Phadael and Phadaiah (Academy, 
 January 1, 1872. Symmida, p. 107 ; Gottingen, 1877). 
 
 Note 10, p. 204. — Many would be gdad to rescue the au- 
 thority of the titles in the second Davidic collection for the sake 
 of Psalm li. Yet the last two verses of the Psalm, with the 
 ]3rayer that God will build the walls of Jerusalem, refer so 
 manifestly to the period of the Captivity, that recent supporters 
 of the Davidic authorship are usually inclined to view them as 
 a later addition (Perowne, Delitzsch). But every one can see 
 that the omission of these verses makes the Psalm end 
 abruptly, and a closer examination reveals a connection of 
 thought between vv. 16, 17 (Heb. 18, 19) and vv. 18, 19 (Heb. 
 20, 21). At present, says the Psalmist, God desires no material 
 sacrifice, but will not despise a contrite heart. How does the 
 Psalmist know that God takes no pleasure in sacrifice ? Not on 
 the principle that the sacrifice of the wicked is sin, for the sacri- 
 fice of the contrite whose person God accepts must be acceptable 
 if any sacrifice is so. But does the Psalmist then mean to say, 
 absolutely and in general, that sacrifice is a superseded thing ? 
 No ; for he adds that when Jerusalem is rebuilt the sacrifice of 
 Israel (not merely his own sacrifice) will be pleasing to God. 
 He lives therefore in a time when the fall of Jerusalem has 
 temporarily suspended the sacrificial ordinances, but — and this 
 is the great lesson of the Psalm — has not closed the door of for- 
 giveness to the penitent heart. 
 
 Let us now turn to the main thought of the Psahn, and see 
 whether it does not suit this situation as well as the supposed 
 reference to the life of David. The two special points in the 
 Psalm on which the historical reference may be held to turn are 
 ver. X-*, "Deliver me from blood-guiltiness," and ver. 11, "Take 
 
LECT. VII. PSALM LI. 417 
 
 not thy Holy Spirit from me." Under tlie Old Testament the 
 Holy Spirit is not given to every believer, but to Israel as a 
 nation (Isa. Ixiii. 10, 11), residing in chosen organs, especially in 
 the prophets, who are iiar excellence " men of the Spirit " (Hos. ix. 
 7). But the Spirit of Jehovah was also given to David (1 Sam. 
 xvi. 1 3 ; 2 Sam. xxiii. 2). The Psalm then, so far as this phrase 
 goes, may be a Psalm of Israel collectively, of a prophet, or of 
 David. Again, the phrase " Deliver me from blood-guiltiness," 
 is to be understood after Psalm xxxix. 8, " Deliver me from all 
 my transgressions, make me not the reproach of the foolish." 
 In the Old Testament the experience of forgiveness is no mere 
 subjective feeling ; it rests on facts. In the New Testament the 
 assurance of forgiveness lays hold of the work and victory of 
 Christ, it lies in the actual realisation of victory over the world 
 in Him. In the Old Testament, in like manner, some saving 
 act of God is the evidence of forgiveness. The sense of forgive- 
 ness is the joy of God's salvation (verse 12), and the word " sal- 
 vation " i^^) is, I believe, always used of some visible delivery 
 and enlargement from distress. God's wrath is felt in His chas- 
 tisement. His forgiveness in the removal of affliction, when His 
 people cease to be the reproach of the foolish. Hence the ex- 
 pression " deliver me." But blood-guiltiness (D'^Dl) does not 
 necessarily mean the guilt of murder. It means mortal sin 
 (Ezek. xviii. 13), such sin as, if it remains unatoned, withdraws 
 God's favour from His land and people (Deut, xxi. 8 seq. ; Isa. i. 
 15). Bloodshed is the typical ofience among those which under 
 the ancient law of the First Legislation are not to be atoned for 
 by a pecuniary compensation, but demand the death of the 
 sinner. The situation of the Psalm therefore does not neces- 
 sarily presuppose such a case as David's. It is equally applicable 
 to the prophet, labouring under a deep sense that he has dis- 
 charged his calling inadequately and may have the guilt of lost 
 lives on his head (Ezek. xxxiii.), or to collective Israel in the 
 Capti^dty, when, according to the prophets, it was the guilt of 
 blood equally with the guilt of idolatry that removed God's 
 favour from His land (Jer. vii. 6 ; Hosea iv. 2, vi. 8 ; Isa. iv. 4). 
 Nay, from the Old Testament point of view, in which the ex- 
 perience of wTath and forgiveness stands generally in such im- 
 mediate relation to Jehovah's actual dealings with the nation, 
 the whole thought of the Psalm is most simply understood as a 
 prayer for the restoration and sanctification of Israel in the 
 
418 PSALM LI. LECT. viii. 
 
 mouth of a prophet of tlie Exile. For the immediate fruit of 
 forgiveness is that the singer will resume the prophetic function 
 of teaching sinners Jehovah's ways (ver. 13), This is little ap- 
 propriate to David, whose natural and right feeling in connection 
 with his great sin must rather have been that of silent humilia- 
 tion than of an instant desire to preach his forgiveness to other 
 sinners. The whole experience of David with Nathan moves in 
 another plane. The Psalmist writes out of the midst of present 
 judgments of God (the Captivity). To Da\id, the pain of death, 
 remitted on his repentance, lay in the future (2 Sam. xii. 13) as 
 an anticipated judgment of God, the remission of which would 
 hardly produce the exultant joy of ver. 12. On the other hand, 
 the whole thought of the Psalm, as Hitzig points out and 
 Delitzsch acknowledges, moves in exact parallel with the spiritual 
 experience of Israel in the Exile as conceived in connection with 
 the personal experience of a prophet in Isa. xl.-lxvi. The Psalm 
 is a psalm of the true Israel of the Exile in the mouth of a pro- 
 phet, perhaps of the very prophet who wrote the last chapters of 
 the book of Isaiah. 
 
 Lecture VIII. 
 
 Note 1, p. 208. — On the subject of this and the following 
 Lectures the most important book is Wellhausen's Geschichte 
 Israels (Erster Band, Berlin, 1878). Among older works 
 Vatke's Religion des alien Testamenls (Erster Theil, Berlin, 1835) 
 is of the greatest value, but, being encumbered with a mass of 
 Hegelian terminology of a repulsive kind, it practically remained 
 unnoticed till inquiry was redirected into similar channels by 
 the writings of Graf {De Templo Silonensi, Meissen, 1855 ; Die 
 geschichtlichen Biicher des alien Testaments, 1866 ; Zar Geschichte 
 des Stammes Levi in Merx's Archiv, 1870). Graf was also neglected 
 in Germany, under the dominant influence of the Gottingen and 
 Halle schools, but his point of view was taken up hj Kuenen in 
 Holland, and was for a time supposed to be necessarily connected 
 with ultra-rationalism. Since the appearance of Wellhausen's 
 book there are many signs that critics of every school are rapidly 
 coming to be at one on the main facts of the religious history of 
 Israel. In the interpretation of the facts, differences of theolo- 
 gical standpoint will no doubt continue ^to assert themselves, as 
 they did to an equal or greater extent when no one doubted that 
 Moses \YioU the whole Pentateuch. 
 
LECT. VIII. THE CHRONICLES. 419 
 
 Note 2, p. 219. — Mohammed boasts of his fabulous version 
 of the history of Joseph that he has it by direct revelation, not 
 having known it before ; Koran, Sura xii. 3. The Biblical liis- 
 torians never make such a claim, which to a thinking mind is 
 one of the clearest proofs of Mohammed's imposture. It is 
 worth while to see how Astruc speaks on this topic more than a 
 century ago. Mc\uy theologians do not think so clearly now. 
 " Moyse parle toujours, dans la Genese, comma un simple his- 
 torien, 11 ne dit nulle part que ce qu'il raconte, lui ait este in- 
 spire. On ne doit done point supposer cette revelation sans 
 aucun fondement. Quand les Prophetes out parle de choses, 
 qui leur avoient este revelees, ils n'ont point manque d'avertir 
 qu'ils parloient an nom de Dieu, et de sa part ; et c'est ainsi que 
 Moyse en a use lui mesme, dans les autres Livres du Penta- 
 teuque, quand il a eu quelque revelation a communiquer 
 au peuple Hebreu, ou quelque ordre de Dieu a lui intimer. 
 Auroit-il neglige la mesme precaution, en composant le Livre de 
 la Genese, s'il s'etoit trouve dans les mesmes circonstances ? " 
 {Conjectures sur la Genese, p. 5, Bruxelles, 1753). When it is 
 admitted that the Bible history is based upon written sources, 
 oral testimony, and personal observation, no theory of inspira- 
 tion can alter the principle that the knowledge of the ^Titers 
 was limited by their sources. Whatever they say which they 
 did not find in their sources is not evidence, but commentary. 
 On the question of fact, what the actual social and religious 
 observances of Israel before the Exile were, the Chronicler can 
 tell us nothing which he had not read in earlier authentic his- 
 tory. Anything which he adds to his sources is historical evi- 
 dence for the state of things in his ow^n time — which he may 
 use to fill up his picture and give it colour — but not for the state 
 of things before the Exile. Now, that the author of Chronicles 
 does use the ritual and standing ordinances of his ow^n time to 
 give copiousness of detail to his pictures of ancient events, and 
 bring them more vividly before the minds of his readers, is 
 quite certain from comparison of his narrative -with that of 
 Kings. In doing so he does no more than is habitually done 
 without off'ence in the pulpit. The Bible history, as para- 
 phrased by a graphic modern preacher, is always coloured with 
 the nationality of the speaker, and assimilated in greater or less 
 degree to the life of his own time. What is innocent, and in- 
 deed inevitable, in an uninspired preacher may surely have hap- 
 
420 CHRONICLES lect. viii. 
 
 pened in Bible times. And that the Chronicler is not so much 
 a historian as a Levitical preacher on the old history, is plain 
 from the whole manner of his book, and from the fact that he 
 actually quotes among his sources a Midrash (E.V. story), or per- 
 haps two books of this character. The word Midrash is not 
 found in earlier parts of the Old Testameut ; and w^hen we con- 
 sider the date of the Chronicles, there can 1^ no hesitation in 
 giving to the word its ordinary meaning — viz., that of a sermon- 
 ising exjjosition, such as w^as familiar in the preaching of the 
 synagogue in the age of the Scribes. Midrash is a thing so un- 
 familiar to us that we are apt to think it impossible that any- 
 tliing of the kind should be found in the Bible. But we are not 
 entitled to say a priori that any style of literature that was 
 freely practised and perfectly understood in those days must 
 have been excluded by Divine providence from the Canon as it 
 w^as ultimately shaped. But in proportion as the Chronicles 
 have the complexion of a Midrash they are improper to be 
 directly used in a purely historical investigation into the ritual 
 and usages of pre-Exilic times. 
 
 Without professing to offer a positive solution of the ques- 
 tions which these remarks suggest, I shall close this note with 
 some illustrations of the relation of Chronicles to Kings, which 
 seem sufficient to prove that the former books cannot safely be 
 used in the way common to recent defenders of the traditional 
 view of the Pentateuch : — 
 
 1°. 1 Kings viii. 3 : " The priests took up the ark." 2 
 Cliron. V. 4 : " The Levites took up the ark." In this whole 
 passage the Chronicles have no other source than the narrative 
 of Kings, which, for the most part, is verbally followed. That 
 the ark w^as carried by the priests is in accordance with Deut. 
 xxxi. and the whole pre-Exilic history (Josh. iii. 3, vi. 6, viii. 
 33 ; 1 Sam. vi. 15 (compared with Josh. xxi. 16) ; 2 Sam. xv. 
 24, 29). The statement in Chronicles is a correction in accord- 
 ance with the Levitical law. 
 
 2°. In 2 Kings xxiii. Josiah's action against the high places is 
 represented as taking place in his eighteenth year, as the imme- 
 diate result of his repentance on hearing the words of the law 
 found in the Temple, and in pursuance of the covenant of refor- 
 mation. In 2 Chron, xxxiv. the reformation begins in his eighth 
 year, and the land is purged before the book of the law is found 
 (ver. 8). 
 
LECT. viiT. AND KINGS. 421 
 
 3°. In 2 Kings xi. Jehoiada's assistants in the revolution 
 which cost Athaliah her life, are the foreign bodyguard which 
 we know to have been emplo^-ed in the sanctuary up to the time 
 of Ezekiel (see p. 249). lu 2 Chron. xxiii., the Caiians and 
 the footguards are replaced by Levites. No doubt the guard 
 were the Le^dtes of the First Temple. They did those services 
 which the Levites did in the Second Temple. But they were 
 not Levites in the sense of the Pentateuch, but, in part at least, 
 uncircumcised foreigners. 
 
 4°. According to 2 Kings xii., the support of the Temple 
 fabric in the early years of Jehoash was a burden on the priestly 
 revenues brought into the house by worshippers. In 2 Chron. 
 xxiv., it appears as defrayed by a special collection made through 
 all Judah (see p. 252, and Wellhausen, Gesch., p. 206 seq.). 
 
 5°. The speeches in Chronicles are not literal reports. They 
 are freely composed without strict reference to the exact 
 liistorical situation. Compare, for example, the correspondence 
 between Solomon and Hiram (1 Kings v. 3-9; 2 Chron. ii. 3-16). 
 Thus in Abijah's speech on the field of battle (2 Chron. xiii. 4 
 seq.), the king is made to say that Jeroboam's rebellion took 
 place when Rehoboam was a mere lad and tender-hearted, and 
 had not courage to withstand the rebels. The mere lad OV^), 
 according to 1 Kings xiv. 21, was forty-one years old. Abijah 
 then proceeds to boast of the regular temple service conducted 
 according to Levitical law. But the ser^^ce described is that 
 of the Second Temple, for the king speaks of the golden candle- 
 stick as one of its elements. In Solomon's Temple there stood 
 not one golden candlestick in the holy place in front of the 
 adyton ("I'^ai, oracle, i.e. Holy of Holies) but ten (1 Kings vii. 49), 
 Again, the morning and evening burnt oflferings are mentioned. 
 But there is a great concurrence of evidence that the evening 
 offering was purely cereal in the First Temple, or indeed in the 
 time of Ezra and Nehemiah (1 Kings xviii. 36, Hebrew; 2 
 Kings xvi. 15 ; Ezra ix. 4, Hebrew). Compare Kuenen's 
 Religion of Israel, chap, ix., note 1. This speech is one of the 
 clearest proofs that the Chronicler's descriptions of ordinances 
 are taken from the usage of his own time. 
 
 6°. Under the reign of David, the Chronicles insert a very 
 
 full and valuable account of the order of the Levitical service of 
 
 song, etc. But the order is that of the Second Temple. The 
 
 gates and the like described in 1 Chron. xxvi. could not have 
 
 19 
 
422 HOSE A. lect. viii. 
 
 existed in David's time, before the temple was built, and one of 
 them has a Persian name. A very curious point remarked by 
 Ewald (Lehrhuch, § 274 b), and more clearly elucidated by Well- 
 hausen, is that six heads of choirs of the guild of Heman bear 
 the names (1) I have given great (2) and lofty help (3) to him 
 that sat in distress ; (4) I have spoken (5) a superabundance of 
 (6) prophecies (1 Chron. xxv. 4). As the names of literal indi- 
 ^'iduals in the time of David, these names are incredible. But 
 the words seem to be an anthem in which six choirs of singers 
 may well have had parts, and received names from their parts. 
 In like manner Jeduthun, which, if the description of the 
 temple music is literal history of David's time, must be the 
 name of a man, head of a choir, is really, as we see from the 
 titles of the Psalms, a musical term. The complete identifica- 
 tion of the Levites with the temple singers which the order of 
 Chronicles sui)poses was not yet actual in the time of Ezra and 
 Nehemiah. 
 
 7°. The Kings say expressly that the high places were not 
 removed by Asa and Jehoshaphat though their hearts were per- 
 fect with Jehovah (1 Kings xv. 14 ; xxii. 43). The Chronicler, 
 on the contrary, says that both Asa and Jehoshaphat abolished 
 the local high places (2 Chron. xiv. 5, xvil 6), which, however, 
 does not prevent him from copying the opposite statements of 1 
 Kings in connection with some other particulars which he has 
 occasion to transfer from that book (2 Chron. xv. 17 ; xx. 33). 
 
 People may shake their heads at all this and say, You are 
 touching the historicity of the book. But our first duty is to 
 facts ; and the only question I raise is whether we can use the 
 Chronicles to correct or modify unambiguous statements of the 
 earlier books, or whether, in order to get real instruction from 
 the later history, we must not frankly admit that its descrip- 
 tions of ritual often belong to the Chronicler's own time. The 
 proofs of this might be greatly multiplied. See especially De 
 Wette^s Beitrage, Bd. 1 (Halle, 1806), and Wellhausen's Geschichte, 
 p. 177 seq. 
 
 Note 3, p. 226. — The English version of Hosea iii. does not 
 clearlv express the prophet's thought. Hosea's wife had deserted 
 him lor a stranger. But though she is thus "in love with a 
 paramour, and unfaithful," his love follows her, and he buys her 
 back out of the servile condition into which she appears to have 
 fallen. She is brought back from shame and servitude, but not 
 
LECT. viii. lAHWE : SHADDAL 423 
 
 to tlie privileges of a wife. She must sit alone by her hushancl, 
 reserved for him, but not yet restored to the relations of wed- 
 lock. So Jehovah will deal with Israel, when by destroying 
 the state and the ordinances of worship He breaks off all inter- 
 course, not only between Israel and the Baalim, but between 
 Israel and Himself. See on the whole allegory the article 
 HosEA in the Ennjc. Brit, (ninth edition). 
 
 Note 4, p. 227. — On the ephod, see Vatke, ojj. cit. p. 2G7 
 seq. ; Studer on Judges viii. 27. The passages where teraphim 
 are mentioned in the Hebrew but not in the English version 
 are, Gen. xxxi 19, 34, 35; 1 Sam. xv. 23, xix. 13, 16; 
 2 Kings xxiii. 24 ; Zech. x. 2. Compare, as to their nature, 
 Spencer, De Legibus Ritiialihus Hehrcsorum, Lib. iii., c. 3, § 2 seq. 
 
 Note 5, p. 231. — Colenso {Pentateuch^ Part V.), Lenormant 
 [Lettres Assyriologiques, vol. ii.), Tiele, Land, and others have 
 sought to prove that Jehovah (lahwe) is a name borrowed from 
 Semitic heathenism, while Brugsch and others will have it that 
 the Mosaic conception of God is borrowed from the Egyptians. 
 The latter view is totally untenable, and the evidence for the 
 former breaks down upon close examination. See especially the 
 elaborate discussion in Baudissin's Studien, voL i No. 3 (1876). 
 That the name lahwe existed in a narrower circle before it 
 became through Moses the recognised name of Israel's national 
 God (Exod. vi. 3) is probable ; and at that time the word may 
 have had a much less lofty interpretation than it received in 
 Exod. iii. 14. The physical meaning can hardly be other than 
 he who causes rain or lightning to fall upon the earth. Compare 
 Gen. xix. 24, where the brimstone and fire that destroyed Sodom 
 are said to fall from {lit. from beside) lahwe from heaven ; and 
 see Lagarde, Orientalia II. 29. 
 
 I take this opportunity to explain more fully than I have 
 formerly done my view of the other old name Shaddai, recently 
 cited by Mr. Cheyne in his commentary on Isaiah. It can be 
 shown from the Greek versions, and even from Jerome's note, 
 rohustus et sufficiens ad omnia perpetranda, that the oldest form 
 of the traditional interpretation of the name is not " almighty," 
 but " sufficient," cKavos, which is again derived from the Jewish 
 traditional etymology from the relative C' and n. Now, if this 
 etymology is so ancient, it can hardly be doubted that the punc- 
 tuation wdth pathach under the second radical is derived from it. 
 But it is this punctuation which has misled many scholars to 
 
424 HIGH PLACES. lect. viti. 
 
 find in the word a derivative from ITW with a nominal forma- 
 tive affix. Such a form is highly improbable in an old divine 
 name, which in the most ancient use is a substantive, not an 
 adjective to El ; and the punctuation loses all authority when 
 we learn that it expresses an impossible etymology. (Compare 
 cases like niDPV.) We are thus entitled to regard the word as 
 an intensive from m^, Aram, iny, eshacl, Arab, thada, to pour 
 forth, and the name, which from its form is probably of Aramaic 
 origin, will mean the god who gives rain. Compare the familiar 
 fact that even under the Mohammedan empire land watered by 
 rain from heaven is named hdl. 
 
 Note 6, p. 235. — In some of these cases, evidence that the 
 place was a sanctuary may be demanded. Kadesh is proved to be 
 so by its very name, with which it agrees that it was a Levitical 
 city and a consecrated asylum. Accordingly it formed the ren- 
 dezvous of Zebulon and Naphtali under Barak and Deborah. 
 Mahanaim was the place of a theophany, from which it had its 
 name. It was also a Levitical city, and Cant. vi. 13 alludes to 
 the " dance of Mahanaim," which was probably such a festal 
 dance as took place at Shiloh (Jud. xxL 21). As a holy place 
 the town was the seat of Ishbosheth's kingdom, and the head- 
 quarters of David's host during the revolt of Absalom. Tabor, 
 on the frontiers of Zebulon and Issachar, seems to be the moun- 
 tain alluded to in Dent, xxxiii. 18, 19, as the sanctuary of these 
 tribes, and it appears along with Mizpah, as a seat of degenerate 
 priests, in Hos. v. 1. The northern Mizpah is identical with 
 Ramoth Gilead. and with the sanctuary of Jacob (Gen. xxxi. 45 
 seq.y 
 
 Note 7, p. 236. — Except at a feast, or to entertain a guest, 
 or in sacrifice before a local shrine, the Bedouin tastes no meat 
 but the flesh of the gazelle or other game. This throws light on 
 Deut. xii. 22, which shows that in old Israel game was the 
 only meat not eaten sacrificially. That flesh was not eaten every 
 day even by wealthy people appears very clearly from Nathan's 
 parable and from the book of Ruth. The wealthy man, like 
 the Arab sheikh, ate the same fare as his v/orkmen. According 
 to MI Nodes (Calcutta edition, ii. 276), eating flesh is one of 
 the three elements of high enjoyment. 
 
LECT. IX. JOSIAH'S LA IVBOOK. 425 
 
 in^'s 
 
 xxiii. 5 
 
 w 
 
 „ 7 
 
 w 
 
 „ 9 
 
 » 
 
 „ 10 
 
 » 
 
 „ 11 
 
 » 
 
 „ 14 
 
 w 
 
 „ 21 
 
 )» 
 
 „ 24 
 
 Lecture IX. 
 
 Note 1, p. 246. — Critics distinguish in Deuteronomy the 
 legislative code (chaps, xii.-xxvi.) and the framework, wliich 
 appears to be by a different hand or hands. In all probability 
 the code once stood, along with an introduction, in a separate 
 book corresponding to Deut. iv. 44-xxvi. 19. There is no evi- 
 dence that Josiah had more than this book, and even the Fathers 
 identify the book found in the Temple with Deuteronomy. So 
 Jerome, Adv. Jovin.^ i. 5 ; Chrysostom, Horn, in Mat. ix. p. 135 B. 
 The relation of his reformation to Deuteronomy may be shown 
 thus : — 
 
 . , Deut. xii. 2. 
 
 • • „ xxiii. 17, 18. 
 
 • • „ xviii. 8. 
 
 • • „ xviii. 10. 
 , „ xvii. 3. 
 
 „ xvi. 21, 22. 
 „ xvi. 5. 
 . . „ xviii. 11. 
 
 Compare further Wellhausen, Composition des Hexateuchs, III, in 
 Jahrbb. f. Deut. Theol., 1877, pp. 458 scq. 
 
 Note 2, p. 248. — The Pillars of Hercules are identical with 
 the two steles or maggehoth of the Tyrian Melkart, described by 
 Herodotus, Bk. ii. chap. 44, and were carried westward by the 
 Phoenician navigators and colonists. Two huge pillars similar 
 to those of Solomon stood in the propylcea of the temple of 
 Hierapolis. See Lucian, De Syria Dea, chap. 16, 28. 
 
 Note 3, p. 248. — This passage is so important that I give it 
 in a translation, slightly corrected after the versions in vv. 7, 8, 
 as already printed in my Answer to tJie Amended Libel (1878). 
 The corrections are obvious, and have been made also by Smend 
 (Der Prophet Ezechiel erJdcirt, Leipz., 1880). 
 
 Ezek. xliv. 6. O house of Israel ! Have done with all your 
 abominations, (7) in tliat ye bring in foreigners uncircumcised 
 in heart and flesh to be in my sanctuary, polluting my house, 
 when ye offer my bread, the fat, and tlie blood ; and so ye break 
 my covenant in addition to all your abominations, (8) and keep 
 not the charge of my holy things, but appoint them as keepers 
 of my charge in my sanctuary. Therefore, (9) thus saith the 
 
42G THE FOREIGN GUARDS. lect. ix. 
 
 my sanctuary — no foreigner whatever, who is among the chil- 
 dren of Israel.' (10) But the Levites, because they departed 
 from me when Israel went astray, when they went astray from 
 me after their idols, even they shall bear their guilt, (11) and 
 be ministers in my sanctuary, officers at the gates of the house, 
 and ministers of the house ; it is they who shall kill the burnt- 
 offering and the sacrifice for the people, and it is they who shall 
 stand before them to minister unto them. (12) Because they 
 ministered unto them before their idols, and were a stumbling- 
 block of guilt to the house of Israel, therefore I swear concerning 
 them, saitli the Lord God, that they shall bear their guilt, (13) 
 and shall not draw near to me to do the office of a priest to me, 
 or to touch any of my holy things — the most holy things ; but 
 they shall bear their shame and their abominations which they 
 have done. (14) And I will make them keepers of the charge 
 of the house for all the service thereof, and for all that is to be 
 done about it. (15) But the Levite priests, the sons of Zadok, 
 who kept the charge of my sanctuary when the children of 
 Israel went astray from me — they shall come near unto me to 
 minister unto me, and they shall stand before me to offer imto 
 me the fat and the blood, saith the Lord God. They shall enter 
 into my sanctuary and approach my table, ministering unto me, 
 and keep my charge. 
 
 Note 4, p. 250. — There is, I think, good ground for -sup- 
 posing that the slaughtering of sacrifices, which Ezekiel expressly 
 assigns in future to the Levites, was formerly the work of the 
 guards. It was the king who provided the ordinary temple 
 sacrifices (2 Chron. viii. 13, xxxi. 3 ; Ezek. xlv. 17), and there 
 can be little doubt that the animals killed for the royal table 
 were usually offered as peace offerings at the temple (Dent xii. 
 21). In Saul's time, at least, an unclean person could not sit at 
 the royal table, which implies that the food was sacrificial (1 
 Sam. XX. 26 ; Lev. vii. 20 ; Deut. xii. 22). Now the Hebrew 
 name for " captain of the guard " is " chief slaughterer " {rah 
 hattahhdchtm) — an expression wdiich, so far as one can judge 
 from Syriac and Arabic as well as Hebrew, can only mean 
 slaughterer of cattle (comp, HllDD, Euting, Pun. Steine, p. 16). 
 So the bodyguard were also the royal butchers, an occupation 
 not deemed unworthy of warriors in early times. Eurip. Electra, 
 815. Odys. A. 108. In Lev. i. 5, 6 it is assumed that every 
 
LECT. IX. ZADOKITES. 427 
 
 man kills his own sacrifice, and so still in the Arabian desert 
 even'- person knows how to kill and dress a sheep. 
 
 Note 5, p. 254. — According to 1 Sam. ii. 27-36 the whole 
 clan or " father's house " of Eli, the family which received 
 God's revelation in Egypt with a promise of everlasting priest- 
 hood, is to lose its prerogative and sink to an inferior position, in 
 which its survivors shall be glad to crouch before the new high 
 priest for a place in one of the inferior priestly guilds which 
 may yield them a livelihood. As 1 Kings ii. 27 regards this 
 prophecy as fulfilled in the substitution of Zadok for Abiathar, it 
 is plain that the former did not belong to the high-priestly family 
 chosen in the "\\'ildemes3. That his genealogy is traced to Aaron 
 and Eleazar in 1 Chron. vi. 50 stq^. does not disprove this, for 
 among all Semites membership of a guild is figured as sonship. 
 Thus in the time of the Chronicles sons of Eleazar and Ithamar 
 respectively would mean no more than the higher and lower 
 guilds of priests. The common theory that the house of Eli 
 was not in the original line of Eleazar and Phinehas is incon- 
 sistent with Num. xxv. 13 compared with 1 Sam. ii. 30. Tlie 
 Chronicler places Ahimelech son of Abiathar in the lower priest- 
 hood of Ithamar (1 Chron. xxiv. 3, 6), but Abiathar himself is 
 not connected with Ithamar by a genealogical line. The deposi- 
 tion of the father reduces the son to the lower guild, i 
 
 Note 6, p. 257.— 1 Sam. i. 20, 21. "When the new year 
 came roimd, Hannah conceived and bare a son, and named him 
 . . . and Elkanah went up with his whole household to sacrifice 
 to Jehovah the yearly sacrifice and his vow." The date of the 
 new year belongs to the last of this series of events. Compare 
 Wellhausen, Text Samuelis, p.39 ; Ge^chichte hrae!s,-p. 97 seq., Ill, 
 note. The autumn feast was also the great feast at Jerusalem 
 (1 Kings viii. 2), and in the Northern Kingdom (1 Kings xii. 32). 
 
 In Judges ix. 27 read, " They trode the grapes and made 
 killAlim (a sacred offering in praise of God from the fruits of the 
 earth, Lev. xix. 24), and went into the house of their god and 
 feasted," etc. 
 
 Note 7, p. 266. — Some other examples of irregiilarities in 
 the ritual of Israel before the Captivity may be here appended. 
 (1) According to the LeWtical law it is the function of the Levites 
 to carry the ark. In the history, the ark is either borne by the 
 priests (Josh. iii. 3, vi. 6, viii. 33 ; 1 Kings viii. 3) or conveyed 
 in a cart (2 Sam. vi. 3). In 2 Sam, xv. 24, 29, the Levites aid 
 
i23 URIM AND lect. x. 
 
 the cliief priests in carrying the ark, but it must be remembered 
 that before Ezekiel priests and Levites are not two separate 
 classes. The Levites in the early history are the priestly guild 
 and family (see p. 359 seg-.). (2) On the use of sacred symbols 
 prohibited in the Law, see p. 353 se^. (3) Under the Law the 
 Levites and priests had a right of common round their cities, but 
 this pasture ground was inalienable (Lev. xxv. 34), so that 
 1 Kings ii. 26, Jer. xxxii. 7, where priests own and sell fields, 
 are irregular. 
 
 Lecture X. 
 
 Note 1, p. 268. — Compare especially Duhm, Theologie der 
 Propheten (Bonn, 1875), and Wellhausen's Gesckichte JsraeZs, Kap. 
 10. 
 
 Note 2, p. 270. — For the subject here touched on I refer in 
 general to the arguments and authorities adduced in my essay 
 on Animal-worship, etc., in the Journal of Philology, ix. 75 seq. 
 In Psalm xlv. 1 2 render, " And, daughter of Tyre, with a gift 
 shall the rich among the people entreat thy favour." 
 
 Note 3, p. 278. — Plato, Timceus, cap. xxxii. p. 71 I>. The 
 mantic faculty belongs to the part of the soul settled in the liver, 
 because that part has no share in reason and thought. " For 
 inspired and true divination is not attained to by any one when 
 in his full senses, but only when the power of thought is fettered 
 by sleep or disease or some paroxysm of frenzy." 
 
 This view of inspiration is diametrically opposite to that of 
 S. Paul (1 Cor. xiv. 32), and the complete seK-consciousness and 
 seK-control of the prophets taught in that passage belong equally 
 to the spiritual prophecy of the Old Testament. Plato's theory, 
 however, was applied to the prophets by Philo, the Jewish Plato- 
 nist, who describes the prophetic state as an ecstasy in which the 
 human vovs disappears to make way for the divine Spirit (Quis 
 rernm div. haeres, § 53, Mang. i. p. 511). Something similar has 
 been taught in recent times by Hengstenberg and others, — sub- 
 stituting, as we observe, the pagan for the Biblical conception of 
 revelation. 
 
 Note 4, p. 285. — In ancient times the priestly oracle of 
 Urim and Thummim was a sacred lot ; for in 1 Sam. xiv. 41 
 the true text, as we can still restore it from the LXX., makes 
 Saul pray. If the iniquity be in me or Jonathan, give Urim ; but 
 if in Israel, give Thummim. This sacred lot was connected with 
 
LECT. X. THUMMIM. 429 
 
 tlie ephocl, wliicli in the time of the Judges was something very 
 like an idol (p. 227 and note). Spencer therefore sei'ms to be 
 right in assuming a resemblance in point of form between the 
 priestly lot of the Urini and. Tliummim and. divination by 
 Teraphim {Be Leg. Bit., lib. iii. c. 3). The latter again appears 
 as practised by drawing lots by arrows before the idol (Ezek. 
 xxi. 21, "he shook the arrows "), which was also a familiar form 
 of divination among the heathen Arabs (Ibn Hisham, 97; C. de 
 Perceval, Essai sur Vhistoire des Arabes, 1847, ii. 310). The very 
 name of Thummini seems to reappear in the Arabic tamdHm (Im- 
 raulkais, Moal., 14 ; Lagarde, Froph. Chald., xlvii.). Under the 
 Levitical law the priestly lot exists in theory in a very modified 
 fiirm, confined to the high priest, but in reality it was obsolete 
 (Neh. vii. 65). 
 
 JS'oTE 5, p. 287. — The argument of Amos v. 25 is obscured 
 in the English translation by the rendering of the following 
 verse. The verbs in that verse are not perfects, and the idea 
 is not that in the wilderness Israel sacrificed to Moloch and 
 Saturn (Keiwan) in place of Jehovah. Verse 26 commences the 
 prophecy of judgment, "Ye shall take np your idols, and (not 
 as E.V. " therefore ") I will send you into captivity." 
 
 Note 6, p. 291. — The Greek doctrine of the inspiration of 
 the poet never led to the recognition of certain poems as sacred 
 Scriptures. But the Indian Vedas were regarded in later times 
 as infallible, eternal, divine. In the priestly bards, therefore (the 
 liUhis), the first authors of the Vedic hymns, we may expect to 
 find, if anywhere, a consciousness analogous to that of the pro- 
 phets. Their accounts of themselves have been collected by Dr. 
 John Muir in his Sanscrit Texts, vol. iii., and some recent writers 
 have laid great stress on this supposed parallel to prophetic in- 
 spiration. But what are the facts ? The Rishis frequently speak 
 of their hymns as their own works, but also sometimes entertain 
 the idea that their prayers, praises, and ceremonies generally 
 were super naturally inspired. The gods are said to " generate " 
 prayer ; the prayer is god-given. The poet, like a Grecian 
 singer, calls on the gods to help his prayer. " May prayer, bril- 
 liant and divine, proceed from us." But in all this there is no 
 stricter conception of inspiration than in the Greek poets. It 
 is not the word of God that we hear, but the poet's word aided 
 by the gods (compare Muir, p. 275). How difi'erent is this 
 from the language of the prophets ! " Where do the prophets," 
 
430 MOHAMMED. lect. x, 
 
 asks Merx {Jenaer Lit. Zelt., 1876, p. 19) "pray for illumina- 
 tion of spirit, force of poetic expression, glowing power of com- 
 position ? " In truth, as Merx concludes, Kuenen still owes us 
 the proof of his statement that other ancient nations share the 
 prophetic consciousness of inspiration. That consciousness is as 
 clearly separated from the inspiration of the heathen /xavrts as 
 from the afflatus of the Indian or Grecian bard. 
 
 On Mohammed's inspiration see Noldeke, Geschichte des Qordns, 
 p. 4. *' He not only gave out his later revelations, composed 
 with conscious deliberation and the use of foreign materials, as 
 being, equally with the first glow^ing productions of his enthu- 
 siasm, angelic messages and proofs of the prophetic spirit, but 
 made direct use of pious fraud to gain adherents, and employed 
 the authority of the Koran to decide and adjust things that had 
 nothing to do with religion." 
 
 Note 7, p. 304. — Projjerly to understand the prophetic doc- 
 trine of forgiveness, we must remember that the problem of the 
 acceptance of the individual with God was never fully solved in 
 the Old Testament. The prophets always deal with the nation 
 in its unity as the object of wrath and forgiveness. The reli- 
 gious life of the individual is still included in that of the nation. 
 When we, by analogy, apply what the prophets say of the nation 
 to the forgiveness of the individual, we must always remember 
 that Israel's history starts with a work of redemption — deliver- 
 ance from Egypt. To this objective proof of Jehovah's love the 
 prophets look back, just as w^e look to the finished work of 
 Christ. In it is contained the pledge of Divine love, giving 
 confidence to approach God and seek His forgiveness. But 
 while the Old Testament believer had no difficulty in assuring 
 himself of Jehovah's love to Israel, it was not so easy to find a 
 pledge of His grace to the individual, and especially not easy to 
 apprehend God as a forgiving God imder personal affliction. 
 Here especially the defect of the dispensation came out, and the 
 problem of individual acceptance with God, which was acutely 
 realised in and after the fall of the nation, when the righteous 
 so often suffered with the wicked, is that most closely bound up 
 with the interpretation of the atoning sacrifices of the Levitical 
 rituaL 
 
LECT. XI. EXOD. AND DEUT. 431 
 
 Lecture XI. 
 
 Note 1, p. 310. — Berachoth Bab., 5a (p. 234 in Schwab's 
 French translation, Paris, 1871). Megilla Jer., cited in Lect. 
 VI. p. 174. Compare "Weber, op. cit. p. 89 seq., and Dr. M. 
 Wise in the Hebrew Review, vol. i. p. 12 seq. (Cincinnati, 1880). 
 
 Note 2, p. 317. — It is of some importance to realise how 
 completely Deuteronomy covers the same ground with the First 
 Legislation. The following table exhibits the facts of the 
 
 Exod. xxi. 1-11 (Hebrew slaves)— Dent. xv. 12-18. 
 
 ,, „ 12-14 (Murder and asylum) — Deut. xix. 1-13. 
 
 ,, „ 15, 17 (Otfences against parents) — Deut. xxi. 18-21. 
 
 ,, „ 16 (Manstealing) — Deut. xxiv. 7. 
 
 ,, „ 18 — xxii. 15. Compensations to be paid for various injuries. 
 This section is not repeated in Deuteronomy, except as 
 regards the law of retaliation, Exod. xxi. 23-25, which 
 in Deut. xix. 16-21 is applied to false witnesses. 
 Exod. xxii. 16, 17 (Seduction)— Deut. xxii. 28, 29. 
 
 ,, ,, 18 (Witch)— Deut. xviii. 10-12. 
 
 ,, ,, 19 — Deut. xxvii. 21. 
 
 „ ,, 20 (Worship of other gods) — Deut. xiii., xvii. 2-7. 
 
 ,, , 21-24 (Humanity to stranger, widow, and orphan) — Deut. 
 xxiv. 17-22. 
 
 ,, ,, 25 (Usury)— Deut. xxiii. 19. 
 
 ,, ,, 26, 27 (Pledge of raiment)— Deut. xxiv. 10-13. 
 
 „ ,, 28 (Treason) — Not in Deuteronomy. 
 
 ,, 29, 30 (First fruits and firstlings)— Deut. xxvi. 1-11, xv. 19- 
 23. 
 
 ,, ,, 31 (Unclean food)— Deut. xiv. 2-21. Tlie particular precej^t 
 of Exodus occupies only ver. 21 ; but the principle of 
 avoiding food inconsistent with holiness is expanded. 
 Exod. xxiii. 1 (False witness) — Deut. xix. 16-21. 
 
 " " ^' ?' o { (Just judgment)— Deut. xvi. 18-20. 
 
 )) >» ") «> "> ) 
 
 ,, „ 4, 5 (Animals strayed or fallen) — Deut. xxii. 1-4. 
 
 „ „ 9-11 (Sabbatical year)— Deut. xv. 1-11. 
 
 ,, „ 12 (Sabbath as a provision of humanity) — Deut. v. 14, 15. 
 
 ,, „ 13 (Names of other gods) — Deut. vi. 13. 
 
 „ „ 14-I9a (Annual feasts) — Deut. xvi. 1-17. 
 
 ,, „ 19b (Kid in mother's milk) — Deut. xiv. 21. 
 
 The parallel becomes still more complete when we observe 
 that to the Code of Deuteronomy is prefixed an introduction, 
 iv. 44 — xi. 32, containing the ten commandments, and so answer- 
 ing to Exod. XX. 
 
432 THE ARK. lect. xi. 
 
 Note 3, p. 319. — According to Exod. xxxiii. 7 ; Num. x. 
 33, tlie sanctuary is outside the camp and at some considerable 
 distance from it, both when the people are at rest and when 
 they are on the march. That the ark precedes the host is 
 implied in Exod. xxiii. 20, xxxii. 34 ; Deut. i. 33. The same 
 order of march is found in Joshua iii. 3, 4, where the distance 
 between the ark and the host is 2000 cubits, and the reason of 
 this arrangement, as in Num. I. c, is that the ark is Israel's 
 guide. (Comp. Isa. Ixiii. 1 1 seq^ That the ark when at rest 
 stood outside the camp is implied also in Num. xi. 24 seg'., 
 xii. 4. This corresponds with the usage of the early sanctuaries 
 in Canaan, which stood on high points outside the cities (1 Sam. 
 ix. 14). So the Temple at Jerusalem originally stood outside 
 the city of David, which occupied the lower slope of the Temple 
 hill (comp. Micah iv. 8, which, on the correct rendering, places 
 the original seat of the kingdom on Ophel). But, as the city 
 grew, ordinary buildings encroached on the Temple plateau 
 (Ezek. xliii. 8). This appears to Ezekiel to be derogatory to the 
 sanctity of the house (comp. Deut. xxiii. 14), and is the reason 
 for the ordinance set forth in symbolic form in Ezek. xlv. 1 seq., 
 xlviii., where the sanctuary stands in the middle of Israel, but 
 isolated, the priests and the Levites lodging between it and 
 the laity, as in the Levitical law, Num. i.-iii. Here, as in 
 other cases, the Levitical law appears as the latest stage of the 
 historical development. 
 
 Note 4, p. 320. — Of the immense literature dealing with 
 the linguistic and other marks by which the Levitical document 
 may be separated out, it is enough to refer particularly to 
 Noldeke, UntersuchuTigeii %ur Kritik des A. T., Kiel, 1869 ; 
 Wellhausen, Composition des Hexateiichs^ in the Jahrb. f. D. T. 
 1876, p. 392 seq. 531 seq.; 1877, p. 407 seq., and many 
 important articles by Kuenen in the Theologisch Tijdschrift. The 
 document contains also a brief sketch of the history from the 
 creation, and includes most of the statistical matter of Joshua. 
 Noldeke gives the following determination of the Levitical parts 
 of the middle books. (An asterisk means that only part of the 
 verse is Levitical.) 
 
 Exod. i. 1-5, 7, 13, 14 ; ii. 23*, 24, 25 ; vi. 2-13, 16-30 ; 
 vil 1-13, 19, 20*; 22 ; viii 1-3, 11*, 12-15 ; ix. 8-12 ; xi. 9, 
 10; xii. 1-23, 28, 37a, 40-51 ; xiii. 1, 2, 20 ; xiv. 1-4, 8, 9, 
 10*, 15-18, 21*, 22, 23, 26, 27*, 28, 29 ; xv. 22, 23*, 27 ; 
 
LECT. XI. CITIES OF REFUGE. 433 
 
 xvL ; xvii. ; xix. 2a ; xxiv. 15-1 8a ; xxv. 1 — xxxi. 17 ; xxxv. — ■ 
 xl. 
 
 Leviticu.s i. 1 — xxvi. 2 ; xxv. 19-22 ; xxvi. 4G ; xxvii. 
 
 Numbers i, 1 — viii. 22 ; ix. 1 — x. 28 ; xiii, 1-1 7a, 21, 25, 
 26*, 32*; xiv. 1-10, 26-38 ; xv. ; xvi. la, 2*, 3-11, 16-22, 23, 
 24*, 26* 27*, 35; xvii. — xix; xx. 1*, 2-13, 22-29 ; xxi. 4*, 
 10, 11 ; xxii. 1 ; xxv. 1-19 ; xxvi. l-9a, 12-58, 59*, 60-66 ; 
 xxvii; (xxx. 2-17?); xxxii ; xxxii. 2 (3?), 4-6, 16-32, 33*, 
 40; xxxiii. 1-39, 41-51, 54 ; xxxiv. ; xxxv. ; xxxvi. 
 
 Some passages in this list have imdergone changes, and all 
 the Levitical laws are not of one hand and date, though they 
 form a well-marked class. Other recent inquirers have been 
 chiefly occupied with this further analysis of the Levitical 
 legislation. So far as Noldeke goes, his table is generally 
 accepted as careful and correct in essentials. On the language 
 of this part of the Pentateuch compare Eyssel, De Elohistae 
 Pentateu^hi sermone (Leipzig, 1878), whose grammatical material 
 is, however, better than his historical conclusion. 
 
 A good example of the fundamental difference in legal style 
 between the Levitical laws and the Deuteronomic Code is 
 found in Num. xxxv. compared with Deut. xix. In Numbers, 
 the technical expression city of refuge is repeated at every 
 turn. In Deuteronomy the word refuge does not occur, and 
 the cities are always described by a periphrasis. In Numbers 
 the phrase for " accidentally " is bish'gaga, in Deut. hib'li da'at 
 The judges in the one are " the congregation," in the other 
 " the elders of his city." The verb for hate is different. The 
 one account says again and again " to kill any person," the 
 other " to kill his neighbour." The detailed description of the 
 difference between murder and accidental homicide is entirely 
 diverse in language and detail. The structure of the sentences 
 is distinct, and in addition to all this there is a substantial dif- 
 ference in the laws themselves, inasmuch as Deuteronomy says 
 nothing about remaining in the city of refuge till the death of 
 the high priest. On a rough calculation, omitting auxiliary 
 verbs, particles, etc., Num. xxxv. 11-34 contains 19 nouns and 
 verbs which also occur in Deut. xix. 2-13, and 45 which do 
 not occur in the parallel passage ; while the law, as given in 
 Deuteronomy, has 50 such words not in the law of Numbers. 
 
 Note 5, p. 328. — J ehovistic narrative — Gen. vi. 5-8 ; vii. 1-5, 
 10, 12, 16b, 17, 23 ; viii. 26, 3a, 6-12, 13b, 20-22. 
 
434 LEA VEN. lect. xi. 
 
 Elohistic narrative— vi. 9-22 ; vii. 6, 11, 13-16a, 18-22, 24; 
 viii. l,'2a, 3b-5, 13a, 14-19; ix. 1-17. A few words and 
 clauses are added by the redactor. 
 
 Note 6, p. 337. — The protected stranger is still known in 
 Arabia. Among the Hodheil at Zeimeh I found in 1880 an 
 Indian boy, the orphan child of a wandering Suleimany or tra- 
 velling smith, who was under the protection of the community, 
 every member of which would have made the lad's quarrel his 
 own. The daJchtl, as he is called, is, as it were, adopted into the 
 tribe, and his lack of relations to help him is supplemented by 
 the whole community. So, no doubt, in early Hebrew times the 
 Ger is in process of conversion into an Israelite. In Deutero- 
 nomy the relation is somewhat looser, or rather the distinctive 
 position of an Israelite is more sharply defined. In Deut. xiv. 
 21, unclean food which the First Legislation commands to be 
 thrown to the dogs may be given to the Ger. In the Levitical 
 Legislation the word Ger is already on the way to assume its 
 later technical sense of proselyte. I\ is noteworthy that in the 
 Levitical law the opposite of Ger i. mtX, avro-^diov, that is, one 
 who belongs to the old inhabitants of Canaan. In the earlier 
 times the autochthonous poj^ulation were not the Israelites but 
 the Canaanites ; and so still in 1 Kings iv. 31 [v. 11], Ezrahite 
 seems to be the name of a non-Israelite family. See Lagarde, 
 Orientalia IL, p. 25 seq. 
 
 Note 7, p. 341. — In Amos iv. 5, the general thought is that 
 the people's ritual zeal pleases themselves but not Jehovah. But 
 when the prophet draws particular attention to the fact that they 
 " burn a thank-offering of leaven," he plainly does so in an un- 
 favourable sense. Now according to Lev. ii. 1 1 the leaven for- 
 bidden in fire-olferings includes not only yeast but grape-honey 
 {dehdsh, the modern dibs). We are therefore justified in connect- 
 ing the expression with the grape-cakes (D''33y ''ti'"''C*J<) in Hosea 
 iii. 1, which the prophet sarcastically says that the false gods 
 love, implying that they were ofl'ered to them on the altar. For 
 the ashhhim are pressed cakes, and so plainly identical with the 
 Syriac h'btge (Bernstein, ChresL, p. 2), composed of meal, oil, and 
 dibs. These sweet cakes appear in connection with a sacrificial 
 feast in 2 Sam. vi. 19, Heb., but the presentation of them on the 
 altar appears to have been regarded as one of the Dionysiac 
 features of the Baal- worship \\i.th which in the eighth century the 
 religion of Jehovah had been mixed. An anti-Dionysiac element 
 
LECT. XII. STEPS OF ALTAR. 435 
 
 appears also in the vow of the Nazarites, to whom Amos attaches 
 weight as representatives of true religion (Amos ii. 11; comp. 
 ii. 8 ; Hos. iv. 11). The point is interesting as an early indica- 
 tion of the line of thought which underlies the ritual observ- 
 ances of holiness in the Deuteronomic Code. 
 
 Lecture XII. 
 
 Note 1, p. 358. — Exod. xx. 26 is addressed not to the priests 
 but to Israel at large, and implies that any Israelite may approach 
 the altar. Comp. Exod. xxi. 14, and contrast Num. iv. 15, xviii. 
 3. That the old law allows any Israelite to approach the altar 
 appears most clearly from the prohibition of an altar with steps, 
 lest the worshipper should expose his person to the holy struc- 
 ture. In the case of the Levitical priests this danger was pro- 
 vided against in another way, by the use of linen breeches (Exod. 
 xxviii. 43). In the case of the brazen altar, which was five feet 
 high, or of Solomon's huge altar, ten cubits in height, there must 
 have been steps of some kind (Lev. ix. 22), and for Ezekiel's 
 altar (xliii. 17) this is expressly stated. The important distinc- 
 tion between the altars of Exod. xx., which are approached by 
 laymen in their ordinary dress, and the brazen altar approached 
 by priests protected against exposure by their special costume, 
 Avas not understood by the later Jews, and consequently it was 
 held that the prohibition of steps (ma'alot) did not prevent the 
 use of an ascent of some other kind — as for example a sloping 
 bridge or mound (see the Targuni of Jonathan on our passage, 
 and also Rashi's Commentary). In the second Temple, the altar 
 was a vast platform of unliewn stone approached by a sloping 
 ascent (Joseph., B. /., Lib. v., cap. 5, § 6 ; Mishna, Zebachim v , 
 Taraid i. 4). But the expression ma'alot seems to cover all 
 kinds of ascent, and the risk of exposing the person to the altar 
 would be unaftected by the nature of the ascent. In fact with a 
 large altar the priest could not put the blood of a victim on the 
 four horns without standing and walking on tlie altar (Zebachim, 
 1. c), which is clearly against the spirit of Exod. xx., except on 
 the understanding that that law docs not apply to priests appro- 
 priately clad for the office. 
 
 Note 2, p. 3C0. — I give here some fuller details of the 
 evidence on this important topic. 
 
 V. Except in the Levitical legislation and in Chronicles, Ezra, 
 
436 LEVITES. lect. xir. 
 
 and Nehemiali, where the \is,us loqiiendi is conformed to the final 
 form of the Pentateuchal ordinance, Levite never means a sacred 
 minister who is not a priest, and has not the right to offer 
 sacrifice. On the contrary, Levite is regularly used as a priestly 
 title. See the list of texts in Wellhausen, Geschichte, p. 150. The 
 only passage to the contrary is 1 Kings viii. 4, where " the priests 
 and the Levites " appear instead of " the Levite priests." But 
 here the particle " and " — a single letter in Hebrew — appears to 
 be an insertion in accordance with the later law. The Chronicler 
 still reads the verse without the "and" (2 Chron. v. 5). The 
 older books know a distinction between the high priest and lower 
 priests {e.g. 1 Sam. ii. 35, 36), but all alike are priests, that is, 
 do sacrifice, wear the ephod, etc. The priesthood is God's gift 
 to Levi (Deut. x. 8, xviii. 1, xxi. 5, xxxiii. 8 seq.), and Jeroboam's 
 fault, according to 1 Kings xii. 31, was that he chose priests who 
 were not Levites. From the first, no doubt, there must have been 
 a difference between the chief priest of the ark (Aaron, Eli, 
 Abiathar, Zadok) and his subordinate brethren, but there is no 
 trace of such a distinction as is made in the Levitical law. 
 
 2°. Ezekiel knows nothing of Levites who were not priests in 
 time past ; he knows only the Zadokite Levites, the priests of the 
 Temple, and other Levites who had formerly been priests, but 
 are to be degraded under the new temple, because they had 
 ministered in the idolatrous shrines of the local high places. 
 Tlie usual explanation that these Levites were the sons of 
 Ithamar is impossible. For the guild of Ithamar appears only 
 after the Exile as the name of a subordinate family of priests who 
 were never degraded as the prophet prescribes. Moreover, Ezek. 
 xlviii. 11-13 clearly declares that all Levites but the Zadokites 
 shall be degraded. Ezekiel's Levites are the priests of the local 
 high places whom Josiah brought to Jerusalem, and who were 
 supported there on offerings which the non-priestly Levites under 
 the Levitical law had no right to eat. 
 
 3°. In Deuteronomy all Levitical functions are priestly, and to 
 these functions the whole tribe was chosen (x. 8, xxi. 5). The 
 summary of Levitical functions in x. 1 is (l) ^o car?'!/ the ark, 
 M-hich in old Israel was a priestly function (Lect. IX. note 7) ; (2) 
 to stand before Jehovah and minister to Him. This expression in- 
 variably denotes priesthood proper ; see especially Ezek. xliv. 1 3, 
 15 ; Jer. xxxiii. 18, 21, 22. The Levites of the later law minister 
 not to God but to Aaron, Num. iii. 6 ; (3) to bless in JehovaJis 
 
LECT. xir. UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 437 
 
 name. Tliis in the Levitical law is the office of Aaron and his sons 
 (Num. vi.). Accordingly in Dent, xviii. 1 seq.^ the whole tribe 
 of Levi has a claim on the altar gifts, the first-fruits and other 
 priestly offerings, and any Levite can actually gain a share in 
 these by going to Jerusalem and doing priestly service. In the 
 Levitical law common Levites have no share in these revenues, but 
 are nourished by the tithes and live in Levitical cities. There were 
 no Levitical cities in this sense in the time of the Deuteronomii^t, 
 for all those mentioned in Joshua — in passages which are really 
 part of the Levitical law — lay outside the kingdom of Judah. 
 And Deuteronomy knows nothing of a Levitical tithe, though it 
 could not have failed to be mentioned in chap, xviii. if it had 
 existed. The Levite who is not in service at the sanctuary is 
 always represented as a needy sojourner, without visible means 
 of support, and this agrees with Judges xvil 7, 8 ; 1 Sam. ii. 36. 
 That the priesthood of Dan was a Levitical priesthood 
 descended from Moses is generally admitted. In Judges xviii. 
 30, the N which changes Moses to Manasseh is inserted above the 
 
 line thus : riiJ^D, Moses ; Hti^ D, Manasseh. The reading of our 
 English Bible was therefore a correction in the archetype {mjjra, 
 p. 70). On the whole subject of the Levites before the Exile, 
 see especially Graf in Merx's Archii\ i. ; Kuenen, Thcol. Tijdsdir., 
 1872 ; and Wellhausen, Gesch., Kap. iv. 
 
 Note 3, p. 366. — For the detailed proof of these statements 
 see my article in the Journal of Philology, vol. ix. p. 97 seq. If 
 the nnj? of Isa. Ixvi. 1 7 is Adonis (Lagarde, Hieron. Qu. Heh., p. 
 72 ; Leipz., 1868), the eating of swine's flesh is the weU-known 
 custom of devouring the hostile totem. But see against this 
 Cheyne, Isaiah (iL 124). In other cases the rite consisted in 
 the sacramental use of one's own totem. To the animal gods 
 mentioned in my essay add the quail-god Eslimun (Lagarde, 
 Proverhien, p. 81), from whom Delos takes the name Orty gia. 
 
 No doubt some of the laws of abstinence simply expressed 
 natural feelings of dipgust at vile things, and became sacred on 
 the principle explained at p. 378. Compare in the Arabic field, 
 the disgust at locusts, Div. Hodh. 116, 1, in Niildeke's transl. of 
 Tabary, p. 203. The lizard was not eaten in Mecca ; Bokhary, 
 vi. 190 (Biilaq ed.). The law against eating blood may be 
 compared with the objection of some Arabs to eat a heart, Wiis- 
 tenfeld, Register , 407. The most curious law of food is the pro- 
 
438 Marriage LAWS. lect. xn. 
 
 hibitioD of seething a kid in its motlier's milk, common to tlie 
 first code and l)euteronomy. As early sacrifices were boiled, the 
 ordinance means that the sacrifice must not be boiled in milk, 
 which from the fermenting quality of the latter may be a 
 variety of the law against leaven in ritual. Milk, no doubt, 
 was generally eaten in a sour form (Arabic aqit^ Bokhary, vi. 
 193). "Its mother's milk," as the Jewish tradition recognises, 
 means simply goat's milk, which was that in general use (Prov. 
 xxvii. 27). 
 
 Note 4, p. 369. See Journal of Philology, ut supra, pp. 
 86, 94 ; Pococke, Speximen (ed. White), p. 325 ; Abu'l Sa'ud, 
 Tafsir, i. 284 ; Shahrastany, Alilal wa-nihal, p. 440. Examples 
 in Kitdb el Agh. i. 9, 10 ; Sprenger, Leb. Moh., i. 86, 133. I 
 reserve for future publication extracts from Tabary's Com. on 
 the Koran (MS. of the Vice-regal library in Cairo) and from the 
 Asbdh of El Wahidy (MS. of A.H. 627, penes me). The advance 
 in the laws of forbidden degrees from the Deuteronomic Code 
 through the " Framework" (Deut. xxvii.) and Ezekiel (xxii. 10, 
 1 1) to the full Levitical law is one of the clearest proofs of the 
 true order of succession in the Pentateuchal laws. Marriage 
 with a half-sister was known among the Phoenicians in the time 
 of Achilles Tatius, and indeed forbidden marriages, including 
 that with a father's wife, seem to have been practised pretty 
 openly in Roman Syria down, to the fifth Christian century. 
 See Bruns and Sachau, Syrisch- Roniisches Eechtsbuch, p. 30 
 (Leipz., 1880). 
 
 Note 5, p. 382. — The original meaning of happer, to atone, 
 is still disputed. Wellhausen, in his important note on the 
 subject {Geschichte, p. 66), starts from Gen. xxxii. 20 [21], "I 
 will kapper his face with the present," and compares Gen. xx. 
 16, Job. ix. 24, But the sense "cover" will not explain Isa. 
 xxviii. 18, where, on the contrary, the verb has its well-known 
 Syriac sense, eKfxda-creLV ; Harkl. John xi. 2, xii. 3, xiii. 5 ; 
 Syro-Hex., Ep. Jer. xiii. 24 ; iIoff"mann's Bar Ali, 5924. Thus 
 D'':3 "ISD = D''J3 n^n, to smooth (wipe) the face, blackened or 
 contracted with displeasure. The religious sense, as Well- 
 hausens admits, does not start from the idea of covering the 
 face. Except in the Levitical Law, it is God who kipper 
 (wipes out) sin, so that "1DD = nnD (I note in passing that nPiD 
 strike, has nothing to do with nriD, wipe, but is Aramaic fc^riD for 
 ynD=J*nD, with softening of y after n). This notion of God 
 
LECT. XII. ATONEMENT. 439 
 
 wiping out sin is the pure religious idea of atonement, as we 
 find it in the Prophets, without any relation to sacrifice. But 
 in common life an offence was blotted out by payment of com- 
 pensation, as we see in the First Legislation, and this payment, 
 which made the score between the two men a tabula rasa, was 
 called kojjher. For certain offences, apparently, the payment was 
 made to the judge at the sanctuary (2 Kings xii. 16, Amos ii. 8) ; 
 or a sacrifice was oftered (1 Sam. iii. 14) which, on the oldest 
 way of thought, was a gift to appease the Divine anger (1 Sam. 
 xx\d. 19, compare with Psalm xlv. 12 [13]). Illegitimate pay- 
 ment to a judge to make him ignore an ofteiice is equally 
 Jcopher, and in the then state of justice was perhaps the com- 
 monest application of the word ; but this does not lie in the 
 original idea — kdpher is simply the compensation which, in a 
 primitive form of the law, is the equivalent of an offence. The 
 conception that sin demands a compensation paid to the Divine 
 judge at the sanctuary is then combined, in bloody atoning sac- 
 rifices, with the notion of presenting a life to God. This idea, 
 again, has a simpler and a more complicated form. In the 
 simpler form the life of the sacrifice is simply returned to God, 
 because it belongs to Him. But in other forms of ritual the 
 blood, which is assumed to be living blood, is applied not only 
 to the altar, but to the worshipper. So we find it in the cove- 
 nant sacrifice, Exod. xxiv. 8, and in forms of consecration, Lev. 
 viii. 23, xiv. 6, 14. The parallel to this is the Arabic cere- 
 mony, in which contracting parties dip their hands in a pan of 
 blood, and are called " blood-lickers " (Ibn Hisham, 125). 
 Here, as in many similar ceremonies among early peoples, the 
 bond of blood is a living bond of brotherhood. So consecration 
 by blood is consecration in a li\ang union to Jehovah. In 
 the ordinary atoning sacrifices the blood is not applied to the 
 people ; but in the higher forms, as in the sacrifice for the whole 
 congregation (Lev. iv. 1 3 seq.), the priest at least dips his hand in 
 it, and so puts the bond of blood between himself, as the people's 
 representative, and the altar, as the point of contact with God. 
 Another form of atoning ceremony, in which a live goat or bird is 
 charged to bear away sin or leprous impurity (Lev. xvi. 22, xiv. 7), 
 is a natural symbolic action similar to that in which in old Arabia 
 a live bird was made to fly away with the impurity of a woman's 
 widowhood. The bird, it is added, died. See Lane, s.v. fadda 
 VIIL, and an Assyrian analogy. Records of the Past, ix. 151. We 
 
440 PRIESTL V DUES. LEcr. xii. 
 
 see then that the ultimate form of the atoning ritual, as it is 
 found in the day of atonement, is a combination of many different 
 points of view — satisfaction to the Judge at the sanctuary, the 
 renovation of a covenant of life with God, the banishment of sin 
 from His presence and land (comp. Micah vii. 19). 
 
 Note 6, p. 383. — One of the chief innovations of the ritual 
 law is the increased provision for the priesthood. This occurs 
 in two ways. In the first place they receive a larger share in 
 the gifts which on the old usage were the material of feasts at 
 the sanctuary. In Deuteronomy the firtslings are eaten by the 
 worshipper at the annual feasts, the priest of course receiving the 
 usual share of each victim. But in Num. xviii. 18 they belong 
 entirely and absolutely to the priest. This difference cannot be 
 explained away, for according to Deut. xiv. 24 the firstlings 
 , might be turned into money, and materials of a feast bonght with 
 them. But in Num. xviii. 17 it is forbidden to redeem any 
 firstling fit for sacrifice. Again, in Deuteronomy the produce of 
 the soil, but not of the herd, was tithed for the religions use of 
 the owner, who ate the tithes at the feasts. But in the Levitical 
 law the tithe includes the herd and the flock (Lev. xxvii. 32), 
 and is a tribute paid to the Levites, who in turn pay a tithe to 
 the priests (Num. xviii.). This is quite distinct from the Deutero- 
 nomic poor-rate or tithe of the third year, which was stored in 
 each township and eaten by dependents where it was stored 
 (Deut. xxvi. 12, 13, where for brought away read consumed: the 
 tithe was consumed where it lay ; see ver. 1 4 Heb.). The Levitical 
 tithe might be eaten by the Levites where they pleased, and in 
 later times was stored in the Temple. It appears to take the 
 place under the hierarchy of the old tithe paid to the king 
 (1 Sam. viiL 15, 17). Once more, the priest's share of a sacrifice 
 in Deuteronomy consists of inferior parts, the head and maw, 
 which in Arabia are still the butcher's fee, and the shoulder, 
 which is not the choicest joint (Pseudo-Wakidy, p. 15, and 
 Hamaker's note). In fact Exod. xii. 9 requires to make special 
 provision that the head and inwards be not left uneaten in the 
 paschal lamb, which proves that they were not esteemed. But 
 in the Levitical law the priests' part is the breast and the leg 
 (not as E. V. the shoulder), which is the best part (1 Sam. ix. 24). 
 
 In the second place, the Levitical law, following a hint of 
 Ezekiel (xlv. 4, 5), assigns towns and pasture grounds to the priests 
 and Levites. The list of such towns in Josh. xxi. is part of the 
 
LECT. XII. JOSHUA. 441 
 
 Levitical law and not of the old history. In ancient times 
 many of these towns certainly did not belong either to priests 
 or Levites. Gezer was not conquered till the time of Solomon 
 (1 Kings ix. 16). Shechem, Gibeon, and Hebron had quite a 
 different population in the time of the Judges. Anathoth was a 
 priestly city, but its priests held land on terms quite different 
 from those of the later law (Lect. IX. note 7). 
 
 On the Levitical modifications of the festivals, see Hupfeld, 
 Be primitiva et vera festorum ratione, Partic. I., II., Halle, 1852 ; 
 Partic. III., 1858 ; Appendix, 1865 ; and Wellhausen, Geschichte, 
 Kap. iii. 
 
 Note 7, p. 387. — The application of this principle may be 
 extended to the Levitical parts of the book of Joshua, e.g., as we 
 saw in last note, to the list of Levitical cities. In recent con- 
 troversy in Scotland it has often been affirmed that Josh. xxii. 
 proves that the Deuteronomic law was known to Joshua. If 
 that narrative does assume the later law, this, in face of the 
 evidence already adduced, would only prove that the chapter, or 
 part of it, is one of those interpolations which have been shown 
 above to exist in several parts of the Old Testament. HoUen- 
 berg has proved with the aid of the LXX. that there are such 
 interpolations in Joshua, e.g. one from Neh. xi. in chap, xv., and 
 another, mainly borrowed from Deuteronomy, in xx. 3-6. But 
 in fact the altar was not a local altar under Exod. xx., for it lay 
 on the west of the Jordan and was of huge size, whereas the old 
 law only allows small altars without steps. The whole narra- 
 tive is puzzling, but the speeches in their present form must be 
 late, for at ver. 28 the altar is said to be constructed on the 
 n"'i2n, manner of building, of the altar before the mishhan. 
 Mishhan, which means the divine dwelling, is a word of the 
 Levitical law and the second Temple, and the altar in the 
 author's mind is not the small brazen altar of the tabernacle, 
 which was not built, but the huge stone altar of the second 
 Temple. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Aktba, 75, 174, 399. 
 
 Al-tascliith, 190. 
 
 Altar, early importance of the, 224 ; 
 as asylum, 336, 341, 353 ; of 
 Ahaz, 253 ; of second Temple, 
 435 ; with steps, ih. ; law of one 
 altar, 233, 352 j consecration of 
 the, 376. 
 
 Amos, 274, 280, 341. 
 
 Ancient poetry, transmission of, 198. 
 
 Anonymous books, 107. 
 
 Antilegomena in the 0. T., 153, 170 
 seq. 
 
 Antiochus Epiphanes, 82. 
 
 Apocrypha, 40, 42, 134 seq., 172 ; 
 value of, 138. 
 
 Aquila, 76, 391, 399. 
 
 Arabic customs, retaliation, 336 ; 
 firstlings, 340 ; marriage law, 368 ; 
 warfare, ib. ; sacred lot, 429 ; 
 widowhood, 368, 439 ; Dakhil, 
 434 ; use of animal food, 424. 
 
 Aramaic, 48, 193. 
 
 Archetype of Old Testament, 74. 
 
 Ark, 117 ; at Shiloh, 258 ; not men- 
 tioned in Deuteronomic Code, 357 ; 
 precedes the host, 319, 432 ; borne 
 by priests, 427. 
 
 Asaph and Korah, Psalms of, 194. 
 
 Ashera, 226, 353. 
 
 Astruc, 325, 419. 
 
 Atonement, note on, 438 ; great day 
 of, 376, 377. 
 
 Baal, 79 ; Tyrian, 222 ; local Baalim, 
 
 229. 
 Bensly, Mr., 407. 
 Bible, Hebrew, arrangement of, 130, 
 
 131 ; Protestant translations of, 
 
 30 se^. 
 
 Biblical books, often anonymous, 107 
 
 seq. ; titles of, 107. 
 Blood not to be eaten, 236, 341. 
 
 Canon, ecclesiastical, 35 seq.; the, 
 
 132 seq. ; left open by Calvin, 42 ; 
 
 history of, 149 ; and tradition, 168, 
 
 169. 
 Canticles, 173. 
 Cappellus, Ludovicus, 86. 
 Carians, 249. 
 Chronicles, 168, 219, 266 ; compared 
 
 with Kings, 420 seq. 
 Copyists, early, 106. 
 Covenant, Mosaic, 299, 331 ; Josiah's, 
 
 245 ; Ezra's, 55 seq. 
 Criminal laws, 336, 367. 
 
 Dan, Sanctuary of, 227 ; priesthood 
 in, 359, 437. 
 
 David and Goliath, 125 ; Saul's hos- 
 tility to, 128. 
 
 Davidic Psalms, 192, 200. 
 
 Daniel, Book of, 168, 171. 
 
 Decadence of Israel, 344 seq. ; causes 
 of, 347. 
 
 Deuteronomic code, 317 ; basis of 
 Josiah's reformation, 246 ; relation 
 to Isaiah, 354, 365 ; not forged by 
 Hilkiah, 362 ; laws of sanctity, 
 365 ; civil laws of, 367. 
 
 Divination, 277 seq.; and prophecy 
 281. 
 
 Ecclesiastcs, 172 seq. 
 Ecclesiasticits, 132, 144. 
 Eli, House of, 256, 359. 
 Ephod, 220, 226, 423. 
 2 Esdras, 131, 149, 155, 407. 
 Esther, 171, 172. 
 
444 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Exegesis, Protestant and Catholic, 
 
 31, 32. 
 Exodus xxi. -xxiii., 316, 336 seq. 
 Ezekiel xliv., 249, 425 ; His Torah, 
 
 374 stq. ; controversy as to his 
 
 book, 410. 
 Ezra, the Scribe, 55, 158 ; book of, 
 
 131, 170. 
 
 Feasts, annual, 257, 338, 341, 371. 
 First Legislation, the, 316, 336 seq. 
 Flood, the, 327 scq. 
 Forgeries of books, 25, 157 seq. 
 
 GftR, 337, 434. 
 
 Great Synagogue, 156, 408. 
 
 Haggada, 58, 168, 410. 
 
 Hagiographa, 130, 160, 166. 
 
 Halacha, 58, 64, 168, 174. 
 
 Hasraonean dynasty, 63. 
 
 Hebrew, so called in the New Testa- 
 ment, 47, 48 ; vowel points and 
 accents, 50 ; Bible, MSS. of, repre- 
 sent the same text, 69. 
 
 Hercules, pillars of, 248. 
 
 Hezekiah, 351, 354, 357. 
 
 Higher Criticism, 104, 105. 
 
 High places, 221, 225, 227, 235, 265 ; 
 abolished by Josiah, 245, 351 seq ; 
 in Deuteronomy, 352 seq. ; priests 
 of, 24.5, 360, 375, 476. 
 
 Hillel, 75, 172. 
 
 Historians, method of Eastern, 325. 
 
 Holiness, in Pentateuch, 209 seq. ; in 
 Deuteronomy, 365 seq.; in Ezekiel, 
 378 ; Isaiah's doctrine of, 364. 
 
 Hyrcanus, John, 65, 144. 
 
 Idolatry, 228, 230, 355. 
 
 Isaiah, attacks the idols, 355 ; sanc- 
 tity of Zion, 355 seq. ; his doctrine 
 of holiness, 364. 
 
 Isaiah, Book of, 109. 
 
 Ishbosheth or Eshbaal, 78, 79. 
 
 Jashar, Book of, 403. 
 
 Jehoiada, 247. 
 
 Jehovah (lahwe), 186, 231, 423. 
 
 Jeremiah, Chaps. 1., li., 112, 402 ; 
 
 Chap, xxvii,, 113 seq.; prophecies 
 of, against the nations, 118. 
 
 Jerome, 36, 40, 41, 69, 132, 392. 
 
 Josephus and the Canon, 149, 408. 
 
 Jubilees, Book oj\ 73, 74, 98, 132, 
 149. 
 
 Judges, Age of the, 220, 255. 
 
 Kabbala, 146, 160. 
 
 Kadhi of the Arabs, 300, 319. 
 
 Kemarim, 246. 
 
 Kerethim and Pelethim, 249. 
 
 Keri and Kethib, 71. 
 
 Kid in mother's milk, 438. 
 
 Kirahi, Rabbi David, 43, 44. 
 
 Kings, Books of, 123 seq. 
 
 Law, function of the, 269, 312 seq. ; 
 
 Pauline view of, 314. 
 Law, Oral, 60 seq., 146. 
 Law, Prophets, and Psalms, The, 
 
 164. 
 Leaven in sacrifice, 341, 434. 
 Legal Fictions, 385 seq. 
 Levites, 358 seq. 
 Levitical law, its system, 209 seq., 
 
 231 seq. ; unknown to Josiah, 246 ; 
 
 in Solomon's temple, 248 seq. ; at 
 
 Shiloh, 257 seq.; to Samuel, 261 
 
 seq. ; to the prophets, 287 seq. 
 Levitical law-book, 317 seq.; later 
 
 than Ezekiel, 375 seq. ; origin of, 
 
 383 seq. 
 
 Maccabee Psalms, 196, 413. 
 Mac9eba, 226, 353 seq. 
 Maine, Sir H., 385, 386. 
 Marriages, mixed, 254, 269 ; ancient 
 
 marriage laws, 270, 368, 438. 
 Massorets, 72. 
 Meturgeman, 48, 135, 393. 
 Midrash, 135, 420. 
 Mishna, 63, 396. 
 Morinus, John, 86. 
 Moses, Judge and Lawgiver, 300, 334 ; 
 
 his writings, 320, 331 ; Law of, 
 
 meaning of the phrase, 309 seq., 
 
 385 seq. 
 
 Nehemiah, 56, 157 ; his book, 107, 
 140. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 445 
 
 Old Testamknt, standard text of, 
 
 74-76, 80, 81. 
 Origen and his Hexapla, 103, 392. 
 
 Pentateuch, contains several dis- 
 tinct codes, 316; not written by 
 Moses, 320 seq.; sources of, 324; 
 composite structure of, 325 seq.; 
 Samaritan, 73 ; iu tlie Synagogue, 
 96, 160. 
 
 Pharisees, 59, 61 seq., 395. 
 
 Philo, 136, 402, 428. 
 
 Pirke Ahoth, 151, 394. 
 
 Poll tax, 64, 376. 
 
 Precedents, legal, 300, 318. 
 
 Priests, 358 ; revenues of, 252, 
 440. 
 
 Prophecy, cessation of, 142. 
 
 Prophets, their work, 271 ; mark of 
 true prophets, 274 ; Canaanite, 
 279 ; professional, 280 ; consecra- 
 tion of, 282 ; prophets and priests, 
 285 ; their inspiration, 289 seq.; 
 writings of, 296 ; their doctrine of 
 forgiveness, 301 ; not politicians, 
 349 ; their ideal, 283, 294, 350 ; 
 canon of the, 161. 
 
 Proverbs, Book of, 121, 122, 403. 
 
 Psalms, titles of, 110, 111, 190; 
 text of, 182 ; five books of, 184 ; 
 Davidic, 185, 192, 199 seq., 202 
 seq. ; Elohistic, 186 ; Levitical, 
 188 ; age of, 189 ; typology of, 
 206 ; imprecatory, 207. 
 
 Psalm li., 416 ; Ixxxvi., 413. 
 
 Psalter, the, 163, 176 seq. 
 
 Psalmody, early, in Isi'ael, 204 seq. 
 
 Panda ExtraordinaricL, 70 seq. 
 
 Rashi, Rabbi Solomon of Troyes, 
 
 44. 
 Redaction, editorial, 112, 113. 
 Reformation, the, 11 seq. 
 Reformers, scholarship of, 44, 45. 
 Religion, tribal or national, 271 ; 
 
 popular, of Israel, 222, 272 seq. ; 
 
 prophetic, 273, 282. 
 Reuchlin, John, 43. 
 Retaliation, law of, 336, 367. 
 Revelation, the record of, 16, 139 ; 
 20 
 
 close of the age of, 140 seq. ; Jew- 
 ish theory of, 144, 145. 
 
 Sacrkd dues, 338, 370, 440. 
 
 Sacrifice, Pentateuclial law of, un- 
 known to Amos, 238, 287 ; to 
 Jeremiah, 287 seq.; atoning, 210, 
 372, 376, 381 ; by laymem 248, 
 264, 358; stated sacrifice, 234, 
 375, 383. 
 
 Sacrificial feasts, 236, 338. 
 
 Sadducees, 395. 
 
 Samaritans, 73, 398. 
 
 Samuel, 259 seq.; Books of, 94-96. 
 
 Sanctuary as seat of judgment, 334, 
 358, 367 ; plurality of sanctuaries 
 in the old law, 338 ; abolished iu 
 Deuteronomy, 352 seq. 
 
 Sanhedrin, 62. 
 
 Scribes, and Pharisees, 54, 55 seq. ; 
 work of, 57 ; guilds of, 57 ; altered 
 Pentateuchal laws, 65 ; the, as 
 critics, 67 seq.. 77. 
 
 Septuagint, 33, 84 5e^., 99; an in- 
 dependent witness as to the text, 
 85 ; value of, 88 ; its variations 
 from the Hebrew, 88-90, 103-130 ; 
 Jewish estimate of, 101, 102. 
 
 Shaddai, 423. 
 
 Shiloh, Temple of, 256 seq. 
 
 Sin and trespass numey, 251, 372. 
 
 Songs of degrees, or pilgrimage songs, 
 191. 
 
 Square characters not introduced by 
 Ezra, 81. 
 
 Syncretism, 228, 353. 
 
 TaberNxVCLE or Tent of Meeting, 
 232. 
 
 Targums, 70, 399. 
 
 Temple of Solomon, 248 seq., 373. 
 
 Teraphim, 227, 423. 
 
 Tikkune Sopherim, 78, 400. 
 
 Torah, meaning of, 292 seq.; pro- 
 phetic, 293 seq. ; Di\ine, 334 seq. ; 
 Mosaic, 297 ; priestly, 293, 372, 
 384 ; Ezekiel's, 374 seq. ; Jewish 
 estimate of, 1 45 seq. 
 
 Tradition of the Scribes, 52, 53. 
 
 Traditional Law, growth of, 60, 61. 
 
446 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Traditional theory of 0. T. history, 1 Vowel points and accents, 72. 
 
 208 seq. 
 Trent, Council of, 37, 38. 
 
 Unclean animals, 365. 
 Unpointed text, 49 seq. 
 Urijah, 253. 
 Urim and Thummim, 428. 
 
 Worship, notion of, 223 ; popular 
 in Israel, 225 seg-., 241 seq.; 
 under the Second Temple, 239, 
 380. 
 
 Zadokites, 254, 359, 374, 427. 
 
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