¦ THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY A COURSE OF LECTURES BY JOHN W. CHADWICK W INISTER OT THE SECOND UNITARIAN CHURCH IN BROOKLYN, N. Y. Out from the heart of nature rolled The burdens of tlic Bible old. NEW YORK. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 182 FIFTH AVENUE l879 Copyright by G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 1878 TO MY PEOPLE 1864-1878 PREFACE. The lectures contained in this volume were writ ten during the winter of 1877-78, for my own peo ple, some of whom came to hear them with some others. I publish them at the request of various persons who listened to them, and who desire to impress them more distinctly on their memories; also with the hope of propagating their ideas some what beyond the circle of my original audience. Prepared and written as they were in the course of a single season, and in connection with many other tasks, they do not of course pretend to any virtue of original research or exhaustive presentation. My object is to condense into a single volume, modest in size and cost, the principal results of the best historical and scientific criticism of the separate books of the Bible, and of their mutual relations. I am not aware of any other volume' which has made exactly this attempt, and it is high time that somebody should make it. The truth of these re sults, if truth it be, is scattered up and down VI PREFACE. through scores of volumes which few public libra ries, even in our great cities, have upon their shelves, and which it would cost the individual reader hundreds of dollars to procure. Neverthe less I shall be disappointed if one effect of these lectures of mine is not to impel the reader to pro cure for himself some of the books which I have found most helpful and inspiring. Much, however, that has been written is not only costly and inac cessible, but is so laboriously and minutely critical in its form as to repel the average reader. I dare not hope that my own treatment will be entertain ing, but for busy men and women I trust it will have some advantage over that of the great Biblical scholars, in that it is at once compact and compre hensive. The results of my investigations will doubtless be astonishing, if not offensive, to any person of conventional opinions who may happen to stumble upon them in the dark. But those who have kept abreast of modern critical studies (their name is legion in the most orthodox circles) must be aware that these results are, almost without exception, those which have been reached by many scholars of unimpeachable orthodoxy. In the department of Old Testament criticism, it is very seldom that I exceed the limits of my venerated teacher, Dr. Geo. R. Noyes, of Harvard University, and those PREFACE. VII within which Dean Stanley finds himself secure of his ecclesiastical position. The most advanced and revolutionary opinion which I maintain is that of Dr. Abram Kuenen, in regard to the formation of the Pentateuch. But for maintaining substantially this opinion in the Encyclopedia Britannica, Prof. Robertson Smith, of Aberdeen, could not be con victed of heresy by his local presbytery. A remark able sign of the times. Gladly do I confess the powerful influence of Kuenen on my Old Testament studies. But I have not followed him blindly. I have diligently com pared him with others, Ewald especially, only to be more thoroughly convinced of his superior penetra tion. My studies of the New Testament have been less dominated by any one authority. Recognizing the incomparable genius of Baur, I have hesitated to go with him in his refusal to grant Paul more than four Epistles. Perhaps Zeller's treatment of the Acts found me a readier convert, because of its striking vindication of the Apostle of my boundless reverence and love. And I trust that my opinions upon many points in both Testaments have been profoundly influenced by the immense sobriety of Dr. Samuel Davidson, whose elaborate introduc tions are a double monument of his colossal in. dustry and his heroic independence. I append a list of some of the more valuable VIII PREFACE. books which I have made use of in the preparation of these lectures : — Old Testament and Apocrypha : — Davidson's Introduction to the Old Testament and Apocrypha ; Ewald's History of Israel, Kuenen's Religion of Israel; Kuenen's Prophets and Prophecy in Israel; Kuenen's (pamphlet) The Five Books of Moses; Nicolas' Des Doctrines Religeuses des Juifs ; Stan ley's History of the Jewish Church ; F. W. New man's Hebrew Monarchy; J. H. Allen's Hebrew Men and Times ; Colenso on the Pentateuch ; Gold- ziher's Hebrew Mythology ; Tiele's Outlines of the History of Religion ; The Bible for Young People, Edited by Oort, Hooykaas and Kuenen ; Knappert's Religion of Israel ; Matthew Arnold's Literature and Dogma, God and the Bible, Prophecy of the Great Restoration ; Noyes' Introductions to his transla tions of the Prophets, Psalms, Proverbs, Canticles, Ecclesiastes, Book of Job ; Reville's Song of Solo mon ; Davidson's Canon of the Bible; Smith's (Prof. W. Robertson) Article, "The Bible" in Ninth Edi tion of Encyclopaedia Britannica; Milman's History ot the Jews. New Testament :— De Wette's Introduction to the New Testament ; Davidson's Introduction to the New Testament ; Westcott's Introduction to the Study of the New Testament ; Matthew Arnold's God and the Bible, and St. Paul and Protestantism ; PREFACE. IX Rev. J. J. Tayler, The Fourth Gospel ; Rev. E. H. Sears, The Fourth Gospel the Heart of Christ; Renan's Life of Jesus, St. Paul, The Apostles; Sir R. D. Hanson's Jesus of History ; Anonymous Supernatural Religion, Keim's Jesus of Nazara ; Schenkel's Life of Jesus; Strauss' Life of Jesus; Strauss' New Life of Jesus ; Dean Stanley's Epistles to the Corinthians ; Jowett's Epistles to the Romans and Thessalonians ; F. C. Baur's Paul, His Life and Works ; Greg's Creed of Christendom, Emanuel Deutsch's Literary Remains ; Zeller's Acts of the Apostles ; Bleek's Lectures on the Apocalypse ; Tre- gelles' Origin and Transmission of the Gospels ; Coquerel's First Historical Transformations of Christianity; Mackay's Rise of Christianity and The Tubingen School ; Alger's History of the Doctrine of a Future Life ; Neander's Planting and Training and Church History; Prof. Fisher's Beginnings of Christianity. If my little book shall help even a few hundred people to a better knowledge and appreciation of the Bible, a deeper but less superstitious reverence for its incomparable literature, I shall be satisfied. And the sooner it is superseded by some other, written with completer knowledge and more con- vincing skill, the happier I shall be. Chesterfield, Mass., Sept. 5th, 1878. ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. FIRST LECTURE. THE OLD TESTAMENT : THE PROPHETS. The Bible: Its history and fame, pp. I, 2 — Popular Estimates, 2-5 — Contents of Bible, 6 — History of Old Testament canon, 7 — The Prophets, 10 — The New Criticism, II — Isaiah, 12 — The Deutero- Isaiah, 13 — Jeremiah, 14 — Ezekiel, 15 — Daniel, 17 — Minor prophets, Ig — Hosea, 12 — Yahweh : Why used instead of Jehovah, 20 (note) — Joel, 21 — Amos, 22 — Obadiah, 23 — Jonah, 23 — Micah, 24 — Nahum, 25 — Habbakuk, 25 — Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, 26 — Malachi, 27 — Chronological order of the Prophets, 27 — Prophetism : popular view, 2S — Critical view, 29— Historical development of prophetism, 31-34 — Progressive idea of Yahweh, 31 — Elijah and Elisha, 32 — The Writing prophets, 33 — Exclusiveness, 35 — Future Life, 36 — Religion and Politics, 36 — Asceticism, 36 — Predictions, 37 — Messianic predic tions, 37 — Prophetism and Christianity, 38. SECOND LECTURE. THE HISTORIES. Historical Material in Old Testament, p. 40 — Jewish arrangement of the Old Testament books, 41 — Classification of Old Testament books, 42 (note) — The Pentateuch : Its Mosaic authorship, 43 — Its growth, 44-48 — Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and other tribal names and legends, 49 — Pentateuch Mythology, 50 — Book of Joshua, 51 — Its date and authorship, 52 — Its character, 52 — Book of Judges, 53 — Its date, 55 — Legends of, 56 — Samson, 56 — Song of Deborah, 57 — Book of Ruth, 57 — Its tendency, 58 — Books of Samuel, 58 — Samuel's religion and character, 59 — David's, 59 — Books of Kings : Their prophetic character, 61 — Chronicles : Their priestly character, 62 — Ezra and Nehemiah, 65 — Esther a didactic fiction, 66 — History of Israel, 67-72 — Religious development, 73 — Monotheism at last, 76 — Liternry outcome of the Captivity, 77 — Promulgation of the Law, 77 Further developments, 78. XII CONTENTS. THIRD LECTURE. MOSES AND THE PENTATEUCH : THE LAW. Meaning of "The Pentateuch," p. 80 — History of Controversy concerning the authorship of the Pentateuch, 81 — -Mosaic authorship, 84-92 — The Ten Commandments, 93 — Oldest Fragments, 96 — Book of Covenants, 96 — Prophetic narrators (Yahwehist and older Elohist), 98 — Their tendency, 101 — Deuteronomy, 103 — Book of Origins, 108 — Its date, 108 — Priestly character, 109 — Contents, 109-111 — Analogy of literature and life with Kuenen's theory of the late origin of the priestly elements in the Pentateuch, 113 — The Semitic genius, 115. FOURTH LECTURE. THE PSALMS AND OTHER WRITINGS. Growth of Old Testament canon, 117 — " The Writings," 118 — The Psalms, rig — Their influence, 120 — Headings and sub-headings, 121 — Proofs of careless transmission, 122 — Hebrew poetry, 123 — ¦ Parallelism, 124 — Authors, 124-128 — The Psalms of David, 125 — Variety of the Psalms, 130 — Proverbs, 131— Fragmentary character, 131 — Not Solomon's, 132 — Ecclesiastes : A pseudonymous book, 134 — Its date, 136 — Its character, 137 — Immortality, 140 — Song of Songs not Solomon's, 141 — A love-poem, 143 — A noble book, 144 — Allegorical interpretations, 145 — Job, 145 — Form and contents, 146 — Subject, 147 — Age and authorship, 150 — Character of the Old Testament, 151. FIFTH LECTURE. THE APOCRYPHA. The gap between Old and New Testaments, 153 — From Malachi to Jesus, 155 — Aids to filling this gap in Old Testament, 156 — In the Apocrypha, 156 — Extra-Biblical, 154 — Canonicity of the Apocrypha, 157 — Relation to Jewish canon, 157 — Relative value of the contents of the Apocrpyha, 158 — Relation to art, 159 — First (or third) book of Esdras, : Contents, 160 — Not in Roman Catholic canon, 161 — Second (or fourth) Esdras : date, significance, 163 — Tobit : Its supernatural and human character, 165 — Judith : the story, 166 — The object, 167 — The date, 167 — Additions to Esther : purpose of, 168 — Wisdom of Solomon: Its pseudonmous charaacter, l6g — It? date, i6g — Its re lation to Christianity, 170 — Wisdom of Jesus, the son of Sirach, or CONTENTS. XIII Ecclesiasticus, 171— Its date, 172— It spirit, 173— Anti-Pharisaic 174 — Baruchand Epistle of Jeremy, 175— Song of Three Holy Children, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, 175 — Prayer of Manasses, 176 — First Maccabees, 176 — Judas Maccabteus : his work and spirit, 177 — Second Maccabees : Its supernatural character, I7g — Growth of super natural elements, 180 — First contact of Judea and Rome, 181 — Booi of Enoch: (extra-Biblical) relation to Christianity, 183 — Summing up, 1S5. SIXTH LECTURE. THE NEW TESTAMENT : PAUL'S EPISTLES. Formation of New Testament canon, [87-lgo — No Supernatural Element involved, 190 — Contents of New Testament, 191 — Epistles of Pari, Igl — Classification, Ig2 — Epistle to the Romans, 193 — Date, 193 — Church in Rome, ig3 — Purpose of, ig4 — Justification by faith, igfj — Contents of Romans, ig7 — First Epistle to the Corinth ians : When written, 19S — Object, 198 — Paul's battle, 197 — His thorn in the spirit, ig8 — Miracles, 201 — Second Corinthians: Con tents, 202 — Character and aim, 202 — The Jerusalem Apostles, 203 — Galatians, 204 — Paul's Apostleship, 206 — Ephesians : non-Pauline, 207 — Date, 208 — Philippians : reasons for accepting it as Paul's, 2og — Colossians : its authenticity ; its doctrine of Christ's nature, 210 — First Thessalonians : its authorship, 211 — Second Thessalonians not Paul's, 212 — Timothy and Titus non-Pauline, 212 — Philemon, 213 — ¦ Hebrews : not Paul's ; its Christology, 214, 215 — Order and dates of Paul's Epistles, 216 — Their value and significance, 217 — Paul's relation to the other Apostles, 2ig — -The Christ of Paul, 220 — His testimony to the resurrection, 221 — The Saint and the man, 222. SEVENTH LECTURE. THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES : REVELATION : ACTS. The Catholic Epistles, 223— Epistle of James, 223 — Nominal au thor, 224 — When written, 225 — Anti-Pauline, 226 — First Peter : its date and author, 226 — Its conciliatory tendency, 227 — More Pauline than Petrine, 228 — Catholic party, 228 — Second Peter, 229 — Earliest mention of the New Testament as "Scriptures,"' 230 — The Epistles of John, 22g — Relation to the Fourth Gospel, 232-235— Jude, 235— The Apocalypse : its enigmatic character, 237 — Nature of its predic tions, 238— Authorship, 240 — Date, 244— Object, 245— Contents, 246 XIV CONTENTS. — Fortunes of the book, 24g — Acts of the Apostles, 24g — Contents, 250-252 — Authorship, 253 — Characteristics, 253 — Its untrustworthi- ness, 254-259 — A theological romance, 259 — Its tendency, 25g — Date, 260. EIGHTH LECTURE. THE FOUR GOSPELS. Importance of the subject, 262 — Our only source of information about Jesus, 263 — Synoptics : why so called, 265 — How they differ from the Fourth, 265 — Matthew, 267 — Contents, 268 — Characteristics, 26g— Second Coming of Jesus, 270 — Most Jewish of the Four, 272 — Its relation to earlier documents, 272 — Gospel of the Messiah, 273 — ¦ Authorship, 273 — Date, 274 — Mark, 275 — Relation to Matthew and Luke, 276 — Authorship, 277 — Its purpose, 280 — Its neutral character, 280 — Gospel of the Son of God, 281 — Vividness of description, 282 — Structure; authenticity of closing verses, 282 — Luke: authorship and date, 283 — Contents, 284 — Compared with Matthew and Mark, 285 — Object of writer, 286 — Gospel of the Saviour, 286 — Internal divergen cies, 287 — Least Judaic of the Synoptics, 288 — The Fourth Gospel : its relation to the Synoptics, 2S8 — Differences from them, 290-294 — Miracles, 294 — Dualism, 295 — Manner of Jesus' teaching, 295 — Ab sence of parables, 296 — General arrangement, 297 — Contents, 298 — Not a biography : not John's, 300 — External evidence of authorship, 301 — Literary morality, 302 — Its influence, 303 — Conclusion, 304. A CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OLD TESTAMENT, APOCRYPHAL, AND NEW TESTA MENT LITERATURE. [The dates are nearly all more or less approximate. Those which are es pecially doubtful are indicated by a mark of interrogation. A few extra- Biblical books referred to in tne following pages are printed in Italics.] THE OLD TESTAMENT. ANCIENT FRAGMENTS, I32O-80O B.C. B. C. Ten Commandments in germ, . . . . . 1320 ? Deborah's Song and other legends of the Book of Judges, 1150-1050 Jacob's Blessing, Gen. xlix., 1100-1050 Early documents, legends, Wars of Yahweh, Book of faslier, etc., imbedded in the later Histories, . . 1000-800 Book of Covenants, Ex. xxi-xxiii., 19, . . 850 ? PROPHETIC AND CONTEMPORANEOUS LITERATURE, 80O-SOO B. C Amos, ..... Song of Solomon, Psalm XLV., .... Hosea, Moses' Blessing, Deut. xxxiii., Zechariah ix-xi.. Proverbs, x-xxn., 16; xxv-xxix. Isaiah (greater part of) i-xxxm., Micah, ..... Moses' Song, Deut. xxxn., " Ode, Ex. XV., 1-19, . B. c 800-770 800 ? 800 ? 775-745 780? 735 730-700 740-710 720 725 ? 775-725 ? XVI CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. Prophetic Narratives of Gen., Ex., Num. {First form of Pentateuch, including "Book of Covenants ") ; also prophetic narratives of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings ; also a few Psalms 800-700 Nahum 635 ? Zephaniah ' • 626 Jeremiah, . 626-584 Deuteronomy, ........ 621 " fused with the " Prophetic Narratives " by the Deuteronomist, making the Second form of Penta- teuch and book of Joshua, 620 Proverbs 1-IX., 620 ? Job, 608 ? Habbakuk 596 Zechariah, XII-XIV 592 Joel, 59° ? Ezekiel, 592-57© Lamentations, ........ 584 Psalms, a few Fall of Jerusalem, 586-550 Obadiah, . 580 Judges, Samuel and Kings assume their present form, 590-540 Isaiah, xl-lxvl, etc., Babylonia 540-536 " xxxiv, xxxv., " .... 540-536 " xxiv-xxvh., Jerusalem, 525-520 Haggai 520 Zechariah, I-VIII., 520 AGE OF PRIESTLY AUTHORS, 500-200 B. C. [There is a marked fore-feeling of this age in Zechariah, i-vm, in Deu teronomy, in Haggai, and most conspicuously in Ezekiel.J B. C Psalms, many ........ 500-400 Book of Origins, including priestly laws and narratives of Gen., Ex., Numbers, Leviticus and Joshua; drawn up in Babylonia, 536-458. Fused with Second Form of Pentateuch and Deuteronomic Joshua, described above, and published at Jerusalem by Ezra and Nehemiah in 444-45, making the Third form of Pentateuch (our present Pentateuch, with some few exceptions) and present book of Joshua,. . . 445-444 Malachi . 450-430 ? CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. XVH Ruth 420 ? Jonah, 420 j Psalms, many ; Grand era of temple song and temple poetry, 400-30C Memoirs of Ezra and Nehemiah, .... 445-425 Chronicles, 300-250 Memoirs of Ezra and Nehemiah fused with Chronicles, 300-250 Book of Baruch (Apocrypha), ..... 300 More Psalms 300-200 Esther, . 250 ? Ecclesiastes 225 ? Septuagint translation of the Law, .... 275- ? APOCRYPHAL AND APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE, 200 B. C.-IOO A. D. B. C. Daniel 165 Psalms xliv-lxxiv-cxviii., 170-160 Septuagint translation continues, ..... 200-100 Apocrypha : Ecclesiasticus, ....... 180 Tobit, 175 Additions to Esther, 200-100 ? First Esdras 100-1 Susanna, Bel and Dragon, and Three Holy Children, 165-100 ? First Maccabees, 120-80 ? Second Maccabees, ... . 100-50 ? Judith 100 1. Prayer of Manasses, ..... 50-1 Wisdom of Solomon A. D. 40 ? Second Esdras A. D. 75-100 ? Extra-Biblical, Enoch, . . . . B. C 100-A. D. 50 ? Sidy Is, . . . . , . B. C 106-50 Book of Jubilees, Ascension of Moses, Psalms of Solomon, . . . B. C 40-1 Talmud growing, . . B. C 300-A. D. 300 Hillel, .... B. C. 36-A. D. 6 Philo, .... B. C. 10-A. D. 60 Josephus, A. D. 37-95 XVIII CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. NEW TESTAMENT LITERATURE. 53-170 A. D. Life-time of Jesus of Nazareth, THE GENUINE EPISTLES-i OF ST. PAUL. First Thessalonians, First Corinthians, Second Corinthians, Galatians, B. c 4-A.D. 29 ¦ 53? 57 57 . . 58 Romans, ....... 58 Philemon, ...... 62 Colossians, ....... 62 Philippians, ...... 63 " Many taking in hand [Luke I., 1,] to set forth in order a declaration '' of the traditions current concerning the life and ministry of Jesus : Logiaoi Matthew, 68 ; Marcion's Gospel ; a primitive Mark ; Gospel of the Hebrews, Hebrews, ......... General Epistle of James: Apocalypse, Second Thessalonians, Ephesians,First Epistle of Peter, Epislle of Jude, Gospel of Matthew, . Gospel of Luke, Gospel of Mark, Epislle to Titus, Epistles to Timothy, . Acts of the Aposiles, First Epistle of John, Second and Third Epistles Gospel of John, Second Epistle of Peter, of John, 70-100 66 6869 69 ? 75? 80?80? 100 ? H5? 120 ? 120 ? 120? 125 ? 130 ? 130-135135-150 170 ? BOOKS IN OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS AND APOCRYPHA IN THE ORDER OF OUR COMMON VERSION. With page-references to their treatment in the following pages. GENESISEXODUS . LEVITICUS . NUMBERS . DEUTERONOMYJOSHUA . JUDGESRUTHI. SAMUEL . II. SAMUEL I. KINGS II. KINGS . I. CHRONICLES PAGE 43-48 63 109 1 eg 102 5i 53 57 5S58 60 6062 FIRST ESDRAS SECOND ESDRAS TOBIT . JUDITH . ADDITIONS TO ESTHER THE WISDOM OF SOLO MON ECCLESIASTICUS . OLD TESTAMENT. PAGE II. CHRONICLES . EZRA NEHEMIAH ESTHER . JOB PSALMSPROVERBS . ECCLESIASTES . SONG OF SOLOMON 140 ISAIAH . . 12 JEREMIAH . . 14 LAMENTATIONS 14 EZEKIEL . .15 APOCRYPHA. PAGE BARUCH . 62 6565 66 145119 131[35 DANIEL HOSEA . JOEL AMOS . OBADIAH . JONAH . MICAH NAHUM HABAKKUK ZEPHANIAHHAGGAI . ZECHARIAHMALACHI . 160 l6l164 I65 168 PAGH 17 19 21 22 2323242525262626 27 PAGE 175 SONG OF THE THREE HOLY CHILDREN I75175 ¦ 175 I76 . 176178 HISTORY OF SUSANNA BEL AND THE DRAGON PRAYER OF MANASSES FIRST MACCABEES SECOND MACCABEES . MATTHEW MARK . LUKE JOHN . THE ACTS ROMANS I. CORINTHIANS PAGE 267 2752S3 288249 193 197 II. CORINTHIANS 201 GALATIANS . 204 163171 NEW TESTAMENT. PAGE EPHESIANS . . 207 PHILIPPIANS . 209 COLOSSIANS . . 210 I. THESSALONIANS 211 II. THESSALONIANS 211 I. TIMOTHY . 212 II. TIMOTHY . 212 TITUS . . 212 PHILEMON . . 213 PAGE HEBREWS . • 217 JAMES . 223 I. PETER . . 226 II. PETER 229 I. JOHN . . 231 II. JOHN 232 III. JOHN . • 232 JUDE 235 REVELATION • 237 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. FIRST LECTURE. THE OLD TESTAMENT: THE PROPHETS. It is the distinction of the Bible to be the sacred volume of two great religions, the Jewish and the Christian. But while the whole, in cluding the Apocrypha, is sacred to the Roman ist, only the Old Testament and New are sacred to the Protestant ; only the Old is sacred to the Jew. One could almost say that the Bible is the sacred volume of three great religions, so largely is the Koran based upon the Bible, or rather upon the Talmud in the first remove and on the Bible in the second. The Bible is a great book and it has had a famous history. The science of comparative religion teaches nothing more decisively than that the Bible has an immense superiority over all the other sacred scrip tures of the world. These may have isolated sen tences of equal, or of greater spiritual significance, but they have no such average beauty and signifi cance. The superior divinity of the Bible has for the most part engrossed the zeal of its defenders. But what I care for most is its superior humanity. Homer is not a whit more human. And what a his- i 2 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. tory it has had ! Consider what the Old Testament has been to the Jewish people — a nation without a country now for eighteen centuries, — in all their homeless wanderings. It was their consolation through a thousand years of Christian persecu tion. Consider too what it has been to Protestant Christians : the charter of their freedom from the jurisdiction of the Pope; an armory of texts against idolatry and priestly domination ; to French Hu guenots and Scotch covenanters, and Dutch Repub licans, and English Presbyterians and Puritans, a nurse of heroes, teaching them many a song of bat tle, many a hope of final victory. If, in our time, the Southern slave-holder found sanction in it for his creed, not less did Green* and Garrison for theirs, interpreting, as it had not been interpreted for more than two millennia, the spirit of the ancient He brew prophecy. Surely a book with such a history and such a fame and such intrinsic value merits the carefullest consideration. It has been before the world so long — its youngest chapters 1 700 years — and has been so much read and studied that it would seem as if it ought to have been fully comprehended long ago. But please remember that until the Protes tant reformation the Bible was hidden from the com mon-people in the priestly ark of an unspoken lan guage ; that only for about three centuries has it been read in the vernacular, that a little further back the New Testament was assailed by Romanists as a composition of the Devil, that even the scholar- ?Beriah Green, President of the first Anti-Slavery Convention. THE OLD TESTAMENT. 3 ship which hung over the Bible with unwearying patience was, before Erasmus, both superstitious and uncritical to the last degree. Since then there has been a steady progress in the direction of a more scientific comprehension of its character; a progress illustrated by such names as Semler and Astruc, and Michaelis and Eichhorn, and DeWette and Strauss, and Baur and Ewald, and last and best of all Kuenen, the great Dutch scholar, no greater man, perhaps, than many of his predecessors, but entering into their labors, having the benefit of their mistakes, and so arriving at an understanding of the Old Testament in comparison with which even the light of Ewald seems dark and his results irrational. As yet however, so far as 1 can judge, the new criticism has made but very little impression upon the popular estimation of the Bible and the uses to which it is put. Even ministers who are acquainted with it and who substantially accept it, go on using the Bible as if nothing had happened, when some thing has happened of fundamental interest and importance. As for the average disciple in our Protestant communities, the Bible is for him what it was for his fathers. It is one book. Its parts are all of equal value. A text here is as good as a text there or anywhere; Old Testament as good as New, despite the motion that Christianity was some sort of an advance on Judaism. He still quotes it as infal lible ; still wastes his time in harmonizing it with 4 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. science or history, or making history and science harmonize with it. If he does not, like some. one I have heard of, emphasize every word that is in ital ics, so printed because not in the original, has he discovered that the chronology of the Bible dates from Archbishop Usher in 1660, or that the divis ions into chapters and verses were not apart of the original, in which there were neither, but one solid mass of words, without divisions of any sort, with out capitals or punctuation, the Hebrew even with out vowels, the cause no doubt of thousands of mistakes? Not until 155 1 was the Bible printed with the present arrangement of chapters and verses by Henry Stephens, the greatest printer-scholar of that time, who versified the whole New Testament on his way from Paris to Lyons. The arrangement in both respects though generally convenient has frequently obscured the sense and broken the con nection, and the verse arrangement especially has been a fruitful source of textual polemics, resulting in bad blood and worse theology. In some respects the average modern Christian is at a disadvantage compared with Bible-readers of two centuries ago, for then it was commonly known that all of the chapter-headings, and running titles, except those of the Psalms, date from the authorized version of 161 1. With the modern Christian they are general ly of equal value and authority with the text, though frequently misleading and sometimes, as in the case of those attached to the Songof Songs, ridic ulously foreign to the subject matter of the poem. Equally so are many of the chapter-headings and THE OLD TESTAMENT. 5 the running titles of the Prophets and the Penta teuch. But these superficial misconceptions are as nothing in comparison with others which inhere in the essential character of the Bible, the authorship and date and character of its constituent parts and by consequence their value as a spiritual and eccle siastical authority. In a course of eight lectures, with such helps as I can get, I am going to review the contents of the Bible with a view to helping those who come to hear me to a more rational appre ciation of their spiritual significance. Within such narrow limits the work cannot be thoroughly well done, but if we all do our best, you to hear and I to speak, we shall accomplish something I am sure. Certain to be shunned by those who are "joined to their idols" I trust through you to sow a little of the good seed of truth in their inhospitable fields. The Bible.- -That is to say, the book, The Book. But this designation of the collection of writings, which we are about to consider, is only about five centuries old. Before that, the Bible was not called Ton Biblion, the Book, but Ta Biblia, The Books, a much exacter designation ; one which, if it had been retained, would have done something to prevent the almost universal misconception that the Bible is one book and not a collection of books, the various off spring of a thousand years and more of literary activity. Even the plural form Ta Biblia, The Books, was never used till the 5th century. Before 6 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. that they were generally spoken of as The Scrip tures, though this designation had not then long in cluded the scriptures of the New as well as those of the Old Testament. The Bible, at its maximum, includes the Old Tes tament, the Apocrypha and the New Testament. All these together make up the Bible of the Roman Catholic Church, except that the two books of Esdras and the prayer of Manasses in the Apocrypha, though admitted with the rest, are admitted as apocryphal. These parts in their entirety represent a chronologic order, but where they border on each other they sometimes overlap. Thus, the book of Daniel in the Old Testament was written later than The Wis dom of Jesus the Son of Sirach and Baruch in the Apocrypha, and the second book of Esdras in the Apocrypha was very possibly written later than some of the New Testament Epistles of St. Paul. Let us first consider the Old Testament. In our common English version it includes thirty- nine books. They have a general arrangement in two parts, as prose and poetry. The first division ends with Esther, the seventeenth book. The second begins with Job, and ends with Malachi. This arrangement is very different from the Jewish, which has three grand divisions, the Law, the Proph- ets, and the Writings. The Law includes the first five books. The Prophets include Joshua, Judges, Sam uel, Kings, (these are called the Earlier Prophets) ; Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and the twelve minor prophets which are the last twelve books in our English Bible. The Writings include, and in this THE OLD TESTAMENT. 7 order, Psalms, Proverbs, Job, The Song of Songs, Ruth, Lameyitations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, First and Second Chronicles. Origi nally the Law included Joshua, and the Prophets in cluded the Psalms. If this general arrangement had been retained, the chronological order of the books would be a good deal less of a muddle than it is now, though it would still be far enough from accurate. But it would at least correspond to the order in which the different books of the Old Testament came to be considered, first precious, then sacred, by the Jew ish people. Before the Babylonish captivity there were no sacred writings in Judea. There were some laws, and some of the writings of the prophets, and some historical compositions, and some of these, no doubt, were highly valued, but no special character was attached to them, no peculiar authority assigned to them. And this, you must remember was about 800 years after the time of Moses. Soon after the captivity, in the fifth century, B. C, the law appeared, and soon after came to be considered sacred. Not long after it would seem that Nehemiah* made a collection of histories and prophecies, together with the psalms that had appeared up to this time, not with any idea of putting them on a level with the law, but only to preserve them from destruction. Nevertheless, in course of time they came to be re garded as almost, or quite as sacred as the Law. Again as time went on, there appeared other writ ings, and older ones came to be more regarded for one *2 Mace, II. 13. 8 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. reason and another, and so, somewhere along in the first century before Christ, these were collected, and in another century or two had come to be regarded as almost, and quite as sacred as the Law and the Prophets — the two former collections. The Old Testament was now complete. But some of the books included in it did not get in at all easily. There was much opposition to their admission by the learned doctors of the synagogue: to Ezekiel, because it didn't tally with the Law — a genuine criti cal perception as we shall see hereafter* — to Esther, because from beginning to end there was no men tion of God ; to Ecclesiastes, because it was positively irreligious ; to the Song of Solomon, because it seemed to be a pretty song of love and nothing more. But the objections to these books were finally overcome. There was another difficulty. There were more than a million Jews in Egypt; thousands of them in Alexandria ; these had a learned synagogue, which undertook the translation of tne sacred books. You have all heard of this translation, called the Septua gint, and there is a very pretty story about how seventy different translators were shut up in seventy different cells, and each translated the whole of the Old Testament, and when they compared their translations there wasn't a particle of difference. In fact the translation was called the Septuagint, because it issued from the Sanhedrim of seventy members. It was not made deliberately or all at once, but very gradually. It was begun about 300 B. c, while several of the Old Testament books were * Third lecture. THE OLD TESTAMENT. 9 still unwritten. It was not concluded* until some time in the first Christian century. But when con- eluded it contained not only the Old Testament as we now have it, but all of the Apocrypha besides, its books intermingled with the " writings " of the third collection, as if they were of equal value. In Judea the temptation was strong to admit some of these books. At the dawn of Christianity they were knocking for admission to the canon. But for this dawn, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the dis persion of the nation, it is very likely they would have been admitted. As it was they never were, and the books of our Old Testament are the books of the Hebrew canon to this day ; only, as I have said, arranged in a very different, and considering the gradual course of their adoption, much better order. Thus, all too briefly, I have given you a history of the canon (which means list) of the Old Testament. I am now in search of positive rather than negative conclusions, but I cannot resist pausing a moment to ask you, what probability or possibility is there, that a collection of books drifting together in this way in the course of 500 years, accidentally admitting some and omitting others of much greater value, anonymous in the majority of its constituent parts — what probability or possibility is there, that such a collection is an infallible, or in any way, a special revelation of the invisible God, as such to be used as an authority to obstruct the path of science, or enlighten us in matters of theology ? But this his tory of the canon will be further illustrated as we * As a canon. The latest books were not translations. IO THE BIBLE OF TO -DA Y. consider the separate books of the Old Testament, and then, if I am not mistaken, the impression made by such a cursory view as we have taken will be in tensified a thousand times. My general subject for this evening is the Old Testament ; my special subject is the prophets. But why the prophets first of all, when in our Eng lish Bible they are last of all? Indeed, I can conceive that the order of my lectures from beginning to end, would seem a dreadful putting of the cart before the horse to any average popular religionist. For the Old Testament, first the Prophets, then the Histor ies, then the Law ! For the New Testament, first the Epistles, and then the Revelation, and the Gospels last of all ! But this arrangement is by no means accidental. It is intended to be roughly chrono logical. Parts of the Law and parts of the Histories were written before the Prophets. Some of the Epistles were written before some of the Gospels. Yet on the average the Prophets are much earlier than the Law, and a little earlier than the Histories ; and on the average the Epistles are earlier than the Gos pels. But by the average reader, the books of the Bible are supposed to be arranged in chronological order. The Pentateuch is supposed to have been written by Moses, and the books of Samuel by Samuel, and all or nearly all the Psalms by David, and all the Prophets by the writers whose names they bear, and at the times specified in the margin. So with the writings of the New Testament. These THE PROPHETS. II also are supposed to be arranged in chronologic order. But we shall find that they are not. It would be hard to overestimate the amount of mis conception that has arisen out of the mal-airange- ment of the different books of the Bible. You will find no less a writer than John Stuart Mill* basing an argument upon the order of the Old Testament writings, as if it were chronological ; referring to the Pentateuch, as if it were several hundred years earlier than the Prophets, when in fact, except fragments imbedded in it here and there, it was two or three hundred years later. First the Prophets, also because they are the bed rock, the hard pan, from which we must start to build with any satisfaction or security. We ought to proceed from the known to the unknown, and in good part, we know the prophets, who they were and when they wrote, and from their conscious and un conscious testimony we strike out in both directions ; into the past behind them ; into the future which they did so much to form. This is the new criticism. This is the principle of Kuenen, which has proved a key to mysteries which have baffled scholarship for half a century, and which revolutionizes the popular conception of the order of Old Testament ideas, sub stituting evolution for revelation as a sufficient ex planation of everything we find from Genesis to Malachi. "The Prophets" of my present subject, do not mean the Prophets of the Jewish tri-partite division of the Old Testament. That, I have told you, in- * R<"p. Government, pp. 41. 42, Eng. Ed. 12 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. eludes Joshua, Judges, Kings and Samuel, as " the earlier prophets." And that does not include the book of Daniel nor Lamentations, both of which I shall include. " The Prophets " of my subject mean all the prophets of our English Bible from Isaiah to Malaclii. I am strongly tempted to speak of them in chronological order, but it would require so much jumping forward and back, that you might get con fused. So I will take them as they stand, and after ward give you a list of them as near as may be chronological. First in the list stands Isaiah, and if the books had been arranged in order of merit, he would stand here with perfect right. In a chronological order he would be the third or fourth. He began to prophesy a year or two before Uzziah's death (757), and kept on into the second half of Heze- kiah's reign, say to 703, B. c. He had a wife and children; his father's name was Amoz ; he is said in Chronicles to have written a life of King Uzziah. And this is all we know about his personal history. Of all the prophets he has the loftiest style, the most poetical. The book which bears his name contains sixty-six chapters, and it is habitually quoted from, and argued from, by Christian minis ters as if it were all of one piece, and written by Isaiah. The marginal date of the latest prophecies in our English Bible is 712, and the chapter head ings and running titles are adapted to keep up the illusion. But in fact not more than half of the whole book was written by Isaiah. Chapters xill., 9 to XIV.. 23; XL, I to IO; XXIV. to XXVII.; THE PROPHETS. 13 XXXIV. to XXXIX. are none of them Isaiah's. The last four of these chapters are evidently an editor's appendix to the original Isaiah. The two previous belong to the time of the captivity. And so do all the chapters after the thirty-ninth. " Com fort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God," be gins the fortieth chapter, and from this point on to the end of the sixty-sixth chapter we have the words of some one writing two hundred years after the true Isaiah, probably at Babylon. Some of the earlier chapters which are not Isaiah's, probably be long to the same author. The critics speak of him as the Great Unknown, or as the Deutero- Isaiah* For a long time there has been a steadily increasing agreement among scholars in regard to his separate authorship, and now there is not a respectable scholar who is not convinced of it. Read the whole book for yourselves, and you will see the lines of separation. The true Isaiah and the Great Unknown are talking of entirely diff erent things. Their stand-points are different ; their styles are different ; their aims are different. The great subject of the latter is the deliverance of the Israelites from their captivity, and their return to their own land, while in the true Isaiah this cap tivity does not even threaten on the remotest verge of the prophetic horizon. No wonder, seeing that it was still a hundred years and more in the future at the time of his death. You will see at once how fruitful of misconception must have been this print ing as one book the writings of two great prophets, * Dean Stanley calls him " the Evangelical Prophet.'' 14 THE BIBLE OF TO- DA Y. one of the eighth, and the other of the sixth cen tury, B. c. You will see how much wonder must have been wasted over prophecies which were al most or quite contemporaneous with the events. You will see how little literary skill and conscience went to the editing of the Old Testament books, for this is not an isolated example, and how blas phemous it is to saddle the Almighty with the re sults of so much human imperfection. Let me say in passing that " the servant of Yahweh," who plays such a conspicuous part in the Deutero-Isaiah, the description of whom has always been applied to the Messiah, " He is despised and rejected, etc.,"* is not Messianic at all. It is the true Israel which is described ; that is, those Jews who during their captivity were faithful to their national re ligion. The next book in the Old Testament is the book of the Prophet Jeremiah. About 625, B. c, says the marginal date. Say for the whole of his career from 626 to 584, B. c. So his beginning was almost a hundred years after the end of Isaiah ; his end two years after the destruction of Jerusalem. The La mentations which follow his book in our Bible are also his. In a strictly chronological order he would be about the twelfth. No such liberties have been taken with him as with Isaiah, but the last three chapters (fifty, fifty-one and fifty-two) are from an other hand. These date from about the middle oi the captivity. The first two are a prophecy against Babylon ; the third is an historical appendix aimost * Isaiah LIII. THE PROPHETS. I 5 verbally identical with a passage in the book of Kings* All that is really Jeremiah's falls into two sections : the first, Chapters I. — xlv., is made up of prophvcies concerning the Hebrew state and religion ; the second, Chapters XLVI. — XLIX., is made up of prophecies against foreign nations. Jeremiah was a very melancholy prophet, so much so that his name has passed into a proverb, and we call any address or writing that is full of dark fore bodings a Jeremiad. His sense of Israel's sin against Yahweh was so overpowering that he could prophesy evil, and evil only. There were other prophets who prophesied " smooth things," and what with the.e and the kings and people whose vices he rebuked, Jeremiah had a hard, hard time. Much has been made of his prophecy .of Israel's restoration after seventy years. But his seventy was a round number, and there is no possible way of making the captivity seventy. It was only fifty years from the destruction of Jerusalem to the re turn ; only sixty-one years from the carrying off of the 10,000, in 597, B. C. Moreover, such a prophecy has such a tendency to fulfil itself that if it had been literally fulfilled, it would be only what we might expect. But Jeremiah prophesied the return of the ten tribes as well as Judah. Defenders of predictive prophecy do not say much about this. They are generally as silent about unfulfilled proph ecies as the revivalists are about unanswered prayers. Next comes Esekiel, third in the Biblical order, thirteenth in the chronological, but very properly *2 Kings. XXIV., 18, and XXV., 30. 1 6 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. immediately after Jeremiah. A priest of Jerusalem, he was one of the 10,000 who were carried off to Babylon in 597, eleven years before the destruction of his native city. At Babylon his prophetic ac tivity lasted twenty-two years. Ewald calls him " a writer rather than a prophet." In him we find the first traces of that ultra-priestly legislation which was soon to attain a wonderful development in the hands of kindred spirits.* In Ezekiel also we find the first striking example of what is called apoca lyptic writing, that is writing made up of splendid artificial visions of coming events. The other great examples of it in the Bible are the book of Daniel and the Apocalypse of John or Revelation, and the Apocryphal books of Enoch and Esdras, the former only in the Ethiopic Bible. Kuenen discovers in him a sort of Hebrew Calvin, severe and narrow, and never recoiling from the logical consequences of his essential principles. But certainly he was much more of a poet; he had much more imagin ation than the Genevan reformer. His book, like Isaiah's and Jeremiah's, was a record of his prophe cies written out at the end of his life. Other pro phetic books have the same character. It was the general character of written prophecy. Naturally enough the prophet's memoty of his prophecies sometimes got mixed a little with the actual events which followed them. It could not have been other wise. We have reason to believe that Ezekiel's memory was particularly fallacious. At any rate in judging of the prophecies, we ought never to * See Lecture III. THE PROPHETS. 1 7 forget that almost without exception they were written out long after they were uttered, and that afterward from time to time they were edited and re-edited again and again, and made to agree with subsequent events. When people say, " I told you so," it does not always mean they told you exactly so, but only something of that sort. The last eight chapters of Ezekiel are a wonderful treasure house for the modern scientific critic. They could never have been written if the priestly legislation of the Pentateuch had been in existence at the time. Many of their particulars would have been superfluous ; others would have been simply blasphemous. He tells us why the sons of Aaron were to be the only priests. But the priestly legislation of the Penta teuch makes it appear that they had always been the only priests by supernatural decree. No wonder the doctors of the synagogue hesitated to admit Ezekiel into the Canon ! When the Temple was rebuilt, his plan, as furnished in his fortieth and succeeding chapters, was not followed. Its ground plan would have occupied the total area of the city. This again is one of the prophecies about which little is said by the apologists. Next after Ezekiel, Daniel. The logical order is cor rect but not the chronological. Danielis the next great Apocalyptist but his true date is 425 years after that of Ezekiel, about 165 years B.C. He would be the last of the prophets in a chronological order, if he were indeed a prophet. But he can hardly be considered one, his whole genius and method are so entirely different from that of the great prophets of the eighth 1 8 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. century, B. C, who give to prophecy its typical form. The book of Daniel was the last book admitted into the Jewish canon, and it was admitted very grudg ingly. It was never placed among the Prophets by the Jews. It was left for Christians to perpetrate this piece of literary folly. True it professes to have been written, after the sixth chapter, in the time of the captivity. 537 B. c, is the marginal date, which is based upon the text. It is a description of visions had by the prophet Daniel in Babylon. No other book of the Old Testament has played a greater part in the development of Christian ideas. It was the great stronghold of the defenders of predictive prophecy in England, in the eighteenth century. But now its gates are broken down. Its wall is flat. There is not a respectable critic who disputes that it was written in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, from 170 to 165 B. C. The writer's object was to strengthen the faithful among the Jewish people under the tyranny of Antiochus Epiphanes, and to encourage them with the hope of speedy deliver ance. Even as an acknowledged fiction it was well adapted to its purpose. How much better as a veritable prophecy of the time of the captivity. This it professed to be. Speaking squarely, it was a pious fraud. It was pious. The man who wrote the book was an earnest patriot ; filled with an hon est hatred of injustice. He had a noble end in view: to strengthen and console his fellow-countrymen. He thought it justified the means. But these were fraudulent. A book written 165 B. c, was put forth as a book written 537 B. C. But the subjective im- THE PROPHETS. I.) morality of such an act as this was not then what it would be now. Then there was not the sense of ownership in books that there is now. The copyist easily glided into the redactor. He added and he took away to suit his own ideas. It was a very com mon thing, especially a little later in the first Chris tian centuries, to try to float one's book with the great name of some apostle or father in the church. The apocryphal books of Esdras are a case in point, Esdras being the Greek form of Ezra, and these books written hundreds of years after his death pretending to be written by him. Other instances are the Wisdom of Solomon, the book of Enoch attri buted in the New Testament to " the seventh from Adam," but actually written a little before Christ, and some of it a little after ; in the NewTestament the fourth Gospel, and various Epistles. The next twelve books in the Old Testament after Daniel are the Twelve Minor Prophets, so-called be cause they are of minor length, not because, as Thomas Paine absurdly fancied, they are of minor importance. Hosea is the first. His marginal date in the Bible is 785 B. C, and this is not far from right. Say from 775 to 745 for his entire career. In a true chronological order, he would be the second of all the prophets. Whereas he is now the fifth. He was a native of Northern Israel. His book is an ab stract of his prophecies prepared by himself. The amount is very small compared with many a modern prophet's twelve or fifteen hundred sermons, but there may be a difference in quality. There are only fourteen chapters in the book. The first three 20 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. are very astonishing. Hosea represents himself as marrying an adulterous woman as a sign that Yah weh* has made Israel his wife. As Hosea's wife proves unfaithful to him, so does Israel to Yahweh. The figure is carried out with immense freedom and force. It has generally been supposed by Christian scholars, that Hosea actually did this monstrous thing at the command of the Eternal. Even so euphemistic a critic as Dean Stanley accepts the story of Hosea as the truth. But a wiser criticism assures us that the adulterous wife and children of Hosea, with their queer names, Unfavored and Not my people, are purely symbolic, and so the character of Hosea, as well as that of the Almighty is re deemed. His is a very stirring prophecy, full of hatred of the bull-worship of Yahweh that was com mon in his day, but with an intenser hatred for in- *I shall use this name instead of Jehovah throughout these lectures. A more correct spelling would be Jahveh. but as Jahveh should be pronounced Yahweh I adopt the phonetic spelling. Jehovah is en tirely incorrect. The Hebrew consonants were J H V H. When this became " the ineffable name," too sacred to be spoken, the scribes, when reading the scriptures, substituted for it Adonai, Lord ; and for Lord Jhvh, they substituted Elohivi, God. When at length it became customary to write the vowels, which had before been simply under stood, instead of taking the vowels originally understood with JHVH the rabbis took either the vowels belonging to Adonai or to Elohim, making it either Jehovah or Jehovih. (The firsts in Adonai is like t mute in French, and the final i is/, a consonant.) Where Lord oc curs in our common version, it generally represents I H V H in the original which it does not translate at all, but follows the septuagint, where JHVH is always rendered Kryjioc, Lord, an exact transla tion of Adonai. The name Jehovah only occurs twice in our transla tion, when the true name should occur a hundred times. But if not the vowels e, o, a, what vowels should be written with- J II V H? The consensus of scholarship is for a and e making Tahveh. But they" is pronounced Y, as is in Hallelujah, and the v should have the sound of w. Hence, phonetically Yahweh, the final // of which is silent. See a complete discussion of this matter in an appen dix to Ewald's Hist. Israel, Vol. II., by Mr. Russell Martineau. THE PROPHETS. 21 justice and oppression. He is unsparing in his de nunciations of the priests. Wonderful is his love for Israel, and his faith that when Yahweh has pun ished her sufficiently for her sins he will restore her to his favor. After his time, the comparison of Yahweh to a faithful husband and Israel to an un faithful wife became more and more common. Hun dreds of changes are rung upon it here and there. If it did not originate with Hosea it received from him a great impulse. The next prophet in the Bible list is Joel, and un til lately it has been supposed that he was not much out of place in being here. Ewald, in fact, places him before Amos and Hosea. But his place has always been exceedingly difficult to determine. The critics have varied through two or three centuries. The Bible date is cir. 800. Judged by the latest tests about 600 would be a truer date.* His ideas are those of the period immediately preceding the captivity, especially his ideas of the temple-service. He has an allusion to the garden of Eden, and this was not imported from Persia till sometime in the seventh century. The book opens with a descrip tion of a fearful plague of locusts and other raven ous insects. " That which the palmer worm hath left hath the locust eaten, and that which the locust hath left hath the canker-worm eaten, and that which the canker-worm hath left hath the cater pillar eaten." This plague is sent upon the people for their sins. Let them repent and Yahweh will be gracious unto them. Joel must always rank among * Subsequent to the Captivity of 597 B.C. See Chap. Ill ; 1-3. 22 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. the greatest of the prophets, not only for the sub limity of his imagery, but also for his lofty views of moral obligation. Next after Joel we have Amos. His marginal date is 787 B. C. This is sufficiently correct. He was an elder contemporary of Hosea, and in a chro nological arrangement of the prophets his place should be the first. His book is a summary of prophecies which he had uttered at different times, and afterwards recalled to mind. It makes one's pulses fly to read it even now. Amos was no prophet he tells us, neither a son of a prophet, but a herdsman of Tekoa, (a little place, 12 miles south of Jerusalem). He means that he was not a pro fessional prophet ; not an " ordained minister " or " regular practitioner," as we should say. Nor the son of a prophet — that is not attached to one of the schools of the prophets. There were professional prophets it seems, who flattered both the vices and idolatries of kings and people. And these lived in schools or companies. The expression " schools of the prophets " has been much misunderstood. They are sometimes spoken of as colleges. But you have heard of schools of fish, meaning aggregations. The schools of the prophets were hardly more than this. They were not centres of instruction. At any rate, Amos cordially detested them. His was no pro fessional utterance. " When the lion roars." he says, " who does not tremble ; when Yahweh speaks who can but prophesy?" And prophesy he did; his prophecy, a turmoil of indignant grief, that Yah weh should be worshipped with idolatrous and lasci- THE PROPHETS. 23 vious rites, and that men cared more for empty cere monies, than for justice, mercy, and truth. Although a native of Judea, it is against the Northern King dom that he prophesies, bearding the lion in his den at Bethel, very much as if Garrison had lifted up his voice at Charleston or Savannah. But his con viction of Israel's sin was not greater than his con viction of Yahweh's mercy. He would pity after he had punished. Israel should return after her cap tivity, and great should be her glory and prosperity. Alas! as spoken of the Northern Kingdom this prophecy was destined never to be fulfilled. From her captivity there was no return. After her fall in 719 B. C, there was no resurrection. The prophet Obadiah is the next in Bible order. His marginal date is 587. A year or two later would be better, for the book was evidently written after the fall of Jerusalem, in 586. It consists of but one chapter, which denounces vengeance on the Edom- ites for rejoicing in the destruction of Jerusalem, by the Chaldeans, concluding with a prophecy never to be fulfilled, of the territorial extension, and the unexampled glory of Judea. The marginal date of Jonah, who comes next in our Bibles, is 862, B. c, and according to 2 Kings, XIV., 25, there was a prophet Jonah who lived in the ninth century, B. C, in the time of Jeroboam II. But this Jonah was not the author of the book of Jonah. There is no pretence that he was. But who the author was we do not know. He was another Great Unknown. Ay, great for all the fun that has been had at the expense of Jonah and the 24 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. whale, for the book is one of the most significant in the Old Testament. It was written somewhere along in the fifth century, B. c, about four hundred years after the time of Jonah, as a protest against the narrowness and exclusiveness of such men as Ezra and Nehemiah. It is a fiction, not a history, but a didactic fiction, meant to confute the notion that Yahweh was the God of the Jews only. Jonah is used as a type of the prophets, who, like the Scotch minister, did not want to be " saved in a crowd," did not wan-t to extend the blessings of their faith to the outlying nations. Here was a real prophecy of Jesus and of Paul, though not a word about them or the Messiah, because here was a real anticipation of their tenderness and universality. Jonah is, perhaps, the most Christian book in the Old Testament. Thomas Paine was one of the first to perceive its fictitious character and its moral drift, and to accord to it his honest admiration. Subsequent studies have entirely justified his happy intuition. The book of Ruth, as we shall see, ap peared about the same time as Jonah, and in answer to the same need. Doubts of the infallibility of the Bible have generally begun with Jonah, but once let the book be seen in its true character, it becomes one of the most precious in the whole col lection. The marginal date of Micah is 750, B. C, which is not far from right. His prophecies are contem porary with the later prophecies of Isaiah, and in a chronological order of the prophets he would be the fourth. In manner and spirit he is a good deal like THE PROPHETS. 25 Isaiah. He has an equal sense of the moral degra- tion of the nation, an equal feeling that not sacri fices but righteousness is the one service of Yahweh. He denounces the " false prophets," by whom here we are to understand those who did not insist upon the moral service of Yahweh, and those who still encouraged a popular worship of him, associated with images and lascivious rites. He predicts dreadful woes for Israel and Judah, but like all his fellow prophets has a sure and perfect trust in better things at last. " Yahweh will turn again. He will have compassion on us. He will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea." The book of Nahum is dated 713, B. C, almost a centuiy too soon. His time was that of King Jo- siah, about 630, B. C. Very likely he was an exile in Assyria, the Northern Kingdom being captive at this time. His book is one continuous prophecy against Assyria, suggested probably by a threatened invasion of the Scythians. The terms of his predic tion do not correspond with anything that actually happened to Assyria at any time. Next Habbakuk, whose marginal date is 629, B. c. Twenty or even thirty years later would be better. Judah is already under the heel of Babylon.* Hab bakuk recognizes that her punishment is just, but what are her sins compared to those of her oppres sors? So he proceeds to prophesy their ruin, and to comfort his afflicted fellow countrymen. He was one of the optimists ; one of the predicters of " smooth * The destruction of Jerusalem in 586 is still in the future, and is not anticipated. 26 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. things," whom Jeremiah did not like. They did not seem to him to understand the depth of Ju- dah's wickedness, and the fearful retribution it must necessarily entail. The marginal date of Zephaniah, 630, B. C, is as correct as need be. The hordes of Scythians who awaken Nahum's hope of the destruction of Assyria, awaken Zephaniah's fear of the destruction of Ju dah. But it was well deserved for her idolatry and sin. The Scythians would compass it, but a faith ful remnant would be saved, and long enjoy a glori ous prosperity. The destruction came full soon, but not however from the Scythians, and the glorious prosperity still awaits some Daniel Deronda to ac complish it. The marginal date of Haggai, 520, B. C, is also as correct as possible. The captivity was over. The rebuilding of the temple had been begun and dis continued. The prophecies of Haggai are exhorta tions to begin, and encouragements to carry on the work. His spirit is less moral than ecclesiastical. He is one of the least inspired of all the prophets, one of the most prosaic. Zechariah is put down in the Bible at 520, B. c., and this is the true date of the man, who was con temporary with Haggai and whose enthusiasm for the rebuilding of the temple he fully shared. His prophecies, Chapters I. to VIIL, embody this en thusiasm. But the book of Zechariah as it stands is not his beyond this chapter. Chapters IX. to XL are by a contemporary of Amos and Hosea, two hundred years and more before the time of THE PROPHETS. 27 Zechariah. Chapters XII. to XIV. are by another of the optimistic* prophets, whose view of things was too encouraging to suit the prophet Jeremiah. Here is another sign how little critical acumen was invested in the enterprise of collecting and editing the literature of the Old Testament, another warn ing that we have here no supernatural message, but, at best, the earnest thoughts of many noble men jumbled together by the careless hands of other men, into a heap which has not yet been, and never can be perfectly assorted. The marginal date of Malachi is 397, B. C. It should be about 450. He stands for the exclusive tendency to which the book of Jonah was opposed. It is uncertain whether Malachi is a prophet's name, or his title. It means the " angel," or " Messenger" of Yahweh. There is no contemporary mention of any such prophet. He has not the old time in spiration. The Jews considered him the last of the prophets. Apparently his prophecies were never spoken. He is significant as the first prophet who makes any mention of the Mosaic Law. If the dates that I have assigned to the different prophetic books are approximately true, the present order of their arrangement is hopelessly confusing and absurd. Arranged in chronological order, they would come in some such way as this: 1. Amos; 2. Hosea; 3. Zechariah IX. to XL; 4. Isaiah; 5. Micah; 6. Nahum; 7. Zephaniah ; 8. Joel; 9. Hab- bakuk ; IO. Zechariah, XII. to XIV.; II. Obadiah ; 12. Jeremiah,\ except the closing chapters; 13. * Chap. XTI : 6. -(-Including Lamentations. 28 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. Ezekiel: 14. the Deutero-Isaiah : the Great Un known ; 15. Haggai; 16. Zechariah, I. to VIII.; 17. Malachi; 18. Jonah; 19. If to be ranked among the prophets, Daniel. But the phenomena of prophetism, as it appeared in Palestine from first to last, are not exhausted by the prophetic books which we have been con sidering. These books, omitting Daniel, cover a period of three hundred and fifty years'. But al ready at the beginning of the eighth century, B. C, when Amos left his herds and sycamores to lift up his voice against the Northern Kingdom, prophetism had had a long career, and names full as illustrious as any from Amos to Malachi. Before considering this previous development, let us for a moment pause and ask ourselves what is the prevailing view of prophetism in the Christian world. Is it not that the prophets were all chips of the same block ; that their many voices made but one music ; that they all held the same views, and cherished the same hopes ; that Jehovah was to all of them the same God, and the only God of all the universe; that they were pure monotheists from first to last ; that they all accepted the same moral standards ; were all equal haters of idolatry in every form ; that they were inspired directly by the Deity to utter their predictions? But still more strikingly, is it not, the prevailing view of Christendom, that the chief and almost the only function of these prophets, was to predict the distant future, and especially the com ing of the Messianic Kingdom, supposed to be identical with Christianity, and of the Messiah, sup posed to be identical with Jesus Christ ? THE PROPHETS. 29 I have said enough already, incidentally, to con vince a candid hearer that this prevailing view of prophetism is not true of those prophets whose writ ings have come down to us. Casually as we have considered them, does it not appear that there was much variety among them, much development from first to last ; that there was growth, and afterwards decline of form and spirit ; that their concern was always with the near future, never with the remote ; that all of their predictions had reference to the Jewish religion and the Jewish state, and their im mediate relations to the religions and the nations round about, not to a religion in the distant future which should array itself against their own with persecuting hands? But all of this, and more, will straightway appear more clearly if we attempt to trace the phenomena of prophetism from their be ginning, long before the time of Amos, to their close, in the fifth century, B. C. Hebrew prophecy, strictly speaking, dates from the time of Samuel, the eleventh century, B. C. The Hebrew word generally used for a prophet is nabi, which means one inspired, possessed by some deity. The Hebrews borrowed many things from the Ca- naanites, very naturally, for they were a much more highly civilized and cultivated people than them selves. One of the things they borrowed, it would seem, was prophecy. At any rate the Canaanites had their prophets quite as much as the Hebrews, prophets of Baal and Ashera, and other deities. The earliest meaning of " false prophets," of whom we hear so much in the Old Testament, was proph- 30 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. ets not inspired by Yahweh. Afterwards it came to mean prophets favoring the idolatrous worship of Yahweh, or prophets who did not insist on the im portance of righteousness to the true worship of Yahweh, and finally Jeremiah treats as false proph ets such as Habbakuk and the author of Zechariah, xii. — XIV., because they took a less gloomy view than he of the prospective sufferings of Judah. The prophets of Baal went in herds; so did the prophets of Yahweh. The most of them were young men, enthusiastic and fanatical. They had commu nities by themselves — schools of the prophets. They stirred up the prophetic spirit in themselves with music and other artificial means. Samuel took these communities in hand. He gave direction to their energy. He infused into them a passionate rever ence for Yahweh, and attachment to his cause. He is himself called a prophet, and so, for that matter, is Moses, and Deborah, whose famous song you know, is called a prophetess. But these designa tions are all after-thoughts. Samuel was a seer, that is a soothsayer, and there were plenty of other soothsayers before and after him. But their fortune- telling had no necessary connection with religion. But prophetism was religious through and through. It allied itself with soothsaying. The seers became prophets. Indeed soothsaying was one of the signs of a false prophet in the times of Amos and Hosea. But it was not in the ninth and tenth centuries be fore Christ. The prophets of Samuel's time were very different from Amos and Hosea. They were not monotheists any more than David and Solomon, THE PROPHETS. 31 though they did not, like David, worship other gods, or like Solomon tolerate all manner of idolatry and licentiousness, under the cover of religion. They did not deny the existence of other gods than Yah weh. But Yahweh was their God. Yet he, again. was very different from the Yahweh of Micah and Isaiah. The name was the same, but it stood for an entirely different conception of the deity. Be ginning in nature-worship, and in awe and terror of the darker and fiercer aspects of nature, the religion of Israel did not shake off for centuries the spell of early associations. Their God was " a consuming fire ;" a cruel God, and as such to be worshipped with cruel human sacrifices. The Canaanitish Mo loch (more properly Molech) was his nearest blood relation. When Samuel " hewed Agag in pieces before Yahweh in Gilgal," he made a human sacri fice. So did David when he put to death seven of Saul's sons to appease the wrath of Yahweh. This act, which is so shocking to our sensibilities, was an act of piety. But if such men as Samuel and David had such a conception of Yahweh, what must have been the popular conception ? Associated with the worship of Yahweh was the worship of Ashera. Her symbols, the asheras* were set up on every hill by the side of the altars of Yahweh. Her worship was licentiousness. Yahweh himself was worshipped in the shape of a young bull. In the Northern King dom this worship continued till the fall of that kingdom. It was the worship of no other deity, as * Translated groves in English Bibles. They were tree-stems : phallic emblems. 32 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. we have been always taught. It was the worship of Yahweh. " Thy God," says Jeroboam, speaking of his golden bull, " which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." In the Southern Kingdom there was no bull in the temple, but the reminis cences of bull worship were all about: " the horns of the altar," the great laver resting upon twelve oxen. Molech was worshipped under the same form, and thus again is his relationship with the Yahweh of the Hebrews attested. Such were the ideas of Yahweh which animated the early prophets, and such the worship they ac corded him. We do not hear of the schools of the prophets for one hundred and fifty years after Samuel. Then they appear again in great vigor, especially in the Northern Kingdom. Elijah and Elisha were honored by these schools as " fathers." These prophets are commonly regarded as the spir itual equals of Amos and Isaiah. And truly they were stalwart men, and saved the Northern King dom from going over utterly to the worship of Baal. But their conception of Yahweh was very different from that of later times. We have reason to believe that they made no objection to the bull worship of Yahweh, but were entirely satisfied with it. They were not preachers, and still less writers like the later prophets; they were men of action. With their retainers they were a party in the state, a very powerful one, now pulling down one king or dy nasty, and setting up another. Prophetism in the tenth century was organized tyrannicide. Did Eli jah and Elisha believe in one God and no more? Rather that Yahweh was the only Godyw- Israel. THE PROPHETS. 33 For the ninth century we have but scanty records, but at the beginning of the eighth the prophetic office had become a means of livelihood. The schools had lost their hold upon the affections of the people, and had fallen into disrepute. A little later and we hear nothing more of them. How then ? Is prophetism dead ? Rather it is about to have a second birth, and to enjoy a new and higher life for full three centuries before again it falls into decay. We have now arrived at Amos, the first of the writing prophets whose prophecies have been preserved. At the very outset he makes his boast that he is no prophet, no son of a prophet. From henceforth prophetism is to be less clannish, and more individual. The great prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries are to stand by them selves. They are to have kings and priests, and the majority of the prophets, all against them ; sometimes the people too. But all that is best in the religion of Israel is to be wrought out by these men. But for them it would be no more to us than the re ligion of Phenicia or Babylon. Now it is infinitely more. The prophets of the eighth century are the first prophets who are strict monotheists. For them Yahweh is not one God of many ; he is the only God. " The gods of the nations are idols." They affirm this. They have no real existence. Corre sponding to their images there is no reality. For them Yahweh is no longer a mere tribal God. He is the God of all the world ; the maker and sus- tainer of the universe, of whom no image must be made. But best of all he is a moral being. He is 34 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. a holy God, and his best service is righteousness, This is the central thought of prophetism at its best: The Eternal loveth righteousness. Compared with this, sacrifices are an abomination in his sight. And this thought of theirs was no revival of any ancient Mosaism, though they were pleased to so consider it. We have been taught : The basis of prophetism was the Mosaic Law. But the first prophet who mentions the Mosaic Law is Malachi, the last of the prophets. In the eighth century there was no Mosaic Law in any modern sense. There were the "ten words," as they were then called, the ten commandments, as we call them, and a few precepts and traditions. But the Pentateuch in anything like its present form was still far in the future ; Deuteronomy more than one hundred years ahead ; Leviticus and Numbers* nearly three hun dred. Prophetism created Deuteronomy. It col lected the legends. It wrote the histories.f It reflected back the light which it had won upon the past But the spiritual monotheism of the eighth century, B. c, was no tradition. It was an evolu tion. It was a new discovery, a greater one than any that mankind had made before. These spiritual monotheists did not carry every thing before them. Judah and Israel did not sud denly abjure . their idols and their immoralities. There were still prophets as well as people who be lieved that Yahweh was best worshipped by sacri fices and image worship and lascivious rites.J And * Mainly, with much of Genesis and Exodus. See third lecture. ¦j- Samuel and Kings ; not Chronicles. \ Those of the Ashera closely connected with the worship of Je hovah, if not a part of it. — Amos II., 7 ; Deut. XVI.. 21. THE PROPHETS. 35 not content with this, the kings and people still worshipped everywhere the gods of Moab and Phe- nicia, as they had always done. There was no back sliding to speak of. It is only made to appear so by the narrators of a later day. There was pretty steady progress all along. The people were not quite so bad as the prophets make them out. They thought their religion a great deal better than the religion of the prophets, and their way of worship ping Yahweh the better way. Why not ? It was certainly the old way, and their religion was the old religion. It must be granted that there was a certain nar rowness in prophetism, even at the best. Yahweh was the God of all the earth, but he had a peculiar relation to Israel. She was his chosen wife. He had no such love or care for any other people. Where did they get such an idea ? That Yahweh was their tribal God to begin with does not fully account for it. Alas, what a satire upon it has been the history of Judaism for two and twenty hundred years ! But could the prophets have foreseen it all, I doubt if they would have confessed themselves mistaken. Jeremiah certainly would not. He would say: We have deserved it for our sins. But he would hope for better things at last. Yahweh will not keep his anger forever. As time went on prophetism grew narrower in its conviction that Yahweh was peculiarly the God of Israel. Yet protestants arose, one of them the Deutero- Isaiah; another, as we have seen, the author of The Book oljonah, with a less exclusive, and a tenderer thought of God. 36 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. These men believed in a great future for Israel, but not in any future for the individual beyond the grave. " The grave shall not praise thee Yahweh. The dead shall not celebrate thee. They that go down into the pit shall not hope for thy truth. The living, the living shall praise thee as I do this day." They were not politically wise. In state affairs they did not consult prudential motives but their religious principles. • They would trust for safety to their obedience to the commandments of Yahweh. They would make no alliance with foreign peoples. In times of peace they would not prepare for war. Jeremiah exhorted his countrymen to submit to the Chaldeans. And when Josiah, faithfullest of all the servants of Yahweh, was killed in battle by Necho, of Egypt, great was the consternation and out of it came the awful questionings of the book of Job* The greatest of the Hebrew prophets were not laughing philosophers. They were the harshest of ascetics. They despised all wealth and art and luxury. How hard Isaiah was upon the women of Jerusalem. " Because the daughters of Sion " he cried, "walk proudly with their necks stretched out, mincing their gait to make their anklets tinkle, Yah\yeh will make bald their heads and expose them in nakedness. Then will he wrench off these anklets, little suns and moons, ear-rings, armlets, veils and gauze, foot-bracelets, girdles and scent- *See Fourth Lecture. THE PROPHETS. 37 boxes, kerchiefs and mantles, pouches and shifts, turbans and tunics. There shall be rottenness in stead of balsam, a rope for a girdle, baldness for plaited hair, sack-cloth for a mantle, and bruises for beauty." Perhaps the right was somewhere be tween these daughters of Sion and the prophet. They may have overdone it, but perhaps they were a little nearer right than he. But what about the wonderful predictions by these prophets of events in the far distant future ? They made no such predictions. They pretended to make none such.* The idea that they did grew up long after they had ceased from all their labors. They were not sooth-sayers but preachers of right eousness. They did make predictions. But they were all conditional. And they all had reference to an immediate future, to calamities already impend ing ; to a deliverance that would not be long de layed. Captivity and desolation were to be the punishment of sin ; peace and prosperity the re ward of righteousness. Of their predictions some of the more general were fulfilled. The most were doomed to utter disappointment. It is the creed of Christendom that the special function of the prophets was to predict the Mes sianic Kingdom and its King; Christianity and Jesus from the Christian stand-point. But so far were predictions on this head from constituting a preponderating part of prophecy that several prophets do not mention them at all. Those * The test of a true prophet given in Deuteronomy is that the event shall correspond with his prediction. If the event was ever in the distant future the futility of such a test is obvious. 38 THE BIBLE OF TO -DA Y. that do have each his individual conception. Dis- tance had lent enchantment to the view of David's reign. Freely idealized it came to be the typical anticipation of "the good time coming.' The conviction that such a time was coming only grew more intense with every added disappointment. A king* of the house of David should reign over Ephraim and Judah once again united. But in the Deutero-Isaiah there is a very different concep tion. There is no mention of a personal Messiah. David's line had sunk too low for any good thing to come out of it. Yahweh shall be glorified in his " Servant," by whom, as I have said, no person is intended but the faithful and righteous from among the people. These will bear the sins of all the rest. They will be wounded for their transgressions and bruised for their iniquities. Then shall the glory of Israel be restored and she shall have dominion over the heathen. Ay, more ! These shall hear of Yahweh and shall worship him as their God. Here was another protest against the habitual narrowness of the prophetic expectation. Here was the most beautiful expression of the impersonal Messianic hope. I need not tell you that this hope has not been realized. Certainly there was no fulfilment of it in Christianity. The nations do not worship Yah weh and Israel has not dominion over them. The so-called Messianic passages in the New Testament are seldom Messianic in their Old Testament mean ing and those that are do not apply to anything * Nowhere in the Old Testament called the Messiah. THE PROPHETS. 39 concerning Jesus save in some petty, verbal way. And yet there was a very real sense in which the prophets prophesied of Jesus and his new religion. Their central word was this : The Eternal loveth righteousness. And what was his? Righteousness tendetli unto life* Essentially the same but with an accent of diviner pity and more holy trust. They prophesied of him as the first streaks of morn ing prophesy the coming day. The exposition of prophecy which I have now concluded is no whim of mine ; no notion of some radical iconoclast. It is a result wrought out by the most patient scholarship of the most gifted men. It has taken a long time to perfect it so far. Men have labored and other men have entered into their labors. I am conscious of the incompleteness of my exposition though I have kept you long. How hap py I should be if I could feel that my instruction has rewarded your attention half so well as it de serves. * See Matthew Arnold's Literature and Dogma, SECOND LECTURE. THE HISTORIES. The best historical material of the Old Testament is that which is not avowedly historical, " The Prophets," which I considered in my last lecture ; "The Writings," which I shall consider in my next but one. In and between the lines of these books — The Prophets and The Writings — we have our only contemporary history. The avowed histories were written for the most part hundreds of years after the events which they narrate. The Prophets and the Writings let us into the very heart of the times when they were written. It is only incident ally that they make mention of political events. But the history of Israel is much more interesting and important considered as a history of thought than as a history of political events. And the Prophets and the Psalms, and other writings inform us perfectly what their authors thought. From the predictions of national disaster we can learn what dangers were imminent ; from the immoralities and the idolatries denounced, what immoralities and idolatries were prevalent at certain times. In draw ing out from the Old Testament the history of the Hebrews and the Jews (the former word applies to the pre-exilic, the latter to the post-exilic nation) the Prophets are of the first importance. The only THE HISTORIES. 4 1 safe method is to start from them, and in a less degree from the Writings, and then cautiously work our way backward over the ground covered by the avowed histories of the Pentateuch and the books immediately succeeding. These in their turn prove to be exceedingly valuable as historical material, once we discover their true age and character. Those parts of them which are worth least as his tories of early times are worth a great deal as un conscious testimony to the religious tendencies of the times when they appeared. But nothing could be more dangerously misleading than to take the apparent histories of the Old Testament as they stand and use them as veritable histories. A very little investigation proves that they were not origin ally written as histories but as didactic composi tions ; that the history is mainly incidental to the moral purpose, a vehicle for the conveyance of cer tain doctrines and ideas priestly or prophetic. There is a hint of this, as of much else that is important, in the Jewish arrangement of the Old Testament books, an arrangement, as I showed in my last lecture, vastly more instructive than our own. In their arrangement there was and is noth ing which is set up as history. The Pentateuch, originally including Joshua, was called the Law — Thorah ; the Prophets — Nebiim — included the His tories of Judges, Samuel, Kings as the early prophets ; all of the Prophets except Daniel that I considered in my last lecture, and originally such of the Psalms as had appeared up to the middle of the fifth cen. tury, B. c, while all the rest of the Old Testament, 42 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. including ultimately the Psalms, was called the Writings, Ketubim. Now in the designation of the books of Judges, Samuel and Kings as early proph ets, there was involved a really critical perception of their character, for it is not likely that this desig nation was applied because the books in question contained accounts of the early prophets, but rather because they were seen to be prophetic in their spirit and their aim. We shall discover that the contributions of the prophets to the Old Testament are by no means included in the prophetical books which we have already investigated, but that they had a hand in much beside ; that the Pentateuch is of their making to a considerable extent ; the books of Joshua and Judges and Samuel and Kings to a much greater; the Psalms so largely as to justify their original inclusion with the prophets by the Jewish canonists.* *The contents of the Old Testament admit of a pretty complete classification under three heads, Prophetic, Priestly, and Sophistic in the better sense : the writings of the wise men, or the sages, an im portant element, as we shall see, but in quantity much less than either the Priestly or Prophetic. Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are its most conspicuous factors. The Priestly element includes Chronicles and Ezra and Nehemiah, many of the Psalms, and the Levitical portions of the Pentateuch, which are considerable, the most of Numbers and Leviticus, and a good deal besides. In quantity as well as quality the Prophetic element largely predominates over not only the Sophistic, but also the Priestly. It includes all of the so- called prophets, considerable portions of the Pentateuch, especially the accounts of patriarchal times, the most of Joshua and Judges, of Samuel and Kings, and many of the Psalms, the best ones always. But it must be allowed that there are books which do not easily fall into either of these three classes. Daniel is a cross between a proph etic and apocalyptic writing ; Ezekiel a cross between priestly and prophetic ; Deuteronomy another and much more remarkable ; Job a cross between sophistic and prophetic, while The Song of Songs, though often classed with the sophistic, is really sui generis. Its style is absolutely unique. THE HISTORIES. 43 Of the Pentateuch as " The Book of the Law," I shall speak exclusively in my next lecture. But the legal element in it is embedded in a continuous historical narrative. Let me then, seeing that I de sire before completing this lecture to give a sum- man- of the political and religious history of Israel throughout the entire course of its development until the extinction of the Jewish state — let me state, in brief, a few things about the composition of the Pentateuch, which I shall more completely explain and develop in my next lecture. It is diffi cult to believe that less than twenty years ago the denial of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, by Bishop Colenso, roused such a storm of indigna tion as threatened to cost the good bishop his posi tion in the English church, for at the present time Stanley, the Dean of Westminster, holds his posi tion in the church, one of the proudest too, with absolute security while frankly publishing opinions far more radical than Colenso's. Moreover he has the scholarship of the church almost entirely on his side, and hundreds of the lower clergy. But here in America, so far as I can judge, the Mosaic au thorship of the Pentateuch is commonly assumed in all the Evangelical churches. A history purporting to begin with the beginning of the world, 4004, B. C, and to end in 145 1, shortly after the death of Moses, whose death it piously records, — all this is sup posed to have been written by the hand of Moses, and to be a faithful and consistent account of things which really happened, and words which were really spoken by the persons or the deity to whom they 44 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. are ascribed. If it were so we should still have a history written at a distance, in many instances, of from five to five-and-twenty hundred years from the events recorded. To such a history a theory of supernatural inspiration is absolutely necessary if it is going to have any authority whatever. But the theory of supernatural inspiration, as well as the theory of Mosaic authorship, was never started till ten or a dozen centuries after the death of Moses. The theory of Mosaic authorship was part of a gen eral system, which just before the beginning of the Christian era ascribed the Old Testament books to those persons who figured in them most conspicu ously, for example, the book of Joshua to Joshua, the books of Samuel to Samuel. But this conclu sion of the Talmudists, ever the most uncritical of men, was without any critical justification what soever. There is not a sign that the book of Joshua was written by Joshua, or the books of Samuel by Samuel, or the five books of the Pentateuch by Moses. The Pentateuch is not, if you will permit me to say so, Mosaic, but it is a Mosaic. Perhaps a patchwork would be a still correcter designation ; a patchwork too, in many parts, of the sort called harlequin, so incongruous are the materials that are arbitrarily joined together. So far was the compo sition of the Pentateuch from being contemporaneous with even the latest events which it narrates, that the oldest fragment of any size which it contains dates from the ninth century, B. C, that is to say, five hundred and fifty years after the events, if we accepted the Old Testament chronology, three hun- THE HISTORIES. 45 dred and eighty on a more rational system. The gap between this fragment and the patriarchal times is about a thousand years. This fragment, which the critics have agreed to call the Book of Covenants, extends from Exodus XXL, to XXIII., 19. The next considerable portion of the Pentateuch was probably written about 750, B. c, a dozen centuries and more from the events to which it gives the most atten tion. These are the events of patriarchal times. In this document appear the patriarchal stories in their most charming form. The writer's standpoint is prophetic, and the critics sometimes call him the prophetic narrator, and sometimes the Jehovist or Javehist, because he uses the name Yahweh in speaking of the earliest times, where another prin cipal writer is very careful not to. The Book of Covenants is included in this document, and also (according to some critics) another very consider able one is amalgamated with it, the author of which is sometimes called the older Elohist* because he uses the word Elohim for God, where the great prophetic narrator uses Yahveh. But in other re spects he is more like the Jehovist than like the great Elohist of the Book of Origins* for his stand point also is prophetic, while that of the great Elo hist is thoroughly levitical. Here then we have already three considerable documents included in the Pentateuch, but as yet it had not attained to *" The junior Elohist" of Davidson, the author of the Book of Origins being his older Elohist. Ewald calls him " the first prophetic narrator" or "the third principal narrator." Kuenen ignores him altogether. * See Lecture III. for full account of this title. if) THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. half its present bulk. The next great addition was made in the time of King Josiah. This was the book of Deuteronomy. It was made public in 621, B. C, and had been written just before, six hundred and fifty years after the death of Moses. Soon after it was incorporated with those parts of the Penta teuch which had been previously written — the Book of Covenants and the two prophetic narrations. The standpoint of the writer is priestly-prophetic. The priests and prophets had often been opposed to each other. But here was a man who believed heartily in both parties, and his book is a sort of compromise between them. His is the fragment of the Pentateuch which shows the most individual genius. He is another Great Unknown. For a long time after the modern date of Deuter onomy was established to the satisfaction of the ablest critics, it was supposed to be the latest frag ment of the Pentateuch. After the Deuteronomist there was supposed to have been only a redactor of the whole. But it is much more likely that at the time when Deuteronomy appeared the most influ ential and characteristic portion of the Pentateuch was still unwritten, namely, the great Elohistic document, so called because it is very careful to speak of God only as Elohim up to the time of Moses. Ewald and others after him call it also the Book of Origins. The date of this document is a matter of fundamental importance in dealing not only with the Pentateuch, but with the religious history of the people of Israel. Ths date of Kuenen, about 450 B. C, it seems to me, rests upon abso- THE HISTORIES. 47 lutely irrefragable foundations. This Elohistic doc ument, or Book of Origins, contains the bulk of Numbers and Leviticus, together with considerable parts of Genesis and Exodus. Therefore it contains the whole of what for centuries has been regarded as preeminently the Mosaic Law, and it proves to have been written at least eight hundred years after the death of Moses. A wonderful conclusion, but one which is the key to many a mystery before in soluble ! The Pentateuch was now well nigh complete. After the fifth century, B. C, only a few more levitical precepts were added, and the whole by processes of elimination and addition made to ap pear somewhat more congruous. The fourth cen tury, B. c, beyond a doubt beheld it in its present form. If the account which I have given of the forma tion of the Pentateuch is even tolerably correct, it is certainly a very different matter from the imag inary Pentateuch of our popular Christianity, which is a book made by Moses at one cast 1450 B. C* Instead of this we have here a book made up of fragments, arbitrarily forced together, which frag ments made their appearance all the way along from 900 to 450, B. c, one of the most considerable of all being the latest. At the same time it ought to be remembered that none of the fragments we have spoken of were " made out of the whole cloth." There was a great stock of oral traditions to draw * The Biblical date of Moses' death. The date of scientific criti cism is 1280 B. c. 48 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. upon, and also various books, the names of which, in a few cases, have been preserved to us, as, for example, the book of Jasher* and the Book of the wars of Yahweh.\ But even the earliest of these was ante-dated a long time by the events reported, and they are only quoted in the most fragmentary man ner. In short the Pentateuch was not a manufac ture, but a growth, a growth of many centuries.;); " To that collection," says Matthew Arnold, " many an old book had given up its treasures, and then itself vanished forever. Many voices were blended there — unknown voices, speaking out of the early dawn. In the strain there were many passages familiar as household words, yet the whole strain, in its con tinuity and connection, was to the mass of the people [at the time of its completion] new and affecting." The value of such a book as this as history is greater than at first appears. But its value is not that of direct statement, but of indirect testimony. Its value in the way of direct state ment is almost inappreciable. Its accounts of primi tive times must be taken not merely cum grano salis. They must be almost totally rejected. From all the patriarchal stories only a few cautious infer ences can be drawn. These stories remain as beau tiful as ever, as stories, but as history, or as bio graphy, they are of no account. Whether there ever was an individual Abraham, Isaac or Jacob, * Numbers XXL, 14. f Joshua X., 13. ^Especially the so-called documents of the older Elohist and Yahwehist were less documents than groups of legends developed around different centres of prophetic enthusiasm. THE HISTORIES. 49 is a very doubtful matter. The secret is let out in twenty different ways that these are representative names of tribes. " Esau, that is Edom," we read. Jacob's little Benjamin, whom he cannot bear to part with, proves to be seventy years of age, and to have ten children. In short the patriarchal family relations are a crude philosophy of the relations of the Israelites to the adjacent tribes. Closely re lated to the Edomites, they accounted for this rela lation by deriving themselves and the Edomites from two brothers, Esau, or Edom, and Jacob. Esau's seniority points to the fact that Edom was a civilized settled nation, while the Israelites were still nomadic. The story of the stolen birth-right was an attempt to show that Israel, spite of its juniority, was the superior nation. Again, less closely related to the Ishmaelites than to the Edomites, this relation was indicated by making Isaac, the father of Jacob, the son of Abraham, by his lawful wife, Ishmael the son of his unlawful concubine. Still less closely related to the Midian- ites and Dedanites, this relation was represented by making these descend from Keturah, a slave of Abraham. Rightly divining that they belonged to the same great family with the Ammonites and Moabites, the Israelites symbolized their relation to these tribes by making Lot, a nephew of Abra ham, their progenitor. If you will study carefully the patriarchal genealogies, you will find that they are almost always easily explicable upon this theory, and senseless upon any other. The chances are, however, that before Abraham, 50 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. Isaac and Jacob were employed as tribal represen tatives, they had already done double service, first as factors in a primitive solar mythology, and after wards as factors in the myths of agriculture and civilization.* And not these alone, but many othet Pentateuch ancestors and heroes and celebrities. When we read that Enoch was 365 years old, when " he was not, for God took him," we see plainly that the original Enoch was a solar year, the 365 years of his life its 365 days. With almost equal plainness, we see that in the myth of Cain and Abel Cain is the agriculturist and Abel the nomad, and the myth embodies the enmity always existing between the nomads and the agriculturists. But before Cain and Abel figured in this myth of civiliza tion they had impersonated, as their names indirectly imply, the day and night respectively in a solar myth. There are not wanting signs that the principal patriarchs were fairly on the road to deification when this tendency was arrested by a variety of circum stances, and they became heroic ancestors instead of gods. But their arrival at the dignity of heroic ancestors did not complete the round of their de velopment. As monotheism gradually arose, the hero ancestors became pious servants of Yahweh. Religious sentiments were freely attributed to them which it had taken centuries of sad experience to develop. As they have come down to us, the patri archal stories are a palimpsest on which a legend of civilization is written over a solar myth, and a tribal legend over the legend of civilization, and a theo- * For this whole matter see Goldziher's Hebrew Mythology. Whaf I assume is allowed by many of his critics, even the most unfriendly THE HISTORIES. 5 I cratic legend over the tribal. The first are very dim, so dim that average eyes can hardly be expected to discover them, but patient scholars, with their critical acids, have made some things legible enough. And now let us proceed to consider the other historical books of the Old Testament, and then returning to the Pentateuch, take up the thread of history at the earliest possible date, and follow it until the cycle of Israel's fortunes was completed in the first century of the Christian era. First in order after the Pentateuch comes the book of Joshua. At the first formation of the Jewish canon, it was included with the five books of the Pentateuch, as a part of the Law. This was a very natural arrangement. If it was necessary to have a Pentateuch, that is a five-fold book, it would have been better to leave off Genesis from the beginning, than Joshua from the end. The four remaining books are much completer without Genesis than without Joshua. Moreover, we have reason to be lieve that the same hands that shaped the principal documents of the Pentateuch, shaped the two prin cipal fragments of the book of Joshua. These are, i. Chapters I. to XIII. ; 2. Chapters XIV. to XXIV. The book is naturally divided into these two sec tions. The first recites the story of Joshua's con quest of Canaan; the second his division of the land among the tribes. The first is mainly from the Deuteronomist, who makes use of older material of the Pentateuch Yahwehist ; the second is mainly by the Elohist.* But there are Yahwehistic frag- * So I shall designate the later Elohist, the author of the Book of Origins. 52 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. ments in the second part, and Elohistic in the first. The marginal dates of the book are from 145 1 to 1427. Talmudic legend ascribed the book in its entirety to Joshua, and Christian superstition has endorsed the notion of the Rabbis. Certainly Joshua could write an account of his own death as well as Moses. The actual date of the conquest, however, and of Joshua's leadership, was not that of the Bible margins, but one hundred and seventy- one years later, from about 1280, B. C, onward. But the composition of the book by Joshua at this date is hardly less impossible than at the earlier, a cen tury and more before his birth. The book was written mainly by the Deuteronomist soon after Deuteronomy (say about 620, B. C.), and by the Elo hist after the captivity, about 450, B. C. In a book written so long after the events which it records, from six to eight hundred years, we should not expect to find accurate history. A year then was just as long as a year now, and people's memories were just as treacherous, and their ideal izing tendencies just as active. But it may be said that in our day the best histories are the latest, for example, Green's History of the English People, and Freeman's History of the Norman Conquest. True enough, but the superior value of these his tories is based upon their critical use of contem porary documents. But the authors of Joshua had, in the first place, no contemporary documents, no memoirs pour servir that came within centuries of the events, but, worse than this, they had no taste or aptitude for critical investigation. Whatever THE HISTORIES. 53 glorified Israel or Yahweh, by that sign was true enough for them. They were not in search oi truth. They had a thesis to maintain. Their writ ings were what the Germans call tendency writings ; that is, they were written to carry a point, and the writers saw everything through the distorting me dium of their predisposition to believe that certain things were true. The Deuteronomist wanted the sanction of antiquity for his priestly-prophetic com promise, and for his passionate exclusiveness, and for his centralized worship at Jerusalem. The Elo hist wanted the sanction of antiquity for his levitical enthusiasm. Understand this, and you understand the book of Joshua. The book of Judges, which comes next after the book of Joshua, is the best commentary upon it, the best corrective of its unhistorical assumptions. Not but that there are embedded in Joshua, here and there, bits of tradition which are wholly at variance with the average tenor of the book. But Judges is a wonderful treasury of almost contem porary traditions of the period between the con quest and the time of David, from about 1280 or 1270 to 1050, or thereabout. According to Joshua the ten tribes acted in perfect unity, subjugated Canaan entirely in one year, and divided its terri tory among the tribes. From the traditional stories of the book of Judges we learn that the conquest was a very gradual affair, requiring centuries instead of months for its completion, and that the tribes, instead of acting as a united nation, were always more or less divided. Single tribes did the most of 54 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. the fighting; sometimes two or three were banded together for an immediate object. Sometimes they waged bitter war upon each other. Sometimes they were subjected to the Canaanitish tribes. A great deal of pious ingenuity has been wasted on the extermination of the Canaanites by the Israelites. There was no such extermination. No doubt the tender mercies of the Israelites were cruel, for they were barbarians, and they were Semites. But their extermination of the Canaanites was an imagination of the Deuteronomist, who wanted such a precedent to justify his own exclusiveness. And as there was never any such conquest as that of Joshua I. to XIII., so was there never any such division of the territory as that of Joshua XIV. to XXII. This was a prophecy after the event. A division which it had taken centuries to establish wTas attributed to Joshua, in order, mainly, that the claims of the priests and levites of the fifth century, B. C, might seem to have the sanction of antiquity. As historic material the book of Judges is one of the most valuable sections of the Old Testament. But a sharp distinction is to be made between the final author or editor of it, and the legends which he incorporates in it, some of which are actually con temporary with the events. For Judges also is a tendency writing. It has a thesis to maintain, viz : that faithfulness to Yahweh is the only means of victory in war or national prosperity. This was the stand-point of the prophets, of whom the final edi tor of Judges was certainly one, a monotheist who reflected back his monotheism upon times when THE HISTORIES. 55 there was no such thing as monotheism ; at best only monolatry — the exclusive worship of one God, while allowing the existence of many others. He repre sents the divisions of the Israelites and their subjec tion by their Canaanitish neighbors as resulting from their lapse from the pure monotheism which Moses had revealed to them, the fact being that he revealed no such monotheism, and that there was no such national unity as the writer imagines, at the time of the conquest. The traditions which he in nocently admits into his book, and which make up the bulk of it, sufficiently confute his darling theo ries. His time was certainly no earlier than the seventh century, B. C. When he wrote the northern tribes had already gone into captivity. * The traditions embedded in his argument, — for argument it is — are exceedingly instructive. They show us how little unity there was among the tribes ; how much jealousy and rivalry. The ma jority of the legends recite the exploits of the so- called Judges. But the function of these men was not judicial as our modern fancy pictures it, nor did any of them judge all Israel. Their function was that of military leadership, generally of one, some times of two or more tribes. The chronology of our English Bible is based upon the idea that they were none of them contemporaneous, and so the periods of their separate leadership are all added together making about four hundred years in all. But we are tolerably certain of the date of the invasion and also of the beginning of David's reign. Between the * Judges XVIII ; 30. $6 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. two, we have only a little more than two centuries left for the entire period of the Judges including the times of Joshua and Samuel. These were the cen turies of anarchy and chaos, but of inchoate national life. Out of the anarchy and division came the felt need of national union and a centralized govern ment. Fourteen Judges are named in the book of Judges but there are copious accounts of only six. The legends of Gideon and Deborah and Samson, are the best of all — fountains of poetry that never cease to flow with infinite suggestion. From Milton's glori ous " Samson Agonistes," a cry out of the depths of his own night of blindness, to Longfellow's " Warn ing," how often has the blinded giant typified the cruelly oppressed, who yet shall overthrow the might of their oppressors. It was from the tragedy of Milton that George Eliot borrowed the concluding words of Daniel Deronda, words which might be the truthful epitaph of men and women whom you and I have personally known and loved. " Nothing is here far tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt. Dispraise or blame, nothing but well and fair And what may quiet us in a death so noble." Will the story of Samson be any less suggestive to the poet, when he is told that his place among the Judges is an extremely doubtful one? He is nowhere represented as exercising military leader- ership, the characteristic function of the Judges. In fact, his story proves to be a solar myth, the name Samson signifying " the sun-god," and many of the THE HISTORIES. 57 details of his story easily admitting of a mythologi cal explanation. So evident is this, that it was the story of Samson which first suggested to Steinthal * and other critics, the existence of an underlying stratum of solar myth in the Old Testament histor ies. As the story has come down to us, it has been amalgamated with the story of some Danite hero. In the course of development sometimes the mythical name absorbed the lineaments of some actual hero, and sometimes the name of some actual hero ab sorbed the lineaments of the solar myth. The Song of Deborah, one of the Judges of Israel, is one of the most valuable of contemporary frag ments. And it is one of the most ancient fragments anywhere embedded in the Old Testament. It is wonderfully strong and beautiful, but its strength is the strength of a barbaric time and its beauty is the beauty of the tigress tasting upon her thick and sen suous lips the blood of recent ravening. Next after Judges we have the book of Ruth. One of the smallest books in the Old Testament, it is one of the most precious. It is the idyl of the Old Testament. It forms a natural link between Judges and Samuel, and in the Septuagint it is ar ranged as a continuation of the former, without any separate title. But the fact that it was originally among the "writings" in the Jewish Canon suggests a later origin, and its contents mark it plainly as the outcome of an entirely different spirit. The book of Judges is theocratic and prophetic in its spirit. The book of Ruth is not. It is the story of Ruth, a Moabi- * Goldziher*s Hebrew Mythology, p. 392. 58 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. tish woman, a model of filial devotion, who by her marriage with Boaz becomes the ancestress of David. This is another tendency writing. A story written with a purpose ; this purpose to confute the narrowness of the Ezra-Nehemiah school with their hard exclusive ness, their opposition to all foreign marriages. If a marriage with a foreign woman had been blessed by such a child as David in the third generation, a foreign marriage couldn't be the heinous sin that Ezra represented it. Such is the argument which the author of Ruth clothes in idyllic language and sends forth upon its mission of good will. Its date is therefore easily determined. It must have been subsequent to Ezra, somewhere about 400 B.C. The first and second books of Samuel were reck oned as one book in the Jewish Canon, and classed among the Early Prophets. For the Talmudic notion that it was the work of Samuel there is no justification, except, perhaps, that it recites in such a case the circumstances of the author's death, as do also the Pentateuch and Joshua, supposing these books to have been written by Moses and Joshua. It is not likely that these books attained their pres ent form till just before or soon after the beginning of the captivity, about four hundred years after the death of Samuel. The object of the writer was to glorify Samuel and David at the expense of Saul. He made use of various legends, written and oral, and joined them together in a very crude and blund ering fashion. The books abound in contradictions and repetitions. Some of the fragments incorpora ted in them, such, for example, as David's lament THE HISTORIES. 59 for Saul and Jonathan, are full of sentiment and life. Others are much inferior. The text of Samuel is more " corrupt " than that of any other book ; that is to say, more mistakes have occurred in the tran scription of manuscripts and more liberties have been taken by the transcribers. Davidson marshals hun dreds of absurdities or contradictions that have oc curred in one or the other of these ways. But through this haze of doubt and contradiction we distinguish the impressive forms of Samuel, Saul and David ; we see the growing dawn of Hebrew nationality, and we see, in spite of the final author's predilections, that not to Samuel or David, but to Saul belongs such credit as inheres in that event. But if to Saul belongs the credit of national union, to Samuel who opposed this union belongs the credit of reviving the worship of Yahweh. Apparently no monot heist, and conceiv ing of Yahweh as a God delighting in the blood of human sacrifice, he was a strict monolatrist, insisting that to Yahweh Israel must pay exclusive homage. A very different person from the Samuel of the Sunday-school books and the popular theology, ec clesiastical forerunner of the headstrong Hilde- brands, Bernards, and Beckets of the Christian era, he had a work to do and did it wonderfully well. For all the writer's good intentions the David of the books of Samuel is not the David of the Psalms, as we shall see more clearly in due time. * He is a man of cruelty, and treachery, and lust ; a man after * Fourth Lecture. 60 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. Yahweh's own heart, as he conceives Yahweh, a god to whom he sacrifices the seven sons of Saul. Yah weh was a god after his own heart, and that was the heart of a man who passed the Ammonites " under saws and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick kiln," — that is, burned them or roasted them to death. Next after the two books of Samuel we have the two books of Kings, which were the third and fourth books of Kings in early Christian times, before the first and second were yet called the books of Samuel. In the Jewish Canon they brought up the rear of the Early Prophets. This designation proves to have been eminently fit when we consider the scope and spirit of the work. The prophetic manner is more strongly marked than in the books of Samuel, though there also it is conspicuous. The books are written with a purpose : to show that only in the faithful service of Yahweh is there safety and suc cess for kings and peoples. The sufferings of Israel and Judah are the merited punishments of their idolatry and disobedience. If the author was not himself a prophet, he must have lived in a circle of prophetic sympathies. For he sees everything from the prophetic standpoint. His history begins with the last years of David and his death (1018 B. C.) and continues until 562 B. C, about midway of the Captivity. Probably the work was finished soon after the later date. It was written in Babylon by one who was a captive there. The writer is an en thusiast for the House of David, which he unconsci- THE HISTORIES. 6 1 ously idealizes a good deal, depreciating at the same time the rival Kings of Israel. But of conscious tampering with his materials he is apparently never guilty. An honest man who likes to have the facts fall into line with his theories ; but if they do not he cannot help it. Honest, but not critical, and skep tical of nothing that appears to favor his prophetic theory. Obedience to the prophets was with him synonymous with obedience to Yahweh. In com piling his history he made use of many written sources and he sometimes stands corrected by the narratives which he incorporates into his own. But with the exception of the incidental history embod ied in the Prophets, he is our only historian of Israel for 500 years who is at all trustworthy. And for the first 200, we have no contemporary witnesses to whom we can appeal. The books of Chronicles go over the same ground, but they pervert our knowl edge more than they increase it. With the books of Kings ended the treatment of history from a pro phetic standpoint. Ezekiel had already sounded the advance of a new order in which the priest should be everything, the prophet almost nothing. Acting upon this hint the unknown Elohist prepared the Book of Origins, a priestly reconstruction of the primitive histories. Written at Babylon this recon struction made its appearance in Jerusalem on the return of Ezra, midway of the fifth century, B. c. But as yet there was no priestly reconstruction of the history from Saul to the captivity. Here was a crying need if the entire past of the nation was going to sanction the latest hierarchical development. The 62 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. response was not immediate, but it came at length embodied in the books of Chronicles. These were written about 300 B.C., and are a reconstruction of the entire history of Israel, in order to compel the sanction of that history for that scheme of priestly worship which had been developed in Babylon and set up in Jerusalem by Ezra and Nehemiah. The perception of the true character of the books of Chronicles, as a systematic reconstruction and perversion of the national history in the interest of the priests and levites, was one of the first results of a more scientific study of the Bible. Though they are placed in our English version, following the Septuagint, next after the Kings, in the Jewish Canon they were and are placed with the Writings, and are the last in order. Such a position is appro priate, not only to their date of composition, but also to their moral quality, the absence of all literary conscience from the compiler's scheme of work. In cluding the present books of Ezra and Nehemiah, they were written in the third century, B. C„ some where along from the beginning to the middle of it. Their author was a levite of the temple, apparently among the singers, so knowing is he about the singers' ways and doings. What he attempts is to write the history of his people, from the time of Adam down to his own time. But the first five chapters are a long and tiresome string of geneal ogies, full of difficulties for the apologists who en deavor to harmonize them with the genealogies of Genesis. After the genealogies Saul is disposed of in a single chapter, and then the account of David's THE HISTORIES. 63 reign runs on to the end of the first book. The subsequent history of Judah is narrated in the second book. The history of the Northern King dom is treated with comparative neglect. The ob ject of the writer is to exhibit the kings of Judah, as far as possible, as faithful servants of Yahweh, or — which in his mind is the same thing — as stout defenders of the temple-service, and the rights and privileges of the priests and levites. His work was based very largely upon older writings, of which he names at least a dozen. Strangely enough the pre sent books of Samuel and Kings are not among those named. But these also must have been among his sources. Whatever his materials, they were all fluid in the heat of his levitic zeal, and all received the impress of his cherished theory, that the acceptable worship of Yahweh consisted in the minute observance of a ceremonial and sacri ficial system of religion, centralized in the one temple at Jerusalem. Hence an astonishing re construction of the national history, and of the character of individual kings. The unconscious idealization of the prophetic historians of Samuel and Kings was sternly critical and splendidly vera cious in comparison with the unlicensed freedom of this ' orthodox liar for God.' Everything that helps his case is made prominent. Everything that hinders it is cast into the shade. The persistent idolatry of the nation is scarcely mentioned, except where it is needed as a background to bring out the virtue of the kings who labored to suppress it. David and Solomon especially appear in such new 64 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. guise that they bear hardly the least resemblance to the David and Solomon of the earlier histories. Solomon had up to this time all the credit of build ing the temple, and originating its service, but in the popular imagination Solomon was no such pious king as David. What then does the Chronicler do but transfer to David the entire credit of the de sign of the temple, and the organization of the temple service? Nothing remains for Solomon but to carry out the plans of David. The fondness of Solomon for other forms of worship than that of Yahweh is passed over lightly, and made to appear the sin of his old age, and, in the same oriental spirit that makes Eve seduce her husband, his wives are charged with his defection. .Manasseh, whose reign lasted all the way from 695, B. C, to 640 — the longest reign of any king of Judah, and the most prosperous and peaceful — offered a very knotty problem to the Chronicler, who, with Ezekiel, believed that national prosperity depended on the faithful service of Yah weh, for Manasseh fostered all the abominations of the Canaanites. And so Manasseh is made to suffer captivity, and to repent in dust and ashes for his wickedness. But for neither repentance nor cap tivity is there any warrant in the earlier and more truthful histories. The story is perhaps the earliest prototype of a numerous class of famous recanta tions, of which Voltaire's and Thomas Paine's are modern illustrations, and equally without a particle of evidence. The conclusion to which we are compelled con cerning Chronicles is one which is but little to our THE HISTORIES. 65 taste, but it is a conclusion at which the most care ful and conservative scholarship arrived long since. To maintain their authority, and heighten their prestige, the Jewish priesthood stooped to falsify the characters of men, the course of history, attri buting the ceremonial inventions of their own time to the prevision of David and the inspiration of Yahweh. But surely there is nothing unexampled in this turpitude. We have no reason to suppose that the Jewish hierarchy was more truthful or honest than the Roman hierarchy of the middle ages, and we know that this concocted a whole batch of donations of Pepin and Charlemagne and Isidorian decretals to make good its ecclesiastical pretensions. For the Chronicler, as for the authors of Daniel and the Book of Origins, this only can be said, that " making history" appears to have been the order of the day, and literary conscience as un discovered yet as the Western Hemisphere or the telephone. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah in their present form are by the author of the Chronicles, and were written at the same time (post 300, B. C.) In fact they were originally a part of the Chronicles. But their value is much enhanced for us by the fact that they contain considerable portions of contem porary history, written by Ezra and Nehemiah. Not only is the time of which they write exceed ingly interesting and important, covering as it did the publication of the Law, but it succeeds to fifty- nine years of absolute silence, a silence carrying in its fruitful womb the germs of Ezra's reformation. 66 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. The book of Esther was one of the latest books received into the third division of the Jewish canon. It was received in spite of much misgiving. There was nothing religious in its tone. The name of God does not occur in it. But these scruples once conquered, it entered on a great career. To Chris tians the least perhaps of all the Old Testament books ; to Jews it has been one of the most precious. It has symbolized their national. exclusiveness, their hatred of their various oppressors. The object of this book was to naturalize in Judea the feast of Purim, a feast which Persian Jews would seem to have borrowed from the Persians. In order to in duce the Palestinian Jews to adopt this feast, the author of the book of Esther writes a purely ficti tious, but exceedingly affecting story, which pur ports to give the origin of the feast. In later times, as often as this feast has been celebrated in the Jewish synagogues, the place has rung with curses shouted by all the congregation, the reader of Es ther running together the names of all of Haman's sons, to indicate that they were strangled all at once, the boys making as much noise as possible with stones and blocks of wood, on which they have written Haman's odious name against the moment when the reader and the congreeation shout together, " Let his name be blotted out." Such are the books from which the history of Israel is to be gathered up. The task would be a hopeless one if we had not the writings of the prophets to set over against them for several cen turies ; if they did not furnish much unconscious THE HISTORIES. 6"J testimony to the inaccuracy of their own assump tions; if we could not read between the lines of the idealizing and perverting annalists. Thanks to the industry and patience of such scholars as Ewald and Kuenen, we are enabled to do this, and to arrive in consequence at certain definite results. I should like nothing better than to set forth these results with free elaboration, but this would need a course of lectures by itself. This evening I can do no more than set forth in the briefest manner the course of Israel's political and religious history. First, the political : In all strictness this does not begin until the Exodus from Egypt in 1320. And there are some things antecedent to the Exodus which we can dimly fashion. For centuries before the Exodus — such would appear to be the import of the patriarchal stories — Semitic hordes from be yond the Euphrates were pushing down into Arabia and Palestine and Egypt. Sometimes the races al ready in possession forced them back. The journey of Abraham was most likely the migration of a tribe, its starting point, Ur of the Chaldees, being about one hundred and fifty miles due south of modern Erzerum, on the south side of the Taurus. The journey of Jacob back into Haran was a great backward movement of the swaying mass ; his sub sequent return to Canaan another great migration. Joseph in Egypt possibly represents the first wave of migration into Egypt, followed ere long by that of kindred tribes. But these Hebrews, which means men from across — from across the Euphrates — were not the first Semitic tribes to go down. They were 68 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. the last. About 2100 B. C. lower Egypt was con quered by a Semitic race, which ruled over it till 1580, B. C, when it was driven out by the native Egyptians, who had maintained themselves in upper Egypt. At one time the Hebrews were identified with these Semitic rulers of Egypt, the Hyksos or Shepherd Kings. Josephus set the fashion of this way of thinking. It was very flattering to his na tional pride. The Hebrews were a later wave of immigration, and they remained in Egypt after the Shepherd Kings, of whom Joseph's Pharaoh was one, had gone. " A king arose who knew not Joseph." In other words the native Egyptians had re-con quered lower Egypt. So long as the Israelites could be kept contented they made a living wall between the banished Hyksos and the Egyptians. But they at last grew restless under the oppression of the great Rameses II. and under his son Menephtha (Amenophis.) they rebelled, and aided by the Hyksos they broke away from their allegiance, and resumed their old nomadic life. Such was the Ex odus, the Bible date of which is 1491. Instead of this date write 1320, as the best approximation we can make, by carefully comparing the Pentateuch and Manetho (anEgyptianhistorian), and the monu ments. The Hebrews of the Exodus were an aggregation of different tribes, more or less closely bound to gether by ties of blood and worship, but by no means a united nation. The towering personality of Moses was equal to the task of holding them to gether in the act of their rebellion and deliverance, THE HISTORIES. 69 but after that there was but little ot united action. The different tribes went each its way to plant and graze between the mountains of Seir and the Eu phrates. Some of them conquered the district east of the Jordan, with the help of the Moabites Several uniting under Joshua, assisted by the Midianites and Edomites, pushed their way into Canaan about forty years after the Exodus ; (perhaps nearer fifty than forty.) There was no sudden conquest ; there was no apportionment of the territory among the different tribes, though these things were imagined at a later day. The period of the Judges, extending about two hundred years from the invasion, was a period of anarchy and internecine wars among the tribes, some of which were at times subject to the Canaan ites, a people much more highly civilized than themselves. Now and then a judge like Gideon or Deborah succeeded in uniting two or more of the tribes against the common enemy, but oftener it was every tribe for itself, and the Canaanite took the hindmost. To Saul, the son of Kish, and of the tribe of Benjamin, belongs the glory, as to no other, of arousing the sentiment of nationality, and fusing the discordant tribal elements into a political unit. It was at no chance meeting that Samuel anointed him as king, but he proved himself a natural leader in many a hard fought battle with the Philistines, and then the people's acclamation was his best an ointing. His reign was short, but did him no dis honor. Somehow he was not fierce enough for 70 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. Samuel against the Canaanites, for it was Samuel's disposition to destroy them root and branch. Hence mutual alienation, and the withdrawal from Saul of the prophetic party, which attached itself to a rising captain of the tribe of Judah, David, the son of Jesse. Defeated in a battle with the Philistines, Saul took his life with his own hand. David was a man after Yahweh's own heart ; that is he exactly suited the prophets. He had none of Saul's scru ples about slaughtering the Canaanites. Coming to the throne in 1058 B. C, he ruled with varying for tunes till 1018 B. C, a period of forty years. Tak ing Jerusalem, he set up his court there, and organ ized it with a rude magnificence. But his throne was not a comfortable seat. There were conspira tors on the right hand and on the left. He had his band of foreign mercenaries to protect him. With many wives came many jealousies, and the rebellion of his sons. But he was every inch a king, and con solidated the nation, and subdued its enemies, and utilized the zeal alike of priests and prophets. His reigri and Solomon's of equal length, with Saul's two years, cover the entire period of the united monarchy. The splendor of Solomon's reign pre pared and hastened the catastrophe. He was an oriental despot, pure and simple ; a secular mon arch ; indifferent to religion save as it ministered to his love of pageantry. Immediately upon his death the kingdom split asunder. The Northern Kingdom was much more unstable than the South ern. Every little while a king or dynasty was over turned, and the event was signalized by indiscrim- THE HISTORIES. 7\ mate slaughter of the weaker party. Hitherto the Israelites had fought among themselves, or with their Semitic neighbors. But now began to loom up in the East those mighty monarchies, Assyria and Babylon, and ere long the Semitic genius was confronted, in the form of Persia, with that Aryan genius, with which it was one day to marry, and bring forth the stalwart brood of modern civiliza tion. The first contact of Judah with her Semitic cousins* was not pleasantly suggestive. " The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold." He kept on coming. In fact Judah invited him to protect her against Israel. In 719 the Northern Kingdom, after a separate existence of two hundred and fifty-nine years, ceased to exist, and ten tribes out of the original twelve pass out of history into the realm of wildest possible vaga ries. The Southern Kingdom enjoyed another cen tury of comparative prosperity, but just as she had committed herself, at the instigation of Josiah, to Yahweh's keeping, as never before, and looked to him to conquer all her enemies, in came the Egyp tians, soon followed by the Chaldeans, and in 586, B. C, Judah followed Ephraim into captivity. From this time forward Judea, from a political point of view, was not of much account. Henceforth its history is the history of a religion, not of a state. In 536, B. C, a colony of the captives came back to Jerusalem, and rebuilt the temple, so mean a copy of the first that the old men who had seen that * The Assyrians and Chaldeans were Semitic peoples, with an infusion of Akkadian (probably Turanian) blood. 72 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. wept at the sight of this, but a larger and better part of the exiles preferred their new home to the old. The government at Jerusalem was a govern ment of priests, under the generous patronage of the Persian monarchy. When Persia succumbed to Alexander the Great, Judea passed into his hands in 332, B. C. Upon his death it fell to the share of the Egyptian Ptolemies, though not without a struggle, which ended in 301. A century of Egyp tian rule was followed in 203, B. C, by the rule of the Syrian Selucidae, another remnant of Alexan der's Empire. Antiochus Epiphanes,* the reigning king, attempting to crush out the Jewish religion, roused so much opposition, headed by Judas Mac- cabaeus, that in 164, B.C., Jerusalem was recaptured, and in 138 the independence of Judea was acknow ledged. Next, in 63, B. C, came the Roman Pom- pey, and in 37 the Idumean (Edomite) Herod, who, with the help of Rome, made himself king. Still for another century Judea fretted under the galling yoke, and then broke out once more in flat rebel lion, only suppressed with the destruction of Jeru salem and the extinction of the Jewish state, in the year 70 of the Christian era. Thus you will see the cycle of Jewish history from 1320 B. C. the date of the Exodus, to 70, A. D., lacked but ten years of fourteen centuries. If Israel had nothing for us but this political his tory, though these dry bones were clothed in palpi tating flesh, her career would have for us but little fascination. But parallel with this political history * The Illustrious ; a favorite pun made it Epimanes, the Mad. THE HISTORIES. 73 runs a. religious history of commanding interest, and ol unique importance. Even the poh'tical history of Israel upon examination proves to be very dif ferent from popular conceptions, but the religious history differs from these more widely still, for ac cording to these conceptions even the patriarchs were monotheists of so pure an order that for Moses to reveal a purer God than theirs would seem im possible. To Moses again is attributed a lofty spiritual monotheism, intolerance of all idolatry, and the promulgation of every legal precept in the books of Deuteronomy and Numbers and Leviticus. To the early prophets also is attributed a mono theism as lofty and spiritual as that of Isaiah and Micah and the Great Unknown of the captivity. Compelled to see that the idolatrous worship of Yahweh and the worship of other gods was never rooted out till after the captivity, all this is com monly regarded as a lapse from some primeval purity of faith and worship. The scientific study of the Bible leads the modern student to conclusions very different from these. He learns that the monotheism of patriarchal times was purely imaginary ; a reflection back upon those times of men's beliefs who lived centuries later. The religion of Israel, like that of every other people, began in fetichism, pure and simple, in the deification and worship of petty natural objects, trees and stones. These trees and stones were afterwards adopted into the higher faith, and interpreted as monuments set up in honor of Yahweh, or as mark ing the site of some appearance of the deity to man. 74 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. The tribes in Goshen had already risen above fe- tichism for the most part, or at least to some ex tent, into nature worship.* But the worship of many gods does not preclude special devotion to one. The principal God of Israel in Egypt was a god of light and fire, a dreadful god, much more closely akin to the Ammonitish Molech and the Moabitish Chemosh than to the Phenician Baal. The fiercer and gloomier aspects of nature were those in which the Israelites saw the lineaments of their deity. And so conceiving him, they wor shipped him with cruel rites, with human sacrifices. The dedication of the first born and circumcisionf were rites that could have had their origin only in the brutal worship of a deity brutally conceived. The principal god was worshipped under the image of a bull, and the bull worship of Yahweh continued in the Northern Kingdom until its extinction in 719. The festival of the new moon dated from the old nature worship, and the institution of the Sabbath from the dedication of every seventh day to Kewan or Saturn, also worshipped as a god. It is most likely that the names El Shaddai, Adonai, Elohim and Yahweh were at first names of different gods. The idols called teraphim, which were in common use till after David's time, were idols of one or the other of these gods. David was not so good a Yahwehist but that he had one in his house. *The worship of the great forms and aspects and forces of nature : Polytheism when the deity is abstracted from the object or force. \ A part for the whole : the underlying principle of all sacrificial mutilation. See Herbert Spencer's Principles of Sociology ; Cere monial Government, III. ; Mutilations. THE HISTORIES. 75 The function of Moses was not only that of a deliverer. He was a religious enthusiast. He se lected Yahweh from all the gods of the Israelites, as the one most worthy of honor. Why he did this we cannot tell. Perhaps he was the god of his own tribe. But his great service was to connect the worship of him with morality. He did this in the ten commandments. But Moses was no monothe- ist. He believed that there were many gods, but that only one should be worshipped. Nor did he object to the idolatrous worship of Yahweh. The commandment against this was of much later origin. From Moses' time to Hosea's, a period of five hundred years, monolatry, the worship of one God, and that God Yahweh, was the loftiest ideal of Israel's religion. And even this was an ideal too lofty for any general realization, though it did not demand any lofty conception of the god, nor his worship without an image. Samuel was a stout monolatrist. No god for him but Yahweh. But he could offer a human sacrifice to him with perfect confidence. Elijah and Elisha were stout monola- trists. No god for them but Yahweh. But, appa rently, his worship under the form of a bull never impressed them as wrong, or even doubtful. And Samuel and Elijah and Elisha were none of them monotheists. They never doubted the existence of Baal and Chemosh and Milcom and Molech. It was reserved for the great prophets of the eighth century to do this. I have said that even monolatry, the exclusive worship of Yahweh, and this too with the use of 76 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. images, was too lofty an ideal for general realiza tion. The worship of other gods with him was commoner than the exclusive worship of Yahweh. Not only the common people were guilty of it, but the kings of both Ephraim and Judah, again and again. Under the house of Omri, in the North, the Baal worship threatened to subvert the Yahweh worship altogether. Witness the motley worship of Solomon and Ahaz and Manasseh. The pillars of Ashera were everywhere planted in the vicinity of Yahweh's altars, and invited men to practice her licentious rites. In the eighth century before Christianity the prophets arrived, for the first time in the religious history of Israel, at the purely monotheistic idea: that there was only one God, and that he was the creator of the universe, and that he must be wor shipped without any image ; that he was a righteous God, and was best worshipped with the sacrifices of righteousness. Without these the blood of bulls and goats was a mockery of him, which he abhorred. They did not convince their fellow countrymen of this at once. The seventh century B. c. saw but little improvement. But as it drew near its close the prophets and the Levitical priests united their forces, and embodied their idea in the book of Deu teronomy. The idea was that the true worship of Yahweh consisted in sacrifices and righteousness. Only the sacrifices must be offered in the temple at Jerusalem, and there only. The religion of the country was violently reformed, even that of the northern provinces, on which Assyria had somewhat THE HISTORIES. 7 7 relaxed her hold. Surely the day of Yahweh was at hand. But first the day of the Chaldean. In 586, B. c, the temple was destroyed, and the best of the people followed the 10,000 who had gone in 597, B. c, into captivity. The period of Israel's non-existence as a nation was the period of her most intense religious activity. The fruits of this activity were the prophetic* histo ries of Samuel and Kings, the prophecies of Ezekiel, the loftier prophecies of the Deutero-Isaiah, and the great Book of Origins. All this was done at Babylon, the books of Samuel perhaps excepted. And from this time forward the religious life of Israel, especially in its literary form, was more active in Babylon than in Judea. It was here that that wonderful growth, the Talmud, was most carefully fostered. It was here that the institution of the Synagogue arose, an institution of which our Chris tian Churches are direct descendants, as are our ministers of the scribes, who were the teachers in the synagogues, the expounders of the Law. For fifty-nine years the religious history of Israel, as well as the political, is a blank — from 5i6f to 457, B. C. — when Ezra arrived in Jerusalem with 1500 men, besides a number of priests and levites. In 445 Nehemiah followed, and soon after these to gether published the Pentateuch in much its present form, the levitical law of Numbers and Leviticus now making its first appearance. Not amid the thun ders of Sinai, but amid the thunders of Babylon was the Law delivered ; and not to Moses, but to * Written from the prophetic standpoint. f When the second temple was completed. 78 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. some daring innovator, whose fame would have been fatal to his work. The publication of the Law announced the death of prophecy. The wor ship of the letter succeeded to the freedom of the spirit. The new order was in reality the last result of that compromise between prophetism and the priest, which the book of Deuteronomy had signal ized. Then the priests had the best of it. Now they had everything their own way. But the religious development of Judaism had not yet arrived at its conclusion. Persian influ ences made themselves felt. Hence doctrines of angels and the devil ; hence also the doctrine of a future life, and of the resurrection of the body. Nor was the political cycle of Judaism completed until it had developed on the religious side into the Christianity of Jesus and of Paul, a magnificent re volt against the worship of the letter, the subordi nation of righteousness to formal worship, and the exclusiveness which even prophetism had done much to nourish. I thoroughly appreciate how different this presen tation of the matter is from the conceptions of the popular theology. We have here in these Old Tes tament histories no supernatural writings. More natural were never written ; nor more human either. They are human in their errors, in their false pre tensions, in their thousand imperfections, but also in their grandeur and simplicity, their infinite and nameless charm. And so with the religion. It is no ladder let down. It is no supernatural revela tion. It is built from the earth up with various THE HISTORIES. 79 blunder and mishap. It is an evolution, step by step, from small and poor beginnings to such con clusions as are still remote. From fetichism and nature worship up to the filial heart of Jesus! It took a little more than thirteen centuries for the religious sentiment to journey from the first of these points to the last. That was not very long, it seems to me, for such a journey. In the joy of its completion, is it not almost pleasant to remem ber the hundred glooms and terrors of the way ? THIRD LECTURE. THE LAW : MOSES AND THE PENTATEUCH. The subject of my lecture this evening is a sub- ject within a subject. The more general and inclu sive subject is Moses and the Pentateuch. The more particular and included subject is the Law. In the Jewish division of the Old Testament into the Law, the Prophets and the Writings, the first division, the Law, corresponds to the Pentateuch. (Originally it corresponded to the Pentateuch plus the book of Joshua?) But the Pentateuch, strictly speaking, contains a good deal which is not law, but history. Of this historic element in the Penta teuch I spoke with some fullness in my last lecture, so that I might properly enough devote myself en tirely to the legal element this evening. But I am aware that some of you fancied that I disposed somewhat too summarily of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and I am not sorry to repeat myself concerning a matter the bearings of which I might easily fail to impress upon you in a single lecture. By the Pentateuch, as doubtless you are all aware, is meant the first five books of the Old Testament, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The word Pentateuch does not mean. 80 THE LA IF. 8 1 however, the five books, but the five-fold book. The origin of this division is unknown, except that it was Greek, and not Hebrew, and therefore must have been subsequent to the Septuagint transla tion, and not before the beginning of the Christian era. The division is generally agreed to be quite arbitrary. A three-fold division, Ewald thinks, would be more natural, thus: I. Genesis; 2. Exo dus, Leviticus and Numbers ; 3. Deuteronomy. But even this would correspond to no definite lines of authorship. The five books as they stand at pre sent are really one great book. — e filuribus unum, we shall soon conclude, needing the book of Joshua to make it a more perfect unit. So few, even of the most conservative scholars, are at the present time disposed to contend for the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch in its present form, that it is difficult to believe that within a few years the denial of this has been regarded as a hor rible offence against the Bible and religion, and that in the majority of Christian pulpits the Mosaic authorship is still confidently assumed. First of all consider very briefly the history of the contro versy. Doubts of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch were entertained by a few distinguished scholars (notably by Jerome, decidedly the scholar, and almost the only one with any critical percep tion) among the fathers of the Church. But then for more than a thousand years the Mosaic author ship had full credit. Late in the seventeenth cen tury we find Hobbes, the English philosopher of the Restoration, throwing doubt upon it, and 82 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. Spinoza, the father of modern criticism, what ever be his rank as a philosopher, was still more explicit in the same direction. But the controversy, which has since been so protracted and so violent, was not fairly inaugurated until As- true, a French physician, in 1753, announced the discovery of two parallel documents in Genesis, characterized by different designations of the deity. This discovery was at once allowed by various crit ics, but strenuously denied by others. Little by little the theory of the fragmentary composition of the Pentateuch gained ground, until now it would be difficult to find a scholar of even respectable ability who would not concede that if the bulk of the Pentateuch came originally from the hands of Moses, this bulk has since his time been subject to much alteration and enlargement. The existence of the different documents is almost universally allowed, and, when it is denied, the denial is sup ported with such elaborate ingenuity as is its own sufficient refutation. The formal designation of the different fragments which have been combined to form the Pentateuch, has been carried further by Ewald than by any other scholar. He contends for at least eight different documents united in the Pentateuch, the most considerable of which are the Book of Covenants, the Book of Origins, or Elohistic document, a couple of prophetic narrations of the primitive history, and the book of Deuteronomy. Besides all these there was a final redactor or editor, whose task it was to fuse these different documents into their present unity. This theory THE LA IV. 83 of Ewald has not been very generally accepted as a whole by subsequent scholars, to many of whom it has seemed too nice in. its discriminations. But many of its features, and these the most important, have found very general acceptance. Of these are the separate existence of the Book of Covenants {Exo dus, XXI — XXHL, 19) ; the separate existence of the Book of Origins, or Elohistic document ; the separate existence of one or more prophetic narrations of the primitive histories ; the separate existence of the book of Deuteronomy. The most general agreement is in regard to the distinct character and the date (circum 620) of Deuteronomy. The next most gen eral is in regard to the separate and peculiar char acter of the Book of Origins. Its limits too are pretty well agreed upon, though it runs in and out through all the rest, from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Joshua. The most doubtful points in the controversy at the present time are concern ing the age of the Book of Origins, and as to the prophetic narrations; whether there is more than one, and if so, what are their limits. In regard to this last point it surely will not do to be dogmatic. The most important question of all concerning the Pentateuch is the age and general trustworthiness of the Book of Origins. And here, it seems to me, the opinion of Ewald has been effectually disproved by later critics. It was his opinion that this important fragment of the Pentateuch was written in the time of Solomon. It is the opinion of later critics that it originated in Babylon, for the most part after the return of the first colony of captives to Jerusalem, in 536, B C. 84 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. These last results are far enough from the con- ventional belief that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, and wrote it all, even to the account of his own death, by supernatural inspiration, but they have been reached by a process of critical evolution, which has admitted of no leaps. Little by little successive scholars have modified the opinions of their predecessors, until the satisfactory results of Kuenen and his school have been developed. Even these may not be final. Many of their details no doubt are capable of better explication. But in the main they constitute an order in criticism as new and irreversible as in astronomy the discover)'- by Copernicus of the motion of the earth around the sun. Turning now from the history of the controversy to its merits, the wonder is that so many scholars have argued so laboriously to disprove a theory which never had any critical standing-room what ever, but rested wholly on a late and irresponsible tradition. Not until about the time when Chris tianity arose, some 1300 years after the death of Moses, did the tradition obtain currency that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch. The tradition originated at this time in the schools of the Rab bis, and. was one of a circle of traditions which ascribed various books, or sets of books, in the Old Testament to those who figured in them most con siderably. Thus the book of Joshua was ascribed to Joshua, and the books of Samuel to Samuel. But so uncritical were the Jewish Rabbis, that a tradition 0/ theirs on a point of this sort well nigh THE LAW. 8jj affords its own sufficient refutation. It would hardly be too much to say that their decisions in regard to the authorship of doubtful books were always wrong. How could they well be otherwise, when their ideas of proof were much the same as those of the early Christian fathers; if anything, yet more irrational ! And one of these, Irenaeus, argued that there must be four Gospels, and no more, be cause the wind blew from four quarters, and there were four parts to the cross ; and another, Gregory the Great, finds the twelve Apostles and the clergy in the seven sons of Job, and the lay worshippers of the Trinity in his three daughters. If Moses were indeed the author of the Penta teuch, we should naturally expect to find a good many hints of this in other parts of the Bible. Even in the New Testament, which was, of course, written after the tradition of the Mosaic authorship had obtained general currency, there is no single statement that necessarily implies that Moses was the author. And if there were a thousand, they would all have as much value, and no more, as the tradition upon which they were based. The writers of the New Testament had no more aptitude for criticism than the Jewish Rabbis and the early Christian fathers. Paul, the most scholarly among them, had been a pupil of the Rabbis, and his methods of Biblical interpretation were the Rab binical methods. Turning to the Old Testament, we find that even a tradition of the Mosaic authorship of the Penta teuch is nowhere to be found. A modern writer 86 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. says, " The Pentateuch expressly claims to be the work of Moses." For proof we are referred to various passages in Deuteronomy. But now that criticism has detached the book of Deuteronomy from the rest of the. Pentateuch, these passages must be regarded as referring to the book of Deuteronomy alone, and the book of Deuteronomy is the very por tion of the Pentateuch which the most various critics have declared is not Mosaic. But even if these pas sages, or any others in the Pentateuch asserted the Mosaic authorship of the whole with unequivocal distinctness, such testimony would go for little in comparison with the internal evidence afforded by the Pentateuch itself. For we know it was the cus tom of writers, for hundreds of years before and after the beginning of the Christian era, to ascribe their books to celebrated persons in the hope of giving them a wider currency and insuring for them a larger measure of authority. Whether they could do this conscientiously it is difficult to determine. But that they did do it, more than one book in either Testament bears ample witness. The testimony to the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, beyond its own limits in the Old Testa ment, is feeble in the extreme. The passages are very few in number, and in them such expressions as, " the Book of the Law of Moses * " are suffi ciently explained as referring to Deuteronomy, with the exception of those which occur in Chronicles and Malachi and Nehemiah, which were manifestly written after the completion of the PentateucJu *n. Kings, xiv., 6. THE LA W. 87 But such expressions, even when referring to the Pentateuch as a whole, do not imply that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, but only that " the law " con tained in it was promulgated by Moses. Whether it was is a question which we cannot entertain at present, while our concern is not with the origin of the Law, but with the authorship of the Pentateuch. It is a remarkable fact that in all the writings of the prophets, who are commonly supposed to have planted themselves firmly on the law of Moses, the name of Moses occurs only four times : once in Micah, once in Jeremiah, once in the Deutero-Isaiah, and once in Malachi; and Malachi, the last of the prophets, is the only prophet who makes any reference whatever to the law of Moses. There is then nowhere in the Bible even an un- mistakeable tradition of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, though if there were, it would be no sufficient testimony in the teeth of so much oppo sition furnished by the internal evidences of the book itself to its diverse and post-Mosaic origin. These I will briefly summarize, and then proceed to state some of the positive results of scientific criti cism in regard to the gradual development of the Pentateuch into its present form. I must confess however that it is with some re luctance that I spend our precious time in adducing arguments against a theory in favor of which there is no argument whatever, only a groundless preju- dice and a tradition stamped by the mint from which it came as counterfeit. The first internal evidences of non-Mosaic author- 88 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. ship by which Biblical scholars were arrested, were those furnished by historical, geographical, archaeo logical and explanatory passages implying a differ ent state of things from that which existed in the time of Moses. For a sample of such passages take, " And the Canaanite was then in the land." {Genesis, XIL, 6.) Evidently this was written after the expulsion of the Canaanite which was not com pleted for several centuries after the death of Moses. There are many similar passages. In Gen esis, XXXVI. 31, we read, " Before there reigned any king over the land of Israel." Evidently this was written after the establishment of the kingdom, and so at least two hundred years after the death of Moses. " The nations that were before you," in Leviticus, XVIII., 28, of course, implies that the Canaanites have been already conquered. " Now the man Moses was very meek above all the men that were upon the face of the earth." Very learned critics can convince themselves that Moses wrote this, but they cannot convince any unlearned person of ordinary common sense. The formula unto this day in its connection is frequent proof that the writer's time is long subsequent to the events which he narrates. Again, there are various pas sages in the Pentateuch, implying that their author was a resident of Palestine, and so could not be Moses. In Deuteronomy, XIX., 14, we read, " Thou shalt not remove thy neighbor's land-mark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance;" In Leviticus, XXVL, 34, 35, — 43, neglect to keep the Sabbath in the past for a long time, is snoken of as a THE LA W. 89 reason for the captivity. Critics contending for the Mosaic authorship have sometimes tried to break the force of these and many similar passages, by calling them interpolations. But as there is not the least reason for regarding them as such, except that they do not harmonize with the theory of Mosaic authorship, it is a manifest begging of the question to resort to such a theory. There are things omitted as well as things in serted, which do not tally with the authorship of Moses. The most notable of these is the omission of any account whatever of thirty-eight years out of the forty, during which the Israelites were wander ing in the wilderness. In Numbers, XX., 1, the Is raelites come to Kadesh, where Miriam dies. In the twenty-second verse they remove from Kadesh and come to Mount Hor. But these events, we learn from a subsequent chapter, were thirty-eight years apart. What must we infer if not that the Pentateuch was written so long after the Exodus and the time of Moses that all tradition even of those eight and thirty years had faded from the mem ories of men. The next and most important argument for the post-Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is the ex istence within its limits of at least* two leading documents. These are known to critics as the Elohistic and Yahwehistic, or Jehovistic, documents,- because in one of them the use of the, name Yahweh for the god of Israel is carefully avoided until Exodus VI., 2, 3, where it is told how the god revealed him- *An older Elohist document can also be detected. See page 98. go THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. self to Moses by his name Yahweh, by which he had not before been known, while in the other the names Yahweh and Elohim are used indifferently throughout the book of Genesis. After Exodus, VI., 2, 3, the Elohistic writer also uses the two names indifferently, and so it becomes more difficult to keep the two documents distinct. It may be sometimes quite impossible. But having once been put upon the scent of the two documents by the different divine names, we discover that this difference is but the smallest part of all the difference that exists be tween them ; and, the nature of this further differ ence having been discovered by it, we can track the different documents up to Deuteronomy, in the con cluding parts of which there are a few verses of the Elohist, and then on again all through the book of Joshua. On the very threshold of the Pentateuch we are confronted by these diverse documents. Thus in Genesis, I. — II., 3, we have one account of the crea tion, and in Genesis II., 4, — III., 24, another, which is widely different. The first of these is Elohistic ; the second Yahwehistic. Again, in Genesis VI. — IX., we have two entirely different accounts of the flood. But it would be very wearisome to continue the enumeration. In Davidson's Introduction to the Old Testament you will find a careful list of all the Elo histic and Yahwehistic passages. And in the majority of cases by referring to them in the Bible, you will be able to discover for yourselves the lines of de- marcaticn, for both the manner and the spirit of these two documents are indeed very different. THE LA W. 9 1 The Yahwehistic is much the fresher, simpler, more spontaneous. It tells the patriarchal stories in their most engaging forms. The Elohistic docu ment, or Book of Origins, is much more studied, formal and artificial in its character. But the great difference between the two is that one (the Yah wehistic) is dominated throughout by the prophetic spirit, while the other is dominated throughout by the priestly spirit in its levitical form. All of the levitical legislation of Numbers and Leviticus is in the Book of Origins* But allowing the existence of these different doc uments, and their difference of method and aim, may not Moses have united them into their present form ? Not if it proves, as we shall yet discover, that the separate documents came into being long after his time : the Yahwehistic document some five hundred, and the Elohistic some eight hundred years. * The German critic, Hengstenberg, was in his day easily first of all the great protagonists of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch and its literary and moral unity. The most ingenious of critics, he was the least ingenuous. Compelled to acknowledge that the use of the different divine names was not always accidental, he resorted to the most fanciful hypotheses to prove that it was always intentional. Thus Eve says in Genesis, IV., i : "I have gotten a man with the help of Jehovah," and in the same chapter, verse 25 : " God hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel." Whereupon Hengsten berg refines upon the different divine names in the following manner: "At the birth of Abel, Eve's consciousness of the divine presence and Being is particularly v.vid. By inflicting punishment God has shown Himself to be Jehovah ; as Jehovah also He is recognized in the benefit. In the birth of her first son Eve discovers a dear pledge of his favor. At that of Seth this feeling is not a little qualified She merely recognizes a general divine influence, and the natural ness of the event does not appear to her, as in the first event, entirely in the background." When a critic must ascribe to Eve such psy chological niceties as these, in order to maintain his case, is it not evidently time for him to give it up ? 92 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. Besides the reasons named already for the non. Mosaic and diverse authorship of the Pentateuch, others might easily be named. Thus it abounds in duplicate etymologies, and in duplicate traditions of the same transaction, and also in diversities and contradictions. The numerous repetitions of the legal prescriptions is fatal to the supposition that the whole was written by one who stood in any such relation to these prescriptions as is ascribed to Moses in the text. But not only are these pre scriptions repeated ; they are developed. In the Book of Covenants (Exodus XXI. — XXIII., 19), in Deu teronomy, and in the Book of Origins, we have three different sets of laws, corresponding to these differ ent stages of development : the first not levitical at all ; the next somewhat more so, but not very markedly ; the third intensely and exclusively so. That Moses could have published all of them is in conceivable. The first appears to have been pub lished soon after the disruption of the Kingdom (circum 900, B. c.) ; the second in the time of King Josiah (621, B. a), and the third by Ezra and Nehe miah, in 445, B. c. Here then we may safely leave a question which already has detained us far too long. As there is nothing on the other side but a tradition and a prejudice, enough has already been said to convince those who are unprejudiced, and who know. the value of Rabbinical traditions. But if Moses did not write the Pentateuch, is there no part of it which can be ascribed to him with perfect confi dence ? Between the two extremes — that he wrote all THE LA W. 93 of it ; that he wrote none of it — a hundred different theories could easily disport themselves, ascribing to Moses different degrees of authorship. But the most able critics, and those least anxious to deceive themselves, assure us that the negative extreme is unavoidable. They do not deny that there are laws and regulations and ideas in the Pentateuch stamped by the genius of Moses, but of nothing written there can we be certain that he shaped it' in its present form. In the Ten Commandments we approach him most nearly. These we have in two versions, the version in Deuteronomy being much more expanded than that in Exodus. But even the less expanded one, we have reason to be lieve, is much fuller than the original version. The Old Testament, in the original Hebrew, speaks of ten words, and not of ten commandments. Such a designation certainly does not apply to anything so full as either of the versions that have come down to us. Moreover we have eleven words, al though but ten commandments, " I am Yahweh, thy God," being undoubtedly one of the words. What then shall be excluded ? Evidently that portion which so expressly forbids the worship of images of Yahweh, for, seeing that the image worship of Yahweh was kept up by the most zealous followers of Moses for six hundred years after his time, — see ing that such great prophets as Elijah and Elisha never questioned the rightfulness of such worship, it is impossible to believe that one of the original words of Moses was an express prohibition of such worship. With this exception, and in a much sim- 94 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. pier form than they have assumed in the Pentateuch, the ten words may confidently be regarded as the contribution of Moses to the religion of Israel. And although so meagre in its quantity, it was, indeed, a splendid contribution. It demanded a moral worship of Yahweh. It declared the bans between religion and morality. This was an ines timable service. But it was not the only service which Moses rendered to his people. From an array of many gods he chose the sternest and the purest for their national God, and demanded for him their undivided allegiance. But this is already signified in the first word: I, Yahweh, am thy God. What he did more than this was to fuse the differ ent tribes into a unity, compact enough, for the time being, to brave the wrath of Egypt, and break away from her intolerable oppressions. And to do this he must have been as god-like in his make as Michael Angelo has fashioned him.* " If Moses didn't write the Pentateuch, who did?" demands the supernaturalist. Alas ! we cannot an swer him. Apparently there was no vanity of au thorship in those good old times. With the excep tion of the prophetic writings, the books of the Old Testament are almost all anonymous. There is this at least to be said for those who, like the authors of Daniel and Deuteronomy, put forth their own writ ings as the writings of illustrious men who had lived long before — there is this at least to be said for them : it was not for themselves that they desired * The horns in Michael Angelo's statue of Moses are an attribute of Zeus. THE LA IV. 95 the honor and authority which would accrue from such a course ; no, but only for the word they had to speak, the cause they wished to serve. If only this might prosper, they were willing to remain for ever in obscurity. And there they have remained until this day. The authors of Samuel, Kings, Chronicles are all unknown to us. The greatest too of all the prophets is, and must ever be, the Great Unknown.* And with the Pentateuch it is just the same. The Yahwehist, the Elohist, the Deuterono mist, — men who created, or at least collected, a liter ature which has had a more commanding influence than any other on the fortunes of the world, the fountain-head of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are all unknown to us. They died to fame that Israel might live for righteousness, and for the honor of her god. Of a hundred things that we should like to know in regard to the gradual evolution of the Pentateuch into its present form we must remain forever ignorant, but these are for the most part matters of mere curiosity. There is very little about it that is really important which is not now accessible to lovers of good books. We must not hope to learn anything very definite about the Pentateuch in the first stages of its growth. The ten words of Moses were per haps the nucleus around which laws and legends soon began to cluster. Perhaps there are a few of these laws and legends that date back to Moses' time ; some of the legends very possibly date back even farther. Certain mythical elements which they * Isaiah, XL.— LVI. 96 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. contain do unmistakeably. There are various traces in the Pentateuch of writings older than any of its principal component parts. Two of these are men tioned by name, the book of Jasher and the book of the Wars of Yahweh. The acknowledged quotations from these books are very brief, but Ewald thinks we can discover many others which are not acknowl edged. But even the book of Jasher, (Jasher means " the upright"), a picture of an ideal king, was proba bly written after the time of David ; and the book of the Wars of Yahweh was as late or later in its origin. Ewald would also persuade us that there are various fragments of an unnamed Biography of Moses scat tered along throughout the Pentateuch as we now have it. One of these fragments is, he thinks, the list of camp stations in Numbers XXI., which the Book of Origins in Numbers XXXIII., develops in its usual manner. The truth which underlies these over-nice discriminations of Ewald is doubtless this : that many an ancient book of songs and legends contri buted its mite into the treasury of the principal Pentateuch documents. " Many voices were there ; unknown voices speaking out of the early dawn." The learned may attempt to fix the limits of these contributions, but the wise will not attach to their conclusions any great importance. The earliest document of any considerable length which the critics have succeeded in distinguishing from the adjoining portions of the Pentateuch, is one to which I have incidentally referred already several times, Exodus XXI.-XXIW., 19, the Book of Cove nants, so-called by the critics, following Exodus THE LA IV. 97 xxiv., 7. The narrative in the midst of which it oc curs is in the Yahwehistic document, and was writ ten subsequent to the fall of Northern Israel. But the Book of Covenants itself was a production of the first century after the disruption of the kingdom. It is a very interesting document. The most notable thing about it is that the priestly element occupies a very subordinate place in it. Its precepts in re gard to feasts and sacrifices are very few and simple even in comparison with those of Deuteronomy, to say nothing of the solemn trifling of the Book of Origins. The matters mainly insisted on are moral and social. The treatment of slaves occupies the first place. The penal code would now be consid ered harsh in the extreme, but it was extremely mild for the time of its appearance. Even the pro vision " An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," was evidently meant to guard againt more violent reprisals. Among the social regulations there are many that bespeak a tenderness which argues well for those who made them : " Thou shalt neither vex a stranger nor oppress him, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." * " If thou meet thine enemy's ox or ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him. And if thou see the ass of him that hateth thee, lying under his burden and wouldst for bear to help him thou shalt surely help him."f There is much more of the same sort. And notice, too, the reason given for the observance of the sabbath : " that thine ox and thine ass may rest and the son * Exodus XXII., 21. f Exodus XXIII. , 5. 98 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. of thine hand-maid and the stranger may be re freshed." How unlike the reason subseqjently given in the Book of Origins : because Yahweh made the world in six days and rested on the seventh. From this point onward the history of the devel opment of the Pentateuch is at the same time the history of the development of what has now been known for twenty-three hundred years as the Law of Moses. The Book of Covenants is the first con siderable installment of that Law, and, so far from having been promulgated upon Sinai's top, it was the offspring of progressive social inspiration four hundred years or more after the death of Moses. The next step in the development of the Pentateuch was, so to speak, a double one, but though a real stride so far as the development of the Pentateuch was concerned it was not much of an advance in the development of its legal elements. It corresponds to the formation of the great Yahwehistic document, together with another document ultimately amalga mated with it. I call it a double step because of the union of these two documents in its scope. This second document* was called the Junior Elohist, so long as the great Elohistic document which consti tutes the Book of Origins was supposed to antedate it. But we are now obliged if we accept the theory of Kuenen in regard to the Book of Origins to call it the older Elohist, for it was certainly written as early as the eighth century B. C, while the Book of Origins was not written till the fifth. We call * Steadily ignored by Kuenen, but accepted by other critics of hiy school. THE LA IV. 99 its author the older Elohist, because like the writer of the Book of Origins he refrains from using the name Yahweh for his god, until the time of Moses. He never lets the generations before Moses speak of Yahweh or offer sacrifices, while the Yahwehist does this with perfect freedom. This older Elohist is a great believer in dreams, while the Yahwehist never mentions them, and the later Elohist is openly opposed to them. All the dream stories about the patriarchs are from his hand and therefore the greater part of the story of Joseph, which hinges almost entirely upon dreams. I suppose the child ren would wish that he had written the whole Bible and will consider the great Elohist of the Book of Origins very stupid in comparison with him. PI is document and that of the Yahwehist are so run to gether that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish them, but for the most part they are joined so clumsily, and so many contradictory passages are left standing side by side, that a careful critic can generally detect the lines of separation. The differences between the Yahwehist and the older Elohist are many, but their agreement is much more conspicuous, so that it was by no mere acci dent that they were ultimately fused together. They agree in being equally representative of the prophetic spirit and equally fond of rehearsing the legends of their race and their religion. The older Elohist is supposed to have been a native of North ern Israel,* the Yahwehist of Judah. To them we *His elaboration of the Joseph story suggests this clearly enough, Joseph the father of Manasseh and Ephraim, the two great Northern tribes, was of course a Northern hero. IOO THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. are indebted for the legends of the patriarchs in their most picturesque and interesting forms, very different from the bald summaries of the Book of Origins which in the book of Chronicles degenerated into a mere list of names, " Adam, Sheth, Enosh, Kenan," and so on. We speak of the Yahwehist and older Elohist, but it is not probable that any one man did very much of the work necessary to the construction of these documents. They were not a manufacture, but a growth. The schools of the prophets were points of attraction around which songs and laws and legends naturally clustered. For a long time these were transmitted orally, receiving constant modifications and improvements, as more and more the ideal of the prophets was reflected back upon the nation's past, and then, when in the course of the eighth century the prophets became writers, they began to write down the songs and laws and legends which they had inherited, and as they wrote they still kept on improving. And so it happened that in the course of the eighth century, B. C, the Yahwehistic and older Elohistic collections of legends were written down at different centres of prophetic enthusiasm, and afterwards joined togeth er in a hap-hazard way, and the Book of Covenants was incorporated with them. And still the Penta teuch was not half written, and of the so-called Law of Moses only a much smaller fraction. The literary outcome of such methods of trans mission and development cannot, in any strict sense of the word, be spoken of as history. The Republic of Plato and the Utopia of Sir Thomas More are THE LAW. 10 1 hardly less historical than the prophetic portions of the Pentateuch. As those express the spiritual ideas of their writers, so do these. We saw in our last lec ture how the Chronicler recast the history of the king dom in the interest of his priestly theories and shall see the same phenomenon again to-night, in the com position of the Book of Origins. But it must not be imagined that the priests monopolized the practice of recasting history in order that they might "hitch it to some useful end." They did this more deliber ately than the prophets, but hardly more efficient ly. The spontaneous enthusiasm of the prophets stood them in as good stead as the calculating per sistency of the priests. In the white heat of their devotion to the cause of Yahweh, the traditions of their people, laws and songs and legends, all became fluid and took on the shape of their ideal concep tions. Moses and the patriarchs became the mouth pieces of their zeal for Monotheism, their hatred of idolatry. They freely ascribed to them customs and ideas which were prevalent in the eighth cen tury, B. C, but had not been before. But, fortun ately for us they were so uncritical that they often left, imbedded in their work, fragments of older date which prove how subjective their methods ordin arily were. A trout in the milk is no better circum stantial evidence than many an archaic fragment which the various writers of the Pentateuch have left to guide us to the secret of their method of histori cal composition. In the eighth century before Christ, the Pentateuch grew fast enough, but the Law very slowly, then 102 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. or during the next century, until the reign of King Josiah. In Exodus xxxiv. there is an elaboration of certain portions of the Book of Covenants which the Yahwehist perhaps considered more important than the rest, and this was apparently the only addi tion that the law received in any collective form until 62 1 B.C. In this year the temple needing certain repairs, Josiah having sent his scribe to Hilkiah the high priest,* on an errand relating to these repairs, he brings back a startling message from Hilkiah, " I have found the Book of the Law in the house of Yahweh." He also brings back the book which he has found and reads it to Josiah, upon whom it makes a deep impression, and he sets about to effect a sweeping reformation in accordance with the pre cepts of the book. Everything connected with the worship of false gods is removed from the temple. In the vicinity of Jerusalem was the Topheth where children were sacrificed to Molech. It was defiled. On the Mount of Olives there were sanc tuaries of Milcom, Chemosh and Ashtoreth dating from the time of Solomon and established by him. Even the altars dedicated to Yahweh were every where defiled, for the Book of the Law which had been found in the temple declared that only in the temple at Jerusalem could sacrifice be acceptable to Yahweh. Josiah's zeal extended even beyond the boundaries of his own kingdom to the Northern dis tricts, in which the Assyrian power had become weakened by the rise of Babylon. What was this Book of the Law, the practice of * 2 Kings XXII, 3-7. THE LAW. 103 which demanded such a thorough-going reformation ? I do not see how any intelligent and reasonable per son can doubt that it was our present book of Deu teronomy, not quite the whole of it, but IV., 44 to XXVIIL, inclusive, leaving out Chapter xxvu. Moses himself is represented as the speaker but with the exception of fragments here and there it is evident that the book had come into existence only a short time previous to its discovery. The prophets after Josiah's time frequently refer to it, while those before his time never refer to any such book. It could not have been written long before the time at which it apj>eared. Its doctrines and ideas are the doctrines and ideas of the priests and prophets of Josiah's time. It was a manifesto of their wishes put into the mouth of Moses to express their sense of its importance and to give it an authority which otherwise it could not have possessed. The book of Deuteronomy was much moie of a manufacture than any previous portion of the Penta teuch. Here calculation takes the place of sponta neity. The Yahwehist and older Elohist had un consciously allowed their predilections to determine their interpretations of the past, but the Deuterono mist went about deliberately to invent a great his toric fiction. He knew what he wanted ; namely, to abolish all idolatrous worship of Yahweh, all wor ship of all other gods, and as a means to these ends to confine the worship of Yahweh to Jerusalem. His book was written to enforce these ideas, with the sanction of the greatest name in Hebrew history. The writer was tremendously in earnest ; his hatred 104 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. of the false gods and the image-worship of Yahweh was immense ; but at the same time he was an artist and had an eye to dramatic effect. Choosing Moses for his mouth-piece, he represents him as calling the people together, in the fortieth year of their wanderings in the wilderness, to refresh their memory of the Law which had been previously re vealed to them. Sternly commanding them to serve no other gods but Yahweh, he adjures them to ut terly exterminate the Canaanites when they have come into their land. Rehearsing the " ten words," he makes the " word " forbidding any images of Yahweh much more explicit than it had ever been before. But he is still more emphatic in his prohi bition of the worship of Yahweh at the various altars here and there throughout the country. He must be worshipped nowhere but in the temple at Jerusalem. And as there can be but one proper place of worship, so there can be but one proper tribe of priests, and this the tribe of Levi. The Levites who minister in the temple have fixed dues assigned to them, those scattered about the country are com mended to the charity of the people. The three feasts, already mentioned in the Book of Covenants, are insisted on (unleavened bread, weeks, and taber nacles), but he readjusts the eating of the passover to the feast of unleavened bread in such a way as to throw the dedication of the first born as much into the shade as possible, and give to the passover (which actually originated in the custom of human sacrifices to Yahweh, when he was a nature-god,) an historic explanation. The distinction of clean and THE LAW. 105 unclean had long been in vogue among the Israel ites, but it had not appeared before in any popular code. Originally a natural distinction, the priests had taken it in hand and made it a religious one. Hence the injunction, — following the prohibition of unclean animals or those which had died a natural death — "Thou shalt give the thing that dieth a natural death to the stranger that has settled among you, or thou mayest sell it to an alien for thou art an holy people unto Yahweh thy God." Mark well the reason. It is a perfect sample of the priestly ten dency to substitute artificial and senseless for natural and rational grounds of conduct. But the Deuteronomist does not by any means confine himself to the outward forms and ceremon ies of religion. His book abounds in precepts which are political and civil and domestic in their character, and many of these are very noteworthy for their moral excellence. A spirit of equity and clemency in some of his social regulations allies them to the teachings of Jesus more closely than any other portion of the Pentateuch. If I had time to take up the different portions of this wonderful composition, point after point, I could, I think, convince even the most skeptical that Moses was entirely innocent of all complicity in its publication, that it was the work of a religious reformer in the time of King Josiah, and was writ ten to correct the abuses, and to fix the formal wor ship of that'time. The state of things it presupposes is always the state of things existent in Josiah's reign. The command to utterly exterminate the 106 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. Canaanites was only written with a view to making the worshippers of Yahweh intolerant of all Canaanitish practices. The Canaanites were not so exterminated. The representation to this effect in the first dozen chapters of Joshua is the Deuterono- mist's own imaginary fulfilment of his own imagin ary command. The book of Judges which is much" more trustworthy on these points,* gives an entirely different impression. The image-worship of Yah weh had been customary for hundreds of years at the time when Deuteronomy appeared, and the first feeling of its wrongfulness dates, not from Moses, but from the prophets of the eighth century, B. C. So with the worship of Yahweh at various sanctu aries. Not only was it customary up to this time, but it is expressly allowed in earlier portions of the Pentateuch. So with the Levitical priesthood. A preference for Levitical priests dates back as far as Solomon, and this preference increased until at length, we infer, the Deuteronomist did little more than formulate the custom of his time, That Moses expressly commanded any such Levitical function we have no particle of evidence. Prophecy and kingship claim the Deuteronomist's attention to a large degree, and he was guided entirely by the phe nomena of prophecy and kingship that were visible about him in the seventh century and by his knowl edge of their past abuses. His portraiture of what a monarch should not be, is an almost photographic likeness of what Solomon really was. * See Second Lecture. THE LA IV. 10; Whether the writer of Deuteronomy was a priest or prophet we cannot say. In spirit he was both ; his book a compromise between the priestly and prophetic tendencies active in his time. Perhaps he was both in fact, as was his contemporary Jere miah and his successor Ezekiel. But he was more prophet than priest. His prophetic fervor overtops his priestly formalism. And still his book was a great victory for the priestly tendency. Had not the captivity so soon succeeded, this tendency would have no doubt developed very rapidly, and less than one hundred instead of nearly two hundred years would have been sufficient to develop a priestly system as complete as that embodied in the Book of Origins. So much of Deuteronomy as was sent by Hilkiah to the king was the Deuteronomist's contribution to the so-called Mosaic Law. But his contribution to the Pentateuch was more considerable, for appa rently soon after his original publication, he wrote the introductory and closing chapters of our present book of Deuteronomy, and dressed up a little here and there the earlier Pentateuch documents, and fused his own with them. At the same time he wrote the opening chapters of the book of Joshua. And still the Pentateuch awaited an immense ac cession to its priestly elements, an immense addi tion to its bulk.* That is, if we can trust the judg ment of Kuenen and his school in regard to the *Of two hundred and ten chapters in the Pentateuch and Joshua, eighty belong to the Yahwehist and older Elohist, one hundred and twenty, — including the eighty of the Yahwehist and older Elohist — to the Deuteronomist, and ninetv to the Book of Origins. 108 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. - date of the Book of Origins. According to Ewald, Deuteronomy was the last great addition to the Pentateuch. After the Deuteronomist came only a redactor, or editor, of the whole work. The Book of Origins, says this eminent critic, dates from the time of Solomon. But this theory, while it met with much acceptance, at the same time provoked considerable doubt ; it left unsolved so many prob lems. The theory of Kuenen that the Book of Ori gins dates from the fifth century, B. C, at first seems very revolutionary, but he did not reach it by any leap. The labors of other critics led up to it little by little. Graf, a Dutch critic of the first rank, impeached the integrity of the Book of Ori gins, and while pushing forward its Levitical por tions into the fifth century before Christ, assigned its narrative portions to some pre-exilic time. It only remained for Kuenen to re-assert the integrity of the book, within much the same limits assigned to it by Ewald, and to demonstrate that the whole was a production of the fifth century, B. c. Upon the statement of his grounds for this conclusion, Graf immediately accepted it, and simultaneously Dr. Zunz, of Berlin, a venerable and cautious scholar, arrived at the same conclusion. It is now generally accepted by liberal scholars in Holland, and is finding much acceptance in Germany and England. Notably the celebrated article of Prof. Robertson Smith in the Encyclopedia Britannica adopts this view, and in the last volume of Dean Stanley's Jewish Church his sympathy with it is unmistakeable. THE LA IV. IO9 The question of the date and character of this document is one of first rate importance, the con clusion of Kuenen is so utterly subversive of all popular conceptions of the Levitical law, which is supposed to have been announced by Moses, by divine suggestion, at the base of Sinai. For a com plete discussion of the matter I must refer you to Kuenen's Religion of Israel. If his reasoning is as convincing to you as it has been to me, his conclu sions will command your willing and unqualified approval. The Book of Origins, as it now exists, begins with the first verse in Genesis, and runs in and out through all the other documents, not meddling much with Deuteronomy, up to the end of Joshua- It contains the first account of the creation and Adam's family register, an account of the flood and Noah's family register. It deals with the patriarchs much more summarily than do the earlier documents. In fact until the time of Moses the portions of this book are only introductory to the writer's principal theme, which is the publication of the Levitical Law. The book of Leviticus is almost entirely his, and the larger part of Numbers. Here in with parts of Exodus we have a sacerdotal code which marks an immense advance in priestly no tions and pretensions on the book of Deuteronomy. Whenever it is necessary to his purpose, the writer freely recasts the history of the Mosaic and pre- Mosaic times. The tabernacle, which was in fact a simple tent, he represents as a very magnificent affair, and goes on chapter after chapter describing HO THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. its details in the most careful manner. The resem blance to Solomon's temple is very close, and hence the popular idea that Solomon's temple reproduced the arrangements of the tabernacle. In fact there was no such tabernacle as the Book of Origins de scribes. The description is a reproduction of the temple of Solomon. In order to sanction the ex clusiveness of the temple sacrifices which the Deu teronomist had instituted, he asserts that the taber nacle was the only place of sacrifice in the wilder ness. In his scheme only the sons of Aaron can be priests, and he ascribes this regulation to Moses. But we have seen that the Deuteronomist allowed all Levites to be priests, and that the preference for even Levitical priests was of very gradual origin. Moreover we have in Ezekiel an account of how and why the other Levites were degraded, and the sons of Aaron made sole proprietors of the priestly function. Ezekiel is in fact of great service to us in determining the nature of the Book of Origins. The last eight chapters of his book are a sort of middle term between Deuteronomy and the Book of Origins. They never could have been written if he had known of any such sacerdotal law as that of the Book of Origins. Himself a priest, he would not have dared to publish an ideal conception of the hierarchy so foreign to the actual one if the concep tion of the Book of Origins ever had been actual before his time. But Ezekiel is invaluable as re vealing to us Israel during her period of gestation with the Levi tic law. His last eight chapters are the fcetal child whose birth was signalized by the THE LA W. m publication of the Book of Origins by Ezra and Ne hemiah. The Book of Origins is exceedingly minute in its regulations of the various sacrifices, and what is most important in these regulations is the careful provision that is made for the priests and Levites. These were dependent for their living on the temple offerings. In Deuteronomy the claim for them is modest enough. Here it is so no longer. Extor tionate demands are made for the support of the priests, the Levites and the temple servants. The_ latter now monopolize those portions of the sacri fices which had previously been eaten by the wor shipper with his family. And all of these provis ions, so manifestly inspired by sacerdotal greed, are unblushingly declared to be inspired by Yahweh, and to have been spoken by his servant Moses. In the Book of Origins the ordinances of clean and unclean are much more elaborate than in the book of Deuteronomy. They are exceedingly min ute and fanciful, and many of them evidently have their reason for existence in the disposition to still further increase the revenues and perquisites of the priestly office. The regulations of the festivals, also, are much more minute than they had been in previous codes. The passover, originally a private meal and celebrated at any time when children were eight days old, a reminiscence of ancient human sacrifices, was now made national and received a plausible historical explanation. Another day was added to the feast of Tabernacles, and every new moon was to have its feast-day, and in the seventh 112 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. month was a great day of atonement. These lunai feasts were apparently concessions to the customs of the people which the priests despaired of being able to eradicate. Such feasts had long been dedi cated to the Moon-goddess, Ashtoreth, and now without a word of explanation they were dedicated to Yahweh, in much the same way as the Roman Saturnalia was converted into Christmas. The author of the Book of Origins not only retained the Sabbath in his list of solemn days. He laid new •stress upon it. He denounced the penalty of death against anyone who should fail to keep his regula tions, and to strengthen his case he invented the story of a man who was stoned to death for gather ing sticks upon the Sabbath. Instead of the sweet human reason given for observing the day in the Book of Covenants, he invents another, worthy of a sacerdotalist : that God rested on the seventh day from the creation of the world ! Such, all too briefly is the form and spirit of the Book of Origins or Elohistic document. It is a very different work from Deuteronomy ; infinitely less moral in its tone, infinitely more sacerdotal. There the priest was gaining on the prophet. Here he has left him out of sight. Go to it, yourselves, and see what an ado he makes about his mint, anise and cumin, and how little he has to say about the weightier matter of the Law, justice and mercy and righteousness. It is reading history backwards to suppose that this book was written before Ezekiel, or before Deuteronomy, and before the prophetic writings of the prophetic portions of the Pentateuch THE LA W. 113 Little by little all of these lead up to it. What is more rational than to suppose that Hebrew and Jew ish literature had the same order of development as Hebrew and Jewish life. We know that in the life, free, spontaneous, prophetic elements preceded the formal, artificial, priestly elements. Does it not stand to reason that it was just the same in litera ture ; that the increase of the sacerdotal spirit was the outcome of an increasingly sacerdotal life, and reacted upon the life to make it still more sacer dotal ? That this was so in the historic literature of Israel no one thinks of doubting. Samuel and Kings are written in the prophetic spirit, Chronicles in the priestly. So then, to assign the Book of Origins an earlier date than the other leading docu ments of the Pentateuch, is not only to defy the analogy of Hebrew life, but also the analogy of Hebrew literature in those cases where we are ab solutely certain of the order of development. The Book of Origins already incorporated with the remainder of the Pentateuch, minus a few priest ly laws of still later origin was promulgated by Ezra and Nehemiah, at Jerusalem, in the year 445, B. C. Who had done this work of incorporation we do not know. Perhaps Ezra himself in the interval between his return to Jerusalem in 458, " with the law of his God in his hand," and the year when he and Nehemiah together published it. But the smoke of Sinai was not more impenetrable than the mystery which shrouds the development of the Book of Origins. That it was a development and not a sudden manufacture we have every reason to 1 14 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. believe.* The last chapters of Ezekiel herald the coming of a time of priestly domination. But thirty-six years later, at the time of the return of the captives, the Deutero-Isaiah speaks in a voice which has the real prophetic ring, no priestly accent whatsoever. The returning captives were guided more by prophetic than by priestly enthusiasm. Their history is a blank for seventy years after the return, but could it all be known to us, it is doubt ful if the development of the Book of Origins would be a part of it. Not Jerusalem, but Babylon, it is most likely, was the scene of this development. Cut off from actual participation in the temple rites, the captives there took refuge in an ideal sacerdotal ism and hardly dared to hope for it a local habitation. To the faith and zeal of Ezra and Nehemiah we owe the realization of their sacerdotal dream. Not Sinai and the Wilderness, but Babylon and Jeru salem witnessed the promulgation of the Levitical law. Its priest was Ezra, and not Aaron ; but who its Moses was the most patient study is not likely ever to reveal. The roar of Babylon does not give up its dead. If I have told aright the story of the Pentateuch, its gradual evolution, its combination out of various leading documents, some of which in turn combined still others and endorsed many existing practices,f it is a very different story from that which has been told for twenty centuries. It may be hard to be- *T\vo distinct portions at least are discernible. Krsnen's Rel'g ion of Israel, II., p. no. + As do many regulations of the Book of Origins. THE LA IV. 115 lieve, but is it so hard as to believe that the Infinite God did really speak to Moses, and that Moses really saw him with his outward eyes, and that all the things recorded really happened ? Would it be hard at all to believe if we would not import our ideas of book-making into the pre-Christian cen turies. If the Pentateuch was such a growth as I have indicated, it was not exceptional. The book of Joshua was such another ; the books of Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Zechariah, Job and Daniel all repeat the features which we have been noting. "The Semitic genius," says Prof. Robertson Smith, "does not at all lie in the direction of organic struc ture. In architecture, in poetry, in history, the He brew adds part to part, instead of developing a sin gle notion. The temple was an aggregation of small cells, the longest psalm is an acrostic; and so the longest Biblical history is a stratification, and not an organism. The habit was facilitated by the habit of anonymous writing, and the accompanying lack of all notion of anything like copyright. If a man copied a book, it was his to add to and modify as he pleased, and he was not in the least bound to distinguish the old from the new. If he had two books before him to which he attached equal worth, he took large extracts from both, and harmonized them by such additions or modifications as he felt to be necessary."* However distasteful to our preconceptions such plain truth as this may prove, and however subver sive to any claim of special inspiration set up for the * Article "Bible" in Encyclopedia Britannica. u6 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. Bible, it is only by intrenching himself in ignorance and prejudice that a man can long fence himself against the conclusions of enlightened scholarship. So do not you. Open your gates. Go forth to meet the enemy with music and with flags, and you shall find he is no enemy: nay, but your dearest friend. FOURTH LECTURE. THE PSALMS AND OTHER WRITINGS. Let me again remind you that the Jewish division of the Old Testament is into the Law, the Prophets and the Writings. These three divisions do not so much correspond to the chronological order in which the different books which make them up were writ ten as to the chronological order in which they were received into the Canon, or list, of those books which were considered worthy of a very special reverence and admiration. The first step in the formation of the Canon was signalized by the publication of the Pentateuch, in very nearly its present form, together with the book of Joshua, by Ezra and Nehemiah, in 445, B. c. According to the book of Maccabees* the second step in the same direction was also taken by Nehemiah. He, it is said, founding a library, brought together, in addition to the Pentateuch and Joshua, " the things concerning the kings and the prophets," that is the books of Judges and Samuel and Kings, the three major, and twelve minor proph ets, " and David's things and letters from kings about offerings," But this collection and addition made by Nehemiah does not correspond exactly to the second division of the Jewish Bible. It lacks * 2 Maccabees, II., 13. I 1 8 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. Joshua at the beginning, and has some of "David's things" at the end, and " letters from [foreign] kings about offerings" to the temple, which have dropped out of the Canon altogether, though once esteemed as highly as the rest. In course of time it seems that Joshua was detached from the end of the Law, and made the beginning of the Prophets, and, still further along, the Psalms of David, his " things," as they are called, were detached from the Prophets, and made the beginning of the Writings. This was done all the more naturally because the Psalms at Nehemiah's disposal did not correspond with our present book of Psalms, which is made up of five books, each one of which, it may be, corresponds to a separate date of collection. The Psalms col lected by Nehemiah may have comprised only the first book, which concludes with the forty-first psalm, or the first with the second, which concludes with the seventy-second psalm, and with the words, " Here end the Psalms of David, the son of Jesse," though in the following books there are various psalms ascribed to him. But when was the collection of the Writings made and added to the Canon? According to the Maccabaean historian it was made by Judas Mac- cabaeus in the second century before Christ. Its original limits cannot be defined. For a century after the time of Judas Maccabaeus there was a good deal of doubt and discussion about several books now included in the Writings, notably about Esther and Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. ¦ Some of the Psalms were hardly written in the time THE PSALMS AND OTHER WRITINGS. II9 of Judas Maccabaeus, and the book of Daniel was so nearly contemporary with him that it must have had to wait a while after his time for its canonical distinction. However, not long before the advent of Jesus, the Writings, in their present bulk and number, must have been generally accepted as worthy additions to the Law and the Prophets, al though at first their inspiration was not regarded as so perfect and imposing. The list of writings thus completed included some that we have already considered, Daniel and Lamen tations, which I mentioned in my lecture on the prophets, Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles and Es ther, which I mentioned in my lecture on the His tories. There remain for us to consider this even ing Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solo mon and the Book of Job. To make the book of Psalms the subject of crit ical investigation seems hardly less a breach of natural piety than for a man " to peep and botanize upon his mother's grave." They are that portion of the Old Testament, if not of the whole Bible, which has endeared it most to men of Christian faith. The ritual of both Jewish and Christian wor ship has drawn upon them more largely than upon any other part of the Bible, than upon all the other parts together. In the fifth century, according to Theodoret, the majority of Christians knew them by heart, while knowing nothing of the remainder of the Bible. In the time of St. Ambrose, fourth century, as he himself informs us, when any other part of the Scriptures was read, the noisy talking of I 20 Th E BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. the congregation drowned the speaker's voice, but the psalms were listened to in silence and with ad miration. But their private far transcends their public use in spiritual significance'. The personal and individual element in them is vastly more pre dominant than in any other portion of the Bible. Therefore the book of Psalms has been for more than twenty centuries the loved companion of the soul in sickness, in sorrow, in pain, in weariness, in ignominy and remorse, and scarcely less in all the various moods of spiritual joy and exaltation. Hardly could one imagine any shame or rapture of the private heart for which there is not in the Psalms some fit expression. Where, if not here, shall one look for an abundance of those " Words which have drunk transcendent meaning up From the best passion of all bygone times ; Steeped through with tears of triumph and remorse ; Sweet with all saint-hood, cleansed with martyr fires " ? Doubtless there is much in them which has never served any good or useful purpose. Doubtless there is much that has been fuel to the flame of men's malignant hate and bitterness. And doubtless much of all that seems to us in them most sweet and tender has been imported into them from lime to time, and had no place in their original concep tion. Take the expression, " Cleanse thou me from secret faults." Who ever thinks, as he repeats it, of its original meaning, which was not faults secret from others, but unconscious violations of the law of ritualistic cleanness. And there are hundreds of verses in the Psalms whose meaning we uncon- THE PSALMS AND OTHER WRITINGS. 121 sciously idealize and alter in a similar manner. And still, take them for all in all, I cannot think that men have prized them over and above theii worth, although they might have prized them with a good deal more intelligence and candor and dis crimination. The Hebrew title of the whole collection is Songs of Praise. The Rabbins called it the Book of Hymns, a much truer appellation, for less than half of all are songs of praise. Our own title, the Psalms, is aftet the Vatican MS., and the Church of England Psalter after the Alexandrian.* Both of these titles are derived from the instrument that David is supposed to have used to play upon, or rather the second is the English name of it, and the first derivative. As printed in our English Bibles, each psalm has first an italicised heading, which is a sort of argu ment of the psalm, and then a sub-heading in Ro man letters. The italicized headings only date from the seventeenth century. They are as old as the King James' translation. They are often misleading and absurd, and in the new translation of the Bible, which is being made in England, they will be either wholly stripped away, or thoroughly amended. How and when the sub-headings originated, it is impossi ble to discover. The mere apologist contends that they are as ancient as the psalms to which they are attached. But the drift of criticism is towards the conclusion that the most of them originated long after, some of them hundreds of years ; that so far * Two of the three earliest MSS. of the New Testament, and por tions of the Old. 122 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. as they are historical, they are purely conjectural, and generally fanciful. Many of them, however, are directions for the musical accompaniment, expressed in terms which modern criticism tries in vain to fathom. The forty-seventh psalm affords a good example of these different headings. The ital icized heading reads, " The nations are exhorted cheerfully to entertain the Kingdom of Christ." What sort of spectacles enabled the seventeenth century divines to find anything about the King dom of Christ in this psalm will always be a mys tery. The sub-heading of this psalm reads, " To the Chief Musician. A Song for the Sons of Korah." For the best understanding of the psalms all these headings and sub-headings are superfluous, and should be entirely disregarded. Even those sub headings which ascribe the authorship of the psalms to David, or some other person, should have no weight compared with the internal evidence. The same lack of critical judgment which char acterizes the Prophets and the Pentateuch, is emi nently characteristic of the Psalms. Some of them have been broken in two. Others are made up of two or more incongruous fragments. The nine teenth is a good example. The first part of it, be ginning, " The heavens declare the glory of God," is a magnificent poem of nature, such as an eighth century prophet might have written. The second part beginning, " The law of the Lord is perfect," is a glorification of the ritual law, dating from Ez ra's time or later. The fourteenth psalm is a dupli cate of the fifty-third, and parts of various psalms THE PSALMS AND OTHER WRITINGS. I 23 reappear in others. Quite a number of the psalms are alphabetical in their poetic form. Each verse in the original begins with a letter of the alphabet till all be gone over, as in Psalm XXV. Sometimes each half verse begins with a different letter. But these psalms are seldom perfect. A letter here and there has been dropped out. All of these things go to show what vicissitudes of careless transmission and transcription the psalms encountered on their way to a canonical authority. A word concerning their poetic forms. These vary much between the extremes of spontaneity and artificiality. The alphabetical psalms are of course extremely artificial. An interesting group of psalms are those called Songs of Degrees. There are fifteen of them in all (cxx. — CXXXIV.) The most reasonable theory concerning them is that they were pilgrim songs, sung by the people of the caravans going up to Jerusalem to keep the various feasts. The rhythm of Hebrew poetry is not a rhythm of quantity, but a rhythm of sense. Even where the number of syllables is the same in corresponding lines, the quantity is very seldom equal. The term parallelism is generally used to indicate the Hebrew rhythm. Its two principal methods are those of opposition and similarity. Often the parallel members are perfectly synony mous. Take the expression, quoted in the New Testament from the prophets, " He shall come rid ing upon an ass and upon a colt, the foal of an ass." Strangely enough the New Testament in terprets this as meaning an ass and colt, and repre- 124 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. sents Jesus as sending for the two animals. But in its original connection the " colt, the foal of an ass," is simply the synonymous poetic parallel of the ass already mentioned, and only one animal is intended. " Sweeter than honey and the honey comb" is another case in point. For the parallelism of opposition take " For His anger endureth for a moment, But His favor through life. In the evening sorrow may be a guest, But joy cometh in the morning." Sometimes the parallelism is double. Sometimes each member marks an advance in thought upon the previous member. In one way and another this rhythm of sense is capable of being varied in a good many ways. It is the distinguishing mark of Hebrew poetry, and as such is characteristic of the Psalms, the Proverbs, Job, the Song of Solomon, the Prophets, with some exceptions*, together with many fragments imbedded in the Pentateuch and in the Histories. There are one hundred and fifty psalms in all. Of these forty-eight are anonymous ; seventy-three are ascribed to David ; twelve to Asaph, the chief of David's choir; eleven to the sons of Korah, con temporaries of David , two to Solomon, and one to Moses. In this enumeration the forty-second and forty-third are counted as one psalm, as any one can see they ought to be. Our principal interest in this enumeration attaches * All of Daniel, and parts of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. THE PSALMS A N D OTHER WRITINGS- 125 to the preponderance assigned to David — seventy- three psalms. And there have always been critics ready to claim and argue that a large majority of the anonymous psalms were also written by David. Indeed there have been critics who have set aside the twenty-nine titles ascribing psalms to Asaph, Solomon and others, and have contended that the book of Psalms was written by David from the be ginning to the end. The opposite extreme of this conclusion has been reached by Kuenen and his school, namely, that we cannot safely predicate of a single psalm that it was written by David, and that the chances are that not a single one was writ ten by him. I need not say that this position is a thousand times more reasonable than the opposite extreme, but the majority of critics range them selves between these two positions, the mere apolo gists verging to the Davidic side, the scientific crit ics to the other. Prof. Robertson Smith, to whom I have frequently referred in these lectures, in his article on the Bible in the Encyclopedia Britannica, says : " The assertion that no psalm is certainly David's is hyperskeptical ;" but when he would enumerate those which he regards as certainly Da vidic, he is obliged to stop short at the eighteenth and the seventh. There is little enough in the spirit of the eighteenth to prevent our assigning it to David, seeing that Dean Stanley writes: " When Clovis fed his savage spirit from the eighteenth psalm, it was, we must confess, because he found there the sparks of a kindred soul." Ewald is a critic whose natural disposition is to hold on to as I 26 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. much as possible of what has been received, and he attributes to David only fifteen psalms in all. The argument of Kuenen for the non-Davidic author ship of the entire collection is based upon our knowledge of the character of David and his time, compared with the historic and religious implica tions and teachings of the psalms. Let us remind ourselves, very briefly, what the character of David actually was, and what sort of religion was illus trated by the practice of his life. We have really three accounts of David, one in the Chronicles, which is hardly worth attending to ; two in Samuel, one, as it were, inside the other. That is, we have a set of legends imbedded in a prophetic* idealiza tion. It is evident that we get nearest David in the legends. Drawing out our conclusions from these legends, we find that David was a man of splendid force and courage ; that he followed up successfully the work of Saul in consolidating the wrangling tribes into a single nation ; that he could love as passionately as he could hate, and did love his children and a few others with a great affection. But for all his physical courage, he was smitten through and through with moral cowardice. One of the most cunning, he was also one of the most treacherous of men, and one of the most cruel. He put the captive Ammonites " under saws and under harrows of iron and under axes of iron, and made the/n to pass through the brick kiln," that is roasted them alive. " And thus did he unto all the cities of the Ammonites." Joab, who had fought his * Deuteronomic might be a tetter word. THE PSALMS AND OTHER WRITINGS. I 27 hardest battles for him, and done his dirtiest work, he hated, and yet feared, and so, himself afraid to strike at him, arranged his murder on his dying bed. This man had all the vices of a Herod and a Henry Eighth. He was as licentious as he was murderous and cruel. " A man after God's own heart," was he ? " After Yahweh's own heart," the text should read, and this he was, his Yahweh being such a god as such a man would naturally conceive. As for his religion, it was not even the best re ligion of his time. Samuel and others had arrived at the exclusive worship of Yahweh. But David apparently worshipped Baal also, and named one of his sons Baal-jada. He had a domestic teraphim, or idol, which he worshipped. And what was his conception of Yahweh ? As a god whom he could not worship outside of Canaan. As a god whom he could appease by letting him " smell a burnt offering;" a god who could delight in human sacri fice. You have not forgotten that terrible picture at the Centennial of Rizpah defending the corpses of Saul's seven sons against the wild beasts and the vultures. That was a picture of King David's wor ship of Yahweh. Those frightful corpses were a sacrifice which he had offered to his god in time of famine. It is only possible to think of David as the author of any number of the psalms by forming our idea of the man and his religion from the psalms them selves, a manifest begging of the question. Such a man as he actually was, with such a religion as he practiced, could have written but a very few, if any, 128 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. of the psalms that have come down to us. Some of them are harsh and cruel and vindictive enough to be his, but they have other marks, which prove a later origin. This is the general argument. Then taking up one by one the three and seventy psalms ascribed to David, it is found that almost without exception they betray a situation very different from his, and a religion of a much higher order : conceptions of Yahweh, of the worship appropriate to him, of his relation to nature and to Israel, and to other gods, such as no one in David's time had reached. Take the fifty-first psalm. It is ascribed to David on the occasion of Nathan's rebuking him for his sin with Bathsheba. But it contains a spir itual doctrine that David never could have antici pated, and its closing verses " Show favor to Zion ; build up Jerusalem's wall," indicate the time of the captivity, or after, when the walls of the city had been broken down. Very likely these closing verses were stuck on at a later period, but the remainder of the psalm is a sufficient argument, and in almost every case the psalms ascribed to David are as evi dently as this of later origin. It is easy to discover how it came to be supposed that David was the author of so many of the psalms. The tendency of the post-exilic times was to single out individuals distinguished in certain departments of thought and life, and ascribe to them all, or nearly all, that had been accomplished in those depart ments. Thus to Moses was ascribed all of the legal literature ; to Solomon all of the proverbial, and to David and his choristers a majority of the psalms. THE PSALMS AND OTHER WRITINGS. 120 The Chronicler idealized David, and made him the founder of the temple service in all its full ness and perfection. In the same spirit the psalms, which were " the hymn-book of the second temple," were naturally ascribed to him who was regarded as the founder of its service. A nucleus was furnished for this conception in the fact that David was actu ally fond of music, and was a composer of songs. But his songs, we have reason to believe, were songs of war and love and wine, not psalms of praise and hymns of shame and sorrow. The first mention made of David as a singer or musician is by Amos,* in the eighth century, B. c, and it is by no means flattering, for he is there associated with a disre putable set of merry-makers, who were " not grieved for the affliction of Joseph. f" Without then being dogmatic, it may safely be asserted that nothing that is purest and best in the Psalter can properly be ascribed to David. If any part of it is his, it is, beyond a doubt, that part which has for us the least significance of help or consolation. Besides the seventy-three psalms ascribed to David in their titles, there are twenty-nine others which have definite ascriptions ; twenty-six to Da vid's contemporaries, two to Solomon, and one to Moses. These titles are as little to be trusted as the Davidic. In form and spirit those of Asaph and the Sons of Korah belong to a period much later than David's ; the most of them to a period subsequent to the captivity. The psalms ascribed * Amos, VI. , 4, 5, 6. f The Northern Kingdom. 130 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. to Solomon are certainly not his. The psalm as cribed to Moses is the ninetieth. The Talmudic writers ascribe to him ten others, with as much reason, that is, with none at all. The forty-eight anonymous psalms have been ascribed to various authors, but with no better ground than vague con jecture. The wisest course is to abandon altogether the attempt to fix the authorship of these or any. The most that can be wisely done is to determine, in a general way, the periods of their composition. This we can often do with tolerable certainty. The prophetic enthusiasm of the eighth century, B. C. ; the sorrows of the faithful in the idolatrous reign of Manasseh ; the shame and confusion ensu ing on the downfall of Josiah, soon followed by the captivity ; the gloom and misery of the Babylonian exile ; the joy of the return ; the delight in the re juvenated service of the temple, and, more than possibly, the fiery ardors of the Maccabaean genera tion — all these have left their traces on the psalms indelibly impressed. The highest thought which they embody, and, with very few exceptions, the earliest, is that of the eighth century prophets : their thought of Yahweh as the only God, delight ing not in sacrifices, but in righteousness. Suppos ing, as even Calvin did, that some of the psalms date from the Maccabaean period (second century, B. C.), and allowing some of them to be Davidic (but this more doubtfully), the formation of the entire collection would cover a period of 900 years, a period long enough to include a great diversity of THE PSALMS AND OTHER WRITINGS. 131 authorship and of religious teachings* Whoever wrote them, they contain sentences which for a thousand years to come will echo to men's deepest shame and highest aspiration. Consider next the book of Proverbs. "The proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel," reads the first verse, and hence the popular conception that the whole book was the fruit of Solomon's proverbial philosophy. But the book assigns the thirtieth chapter to a certain Agur, the son of Jakeh, and part at least of the thirty- first chapter to Lemuel's mother. The remainder is ascribed to Solomon at the beginning and else where in the text. The book, considered as a whole, is evidently made up of various separate fragments, Solomonic or otherwise remains to be seen. Thus, after six introductory verses in the first chapter, we have a discourse proceeding from the seventh verse to the end of the ninth chapter. This part of the book is not really a collection of proverbs, but a continuous discourse. " It is a very earnest exhortation to a moral life ; a warning against murder, theft, contentiousness, dishonesty, sloth, and above all, unchastity and adultery." At chapter X. there is a new start, announced as such by the words, " The proverbs of Solomon." The fragment thus began continues to chapter XXII., 17. It is the most important fragment in the book ; the longest and the most genuinely proverbial. A third fragment begins with a separate introduction * To "the Scribes," of whom the Christian believer commonly thinks only hard things, we are indebted for their preservation. J 32 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. at XXII., ,17, and continues to the end of chapter XXIV. Chapters XXV. to XXIX. constitute still an other fragment. It begins, "These are also the proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied out." Chapters XXX. and XXXI. constitute another fragment, made up of three lesser fragments : the words of Agur, the prophecy which Lemuel's mother taught him, and the de scription of a good wife which Dbderlein has called " the golden A B C for wives," and Henry, " the looking-glass for ladies." It is an alphabetical poem and hence Doderlein's name for it. The variety of literary workmanship in the differ ent fragments forbids the supposition that they are all the product of a single pen. The poetic paral lelism is very different in the first and second frag ments. But if the whole cannot be Solomonic, which fragment, if any, can safely be regarded so ? Not the first, say Davidson and Kuenen, and many other critics. This is the part which is not so prov erbial as the others, but is a continuous discourse. Besides the Prophets and the priests and hymn- writers, many of whom were either priests or proph ets, there was from the time of Solomon a class of thinkers or writers spoken of as wise-men or sages. Solomon himself was one of these. But apparently his chokmah or Wisdom was but little more reli gious than David's psalmody. It consisted in such shrewd practical judgments as that reported in Kings, (1, III., 16-28), in some fanciful knowledge of plants and animals, and on the giving and solving of riddles, some of them possibly of an ethical THE PSALMS AND OTHER WRITINGS. 1 33 character. The first section of the proverbs was written by a sage, but by a sage who lived in the seventh century, B. C, four hundred years after the time of Solomon, when the sages who at first had been rather anti-religious or unreligious had become zealous adherents of Yahweh and his wor ship. Religion, by growing less fanatical and more moral, gradually enlisted the sympathy of the sages who, in their turn, were growing less fanciful and more moral ; less fond of riddles, and more fond of righteousness. The book of Proverbs as we have it is the outcome of this compromise between the sages and the prophets of Yahweh. In the first section we have the finest fruit born of this mar riage, a beautiful discourse which celebrates the moral service of Yahweh, written, as I have said, in the seventh century, B. C, not long before the book of Deuteronomy. The next and longest section pre sents us with an earlier aspect of the same develop ment. In this part and the succeeding we have simple lessons of a not very lofty prudential moral ity, all in the interest of the Yahwehism of the prophets on their moral side, but with less positive enthusiasm for Yahwehism than is displayed by the first section. Here and there throughout these sections it may be that we have a few proverbs which in their original form date from the time of Solomon, and from the great king himself. For there are some that very possibly were originally propounded in the form of riddles. But this is vague conjecture. That any of the Proverbs came from Solomon we cannot say for certain. That but 134 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. a few can date from him is clear as day. The prin cipal fragments of the book were written in the eighth and seventh centuries, B. C, and the book as sumed its present form soon after the return from Babylon. If its Solomonic origin had been accepted in Ezra's time, we may be sure that " Solomon's things" as well as "David's things" would have been included by Nehemiah in his library of pre cious books. The book of Proverbs is followed in the Old Testa ment by a book called Ecclesiastes, or The Preacher, Ecclesiastes being the Greek word for preacher, as Ecclesiasticus, which we shall encounter in the Apocrypha, is the Latin. By the preacher Solomon is manifestly intended. The book begins, " The words of the Preacher, the Son of David, King in Jerusalem," and as it proceeds, the attempt to indi cate the character of Solomon is unmistakable. It may be doubted whether the writer really meant to pass himself off for the wise king. Possibly he only meant to make him the. literary impersonation of his thought. But the habits of his time suggest a different explanation. It was the order of the day to secure additional prestige for laws and psalms and prophecies, by ascribing them to Moses and David and distinguished prophets. In Ecclesiastes we have, most likely, another instance of this favor ite custom. Whichever way it was, the impersona tion of Solomon by its author was a stroke of won derful good fortune. It has preserved his book for more than two thousand years. There was much hesitation in regard to its admission to the list of THE PSALMS AND OTHER WRITINGS. 1 35 precious books, because of the manifest coldness towards the Temple and the Law, and its various skeptical, epicurean tendencies. But its pretence of Solomonic origin, the worthlessness of which could not be made apparent at a time when criticism was a wholly undiscovered art, finally overbore all scru ples. And so an interesting book was saved from threatening oblivion, to be the battle-ground of critics and the confusion of believers. I have taken for granted that the author of Eccle siastes was not Solomon. No critic of respectable intelligence and candor would disagree with me in this particular. It is a difficult matter for a writer even with the utmost care, to reproduce the form and spirit of a by-gone time. A recent historical novelist* anticipated the musical activity of Cheru- bini and Beethoven fifty or sixty years. Thackeray's Henry Esmond was a very careful attempt to repro duce the form and spirit of the age of Anne, and yet the critics have detected some surprising incongrui ties. But the writer of Ecclesiastes did not go to work carefully and reproduce the form and spirit of the time of Solomon. Once having chosen the name of Solomon and a few of his more striking char acteristics, as traditionally known, he went on to freely express himself in forms of thought and speech that would have been impossible for any writer in the time of Solomon. The very first verse betrays his secret : " King in Jerusalem ; " and the twelfth more openly, " I, the preacher, was King over Israel in Jerusalem." Solomon could never * Mrs. Alexander in her Hetitage of Langdale. I36 THE BIBLE OF TO DA Y. have written of his kingship in the past tense, or have specified Jerusalem at a time when there was no king anywhere else. Fancy Solomon writing, " I have gotten more wisdom than all that were be fore me." But he would have been much less likely to write in condemnation of his own injustice and oppression. The part of Solomon is not well sus tained. The writer is continually forgetting him self, and writing in his own proper person as a critic of the rulers of his time. The time of Solomon was a time of splendor and success ; the writer's time, a time of the opposite character. And once there pops out an allusion to Judea as the " province ; " whether of Persia or the Seleucidae is not specified. The ideas of God are more advanced than those of Solomon's time, or than the prophets'. The word Elohim is used for the Deity exclusively, as it did not come to be till after Ezra's time, when Yahweh became the ineffable name. The character of the Hebrew, abounding in Chaldaisms, that is, forms of speech contracted in Babylon, and most resembling the Hebrew of Daniel, and the decay of the poetic forms, are other arguments which have great weight with those who can appreciate their force. The exact date of the author I shall not endeavor to de termine. Ewald and Davidson say, 325 B.C., seven hundred years after the accession of Solomon to the throne of David. Kuenen, Oort and others put him a century later; about 225 B.C. The writer was evidently one whom the service of the temple and the refinements of the scribes upon the Law no longer satisfied. THE PSALMS AND OTHER WRITINGS. 1 37 Ecclesiastes has been called by some one whom I cannot now recall, " the saddest of all sad books." I think I have read sadder books than this, but certainly this is not a merry one. That it has no faith in any other life than this is not its gloomiest trait. It has no faith in this. Skeptical, epicurean, pessimistic : these are the adjectives that best de scribe its quality. And it is skeptical in the true sense of the word. Dogmatic denial is no more skepticism than dogmatic affirmation. Voltaire was not a whit more skeptical than Calvin. The skep tic is the man who is not sure of anything, the man whose conclusions are all infected with an element of doubt. Skepticism ? — " It is the rift within the lover's lute, Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit Which rotting inward slowly moulders all." It is this quality in Ecclesiastes which has given a certain color of likelihood to the criticism which has been frequently made upon it : that it is made up of two incongruous fragments, one skeptical, the other conventionally orthodox. " Good God ! " alternates with " Good devil ! " all the way along. The writer has an undisguised contempt for the popular religion, but so had Socrates, who, dying, orders Crito to sacrifice a cock to Esculapius. It is better to be on the safe side. So I was reading in a Baptist paper the other day, " If the doctrine of Eternal Hell is ever so doubtful, you'd better be lieve it. For if it should happen to be true you would be all right, and if it should not, you would be no worse off for having believed it." This is Ij8 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. the spirit of Ecclesiastes. There is a God. Yes, pretty certainly, but " God is in Heaven and thou art upon Earth, therefore let thy words be few." He is remote and inaccessible to praise and prayer. " Fear G°d and keep his commandments." Yes, he advises this, but also, " Be not righteous overmuch, neither make thyself over-wise. Why shouldst thou destroy thyself?" On the other hand, "Be not over-wicked, and be not foolish. Why shouldst thou die before thy time?" This is the character istic tone. It has no enthusiasm, no elevation. The piety is without warmth. The morals are the coldest prudence. Nothing is certain, but let us keep an eye to windward. As I have used the word skeptical advisedly, so would I use the word epicurean. It does not mean coarse and beastly, indulgent to excess, given over much to sensual pleasures. It is " the doctrine of the mean," the middle way between extremes of poverty and riches, ignorance and wisdom. "There is nothing better," says the Preacher, " than for a man to eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy the good of all his labor. There is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his own works ; for that is his portion ; for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him. Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing to do under the sun than to eat and drink and be merry." At the same time remember that excess is apt to dull the edge of appetite. But the Preacher is not more epicurean than he is pessimistic. "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity," THE PSALMS AND OTHER WRITINGS. I yj is his perpetually recurring cry. Tc enjoy life is the only wisdom, but even this is folly. " I saw " he says " that the race was not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill, but time and chance happeneth to them all. Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead, more than the living which are yet alive. Yea, better is he who hath not yet been than both." In his pessimism he is an utter fatal ist. " Consider the work of God ; who can make straight what he hath made crooked. There is one event to the righteous and the wicked ; to the clean and unclean. There is a time for everything;" that is, a time fixed beforehand. Men are the pup pets of a power behind the scenes. It has been a very pretty piece of business for the apologists to make a book of this sort fit in with their conceptions of religion. For special combats it has furnished a whole armory of texts. " The heart of the sons of men is full of evil :" there is one for the protagonists of total depravity. And there is pigment here to paint the world as black as any Calvinist could wish. On the other hand, there are sweet morsels for the Universalists : " All things come alike to all. There is one event to the righteous and the wicked. As is the good so is the sinner." Only the moment that we go behind these words we find that the equality they predi cate is one of everlasting, joyless death, not one of everlasting life and happiness. And whatever wea pons there are here for special controversies, the I40 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. spirit of the whole is dreadfully at variance with any elevated form of Christianity. But your thor ough-going apologist is never at a loss for explana tions. The object of Ecclesiastes, he informs us, is to compel us to infer the doctrine of another life from the futility of all enjoyment here. Stranger than this is the conceit that the purpose of Ecclesi astes is to teach explicitly the doctrine of a future life. The strongest text for this position is that which has been graven as a motto over the entrance to Mount Auburn, " Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it." But what this text asserts is just the opposite of immortality, as every critic knows who is not consciously or unconsciously a special pleader. What it asserts is the absorption of the individual in God, the annihilation of all indi vidual existence. Interpreting, as we are bound to do, the more by the less obscure statement, we must interpret this by chapter III., verses 19 and 20. " For that which befalleth the sons of man befalleth beasts ; even one thing befalleth them ; as the one dieth so dieth the other. Yea, they have all one breath : so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast ; for all is vanity." Read in the light of these clear-shining words, the motto of Mount Au burn is a denial of any personal immortality. We have still another book in the Old Testament ascribed to Solomon. " The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's," reads the first verse. But this is prob ably the grossest instance that we have of the ten dency to ascribe books to those who figure most THE PSALMS AND OTHER WRITINGS. 141 conspicuously in them, as the books of the Penta teuch to Moses; the book of Joshua to Joshua, and so on. This Song of Solomon, or Song of Songsj or Canticles, as it is indifferently called, has had perhaps the most remarkable history of any book in the Old Testament. There are fragments in the Bible of older date, such as the Song of Deborah, and, possibly, individual psalms, but as an entire book this is undoubtedly the oldest in the Old Testament collection. " First that which is nat ural," as Paul said, " and afterward that which is spiritual," for I shall assume that the book is " nat ural," and was at first regarded so, and rescued from oblivion by men's admiration for it simply as a poem of love and faithfulness. The title, the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's, could not have been a part of the original poem. If it had been, we may be sure that Nehemiah* would have in cluded this also in his library of precious books. But, though written late in the ninth, or early in the eighth century, even if attributed to Solomon, the claim could not have been allowed until the system of allegorical interpretation had arisen. It was received into the Canon in the first or second century, B. c, and at this time its Solomonic au thorship and its allegorical character were both al lowed, no doubt. " Unless the book were ascribed to Solomon, it is not likely that it would have been received into the Canon, and except for its allegori cal interpretation at the time when the Canon was * He might have found in it a capital argument against foreign marriages. 142 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. fixed, it probably would not have been ascribed to Solomon." Once admitted into the list of precious, which soon became the list of sacred, books, it soon became a great favorite with the Rabbinical exposi tors. It was supposed to figure forth the "relation of Yahweh and his people Israel. This relation had often been set forth in the similitude of a faith ful husband and a faithless wife. But here the wife was represented as altogether faithful. Rabbi Akiba said : " The whole world is not worth the day on which the Canticle was given to Israel. All the writings of the Canon are holy, but the Canticle is the most holy of holies." But persons under thirty were prohibited from reading it ; not, we are assured, on account of its sensuous imagery, but on account of its theological profundity. Origen, the greatest Christian scholar of the second century, was a firm believer in the double sense of Scripture, and he set the fashion for the allegorical Christian interpreta tion of the Song of Solomon, which has been the most common ever since, and which the chapter headings and running titles in our English Bible, dating from the seventeenth century, tend to per petuate indefinitely. According to these the Shu- lamite maiden of the poem is the Church, and her lover is Christ. Here are the headings of the first chapter, " The Church's love unto Christ. She confesseth her deformity [I am black but comely] and prayeth to be directed to his flock. Christ di- recteth her to the Shepherd's tents, and showing his love to her, giveth her gracious promises. The Church and Christ congratulate one another." THE PSALMS AND OTHER WRITINGS. 1 43 And so on for seven chapters. But from the earli est dawn of modern criticism the interpretation of the book has varied in a hundred different ways, tending more and more away from the allegorical method, and getting more and more rational and sensible. Prof. Stuart thought the book an alle gory representing the love of Christ, not for the Church, but for the individual soul, and it has fre quently been regarded in this light, which is, it seems to me, the most disgusting possible. Scien tific criticism has but one opinion, and that a very simple one, viz., that the book is a poem of the natural human love of a young girl for a shepherd lad, whom she has just espoused. Solomon desires to add her to the number of his wives, and to make her his greatest favorite. To this end she is plied with flatteries and entreaties. The other women join with Solomon to persuade her to remain with them. But it is all without avail. Her virtue and her love are an impregnable fortress, and in despair of making her more docile, Solomon at length con sents to her return to her more humble and more virtuous lover. The poem is dramatic in its form. The Semitic mind was never master of this form of poetry. But this is the nearest approach we have to it in ancient Jewish literature. The book of Job comes next, but that is hardly more than dialogue. The limits of the different scenes and speakers have been determined by the ablest critics with much unanimity. Dr. Noyes has well said, that if the book were anywhere but in the Bible, no one would have a moment's hesitation in deciding on its char- 144 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. acter. The book was never written that carried its meaning on its face more obviously than this. The heroine's nose is compared in the text to " the tower of Lebanon, which looketh towards Damas cus :" a prominent feature in a beautiful landscape. The central idea of the book is just as prominent, and has its beautiful surroundings. As for the authorship of Solomon, it is hardly worth considering. On any theory of interpreta tion, natural or allegorical, it is equally impossible. He would have been the last man to write a drama celebrating the purity and faithfulness of a maiden whom he had tried in vain to add to his seraglio. And how absurd to think that he would make him self in an allegory the impersonation of the idola trous enemies of Israel's righteousness and peace. The book was probably written, as I have said, late in the ninth, or early in the eighth century, B. C, most likely in Northern Israel, where Solomon was never a great favorite. The Song of Songs needs no apology for its char acter, or for its appearance in the Old Testament Canon. It needs no Solomonic authorship or alle gorical interpretation to defend its claim. It can afford to stand on its own merits. It has been a favorite subject of attack with the Voltairean school of critics. It has been assailed as grossly sensuous. But it is not so in reality. Considering the time when it was written, and that it is an oriental poem, its imagery is singularly pure. And in its central purpose it is the peer of any book from Genesis to Revelation. It celebrates a fidelity so perfect, that THE PSALMS AND OTHER WRITINGS. H5 not even the most splendid King of Israel, with all the gifts and blandishments at his command, could swerve the Shulamite maiden from her fond allegi ance to her rustic lover. It is a poor business, throwing dirt at such a book as this. Taken for what it is, the book would never have been very harmful, though it might have been un duly exciting to the youthful imagination. But taken as an allegory of God's love for the Church, or for the individual soul, it has been extremely pernicious in its influence. It has conduced to spiritual lasciviousness, to what Theodore Parker called " voluptuousness with God." St. Bernard preached scores of sermons from it reeking with sensuous images of spiritual relations. The Mora vians fed with it their morbid appetite for passion ate images of the soul's union with God until their hymns were marvels of obscenity. It was a great favorite with the early Methodists, and Dr. Adam Clarke, himself a Methodist, has testified that its influence was exceedingly demoralizing, so potent is the universal tendency to carry over sensuous- ness from the realm of feeling and imagination into that of life. And even if it is not carried over, it is hardly less pernicious. The ecstasy of a St. Cath erine of Siena, fancying herself the mystic bride of Christ, is that for which the manly piety of Jesus had no politer term than adultery of the heart. * Last, but not least, the book of Job remains to be considered. And certainly I could not have a * For the pathological aspect of such phenomena, see Dr. Mauds- ley, Body and Mind. He regards the ecstasy of St. Catherine as 3 species of insanity, caused by an inflammation of the ovaries. I46 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. better with which to conclude my account of the Old Testament literature, for indeed it is a wonder ful book, dealing with a great problem in a lofty spirit, and in a grand poetic style. It is the nearest approach we have to a dramatic poem in the Old Testament, with the exception of the Song of Songs. In the Song of Songs there is a development of action ; here, at the most, only a development of ideas. The Song of Songs is confined to the dram atis per sonce, but in Job we have a prose introduc tion, Chapters I. and II., and a prose conclusion, both historical in form, not a prologue and epi logue. The remainder of the book is more a dia logue than a drama, properly speaking. There are six speakers in all, Job, his three " comforters," Elihu and the Deity. The dialogue is broken up into three series of speeches, besides the speech of Elihu and that of the Deity. The first series consists of six speeches, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar each speak ing once, and Job answering each of them in turn.* The secondf repeats this number and order. The third series^ consists of but four speeches, Zophar having retired from the discussion. The speech of Elihu extends from the beginning of the thirty- second to the end of the thirty-seventh chapter ; that of the Deity from the thirty-eighth to the end of the forty-first. Then come a few words from Job, and afterwards the prose conclusion. The unity of the book has often been assailed by various critics. Some have argued that both the introd'ic- * Chapters IV.— XIV. t Chapters XV.— XXI. % Chapters XXII.— XXXI. THE PSALMS AND OTHER WRITINGS. 142 tion and the conclusion are later additions, with some reason in the first instance, and with a great deal in the second, which gives up the case entirely to the three friends of Job, who have all along been faying to put him in the wrong. Poetic justice is done him. He gets twice as many sheep and oxen and camels and she-asses as he had before, and seven sons once more and three daughters, the children, let us hope, of a second wife of more agreeable disposition than the first. This conclusion cer tainly has the appearance of an after-thought, stuck on by some conventionally orthodox person. But there is less agreement among the critics about this than about the speech of Elihu, which is almost universally regarded as an interpolation, for reasons which appear to me extremely satisfactory. It in terrupts the natural climax of the poem. Its solu tion of the question in dispute is not that of Yah weh. It is an advance upon the solution of Job's friends. But it is also an advance upon the solution of Yahweh. If the poet had arrived at this solu tion, he would probably have put it into the mouth of Yahweh instead of the one he has put there. Be sides, the speech of Elihu has peculiarities of style which put it into post-exilic times, a hundred years at least after the remainder of the dialogue. The subject of the poem is a subject of perennial interest. It is the relation of suffering to personal character. The received idea among the Hebrews up to the seventh century had been that for indi viduals and states outward success and peace and happiness were the invariable rewards of a good 148 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. life. Strange as it may seem to us, that such a doctrine could hold its ground a day in the presence of so many contradictory facts, it did hold its ground for centuries. " I have been young, and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, and his seed begging bread." So writes one of the psalmists. It did not look so to CoL.Newcome, as he sat there in the Charter House, and heard the choir chanting these ancient words. How could it look so to anyone who did not argue backward re morselessly from the calamity to the unrighteous ness of the sufferer? It certainly did not look so to the writer of Job, and his book was written to protest against the received doctrine that outward happiness and fortune were proportioned to the righteousness of individuals and states. His hero was a man of blameless life, and he was smitten down beneath the weight of infinite misfortune. Stripped bare of children and possessions ; advised by her who should have been his comforter, to " curse God and die," he still held fast to his integ rity, and refused to allow that he had sinned against his maker. His three friends represent the conven tional idea of retribution, and repeat its argument over and over again with " damnable iteration." But they do not make the least impression upon him. When they have finished he cries out : " O, that one heard me ! Lo ! here is my signature : Let the Almighty answer me. And let mine adversaiy write down his charge : Verily I will carry it on my shoulder And bind it on me as a crown." THE PSALMS AND OTHER WRITINGS. 1 49 The advance of Elihu's argument on the others is in its clearer assertion of the corrective character and purpose of suffering. But this solution of the difficulty was not that of the writer of the book of Job. Indeed for him there was no solution. " Then the Eternal answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said: — What did he say? Nothing that threw any light upon the awful problem which had shaken the moral nature of Job to its foundations, but only many things in proof of his exalted power and wisdom. Let Job deny the inevitable sequence of righteousness and happiness, but let him not dare to deny the wisdom, power and righteousness of God. " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" Abject submission to His inscrutable designs is the conclusion of the whole matter: " To bow before the awful will. And bear it with an honest heart." . It is commonly assumed that what this writer missed, the real solution of his problem, was the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punish ments. That such a doctrine would have seemed to him the real solution of the problem I can hardly doubt. But that it would have been the real solu tion, I am compelled to doubt very seriously. Is not the real solution to be sought for in the one ness of the individual with the Infinite, the All ? — a conscious solution when this oneness is consciously apprehended. But when it is not, God still takes the responsibility. The book of Job was the first sturdy protest against the current Hebrew doctrine of recompense. I 50 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. It was not the last. Jeremiah amended it by say ing, " The inquities of the fathers are visited upon the children," which Ezekiel denies with passion. But, six hundred years after the time when Job was probably written, the doctrine of compensation had been completely turned around. In the New Testa ment it is not wealth but poverty that is the sign of heavenly favor. " Blessed are the poor." " Go to, ye rich men, weep and howl, for ye have received your consolation." " How hardly shall they who have riches enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Doubt less this doctrine is as unphilosophic as the antipo dal doctrine in the Old Testament. When and by whom was the book of Job writ ten ? The first question is more easily answered than the second. It was probably written about 600, B. C. The fall of Josiah was possibly, as Kuenen thinks, the political occasion of it. But I cannot see that it needed any special political occa sion, although the overthrow of the good King Jo siah must have been a fearful strain on the conven tional idea of reward and punishment. Renan puts the book as far back as 800, B. C, and others put it after the captivity. To arrive at certainty is hard, but various indications point to about 600, B. C, as the most probable date. In that case it was not written by Moses, as is laboriously contended by its latest critic, Cowles, whose commentary on it has just appeared. The whole argument assumes the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and is still as thin as vanity. The God of Job is the God of universal nature and of all mankind, a conception THE PSALMS AND OTHER WRITINGS. 151 never dreamt of till the eighth century, B. c Who was the author of this wonderful book, we have no means of knowing. He was another Great Un known, the greatest of the sages, as the Deutero- Isaiah was of the prophets. Across the lapse of four and twenty centuries another poet* answers him, a poet even simpler than he in his poetic forms : Honor to those who have failed ; And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea ; And to those who sank themselves in the sea ; And to the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known. We have now come to the end of our consideration of the Old Testament writings. Together we have been witnesses of the gradual development of Israel's religion, the gradual growth and manufacture of its various books, and what we have seen has not at any point been a supernatural spectacle, but an en tirely natural and human one. If we have even ap proximated to the actual truth, we have discovered that the Old Testament is a book of many voices — ¦ voices of various compass and expression, but all, without exception, human voices ; human, and therefore often fallible. And we have seen enough to make us wonder how much longer such a book will hold the absolutely unique position which it holds to-day, whereby its texts serve in the place of arguments to impede the advance of science, and bolster many a tottering iniquity. But what I have told in these lectures is but a * Walt Whitman. I52 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. little part of the whole story. I have often been compelled to give you mere results where I would gladly have given you arguments, if the minutes had been hours. And of the beauty and glory which shine forth on many a page of psalm and prophecy, wisdom and law, I have said almost noth ing, for I have been dealing with the different books somewhat externally. " Others shall sing the song ; Others shall right the wrong ; Finish what I begin, And all I fail of win." But as for the principal idea which has been forced upon us — that the religion of Israel was not " a ladder let down from heaven," but one that was built up round by round from the good solid earth — for this I offer no apology. A hundred times more rational, it is a thousand times more beautiful than the idea it displaces. It makes the religion of Israel of a piece with all the other great religions of humanity, and with the universal order, which by a million million infinitesimal variations has been evolved from the primeval chaos. FIFTH LECTURE. THE APOCRYPHA: THE MISSING LINK. Hardly anything else has contributed so much to give the origin of Christianity an abnormal and miraculous appearance, as the gap apparently and really existing between the Old and New Testa ment literature. I say " apparently and really," for the gap is not so great as it is made to appear in our English Bible ; there is a " missing link," but some of the materials for forging it are at hand in the Old Testament. If Malachi were indeed the latest book in the Old Testament Canon, as it is represented by its marginal date, 397, B. C, there would be a gap of four hundred and fifty years be tween this book and the earliest books of the New Testament. No wonder then that Christianity has impressed the multitude as an interpolation from a supernatural sphere, — Jesus an unrelated person, wholly sui generis, teaching a doctrine of which there had been no previous anticipation. That the gap is in reality a good deal less than four hundred and fifty years has made no difference with the majority, for the fact has either been denied by their constituted teachers or passed over in prudent silence. But if we have not wholly gone astray, in the lectures of this course already given, the mar- i53 I 54 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. ginal date of Malachi, 397, is far from being the latest date of any Old Testament book, though it is fifty years too late for Malachi. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah, even in their original form, were written after Malachi, and did not assume their present form until 250, B. C, when the books of Chronicles made their appearance with these incor porated in them. We have good reason to believe that many of the Psalms were written after Malachi, together with the books of Ruth and Jonah and Ec clesiastes and Esther and Daniel, the last only one hundred and sixty-five years before Christ, and Esther and Ecclesiastes not very long before. Thus between Malachi and Paul's first Epistle, we have a considerable amount of Old Testament literature, a good deal of material out of which to forge the missing link. But we have nothing like enough. We get some wonderful glimpses of what was transpiring in the bosom of Judaism ; but there is need of much more light if we are going to under stand the natural development of Christianity from the parent faith. The last word of the Old Testa ment, unless a psalm or two are later still, is Daniel, and even this was written more than two hundred years before the first line of the New Testament. The gap is still considerable ; the missing link still lacks material. And where shall more be found ? A , great deal more in the Apocrypha; but the books herein contained need to be supplemented by others, which are not even contained as these are in the Roman Catholic Bible, such as the book of Enoch, which is in the Bible of the Abyssinian THE APOCR YPHA. I 5 5 Christians; such as the Sibylline Books, the Book of Jubilees* the Psalms of Solomon, so called, the writings of Josephus and the Talmudic Mishna. With all these helps much will remain obscure ; but using them discreetly, they will convince the can did, if not the most skeptical, that a rose upon its bush in June is not more natural and timely than Jesus was in the Galilee of Herod Antipas, and under the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate. And moreover, the genesis and growth of much that is implied in Jesus are thus made apparent. For when the curtain rises on the scenes of the New Testament, Judea is the province of an empire of which even the pseudo-Daniel did not dream, and which lay far, far beneath the horizon of Malachi and his contemporaries. Moreover Scribes, Phari sees, Sadducees and Essenes, sects of which Malachi was entirely ignorant, jostle each other on the narrow stage. The synagogue, an institution of which the Old Testament is wholly innocent, in the New Testament is of more importance than the temple. Again, the language of the speakers in the New Testament is entirely strange, not merely that it is Greek or Aramaic instead of Hebrew, but that it is concerning angels and devils, concerning immortality and the resurrection of the body, and paradise and hell, of all which Malachi and his con temporaries had only learned the alphabet. And yet no less a scholar than Westcott, anxious to make a point, speaks of the time from Malachi to Jesus as a period of stagnation. Never at any * Sometimes included in the Aby=sinian Canon. 156 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. time did a more active principle of change preside over the fortunes of the Jewish people. And the change was as important as it was immense, im portant for prospective Christianity as well as pres ent Judaism. No Jewish synagogue, no Christian church. No Jewish scribe, no Christian minister. No Jewish gehenna, possibly no Christian hell. No Jew ish immortality, no such gigantic other-worldliness, obscuring the ethical simplicity of Jesus with its absurd or solemn phantasms. No general resur rection of the body, then no special resurrection of Jesus to usurp the place of every higher argument for immortality. " If the dead rise not," said Paul, " then is Christ not risen." We have need then of every help of which we can avail ourselves to understand the process of de velopment from Malachi to Paul. As I have said, the Old Testament is not entirely silent on this period, though at the first blush it appears to be so. In Esther we have seen the introduction of the Purim feast into Judea ; in Chronicles the entire recasting of the national history in the priestly in terest. In Ecclesiastes we have heard a plaintive cry of discontent with both the temple and the Scribes ; in Daniel, a great voice of prophecy and exhortation, the last not wholly vain, the prophecy, like the predictions of far greater men, destined to utter disappointment ; the first hint also of the resur rection of the body. The books of the Apocrypha, with which we are to deal to-night, fill up the gulf still more between Old Testament and New ; but yet other books are needed to bridge it over perfectly. THE APOCRYPHA. 3 57 These can be sought and found outside the Bible's most inclusive boundaries. Their names I have already given.* The books contained in the Apocrypha, as it is commonly printed, are not all regarded as canon ical even by the Roman church. The exceptions are the two books of Esdras and the Prayer of Manasses. The others were adjudged canonical by the Council of Trent, April 8th, 1546, as they had been by the Council of Carthage, in 397, A. D. The Lutheran and the Anglican churches do not consider them canonical, but allow them to be printed with the rest of the Bible, and read " for instruction." Other branches of the Protestant Church have made apocryphal, which originally meant hidden, (a hidden meaning being attributed to the books), mean spuri ous, and in accordance with this view the Apocry pha has not been printed by other Bible Societies than the Lutheran and Anglican. I have myself been taken to task for using a text from it, as if I had sinned against the Holy Ghost; but in this pulpit it has always been a favorite section of the Bible. The books of the Apocrypha were not admitted into the Jewish canon, mainly, because the destruc tion of the Jewish state in 70, A. D., naturally threw back the Jews with exclusive admiration on what had been accepted as canonical before that event. These books were then already knocking at the door of the Jewish canon, and would have been ad mitted but for the destruction of Jerusalem. To *Vide, pp. 154, 155- I5§ THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. the canon of the Alexandrian Jews, whom this catastrophe did not seriously affect, they were ad mitted, and from thence passed over into the keep ing of the early Christian Church. Though never quoted expressly in the New Testament their influ ence is often unmistakable, and by the early schol ars of the Church they are continually quoted as of equal authority with the Old Testament and those which have never been admitted into the Roman canon ; Enoch, which is in the Ethiopic canon only, being even quoted in the New Testament, in the Epistle of Jude. The Council of Carthage, which decided on the canonicity of those which were again canonized at Trent, was the same Council which decided on the canonicity of our New Testa ment books. It had as good reasons in the one case as in the other, and Protestants who attach any value to its judgment of the New Testament writings, are bound to attach equal value to its judgment of the Apocrypha. The arguments of Protestant divines against their canonicity, are for. the most part miserable make-shifts. The puerility of certain portions is charged upon the whole. They are not written in Hebrew, we are told, like the Old Testament books. No more is the New Testament, and for the same good reason. When it was written, Hebrew was not the language of the time and place where it was written. Some of the later Old Testament books are written in a different Hebrew from the earlier. As for internal character istics, whatever militates against their value can be matched in the Old Testament. The most doubt- THE APOCRYPHA. I 59 ful history is no more doubtful than that of Chron icles, and is less wilfully misrepresented. The an gel of Tobit is no more fictitious than the angel of Jacob. The murder of Holofernes by Judith is paralleled by that of Sisera by Jael, and the gen eral spirit of the book of Judith is not so savage and vengeful as that of Esther. But to those who set no artificial value on the Old Testament these comparisons are for the most part superfluous. To such the canon is but a list of books which for one reason or another came, in course of time, to be re garded as of remarkable and even supernatural im portance. Remarkable we may allow ; but to say supernatural we have no faintest warrant. The books of the Old Testament differ among them selves in value and significance. In the Apocrypha there are books which, if not equal to some in the Old Testament, are certainly superior to others. We could give up Esther and Ecclesiastes much bet ter than the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus. The first book of Maccabees is a chapter which the epic of the centuries could ill afford to spare, while Chronicles, however interesting as a contribution to the history of opinions, has no such moral energy, and tells no such unvarnished tale of heroism and unwavering fidelity. The genius of Handel knew its own when it made Judas Maccabaeus the theme of one of his most glorious oratorios. High art is never narrow or sectarian, and therefore it has found in the Apocrypha a never-failing fountain of sug gestion. Music and poetry and painting have dis covered here some of their choicest themes, some 160 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. of their grandest inspirations. Commend me tc the artists, rather than to the theologians, as judges of what is most inspiring, and by consequence the most inspired. The first book in the Apocrypha is one which might discourage a new-comer from proceeding any further. It is the first book of Esdras, sometimes called the third because, Esdras being the Greek form of Ezra, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are designated in the Vulgate as the first and second books of Esdras. This book is for the most part a rehash of material contained in Chronicles and Ezra, and adds little or nothing to the original, which is far more trustworthy as history. First we have an account of the great passover celebrated by Josiah, after the discovery of Deuteronomy and the subse quent reform ; then, in order, accounts of Cyrus's permission for the captives to return, of the rebuild ing of the temple, its interruption and completion and the publication of the Law. Seeing that we have all this in better form elsewhere, the most interesting portion of the book is the episode, be ginning at chapter HI., 4, the argument before the king, Darius, as to which, wine, woman, or the Truth is the strongest, from which, in slightly modified form, we get the glorious proverb Magna est Veritas et prcevalebit ; — " Truth is mighty and will prevail," a sentiment whose latest echo is the noble plea which Dr. Holmes has written for the substitu tion of Veritas, the earliest motto of Harvard Col lege, for the later and present one, To Christ and the Church : THE APOCRYPHA. l6l " Nurse of the future, daughter of the past, That stern phylactery best becomes thee now : Lift to the morning star thy marble brow ! Cast thy brave Truth on every warring blast ; Stretch thy white hand to that forbidden bough And let thine earliest symbol be thy last." The first book of Esdras was perhaps written from a purely literary impulse, the writer fancying he could improve on the original account; perhaps from a desire to hold up the character of Cyrus as a model to the foreign oppressors of Judea. The au thor would seem to have been a Greek-speaking Jew resident in Egypt, and this book to have been written in the first century before Christ. Quoted as Scriptural authority by Athanasius and August ine, it was nevertheless omitted from the canon by the Council of Carthage, and this omission was con firmed at Trent. The second book of Esdras, the fourth according to the Vulgate reckoning, is a much more important contribution to our knowledge of the hopes and theories that were in ebullition in Judea, in the time of Jesus. At the earliest it was not written long before his birth ; at the latest not later than the end of the first Christian century. The date is harder to decide because the book has been freely interpolated by a Christian hand, and it is not always easy to distinguish the limits of the interpo lations. Like Daniel the book pretends to have been written by one who had been dead four or five hundred years. This sort of pseudonymous writing was the order of the day. The book is further like Daniel in being an example of Apocalyptic writing, 1 62 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. the peculiarity of which consists in its representa tions of corning events by extended rhetorical vis ions in which imaginary beasts play a distinguished part. The two great examples of this sort of writ ing in the Bible are the books of Daniel and Revela tion. The second book of Esdras makes a third and the book of Enoch still another of the most striking character, and so instructive that it is a pity the Abyssinian Bible has its exclusive benefit. Daniel's fourth empire, which was the Greek with him, here figures as the Roman, and the great events which Daniel had predicted on the downfall of the Greek Empire not having happened, they are here postponed till the destruction of the Rom an Empire is accomplished. The first two and last two chapters of the book are plainly Christian addi tions. The remainder is made up of a series of dream-visions, six in all, very mysterious, with ex planations hardly less so, concluding with a revela tion to Esdras that " the world has lost its youth. and the times wax old," and a command for him to take five men "ready to write swiftly," and dictate to them the contents of all the sacred books which had been burned by the Chaldeans. For forty days he dictated day and night, and from his dictation the five scribes wrote two hundred and four books "to publish openly," and afterwards seventy others for the wise only among the people. One could hardly have a better sample of the critical acumen of the early fathers than their acceptance of this story as a true account of the miraculous preservation of the Old Testament books, though of the twohun- THE APOCRYPHA. 1 63 dr^.d and seventy-four thus written only thirty-nine remained to them. Irenaeus and Tertullian, and even Clement and Augustine, scholars among the fathers, swallowed this camel as easily as if it had been a gnat. And yet this marvellous story is but the lengthened shadow of the fact that Ezra was the publisher, if not the writer, of the whole Levitic legislation, and that from his resolute activity dated a new order in the religious life and doctrine of his people. The second book of Esdras is a wail of bitter disappointment over the hard fate of Judea, but the persuasion finally prevails that, however dark the present, the Lord cannot withhold his mercy forever, and the appearance of his anointed one cannot be long delayed. As a book written during the first Christian century, and near its close the book is interesting as showing how absolutely unconscious Judaism was of the significance of Christianity. The coming of Messiah is still future, and the claim of Jesus to the messianic office does not so much as demand a passing word of reproba tion. "How calm a moment may succeed * One that shall thrill the world forever ! " The Abyssinian is the only Christian canon which contains the fourth book of Esdras, it having been rejected by the Council of Carthage, and again by that of Trent. But between Carthage and Trent it was printed in the Vulgate, and parts of it still linger in the Roman service. Such a book is proof positive that the forms of thought of the New * " Precede " in the original by Alfred Domett. 164 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. Testament are by no means sni generis, but those of the Jew as well as the Christian in the first century. We find here many a curious analogue of Paul's theology and the imagery of John in the Apoca lypse. The next book in the Apocrypha is the Book of Tobit. It is the story of a faithful Jew of the As syrian captivity, whose prayers and alms are not forgotten, but secure him ample blessings after a period of sad mishap. In fact, the writer is one who joins the three friends of Job to charge him with folly in denying the infallible connection of piety and good fortune within the limits of the present life. The book is similar to Job at various points, and it is not unlikely that the author had Job in his mind and felt he was improving on its treatment of the universal problem : Why is the good man made to suffer? Tobit is remarkable for its union of the most natural and human elements with the baldest supernatural traits. In many parts of it there is a charming simplicity. No other book in the whole Bible has such a warm, domestic color ing; the home life of the Cohens in Daniel De- ronda is hardly made more real than that of Tobit and his wife and their son Tobias. On the other hand, the supernatural element is omnipresent. We have a complete doctrine of angels. A group of seven, standing before God, present to him the prayers of the pious. The angel Raphael, passing himself off as a distant relative of Tobias, makes a long journey with him. The bad angel Asmodeus, desiring Sara for himself, kills seven of her hus- THE APOCRYPHA. l6j bands on their bridal night, and is finally outwitted by Tobias who, with the smoking heart and liver of a fish, a device of Raphael's suggestion, drives him away into the utmost parts of Egypt, where a good angel binds him. This is the atmosphere of the Talmudic legends and the " Arabian Nights.'' Palestine has already borrowed the whole Persian angelology. The seven angels about God repro duce the seven councillors of King Darius. The doc trines of prayer and alms prepare us for the Phari saic pride in these "means of grace " which kindled the pure flame of Jesus' indignation. But there is no trace of Hellenism in Tobit. The book was probably written in the first quarter of the second century, B. c, and by a Palestinian Jew who had no personal acquaintance with the scene of his story. Hence, a good deal of bad geography. Origen and other early Christian scholars quoted it as regular Scripture. It was an especial favorite in the West ern Church and was made canonical at Carthage, and again at Trent. Luther's fondness for it is well known. Its homely domestic quality must have attracted him, and its childish superstition certainly did not repel him. As Tobit is another Job, so Judith is another Jael, — a mingled Jael and Esther, perhaps we might say more truly. Judith is one of the great Bible story books. Her figure, with the head of Holo fernes in her hand, is one that artists have a hun dred times essayed to paint, and as I read the book it is made far more impressive because, with m)' mind's eye, I see Judith always wonderful with the 1 66 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. beauty that a modern artist has given her upon his canvas. The most of you are well acquainted with the story of the book : how Nebuchadnezzar, King of Nineveh, sent out his general, Holofernes, tc compel the whole earth to worship him alone; how, ravaging and murdering, he came at length to Beth- uliah, and lay siege to it, and cut off its supply of water ; how the people were in such sore distress that they begged the elders to give up the town to the invader; and then how Judith, the rich widow, as good as she was beautiful, devised a plan for bringing all the counsels of the enemy to nought. Arraying herself splendidly, she sought the camp of Holofernes, and was admitted to his tent. And having seen her beauty, he forgot all things else, and thought only how he might win her. But when she feigned compliance, and he, for joy thereat, had drunk him into a heavy sleep, she took his falchion and at two strokes cut off his head, and then, upon the plea of going to her morning prayers outside the camp, she made off with the head of Holofernes to Bethuliah. And when the Assyrians knew their general had been murdered, and saw his head sus pended from the wall, they fled in terror, but were overtaken and despoiled, and the remnant of them was pursued beyond Damascus. And Judith's share was Holofernes' tent, with all its gorgeous stuffs and costly vessels, and better still a crown of olive and the love of all her people, and many years of honored widowhood. Such is the story, and it is told very powerfully. It is a fiction, not a history of any actual occurrence. The writer did THE APOCRYPHA. 1 67 not try to keep up an appearance of historic veri similitude. He made Nebuchadnezzar King of Nineveh after the captivity, though Nineveh was taken by his father before the captivity, and he himself was King of Babylon. Wherever we can check the writer's history, it proves to be absurd. Holofernes is an unknown general, and Bethuliah is an unknown city. But, though the book is a fiction, it is a fiction with a purpose, as Estlier was and Daniel and Jonah. Its purpose was— all here is probability — to fire some woman's heart to such a deed as that of Charlotte Corday,* her Marat some general of the Syrian Seleucidae or some royal op pressor like Demetrius. Such a purpose would as sign the book to the last quarter of the second century, B. C. In the sixteenth chapter there is a song of Judith, suggested by the song of Deborah. The seventeenth verse is strangely parallel with a verse in Mark, " Where their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched ;" "Woe to the nations that rise up against my kindred. The Lord Al mighty will take vengeance on them in the day of judgment, putting fire and worms in their flesh ; and they shall feel them and weep forever." The book of Judith has been canonical in the Roman Church since the first Council of Carthage. It may well be that more than once it has nerved to treach erous or open murder the assassin's arm.f But art is debtor to it more than morals or religion. * Since writing this I have read that Charlotte Corday's act was directly inspired by the book of Judith. \ Donatello's statue of Judith in Florence was set up by the people as an " exemplum sdlulis public 02" 1 68 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. Next after the book of Judith we have certain additions to the book of Esther. These in the Sep tuagint were scattered through the book of Esther, but in the Latin Vulgate, following Jerome, they conclude the tenth and make six other chapters. These additions were probably written midway of the first century, B. C. There is but little doubt why they were written. The original book does not contain the name of God, or any allusion to the Deity from beginning to end. To the pious Jew this was a serious defect, and there were rabbis who opposed the admission of Esther into the canon on account of it. The additions were mani festly written to supply this serious defect. They are larded thick with the divine name, and blacken that of Haman with a more malignant energy than the original ; a difficult business, and yet possible. Josephus uses these additions freely, and our earli est knowledge of them is from his writings. But for some reason they were rejected by his country men, perhaps because they were so greedily ac cepted by the early Christians. Their canonical dignity in the Roman Church was confirmed by the Council of Trent. The next step in the Apocrypha is to a higher plane, from which our view begins to widen, and our impression of the country as a whole to grow more favorable. The Wisdom of Solomon is an other instance of the habit, so inveterate with the Jews and early Christians, of putting forth their teachings in the name of some distinguished person long since dead. And yet so little critical discrim- THE APOCRYPHA. 1 69 ination had the great scholars of the early Church, that some of the wisest of them confidently ascribed this book to Solomon. Even if the book of Prov erbs were his, as these assumed, it would still be impossible to attribute the book of Wisdom to the same author. Who was its author no modern critic has been bold enough to say, and to discover is impossible. The suggestion of Augustine that it was Jesus, the son of Sirach, the author of Ecclcsi- asticus, is another proof of Augustine's defect of critical ability. When it was written cannot be confidently stated. Opinions vary through two centuries, a few extremists exceeding even these limits. The more general opinion puts it from fifty to a hundred years before the Christian era, but the opinion of Kuenen and others that it was written in the reign of Caligula (37 — 41, A. D.) has much to recommend it. The desire of that imperial maniac to have his image worshipped as a god is plainly reprehended. Where it was written is less doubt ful. Doubtless in Alexandria. The writer was a Jew, strongly imbued with the philosophy of Plato, like his contemporary Philo Judasus. His four car dinal virtues are Platonic, so is his doctrine that " the corruptible body presseth down the soul," and his doctrine of wisdom, as an emanation from the Deity, is a compromise between the purely Pales tinian personification of the Wisdom of Yahweh and the Platonic doctrine of the Logos. Identify this emanation with Jesus, and you have the proem of the fourth Gospel. Ewald well says, " In the deep glow which, with all its apparent tranquility, 170 'THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. streams through its veins, in the nervous energy of its proverbial style, in the depth of its representa tions, we have a premonition of John ; and in the conception of heathenism a preparation for Paul, like a warm rustle of spring ere the time is fully come." " These preludings of a high philosophy and faith," says Dean Stanley, " whether two cen turies before, or close upon the new era, are in any case the genuine product of Alexandrian Juda ism, of the union of Greek and Hebrew thought." And surely we could have no better evidence than is afforded in this book, that at the dawn of Chris tianity everything that was best and highest in its teachings was possible without the least interpola tion from a supernatural sphere. But this is not to say that Christianity was superfluous. These lofty teachings needed to be incarnated in some magnetic individual, and needed too — for history is always wise — to be invested in a wonderful mythology ere they could be the new religion of the Greek and Roman and Teutonic world. Without this vehicle the tonic sentiments of Jesus could not have forced a pas sage through the set lips of paganism, and coursing through its veins have made them thrill with new and higher life. However this may be, The Wisdom of Solomon is a book that might well have an honored place in either Testament, a bright " Hesper-Phosphor, double name For what is one, the first, the last," — the last of the declining day of Judaism, and the first of the new morn of Christianity. Its different THE APOCRYPHA. 1 71 parts are of unequal value, but it is full of wise and tender thoughtfulness. Nowhere else in the Bible, not even in the New Testament, which Dr. Hedge avers contains only one doubtful affirmation of the soul's natural immortality — nowhere else is this doctrine asserted so strongly and clearly. " For God created man to be immortal, and made him the image of his own eternity." And here too is the first anticipation of that other immortality, which to George Eliot and many others seems a sufficient substitute for a future life of conscious immortality beyond the grave. " Better is it to have no chil dren, and to have virtue, for the memorial thereof is immortal ; because it is known with God and with men. When it is present men take example at it, and when it is gone they desire it. It weareth a crown, and triumpheth forever, having gotten the victory striving for undefiled rewards." In making this book canonical in 397, A.D., the council of Carthage honored itself and the great council of Trent did well to follow its example. And this remark has an equal application to The Wisdom of Jesus, tlie Son of Sirach, known also as Ecclesiasticus, the Latin word corresponding to the Greek Ecclesiastes and like that meaning the preacher, although, according to Dean Stanley, the word in this instance was not part of the original title and merely indicates that this was an ecclesias tical book among the early Christians ; that is, used by them, and one of the first so used, to read from in the churches. Stanley has called this book " the recommendation of the theol- 172 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. ogy of Palestine to Alexandria," and the Wisdom of Solomon " the recommendation of the theology of Alexandria to Palestine." But in the case of Ben Sirach, the recommendation was notmade by the original author, but by his grandson, who, as the prologue informs us, translated his grandfather's book from Hebrew into Greek (in Egypt, presuma bly at Alexandria,) in the year 132, B. C. This would place the original work about 180, B. C. The general character of the book is most akin to Wis dom and the canonical book of Proverbs. But as it is from four to six hundred years younger than the latter and about two hundred older than the former it differs from them respectively, as we should ante cedently expect. In the canonical Proverbs, devo tion to the temple service is still far in the future, but in Ben Sirach nothing is more conspicuous. The closing section of the book begins " Let us now praise famous men and our fathers that begat us," and then follows a long catalogue of worthies in which Moses is dismissed with a few verses, and Aaron the High Priest comes in for a much larger share of honor. The same tendency to exalt the priesthood and the temple is shown in the glowing picture of the high priest Simon, as he appeared in the performance of his sacred functions. The same spirit is divulged in this passage as in the psalmist's declaration, dating from this same period ; " A day in thy courts is better than a thousand." But Ben Sirach is not so much in love with the temple as to exalt its ceremonies above the claims of " mere morality." True to his order, for he is one of the sages, he is THE APOCRYPHA. 173 preeminently a moralist. And his morality, though frequently prudential, rises at its best to a much higher level than that of his canonical model. There are voices of compassion here which anticipate the tenderness of Jesus for the poor and erring. And now and then the voice of the philosopher deepens and rounds into prophetic utterance: " He that re- quiteth a good turn offereth fine flour, and he that giveth alms sacrificeth praise. To depart from un righteousness is propitiation." And, best of all, we have that passage which John Bunyan hunted for in his Bible a whole year and more, and at last stumbled upon in the Apocrypha ; which at first did some what daunt him, but afterward he wrote, " That word doth still oft-times shine before my face." And no wonder, you will say, for it was this : " Look at the generations of old and see. Did ever any trust in the Lord and were confounded, or did any abide in his fear and were forsaken ?" There is many a foregleam in Ben Sirach of the light which should "lighten the Gentiles," as well as of the folly which that flame would scorch with righteous indig nation, when prayers and alms should have become as formal and self-righteous as the blood of bullocks. Nearly contemporaneous with Ecclesiastes, this book is only less positive than that in its denial of a future life. It makes no affirmation. The only comfort it can give is that which Buddha gave to the young mother, Kisagotami : death is the uni versal law. " Fear not the sentence of death ; re member them that have been before thee and that come after, for this is the sentence of the Lord over 174 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. all flesh." And yet the general aspect of the book is far more noble than that of Ecclesiastes. Written but a few years later, the wonder is why this did not attain canonical repute equally with that, or in pre ference to it. The solution of this problem is two fold. The writer of Ecclesiastes had the shrewdness to put forth his book as Solomon's. But, further than this, it was the scribes who decided, for the most part, which books were canonical, and they were not friendly to Ben Sirach, because he was not friendly to them. In his list of famous men he does not even mention Ezra, their great prototype. His sympathies are with the Sadducaic party, which, in his time, already existed and opposed the Pharisaic, the party of the scribes. Nothing could be falser than the ordinary conception of the Sadducees as free-thinkers. It was not as free-thinkers, but as conservatives that they denied the resurrection of the body. The Scriptures did not teach these things and therefore they did not believe them. The Pharisees were the party of freedom, the innovators, foisting their meanings on the Scriptures, and piec ing them out with their oral traditions. Ben Sirach's sympathies were all with the conservatives, and so the scribes denied him a canonical position. But for emancipated minds his book is just as sacred out of the canon as it would be in it. Ubi spiritus, ibi Ecclesia and " where the spirit is there is the " holy Bible. The early Christians, wiser than the scribes, reversed their judgment ; Carthage and Trent de clared the book canonical, but Protestantism reverted to the Pharisaic narrowness. THE APOCR YPHA . 1 7 5 The book of Baruch follows Ben Sirach in ordin ary editions of the Apocrypha. Here again is an example of the custom of pseudonymous writing, with a view to getting a more extended hearing and influence. To Baruch, the Scribe of Jeremiah whom Allston's famous picture of the two has made so real for some of us, is attributed a book written about two hundred years after his time, that is soon after the Alexandrian Conquest, to encourage the Jews under their new rulers and hold out to them the prospect of their ultimate deliverance. The book has not a little dignity and power. The closing chapters have the veritable ring of ancient pro phecy. The author was no mere copyist, but one who had drenched himself in the prophetic spirit. The council of Trent did well to reckon it canon ical. An " Epistle of Jeremy " is commonly printed as its sixth chapter. This epistle is manufactured out of Jeremiah, X., and XXIX. It was probably written in the Maccabaean period and has no natural connection with the book of Baruch. Next after Baruch, we have The Song of the Three Holy Cliild- ren and the stories of Susanna and Bel and the Dragon, all additions to the book of Daniel by an other hand than that of the original author. They are conceived in much the same spirit as the origi nal, and have found equal favor with artists and poets, if not with Protestant theologians. By Roman Catholics they are regarded as rightfully be longing to the original composition. I must myself confess to a great tenderness for Bel and the Dragon and allow that in my childhood it was my favorite 176 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. portion of Scripture, which I was never tired of hear ing read by one dear voice which I shall hear nc more. The Prayer of Manasses is not regarded as canon ical by either Protestants or Romanists. Manasses or Manasseh was the most idolatrous, and at the same time the most prosperous of all the Kings of Judah. But this conjunction of idolatry and pros perity was intolerable to the pious Jew, and so the story was invented that he was taken captive to Babylon and there, bitterly expiating his offences, repented of his evil deeds. I have said before, that this story is on a par with the death-bed repentance of Voltaire and Thomas Paine and other famous " infidels." It does not contain a particle of truth. The Prayer of Manasses is a noble fiction which does credit to its author, who wrote it not long be fore the time of Christ. There is better Psalmody and Prophecy in the Old Testament than in the Apocryphal books, and bet ter, or at least grander, " wisdom," if we put the Great Unknown who wrote the book of Job among the Sages, but there is no history so good as that contained in the first Book of Maccabees, none so sim ple and truthful, and none which boasts a theme so epical in its inherent quality. The time de scribed is that which generated the magnificent Apocalypse of Daniel and the Psalms of Solomon, the latter for some unaccountable reason never included in the Jewish or in any Christian canon but worthy of a place among the best. Were we considering the time or the literature of the time in its connection THE APOCRYPHA. 1 77 with events, these writings would demand from us the carefullest consideration. * But we arc con sidering now only the books of the Apocrypha. The first Book of Maccabees was doubtless written very shortly after the events which it describes : in the last part of the second century, B. C, or early in the first. It contains a history of the Jews from 175 to 135 B.C., a history which covers the attempt of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Syrian Greek, to root out the Jew ish religion, and the revolt of the Jews, headed by Mattathias and his sons, ending in the establishment of a native Jewish monarchy for the first time since the rupture at the death of Solomon, and with a ter ritorial extension equal to that of David's Kingdom. A group of more commanding interest than that composed of Mattathias and his five stalwart sons, history does not contain in all her galleries of heroes. But from the group, Judas Maccabaeus, Judas the Hammer, stands forth as the most grandly simple and imposing. His brothers, Jonathan and Simon, played well their parts, but Judas his with so much mingled grace and power as should make a name which Christians have regarded as the most accursed of all names, for Jews one of the most honorable and blessed ; for Christians too, who can not suffer even Christianity to confine their sympa thies and admirations within sectarian limits. Not that the religion for which he put forth his strength was one which held the future in its fee. It was the religion of the temple, the religion of Levitical puri ty, of the Sabbath and the Sabbatical year, of cir- * As well as certain Psalms, such as the 74th, 79th, ard 110th. I78 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. cumcision and sacrifice. And all of this the ethics of Jesus would implicitly, and the inclusive sympathies of Paul explicitly, discard. But in the meantime it was the religion of the Jews, and if their fidelity to it was worthy of a better cause, it was still an abso lute fidelity to their sense of right. And it is such fidelity to personal conviction that makes a man a hero or a saint, apart from the intrinsic value of the cause for which he puts his life in jeopardy. Nor are there wanting signs that Judas Maccabaeus was no hide-bound formalist, but one who penetrated to the deeper spirit of the national religion. Even his father so far understood that "the sabbath is made for man " that he contemptuously refused to sacrifice the welfare of his cause to any fear of violating the day. If the enemy struck at him on that day, he would strike back his hardest, and not repeat their folly who had died like sheep, lest they should vio late the Sabbath. Certain it is that Judas Macca- baeus was not a favorite with the Talmudic scribes. Not even his name appears in the Mishna. He was a popular rather than an ecclesiastical hero ; a patriot rather than a fanatic. The second book of Maccabees is parallel with the first from 176 to 160, B.C. ; but then comes to an end while the first goes on a good deal further. This book has more of the character of a compila tion than the one which we have been considering, and was written at a much greater remove from the events narrated ; exactly when, it would be difficult to say. Judged by the calmer narrative of the first book of Maccabees and such extra-Jewish histories THE APOCRYPHA. 1 79 as are available, its historic value is inconsiderable. The Greek influence is plainly seen in the long speeches put into the mouths of the great person ages in the story. There is an exaggerated tone throughout, culminating in miraculous features of the most astounding boldness, to one of which, the story of Heliodorus, we are indebted for the great fresco of the Vatican, painted by Raphael for Pope Julius II., to symbolize his victory over the enemies of his pontificate. Heliodorus having been sent to take away the treasures of the temple, " There ap peared a horse with a terrible rider upon him and adorned with a very fair covering, and he ran fierce ly and smote at Heliodorus with his fore-feet ; and it seemed that he that sat upon the horse had a complete harness of gold. Moreover, two other young men appeared before him, notable in strength, excellent in beauty, and comely in apparel, who stood by him on either side and scourged him con tinually. And Heliodorus fell suddenly upon the ground and was compassed with great darkness." There is much more of this sort, as when the proph et Jeremiah appeared to Judas Maccabaeus and gave to him a golden sword, or when Antiochus was about to undertake a second expedition against Egypt. "Through all the city through the space of almost forty days there were seen horsemen running in the air in cloth of gold and armed with lances, like a band of soldiers, and troops of horsemen in array encountering and running one against another with shaking of shields and multi tude of pikes, and drawing of swords and casting of l8o THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. darts, and glittering of golden ornaments and har ness of all sorts." Now all this is not only very pretty but it is very instructive. For besides this second book oi Maccabees and the first which we have already noticed, both of which are in the Roman Catholic canon, there are three other books of Maccabees, none of them canonical* nor printed in ordinary edi tions of the Apocrypha. Take all of these books to gether and they are an admirable illustration of the growth of a legend. The first book of Maccabees is calm and sensible, and self-restrained. There is not a hint of miracle. Not a hint of supernatural interposition. This book -was written very shortly after the events narrated. But the farther we get away from these events in the other books the more supernatural is the account of them, until at length the history which is at first so calm and sensible becomes a tissue of miraculous elements. And if a hundred years could work so great a change as this upon the Maccabaean history, what must not four, five and six hundred years have worked upon the history of the Exodus and the Conquest and the Early Monarchy? We have no reason to suppose that the Hebrews of the captivity were any more critical, any less imaginative, than the Jews of the first century, B.C. It is a notable fact that everywhere in the Old Testament or the New, when we come to close quarters with events, the miraculous wholly disappears or is reduced to a mere fraction of what it is in other places where the narration is considerably removed from the * Third book of Maccabees is in the Ethiopic canon. THE APOCRYPHA. l8l events narrated. Renan declares, "A miracle has never yet been wrought in the presence of savaus." Or, we might add, in the presence of any clear headed contemporary. There is one passage in the first book of Macca bees which is as fertile in suggestion as any other I can now recall in the whole range of literature. It is that which recites, in the eighth chapter, the cir cumstances of the first contact of Judea with the Roman commonwealth. This is the first mention in the Bible of that power, which in the following century was to be the Babylon of the Apocalypse. There is no hint of it in the Old Testament. Even in Daniel, written 165, B.C., the writer's vision does not extend beyond the empire of the Seleucidae. After them the deluge. But this first appearance of Rome in the book of Maccabees is like that of Athene springing in panoply complete from Zeus's brain. It is a truly wonderful picture of the power of Rome as seen from a distance, midway between the period of the Gracchi and the end of the Re public. How bright and happy and auspicious seemed that first contact of Judea and the Roman power, even to this writer, sixty or eighty years afterward ! No shadow of suspicion of the dreadful days to come falls for a moment athwart his glow ing page. But, as if such a shadow fell upon the hearts of his contemporaries, they were but ill- pleased with the compact which Judas Maccabaeus made with this portentous stranger of the West. Stanley imagines that it was the cause of that de fection of his army, on account of which he was 1 82 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. defeated in his last battle, when he himself was numbered with the slain. Less than two centuries after that first happy meeting, the Roman legions smote Jerusalem into the dust, and made an end forever of the Jewish state. Again, three centuries later, the emperor Julian sought in vain to reinstate the pagan worship, which indeed he loved with a much deeper love than Constantine, " the first Christian Emperor," was capable of cherishing for any object whatsoever. Dying, the story runs, he cried despairingly, "Thou hast conquered, O Gali lean ! " Little the Roman Senate thought when they received the ambassadors of Judas Maccabaeus that in five hundred years their mighty Rome would worship as a god a peasant of this nation, which now begged of them the help of their alliance. But would not Jesus have been more astonished if he had known that it would ever come to this? I have completed my account of the Apocrypha, but there is a single book which is beyond its pale, regarded as canonical by the Abyssinian Church alone, which I cannot forbear to mention. It is the book of Enoch which Dean Stanley has designated as " the Divina Commedia of those troubled times " which followed on the death of Simon Maccabaeus. Its date has been disputed, but the weight of scholarship is thrown in favor of its pre-Christian origin. At the latest it could hardly go more than midway into the first Christian century; for it is quoted in the book of Jude, which could hardly have been written later than 80, A. D., and it must have taken quite a little while for it to get up the repute necessary for such a quotation. Strangely THE APOCRYPHA. 1 83 enough, no book of our Apocrypha is directly quoted in the New Testament, while Enoch has this honor. In form it is a series of apocalyptic visions seen by the patriarch Enoch, who walked with God until " he was not, for God took him." Speaking of the inchoate science which is a striking feature of the book, the exuberant and impassioned earnestness with which the writer dwells upon the regularity and uniformity of natural phenomena, Dean Stanley says, " Had Western Christendom followed the example of the Ethiopic Church, and placed the book of Enoch in its canon, many a modern philosopher would have taken refuge under its authority from the attacks of ignorant alarmists ; many an enlightened theologian would have drawn from its innocent speculations cogent arguments to reconcile religion and science. The physics may be childish, the conclusions erroneous. But not even in the book of Job is the eager curiosity into all the secrets of nature more boldly encouraged, nor is there any ancient book, Gentile or Jewish, inspired by a more direct and conscious effort to resolve the whole system of the universe, moral, intellectual and physical, into a unity of government and idea and development." But I have made mention of this book particular ly, because no other in the Apocrypha or out of it throws such a flood of light upon the mental cir cumstances of the time in which Christianity was born and had its first successes. Whether it was written just before the Christian era or contem poraneously with its beginning, no one will claim 1 84 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. that, with the exception of a few obvious inter polations, it is a Christian book. A Christian book in the first Christian century without a syl lable concerning Jesus, and regarding the advent of the Messiah as an event still future, is a mani fest absurdity. It follows then, that if it did not itself create the circle of ideas in which the earliest Christians moved, it was, with early Christi anity, the outcome of a circle of ideas that was all- inclusive, and in either case that much which we have always regarded in Christianity as entirely original, was common as the air which Jesus and his disciples breathed. " Here we find," says Mar- tineau, " a century before the first line of the New Testament was written, all the chief features of its doctrine respecting the ' end of the world,' and the ' coming of the Son of Man ; ' the same theatre, Jerusalem ; — the same time, relatively to the writer, the immediate generation, — the hour at hand ; — the same harbingers, — wars and rumors of wars, and the gathering of Gentile armies against the elect ; — the same deliverance for the elect, — the advent of Messiah with the holy angels ; the same decisive solemnity, — the Son of Man on the throne of his glory, with all nations gathered before him ; — the same award, — unbelievers to a pit of fire in the valley of Hinnom, and the elect to the halls of the kingdom, to eat and drink at Messiah's table ; — -the same accession to the society, — by the first resurrection sending up from Hades the souls of the pious dead ; — the same renovation of the earth, — the old Jerusalem thrown away, and replaced by THE APOCRYPHA. 1 85 a new and heavenly ; — the same metamorphosis of mortal men, — to be as the angels ; — the same end to Messiah's time, — the second resurrection, and the 'second judgment of eternity,' consigning the wicked angels to their doom ; — and the same new creation, transforming the heavenly world, that it may answer to Paradise below. Here, in a book to which the New Testament itself appeals, we have the very drama of ' last things' which reappears in the book of Revelation and in portions of the Gos pels." And now I would that I had time to gather up the scattered hints which I have found in all these books of the Apocrypha, together with the book of Enoch, and to add to them such others as we might discover in the Psalms of Solomon and in the Sib ylline books, in Aristobulus and Philo Judasus, and in the Talmudic Mishna, — I would that I could gather all these hints together so that you might see how gradual but sure the evolution was, from Malachi to Jesus, of that social and ecclesiastical environment in the midst of which the life and character of Jesus were developed, and the ideas moral and spiritual and theological which formed the bulk of his own teachings, and of his dis ciples, in the infant Church. So doing, I could forge the missing link necessary to connect these distant centuries of Jewish culture in an indissoluble unity. So doing, I could show that Christianity was no interpolation from a supernatural sphere into the natural and human order of events, but the result of forces wholly natural and human ; that the 1 86 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. teachings of Jesus and his apostles involved no sudden and astounding revolution of existing manners and beliefs, but simply embodied elements that were alive and germinant on every side. That thus I could account for Jesus as the third person of the Trinity, or for the doctrine of the atone ment in its present form, or for the special doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, I shall not certainly pretend, for these are nowhere to be found in the New Testament. These too were gradually evolved ; some of them in a few, but others in the course of many centuries. But to understand the literature and history of the times immediately pre ceding, and contemporaneous with, the first Christian phenomena, is to understand, that to speak of the natural origin of Christianity is as allowable and as inevitable as to speak of the natural origin of any fruit that ever grew on tree or vine. Doubtless in either process there is involved a divine, an infinite element. But in neither is it an irruption from an external sphere, but simply that divine and infinite element which is involved in every stage of evolution, from the inorganic nebulae up to the conscious thought and love of the undying sons of God. SIXTH LECTURE. THE NEW TESTAMENT: THE EPISTLES. As in my first lecture on the Old Testament, ] indicated briefly, the nature of the process by which the Old Testament canon was formed, and came to be regarded of supreme and supernatural import ance, so in this lecture, my first on the New Testa ment, by way of introduction, I shall say a few words on the formation of the New Testament. It is permitted us in this instance to follow the process of formation more carefully than in the case of the Old Testament. From the way in which the New Testament is commonly regarded, one would suppose that it came down from heaven as the Koran of the Moslem fable did, in a single night ; that it was written either by the hand of the Almighty or at his immediate dictation. But what we find to be the truth is, that for centuries after they were written the New Testament books were regarded as belong ing to a different order from the Old. A Jew would have been shocked hardly more than a Christian at the idea of putting them on a level with Old Testa ment Scriptures. Oral tradition was esteemed of greater value than the written gospels or Epistles. Strangely enough the first mention of any part of the New Testament as Scripture is within the limits 187 1 88 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. of the New Testament itself, in the second Epistle of Peter* But this Epistle is the latest book of the New Testament, its date, as we shall see, about 170, A. D. After this, references to parts of the New Testament as Scripture grow more and more fre quent, but the term is equally applied to other writings which were not finally incorporated in the New Testament. The earliest list of New Testament books that we come upon is that of the heretic Mar- cion, 144, A. D. It includes ten of Paul's Epistles. Thirty years later all of these were still rejected by an important section of the Church. Several lists date from the close of the second and the beginning of the third century. None of these contain all the books now in the New Testament, but they contain others not in it. Speaking of this period Dr. David son says, " The infancy of the canon was cradled in an uncritical age and rocked with traditional ease. Of the three fathers who contributed most to its early growth, Irensaus was credulous, Tertullian passionate and one-sided, and Clement of Alexan dria was mainly occupied with ecclesiastical eth ics." " No analysis of the different books was seriously attempted. In its absence custom, acci dent, taste, practical needs directed the tendency of tradition." "Their decisions were much more the re sult of pious feeling biased by their theological speculations than the conclusions of a sound judg ment." In the year 332, A. D., the Emperor Con- stantine entrusted Eusebius with authority to make out a complete collection of the sacred Christian * Chapter in. 16. THE NEW TESTAMENT. 1 89 writings for the use of the Catholic Church Ap parently the list contained all that is now in the New Testament, except the Apocalypse. He thus admitted several books which he allows were con troverted in his time, James, 2 Peter, Jude, 2 and 3 John. In other instances, the tradition or opinion of the churches was the only ground of his decision. The Council of Laodicea, 363, A. D. is commonly credited with having accepted as canonical all of the books now in the New Testament, except the Apocalypse and no others. But the sixtieth canon of the Council, which contains the decision, has been proved to be a forgery of much later date. The first Council of Carthage, 397, A. D., is in reality the first authentic instance of the acceptance of our pre sent books and no others, as canonical. But even then, the decision of the Council did not represent either the agreement of the scholars, or the unani mous opinion of the churches. Jerome and Augus tine, the two most influential scholars of the time, were much divided. Many of the books thus voted in were almost universally rejected : the Epistle to the Hebrews in the Latin Church, the Apocalypse in the Greek, second of Peter and Jude and James, and two of John's Epistles. But even this brilliant tour de force did not settle the matter finally. Books voted out by the Council were still read in the churches, and books voted in were still regarded with suspicion. And it must always be remembered that the same Council which fixed the New Testament canon, de clared canonical the whole of the Old Testament Apocrypha as it is now accepted by the Roman 190 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. Catholic Church. The Protestant reformers were far from unanimity in regard to the rightful canoni city and value of the New Testament books. "The fourth book of Esdras" said Luther, " I toss into the Elbe," and he put the Apocalypse on the same level. The Epistle of James he considered "aright- strawy Epistle." Calvin denied the Pauline author ship of Hebrews, and the Petrine authorship of sec ond Peter, but allowed the right of both to be in the New Testament. Such is the story of New Testament canonicity. Such were the accidents and the vicissitudes to which the New Testament writings were subjected before they arrived at the position of supernatural and infallible authority. Nowhere along the line have we a particle of evidence of any supernatural guidance or illumination which enabled those who judged between these books and others to decide which were, and which were not, of superhuman origin. The most various motives contributed to- the arrangement finally agreed upon. Some were prudential, others were superstitious. Few, almost none, were critical. The Roman Catholic assumes that there was supernatural guidance of the Church to her decision. The Protestant, denying this, — as well he may, for it has not a particle of evidence — is forced to the conclusion that the determination of the limits of infallibity and inspiration was left to be decided in the course of several centuries by men of dubious character and doubtful scholarship, or by the superstitions and the passions of the crowd. Surely, such a conclusion ought to hush forever all THE EPISTLES. IQI the arrogant assumptions that are made upon this head and all the petty taunts which orthodoxy hurls at those who feel obliged to go behind the superstitions and opinions of the early church to test every book by scientific methods, and to ac cord to each particular part so much of reverence and authority as it demands on its intrinsic merits. The contents of the New Testament are made up of three sorts of writings : Biographical history, in cluding the four Gospels and the Acts ; Epistolary documents, including the Epistles ascribed to Paul, Peter, James, John and Jude ; a book of prophecy, known as the Apocalypse or Revelation of St. John the Divine. As in the Old Testament, so here I shall observe a rough chronological order and treat of the Epistles first because they were for the most part written before the other books. Of the Epistles, fourteen are ascribed to Paul, one to James, two to Peter, three to John, and one to Jude. Of the fourteen ascribed to Paul, of which I shall speak exclusively this evening, only thirteen are so ascribed to him in the text of the Epistle; the fourteenth, that to the Hebrews, is ascribed to him only in the superscription, and the present superscriptions of the New Testament books " are of much later date than the books themselves. The authenticity of three others, those to Timothy and Titus, was for some time doubtful in the early church, but the remaining ten were generally con sidered as unquestionably Pauline. Modern criti cism has not, however, been content with confirm ing the doubts of the early church in regard to He- 192 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. brews, Timothy, and Titus, but has, furthermore, im- peached the authenticity of Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, Philemon, and Thessalonians. In regard to these, however, there is much difference of opinion. Only the most destructive criticism re jects them all. Ephesians fares the worst, Colossians next. Many who accept First Thessalonians, reject Second. Even the authenticity of Romans, Corin thians, and Galatians has been denied by Bruno Bauer, a very different person from F. C. Baur, the great Tubingen critic. But his denial is almost an argument for anything that he denies. The nomi nal Epistles of Paul may properly be classed under four heads, those certainly Pauline, Romans, Corin thians, Galatians ; those doubtfully Pauline, in the order of their doubtfulness, from more to less : Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, second Thessalo nians, Philemon, first Thessalonians ; those almost certainly not Pauline: the two to Timothy and one to Titus; one very certainly not the Apostle's : the Epistle to the Hebrews, Strangely enough, this gradation of authenticity has been preserved in the arrangement of the Pauline Epistles.* First we have the impregnable four ; Romans, the two Corinthians, and Galatians; next- the doubtful, led off as they should be, by Ephesians; then the more doubtful pastorals to Timothy and Titus, and the most doubtful, Hebrews, last of all. I will first consider them in the order in which they are printed and afterward state (approximately) their proper chrono logical order. * Except that Philemon follows the pastorals, which it should pre cede. THE EPISTLES. 1 93 By doing so, however, we get the best wine at the beginning of the feast. The Epistle to the Romans is Paul's great Epistle, his greatest, whether with Baur we allow him only four, or with the extreme apologists ascribe to him all the fourteen. When was it written? Probably in the year 58, A. D. And where? At Corinth, where the Apostle lingered for awhile on his way up to Jerusalem for the last time, to carry his con tributions for the saints, and for thanks be set upon by Jewish-Christians, and through their machina tions sent a prisoner to Rome. His other letters for the most part were addressed to churches which he had founded. But in 58 he had never been in Rome. The church there was not of his founding. Apparently it had taken its rise there in the Jewish ghetto eight or ten years before the writing of this letter. Two circumstances everywhere contributed to the growth of Christian missions : the extension of the Roman Empire and the colonial dispersion of the Jews. There was a little cluster of them in eveiy large city or considerable town, and to them the Christian missionaries made their first appeal. Already in the reign of Claudius which ended in 54, A. D., a reported insurrection of the Jews " at the instigation of one Chrestus," points at the excite ment of the Jewish community attendant on the preaching of the new religion. Suetonius says that Claudius cleared the Jews out of the city ; but if he did they- soon came back and Christianity with them, so that in 58 there was a flourishing Christian church there of predominantly Jewish tendencies, 194 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. made up principally of Jews and Gentiles who had become Jewish proselytes before embracing Chris tianity. But the church also contained persons who had been converted to Christianity directly from paganism, and apparently Paul wrote his Epistle at the instigation of some of these, to conciliate in their behalf the converted Jews and Jewish pros elytes. This Epistle, the great fountain-head of Chris tian theology, the source of woes innumerable to Christendom, has often been regarded as an Epistle written in pure space, — a didactic composi tion setting forth the doctrinal system of the apos tle, quite independently of any special circum stances of the time when it was written, or the place to which it was directed. But a composition of this sort is entirely foreign to the general char acter of Paul's Epistles which are all, unless this be an exception, written for a special purpose, to meet a special emergency. " So fight I," said he, " not as one that beateth the air." Even the idea of Renan, that the body of this Epistle was written as an encyclical letter, and as such ended at Chapter XIII. 15, is not admissible. The chances are that the Epistle was written to meet an emergency as definite as that which occasioned the Epistle to the Galatians or those to the Corinthians. The Jewish Christians were troubled and offended by the direct admission of the Gentiles into the privileges of the new religion. " What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision?" This was the question that had been propounded. THE EPISTLES. 1 95 and the Epistle to the Romans is the Apostle's an swer. It must be confessed that in this answer there is abundant justification for the doctrines of election and reprobation as set forth by Calvin and Edwards, but as philosophical doctrines only. The practical outcome of his system was entirely differ ent from theirs ; in his case universalism, in their case partialism. But never was the doctrine that might, the Almighty might, makes right set forth more frankly. Because God had the might he had the right to include Gentile as well as Jew in his great scheme of mercy. And with the right he had the disposition. It is at this point that Paul di verges from Calvin and Edwards. His God, like theirs, is an absolute despot; a law unto himself; his arbitrary will not to be questioned. But where as their despot-god is a monster of cruelty, damning the great majority of men to everlasting burnings, his despot-god is kind and fatherly, and decrees the universal salvation of mankind. It may well be doubted whether Paul's answer to the Roman Jewish-Christians was as satisfactory to them as to himself. For a century after his death he was of no account among them, and then, after a brief resurrection, his name and influence vanished for a thousand years. No one, he told these Jewish Christians, ever had been saved by the works of the law. The law was given for the very purpose of increasing sin, so that God's glory might appear the more in overcoming it. No wonder that the Ebion- ites, the Judaizing Christians of the first and second century, hated Paul, and identified him with Simon 196 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. Magus as th enemy of Peter, the great typical representative of Jewish Christianity. Paul's argument in this Epistle, it must be al lowed, is very bald and harsh, and poorly justifies the end he has in view. It is the end that justifies the argument. His motive was so good that we forget the clumsy rabbinism and absurd philosophy to which he resorted to convince his head of that with which his heart was full to overflowing. And, say what you will of it, twice has this Epistle, with its all-pervading doctrine of justification by faith, been a charter of emancipation to mankind. It made Christianity independent of Judaism in the first instance ; it made Protestantism independent of Romanism in the second. And here it must be said that Paul's doctrine of justification by faith was not that doctrine which to-day appeals to him for confirmation. It was not the doctrine of salvation by an opinion or a notion or an ecstasy about the blood of Christ. At the same time it must be con ceded that by " the works of the law," which could not save", he meant, not merely the works of the Jewish ritual law, but also works of the moral law done with a view to justification. His thought was this : This law is so universal that no one can help violating it at one time or another. Where fore it isn't the amount of right-doing, but the steady inward purpose of our hearts to die to sin and live to righteousness that justifies and saves. And here, of course, the shadow of Antinomianism fell across his path. " Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" "God forbid," he cries. THE EPISTLES. 197 And, though here his argument is very thin and vague, he leaves no crumb of comfort lying round for those who talk of "mere morality !" Paul is intensely moral. " Let everyone who nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity." Matthew Arnold has truly said that this sentence is the key note of all his teaching. He never offered pre miums upon immorality as Luther did by saying, that if a man had faith he might " deflower the Virgin Mary," and it should not be accounted unto him for sin. The Epistle to the Romans is made up of three parts. Chapters I. to VIII., set forth the doctrine of justification by faith. Chapters IX. to XI. attempt to reconcile this doctrine with the Jewish sentiment of Israel's special calling. According to Baur these chapters are the back-bone of the Epistle. They indicate the occasion of its being sent to Rome. What goes before is the foundation of this super structure. Chapters XII. to XVI. are practical and hor tatory. The letter, properly speaking, ends at XV., 13. The rest is a personal postscript. The sixteenth chapter cannot be regarded as belonging to the origi nal epistle. The persons named do not belong in Rome or could not have been there at this time. If it is Paul's, it is the modified ending of some other Epistle; possibly of one sent to the Ephesians. What is called " The first Epistle to the Corin thians " in the New Testament is not the first Epis tle that Paul wrote to the Corinthians. A former Epistle is referred to in this. That such an Epistle should have been lost, but ill comports with the I98 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY mechanical theory of inspiration and the miraculous guardianship which is supposed to have preserved the writings of the Apostles ; but the saying of Emerson : " One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost." must not be interpreted too literally. The letter which we call the first was written from Ephesus in the spring of 57, A. D., not from Philippi as the sub scription states. Never was a letter written with a more direct reference than this to the immediate time and place for which it was intended, and hence the folly of applying its injunction to all times and to all places, as if it had been written as an ency clical letter to all the Christian churches that have existed from Paul's day to our own. Word had come to the Apostle that there were various divisions and immoralities in the church at Corinth, and his letter is a letter of rebuke and warning and advice. The first four chapters treat of the divisions in the church ; the next six treat of the immoralities of a more private nature that have made their appear ance ; the next four, of the public conduct of the new converts, and the next two and concluding of the resurrection of the dead. Primitive Christianity is often spoken of as an ideal society which modern Christianity would do well to reproduce, but the primitive Christianity of Corinth does not appear in any gracious, beautiful or winning light in Paul's Epistle. On the contrary the church which Paul had founded with so much affection, and labored for with so much earnestness, and yearned over with so much THE EPISTLES. 199 tenderness, was given over to contentiousness, fanat icism and impurity. Everywhere in Paul's least doubtful Epistles do we find him fighting the same battle of Christian liberty, against the same foes, — the Judaizing Christians. According to Baur we have the first stage of this battle in the Epistle to the Galatians, the second in the two Epistles to the Corinthians, the third stage in the Epistle to the Romans. In Galatians the demand of the Jewish Christians is that every Gentile Christian shall be circumcised ; in Corinthians that the Gentiles who come in shall refrain from eating meats which have been offered to idols ; in Romans, that the superiority of a Jewish over a Gentile Christian shall somehow be made apparent. We have here a logical order and Baur contends that it was also chronological. But it may be the Judaizers adopted different tactics in the different churches, or that the same difficulties did not come uppermost in every church. Only one thing is certain, that whatever Paul's thorn in the flesh was, his thorn in the spirit was the Jewish Christian party which beset him everywhere, and which was inspired directly by the Apostolic Judaizers at Jerusalem, with James, the brother of Jesus, at their head. The trouble in Corinth had been stirred up by emissaries from Jerusalem bringing letters of commendation from Peter and James. The Jerusalem Christianity was Judaism plus the faith that Jesus was the actual Messiah. A good Christian was a complete Jew and something added. But Paul was of a different opinion. For him the law had been abolished. His 200 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA V. Christianity was purity of heart and life. He recog nized no other. There has been much dijcussion as to whether there were four parties corresponding to the four watchwords, " I am of Paul, I of Apollos, I of Cephas and I of Christ." The conclusion that there were only two, seems the most reasonable. Paul and Apollos stood alike for Christian liberty. The Petrine Judaizers tried to monopolize the leadership of Christ. Those who said, " I am of Cephas," and " I of Christ " were all of one party. Paul knew that it was just as easy for narrowness and bigotry to shelter themselves behind the name of Christ as behind any other. It was so then and it is so now. Very likely the Petrine party called itself " of Christ " because it emphasized the Messiahship of Jesus, which already in Paul's doctrine had be come overshadowed by larger and more individual conceptions. Partisanship was the first evil attacked by the Apostle ; the next licentiousness ; then the abuse of the Lord's Supper. At first the poor had shared the bounty of the rich. Now the rich ate their own food, and drank their own wine ; drank themselves drunken, and the poor looked on and went hungry and sober. Another evil was that the Corinthian Christians took their disputes for settlement to the civil courts, instead of settling them among them selves. Whether Christians should marry was an important question. Paul thought not, in view of the approaching end of the existing order of the world. But he conceded marriage to the grossly passionate. In view of the impending catastrophe slaves were THE EPISTLES. 201 exhorted to submission. Should a Christian cat of meat which had been offered to idols and afterward exposed for sale ? Paul answered in the affirmative. Should a Christian eat and drink at feasts in pagan temples ? Paul answered in the negative. Should a Christian, at a private entertainment, eat the flesh of animals that had been dedicated to an idol ? Paul answered, He should ask no questions, but if told that such or such a dish had been offered to an idol then he should abstain : which sounds a little Jesuiti cal. " Speaking with tongues" was a still more im portant matter. This apparently consisted in pour ing forth a stream of inarticulate, incoherent gibber ish, upon which nevertheless a certain value seems to have been set. Paul, however, regards it as the least of " spiritual gifts " and even puts " teaching and preaching" above "miracles" — and love still higher. The twelfth chapter of this Epistle has fre quently been quoted as a proof that miracles were common in the Apostolic age. But the most search ing criticism would seem to show that the word here and elsewhere translated miracles has not in Paul's Epistles any such meaning as is commonly ascribed to it.* That Paul regarded these " powers " as super natural is not denied. But so he did the gift of tongues. The second canonical letter to the Corinthians is a natural continuation of the first. It is possible but hardly probable that another letter w?s lost, written between this and the letter we have been considering. This was written in Macedonia, a few *For an exhaustive discussion of this matter, see Supernatural Religion, Vol. III. 202 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. months after the first and not long before the Apos tle's three months sojourn in Corinth, during which he wrote his letter to the Romans. The letter di vides itself naturally into three parts, the first of which (Chapters I. to VII.) is mainly personal, giving an account of the Apostle's doings and feelings since his former letter, what he had heard from the Corinthians, and finally a stout assertion of the dig nity of his Apostolic office. The second part (Chap ters VIII. and IX.) relates to the contributions for the poor Christians in Judea, and endeavors to excite the generosity of the Corinthians by various appeals and promises. The third part (Chapters X. to XIII.) reveals the principal object for which the letter was written, namely : to vindicate Paul's Apostolic dig nity, and to denounce the enemies who underrated it. We have nowhere in the New Testament any piece of writing that is more vigorous than this, none where we feel the heart of the Apostle beating so hot beneath the tortuous lines. From the fierce ness of his rejoinder we can judge how harsh the enmity to which he was exposed. Vain, boastful, arrogant, you may call it if you will, and I shall not deny that it is so, but it is the vanity, the boastful- ness, the arrogance of a great, loving heart ; of a man who knew the will of God, and could not bear to have it frustrated by the ecclesiastical Turveydrops who knew not what manner of spirit the religion was of, of which they would fain have the exclusive charge. Nothing can be plainer, as we read this let ter, than that there was no love lost between Paul and " James, the brother of the Lord," and the Jeru- THE EPISTLES. 203 salem Apostles. Nothing can be plainer than that James and these denied the claim of Paul to be con sidered an Apostle, urging that he had never known the living or the risen Jesus. He does not speak of them with soft and pretty words. He is a master of irony, and the Jerusalem Apostles are compelled to feel its sting. " We dare not," he says, " make ourselves of the number or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves, and measure them selves by themselves." "The over-much Apostles " he calls them, a phrase which our translation softens into " the very chiefest." Again, dropping his irony, he calls them " false Apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the Apostles of Christ." "Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham ? So am I. Are they the ministers of Christ? I am more. In labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft." And then follows that enumeration of the items of " Paul's salary," as one of blessed memory taught me to call it long ago. " Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep. In jour- neyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of rob bers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils (notice the climax of them all) in perils among false brethren." How deep the wound that made this lion roar so piteously ! He is himself ashamed of his own cry. 204 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. " I am become a fool in glorying," he says, " but ye have compelled me. For you ought to have com mended me, (and not have forced me to do it my self) for in nothing am I behind the over-much Apostles, though I be nothing." Then comes an other touch of irony. " For what is it wherein ye were inferior to other churches, except it be that I myself was no expense to you ? Forgive me this wrong." This does not seem to be the language of a saint. But it is better. It is the language of a man ; a man whose faults are more endearing to us than the virtues of the narrow-minded formal ists who did their best to poison the affections of the churches he had nourished with the blood of his great heart. The Epistle to the Galatians stood at the head of Marcion's list of Paul's Epistles, and it is the opinion of Baur that it should still stand there as the earliest, mainly because it seems to represent an earlier and cruder stage of Paul's great contro versy with the Judaizing Christians, which runs through all that are indubitably his. But its tone and manner ally it most closely with second Cor inthians. The most reasonable conclusion seems to be that it was written at Corinth, early in 58, A. D., soon after second Corinthians, and just before the Epistle to the Romans. The subscription is " To the Galatians from Rome," but this is in every way unreasonable and difficult to believe. The sub scriptions to the Epistles, as I have said before, are generally worthless. From first to last the Epistle represents another phase of the great THE EPISTLES. 205 conflict between Paul's inclusiveness and the nar rowness of the Jerusalem Apostles. It is the touch-stone by which we shall yet try the book of Acts, and find it almost wholly wanting in historic truth. Paul had founded the Galatian church in 52, A. D. ; he had visited it again in 55. Paul does not here, as in his second letter to the Corinthians, reserve his pent-up indignation till the last. At the very outset he discharges his full soul of all its wrath and bitterness, of all its hoard of righteous indignation and afterward, when he has somewhat spent the fury of his heart, he proceeds to matters doctrinal and practical. His Apostle- ship has been again denied, because he was not one of the original twelve, or had not received from them his commission, and in the opening verse he reasserts his claim and glories in the fact that his Apostleship is not derived from James and Peter: " Paul an Apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father." Then in the first and second chapters he goes on to show that he had never derived his knowledge or authority from the Jerusalem Apostles, and that he had never subjected himself to them, " no, not for an hour." We have plenty of Paul's characteristic irony here. " Them which were of reputation," he calls the Jerusalem Apostles ; and again, " these who seemed to be somewhat, (Whatsoever they were it makes no difference to me:) for they who seemed to be somewhat in conference added nothing to me ; " and a little further on, " And when James and Peter and John who seemed to be pillars." Else- 206 THE BLBLE OF TO-DA Y. where* he speaks of them in terms the force of which is lost in our translation, and which " cars po lite " could hardly entertain if their full force were given. The contest in Galatia was apparently a very narrow one. It was narrowed down to the denial of Paul's Apostleship, and the demand for circum cision as a necessary part of Christianity. To be a Christian, the Gentile must first become a Jew. How often since that day have those immortal words, in which Paul summoned the Galatians to be steadfast and immovable, rung in the ears of other men, sore tempted as they were, to abjure their Christian liberty and go back to " the beggarly elements of the law:" "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage." Surely he could not have put himself in more de cided opposition to the claim of the Jerusalem Apostles. " Behold, I, Paul, say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing." But how loving and how tender he could be, this man who could be such a flame of indigna tion ! The loud allegro dies away into the softest possible andante. How touching too is that eleventh verse of the sixth chapter, ruined in our transla tion where it runs, " Ye see how large a letter I have written you with mine own hand." It should read, "' Ye see in what big letters I have written you with my own hand." Is this the language of apology or self-congratulation ? The former, I should say. The fingers used to holding sail-cloth *Gal., v., 12. THE EPISTLES. 207 and tent-cloth were little skilled in penmanship. Nevertheless, contrary to his custom, he had writ ten this letter himse.f to prove his love for the Galatians. We can almost see the awkward char acters in which the previous verse was written, so that this one was suddenly obtruded. Thanks for such little helps, that make the Apostle a living, human man to us across the waste of eighteen hundred years ! In our New Testament, Ephesians immediately follows Galatians ; but the difference between the two of thought, of atmosphere, of spirit, of idea, is so great, that many critics who can by no means go with Baur in his dismissal of all the Epistles, except the four already named, as non-Pauline, agree that this must be denied the honor of his authorship. Was it written to the Ephesians? Some of the earliest MSS. omit the words " at Ephesus " in the first verse. The internal evidence is, however, much more reliable, and this is strongly adverse to its Ephesian destination, if Paul was the author of it. But if he was not, then there is no good reason to suppose that it was not written to the Ephesians by someone else. The reasons for believing that it was not are various and conclusive. Its resem blance to Colossians is remarkable, and of such a nature as bespeaks a copy rather than a sponta neous reproduction. It abounds in unapostolic words and phrases. The style of writing is redund- ant and verbose, whereas Paul's words always seem too few for his ideas ; his vocabulary insufficient to express his thought. Again, the letter does not 208 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. betray any specific purpose. The doctrine of Christ's nature is certainly developed here beyond the point which it has reached in Romans, the latest of Paul's four great Epistles. But, accepting first Thessalonians as genuine,* from this to Romans there is a decided development, and there is no rea son why this should not have gone on still further. In this Epistle we are already in the circle of ideas called Gnostic, which was so important in the sec ond century. Those ideas are here dimly descried. For this reason Baur would date the Epistle from the second century. But may not the germs of Gnosticism (the resolution of the human Christ into an ideal and metaphysical conception) have been of earlier date than Baur imagines? May not Paul himself, as Marcion thought, have been the first progenitor of the Gnostic system? Aside from these considerations the un-Pauline origin is plain enough, and the date fixed by Davidson (about 75 A. D.) approximately correct. The principal difficulty in the way of this conclusion for an ordinary reader is the apparent incongruity between the moral dignity and beauty of the letter, and the idea that its au thor pretended to be the Apostle. But again I must insist that it will never do to import our no tions of the right of property in ideas into the early Christian and preceding centuries. Pseudonymous writing was the order of the day. The Christian father Irenaeus speaks of "an Infinite number of Apocryphal books and adulterated Scriptures." The most of these were written with the best intentions. * See grounds for this below. THE EPISTLES. 209 The end was thought to justify the means. Noth ing is surer than that writings characterized by the profoundest moral earnestness were frequently put forth as those of men who were entirely innocent of them, and had perhaps been centuries dead. Why this Epistle was thus fabricated is not wholly plain. Possibly because Paul had written no epistle to the Ephesians, and the writer wished to supply the de ficiency. He could appreciate the genius of his master, but he could not re-produce the spontaneity and force and passion of his inimitable thought. The Epistle to the Philippians is declared by Baur to be equally un-Pauline with that to the Ephesians, and mainly for the same reason : that its ideas of Christ's nature betray too much familiarity with Gnostic speculations, which were the special characteristic of the second century. The argu ment appears to me inadequate. We have here I think the ring of the true Pauline metal. If Gnos tic ideas are apparent, if the conception of Christ is more transcendental than elsewhere, I prefer to find the dawn of these ideas here, rather than a mere re flection of their later fulness. The Epistle was Paul's latest ; written in 63, A. D., at Rome, not long before his death. As his life grew less active he grew more meditative, and his speculations on the nature of Christ became freer and bolder. The let ter is intensely individual and personal. It is the very Paul of second Corinthians and Galatians who writes (ill., 2.) " Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision. For we are the circumcision who worship God in the spirit, and re- 2IO THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. joice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh." The development of Paul's ideas from Romans to Philippians is no greater than from first Thessalonians to Romans. The Epistle to the Colossians is a near relative of that to the Philippians, and its authenticity has been impeached for the same reasons. The Gnos tic element comes out more clearly here than in either Ephesians or Philippians. We stand upon the threshold of the Logos doctrine in the proem to the fourth Gospel. The Christology of the syn optic gospels, and even of Paul's earliest Epistle, is already far behind us. We are fairly set out on that voyage which will end at the great Council of Nicaea, when Christ will be identified with God. Accepting this Epistle as St. Paul's, it must be con fessed, if the deity of Christ cannot be inferred from it, no more can his humanity. Our most conserv ative Unitarianism is timid and heretical in its Christology compared with this Christology of Paul. Whether the windy speculations of the great Apos tle, chafing in his imprisonment, and taking refuge in a metaphysical theology from the regrets and tortures of a great career untimely thwarted, are to be made the standard of a rational conception of the personality of Jesus, is a question which each man of us must answer for himself. The argument of Baur against the authenticity of this Epistle is strong, but it is not conclusive. What has been said of the Philippians applies as well to this. If it is Paul's, the Epistle must have been written from Rome, in 62, A. D. THE EPLSTLES. 211 Next in our New Testaments come the two let ters to the Thessalonians. The authenticity of both has been seriously questioned by Baur and other critics, but it is a significant fact that Hilgfen- feld, the ablest of Baur's followers, has reinstated the first as genuine, while pushing the second into the last years of the Emperor Trajan, in the second decade of the second century. The authenticity of the second Epistle is much more easily impeached than that of the first. Davidson, who allows both to be authentic, claims that the second was written prior to the first, a reasonable conclusion, if they are both Pauline. Though there is much that can be urged against the authenticity of the Epistle, the force of this is overcome by other considera tions. Unless, then, we accept the second as Paul's also, and as prior to this, this is the first of Paul's ex tant Epistles. It is a natural beginning, less rich in thought and style than any that succeed it. It consists of two parts ; the first a sort of jubilee over the faithful Church of Thessalonica ; the second, words of comfort to those whose friends had fallen asleep before the second coming of Jesus, and of exhortation relative to that event, its suddenness and possible nearness. The expectation of the second coming had evidently demoralized the sociai order. The letter, if authentic, was probably writ ten from Corinth, in the year 53, A. D. The sec ond, if authentic, was written in the previous year and from Berea. But the objections to its authen ticity are much more weighty here than with the first Epistle. The doctrine of anti-Christ developed 2 1 2 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. in Chapter II., I to 12, affords the principal objec tion. This is, with this exception, an un-Pauline doctrine, and seems to presuppose the Apocalypse or else the same or similar circumstances, which did not occur till after the Apostle's death. I must confess that this objection to the authenticity of the Epistle seems to me almost insuperable. It was evidently written to allay the rising fear that the great expectation of Christ's second coming was doomed, to disappointment. But the idea of Baur that it was written soon after Paul's death and almost contemporaneously with the Apoca lypse, seems to me much more reasonable than the idea of Hilgenfeld, that it was written in the time of Trajan. The pseudonym of Paul would hardly have been chosen at so late a date, to give author ity to so special an idea. The so-called pastoral Epistles follow next in our New Testament order. These are the two to Timothy, and the one to Titus. Their form is that of advice from Paul to his disciples and companions, Timothy and Titus, in regard to their ecclesiastical and personal conduct. Their authenticity has been freely questioned even by the most conservative critics. Neander, remarkable for his conservatism, denies the Pauline authorship of first Timothy. But the three Epistles have but one character, and they must stand or fall together. Davidson who stretches the limits of Pauline authorship to its utmost tension, so that it includes Philippians and Colossians, finds these beyond its pale with Hebrews and Ephesians. The date which he assigns to the three pastorals is THE EPISTLES-. 213 about 120 A. D. The grounds for this conclusion are mainly that the Epistles presuppose an ecclesiasti- cism much more developed, as well as certain con troversies, than it could have been within the life time of the Apostle. The advice to Timothy and Titus would have been superfluous and absurd, con sidering Paul's acquaintance with them and the con fidence he had reposed in them. Some of it smacks of Polonius more than of the Apostle, to the Gen tiles. The very passages that are cited in proof of Paul's authorship are manifestly realistic touches introduced to create an authentic appearance. It will be safe for us to leave these three Epistles out of the account in judging of Paul's life and thought. But they are interesting and valuable memoirs of the ecclesiastical and speculative notions which pre vailed in the forepart of the second century. The Epistle to Philemon contains only one chap ter. Had it contained one less it would have been better for runaway slaves from Paul's time to our own. The principal subject is the sending back of Onesimus by the Apostle to his former master. Some of you can well remember how this Epistle was the very gospel of the slave-catchers in the pro- slavery times and of the statesmen who quoted it in favor of the Fugitive Slave Bill. At the best, Paul is a doubtful teacher of social and political wisdom, but it must always be remembered that his social and political ethics were conditioned largely by his idea of the approaching end of the existing order of the world. Very few of us' would have thought it worth while to destroy slavery by civil war, if we had 214 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. thought that there would be a general catastrophe to right that and everything else in the one hundredth year of the republic. The authenticity of Philemon has been questioned, but it was probably written by the Apostle in the year 62 A. D. ; the first extant of those he wrote during his captivity at Rome. We have now completed our survey of those Epistles which claim to be Paul's in the opening verse of each. The Epistle to the Hebrews is an exception to this rule. If Paul did not write it, it is simply an anonymous, not a pseudonymous writing. The superscription is The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebretvs, but in the oldest MSS., the super scription is simply " To the Hebrews." For dignity and earnestness and eloquence it does not fall be low the genius of St. Paul, but the eloquence is not of his sort, nor is the earnestness. Its Pauline authorship was generally denied in the early church, especially in the Western : not till the second coun cil of Carthage, (419 A. D.,) was it admitted to the. Canon as an Epistle of Paul. Its position as the last of the Epistles ascribed to him is a reminiscence of this tardy acknowledgement. But the critics went on doubting after the ecclesiastics had voted it Pauline. Calvin was found among the doubters in the sixteenth century. Since then the doubts have gone on steadily increasing until now adhesion to the Pauline authorship is the best pos sible evidence that the critic is a mere apologist. Among those who have denied the Pauline author ship there has been much difference of opinion in regard to the real author. Some have said Barnabas; THE EPISTLES. 2 I 5 some have said Apollos. This was Luther's conjec ture and it has found many able advocates. But it cannot be determined to a certainty. And it is a matter of curiosity rather than of vital interest or importance. Whoever wrote the Epistle it is still sig nificant and grand enough to have an honored place among the anonymous writings of the New Testa ment. It was addressed to Jewish Christians some where ; Davidson says in Alexandria, supposing it to have been written by Apollos. It is made up of two parts, doctrinal and hortatory. The nineteenth verse of the tenth chapter is the dividing line. The writer's object is very similiar to that of Paul in the Epistle to the Romans, to conciliate the Jewish Christians, but it must be confessed that the means adopted are much better chosen than were those of Paul. The argument is that the Jewish religion, — law and temple, — was a type of better things to come, a prototype to which Christianity was the antitype. The allegorical method of interpretation necessary to this argument is much freer and more fanciful than the allegorizing of Paul who indeed allegorizes verses here and there of the Old Testa ment, but here the whole of the Old Covenant is a mere shadow of the Christian dispensation. In car rying out this scheme Jesus is represented as a great high priest, unchanging and eternal, of whom the priesthood of the Jewish Church was but the pro phecy and type. The date of the Epistle has been fixed by Davidson at 66 a. d. Here, as in Paul's later Epistles, the Christology of the Church is on its way from the original humanity of Jesus to the assertion 2l6 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. of his deity. A good deal more than half the dis tance has already been passed over. Various con siderations may unite to date the fourth gospel far in to tfhe second century, but its Logos doctrine is but a slight advance upon the Christology of Hebrews. The Christ of Hebrews is a super-angelic being, creator of the world, while at the same time his sub ordination to the father is distinctly declared. The difference between the son and father is here how ever reduced to well nigh its minimum. Concerning the fourteen Epistles usually ascribed to Paul, the net result is as follows : four are his with absolute certainty, and these the most signifi cant of all ; First Thessalonians, Philemon, Colossians and Philippians, are his somewhat more doubtfully; Ephesians is pretty certainly not his, and second Thessalonians; the three pastorals more certainly not his, and the Epistle to the Hebrews not his very cer tainly. The order in which those which can with perfect certainty or moderate assurance be ascribed to him, appeared, is as follows and at these approxi mate dates: First Thessalonians, 53 A- D-> first Corinthians 57, second Corinthians 57, Galatians 58, Romans 58, Philemon 62, Colossians 62, Philippians 63. And in these eight Epistles, written by the Apostle to the Gentiles in the course of ten years from 53 to 63 A. D., we have our earliest contribution to the history of Christian origins and one of such im portance as cannot be overrated. Do not wish that this earliest contribution had been in biographical rather than in epistolary form. The unconscious witness is always the best witness possible. In THE EPISTLES. 21 J these Epistles Paul was not writing, he was making, history. Little he thought that eighteen centuries after him the letters which he forged in the fierce flame of his enthusiam, sorrow, love, and indigna tion would be the weapons of our petty theological debate. It is the unconsciousness of his testimony that makes it so valuable. These Epistles are bet ter than any history of Christianity from 53 to 63 A. D., could be ; they are better, too, than any bio graphy or autobiography of Paul. A biography does not always tell the truth. If we knew Paul on ly from his biography in the book of Acts, how differ ent he would appear to us ; a time-server, a double- dealer, a hypocrite ; always upon the best of terms with the Jerusalem Apostles ; sharing with Peter the honor of first preaching the gospel to the Gentiles. But the unconscious testimony of the Epistles sets this good-natured fiction in its proper light. Even if Paul had written his autobiography, we should have no such knowledge of him as we have to-day. Autobiography is apt to be less true than biography. We praise Franklin's for its frankness, and find that its apparent frankness was a blind ; its confessions of certain faults, concealments of yet greater. The unconscious testimony of Paul's Epistles is the best witness we can have not only to his time but to his character and personality. Fortunately for us it is the four of most undoubted authenticity that are the richest in both historical and biographical materials. Would it be too much to say that they inform us of the real origin of Christian- ity ? Perhaps it would, but it is not too much to say 2 1 8 THE BLBLE OF TO-DA Y. that they inform us of that but for which Christianity would have hardly survived a hundred years after the death of Jesus. For what was Christianity as it was conceived by those who took special charge of it after the crucifixion of its founder, — the Jerusalem Apostles headed by " James the brother of the Lord," who cared little enough for Jesus while he was living, but after he was dead did him the worst indignity — declaring that the whole significance of his career was in his messianic character ? What was this primitive Christianity ? Why, simply Juda ism with all its circumcision, temple-service, feasts and formalism, plus the acknowledgment that Jesus was the Messiah. Apparently the one year or three of Jesus' ministry had come to this when Paul saw the face of Stephen, " as it were the face of an angel," bruised with the paving stones with which the Jews had battered him to death. Is it extrava gant to say that this sort of Christianity would not have survived a century? that it did not deserve to survive even so long as that ? How many converts would it have made throughout the Gentile world, insisting upon circumcision and all the tiresome Jew ish ceremonial, especially after " the fathers had fallen asleep, and all things remained as they were from the beginning." But with the arrival of Paul upon the scene of action there was a change of in finite importance. Henceforth it was possible for a Gentile to become a Christian without first becom ing a Jew. In that announcement lay in embryo the possibility of eighteen centuries of Greek and Roman and Teutonic Christianity. But this an- THE EPISTLES. 2ig nouncement was not well received by the Jerusalem Apostles. The principal Epistles of St. Paul reflect on every page the harshness of their opposition. These excellent people who "seemed to be pillars,'' gave the Apostle to the Gentiles no rest. They dogged his footsteps ; they denied his Apostleship ; they called his doctrine the doctrine of Balaam and accused him of enjoining fornication ; * even in his life-time they alienated his churches, and well nigh broke his heart. And for a long time after his death their machinations seemed to have succeeded. In the second century, till towards the end of it, Paul was of no account. He was given over to the Gnos tic heretics, but for whom, it may be, no one of his Epistles would have been preserved. He was iden tified with Simon Magus, and Peter was represented as everywhere confronting and confounding him. Then came reaction. It was his genius that presided over the early councils. It was his Epistles that fur nished the weapons of theological controversy. It must be confessed that a great deal of harm was in those phrases of incipient Gnosticism which he in troduced into his later writings. But we can easily forgive him that unconsciously he saddled Christian ity with a metaphysical theology, when we remem ber that but for him we should have had no Chris tianity whatever. Accepting as Pauline the eight Epistles of which I am speaking, they present a most instructive les son in the growth of the ideal Jesus from a purely human personage as he is in Thessalonians, the Jew- * Revelation. II, 14. 220 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. ish Messiah of the Synoptic gospels, through the in creasing grandeurs of Corinthians and Romans until at length in the epistles to the Colossians and Philip pians he stands upon the utmost verge of super- angelic power and grace, upon the mystic line where but a step and he is the Eternal Logos, one with the Eternal God. But corresponding to this devel opment of the ideal Jesus we have no account in these Epistles of the development of the actual Jesus. Only twenty years have passed since his death and how precious would be any tradition of his person or his character at such a brief remove. But alas ! forty or fifty years must pass after the last of these Epistles has been written, ere the first gospel* which shall be handed down the centuries shall see the light. And in the meantime Paul is almost absolutely silent concerning the actual life of Jesus. Once and once only does he quote his words. He does not make a single reference to any event in his whole life. It must be confessed that the Christ of Paul was not a person but an idea. He took no pains to learn the facts about the individual Jesus. He actually boasted that he got nothing from the Apostles. His Christ was an ideal conception, evolved from his own feeling and imagination, and taking on new powers and attributes from year to year to suit each new emergency. But, although so silent concerning the life of Jesus, he is talkative enough about his death and resurrection, and those to whom the death of Jesus is of infinitely more im portance than his life find in his words abundant * In anything like its present form. THE EPISTLES. 221 confirmation of their predilections. There are those who say that the great thing in Paul's Epistles is their evidence of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. And there is plenty of evidence that he be lieved that Jesus died and rose again ; of the ascen sion not a word ; the resurrection and ascension be ing, apparently, with him identical. Fortunately for us, we have in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, (XV., 4-8) the grounds of Paul's belief in this stupen dous miracle set forthwith perfect frankness. There, after detailing the various appearances of Jesus, after his resurrection, — to Cephas and the Twelve, to above five hundred at once, after that to James and all the Apostles, — he adds, " And last of all he was seen of me also." So then it appears that he puts his own vision of Jesus years after his death exactly on a level with his previous appearances, or rather that he puts the previous appearances exactly on a level with his own vision. This is Paul's evidence to the resurrection. For him it was sufficient. Whether it shall be for you or me, depends upon our ideas of evidence. To me it seems that Paul's witness to the resurrection is the ruin of the argument. For it remands all the phenomena of Christ's appear ances to his disciples after his death to that vision ary sphere where, so that the subjective elements are present, there is no need of anything objective whatsoever to produce a vision of the most im pressive and sublime reality. But that which endears the Apostle Paul to me above, I had almost said, all other men in history, — that which, as I read his letters, for the thousandth 222 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. time, makes dim my eyes with hot and passionate tears, is his heroic struggle against fearful odds for simple righteousness of heart and life, as the one only power of God unto salvation. The Jersusalem Apostles were not altogether wrong in refusing him admittance to their number. His place was not among those arid formalists. I sometime wonder if he has rightfully been called a saint. He bore but slight resemblance to "that perfect monster 'whom the world ne'er saw." He had his faults. He was not all sweetness. Sometimes he was irascible and fierce enough. He said some dreadful things about the holy Apostles, almost or quite as bad as anything they ever said of him. I am so glad I wasn't Peter, when he " withstood him to the face." That look which Jesus gave him could not have gone much nearer to his heart. No, it must be con fessed that Paul was not a perfect saint. But he was a splendid hero, and he was every inch a man. Thank heaven that when Rome built up, little by little, from' century to century, a spiritual formalism and despotism, such as Paul would have abhorred, she had the intuitive grace and decency to make Peter, her imaginary, instead of Paul, her real Apostle, the central figure of her stupendous ecclesiastical mythology. There could have been no sadder irony than to call Pope Pius IX, or Pope Leo XIII, the successor of St. Paul. Rome did well to neglect him for well nigh a thousand years. She should have neglected him forever. Between her spirit and his there is no sympathy, but everlasting enmity and war. And which of them shall triumph in the end ? SEVENTH LECTURE. THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES: REVELATION: ACTS. In my last lecture I considered the fourteen Epis tles commonly ascribed to Paul. There are seven other Epistles in the New Testament, known as the Catholic Epistles. We are to understand Catholic here in the sense of general. The designation was probably applied originally to the first Epistles of John and Peter, to distinguish them from Paul's Epistles which were generally addressed to a par ticular community. These two Epistles obtained recognition in the Church much earlier than the others which were afterward united with them, and the designation Catholic was given to the whole col lection. Of the seven one is ascribed to James, two to Peter, three to John, and one to Jude or Judas. In the ancient MSS. these Epistles gener ally precede those of Paul, but our English order is that of the Sinaitic Ms. "The General Epistle of James" is the first in the New Testament order of arrangement, and this will help us to remember that it is also first in order of time. The first question which it suggests is, Who wrote it ? or, more exactly, what James is in tended in the first verse, "James, a servant of God." Not " James the Elder," certainly, for he was be- 223 224 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. headed by King Agrippa, about 44, A. D. The only alternatives then are " James the son of Alphe- us," and " James the Brother of the Lord." Some critics have considered these identical. But they were not so regarded by the earliest ecclesiastical writers. It is Paul who speaks of "James the Brother of the Lord," and the word translated, brother cannot be translated cousin or relative, as it must be to identify him with James the Son of Al- pheus. Jesus appears to have had four brothers, James and Joses, (Joseph) Simon and Judas, none of them Apostles. Renan thinks they were his half-brothers only, children of Mary by a second husband ; others have thought them Joseph's chil dren by a former wife. What is most probable is that they were all the children of Mary (Jesus is called the first-born son) and Joseph. James the Brother of the Lord being then distinct from James the Son of Alpheus, which of them is the nominal writer of this Epistle? Most probably the former. The latter would have vaunted his Apostleship. But was the nominal the real author? Did James, the brother of Jesus, write this Epistle? In the main it is certainly conceived in his spirit, so far as it is anti-Pauline. But it is not sufficiently Jewish to be his. It does not insist upon the Mosaic law and circumcision, and the distinctions of clean and unclean food. The law of liberty is warmly eulo gized. Again, the literary character of the Epistle is opposed to James's authorship. The Greek is too refined. The external evidence for James's au thorship is also very weak. It was with the great- THE CA THOLIC EPISTLES. 225 est difficulty that the Epistle secured a canonical position and authority. It was made canonical at Carthage, in 397, A. D., by an ecclesiastical tour de force, in opposition to the general opinion of the Churches. It is therefore probable that we have here another pseudonymous writing which appeared soon after the death of James, and not long before the destruction of Jerusalem ; about 68, A. D. The name of James was chosen to give additional au thority to the writer's various injunctions. Luther's opinion of its general character is well known. He called it "a right strawy Epistle." But this was because it contradicted his favorite doctrine of just ification by faith. The chances are that it is the best reproduction anywhere contained in the New Testament Epistles of the Christianity of Jesus, a moral not a theological system. The object of the letter was to correct certain abuses that were preva lent among the Jewish Christians, such as invidious distinctions between the rich and poor, and ambi tion for ecclesiastical preferment. The expectation of the second coming of Jesus is nowhere more con spicuous. " Stablish your hearts; for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Behold the judge1 standeth before the door." But the anti-Pauline drift of the Epistle is its most evident trait. " What doth it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, and hath not works? Can faith save him ? " From the common-sense point of view this writer makes an excellent appearance; but it is cer tain that he was not deep-natured enough to ap preciate the spiritual significance of Paul's religion. 226 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. And so he arrogantly addresses him, "But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead ? " Possibly Paul is not intended, but probably he is. That his doctrine is intended does not admit of any doubt. The early Church was not quite the happy family of the popular imagination. Divisions, hatreds, rivalries, were as common then as now, and quite as sharp and bitter. The next Epistle in the New Testament order, and, by a singular piece of good fortune, in the order of time also,* is the first Epistle of Peter. For though Baur would have it that the Epistle was not written until the latter part of Trajan's reign, (ended 117, A. D.) and though the circumstances of that time agree with its contents, we must allow, with Davidson, that the indications are not pointed enough to decide upon so late a date. Davidson's own date is between A. D., 75 and 80. This is on the supposition that the Epistle is not Peter's. Those who consider it authentic, date it all the way along from 46 to 64, A. D., when Peter is supposed to have perished in the Neronian persecution. But to every such date the contents of the Epistle are opposed as well as to its Petrine authorship. It pur ports to be written from Babylon. Here it is most likely we have the mystical name for Rome, itself an indication that the letter was written after the Apocalypse, and not by the Apostle. Apparently we have here one of the most inter esting and conspicuous of that class of writings, which the Tubingen critics have called tendency *Of the Catholic Epistles. THE CA THOLIC EPISTLES. 227 writings, from their exhibition of a tendency or pur- pose to conciliate or modify in some way the an tagonism of the Petrine (Jewish-Christian) party, and the Pauline universalism.* How lively this antagonism was in Paul's life-time, we have seen already in Paul's letters to the Galatians and Cor inthians. After his death the antagonism did not cease. Rather the breach widened as the first cen tury approached its end, and far along into the second. Even after the Jewish-Christian party had conceded to the Gentiles some of Paul's demands, the Apostle himself and much of his doctrine were objects of the fiercest animadversion. In the Clem- intine Recognitions (second century Jewish Christian writings) Paul is represented as throwing James from the top of the temple steps. In the Homilies, an other form of the same writings, Paul is thinly dis guised under the name of Simon Magus, as the great enemy of Peter and the true Christianity. It is impossible to deny that Paul is intended where Peter says to Simon, " If indeed our Jesus did ap pear unto thee in a vision, and thou did'st recog nize him, and he conversed with thee, it was be cause thou didst resist him, and he was wroth with thee ; for this reason it was that he spake with thee by visions and dreams, or even by outward revela tions, if such took place. But can anyone be made wise to be the teacher of another by a vision? And if thou sayest that he can, then why did the Master abide with us for a whole year and converse with us * I use this word, as do the New Testament critics generally, to indicate Paul's doctrine that the Gentiles must not first become Jews in order to be Christians; that the new religion was for all upon an equal footing. 228 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. not sleeping, but awake? And how could he be seen of thee when thou holdest things contrary to his teachings? But if thou wert seen of him for one hour and having been taught of him, wert made an Apostle, then preach the things which he said." There are not wanting various signs of the free dom and sharpness with which the Pauline party retorted on these scornful innuendoes. But little by little there grew up in the Church a Catholic party, a party of persons indisposed to throw themselves violently upon either side of the great controversy, but rather disposed to obliterate or at least ob scure all differences as much as possible, and to es tablish an era of good feeling. The extremes of Jewish and Pauline Christianity were both rejected, (Ebionitism and Marcionism) and as a means by which to effect a middle course, and also as one re sult of such a course, there grew up a literature, the object of which was to disguise, as much as pos sible, the conflict which had raged, and to make over the Apostles Paul and Peter as much as possi ble, each into the other's likeness. Of this litera ture, the book of Acts is the most notable example. Very similar is the book of Luke. Matthew is by a Jewish Christian, but with a conciliatory disposition. The first Epistle of Peter represents Peter through out as a thorough Paulinist. The letter is written to Paul's Churches to confirm them in the teachings of St. Paul. It abounds in Paul's ideas, formulas, expressions. Thought and language, both are Pauline. I need not tell you how impossible it is to harmonize such a Peter as this with the Peter of THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES. 2 29 Paul's most characteristic Epistles. This Peter, in stead of being the antagonist of Paul, is his double and his copyist. Fancy the real Peter studying Paul's Epistles to the Romans and Corinthians, and transferring their ideas and expressions to his own ! If Peter had written a letter it would at least have been spontaneous. But this is not. It borrows not only from Romans and Corinthians, but also from Ephesians and James. The external evidence of Peter's authorship is ample, but counts for nothing against all these internal traits, so strikingly non- Petrine* The second Epistle of Peter is of a much later date and much more clearly unauthentic. The first unmistakable proof of its existence is in the writings of Clement Alexandrinus late in the second century. Not one of the imaginary references to the Epistle of an earlier date than this will bear examination. But Clement did not ascribe it to Peter. Its author ship continued doubtful through the third and fourth centuries and its Petrine origin was still " denied by most," says Jerome, when it was forcibly in troduced into the canon at the council of Car thage in 397 A. D. The internal evidence would however prove it unauthentic if the external were as strong as possible. We have here another copyist. The expressions of Jude are freely borrowed and Jude was written as late as 80 A. D. In his anxiety to pass himself off for Peter the writer overacts his part. The real Peter would have been at no such * Luther's admiration of this Epistle is a capital testimony to its Pauline character. 230 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. pains to establish his identity. And even if Peter might have written, " our beloved brother Paul," for even in our day such epithets as this are used with very little meaning, it is absolutely impossible that he should have spoken of the Epistles of Paul as " Scriptures." We have here, in fact, the earliest designation as " Scriptures " of any part of the New Testament and it is a proof that we are far along in to the second century, nearer its close than its be ginning. The pathetic passage, " Where is the promise of his coming ? For since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the be ginning of the creation," is evidence of a period much later than the Apostolic age. Then the fathers had not fallen asleep and then doubts had not arisen. But, moreover, the second com ing of Jesus is attenuated into a ' day of the Lord." Again the doctrinal application of the word heresy is a second century trait. The style of the Epistle is so unlike that of the first that it could not have been written by the same author, whoever wrote the first. Its real author we can never hope to know, nor the exact date of its appearance. Davidson suggests about 170 A. D., and he is a con servative critic. The object of the Epistle is not clearly defined and its destination is differently re presented in different parts. Apparently the letter was written to combat certain Gnostic speculations of the second century. It was written from an ad vanced Jewish-Christian standpoint, so far advanced that the theology is largely Pauline. It has no such decided tendency as the first Epistle. Unconsciously THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES. 23 1 it celebrates the compromise between Jewish Chris tianity and Pauline Universalism as already fairly accomplished. Less fettered by his " dead men's clothes," the author would have written much more effectively. The endeavor to keep up his character gives an indeterminate aspect or blur to almost everything he says. Following the two Epistles commonly ascribed to Peter, we have three which are as commonly ascribed to John. But whereas those ascribed to Peter are so ascribed in strict accordance with the contents of the Epistles, the three of John make no such inner claim to be the work of the Apostle. The first is purely impersonal ; the second and third begin "The Elder unto the Elect lady" and "The Elder unto the well-beloved Gaius," So that if we cannot ad mit the Johannine authorship of these Epistles they are simple anonymous writings, like the Epistle to the Hebrews; not pseudonymous, like those of Peter, the pastorals to Timothy and Titus, Ephesians, and second Thessalonians. The traditional opinion con cerning the first of these Epistles is that it was written together with the fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse by the Apostle John. The variations from this opinion are numerous and important. The majority of — I might say all — the real critics are agreed that the same person, John or anybody else, did not write both the fourth Gospel and the Apo calypse. If John wrote the Apocalypse and not the fourth Gospel, all of these would say, he certainly did not write the first Epistle of John, for this goes with the Gospel not with the Apocalypse, if it goes 232 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. with either. And as the more common opinion among real critics is that John did write the Apo- calypse,the more common opinion is that he did not write the first Epistle. But there are those who think that John did not write the Apocalypse but did write the fourth Gospel. And these almost uni versally ascribe to him the first Epistle. And again there are those who think he wrote neither Apo calypse nor Gospel nor Epistle. But whoever wrote the Gospel and Epistle, it is commonly agreed that they were both written by the same person. To this, however, Davidson does not assent. Allow ing that there are remarkable resemblances between the Gospel and Epistle, he finds that there are also differences which in his opinion are suffi cient to establish a double authorship. But while F. C. Baur finds in the Epistle only weak imita tion of the Gospel, Davidson finds in it brilliant anticipations of the fourth Gospel proceeding from an independent mind. Neither opinion seems to me entirely sound. That there is here anticipation of the fourth Gospel rather than imitation I am con vinced, but also that it is the anticipation of the same mind whose striking individuality is impressed upon the later work. Assured that the fourth Gos- ple is not the work of John, the Epistle also must give up all claim to be considered his. The date of its appearance, somewhat prior to that of the fourth Gospel, may be approximately fixed at 130 A. D. But, if not John, who was the author ? It is easy enough to ask such a question, but it is very diffi cult to answer it. The most that we can say is. THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES. 233 that it probably originated in Asia Minor, among the Ephesians, to whom the name and fame of the Apostle John were specially dear.* Without nam ing itself as his, it is evidently intended to pass for his. Possibly John, the Presbyter (Renan says probably), resorted to this impersonation, and to the still more daring one of the fourth Gospel, in order to advance the reputation of the Apostle who had honored Ephesus by making it the centre of his missionary operations, and at the same time to get a better hearing for some speculations of his own. This John the Presbyter was a considerable person in and about Ephesus, in the forepart of the second century. He was reputed to have an un common store of traditional knowledge of Christian origins. The probability that the first Epistle of John and the fourth Gospel were both written by this Presbyter John is much increased by the fact that the second and third Epistles of John are writ ten avowedly by a presbyter, translated " Elder" in the first verse of each, and the style and thought and doctrine of these Epistles is as nearly as may be identical with that of the first Epistle and the Gospel. Proceeding, therefore, as we should al ways, from the known to the unknown, we are compelled to assign the Gospel and the three Epis tles to a certain presbyter, and both the name and famef of the Presbyter John, of Ephesus, make it * From arbitrary choice, says Keim, without his ever having been among them. f Except that Papias and Irenasus represent him as a Millenarian, an argument for his authorship of the Apocalypse. 234 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. seem highly probable that he was the principal author of this important group of writings. The first Epistle is a sort of essay preliminary to the fourth Gospel.* Perhaps the success of this brochure induced the author to attempt a bolder flight. His polemical purpose, so far as he had one, was to attack the Docetists, a thriving sect in Asia Minor, who contended that the human Jesus was a mere phantom, which only seemed to suffer on the cross. These are the " Antichrists" of the second chapter ; but along with this purpose, there is a charming mysticism, evincing itself in many striking phrases, which have served the purposes of the higher Christian sentiment better, perhaps, than any others in the New Testament. The begin ning and the end of everything is love. The most remarkable interpolation in the New Testament oc curs in this Epistle. The words in the seventh and eighth verses of the fifth chapter, " in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one, and there are three that bear witness on earth," are only found in four out of two hun dred and fifty Mss. of the Epistles, and these four date from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. " Why, don't you know that that is spurious ? " said a Unitarian to a Trinitarian, who quoted it at him. " O, yes," said the Trinitarian,' " I knew it. But I thought perhaps you didn't." The second and third Epistles of John are not, as we have seen, professedly the Apostle's. They are professedly a certain elder's, and probably the * Renan's opinion, Contemporary Review, September, 1877. THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES. 235 elder, or presbyter, John's. They contain only a short chapter each. " The Elect lady," to whom the second Epistle is addressed, is probably no in dividual lady, but some church of Asia Minor; and the Gaius, to whom the third is addressed, is possi bly equivalent to our modern " Mr. So-and-So." Both Epistles, in the judgment of Renan, are mere mod els of Encyclical Epistles. But there are features which but ill agree with this interpretation. Oppo sition to the Docetists appears again in the second. The fact of their preservation is sufficient to attest their early reputation. Only the supposed author ship of an Apostle could have preserved such tiny craft when whole armadas went to wreck. Their principal interest for us is as a key to ihe most en grossing literary problem of the New Testament : the authorship of the fourth Gospel. Certainly by the same hand as the first Epistle and the Gospel, they make no pretensions to Apostolic authorship, but are avowedly the work of some " Presbyter." The time of their appearance must have been very near that of the first Epistle, a little earlier or later. The last of the seven catholic Epistles is The General Epistle of Jude. The writer announces himself in the first verse as " Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James." Among the twelve Apostles there was another Jude, or Judas, besides Iscariot, and in our common version he is spoken of as the " brother of James," but the word brother is not in the Greek original, and is probably not the word to be supplied. Moreover, the Jude of the Epistle was not an Apostle. If he were, 236 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. would he seek to identify himself by calling him self the brother of James? Would not " Jude, an Apostle," be a more natural and honorable dis tinction ? But in the eighteenth verse he distin guishes himself from the Apostles by speaking of them in the third person. The James, whose brother he was, was evidently " James, the brother of the Lord." If, then, the Epistle is authentic, it is very interesting, as proceeding from the brother of Jesus. Nor does there seem to be any sufficient reason for doubting its authenticity. It is certainly no reason that it quotes the book of Enoch, an apo cryphal book, which only the Ethiopic canon has preserved. The influence of this book is very ap parent elsewhere in the New Testament. The dis tinction between apocryphal and canonical was not then clearly defined. Enoch was on the way to canonicity, and would have attained to it but for the destruction of Jerusalem. But, evidently, to be the brother of Jesus did not insure critical judgment. The prophecy of Enoch, written in the previous century, is spoken of as written by " Enoch, the seventh from Adam," and we have a charmingly ingenuous reference to Michael, the Archangel, who, "when contending with the devil, he disputed about the body of Moses, he durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, the Lord rebuke thee." The Epistle, which contains but one chapter, is a vigorous piece of writing, directed against certain evil-doers in some particular church, a miserable set of antinomians, given over to licentious and other hateful practices, very similar to those condemned THE APOCALYPSE. 237 by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians. When it was written, the Apostles had vanished from the scene (verse 17), so that we must suppose Jude him self an old man. Davidson assigns the Epistle to the year 80, A. D., but certainty on this point is not attainable. Of the seven catholic Epistles then, we find that only one was written by the traditional author. But only those of Peter and James are really unau thentic and pseudonymous ; the three of John not claiming to be his,* especially the second and the third, which are avowedly not his. The next book which invites our attention is the Apocalypse, called in our common version The Rev elation of St. John the Divine. There is no other book in the New Testament about which so much has been written to so little purpose. Dr. South said of it, " It either finds a man mad, or makes him so." It was said of Calvin that he showed his wisdom in not writing a commentary on this, as he did on other books. For almost every century it has had a different meaning. Judaism, Paganism, Mohammedanism, the Papacy, the French Revolu tion, the cholera, the potato-rot — all these things have been found in it, and hundreds more. Very likely at this momentf some one is discovering the most remarkable prophecies in it of the Turko-Rus- sian and the threatened Anglo-Russian war, and will make out quite as good a case as any of his predecessors. No wonder the Scotch elder, on learning that his minister proposed to give a course * The first suggests his authorship, without directly claiming it. f April 7, 1878. 238 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. of lectures on the Apocalypse, cautioned him, say ing, " I've nae objection to ye takin' a quiet trot through the seven churches, but for ony sake drive canny among the seals and trumpets." The cause of so many fanciful and such widely different inter pretations is not far to seek. It is nothing else than the persuasion that because the Apocalypse is bound up with the Bible, its predictions must at one time or another certainly come true. No generation has so far been able to discover any past fulfillment of these predictions, and hence it has been in ferred that the fulfillment is still future. But amid much that is doubtful concerning the Apocalypse, one thing is plain as plain can be, namely, that its predic tions related to an immediate future. In the pro logue we read, " Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy ; for the time is at hand ;" " The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him to show unto his servants the things which must shortly come to pass'' And in the epilogue we read, " He which testifieth these things saith, surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so come Lord Jesus." Do not these phrases make it as clear as day that we are to seek for the fulfillment of the writer's prophecies in the time immediately suc ceeding their appearance ; that, whether we dis cover their fulfillment there or not, it is absurd to look for it anywhere else ? But if we do not find it there, then we must allow that the prophet was mistaken in his expectations. Certainly : and why not ? This is exactly what the analogy of Old Testament prophecy would lead us to expect. The THE APOCALYPSE. 239 Old Testament prophets were almost invariably mistaken in their expectations.* And especially the analogy of prophets similar to the Apocalyptist would lead us to anticipate the fallaciousness of all his hopes, for this book is one of a class, of which other notable examples are the book of Daniel, por tions of Ezekiel and Zechariah, the second book of Esdras in the Apocrypha, and the book of Enoeh.f To the book of Enoch it bears a most remarkable resemblance, so much so that John as well as Jude, must have been well acquainted with that remark able production. All of these writings are char acterized by greater boldness than the mass of Old Testament prophecy. They set forth the events of the future in a series of extravagant and enigmatic visions. So long as their prophecies are post even- turn, only their ignorance of history prevents the most remarkable fulfillments. The moment they would penetrate the future their predictions fail of literal or even general verification. The analogy of other New Testament writers would also lead us to expect the disappointment of the Apocalyptist. For Paul and James and Jude, in their Epistles, all cherish a lively expectation of the second coming of Jesus, and the collapse of the existing order of the world. Granting that John the Apostle wrote the Apocalypse, was he any less likely to be mistaken than Paul and Jude ? But the moment that we grant the possibility of his being mistaken, the Apocalypse becomes easily comprehensible, not in * Kuenen's Prophets and Prophecy in Israel. \ See the fifth lecture. 240 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. each minute particular, but in its general intention. For a century and more there has been a growing disposition to allow that the Apocalyptist was not infallible, and as a consequence there has been a growing agreement among scholars in regard to the intention of the work. There is hardly any point of Biblical criticism on which there is more general agreement at the present time. This agreement is less perfect in regard to the authorship of the book than in regard to the nature of its contents and the time of its appearance, but even upon this head the most advanced critics agree with the most conservative in accepting the tradi tional opinion that it was written by the Apostle John. Still it is not to be denied that some of the most able critics, midway between the apologists and the Tubingen critics, deny the Apostolic au thorship and ascribe the book to John the Presby ter, or some wholly unknown author. Unfortunately the question of authorship is seriously complicated with the most vital question in New Testament criti cism : the authorship of the fourth Gospel. Critics who allow its Johannine authorship are accused by others of doing this in order to weaken the case of the fourth Gospel, it being generally agreed that both cannot be by the same author. But are not those who deny the Johannine authorship unconsciously influenced by their desire to save the fourth Gospel for the Apostle? A bias upon this side is quite as natural as on the other. Among the more distin guished of the critics on this side are Noyes and Bleek and Dusterdieck and Ewald and De Wette. THE APOCALYPSE 24 1 Among the more distinguished on the John-side are Baur and Hilgenfeld and Zeller and Davidson and Martineau and Tayler. The traditional evidence of the early Church in favor of the Apostle's authorship is certainly as strong as that for the most indubitable of Paul's Epistles. After the lapse of two or three centuries doubts were thrown upon its authorship but these apparently were suggested solely by its doctrinal contents. Millenarianism fell into disrepute, and so it was insisted that the Apostle could not have written such a Millenarian book. It is, however, a notable fact that both Clement and Origen, to whom its Millenarianism was exceedingly distasteful felt themselves obliged to credit it to the Apostle. Yet, strong as is the external evidence in favor of John, I should not hesitate to deny his authorship if the internal evidence were decidedly opposed to it. But the internal evidence is eminently con firmatory of the external. Four times the author names himself as John. That he does not name himself as an apostle is perfectly natural. A writer simulating him would have been sure to do it. But he writes to the seven churches with all the dignity and authority of an apostle. From any John but the apostle such an imperious tone would have been ridiculous. The central idea of the Apocalypse, the second coming of Jesus, is in perfect consonance with the Apostolic age and character. It appears in the Gospels, in Paul's Epistles, in Hebrews, James and Jude, in first and second Peter. The idea of Antichrist (the name does not appear) is the natural 242 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. concrete beginning of the more abstract conceptions of a later time. (II. Thess.: 1st Epistle of John.) Those who have failed to find the individuality of John in the Apocalypse base their idea of his indi viduality entirely upon the fourth Gospel. Aside from this the Apocalypse is in singular harmony with what we know of the Apostle. He appears in the Synoptic Gospels as a " son of thunder," impet uous and fierce, wishing to call down fire from heaven on a Samaritan village. He appears in Paul's Epistles, and even in the mediating Acts of the Apostles, as, a narrow, Judaizing, conservative opponent of the Apostle to the Gentiles. And in the Apocalypse he is thoroughly Jewish. The El ders, or elect, sit upon thrones immediately adjacent to Yahweh's and participate in his judicial functions. These are all Jews. The Gentiles have " back seats " assigned to them. They become quasi Jews. In the catastrophe which he foretells, the temple' is miraculously preserved and Jerusalem is the capital of the Messianic Kingdom. The hostility to Paul ine universalism is exactly what we should expect from John, forming our conception of him upon Paul's Epistles. One must be wilfully blind not to perceive that Paul and his followers are designated when we read of " those who say they are Apostles and are not, but are liars," and of those of " the syna gogue of Satan who say they are Jews, but are not," and of " the doctrine of Balaam," that it is lawful to eat things offered to idols. Paul claims to have knowledge of " the deep things of God." " The deep things of Satan" rather, retorts the Apocalypse THE APOCALYPSE. 243 Was it by any accident that the names of only twelve Apostles were in the foundations of the New Jerusalem? Is it not much more likely from the general tone of the Apocalypse that Paul was pur posely excluded ? There is no other feature of the Apocalypse which differentiates it from the fourth Gos pel so much as this : the Apocalyptist is one of the narrowest of Jewish Christians: the fourth Evangel ist is one of the narrowest of anti-Jewish Christians. Can we suppose that such a change as this came over the Apostle after he had reached and passed the grand climacteric ? Such a supposition is only less as tounding than the supposition of Dr.E. H. Sears* that both the Gospel and the Apocalypse were written by the Apostle when he was almost a centennarian. " Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles ? " It is certainly wonderful enough that a Galilean fisherman at any time of life should write the Apoc alypse. But so far as its Greek is concerned he might have written it more easily than any other New Testament book, for it is ruggeder and more Hebraistic than that of any other. At least we are more certain of the Johannine authorship of the Apocalypse than of the author ship of any other New Testament book, except the four indubitable Epistles of St. Paul. Here then we have the only book in the New Testament written by an immediate follower of Jesus. A Gospel from his hand would have been much more welcome, but we must make the best of what we have. Suppos- * In his fascinating and brilliant critical romance, The Fourth Gospel the Heart of Chi is t. 244 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. ing John to be the author, when and where did he write it ? The traditional answer is in 95 or 96 A. D. at Patmos. The critical answer does not agree with this. Jerusalem had not yet fallen. Therefore it was written before 70 A. D., and from Chapter XVII., 10, II, we infer in the reign of Galba or Vespasian, in the year 68 or 6g. " And there are seven kings," we read ; " five are fallen, and one is and the other is not yet come, and when he cometh he must con tinue a short space ; aud the beast that was and is not even he is the eighth and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition." The five fallen kings plainly enough are Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero. The one that is reigning is more doubtful. Galba,- Otho and Vitellius reigned so short a time, and were so partially acknowledged throughout the Empire, that possibly they were passed over. In this case Vespasian is the sixth, and, as his likeliest successor, Titus is " the other " who is not yet come. "When he comes he must continue a short space," because " the beast that was and is not " is to return and rule the Empire in his place. Who is this "beast that was and is not"? Nero beyond a doubt. For there is abundant evidence of a wide spread belief after the death of Nero that he was not really dead, but somewhere concealed, and that he would come back again to seize the sceptre. For this belief we have the evidence of the four great historians, Suetonius and Tacitus and Dio Chrysos- tom and Dio Cassius, besides a great abundance in the Sibylline oracles and the Church Fathers. Then too we have the " number of the beast." How then THE APOCALYPSE. 245 can we desire more perfect indications of the date of the Apocalypse? At the widest range it is some- where between the death of Nero and the destruc tion of Jerusalem, in the year 68 or 69 A. D. The latter date is the more probable. The place of writing was probably Ephesus, in Asia Minor.* The analogy of Hebrew prophecy, and especially of the Apocalyptic writings, Daniel and Enoch, is our best guide in seeking to discover the object which the author of this composition had in view. That analogy would lead us to expect his object to be two-fold ; part warning, part encouragement. To warn or to encourage, the old Hebrew prophets had endeavored to withdraw the veil which hid the future from the eyes of common men. Not to as tonish by their prescience, much less to gratify an idle curiosity, did their prophetic souls divine the course of individual or national futurity. Without exception their predictions were means to an end. The end which the Apocalyptist had in view was to encourage his fellow-Christians under the stress of persecution, and to warn them of the danger of apostatizing from the faith they had professed. The prophetic visions which he unrolled before them were means directed to this end. The one great central idea in all these visions was that Christ was coming back to live and reign upon the earth. He was not only coming, but he was coming right away. " He which testifieth these things saith, surely T come quickly." He was coming to raise the dead ; * Keim denying the Johannine authorship of the Apocalypse, naturally denies any connection between John ajid Asia Minor. 246 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. to judge the world ; to establish his Messianic King dom ; to purify Jerusalem; to shatter the enormous power of Rome ; to cast the Antichrist and Satan into Hell. Why then should Christian men despair? Why should they not endure with patience to the end ? Never I think was any writing better suited to the purpose of its author than this same Apoca lypse. It might well lift up the hands that hung down and confirm the feeble knees. John had no doubt that the things he predicted would certainly come to pass. .He was no psychologist. These .. splendors of his imagination appealed to him as a direct and awful revelation from the Most High God. The things which he predicted did not come to pass. Jerusalem, temple and all, was trampled in the dust. Nero did not come back. Christ did not come back. The Babylon of his denunciation became the New Jerusalem, the Christian capital. But the predictions and others like them, — for this Apocalypse was only one of many which appeared about this time, — the predictions did their work. They sustained men's fainting hearts. For a whole century men went on hoping and believing, ere they began to ask, "Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep all things remain as they were from the beginning of the creation." The contents of the Apocalypse may be divided into three parts. Part first, consisting of the first three chapters, is made up of a series of rebukes and warnings and encouragements dictated by Jesus Christ to the seven churches of Asia Minor. Part second, Chapters IV. — XL, sets forth the woes that THE APOCALYPSE. 247 are to precede the second coming of Christ, culmi nating in those which purify the Jewish nation. This part includes the opening of the seven seals. Of the plagues indicated by the four horses which appeared at the opening of the first four seals, the second, third and fourth are plainly war and famine and pestilence. But the first horse suggests no nat ural explanation.* At the opening of the seventh seal there is an awful silence of expectation. Seven angels appear with seven trumpets, and as each blows a blast the vision of a woe appears, prelimi nary to the final conquest of Messiah. At the sounding of the sixth trumpet Jerusalem is purified and the temple is preserved to be the. regal seat of the returning Christ. The seventh trumpet is re served to sound the final woe to which all that pre cedes leads up by gradual approaches : the over whelming destruction of Babylon, by which is symbolized the power of Rome and heathendom. The third part of the book is the revelation attend ant on the sounding of the seventh trumpet. This part begins at the twelfth chapter and continues to the end. First we have a description of the terrible Satanic dragon which is the archetype in heaven of the Roman power, then a figurative description of the Roman power itself, the beast with seven heads and ten horns ; then the judgment upon Rome, the seven vials of wrath poured out, Rome and Satan cast into the lake that burneth with fire and brim stone, the reign of Christ upon the earth a thousand years, the loosing of Satan, his final overthrow, the * It suggests the victorious Christ to Bleek and Dr. Noj'es. 248 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. second resurrection, the Day of Judgment, the coming down from heaven of the New Jerusalem. The Epilogue contains a fearful curse on anybody who should add anything to the book or take any thing from it, a capital testimony to the rage foi literary mutilation and addition which was so char acteristic of the time. While it cannot be denied that the Apocalypse contains many isolated passages of great imaginative force and beauty, it must be confessed that nothing could be clumsier than its general arrangement. The apologist may find in this a proof of the rhapsodical condition of the writer. But the literary critic will find only another evidence of the truth of Professor Smith's assertion: "The Hebrew genius did not at all lie in the direc tion of organic structure." We have here no rhap sody, but the result of long and painful cogitation by a man whose constructive imagination utterly refused to second his religious zeal. Hence this bewildering muddle of seals and trumpets and vials and plagues, shot through from time to time with lightning flashes of the true Promethean fire. Nothing is surer than that this book was written for an immediate purpose. Its predictions were concerned with the immediate future and, whether they were then fulfilled or not, it is absurd to seek for any realization of them in the general course of subsequent events and in particular catastrophes of later times. The fortunes of the Apocalypse have been very interesting and significant. After the conversion of the Roman Empire the obvious meaning of the ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 249 Woman and the Beast was frittered away as being too uncomplimentary to the new Christian capital As the end of the first Christian millenium'approach- ed, there was universal and immense excitement throughout Christendom, in expectation of the loos ing of the devil and the general resurrection, but, noth ing happening, the interpretation of the Apocalypse became more and more symbolical and fanciful. The beast was found to mean Mohammedanism and the false prophet Mohammed. Again the papal party found in the beast the Hohenstaufens and these returned the compliment. The Protestants found the Roman Church prefigured in the Woman and the Beast. Later enthusiasts have found the French Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte. The number of the beast, 666, which is clearly the numerical complement of Ccesar Nero or the Latins, as we interpret it by Hebrew or Greek numeral letters, has probably been interpreted in a thousand differ ent ways. But we have come at length to pretty near the end of these vagaries. The Acts of the Apostles is one of the most inter esting books of the New Testament, and were it what its name implies, a history of the apostles gen erally, it would have a quite incalculable value. But the title is misleading. The Sinaitic Ms. more properly has simply " Acts," and the Vatican Ms., "Acts of Apostles," for the acts reported are really only those of two apostles, Peter and Paul. The other apostles are only mentioned incidentally. The book falls naturally into two parts. In the first part, to the end of the twelfth chapter, Peter is the 250 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. important person ; in the second part, from the thirteenth chapter to the end, Paul is exclusively important. Renan has called the book, " The Christian Odyssey," and certainly it has an air of conquest and adventure which attracts us to it with an irresistible charm. We may accept in full the charges which the Tubingen critics make on its veracity and still return to it with unabated interest. It may not be history and biography, but it is at least one of the most charming fictions that was ever written. The contents of the first part are, in brief : an account of the ascension of Jesus, the return of the apostles to Jerusalem, the outpouring of the spirit on the day of Pentecost ; the first persecution of the infant church ; the death of Annanias and Sapphira ; the election of seven deacons, one of whom, Ste phen, is stoned to death, by order of the Jewish council ; a new and violent persecution of the church ; the dispersion of the disciples and consequent preaching of the gospel in Samaria, where Peter en counters Simon Magus ; the conversion of Paul on his way to Damascus ; Peter's journey to Lydda, and the miracles attending it ; the first preaching of the Gospel to the Gentiles by Peter, with the con version and baptism of Cornelius ; the ministry of Paul and Barnabas at Antioch. The contents of part second are as follows : the return of Paul and Barnabas to Antioch, followed by their first missionary journey ; after preaching in Cyprus, and Perga, and Antioch in Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe, they retraced their steps to An- tioch, where a dispute arose about the obligation of ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 25 1 Gentile converts to practice circumcision and the law of Moses. To settle the matter Paul, Barnabas, and others are sent to Jerusalem, where a council is held and it is decided, after speeches by James and Peter, that only Jewish Christians shall observe the law, including circumcision : Gentiles shall be ab solved with certain exceptions — abstinence from food offered to idols being the most notable. Then follows Paul's second missionary journey, in com pany with Silas. It takes him to Syria, Cilicia, and Lycaonia, where he circumcises Timothy, to Phrygia and Galatia, and from Mysia to Troas ; thence to Macedonia in obedience to a vision ; from Philippi to Thessalonica and Berea; Paul's next appearance is alone at Athens, where he speaks on the Acropolis ; then at Corinth, where he stays a year and a half ; then back to Antioch by way of Caesarea and Jeru salem, touching at Ephesus upon his voyage. After a time he sets out on his third missionary journey, during which he " went over all the country of Gala tia and Phrygia in order strengthening all the dis ciples." After a stay of some three years in Ephesus, he sets out for Jerusalem by the round-about way of Macedonia and Achaia. Arriving at Jerusalem he is persuaded by the other apostles to prove his devo tion to Judaism by joining himself with four men who had undertaken a vow, getting his head shaved with them and paying all the charges. He consents but is seized upon by the Jews in the temple, dragged out and beaten. Claiming to be a Roman citizen he is rescued by the Roman officer. Sent to the Sanhedrim, he claims to be a Pharisee, and so 252 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. makes the Pharisees his partizans. To prevent an other attack of the mob upon him, he is sent to Caesarea where he speaks before Felix and Drusilla with great power, but remains a prisoner for two years, and then, Felix being superseded by Festus, he appeals before him to Caesar, and is finally sent to Rome ; but not before he has made a great im pression upon King Agrippa. The voyage to Rome is treated expansively and his arrival there is made to appear the first introduction of Christianity to the Eternal City. " And Paul dwelt two years in his own hired house, and received all that came to him." Have we in this book of Acts a trustworthy ac count of actual events, of Peter and Paul, their characters and mutual relations, and of the manner in which Christianity from being a little Jewish sect became a world religion ? With some abatements we might think so if we only had this book for our instruction. But fortunately for us, and fortunately for Paul, though unfortunately for Peter and for the credibility of this book, we have also certain letters of Paul between which and this book we are obliged to judge, and doing so, we come to the conclusion that this book is a theological romance, written with a set purpose to represent important matters in a different light from that of more trustworthy authori ties. It is universally agreed that this book was written by the same person as the third Gospel ; both of them by Luke according to traditional opinion. But where Luke puts the ascension of the risen Jesus on ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 253 the day of the resurrection, Acts puts it forty days after. That says at Bethany ; this from the Mount of Olives. A writer who thus contradicts himself we should expect to contradict others, and we are not disappointed. The book abounds in the most startling miracles, of such a character that they excite at once our incredulity. The Gospel miracles are very few and simple in comparison. But we will let them go, save as they contradict themselves or something more reliable. I can only name a few out of the many contradictions between the Acts and Paul's Epistles. In the Acts soon after his con version Paul goes up to Jerusalem and begins to preach Christianity. In Galatians he tells us he did not go to Jerusalem for three years, but went into Arabia. In the fifteenth chapter of Acts, we have an account of a council in Jerusalem, Paul and Bar nabas having been sent from Antioch to inquire about the obligations of Gentile Christians to observe the Jewish law. We have here an entire misrepresenta tion of a visit to Jerusalem described by Paul in the second chapter of Galatians. In Acts we have a for mal, in Galatians an informal conference. \n Acts the law is declared binding upon Jewish Christians, and Paul assents, which he could not possibly have done ; he who declared, " If ye be circumcised Christ shall profit you nothing." In Acts it is decreed that even Gentiles must abstain from meats offered to idols, and Paul publishes far and wide this decree, exactly contrary to his own convictions expressed in his Corinthian Epistles. Both sides are represented as making concessions. Paul asserts that he made no 254 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. concession. The apostles would have had him cir cumcise Titus and he stubbornly refused. Of this the Acts says nothing, but at a later date it repre sents him as circumcising Timothy. To believe this is to believe that he went backward. The Acts mentions a visit of Paul between this and the first. Paul implies distinctly that he made no such visit. What the gift of tongues was we know from Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians. It was the gift of talk ing unintelligible gibberish. But in the Acts this gift becomes the miraculous power of speaking for eign languages, evidently a symbol of the Pauline Universalism, and further suggested by the Rabbin ical notion that in the Messianic times the confusion of tongues begun at Babel would be resolved back again into a universal language. The account of Paul's arrival at Rome in Acts is wholly at variance with Paul's Epistle to the Romans. Here a flourish ing church is represented as existing ; there Christ ianity as being unknown except by mere hearsay. Among the internal contradictions it is notable that Paul's companions on the way to Damascus, are represented both as hearing and as not hearing the voice of Jesus. Annas, the high priest, is represented as a Sadducee, (v. 17) which we know that he was not. This misrepresentation is not without a definite pur pose. The account of Simon Magus is full of doubt ful particulars. It is even doubtful whether there ever was any such person. In the second century he was identified with Paul. In short the narratives in Acts will seldom bear examination. They every where abound in mutual contradictions and internal incongruities. ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 255 This book is very rich in speeches. There are several of Peter's, a remarkable one of Stephen's, and several of Paul's, of which those before Felix and Agrippa, and the one in Athens upon Mars Hill, will occur to you most readily. These speeches cannot be regarded as historical. They could not have been made by the persons to whom they are ascribed. They are too short for actual addresses on the occasions indicated. Paul preached so long at Troas that Eutychus went to sleep, and fell out of a three story window. But he would hardly have got Napoleon's forty winks before any one of these was over. But the principal reason for refus ing credence to these speeches is that they are all alike. Peter and Stephen and Paul, all speak the same thoughts, in tne same language. Listening to Peter, Paul seems to be ventriloquizing. Peter was a Jewish Christian, and he talks Pauline Uni versalism. Paul's speeches have in no single in stance the ring of his Epistles. The Greek and Roman historians put made-up speeches of their own into the mouths of generals and emperors. The writer of Acts, little imagining that he is writ ing a considerable section of an infallible Bible, follows their example. Comparing the language of the speakers with his own, we find it is the same. They have his tricks of style, his turns of expres sion, and his conciliatory type of thought. But the one great consideration which prevents our trusting the Acts as real history and biography is that it offers us a representation of Paul, and his relations to the other Apostles, widely different 256 THE BLBLE OF TO-DA Y. from that which we have found in his Epistles. Even the Jewish Christianity of the Apocalypse would be an incomprehensible riddle if the Acts had to be accepted as a valid testimony to the character of the Apostolic age. But in comparison with Paul's Epistles, the Acts at once exhibit their true character.^, Under these startling miracles, these charming narratives, these eloquent speeches, these entrancing pictures of the unity and harmony of the early Church, there is a writing in invisible ink, declaring the real purpose of the book. Hold it up to that great flame of godly indignation, which burns so hot in Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians and Galatians, and this writing becomes clear as day. The first thing that impresses us in reading about Paul in Acts is his devotion to Jerusalem and the temple ritual. " I must by all means keep this feast that cometh at Jerusalem," he is represented as saying, and again as leaving his successful work at Ephesus to go to Jerusalem, as being reluctant to stay longer in Asia, because he hasted to be in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. So he shaves his head at Cenchrea, because he has taken a vow. And he does this again at Jerusalem, with four others, who cannot pay their own expenses, to prove that he is just as good a Jew as ever. He is represented as circumcising Timothy. His re fusal to circumcise Titus is passed over in silence though we have Paul's own word for it that the Jerusalem Apostles demanded it. and he refused to grant it. Again we have no mention of Paul's con- ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 257 flict with Peter at Antioch, when he withstood him to his face, because he deserved to be blamed. But not only are Paul's most striking characteris tics, as consciously avowed and unconsciously ex hibited in his own Epistles, suppressed in Acts, or contradicted ; the part he played in the great work of universalizing Christianity is totally misrepre sented, if his own statements are to be depended on. According to these statements his mission from the very first was to the Gentiles. According to Acts he began his Christian preaching at Jerusalem, among his own countrymen, and only with reluc tance did he turn from them to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles. Everywhere he is represented as systematically seeking the Jews first, and only turn ing from them to the Gentiles on compulsion of their human rage, or the divine interposition. His own representations in his Epistles are diametrically opposed to this. Nor do his representations agree any better with those of this book in regard to his relation to the other Apostles concerning his work among the Gentiles. He represents it as being origi nal with him, undertaken of his own motion, and carried on without their counsel or encouragement, though not without their constant and annoying interference. Acts represents his Gentile work as carried on under the supervision and the guidance of the Jerusalem party. It represents Peter as en tertaining the views of Paul from the beginning; as being before him in preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles ; it represents the Gentile Christians at Antioch as being amply recognized by Peter and 258 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. the twelve before the appearance of Paul upon the scene. Yet another respect in which the Paul of Acts is not the Paul of his Epistles, is in regard to his addresses. They contain nothing characteristic ; to his great doctrine of justification by faith only one faint allusion- It is hardly too much to say that the discourses of Peter are more Pauline than those of Paul. Certain it is that, taken in the mass, the Paul of Acts is more like the Peter of the Epistles than he is like their author. His conduct at Jerusalem, where he has his head shaved with four impecunious vagabonds, and shuts himself up in the temple seven days to show his devotion to the law, was far. more hypocritical than Peter's when he withstood him to the face at Antioch. And certain it is the Peter of the Acts is far more like the Paul of the Epistles than he is like the Peter there por trayed. What shall we say of this remarkable double transformation ? First, that if Paul was such a man as he is represented in the book of Acts he is but little worthy of our admiration, leaving the Epistles out of the account. But second, taking the Epis tles into the account, that either Acts misrepresents him grossly or he was not only a liar and a hypo crite, but a blustering Falstaff, bragging of heroisms of which he was incapable and slandering men who were of larger mould and better spirit than himself; Choose, as you must, one or the other of these two alternatives. For me, I chose long since. I ac cept as simple truth Paul's representation of him self, and of the other apostles and his relation to ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 259 them, in his Epistles. And therefore I cannot ac cept the representation of the book of Acts. As I said at the beginning, it is a theological romance. But a romance with a set purpose. Be certain that it was not by any accident that the attributes of Peter and Paul were so inextricably shuffled up together, that they masquerade in each other's armor, fight with each other's weapons, talk in each other's voices. It is not accidental that we have twelve chapters devoted to Peter and then about as many more devoted to Paul. It is not accidental that for almost every event in Peter's career there is a par allel event in Paul's ; that if Peter confutes Simon the magician, Paul must confute Elymas the sor cerer ; if Peter raises Tabitha from the dead, Paul must raise Eutychus; if Peter has a vision, Paul must have one for a similar purpose ; if Peter's shadow could work miracles, so could Paul's hand kerchief. It is not accidental that the sufferings of Peter also are represented as parallel with those of Paul ; that two men of striking individuality are represented as being alike as two peas. To repre sent them as being so alike is the very purpose for which the book was written : in order to conciliate the rivalries and hatreds of the opposing Pauline and Petrine parties in the early church. The writer was himself a Paulinist ; himself a Universalist. And his book was written as the basis of a compromise between his party and the other.* Come, said he, let us Paulinize Peter and Petrinize Paul ; let us * A secondary object was to ingratiate Christianity with the officials of the Roman Empire. The Roman officials with whom Paul comes in contact find no fault in Jim. 260 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. pretend that they were not so very different ; that they always got along smoothly together; that Peter was the first apostle to the Gentiles ; that Paul was a devout adherent of the law. Is not this better than to go on fighting? United we stand ; di vided we fall. Apparently the other party said Amen. Certain it is there was a compromise, on pretty much this basis, in the second century. A Catholic church was formed midway between the two extremes of Petrine Ebionitism and Pauline Gnosticism. Its spirit became more and more Pauline and its name and tradition more and more Petrine. The date of this compromise was a little subse quent to that of the third Gospel: about 125 A. D. Written by the same person as the author of the third Gospel it could not have been written by Luke. Like the third Gospel it contains memorials of a much earlier date, it may be from the hand of Luke. The passages in which the first person plural appears* are of this nature but they have all been made over by the final editor. The author of this book was a person of excellent intentions. But in order to further them he delib erately falsified the character and conduct of the man who had made Christianity a universal religion and, instead of the true Paul, endeavored to palm off upon us a poor, puny double of the apostle of the circumcision. He did not mean to slander the apostle to the Gentiles. But it takes a hero to com prehend a hero. And this man was not a hero but a ?Chapter xvi., 10, for the first time. ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 261 valet with a valet-soul. If anywhere in heaven the great shade of Paul has encountered his poor ghost I fear that he has had a very disagreeable experience. We cannot be too thankful that it was not suffered we should know of Paul only by this piece of whole sale misrepresentation but that in his own Epistles we can look upon the actual man and know him for the stalwart hero that he was. EIGHTH LECTURE. THE FOUR GOSPELS. It seems almost preposterous to invite your at- tention, for a single hour, to the consideration of a subject which has been more engrossing than any other of a literary character. If all the books that have been written about the four Gospels could be brought together, it might be hyperbolical to say, "The world itself could not contain them," but they would make up a library of many thousand volumes. And still the number grows. Hardly a year goes by, that one or more new treatises upon the Gospels is not added to the multitude already written. And let me say, that if you wish to think and speak with absolute confidence about them, your only chance is to choose some one writer, and pin your faith to him. Let it be Davidson or Strauss, Keim or Baur; but let it be one, and one only. The moment that you try a second, there is an end of perfect confidence. Admit a third, and dogmatism becomes even less possible. Each of these authors by himself, and twenty more, seems perfectly conclusive, but all of them together breed confusion, head-ache and despair. Having myself felt obliged to compare as many as possible of these writers, you will not expect me to be entirely cer- 262 THE FOUR GOSPELS. 263 / tain upon every point, for, like the men who sprung from Cadmus' fatal seed, their certainties are often mutually destructive. And yet, as the result of reading many of these writers long and carefully, a candid person will, I am persuaded, find some general convictions emerging with much force and clearness. I shall content myself with indicating some of these this evening. There is nothing strange or unaccountable in the interest which has attached to the four Gospels. Rather the wonder is, that, for one who has devoted himself to the study of them, there has not been a score, for they contain well nigh our sole account of the earthly career of one who is esteemed to-day by three hundred and forty millions of people, and these the most civilized people in the world, to be none other than the infinite and eternal God, the maker and the ruler of this boundless universe. The existence of Jesus is implied in the New Test ament, outside of the Gospels, but hardly an inci dent of his life is mentioned, hardly a sentence that he spoke has been preserved. Paul, writing from twenty to thirty years after his death, has but a single reference to anything he ever said* or did. Of Jewish mention of Jesus outside of the New Testament there is not a single valuable instance. The famous passage in Josephus, whose life began soon after that of Jesus ended, is considered by the best authorities to be wholly an interpolation^ His bare allusion to him in another passage, where * " Do this in remembrance of me." — 1 Cor., n, 25. f For argument see Keira's Jesus of Nazara.Wcl I., p. 24. 264 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. f * he speaks of " James, the brother of Jesus, the so- called Christ," is less certainly spurious. The earli est Talmudic references are remote and scanty and contemptible. The earliest references to Jesus by pagan authors date from' the beginning of the sec ond century. Tacitus mentions the mere fact of his crucifixion ; Suetonius imagines him to have been a seditious Roman Jew living in the time of Claudius ! The younger Pliny, Governor of By- thinia, in 104 A. D., writes an interesting letter about the Christians of that region, but it contains no reference to the events of Jesus' life. So, then, for knowledge of the man whose name has been above all names, the fountain-head of love more tender, strife more keen and hatreds more intense, than have arisen from any other personal source, we are thrust back upon the four Gospels as our only biographical material. The four cover only a few more than one hundred pages. A three-volume novel is four times as copious in its contents as this four-volume biography of the most central and com manding figure in the human order. Surely from any point of view, the most orthodox or the most heterodox, this four-volume biography deserves to be a subject of the most careful study, and the most engrossing interest. But " this four-volume biography" is an expres sion that will not stand a moment's searching ob servation. We have here, not a single continuous work made up of four consenting parts. We have four separate and individual wholes ; four different biographies of one and the same person. Different, THE FOUR GOSPELS. 265 and yet of the four there are three which, in spite of minor differences, have a strong general resem blance. These, the first three, are called by the critics the Synoptic Gospels, because a synopsis or general view of the three taken together is quite possible, in which the Fourth cannot be included. It is a common mistake to suppose that the Syn optic Gospels are so called because they give a synopsis of the discourses of Jesus, or the events of his life. These Synoptics, which are so much alike, are all about equally different from the fourth Gos pel. I say about equally because the spirit of Luke approaches that of John most nearly ; that of Mark next ; while that of Matthew is most diverse from it, as concerns the relations of Christianity to the Jewish nation and religion. Apart from this, the Synoptics differ equally from John. They give us an entirely different idea of the personality of Jesus, of the length and course of his ministry, and of the style and nature of his teachings from that presented by the Fourth Gospel. The most various ingenuity has been developed to account for these divergen cies. But that the divergencies are there is not de nied by any. Says Canon Westcott, one of the most conservative of critics, " It is impossible to pass from the Synoptic Gospels to the Fourth with out feeling that the transition involves the passage from one world of thought to another. No famili arity with the general teachings of the Gospels, no wide conception of the character of the Saviour is sufficient to destroy the contrast which exists in form and spirit between the earlier and later narra- 266 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. fives." Nevertheless, Canon Westcott is persuaded that the Fourth Gospel proceeded from " the be loved disciple," in the last decade of the first cen tury, when he was between ninety and one hundred years old. The question of the date and authorship and character of the Fourth Gospel is by far the most interesting question suggested by the four Gospels. but there are questions touching the mutual rela tions of the three Synoptics which are hardly less interesting or important. The traditional idea is that the four Gospels were written by the persons whose names they bear; two of them by Apostles, Matthew and John, and two of them by specially qualified companions of Peter and Paul. But there is nothing in the Synoptics declaratory of the au thorship of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and the tendency was so strong among the early Christians to seek for Apostolic warrant for this writing, or that opinion, that every tradition of Apostolic au thorship or sanction must be closely scrutinized. The case of the Fourth Gospel is different. The Apostle John is clearly indicated as its author. Should we be compelled to deny that the Synop tics were written by Matthew, Mark and Luke, we should only be going counter to a late and irrespon sible tradition. But should we be obliged to deny the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel, we should be going counter to the most positive indi cations of the Gospel itself. The differences of the Synoptics from each other in contents and char acter, I shall indicate as I treat of them in the New THE FOUR GOSPELS. 267 Testament order. The differences between the Synoptics and the Fourth I shall reserve until I come to this. "The Gospel according to St. Matthew," as it is superscribed in our common version, is made up of twenty-eight chapters, which naturally fall into three parts. Chapters I.-IV. contain a genealogy of Jesus, an account of his birth and infancy, the preaching of John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus by him ; then, following the imprisonment of John the Baptist, the entrance of Jesus on his inde pendent ministry and the calling of his first disci ples — two pairs of brothers, Peter and Andrew, James and John. These four chapters make up the first or introductory part. Chapters V.-XV1H. make up the second part, and cover the Galilean ministry of Jesus. Chapters xix.-xxvill., the third and con cluding part, cover his Judean ministry, and the incidents of his death and resurrection at Jerusalem. Criticism has sometimes attempted to separate the first two chapters from the remainder of the Gospel as a spurious addition. But the earliest and best Mss. do not justify any such procedure. Le gendary and miraculous elements are more promi nent here than in the body of the Gospel. But this is only what we should expect, because of the greater remoteness of the birth and infancy of Jesus, and the natural tendency of such elements to cluster around the beginning, as around the end, of life. Miracles always multiply as the narration gets re moved from the event. But there is good reason to believe that these chapters, at least the whole of 268 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. them, did not form a part of the original Gospel of the Hebrews upon which Mattliew would seem to have been based. These opening chapters, as the most casual observer can perceive, are made up of incongruous elements. The genealogy deduces Jesus from David through Joseph. Either its au thor had not heard of his miraculous birth, or he did not believe it. The miraculous birth of Jesus makes the genealogy through Joseph superfluous and absurd. The first three chapters of the second part con tain the Sermon on the Mount, and constitute the richest section of the Synoptic Gospels. The length of this discourse has frequently been cited as a par allel to the protracted discourses of the Fourth Gos pel, but the internal evidence is ample that in the present instance we have fragments of a great many different discourses arbitrarily joined together. Some famous hill-side talk became a nucleus around which various sentences, spoken at other times, gradually clustered. In Mark and Luke the sen tences, which are here joined together into a tolera bly consistent whole, are assigned to various occa sions. But there is internal evidence, not only of spontaneous growth, but of conscious manipulation. The discourse has been carefully worked up into its present form, yet not so carefully but that several of the joints are easily apparent. Chapters VIII. and IX. are full of miracles. Chapter x. gives the full list of the twelve Disciples and the instructions given to them by Jesus, instructions which smack very strongly of a later time. Actual experience of THE FOUR GOSPELS. 260 persecution is here reflected back upon the time and thought of Jesus. Chapters XL and XII. report the wandering ministry of Jesus, and his first conflict with the Pharisees. Chapter XIII. groups into arbi trary unity a number of striking parables, which certainly, when originally spoken, did not come gal loping upon each other's heels in any such fashion. Equally arbitrary is the grouping of events in chap ters XIV. and XVII. And yet a certain progress is discernible. The period of conflict becomes more clearly marked, and it hardly needs a prophet to foretell the ultimate catastrophe. Part third begins with the departure of Jesus from Galilee, and in the twenty-first chapter we have his entry into Jerusalem. Here his contention with the Pharisees waxes hotter, and in chapter XXIV. he is represented as predicting the destruction of Je rusalem, the downfall of the Jewish State, and his own return from heaven to set up his Messianic Kingdom on the earth. So far as these predictions were fulfilled it is quite certain that they were not originally spoken in their present form ; that this was shaped by subsequent experience. If Jesus had thus predicted the destruction of the temple, could his disciple John in the Apocalypse have con tradicted him to the extent of prophesying the preservation of both the city and the temple? If the city and temple had not been destroyed, we may be very sure we should have had no such prophecy as this put into the mouth of Jesus. But it may be said, Jesus did not return from Heaven and yet his prophecy of his return is frankly 270 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY. given. I answer, The expectation of Jesus' second coming was still current in the forepart of the second century, when the first Gospel reached its present form. Did this expectation project itself upon the past? — impose itself upon the speech of Jesus? Or did actual expressions on the part of Jesus give rise to the expectation among his followers? This is a very interesting question, but it is a very difficult one to answer. The first alternative is accepted by Matthew Arnold, Davidson, Schenkel, Baur, and many other critics ; the second by Strauss and Keim ; also by Drs. Noyes* and Martineau. Still others explain away the natural meaning of the words into some spiritual significance. This only is wholly im permissible. But between the above alternatives it is easier to make a wilful than a deliberate choice. I am myself inclined to the opinion that Jesus did anticipate his second coming. On any other sup position the belief of John and Paul, and of the early Church generally, is, if not wholly unaccountable, very nearly so. But on this point I must refuse to dogmatize. In Chapter XXV. we have the impressive parables of the virgins and the talents, together with the striking allegory of the sheep and goats. To what extent these had originally a special Messianic mean ing, — the coming of the bridegroom and " the lord of those servants " coinciding with the coming of the Son of Man in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, — it is not easy to decide. It is entirely possible that their original intention was moral and * In the last years of his teaching at Cambridge. THE FOUR GOSPELS. 2J\ universal and that the bias of Jesus' contemporaries attached to them a special meaning. Certain it is that hardly anywhere in the New Testament have we anything that lends itself so readily to simple moral uses as these parables of the virgins and the talents, and this allegory of the sheep and the goats. The popular doctrines of salvation by belief or magic, with their contempt of " mere morality," must go elsewhere for aid and sustenance. They will not find them here. The three concluding chapters de tail the circumstances of the arrest and trial and crucifixion of Jesus, followed by the story of his resurrection. Barring a few apocryphal additions* these chapters, till the death of Jesus, are charac terized by a remarkable dignity and self-restraint. Surely the process of natural selection in this in stance did achieve the preservation of the fittest. Consider next some of the absolute and relative characteristics of this' Gospel. Concerning these the critics are sufficiently agreed. It is the most Jewish Gospel of the four ; in fact the most Jewish book in the New Testament, with the exception of the Apocalypse and the Epistle of James. Some of the more conspicuous Jewish traits areas follows: Jesus is sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel ; the twelve are forbidden to go among the Gentiles or the Samaritans ; they are to sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel; the genealogy of Jesus is traced back to Abraham and there stops ; the works of the law are frequently in- * Such as the dream of Pilate's wife and the narrative in XXVII., 52. 272 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. sisted on ; there is a superstitious regard for the Sabbath;* the preeminence of the apostle Peter. Nowhere else in the New Testament is the desire so obvious to force from the Old Testament a con fession favorable to the Messianic claim of Jesus. A distinct anti-Pauline tendency is affirmed by some of the Tubingen critics, but upon the strength of dataf which are not entirely satisfactory. The next most striking characteristic after this Jewish tendency is the unmistakable presence here and there of elements incongruous with this. To say that the Gospel is a union of contradictions would be too severe ; for it is never anti-Jewish like the fourth Gospel. But plus the narrow Jewish tendency there is a liberal Jewish tendency discover able in many places. Instances of this are to be found in the story of the Canaanitish woman,;]: the worship of the heathen magi, the saying of Jesus (viil, 10) that he had not found in Israel such faith as the heathen centurion's, his freedom from Sab batical superstition (Chap. XII., 1-9) ; and there are many others.* Now what are we to say of this house divided against itself — of this internal contra diction ? That these divergent statements represent an earlier and later stage of the development of Jesus? This explanation has been offered, but it is wholly insufficient, and a much more rational ex planation is at hand. It is that we have here two different stages of the development of Christianity : first, a narrow Jewish and then a liberal Jewish stage. *Chap. XXIV.,. 20. f Such as Chap. XL, 12. and XXIV., 11. \ XV., 28. * Chap. XXIV., 14; XXVIII., iS ; XXVIL, 24, 25 ; XXL, 43 THE FOUR GOSPELS. 273 But though it is not impossible that the final editor of the Gospel, himself a liberal Jew, should have added liberal elements of his own to an original basis with which he had little sympathy, it is much likelier that the author of the Gospel in its present form was a mere compiler and one by no means critical, who selected from two or more documents, more or less Jewish, whatever was most pleasing to his taste. The existence of such prior documents does not depend alone upon these contradictions. There are double narratives of the same event in several instances which do not admit of any other rational explanation. A narrow Jewish document was used much more freely than a less narrow, so that the narrow Jewish element preponderated in the finished work. A third principal characteristic of the first Gos pel is co-extensive with its general purpose, which is to set forth Jesus as the Messiah promised to the Jews. It is preeminently the Messianic Gospel. Its frequently recurring formula, " that it might be ful filled," betrays the writer's animus. But of his many would-be-prophecies it must be confessed that hardly one has such a meaning in its old Testament connection as he ascribes to it. For the most part some merely verbal resemblance is sufficient for his purpose. To suppose that the Apostle Matthew wrote our present Gospel, based as it is on various prior docu ments, is manifestly absurd. Not until the year 1 73, A. D., is it ascribed to him* And what is more, there * By Apollinaris, Eishop of Hierapolis. 274 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. is no evidence until about this time of the existence of the Gospel in its present form. A passage in the apocryphal Epistle of Barnabas has been urged against this statement, but, carefully considered, it cannot bear the weight that has been put upon it.* A saying of Papias, dating from about the middle of the second century, is frequently cited as a testi mony to Matthew's authorship of our present Gos pel. But the saying is, " Matthew composed the oracles in the Hebrew dialect, and everyone inter preted them as he was able." But our present Gos pel bears no trace of being a translation from the Hebrew. There was, however, in the early church a Gospel of the Hebrews in Greek, which possibly, and even probably, was a translation, in part at least, of the original Hebrew Matthew. But this Gospel of the Hebrews e^dsted in various forms, one of which was the intensely Jewish Gospel of the Ebi- onites, the Ebionites being the narrowest Jewish Christians of the second century. The most primi tive form of it was probably a collection of dis courses — the " oracles" of Papias. The documents made use of by the final author of our present Gos pel were probably for the most part some of the various editions of the Gospel of the Hebrews. The original oracles were written, likely enough, not long before the destruction of Jerusalem. But it is not likely that the Gospel assumed its present form before ioo A. D.f If it were possible to separate the whole of the original matter from the later ad- * Supemafural Religion, Vol. I., p. 236. •f Baur says 130-34 ; Davidson 100 ; Keim circum go A.D. THE FOUR GOSPELS. 2/$ ditions, we should have a tradition of the discourses of Jesus only about forty years later than his death.* Even then there would be plenty of room for imper fect memory, amplification and distortion. Never theless this is the nearest approach that we can make to the actual personality of Jesus and his actual words. We are at a still further remove from him in all the other Gospels. Certainty that he spoke one sentence, just as we have it here re corded, is of course impossible. Stenographers and phonographs had not been invented in his day. But memory was surer when the demand on it was greater. The chances are that many of these say ings report with tolerable exactness the actual speech of Jesus. They have an individuality which can hardly be fictitious. The incidents with which they are connected are less to be depended on. And yet again, for incident as well as teaching, this is the fountain head. If we would, we could not have it otherwise. Nor would we if we could ; so strong and sweet a face is that we dimly see through these meshes of legend and contradiction ; so deep and rich and penetrating is the voice we hear. The next Gospel in the New Testament, but not, as we shall see, in chronological order, is " The Gos pel according to St. Mark." It is the shortest Gos pel of the four. It has only sixteen chapters to Matthew's twenty-eight and Luke's twenty-three. It is very different from Matthew ; poorest where Matthew is richest, in the discourses of Jesus. It is the Gospel of action rather than of speech. For. * Fixed at the year 29 of our era by the best authorities. 276 THE BLBLE OF TO-DA Y. merly, because it was the shortest Gospel, it was considered by many critics the earliest ; Matthew and Luke expansions of its briefer history. This was a most uncritical assumption, as if condensa tion were not quite as often as expansion the aim of editorial work. Even those who now contend for the priority of Mark do not contend for the priority of the present Gospel, but for that of a primitive Mark. A suggestion of this primitive Mark is found in Papias of Hierapolis (circum 150), who says, as quoted by Eusebius, " Mark, being the interpreter of Peter, wrote exactly whatever he re membered ; but he did not write in order the things that were spoken or done by Christ." Without a word of comment, Dr. E. H. Sears* refers to this passage, which he shrewdly abstains from quoting, as evidence that Papias was acquainted with our Mark. That the remark of Papias did not refer to our Mark is abundantly evident to any candid mind. Our Mark is written " in order ;" with as much consecu- tiveness as either Matthew or Luke. Indeed it is written for the most part in the same order as these. Moreover, a Gospel written by the companion of Peter, as Mark was, according to Papias and other representations, would naturally have given Peter some precedence of the other Apostles, or at least have mentioned him more frequently than the other Evangelists. But Peter has less precedence here than in Matthezu, and less mention is made of him. The story of his walking on the sea, and also the famous, " Thou art Peter, and on this rock will I * The Heart of Christ, p. 140. THE FOUR GOSPELS. 277 build my church," are omitted altogether. The modesty of Peter does not account for these omis sions, because he must have been already dead when they were made by Mark, supposing him to have written the Gospel. But counting out, as we are bound to, this testimony of Papias, we have not a particle of external evidence that Mark wrote this Gospel, not a statement* to this effect till about 190 A. D. Then we get a perfectly clear statement of Irenaeus. But this was more than a hundred years after the time of Mark. Such testimony is worth very little ; without internal confirmation absolutely nothing. Matthew Arnold, who accepts a fragment of Claudius Apollinaris as evidence^ of the existence and exclusive use of our four Gospels as canonical in 173 A. D., declares, " But he is really our last witness. Ascending to the times before him, we find mention of the Gospel, of Gospels, of iMcmorabilia and written accounts of Jesus, by his Apostles and their followers. We find incidents from the life of Jesus ; sayings of Jesus quoted. But we look in vain in Justin Martyr [150] or Poly- carp [died 160] or Ignatius [died 105] or Clement of Rome [died 101J either for an express recogni tion of the four canonical Gospels, or for a distinct mention of any one of them. No doubt the men tion of an Evangelist's name is unimportant, % if his * The Canon of Muratori (180 A.D.) only implies a second Gospel ; our second, very likely, but whether as Mark's, we cannot even guess. f Tried and found wanting by the author of Supernatural Religion, Vol. I., p. 185. X Concerning the existence of a book, but not concerning its au- thenticity. 278 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. narrative is evidently quoted, and if we recognize without hesitation his form of expression." But till the last quarter of the second century none of our four Gospels are evidently quoted. The method of Tischendorf and Dr. Sears and other critics is to infer the existence of our Gospels from every phrase they meet with in the Fathers similar to any phrase in our Gospels. This may be honest, but it is at least ridiculous. As if " many" had not " taken in hand," as Luke confesses, " to set forth in order a declaration of those things which" were " most surely believed" by Christian folk ! As if these declarations, Gospels of the Hebrews, Gospels of James and Peter, and so on, were not in good re pute and freely quoted ! As if the Gospel of the Hebrews were not so similar to our Matthew that even St. Jerome at first thought them identical ! Allow these circumstances their due weight, and you will see the folly of confidently inferring the existence of our Gospels even from the most perfect reproduction of their phrases in the writings of the second century. Certain of their existence, we can not be before Apollinaris at the earliest (173 A. D.) To be absolutely certain, say before Irenaeus, about 190 A. D. He is at any rate the first to name Mark as the author of our second Gospel. This late opinion is not supported by any internal evidence. On the contrary the internal evidence is conclusive of an unknown author. Subsequent to both Matthew and Luke, he must have written the Gospel about 120, and probably at Pome, the Latinisms of his style, and the apparent motive of his work, strongly sug- THE FOUR GOSPELS. 279 gesting that he was a Jewish citizen of the Eternal City. A superstitious sentimentalism has not failed to find in each of the four Gospels a charming indi viduality, a necessary contribution to our perfect understanding of the personality and thought of Jesus. But in sober truth if we had only Matthew of the three Synoptics, our means of apprehending Jesus would be very slightly diminished. With Luke we should indeed lose the most touching of all parables, that of the prodigal son,* but of Mark it may be confidently affirmed that it is almost entirely superfluous. Of valuable incident it adds next to nothing; of significant teaching, even less. In this Gospel there are only twenty-four verses which are not contained in either Matthew or Luke. But the number of resemblances to Matthew is much greater than the number to Luke, and in the former case they are much closer than in the latter. Hence while it is as certain as need be that the author made use of our Matthew as a principal authority, it is not so certain that he also made use of Luke.\ If he did not it is still easy to account for those things which he has in common with Luke only. We have only to suppose that he had, besides our own Mat. thew, some one or more of those declarations which "many" had "set forth in order" and which Luke confessedly made use of. But Mark's knowledge of Luke is almost necessary to account for the existence of the second Gospel, a neutral go-between, a com- * Also the Good Samaritan and some others. See below. f The more common opinion is that he did. Hilgenfeld argues lr the negative. 28o THE BLBLE OF TO-DA Y. promise between Matthew as too Petrine and Luke as too Pauline. In part, no doubt, abbreviation was the author's motive. But over and above this the chances are that the different aspects of Matthew and Luke were found to be confusing to believers, and provocative of hostile criticism from without. Hence the idea of writing a shorter Gospel that should combine the most essential elements of both. Luke was itself a compromise between the opposing Jewish and universal tendencies of early Christian ity, but " Mark endeavors by avoidance and omission to effect what Luke did more by addition and con trast. * * * * Luke proposed to himself to open a door for the admission of Pauline ideas without offending Gentile Christianity ; Mark on the contrary in a negative spirit to publish a Gospel which should not hurt the feelings of either party." * Hence his avoidance of all those disputed questions which disturbed the Church during th«- first quarter of the second century. The genealogy of Jesus is omitted ; this being offensive to Gentile Christians, and even to some of the more liberal Judaizers. \ The supernatural birth of Jesus is omitted, this being offensive to the Ebionitish (extreme Jewish) and some of the Gnostic Christians. For every Judaizing feature that is sacrificed, a universal one is also sacrificed. Hard words against the Jews are left out, but, with equal care, hard words about the Gentiles. An interesting example is that of the Canaanitish woman. Jesus says in Matthew, " It is * Strauss : New Life of Jesus vol. I, p. 176. fSee the Clementine Homilies, passim. THE FOUR GOSPELS. 2Sl not meet to take the children's bread and give it unto dogs." Luke finds this so little to his taste that he omits it altogether. Mark modifies it so as signify the precedence of the Jews without the ex clusion of the Gentiles. After its neutral, compromising character the most conspicuous trait of the second Gospel is its desire to magnify the personality of Jesus. To set forth Jesus as " the Son of God" is, we may say, declared to be the object of the Gospel in its open ing verse.* To do this the writer does not rely upon the words of Jesus, to which he is compara tively indifferent, but upon " his mighty acts." His power and influence are generally magnified ; not only by his miracles, but also by the effect of his presence,' the crowds which followed him. His in fluence over the demons is a very significant trait, inhering as it does in a dualistic conception that pervades the Gospel. Jesus is represented as a sort of Ormuzd, a Prince of Light, contending with a sort of Ahrimanes, the Prince of Darkness, under whose power the demons are ; but they are no match for the celestial energy of Jesus. In Mat thew z.czeot2.nee of Jesus as the Messiah, here accept- tance of him as the Son of God, is the one sign of a true disciple. A certain vividness of description in the second Gospel has often been regarded as a proof of its priority and its closeness of adherence to the facts recorded. But to the literary critic this superior * The Sinaitic Ms. omits " the Son of God," but if this is an in. terpolation it is a very proper and suggestive one. 282 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. vividness is but the effort of a writer essentially prosaic, to enliven his dull narrative with artificial ornaments. True the added traits are pretty enough ; but many of them are superfluous, and a few are positively absurd, and show how weak thf writer's hold was on his materials. A notable ex ample is his explanation of the fruitlessness of the fig tree : " for the time of figs was not yet," a good reason for its not having any figs, but surely not for cursing it. The secondary character of Mark is shown still further by its frequent obscurities, caused by its failure to embody a sufficient amount of the context of certain borrowed passages to ex plain the text. The general structure of the Gospel is the same as that of Matthew. After a brief introduction, a second part narrates the story of the Galilean min istry of Jesus, and a third part his journeys to Je rusalem, his death and resurrection. In some an cient MSS. the last chapter breaks off with the eighth verse, and many critics argue that verses 9-20 were not originally a part of the Gospel. There is much to be said on both sides. Hilgenfeld considers them authentic, and also Davidson, but less confidently.* The verses contain nothing which we cannot well afford to lose. As Matthew was written to convince the Jews of the Messianic dignity of Jesns, so Mark was written to convince the Gentiles of his God-like majesty and power. In the second century, therefore, it was not superfluous. And, even now, it adds some- * Introduction to New Test., vol. II., p. 112. THE FOUR GOSPELS. 283 thing to our knowledge of early Christianity, though nothing to our knowledge of the life and character of Jesus. The gospel according to St. Luke is a much longer, fuller and richer gospel than its immediate predeces sor. We have no external evidence of its authenticity before the canon of Muratori, 180 A. D., nor indeed any external evidence of its existence before this date. Supposing the Gospel of the heretic Marcion to have been a garbled Luke we should have evidence of its existence. But Marcion's gospel was not, it would appear,* a garbled Luke, but one of the many decla rations to which Luke refers in the first verse of his gospel. To the same sources must we ascribe such of Justin Martyr's quotations as are like and yet un like Luke as we have it. The third gospel was as cribed to Luke because it was by the same author as the Acts, and the Acts had been ascribed to him because he figures in the Epistles as a companion of Paul, and no other companion, Timothy or Titus, would answer as well. But of real evidence that Luke wrote the Acts there is not a particle. It was written about 125 A. D., and Luke not long before, but earlier than Mark, (120 A. D.,) and later than Matthew, and so about 115 A.D., by whom we can not say. The contents oi Luke admit of a more various sub- division than those of Matthew and Mark. The first two chapters treat of the birth and infancy of John the Baptist and of Jesus. The most astonishing inge nuity has never yet been able to reconcile these * Supernatural Religion, vol. II., p. 7Q- 2S4 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. chapters with the first two chapters of Matthciv. While Matthew regards Bethlehem as Joseph's place of residence, Luke does not, but Nazareth : and Bethlehem as the accidental birth-place of Jesus. This is but one discrepancy of many. Part second extends to Chapter iv., 13. It recites the circum stances attendant on the early ministry of Jesus. The genealogy of Jesus which it contains is wholly irreconcilable with that in Matthew. But like that it derives Jesus from David through Joseph, and must therefore have originated in a circle of tradi tion in which the miraculous birth of Jesus was not accepted as a fact. Once entered on the ministry of Jesus, the general arrangement of Luke is the same as that of Matthew. But there are several variations in the chronology of events in which Mattheiv gener ally has the advantage of superior sense and truth. Luke's is the later and more careless hand. Part third, extending to Chapter IX., 50, covers the Gali lean ministry of Jesus. The resemblances to Matthew are most numerous in this part. The next, to Chapter XXL, 38., is most peculiar to Luke. It is the most important section of the gospel. It con tains all the great parables and the account of the conflict of Jesus with the Pharisees, synchronizing with the protracted journey of Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem. The Galilean ministry is shorter than in Matthezv. The going to Jerusalem is the great thing. Everything tends to a catastrophe from the beginning of the journey. The last three chapters cover the concluding events of the young prophet's life, his arrest and trial, and death, and resurrection, THE FOUR GOSPELS. 285 There is a good deal of matter in Luke which we do not find in Matthew and Mark. In general it is not so rich in teaching as Matthew, though it is in finitely superior to Mark in this respect. But in the Prodigal Son and Good Samaritan it has preserved two parables that Matthew well might covet. Other parables peculiar to it are those of the two debtors, the friend borrowing bread at night ; the rich man's barns ; Dives and Lazarus ; the lost piece of silver ; the unjust steward ; the Pharisee and the publican. Several miracles are also peculiar to Luke : the raising of the widow of Nain's son being the most remark able. A good many little touches here and there are also peculiar to the third gospel, some of them unrivalled in their tenderness and beauty: Jesus weeping over Jerusalem ; his sayings, " Daughters of Jerusalem weep not for me," and " Father into thy hands I commend my Spirit." The ascension also is additional to Matthew, and is only vaguely repro duced in Mark. The opening verse of Luke betrays a writer far re moved from the events which he records,* but rich in written and in oral sources of information. The contemporaries are no longer on the stage. Between them and our author has intervened a period of lit erary fertility. But none of its results satisfy him entirely. He thinks he can do better. We shall hardly agree with him, knowing, as we do, that the writer of our Matthew was among the " many " * So does his fearful blunder in regard to the taxing of Quirinus which is thrown back ten years from its true date. See Davidson's Introduction, Vol. II., p. 68, for comments on the ingenuity of the apologists 286 THE BLBLE CF TO-DA Y. whom he flatters himself he can improve upon. Besides our Matthew, he must have used a more primitive form of the same gospel, the Gospel of the Hebrews or of the Ebionites ; for some of his traits are even more strictly Jewish than Matthew's. Among his many sources we may also reckon Mar cion's gospel. But this did not contain the Prodigal Son, and so he must have had still other sources ; written perhaps ; perhaps oral. The traditional idea that the author of this gospel was a friend of Paul has a symbolic truth. He was a friend of Paul's theory of Christianity. He had drunk deep at Paul's Epistles. He reproduces his ideas and his words at every turn. The principal object of his gospel is to reconcile Paulinism and the more Jewish forms of Christianity. Where Mark is negative in this attempt, he is positive. The op position of the Jews to Jesus is the harsh prelude of a wider opportunity for his religion. The relation of Jesus to Judea is much less definite than in Mat thew; his relation to the Gentile world much more pronounced. The great parables of the Prodigal and the good Samaritan are full of Pauline univer salism. Jesus is not a national Messiah, but the Saviour of mankind. His genealogy instead of stop ping at Abraham is carried up to Adam, the univer sal parent. Seventy disciples are appointed, corre sponding to the seventy nations of the world, as then reckoned, besides the twelve apostles corre sponding to the twelve Jewish tribes. Orrission as well as addition plays its part in this Paulinizing tendency. THE FOUR GOSPELS. 2S7 But as in Matthew there is a contradiction between a narrow and less narrow Jewish Christianity so in Luke there is a contradiction between a more and less decided Pauline universalism. The Tubingen expla nation of this contradiction is that we have here a decidedly Pauline gospel, the same as that of Mar- cion, overlaid by the author of the Acts with his own scheme for reconciling the conflicting tendencies of Petrine and Pauline Christianity. To this end he chooses the same methods as in Acts. " He did not, like the author of the Fourth Gospel, feel himself to be the man to put the evangelical tradition into the crucible and recast it all afresh, but was satisfied with bringing it into another shape by analysis, modifica tion, and reconstruction."* Part of his method was to allow both sides to have their say. The effect is some times almost comical. Thus in Chapter XVI., 16, 17, we read, "The Law and the Prophets were until John ; since that time the Kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it. And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass than for one tittle of the law to fail." Here, close upon the heels of an assertion that since the time of John the law has been superseded by the gospel, we have jammed in an absolutely contradictory expression. Were this the only instance it would be unaccountable, except upon the theory of interpolation. But the like occurs so often that we are at length convinced that there is method in the apparent madness — -the method of an arbiter who attempts to reconcile op posing interests by allowing each side to state its * Strauss' New Life of Jesus, Vol I, p. 164. 288 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. case. Yet notwithstanding these emendations and additions of the final author of this Gospel, its average effect is much more Pauline than that of either Matthew or Mark. We have in the three Syn optics a distinct gradation from more to less Judaic, from less to more universal. And as in Matthew we have a more liberal afterthought of the final editor, so in Luke we have, not exactly a less liberal after thought, but a less exclusively Pauline ; — a prelimin ary draft of that scheme of compromise afterward set forth so much more fully and immorally in the book of Acts. In Luke no one is sacrificed, as Paul is in the later work, to the exigencies of the Catholic com promise. And still we cannot help regretting that the Gospel did not come down to us in its original form,* though in its present form it is, if less con sistent, more instructive. The transition from the Synoptic Gospels to the Fourth is a transition from one world of thought and feeling to another. The common explanation is that in the Fourth Gospel we have a view of the career and character of Jesus seen from a different standpoint, and under new conditions. The inci dents narrated here, of which no mention is made in the other Gospels, are supposed to be supplemen tary to those. John, writing long after the others, addressed himself to writing down the discourses and events which they had omitted. These expla nations failing utterly to account for so much radi- * The explanation which I have given of the contradictory elements in Luke is that of the Tubingen school of critics. Its valid ty has often been impeached, but it is the most adequate explanation with which I am acquainted. THE FOUR GOSPELS. 289 cal discrepancy as there is between the Fourth Gos pel and the Synoptics, it is next discovered th it a steady-going Englishman, a systematic Frenchman, a wonder-loving Italian and a mystical German would not give the same report of any series of remarkable events. In this parable the mystical German represents the fourth Evangelist. Never theless, certain things in the career and character of Jesus were, or were not, so. If he was the man of Matthew's Gospel, he was not the mysterious being of the Fourth. If his ministry was only one year long, it wasn't three. If he only made one journey to Jerusalem, he did not make many. If his method of teaching was that of the Synop tics, it was not that of the Fourth Gospel. If he was the Jew of Matthew, he was not the anti-Jew of John. It may be doubted whether any differ ence of standpoint or subjective bias is sufficient to account for such differences of representation as there are between the Fourth Gospel and the Synoptics. But granting the possibility of this, Jesus was one thing or another, taught one thing or another, did one thing or another. What was he ? What did he teach ? What did he do ? It is an astonishing revelation, which includes such different representa tions of its central personage without distinguishing them as true and false, or at least as more or less true. To compare small things with great, Voltaire seemed to Condorcet the wisest, greatest and the best of men. To Carlyle he seemed only " the prince of persifleurs." He could not have been both. And what sort of a revelation would it be 29O THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. of the character of Voltaire, which included both of these representations, and left us to judge be tween them for ourselves? The difference between John and the Synoptics is certainly not of this na ture, but it is equally great. Let us be more specific. The resemblances be tween John and the Synoptics must not be over looked. There are such resemblances, but they are confined to a few particulars : the cleansing of the temple; the feeding of 'the multitude; Jesus walking on the sea; the anointing of Jesus by a woman ; Jesus, public entry into Jerusalem ; his indication of Judas as his betrayer; his prediction of Peter's de nial; his suffering and resurrection from the dead. But even here the resemblance is mixed up with a great deal of difference. The same fact — apparently the same — is differently reported, and all the inge nuity of the apologists is powerless to reconcile the incongruity. But so far the incongruity is hardly, if any, more than that between the different Synop tics. Besides this incongruity with resemblance, we have the incongruity of independent narratives. Such are the most of those contained in the Fourth Gospel. Mark, as we have seen, has only twenty- four verses which are not contained in Matthew and Luke. Luke has perhaps one-third new matter. Two-thirds of John are absent from the three Syn optics put together. Some of the more striking incongruities, with or without resemblance at some point, are as follows: The Synoptics represent Jesus as dying on the 15th Nisan, and as eating the paschal supper on the 14th ; John represents him as dying THE FOUR GOSPELS. 29 1 on the 14th, and as not partaking of the passover at all. His cleansing of the temple in the Synoptics is the climax of his opposition to the prevailing ortho doxy, and the immediate precursor of his arrest and crucifixion. John puts it at the beginning of his ministry. The apologists, by nothing daunted, say he repeated the act. But the historic law oi parsi mony — that as few extra events as possible must be imagined — forbids an hypothesis which has no justi fying principle. According to the three Synoptics, as we have seen, the ministry of Jesus was princi pally confined to Galilee. Not till the end of his ministry does he go up to Jerusalem and announce his spiritual Messiahship. Only once in the course of his ministry does he publicly appear in the eccle siastical city, and then to meet his doom. In John his ministry is mainly in Judea. He makes his first appearance in Jerusalem, plunging at once in medias res, his first public act the cleansing of the temple. In the Synoptics his ministry is only one year long. In John it. is from two to three. In the Synoptics he attends but one passover; in John several.* In the Synoptics we have a natural and human repre sentation of the Jews. They are not all of one sort. Some are stiffly orthodox. Others are more liberal, inclining a willing ear to Jesus. But the Jews in John are not natural and human. They are a mere typical abstraction — typical of darkness opposing itself to the light. They are Chief Priests and * Theexpression " how often, etc.," in Matthew XXIII, 37, and Luke XIII, 34, on which the apologists rely to harmonize the Synoptics with fohn, is shown by Davidson to be a quotation from some book no longer extant. It is really Jehovah, or the Wisdom of Jehovah, not Jesus who is speaking. 293 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. Pharisees. The Sadducees, the Herodians, the Scribes, so prominent in the Synoptics, do not ap pear at all. A picture of Tenier's is not more astir with natural human life than Matthew and Luke. Publicans and sinners jostle each other and the great-hearted Teacher on the narrow Galilean stage. In John for men and women we have types and shadows. The personages are as thin as ghosts, and through their translucent bodies we discern the artificial framework of the Gospel, and its dogmatic purpose. Of the principal personage this is particu larly true. The Jesus of John is a mere phantom compared with the human being of the other Gos pels. In Matthew he is. the Jewish Messiah ; in Mark the Son of God ; in Luke the Saviour of man kind, but everywhere a human being of more or less exalted attributes; miraculously born,* but not pre- existent. In the Fourth Gospel he is the pre-existent Logos or Word, co-eternal with the Father, consub- stantial with Him: "In the beginnning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by Him." He is the Creator of the universe. Of the Jewish Mes siah of Matthew he does not preserve a single trait. The man Jesus is a mere fleshly vehicle in which the Word incarnates itself. The spiritual relation of this mysterious being to his disciples and men generally is altogether different from that of Jesus in the Synoptics. In these the emphasis is upon conduct ; in John upon belief. It must be con fessed that this Gospel, so tender, so spiritual, is the * In Matthew and Luke only. THE FOUR GOSPELS. 293 great fountain-head of the intolerable doctrine of dogmatic salvation. Belief in Jesus as the Truth, as the only begotten Son of God, is here the one thing needful. The egotism with which Jesus in sists upon his own spiritual grandeur would be in tolerable even if we allowed his claim. It is a won derful relief to know that all these representations correspond to nothing actual. The critics who have proved the Fourth Gospel unhistorical, have not only cleared the character of Jesus from a degrading im putation, but they have done an equal service to the Deity, for whom we should lose all respect if he could thus insist upon his dignity and his pre rogative. Everywhere in John we come upon a more de veloped stage of Christianity than in the Synoptics. The scene, the atmosphere, is different. In the Synoptics Judaism, the temple, the law, the Mes sianic Kingdom are omnipresent. In John they are remote and vague. In Matthew Jesus is always yearning over his own nation. In John he has no other sentiment for it than hate and scorn. In Matthew the sanction of the prophets is his great credential. In John his dignity can tolerate no previous approximation. " All that came before me," he says, " were thieves and robbers." Surely to put such narrowness as that into the mouth of Jesus was not to do him honor. The resurrection of Lazarus is peculiar to the Fourth Gospel. So is the resurrection of the widow of Nain's son to the third, says the apologist. But in its setting the resurrection of Lazarus was the 294 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. most important miracle that Jesus ever wrought Suspended animation was here out of the question. Lazarus had been dead four days, and decomposition had set in. His relation to the family of Lazarus gave a pathetic interest to the event. He came from beyond Jordan to work ihe miracle, after firs' permitting Lazarus to die, in order that he might perform a greater wonder. According to John it was this miracle which determined the Sanhedrim to put Jesus to death. It was the climax of his ministry. If the Synoptics had heard of this mira cle, it is impossible that they should all have passed it by in silence, except upon the supposition of the apologists that such things were an every day oc currence. The differences and contradictions which I have already named are quite sufficient to compel any candid person to admit that we must choose be tween this Gospel and the other three as tolerably faithful representations of the life and character of Jesus, but they do not by any means exhaust the argument, or give a complete idea of the individu ality of the fourth Evangelist. His miracles have all a special quality. He has only seven, to a score in Matthew, but every one is made to tell. In the Synoptics the miracles are acts of mercy. In John they are manifestations of the divine glory. And in every case the circumstances are exaggerated to enhance the wonder of the miracle. The noble man's son is healed at a distance. The impotent man has been afflicted thirty years. The blind man's blindness was congenital. Lazarus " has been THE FOUR GOSPELS. 295 dead four days, and now he stinketh." Dr. Furness says this expression is not natural, and so he throws it out, really because if Lazarus had been so dead he doubts if even ;>ne as good* as Jesus could have raised him up. But evidently this expression was chosen with the utmost deliberation to enhance the greatness of the miracle. Another example of John's individuality is the dualism that pervades his gospel. There is a dual ism in Mark, as we have seen ; but there it is iso lated ; here if is all-pervading. The Logos and the Prince of this world, — the devil, Satan, — are con stantly opposed. So are the antitheses of light and darkness, spirit and flesh, truth and error, love and hatred, the children of the world and the children of the devil. But in no other respect does the difference of the Fourth Gospel from the Synoptics stand out so plainly as in respect to the method of Jesus' self- communication, — the teaching of his truth to men. " Brief and concise were the sentences uttered by him," says Justin Martyr. Nothing could be truer of the Synoptic Jesus, nothing could be less true of the Johannine Jesus. The Synoptic Jesus speaks in aphorisms and parables, the drift of which is purely moral. In John we have long articulated discourses.! In John we have not a single para- * According to Dr. Furness the goodness of Jesus is the foundation of his wonder-working power — a beautiful idea, but without the least support from average experience. The good man's goodness is his only and sufficient miracle. + The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew is long, but it is not artic ulated. It is a mere aggregation of gnomic sayings. 296 THE BLBLE OF TO-DA Y. ble.* If we had not the synoptics to test them, we should suspect these wordy utterances of not being genuine reproductions of the method of Jesus. For it is noticeable that it is exactly the same style as that of the Evangelist himself. In the third chap ter it is quite impossible to tell where Jesus leaves off, and the evangelist goes on. For these dis courses to come from the same teacher as the para bles and crisp sentences of the Synoptics would be a psychological miracle, as astounding as the resur rection of Lazarus. The style of these discourses " has been," as Renan frankly says, " unduly ad mired. It has indeed fervor and occasionally a kind of sublimity, but also a something that is unreal, in flated and obscure. It has an utter want of naivete. The author does not narrate, he demonstrates. Nothing can be more fatiguing than those long ac counts of miracles, and those discussions turning on misapprehensions in which the adversaries of Jesus play the part of idiots. How much we prefer to this wordy pathos the sweet style, still purely He braic, of the Sermon on the Mount, and that limpid narrative which makes the chain of the primitive evangelists! These have no need constantly to re peat that they have seen what they tell, and what they tell is true. Their sincerity, unconscious of any objections, has not that febrile thirst for re peated attestations which shows that doubts, in credulity, have already set in. From the somewhat * The so-called parables of the Good Shepherd and the Vine are not, strictly speaking, parables. The difference is apparent at a glance. In a true parable the speaker does not appear as part of the machinery. THE FOUR GOSPELS. 297 excited tone of the new narrator one would say that he fears not to be believed, and that he seeks to surprise the religion of his reader by strongly em phasized affirmations." If now we turn from special characteristics to the general arrangement of the Gospel, we shall find that many of the characteristics we have named in here in the essential quality of the work. Each of the Synoptics has his own personal tendency. No one of them writes simply to give a biographical ac count. Each has his thesis to maintain : Matthew, that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah ; Mark, that he was the Son of God ; Luke, that a Catholic Christian ity is possible, inclusive of both Petrine and Pauline elements. But the tendency in John is much more strongly marked. The dogmatic purpose is every thing. It compels everything to suit its purpose. The personality of Jesus, the facts of his career, his mode of speaking — all are as obedient to his impress as clay beneath the artist's moulding hand. And what is this dogmatic purpose ? It is to ex hibit Jesus as the incarnate Word of God: this against those who, on the one hand, held him to be only a wonder-gifted man, and on the other, denied that the Son of God had " come in the flesh," the Docetic Gnostics who denied that Jesus really suf fered on the cross, affirming that the Eon Christ had no substantial body, but only the appearance of one. True, the Evangelist's own thought was only a shade different from this. How could he be so earnest and so violent against it ? Simply because "dogmatic minds are never more severe than to 298 THE BLBLE CF TO-DA Y. those who differ from them by a mere shade." The Evangelist only differed from the Docetists in af firming the corporeality of Jesus. " The word was made flesh and dwelt among us." But the flesh was nothing but a mere receptacle of the Eternal Word. The Gospel is not a biography, but an Epic celebrat ing the manifestation of the Logos, his conflict with the powers of darkness, his seeming downfall turn ing to glorious victory. We have here no develop ment of a character and purpose as in the Synop tics. The redundant and yet resounding sentences of the Proem of the Gospel set forth the splendid the sis that the writer will maintain against all comers. Then we have the testimony of the Baptist to the truth of this thesis, so different from the Synoptic version of the natural relations of Jesus and John, because the subordination and baptism of the in carnate Word would be a manifest absurdity ;* then the miracle of Cana in which he " manifested forth his glory; " then in Nicodemus atypical representa tive of Jewish unbelief, to whom belief in the in carnate Logos is declared to be the only method of salvation. Following this immediately and natur ally we have the manifestation of his glory to the Samaritans, then to the out-and-out Gentiles sym bolized by the nobleman whose son he heals. In the fifth chapter an argumentative and miraculous attestation of the Word as a life-giving power ; in * The important function of the Baptist in this Gospel has natur ally suggested to some critics that it was specially intended for a cir cle in which the Baptist's name and fame were specially regarded. THE FOUR GOSPELS. 299 the sixth chapter the feeding of the five thousand introduces a representation of the Word as the heavenly manna which nourishes the spiritual life. The seventh chapter reveals the efficacy of the Word against the darkness embodied in the eccle siastical system of the Jews; the eighth, so far as it is really human, — its account of the woman taken in adultery, — was no part of the original gospel. In the ninth chapter, the healing of a blind man re veals the Logos as the principle of Light, and leads in the next chapter to a glorification of the Logos as the Light of the World. " In him was life," says the Proem, and this is the special doctrine of the tenth chapter, illustrated by the raising of Lazarus. Next, in the eleventh chapter, we have the last sup per, which is not the passover of the Synoptics. According to John, Jesus did not eat of, but was, the Paschal Lamb. Then after the betrayal and denial by Judas and Peter, we have through a series of chapters a continuous discourse, the ground theme of which, perpetually recurring, is the glorification of the Son by the Father. Let not the tenderness of this discourse, which has made the gospel it con tains the gospel of the sentimentalists in every age, prevent our seeing its essential narrowness. " I pray not for the world" has not a pleasant sound, and when a little further on we read, " Neither pray I for these alone," the widening circle still includes those only who believe in Jesus as the Logos, upon the testimony of his disciples. The concluding chapters, treating of the death of Jesus and his 300 THE BIBLE OF TO-DA Y. resurrection, are all subservient to the leading pur pose of the book.* Such is the general arrangement of the Evangel ist's material. How plain it is that we have here no simple biography of Jesus written by John or an)' other " disciple whom Jesus loved," but a dogmatic exposition of a theological conception of surpassing energy and daring. In a previous lecture I have discussed the authorship of the Apocalypse, and de cided in favor of the Johannine authorship. But if John wrote the Apocalypse, he certainly did not write fthe Fourth Gospel. Longfellow asks, — " Can it be that from the lips Of this same gentle Evangelist Came the dread Apocalypse ? " Morally, Yes ; for there is nothing in the sentiment al mysticism of the Evangelist inconsistent with the sternness and fierceness of the Apocalyptist. But psychologically, No ; not even supposing the Apoca lypse to have been written by John, in 69, A. D., and the Gospel when he was more than ninety years of age. In this sense at least, good Nicodemus, a man cannot " be born again when he is old." No feeble centenarian wrote this gospel teeming with youth and fire. No Galilean fisherman ever got so deep as * The Gospel naturally terminates with the twentieth chapter. The twenty-first is an appendix, but is it from another hand ? The critics are divided. Hilgenfeld's opinion, very recent, is that it is the Evangelist's own afterthought. It is in perfect keeping with his nervous dread that his account will be rejected. "Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all." f If he did not write the Apocalypse, the case is little altered. THE FOUR GOSPELS. 301 this in Platonism, Philonism, Gnosticism. The artifices by which the apologists endeavor to main tain the authorship of John substantially abandon it. Renan may well be right in his opinion that we have here some genuine traditions and events. Matthew Arnold may even less doubtfully contend that we have here some genuine sayings of Jesus. But his- method of detecting them, if you will pardon the comparison, is like a patent knife-sharpener. Let the inventor show it off and it works beautifully. Buy it and take it home, and it sharpens nothing but your temper. Let Mr. Arnold work his own me thod, and he can find quite a number of sentences in the Fourth Gospel that have the ring of natural ness and Jesus-like simplicity. But no ordinary man can work his method.* The external evidence for the Johannine author ship of the Fourth Gospel is by no means reassur. ing. It is attributed to John for the first time by Theophilus of Antioch about 180 A. D., and simul- taneously by the canon of Muratori. Nor is there any satisfactory evidence of its existence at a much earlier date. That Justin Martyr could have known it and accepted it in 150, A. D. without quoting it, when it was exactly what he wanted to confirm his own personal doctrine of the Word, is absolutely in- * In a public lecture, Dr. R. S. Storrs has recently declared that the Fourth Gospel is the most consummate literary product which the ages have engendered. Mr. Arnold also knows something about literature, and it is his opinion that the literary merits of the Fourth Gospel are almost inappreciable ; thai the author has strung together his materials in a most inartistic, clumsy and bewildering fashion. Who shall decide when doctors disagree ? 302 THE BIBLE OF TO-DAY credible. There is a yet more convincing argument for its non-recognition as John's Gospel, even beyond the middle of the second century. For hereabouts there was a famous quarrel in the church, known as the Paschal controversy ; some contending that Jesus ate the Passover on the 14th Nisan, others that the last supper was on the 13th. John was appealed to by Polycarp as having accepted the 14th as the proper day, in harmony with the Synoptics. But the Fourth Gospel puts the last supper expressly on the 13th. If Polycarp accepted the gospel as John's, how could he have appealed to John in flat defiance of the gospel ? But such a gospel once written must have achieved distinction in a few years. Therefore we cannot put its date far back of 150, A. D. We have assigned the .first Epistle of John to 130, A. D ; the Gospel must have appeared a little later. Dr. J. J. Tayler says about 140. It may have appeared a little earlier than this ; or, as Davidson believes, a few years later. Though he never once calls himself by name, the writer of the Gospel evidently means to pass himself for John. Can it be possible that a writer of so much spiritual depth and moral earnestness would simulate another's personality? Again, it must be insisted that such simulation was the order of the day. Apparently it was not inconsistent with the profoundest spiritual depth or moral earnestness. Witness the pseudo Daniel and the Wisdom of Solomon ; witness also second Thessalonians and all the pastoral epistles. At least the offence was not so great as if the writer had attached his own name THE FOUR GOSPELS. 303 to a great writing that was not his. His was an act of wonderful self-abnegation. He "made himself of no reputation " for the sake of his idea. It would not have served his purpose if he had acknowledged himself to be its author. With sufficient certainty we can identify him as the author of the three Catholic Epistles commonly ascribed to John, who in the second and third calls himself the presbyter or elder. Was he the celebrated Presbyter John of Ephesus? If so the oneness of his name with the Apostle's may have facilitated the apostolic reputa tion of the work. What shall we say of his accomplished task? It has done wonders for the Apostle's reputation, and it abounds in sentences which have gradually taken on even more spiritual meanings than they at first embodied, but it has contributed in a large degree to confuse the image of Jesus. If we would know what manner of man he was, we must appeal from this great Epic of the Logos to the more natural and human representations of the Synoptic gospels. Here, also, much is indistinct, but what we encounter is a human being, not a theological abstraction. And now at length I bring these lectures to a close. Some that set out with me have fainted by the way. Others have kept me company from first to last. To such I trust I have not been a false though doubtless I have been a tedious guide. I dare not hope that everything which I have written will stand the test of the more rational and scientific criticism which is yet to be. But I am entirely sure that all along I have been moving in the right direc- 304 THE BLBLE OF TO-DA Y. tion ; and, if away from average conceptions of the Bible, towards such as are a thousand times more reasonable and suggestive and inspiring than those which they are silently but surely modifying and displacing in the minds of all intelligent and earnest people. " Slowly the Bible of the race is writ, And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone ; Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it, Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan ; While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud. While thunder's surges burst on cliffs of cloud, Still at the prophet's feet the nations sit." THE END. YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 9002 08844 4527 '¦"'"'?