disregards it altogether, for a variety of reasons. The fact that the tradition was for so long a time undisputed deprives it of weight. A tradition is of little scientific value until it has been subjected to careful investigation; and this tradition was never investigated until about a hundred and fifty years ago. It is, therefore, as a tradition, entitled to no more consideration than the Ptolemaic tradition in astronomy, or the long undisputed but now wholly discarded traditions respecting the early history of Greece and Rome. This particular tradition is of the less value because of the age in which it first appeared. If we trace it back to the fourth century before Christ, its birth is a thousand years after the time of Moses. The scientific thinker can see no reason for accrediting men who lived a thousand years after Moses with any better facilities for determining the authorship of their sacred books than have the scholars of our own time. A tradition concerning the authorship of a volume written ten, five, or even two centuries before the tradition first appears is not, to the scientific scholar, of any considerable value. If we could suppose that at that time the question was carefully studied by intelligent and unprejudiced scholars, some weight might be given to their conclusions. But this tradition had its rise among a school of rabbis whose methods were as far removed as possible from those of a rational and unprejudiced investigator. Paul, reared in the rabbinical school, has treated these traditions with no respect, saying that when the rabbis read the law in their synagogues they had a veil over the face.1 Christ spoke of them with even greater severity, saying that by their traditions the rabbis had made the word of God of none effect, and telling his disciples that their interpretations of the Old Testament showed them to be fools and blind.2 Theologians who soberly maintained that the law existed two thousand years before the creation, and that Jehovah himself studied it in the heavens with his holy angels, cannot be regarded as authority on questions of literature by Christian scholars in this close of the nineteenth century. Nor does Christ give to this Jewish tradition any endorsement. There is nothing inconsistent with a rational recognition of his divine character in the opinion that he shared on these questions the common impressions of his time. But if he did, he never gave to those impressions the weight of his authority. He never undertook to speak with authority on the question of the date or authorship of Biblical books. He never makes Biblical criticism the subject of his teaching. He never bases his authority on that of the authors of the Biblical books. Sometimes he sets their authority aside, as in the Sermon on the Mount. Sometimes he cites their own Scriptures against his critics, in much the same 1 2 Cor. iii. 15. 2 Matt. xxiii. 17; Mark vii. 13. 3 For illustrations of the spirit of traditionalism in the time of Christ see Edersheim's Life and Times of Jesus, Book I. chaps. vii. and viii. spirit as that in which Paul, speaking in Athens, cites "certain of your own poets." It is true that he often refers to these books, and when he does, refers to them by the name by which they were known in his time; but such a reference does not even indicate his opinion as to their authorship, still less does it indicate any intention on his part to make an utterance on the subject which loyalty to him must regard as final. No popular writer or speaker would hesitate to refer to Æsop's Fables, although he might agree with the conclusion of modern scholarship that Æsop did not write them, but only gathered together the collection which bears his name from a mass of fables current among the Greeks of his time.1 I invite the reader, then, who will follow me further in this volume to follow me in the spirit of this Introduction; to imagine that there stands before him on the table, not a book, but a library of sixty-six different books, which represent the literature of a peculiar people, extending over a period of twelve hundred years or more, and are a survival of the fittest, out of a much larger number 1 "His [Christ's] allusions to the Old Testament books and narratives are sometimes made a touchstone for determining ethical and historical questions, which were as foreign to the thought of his time as were the researches of anthropology or modern science. If his assertion' Moses wrote ' discredits modern criticism, does not his affirmation that the sun rises destroy modern astronomy?" G. B. Stevens, D. D., The Theology of the New Testament, p. 77. Compare Delitzsch on Genesis: Introduction, p. 21. which have not survived; 1 to remember that this library has produced a profound moral impression on all that portion of the human race who have ever known it; to believe, therefore, that this collection is well worth his careful study; to assume, however, that it is to be studied, not as a collection of texts, out of which, by a process of mosaic work, a theology may be constructed, but as a collection of vital literature, out of which, by a course of literary study, life may be promoted and truth made both more apparent and more effective; and to enter on the study of these books in the spirit in which they were conceived, and with the purpose for which they were written, as that purpose has been defined by one whose writings are recognized as among the loftiest in the whole collection: "Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work." 2 1 Though some of the books to be found in the apocryphal Old Testament are morally equal to some of those included in the canon. 2 2 Tim. iii. 16, 17. CHAPTER II HEBREW HISTORY THE history of the Hebrew nation, as it is recorded in the Bible, begins with the exodus from Egypt of the before-enslaved tribes; this exodus took place, according to the opinions of modern scholars, about B. C. 1250.1 But the earlier history contained in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers may properly be regarded as constitutional history, and is so interwoven with the constitution and laws of the Hebrews that it will be more appropriately considered in the chapters devoted to a consideration of the origin and growth of those laws.2 The distinctively historical books are those of Joshua, Judges, First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings, First and Second Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. If we assume that the exodus took place about 1250 B. C., and the restoration of Israel to her land and the rebuilding of the city and temple, as described by Ezra and Nehemiah, about the year 450 B. C., the history of the ancient Hebrews, as narrated in the Old Testament, covers a period of about eight hundred years. 1 See chronological table on page xi. |