292 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



Bible, embracing, under the general title of the 

 Prophets, the historical books of Joshua, Judges, 

 Samuel, Kings [earlier Prophets), and the four 

 prophetic books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 

 and of the twelve minor prophets {latter Prophets). 

 The mention of the writings of David implies that 

 Nehemiah also began the formation of the third 

 and last part of the Hebrew canon, which com- 

 prises, under the title of Ketubim (Scriptures, Ha- 

 giographa), the Psalms, Proverbs, Job, the five 

 Megillot or rolls (Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, 

 Ecclesiastes, Esther) ; and, finally, Daniel, Ezra, 

 Nehemiah, and Chronicles. It is certain, how- 

 ever, that this part of the collection was not com- 

 pleted till long after Nehemiah's time ; for to say 

 nothing of the disputed dates of Ecclesiastes and 

 Daniel, the book of Chronicles contains genealo- 

 gies which go down at least to the close of the 

 Persian period. The miscellaneous character of 

 the Ketubim seems, in fact, to show that, after 

 the Law and the Prophets were closed, the third 

 part of the canon was open to receive additions, 

 recommended either by their religious and his- 

 torical value, or by bearing an ancient and ven- 

 erable name. And this was the more natural 

 because the Hagiographa had not the same place 

 in the synagogue service as was accorded to the 

 Law and the Prophets. 



The time and manner in which the collection 

 was absolutely closed is obscure. The threefold 

 division of the sacred writings is referred to in 

 the " Prologue to the Wisdom of Sirach " (Eccle- 

 siasticus) about 130 b. c, but Jewish tradition 

 indicates that the full canonicity of several books, 

 especially of Ecclesiastes, was not free from doubt 

 till the time of the famous R. Akiba, who perished 

 in the great national struggle of the Jews with 

 the Emperor Hadrian (Mishna, Jadaim, 3 ; Edaiot, 

 5). The oldest list of canonical books, given by 

 Josephus (c. Apion., 1. 8), is of somewhat earlier 

 date. Josephus seems to have had quite our 

 present canon ; but he took Ruth along with 

 Judges, and viewed Lamentations as part of the 

 book of Jeremiah, thus counting twenty-two 

 books instead of the twenty-four of the Talmudic 

 enumeration, and of the present Hebrew Bible. 

 There is other evidence that only twenty-two 

 books were reckoned by the Jews of the first 

 Christian century ; and it appears that this num- 

 ber was accommodated to that of the letters of 

 the Hebrew alphabet. Even in the time of Je- 

 rome, Ruth and Lamentations were not uniform- 

 ly reckoned apart. The expansion of the Talmu- 

 dic twenty-four to the thirty-nine Old Testament 

 books of the English version is effected by reck- 



oning the minor prophets one by one, by sepa- 

 rating Ezra from Nehemiah, and by subdividing 

 the long books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. 

 In this reckoning, and in the very different order 

 of the books, we follow, in the main, the Alex- 

 andrian Greek and Vulgate Latin versions. But 

 the Alexandrian differed from the Hebrew canon 

 in more important points. The line of distinc- 

 tion between inspired and human writings was 

 not so sharply drawn, and the Greek Bible not 

 only admitted additions to several of the Hagi- 

 ographa, but contained other apocryphal books, 

 of some of which Greek was the original tongue, 

 while others were translations of Hebrew or Ara- 

 maic writings. 



In turning now to a literary and critical sur- 

 vey of the Old Testament books, we shall find it 

 convenient to depart from the division of the He- 

 brew canon in favor of a classification suggested 

 by the order of the books followed in the English 

 version and in most other translations. The Old 

 Testament literature is made up of historical, po- 

 etico-didactic, and prophetic writings, and under 

 these three heads we will arrange what remains 

 to be said on the subject. 



Historical Books, — These form two parallel 

 series of sacred history. The books from Gene- 

 sis to Kings give a continuous story (with some 

 episodical additions) from the creation to the fall 

 of the kingdom of Judah. The book of Chronicles 

 covers the same ground on a narrower plan, con- 

 tracting the early history into genealogical lists, 

 and occupying itself almost entirely with the 

 kingdom of Judah, and especially with matters 

 connected with the temple and its worship. The 

 narrative of the chronicler is continued in the 

 books or, rather, book of Ezra and Nehemiah, 

 which incorporates original memoirs of these two 

 reformers, but otherwise is so exactly in the style 

 of the Chronicles that critics are practically agreed 

 in ascribing the whole to a single author, prob- 

 ably a Levite, who, as we have already seen, can- 

 not have written before the close of the Persian 

 Empire. The questions that are raised as to the 

 work of the chronicler belong less to the general 

 history of Biblical literature than to special intro- 

 duction ; we pass on, therefore, to the larger and 

 more important series. The Pentateuch and the 

 so-called earlier prophets form together a single 

 continuous narrative. It is plain, however, that 

 the whole work is not the uniform production of 

 one pen, but that, in some way, a variety of records 

 of different ages and styles have been combined 

 to form a single narrative. Accordingly, Jewish 

 tradition bears testimony that Moses wrote the 



