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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



tion of the functions of copyist and author 

 which is here presupposed did not wholly disap- 

 pear till a pretty late date; and where, as in the 

 books of Samuel, we have two recensions of the 

 text, one in the Hebrew and one in the Septuagint 

 translation, the discrepancies are of such a kind 

 that criticism of the text and analysis of its sources 

 are separated by a scarcely perceptible line. 



Poetical Books. — The origin of some leading 

 peculiarities of Hebrew poetry has been recently 

 referred to by Assyriologists to Accadian models ; 

 but, however this may be, the key to the whole 

 development of the poetical literature of Israel 

 is found in the same psychological character- 

 istics of the race which are impressed on the 

 vocabulary and grammatical structure of the lan- 

 guage. The Hebrew tongue is sensuous, mobile, 

 passionate, almost incapable of expressing an 

 abstract idea, or depicting a complex whole with 

 repose and symmetry of parts, but fit to set forth 

 with great subtilty individual phases of Nature 

 or feeling. It is the speech of a nation whose 

 naturally quick perceptions minister to an emo- 

 tional temperament and an imperious will, which 

 subordinates knowledge to action and desire, and 

 habitually contemplates the universe through the 

 medium of personal feeling or practical purpose. 

 To speak with the philosophers, the Hebrew 

 character is one of predominant subjectivity, 

 eager to reduce everything to a personal stand- 

 ard, swift to seize on all that touches the feelings 

 or bears directly on practical wants, capable of 

 intense effort and stubborn persistence where the 

 motive to action is personal affection or desire, 

 but indisposed to theoretical views, unfit for con- 

 templation of things as they are in themselves 

 apart from relation to the thinker. In the poetry 

 of such a nation the leading current must neces- 

 sarily be lyrical, for the lyric is the natural vehicle 

 of intenseand immediate personal feeling. Theear- 

 liest Hebrew poems are brief, pregnant expressions 

 of a single idea, full of the fire of passion, full, 

 too, of keen insight into Nature, in her power to 

 awake or sustain human emotion; but record- 

 ing this insight not with the pictorial fullness 

 of Western art, but in swift, half-formed outlines, 

 in metaphor piled on metaphor, without regard 

 to any other principle of proportion or veri- 

 similitude than the emotional harmony of each 

 broken figure with the dominant feeling. Such 

 a poetry could not but find its highest scope in 

 the service of spiritual religion. The songs in 

 Exodus xv. and Judges v. prove the early origin 

 of a theocratic poetry; but the proper period 

 of Hebrew psalmody begins with David, and 



its history is practically the history of the Psalter. 

 Here, as in the case of the historical books, we have 

 to begin by questioning the tradition contained 

 in the titles, which ascribe seventy-three Psaims 

 to David, and besides him name as authors 

 Asaph, the sons of Korah, Solomon, Moses, Heman, 

 Ethan. Again the tendency is to refer as much as 

 possible to familiar names. There is no reason 

 to believe that any title is as old as the Psalm to 

 which it is prefixed, and some titles are certainly 

 wrong ; for example, the author of the elegy on 

 Saul and Jonathan could not possibly have writ- 

 ten Psalm lxxxvi., which is a mere cento of rem- 

 iniscences from other poems. On the other hand, 

 the titles are not purely arbitrary. They seem to 

 supply useful hints as to the earlier collections 

 from which our present Psalter was made up. 

 The Korah it e and Asaphite Psalms may probably 

 have been derived from collections in the hands 

 of these families of singers ; and the so-called 

 " Psalms of David " were very likely from col- 

 lections which really contained poems by David 

 and other early singers. The assertion that no 

 Psalm is certainly David's is hyper- skeptical, and 

 few remains of ancient literature have an author- 

 ship so well attested as the eighteenth or even 

 as the seventh Psalm. These, along with the in- 

 dubitably Davidic poems in the book of Samuel, 

 give a sufficiently clear image of a very unique 

 genius, and make the ascription of several other 

 poems to David extremely probable. So, too, a 

 very strong argument claims Psalm ii. for Solo- 

 mon, and in later times we have sure landmarks 

 in the Psalms of Habakkuk (Habakkuk iii.) and 

 Hezekiah (Isaiah xxxviii.). But the greater part 

 of the lyrics of the Old Testament remain anony- 

 mous, and we can only group the Psalms in broad 

 masses, distinguished by diversity of historical 

 situation and by varying degrees of freshness 

 and personality. As a rule the older Psalms are 

 the most personal, and are not written for the 

 congregation, but flow from a present necessity 

 of individual (though not individualistic) spiritual 

 life. This current of productive psalmody runs 

 apparently from David down to the Exile, losing 

 in the course of centuries something of its original 

 freshness and fire, but gaining a more chastened 

 pathos and a wider range of spiritual sympathy. 

 Psalm li., obviously composed during the desola- 

 tion of the temple, marks, perhaps, the last phase 

 of this development. The epoch of the return 

 was still not without poetic freshness, as some of 

 the so-called " Songs of Degrees " (Pilgrim Songs ?) 

 prove. But on the whole the Psalms of the sec- 

 ond temple are only reflections of old ideas, cast 



