PROPHETS. 



275 



aniah and Jeremiah, as belonging, probably, to the 

 later years of Josiah. 



The Book of Jeremiah, as it now exists, is more 

 fully provided with a system of titles and sub-titles 

 than any other book of the Old Testament. Follow- 

 ing these, or classifying by them, the book consists of 

 five parts: The first part, chaps, i.-xx. , contains six 

 collections of sketches of prophecies (i. 4-iii.5 ; iii.u-vi. ; 

 yii.-x.; xi.-xiii. ; xiv.-xvii. ; xviiL-xx.). Each collection 

 includes several sketches, some of the prophecies be- 

 inj; sketched in a sentence or two, and others given 

 quite in full. The sketches mingle poetry and prose 

 in the most unexpected ways, and are remarkably un- 

 even, both in literary character and in the topics diar 

 cussed. The first two of these collections are dated as 

 belonging to the reign of Josiah ; the third is identi- 

 fied in chap. xxvi. as containing the group of prophe- 

 cies for which Jeremiah was prosecuted early in the 

 reign of Jehoiakim ; the other three are not dated. 

 The second part, chaps, xxi.-xxxvi. , is a series of 

 dated narratives and addresses, each complete in 

 itself, in an order which seems to be entirely miscel- 

 laneous. The third part, chaps, xxxvii.-xliv., is a 

 continuous narrative of the times of the destruction 

 of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, including some 

 discourses. The fourth part, chaps, xlv.-li. , is a col- 

 lection of poems, which might be entitled "The 

 Book of Woes upon the Nations. " The poems con- 

 tained in it are of different dates, but they have a 

 common character. The fifth part is the historical 

 appendix, chap. lii. Whatever there may be that is 

 puzzling in the present order of the book, it seems at 

 fo be clear that the man who put the book to- 

 gether had in his possession the first, third, fourth, 

 and fifth parts, each complete in itself, and also the 

 various discourses that compose the second part ; he 

 first arranged the completed parts, in the order which 

 was on the whole the most natural, ami then put the 

 remaining separate discourses in the place where, as a 

 whole, they belonged, without arranging them, rela- 

 tively to one another, in the order of time. 



The first collection of the first part of Jeremiah con- 

 tains sketches of five different prophecies, eaeli intro- 

 duced by the formula, "And the word of Jehovah 

 was unto me, saying." The five sketches are i. 4-10, 

 II. 1 1'. 13-19; ii.; lii. 1-5; the introductory formula 

 being incomplete in our text in iii. 1. Here and in 

 the following collections it is at once evident (hat we 

 have not, ordinarily, the full text of each prophecy, 

 written out in the words in which the prophecy was 

 originally uttered, but a mere sketch of the prophecy, 

 made lor some purpose, at a later date. What should 

 we expect to find different from these collections, if 

 we could recover the roll said to have been written by 

 Baruch, Jer. xxxvi. 32? The different roll mentioned 

 in xxxvi. 2-2t'>, the roll which the king destroyed 

 "when Jehudi had read three or four leaves," can 

 hardly have been so brief a document as Graetz sup- 

 poses, when he says that it was merely the prophecy 

 IMW found in chap. xxv. A resume' of the prophet's 

 utterances for many years would give weight to his 

 testimony, even if it included much besides direct 

 thrcatenings as to what the king of Babylon would do 

 to Judah. It is not good reasoning to substitute con- 

 jecturc for testimony, incases where there is no more 

 difficulty with the testimony than there is here. 



In the argument as to the authorship of Jer. lii., it 

 should be kept in mind that the accession of Evil- 

 merodach was but sixty-six years after Jeremiah began 

 to prophesy, he being then a "child" (i. 0). We 

 have no information as to how long Jeremiah lived. 

 It is true that Ezekiel was his "late contemporary," 

 but we do not know which of the two died first, 

 and most of the Hook of Ezekiel is dated either be- 

 fore the destruction of the temple, or very soon after 

 that event, that is to say within the probable life- 

 time of Jeremiah. 



The article on EZKKIEL in the ENCYCLOPEDIA 



BRITANNICA includes a good many dates from the 

 Christian era, given according to the commonly ac- 

 cepted scheme of chronology. If any one will take 

 the trouble to compare the Biblical dates with those 

 of the Canon of Ptolemy, and will do the work cor- 

 rectly, he will find that all these dates are too large by 

 two ; that is, for example, the date of the exile of 

 Jehoiachin was B. c. 597, instead of B. C. 599. The 

 difference is important, not for the times of Ezekiel 

 only, but for all dates concerning the prophets, or 

 concerning the history, back to the time of the down- 

 fall of Samaria. For all this period, the dates B. c. 

 accepted by the Assyriologists are based on the Can.m 

 of Ptolemy. As a matter of fact, if we reduce the 

 Biblical dates to the same standard, we transform 

 many a supposed general and vaguu synchronism be- 

 tween the Biblical and the Assyrian records into an 

 exaet synchronism. 



The connecting of Ezekiel's forty years with his 

 frequently repeated prophecies of the restoration of 

 Judah is, it should be remembered, a matter of in- 

 terpretation, and not of direct statement by him. 

 Whatever may be true as to Kuenen s having proved 

 the traditions concerning the Great Synagogue to be 

 unhistorical, no history is more veritable than much of 

 the tradition concerning Ezra, Nehemiah, and some 

 of the other men who are often called "the men of 

 the (Jreat Synagogue ;" and it is the traditions con- 

 cerning the men, and not those concerning the organi- 

 zation, that are mainly important as evidence in re- 

 gard to the completing of the Scriptures. According 

 to the traditions, Ezekiel's contemporaries, Daniel, 

 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego were among the 

 men of the Great Synagogue. Ezekiel himself is 

 likely enough to have been one of the number. There 

 is no reason for doubting the essential fact in the tra- 

 dition concerning Ezekiel, namely, that the men of the 

 Great Synagogue are responsible for its existence as a 

 literary work. 



As to the relations of Ezekiel to the Pentateuch, his 

 holy land, holy city, temple, and ritual are all largely 

 symbolical, for they are full of specifications that are 

 iialpably impossible, if we try to understand them as 

 literal facts ; the strong literary resemblances between 

 Ezekiel and certain parts of the Pentateuch are readily 

 accounted for by the fact that the prophet was evi- 

 dently a man of narrow reading, whose style was greatly 

 affected by those writings to which he paid especial 

 attention ; Ezekiel is distinguished from every part 

 of the Pentateuch, by the fact that the Babylonian 

 ZocJMof the author never for a moment disappears from 

 Ezekiel, and never sharply appears in the Pentateuch; 

 and by the fact that Ezekiel throughout presents lin- 

 guistic peculiarities different from those found in the 

 Pentateuch. _ The relations of Ezekiel to the Law are 

 admirably discussed by Dr. Frederic Gardiner, in the 

 Jnin-r.nl of tlie Society of BMiail Literature and Exe- 

 gesi'x for 1881. 



The Pott-exilic Prophets. These are Haggai and 

 Xcchariah, each containing several short prophecies, 

 dated bv certain days of certain months in the reign of 

 Darius Ilystaspcs, and Malachi, dated by its contents, 

 its position in the canon, and tradition as from the latest 

 period of the Old Testament canon, that is, from the 

 latter part of Nehcuiiah's second administration in 

 Jerusalem. By the plan on which the present articles 

 are written, these books require no extended notice. 

 Any reader who will carefully examine the references 

 given in the article on HAGOAI in the ENCYCLOPAEDIA 

 BRITANNICA will see that, really, there is no conflict 

 between the statements made in Haggai and those made 

 in Ezra, as to the restoration of the temple, but that. 

 on the other hand, the prophecies of both Haggai and 

 Malachi presuppose that the builders had had especial 

 hindrances and difficulties, and that the hindrances 

 mentioned in Ezra exactly fit the case. 



We have already noted the fact that the two proph- 

 ecies in Zcch. ix.-xiv. , although they immediately 



