i8 7 7] OLD TESTAMENT STUDY IN 1876 385 



fessor Kuenen points out that whatever we may think 

 of the thing, the name is probably late, as it is not found 

 in the Apocrypha, the New Testament, or Josephus. As 

 KenSseth, like o-waywy?), came to be ever more and more 

 confined to a meeting for worship, the inventor of the 

 name presumably thought of some great assembly for a 

 religious purpose. The only such assembly that occurs as 

 suitable to the name is that described in Neh. viii.-x. 

 And, as a matter of fact, a number of the things related 

 of the great synagogue find their explanation in these 

 chapters, and show that such was really the original sense 

 of the expression to which later tradition attached so 

 many fables. Of course, it follows that the whole 

 Talmudic idea that the great synagogue was a law- 

 giving body is unhistorical. The Keneseth, as hitherto 

 understood, disappears from history. Finally, Professor 

 Kuenen indicates how the Talmudic ideas on this head 

 form an integral part of a radically false view of the 

 history of Israel characteristic of the whole Talmud, 

 which ascribes to the scribes, before the fall of the Jewish 

 state, the position which they actually attained only 

 after the dissolution of the nation. Professor Kuenen s 

 argument is closely knit and convincing at every point, 

 and displays his critical powers at their best. 



For the parts of the Biblical history prior to the 

 captivity there is little to record, except translations of 

 Assyrian texts and discussions of their bearing on biblical 

 problems. New texts continue to appear in versions of 

 unequal merit in Messrs. Bagster s series, Records of the 

 Past. The seventh volume (1876) contains several of 

 the documents most interesting to biblical students the 

 annals of Sargon, the conqueror of Samaria ; the inscrip 

 tion of Sennacherib, in which he speaks of Hezekiah ; 

 and some of the legends parallel or analogous to the 

 narrative of Genesis, which are collected in the last great 

 work of the lamented George Smith, The Chaldean Account 

 of Genesis (London: Low, 1876). Of Smith s work 



25 



