IV 

 THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 1 



THE poetical books of the Old Testament have always 

 possessed special attractions for scholars as well as for 

 simple readers of the Bible, and have gathered round them 

 a copious literature in which no period of Christian 

 theology is unrepresented. But the study of Hebrew 

 poetry, as poetry, is a comparatively recent thing, and 

 even in recent times the number of really important books 

 that deal with the subject is by no means large. It cannot 

 indeed be supposed that there ever was a time when 

 readers of the Old Testament were altogether insensible 

 to the poetic genius and beauty of the Psalms and of the 

 Prophets ; but the idea that these qualities, or indeed that 

 any of the literary and human characteristics of Scripture 

 demand and richly reward special study, is one which, 

 however obvious it appears in the present day, lay quite 

 beyond the horizon of older theologians. 



The purely magical conception of Scripture which pre 

 vailed in the old Catholic Church the one-sided theory 

 that regarded the Word of God solely as a supernatural 

 communication of &quot; intelligible &quot; truths was only con 

 sistent in laying down a canon for the study of the Bible 

 which has nothing in common with the rules that guide 



1 From the British Quarterly Review, July 1877. The books men 

 tioned at the head of the article were: Lowth s Praelectiones (1753), 

 Herder s Geist der ebrdischen Poesie (1782-83), Ewald s Dichter des 

 alien Bundes (1839,2 1866), and E. Meier s Geschichte der poetischen 

 Nationalliteratur der Hebrder (1856). 



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