i8 7 7] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 407 



In demanding that the poetry of the Hebrews be studied 

 according to the laws of historical psychology, Herder 

 laid down a principle of permanent importance, but his 

 application of the principle is marred by many defects. 

 The plan of his work was gigantic. An introduction, 

 which forms nearly half of all that the author actually put 

 on paper, discusses the basis on which the Hebrew poets 

 built the poetic structure of the language, the primitive 

 ideas of the race, and its earliest fortunes to the time of 

 Moses. With Moses commences a full and elaborate 

 history of all that influenced the poetry and poetic con 

 ceptions of Israel ; and this task is so widely conceived 

 that, had the book been completed, almost the whole 

 material of the Old Testament would have been worked 

 up in its pages. So large an undertaking had for the 

 first condition of success an accurate conception of the 

 total historical development of Israel. That Herder was 

 not in possession of such a conception cannot be imputed 

 to him as a fault, for a century of further study has still 

 left much that is obscure even in vital points of the 

 Hebrew history. But under such circumstances the work 

 was premature. The continuity of development which 

 is traced has often no objective truth, and its apparent 

 consistency means only that where it was impossible to 

 read the poetry in the light of history, the history itself 

 has been read by the light of poetical ideas, and the lack 

 of precise conceptions has been concealed in a mist of 

 genial subjectivity. In this mist the objective features 

 of Hebrew culture, intellect, religion, melt away into 

 indistinctness. The specific peculiarities that distinguish 

 the religion of revelation from other primitive faiths are 

 so little emphasised, that a product so intensely Hebrew 

 as the Book of Job is supposed to have been the work of 

 an Idumean poet. The whole history tends to disappear 

 in poetry, while the objective peculiarities of the poetry 

 itself lose their sharpness from an exaggerated endeavour 

 to resolve everything into a purely untutored flow of 



