214 



♦ KNOAA^LEDGE 



[May 1, 1886. 



the Book of the Law was read to the people ; the priests | 

 who had been ordained in .Tudah to burn incense " to the 

 sun, tlie moon, the planets, and the stars" were put down; 

 " the chariots of the sun," whatever they may have been, 

 were burned, and " the horses given by the kings of Judah 

 to the sun" were taken away; the priests of the high 

 places were slain and men's bones were burned upon their 

 altars (to defile them) ; the wizards and mediums (•' those 

 that had familiar spirits"), and the teraphim or ancestral 

 idols, were put away. Everything, in fact, was done to 

 appease the anger of Yahveh-Elohim, though unfortunately 

 without avail ; for we read that, " notwithstanding, Yahveh 

 turned not from the fierceness of his great wrath wherewith 

 his anger was kindled." 



Around the Book of the Law, so long neglected, and 

 freshly lirought out under these striking circumstances, 

 other old records were collected — we know not by whom. 

 Whether they had the authority of Hilkiah the priest or 

 Shaphan the scribe, or Huldah the sibyl, for their authen- 

 ticity as the inspired work of God, no one knows.* We 

 know only that they were the I'emaining books or docu- 

 ments forming the Pentateuch and the story of Joshua's 

 victories. Even at this stage, however, diversities of opinion 

 existed as to the value of the several records. The Sama- 

 ritans accepted the Pentateuch and rejected the Book of 

 Joshua. One would like to know their reasons in detail. 

 I'^nfortunately we do not. We know only that during the 

 two centuries between the time of Josiah and the time of 

 Nehemiah the sacred documents had increased considerably 

 in amount ; for Josiah could hardly have read the whole 

 Pentateuch, as we are told he actually did read the dis- 

 covered Book of the Law, aloud to all the people. 



One would like also to know who they were who during 

 these two centuries weighed these other documents, and 

 were moved to pronounce them God's own word. Let us 

 ,at least hope that thoroughly trustworthy opinions were 

 pronounced on that point in that age, uncritical though it 

 was. For if not, we have to rely on opinions formed by 

 men who in later times, with greater acumen, and perhaps 

 wider knowledge, had also too personal an interest in the 

 matter to be entirely free from the possibility of being 

 biassed. A rather serious difficulty arises, of course, from 

 the consideration that much of the material subsequently 

 included among the sacred writings (God's very own Word I) 

 must have existed in the time of Hilkiah, the high priest, 

 and Huldah, the wise woman, and yet somehow failed to be 

 recognised by these exjaerts (may we assume?) as inspired. 



Time passed, and again the Book of the Law was read to 

 the people. It was after the restoiution, and the time was 

 that of the Feast of Tabernacles. Since the days of Joshua, 

 the son of Nun, we are told, this feast had not Ijeen kept 

 as it should have been; but now the people made booths, as 

 had been enjoined — probably in far earlier times than even 

 the priests themselves suspected. They did this because 

 now the fuller law had been read to them by Ezra, as Nehe- 

 miah relates, with interpretation (popularised as it were), 

 and the people had been much moved when they heard it. 



This " revival," as Mr. Matthew Arnold calls it, Ijrought 

 into the canon the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua. 

 Doubtless the Book of Judges, and the Books of Samuel 

 and Kings, then existed ; but the glamour of antiquity and 

 mystery had not yet surrounded these and other documents 

 in the Temple chests, so that as yet it had not been dis- 

 covered that they were written by divine inspiration. We 



* We do not know how Hilkiah, or Shaphan, or even the wise 

 woman Huldah, came to be infallible judges of what should be 

 I'egarded as the Word of the Infinite, or why they held in less 

 esteem the books which Nehemiah subsequently accepted as in- 

 .spired. 



know, iu fact, that Nehemiah started a library, which pro- 

 bably he regarded as altogether secular. He put into it 

 (2 Maccabees ii. 13) works which he had collected outside 

 the Book of the Law and Joshua, viz. " matters relating to 

 the kings and the prophets, and David's matters, and letters 

 to the kings about oiferings." 



When a suiiicient time had elapsed, it was discovered 

 that these documents also were insjiii-ed — all except the 

 letters to the kings about offerings. So tlteij were included 

 in the growing canon of the Old Testament. This was not 

 done on Neliemiah's authority ; nay, he may be said, by 

 omitting to include them among the .sacred books, to have 

 practically excluded them, just as Hilkiah and Huldah had 

 to all intents and purposes excluded still older books which 

 later became the Holy Scriptures. 



The new matter thus added to the Bible included the 

 Books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings ; the books of Isaiah 

 (or, rather, of the two Isaiahs), Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the 

 twelve minor prophets ; and the Psalms, — not all of them 

 David's, but all so far associated with his name as to be 

 called "David's matters" {rii roii Aa/3(f). 



Judas Maccabwus is i-esponsible for the next addition to 

 the sacred Sci-iptures. Among " the things lost by reason 

 of the war we had," were the Books of Daniel, Job, 

 Proverbs, and other documents, including all those which 

 the Protestant Bibles add to the books already mentioned. 

 A strange feature in the list of additions thus made is that 

 while it included books like the Proverbs, the Song of 

 Solomon, and Ecclesiastes, which must have been known in 

 the time of Hilkiah and Huldah, and must have been old lore 

 to Nehemiah, so that they had been practically rejected for 

 centuries by all the leading religious folk as certainly not 

 inspired — whatever other excellent qualities they might 

 have — it included also the Book of Daniel and others which 

 were actually contemporary with the introduction of the 

 new series. This series closed, and still closes, in the 

 Hebrew Bible, with the Books of E.sther, Daniel, Ezra, 

 Nehemiah, and Chronicles, an arrangement which very 

 suggestively indicates the value assigned to the last three 

 books by those who thus included them in the sacred 

 canon 1 



There the record for the Old Testament ends. One can 

 readily see, however, that the books written by Jews during 

 the next two centuries would have been added in due time 

 to the canon, if misfortunes had not unhappily inter- 

 rupted the development of the holy Jewish scriptures. The 

 mere fact that the Greek Jews wrote in Greek and not 

 in Hebrew would have made little difference to the 

 Jewish people, who until the fall of Jerusalem had a rare 

 faculty for regarding all the writings by men of their own 

 race as inspu-ed I The Books of Baruch and Tobit, Wisdom, 

 Ecclesiasticus, and the two Books of the Maccabees, will 

 bear comparison exceedingly well with the Books of Esther 

 and Daniel, the Song of Solomon, Proverbs, and the two 

 Books of Chronicles. Of course, to those who regarded the 

 Hebrew language as specially sacred, as the language in 

 which Yahveh-Elohim talked with Adam and Eve, with the 

 Serpent, and (.see Job) with Satan, the idea of including 

 Greek books in the sacred canon must have appeared 

 outrageous ; but if the Jewish nation had but survived a 

 century or two longer, the books of the Apocrypha would 

 have taken a permanent place in the Old Testament. In 

 fact, remembering that the Greek and Roman Churches in- 

 clude these books, while the Armenian Church includes the 

 Book of Enoch, we are obliged to admit that the action of 

 the English t'hurches in excluding them is somewhat per- 

 verse. Especially puzzling is the criu: presented by the 

 Epistle of Jude, long doubted, but now accepted as canonical ; 

 for this epistle quotes from the Book of Enoch as from 



