OLD TESTAMENT SCIENCE 539 



when they proclaimed that true religion is moral, not ceremonial; that 

 the divine holiness or sanctity has a moral basis; that human respon- 

 sibility is individual, not merely tribal or national; that God cares 

 for all nations alike; and that moral obligation extends beyond 

 national to international relations. In a word, the prophets laid the 

 foundations of the religion of humanity. This demonstration is 

 the crowning glory of modern criticism, and is of itself sufficient to 

 vindicate its methods and claims. 



(2) Of almost equal importance is the reconstruction of the lyrical 

 and reflective poetry of the Old Testament. The Psalms of David 

 are now known not to have been written by David, and the Pro- 

 verbs of Solomon not to have been composed or compiled by Solo- 

 mon. These are in themselves secondary matters. What is of most 

 significance is that Hebrew psalmody and the Wisdom literature 

 are, as a whole, complements and successors, not to the Law, but to 

 Prophecy. 



(3) What is dominant and vital in Hebrew literature is its imagin- 

 ative element, the poetry and not the prose of the Old Testament. 

 With this idealistic literature or poetry must be reckoned the greater 

 portion of the prophetic writings. 



(4) Another epoch-making fact has been established by recent 

 criticism, the essential duality of the Old Testament. Such unity as 

 the Old Testament has is superficial, so to say accidental. It is a unit 

 as the literature of a single people, as written in what is practically 

 the same language throughout, as being predominantly religious, as 

 nominally though not always actually illustrating the worship and 

 attributes of the same God. It is not a unit in what is more cardinal 

 and vital, in its conceptions of God and of duty, in its attitude 

 toward life and conduct. There was an epoch in the history of the 

 Old Testament literature when its whole character was changed, and, 

 what is of special significance for the question of the relations of the 

 Old Testament, this era was also a turning-point in the moral and 

 religious education of the race. It was the era of non-professional 

 prophecy, the spiritual birth-time of humanity. 



We may now consider directly the relations of Old Testament 

 science to other subjects of human interest. To what other branches 

 of knowledge is it chiefly indebted? It has drawn very largely from 

 several of them. In analyzing the contents of the Old Testament liter- 

 ature historically and genetically, and in determining the relations of 

 its several divisions to one another, Old Testament scholars have 

 gained facts and suggestions from philology, archaeology, ethnology, 

 literary criticism, and the modern evolutionary philosophy. What 

 then does our science, stimulated and enriched from the regions lying 

 beyond its borders, give back to the world of thought? According to 

 the rubric laid down at the beginning, we shall have to consider the 



