540 OLD TESTAMENT 



relations of our subject to history, to literature, and to sociology and 

 morals. 



Relations to History 



These may be estimated by examining the various forms of 

 activity by which the people of Israel impressed themselves upon the 

 world, and by indicating their importance to mankind. For the Old 

 Testament history is in a broad and very real sense the history of 

 Israel. All that we have learned or are likely to learn from outside 

 sources as to the doings and character of the Hebrews can do little 

 more than illustrate the national history embodied in their own liter- 

 ary records. What, then, we ask, has general history to gain by the 

 tribute which it draws from Old Testament science, that is, from the 

 knowledge which the Old Testament gives to the world of the life and 

 work of the people of Israel? What were the forms and modes of 

 their activity? What was the character of their government and legal 

 institutions; of their trade and commerce; of their industrial and 

 idealizing arts; of their mental philosophy, their moral and religious 

 principles and beliefs? What also were their achievements in war and 

 in statesmanship? 



Turning to the Old Testament for the answers to these questions, 

 we see at once that, for comparative purposes, some of the most 

 important of these factors in national influence must be wholly 

 ignored. The Hebrews made no name for themselves in the useful or 

 in the aesthetic arts. They had no speculative philosophy either of the 

 material or the supersensuous world, while their trade and commerce 

 are negligible in any general survey of ancient civilization. 



Nor is the political history of Israel now regarded as of importance 

 to the world at large. It is shown to have been a mere episode in the 

 larger history of Western Asia, in which it was never of any moment 

 as an active factor. In the light of our reconstructed history of the 

 ancient East, Israel is seen to have been a small composite people 

 inhabiting the highlands of Palestine at a comparatively late period, 

 in succession to a long occupation by Amorites or Canaanites, Baby- 

 lonians and Egyptians, inheriting the civilization of the Canaanites 

 directly, and tinctured indirectly by that of the Babylonians; attain- 

 ing to a sort of solidarity by tribal federation; then following the 

 example of all Oriental states by adopting monarchical government, 

 and, after a more or less precarious autonomy, going the way of all the 

 kindred coast-land peoples, in complete subjection to the Assyrians 

 and Babylonians. There is nothing striking or exceptional even in its 

 period of independence, at least to the mere chronicler of momentous 

 political events. Yet to the student of national and social life there 

 are points of much interest. One is the cohesiveness, unique among 



