RELATIONS OF OLD TESTAMENT SCIENCE 557 



Christian centuries, which are, indeed, not without representation in 

 the Old Testament canon, but only by way of "exception and con- 

 trary to the opinion and intention of the synagogue. Now, since this 

 body of writings is not only in point of time nearest neighbor to the 

 New Testament, but emphatically its cradle, it has, naturally enough, 

 attracted much more attention from our New Testament colleagues 

 than from ourselves. Under the unattractive name of New Testa- 

 ment contemporary history, it has developed as an independent 

 branch, and a whole school of New Testament students have devoted 

 themselves with zeal and thoroughness to this inter-Testament time 

 and literature. We Old Testament men ought not to lose touch with 

 this field; in fact, it is greatly to be desired that there shall always 

 be some of us who bend our chief energies toward its particular 

 investigation. But its complete incorporation into our department 

 has been prevented by the facts; and, moreover, the study of Israel 

 of the earlier time will long make such demands upon our undivided 

 strength that it will employ by far the greater number of our workers. 



In another direction the necessity for division of labor seems even 

 less open to question, but rather fundamentally justified. Only 

 uncertain boundaries naturally separate that body of popular writ- 

 ings, the so-called Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, from the literature 

 of talmudic Judaism, in which alone the Hebrew language, together 

 with the Jewish Aramaic, continued to exist and to develop. The 

 roots of this body of writings stretch back into the pre-Christian 

 period, and thus reach as well into the fields of Old Testament 

 science. What is therein handed down to us is absolutely indispens- 

 able for the reconstruction and exposition of the canonical books; 

 indeed, the form in which we possess the latter is simply that of the 

 synagogue. The insight into post-Christian development is also of 

 great value for us, because in this connection lines are running on 

 which trace their beginning to pre-Christian Judaism in the Old 

 Testament, so that they must serve as guides to the full recognition 

 of the possibilities contained in the Old Testament. All this does not 

 invalidate the truth that our peculiar task is ended when talmudic 

 Judaism has fully developed and gained the mastery. For us it is 

 not a matter of our own territory, but of frontier lands. Here, too, 

 Old Testament science has worked and has given contributions of 

 the greatest importance, and it always will be to our advantage, as 

 well as to that of the science of Judaism, to send to that camp from 

 ours some workers who will there perform their chief labor. Most 

 of us will have to be content with much less in order really to ac- 

 complish something in our own particular field. 



But the Old Testament has not spent its life and its influence 

 solely in its original language and among the people from which it 

 sprang, but, as a component part of the sacred book of Christianity, 



