THE SILENCES OF SCRIPTURE. 



75 



and Nehemiah constitute almost all that is known between the 

 Keturn from the Captivity and the close of the Canon. 



It is much the same when we examine the lives of the most 

 famiUar characters. Abraham is said to have hved 175 years, 

 yet of the first 75 we know nothing but the migration to Haran 

 and of the last 75 only some half-dozen events are noticed. 



Concerning Joseph, there is nothing of his early life, very little 

 of his period of servitude and imprisonment, and nothing again 

 of his reign as viceroy after the famine. Moses lived 40 years 

 as an Egyptian prince, and another 40 as a shepherd in Midian ; 

 except his slaying of the Egyptian and consequent flight, and 

 his marriage with Zipporah all of that period is a blank. The 

 life of David is given more fully than most, yet of more than half, 

 the 40 years of his reign as king, it is only a comparatively few 

 incidents that are narrated. Elijah flashes suddenly like a 

 meteor across the dark period of Ahab's reign ; and how much 

 is really known of the long hves of Isaiah and Jeremiah ? 



Most remarkable of all are the gaps in the Hfe of Christ. It 

 is a little difficult to reaUze that all which the four Gospels have 

 to tell us relates to less than one-tenth of His earthly life. In 

 the 30 years from His Birth to His Baptism there is but the one 

 incident of the Finding in the Temple. Of the Apostles, too, 

 we know something about St. Peter, St. John, and St. Paul — 

 and how little even of them ? — ^while the others are scarcely 

 more than names. 



It comes to this, that a few great crises, a few marked lives, 

 a few notable events are brought out in starthng relief against 

 a shadowy background. The silences of Scripture are almost 

 more remarkable than the records. 



It is very evident that all this shows a process of selection, 

 for it is not the case that nothing more was known. The 

 allusions to the books of the Wars of the Lord and of Jashar 

 as well as the repeated references to the chronicles of the Kings 

 of Israel and Judah clearly indicate that there was a mass of 

 material which might have been utiHzed. The writers of the 

 first three Gospels could not have been altogether ignorant 

 of the events in Judsea narrated in the fourth, and St. John 

 (xxi, 21) expressly asserts that there was very much more that 

 was not written. The latter half of the book of the Acts is 

 taken up with the doings of St. Paul ; were all the other 

 Apostles idle, and were there no events worth recording at 

 Jerusalem, except the First Council and the arrest of St. Paul ? 



