I have followed the guidance of my own judgment as to what was probable or not; but where alternative views appeared to me to be tenable, or where the opinion towards which I inclined only partially satisfied me, I have been careful to indicate this to the reader. I have, moreover, made it my aim to avoid speculation upon slight and doubtful data; or, at least, if I have been unable absolutely to avoid it, I have stated distinctly of what nature the data are (e.g. p. 209 f.).

Polemical references, with very few exceptions, I have avoided: in this case, the limitation of space coincided with my own inclinations. It must not, however, be thought that, because I do not more frequently discuss divergent opinions, I am therefore unacquainted with them. I have been especially careful to acquaint myself with the views of Keil, and of other writers on the traditional side. Upon no occasion have I adopted what may be termed a critical as opposed to a conservative position, without weighing fully the arguments advanced in support of the latter, and satisfying myself that they were untenable.

Naturally a work like the present is founded largely on the labours of previous scholars. Since Gesenius, in the early years of this century, inaugurated a new epoch in the study of Hebrew, there has been a succession of scholars, of the highest and most varied ability, who have been fascinated by the literature of ancient Israel, and have dedicated their lives to its elucidation. Each has contributed of his best: and those who come after stand upon the vantage-ground won for them by their predecessors. In exegesis and textual criticism, not less than in literary criticism, there has been a steady advance.1 The historical significance of different parts of the Old Testament--the aim and drift of individual prophecies, for instance, or the relation to one another of parallel groups of laws-has been far more carefully observed than was formerly the case. While in fairness to myself I think it right to state that ny volume embodies the results of much independent work, for I never accept the dictum or conclusion of any critic without satisfying myself, by personal study, that the grounds alleged in its support are adequate,-I desire at the same time to acknowledge my in

1 The progress in the two former may be measured approximately by the Revised Version, or (in some respects, more adequately) by the notes in the "Variorum Bible" of Eyre & Spottiswoode.

debtedness to those who have preceded me, and facilitated my labours. The references will generally indicate who the authorities are that have been principally of service to me; naturally they vary in different parts of the Old Testament.

It does not fall within the scope of the present volume to deal with either the Theology or the History of the Old Testament, as such nevertheless a few words may be permitted on them here.

It is impossible to doubt that the main conclusions of critics with reference to the authorship of the books of the Old Testament rest upon reasonings the cogency of which cannot be denied without denying the ordinary principles by which history is judged and evidence estimated. Nor can it be doubted that the same conclusions, upon any neutral field of investigation, would have been accepted without hesitation by all conversant with the subject: they are only opposed in the present instance by some theologians, because they are supposed to conflict with the requirements of the Christian faith. But the history of astronomy, geology, and, more recently, of biology,' supplies a warning that the conclusions which satisfy the common unbiassed and unsophisticated reason of mankind prevail in the end. The price at which alone the traditional view can be maintained is too high.2 Were the difficulties which beset it isolated or occasional, the case, it is true, would be different: it could then, for instance, be reasonably argued that a fuller knowledge of the times might afford the clue that would solve them. But the phenomena which the traditional view fails to explain are too numerous for such a solution to be admissible; they recur so systematically, that some cause or causes, for which that view makes no allowance, must be postulated to account for them. The hypothesis of glosses and marginal additions is a superficial remedy the fundamental distinctions upon which the main conclusions of critics depend remain untouched.3

1

The truth, however, is that apprehensions of the character

Comp. the luminous and able treatment of this subject, on its theological side, by the late lamented Aubrey L. Moore in Science and the Faith (1889), esp. pp. xi-xlvii, and pp. 163-235.

2 Of course there are many points at which tradition is not affected by criticism. I allude naturally to those in which the case is different.

These distinctions, it ought to be understood, in works written in defence of the traditional position, are, as a rule, very imperfectly stated, even where they are not ignored altogether.

They

just indicated are unfounded. It is not the case that critical conclusions, such as those expressed in the present volume, are in conflict either with the Christian creeds or with the articles of the Christian faith. Those conclusions affect not the fact of revelation, but only its form. They help to determine the stages. through which it passed, the different phases which it assumed, and the process by which the record of it was built up. do not touch either the authority or the inspiration of the Scriptures of the Old Testament. They imply no change in respect to the Divine attributes revealed in the Old Testament; no change in the lessons of human duty to be derived from it; no change as to the general position (apart from the interpretation of particular passages) that the Old Testament points forward prophetically to Christ. That both the religion of Israel itself, and the record of its history embodied in the Old Testament, are the work of men whose hearts have been touched, and minds illumined, in different degrees,2 by the Spirit of God, is manifest : 3 but the recognition of this truth does not decide the question of the author by whom, or the date at which, particular parts of the Old Testament were committed to writing; nor does it determine the precise literary character of a given narrative or book. No part of the Bible, nor even the Bible as a whole, is a logically articulated system of theology: the Bible is a "library," showing how men variously gifted by the Spirit of God cast the truth which they received into many different literary forms, as genius permitted or occasion demanded,-into poetry of various kinds, sometimes national, sometimes individual, sometimes even developing a truth. in a form approaching that of the drama; into prophetical dis

1 Comp. Prof. Sanday's words in The Oracles of God (1891), p. 7—a volume which, with its counsels of wisdom and sobriety, I would gladly, if I might, adopt as the Preface to my own.

2 I say, in different degrees; for no one would attribute to the authors of some of the Proverbs, or of the Books of Esther or Ecclesiastes, the same degree of spiritual perception displayed, for example, by Deutero-Isaiah, or in the Psalms.

So, for instance, Riehm, himself a critic, speaking of the Pentateuch as a record of revelation, remarks on the "immediate impression" of this character which it makes, and continues: "Every one who so reads the Pentateuch as to allow its contents to work upon his spirit, must receive the impression that a consciousness of God such as is here expressed cannot be derived from flesh and blood" (Einleitung, § 28, "Der Pentateuch als Offen. barungsurkunde ")

courses, suggested mostly by some incident of the national life; into proverbs, prompted by the observation of life and manners; into laws, prescribing rules for the civil and religious government of the nation; into narratives, sometimes relating to a distant or a nearer past, sometimes autobiographical; and (to include the New Testament) into letters, designed, in the first instance, to meet the needs of particular churches or individuals. It is probable that every form of literary composition known to the ancient Hebrews was utilised as a vehicle of Divine truth, and is represented in the Old Testament. Hence the character of a particular part of the Old Testament cannot be decided by an à priori argument as regards what it must be; it can only be determined by an application of the canons of evidence and probability universally employed in historical or literary investigation. None of the historians of the Bible claim supernatural enlightenment for the materials of their narrative:2 it is reasonable, therefore, to conclude that these were derived by them from such human sources as were at the disposal of each particular writer; in some cases from a writer's own personal knowledge, in others from earlier documentary sources, in others, especially in those relating to a distant past, from popular tradition. It was the function of inspiration to guide the individual writer in the choice and disposition of his material, and in his use of it for the inculcation of special lessons. And in the production of some parts of the Old Testament different hands co-operated, and have left traces of their work more or less clearly discernible. The whole is subordinated to the controlling agency of the Spirit of God, causing the Scriptures of the Old Testament to be profitable

1 Πολυμερῶς καὶ πολυτρόπως πάλαι ὁ Θεὸς λαλήσας τοῖς πατράσιν ἐν τοῖς προφήταις, Heb. 1, 1. On the manifold Voice of God as heard in the Old Testament, the writer may be permitted to refer to a sermon preached by him at Cambridge on April 27, 1890, and printed in the supplement to the Cambridge Review, May 1, 1890. See also the Contemporary Review, Feb. 1890, p. 229 f. 2 The preface to St. Luke's Gospel (Luke 1, 1-4) is instructive in this respect. St. Luke only claims for his narrative that he has used in its composition the care and research of an ordinary historian. Comp. Sanday, 1.c. pp. 72-75: "In all that relates to the Revelation of God and of His Will, the writers [of the Bible] assert for themselves a definite inspiration; they claim to speak with an authority higher than their own. But in regard to the narrative of events, and to processes of literary composition, there is nothing so exceptional about them as to exempt them from the conditions to which other works would be exposed at the same place and time."

"for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction, which is in righteousness:" but under this presiding influence scope is left for the exercise, in different modes and ways, of the faculties ordinarily employed in literary composition. There is a human factor in the Bible, which, though quickened and sustained by the informing Spirit, is never wholly absorbed or neutralized by it; and the limits of its operation cannot be ascertained by an arbitrary à priori determination of the methods of inspiration; the only means by which they can be ascertained is by an assiduous and comprehensive study of the facts presented by the Old Testament itself.1

1 Two principles, once recognized, will be found to solve nearly all the difficulties which, upon the traditional view of the historical books of the Old Testament, are insuperable, viz.—(1) that in many parts of these books we have before us traditions, in which the original representation has been insensibly modified, and sometimes (especially in the later books) coloured by the associations of the age in which the author recording it lived; (2) that some freedom was used by ancient historians in placing speeches or discourses in the mouths of historical characters. In some cases, no doubt, such speeches agreed substantially with what was actually said; but often they merely develop at length, in the style and manner of the narrator, what was handed down only as a compendious report, or what was deemed to be consonant with the temper and aim of a given character on a particular occasion. No satisfactory conclusions with respect to the Old Testament will be arrived at without due account being taken of these two principles. Should it be feared that the first of these principles, if admitted, might imperil the foundations of the Christian faith, it is to be pointed out that the records of the New Testament were produced under very different historical conditions; that while in the Old Testament, for example, there are instances in which we can have no assurance that an event was recorded until many centuries after its occurrence, in the New Testament the interval at most is not more than 30-50 years. Viewed in the light of the unique personality of Christ, as depicted both in the common tradition embodied in the Synoptic Gospels and in the personal reminiscences underlying the fourth Gospel, and also as presupposed by the united testimony of the Apostolic writers belonging almost to the same generation, the circumstances are such as to forbid the supposition that the facts of our Lord's life on which the fundamental truths of Christianity depend can have been the growth of mere tradition, or are anything else than strictly historical. The same canon of historical criticism which authorizes the assumption of tradition in the Old Testament, forbids it-except within the narrowest limits, as in some of the divergences apparent between the parallel narratives of the Gospels—in the case of the New Testament.

It is an error to suppose, as seems sometimes to be done, that topographical exploration, or the testimony of Inscriptions, supplies a refutation of critical