The International Theological Library.

EDITED BY

Augustus

CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D.,

Edward Robinson Professor of Biblical Theology, Union Theological
Seminary, New York;

Dingwall Fordyec

STEWART D. F. SALMOND, d.D.,

Professor of Systematic Theology and New Testament Exegesis,
Free Church College, Aberdeen.

1. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LITERATURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. BY PROF. S. R. DRIVER, D.D.

AN INTRODUCTION

TO THE

LITERATURE OF THE

OLD TESTAMENT

BY

Samuel Rolles

S. R. DRIVER, D.D.,

REGIUS PROFESSOR OF HEBREW, AND CANON OF CHRIST Church, oxford;
FORMERLY FELLOW OF NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD.

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

(The Rights o, Translation and of Reproduction are Reserved.)

PREFACE.

MORE than three years have elapsed since I undertook to prepare an Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament. Although the more important parts of the ground were already familiar to me, other occupations prevented my being able to complete it until now. I ought, in the first instance, to guard against any misapprehension as to the scope of the work. It is not an Introduction to the Theology, or to the History, or even to the Study, of the Old Testament: in any of these cases, the treatment and contents would both have been very different. It is an Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament; and what I conceived this to include was an account of the contents and structure of the several books, together with such an indication of their general character and aim as I could find room for in the space at my disposal. For it is not more than just to myself that I should state that by the terms of my agreement I was limited in space. I had to do the best that I could within an average, for the longer books, of 20-25 pages. There have been many matters on which I would gladly have given fuller particulars there have been opinions which I should often have been glad to notice, or discuss more fully than I have done, if only out of respect for those who held them but my limits have forbidden this, and I have repeatedly omitted, or abbreviated, what I had originally written-sometimes, no doubt, to the reader's advantage, though not perhaps always so. Hence, while I am prepared to accept full responsibility for what I have said, for what I have not said I must put in a plea to be judged leniently.

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1 The Theology of the Old Testament forms the subject of a separate volume in the present series, which has been entrusted to the competent hands of Professor A. B. Davidson, of the New College, Edinburgh.