The Evolution of Old Testament Religion
by W. E. Orchard · English · Gutenberg #45952 · 405,169 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Evolution of Old Testament Religion
Author: W. E. Orchard
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION ***
THE EVOLUTION OF OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION
THE EVOLUTION OF OLD
TESTAMENT RELIGION
BY
W. E. ORCHARD, B.D.
LONDON
JAMES CLARKE & CO., 13 & 14, FLEET STREET
1908
TO
My Wife
PREFACE
The substance of this book was originally delivered as a Course of
Lectures to a week-night congregation. The Lecture form has been
retained, and this accounts for the repetition of the leading ideas,
while the practical interests of Church life account for the insistence
on the religious value and lesson. It is hoped that this, which might
be irritating to the professional student, may be helpful to the
ordinary reader who is repelled by the technicality of critical works,
and often fails to discern the devout spirit by which such works are
inspired, or to discover what religious interest is served by them.
Where everything is borrowed from other writers, and no claim to
originality is made, detailed acknowledgment would be impossible, but
the resolve to attempt some such course in place of the usual form of a
week-night service was formed in the Hebrew class-room of Westminster
College, Cambridge, while listening to the Lectures on Old Testament
Theology and Messianic Prophecy, delivered by the Rev. Professor Dr.
Skinner (now Principal), in which accurate scholarship was combined
with a deep insight into the present religious importance of these
subjects. Grateful acknowledgment is also due to the Rev. J.R. Coates,
B.A., who kindly read through the proofs and made many valuable
suggestions.
W. E. ORCHARD.
ENFIELD, _August, 1908_.
CONTENTS
LECTURE PAGE
INTRODUCTION vii
I. THE SEMITIC RACES 19
II. THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE HEBREWS 31
III. MOSAISM 55
IV. THE INFLUENCE OF CANAAN 83
V. PROPHETISM--EARLY STAGES 107
VI. THE RELIGION OF THE LITERARY PROPHETS 135
VII. THE EFFECT OF THE EXILE 169
VIII. THE WORK OF THE PRIESTS 195
IX. THE RELIGION OF THE PSALMISTS 215
X. THE RELIGION OF THE WISE 241
XI. MESSIANIC EXPECTATIONS 265
INTRODUCTION
It is a matter of common knowledge that within the last few decades a
tremendous change has come over our estimate of the value of the Old
Testament, and that this change is of the gravest importance for our
understanding of religion. But what the exact nature of the change
is, and what we are to deduce from it, is a matter of debate, for the
facts are only known to professional students and to a few others who
may have been led to interest themselves in the subject. With some,
for instance, the idea prevails that the Old Testament has been so
discredited by modern research that its religious significance is now
practically worthless. Others believe that the results arrived at are
untrue, and regard them as the outcome of wicked attacks made upon the
veracity of the Word of God by men whose scholarship is a cloak for
their sinister designs or a mask of their incapacity to comprehend its
spiritual message. There is perhaps a middle course open to some who
have found a message of God to their souls in the Old Testament, and
who, on hearing that the authorship of this book has been questioned
or the historicity of that passage assailed, are unmoved, because
they believe that it does not matter who wrote the Pentateuch or the
Psalms so long as through these documents they hear the voice of the
living Word of God. Here then is a subject on which there exists a
distressing confusion, and, moreover, a subject in which ignorance
plays no small part. Save with a few devout souls who have made a long
and continuous study of the Scriptures, it may be doubted whether there
is any widespread knowledge of the actual message of the Old Testament,
even among Christian people. There are certainly many people willing to
defend the authority of the Bible who spend very little time in reading
it. The favourite Psalms and the evangelical passages of Isaiah are
probably well known, and beyond this there is but the knowledge gained
in early days, from which stand out in the memory the personalities
of Samson and Saul, David and Goliath, and Daniel in the lion's den,
together with the impressive stories of the Flood, the destruction
of Sodom and Gomorrah, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the fall of
Jericho. A very little is probably carried away from the public reading
of the Scriptures in places of worship. It cannot be said that this
acquaintance conveys any real impression of the magnificent message
that lies embedded in these thirty-nine books which go to make up the
Old Testament. Now whatever harm may be charged to the modern methods,
it can at least be claimed that neglected portions have been carefully
studied, the meaning of obscure passages discovered, and much of
importance and interest brought to light; but more than this, it has
been discovered that the essential message of the Old Testament lies
largely apart from those narratives and personalities that impress the
superficial reader, and rather in the record of a gradual development
of the conception of God and of His purpose in calling Israel to be the
recipient of His self-disclosure. It has been found that the striking
figures of the landscape are of less importance than the road that
winds among them along which revelation moves to its final goal.
It may be objected that the new inspiration, which so many who have
studied the Scriptures by these methods claim to have felt, throws
quite a new emphasis on our conception of the Old Testament and
is revolutionary of all that we have been accustomed to believe
concerning it; that the methods are such as could not legitimately
be applied to the Word of God, and are the products of a criticism
which is puffed up with a sense of its own superiority; and that the
results are discreditable to the Old Testament, since they allege
that some of the narratives are unhistorical, some passages and even
whole books unauthentic, and traditions on which the gravest issues
have been staked shown to have nothing more than a legendary basis.
There is much in these objections that is natural, but much that
is misunderstanding. It is true that the contribution which the Old
Testament makes to religion is estimated differently from what it was
fifty years ago, and it must be allowed that this brings a charge of
having misunderstood the Scriptures against generations of scholars
and saints. But it is admitted that all matters of knowledge are open
to misunderstanding. It is no argument against the conception that
the earth moves round the sun, that the contrary idea was held in
other ages. We know that the understanding of the Old Testament has
been obscured, often by those who ought to have been the greatest
authorities on its meaning. Jesus read into the Scriptures a meaning
unrecognised by the authorities of His day, and dealt with them in a
fashion that was regarded as revolutionary. To some of the Scriptures
He appealed as to a final authority, but others He regarded as
imperfect and only suited to the time in which they were written. The
Jews of His day venerated every letter of the sacred writings, and
regarded the very copies of the Law as sacred to the touch, and yet on
their understanding of the Scriptures they rejected the mission and
message of Jesus. Christian scholarship has undoubtedly followed rather
after the Rabbis than after Christ. The message of the Old Testament
that the new methods have made clear certainly appears to be more in
conformity with the Spirit of Christ than with that of His opponents,
and if this is revolutionary then it is no new thing; religion always
moves along such lines.
Great offence has been caused and insuperable prejudice aroused among
many by the name under which these methods have become known. The
name, "higher criticism," conveys to most people a suggestion of
carping fault-finding and an assumption of superiority. This is due to
an entire misunderstanding of a technical term. Criticism is nothing
more than the exercise of the faculty of judgment, and, moreover,
judgment that ought to be perfectly fair. The sinister suggestion
that is conveyed in the word is due to the fact that our criticisms
are so often biassed by personal prejudices. But this only condemns
our faults, and not the method. "Higher" criticism does not mean any
assumption of superiority, but is simply a term used to distinguish it
from "lower" criticism. The criticism that endeavours to ascertain the
original text by a comparison of the various documents available is
called _lower_, and that which deals with matters higher up the stream
of descent by which the writings have been conveyed to us, namely,
matters of date and authorship, is called _higher_ criticism. It might
well be called literary and historical criticism, in distinction from
textual criticism. It employs historical methods, and uses the simple
tests of comparison and contemporaneity. For the understanding of a
particular age, it prefers those documents that describe the times in
which they were written, and give indirect evidence, rather than those
histories which were written long after the event and which reveal a
purpose other than the strictly historical. Fortunately, we have in
the Old Testament many such contemporary and indirect witnesses in the
writings of the Prophets. They are not consciously writing history,
but they tell us indirectly what the practices of their day were, and
especially what religious ideas were prevalent; for it is these things
that they feel called upon to attack. With these reliable standards we
can compare the regular histories, which were necessarily written at a
much later age, and very often to serve some religious purpose.
Now it is this method, which is surely a true and proper one, that
has changed our estimate of the history and development of religion
in Israel. Are we to condemn the method without examination because
it destroys certain traditions about the Bible which we have received
largely from Judaism?--the Judaism which could find no place for Jesus!
But it will be answered that these methods yield results that are
incompatible with the inspiration of the Bible, and are unworthy of
God's revelation to us. But how are we to decide what is compatible
with inspiration? We can only tell, surely, by seeing what these
results are and by discovering whether they bring any inspiration to
us. Can we be certain, without examining the facts, to what lines the
revelation of God is to be restricted? Is this not coming to the Bible
with a theory which we have manufactured and which will surely distort
the facts? It will be said that anything less than absolute accuracy
makes void any claim to be a Divine revelation. Let us consider what
this means. We know that the historical spirit, which endeavours to
see history as it actually happened quite apart from our desires or
sympathies, is an ideal which has only emerged with the general spread
of education, and that in ancient times history was written largely
with a view to edification, and especially for giving such lessons
as would lead to right principles being adopted for the future. It
was not the accuracy of the material but suitability for its purpose
that weighed with the historian. Now, with these conditions existing,
was it impossible for God to speak to men through their conceptions
of history, or had He to wait until the historical spirit prevailed?
Could He not use the early legends which they believed, and through
them bring the truth to men? We know that the greatest of all religious
teachers did not scruple to embody the highest truths in such parables
as lowly minds could receive. We may demand that revelation shall be
infallible, but this would need in turn an infallible person to receive
it, and even then an infallible interpreter. An infallible revelation
would mean that there could never be any progress in revelation; that
it would have to be given perfect in one process; that it would have
to be authenticated to men by authority, since it would be beyond the
understanding of a fallible mind; that it would break in upon every
other experience, remain isolated, and never be grasped by that strong
conviction which we call faith; and this would entail a destruction of
the mental faculties of man, and an acknowledgment that communication
between God and man is really impossible. Could not God speak to man
in his infancy, and with the growing understanding would there not be
growing light?
Meanwhile, whatever we feel about these abstract principles, we ought
to know the facts. In the pages that follow an endeavour is made to
present the results at which a consensus of opinion has arrived. There
will be no great time spent in argument for or against these facts.
Such are to be sought in the scientific works and in the dictionaries,
which alone can deal adequately with these facts, but since many
altogether refuse to consider the facts because of the inferences
which they think can be drawn from them, this book is an earnest
plea for earnest men to consider whether it is not open to be shown
that from these facts there comes to us a much clearer understanding
of God's ways with man; a more certain conviction that in the past
God has actually spoken through the Scriptures; a clue to a better
understanding of the place Jesus occupies in the history of revelation;
and what we all need greatly to-day: a preparation of heart that we may
follow the leading of that Spirit who ever has and who ever will guide
into all truth those who are willing to follow Him. The aim of this
book is that the reader may feel that the voice which speaks in his
own heart and the voice which has guided man through all his strange
history is One, and is of God.
THE SEMITIC RACES
_Read, as Introduction to this Lecture, the Tenth Chapter of Genesis._
This is one of the most interesting documents in anthropology. It is
an attempt at a scientific ethnology, and seems to have been expanded
from the closing verses of the preceding chapter. It will be noticed
that those verses are in poetical form (R.V.), and are likely to be
very ancient.
Note the principles of classification:--
(1) Geographical. It is a very incomplete summary of the peoples of
the earth. Only those nations are mentioned that fill the horizon of
the writer's knowledge. That horizon will be found to correspond very
largely with that of the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
(2) Prejudice. The evident kinship of some peoples is denied on the
ground of dislike; for the same reason, Moab and Ammon, who are well
known, are simply omitted.
The real test of kinship is language, which is here ignored.
The names are not to be taken as individuals. Of this the very form
is witness: Ludim is plural, Mizraim is dual, Tarshish is the name of
a place, and Amorite is gentilic.
Notes:--
Verse 2. Madai = Medes. Javan = the Greeks, or more particularly, the
Ionians.
Verse 4. Tarshish is probably Spain. Kittim = the Cretans. Dodanim
(read Rodanim 1 Ch. i. 7) = the inhabitants of Rhodes.
Verse 6. Mizraim: the name for Egypt. Canaan: here and elsewhere
said to be descended from Ham. Beyond all doubt the Canaanites were
a Semitic people and spoke a language akin to Hebrew. Religious
antagonism and the fact of their conquest demanded in the popular
imagination a different ancestry.
Verse 14. "Whence went forth the Philistines" is misplaced, and
should follow after "Caphtorim" (Amos ix. 7).
Verse 21. Eber: the name of the supposed ancestor of the Hebrews.
Verse 22. Elam = Persia. Racially the Elamites were quite distinct
from the Semites. This inclusion may be a clue to the date of this
Table of Nations; friendship with Persia dates from Cyrus (Sixth
Century B.C.).
(See Driver's "Genesis.")
Lecture I
THE SEMITIC RACES
The Hebrew nation forms a branch of that group of the human family
known as the Semites. Their relation to the other great racial
divisions of mankind is far beyond the reach of our enquiry, and we
cannot even penetrate to a period when the Semites formed an unbroken
family. At the remotest date to which history can take us we find the
family already widely dispersed, with distinct national characteristics
well developed, and their common ancestry quite forgotten in their
violent hatreds of their unrecognised kinsmen. Indeed it is only the
test of language which still preserves for us an indisputable proof
of their common origin. Their existence can be traced back to a very
remote date, for fragments of their literature and other evidences
of civilisation have been discovered that have been dated 5000-4000
B.C., and even at that period the language shows signs of phonetic
degeneration that require a still further period for the process to
have reached this stage.
The primitive home of the Semites cannot have been, however, where
these ancient remains have been found, namely, in the Euphrates valley,
for the records themselves show that they were only immigrants there
and had replaced the original inhabitants, who came of Sumerian stock.
Neither was it in Palestine, as our own Bible will tell us; but it
is probably to be sought in Arabia, where the purest Semitic stock
is still to be found. In this desert home the race was bred that was
destined to have such a tremendous influence on the history of the
world, and it is largely to this desert training that we can trace
influences which have made them what they are. The battle for life in
that inhospitable land would mould a physique capable of extraordinary
endurance, and to this we can perhaps trace the virility of the modern
Jew, who has resisted for centuries the poisonous ghettos of European
cities and remains far healthier than his indigenous neighbours. This
hard training fitted them for an exacting life, and in the Phoenicians
they became the traders of antiquity, and in the Carthaginians and
Saracens, warriors not to be despised. Hardness easily becomes
cruelty, and purely Semitic empires, such as Assyria, developed a
barbarous cruelty, the story of which is told on their inscriptions
and in the denunciations of the Hebrew Prophets. There is something
in the Semitic character that is disliked by Western nations, and
the Jews have been subjects of relentless persecution in mediæval
times, and are still capable of arousing bitter hostility, as may be
seen from those violent eruptions of anti-Semitism which occasionally
burst through the cosmopolitanism of Western Europe. The well-defined
limitations of their primitive home--crushed in between the continents
of Europe, Africa and Asia, the neutral ground of the Eastern and
Western worlds--seem almost to be reflected in the limitations of their
mental development. The Semitic tongue is crude in its simplicity
and incapable of expressing an abstract idea, and it is natural to
find as a result that the philosophical faculty is almost entirely
missing. Although they have given to the world an alphabet, a system
of numeration which has made mathematics possible, and the beginnings
of measurement and of the science of astronomy, yet their mind is not
scientific in the modern sense. They possess, as perhaps no other race,
the gift of telling stories of wonder and mystery, and for a simple
tale of love and pathos they are unsurpassed. They have produced the
finest lyrical literature of the ancient world, but have contributed
hardly anything to dramatic or epic poetry, and their achievements in
art have been cramped by their religious prejudices.
But in the realm of religion they are supreme, and have become the
high-priests of humanity, for from them have gone forth three great
religions, and one of these capable of development into the universal
religion of mankind. These faiths have not been slowly evolved from the
national consciousness, but have both sprung from and been embodied in
inspiring personalities; for have they not given to the world Moses and
the Prophets, Mahomet, and the Son of Man?
The Semites are divided by anthropologists into the following groups:
Southern Group--North Arabians, Sabæans, Abyssinians; Northern
Group--Babylonians, Assyrians, Aramæans, Canaanites, Hebrews; and
all these groups seem to have been formed from the original stock
by migrations from their home in Arabia. The contracted area of the
Arabian peninsula, the inability of the land to support a large
population, coupled with their restless spirit and the constant feuds
between the tribes, made emigration a necessity at a very early period.
The exact history and order of these migrations it is now impossible to
trace, but it would seem that the first great movement was eastward,
whither they were drawn by the culture and wealth of the Sumerian
civilisation in the Euphrates valley. It is quite possible that this
movement commenced 6000 years before Christ. At a later date they
seem to have invaded Egypt and left some traces upon the language and
customs of that land.
The land of Syria would offer a near and easy home for the emigrants,
and yet the first Semites to arrive in Palestine seem to have come from
the Euphrates. The inhabitants they displaced were the Hittites, who
probably came from Asia Minor; they were Turanians, and were akin to
the present inhabitants of Armenia. It is only lately that excavation
has revealed the remains of a Hittite Empire in Palestine. The first
Semitic tribes to reach Palestine pushed down to the seaboard, where
they developed a wonderful maritime civilisation and became the daring
traders and explorers who are known in history as the Phoenicians;
the other tribes occupied the hill country and became the Canaanites
of Bible story. Of the next migration westward, the Bible preserves
a popular account in the story of the journey of Abraham from Ur of
the Chaldees. Now Abraham and his descendants were called Hebrews,
and this name is traced to an ancestor who was called Eber or Heber.
It is doubtful whether an _individual_ so named ever existed. The
name "Hebrew" means "one from the other side," and would therefore
have been a suitable name for those who crossed the Euphrates, coming
from Arabia; but of this movement the Bible knows nothing. Some have
supposed that the name was given much later to the tribes who entered
Palestine across the Jordan. The discovery of the Tel-el-Amarna
tablets has somewhat complicated our understanding of these events.
These tablets were letters written by the vassal-kings of Syria to
their overlord Amenophis III., King of Egypt, and in them the King
of Jerusalem calls for help against some tribes who are invading the
country and whom he names _Habiri_. Now the date of this correspondence
is about 1500 B.C., and if these are the Hebrews, we shall have to
suppose that not all the tribes of Israel went down into Egypt or that
the Exodus took place some two centuries earlier than the date given in
the Bible; but the whole question of the identification of the Habiri
is not yet certain.
It is, however, with those Hebrew tribes who were afterwards known as
the children of Israel that we have to do; and however remote, and
by whatever stages it is to be traced, their Semitic relationship is
certain. Their own tradition of the birthplace of Abraham shows that
they are conscious of their common origin with the Babylonians; the
stories in Genesis acknowledge their kinship with Moab and Ammon, even
though national hatred has coloured the account of their birth (Gen.
xix. 30-38). They formed a brotherly covenant with Edom, and Ishmael is
recognised not only to be kin but to be the elder. The Canaanites were
disowned wrongly, for they were certainly Semites; but the Philistines
rightly, for they came into Palestine over-sea from Crete.
We need always to bear in mind that our Bible is the product of Semitic
thought, and whatever its universal message, it is expressed in the
forms of Semitic genius; and yet that the Hebrews stand out from the
other Semitic nations is indisputable, and the distinguishing mark is
the purity of their religion. What is the cause of that difference? How
came such a tender root out of such a dry ground?
Renan is responsible for the popular idea that the Semites have a
natural tendency towards Monotheism. The idea should present no
difficulties for a theory of Revelation, but it is certainly not true.
It is not true of the general type of Semitic religion, and it cannot
be claimed, in the face of the Prophets' record of their countrymen's
lapses, that it was true even of the Hebrews. If it were said that
there was that in Semitic history and character which, provided
opportunity were given, would offer a congenial soil for the reception
of monotheistic ideas, it would be the utmost that could be said.
Neither is there more truth in the antithesis that contrasts the Aryan
conception of God as immanent with the Semitic as transcendent; for in
their primitive stages Aryan and Semitic religions are alike.
Primitive Semitic religion is indeed quite polytheistic; every tribe
has its own god and this god is closely identified with a particular
locality. Therefore, to be an outcast from the tribe meant to be
an exile from the protection and service of the god. This idea can
be found in the Bible as late as David, who thought that if he were
driven forth from his own land he would have to serve other gods (1
Sam. xxvi. 19). The god is conceived to be the father of the tribe,
while the land is the mother, and this in quite a physical and literal
sense. The same idea is of course frequent in the Greek religions, and
some such conception must be the original of the strange tradition
in Genesis (vi. 1), which describes a union between the sons of God
and the daughters of men. The connection of the god with the tribe
is therefore simply a matter of blood descent, and the blood becomes
in consequence invested with sacred virtues. The blood of the tribe
cannot be shed by one of the members without incurring the vengeance
of the god; and the use of the blood of animals in various ceremonies
may point to the belief in a common ancestry for men and animals; in
some tribes the animal is regarded as a superior being, and is actually
worshipped. The blood of animals even is thought to be too sacred for
human consumption, and is therefore set apart by libation as suitable
food for the god. Seeing that the connection between the god and man
is only tribal, the shedding of the blood of any other tribe is quite
allowable; for the tribal god cares only for his own people, and others
cannot approach him (2 Kings xvii. 27). It is evident that a religion
based upon such ideas can never be a factor in the moral development of
a people. It only needs to provide for help against enemies, counsel
in times of national affliction, and oracles for difficult problems of
judgment; therefore, in times of national prosperity and security, it
will play no part beyond that of custom; and custom often seems the
stronger in proportion to its lack of meaning.
We may insist that the Hebrew religion is superior to all this because
it owes its origin to the special revelation of God; but even that
does not preclude us from enquiring through what natural causes this
revelation came, if we believe that natural causes form some part of
the working of the Divine mind.
Now these ideas common to Semitic religion persisted among the Hebrews
and were only shaken by the earnest ministry of the Prophets, and
eventually destroyed by the reflection which followed the national
disaster of the Exile. The continued national trouble of Israel
was therefore a factor in her advance in the truth, and she stands
as a witness to the possibility of suffering being an educative
force. Moreover, she found that her Promised Land was only a little
strip hemmed in between the desert and the sea, where all dreams of
world-empire were forbidden. Then it was that this nation turned her
thoughts to a spiritual kingdom, and looking across the sea that
she feared to cross saw a day when the distant isles should be her
possession, because she had given to them the Law of Jehovah, and the
knowledge of God.
THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE HEBREWS
THE STRATA OF THE PENTATEUCH
We give here for reference the proposed identification of the
documents that critics say can be recognised in the construction of
the first five books of the Bible. The theory has been developed so
as to include the Books of Joshua, Judges, and some parts of Samuel,
all of which are said to bear the same marks of composition from
pre-existing documents.
"J." Jahvistic. Dated 900-700 B.C. This document is especially
distinguished for using the name of Jehovah, or "Yahwè," and is
anthropomorphic in its conception of God.
"E." Elohistic. Dated 750-650 B.C. The name for God in this document
is "Elohim," and its conception of God is more spiritual and elevated
than in "J."
"D." Deuteronomist. Dated 650-550 B.C. This document has the style
and thought of the Book of Deuteronomy, where it is chiefly, though
by no means exclusively found. The central idea of this document is
_the one sanctuary_.
"P." Priestly Code. Dated 550-400 B.C. This document supplies the
framework of the Pentateuch, and is distinguished by its interest in
questions of ritual, and by its very legal and stereotyped style.
The dates given above are arrived at from a comparison of the ideas
expressed in these documents with their emergence in the historical
books of the Old Testament. Only for the last two can it be claimed
that there are historical events which are said to confirm them.
These are: the finding of the Book of the Law in the reign of Josiah,
and the promulgation of the Law by Ezra.
Lecture II
THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE HEBREWS
We have seen from the last lecture that an examination of the
general type of Semitic Religion gives us no explanation of the
mature development of the Religion of the Hebrews; on the contrary,
that development would seem to take place in spite of the common
Semitic characteristics, for it is against these characteristics and
the natural tendency to return to them that we find the Prophets
continually at war. If this is so, can we penetrate to the first stage
at which the new religious movement begins which was to reach such
glorious heights in Jeremiah, the Psalmists and the Son of Man? It is
certainly not to be found in the general character of Semitic religion;
does it commence with the ancestor of the Hebrew race, the Patriarch
Abraham?
To this question the editor of Genesis means to return a decided
answer: the true religion of Jehovah existed from the earliest times,
and all lower forms are deteriorations from that pure original
revelation. The earliest stories in Genesis are made to bear witness
to this; Abel offered the true worship of God in that he brought of
the best of his flock, thus agreeing with the sacrifice of animals set
forth in the fully-developed ritual of Leviticus as the only means of
approach to God; Noah offers of "clean" animals; the Patriarchs offer
animal sacrifices, and call upon the name of Jehovah; Rebekah goes to
enquire of Jehovah and obtains an oracle. The author means to convey by
this that the earliest religion was the religion which we find outlined
in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, with the exceptions that a priest is not
necessary, and that sacrifice is permitted at other places besides the
one chosen sanctuary. This idea is enshrined in that favourite name for
God which we find in the Old Testament, the God of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob.
We have now to enquire whether this is a correct view of the history,
or only the writer's speculations about an age long removed from
his own. We are moved to do this because there are certain facts in
this history that do not seem to fit in with the author's view. It
is evident at the outset, that the writer, whoever he be, is dealing
with subjects concerning which he can have at best only second-hand
knowledge. This may have been conveyed to him in documents, or in
popular tradition. If the object of the compilation of this history was
not so much to produce an accurate and exact history as to interpret
the past as a religious lesson for his own age, it cannot be instantly
dismissed as improbable that he may have altered some of his material
so as to accord more closely with his own religious views. Now scholars
say that they can detect the presence of various documents, which have
been loosely combined and coloured with the editor's own ideas of what
should have taken place. There is hardly any theory which has excited
more ridicule from a certain class of Biblical students. The idea is
dismissed offhand as utterly unworthy of a sacred writer; and even if
he did adopt such a scissors-and-paste method of compiling history, it
is denied that anyone could detect the various strata now. No defence
of these claims of the critical school need be attempted here, for we
are taking their theories as granted, with the idea of seeing what
their acceptance as true would mean to our estimate of the Bible and
Revelation; but it may be shown that the Evangelist Luke is not ashamed
to confess that he used something like this method in compiling his
Gospel. From the Table that faces this lecture, it will be seen that
the critics give dates for these documents that lie very far apart, and
if the dates are even approximately true, it is a fair conclusion that
with such wide separation of time, and with the consequent difference
both in language and idea, there should be sufficient criteria to
detect the different strata. The critics who have attempted the
disintegration of the original documents of the Pentateuch have been
challenged to show their fitness for such a task by extricating the
respective contributions in a joint authorship novel such as "The
Chaplain of the Fleet," by Walter Besant and James Rice. Or, again,
such claims are discounted on the ground of the known failures
of professional literary critics to recognise under pseudonym or
anonymity, the style of a well-known author, or even to guess correctly
the sex of the writer. The analogy fails because the circumstances are
entirely different. It would be on more equal terms to deny that it
would be possible to distinguish, say, the personal opinions of the
author of an English History from the passages quoted from the Doomsday
Book, Chaucer, or an Act of the Long Parliament, if all quotation marks
and references were omitted.
For according to the witness of the very documents themselves this
conception of the early history must be set aside as not quite correct.
The history in Genesis is conscious that some new start began with
Abraham: he abandoned idolatry. Still more clearly is it seen that with
Moses another epoch began, for according to one document, the very name
of Jehovah was unknown before its revelation to Moses (Exod. vi. 2, 3).
We are, therefore, faced with the necessity of enquiring how much of
the stories of the Patriarchs can be called history in any true sense.
The reasons for and against their historical value may be summarised:
_Against_: (1) The stories must have been composed long after the
events took place. (2) Tribal movements and personal incidents seem to
have been confused. (3) The endeavour to explain the origin of personal
and geographical names is often merely popular, and etymologically
incorrect. (Compare with this the common errors of our own day; for
instance, the explanation of the name of Liverpool from a supposed bird
called the liver, now known to be entirely mythical.) (4) While the
contemporary history of this period is now quite an enlightened field,
and the life, character, and customs of the inhabitants of Palestine in
this age of the Patriarchs comparatively well known, we look in vain
for any mention of these persons themselves.
_For_:(1) The narratives of the Patriarchs are admitted by critics to
have been taken from at least two documents of separate origin and
of different dates. This should double the weight of the evidence.
(2) The simplicity of the narratives in many places looks like a
relation of fact. (But over against this must be placed the genius for
relating a story of pure fiction which is so peculiar a distinction
of the Semites. Some of the narratives are quite artificial; as the
story of Isaac's lie to shield his wife, which follows a similar story
related of Abraham.) (3) We might appeal to the memory of the Bedawin
reciters, who can repeat almost incredibly long portions of the Koran.
The most likely solution of this conflicting evidence would seem to be
that in the history of the Patriarchs we have a modicum of historical
foundation which has been worked up into popular and idealised legends.
If the stories of the three Patriarchs be carefully studied, it will
be noticed that while the stories of Jacob are matter of fact, and
do outline a conceivable character, the stories of Isaac produce
only a nebulous character impression, while Abraham stands forth as
a character which has been idealised. This would be an accountable
psychological process: in the case of Jacob a good deal of detail is
remembered, Isaac is almost forgotten, while in the case of Abraham,
only the name and a few incidents are known, which serve to form the
framework of a religious lesson.
It is, however, in the conception of their religion that idealisation
has most plainly occurred, for it is mainly the religion of the Ninth
Century, that is, of the age immediately preceding the great literary
Prophets. In the documents themselves there is left to the careful
reader ample indication in customs and narratives, the meaning of
which has escaped the notice of the editor, that a more primitive
form of religion prevailed. It would seem, as we have seen, that the
name of Jehovah was unknown to them, while there are evident tokens
of polytheistic belief (Gen. xxxi. 19; xxxv. 1-4). The crudity of
the worship may be seen in the frequent reference to the erection of
pillars and stones, which, it will be seen later, have more than a
merely memorial purpose. The ease with which we find idolatry always
reappearing in later history points to some hereditary tendency at
work among the mass of the people. If, however, we suppose that the
primitive religion was entirely heathen we shall be faced with the
problem of discovering some necessary point of departure to which
the higher revelation could affix itself. We may suppose, therefore,
that among the ancestors of the Hebrews there was held a faith that
was relatively purer than that common to the Semites, a faith which
contained in itself the guarantee of the possibility of advance,
if only favourable conditions arose; that "El, the Mighty One
(_Shaddai_)," was worshipped, but along with the retention of customs
and ideas that are to be found in some forms of demon worship, that is,
with the recognition of many other great spirits, not all of whom are
thought of as inimical to man; very much as we find among the North
American Indians the idea of a Great Spirit, existing side by side with
heathen practices and beliefs.
So far our enquiry has not taken us on to very sure ground, and we must
seek other methods. In the study of Comparative Religion the idea of a
certain natural order of the evolution of religion predominates, but
the actual origin of religion is still only a matter of speculation,
as indeed it is bound to remain from the very nature of religion
itself, since it is a vision of faith, rising in different ages and
races through quite different processes. We propose now to take both
the speculations and the assured results of the study of Comparative
Religion, and using these as tests, see if they have left any traces
in the evolution of the Hebrew religion or if they can guide us to its
possible origins. The principles of such enquiry and application may be
stated.
(1) The ascertained customs and ideas of other religions, especially
those of the Semites, will form a working hypothesis, and if we then
find any reference to these customs or ideas in the Old Testament, it
will make towards reasonable proof of a similar origin.
(2) We must be careful, however, to exclude customs that are known
to have been borrowed from the Canaanites, such as the practice of
Baal-worship.
(3) At the same time we must beware of assuming, without further
enquiry, that all the observances ordained by the religion of Jehovah
whose origins are connected with some historical event are to be
thought of as having their beginning then. It is more than likely that
when a long-established custom was recognised to be heathen in its
origin or tendency, it would be strictly forbidden, as in the case
of the heathen practice of necromancy; others which had lost their
original meaning would be baptised into a new significance under the
new religion. (With this phenomenon may be compared our own festival of
Christmas Day, taken over from the Roman Saturnalia, and our mourning
customs, which are survivals of heathenism, and can only with great
difficulty be made to take on a Christian meaning.) Let us then examine
the supposed origins of heathen religion, and first of all, that known
as Totemism.
Totemism is a custom exceedingly common among savage tribes, in which
some animal is chosen as the badge, or the name of the tribe, and a
blood covenant formed, when the animal becomes the "totem" or god of
the tribe. Popular instances may be given in the names of many of the
Indian tribes of North America, or even in the crests and emblems of
our now disrupted clans in Scotland, which can be traced back to a
similar idea. In other cases the totem may be one of the well-known
flora of the country or some other natural object. The custom is,
of course, seen in the well-known worship of animals which has
continued even among nations of advanced civilisation. Are there any
traces of the influence of this idea at work in the religion of the
Old Testament? There are one or two tribal names which are names of
animals. Simeon is probably the name of a hybrid between a wolf and a
hyæna. Leah means a wild cow, and Rachel is the Hebrew name for an ewe.
The distinction between clean and unclean animals might be traced to
this influence, but it does not altogether explain the lists in Lev.
xi. and Deut. xiv.
Another theory of the origin of religion is that known as Animism. This
is the belief in the existence of spirits,--a belief prompted by the
phenomena of dreams,--which usually takes the form of belief in the
activity of the spirits of the recently deceased, an activity which
is sometimes thought to be harmful and therefore feared. Animism, as
a belief in a spiritual activity behind natural phenomena, especially
those of the fearful type, survives in some form or other in the
highest religions, and was particularly active in the Hebrew idea that
Jehovah controlled natural forces for the deliverance of His people and
for His own wonderful manifestations. Animism generally survives among
uncivilised peoples in the practice of ancestor worship, of which there
is no trace among the Hebrews.
Nevertheless, the belief in Animism has left some customs behind it.
Especially is this seen in the mourning customs which are designed to
render the relatives unrecognisable to the departed spirit. This was
effected by sprinkling ashes on the head, going naked or clothed in
sackcloth. Cutting the flesh for this purpose is expressly forbidden
(Lev. xix. 28). The ritual uncleanness of one who has come into contact
with a dead body is also a relic of Animism, as is also the strange
idea in Num. xix. 15, which is intended to guard against the spirit
taking up its abode in a position from which it would be difficult to
dislodge it. The funeral feast is held with the idea that the dead can
still partake, but in this case friendly feelings rather than fear
operate. The conclusion is that Animism has played its part in the
shaping of Israel's religion, but that the cruder forms of it were
dropped at a very early age.
The religion of savage tribes is generally found to be polytheistic,
and this is supposed to be one of the earliest stages in the
development of religion. It takes the form of the deification of the
forces of Nature or of striking natural objects, which are worshipped
and generally feared, and is therefore a form of Animism. If the
theories of the critics as to the composition of the early books of
the Bible are correct, we should expect to find that, if any traces
of Polytheism could be detected, they would be carefully obliterated
from the original documents by the latest editor. There are indications
discernible which show that this has been done, for although the
worship of other gods is always severely condemned as the greatest of
sins, yet at the same time we find no clear recognition of the idea of
the One God until the time of the Prophets. The gods of the heathen
are mentioned as if they were real beings who are to be feared. The
evidence for this may be objected to in detail, but the accumulation of
facts does press the reader to the unavoidable conclusion that until
the Prophets, the faith of Israel was Monolatry rather than Monotheism,
that is, the worship of one God rather than the definite belief that He
is the Only God.
The very name for God in the Hebrew language has a plural form
(Elohim), but this is explained by a grammatical custom by which things
of exalted idea are spoken of in the plural, called by grammarians,
_the plural of eminence_. The evidence for Polytheism quoted above
from Gen. xxxi. 19; xxxv. 1-4, might be referred to the introduction
of alien idolatrous practices; but this can hardly be claimed in
the case of the practice mentioned in Lev. xvii. 7, which must be
a reference to the cult of satyrs, or goat-like demons which were
commonly supposed to inhabit the desert, to the discouragement of
which the ceremony mentioned in Lev. xvi. 8, 10, 21 ff, would seem
to be directed. This strange figure called Azazel is not elsewhere
described in the Old Testament, but we learn from the Book of Enoch
that this was the name for the King of the Demons, a kind of _djinn_
who inhabited the wilderness and demanded toll of human life. (In
agreement with what has been said before it will be noticed how this
practice has been absorbed in the ritual of the Tabernacle, but with
a different meaning.) Even the First Commandment does not explicitly
deny the existence of other gods; it merely prohibits their worship
by the Israelites. It may be that this command led to the full
monotheistic belief which we find in men like Isaiah, but that full
conception cannot be fairly read into the First Commandment. Chemosh,
the god of the Amorites, is mentioned in Judges xi. 24, as a real
being who had given the Amorites the possession of their land, even as
Jehovah had given Canaan to the Israelites. In the popular imagination
these heathen gods would remain as real beings probably long after
the monotheistic belief had been held by the more enlightened,
being thought of as demon powers, in much the same way as the early
Christians regarded the gods of Greece and Rome.
When we turn to the evidence from the customs of worship that owe their
origin to heathen ideas, the supposition that the early religion of the
Hebrews was hardly distinguishable from that of the Semitic races finds
a full confirmation.
The most determinative of these ideas is that of the localisation of
the god, who appears only at certain specified places with which he
is inseparably connected. The appearance is generally in some form
more or less human, and the site of the manifestation is either marked
for posterity by the erection of a suitable memorial, in the shape of
a stone or an altar, or else some natural object is taken to be the
actual residence of the god. The god is therefore connected rather
with the land than with the people, and it is this antagonism of the
popular idea with that of the Prophets, who stand for the relation
between Jehovah and Israel as not territorial but covenanted, which is
the key to the history of Israel. Apart from this prevalent idea, which
is in itself a sufficient proof, we have the frequent reference to the
sacredness of certain memorials and objects whose original significance
cannot be hidden from the careful reader. We shall examine first these
objects of reverential regard and then proceed to notice some of the
more outstanding customs whose origin is heathen.
(a) _Sacred Stones._ Throughout the Old Testament we meet with numerous
references to stones or circles that form convenient landmarks or
natural _rendezvous_ for national ceremonies. Adonijah strengthens
his rebellion by a great sacrifice at the stone of Zoheleth--"the
serpent's stone." The extremely important part which the serpent plays
in all Semitic religion and mythology, together with the sacrificial
act at this spot, points to its having been the ancient site of some
idolatrous cult. Many of these sacred stones may have been the shrines
of the Canaanites, and to some of these the invading religion attached
its own meaning. The circle at Gilgal, which is said to commemorate
the crossing of the Jordan, may be an example of this, for there
is some contradiction in the account which refers it to a memorial
erected by Joshua for this purpose (compare Josh. iv. 2-6, 20 ff, with
iv. 9), and it is more than likely that the circle of graven images
mentioned in Judges iii. 19 (R.V. margin) is to be identified with
it. Among this class of sacred objects must be mentioned the obscure
_Mazzebah_, translated in the margin of the Revised Version, "Obelisk."
The use of the Mazzebah is strictly forbidden in Exod. xxxiv. 13, as
one of the idolatrous customs of the former inhabitants of the land,
but in the Eighth Century the Mazzebah is reckoned by Hosea as one
of the essentials of Hebrew worship, as if he knew nothing of this
proscription in the Law (Hosea iii. iv.). These pillars were evidently
used to mark the place of worship, and they are said to have been found
at Shechem, Bethel, Gilgal, Mizpeh, and elsewhere. From their usage in
primitive Semitic religion as well as from their prohibition in Exodus
it can be seen that they had idolatrous significance, and it is thought
that they were rudely carved to resemble the likeness of the god. The
two pillars placed before the temple, called Jachin and Boaz, are
probably connected with the Mazzebah.
(b) _Sacred Trees._ The continual reference to these in the Old
Testament shows that they had some special and sacred significance.
Such are the terebinths of Mamre (Gen. xiii. 18; should be singular
according to the Septuagint), the tamarisk at Beersheba (Gen. xxi. 33),
the palm of Deborah (Judges iv. 5), and the terebinth in Ophrah (Judges
vi. 11). We can understand how to desert peoples trees naturally
stood for objects of thankful reverence, and in the popular mind were
regarded as the special seat and haunt of a deity. That they also
served for the purpose of obtaining oracles may be seen from 2 Sam.
v. 24; with which may be compared the practice of oracular decision
by the rustling of the famous oaks of Delphi. With this species of
tree-worship we must compare the use of the Asherah mentioned as a
sacred symbol in Judges vi. 25; this is expressly forbidden in Exod.
xxxiv. 13, Deut. xvi. 21. It used to be supposed that this was a wooden
symbol of a goddess Asherah, but from the description in the passage
quoted from Deuteronomy, and from Isa. xvii. 8, it would seem to be a
tree-like post, and is more likely to be a remnant of tree worship,
as our own Maypole may be. It came to pass that the tree or tree-like
pole could therefore stand beside any altar as the sign of the presence
of the god, and in the pre-Prophetic religion of Israel this was
transferred to a sign of the presence of Jehovah until the Asherah was
forbidden, in that great attempt to make return to idolatry impossible,
the reform under Josiah.
(c) _Sacred Springs._ A similar origin may be supposed for the
recognised sacredness of springs. From the names given to some of these
it is evident that they were regarded as the special seat of Divine
power, natural enough, as in the case of the trees, to a desert-bred
race and to dwellers in a land which never had too plentiful a supply
of water. The proximity of the spring to an altar or sacred stone
confirms this, as in the case of the stone Zoheleth near the spring
En-rogel, the "spring of the fuller." The name of "En-Mishpat" (Gen.
xiv. 7), "the spring of judgment," would seem to indicate that springs
were used for the purpose of obtaining oracles, but by what signs this
was effected is not known. The name of the spring in Gen. xvi. 14,
where the angel appeared to Hagar, is significant in this connection:
"the well of the living one who seeth me."
In the customs of worship, and in all customs to which there is
attached a definite religious significance, we find analogies in
the heathen religions which show that they must have had a common
origin. Chief among these must be classed the custom of sacrifice.
It is natural, therefore, to find that sacrifice, which has such an
undoubtedly natural explanation in heathen religions as either the food
of the god or a means of propitiation, is nowhere in the Old Testament
explicitly defined as to its intent and meaning. The root idea is,
however, clearly seen in such customs as that of the setting forth of
the Shewbread, however much the meaning may have become spiritualised
by a purer idea of the nature of Jehovah, while in Ezek. xliv. 7, 15,
this seems to be quite explicitly stated. As the conception of Deity
was spiritualised, the idea of material food would doubtless grow too
repugnant to be retained in the bare offering of flesh, and so we get
the burnt-offering, the smoke of which Jehovah can smell. The blood
especially, forms the correct offering, since being the seat of life,
it belongs altogether to God. On the idea of the sacrifice being used
as a propitiation to the Deity, it follows naturally that the more
costly the victim the more acceptable it will be, and of all sacrifices
the most efficacious will be that of a human being. The story of Abram
and Isaac in Gen. xxii. is made to serve as a condemnation of human
sacrifices, but the origin of the story may very well have pointed
the other way, as indeed the first part of the story does; and that
the practice was common may be seen from 2 Kings xvi. 3; xxi. 6; Jer.
vii. 31; xix. 5 (Delete the last words of Jer. xix. 5, as an evident
gloss from vii. 31). True, in these passages human sacrifice is said
to be in express contravention of the will of Jehovah, but no such
comment is added to the story of Jephthah (Judges xi. 30 ff.), while
in Micah vi. 7, the sacrifice of the firstborn is simply classed among
other sacrifices as part of the common idea. A remnant of this horrible
practice is probably to be found in the consecration of the firstborn
to Jehovah, while the legality of human sacrifice is determinative in
the common practice of the "ban," by which all captives were devoted
to Jehovah, and any violation visited by the direst vengeance; as in
the case of Saul and Agag. Another use of the sacrifice was that of
ratifying a covenant by cutting a victim in parts, between which the
contracting parties passed (Gen. xv. 9-17; Jer. xxxiv. 18).
Much the same result will be found from enquiry into the origin of
special feasts and customs that are said to have been instigated at
the express command of Jehovah; for there is evidence which shows that
they were often customs common amongst the heathen, and were only
invested with a new significance by the higher religion of the Hebrews.
Among these it is likely that we must reckon even the Passover, for
the daubing of the lintels is said to be a common heathen practice,
and it will be noticed in support of the pre-Mosaic origin of the
ceremony that at its first mention in Exod. xii. 21, it is called _the_
Passover. The meaning of the Hebrew word translated "Passover" is
also capable of another meaning than that given in the story of its
institution, a meaning which also points to its being the survival of
a Semitic and heathen custom. Similar enquiry into ancient religions
of the Semitic type shows that originally circumcision had no special
religious significance, but was probably a sign of puberty and the
right to marry. As manners softened it became a family rite and there
was no need to postpone it till years of manhood. The practice of
wearing special garments at religious rites is also found in heathen
religions, and still maintains itself in our habit of wearing "Sunday
clothes."
The results of these enquiries are sufficiently startling to those who
have been accustomed to regard the religion of Israel as starting from
some definite act of revelation which ordained these ordinances and
their religious meaning for the first time. But it is common enough
in history to find that customs persist long after their original
significance has been forgotten, and that they are gradually invested
with a meaning more appropriate to the spirit of the age. We are not,
however, shut up to the conclusion, that, because we can trace much of
the wonderful religion of Israel to common causes acting upon heathen
religion, there is no real work of revelation in this gradual progress
from lower to higher stages. It would be quite useless, from the
point of view of this book, to enter on the fruitless discussion as to
whether in the evolution of religion we have to deal with a natural
process or with a supernatural revelation. Is any such antithesis
necessary? Surely the one can come through the other. If revelation is
to reach us it must come through the ordinary processes of our minds;
the recognition that it is from God cannot be authenticated to us by
any miracle or outward authority, but simply by the possibility of the
mind, which God has made, being able to recognise its Maker. It may
be more of a difficulty to others that we should have such erroneous
conceptions of history in a Book that has been regarded as infallible
on these matters. We have to face the fact, from which there is no
escape, that the historian may not have known the origin of the things
of which he wrote, or may have intentionally obscured the fact of the
heathen origin of customs that had become to all pious Israelites
expressions of Jehovah's special revelation to Israel. If we are going
to call this fraud, then it means that we are going to force on that
early age a conception of historical accuracy which it certainly did
not possess, and which, as a matter of fact, is only a late demand of
the human mind. And after all, there was truth in this reference of all
their religion to the revelation of Jehovah. It witnesses to the fact
that behind even the crudest religion there is something which defies
explanation, and that we have in heathen religions the slow dawning
consciousness of God within man's soul. In Israel these things never
stood still. That central idea of the localisation of Jehovah grew
too small to contain the widening conception of Him as it was evolved
through reflection and national experience, until the Prophets burst
forth with the proclamation that He was the God of the whole earth, and
His relation to Israel not tribal or territorial, but moral, and only
to be maintained by righteousness and true holiness.
MOSAISM
The reader is recommended to make a careful study of the following
passages, which are among the most important adduced by the critics
as evidence for the non-Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch.
(1) Mosaic authorship is never claimed for the Pentateuch as a
whole. Only in certain places is it noted that Moses wrote down
special things (Exod. xvii. 14; xxiv. 4; xxxiv. 27; Num. xxxiii.
2; Deut. xxxi. 9, 22, 24). Moses is consistently spoken of in the
third person, and it is hardly likely that this is a style purposely
adopted, or the statement of Num. xii. 3 would be extraordinary in
the circumstances. Obviously the last chapter of Deuteronomy was not
written by him, nor is the common opinion that it was added by Joshua
at all probable, for there is no difference in style from the rest
of the book discernible, and, moreover, Dan is referred to (Deut.
xxxiv. 1; cp. also Gen. xiv. 14), which was not so named until after
the conquest. (Josh. xix. 47; Judges xviii. 29.) Would Moses need to
authenticate his history of contemporaneous events by quoting from
what are regarded as ancient books: from the Book of the Wars of
Jehovah (Num. xxi. 14), wars which could have only just commenced, or
from the poem which refers to the victory over Sihon (Num. xxi. 27
ff.), which took place at the very end of the forty years' wandering?
(2) The standpoint as a whole is that of an age later than Moses.
The remark in Gen. xxxvi. 31 can only have had any meaning in the
age of David when Edom was in submission to Israel. A late date is
also needed for the following passages: Gen. xii. 6; xiii. 7; xxxiv.
7 ("in Israel"! cp. Judges xx. 10; 2 Sam. xiii. 12); Lev. xviii.
27; Deut. ii. 12; iv. 38. In fact, the whole geographical outlook
is that of an inhabitant of Western Palestine, as may be seen from
the use of the term "Seaward" to indicate the west, and of "Negeb,"
or the desert land, for the south. These terms are used even in the
description of the Tabernacle, which, if taken from the site of Mount
Sinai, would be altogether wrong and meaningless. Compare Num. xxii.
1; xxxiv. 15; Deut. i. 1, 5; iii. 8; iv. 41, 46, 49: "beyond the
Jordan," showing clearly that the writer's position is in Palestine,
west of the Jordan.
(3) There is no trace in the history of any observance of the
Levitical ritual until after the exile; the day of atonement, the
sin-offering, the high-priest, all are unheard of until this date.
Nor can it be claimed that it was the ignorance of the common people,
or their apostasy, that was responsible for this condition of things.
The great leaders of the various reformations are apparently also
quite ignorant that none but a priest could sacrifice, and none but a
Levite take charge of the ark. Samuel, who was not a Levite, sleeps
beside the ark and offers sacrifice. Elijah does nothing to recall
the people to the ritual of Leviticus.
(4) The conclusion is that, while later ages were right in
attributing to Moses the founding of their religion and some of
their ritual, all the accumulation of law, which had only been the
growth of many centuries, has been placed to his credit. What the
actual contribution of Moses was it is now impossible to say, but the
original of the Ten Words and of the Book of the Covenant (Exod. xx.
2-xxiii. 33) may well go back to that age, as may be seen from the
relative simplicity of the laws and rules. For example, compare the
simple regulations for the altar in Exod. xx. 24 with the elaborate
altar described in Exod. xxvii. 1-8.
Lecture III
MOSAISM
The national consciousness of Israel goes back to a series of
remarkable events in which the nation was born, and which are too
deeply graven on the mind of the people to be mere legends without
historical foundation. These events are the deliverance from the
bondage in Egypt and the great covenant made with Jehovah at Sinai. The
indispensable personal centre, round which these events revolve, is
that of the great national leader, Moses. The fact that, outside the
Pentateuch and the closely connected Book of Joshua, little is known
of the work of Moses until after the exile, has given rise to doubts
concerning his historical reality. If we take the writings of the Old
Testament that are contemporary with the period they describe, there
stand out in indisputable primacy the writings of the great literary
Prophets. To these modern criticism has rightly turned to discover the
opinions, customs, and religion, prevailing in the Eighth Century; and
it is claimed that by these writings we can test the historical value
of the Pentateuch, and of the other historical books. Now it must be
admitted that in the pre-exilic Prophets the mention of Moses is less
frequent than we should expect from the position which is claimed for
him in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The
Prophets do appeal with one consent to the original covenant of Jehovah
with Israel, to the fulfilment of which they would recall the nation;
but only rarely is the name of Moses associated with that covenant.
There are only four references to Moses in the Prophets before the
exile (Hosea xii. 13--Moses not actually named; Micah vi. 4; Jer.
xv. 1; Isa. lxiii. 12--reckoned post-exilic by critics), and in none
of these is Moses referred to as a law-giver, but as a prophet and
national deliverer. We have to come to Prophets writing after the exile
to find any reference to the legislative work of Moses (Mal. iv. 4;
Dan. ix. 11-13). The purpose of the prophetic writings is moral rather
than historical, and this forbids putting more evidential weight upon
this argument from silence than it will bear; but in face of their
continual appeal to the covenant of Sinai, this silence is at least
significant. Evidently Moses was not a name to conjure with in their
age. (Compare Jer. xxxi. 31, 32, where the mention of the name of Moses
would have been most natural.)
We have, on these and other grounds, to disregard the later idea
that Moses was the only law-giver of Israel and the author of the
Pentateuch, although the fact that the later legislation could only
find sanction as it was included under his name, points to him as
in some way the initiator of Israel's great Code of Laws. While in
addition to this, it must be admitted that a great deal of the story
of his life is due to the growth of legend, there is no need to regard
the figure of Moses as entirely mythical. The events by which a motley
crowd of serfs became a nation and covenanted themselves to an almost
new religion not only need for their explanation a great interpreter,
but also a great leader; and this demand and need Moses fills. We may
therefore safely regard Moses as one of the great Founders of Religion.
We have now to enquire how much of the marvellous story of his life can
be safely reckoned as history. The document which gives the earliest,
and therefore the most trustworthy, story of his life is dated by the
critics in the Ninth Century, although it is not denied that it may,
and probably does, go back for its material to a much earlier period.
This document, known to the critics as "J," owes its origin to early
prophetic influence. In this document, as might be expected from the
analogy in similar cases (compare the absence of the birth stories in
Mark), the story of the birth and finding of Moses is omitted; it is
probably nothing more than an effort to find a popular explanation
of his name, as derived from _Mashah_, "to draw out." A much more
likely origin of the name is found by modern scholars in the Egyptian
word for "son" (_Mesu_). The important thing to be noticed is that in
this early document he appears first of all in Midian, although there
are indications which show that it is known that he had previously
been in Egypt. Here, alone in the wilderness, or in intercourse with
the strange Bedawin who still inhabit that region, there came to him
a revelation of Jehovah and the call to deliver Israel from their
bondage. He returned to Egypt with a message at once religious and
national. He calls upon the Israelites to leave Egypt and to seek
a covenant with Jehovah at His shrine at Sinai. During a plague,
the passage of the Red Sea was effected under conditions that were
interpreted to be due to the direct intervention of Jehovah; and, the
returning tide cutting off the pursuing Egyptians who challenged their
flight, the Israelites stood delivered from their enemies and their
first trust in Jehovah was vindicated. It is not for us to enquire
into the exact causes which proved so favourable to the Israelites and
so disastrous to the Egyptians; we only need to know that they were
interpreted religiously. Then around Mount Sinai, with its impressive
solitude and its awful storms, Moses gathered the people, imparted
the secret of the new worship, made a solemn covenant by which the
people of Israel became for ever the people of Jehovah, and probably
laid down some rudiments of legislation fitted for their primitive and
nomadic condition. This much at least the after history demands as the
irreducible minimum.
If this is at all an accurate view of the founding of the religion of
Jehovah, then we are faced with the phenomenon of a nation practically
adopting a new religion. We do not ignore "revelation" when we feel
compelled to seek for natural causes which might prepare the way for
this event; and this we may attempt by an enquiry into the meaning of
the name "Jehovah."
It should be noted at the outset that "Jehovah" is a personal name,
like that of Zeus or Poseidon, conveying the idea of some aspect of
deity. The meaning of the name is exceedingly obscure. The general
name for deity common to all Semites, and therefore belonging to the
undivided primitive stock, is "El," meaning either "the Mighty One" or,
and more in accord with Semitic conceptions of God, "the Leader." The
meaning of the name "Jehovah" is difficult to discover, because in the
first place the exact pronunciation of the word has been lost, probably
beyond recovery.
The word "Jehovah" is a hybrid compound, and as a matter of fact was
never used as a name for God until the Reformation. We can be certain
only that the consonants of the word were _JHVH_ (or _YHWH_, Hebrew
pronunciation). This extraordinary state of things is accounted for
by the fact that for centuries the Hebrew Scriptures were "unpointed"
or unvocalised--that is, the consonants only were written and the
necessary connecting vowels were taught orally, and only retained in
the memory for use when the Scriptures were read aloud. When in the
Ninth Century A.D. it was likely that the pronunciation of the sacred
language would be entirely forgotten, a device for its preservation
was made whereby the vowel pronunciation was indicated by means of
"points" placed chiefly underneath the consonantal text; very much like
the dots and dashes used for vowels in Pitman's system of shorthand.
When, however, it came to the "pointing" of JHVH, it was found that
the pronunciation of this word had been entirely lost. Reverence for
the name of God had become so exaggerated that, in reading aloud from
the Scriptures, wherever the sacred name occurred another word had
always been substituted. This word was one of respect, but of less
marked exaltation--_Adonai_, equal to our word "Lord." The only course
open to the punctuators was that of inserting under the consonants
JHVH, the vowels (with suitable euphonic modifications) of the word
_Adonai_, with the result that we get the conflate "Jehovah," a word
which has become invested with so much solemnity to our ears, but
which was certainly not the right pronunciation, and which has never
been used by the Jews. Scholars have endeavoured, at present without
any universally accepted result, to recover the lost pronunciation
by linguistic enquiries, with the desire to discover what the word
originally meant, in the hope that it would throw some light on the
origin of the religion founded by Moses. In Exod. iii. 13 ff. (R. V.
margin) we have the traditional explanation of the word, an explanation
which is not altogether satisfactory from a grammatical point of
view; the great Hebraist Ewald goes so far as to pronounce it highly
artificial. It has been objected that the man who wrote this account,
about 750 B.C., surely understood his own language. Probably; but that
is not to say that he understood the etymology of it, for etymology is
a new science, and has upset many popular derivations in the case of
our own language. If the explanation given in Exodus is correct, and
we cannot with certainty put anything much better in its place, then
the meaning of the word "Jehovah" would be "He that is," perhaps an
equivalent in Hebrew form to the Western idea of "The Eternal." Only
one of the numerous guesses as to the meaning of the original name
need be quoted here: that the word comes from a verb, _hawah_, meaning
either "to fall," or "to blow." Similar ideas would seem to account
for either of these meanings. "He who blows," looks like the name for
the Tempest God, while "that which falls" has been taken to indicate a
fallen meteorite, which may have been preserved as a symbol of Jehovah.
When we remember the thunderstorms at Sinai, and the common belief that
thunder was a special theophany of Jehovah, these ideas are not to be
hastily dismissed as altogether incredible. Nor should we be prevented
from considering such an idea from the prejudice that it would make
the origin of the religion of Israel a piece of Nature-worship and
superstition. God has taken man where He has found him, and none can
dare to define the limits of childish and crude conceptions within
which the Spirit of God can begin His work in man's mind.
The conclusion derived from the examination of the meaning of the name
"Jehovah" must therefore remain open until some further light is thrown
on the subject. (Scholars usually adopt the pronunciation, _Yahwe_, as
our nearest approach to the original.)
An endeavour has been made to discover the origin of the religion of
Israel from the persistent connection of Jehovah with the locality of
Mount Sinai. This idea continues long after in the Promised Land (Deut.
xxxiii. 2; Judges v. 5), and Elijah takes a long journey back to the
sacred spot, presumably to get into closer touch with Jehovah (1 Kings
xix.). With the prevailing beliefs of that age in the localisation of
the god, this connection must be thought of as of more than accidental
significance. It is fair to assume that the seat of Jehovah at Sinai
must have been known before the great covenant, and is indeed required
by the narrative itself (Exod. iii.; iv. 27), while recent discoveries
are said to prove that the traditional Sinai must have been a sacred
place from the earliest times. Moses, however, is clearly represented
as coming to know of Jehovah during his stay in Midian. The exact means
of the revelation is said to have been the sight of a bush on fire, yet
miraculously unconsumed. What actually lies behind this story--whether
it is a creation of the religious imagination which sees "every common
bush afire with God"--it is useless for us to try and discover. A
natural explanation has been sought in the fact that Jethro, the
Kenite, was the priest of Midian, and presumably of some shrine of
Jehovah. Certainly Jethro knew the name of Jehovah, but apparently only
regarded Him as one of the gods, until the marvellous deliverance of
the Exodus proved Him to be the greatest of gods (Exod. xviii. 9-11).
Jethro performs an act of sacrifice to Jehovah, in the presence of
Aaron and the elders, that looks remarkably like an act of initiation
by which Israel are introduced to the worship of Jehovah by the regular
priest of the shrine (Exod. xviii. 12). The hypothesis is further
strengthened by the fact that the Kenites are found later dwelling
in Palestine (Judges i. 16), and are always remembered long after as
the friends of the Israelites (1 Sam. xv. 6; xxvii. 10; xxx. 29). The
inference from this is that Moses first learned of Jehovah from his
father-in-law Jethro, but that he understood more of the character
of Jehovah than Jethro, and by his superior religious consciousness
conceived of Him as in some way Supreme who to Jethro had been only one
of the desert gods.
This theory would certainly be strengthened if Sinai could be
identified, not with the traditional site of _Jebel Musa_ in the
southern part of the Sinaitic peninsula, but with some spot in the land
of Midian, across the gulf of Akaba. This does indeed seem necessary
from the narrative, for from the most natural interpretation of Exod.
iii. 1, Horeb, the mount of God, was in Midian. It is generally taken
for granted that Horeb and Sinai are identical; the respective names
are used by different documents. It is said that, for some reasons,
Midian would fit in with the record of the journey through the
wilderness better than the Sinaitic peninsula. If the parallelism of
Sinai with Seir in Deut. xxxiii. 2 can be taken to show identity, as is
natural, we have a further confirmation, for Seir is in Midian.
The grave difficulty of all this is that it would make the religion
of Jehovah a distinct importation. Is such a thing as its reception by
the Hebrews credible on this account? The idea of a nation changing
its religion is certainly repugnant to the Semitic mind (Jer. ii. 10,
11), and some more natural connection seems necessary, both from the
narrative and from general considerations. Now the narrative hints that
the religion was not entirely new (Exod. vi. 3), but was known to the
Patriarchs under different forms; while the sanctity of Sinai would
seem to have been already known to some of the tribes (Exod. iv. 27).
There is nothing here definite enough for us to proceed to historical
certainty, but it is fair to suppose that the shrine at Sinai was
known to the Patriarchs in their wanderings, and that Jehovah would be
worshipped; as would any other local god whose territory they happened
to be in. Grant that this was partly known to the Hebrew slaves in
Egypt; that Moses received the revelation of the power of Jehovah in
his exile in Midian, and by a splendid leap of inspiration identified
the actual shrine and the Person of Jehovah with the Mighty Spirit
dimly known to the Patriarchs, and we have an explanation that is
natural and is also true; for the Object of man's worship has been One
through all history. When the successful passage of the Red Sea and
the defeat of the Egyptians were interpreted by Moses as the direct
intervention of Jehovah, the transition to the great covenant is made
possible. All this may be very contrary to the traditional idea of how
Moses received the revelation of Jehovah, but the facts do point this
way; and it is not for us to deny that the Spirit of God could work
through these natural events and through the mind of this commanding
personality, and so bring about this identification of Jehovah and the
Great Spirit of the Patriarchal thought, which was to lead to such
great results for religion.
We are now free to investigate what the character of the religion
introduced by Moses actually was.
(1) _General Character._ A careful examination of its character shows
that while it is by no means identical with the religion taught by the
Prophets, and while it retained many heathen ideas and customs, yet it
contained within itself the promise and guarantee of development. We
have already had occasion to notice that it is not pure Monotheism.
Jehovah is not the only God; He is the only God for Israel. The heathen
deities are still regarded as having a real existence. Neither can it
be called a purely spiritual religion, for Jehovah is rather said to
have a spirit than to be a spirit; He has a form which, though terrible
in its effect on the beholder, by reason of its glory, can nevertheless
be seen; He inhabits a special place, which is His sacred territory,
and on this Moses stumbles all unwittingly in Midian.
Still more emphatically against the idea of a purely spiritual religion
is the fact--which the editors have done their best to hide, but
not successfully--that images of some kind were allowed, or existed
unreproved. The Ephod, of which we hear so often, was evidently at
one time an idol. The meaning of the word is of something "covered,"
as may be seen from Isa. xxx. 22, where the feminine form of the word
(_aphuddah_) is used of the gold plating of images; but according to
a later idea (Exod. xxviii. 6-14), the Ephod formed part of the dress
of the High Priest, and was a kind of embroidered waistcoat. This
explanation, however, does violence to a number of passages where
the Ephod is mentioned. Gideon expended seventeen hundred shekels of
gold on an Ephod which he "set up" in Ophrah (Jud. viii. 26 f.); this
cannot be a waistcoat. Only the explanation that the Ephod was an image
can do justice to the reference in Judges xvii. 5, and it suits the
passage in 1 Sam. xxi. 9, if we think of the sword hanging behind an
image. If the ephod was nothing more than a waistcoat by which lots
were determined, we have to explain why it is so sharply condemned
in Judges viii. 27, and why the text of 1 Sam. xiv. 18, which in the
Septuagint reads "ephod," in the Hebrew text has been altered to read
"ark"; an alteration which is quite impossible here, as the ark was at
this time in Kirjath Jearim, and, moreover, was never used for the
purpose of obtaining oracles. (The only explanation is that some scribe
has made this alteration because he knew that there was something
idolatrous about the ephod.) Even as late as Hosea (iii. 4) we find
the ephod mentioned in a connection where it can only stand for an
object of idolatrous worship. It is certainly strange that the same
name should be in use for an image, and then later for a garment of the
high-priest; but the likely explanation of this is that the image was
at one time clothed with a dress, as was usual (Jer. x. 9), and that
in the pockets of this the lots were kept. When the use of the image
became offensive the garment was retained as part of the high-priest's
dress. The transition is made more natural if we can suppose that the
Priest of the Oracle, in the early days, was accustomed to put on the
garment of the image, under the customary idea that thus the divine
knowledge of the idol would be communicated to him. In 2 Kings xviii.
4, we read of _Nehushtan_, the brazen serpent which Moses had made,
being used idolatrously; but perhaps this has been wrongly ascribed to
Moses. From the intimate connection of bull-worship with the worship
of Jehovah, it would seem that the bull was regarded as a symbol of
Jehovah; a similar idea may have instituted Aaron's golden calf.
While admitting the force of this evidence, we must still keep open
the possibility that the religion instituted by Moses was of a purer
type, but was never strong enough to drive out the remnants of heathen
practice.
More indisputable evidence of the materialistic conception of the
Person of Jehovah is found in the reverence paid to what is known as
"the ark of Jehovah," the making of which is certainly ascribed to
Moses. The name "the ark of the covenant," was not the original name
given to the ark, but is taken from the incident recorded in Deut. x.
1-5. The idea that the ark was built to contain the tables of the Law
does not appear until the time of Deuteronomy, and is quite unknown to
the older strata of the Pentateuch. In these older strata all mention
of the actual making of the ark is omitted, although there is evidence
that they did contain an account of its preparation and meaning.
Enough, however, is told us of the reverential treatment of it, to show
that it was a symbol of higher sanctity than a mere receptacle for the
stones of the law would be likely to be. It is certainly very closely
identified with Jehovah Himself, as may be seen from Num. x. 35. (This
is in poetic form, and is therefore likely to be a very early fragment.
It should be noticed that the ark apparently starts of itself.) Its
presence in the battlefield ensures victory, while its absence brings
about defeat (Num. xiv. 42-45; 1 Sam. iv. 3-7; v. 1 ff.). It can hardly
be that the ark was taken for Jehovah Himself, but it must have
contained something that was closely identified with Jehovah; a box
is not built except with the idea of holding something. We have seen
that it is unlikely that that something was originally the two tables
of the law; was it something else of stone which made the transference
to the tables of the law at once necessary and natural? Was it a stone
image of Jehovah? It has been conjectured that it may have contained
meteoritic stones, which would agree with the proposed derivation of
"Jehovah" from the Storm God of Sinai. There is nothing in the Old
Testament which gives any support to these conjectures, but in face
of the fact that the original narrative of the making of the ark has
been omitted, and in view of the ideas of religion which were common
in that period, we cannot say that they are absolutely excluded from
consideration. The ark was certainly bound up with the idea of war, and
would seem to have been kept in a soldier's tent. It was transferred to
the dark inner temple till 586 B.C., and from that date all trace of it
is lost. The Priest's Code ("P") makes provision for it in the second
temple, but we have unimpeachable Jewish testimony that the shrine of
the inner temple was absolutely empty (Josephus, _War of the Jews_, v.
v. § 5). Jeremiah may have been aware of the original significance of
the ark as tending towards idolatry, and hence his words in Jer. iii.
16.
(2) _Ordinances of Worship._ It remains for us to enquire into the
character of the religion founded by Moses by an examination of some of
the outstanding ordinances that regulated the idea of worship.
Here the traditional ascription of the fully developed ritual of the
Book of Leviticus to Moses has to be set aside, on the consideration
that we have no record of its observance until late in the period of
the monarchy, and from then it can be traced as a gradual growth of
custom and ideal until its complete observance after the Exile.
There does not seem to have been any priesthood of the exclusive
Levitical order founded by Moses. The story of the Levites in Exod.
xxxii. can only be a late story, for there is no record of their
monopoly of the ritual service until the Reform under Josiah:
Joshua, an Ephraimite, is the "servant of the tent"; Samuel, also an
Ephraimite, sleeps beside the ark (1 Sam. iii. 3); David and Solomon
assume a kind of chief priesthood (2 Sam. vi. 13; 1 Kings viii. 5, 62
ff.), and of course neither of them were Levites. The story in Judges
xvii. gives what is perhaps the true position of the Levites: anyone
could be consecrated as a family priest, but the presence of a Levite
was reckoned propitious. Down to a very late age sacrifice seems to
have remained largely a tribal or family act, and although a descendant
of Moses' tribe (Levi) was regarded as possessing special advantage,
there was no law by which Levites alone were reckoned capable of
discharging priestly functions.
In the matter of sacrifice, it would seem that Moses simply adopted
what was a very ancient and common practice. In face of the evident
neglect of the Levitical ritual in matters of sacrifice, both by
the common people and by such great reformers as Samuel and Elijah,
together with the fact that in the teaching of the prophets doubts are
cast on its divine origin (Isa. i. 11; Amos v. 25; Micah vi. 6-8),
we cannot infer that the detailed and explicit commands concerning
sacrifice found in the Book of Leviticus are the work of Moses,
or belong to an early age. To the Prophets, sacrifice is always
reminiscent of paganism. The time when the change came in may be
detected in the different value given to sacrifice by the post-exilic
prophets (Mal. i. 13 f.), while the incompatibility of the two views,
prophetic and priestly, can be seen from the addition which has been
made to Ps. li., to bring it into accord with the later view.
Neither is it possible for us to believe that the elaborate shrine
known as the Tabernacle owed its existence to Moses. The impossibility
of transporting the cumbrous fixtures through the wilderness had been
noticed before the modern era of critical study. A close examination
of the details of construction shows that it is nothing more than an
ideal projection from the mind of a priestly writer who believed that
a tent-like counterpart of Ezekiel's temple was essential to Israel's
worship in the wilderness. It is enough to recall that the tabernacle
of the priestly writer's imagination is quite unknown to the historical
books. In Exod. xxxiii. 7 ff., which may be seen to be only a fragment
of an early document, since it starts abruptly by describing "the"
tent, which is known as the Tent of Meeting, we have what has been
taken to be the Tabernacle; but it is nothing more than a tent for
keeping the ark in.
(3) _Legislation._ How much of the legislation of the Pentateuch is
to be ascribed to Moses we cannot tell. Too many hands have been at
work on it for the original to be discovered. A remarkable discovery
was made in the year 1901 of some enormous _steles_, which bear in
cuneiform characters what is now known as the Code of Hammurabi, the
oldest code of laws in the world, the date of which is reckoned to
be 2250 B.C. They presuppose an advanced state of civilisation and
morality existing in the Euphrates valley at that period. The agreement
between the Pentateuchal Code and the Code of Hammurabi argues
dependence of the former on the latter to a very considerable extent,
and supplies a still further testimony to the extent to which the
religion of Israel is indebted to Babylon. The exact bearing of this
discovery upon critical theories, and especially upon the date of the
Pentateuch has perhaps hardly been estimated yet; it does not, however,
refute the theory which denies that the Pentateuch as it stands is from
the hand of Moses.
We naturally think of the Decalogue as the work of Moses, but here
we are faced by the difficulty that the Decalogue appears to exist
in three recensions (Exod. xx. 1-17; xxxiv. 14-28; Deut. v. 6-21).
The account in Exod. xxxiv., which forms part of the document "J," is
reckoned to be the oldest of these, and the original of this might well
go back to the time of Moses. It has been objected that the Decalogue
is too ethical to suit the time of Moses, but is this not because we
are inclined to read into the Ten Commandments far more than is to be
found there? It can be shown that they are little more than ten laws
of "rights." A special difficulty is found in ascribing the second
commandment to this age, in view of its frequent uncensured breach;
but perhaps there is some difference that escapes us between a molten
image, which is prescribed in the first draft (Exod. xxxiv. 17), and
the later prohibition of the graven image (Exod. xx. 4).
In the foregoing examination we have allowed for the most rigorous
demands of advanced criticism, demands which may have to be modified
as criticism becomes more of a science, but there remains the need to
discover what there was, on these critical assumptions, in the Mosaic
religion that provided the way for a further advance into the faith
which became the glory of Israel. What is it that makes the difference
between Mosaism and the heathen Semitic religions, a difference which
was to make the gradual growth of a pure Monotheism possible?
The first important element which needs to be reckoned with is that it
was a religion of choice rather than a religion of nature. We saw that
it was difficult to conceive how the religion of Jehovah could have
been adopted by Israel unless there had been some previous contact.
What is so difficult to understand is nevertheless the one element
that contained the possibility of progress. The relation of Israel to
Jehovah was neither by physical descent nor through the connection of
the god with the land, as with the heathen Semitic religions. Jehovah
was at first conceived of as the God of the tribe only, but even
this was not by nature, but by His gracious choice. Their land was
given to them by Jehovah, but His natural connection was with a far
distant shrine. This fact in itself must have rendered necessary some
more spiritual conception of His habitation, and, though hard enough
for the common people to realise, when they entered Canaan and found
a full-grown cultus and religion in connection with the god of the
land already in possession, it was this fact upon which the Prophets
fastened and which could not be denied: the religion of Jehovah was a
matter of choice and not of racial or local connection. That choice
had been ratified by solemn covenant, to which the Prophets appealed.
The relation between Jehovah and Israel depended therefore on the
conditions of the covenant being faithfully kept. When we compare the
religions of the other Semites, which made the relation of the god
and his people one which nothing could break, and from which neither
the god nor the people could escape, we can see how this difference
constituted one of the ethical germs of the religion which was destined
to grow into fuller power and life.
There was another important conception, which was intensified by the
fact that the religion of Jehovah was a religion of choice: that of
the jealousy of Jehovah. This was often interpreted, especially in
the pre-prophetic period, in a very crude and in even a cruel way.
The jealousy of Jehovah was very like the human passion: uncertain,
arbitrary and irrational, manifesting itself according to the popular
mind in outbreaks of fury for ceremonial mistakes, or for causes even
less comprehensible (Num. iii. 4; 2 Sam. vi. 7). In all the religions
it was thought to be a serious thing to depart from the allegiance
to the rightful god, and sure to lay one open to his jealousy and
vengeance; but something more is now found in this idea as it develops
in Hebrew thought: it is that the jealousy of Jehovah is due to the
great difference between Him and the other gods, a difference which
came to be recognised as one of character. Something of this must go
back to Moses himself.
This difference is also expressed in the idea that He is a God of
righteousness. The word "righteousness" does not always have in
the Hebrew Scriptures the absolute meaning which it has for us. It
was rather equal to our word "rights," which we often employ quite
unethically. Jehovah was one who gave right judgments when questions
were submitted and answered by the lot, and One who brought victory
to the right. It was undoubtedly Israel's right that was chiefly
considered, but there was hidden in it an ethical germ which was to
bring forth notable fruit when man's sense of right was widened.
This at least was the mark of the new religion which Moses impressed on
the people, impressed with such a force that it could never be quite
forgotten. It had new thoughts pregnant with meaning for the mind of
man and for the future of religion, and these became the fulcrum of the
Prophets' appeal. From the bosom of this people was to come forth One
who was to reveal the Father as perfectly righteous and impartial, and
who demands for His service a righteousness that must far exceed that
of the straitest observers of external religion.
It would be easy for us to despise this day of small beginnings, or
to refuse to see in it any real revelation of God at all. Doubtless
this enquiry may necessitate a change in our conceptions of the work
of Moses, but it is one that we are forced to by a multitude of facts,
and we must find a theory of inspiration wide enough to fit them. Crude
as we may make the beginnings of Israel's faith, natural as we may
feel are the laws by which it worked towards its growth, we have not
been able to get any nearer to some of those ultimate questions which
ask how religion begins, what the nature of revelation is, and how it
comes to man's mind. We need not think that God had to break in on the
mind of Moses, so that the personality of the man was in abeyance while
God worked through him. When God wishes to bring men to a higher truth
He does not supernaturally communicate it; He makes human nature to
produce personalities whose minds come naturally to the truth. There
can be no separation of natural and supernatural here; wherever that
separation is to be made, we certainly cannot make it. There can be
no meaning in revelation, and no possibility of it, unless God has
made man's mind to be growingly in touch with Him and to be capable of
receiving His revelation by the natural working of thought, so that it
seems to spring up within his own consciousness.
Deeper into this question we are not called upon to go at present, but
no one can object that it is less reverent, or that it shows signs of a
decay of faith, if men can see God to-day not only in the extraordinary
and the supernatural, but also in the ordinary and the natural. If the
recognition of God depends on spiritual vision, then those who refuse
to narrow the limits within which God can be seen, and who therefore
welcome all truth with gladness and without fear, are not to be called
godless and unspiritual.
We should learn to be thankful for Moses, for he was faithful as far as
he knew; if we were as faithful in proportion to the fuller light which
has come to us, religion would be a very real and inclusive thing. We
should also learn to take heart, if from these beginnings such mighty
movements have sprung. The mistakes inevitable to the human mind do not
destroy the possibility of revelation, the error cannot everlastingly
obscure the truth, nor in the long run will evil triumph over good.
It was possible in that far off age, it was possible in all ages, it
is possible now, for a mind still far from the true conception of the
ultimate nature of God to yet grasp something, and by a supreme faith
in the leading of a Mighty Power to lift a whole nation, and through it
the world, one stage further on in goodness and truth.
THE INFLUENCE OF CANAAN
As an introduction to Lecture IV. the reader is advised to make a
careful study of Judges i. 1-ii. 5, a mutilated fragment of a very
early and reliable account of the invasion of Canaan. The opening
words (verse 1) refer the events which follow to the period after
the death of Joshua; but the Book of Joshua has already recorded
the complete conquest of Canaan, so that there can be no place for
this further invasion on a far less ambitious plan, and apparently
with less successful results. It will be noticed, however, that
this account easily falls away from the main body of the narrative;
Judges ii. 6 follows naturally after Joshua xxiv. 28, and ignores
what comes between. We have, therefore, in this account another
history of the conquest of Canaan, which contradicts altogether the
impression--which we get from reading the Book of Joshua--that the
conquest of Canaan was effected by the tribes acting in unison, that
it was complete, and that the conquered were exterminated; it records
a movement of tribes acting independently, there is no "conquest" in
the ordinary sense of the term, but a footing is obtained alongside
the original inhabitants of the land.
This account of a gradual immigration of tribes is confirmed by the
discovery of inscriptions, which seem to show that there were some
tribes of the Hebrews in Palestine before the traditional date of the
Conquest, and even before the Exodus.
Until quite lately the history of Egypt has thrown no light on these
events. It has not even been possible to identify with any certainty
the Pharaoh under whom the Exodus took place. One identification
is now fairly certain. The Pharaoh who enslaved the Israelites was
Rameses III., for discoveries have proved that it was he who built
Pithom (Exod. i. 11); the Exodus has therefore been referred to
the reigns of Merneptah or Seti II., his immediate successors. The
objection to this is that in these reigns both the peninsula of
Sinai and the land of Palestine were under full Egyptian control,
and therefore the Exodus must be put later on, when this control
slackened. This would bring the Exodus to the date of 1200-1180 B.C.
and the Conquest some fifty years later.
The latest discoveries tend to throw this result into confusion.
Names, which it is proposed to identify with tribes of the
Israelites, have been found in inscriptions belonging to earlier
reigns. On an inscription of Rameses II. the name of Asher is found
as dwelling in North Palestine. In a list of Thotmes III. (still
earlier, Sixteenth Century, B.C.) we find the names Jacob and Joseph
in the significant combination, Jacob-el and Joseph-el, used to
describe the Dan-Ephraim district of Palestine. This makes it more
likely that the Tel-el-Amarna tablets (dated Fourteenth Century,
B.C.) refer to the Hebrews. In these letters, addressed to Amenophis
IV., the King of Jerusalem appeals for help against an invasion of
the _Habiri_, who are led by Abd Ashera. The invasion is not by a
large force, as may be seen from the fact that it is thought thirty
or forty Egyptian soldiers will be sufficient for the purpose of
resisting their attacks. More certain than any of these references
is the occurrence of the name of Israel on a Stele of Merneptah,
in connection with a recital of his triumphs in Syria. The form in
which this reference is made leaves no doubt that, by this period,
Israel was already settled in Palestine. ("Israel is laid waste,
its corn is annihilated.") There is no confirmation of a Syrian
campaign under Merneptah, and it may be that in accordance with the
fashion of the age, he is including among his victories the exploits
of his predecessors; this would agree with the earlier date for the
occupation of Canaan by Israel which the previous references seem to
require.
The exact bearing of these discoveries has yet to be determined, but
they either require us to put the date of the Exodus earlier, which
would in itself be difficult, or, what would bring light on many
problems, assume that not all the tribes were in bondage in Egypt,
and that the invasion of Canaan by various tribes, only long after
welded into a nation, was spread over a long period.
Lecture IV
THE INFLUENCE OF CANAAN
If the nation of Israel may be said to have been born in captivity,
baptised in the Red Sea, and awakened to national consciousness at
Mount Sinai, then the settlement in Canaan corresponds to the no
less critical period of adolescence, when, training and tutelage
being over, youth must choose its own path and fight its way in the
world. Certain it is that the entrance into Canaan largely determined
the future of this people, for it must have profoundly modified the
national character, turning as it did nomadic tribes into a settled and
civilised people; but above all, and what more concerns us, it proved
extremely critical for the fate of that as yet untried revelation of
Jehovah, which had still to win its way against the heathenism of
the common people, and was now by this new experience called upon to
measure its strength against the attraction of a competing faith.
The peculiar and pathetic love of the Jews for Canaan is largely due to
the remembrance that it was not their own land but the long promised
gift of Jehovah, standing therefore to all time as the material proof
of His love for Israel; while their estimate of it was intensely
deepened by the wilderness experience which preceded. That estimate
seems to us somewhat exaggerated, for to-day Palestine has almost given
up the struggle against the always threatening advance of the desert.
It has certainly changed for the worse under neglect and misrule, but
it can never have been a too indulgent land; only comparison with the
bare and awful desert can have called forth the description, "a land
flowing with milk and honey." With the long memory of restless nomadic
life and the bitter thought of bondage, any land would seem welcome
that offered them freedom and safety; while to those approaching it
from the desert it seemed as fair and fruitful a land as men could
desire.
All lands have contributed largely to the character of the nations they
have reared, and the wilderness ancestry and the character of Canaan
have played their part in the development of Israel.
The very geographical position of Canaan helps us to understand the
Hebrews, and even to see how it was that in this land it was possible
to nurture from such unpromising beginnings the wonderful development
of religion that was to make this smallest of all lands one of the most
sacred spots on earth, and this strange and limited people among the
greatest contributors to the moral and religious ideas of humanity.
Crushed in between the sea and the desert, hemmed in by great military
powers, the little buffer state itself the very crossways of East and
West, its roads never long at rest from the tramp of armies; here was
a land in which all dreams of fame and empire were hammered out, and
nothing left possible save an empire of spiritual power and the fame of
a unique religion. A people strangely proud and passionately exclusive,
they could never rest under the dominion of their great neighbours,
however light the burden imposed; and since sustained resistance was
out of the question by reason of their inferior numbers and lack of
military power, they resorted to irritating acts of rebellion, or
intrigued with the enemies of their overlords, and so brought down on
their land frequent vengeance. Such was their untameable nature that
the only practical policy open to Babylon, if she wished to insure the
loyalty, or at least, the neutrality of Palestine, was to deport the
Jews bodily to where they could be under observation.
So we find the greatest heroes of Jewish history--from Moses, through
Gideon and Samson, to David and Judas Maccabæus--are those who deliver
the nation from oppression; while Israel's prayers are largely cries
for succour against enemies, or for Divine vengeance on the oppressor;
only too eloquent a witness of the sense of their own impotence. Yet it
was precisely this experience that forced their religion to rise above
the common type, to conquer its natural tendencies, and to become the
most magnificent faith in God that the world has seen. Of this they
themselves were not ignorant; for one of their writers points to the
easy lot of Moab as the cause of their irreligion (Jer. xlviii. 11),
and one of the Psalmists says that it is the men who have no changes
who fear not God (lv. 19). We need not consider the utterly feeble
objection that all this makes the religion of Israel the outcome of
natural necessity, rather than of Divine revelation; for God made the
land that made Israel.
The entry into Canaan was therefore one of the most critical periods in
the history of this people and in the development of the religion of
the Old Testament. It is, however, extremely difficult to discover from
the means at our disposal just how or when that entry was effected. The
sources for this period are found in the Books of Joshua and Judges,
but, from comparison with much in the history that follows, it is clear
that they do not present us with absolute history; yet a critical
examination of these books enables us to recover the essential facts.
A study of the preface to this lecture will show that the story of
the Conquest is obscure in its details and difficult to reconcile
with modern discoveries. A careful examination of our sources shows
that the description of the entry of the Hebrews into Canaan as a
"conquest," which was settled by a few decisive battles, is at least
rather fanciful; and as a matter of fact we have quite another picture
in the first chapter of Judges, which partakes more of the character
of an "alien immigration," a method of "conquest" in which the Jews
have always been remarkably successful. The history in Joshua certainly
represents the Conquest as striking, complete, and followed by a
ruthless extermination of the defenders of their native land. In view
of the relations that were for long maintained between the Canaanites
and the Hebrews, the representation in Judges i. must be regarded
as nearer to the facts than the story of the Conquest according to
the Book of Joshua. The children of Israel dwelt side by side with
the Canaanites, simply because they were not able to drive them out;
and as a result the tribes were frequently divided by strong belts
of Canaanitish territory. Right through the time of the Judges we
get warfare between the Israelites and the inhabitants of the land;
sometimes in pitched battles between the Canaanites and the united
tribes of Israel (Judges iv. v.), but more generally in guerilla
warfare or in the sudden surprise of a Canaanitish garrison (Judges
xviii.). The result of the conflict seems to have been the gradual
absorption of the two elements into one nation. The records definitely
admit that it was not until the time of David that the Jebusites were
driven from Jerusalem (2 Sam. v. 6, 7), and not until Solomon that the
superiority of the Israelites was finally established (1 Kings ix. 20,
21). It surely is an immense relief to think that the huge slaughters
recorded in the Book of Joshua are, to say the least, exaggerations.
The history in Judges also clearly shows that there was little cohesion
between the tribes. They filtered across the Jordan only by degrees,
and there is evidence that this process may have extended over a
considerable time. We have records of quarrels between Gideon and
Ephraim (Judges viii. 1), and between Jephthah and Ephraim (Judges xii.
1). These inter-tribal conflicts might have been serious, were it not
for the circumstance that the Israelites were no sooner settled in the
land than other tribes of desert invaders began to press upon them, and
they had to sink family differences in order to combine against the
common enemy.
The song of Deborah (Judges v.) is one of the most valuable documents
we possess for the light which it throws on the conditions of religious
and national life in this period, for it is probably the only document
in the Old Testament, earlier than the founding of the monarchy, that
is contemporary with the events it describes. It shows that the tribes
had somewhat improved their position, for they now seem to be in
possession of the highlands of Ephraim, although the plains are still
in the hands of the Canaanites. The growing power of the Israelites
and their threatening predominance moved the Canaanites to a united
effort to repress Israel. It is to face this danger that the Prophetess
Deborah calls the tribes; but from the way in which the praise and
blame is meted out we can see that a strong sense of national unity
was still lacking. The important point to be noticed is that the bond
of unity to which Deborah could appeal was the name of Jehovah. It
should be noted also that in the enumeration of the tribes, Judah,
Simeon, and Levi are altogether omitted. In the case of so important a
tribe as Judah this is significant, for it agrees with the fact that
until the time of David this tribe does not come into prominence. It
has been conjectured that Judah was only a small tribe, and may have
invaded Canaan from the south, for it is difficult to conceive how it
could have crossed the strong Canaanitish territory which separated it
from the other tribes. At any rate, at this time it was not regarded as
one of the tribes of Israel; it may have been that this tribe embraced
a strong Canaanitish element (Gen. xxxviii.), and this fact may have
contributed to the resentment which broke out among the other tribes
when Judah assumed the hegemony in the time of David, and which led in
the end to the disruption of the Kingdom.
In our sources the history of this period has attached to it a
religious interpretation: apostasy, and disobedience to the commands
of Jehovah were the causes of the people being sold into the power
of their enemies; when they returned to the worship of Jehovah and
penitently pleaded for His forgiveness then deliverers were raised
up who vanquished their oppressors. This can be nothing but a late
interpretation, for the religion of the Book of Judges is of quite
a fixed order, and many of the stories recorded in it will not lend
themselves to any such interpretation. The hand that supplied this
reading of the history of this period has been identified with the
author of Deuteronomy, or, as some would prefer to say, with the
school of thought that produced that work. There is a religious lesson
in this history, as in all history; but it is hardly to be found in
a series of apostasies and returns. There are really four separate
endeavours to account for the undoubted fact of the Canaanites being
spared. (1) Israel was not able to drive them out (Judges i. 19, 27).
(2) Israel was only commanded to drive them out by degrees, "lest
the beasts of the field increase upon thee" (Deut. vii. 22). (3) It
was a providential arrangement to keep the Israelites practised in
war (Judges iii. 1, 2). (4) It was due to direct disobedience to the
command of Jehovah (Judges ii. 20).
The history does not entitle us to assume that the judges were
officials who exercised kingly rights over a united Israel. The word
translated "Judge" more often means "Deliverer," and this is certainly
the part that they play. Of some of the so-called minor judges we know
nothing beyond their names, and there is evidence that they have simply
been used to fill out a traditional period of 480 years (1 Kings vi.
1). Whenever the "Judges" assumed kingly or judicial functions trouble
and rebellion always followed. The figure of Samson displays little
fitness for ruling a nation or guiding it in religion, but the stones
of his life are illuminating for the understanding of the morality and
interests of that age.
With this revised conception of the history of the Conquest, and of
the events which followed, we are in a better position to estimate the
effect of the change from nomadic life to a settled existence, and to
understand how critical for the future of the religion of Jehovah this
change was.
We see tribes possessing little national unity, but bound together by
a religion in which lay the germ of a mighty future, entering a land
where the inhabitants had reached a higher stage of civilisation, and
possessed a religion that drew its power from the fact that it was the
worship of Baal, the possessor and owner of the land. In face of these
conditions it was almost inevitable that many of the customs of the
original inhabitants should be gradually adopted, and that the religion
of Jehovah should borrow something from the religion indigenous to the
land. This was certainly the result which followed. For a considerable
period we find a religion prevalent among the common people, which is
simply a conflation of the two religions. There were certain elements
common to both, and certain advantages in the one, together with
corresponding weaknesses in the other, that prepared the way for this
syncretism.
We shall now turn to examine the religion of the Canaanites, which
we shall find to partake largely of the common elements of Semitic
religion. Their deities were personifications of natural forces,
and among these there is no one which is supreme, and nothing that
tends to Monotheism. The gods are friendly and destructive by turn,
and of unreliable character. It is nothing more than an undeveloped
Polytheism. The religion, as it is seen in the Old Testament, groups
itself around three names: Baal, Ashtoreth (often written in plural
form Ashtaroth), and Molech (otherwise written Moloch, Milcom, and
known to the Phoenicians as Melkart).
The name of Baal has a hateful memory in the pages of the Old Testament
as the Canaanitish deity to whom Israel constantly apostatised. The
exact significance of Baal in the Canaanitish religion is a matter of
dispute. He has been identified with the sun, and by the Greeks with
Zeus; so that it has been inferred that Baal was the President of the
Canaanitish Pantheon. This view is no longer generally accepted, for
it certainly fails to fit in with the records of the cult preserved in
the Old Testament. The word "Baal" is not a proper name, but signifies
"the Possessor"; it is used in Semitic language for "husband," as
the possessor of the wife, and is used as the name for deity, as the
possessor of the land. Every land, and indeed every locality, will
therefore have its own Baal; so that in the Old Testament we hear of
the "Baalim" (the Hebrew plural), and these local Baalim are further
distinguished by the addition of the name of their locality or of
some event with which they were connected, as Baal-Peor, Baal-Berith,
Baal-Zebul. The "Baal" is especially responsible for sending rain and
sunshine, and for giving fruitful seasons. He is, therefore, the god
of agriculture, and the great events of the agricultural year, such
as harvest and vintage, are observed as his festivals. It is natural
to find the uncertainty of the weather reflected in the character of
the Baalim, with the result that we get a religion alternating between
intoxicating joy and the deepest gloom. To appease the fickle god or to
win his favour sacrifices, even of human lives, are presented, and if
Baal continues unheeding, scenes of the most unrestrained fanaticism
prevail. It is this gloomy religion which darkens the times of the
later Kings of Judah.
The Canaanitish Baal should be distinguished from the Baal of Tyre
(Melkart) whose worship was introduced by Ahab. Here the introduction
of an alien Baal, with probably different rites and ceremonies, awoke
the resentment of the prophetic party under the leadership of Elijah,
but the worship of the Canaanite Baal was maintained for long unchecked.
Closely connected with the worship of the Baalim we find the worship
of the Ashtaroth (Judges ii. 13). The pronunciation of this word is
obscure; it was probably _Ashtart_, and the singular form, Ashtoreth
(1 Kings xi. 5), has been formed by inserting the vowels of the word
_bosheth_ (shame), a common device in the Old Testament for expressing
contempt. Ashtart is the female counterpart of Baal, and is spoken of
in the plural for a similar reason. Monuments of the worship of Ashtart
are still to be found, and from these it is evident that we have here
the worship of the goddess of sexual passion, as common in polytheistic
systems, and best known in the Greek worship of Aphrodite. The whole
conception of Ashtart can be traced to the famous goddess _Ishtar_
of Babylonian religion, and there is only too certain evidence that
in Canaan as elsewhere the degrading rite of religious prostitution
was used in this worship of female divinity (Hosea iv. 13). The
identification of Ashtart with the "Queen of Heaven" (Jer. vii. 18;
xliv. 15-25) is not so certain. As far as the worship of the latter is
described to us, it looks like an importation of the Babylonian worship
of Ishtar, who was identified with the planet Venus or sometimes with
the moon. The "cakes to pourtray her" (Jer. xliv. 19) may have been
crescent-shaped cakes.
Of a similar character was the worship that gathered around the name of
Molech. We have here simply the word for king (_Milk_) with the vowels
of _bosheth_. Of this name, Moloch, Milcom, and Melkart of Tyre are
variations. Molech is not to be distinguished from Baal, as may be seen
from Jer. xix. 5, where the practice of passing children through the
fire, which was certainly connected with the worship of Molech, is a
part of the worship of Baal. This burnt-sacrifice of children evidently
belonged to the Canaanitish religion (2 Kings xvi. 3).
This then was the religion of the Canaanites: in times of prosperity
and fruitful seasons, one of rejoicing and festivity; but in time of
famine, drought or national danger, one of the most hopeless gloom and
of the most fearful fanaticism. In conflict with this religion, the
purer worship of Jehovah yet presented certain weaknesses; these are
found chiefly in points of possible identification, which in the course
of the history actually took place. This may be difficult for us to
understand until we remember that Baal and Molech, to Semitic ears,
simply meant "Lord" and "King"; and Jehovah was the "Lord" and "King"
of Israel. If the character of Jehovah was not clearly apprehended as
moral by the common people, we can see how easy it was for confusion to
take place.
The great weakness of the religion of Jehovah was that He was not the
God of Canaan. His home was in distant Sinai, and the only symbol of
His presence was the ark, a symbol bound up with the idea of war. As
the people settled down to a peaceful agricultural life, the need for
Jehovah, the warrior God, would not be keenly felt. There was certainly
a party from the very first who recognised the difference between
Jehovah and Baal and fought against their identification, but so long
as Baal was believed to be a real being the danger of his secret
worship at least was never far away. Every land had its own god, and
although the people knew that Jehovah was their God, yet they might
think it necessary, and not inconsistent, to pay their respects to the
local Baalim on whom they were dependent for the fruits of the earth
(Hosea ii. 8). Nothing therefore but a national calamity could revive
the old religion in face of the attractions of the new; if peace had
been continuous it is hard to see how the religion founded by Moses
could have persevered. Such dangerous peace the Children of Israel
were not to enjoy. We soon hear the rousing call to the help of Jehovah
in the Song of Deborah, and it was the threatened domination by the
Philistines that called the monarchy into existence and revived the
religion of Jehovah.
Meanwhile, however, a process of syncretism was gradually taking place,
which it was to be the task of the Prophets to unravel; and how far
it had gone may be seen from the difficulty they found in making the
character of Jehovah and the moral demand made upon His worshippers
clear to the people. "Jehovah," it must be remembered, was a name
largely personal. Baal was a general name for deity, and could be
applied to Jehovah quite truthfully. That this actually took place
may be seen from a number of passages in the Old Testament. The most
instructive instance is to be found in Hosea ii. 16; but the names
given to places point in the same direction: David calls the spot
where Jehovah broke his enemies, Baal-perazim; the same god is called
indiscriminately, Baal-berith (Judges viii. 33; ix. 4) and El-berith
(Judges ix. 46). This practice accounts for the names of Saul's son,
Eshbaal, and of Jonathan's son, Meribbaal (1 Chron. viii. 33, 34), both
of which have been altered in the Book of Samuel to "bosheth." (In
obedience to the command of Exod. xxiii. 13, _Bosheth_ was substituted
for _Baal_ in reading the Scriptures. The written text was altered in
many places at a later period; the Chronicler must have found _Baal_ in
his text of Samuel; that is about 200 B.C.) The names of Jehovah and
Baal therefore came to have the same significance, and the distinction
began to be missed; Jehovah was still the God of Israel, but the moral
elements of His religion were gradually diluted with the naturalistic
conceptions of the worship of Baal. Jehovah becomes the Baal of the
land; that is, the relation between Him and Israel is conceived in a
natural and even physical way. It is therefore no longer a covenant
relation, which depends on the observance of moral obligations, but
one of nature which cannot be broken by either party. Naturally the
sanctuaries of the Canaanites are taken over by the Israelites, and
Jehovah is worshipped in "the high places." All through the history
worship at these local sanctuaries is condemned, but only from a later
standpoint, for the earliest Book of Laws permitted an altar to be
erected anywhere where Jehovah had manifested Himself (Exod. xx. 24).
Around some of these undoubtedly Canaanitish sanctuaries the stories
of the Patriarchs gathered, but from the practices which prevailed at
such places as Bethel we can see that heathen rites were used, for here
Jeroboam set up the golden calves, which seem to have been used in the
worship of Jehovah, for neither Elijah nor Amos condemns them. Jehovah
is now worshipped all over the land, but there is the same tendency to
regard each separate place as having its local deity, and so Jehovah is
multiplied (perhaps, Jer. xi. 13) and needs to be further identified
by the addition of place names, as in the strange name El-bethel (Gen.
xxxv. 7), El-elohe-Israel (Gen. xxxiii. 20), in a way that is very
like the multiplication of the Baalim. So deeply was the worship of
Jehovah mixed up with Canaanitish ideas that in the reign of Josiah the
only possibility of reform lay in forbidding the worship at the local
sanctuaries altogether and concentrating all worship at the central
sanctuary of Jerusalem.
Nothing but this process of syncretism can explain the condition of
religion in the subsequent history, and it is needed to enable us to
understand both the difficulty of the work of the Prophets and the form
their message takes.
Nevertheless, there must have been from the earliest times elements
that made for a purer faith, and that never acquiesced in this
confusion between Jehovah and Baal, which certainly prevailed in
the popular mind; otherwise the Reformation of the Eighth Century
would be an isolated and inexplicable movement, and without that
historical support the Prophets claimed. There was a party against Baal
altogether, although they do not emerge until the monarchy. This party
may have consisted of the "priests" of Jehovah. At mention of these
we must not think of the sacrificing priests described in the Book of
Leviticus. No such persons are known until after the exile; during
this period anyone could sacrifice. The story of the priest in Judges
xvii. gives a good idea of this class; his chief duties seem to have
consisted in keeping the oracle and obtaining decisions by the lot.
These decisions became the basis on which there was gradually built up
the _Torah_ (the Law), which, as the word implies, was a collection
of decisions obtained by casting lots. For the purpose of obtaining
these decisions the priests seem to have used an idol of some kind;
for this is the most natural explanation of the Ephod and its use in
the early history. There would be different degrees of intellectual
and moral capacity found in the ranks of the priests, and many of them
may have had higher ideals of their duties than the one mentioned in
Judges. It would be likely that those who were in charge of the Sacred
Ark possessed a superior dignity and maintained a purer tradition.
Gradually the magical accompaniments to their oracular decisions may
have given way to more judicial deliverances, although in the time of
David and Abiathar they were apparently still used (1 Sam. xxx. 7). At
any rate the priests kept alive the idea of Jehovah as the dispenser of
justice, and helped to build up that system of laws for which Israel is
so justly famous.
This "higher critical" view of the history is simply one to which
we are driven by the records that stand nearest to the times they
describe. It certainly alters considerably the ordinary conceptions of
the type of religion that prevailed in those early days, before the
coming of the Prophets; but that such was the type is only too clearly
shown by the writings of the Prophets themselves. Nevertheless this
view of the period, while it shuts out a somewhat stiff and mechanical
religious interpretation of the history which has been forced upon
it by a later age, is still not without a valuable lesson, which is
perhaps not taught elsewhere in the Bible, and yet is one that we
need to have always before us. It is one, the possibility of which
always exists and often threatens a spiritual religion: the danger
of a gradual encroachment and assimilation of pagan ideas until the
original purity is lost almost beyond recovery. If this has happened
anywhere it has happened in Christianity. It was the awakening to
this paganisation of Christianity that provoked the struggle of the
Reformation, not yet decided. Many of the conceptions that are still
popularly identified with Christianity are the remnants of paganism.
It is not necessary to enumerate the common customs which wear only a
thin veneer of Christianity; but many of the ideas in connection with
Christian Doctrine certainly owe more to pagan philosophy than they do
to the New Testament. The syncretism between Paganism and Christianity
has not been destroyed by the Reformation. Many of the popular ideas
of the Atonement, for instance, rest on a pagan conception of God and
a materialistic idea of Christ's work which are so deeply involved in
the common presentation of Christianity that to present the actual New
Testament teaching would seem to many like a denial of the foundation
truths of the Gospel. Still more dangerous is the localisation of
the god as the peculiar patron of the land, which justifies many
unholy wars and makes such a thing as a national repentance almost
impossible. There is a god of the British Empire who is remarkably
like the Jehovah-Baal of the old syncretised religion that ruled in
the period which we have been studying, and whose worship begets
equal indifference to the claims of true religion, and equally cruel
treatment for the prophet who strives to call men to a purer faith.
It is a relief to turn to a more comforting lesson. It is that which
assures us that man's thought of God is not entirely his own, that it
cannot be destroyed and is never wholly forgotten, but ever makes its
way to higher truth and greater power. The way in which the higher
religion comes is through the pure minds of those who wish only to live
up to the fulness of the truth, and however mistaken they be, wish
only to know and to do the will of God. A similar task lies equally
before every honest man and every true Christian. The lesson is plain:
beware of a stagnant religion that dreads progress, and keep the mind
open as a child's to God's further revelation of Himself, which has yet
many things to tell us.
PROPHETISM--EARLY STAGES
The reader is recommended to investigate for himself the origins of
Prophetism by a careful examination of the following passages:--
I. There were originally Guilds or Schools of Prophets; from which
it would appear that Prophetism was a kind of profession (1 Sam.
x. 5; xix. 20; 2 Kings ii. 3, 5). There is nothing in the records
that we possess that marks these bands of prophets as possessed of
great spiritual power; they were devoted to the cause of Israel
and Jehovah, and the way in which this was manifested was taken to
imply that they were filled with the spirit of Jehovah; it inclines
somewhat to the Dervish order of enthusiastic devotion (1 Sam. x.
5; xix. 20-24). It is significant that wherever these schools are
found there is known to have existed a "high place," _i.e._, an old
Canaanitish sanctuary, now used for the worship of Jehovah-Baal.
A similar order of prophets was connected with the worship of the
Tyrian Baal (1 Kings xviii.).
II. Samuel (1 Sam. xix. 20) Elisha (2 Kings ii. 15; iv. 38; vi. 1-7)
and in much less degree, Elijah (1 Kings xviii. 4; xix. 10) had some
connection with these schools.
III. The later Prophets did not claim descent from these guilds of
"prophecy," and even repudiated any connection with them (Amos vii.
14). This conflict between the "called" prophet and the professionals
is revealed in the fierce denunciations of Isaiah (xxix. 10) and
Jeremiah (v. 31; xiv. 13, 14; xxvi. 7, 8).
IV. The identification of these prophets with priests and seers
probably gives a clue to their origin (1 Sam. ix. 9; Isa. xxix. 10;
Jer. xxvi. 7, 8; Amos vii. 12).
V. Certain individuals who are called prophets or seers had official
court connection (2 Sam. xxiv. 11; 1 Chron. xxv. 5; Amos vii. 10).
Between these "prophets" and the great writers who bear the same
designation, we cannot fail to recognise an immense difference;
Samuel and Elijah are connecting links between the two classes.
Elijah is rather a hero than a prophet in the later sense, for
he gives us no new doctrine, and Samuel is a seer who has risen
to political power, rather than a religious ruler. Critics have
discovered evidence of a double narrative in our documents.
(Earlier) 1 Sam. ix. 1-x. 16; xi. xiii. 2-xiv. 52.
(Later) 1 Sam. i. ii. iii. iv. vii. 3-17; viii. x. 17-25; xii. xv.
If these be examined and contrasted, it will be found that Samuel
is more allied in the earlier narratives with the "priest-seer"
than with the Prophet of the type of Amos. A confirmation of this
double narrative is found in the different accounts of the origin
of the monarchy which they give. Samuel, according to the earlier
sources, is just the type we need for the intermediate stage in the
development of the Prophet.
For the different historical conceptions of the work and character
of David the narratives in Samuel should be compared with the
representation given in Chronicles, and with that inferred by the
ascription of various Psalms to his authorship.
Lecture V
PROPHETISM--EARLY STAGES
We have seen that in the time of the Judges the religion of Jehovah
became so mixed with elements taken over from the Canaanites that the
original revelation gained through Moses was in danger of being lost.
We have now to trace the steps by which this syncretism was broken
up, and the advance made to the purely monotheistic conception and
the lofty morality of the great literary Prophets. However this came
about it is certain that it was not due to any gradual movement among
the mass of the people, for the type of religion which we have been
considering remains largely unaltered in its hold upon the popular
mind. Through the teaching of the earlier prophets certain reforms
were attempted, but none of them seem to have touched the heart of
the nation. Hezekiah and Josiah attempted to reform religion by
centralising the national worship, but, from whatever cause, it left
the people still in opposition to the prophetic type of religion, a
conflict that was only ended by the calamity of the exile. It is,
therefore, to the prophetic band themselves that we must turn. Can we
trace within this more limited circle a movement that shall in any way
prepare us for the appearance of men of the type of Amos?
To answer this question we must turn to the Books of Samuel and Kings.
These present us with a history of the period which, like most history,
has been written, or over-written, from a later standpoint and made to
conform with later ideals. On the whole, however, and by contrasting
it with the still later conceptions of the Books of Chronicles, we
can form an accurate impression of the state of religion at this
time; and incidentally we have a valuable account of a movement that
evidently gave birth to those great conceptions of religion which were
to be voiced with such power and force by the great Prophets. The
writers who, apart from the value of their religious teaching, have
by their distinctive style made the Old Testament a contribution to
the literature of the world, are known to us as "Prophets." This name
they share, however, with others who have left us no first-hand record
of their religious opinions, and who, as described to us in the early
sources, bear only the slightest resemblance to Prophets as we conceive
them. Our task will be, therefore, to investigate the origins of this
movement which embraces such diverse elements, and this we may commence
by examining the meaning of the word "Prophet" (_Nabi_).
Like many other words in the Old Testament that lock up important
secrets, the origin of the word Prophet is obscure and its meaning
disputed. The conception which is most natural to our word "Prophet"
is of one who sees into the future; this is not even the main
characteristic of the writing Prophets, nor does it embrace all the
phenomena connected with the movement, especially in its early stages.
All that can be said of the word from an etymological standpoint
is that it has no origin which can be traced in historical Hebrew,
and the inference is that it is either a very ancient word, or one
borrowed from some other language. The word can, however, hardly be
ancient, for it is not common to Semitic tongues, as is the word
"priest," for instance, while we have a definite statement that within
historic times it superseded the older word "seer" (1 Sam. ix. 9).
The name was also used for certain devotees of the Tyrian Baal, whose
worship was imported by Ahab; but it can hardly be that the name would
be adopted directly from a phenomenon that was so repugnant to the
Israelites, although the common name hints that there was a common
ancestry somewhere. It seems fair to assume from the facts mentioned
that the word is, at least, not older than the entry into Canaan, and
while it cannot be definitely proved that it was borrowed from the
Canaanites, there is some confirmation of this in the fact that the
earliest occurrence of the name is in connection with the "sons of the
prophets," who are always found in places where it is known that there
were Canaanitish sanctuaries.
The word _Nabi_ has been variously connected with the root, _nab'a_,
"to bubble," and so one inspired; with the Arabic word, "to speak,"
and so a speaker or herald. The word seems to exist in Assyrian in
the form _nabu_, "to announce," but this is probably from the name of
the Babylonian deity, Nebo, the God of Eloquence, so that the word
might mean one possessed by Nebo. Some have even looked to this as the
ultimate derivation of the word. The investigation of the word really
gives nothing satisfactory, and we must therefore turn to examine the
character of the persons to whom it was applied.
In various passages in the Old Testament, Seer and Prophet are so
used as to lead us to infer that they embraced identical ideas (Isa.
xxix. 10; Amos vii. 12), and in one passage, which has only the
authority of a late annotation of the text, we learn that they were
identical in their application (1 Sam. ix. 9). The other name with
which Prophet is frequently bracketed is that of Priest; they are
placed together in the denunciations of Jeremiah (ii. 8; v. 31). Our
previous studies showed us that these classes were all somewhat akin
in their origins; the duties of the priest were discharged in keeping
the oracles, while the Seer is evidently akin to the Soothsayer, a
type that has appeared in all religions. We have a concrete example
of these classes being combined in Samuel. In the early story of
Samuel's first meeting with Saul, we find Saul turning to consult the
famous Seer in order to discover where his father's lost asses are to
be found; and even the question of the Seer's usual fee is mentioned
(1 Sam. ix. 8). This picture, which makes Samuel a notable Seer, is
earlier and more authentic than that which makes him nearly a ruler
over Israel. Although he is nowhere called a priest, yet he himself
sacrifices, and his presence at a sacrifice is reckoned an advantage
(1 Sam. xiii. 8-13); while we have the story of his sleeping by the
ark in his youth. The Seer is, therefore, an exalted type of priest
who has obtained renown by the success of his prognostications, and
so we read of Seers attached to the courts of the Kings (2 Sam. xxiv.
11; 1 Chron. xxv. 5); but the later sources have recognised that
there is something heathenish about the word, and have covered it up
with the name Prophet. From the early descriptions of the bands of
prophets in the books of Samuel, it would seem that they are more
allied to the priestly order than to the Seers, for it is certain that
down to the middle of the Ninth Century the name Prophet stands for
something different from its use as applied to Moses and the literary
Prophets. The name is applied to bands of men who "prophesy," but
this prophesying is entirely unlike the methods associated by us with
the prophetic spirit. It is evidently something which is done, not
individually, but in companies, and apparently in solemn procession
to the accompaniment of noisy music. It must have been a species of
violent incantation, leading to acts of fierce fanaticism, in which the
clothing might be stripped off, and often ending in complete mental
prostration (1 Sam. x. 5, 6; xix. 23, 24). The connection of music
with religious exercises is almost universal, and it always had a
conspicuous place in the worship of Jehovah (2 Sam. vi. 5; Isa. xxx.
29), while music has often been used to induce the prophetic vision (2
Kings iii. 15). These prophets seem to have lived together in schools,
semi-monastic orders, or guilds, and to have been found where there
were high places, or Canaanitish sanctuaries; and from their behaviour
we are forced to admit that we have here a common manifestation in
the history of religion, where companies of men devote themselves
to fanatical outbursts that are taken to indicate possession by the
Spirit of God. To the accompaniment of music and frenzied dancing
they work themselves into a state that approaches madness--always
among uncivilised peoples taken to be a sign of the hand of God (Hosea
ix. 7). We cannot fail to be reminded of the greater excesses of
the prophets of Baal, the extraordinary performances of the dervish
bands, and the fanatical excesses that have always disfigured monastic
institutions.
It cannot be dismissed, therefore, as incredible that this phenomenon
was derived from the Canaanites, and developed a zeal for Jehovah
that was manifested after a fashion common to the devotees of other
religions.
Down to a very late date in the history of the Kingdom, the literary
Prophets found themselves in conflict with bands of prophets, who to
their judgment prophesied falsely; and from the way in which these
are often associated with the priests, it seems probable that they
represent the deteriorated--or perhaps simply the stagnant--remnant of
this earlier movement. It is, however, necessary to assume that even
in the earlier movement there were purer elements than those which
we have noticed, and that it embraced individuals who were led into
a real fellowship with the mind of God, of which Samuel and Elisha
are conspicuous examples. Religious movements of the "revival" type,
which have undoubtedly inspired and produced great ethical changes and
resulted finally in sane religion, have often been accompanied in their
earlier stages by these frenzied outbreaks. It would be in response
to some of those strange mental movements which modern psychology is
endeavouring to understand, but also whenever danger threatened the
nation or the national religion, that these enthusiasts would take the
field. As the movement shed its purely hysterical elements, it may have
been occupied in the compilation of the records of Israel's history,
for many of these hardly reflect the higher prophetic standpoint, or in
writing down such stories of their great heroes as we find connected
with Elijah and Elisha. A connection with the literary productions
of the great Prophets may be thus indirectly traced, as it also most
certainly can in the prophetic _style_, which in its fierce rhythm
of denunciation or its sobbing sweeps of passionate appeal recalls
something of the incantation of the prophetic bands. Samuel, Elijah and
Elisha, by their connection with this early phenomenon of prophetism
and by the approximation of their work to the ideals of the later
Prophets, are the true links between the earlier and later stages of
the prophetic movement. It is both credible and natural that, when
the movement had spent itself in some wonderful advance into ethical
power and religious insight, the less noble elements should have still
remained and continued to claim divine inspiration, and yet have been
found in open conflict with its own nobler productions.
It would seem that the obscure sect known as Nazarites were connected
in some way with the early prophetic movement, for they are mentioned
side by side with the prophets (Amos ii. 11, 12); and it is probable
that Samuel was both a Nazarite and a prophet (1 Sam. i. 11), while
Samson, in whom the Spirit of Jehovah seemed to produce these strange
outbursts of savage frenzy, was certainly a Nazarite (Judges xiii. 4,
5, 7, 14). It would appear that the Nazarites were men who devoted
themselves to the service of Jehovah under certain vows of abstinence
from wine and ceremonial defilement. The vows might be taken for life
or for a limited period, but while under the vow the hair was left
unshorn. There is evidence that this is an old Semitic custom, and that
when the vow was accomplished the hair was made an offering to the god
(Num. vi. 18); to this day the pilgrims to Mecca are forbidden to cut
their hair until the journey is completed. The law of the Nazarites
(Num. vi.) is only a late attempt to legislate for a custom that had
existed independently of the institutions of the religion of Jehovah,
and so to secure a place within the official religion for a custom
that would have been difficult to suppress by prohibition. Similar
in many respects to the Nazarites, but even more obscure, were the
Rechabites, who abstained from wine (Jer. xxxv. 2-10), but who seem
also to have protested against the adoption of any of the arts and
customs of settled life, especially as these customs were typified
in the cultivation of the vine. They chose these methods in order to
resist the influence of Canaan, which was threatening so dangerously
the integrity of the nation and the national religion. They probably
hoped by these conservative manners to destroy the syncretism between
Baal and Jehovah; for the only other mention of the sect in the Old
Testament is in connection with the extirpation of the house of Ahab (2
Kings x. 15-17).
It may appear repulsive to those who have made up their minds as to the
methods by which the Spirit of God can work to trace back the supreme
genius, the impassioned ethical ideals, and the practical statesmanship
of the great Prophets of Israel to movements bordering on insanity; yet
it is from enthusiasm that most of the great saving movements of the
world have come. Certainly the great religious revival which was soon
to come in Israel owed almost as much of its success to these bands of
enthusiasts as to the personality of Elijah.
It falls now to our task to trace the movement from bands to
individuals, from Prophetism to Prophecy, from a phenomenon to a
teaching. We have records of men who seem to have moved beyond the
mantic stage and who prepare the way for the great Prophets. We can
conveniently call these "transition prophets." We shall find that
they bear some resemblance to the old style of Seer, or to the guild
prophets, or to both. Of some of these we have only the merest mention,
so that they may be called the _minor_ transition prophets.
Two stand together by their connection with David and from the fact
that they both seem to have been Court officials (2 Sam. vii. 2; xxiv.
11; 1 Kings i. 10). There is no word here of the mantic fury of the
early prophets; although in Gad, who makes known the best way to escape
the anger of an offended Deity, we have a survival of the ancient seer;
but in Nathan we have a truly noble example of one who, although he
may have been dependent on David for his daily bread, yet faced him
with the unsparing denunciation of his sin. Here is a man who regards
right in Israel more than the smile of princes, and who has a higher
conception of his office than that of a convenient manipulator of
oracles for the flattering of a King. Nathan is a true ancestor of Amos
and Jeremiah.
Ahijah the Shilonite is famous because he foretold the disruption of
the Kingdom (1 Kings xi. 29-31), and we may see in this the beginnings
of that political judgment which was to become notable in the later
Prophets; although a partisan motive might be suspected in this
particular case, when Jeroboam, in later years, sent his wife to
consult Ahijah, accompanied with the usual fee (1 Kings xiv. 2), the
message he received shows that in Ahijah we have no party politician,
but the impartial judgment of the later Prophets.
There is a pathetic and somewhat mysterious story of an unnamed man
of God who delivered the word of Jehovah to Jeroboam at the altar at
Bethel, and who, refusing the accustomed hospitality due to a prophet,
afterwards accepted the invitation of the old prophet of Bethel, and
paid the penalty with his death. We have here a story, the moral of
which may be obscure enough, but which certainly illustrates the
growing conflict between the two prophetic ideals. Here is a prophet
who travels from his own land to rebuke the sin of a King to his
face, afterwards yielding to the blandishments of one of the official
prophets. The new Prophetism, tempted from its superior position by the
old, fell; yet not many years were to elapse before these two orders,
in the persons of Amos and Amaziah, were again to face one another at
this same spot, and this time the new Prophetism was to maintain its
integrity (1 Kings viii.; Amos vii. 10-17).
Before we pass on to the _major_ transition prophets, it will be well
to consider here the effect which the foundation of the Monarchy had on
the development of the religion of Israel.
Of the inauguration of the Monarchy we possess two accounts; one
extremely unfavourable, written doubtless after Judah's experience
of some of her notorious Kings, and in the light of a somewhat ideal
conception of the Theocratic government that was supposed to have
flourished before the time of Saul (1 Sam. x. 17-24); the other
account, in which Samuel himself at the revelation of Jehovah
initiates the movement towards the Monarchy (1 Sam. ix. 15-x. 1) by
anointing Saul, is the one that is placed earlier by the critics. The
Monarchy was an inevitable stage in the social development of a settled
people, and it was the policy of Samuel to make the Monarchy the organ
of the Theocracy. For all this Saul does not seem to have had any
influence on religion, or to have ever realised the needs of his times,
and under the sense of failure he became a prey to fear and depressing
influences which eventually wrecked his reason.
Round the name of David have gathered the national ideals of heroism
and sainthood so often found in combination in early story. They
had a true origin in David, if we judge from the standards of piety
and rulership that were natural to his age. Outlaw, hero, poet,
saint--David is the darling of Israel's history. It would be unfair
to David to picture him as the saintly author of some of the tender
Psalms that bear his name, although others of a more robust character
might well be from his hand. That David was a poet seems to be certain,
and the songs of lament over Saul and Abner, which have strong claims
to be genuine, bear witness to his true poetic gift; but they are
deficient in any display of deep religious feeling. We may have also
to reduce somewhat the conception of the extent or the absoluteness of
his kingly rule. He was rather one of those freebooters who by their
heroism and rough manly courage are able to gather round them men of
their own nature and to inspire in their followers a loyal devotion. To
this pleasant adventurer the early Kingdom fell, but for long it was
only a kingdom of personal followers; nor does he ever seem to have
been enthusiastically acknowledged by the whole nation, or to have
established his claims absolutely beyond dispute. His heroic defence
against the Philistine invasion was sufficient to give him a great
place in the affection of the people, yet he never assumed the imperial
rule in the manner of his successor Solomon. With all this necessary
allowance for the idealising process of a later age, David was the
indispensable centre round which the early ideals and legends of the
Monarchy could collect. His work was of immense importance for the
future; especially his conquest of Jerusalem, now for the first time
wrested from the Canaanites and destined to become in the future the
centre of the national life, to be bound up with his name, and above
all to be the peculiar dwelling-place of Jehovah. To make Jerusalem
his capital was a very diplomatic stroke, for it was neutral territory
to both Ephraim and Judah, and this fact quietened the mutual jealousy
of these tribes. It was also a great work of David that by his rough
piety he definitely connected the Kingship with devotion to the cause
of Jehovah. This devotion found expression in his care for the sacred
palladium of the Tribes, although it was policy as well as piety that
brought the Ark to Jerusalem; for we are forced to admit that in
matters of religion David was not greatly in advance of his times. He
regarded the jurisdiction of Jehovah as not extending beyond Palestine
(1 Sam. xxvi. 19), and although he himself may have abandoned idols,
yet he allowed them in his house (1 Sam. xix. 13), while he retained
the old custom of consulting the will of Jehovah by the Ephod (1 Sam.
xxx. 7) or by the movements of trees (2 Sam. v. 23-25). His conception
of Jehovah was that of a Being of uncertain temper, who would take
vengeance for any acts of ceremonial violation (2 Sam. vi. 9) or whose
anger might be aroused for reasons beyond human discovery (2 Sam. xxiv.
10-17).
But it would be equally wrong to blame David because he does not come
up to the ideals of a later age. So far as it went, we may believe
that his piety was real; he was a man after Jehovah's own heart, _for
those times_. He certainly did his best to found a Kingdom on personal
affection and to establish some kind of impartial justice. In the
matter of Bathsheba and Uriah David has been judged by impossible
standards, and especially by the religious ideas of the 51st Psalm,
which bears in its every line evidence of a morality far too deep for
the age of David, and which is quite unsuitable for a confession of
murder and adultery. It was no crime in the eyes of an oriental monarch
to take his neighbour's wife, and it was novel doctrine that David
heard from the lips of Nathan; it is to be laid to his everlasting
credit that he listened to this prophetic judgment, was convicted of
the sinfulness of his act, and repented very profoundly.
When we pass to Solomon we come to a character altogether different,
but one that is very difficult to estimate from the portrait presented
to us in the Old Testament. The writers allow themselves to be carried
away by the tradition of his magnificence, and by the external evidence
of his piety preserved in the splendid Temple which he reared to the
glory of Jehovah; but they cannot produce much evidence for the depth
of his personal religion. He attempted to build an empire on the lines
of the barbaric and superficial glories of his greatest neighbours;
but its splendour and certainly its significance have been rather
overdrawn by the later historians. It was a reign of splendour, but
for the religion of Israel it was unimportant, for it was in the main
irreligious. Save for the presence of Nathan at his coronation, the
prophetic ministry almost disappears in this reign; what prophets
remain are opposed to his policy. Solomon was little more than a
worldly cosmopolitan; his empire was magnificent in comparison with
the achievements of his predecessors, but it rested not as David's
on the devotion of the people to a popular hero, but depended for
its strength on a system of taxation and a false imperialism: forced
labour was employed and the loyalty of the tribes was strained. It
was an endeavour to change the government from a natural and tribal
system to that of an Eastern despotism; and it ended in failure. The
building of the Temple was only a part of this policy, and it was a
policy resented by the prophetic party, who were all for simplicity
in matters of worship (2 Sam. vii.; omit verse 13). The Temple did
not occupy too outstanding a place in the block of royal buildings,
and there is no evidence that in this age it was anything more than
Solomon's private chapel built with the desire to rival the splendid
royal shrines of other countries. It was evidently designed largely
on heathen models, and contained heathen symbols which the later
religion absorbed with difficulty. The adoption of the Temple as the
supreme centre of Israel's worship was not the work of Solomon, but
the effect of the teaching of Isaiah of Jerusalem and the consequence
of the reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah. The harem and the strange
worship were similarly parts of an international policy. Solomon was
certainly the first to give to the worship of Jehovah an imposing
splendour and regularity, but it was not a splendour that appealed
to the Prophets. The beautiful prayer of the dedication can hardly
be the composition of Solomon, but is more likely to have been the
production of a later age which endeavoured to give to this display a
piety which the original did not possess. In time the Temple was to
become of enormous importance, but in this period it remained only a
magnificent shrine for the Ark. The fact that two of the prophets sided
with Jeroboam may point to a revolt against this religious splendour.
The bulls of Jeroboam were a counterblast to the Temple, and although
his name is ever afterwards connected with the introduction of this
idolatrous worship, and the succeeding Kings of Israel condemned for
their participation, it is evident that these strictures are somewhat
intensified by the conception that in the quarrel between Israel and
Judah, Judah was in the right, and by the refusal to allow for the fact
that this method of worship had not been condemned by any contemporary.
The calves were most likely ancient symbols of Semitic divinity, and
were certainly intended as symbols of Jehovah. Nevertheless, the future
lay with the Temple and the South, for the revolution was based on
a merely conservative impulse and contained no ideal. In the South,
Jehovah was never worshipped with such an excess of heathen symbolism,
and thither the voice of Prophecy soon transferred itself to find in
Judah its greatest sphere.
We are brought now to one of the most pregnant movements of this time,
known as the northern prophetic revolt, and to the work and personalty
of the major transition prophets, Elijah and Elisha. The introduction
of the worship of the Tyrian Baal by Ahab was the signal for revolt.
Here was a violation of the commonest conceptions of religion: the
transplantation of the worship of another god, Melkart, the Baal of
Tyre, into the territory of Jehovah, who was regarded as the Baal
of Canaan. It opened the eyes of the schools of the Prophets to the
danger of the use of the name of Baal, and was the cause of its
complete disuse as a name for Jehovah (Hosea ii. 16, 17). In the revolt
against the worship of this heathen Baal there stands out as its chief
inspiration and leader the magnificent figure of the prophet Elijah. It
is evident that in the story of his life we have much that is legendary
and probably some confusion with the work of Elisha, but the religious
significance is sufficiently clear. We have noticed that Elijah is
remotely connected with the prophetic schools, and they share with
him the persecution organised by the devotees of Baal; the old mantic
accompaniments of prophecy are still found in Elijah; he seems to
charm the rain (1 Kings xviii. 42), and he certainly hears it coming.
With all his courage and insight he does not fully comprehend the true
methods by which the religion of Jehovah is to win its way; conviction
is to be brought by thunder and fire; if these fail there remains the
sword. It may be difficult to decide whether Elijah actually conceived
the wonderful revelation at Mount Horeb, but it is more than likely
that to this man there came in the hour of failure the discovery that
there were other ways more to the mind of Jehovah whereby men should
realise His presence; a discovery which has been dramatised in the
theophany on Horeb. Revelation by the still small voice of inner
conviction certainly gained greater recognition after the ministry of
Elijah.
If we seek to understand the meaning of Elijah's stand for Jehovah, we
shall see that it was first of all a protest against the syncretism
of the Baal and Jehovah religions. This protest may have been founded
initially on conceptions not too exalted, namely, that Jehovah and
Melkart could not be worshipped in the same land, but there are
evidences that Elijah had advanced further than that. His daring taunts
to Baal amount to complete scepticism as to his existence, or at least
of his power to injure the true follower of Jehovah. If that is so,
then we have in Elijah the first monotheist. He clearly perceived that
in character Baal and Jehovah were utterly different. The cruelty
connected with the religion of Jehovah still persists under Elijah,
but the incompatibility between the true religion and heathenism is
recognised and affirmed. We may sum up Elijah's religion in his own
phrase: "I have been very jealous for Jehovah."
There is another aspect of Elijah's work which certainly forms a true
transition to the teaching of the later Prophets; he denounces the
murder of Naboth almost as much as the worship of Baal. We trace here
the rise of the ethical conception of the service of Jehovah and the
protest against social wrongs which was to become so great a part of
the burden of such men as Amos and Micah.
With Elijah we can see forming, however dimly, the thought of a Kingdom
of God, and the peculiar patriotism of the Prophets: he desires an
Israel independent of all heathen alliances; it is a conception of
a Kingdom which shall be great in intension rather than wide in
extension. It was this conflict of the prophetic and the so-called
patriotic ideals that was to contribute largely to the final overthrow
of the State. It may have been that the Prophets could never have
built up a strong State on the lines they indicated, and their very
protest may have weakened the arm of statesmen and contributed to the
destruction of the Kingdom founded by David and Solomon. We can only
feel that we side with the Prophets. If the prophetic voice had been
silenced we might have had Israel with a kingdom as mighty as Assyria,
although that is highly doubtful; but it would have been a kingdom as
useless for its contribution to religion as that proud, vain, and
cruel empire.
The theophany at Horeb, therefore, whatever its embellishment and
however symbolical its dress, is the true history of this period.
In the development of the prophetic religion, magic and mystery are
failing, display and external glory are passing away, and there enters
from this time the conception of the religion of the inward voice on
which the work of the later Prophets is built. Elisha is but a pale
reflection of his master, and makes little contribution to religion;
but we soon hear of Micaiah (1 Kings xxii. 8), whose message reveals
the still widening gap between the professional prophet and the new
order of men who hear with greater clearness the true voice of Jehovah.
But sixty years have to pass, and Northern Palestine awakens to the
echoes of a new voice, and listens to the new message of the first
of that prophetic band who have enriched literature while they have
exalted religion--Amos the herdman of Tekoa.
Where elsewhere in history has there been a religion that, starting in
comparative heathenism, almost lost in conflict with a fully-developed
paganism, has yet moved steadily upward, breaking away from its
origins, shedding the false charms of magic and sorcery, and rising
by gradual ascent into fellowship with the Will of God? It is this
_movement_ that constitutes the inspiration of the Old Testament and
that makes it still a Word of God to us.
Many of these conclusions, which have been put forward and established
by critical methods, especially in reference to the religious feeling
of those times, and in the different conception of the piety of
men like David and Solomon, may strike the reader as startling and
disturbing. That may well be, but that is no excuse for our reading
into Bible story more than can be legitimately found there, while it
will be sure to obscure some of its highest teaching, which is to
be found not in isolated "texts," but in great movements. It is the
facts that we have to face, and the facts are obscured not so much
by the corrections of the history by the later historians, as by our
forcing into them the still later conceptions of our own times. We
have not given detailed proof of many of the positions here taken up;
they may be sought in detail by the reader in the works of Biblical
scholarship. Our object is to discover whether these things being so,
we can still find a true revelation in the history of this people,
and hear in it the Voice of God. Do we not get from this corrected
view of the history, a sense of the splendid onward movement of this
religion, which in itself is so much more inspiring than the monotonous
conception, which is only the product of later Judaism, that the
history of Israel's religion is nothing but a series of apostasies
from a pure and perfect faith? That late conception is not borne out
by a careful and critical study of the sources, and it rather owes its
strength to-day to a certain dogmatic conception of human nature that
is needlessly pessimistic, and to an idea of the weakness of the Spirit
of God in His dealings with man that nearly approaches atheism.
One or two lessons of the period stand out in strong relief. One is
that better things come of enthusiasm, even when it is mistaken, than
from indifference. The reference of all the institutions of Israel
to the definitely revealed Will of Jehovah may seem to some, after
these investigations, a mistake. This can only arise from too narrow a
conception of the working of God and the means through which His Spirit
reaches man, for it is this very reference to the Will of God that is
responsible for the advance in Israel's faith. To believe in the Will
of God, and to refer all to it, does gradually increase the knowledge
of that Will, and so leads to a true revelation.
Another lesson is, not to despise the accompaniments of the first
movements of the Spirit of God in man. It is not within the scope of
this work to enquire why it is that when a man is moved by the Spirit
of God such strange phenomena as we have been studying in the prophetic
bands, which still accompany many revivals, should be the immediate
results. There must be patience with these things as beginnings; but
equally must there be impatience with them when they elevate themselves
into a permanent claim to recognition as the only signs of a true
religious life, and when they refuse to recognise as higher the sane
and ethical movement to which they themselves have given birth. One
of the chief difficulties in things religious is to recognise the
offspring of a great movement, to discover the time when the child
must be allowed its new-found freedom, to know when symbols may be
dropped and the reality brought in. Protestantism has given birth to
wider thoughts about God and deeper appreciations of the extent of His
working, which are the logical outcome of Protestantism, and yet which
are often repudiated by those whose Protestantism is of the aggressive
type. A progressive movement of any kind always has these strifes. They
are as constant in Science as in Religion, only in Science they are
more easily overcome by the greater readiness to accept new revelation.
Christianity is a religion that moves, and, as Christ Himself foretold,
it causes the son to rise up against his father, the new generation
to come into conflict with the old. Ours it is never to forget that
the Kingdom of God is on the side of the child; except ye receive the
Kingdom of God as a child, in the spirit of enquiry and growth, except
ye never grow old, ye cannot enter therein.
THE RELIGION OF THE LITERARY PROPHETS
THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE PROPHETS
_Assyrian Period._
B.C.
Amos 760-750 B.C.
Hosea 750-737 Accession of Tiglath Pileser III 745
Isaiah 740-700 Invasion of Sennacherib 701
Micah 724- Fall of Samaria 722
Zephaniah _circa_ 627 Western Palestine invaded by Scythians
Nahum 610-608? Fall of Nineveh 607
_Chaldæan Period._
Jeremiah 626-586 Deuteronomy discovered 621
Habakkuk 605-600? First Great Exile 597
Ezekiel 593-573 Second Great Exile 586
_Persian Period._
Isa. xiii.-xiv.; xxi. 1-10; xxxiv., (Date uncertain, but
xxxv. definitely after the
Exile.)
Isa. xl.-lv. (The "Second" Isaiah)
_c_540. Cyrus takes Babylon 538
Isa. lvi.-lxvi. (Various prophecies,
to be dated after the return.) Return of the Exiles 537
Haggai _c_520
Zech. i.-viii. _c_520
Mal. 460-450 Promulgation of the Law 444
Zech. ix.-xiv. 322
There is nothing to enable us to decide the dates of Jonah, Joel, and
Obadiah with greater definiteness than to say that they were written
after the Restoration.
Diagram representing the religious significance of the Prophets:--
FINAL EMBODIMENT
GOLDEN AGE OF PROPHECY SILVER AGE OF PROPHETIC
TEACHING
_Exile_
+ +--------+ PSALMS
| | |
| | |
| + |
+--------------+ 2 ISAIAH |
| | |
| | |
+---+ JEREMIAH | |
| | |
| | |
+ | |
+--+ HOSEA | |
| | |
| | |
AMOS +-------+ MICAH--NAH.--HAB. +--+--------------+ WISDOM LITERATURE
| | |
| | |
+-----------+ ISAIAH DEUT. | |
+ | |
| | |
| | |
+-------------+ EZEKIEL -----+ THE LAW
Judging from the standard of New Testament religion and their
contribution to it, the Prophets may be roughly classified in the
above order. The higher tendency seems to vanish from the historical
works which were composed after the Exile, save in many of the
Psalms, where religion reaches its highest expression outside the
New Testament. The tendency represented by the middle and horizontal
line ends in the somewhat superficial ethics of such works as the
Book of Proverbs. The lower tendency _is only to be judged so from
comparison_; it served its purpose, and it was an honest endeavour to
reduce the Prophetic ideals to a definite system. It is in line with
the spirit of many of the Psalms that the religion of the revelation
of Christ takes its rise, and we may see in the Sadducees and the
Pharisees the degenerate effect of the other lines of development.
Lecture VI
THE RELIGION OF THE LITERARY PROPHETS
Among the writings of the Old Testament, the Prophetical Books, whether
considered as literature or religion, are acknowledged to stand out as
unsurpassed. If the Psalms claim to rival them it is to be remembered
that the Psalms are probably to be traced to the Prophetic teaching.
The Prophets themselves begin a new era; they are creative and owe
but little to their past. That for so long a period, in unbroken
continuity, there should emerge from a tiny nation a succession of men
of differing temperament, training, and social position, who should
with remarkable unity voice truths of religion not only hitherto
unrecognised but rarely surpassed or apprehended in subsequent
history, is in itself a unique phenomenon in comparative religion.
Equally notable is the fact, that in the majority of the Prophets we
have not only the gift of religious intuition, but that this is found
in combination with great oratorical power, true poetic genius, and
practical statesmanship. They remain for all time an indisputable
witness to the Divine revelation in the development of Israel's
religion.
Previous stages which we have been able to recognise in the development
of Israel's religion do not carry us on to Amos by so inevitable a
movement, that his message could be predicted as the next stage to be
reached. When we come fresh from the investigation of the religion
held by the leaders of the people in the times of David and Solomon,
we recognise the immense strides made when we open the Book of Amos.
We can trace a likeness between Elijah and Amos in their denunciation
of wrong; but, in the sphere of religion, there is a great gulf
between them which no records of the intervening period quite help
us to bridge over. We cannot think of Amos taking part in the great
vindication of Carmel; it is probable that he would have recognised
it as useless. In Samuel, Elijah and Elisha we undoubtedly have the
religious ancestors of the Literary Prophets, but while they stood at
the head of popular movements which they led in triumph against the
intrusion of alien faiths, the Prophets that we are now to study stand
in decided antagonism to the popular faith, and the conceptions of
Israel's religion which they reiterate with such passion and insistency
were never acceptable to the people. Their religion has to make its way
against the national religion.
The importance of the Prophets is the natural starting point for
the modern study of the Old Testament, and it is from the earnest
perusal of their writings that modern Biblical science has been forced
to take up a rigorous criticism of the entire literature of the Old
Testament. Under the old methods, the Prophets had only a secondary
position in the history of the ancient revelation, since their message
was conceived as rather concerned with an age yet to come than with
their own times and needs. The Divine Law had already been given
to the people, constituting a perfect norm of religion. When the
people failed to obey the Law, then the Prophet appeared, enforced
its principles, and condemned the people's apostasy. If that message
was rejected, as it often was, then nothing was left for the Prophet
but the proclamation of vengeance, or the prediction of a time when
the Law should be ideally fulfilled by the revelation of the Gospel.
Between the Law and the Gospel, therefore, stood the Prophets, but
they acted only as a bridge from the one to the other. The natural
method of studying their writings was to search for the fulfilment
of their predictions in history. With these aims it was perhaps
inevitable that their words should often be interpreted in a quite
unwarrantable manner; events were read back into their prophecies, or
the fulfilment was found in such ordinary coincidences that the dignity
of prediction was itself lost, the study became puerile and morbid,
while a fancied necessity as to what they must mean prevented any
scholarly and unbiassed interpretation. Their works have consequently
been largely used as mysterious oracles from which the future history
of the world could be accurately predicted. To read the Prophets in
order to obtain a picture of their own age was regarded as a secular
occupation, while every attempt to recover the original application of
their words was regarded as an endeavour to discountenance the proofs
of Divine revelation. Many of their words bear remarkable likeness to
the gracious invitations of the Gospel, so that they have been used
equally with the New Testament for Gospel preaching, but it was never
dreamed that they were real invitations to the people of their own
times, founded on the eternal laws of God's forgiveness afterwards made
clear in Christ; they were simply words spoken under mental effects
which transferred the speakers to the time of the New Testament.
Whatever the final results of the application of historical criticism
may be, it has already laid religion under a permanent obligation in
its discovery of the hitherto unrealised importance of the Prophets.
At first attention was directed to their exalted ethical and religious
standpoint, appearing as it did in an age that neither produced nor
responded to it; minute study then showed that they gave first-hand and
incidental accounts of their own times. Their messages bear witness
to the contemporary state of the religion of Jehovah and the people's
morals, and although it may be that they sometimes judged these from
their own high standard, which caused them to paint them somewhat
darker than an absolutely historical judgment would demand, yet on what
the prevailing religious opinions of the day really were, they are the
best evidence. The startling but unassailable deduction made from the
Prophets' accounts of their own times is, that in matters religious
they were proclaiming doctrines that seemed to their contemporaries
entirely novel. The Prophets do not, however, acquiesce in the charge
of novelty. They profess to go back to the original and inner meaning
of Jehovah's choice of the nation. They refer to this choice, as a
"covenant," and to the religion demanded by it, as the law of the Lord.
The first inference is that they refer to that which _we_ know as the
Law, the Pentateuch, or Law of Moses. A comparison with the Prophetic
teaching with the ordinances of, say, the Book of Leviticus, shows that
this cannot be the case, for they do not correspond. Many things there
commanded as essential are passed over in silence by the Prophets;
but the force of the argument is not wholly drawn from that, although
it has a weight here which the argument from silence cannot usually
carry, because both Leviticus and the Prophets' teaching set forth
the essentials of religion, and there can be no possibility of doubt
that the conceptions of the essentials have an altogether different
outlook. It is chiefly, though not by any means entirely, from the
standpoint of the Prophetical writings that modern criticism is forced
to revise the conception of the progress and decline of religion that
Jewish tradition has embodied in the arrangement of its Scriptures, and
especially in the ascription of the Pentateuch as a whole to the age
and authorship of Moses. The verdict from this comparison between the
Prophets and the Law is, that the five Books of Moses either did not
exist in their present form at the time of the Prophets, or, if they
did, remained entirely unknown to them.
The historical value of the Prophets is therefore to be rated very
high, not only because of their transparent sincerity, but also
because the historical data which can be secured from them are given
indirectly, and are valuable for the same reason as the remarks of a
contemporary diarist. They are unaware that they are writing history,
and are consequently free from the almost unescapable tendency of the
historian to make the facts fit into preconceived theories. Modern
criticism, therefore, does rightly in making the Prophets of paramount
importance for the understanding of the Old Testament, and when the
Prophets are thus made the test, much in the history that was either
completely hidden or difficult to understand, becomes visible and
clear, and the progress of Israel's religion is displayed in all its
grandeur and movement.
We can now turn to examine the extent of the sources from which we may
draw, in order to estimate the religious opinions and influence of the
Prophets, and to examine the peculiar character of the literature for
which they are responsible.
First in importance stand the Books of the Prophets proper. In the
ancient division of the Hebrew Bible into, (1) The Law, (2) The
Prophets, (3) The Hagiographa, or the holy writings, "The Prophets"
included, beside our Books of the Prophets, such historical Books as
Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. Significantly enough, however, Daniel
is not grouped with the Prophets, but with the Hagiographa, either
because it was not classed as prophecy, or more probably because the
Canon of "The Prophets" had been closed by the time it was written.
Therefore, in addition to the writings ascribed to the Prophets, there
is a literature which has been influenced by their teaching, and this
is found largely in those historical Books which have thus been rightly
included in the Prophetical division of the Hebrew Bible. That is to
say, however, that Books dealing with history prior to the rise of
the Prophets, show traces of an influence that can only have emerged
later. It is here that criticism seems to the ordinary reader to enter
very debatable ground, although among critical students of the Bible
the question is no longer an open one. They claim that the peculiar
conditions under which Hebrew history was compiled allow us to discern,
and to separate with ease, this later prophetical editing, whereas in
other literatures such would be impossible. History was compiled among
the Jews largely from pre-existing documents, much as it is everywhere,
with the difference that in the Old Testament the records have been
simply pieced together with whatever corrections and reductions were
rendered necessary, while the conceptions of the later times, when
this re-editing was accomplished, are often simply superimposed; this
method has been ridiculed as an invention of the critical mind, but it
is simply an indisputable if tiresome fact which has to be taken into
account in any serious study of the literature. The narratives of the
documents that have been named "J" and "E" bear the marks of having
been combined under the influence of prophetical teaching, since this
teaching, it is to be noted, is recognisably incompatible with other
parts of the stories which have been left untouched.
It has been suggested that criticism seems to assume that religion
progressed until it reached a certain height in the Eighth Century, and
to enable this theory to stand all marks of this supposed later type
appearing earlier are classed as interpolations. It is usual to trace
this theory to "Evolution gone mad." Even on the critical theories
this cannot however be legitimately shown to result, since critical
reconstruction shows that the supreme height gained in the Prophets
was never maintained, but suffered a perceptible decline. Whatever the
guiding idea of criticism may be, it cannot be an endeavour to make
the history of Israel's religion confirm some theory of the natural
development and evolution of religion. The critical theories leave us
with the problem of moral lapses to account for and with the failure
of vision to explain, and demand still a moral insight to detect the
cause. But it is clear to many that the moral causes do stand out more
clearly discoverable by this method.
The critical theory of the priority of the Prophets is not based
only upon the emergence under their teaching of certain theological
ideas for the first time; but also on the difference of style and
vocabulary which can be recognised after only a slight acquaintance
with the language; and on the general outline of the history that the
Bible itself forces upon us. It is a fact which the reader can soon
discover for himself, that the historical Books are compilations from
the records of various ages, and these various ages can be as easily
discerned as the conflicting styles of an oft-restored church, or
the disturbance of the normal geological strata that demands some
upheaval for its explanation. It must be remembered that all this is
made possible from the fact of the remarkable uniformity of ideas that
characterises the various stages of Hebrew religion.
The Prophets' teaching can therefore be traced outside their own
writings; mainly in fragmentary comments added to the narratives;
or in a superimposed colouring, which easily falls off, leaving the
original outlines in view; but it is supposed to be found grouped
into one great mass in the Book of Deuteronomy. The critics' theory
of this Book is that it is an endeavour to reduce the teaching of the
Prophets, more especially that of Isaiah, to a code, and to secure
reform by the centralisation of worship at Jerusalem. This idea of a
central worship, which leaves no record of its actual observance until
the time of Josiah, or perhaps an attempt in the reign of Hezekiah, is
so unmistakable and is so uniformly expressed that the work of this
author (perhaps we should say, this school) can be easily detected,
and many of the Books, such as Judges and Kings, can be seen to have
been subjected to a "Deuteronomist" redaction. In all these phenomena
we have teaching that presupposes the Prophets, and that stands in
contrast and often in conflict with the general tone of the original.
It is remarkable that with such redactions of history any clue to
the earlier conceptions should have been left to us, especially that
there should have been left in the records anything that would be in
disagreement with the editors' ideas, but the Jews, like the other
nations of antiquity, did not possess modern notions of exactness, and
their notions of history prevented them from understanding things that
were removed only a short distance from their own times.
It is hardly surprising to find that this Prophetical literature was
in turn liable to redaction, though in a different degree and for a
different reason, since it has been preserved to us under peculiar
conditions. This at first may seem terribly confusing to the bewildered
student, and it is here that tired men reject criticism and all its
works. To such the reminder cannot be spared that in any branch of
Science the same conditions have to be overcome, and if he would
understand the Old Testament and reap the magnificent reward that its
earnest study gives, he must be prepared to face the facts and labour
at their solution.
First of all then, it must be noted that the Books of the Prophets are
not so much literature, in the ordinary sense of the word, as reported
rhetoric, with the qualification that the reporter and the speaker may
be usually assumed to be the same. In most cases the speeches were
written out by the Prophet himself soon after they were delivered,
although sometimes this was done by others long after, and expanded
or altered, as is actually reported to have been the case with the
prophecies of Jeremiah (Jer. xxxvi.).
In the second place, the literature reveals the fact that there does
not seem to have been in that age any conception of literary property;
ideas are borrowed directly from one Prophet by another, and sometimes
direct quotation is made without any acknowledgment or indication of
the source. The Prophet's scribe, his school or followers, could amend
or paraphrase; later generations could evidently insert a qualifying
phrase, temper a threat with a qualifying condition, or to the doom of
exile add a promise of restoration. When it is noticed that messages
like those of Amos or Hosea end unexpectedly in hopeful words, and
when it is recollected that these Prophets have been used as Service
Books in the Synagogue and may have been therefore altered to suit the
purpose, then we shall understand the problem that faces us and why a
shadow of suspicion should rest on promises of restoration that are to
be found in pre-exilic writings. Let it be remembered however that it
is no true critical canon to assume that prediction cannot be made; but
what are we to do when such a prediction fits ill with the context,
breaks the sense, is foreign to the outlook of the speaker, and is in
later style?
Finally, there seem to have been many prophecies circulated
anonymously, and since a place had to be found for these they were
inserted in other writers, on no principle that we can discover, or
more often were grouped together at the end of some notable Prophet's
works. In Zechariah we have to suppose three strata of different
authorship and date, or give up the rational study of the Book
altogether; and in the famous case of the Book of Isaiah we have to
suppose that some of the early chapters are the work of a post-exilic
author, while chapters xl.-lxvi. are a heterogeneous collection by a
number of writers, of which chapters xl.-lv. are recognised to be by
one hand, and that, one of the most wonderful personalities which has
contributed to the Old Testament; about that grand figure we only know
one thing, that he was not Isaiah of Jerusalem. This has been called
"sawing Isaiah asunder" and making the Bible a piece of patchwork and
the critics are blamed; but if they are right, these complaints are
not directed at them, but at the Bible itself, a proceeding which to
say the least, is not pious. When a writer could say many years later
that revelation came of old time in many fragments (Heb. i. 1), others
beside critics fall under these hasty condemnations.
It is refreshing to turn from this less interesting part of our
subject, which nevertheless demands serious study from anyone who
would be informed where ignorance has done and still is doing so much
harm, and to examine the features which distinguish the work of the
literary Prophets. We have already spoken of the novelty of their
message. Whatever theory is chosen for the study of Old Testament
history, nothing quite prepares us for the message of the Prophet Amos.
What an inspiration we miss because he does not stand in our Bibles
in his rightful place, at the head of the Prophets! His bravery and
ruggedness remind us of Elijah, but he brings something that Elijah is
far from giving us. Elijah was very jealous for the due recognition of
Jehovah as the only God for Israel; Amos is jealous for the recognition
of the true _character_ of Jehovah. That is to say, we receive from
Amos definite teaching concerning the character of Jehovah and His
relations to the people of Israel, and these doctrines are startling to
Israelitish ears.
Almost the first thing that strikes us as an outstanding characteristic
of the Prophets is that they are conscious of a call to which they
often appeal. Five of them definitely refer to the circumstances of
their call (Amos vii. 14; Hosea i. 2; Isaiah vi.; Jer. i. 4-10; Ezek.
i. 1-ii. 3). The same is true of their predecessors, but in a different
way; they stand as defenders of the national religion because they
belong to the prophetic guilds or possess certain gifts of vision. On
the other hand the literary Prophets are against the national religion
as a perversion of the true, and to this weary and warlike work they
are called by immediate and special summons of God. This call is not
self-originated nor can it be evaded (Jer. xx. 9), and in some cases
there has been no preparation for the office (Amos vii. 14, 15), and
even positive unfitness (Jer. i. 6). They are very careful therefore to
distinguish themselves from the schools of prophets. Professionalism
has disappeared, and in Jeremiah the official idea also vanishes.
The peculiar mental condition of the Prophets has of late years
attracted a great deal of attention. The rapture and holy frenzy into
which they are sometimes thrown remind us of the phenomena accompanying
the early Prophetism, studied in our last lecture; but this is now
accidental and is becoming rare. The Prophets often speak of this as
"the hand of the Lord" upon them (Isa. viii. 11); in the visions of
Ezekiel the effect is often described as overpowering (Ezek. iii. 14
ff.). There is a similarity between the accompaniments of these states
and the trances which have been found in so many religious movements,
and which are now attracting the attention of the scientific world
so seriously. Only the results differ remarkably from the effects
obtained in hypnotic and sub-conscious states, with which the prophetic
gift has sometimes been compared. The Prophet still exhibits his
natural style when under the influence of the Word of the Lord. Yet it
may be that there is something to be learned along the lines of modern
research; we know that if certain states of mental passivity can be
induced, there lies open a new realm of knowledge, which, although
it can be accounted for, cannot be summoned under ordinary mental
conditions; add to this the superior moral constitution which seems to
be missing from the mediums of spiritualistic phenomena to-day, and the
prophetic consciousness becomes more comprehensible. The Prophets often
speak of visions, but it is difficult to gather their actual character.
It can hardly be objective; it is more like the artistic vision which
creates within the mind in perfect detail and objectivity, so that
what is seen has greater reality than any reproduction on canvas or in
stone. The mind would seem to project its vision by the strength of its
imaginative powers, so that, owing to the emotion aroused by the nature
of the truth perceived, the revelation appears to come from an entirely
external source. Sometimes it would seem to be an actual beholding of
some natural object, which induces a train of thought, as the case of
Amos's vision of the plumb-line may well be. We cannot think either
of any organic hearing of their message, since they sometimes also
declare that they "see" it.
Their predictive power has been exaggerated, chiefly because it was
thought that this was the only office of the Prophet. Where it occurs
it is mostly a natural deduction from their insight into the movements
of their age, their conception of the unchangeable character of
Jehovah, and their belief in His providential government; the emphasis
is never upon details, and it may be added that the prediction is by
no means always fulfilled. Their vision of the future usually takes
a certain outline, or order; a national calamity is immediately
impending, in which they recognise the punishment of the people's sins
and the complete triumph and vindication of Jehovah; this will result
in a purifying of the nation, and in the immediate succession there
will come the Messianic or ideal era. Still there are predictions which
cannot be explained on any theory yet broached, such as the prediction
by Isaiah of the destruction of Sennacherib's army, or Jeremiah's
prophecy of the Restoration. If this is ordinary second sight, then it
is strange that it should have occurred in so many cases at this time
when prophecy was dropping its mysterious accompaniments. Yet it may be
recalled that in the history of all nations there has been, in times
of great national affliction, a tendency to prophecy of this order,
which can sometimes claim a remarkable fulfilment. The distinguishing
glory of Israel's prophecy is, however, to be sought in its ethical
character, and it is perhaps to the writings of men like our own
Carlyle, where we often catch the old prophetic ring, that we are to
look for its analogy.
Among the things that separate Amos from his predecessors is the use
of a literary channel for the dissemination of his teaching, which was
of course primarily preaching. This in itself marks a great change.
What was it that led the Prophet to write down the message which he
had delivered? It may have been that there was a tendency towards
literature at that particular period, but even before this the habit
of keeping records must have commenced, while there is evidence of
collections of poems or sagas, such as the Book of Jasher, or the Book
of the Wars of the Lord, being in existence from a very early period.
It is evident therefore that we need some particular occurrence to
account for the adoption of literature as the vehicle of Prophecy. It
has been suggested that the cause is to be sought initially in the
rejection of the message of Amos by those to whom it was delivered:
he was aware of the permanent application of the truths that he had
delivered, and since his own times would not hearken he resolved to
commit them to the verdict of posterity. The example once set, it was
natural for the succeeding Prophets to wish to give something more
than the fleeting character of the spoken word to teaching that was
new and that had been rejected, and therefore to adopt this form (Isa.
viii. 16 f.). Whatever the cause, we are thankful for the results.
The channel chosen for the preservation of their messages was not
purely literary; the form is not that of the essay, or thesis; it has
not the studied elegance of poetry, yet it rises above prose, and
rhythmic verse is found scattered throughout their writings. These
reports of passionate oratory fall naturally into poetic form as the
Prophet is carried away by his message. Especially do we find a very
extensive use of symbolism, which has proved a trap into which the
literalist has hastened to fall.
The relation of the Prophets to the State is difficult for us
accurately to appreciate. Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha headed what were
practically popular revolutions; in them nationalism overshadows the
universally religious, or
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