



Produced by Delphine Lettau, Julia Neufeld and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net





Transcriber's note:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=).

Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.

The carat character (^) indicates that the following letter or number
is superscripted (example: 15^b-18^a).

[=e] represents "e" with a macon over it.




  HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
  OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE
  THE LITERATURE OF THE
  OLD TESTAMENT

  BY
  GEORGE FOOT MOORE, M.A., D.D., LL.D.

  LONDON
  WILLIAMS & NORGATE

  HENRY HOLT & Co., NEW YORK
  CANADA: WM. BRIGGS, TORONTO
  INDIA: R. & T. WASHBOURNE, LTD.




[Illustration:

HOME
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
OF
MODERN KNOWLEDGE

_Editors_:

HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A., LL.D.
PROF. GILBERT MURRAY, D.LITT., LL.D., F.B.A.
PROF. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A., LL.D.
PROF. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A.
(COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, U.S.A.)

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY]




[Illustration:

THE
LITERATURE
OF THE
OLD TESTAMENT

BY
GEORGE FOOT MOORE
M.A., D.D., LL.D.

Professor in Harvard University; Editor of the
Harvard Theological Review; Author
of "Commentary on Judges," etc.

LONDON
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE]




The following volumes of kindred interest have already been published
in the Home University Library:--

     VOL. 56.--THE MAKING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. By PROF. B. W.
     BACON, LL.D., D.D.Vol.

     VOL. 68.--COMPARATIVE RELIGION. By PRINCIPAL J. ESTLIN
     CARPENTER, D.Litt.

     VOL. 15.--MOHAMMEDANISM. By PROF. D. S. MARGOLIOUTH, M.A.,
     D.Litt.

     VOL. 47.--BUDDHISM. By MRS. RHYS DAVIDS, M.A.

     VOL. 54.--ETHICS. By G. E. MOORE, M.A.




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                                  PAGE

  I THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT                            7

  II THE OLD TESTAMENT AS A NATIONAL
  LITERATURE                                                 25

  III THE PENTATEUCH                                         29

  IV CHARACTER OF THE SOURCES. GENESIS                       33

  V EXODUS, LEVITICUS, NUMBERS                               47

  VI DEUTERONOMY                                             58

  VII AGE OF THE SOURCES. COMPOSITION OF THE
  PENTATEUCH                                                 65

  VIII JOSHUA                                                73

  IX JUDGES                                                  81

  X SAMUEL                                                   91

  XI KINGS                                                  100

  XII CHRONICLES                                            118

  XIII EZRA AND NEHEMIAH                                    128

  XIV STORY BOOKS: ESTHER, RUTH, JONAH                      134

  XV THE PROPHETS                                           144

  XVI ISAIAH                                                147

  XVII JEREMIAH                                             164

  XVIII EZEKIEL                                             174

  XIX DANIEL                                                180

  XX MINOR PROPHETS                                         190

  XXI PSALMS. LAMENTATIONS                                  218

  XXII PROVERBS                                             231

  XXIII JOB                                                 235

  XXIV ECCLESIASTES. SONG OF SONGS                          243

  BIBLIOGRAPHY                                              251

  INDEX                                                     253




THE LITERATURE

OF

THE OLD TESTAMENT




CHAPTER I

THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT


The early Christians received the Sacred Books of the Jews as inspired
Scripture containing a divine revelation and clothed with divine
authority, and till well on in the first century of the Christian era
the name Scriptures was applied exclusively to these books. In time,
as they came to attach the same authority to the Epistles and Gospels,
and to call them, too, Scriptures (2 Pet. iii. 16), they distinguished
the Christian writings as the Scriptures of the new dispensation, or,
as they called it, the "new covenant," from the Scriptures of the "old
covenant" (2 Cor. iii. 6, 14), the Bible of the Jews. The Greek word
for covenant (_diatheke_) was rendered in the early Latin translation
by _testamentum_, and the two bodies of Scripture themselves were
called the Old Testament and the New Testament respectively.

The Scriptures of the Jews were written in Hebrew, the older language
of the people; but a few chapters in Ezra and Daniel are in Aramaic,
which gradually replaced Hebrew as the vernacular of Palestine from
the fifth century B.C. The Sacred Books comprise the Law, that is, the
Five Books of Moses; the Prophets, under which name are included the
older historical books (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings) as well as what
we call the Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve, i.e.
Minor Prophets); a third group, of less homogeneous character, had no
more distinctive name than the "Scriptures"; it included Ruth, Psalms,
Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Lamentations, Daniel,
Esther, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles. The Minor Prophets counted as
one book; and the division of Samuel, Kings, Ezra-Nehemiah, and
Chronicles each into two books was made later, and perhaps only in
Christian copies of the Bible. There are, consequently, according to
the Jewish enumeration twenty-four books in the Bible, while in the
English Old Testament, by subdivision, we count the same books as
thirty-nine.

The order of the books in the Pentateuch and "Former Prophets"
(Joshua-Kings) is fixed by the historical sequence, and therefore
constant; among the "Latter Prophets" Jeremiah was sometimes put
first, immediately following the end of Kings, with which it was so
closely connected. In the third group there was no such obvious
principle of arrangement, and consequently there were different
opinions about the proper order; that which is given above follows the
oldest deliverance on the subject, and puts them in what the rabbis
doubtless supposed to be a chronological series. So long as the books
were written on separate rolls of papyrus, the question of order was
theoretical rather than practical; and even when manuscripts were
written in codex form (on folded leaves stitched together like our
books), no uniformity was attained.

At the beginning of the Christian era, lessons from the Law were
regularly read in the synagogues on the sabbath (the Pentateuch being
so divided that it was read through consecutively once in three
years), and a second lesson was chosen from the Prophets. The title of
these books to be regarded as Sacred Scripture was thus established by
long-standing liturgical use, and was, indeed, beyond question. Nor
was there any question about the inspiration of most of the books in
the third group, the "Scriptures." There was a controversy, however,
over Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs; some teachers of the
strictest school denied that either of them was inspired, while others
accepted only one of them. The question was voted on in a council of
rabbis held at Jamnia about the