



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 beginning of the second century of our
era, and the majority decided for the inspiration of both books. There
were also, even down to the third century, Jewish scholars who did
not acknowledge Esther as Sacred Scripture. On the other hand, some
were inclined to include among the Sacred Books the Proverbs of Ben
Sira, which stand in the English Bible among the Apocrypha under the
title Ecclesiasticus.

It is thus evident that, while there was agreement in general, there
was, down to the second century A.D., no authoritative list of the
"Scriptures," and that about some of the books there were conflicting
opinions among the learned of the most orthodox stamp. An interesting
confirmation of this is the fact that in the first half of that
century it was thought necessary to make a formal deliverance that the
"Gospel and other writings of the heretics" are not Sacred Scripture.
There are other indications that in that generation Jewish
Christianity had a dangerous attraction for some even in rabbinical
circles, and there was evidently ground for apprehension that the
inspiration which the Christians claimed for the Scriptures of the New
Covenant might impose upon well-meaning but uninstructed Jews. In the
same connection it was decided, further, that Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus)
was not Holy Scripture, and that no books written from his time on (about
200 B.C.) were inspired, in accordance with the theory, found also in
Josephus, that inspiration ceased in the age of Ezra and Nehemiah.

By such decisions, recognizing the inspiration of books that had been
challenged and excluding others for which inspiration had been
claimed, the canon of the Scriptures, that is, the authoritative list
of Sacred Books, was defined. The oldest catalogue we have, containing
the titles of all the books, dates probably from the latter part of
the second century, and is not concerned with the point of
canonicity--which it takes for granted--but with the proper order of
the Prophets and the Scriptures.

The Jews had for centuries been widely distributed through the lands
that had been included in the kingdoms of Alexander's successors.
There were large numbers in Babylonia and the neighbouring provinces
of the Parthian empire, and still more in the countries around the
eastern end of the Mediterranean, in Syria and Asia Minor, in Egypt
and Cyrene. In Alexandria the Jews had a whole quarter of the city to
themselves, and Philo estimates their numbers in Egypt in his time
(ca. A.D. 40) at a million.

In cities like Alexandria, where Greek was the common speech of a
population recruited from many races, the Jews soon exchanged their
mother tongue for the cosmopolitan language. The ancient Hebrew of
their Sacred Books was unintelligible, not only to the masses, but
even to most of the educated, who had learned in the schools of Greek
rhetoricians and philosophers rather than at the feet of the rabbis.
If the knowledge of the holy Law by which the distinctive Jewish life
was regulated was not to be lost altogether, the Scriptures must be
translated into Greek. The Pentateuch was doubtless translated
first--legend attributes the initiative to King Ptolemy Philadelphus
(285-246 B.C.); then other books, by different hands and at different
times and places. To some of the books, as to Daniel and Esther,
additions were made in the translation which were not accepted by the
Palestinian Jews.

Besides the books which were finally included in the Jewish canon,
there were various others, written in Hebrew or Aramaic after the
pattern of the several forms of Biblical literature. History, for
example, is represented by 1 Maccabees, relating the struggle of the
Jews in Palestine for religious liberty and national independence in
the second century B.C.; the Proverbs of Solomon have a counterpart in
the Proverbs of Ben Sira, already mentioned; the Psalter, in the
so-called Psalms of Solomon; the story of Judith may be compared with
Esther; the visions of Daniel have their parallel in popular
apocalypses bearing the names of Enoch, Noah, Ezra, Baruch, and other
ancient worthies. These writings were sooner or later translated into
Greek, and some of them attained a wide circulation. The
Greek-speaking Jews, also, produced a religious literature, in part
imitating the familiar Biblical forms, as in the Wisdom of Solomon
and 2 Maccabees, in part cast in Greek moulds, as when prophecy
disguised itself in Sibylline Oracles, or the supremacy of reason over
the emotions was made the subject of a discourse after the pattern of
a Stoic diatribe (4 Maccabees).

The influence of Greek culture on many of these writers was not
confined to language and literary form; they lived in an atmosphere of
Greek thought--the popular philosophy, in which Platonic and Stoic
elements were fused or confused--and a few had a more academic
acquaintance with the Greek thinkers. But, under all this, they were
Jews to the core, devoted to the religion of their fathers, of the
superiority of which they were the more convinced by the spectacle of
heathenism about them: Judaism was the only true religion, its
Scriptures the one divine revelation. The Law and the Prophets had the
same precedence as in the Palestinian synagogue. Of the other
Scriptures there was no authoritative and exclusive list, and among
books read solely for private edification it is not likely that a very
sharp line was drawn; but, on the whole, the practice of the
Greek-speaking Jews does not seem to have been materially different
from that of their countrymen in Palestine.

Outside of Palestine, Christianity was spread by Greek-speaking Jews
who had embraced the new Messianic faith, and their converts in the
fields of their missionary labours, both Jews and Gentiles, spoke
Greek, either as their mother tongue or as the language of common
intercourse. The church, therefore, took over the Jewish Scriptures in
the existing translations: the Christian Old Testament was from the
beginning the Greek Bible, not the Hebrew. They received also from the
