Lectures on the history of the Jewish church

Front matter

KltKb tULLtlit LIBRARY

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3 1404 00301 2942

PART I. ABRAHAM to SAMUEL

BY ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D. D.

MGIIJS PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY Df OXFORD, AND CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH

WITH MAPS AND PLANS

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NEW YORK: SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG, AND CO.,

SUCCESSORS TO

CHARLES SCRIBNER AND CO.

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RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:

H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPACT.

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TO THE DEAR MEMORY OF HER, IT WHOSE FIRM FAITH, CALM WISDOM, AND TENDER SYMPATHY, THESE AND ALL OTHER LABORS HAVE FOR YEARS BEEN SUSTAINED AND CHEERED,

WHICH SHARED HER LATEST CARE,

IS NOW DEDICATED,

IN SACRED AND EVERLASTING REMEMBRANCE.

Preface

The contents of this volume, in accordance with a plan which I have set forth elsewhere/ consist of Lectures, actually or in substance, addressed to my usual hearers at Oxford, chiefly candidates for Holy Orders. The Twentieth (with some slight variations from its present form) was preached as a sermon from the University Pulpit. These circumstances will account both for the local allusions, and for the practical character of the Lectures, which I have left in most cases as they originally stood.

Throughout the volume I have endeavored to bear in mind three main objects, indicated in its title.

In the first place, the work must be regarded not as a History, but as Lectures. This mode of instruction, besides being that to which I was naturally led by the duties of my Chair, appeared to me specially adapted to the subjects of which I was to treat In the case of a history so familiar as that of which the materials are for the most part contained in the Bible, and containing, as it does, topics of the most varied interest, the form of Lectures, whilst it avoided

1 Introductory Lectures to the History of the Eastern Church, pp. 30-34.

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the necessity of a continuous narrative, enabled me to select the portions most susceptible of fresh illustration and combination, and at the same time most likely to stimulate an intelligent study of the whole. Moreover, there already exists in English a well-known historical narrative of the History of the Jews, which is now, I am glad to hope, on the point of reappearing, with the most recent revisions from the pen of its distinguished author. I trust that the venerable Dean of S. Paul's will add to his many other kindnesses his forgiveness of this intrusion on a field peculiarly his own, — an intrusion which would never have been attempted, but in the belief that it would not interfere with those labors which have made his name dear to all who know the value of a genuine love of truth and freedom, combined with profound theological learning and high ecclesiastical station.

Secondly, although for the above reasons abstaining from the attempt to write a consecutive history, I have wished to present the main characters and events of the Sacred Narrative in a form as nearly historical as the facts of the case will admit.

The Jewish History has suffered from causes similar to those which still, within our own memory, obscured the history of Greece and of Rome. Till within the present century, the characters and institutions of those two great countries were so veiled from view in the conventional haze with which the enchantment of distance had invested them, that when the more graphic and critical historians of our time broke

PREFACE. IX

through this reserve, a kind of shock was felt through all the educated classes of the country. The same change was in a still higher degree needed with regard to the history of the Jews. Its sacred character had deepened the difficulty already occasioned by its extreme antiquity. That earliest of Christian heresies — Docetism, or "phantom worship" — the reluctance to recognize in sacred subjects their identity with our own flesh and blood — has at different periods of the Christian Church affected the view entertained of the whole Bible. The same tendency which led Philo and Origen, Augustine and Gregory the Great, to see in the plainest statements of the Jewish history a series of mystical allegories, in our own time has as completely closed its real contents to a large part both of religious and irreligious readers, as if it had been a collection of fables. Many, who would be scandalized at ignorance of the battles of Salamis or Cannae, know and care nothing for the battles of Beth-horon and Megiddo. To search the Jewish records, as we would search those of other nations, is regarded as dangerous. Even to speak of any portion of the Bible as " a history," has been described, even by able and pious men, as an outrage upon religion.

In protesting against this elimination of the historical element from the Sacred Narrative, I shall not be understood as wishing to efface the distinction which good taste, no less than reverence, will always endeavor to preserve between the Jewish and other histories. Even in dealing with Greek and Roman times, we

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must beware of an excessive reaction against the old system of nomenclature. An indiscriminate introduction of modern associations into the ancient or the sacred world is almost as misleading as their entire exclusion. But we shall be best preserved from such dangers by a true understanding of the actual events, persons, and countries of which we profess to speak. And there are so many signs of returning healthiness in regard to Biblical History, that we need not fear for the result. It is one of the many debts of gratitude which the Church of England owes to the author of the " Christian Year," that he was one of the first amongst our divines who ventured in his well-known poems to allude to the scenes and the characters of the Sacred Story in the same terms that he would have used if speaking of any other remarkable history. It is for this reason, amongst others, that I have on all occasions, where it was possible, employed his language — now happily familiar to the whole of English Christendom — to enforce and to illustrate my own descriptions. Similar examples of freely handling ttiese sacred subjects in a becoming spirit may be seen (to select two works, widely differing in other respects) in Dr. Robinson's " Biblical " Researches in Palestine," and the Prefaces to Dr. Pusey's a Commentary on the Minor Prophets." Indeed it may safely be said, — and it is the almost inevitable result of an intimate acquaintance with the language, the topography, or the poetry of the Bible, — that whoever has passed through any one of these gates

PREFACE. XI

mto a nearer presence of the truths and the events described will never again be able to speak of them with the cold and stiff formality which once w;:s thought their only safeguard.

Thirdly, it has been my intention to make these Lectures strictly si ecclesiastical." The history of the Jewish race, language, and antiquities belongs to other departments. It is the history of the Jewish Church of which my office invited me to speak. I have thus been led to dwell especially on those parts of the history which bear directly on the religious development of the nation. I have never forgotten that the literature of the Hebrew race, from which the materials of these Lectures are drawn, is also the Bible, — the Sacred Book, or Books, of Christendom. I have constantly endeavored to remind my hearers and readers that the Christian Church sprang out of the Jewish, and therefore to connect the history of the two together, both by way of contrast and illustration, wherever opportunity offered. Yv^hatever memorials of any particular form or epoch of the Jewish History can be permanently traced in the institutions, the language, the imagery, of either Church, I have endeavored carefully to note. The desire to find in all parts of the Old Testament allegories or types of the New, has been pushed to such an excess that many students turn away from this side of the nistory in disgust. But there is a continuity of character running through the career of the Chosen People which cannot be disputed, and on this, the true

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historical basis of " types," — which is, in fact, only the Greek word for " likenesses," — I have not scrupled to dwell. Throughout I have sought to recog* nize the identity of purpose — the constant gravitation towards the greatest of all events — which, under any hypothesis, must furnish the main interest of the History of Israel.

These are the chief points to which I have called attention in my Lectures, and to which I here again call the attention of my readers. There are many collateral questions naturally arising out of the subject, for which the purpose of this work furnishes no scope. Discussions of chronology, statistics, and physical science, — of the critical state of the different texts and the authorship of the different portions of the narration, — of the precise limits to be drawn between natural and supernatural,1 providential and miraculous, — unless in passages where the existing documents and the existing localities force the consideration upon us, — I have usually left unnoticed. I have passed by these questions, because I do not wish to disturb my readers with distinctions which to the Sacred writers were for the most part alien and unknown, and which, within the limits of the plan of this work, would be superfluous and inappropriate. The only exception which I have made has been in favor of illustrations from Geography. These, from

1 For an able statement of this ticle on " the Supernatural " in the question I venture to refer to an ar- Edinburgh Review, No. 236, p. 378.

PREFACE Xlll

the circumstance of my having been twice enabled to visit the scenes of Sacred History, I felt that I might be pardoned for offering as my special contribution to the study of the subject, even if they somewhat exceeded the due proportion of the rest of the work.1 On all other matters of this secondary nature, I have been content to rest On the researches2 of others, and to refer to them for further elucidation. No one will, I trust, suspect me of undervaluing these researches. It is my firm conviction that in proportion as such inquiries are fearlessly pursued by those who are able to make them, will be the gain both to the cause of Biblical science and of true Religion ; and I, for one, must profess my deep obligations to those who, in other countries, have devoted their time and labor, and in this country have hazarded worldly interests and popular favor, in this noble, though often perilous, pursuit of Divine Truth.

To name any, in a field where so many have contributed to the general result, would be difficult and invidious. But there is one so distinguished above the rest, and so closely connected with the subject of this work, that I must be permitted to express here, once

1 This must be my excuse for the Hebron, and the Samaritan Passfrequent references to another work, over.

Sinai and Palestine, which was origi- 2 It will be seen that there is one nally undertaken with the express pur- name constantly recurring here, as in pose of a preparation for such a work all else that I have written on these as is here attempted. I have also subjects. It is an unfailing pleasure ventured to take this opportunity of to me to refer to Mr. Grove's congiving in the Appendix an account of tinued aid — such as I could have re- ''he two most remarkable scenes, which ceived from no one else in like degree m. witnessed in my late journey to the — in all questions connected with Sa* Holy Land, — the visit to the Mosque of cred history and geography.

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for all, the gratitude which I, in common with many others, owe to his vast labors.

It is now twenty-five years ago since Arnold wrote to Bunsen,1 " What Wolf and Niebuhr have done for " Greece and Kome, seems sadly wanted for Judaea." The wish thus boldly expressed for a critical and historical investigation of the Jewish history was, in fact, already on the eve of accomplishment. At that time Ewald was only known as one of the chief Orientalists of Germany. He had not yet proved himself to be the first Biblical scholar in Europe. But, year by year, he was advancing towards his grand object. To his profound knowledge of the Hebrew language he added, step by step, a knowledge of each stage of the Hebrew Literature. These labors on the prophetic and poetic books of the ancient Scriptures culminated in, his noble work on the History of the People of Israel — as powerful in its general conception, as it is saturated with learning down to its minutest details. It would be presumptuous in me either to defend or to attack the critical analysis, which to most English readers savors of arbitrary dogmatism, with which he assigns special dates and authors to the manifold constituent parts of the several books of the Old Testament ; and from many of his general statements I should venture to express my disagreement, were this the place to do so. But the intimate acquaintance which he exhibits with every portion of the Sacred Writings, combined as it is with a loving and reverential appreciation of

1 Arnold's Letters, Feb. 10, 1835 (Life and Correspondence, i. 338).

PREFACE. x\

each individual character, and of the whole spirit and purpose of the Israelitish history, has won the respect even of those who differ widely from his conclusions How vast its silent effect has been may be seen from the recognition of its value, not only in its author's own country, but in France and in England also. One instance may suffice : — the constant reference to his writings throughout the new " Dictionary of the Bible," to which I have myself so often referred with advantage, and which more than any other single English work is intended to represent the knowledge and meet the wants of the rising generation of Biblical students.

But, in fact, my aim has been not to recommend the teaching or the researches of any theologian however eminent, but to point the way to the treasures themselves of that History on which I have spent so many years of anxious, yet delightful, labor. There are some excellent men who disparage the Old Testament, as the best means of saving the New. There are others w7ho think that it can only be maintained by discouraging all inquiry into its authority or its contents. It is true that the Old Testament is inferior to the New, that it contains and sanctions manv institutions and precepts (polygamy, for example, and slavery), wrhich have been condemned or abandoned by the tacit consent of nearly the whole of Christendom. But this inferiority is no more than both Testaments freely recognize ; the one by pointing to a Future greater than itself, the other by insisting on

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the gradual, partial, imperfect character of the Revelations that had preceded it. It is true also that the rigid acceptance of every part of the Old Testament as of equal authority, equal value, and equal accuracy, is rendered impossible by every advance made in Biblical science, and by every increase of our acquaintance with Eastern customs and primeval history. But it is no less true that by almost every one of these advances the beauty and the grandeur of the substance and spirit of its different parts are enhanced to a degree far transcending all that was possible in former ages.

My object will have been attained, if, by calling attention to these incontestable and essential features of the Sacred History, I may have been able in any measure to smooth the approaches to some, of the theological difficulties which may be in store for this generation ; still more if I can persuade any one to look on the History of the Jewish Church as it really is ; to see how important is the place which it occupies in the general education of the world, — how many elements of religious thought it supplies, which even the New Testament fails to furnish in the same degree, — how largely indebted to it have been already, and may yet be, in a still greater degree, the Civilization and the Faith of mankind.

Christ Church, Oxford : Sept. 16, 1862.

Table Of Contents

PAG1

Preface vii

Introduction xxix