A guidebook to the Biblical literature

Front matter

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Preface

THIS book is meant to be just what its title names it : a guidebook to the BibHcal hterature, not a substitute for it. Its office is subsid iary, not principal. One does not study a guidebook for its own sake. The familiar little redcovered volumes that deck the traveled man's shelf bear witness not to erudition in that species of literature but to intimate memories and experiences wherein the useful manual that pointed out the scene of them is forgotten. So may it fare with the guidebook herewith introduced, to the reader. The desired stimulus of it, if indeed it can lay any claim to such effect, is meant to be toward the straight study of the Bible itself, as one would study a virgin object of science, without deflection, without denial, without surrogate. Its postulate is that the Bible, reverently and constructively interrogated, is its own best interpreter. It bears the same relation, accordingly, to the wealth and width of the literature to which it would direct its readers that Murray and Baedeker bear to the lands and cities and treasures of their research ; and its best hopes will be met if it succeeds, in some deserving measure, in placing them at the fair and free point of view whence, surveying with open eye the rich realm of the Biblical literature, they may see and know it as it essentially is.

In essaying, on the scale and scope here contemplated, to be a guide through so vast a tract of literary wealth, the author's most exacting problem has risen not from the difficulty or abstruseness of the subject but from its largeness, its sheer emb arras de riches ses. Here in a single volume is a book covering the life of many centuries which, as i^

Pascal phrases it, was not made by an individual author and dispensed among the people but which itself, as it emerged and grew, made the people ; that is to say, which purveyed for a nation peculiarly gifted and responsive the spiritual light and truth that it needed for the right uses of life in its successive homes and ages and conditions. Immense treasures of matter and manner must needs be noted and weighed, whether reduced to the scale of this guidebook or not ; there is also to be adjusted the everbesetting tendency, figured in the old proverb, to miss the forest for the trees. No end of values are there for the gathering, each abundantly rewarding after its kind. He that seeketh findeth, and in so rich profusion that each department of research, once explored and organized, is prone to claim the monopoly and ignore or contemn the others. Hence the grim controversies that for centuries have so wrought to cleave the Bible truth into parcels and parties, — vehement screeds of doctor and saint, with their

" great argument About it and about," —

controversies warrantable enough, perhaps, to myopic human nature, but generally reducible, for all their solemn sincerity, to some phase of smallness or one-sidedness. Yet, even so, they are not to be scorned ; there are shreds of truth at the bottom of them ; but neither are they to be emulated. The truth that is in them may be found, I am sure, in some more tolerant way, some way more consistent with comity of spirit and aim. But to find it one must ascend ; must reach some point above, where the tangled lines meet and unite. The Biblica l literaturej^afterall^ does make for plainness, simplicity^ y^jlv \ it recjuires only that one shall find the master-key and consistently use it. This is why, as intimated above, I desiderate a fair and free point of view : "^^ fair, I mean, to all sides, all moods, all constituent factors,

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PREFACE

free from subjective willfulness or torsion. I do not coufit myself to have attained. It would not be safe, I imagine, for anyone to do so. The quest is too "high, too far-reaching. I can only avow the ideal, and keep it bright, and follow after. There comes to me often a remark of Matthew Arnold's, made for a similar though less exacting case of literary judgment. '' To handle these matters properly," he says, '' there is needed a poise so perfect that the least overweight in any direction tends to destroy the balance. Temper destroys it, a crotchet destroys it, even erudition may destroy it. To press to the sense of the thing itself with which one is dealing, not to go off on some collateral issue about the thing, is the hardest matter in the world." This may be rather extremely stated ; but the scholar may well lay it up in mind as a self-regulative.

What my desired point of view specifically is, may perhaps be better felt, as giving tone and color to^my whole treatment, than defined in categoric terms ; for to call it literary is at once too broad and too narrow to be truly definitive. It is, to begin with, a station in thought and feeling where the disposition is less to criticize than to describe, less to analyze than to enjoy, less to sit in judgment than simply to inquire and learn. In other words, my attitude, if I know myself, is purely and humbly constructive. A book of this size and scale, I assume, cannot afford to waste time in exploring ctds-de-sac or in recounting things that are not so. It is enough to have found these out ; to make an academic demonstration of the discovery is another matter. Accordingly, I have been content to take the Scripture text as it is, in its latest and presumably most definitive edition, with more regard to the time it fits than to the time in which it was conjecturally written ; content also to assume that the Biblical literature was the product not of vague tendencies and movements merely but of real personal authors who, whether one is able to call their names or not, were

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what Professor Godet assumes of the Gospel writers, ''men of good sense and good faith." This brings me to the most cherished center of my point of view. It has been my endeavor to place myself by the side of each Scripture author, as if his literary task were also mine ; to learn his mind, share in his conception and aim, feel the intimate throb of his personal temperament and style. This for one factor of realization ; there is also its inseparable complement to reckon with. An author implies an audience. We must needs appreciate their point of view, as well as that of their poets and teachers. Our quest accordingly must enlarge itself to take in the mind of a people or of an era which could respond intelligently, whether in sympathy or reaction, to the kind of literature under consideration ; for a book is not a cloistered thing, it reflects, it is intimately involved with, its age. This is where the expository and the historical come into collaboration. In other words, with the study of the literature itself must be combined a study of the people whom the literature fits ; and so our research must correspond in some degree to what the Germans call Culttirgeschickte, a history of a people's culture, as this is reflected in the literary productions that have survived from the successive periods of its historical experience. To the exactions of the point of view must be added the claims of balance, perspective, proportion ; else there is the besetting liability, as phrased above, to leave the core of the thing itself for" ''some collateral issue about the thing." And, first of all, it is worth while to note, in the present stage of Biblical research, that it makes a good deal of difference whether one studies the literature for the sake of the history or the history for the sake of the literature. Both objects, of course, are legitimate and laudable ; they connote, however, quite divergent interests and results, which ought to be fairly discriminated. I have pursued the latter because my taste leads me to lay the stress rather

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PREFACE

on present spiritual values — which is to say the values that have made the literature Biblical — than on values which appeal predominantly to antiquarian interests. But the same emphasis which makes history the second interest and not the first also, when rightly distributed, puts into proper subordination, the multitude of facts and guesses which are so apt to clamor for more than their due. Many a true thing may be insignificant, or only remotely relevant if at all. Especially on the size and scale of this book, such things may merit only casual mention, or indeed sink beneath the surface into silence. Accordingly, I have given comparatively little relative stress to some things that have bulked large in the higher criticism, things like documentary theories, editorial additions or glosses, conjectural sources, and the like ; while I have almost entirely ignored the clatter and clutter of corrupt readings, scribal blunders, dislocations, discrepancies, and in general the pettinesses of destructive or sceptical criticism, — things which do not belong to the scale and scope of this book, and which, when projected on the background of the large Biblical theme, can elicit only the doubtful query, " Well, what of it .? " When the final claims of Biblical values are made up, many things that are first shall be last ; it will do no harm to weigh and discount that possibility, or in other words to sense the proportions and relations of things.

All this, however, brings us only as far as the outworks of our real quest ; the heart of the matter begins here, and no teacher or guidebook can impart it. It is a fallacy to assume, whatever we think of inspiration, that "we are dealing with a literature like every other ; we miss a cardinal factor if we do, and our study is sterilized thereby. This is a literature unique. It holds perpetual commerce with the unseen and the divine, while also its feet are firmly on the earth moving among men's intimate affairs. It is Biblical. It is a thing to be learned, as it were, by heart rather than by

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rote. And the heart has its own means of recognition. Contemplating the majestic evolution and coordination of the Biblical theme until in one unitary body of literature it has recorded a universe of experiences and relations wherein the divine and the human natures meet and blend, the sincere heart is aware of what Virgil felt in the universe of nature : —

or to use Burke's noble' paraphrase : *'the spirit . . . which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part, . . . even down to the minutest member." That is our true, our only adequate objective — the spirit within. I do not insist on a theological or mystical name for it; that is for the reader's experience to verify. One gets the spirit of a book not by logic or memory but by a kindred response to its inherent appeal. So with this Biblical literature. The Open Sesame is not merely the academic or dogmatic or even pietistic spirit, but the strong pervasive spirit of the Book itself. With this as the inner key the Book is its own best interpreter ; and the reflex of that spirit, in fitting proportion and degree, is the best illuminant of the collateral and ancillary issues that are involved with it.

The version of the Bible used as the source of quotation and reference throughout this guidebook, except in some specified cases, is the American Standard Revision of 1901.

JOHN FRANKLIN GENUNG

Amherst, Massachusetts

Contents

PAGIS

I. The Bible as a Literature 4

II. The Bible as a Library 12

III. The Bible as a Book . 21

Chapter I. Semina Litterarum 29-76

I. The Hebrew Mind 29

I. The Genius of a Race 31

II. The Dominant Aptitude 37

II. The Hebrew Heritage 39

I. The Allotted Land 42

11. The Inherited Fund of Ideas 46

III. Before the Age of Books 56

I. Literary Fragments and Remainders ' . 58

II. The Native Mold of Literary Form 64

III. Avails and' Deficits of the Pre-Literary Times . . .72

Chapter II. Awaking of the Literary Sense . . . 77-96 I. The Quickened National Self-Consciousness ... 78

. II. Initiative in Two Gifted Kings 80

I. David's Part in the Literary Awakening . . . . 81 II. Solomon's Relation to Literature 83

III. Evolution of Literary Types and Functions . . . 86

I. The Lyric Strain, General and Sacred 87

II. The Wisdom Strain, and the Sages 92

PAGES

Chapter III. Looking Before and After .... 97-132

I. One People in Two Kingdoms 98

I. Traits and Tendencies in the Two 99

n. Resultailt Literary Situation . . . . . . . . 102

II. Looking Before — Beginnings of Historical Writing

I. Order of Historical Composition

II. Two Main Lines of Source Story ......

III. How these were Supplemented . . . ...

IV. Treatment of Myth and Legend

III. Looking After — Beginnings of Literary Prophecy

I. Oracles Tribal and Racial

II. Evolution of the Prophetic Order

III. Era of Prophetic Masters and Guilds

Chapter IV. The Stress of Prophecy .... 133

I. The Impending Crisis <

I. Tne Broad Historical Situation

II. Rising to the Occasion

III. The Forecast in Joel

II. In the Northern Kingdom

I. Arrios, and his Prophecy of Judgment

II. Hosea, and his Sense of Outraged Love ....

III. In the Southern Kingdom

I. A Postponement of Doom

X II. Micah, Prophet of the Countryside

III. Isaiah of Jerusalem ...

IV. The Crisis Met and Weathered . •

04 04 09

13 14

23 29

85 34 35 38 43

47 48

57 57 60

67 79

Chapter V. After the Reprieve . . . . . . 186-247

I. Men of Insight at" Work 188

I. Isaiah's Vision of Destiny 189

II. Stimulus of a Royal Patron ......... 194

III. Treasures from the Older Literature ...... 196

II. On the Eve of National Transplantation .... 204

I. Prophets of the Dies Irae ......... 208

II. The Book Found in the Temple 220

III. Jeremiah : the Man and the Crisis ...... 228

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CONTENTS BOOK II. THE PEOPLE OF A BOOK

PAGES

Chapter VI. Literary Fruits of the Exile . . 254-369

I. Literary Activities in Chaldea 257

I. Ezekiel : Pastor and Reconstructor 257

II. Daniel : Mage, and Revealer at Court . . . . . 278

III. Second Isaiah : Finisher of the Vision 300

II. The Literature of Reestablishment in the Holy

Land 337

I. Prophets of the Rebuilt Temple 340

II. The Subsidence of Prophecy ......... 352

Chapter VII. The Puritan Era and its Literature 370-425

I. The Initiative from Babylon 372

I. Post-Exilic Men of Letters and their Work . . . 373

II. Ezra: Scribe and Scholar 379

II. Legalism and its Austerities • 3^5

I. The Jewish Mind and Mood . 385

II. The Completed Pentateuch 391

III. The Later Cultus Literature 403

III. Reactions and Alleviations 4^4

I. Veiled Signs of Reaction and Protest 416

II. While the Big Book is Growing 424

Chapter VIII. Treasury of the Choice Hebrew Classics 426-520

I. Traits of the Collection as a Whole ...... 427

II. The Three Great Classics 432

I. The Five Books of Psalms 432

II. Proverbs : Garnered Counsel from the Wise . . . 448

III. Job: Crucial Test of the Heart of Man 463

III. The Five Megilloth 482

I. Uses and Estimates of the Group 482

II. Traits of the Individual Books 485

IV. On the Literary Frontier • • • • 51°

I. The Visioned and the Settled . . 511

II. The Pause between the Testaments . . . . . . 517

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE BOOK III. THE PEOPLE OF THE WAY

PAGES

Chapter IX. The Son of Man 526-581

I. Expectation and Answer 527

I. The Prophetic Herald 530

II. The Old Order Changes ^ . . . 534

III. Initiating the Christ-Idea . ......... 537

II. The Literary Element in Jesus' Ministry .... 543

I. His General Public Utterances 544

II. His Teaching in Parables 548

III. His Encounters with Human Falsity 554

IV. His Utterances in Divine Character 558

V. His Acts in Divine Character 562

III. Bearing Witness to the Truth s^5

I. The Great Confession and its Sequel 567

II. Reckoning on Departure 571

III. Rounding Off the Earthly Ministry 577

Chapter X. The Literature of Fact 582-607

I. The Apostles and their Initial Message 583

I. Their Fitting Kind of Work ........ 585

II. Four Phases of the First Apostolic Message . . . 588

II. The Growth of the Synoptic Gospels 59^

I. The Germinating Time 592

II. Source- Gospels and Logia 594

HI. The Synoptic Gospels as Completed 598

III. The Acts of the Apostles 604

'^I. As Continuation of a Prior History 604

II. As Related to the Planting of Christianity . . . . 605

Chapter XL The Literature of Values ... 608-654

I. Literary Gifts and Medium of Publication- • . . 611

I. The Writers and their Qualifications 61 1

II. The Epistle Form and its Uses 613

II. Saint Paul as Orator and Letter Writer .... 615

I. Saint Paul the Man ^ 616

II. Saint Paul the Orator 620

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CONTENTS

PAGES

III. Letters of the Active Missionary 623

IV. Letters of the Roman Prisoner 628

III. From Jewish to Christian Idiom 633

I. Hebrews, and the FulfiUment of Types 634

II. James, and the Wisdom from Above 636

III. Epistles from Jesus' Personal Circle 638

IV. The Legacy of the Beloved Disciple 641

I. Who was the Beloved Disciple? 641

II. The Story Told Once More 645

III. The " Postscript Commendatory" 651

Chapter XII. The Resurgence of Prophecy . . 65^-677

I. Toward the End of the Era 659

I. The Presage in Jesus' Words 660

II. In the Light of Common Day 663

II. The Revelation of John 664

I. The Apocalyptic Warrant 665

II. Its Symbolism, Inherited and Initiated 668

III. The Reality within the Symbol 673

Index 679

[XV]

A GUIDEBOOK TO THE BIBLICAL LITERATURE

For worthy deeds are not often destitute of worthy relaters, as by a certain Fate great Acts and great Eloquence have most commonly gone hand in hand, equalling and honoring each other in the same Ages. — Milton

These people have a secret ; . . . they have discerned the way the world was going, and therefore they have prevailed. — Matthew Arnold

A GUIDEBOOK TO THE BIBLICAL LITERATURE

AFTER a lifelong conversance with literature, in which L field he did the world great service and nobly wore himself out, Sir Walter Scott, in his last illness, requested his son-in-law Lockhart to read to him. When asked from what book, he replied, " Need you ask ? There is but one." And Lockhart read to him from the Bible.

This tribute of a modern author to the venerable volume was not his alone. Nor did it express, as some would read it, either a sudden vivid conviction or a sick man's sense of last resort. It was the world's tribute, rendered long ago and reenforced by ages of ripened experience ; expressing the general judgment that here, of all books, is the one supremely great, the one that none others can supplant or emulate, the one embodying the essential values of all the rest. This idea is implicit in the name that soon after its completion was given to it : The Bible, — not a specific title at all, for it means simply The Book. The epithet Holy, which was quite generally added to the name, is of the same implication, expressing as it does its separateness from and superiority to all other books.

The term The Bible, from the Greek ta bib Ha, meaning originally "the booklets," or "little books" (more strictly What's in '' little papers," for biblos was the Greek word for the Name papyrus), recognizes the volume before us as a body of literature distributed in a collection of smaller works ;

which it obviously is. These works, however, though diverse, are not fortuitous or miscellaneous but of a selected and classified character ; wherefore the volume, as now made up, is often spoken of as a sacred canon or library. The name ''bible" was not given to the collection until the selecting and amassing of the booklets, in both Old and New Testaments, was . virtually or quite complete ; and soon thereafter the word, originally a plural, was understood and construed as a singular. Thus out of the sense of diversity grew the sense of unity and comprehensiveness. The name crystallizes the book's history. Beginning with the most unpretending claims, making its way by its intrinsic worth, not compelling assent but winning it, the Bible has established itself by its broad and varied scope, its homogeneity, and its developed unity of theme, as the world's supreme classic. In such comprehensive scope it calls for appraisal to-day. The Bible is at once, and in equally true sense of all three distinctions : a literature, a library, and a book.

Note. Its Designations. It was about the middle of the second century a.d. that the name "Bible" was generally adopted; and the word seems to have changed from plural to singular in its transition from Greek to Latin. The name given in the Bible itself to the collection of sacred writings (comprising the Old Testament series) is s'pharijn, books; see for instance, Dan. ix, 2: "I, Daniel, understood by the books," among which he specifies the prophecy of Jererhiah. The New Testament writers speak of the Old Testament books as hai graphai, the writings (Latin scriptures) ; see, for instance, Acts xvii, 11: " examining the scriptures [tas graphas) daily," where the body of Old Testament literature is meant.

The Bible as a Literature. As a gradually accumulated deposit of literary works the Bible coincides, in time and in progress of ideas, with the national history of a people of Semitic origin inhabiting the small land of Palestine, at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, and called at successive stages of their history Hebrews, Israelites, and Jews. During this race's unique national experience this literature, as put into form by its poets, sages, historians, and prophets, embodied its' sanest thinking and far-reaching ideals ; was in fact the education and making of that peculiarly gifted people.

The basis of ^ this literature, its underlying tissue, is historic and prophetic. That is to say, nearly all the works preserved to us are pretty directly concerned with this people's national experience ; not indeed in the mere annalistic or political sense, but as discerning its inner meanings, as related to the elemental claims of God and duty and destiny. This it is which gives the literature its hold on succeeding times and peoples ; for of all ancient races the Hebrew race was preeminent for the depth, the clearness, and the intensity of its spiritual intuitions. Its numerous writers, whoever they were, had in large and like degree the poet's and prophet's endowment of

such large discourse, Looking before and after ;

and this was their undying gift to humanity.

The literature surviving to us in the Bible covers, in its composition, a period from about 1250 b.c.^ to about In its His- lOO A.D. In its literary development this long toric Setting period falls naturally into three stages, which in our present study are considered in three books.

Note. The Starting Point. This period of about 1350 years is reckoned from the Song of Deborah, Judges v, perhaps the earHest literary piece which as a whole can be taken as contemporaneous with its event, to the completion of the Gospels, which may be put at about 100 A.D. The Song of Miriam at the Red Sea, Exod. xv, is in part as old as its event, and there are other early fragments which will be noted in their place; but the Song of Deborah makes a convenient starting point alike in history and in literature, from which we can reckon both backwards and forwards.

1 For the dates in Old Testament chronology I follow mostly those given in Kautszch's " Literature of the Old Testament."

1. Its earliest works, which we read as quoted bits of song and parable more or less fragmentary, embedded in its later compiled history, date from a time when the Hebrew people, newly delivered from Egyptian bondage, were struggling for foothold and independence in the land of Canaan. With the organization of the monarchy under David and Solomon a corresponding literary impulse was awakened, which, increasing in breadth, diffusion, and conscious art, followed the fortunes of the state through the rise and decline of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah, determined the various lines of literary utterance and form, and reached the vigor of its formative period at about the time of the Chaldean exile, in the beginning of the sixth century before Christ. It is during this period that the literature interacts most intimately with the history of the nation. We have named this period ''The Formative Centuries."

2. Through the subsequent centuries of life under foreign dominance, until the coming of Christ, during which period the national interest subsisted largely on the glories of its past, the activities of men of letters were directed to compiling, revising, and completing the works which the preexilic period had as it were left in the rough ; molding them into more matured and self-conscious literary forms ; and coordinating them into a canon for educational and devotional uses. In this period the prophet and creative historian is succeeded by the scholar and scribe. Its literary evolution is traced under the name '' The People of a Book " ; the book in question being the Old Testament, as a collection of laws, prophecies, histories, poems, and didactic precepts,

3. With the Old Testament, the Jewish canon, the Biblical literature of a race is closed, but it contains many intimations of unfinality and presages of a larger consummation. The new era opens, seventy years before the break-up of the Jewish state, with the coming of Jesus. Then later, under the vitalizing power of his ministry and personahty, a new literature gradually rises, related to the old as fulfillment to promise, as realization to hope and symbol ; a literature which from Jewish and ethnical becomes Christian and universal. Thus out of the literature of a race is developed the literature of humanity, which all races and ages can appropriate. The latest works of this new type of utterance date from about a generation after the destruction of Jerusalem and the downfall of the Jewish state, which event occurred a.d. 70. We consider this period under the name "The People of the Way."

At every stage, until the coming of Jesus, the Biblical literature is closely inwoven with national and race affairs ; a running accompaniment of Hebrew history, especially of its wider and more imaginative stage called Israelite, enforcing its spiritual values for present and future. After Jesus' coming it ignores the affairs of state, being concerned with the facts and values of the new order which, through his ministry and the activities of his apostles, is gaining foothold and power in the larger world. The "ideas of this new Christian order it not only sets forth in their own intrinsic light but coordinates at every step with the values that the past through its history and culture has revealed.

The fact that this body of literature has so laid hold on the universal heart of man as to have become the Bible, the I t T h r^'^^^^d book of counsel and authority for the with Nations most enlightened nations of the world, and to and imes h^ye been, as it still is, a main factor of their greatness, rouses inquiry as to what causes could have been great enough to produce so immense an effect. The thought of the factors concerned in it — land, history, people — yields at first consideration only a sense of discrepancy. It was a small and sequestered land, a dim and out-of-the-way history, a people quite undistinguished for arts or learning, and never great " in conquest or statecraft. To explain the power of their literature much has been made, and rightly, of divine superintendence and inspiration. But the divine accommodates itself to human methods and means, and these we can measure. And if these in themselves do not suffice to fill out the solution, we can at least note what part they play and what points they reach in the problem.

To gauge so tremendous an effect, however, we must take in a somewhat commensurate scope of historic and spiritual forces. The Biblical literature was secreted from many centuries of time, and interacted with the most spacious human issues. Its power to naturalize itself among all peoples and ages was well and truly earned. How this was, let a few words of summary attempt to show.

The land from which we get the Bible was indeed small ; '' the least of all lands " it has been called ; but being just at the meeting-place of three continents, and traversed by the main international routes of travel, traffic, and war, it was for the play of historic forces focal and pivotal. • No other ancient land was so favorably situated to be the laboratory for the working out of a world purpose.^ The period covered by the literature may be described in the large as that millennium of antiquity which witnessed the evolution of a world order out of primitive chaos and anarchy. It was that momentous era during which, as in a huge melting-pot, multitudes of turbulent tribes with their warring gods and* confused religions were first gradually subdued in the rude unity of great unwieldy monarchies, — Egypt, Assyria,' Babylonia, Persia, Greece, — and eventually, through the organizing genius of the Romans, amalgarnated in a world-wide merger of empire. It was, in other words, the embryotic