both strengthened and diffused. The child will find it in the story, the youth in the romance and the drama, the lawyer in the political institutions, the ecclesiastic in the canons, the moralist in the apothegms, the rationalist in the philosophy, the mystic in the visions, the man of action in the history, and all in the supreme biography which constitutes the natural climax of the whole collection.

This is perhaps to anticipate the conclusion to which I hope in this volume to conduct such readers as have an inclination to read it to the end. Suffice it to say here that the synthesis of the modern study differs as much from that of the ancient method as does the analysis which I have here described from that of the older method. The modern student can no longer take texts from Genesis, Leviticus, Kings, Job, the Song of Songs, Isaiah, and Romans, and, ignoring the fact that the first book is one of ancient tradition, the second a book of ecclesiastical canons, the third a political history, the fourth an epic poem, the fifth a drama, the sixth a collection of odes and orations, and the seventh an epistolary treatise on theology, treat them as though they are all to be interpreted in the same fashion, and can be combined in a textual mosaic which should be accepted as a standard in theology. But he can study the writings of the various authors, ascertain the thought and catch the spirit of each, and, comparing them with one another, learn in what they agree and in what they differ. I believe that such a synthesis will make

it clear that these men of dissimilar epochs, conditions, and temperaments, widely as they differ, not only in their form of expression, but in their mode of thought, agree in their essential spirit, and, in so far, in their essential religious message. If out of such a synthesis there emerges a system of theology not so definite as that framed by the old method, I believe it will be less scholastic and more spiritual. If so, the gain will far counterbalance any possible loss.

There is one objection, if not to the literary method of study here defined and defended, at least to the results here indicated and summarized, which ought to be frankly stated and as frankly

met.

The Old Testament existed, substantially in the form in which we now possess it, certainly two, probably three, and perhaps four centuries prior to the time of Christ, and there was a practically uniform tradition existing in the time of Christ respecting the date and authorship of most of these books. It was almost universally agreed among the Hebrew rabbis at that time that Moses wrote the whole of the Pentateuch; that Joshua wrote the Book of Joshua; that Samuel wrote the Books of Samuel, Esther, and Judges; the Books of Kings and Chronicles were conceded to be written by unknown authors; Job was thought to be written by Moses; the great majority of the Psalms by David or by men of his age; the great majority of the Proverbs, the whole of Ecclesi

astes, and the Song of Songs by Solomon; Daniel by a prophet bearing that name; Isaiah by the son of Amoz; and the other prophets by the writers whose names they bear. The one possible exception to this was the Book of Jonah, which was regarded by some Hebrew scholars from a very early period as not being written by Jonah and as not being historical. The traditionalist, that is, he who bases his conclusions concerning Scripture upon tradition, considers that this longlived belief substantially settles the question of date and authorship. He says that here is a tradition which has existed for two thousand years practically undisputed. It is true that it has been in some of its parts denied. Luther doubted it; Calvin denied it in part; but, on the whole, it has been accepted down to about the year 1750 with very little discussion. This undisputed tradition, the traditionalist thinks, establishes the date and authorship of these books; and he feels this the more strongly because he thinks these traditions were accepted and indorsed by Paul and by Jesus Christ, since they both cited from the books of Moses and from the different prophets without any intimation that these books were not written by the persons whose names they bear.1

To this tradition the literary student, or higher critic, pays little attention; the most conservative of his class is not stopped by it, the more radical

1 For a full statement of this argument see The Old Testament under Fire, by A. J. F. Behrends, D. D., chap. iii.

disregards it altogether, for a variety of reasons. The fact that the tradition was for so long a time undisputed deprives it of weight. A tradition is of little scientific value until it has been subjected to careful investigation; and this tradition was never investigated until about a hundred and fifty years ago. It is, therefore, as a tradition, entitled to no more consideration than the Ptolemaic tradition in astronomy, or the long undisputed but now wholly discarded traditions respecting the early history of Greece and Rome. This particular tradition is of the less value because of the age in which it first appeared. If we trace it back to the fourth century before Christ, its birth is a thousand years after the time of Moses. The scientific thinker can see no reason for accrediting men who lived a thousand years after Moses with any better facilities for determining the authorship of their sacred books than have the scholars of our own time. A tradition concerning the authorship of a volume written ten, five, or even two centuries before the tradition first appears is not, to the scientific scholar, of any considerable value. If we could suppose that at that time the question was carefully studied by intelligent and unprejudiced scholars, some weight might be given to their conclusions. But this tradition had its rise among a school of rabbis whose methods were as far removed as possible from those of a rational and unprejudiced investigator. Paul, reared in the rabbinical school, has treated these traditions with

no respect, saying that when the rabbis read the law in their synagogues they had a veil over the face.1 Christ spoke of them with even greater severity, saying that by their traditions the rabbis had made the word of God of none effect, and telling his disciples that their interpretations of the Old Testament showed them to be fools and blind.2 Theologians who soberly maintained that the law existed two thousand years before the creation, and that Jehovah himself studied it in the heavens with his holy angels, cannot be regarded as authority on questions of literature by Christian scholars in this close of the nineteenth century.

3

Nor does Christ give to this Jewish tradition any endorsement. There is nothing inconsistent with a rational recognition of his divine character in the opinion that he shared on these questions the common impressions of his time. But if he did, he never gave to those impressions the weight of his authority. He never undertook to speak with authority on the question of the date or authorship of Biblical books. He never makes Biblical criticism the subject of his teaching. He never bases his authority on that of the authors of the Biblical books. Sometimes he sets their authority aside, as in the Sermon on the Mount. Sometimes he cites their own Scriptures against his critics, in much the same

1 2 Cor. iii. 15. 2 Matt. xxiii. 17; Mark vii. 13. 3 For illustrations of the spirit of traditionalism in the time of Christ see Edersheim's Life and Times of Jesus, Book I. chaps. vii. and viii.