SELECTED BY THE REV. J. H. VINCENT, D. D.
[January 7.]
[HISTORY OF GOD’S BOOK.]
By Rev. FRANK RUSSELL, A. M.
The word of God began to be spoken to the first of the race in Eden, and such is the beginning of the Bible. It was only a spoken word, doubtless, for nearly twenty-five hundred years. From generation to generation through all the patriarchal ages it was preserved by fathers carefully teaching it to their children. Many fragments may have been lost, but it is no taxation of our belief that for many centuries much of the early Word may have been carefully treasured through the exercise of memory. We know of marvelous instances of the power of memory. It is supposed that the works of Homer, an elaborate poem with careful divisions, were preserved for centuries in critical form, by one generation repeating it to the next while it was unwritten. It does not bear the marks of change during these generations of its history, but is unique, precise, and giving every evidence of being the original work of one author, Homer. Sir Robert Peel is stated to have been able to listen to a speech in Parliament one and a half or two hours long, and then repeat it all verbatim, and it is also said at the present time that Gladstone has learned Homer so thoroughly that on hearing any line of it repeated he is able at once to repeat the following and the preceding line. Now Shem lived upon the earth after he came out of the ark five hundred years, and could have thoroughly taught the new race in Asia the story. Snatches of song and old tales which he related might have been verbally composed in the antediluvian period, and many think that specimens of the same still hold their place, set like pearls in the earliest Scripture writings. There is little doubt that Job is the first writer whose productions are preserved. That he wrote before Moses seems quite evident from statements easily understood; viz., his descriptions are only of the manners and customs of the ancient patriarchs, his religion is purely patriarchal, the only idolatry he mentions is the worship of the sun and moon, thus seeming to antedate the time of their idol worship, and lastly, he makes no mention of Sodom, Gomorrah, or Abraham, which would scarcely have been the case had he written after Moses. Moses may likely have read Job and have received added inspiration from it, if, indeed, he should need more than to have received the tables writ with God’s own finger. There are, thus far, six pamphlets bound with sixty of later date that make up our book. Look at the antiquity of these six venerable fragments, written one thousand years before Homer sang, one thousand years before either Herodotus or Confucius was born.
Following these earlier Scripture writings there came to be mentioned the rolls of the prophets, songs and sketches of genealogies and history, so that gradually fragments, here and there, came forth by divine direction, which, preserved by divine care, were to enter the canon which we have of sixty-six pamphlets, by about forty writers, the entire authorship spanning a period of about sixteen centuries, geographically ranging over the cities of Chaldea, the plains of Arabia, and the mountains of Palestine. The range of mind is equally varied; written by men who sat on thrones, by some who lived as hermits in the mountains, and by some who were shepherds and fishermen.
About 600 B. C., it is recorded in Jeremiah xxxvi that Jehoiachim, while listening to the reading of the roll, became so enraged at its contents that he took his penknife and defaced it, and then cast it into the fire-place and saw it consumed. He has had many descendants of the same temper, and his race is not yet extinguished.
In about 450 B. C.—I am careful to give approximate dates in round numbers—the sacred rolls were so mutilated that when Ezra and Nehemiah returned from the eastern captivity and reorganized the old worship in the city of Jerusalem, they added to their other improvements the establishment of a district library, Ezra collected and translated all the copies of the Bible, writing in a kind of Chaldaic Hebrew, the old language modified by the eastern dialect, with which the Hebrews in their captivity had grown familiar, so that now there were two languages of Scripture, the Samaritans clinging tenaciously to the old Hebrew of Job, and Moses, and the prophets after them.
About 280 B. C., marks another epoch in the development of the book. Ptolemy Philadelphus, the ruler of Egypt, desired to enrich the great imperial library of Alexandria with a complete and careful translation of the sacred writings into Greek, which was the popular language of his time. He organized a college of seventy or seventy-two eminent scholars, and classified the work among them; and the result was the Septuagint translation, the foundation of all our translations of the Old Testament since. It is said that the last transcript of this work was made by the hand of a woman named Techla. This was the edition which the Savior and the apostles used, the very language which they quoted and mostly spake. Between 130 and 140 B. C., Antiochus distinguished himself by attempting to burn all the Bibles in the world, thus acting the part of Jehoiachim No. 2.