Apart from its religious value and authority for the synagogue and the church, the Old Testament contains the remains of a national literature which richly rewards study for its own sake. While its masterpieces may be read with pleasure and profit without regard to the age and circumstances in which they were written, they will be better appreciated as well as better understood in the light of their own times and in their place in the literature as a whole. In this literature are also the sources for the political history of the Hebrew people and for the history of its civilization and religion. The critical ordering and appraisal of these sources is fundamental to any solid historical construction and, indeed, to any historical understanding of the Old Testament.
In the present volume the results of this critical inquiry are concisely set forth, with primary reference to the history of the literature and the development of religion, rather than to the sources for the political history, a complete investigation of which would require a somewhat different method. The questions are approached in the same way in which we should deal with similar questions in any other literature; critical problems, whether in sacred texts or profane, can be solved only by the application of the established methods of historical criticism.
All that survives of Hebrew literature prior to the age of Alexander is preserved in the Jewish Bible. It is not until the beginning of the third century B.C. that we come upon books written by Jews in Hebrew or in Greek which are not included in the canon. It is, doubtless, only a small part of a rich and varied literature that has thus been rescued across the centuries; much the larger part of what was written in the days of the national kingdoms, for example, must have perished in the catastrophes which befell Israel in the eighth century and Judah in the beginning of the sixth. What was saved was preserved for its intrinsic religious value or its association with great names of religious leaders and teachers, not out of a merely literary or patriotic interest. Nor were these losses confined to the older literature. Of the history of Judah under the Persian kings, for example, there must once have been completer records than the dubious scraps we have in Ezra. Of secular poetry, which there is every reason to think flourished no less than hymnody, we should have had no specimens, had not an anthology of love songs somehow got the name of Solomon, and by a mystical interpretation been converted to religion. The remains of this literature are scattered unequally over a period of a thousand years or more. The youngest writings in the canon date from the second century B.C. (Daniel, Maccabean Psalms), being later than Sirach, and contemporary with some of the visions of Enoch. All that is preserved of the earliest writings has been transmitted to us by later authors, who incorporated in their works longer or shorter passages extracted from their predecessors.
The books of the Old Testament differ widely in matter and form—history and story; legislation, civil and ritual, moral and ceremonial; prophecy and apocalypse; lyric, didactic, and dramatic poetry. The literary quality of the best in all these kinds is very high. The Song of Deborah (Judg. 5), notwithstanding the imperfect state of the text, is one of the greatest of triumphal odes; parts of Job attain the height of the sublime; some of the Psalms are worthy of a foremost place among religious lyrics; many oracles of the prophets are as noteworthy for the perfection of the expression as for the elevation of the thought; the laws are often formulated with admirable precision; in the art of narration the older historians are unsurpassed in ancient literature. These qualities appear even more conspicuous in comparison with the remains of Egyptian or of Babylonian and Assyrian writings. It is only among the Greeks that we find anything to match the finest productions of the Hebrew genius. It need hardly be said that the Old Testament is not all on this high level of excellence—what literature is? But, taken as a whole, the level is surprisingly high, and even in the decadence classical models are sometimes imitated with no small degree of success.
CHAPTER III
THE PENTATEUCH
The Old Testament begins with a comprehensive historical work, reaching from the creation of the world to the fall of the kingdom of Judah (586 B.C.), which in the Hebrew Bible is divided into nine books (Genesis-Kings). The Jews made a greater division at the end of the fifth book (Deuteronomy) and treated the first five books (the Pentateuch) as a unit, with a character and name of its own, the Law. The names of the several books in our Bibles are derived from the Greek version, and indicate in a general way the subject of the book, or, more exactly, the subject with which it begins: Genesis, the creation of the world; Exodus, the escape from Egypt; Leviticus, the priests' book; Numbers, the census of the tribes; Deuteronomy, the second legislation, or the recapitulation of the law.
The three middle books of the Pentateuch (Exodus-Numbers) are more closely connected with one another than with the preceding and following books (Genesis, Deuteronomy); in fact, they form a whole which is only for convenience in handling divided into parts. In these books narrative and legislation are somewhat unequally represented. Exod. 1-19 is almost all narrative, as are also c. 24, and cc. 32-34; the story is picked up again in Num. 10, what lies between is wholly legislative; in Num. 10-27, 28-36, narrative and laws alternate, the latter predominating. It is evident that from the author's point of view the narrative was primarily a historical setting for the Mosaic legislation.
Deuteronomy begins with a brief retrospect (Deut. 1-3) of the movements of the Israelites from the time they left the Mount of God till they arrived in the Plains of Moab, the lifetime of a whole generation. There, as they are about to cross the Jordan to possess the Land of Promise, Moses delivers to them the law which they shall observe in the land, and with many exhortations and warnings urges them to be faithful to their religion with its distinctive worship and morals. Thus Deuteronomy also presents itself essentially as legislation.