3. The perplexity thus set up is greatly deepened when we remember that the period assigned to the earlier prophets is near the beginning of the known age of alphabetic writing,[26] and before the known age of writing on scrolls. A herdsman of Judea, with a classic and flowing style, is held to have written out his hortatory addresses at a time when such writing is not certainly known to have been practised anywhere else;[27] and the pre-eminent style of Isaiah is held to belong to the same period.
“His [Amos’s] language, with three or four insignificant exceptions, is pure, his style classical and refined. His literary power is shown in the regularity of structure which often characterizes his periods ... as well as in the ease with which he evidently writes.... Anything of the nature of roughness or rusticity is wholly absent from his writings” (Driver, Introd. to Lit. of Old Test. ch. vi, § 3, p. 297, ed. 1891). Isaiah, again, is in his own narrow field one of the most gifted and skilful writers of all antiquity. The difficulty is thus nearly as great as that of the proposition that the Hebrew of the Pentateuch is a thousand years older than that of the latest prophetical books, whose language is substantially the same. (Cp. Andrews Norton, The Pentateuch, ed. 1863, pp. 47–48; Renan, Hist. des langues sémit. 2e édit. p. 118.)
4. The specialist critics, all trained as clergymen, and mostly loth to yield more than is absolutely necessary to skepticism, have surrendered the antiquity claimed for Joel, recognizing that the arguments for that are “equally consistent with a date after the Captivity.”[28] One of the conclusions here involved is that “Egypt is probably mentioned only as the typical instance of a Power hostile to Judah.” Thus, when we remember the later Jewish practice of speaking of Rome as “Babylon,” or “Edom,” allusions by Amos and Hosea to “Assyria” have no evidential force. The same reasoning applies to the supposed ancient portions of Isaiah.
5. Even on the clerical side, among the less conservative critics, it is already conceded that there are late “insertions” in Amos. Some of these insertions are among, or analogous to, the very passages relied on by Kuenen to prove the lofty monotheism of Amos. If these passages, however, suggest a late date, no less do the others disparaging sacrifices. The same critics find interpolations and additions in Hosea. But they offer no proof of the antiquity of what they retain.
The principal passages in Amos given up as insertions by Dr. Cheyne, the most perspicacious of the English Hebraists, are: iv, 13; v, 8–9; ix, 5–6; and ix, 8–15. See his introduction to 1895 ed. of Prof. Robertson Smith’s Prophets of Israel, p. xv; and his art. on Amos in the Encyclopædia Biblica. Compare Kuenen, i, 46, 48. Dr. Cheyne regards as insertions in Hosea the following: i, 10–ii, 1; “and David their King” in iii, 5; viii, 14; and xiv, 1–9 (as cited, pp. xviii–xix). Obviously these admissions entail others.
6. The same school of criticism, while adhering to the traditional dating of Amos and Hosea, has surrendered the claim for the Psalms, placing most of these in the same age with the books of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Ecclesiasticus.[29] Now, the sentiment of opposition to burnt-offerings is found in some of the Psalms in language identical with that of the supposed early prophets.[30] Instead of taking the former for late echoes of the latter, we may reasonably suspect that they belong to the same culture-stage.
The principle is in effect recognized by Dr. Cheyne when he writes: “Just as we infer from the reference to Cyrus in xliv, 28; xlv, 1, that the prophecy containing it proceeds from the age of the conqueror, so we may infer from the fraternal feeling towards Egypt and Assyria (Syria) in xix, 23–25, that the epilogue was written when hopes of the union and fusion of Israelitish and non-Israelitish elements first became natural for the Jews—i.e., in the early Jewish period” (Introd. to the Book of Isaiah, 1895, pp. 109–10).
7. From the scientific point of view, finally, the element of historical prediction in the prophets is one of the strongest grounds for presuming that they are in reality late documents. In regard to similar predictions in the gospels ([Mt. xxiv, 15]; [Mk. xiii, 2]; [Lk. xxi, 20]), rational criticism decides that they were written after the event. No other course can consistently be taken as to early Hebrew predictions of captivity and restoration; and the adherence of many Biblical scholars at this point to the traditional view is psychologically on a par with their former refusal to accept a rational estimate of the Pentateuchal narrative.
On some points, such as the flagrant pseudo-prediction in [Isaiah xix, 18], all reasonable critics surrender. Thus “König sees rightly that xix, 18, can refer only to Jewish colonies in Egypt, and refrains from the arbitrary supposition that Isaiah was supernaturally informed of the future establishment of such colonies” (Cheyne, Introd. to Smith’s Prophets of Israel, p. xxxiii). But in other cases Dr. Cheyne’s own earlier positions appear to involve such an “arbitrary supposition,” as do Kuenen’s; and Smith explicitly posited it as to the prophets in general. And even as to [Isaiah xix, 18], whereas Hitzig, as Havet later, rightly brings the date down to the actual historic time of the establishment of the temple at Heliopolis by Onias (Josephus, Ant. xiii, 3, 1; Wars, vii, 10, 2), about 160 B.C., Dr. Cheyne (Introd. to Isaiah, p. 108) compromises by dating it about 275 B.C.
The lateness of the bulk of the prophetical writings has been ably argued by Ernest Havet (Le Christianisme et ses Origines, vol. iv, 1878, ch. vi; and in the posthumous vol., La Modernité des Prophètes, 1891), who supports his case by many cogent reasonings. For instance, besides the argument as to [Isaiah xix, 18], above noted: (1) The frequent prediction of the ruin of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar ([Isa. ch. xxiii]; [Jer. xxv, 22]; [Ezek. xxvi, 7]; [ch. xxvii]), false as to him (a fact which might be construed as a proof of the fallibility of the prophets and the candour of their transcribers), is to be understood in the light of other post-predictions as referring to the actual capture of the city by Alexander. (2) Hosea’s prediction of the fall of Judah as well as of Israel, and of their being united, places the passage after the Exile, and may even be held to bring it down to the period of the Asmoneans. So with many other details: the whole argument deserves careful study. M. Havet’s views were, of course, scouted by the conservative specialists, as their predecessors scouted the entire hypothesis of Graf, now taken in its essentials as the basis of sound Biblical criticism. M. Scherer somewhat unintelligently objected to him (Études sur la litt. contemp. vii, 268) that he was not a Hebraist. There is no question of philology involved. It was non-Hebraists who first pointed out the practical incredibility of the central Pentateuchal narrative, on the truth of which Kuenen himself long stood with other Hebraists. (Cp. Wellhausen, Proleg. pp. 39, 347; also his (4th) ed. of Bleek’s Einleit. in das alte Test. 1878, p. 154; and Kuenen, Hexateuch, Eng. tr. pp. xv, 43.) Colenso’s argument, in the gist of which he was long preceded by lay freethinkers, was one of simple common sense. The weak side of M. Havet’s case is his undertaking to bring the prophets bodily down to the Maccabean period. This is claiming too much. But his negative argument is not affected by the reply (Darmesteter, Les Prophètes d’Israël, 1895, pp. 128–31) to his constructive theory.