[40] Ch. v. Renan’s translation lends lucidity. [↑]
[41] Driver, Introduction, p. 378. Prof. Dillon (Skeptics of the Old Testament, p. 155) goes so far as to pronounce Agur a “Hebrew Voltaire,” which is somewhat of a straining of the few words he has left. Cp. Dr. Moncure Conway, Solomon and Solomonic Literature, 1899, p. 55. In any case, Agur belongs to an age of “advanced religious reflection” (Cheyne, Job and Solomon, p. 152). [↑]
[42] Driver, Introduction, p. 378. [↑]
[43] Biscoe, Hist. of the Acts of the Apostles, ed. 1829, p. 80, following Selden and Lightfoot. [↑]
[44] S. Schechter, Studies in Judaism, 1896, p. 189, citing Sanhedrin, 386, and Pseudo-Jonathan to [Gen. iv, 8]. Cp. pp. 191–92, citing a mention of Epicurus in the Mishna. [↑]
[45] The familiar phrase in the Psalms (xiv, i; liii, 1), “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God,” supposing it to be evidence for anything, clearly does not refer to any reasoned unbelief. Atheism could not well be quite so general as the phrase, taken literally, would imply. [↑]
[46] Cp. W. R. Sorley, Jewish Christians and Judaism, 1881, p. 9; Robertson Smith, Old Test. in the Jewish Ch. ed. 1892, pp. 48–49. These writers somewhat exaggerate the novelty of the view they accept. Cp. Biscoe, History of the Acts, ed. 1829, p. 101. [↑]
[48] Cp. the implications in Ecclesiasticus, vi, 4–6; xvi, 11–12, as to the ethics of many believers. [↑]