Human Origins

by S. Laing

Being concerned mainly with the historical question, I shall not attempt to pursue this higher criticism further, but content myself with referring to the principal points which, judged by the broad conclusions of common-sense, stand out as guiding pillars in the mass of details. Taking these in ascending order of time, they seem to me to be—

1. The Book of Chronicles.

2. The foundation of modern Judaism as described in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah.

3. The discovery of the Book of the Law or Deuteronomy in the reign of Josiah.

The Book of Chronicles is important because we know its date, viz. about 300 b.c., and to a great extent the materials from which it was compiled, viz. the Books of Samuel and Kings. We have thus an object-lesson as to the way in which a Hebrew writer, as late as 300 b.c., or nearly 300 years after the exile, composed history and treated the earlier records. It is totally different from the method of a classical or modern historian, and may be aptly described as a "scissors and paste" method. That is to say, he makes excerpts from the sources at his disposal; sometimes inserts them consecutively and without alteration; at other times makes additions and changes of his own; and, in Canon Driver's words, "does not scruple to omit what is not required for his purpose, and in fact treats his authorities with considerable freedom." He also does not scruple to put in the mouth of David and other historical characters of the olden time, speeches which, from their spirit, grammar, and vocabulary, are evidently of his own age and composition.

If this was the method of a writer as late as 300 b.c., whose work was afterwards received as canonical, two things are evident. First, that the canon of the earlier Books of the Old Testament could not have been then fixed and invested with the same sacred authority as we find to be the case two or three centuries later, when the Thora, or Book of Moses and the Prophets, was regarded very much as the Moslems regard the Koran, as an inspired volume which it was impious to alter by a single jot or tittle. This late date for fixing the canon of the Books of the Old Testament is confirmed by Canon Cheyne's learned and exhaustive work on the Psalter, in which he shows that a great majority of the Psalms, attributed to David, were written in the time of the Maccabees, and that there are only one or two doubtful cases in which it can be plausibly contended that any of the Psalms are pre-exilic.

Secondly, that if a writer, as late as 300 b.c., could employ this method, and get his work accepted as a part of the Sacred Canon, a writer who lived earlier, say any time between the Chronicler and the foundation of the Jewish Monarchy, might probably adopt the same methods. If the Chronicler put a speech of his own composition into the mouth of David, the Deuteronomist might well do so in the case of Moses. According to the ideas of the age and country, this would not be considered to be what we moderns would call literary forgery, but rather a legitimate and praiseworthy means of giving authority to good precepts and sentiments.

A perfect illustration of this which I have called the "scissors and paste" method, is afforded by the first two chapters of Genesis, and the way in which the Elohistic and Jehovistic narratives are so strangely interblended throughout the Pentateuch. No attempt is made to blend the two narratives into one harmonious and consistent whole, but excerpts, sometimes from one and sometimes from the other, are placed together without any attempt to explain away the evident contradictions. Clearly the same hand could not have written both narratives, and the compilation must have been made by some subsequent editor, or editors, for there is conclusive proof that the final edition, as it has come down to us, could not have been made until after the Exile. Thus in Leviticus xxvi. we find, "I will scatter you among the heathen, and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste," and "they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies' land." And in Deuteronomy xxix., "And the Lord rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is to this day." Even in Genesis, which professes to be the earliest Book, we find (xii. 6), "and the Canaanite was then in the land." This could not have been written until the memory of the Canaanite had become a tradition of a remote past, and this could not have been until after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity, for we find from the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah that the Canaanites were then still in the land, and the Jewish leaders, and even priests and Levites, were intermarrying freely with Canaanite wives.

The Apocryphal Book of Esdras contains a legend that the sacred books of the Law having been lost or destroyed when Jerusalem was taken by Nebuchadnezzar, they were re-written miraculously by Ezra dictating to five ready writers at once in a wonderfully short time. This is a counterpart of the legend of the Septuagint being a translation of the Hebrew text into Greek, made by seventy different translators, whose separate versions agreed down to the minutest particular. This legend, in the case of the Septuagint, is based on an historical fact that there really was a Greek translation of the Hebrew Sacred Books made by order of Ptolemy Philadelphus; and it may well be that the legend of Esdras contains some reminiscence of an actual fact, that a new and complete edition of the old writings was made and stamped with a sacred character among the other reforms introduced by Ezra.

These reforms, and the condition of the Jewish people after the return from the Captivity, as disclosed by the Books of Nehemiah and Ezra, afford what I call the second guiding pillar, in our attempt to trace backwards the course of Jewish history. These books were indeed not written in their present form until a later period, and, as most critics think, by the same hand as Chronicles; but there is no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of the historical facts recorded, which relate, not to a remote antiquity, but to a comparatively recent period after the use of writing had become general. They constitute in fact the dividing line between ancient and modern Judaism, and show us the origin of the latter.