In the course of time, however, many of the Jews began to consider some of these books as sacred. The Alexandrian Jews adopted books into the canon which those of Jerusalem did not, and this difference of opinion lasted for a long time, even till the second century after Christ. It was not until this time that all the books of the Old Testament acquired divine authority.[96:6] It is not known, however, just when the canon of the Old Testament was closed. The time and manner in which it was done is altogether obscure.[97:1] Jewish tradition indicates that the full canonicity of several books was not free from doubt till the time of the famous Rabbi Akiba,[97:2] who flourished about the beginning of the second century after Christ.[97:3]
After giving a history of the books of the Old Testament, the author of "The Religion of Israel," whom we have followed in this investigation, says:
"The great majority of the writers of the Old Testament had no other source of information about the past history of Israel than simple tradition. Indeed, it could not have been otherwise, for in primitive times no one used to record anything in writing, and the only way of preserving a knowledge of the past was to hand it down by word of mouth. The father told the son what his elders had told him, and the son handed it on to the next generation.
"Not only did the historian of Israel draw from tradition with perfect freedom, and write down without hesitation anything they heard and what was current in the mouths of the people, but they did not shrink from modifying their representation of the past in any way that they thought would be good and useful. It is difficult for us to look at things from this point of view, because our ideas of historical good faith are so utterly different. When we write history, we know that we ought to be guided solely by a desire to represent facts exactly as they really happened. All that we are concerned with is reality; we want to make the old times live again, and we take all possible pains not to remodel the past from the point of view of to-day. All we want to know is what happened, and how men lived, thought, and worked in those days. The Israelites had a very different notion of the nature of historical composition. When a prophet or a priest related something about bygone times, his object was not to convey knowledge about those times; on the contrary, he used history merely as a vehicle for the conveyance of instruction and exhortation. Not only did he confine his narrative to such matters as he thought would serve his purpose but he never hesitated to modify what he knew of the past, and he did not think twice about touching it up from his own imagination, simply that it might be more conducive to the end he had in view and chime in better with his opinions. All the past became colored through and through with the tinge of his own mind. Our own notions of honor and good faith would never permit all this; but we must not measure ancient writers by our own standard; they considered that they were acting quite within their rights and in strict accordance with duty and conscience."[97:4]
It will be noticed that, in our investigations on the authority of the Pentateuch, we have followed, principally, Dr. Knappert's ideas as set forth in "The Religion of Israel."
This we have done because we could not go into an extended investigation, and because his words are very expressive, and just to the point. To those who may think that his ideas are not the same as those entertained by other Biblical scholars of the present day, we subjoin, in a note below, a list of works to which they are referred.[98:1]
We shall now, after giving a brief history of the Pentateuch, refer to the legends of which we have been treating, and endeavor to show from whence the Hebrews borrowed them. The first of these is "The Creation and Fall of Man."
Egypt, the country out of which the Israelites came, had no story of the Creation and Fall of Man, such as we have found among the Hebrews; they therefore could not have learned it from them. The Chaldeans, however, as we saw in our first chapter, had this legend, and it is from them that the Hebrews borrowed it.
The account which we have given of the Chaldean story of the Creation and Fall of Man, was taken, as we stated, from the writings of Berosus, the Chaldean historian, who lived in the time of Alexander the Great (356-325 B. C.), and as the Jews were acquainted with the story some centuries earlier than this, his works did not prove that these traditions were in Babylonia before the Jewish captivity, and could not afford testimony in favor of the statement that the Jews borrowed this legend from the Babylonians at that time. It was left for Mr. George Smith, of the British Museum, to establish, without a doubt, the fact that this legend was known to the Babylonians at least two thousand years before the time assigned for the birth of Jesus. The cuneiform inscriptions discovered by him, while on an expedition to Assyria, organized by the London "Daily Telegraph," was the means of doing this, and although by far the greatest number of these tablets belong to the age of Assurbanipal, who reigned over Assyria B. C. 670, it is "acknowledged on all hands that these tablets are not the originals, but are only copies from earlier texts." "The Assyrians acknowledge themselves that this literature was borrowed from Babylonian sources, and of course it is to Babylonia we have to look to ascertain the approximate dates of the original documents."[98:2] Mr. Smith then shows, from "fragments of the Cuneiform account of the Creation and Fall" which have been discovered, that, "in the period from b. c. 2000 to 1500, the Babylonians believed in a story similar to that in Genesis." It is probable, however, says Mr. Smith, that this legend existed as traditions in the country long before it was committed to writing, and some of these traditions exhibited great difference in details, showing that they had passed through many changes.[99:1]
Professor James Fergusson, in his celebrated work on "Tree and Serpent Worship," says: