Who Wrote the Bible? : a Book for the People

by Washington Gladden

It is true, as I have said, that during this period certain observances required by the law were kept more or less regularly. But it is also true that many of the most specific and solemn requirements of the law were neglected or violated during all these years by the holiest men. The Mosaic law utterly forbids the offering of sacrifices at any other place than the central sanctuary, the tabernacle or the temple; but the narrative of these early historical books shows all the saints and heroes of the earlier history building altars, and offering sacrifices freely in many places, with no apparent consciousness of transgression,--nay, with the strongest assurance of the divine approval. "Samuel," says Professor Robertson Smith, "sacrifices on many high places, Saul builds altars, David and his son Solomon permit the worship at the high places to continue, and the historian recognizes this as legitimate because the temple was not yet built (I Kings iii. 2-4). In Northern Israel this state of things was never changed. The high places were an established feature in the Kingdom of Ephraim, and Elijah himself declares that the destruction of the altars of Jehovah--all illegitimate according to the Pentateuch--is a breach of Jehovah's covenant." [Footnote: The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, pp. 220, 221.]

According to the Levitical law it was positively unlawful for any person but the high priest ever to go into the innermost sanctuary, the holy of holies, where the ark of God was kept; and the high priest could go into that awful place but once a year. But we find the boy Samuel actually sleeping "in the temple of the Lord where the ark of the Lord was." The old version conceals this fact by a mistranslation. These are only a few of many violations of the Pentateuchal legislation which we find recorded in these books.

From the silence of these earlier histories concerning the law of Moses, and from these many transgressions, by the holiest men, of the positive requirements of the Pentateuchal legislation, the conclusion has been drawn by recent critics that the Pentateuchal legislation could not have been in existence during this period of history; that it must have been produced at a later day. It must be admitted that they make out a strong case. For reasons presented in the second chapter, I am unable to accept their theory. It is probable, however, that the code of laws in existence at this time was a limited and simple code--no such elaborate ritual as that which we now find in the Pentateuch; and that those particular requirements with respect to which the earlier Judges and Samuel and David appear to behave themselves so disorderly, had not then been enacted.

Moreover, it seems to be necessary to admit that there was a surprising amount of popular ignorance respecting even those portions of the law which were then in existence. This is the astonishing phenomenon. Attempts are made to illustrate it by the ignorance of the Bible which prevailed among our own ancestors before the invention of printing; but no parallel can be found, as I believe, in the mediæval history of Europe. It is true that many of the common people were altogether unfamiliar with the Bible in mediæval times; but we cannot conceive of such a thing as that the priests, the learned men, and the leaders of the church at that time, should have been unaware of the existence of such a book.

On his death-bed David is said to have admonished Solomon (I Kings ii. 3), that he should keep the statutes and commandments of the Lord, "according to that which is written in the law of Moses." This is the first reference to the Mosaic law which we find in connection with the history of David; the first mention of a written law since the death of Joshua, four centuries before. After this there are three other casual allusions to the law of Moses in the first book of Kings, and four in the second book. The books of Chronicles, which follow the Kings, contain frequent allusions to the law; but these books, as we shall see by and by, were written long afterward; and the tradition which they embody cannot be so safe a guide as that of the earlier histories. It is in Chronicles that we learn of the attempt which was made by one of the good kings of Judah, Jehoshaphat, to have certain princes, priests, and Levites appointed to teach the law; they went about the land, it is said, teaching the people, "and had the book of the law of Jehovah with them." I think that this is the first intimation, after the death of Moses, that the law delivered by him had been publicly taught or even read in connection with the ordinances of worship. The earlier narrative of Jehoshaphat's reign, which we find in the Book of the Kings, makes no allusion to this circumstance.

Nearly three hundred years after Jehoshaphat, and nearly five hundred years after David, the young King Josiah was reigning in Jerusalem. The temple had fallen into ruin, and the good king determined to have it repaired. Hilkiah, the high priest, who was rummaging among the rubbish of the dilapidated sanctuary, found there the Book of the Law of the Lord. The surprise which he manifests at this discovery, the trepidation of Shaphan the scribe, who hastens to tell the king about it, and the consternation of the king when he listens for the first time in his life to the reading of the book, and discovers how grievously its commandments have been disobeyed, form one of the most striking scenes of the old history. "How are we to explain," asks Dr. Perowne, "this surprise and alarm in the mind of Josiah, betraying, as it does, such utter ignorance of the Book of the Law and the severity of its threatenings,--except on the supposition that as a written document it had well-nigh perished?" [Footnote: Smith's Bible Dictionary, art. "Pentateuch.">[ Undoubtedly "the Book of the Law" thus discovered was that body of legislation which lies at the heart of the Deuteronomic code; and this was never again lost sight of by the Jewish people. It was less than fifty years after this that Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the city and the temple and carried the people away into captivity. And it was not until their return from the Captivity, seventy years later, that these sacred writings began to assume that place of eminence in the religious system of the Jews which they have held in later times. The man by whom the Jews were taught to cherish and study these writings was Ezra, one of the returning exiles. This Ezra, the record says, "was a ready scribe in the law of Moses which the Lord God of Israel had given," and "he had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments." He it was, no doubt, who gave to these laws their last revision, and who put the Pentateuch substantially into the shape in which we have it now. Doubtless much was added at this time; ritual rules which had been handed down orally were written out and made part of the code; the Pentateuch, after the Exile, was a more elaborate law book than that which Hilkiah found in the old temple. Under the presidency of Ezra in Jerusalem, and in the days which followed, the Book of the Law was exalted; it was the standard of authority; it was read in the temple and explained in the synagogues; its writings were woven into all the thought and life of the people of Israel; there never has been a time since that day when the history of the reign of any king could have been written without mentioning the law of Moses; there never has been a decade when any adequate account of the life of the Jewish people could have been given which would not bring this book constantly into view.

This Book of the Law, as finally completed by Ezra and his co-laborers, was the foundation of the Hebrew Scriptures; it possessed a sacredness in the eyes of the Jews far higher than that pertaining to any other part of their writings. Next to this in age and importance was the great division of their Scriptures known by them as "The Prophets."

After the Book of the Law was given to the people with great solemnity, in the days of Ezra, and the public reading and explanation of it became a principal part of the worship of the Jews, it began to be noised abroad that there were certain other sacred writings worthy to be known and treasured. The only information we have concerning the beginning of this second collection is found in one of the apocryphal books, the second of Maccabees (ii. 14), in which we are told that Neemias (Nehemiah), in "founding a library, gathered together the acts of the kings, and [the writings of] the prophets, and of David, and the epistles of the kings concerning the holy gifts." These last named documents are not now in existence. They appear to have been the letters and commissions of Babylonian and Persian kings respecting the return of the people to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the temple. The other writings mentioned are, however, all known to us, and are included in our collection. It is not certain that Nehemiah began this collection; it may have been initiated before his day, and the "founding" of the library may have been only the work of providing for the preservation and arrangement of books already in his possession. This second collection of sacred writings, called The Prophets, was divided, as I have before stated, into the Earlier and the Later Prophets; the former subdivision containing the books of Joshua, [Footnote: Joshua, although originally a portion of the pentateuchal literature, was, about the time of the Exile, separated from the first five books, and put into this later collection.] Judges, Samuel, and Kings; the latter, the books which we now regard and class as the prophecies. Ruth was at first considered as a part of the Judges, and was included among the "Earlier Prophets," and Lamentations was appended to Jeremiah, and included among the "Later Prophets." These two books were afterward removed from this collection, for liturgical reasons, and placed in the third group of writings, of which we shall speak farther on.

It is probable that the prophetic writings proper were first collected; but it will be more convenient to speak first of the books known to the Jews as the "Earlier Prophets," and to us as the Old Testament Histories,--Judges, Ruth, Samuel, and the Kings.

These books take up the history of Israel at the death of Joshua, and continue it to the time of the Captivity, a period of more than eight centuries. Some of the critics are inclined to connect them all together as successive volumes of one great history; but there is not much foundation for this judgment, and it is better to treat them separately.