Of Biblical history before Moses we no more ask "Is it all true?" than we ask if our Lord's story of the Prodigal Son or of the Good Samaritan is actually true. Such stories are eternally true. Well may Carlyle write of these old Bible-writers: "They are the only true seers, interpreting the entirely indubitable Revelation of the Author of the Universe. There is a terrible veracity in every line of the Hebrew Bible. But how can Dryasdust interpret such things, the dark chaotic dullard, who knows the meaning of nothing cosmic or noble, nor ever will know? Poor wretch, one sees what kind of meaning he educes from man's history. Unhappy Dryasdust, thrice unhappy world that takes Dryasdust's readings of the ways of God."

But a word of caution. The Bible-writers preferred truth of idea to truth of fact; wisdom has been justified of her children and we can implicitly steer our course by the Bible's judgments of value. BUT we must not ask it for absolute veracity of fact. "What we have to learn is to give to history what belongs to history and to idea what belongs to idea." Threequarters of the theological wranglings and of modern unbelief would never have arisen if men, especially theologians, had borne this in mind. The Bible's value rests not at all on its science or its historical dates or details. Our salvation in this life and the next does not in the least hang on our accepting as literal and eternal truths its story of the Creation, its biographies of the patriarchs, its ascription of this law or that book to Moses, Solomon, David, Paul or Peter. Its value lies wholly on its spiritual side, in its judgments of value; and "our full persuasion and assurance of their infallible truth and divine source is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness to them in our own hearts."

CHAPTER IV

MISLEADING ORDER AND TITLES OF BIBLICAL BOOKS

THE third and fourth difficulties on our list are these:-(3) The two very first chapters of the Bible flatly contradict each other, and this tendency runs through the Bible; (4) Many Bible-books look like literary forgeries. We hope to show that (3) is largely due to the wrong chronological order of our Biblebooks, while (4) has much in it to elicit praise, not blame, for it flows from a high ideal and a true principle.

(3) Chronological order of our Bible-books.-We speak of "The Bible" (= Book) in the singular as if it were one Book. In a sense it is. From cover to cover there is a wondrous unity underlying all the Bible's variety. Read in the right order, each book dovetails into the next, and the various books seem so many chapters of one author giving us the story of his life, but written at different stages of that life as his spiritual experience and mental horizon broadened. Yet we know that the Old Testament is the work of a large number of independent writers from 850-150 B.C. How, then, are we to account for the wondrous unity? There is but one answer, The Bible is the story of his own life and education as given us by one Servant of God, Israel, at successive stages of his life; moreover, behind that life-education and the writers of its record stands all the while One guiding Master-Mind, the divine Educator. So (1) the education itself is all of one piece, an organic whole; (2) the long record of it, the work of many different

pens, also forms one book and not a disconnected library. This is why we instinctively speak of the Bible as the one Word of God, not as the words of many voices.

But the term "Bible" is of late origin. For hundreds of years after Christ men spoke, not of "The Bible," but "the bibles," "the books" (Dan. ix. 2), “the holy books," "the scriptures" (=writings), "the holy scriptures." This really best expresses the actual fact that the Bible does consist of a vast number of independent writings setting forth Israel's progressive education, at God's hand, at different stages of its life. We want to trace these different stages. We shall not rightly understand God's education of man, or appreciate Israel's own history or character, till we trace this education step by step from Israel's infancy onward. The Bible's aim is to set these various stages clearly before us. Roughly stated, they are as follows:

(a) The Hebrews came from Babylonia to Canaan 1 (after a

We follow the view of Jastrow (Heb. and Babn. Tradns., viii. and 23, etc.). -Dr. Burney (Judges, pp. cvi. sqq.) and others uphold the following view of Israel's ancestors (patriarchal names stand in it for tribes) :-The Hebrew westward movement forms part of a larger Aramaan movement lasting centuries. The Heb. movement begins with "Abraham" (c. 2100 B.C.) from Ur to Harran and then to S. Canaan (Beersheba). Next arrives the Aramæan tribe Rebekah, which united with "Isaac," Abraham's "son"; the issue is two tribal groups, Esau-Edom and "Jacob." They dwell together awhile in S. Canaan, but Edom's hostile pressure forces "Jacob" across Jordan eastward again, where, later, the tribe unites with fresh Aramæan elements (=Jacob's wives). Ultimately, the whole tribal body moves once more towards Canaan, compelled by the westward pressure of other Aramaan migrators (=the pursuit of Laban), with whom a friendly treaty and boundary is formed. The Hebrew group, modified by fresh accessions, re-enters Canaan, no longer as "Jacob," but "Israel." The "Habiru " of the Tell el Amarna Letters, c. 1375 B.C., Burney identifies with Hebrews, i.e. the Israel, Edom, Moab, Ammon of later days.

This school also maintains that not all Israel, but only a few tribes (i.e. the house of Joseph and, for a while, Simeon and Levi) were in Egypt under Moses. The elements ultimately forming the other tribes entered Canaan, not with the Exodus tribes, but gained their heritage there by other means and at other periods. Gad, Dan, Asher ("handmaid tribes") belong to the group sons of handmaid and not full wives," i.e. inferior tribes, probably because not of pure Israelite race, as long since dwelling among Canaanites. In J's account of the settlement, Asher, Naphtali, Dan do not appear as recent and successful invaders, i.e. they had not gone into Egypt but maintained a

ISRAEL'S PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION

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long sojourn in the desert), and brought with them much of Babylonia's "popular" religion, a kind of nature-worship with its many gods, spirits, and superstitions. We know next to nothing of them up to Moses' day.

(6) Moses mainly laid the foundation of Israel's knowledge of one God, Israel's national God (i.e. monolatry=worship of only one god among many; not yet monotheism,=worship of the one and only God). The Sinai Covenant first gave Hebrew religion a higher moral element, the seed of all its after-development. The Hebrews were then a mixed rabble, very rude, clannish, superstitious-the Arab strain strong in them still.

(c) Their settlement in Canaan introduced them to civilisation, also to new gods and superstitions. Moreover, their centuries of war, while effecting a settlement in the land, kept them rude in character; and their fusion with the Canaanites made them material in their ideas of God, apt to revert to their old polytheism, for Canaanite religion and culture were largely Babylonian in type.

(a) Philistia's crushing defeat of Israel in Samuel's day produced an intense patriotic and religious revival. From it arose new religious leaders, schools of prophets, religious and national reformers. But popular religion is still crude and materialistic, mere sacrifice with superstitious (often licentious) rites at any one of the thousand altars and high places scattered throughout the land.

(e) From 760 B.C. arise a succession of great prophets who try to wean Israel from its superstitious worship of Jehovah to real heart-worship and right life. Old ideas and habits are too deep-rooted and they make little headway in their own day.

(f) Between 700-600 B.C., these prophets (backed by Jerusalem priests) try to abolish the many local shrines and high-places, hotbeds of superstition and vice, and to centralise all worship in Jerusalem. Hezekiah (727-698) begins this reform, with little success; Josiah (621) fairly succeeds.

(8) The Captivity (586-538) deepens Hebrew religion and precarious footing in Canaan. Burney tends to include Issachar and Zebulun among the tribes left in Canaan, and in the actual conquest of Canaan he follows J, who only records conquests of (1) Judah and Simeon by a northward move from Kadesh-Barnea, and (2) the house of Joseph under Joshua from E. of Jordan.-This school's view has two great advantages: (1) it adheres closely to Genesis tradition; (2) it is supported by valuable external evidence and recent "finds," Babylonian, etc. (see Burney, Judges, cviii.).

creates an intense reverence for the law. No longer a nation, Israel after the Exile is a Church under priests and scribes; worship is now definitely centralised in Jerusalem. But contact with other nations has broadened some Jews, while synagogueworship has weaned many more from mere ritual cultus and spiritualised their religion. After 400 B.C. prophets wane, practically cease; men have to learn God's revealed will from the study and meditation of the written "Law and the Prophets."

Hence after the Exile we have side by side (1) pronouncedly legal and ecclesiastical writings; (2) a reflective and broadminded "Wisdom" literature; (3) spiritual psalms; (4) apocalypses based on prophetic writings.

This is the story the Bible-books tell us of Israel's religious education, when they are placed in their natural or chronological order. But as at present arranged, the Bible is apt to confuse and mislead the reader, for the different stages are all mixed up anyhow. The very first chapter of the Bible is of the period of the Exile and gives us the views of c. 500 B.C., while the next chapter is some 300 years earlier.

The Books of Moses, so-called, give us an excellent illustration of this haphazard arrangement and the wrong perspective it creates. Instead of being one organic whole and a good picture of Israel in Moses' day (c. 1250-1200 B.C.)1, we find in these Mosaic Books three distinct layers of religious thought, in themselves widely apart in date (c. 850-750 b.c. ; 650 b.c. ; c. 500 B.C.), and one and all very far in advance of the elementary religious views of Moses' day. At the end of this chapter the problem of the Mosaic Books is fully discussed, here we briefly indicate the three layers of religious thought, each of which exactly corresponds

"We know that the Exodus probably took place under Mineptah (1225-1215), successor of Ra'messe II. (1292-1225)," the Pharaoh of the oppression. As we also know, by aid of Assyrian chronology, the approximate date of Solomon's accession (c. 970), this enables us to correct the artificial chronology of 1 Kgs. vi. I, giving 480 years for the period from the Exodus to the building of the Temple in the fourth year of Solomon's rule, whereas it can only have been about 250 years. (From Burney, Judges, p. liii.)