01.2. Theological & Homiletical Introduction to OT
THEOLOGICAL AND HOMILETICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT Preliminary Remarks THE RELATION OF THIS INTRODUCTION TO THE INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT
We prefixed to the Commentary on Matthew a sketch of the General Introduction to the Holy Scripture, since for Christians the New Testament is the key to the Old (Lange’s Matthew, pp. 1–20, Am. ed.). But it is necessary, in preparing a Special Introduction to the Old Testament, that we should again proceed upon a survey of the whole field of Biblical Science and Biblical Theology. For the Introduction to the Old Testament, necessarily points back to the Introduction to the New. In the Introduction to the New Testament, moreover, particular points were simply alluded to, which must now be more thoroughly discussed. But to explain these points in their systematic order, we shall have to make a general statement of the questions of Introduction; only so far, however, that we shall merely refer to points already explained. The Introduction to the New Testament was modelled upon the definition of Exegetics. For our present purpose it seems better to follow the outline of a living Biblical Theology. We shall, however, overstep the ordinary limits of Biblical Theology, and embrace the Sciences of Introduction which Biblical Theology viewed by itself presupposes. For the Literature, the following works may be consulted, in addition to those referred to in Matthew (Lange’s Matthew, Am. ed. p. 17).
1. Introduction to the Bible.—Schumann: Praktische Einleitung in’s Alte und Neue Testament; Steglich: Bibelkunde, Leipzig (1853); Staudt: Fingerzeige in den Inhalt und Zusammenhang der Heiligen Schrift, Stuttgart (1854); Wetzel: Die Sprache Luthers in seiner Bibelübersetzung, Stuttgart (1859); The Bible and its History, 11th edition, with a preface by F. W. Krummacher, Elberfeld (1858); Watson: Apology for the Bible, Letters to Paine, New York; Kirchhofer: Leitfaden zur Bibelkunde, 2d ed., Stuttgart (1860). Similar works by Hagenbach, Leipsig (1850); Hollenberg, Berlin (1854); Schneider, Bielefeld (1860); Lisco: Einleitung in die Bibel, Berlin (1861); Bibelwegweiser, Einleitung in die Heilige Schrift, Calw (1861); Bleek: Einleitung in’s Alte und Neue Testament, Berlin (1860-’62); Nast: Critical and Practical Commentary, Cincinnati (1860); [Hævernick’s Introduction, Edinburgh Translation (1852); Horne’s Introduction, New York (1860); Davidson’s Introduction; Jahn’s Introduction, with References by S. H. Turner.—A. G.]
2. Directions for Reading the Bible.—W. Hoffmann: Ueber den rechten Gebrauch der Bibel, Berlin (1854); Ostertag: Züge aus dem Werke der Bibelverbreitung, Stuttgart (1857); Seelbach: Bibelsegen, Bielefeld (1851–’55); Hollenberg: Ermunterung und Anleitung zum Bibellesen, Berlin (1862); [Francke’s Guide to the Study of the Scriptures; Talbot’s Bible; Locke’s Commonplace-Book; Townsend’s Arrangement; the Paragraph Bibles; Collyer: The Sacred Interpreter, Oxford (1831); Companion to the Bible, Phila. (1852).—A. G.]
3. General and Special Bibleworks.—See Lange’s Matthew, Am. Ed. pp. 19; Starke: Allgemeines Register übėr die fünf Theile seines Bibelwerkes, pp. 1–46; Walch: Bibliotheca Theol. iv. pp. 182, 379. Danz: Universal-Wörterbuch, pp. 126, 134 ff.; Winer, i. p. 33 sqq. 162, Appendix, p. 9.
We call special attention to the well-known works of earlier dates. Polus: The Critici Sacri; Die Berlenburger Bibel, new ed., Stuttgart (1856); Das Bibelwork von L. Maistre de Sacy; Seiler; Das grosse bibilische Erbauungsbuch, Erlangen (1788-’92), in 17 vols.; Die Würtemberger Summarien, Nürnberg (1859). Die Prediger Bibel by Fischer and Wohlfahrt, marks the transition to our time. The antagonistic works by Dinter and Brandt. The Bibleworks of Richter, Lisco, Gerlach; Calwer Handbuch; the unfinished Biblewerk by Bunsen; The Historical and Theological Bibelwerk, by Weber, Schaffhausen (1860); the newly published Wörterbuch of Oetinger; Die Bibel, an article from Ersch’s and Gruber’s Encyclopedia; Luther’s Explanations of the Holy Scriptures, selected from his Expository Works, Berlin. [Besides the Commentaries of Henry and Scott, we may refer to those of J. Gill, Adam Clarke, Patrick Lowth and Whitby, Burder’s Scripture Exposition, Poole’s Annotations, the Biblical Commentary, by Keil and Delitzsch, now in course of publication and translation in Clarke’s foreign library. D’Oyly and Mant: The Holy Bible, with Notes, critical and explanatory, London (1856).—A. G.]
FIRST DIVISION THEOLOGICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT UPON THE PLAN OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY Prefatory Remarks
§ 1 Definition and Structure of Biblical Theology
Biblical Theology, embracing the doctrines and ethics of the Holy Scripture, in their unity as the biblical rule of life, is an historical science; the history, i. e., of the actual and uniform development of Biblical doctrine from its earliest form to its canonical completion. Its sources are the canonical books of the Holy Scriptures; with which we may connect the Old Testament Apocrypha, as a historical auxiliary, which furnishes us with the knowledge of biblical doctrine during its transition period, from its Old Testament form to its New Testament completion. But to assign it its true worth and position, we must compare the Bible with its surroundings; a. with the Apocrypha, b. with the Apostolical Fathers, c. with the Talmud, and the Old Testament text with the Septuagint. It occupies in Theology the transition ground between Exegesis and Church History. Its last antecedent is Biblical History, its nearest result the History of Dogmas. As to its origin and history, it springs out of the total development of Theology. The way was opened for it through the whole Theology before the Reformation, through the biblical character of the doctrines of the Reformers, through the dicta probantia which marked the Dogmatics of the 17th century, and through the effort of the Pietistic school to confine the Christian dogmas to their Scriptural basis. In the second half of the 18th century it became an independent science, formed at first upon the loci theologici, then regarded as purely historical, finally assumed the form of an historical science, conditioned upon the grand norm or principle of Christian doctrine and of the Scriptures. [Upon the idea of the God-Man—the Incarnation.—A. G.]
Biblical Theology is the history of Biblical doctrine in its unity, and in its particular doctrines. It may be divided therefore into General and Special; but these are united again by the Christological principle, the Incarnation, which is the grand fundamental thought of Holy Scripture. We have the reflection of the God-Man, i. e., the unity of the eternal divine being and its finite human manifestation, of the one and absolute Spirit and the manifold life, in Biblical doctrine as in Biblical History. It follows, of course, that General Biblical Theology treats 1. of the divine unity of Holy Scripture, 2. of the human diversities of Holy Scripture, 3. of the divine-human, Christological theology of the Holy Scripture, and its course of development. Accordingly Special Biblical Theology embraces 1. the history of the Biblical doctrine of God, in its Christological form, 2. the history of the Biblical doctrine of Man, 3. the history of the Biblical doctrine of the God-Man, and his redeeming work, 4. the history of the expansion of the life of Christ in his Kingdom; or Theocratology, the doctrine of the Kingdom of God, to its Eschatological completion. For the position of Biblical Theology in the system of Theological Sciences, see Lange’s Matthew, Am. ed., p. 17. It must be observed here, however, that Biblical Theology, with its parallel science, Biblical History, is the result and crowning glory of Exegetical Theology; and further, that Biblical Theology is no more to be confounded with systematic biblical Dogmatics (i. e., the ground of Ecclesiastical Dogmatics), than Biblical History with the history of the Kingdom of God, which latter embraces the entire history of the Church and the world, to the end of time. We must, therefore, avoid confounding with each other the periods of the history of the Kingdom of God, of Biblical History, and of Biblical religion, which is still often the case. For the literature of Biblical History, see Danz: Universal-Wörterbuch, p. 135. Also the Biblical Histories of Hubner, Rauschenbusch, Kohlrausch Zahn. Biblical History is often treated under the name of the History of the Kingdom of God. See Grube: Characterbilder der heiligen Schrift, Leipzig (1853). For the History and Literature of Biblical Theology, see Hagenbach: Theol. Encyclopedia, p. 101.
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FIRST SECTION THE CANONICAL CHARACTER OR DIVINE ASPECT OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES, ESPECIALLY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, OR THE UNITY OF BIBLICAL DOCTRINE
§ 1 THE SACRED WRITINGS AS THE HOLY SCRIPTURE. The records of Revelation, especially of the Old Testament Revelation, or the sacred writings, notwithstanding their endless diversity, as to authors, time, form, language, constitute one Holy Scripture perfectly consistent with itself, and perfectly distinct from all other writings; yet entering into such a relation and interchange with them as to manifest as perfect a unity of spirit as if they had been written by one pen, sprung from one fundamental thought, in one year, in a single moment. This unity of the Holy Scripture rests upon the unity of its eternal Spirit, of its eternal norm or principle, its eternal contents, its eternal object. Whatever is eternal forms a living, concrete unity under the diversities of time; and thus the eternal divine purpose of redemption in Christ—the soul of the Holy Scripture—forms its living unity under the diversities of the sacred writings.
§ 2 THE ONE PERVADING SUBJECT OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURE IN ITS OBJECTIVE ASPECT The Holy Scripture in its objective aspect is one only through its one pervading idea of God, or rather through the living revelation of the one personal God of revelation which runs through the Old and New Testaments. When, therefore, on the one hand the Gnostics make the God of the Old Testament a subordinate deity (Marcion:
Compare the mythological systems, the Talmud, the Cabbalah, and the Koran.
§ 3 THE ONE PERVADING SUBJECT OF HOLY SCRIPTURE IN ITS SUBJECTIVE ASPECT The Holy Scripture in its subjective aspect is animated by one pervading, peculiar religious consciousness—Faith. Faith, as here used, is the knowledge of God awakened by the self-revelation of God, and corresponding to it, of God not as existing merely, but as manifesting himself vividly afar off and near at hand; and the confidence in him having its root in this knowledge and agreeing with it, a confidence not resting upon him in his general character, but upon him in the promise of salvation in his word. In this confidence, as it leads to the yielding of the will to the will and Providence of God—not to any arbitrary human will—and thus to a living obedience to the commands of God, lies the root of love and of all virtue. In this sense of faith of Abraham and Paul are the same. Indeed, Abraham is the father of believers (Romans 4:1); although his faith both in its objective and subjective aspects was merely the living seed which, under the New Covenant, unfolded itself to the perfect fruit of saving faith. As the biblical idea of God is clearly distinguished from all untheocratic conceptions of the Deity, so this religious consciousness or the faith of the theocratic people, is clearly distinguished from all heathen, Jewish, or Mohammedan forms of this consciousness.
§ 4 THE ONE PERVADING THEANTHROPIC SUBJECT OF HOLY SCRIPTURE, CHRIST AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD
Both the personal aspect of the Kingdom of God, the expectation of the Messiah, until his appearance, and until the hope of his second coming, and the universal aspect of the Messiah; the old promise of the Messianic Kingdom, confirmed in the covenant of God with Abraham and Israel, and the new promise of his appearing in glory—after his appearance in the form of the crucified—confirmed in the covenant of God with believers, runs throughout the Scriptures as the grand constituent principle, and final aim of Revelation and the Holy Scripture. Still, there is an endless development which lies between the paradisaic destination of man in Genesis (Genesis 1), especially in the Protevangelium (Genesis 3). and the completed City of God of the Apocalypse (Revelation 21, 22.) The Kingdom of God, as the Kingdom of Christ, as the synthesis of the glory of God and the blessedness of his children (since the glory of God shines in their blessedness, and their blessedness consists in the open vision of his glory), is distinct as possible from all the religious conceptions of the future of heathenism, Judaism and Mohammedanism. It rests upon the eternal covenant of God with humanity, which was prefigured in the old covenant, and fulfilled in the new. The Bible, therefore, is the record of this eternal covenant in its twofold form.
§ 5 THE OPPOSITIONS OF SCRIPTURE The revealed religion of the Bible stands in the most direct and irreconcilable opposition to the various unscriptural religions, considered in their darker aspect, i. e., so far as they are the false religions of false gods (Elilim); or dead, lifeless conceptions of God; but in a relation of friendship, as to the divine elements or those truths, they may embrace. This will define its relation to the different mythologies, to the Talmud, and the Koran. The recorded expression of this revelation in the Bible, stands in a specific opposition to all the derived forms, statements, and outgrowths of this revelation. This is the relation which the Old Testament sustains to the Septuagint, and the New Testament to the Apostolical Fathers, leaving out of view in one case the Old Testament Apocrypha, and in the other the New Testament Apocrypha and the traditions of the Church. But by virtue of its inexhaustible riches of life, embracing the whole history of the world and eternity, the Holy Scripture itself is distinguished into the harmonious antithesis of the Old and New Testaments: the Old, which points on to the New, into which it passes and finds its fulfilment; the New, which is ever referring to the Old, and in a historical sense is grounded in it.
§ 6 IMPORT OF THE UNITY OF THE BIBLE IN ITS DIVERSITY The unity of the Holy Scripture according to its divine, theanthropic origin, rests upon its Inspiration. (Lange’s Matthew, Am. ed. p. 11.)
Recent writers upon Inspiration, e. g., Bunsen, Rothe, and others, have not sufficiently considered the Bible as to its full, harmonious, perfect teleology, through which all its individual utterances are conditioned, and which binds all into one. The perfect adaptation to its design points clearly to a perfect origin. The whole Bible teleologically considered culminates in the New Testament, emphatically in Christ: each particular book in its fundamental idea. To wrest any part out of its connection, for subordinate purposes, is a misconception of the Bible. In its perfectly definite design and end, agreeably to its sacred origin and contents, it is the Holy Scripture. The unity of the Holy Scripture according to its divine, theanthropic contents, constitutes it the Canon. (See Lange’s Matthew, Am. ed. p. 13.) The Bible is beyond question the canon, but not merely the canon, not a canon in the sense of a law-book. The canonical, as a rule and direction, always points to that which is above itself, the principle of life, and the life of the principle; to the source of free love, free life, and free blessedness from which it flows.
Viewing the Holy Scripture as to its effects, its unity proves it to be the word of God. It exerts a power within and beyond itself; it sheds light upon itself; it radiates its light from its mighty living centre—the world-redeeming Christ—to every part, and reflects it from each part to every other, and back upon the central truth itself. Thus by virtue of the analogy of faith, and the analogy of Scripture, the Bible is the one indivisible word of God, in its total impression and operation, more fully the word of God, than in its particular words or utterances.
Hence its eternal efficiency is pure and perfect. As a body of records it points back from itself to its origin, the living revelation. As a word of life it points beyond itself, to the living Christ. It is no idol which fetters the hearts of men to itself in a slavish manner. Neither is it a mere canon, a writing of genuine authority, which simply as a law, fixes the rule what we are to believe, and how we should live. As the word of God, it is the book of life, in the authentic form of writing, which gives testimony to the book of life in the hand of God—the purpose of redemption—to the book of life in the heart of the Church—Christ in us; and awakens, strengthens and enriches the life from God through Christ. It is not only the ground upon which the Cultus of the Church rests, but the book through which it edifies itself, and fulfils its great mission to the world. The unity of the Holy Scripture in the harmony of its great opposition constitutes it the one book of the Covenant, or the Eternal Testament, in the opposition of the Old and New Testaments.
§ 7 THE BIBLE AS THE BOOK OF BOOKS The Bible then, as the Book of Books, is as the sun in the centre of all other religious records; the Kings of the Chinese, the Vedas of India, the Zendavesta of the Persians, the Eddas of the Germans, the Jewish Talmud, and the Mohammedan Koran; judging all that is hostile in them, reconciling and bringing into liberty whatever elements of truth they may contain.
It stands also, with a like repelling and attracting force in the centre of all literature, as well as of Theology. In the same power and dignity it exercises its critical authority upon all historical traditions. As the ideal Cosmos of the revelation of Salvation, it forms with the Cosmos of the general revelation of God an organic unity (Psalms 8; Psalms 19; Psalms 104). It is the key of the World-Cosmos, while this again is the living illustration of the Cosmos of the Scripture. But as that is subordinate to the living God, as an organ of his manifestation, so is the Bible to the living Christ. It holds the same relation to him as the copy to the original, and is coördinate with the eternal word of Christ in the total life of the Church—as a fully accordant testimony. But whoever will utter anything from that mystical writing in the heart of the church, must derive his credentials from the written word.
§ 8 THE RICHES OF THE SCRIPTURES IN THEIR ENDLESS DIVERSITY The grand opposition of the Old and New Testaments, upon a closer view, branches itself into an endless number of oppositions, distinctions, and differences, which meet us not only in the Old Testament generally, but in its particular divisions, and also in the New. In this human aspect the Bible appears as an historical growth, and is open to an historical examination and criticism. In this aspect is is connected with human imperfections. But in this aspect alone, the endless riches of its all-pervading divine fulness unfolds itself to our view. From the reciprocal influence of the divine unity of the Scriptures, and its human diversities, results the living force or movement in the development of Biblical Theology; and thus it comes to be the authentic copy of the advent and life of Christ, flowing out of the connection between the God of revelation and believing humanity.
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SECOND SECTION THE CANONICAL CHARACTER OR DIVINE ASPECT OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES, ESPECIALLY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, OR THE UNITY OF BIBLICAL DOCTRINE
§ 1
Biblical Introduction treats of the Scriptures in their historical aspect. If we distinguish between a preparatory (taking that word in its widest sense) and an historical and critical introduction (which regarded as general includes both parts, but as special only the latter), there is no room for the question which has been agitated (Hagenbach’s Encyclopedia, p. 140), whether the literary history of the Scriptures as a whole and in their individual parts alone, or the scientific aids to Exegesis also, properly belong to such an introduction.[3]
FIRST CHAPTER Preparatory Introduction
§ 2 ITS CONSTITUENT ELEMENTS The direct auxiliaries to the Explanation of the Scriptures are biblical antiquities, and the sacred languages; and as regards the present form of the text, biblical criticism and hermeneutics. Exegesis presupposes all these sciences, and they in turn presuppose exegesis. The circle which is involved in this statement is not logical but real, i. e., science must learn to know the particular through the universal, and the universal through the particular. From the central point between the universal and the particular, it oscillates between the two extremes, which intuition harmonizes.
SECOND CHAPTER Preparatory Introduction: Its constituent parts so far as the text is concerned I. The Old Testament Archæology
§ 3 BIBLICAL ANTIQUITIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
It is defined mainly by the forming principle which constitutes its unity: here, the character of the Jewish people. Regarding this people in its local relations we have Biblical Geography (especially physical), and in its relations to time, Biblical Chronology; then in its relations to nature, the physical science of the Bible, and in its relation to the race, Biblical Ethnography; then in its more vital relations, the Theocracy, embracing the history of the Biblical Cultus and Civilization; and lastly in its relations to History, biblical history and international relations. For the literature of the Old Testament Antiquities: De Wette: Lehrbuch der hebräisch-jüdischen Archäologie (1842).—Ewald: Die Alterthümer des Volkes Israel, 1848, 1854. [This is a very suggestive work.—A. G.] Keil: Handbuch der biblischen Archäologie, 1858. Bertheau: Zur Geschichte der Israeliten, 1842; Hagenbach’s Encyclopedia, p. 136; and in Keil, p. 13. Lange’s Matthew, Am. ed. p. 17. Archæology, [Preston: Student’s Theological Manual, London, 1850. Jahn’s Biblical Archæology, translated by Upham, New York, 1853.—A. G.]
§ 4 THE ISRAELITISH PEOPLE AND SURROUNDING NATIONS
Heathen nations, in their pride and presumption, trace their origin back through various steps to the Gods, or demigods (Tuisko, Brahma, Deucalion, &c.); but the Israelitish people is satisfied to trace its origin from Abraham, the Friend of God. Because it enters into the history of the world as the people of faith, therefore, also as the people marked by humility in its claims.
Heathen nations speak of ancient historical glory which is entirely fabulous; the people of Israel with a far truer historical sense, acknowledges the comparatively recent date of its origin. According to Jewish tradition and history Abraham lived about 2000 years B. C. China and Egypt were then thoroughly developed, well-known historical kingdoms, with the traditions of a thousand years in the past. In their historical name, as they are known in the language of other nations the Israelites are Hebrews (
See Winer: Article Hebrews. Bleek: Einleitung in’s Alte Testament, p. 72. An article protesting against the prevailing view, may be found in the Kirchen-lexikon von Wetzer und Welte. Article Hebräer. The Israelites, as Hebrews, or immigrants into Canaan, may have exchanged their original Aramaic tongue for the Hebrew as their first historical language. (Bleek’s Einleitung, p. 61.) This would be only in accordance with what actually occurred under the New Covenant, when the Hebrew Christians exchanged their own language for the classic language of the Greek and Roman world. In both cases, is the appropriated language moulded into an entirely new language, through the power of the religious spirit. We leave it undetermined however how far this question must be regarded as already settled.
[There is a very able article in the 2d vol. of the Biblical Repertory in which the author defends the antiquity of the Hebrew language.—A. G.] As to their genealogy, the descent of Israel from Abraham, and more remotely from Shem, forms the very kernel and soul of their authentic traditions; while the relation of other Semitic tribes to their ancestors is involved in uncertainty.
See Genealogical table Genesis 10 Kurtz: History of the Old Covenant. The origin of the Covenant people, i. p. 129. The essential question here is this: what is the fundamental characteristic, the distinguishing feature of the Israelitish people. When God chose this people as his own, although it was a stiff-necked people (Exodus 32:9; Exodus 33:3); although it possessed no art, science, political system, like that of the Greeks and Romans (see Introduction to Röhr’s Geography of Palestine); it does not follow that the choice was arbitrary, without a reason in the divine mind. Corresponding to the divine choice, there was a human disposition or quality, which God from eternity had designed, for the individual or people of his choice, and which he actually communicated in its origin. The striking peculiarity of Israel is the great prominence of the religious (Semitic) element in reference to God, which is found in its highest and most genial form in this people; in contrast to the prominence of the Ethical (Japhetic) element in reference to the world. Israel therefore is preëminently a people of religion, not of art and science like the Greeks, nor of politics and law like the Romans. We may say indeed that it is a people of dynamic, not of dead formal forces or principles. As the people of God, which out of a profounder originality, introduces and unfolds among the hoary nations a new life, it places its living religion in opposition to the formal and lifeless Cultus of the heathen; its dynamic poetry, and its science of the one all pervading principle of the world, to the formal poetry and science of the Greeks; and its warfare and politics, animated and exalted by the great principles which actuate them, to the technical and unmeaning Roman politics and warfare. As it is itself an element of regeneration to the nations, so are its gifts for the gifts and arts of the nations. Hence it follows that Israel must possess that comprehensive nationality, in which all the peculiarities of the different nations must be mixed. Thus it was destined and prepared to be the maternal breast for the Son of Man, the man from heaven, the head of all nations. Thus for the Father’s sake, whose profoundest peculiarities it represents, and for the Son of Jesse, who is the flower and glory of humanity, it is the beloved people, the Elect One, Jeshurun, the favorite of heaven, the Apple of God’s eye, the typical Son of God, the type of the true Son of God to come, who is the fulfilling of its deepest faith and desire. Hence too in its darker aspect, its falls and crimes, it must represent the darkest side of humanity, and its worst characters, just as in its peculiarly chosen ones, its patriarchs and prophets, it may claim the noblest and most heroic spirits of the race. (See Lange’s Verfinsterung der Welt, p. 119.) The most distorted features of the Hebrew National Character are found in Hitzig: Introduction to Isaiah; in Leo: Prelections on the History of the Jewish State; in Feuerbach: Tractate upon the Nature of Christianity. The old heathen utterances of contempt for the Jews are recorded in Raumer’s Palestine, p. 396. Herder, Hegel in his Prelections upon the Philosophy of Religion, 2d part, pp. 42, 57. Ewald, and others have contributed to a more correct estimate of the Israelitish people. Franki’s Libanon, the family book of poetry, forms a collection of the poetical glories, and exalted estimate for the Jewish people (1855). The people of Israel must therefore from its very destination come into contact with the most diverse nations, with the astrological Chaldees from whom the family of Abraham sprang (Ur, Light in Chaldea. Abraham, in the starry night. Genesis 15:5); with the Babylonians and Syrians, ever oscillating between pleasure and despair (devotees of lust and moloch); with the cultivated but depraved Canaanites (Kurtz: History of the Old Covenant, i. p. 120); with the wisdom and lifeless Cultus of the Egyptians; with the excitable and prudent Midianites; with the kindred but still dangerously hostile Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites and Samaritans; with the haughty and contracted Philistines (for whose origin, see Kurtz, p. 185); with the skilful and ingenious Phœnician; with the pride and haughtiness of the Assyrian and Babylonian monarchies; with the moral intuitions, and tolerant spirit of the Persian world-power; with the culture and reason-worship of the Greek; and at last with the fateful, mighty, and cruel power of Rome. Upon this, as its fatal rock, after it had, under all these interchanges and influences, unfolded its whole character, in both good and evil, it broke to pieces as to its historical form or nationality, in an exterminating contest between the Judaic religious, legal spirit, and the strong political, and legal spirit of the Roman power.
§ 5 THE LAND OF CANAAN AND ITS POSITION ON THE EARTH The land of Canaan, or the lowlands of Syria, in opposition to Aram or the highlands (Gesenius, Lexicon,
Hagenbach: Encyclopedia, p. 135. Von Raumer: Palestine, p. 2. The Bible Atlas of Weiland and Ackerman, 2d ed. (1845). Bernatz: Album des heiligen Landes (1856). Bible Atlas, by Kiepert (1858.) The plates, plans of Jerusalem, alluded to in Raumer’s Palestine. Also the Periodicals upon this subject. The Lands and States of Holy Scripture, in selected engravings with an explanatory text by Fred’k and Otto Strauss (1861). The description of the land in Kurtz’s History of the Old Covenant, i. p. 103. Zahn: Das Reich Gottes, i. Thl. p. 105. Lange: Life of Christ, ii. i. p. 24. Bible Dictionaries by Winer and Zeller.
We would call special notice to the article upon Palestine in Herzog’s Real-Encyclopedia. Keil: Handbuch der Biblischen Archäologie, p. 15 ff. The Holy Land, by C. Tischendorf (1862). Lange’s Biblework upon Joshua. [Robinson: Researches, with the maps. The articles by the same in the Bibliotheca-Sacra. The articles upon Palestine by Thomson and Porter in the same periodical. Coleman: Biblical Geography, Text-book and Atlas. Wall-map by Coleman. Thomson: The Land and the Book. Article Geography in Angus’ Hand-Book. Wilson: Lands of the Bible. Kitto: History of Palestine. Travels by Olin, Durbin, Bausmann, Bartlett: Walks about Jerusalem. Aiton: The Lands of the Messiah, London (1854). Bonar: The desert of Sinai. Hackett: Illustrations of Scripture. Rohr’s Palestine, Edin. (1843). Stanley: Sinai and Palestine.—A. G.]
§ 6 CHRONOLOGY OF THE HISTORY OF THE OLD COVENANT, OR OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE
See Gatterer’s, Ideler’s, Brinkmeyer’s Chronologie. Die Biographien der Bibel (1858). Hoffmann: Aegyptische und Israelitische Zeitrechnung (1847). Archinard: A la Chronologie sacrée, basée sur les découvertes de Champollion (1841). Biblische Chronologie mit Fortsetzung bis auf unsere Zeit, Tübingen (1851). Becker: Chart of Chronology, Leipzig (1857). Beiträge zur Geschichte des Alten Orients, by A. von Gutschmid, Leipzig (1857). Ewald: Geschichte des Volkes Israel, i. p. 274. The Article Year in Winer’s Bible Lexicon. Bunsen: Bibelwerk, i. p. 201 ff. Biblische Jahrbücher oder Vergleichende Zeittafeln für die Alttestamentlichen Geschichten vom Auszug der Israeliten aus Aegypten bis auf Alexander den Grossen. Keil: Archäologie, i. p. 345. [Browne: Ordo Sœclorum. Walton: Prolegomena. Bedford: Scripture Chronology. The Chronologies of Usher, Hales, and Chronology, as Introductory to his Church History, by Jarvis.—A. G.] The Chronology of the Old Testament, as it lies in the records, was not intended for the purposes of Science, but determined throughout by the religious point of view, to which all geographical, astronomical, and scientific interests are held subservient. Hence it has been said by the author of the Biographies of the Bible, “that among the mistakes of those who would find everything in the Bible, no one is more dangerous and wide-spread, than the attempt to construct a chronology from its pages.” In his later investigations, however, he has seen reason to modify his judgment, and says “In the Bible, Genealogy has far greater importance, and occupies much more space than Chronology. The value which the Hebrews placed upon their genealogical tables harmonizes with the whole system of their religion and law, and with their expectation of the Messiah. They had their genealogists, from the time that they became a definitely formed state, and this remarkable feature in their customs has acquired such a prominence, that they sometimes used the same word to denote genealogy and history.”
It is this very remarkable feature which imparts its distinguishing character, its specific religious worth, its perfection even, to Biblical Chronology. In regard to this character the New Testament also in its dates holds closely to the Chronological key-note of the Old Testament; although in the Evangelists and Acts it frequently connects the Biographical Chronology of primitive Christianity, with the Chronological dates of contemporary general history.
We can thus speak of a scientific imperfection of Biblical Chronology, which is perfectly consistent with its religious perfection, and which on this very account is of great service to the chronology of general history. The first imperfection is the want of an unbroken series of dates by years, starting from some fixed point in the history. The second, is the absence of a reference of the dates in the history of Israel, to the contemporary dates of general history. The particular enumeration of years of the Israelites are fragments, which are only joined together with difficulty. The references of Israelitish dates to those of foreign nations, especially of the Egyptians, sustain the most diverse combinations. Hence the results of the later determinations of Jewish Chronology differ so widely. It is only subsequent to the exile that the Jews have placed their mode of computation in connection with the chronology of general history by the adoption of the Era of the Seleucidæ. But in this precisely, consists the religious superiority of the Jewish Chronology, that it is throughout genealogical, just as the whole biblical monotheism is grounded in the principle of personality. The Israelitish history proceeds upon the assumption that persons, (we might say even personal freedom), are the prime forming elements of history; that the persons determined the facts, and not the facts the persons. Every nation, as indeed every religion, has its characteristic computation of time, through which it manifests its peculiar nature. Hence the Greek computes his time after the Olympiads, the Roman ab urbe condita, the Mohammedan from the flight of the prophet, with which the success of his religion was insured. The Israelite computes time by the genealogy of the Fathers of the race (
It is not our purpose to form a new chronological system of the history of the Old Testament, but rather to vindicate the idea of Old Testament chronology. We throw out here however some brief remarks upon the method of ascertaining some of the general points just alluded to.
1. It is decidedly incorrect for the author of “The Dates of the Bible,” in regard to the chronology of the Old Testament, to place the Samaritan text of the Old Testament, and the Septuagint, by the side of the Hebrew text, so that from their great diversities, he might infer that the biblical chronology was in the same degree unreliable. It is impossible that the Septuagint should rest upon traditions which will bear comparison with those of the Hebrew text. The same is true of the Samaritan Pentateuch. The Hebrew text has throughout the priority, and must therefore have the preference in any case in which they may be compared.
2. It is incorrect again to attempt to rectify Old Testament declarations by what are supposed to be different declarations of the New Testament, as has been done by Usher, Ludov. Capellus and others, more recently by Becker, in his Chart of biblical chronology. The declaration of Paul (Galatians 3:17) agrees with that made (Exodus 12:40), if we take into account that the promise was not only confirmed to Abraham, but to Isaac and Jacob. The 430 years would thus date from the origin of the Israelitish people, after the death of Jacob, to the Exodus. It is more difficult to explain the relation of the 450 years which the Apostle (Acts 13:20) defines as the period of the Judges, to the declaration (1 Kings 6:1), that the period from the Exodus to the erection of the temple was about 480 years. A diversity exists here in the Jewish tradition, since even Josephus (Antiq. viii. 3, 1) reckons 592 years from the Exodus to the building of the temple: thus assigning 443 years as the period of the Judges, while 1 Kings 6:1 fixes 331 years as the length of that period. Either the Apostle intimates in the
3. It is not our province, nor are we in a position to criticise the assertions which Bunsen makes in regard to the Egyptian, Assyrian and Babylonian chronologies (compare the criticism by Gutschmid). In any case he has performed a great service in bringing the Jewish era in relation with these chronologies; which he has done at a vast expense of learning and toil. We must, however, bring out more clearly the doubt which a more complete scientific combination has to remove. In the first place, it seems without any adequate foundation that a chronology beyond the influence of the Theocracy should be presented as an infallible measure for the biblical declarations, as much so indeed, as if generally an unquestioned right should be conceded to Josephus against the Old Testament, and Evangelic history. In the second place, the determination upon this ground of the dates of Jewish history seems to us, to a great extent, questionable. In the third place, it is a result which no one should hastily concede, when the 480 years (1 Kings 6:1), from the Exodus to the founding of the temple are here reduced to less than 352 years. We must leave it to a special investigation, to ascertain these points more certainly. The most certain dates for the determination of Jewish Chronology, are those of Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus. The conquest of Jerusalem by the former monarch, or the beginning of the Babylonian captivity, is assigned, not only by Bunsen, but by Scheuchzer and Brinkmeyer, to the year 586 (not 588) B. C. The return of the Jews from Babylon, according to the ordinary computation, took place 536 B. C. according to Bunsen and Scheuchzer 538. From that time downwards, the Jewish computation is determined by the Era of the Seleucidæ, which follows the era from the beginning of the Captivity in Babylon, or the destruction of the first temple. It begins with the year 312 B. C. A following era, reckoning from the deliverance in 143 B. C., gives place again to the computation used under the Seleucidæ, upon which follows the present computation of the Jews, the world era, beginning 3761 B. C., and divided into three great periods, the first reaching to the Babylonian Captivity, the second from that event to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, the third from that time to the present. From the Babylonian Captivity, going backwards, we reach the first point in the Jewish computation, through the sum of the reigns of the Jewish Kings. It has usually been fixed at 387 years, and the beginning of the reign of Rehoboam placed at 975 B. C. Bunsen places it in 968, and thus, if we follow his method of determinations, as it seems to be confirmed by the Egyptian dates of King Shishak (Sisak, who plundered Jerusalem in the third year of Rehoboam,) we bring out the round number of 382 years for the reigns of the Kings. Solomon reigned forty years, and laid the foundation of the temple in the fourth of his reign (1 Kings 6.) This would give 1004 as the date of the founding of the temple. Connecting the 480 years, the interval mentioned between the Exodus and the founding of the temple, and the Exodus must have occurred about 1484 B. C. It is usually placed in round numbers at 1500, but more accurately at 1493. Bunsen, however, places the Exodus between the years 1324–1328, more definitely 1326, (Lepsius 1314.) But the confidence with which this determination is fixed, is based principally upon the fabulous narrative by Manetho, of the events in the reign of the Egyptian King Menôphthah, (Bunsen, p. ccxii.) It is not credible that the simple, sober narratives of the Old Testament, are to be corrected by such a fabulous record as this (see Gutschmid, pp. 2, 10, 11, and 103, also, Knobel, Exodus, 112, 116 ff.; upon the more extended argument of Bunsen, 215, see Gutschmid, p. 23). If we add the period of the residence in Egypt (Exodus 12:40), 430 years, to the number (1 Kings 6:1), the entrance into Egypt, or the death of Jacob must have happened 1914 B. C. For the residence of the patriarchs in Canaan, according to Knobel’s computation, we may allow 190, or at the most 215 years. Abraham must therefore have entered Canaan about 2129. Knobel is inclined to reduce the 215 years, since in his view, the age of the patriarchs is placed too high, but, with Beer, Koppe, Ewald, and others, defends the 430 years, as the period of the residence in Egypt, against those chronologists, who follow the reckoning of the later Jews, and especially of Josephus, in whose view the residence in Egypt was only 215 years, with this remark, “that in these diverging computations too much stress has been laid upon uncertain genealogies.” The date of the entrance of Abraham into Canaan points to a period still more remote, which may be fixed with considerable accuracy, through the declarations in Genesis as to the lives of the Patriarchs, and which, beyond question, gives a vastly more probable age of the race than 20,000 years, assumed by Bunsen. For the lunar year of the Ancient Israelites, see Winer’s Real-Wörterbuch, Article Year. For their months, the article Months. Also Brinkmeyer, pp. 43, 44.
§ 7 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF PALESTINE (PHYSICA SACRA)
Upon this subject we refer to the works at hand. Von Raumer’s Palestine, p. 69; Keil, p. 23, and other Geographical works. For the literature, see Hagenbach’s Encyclopedia, p. 239.
Die Calwer Biblische Naturgeschichte may be recommended for its lively and popular style. [Robinson: Researches; The Land and the Book, by Thomson, a very interesting and instructive book; Dean Stanley’s work. Upon this and all other kindred subjects, the valuable Bible Dictionary by Smith, 3 vols.; Harris: Natural History of the Bible; Osborn: Plants of the Holy Land.—A. G.]
§ 8 BIBLICAL ETHNOGRAPHY See above, § 4. Kurtz: History of the Old Covenant. ii. p. 444. Lisco: O. T., p. 206, Völkershau.
§ 9 THE THEOCRACY
We cannot comprehend the history of Israelitish civilization, without embracing the history of its worship, which lies at its foundation; nor this again without a prior view of the common root, out of which spring both branches, the history both of the worship and civilization of Israel, i. e., the Theocracy.
It is the faith of Abraham, that faith by which he left his home (Genesis 12:1), not knowing whither he went, which makes him an historical personage. Israel, also, from nameless, unhistorical, servile tribes, became the most glorious people of history through the reception of the legally developed Theocracy at the hands of Moses. The obedience of faith was the constituent principle of the people. Hence it is the type of the church, that one people which the gospel has gathered out of all nations. Josephus ascribes the founding of the Theocracy, or the reign of God over Israel, to Moses (Contra Apionem ii.1, 6, see de Wette’s Archäologie, p. 179). But Moses stands to the Theocracy, or the religious community of the Old Covenant under the immediate guidance and control of Jehovah, just as he does to the Old Covenant itself, i. e., he is not the starting-point or founder, but one who develops it under its legal form: the mediator for the people of the grand theocratic principles, in the form of the fundamental laws of the Theocracy. The Old Covenant law or right, according to which the Church of God, at its very beginning, recognized its conscious dependence upon the Divine Providence, and entrusted itself with entire confidence to His marvellous care, while it walked in the obedience to His commands which faith prompts and works, began with Abraham, with whom the Old Covenant itself began. The symbols of this supernatural order of things, are the starry heavens over the house of Abraham, and circumcision, the religious and profoundly significant rite of his house. Abraham was justified by his faith in the word of promise, and in this begins the germ-like organic growth of the Kingdom of God, which hitherto only in sporadic portents, like individual stars in the night,—in the saints of the earlier times—had irradiated the nights of the old world. Hence the term Theocracy, as Aristocracy, Democracy, and similar terms, designates the principle of the government, not its form;[4] which is designated by the terms Monarchy, Hierarchy, Oligarchy. It is not the outward form of a political power or government. We cannot say, therefore, that the Theocracy ceased in Israel with the erection of the Kingdom. The division of Jewish history into the reign of God, the reigns of the Kings, and the reigns of the Priests, rests upon an error, which confounds the distinction between the immutable Old Testament principle of government, and the mutable political forms under which it appears. The reign of God does not exclude the reign of the Kings, as a form in which it appears; on the contrary it blooms and flowers in its representation through the regal power of David and Solomon, as before in its representation through the prophetical and judicial power of Moses and Joshua, and in later times in its representation through the priestly dominion of the Maccabean Judas and Simon. The organic principle of the divine dominion branches itself into the three fundamental forms under which Israel was led; the prophetic, kingly and priestly. Hence the Providential leading of Israel, we may say indeed, the consciousness of the dominion and leading of Jehovah, endured in Israel, under the Kings as under the Judges, in the Kingdom of the ten tribes as in Judah, by the rivers of Babylon as in Canaan, however much the prevailing unbelief and apostasy of the many could transiently obscure that consciousness; and it was only when Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus, that despair filled the hearts of the people, in the consciousness that for some long, indefinite period, it had been rejected by Jehovah. But the typical form of the Old Testament theocracy, as it was established by Moses (Exodus 19:6), has now passed into the real New Testament Kingdom of God, the
Thus Abraham, in his righteousness of faith, stands as the living type of the Kingdom of God, but the type of the whole theocratic culture is its altar, as the type of the whole theocratic civilization is the shepherd’s tent.
§ 10 RELIGION AND WORSHIP OF ISRAEL AND OF SURROUNDING NATIONS
Abraham appears as an historical personage only through his religion, and the Israelitish people takes its origin from religion. Other nations have formed their own human religions in their own way, but here the divine religion, viewed in its relation to general history, makes its own point of departure, the father of the faithful, and the organ of its growth—the people of Israel. As the Greek tribes were formed into a people through their Hellenic culture, and the Roman tribes through the city of Rome and the Roman State, so in a more marked way has Israel grown to be a historical people through its religious calling. Even its natural origin was conditioned through faith (Genesis 15).
It is not our purpose here to dwell particularly upon the faith of Abraham and Isaac; we will only give those periods which are noticeable in an archæological point of view. In the first place faith itself.
1. Monotheism and the Apostasy, or Symbolism and its heathen form, Mythology.
2. Calling of Abraham and the heathen, or Symbolical Typology, and Symbolical Mythology. Abraham separated from the people for their salvation.
3. The Patriarchal faith in its development, and heathenism in its ramifications.
4. The Mosaic legal institutions, and their counterpart in the Heathen world.
5. The development of the Mosaic law, and the idolatrous service of the surrounding nations.
6. The Prophetic elevation of the national spirit and the Apostasy.
7. The rending of the common public religious spirit, and its true concentration.
Then follows the more direct solemn expression of faith, the Cultus: its pre-condition circumcision, its central point the sacrifice, its spiritual consecration prayer and instruction. The different stages of the Cultus are marked by the temporary and constantly moving tents of the Patriarchs (simple sacrifice), the tabernacle of Moses (the legal sacrificial system), the temple of Solomon (the fully developed liturgy), the second temple (the martyr sorrows of the people pointing on to the real sacrifice).
All these points will be more thoroughly treated in their proper places. For the literature of Biblical History, see Hagenbach: Encyclopedia, pp. 189, 194, and 197; for the literature of Biblical Theology, p. 200. Also Keil: Archœology, p. 47.
§ 11
SACRED ART
We have already designated the sacred art as dynamic. It is clear, therefore, that Poetry must here hold the first place, and after this the Song and Music: and then the Sacred Chorus or religious dances. Symbolical Architecture and Sculpture close the series, as painting seems to have been almost entirely neglected. For a correct estimate of Theocratic Art, the following points are of importance: 1. The religious element always outweighs and controls the moral. It is framed for the purpose of worship, not civilization. 2. The dynamic principle, as in all the theocratic relations of life, is of far greater moment than the formal. 3. All Symbolic Art has a typical signification, i. e., it not only serves the purpose of an æsthetic ritual, and of philosophic contemplation, but by virtue of a real efficient principle, of a seed of true spiritual life, ever strives to give the beautiful appearance or representation its complete corresponding reality in life. For the literature of Hebrew Art and Music, see Hagenbach: Encyclopedia, p. 139. Keil: Archœology, 2d vol. p. 182. Compare the articles Music and Musical Instruments in Winer. Also the articles upon the temple. For the Hebrew Architecture, see the article upon that subject in Hagenbach: Encyclopedia; Schnaase Geschichte der bildenden Künste, i.241. [The articles Music and Musical Instruments in Kitto: Encyclopedia. Smith: Bible Dictionary. Also the Bible dictionaries of the American Tract Society, Presbyterian Boards and Sunday School Union; Jahn: Archœology.—A. G.]
§ 12 THEOCRATIC LAW AND JURISPRUDENCE The fundamental principle of theocratic law and jurisprudence, is that estimate of personal life grounded in the vivid knowledge of a personal God, which leads first to a recognition of the fully developed personal life (personal rights), then to the protection and culture of the undeveloped, or as a matter of history, outraged (marriage rights), then to the awakening of the suppressed (rights of strangers), and lastly to the judgment upon those individuals and tribes who, through their unnatural sins and abominations, have subjected themselves as persons to the curse and destruction.[5]
See Hagenbach, p. 139, under the heading, Staatsverfassung (Michaelis, Hüllmann, Saalschutz); J. Schnell: Das israelitische Recht in seinen Grundzügen dargestellt, Basel (1853). Compare Keil: Archœologie, ii. p. 196. [Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, J. D. Michaelis, English Translation, London (1814), Commentaries on the Laws of the Ancient Hebrews, by E. C. Wines, 2d edition, New York. The Biblical Encyclopedia and Dictionaries.
Jahn: Hebrew Commonwealth, translated by C. E. Stowe, Andover and London; Lowrie: The Hebrew Lawgiver.—A. G.]
§ 13 ISRAELITISH WISDOM AND SCIENCE In no region is it clearer that all the developments of life among the Israelites are preëminently dynamic, than in the intellectual. The wisdom of the Hebrews has upon its theocratic grounds failed to reach the true science, as Greek science, upon its merely human grounds, has failed to reach the last and highest principles of true wisdom. But the theocratic faith, working in its dynamic direction, has laid the ground for the new birth of the ante-Christian, heathen science, as it has thoroughly refuted the theory of two eternal principles, of the eternity of matter, or as it has established that one profound, all-pervading view of the world which rests upon the living synthesis of the ideal and real, upon the assumption of the absolute personality. Since science is the striving after the highest intellectual or ideal unity, it cannot dispense with the Old Testament, if it would attain to its perfect freedom under the New Testament.
We must be careful not to confound the relation of Theocratic Judaism, and post-Christian Judaism to science, with each other. For the Jewish science, see Keil: Archœology, ii. p. 162; Hagenbach, p. 134.
§ 14 THE HISTORY OF ISRAELITISH CIVILIZATION
Periods.—The Nomadic state—the Bondage—the Conquest—time of the settlement and agriculture—commerce—the dispersion.
I. Domestic Life
1. Marriage.—Its religious and moral significance. The Law of Marriage. The Marriage ceremony. The Marriage state in its moral influence and development. The family. Training of children. Domestics. Slaves. The house.
2. The house as a tent.—The dwelling. The village. The market place. The city.
3. The care and ornaments of the family.—Clothing. Jewelry. Luxuries.
4. The work of the family.—Production. Agriculture. Pastoral life. Hunting. Fishing. Mining.
5. The festivals of the family.—Home pleasures and joys. Society. Sports. Hospitality. Household sorrows. Sickness. Death. Burials. Usages of mourning.
6. Food of the family.—Laws relating to food. Meal times.
II. Israel as a State The principle.—The Theocracy as above. 1. The organization of a community. a. The organic union of the tribes in the land. b. The organic division of the land among the tribes. c. The law of inheritance or primogeniture. 2. The establishment of government. The three states or conditions. Priestly. Prophetic. Royal. Urim and Thummim. 3. The establishment of law and jurisprudence. Laws. Judgments. Punishments. The place of judgment. The Sanhedrim. Law of the Zealots. [Nazarenes.—A. G.] The Prophetic Judgments. Judgment an act of worship. For the literature, see Hagenbach, p. 138; Keil, ii. p. 1.
III. Social Intercourse
1. Commerce.—Its conditions, weights, measures, money. Its forms. Barter, caravans, traffic by land, trade by sea. For the Israelitish measures, Bertheau, Bunsen, i. vol.
2. Personal intercourse.—In the gate, visits, journeys, modes of travel.
3. Intellectual intercourse.—Writings and literature, theological schools, science, special sciences, cultus.
4. Art.—See Cultus.
§ 15 HISTORY OF ISRAEL
See Hagenbach: Encyclopedia, p. 185. Lange: Matthew, Am. ed., the Introduction and the following paragraphs upon the theological and homiletical literature of the Old Testament.
§ 16 THE INTERNATIONAL LAW OF THE ISRAELITES The root of this international law lies in the first promise (Genesis 3:15), in the blessings of Noah (Genesis 9:25), especially in the promise to Abraham: “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed (Genesis 12:3-7); and in its fuller explanation (Genesis 22:18), all the nations of the earth bless themselves.” The first declaration in what form this promise should fulfil itself, viz. through a holy Kingdom, is found in the blessing which Isaac gave to Jacob (Genesis 27:27); the second and more definite declaration in the blessing which Jacob pronounces upon Judah (Genesis 49:8). After establishing the pre-conditions (Exodus 19 a legal separation from the nations, and a legal association with them), Moses organized the tribes of Israel into a sacred camp, a warlike host, destined to carry on the sacred wars of the Lord. It enters at first upon the removing, or in a modified sense the uprooting, of a corrupt heathen people, for the purpose of founding a free Israelitish national life. The wider relations of Israel to the nations must be determined through its contact with them—in war and peace, according to the laws of war and treaties of peace. The victories of David awakened in him and in the people, for a time, the thought that he was called, with a theocratic political power, to found a sacred world-power, to which all nations should be in subjection. (2 Samuel 24.) But the thought met the severe punishment of Jehovah, who thus turned the mind of the Israelitish people, before the declining of its political glory, to a spiritual conquest of the nations. Solomon entered this path as a Prince of Peace, and reached great results, but he rashly anticipated the New Testament future, the premature individual religious freedom, which produced similar destructive results in Israel, with the later idolatrous intolerance. Since then the Jewish public mind has ever oscillated in uncertainty between the two thoughts of a spiritual and political conquest of the world; ever falling more decidedly under the influence of the latter thought—which even prior to the exterminating Jewish wars had made them the odium generis humani;—although the prophets with increasing distinctness and emphasis had made the external world-dominion dependent upon the inward spiritual conquest of the world, and therefore promised it only to the true seed of a spiritual Israel. The strict legal separation of Israel from the nations stands in contrast with its position between the nations, and its blessed intercourse with those who differed most widely from each other, in their whole spirit and tendency. Its Pharisaic and fanatical separation from the nations stands in contrast with its outward geographical connection with them (See Lange: Geschichte des Apost. Zeitalters, i. p. 208 ff.) and its mingling with heathen nations of the most diverse tendency and spirit.
It is by pushing its particularism to its utmost limits, that Israel has brought about its own dispersion among the nations.
Concerning the Israelitish international law, its warfare, the celebration of its victories, and the treaties of peace, see Keil, ii. p. 289 ff. [The popular works on Biblical antiquities may be consulted, but the information which they give is—perhaps necessarily—imperfect and unsatisfactory.—A. G.] 2. The Languages
§ 17 THE PROVINCE OF OLD TESTAMENT LANGUAGES In determining the province of Old Testament languages, it is essential that we should have a correct idea of the distinction between the genius of the Semitic languages, and that of other languages, especially the Indo-Germanic family. It appears from this, that the Semitic idiom, owing to its directness, heartiness, and so to speak inwardness, possesses in a high degree a fitness to express the religious and moral aspects of doing and suffering, the moral affections and distinctions; while it wants in an important sense, the opposite characteristic of indirectness and reflectiveness. In particular, the Hebrew language, with the Greek, thus the language of the Old Testament, with that of the New, forms the broad contrast of the most complete direct method of expression, with the most perfect vehicle for expressing the results of philosophic thought and reflection. Both peculiarities are however fused into one, in the language of the New Testament, as the higher and new-created form of speech. For the literature, see Hagenbach, p. 122; Bleek: Einleitung, pp. 37 and 103 [also Havernick: Introduction to the Old Testament.—A. G.]
§ 18 THE OLD TESTAMENT LANGUAGES—LEXICONS
See the list of Hebrew Dictionaries and Concordances in the Commentary on Matthew, p. 17 (Amer. ed.). J. Fürst: Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary of the Old Testament, with an appendix containing a brief history of Hebrew Lexicography, 2 vols. Leipzig, 1857. [Second ed., 1863. English translation by Davidson, London and New York, 1867. Fürst does not supersede Gesenius. Comp. also B. Davidson and Bagster’s Analytical and Chaldee Lexicon. London, 18 8.—A. G.]
§ 19 THE OLD TESTAMENT FORMS OF SPEECH—GRAMMARS
Olshausen: Hebrew Grammar. Grammaire Hebraique de J. M. Rabbinowicz. Paris, 1862. See Lange’s Matthew. Am. ed. page 17. [Gesenius, Ewald, Bush, Stuart, Nordheimer, Conant, Tregelles, Green.—A. G.]
§ 19
REMARKS The development of the Old Testament forms of speech is pervaded throughout by a profound, earnest, moral and religious spirit. Even if the heathen nations of Canaan used this language, and notwithstanding all these moral treasures, have, through their awful corruption, grown ripe for judgment, this does not alter the fact. For these tribes may have put on the Semitic language as a strange garment, or they may have fallen even from the heights of its spirituality, and therefore have fallen so low. The Scripture itself testifies that their decline was gradual. We must distinguish also between the elementary ground forms of the language, and its religious and moral development in Israel. We call attention here to a few striking examples of the profound spiritual significance of the Hebrew forms of speech.
See Stier: Neugeordnetes Lehrgebäude der Hebràischen Sprache. For the literature of the Philologia sacra, see Hagenbach, p. 122 ff.
THIRD CHAPTER Preparatory Introduction. Its constituent parts, so far as the form of the Text is concerned.
Old Testament Hermeneutics
§ 21
LITERATURE
See Hagenbach: Encyclopedia, pp. 162 and 165 ff. [The principal English Works are W. Van Mildert, An Inquiry into the general principles of Scripture Interpretation (Oxford); T. T. Conybeare’s Bampton Lectures; Davidson: Sacred Hermeneutics; Fairbairn: Hermeneutical Manual; Ernesti: Principles of Biblical Interpretation, translated by C. H. Terrot, Edinburgh (1843); Seiler: Biblical Hermeneutics, London (1855).—A. G.]
§ 22 THE NECESSITY FOR A NEW CONSTRUCTION OF BIBLICAL, ESPECIALLY OF OLD TESTAMENT, HERMENEUTICS That there is some reform needed here is clear from the fact that modern criticism, as the assumed last sound result of the grammatical and historical explanation of the Scripture, rejects from the sacred records of the anti-heathen concrete monotheism, i. e., from the Old and New Testaments, any heathenish idea or representation, or rather brings these same notions and representations into the whole sacred text. As heathenism springs directly from this, that the idolatrous mind lays undue stress upon the bare letter in the book of creation; that it separates and individualizes its objects as far as possible; that it places the sense of the individual part, in opposition to the sense of the whole, to the analogia fidei or spiritus which alone gives its unity to the book of nature, while it dilutes and renders as transitory as possible the sense of the universal or the whole; so precisely modern unbelief rests upon an exegesis which opposes all analogy of faith, which presses and even strangles the letter until it is reduced to the most limited sense possible, while it suffers the more universal and historical in a great measure to evaporate in empty, general, or ideal notions. As heathenism laid great stress upon the letter in the book of nature, it fell into polytheism. The particular symbol of the divine, or of the Godhead, became a myth of some special deity. A God of the day and the light was opposed to a God of the night; a God of the blessings of life and of happiness, to a God of calamities and of evil; a God of the waters, to a God of the fire; and finally, the God of one idea to the God of another; the God of one thing to the God of other things; i. e., one Fetisch to another. The final goal of Polytheism was Fetischism. On the other hand, the grand unities of the text of nature, and with these of history, the revelations of mercy, truth, peace, and beauty were not embraced in one living concrete unity, in the idea of a personal revelation, but were diluted into the abstract unity of the one pantheistic one; the one everywhere appearing and then vanishing, formless, impersonal, divine being. Pantheism ends, when pushed to its legitimate consequences, in Atheism. The two fundamental laws of human thought, a true analysis and synthesis, were used in a false method, since they place in their room an abstract absolute analysis and synthesis, and then to escape from the intolerable opposition, they mingled all distinctions and combinations into a confused mass, and then separated the mass again in the same fantastical manner. This could only issue on the one hand in a pantheistic polytheism, and on the other in a pantheistic dualism.
Modern criticism presses the letter of scripture in a direction opposed to Cocceianism. If Cocceius transforms all places in the scripture, from the seed to a tree, and forces into it an utterance of the whole developed truth of revelation (e. g., the Protevangelium), this criticism inverts his whole method, since it circumscribes the letter within the narrowest signification possible. Thus, according to its method, Christ, according to the gospel by Matthew, must have ridden upon two asses at once; the Apostle Paul must have conceived of Christ as in his being, physical light; John must have denied him the human soul and spirit, because he says: “the word was made flesh;” Jehovah must have in heaven a literal palace; and the speaking with tongues must have been a mere stammering or jargon. This is the mere logomachy into which this modern Talmudism relapses, like the Jewish Talmud, seeking to interpret the scriptures in a heathen method. On the other hand, this same criticism evaporates the more general truths of sacred scripture, especially those which are at the same time historical, into mere abstract generalities. Thus, e. g., the birth of the Godman, is nothing more than the birth of the theanthropic consciousness; the resurrection of Christ only the re-awakening of the idea of Christ; the whole eschatology nothing more than the symbolism of the immanent and progressing world-judgment. The Alpha and Omega of Christianity, as indeed of all revealed religion, is the living synthesis of spirit and nature, of idea and fact, of the divine and human, finally of the Deity and humanity; and the central point, the key and measure of all the doctrines of revelation, and of all true interpretations of scripture is the great watchword: “The word was made flesh.” The modern pseudological criticism consists in the disruption of this synthesis. The letter is taken as the mere word of man, and the historical fact as a purely human event, while, in truth, in the form of symbolical declarations, the universal religious ideas, the eternal facts of the spirit, are brought into light only through these ever varying human ideas and facts. There is no unity. For both the personality lying at the foundation, the alpha, and the glorified personality, the omega, are wanting; and instead of this, there is only within the disturbing and blinding influence of the material world, the gradual progress from one ideal unknown to another, lying still further in the region of the unknown. The last result of all spiritual hopes and expectations is the absolute riddle.
It must be granted that this exegetical method has its precursor in the poverty and shortcoming of the orthodox exegesis. Even here we find to a great extent, an extreme literal exegesis in a perpetual interchange with a fabulous allegorizing of the scripture. What this literal exegesis makes comprehensible, and to some degree impresses, is the sense of the infinite importance of the biblical word, in its definite and individual form. What, on the other hand, the whole history of the allegoric interpretation of the scripture declares is, that conviction, living through all ages of the church, of the divine fulness and symbolical infinitude of the scripture word. The four-fold and seven-fold sense of the allegorizers of the middle ages, is the rainbow coloring, into which the pure white light of the symbolical and ideal sense of scripture is resolved, to the mediæval longing and faith. But when adherence to the letter becomes so rigid that it denies any room for poetry in the historical statement, because it mistakes the idea, whose clothing is this symbolical poetry; when, e. g., it insists with stiff-necked obstinacy that the six creative days are six ordinary astronomical days; when it sees in the stopping of the sun at the command of Joshua, a new astronomical event: when it makes Lot’s wife to become a real particular pillar of salt, and Balaam’s ass actually to speak in the forms of human speech; then it is justly chargeable with being dead and spiritless, and places weapons in the hands of unbelief. It is only pushing this view to its consequences, when the literal interpretation involves itself in absurdity. Moving in its circuit, this same unspiritual criticism changes the allegorical interpretation of particular parts of the solid words of the bible, into an allegorical interpretation of the entire word, and thus spreads over the firm monotheistic ground of the holy scripture, the variegated cloud covering of a pantheistic view of the world and theology. Although the text sounds throughout monotheistic, the idea must be taken in a pantheistic sense, since the text is nothing else than the polytheistic dismembered form of the one pantheistic spirit. The spirit of this criticism indeed so daringly inverts the true relation, that it transforms an entire historical apostolic letter, like that to Philemon, into an allegorical point of doctrine, while it inversely interprets an entirely allegorical and symbolical book, like the Apocalypse, as if we must understand it literally throughout. But the assumption of the mythical character of the sacred books is the grand means by which this fleeting misty spirit of modern pantheistic ideas is bound in with the rigid crass literal sense. In reference to the Old Testament, many theologians who are firm believers in revelation, have held that the theory of mythical portions could not be erroneous, if they would not be involved in the untenable results of the literal exegesis. The modern interpreter of the scriptures, in his explanation of large portions of the Old Testament, thinks it necessary, as the only solution of difficulties, to choose between the mythical, or purely literal theory. This alternative is accepted, especially as to the creative days, paradise, the marriage of the sons of God with the daughters of men, and points like these. But even this alternative is fundamentally erroneous. It mistakes the A B C for the full understanding of the principle upon which the bible is written, the truth, viz., that the peculiar subject matter of the theanthropic revealed word must have a peculiar form. The bible contains
It is inconceivable because the myth is a religious statement, in which the consciousness has lost the distinction between the symbol and the symbolized idea. In other words, the myth as such is never barely a form. In it the idea has lost itself in the image, and is bound there until the day of future redemption. On the other hand, the very nature of the Hebrew view and idiom consists in this, that it first clearly grasps the distinction between God and the world, between his spirit and his signs, and then establishes the distinction firmly. Hence even in all its individual parts as a revelation of faith, it has kept itself ever awake to the consciousness of the distinction between its images and the realities to which they correspond. To such an extent is this true, that to avoid being entangled in any one figure, even when it is purely rhetorical, the Hebrew in some way changes his poetical statements and expressions, a fact which appears strange to one accustomed to the constancy with which figures are used by classical writers, e. g., see the 18th and 21st Psalms. Mythology not only elaborates individual figures, but strings one to another until it forms a complete mythical circle.
Finally, the myth as such has no historical efficiency or results. It is the form of a passive lifeless religion. Religion, having life and activity, must have a form suited to its inward nature. The Old Testament, as the record of the revealed faith, contains no merely literal historical statements, in the same sense in which profane history contains them, which records facts for the sake of the facts, and in its practical instruction goes no further back than to second causes, and oftentimes to those only which are most obvious and familiar. We must distinguish clearly between the religious history of the scriptures and common history. Not of course in the sense that it is less historical, or less a narrative of facts, but in the sense that it presents the fact in the light of its highest first cause, its idea, its symbolical import, and therefore in a somewhat poetically elevated style. The biblical fact wears a poetical dress in its presentation, from a threefold point of view; 1. through its relation to the fundamental religious thought or idea, in which the writer comprehends it in the light of divine illumination; 2. through its relation to the fundamental religious thought of the book, i. e., its special connection with revelation in which the writer states it; 3. through its relation to the central thought of divine revelation itself, with which the Holy Spirit has connected it, whether the author was conscious of it or not. We take, e. g., the passage which speaks of the Cherubim, who after the expulsion of Adam and Eve, guarded the gate of Paradise, especially the way to the tree of life, with the flaming sword, The fact is this, that the first man as a sinner, was through the terror of God, driven forth from the original place of blessedness which he had polluted by sin. Viewed according to the religious thought or idea of the passage in and by itself, these terrors are angels of the Lord, personal manifestations of the personal and righteous God, who keeps man, guilty and subject to death, from any return to the tree of life (Psalms 18, 104). Viewed in connection with the fundamental thought of Genesis, these Cherubim are destined to keep man from the heathen longings after the old Paradise, and to impel him onward to the new tree of life, the religion of the future as it came to be established in Abraham (Genesis 12:1, Go out of the land of thy fathers). Viewed, finally, in its relation to the general spirit of the scriptures, these Cherubim introduce not only the doctrine of angels generally, but also the doctrine of the fundamental form of the Old Testament revelation through the angel of the Lord, and the angel of the divine judgments who is ever impelling humanity, through all history, from the threshold of the old paradise, to the open gate of the new and eternal paradise. As to the relation of a definite fact to the special religious idea, e. g., the expression, Lot’s wife looked behind her and became a pillar of salt, not only records, that through her indecision and turning back she was overtaken by the storm of fire, but also contains the thought that indecision as to the way of escape, begins with the first look after the old, forsaken goods of this life; and that every judgment of death upon those who thus turn back, is erected along the way of escape as a warning to others. As to the relation of the particular expression to the individual book, i. e., the fundamental view or purpose of the author, modern criticism would save itself a hundred vexed questions, from an inadequate conception and treatment of the sacred text, if it would proceed from this fundamental thought, and thus understand the arrangement of particular books, what they include and omit, their connections and transitions. These vexatious questions, e. g.,—Which of the three evangelists is the original?—Which of them is correct?—Which preserves the true connection and the original expression? would cease in a great measure, if we will only concede to the sacred writer, what we usually concede to other writers and artists, viz.: that he has a fundamental thought—a prevailing principle upon which he constructs his work. That the history of Joseph, e. g., is more particularly related than that of Isaac or the patriarchs, is closely connected with the fundamental thought or principle of Genesis, that it should narrate the history of the origin of all things, down to the origin of the holy people in Egypt, as that was brought about through the history of Joseph; and not only the history of the origin of this people, but of its exodus from bondage, which was in woven with the great crime of Joseph’s brethren, who sold him into bondage. As to its connection with the principle of scripture as a whole, this history is an expressive image of divine Providence, in its relation to human innocence and guilt, as it is destined to be the type of all the subsequent providential leadings of this nature, down to the history of Christ. In every particular fact, the religious idea of the absolute divine causality rises into prominence above all natural second causes. As the heathen is entangled and lost in second causes, so the theocratic believer must ever go back to the sovereignty and providence of God. He does not deny the second cause, since he rejects all one-sided supernaturalism, but clothes it in a new form in the splendor of Divine Providence. The Cherubim with the flaming sword appear later as the symbolic forms of Divine Providence (Psalms 104), as the Cherubim of the storm upon which Jehovah rides (Psalms 18), as the seraphim, the angels of fire, who should consume the temple of hardened and obdurate Israel (Isaiah 6). Even moral second causes, human freedom and human guilt, must be placed under the divine causality, and this not according to the assumption of a crushing fatalistic idea of Providence (Wegscheider), but according to the fundamental law of Divine Providence itself. When the Bible records that God hardened the heart of Pharaoh, it informs us also that Pharaoh was a despot and hardened his own heart; and further, that all his guilt was foreseen, and, under the righteous judgment of God, set for the glorifying of his name in the execution of the plan of his kingdom. That is a strong one-sided supernaturalism, which utterly denies not only natural but moral second causes, when they are not made prominent in the statement of Divine Providence, or, perhaps, notwithstanding they are made prominent. For the same reasons, the authors of the books of the Bible have not recorded all the facts of the sacred history remarkable to human view, with the same minuteness, but only the principal points in the development of the kingdom of God, through a given period of time. They devote themselves more to the pictures of personal life than to the description of their impersonal surroundings; to the creative epochs, than to the lapse of time between; to the turning-points of a grand crisis, more than to the after progress and development; rather to the great living picture of individuals illustrating all, than to an external massing together of particular things. The method of writing the sacred history of the Bible is like its chronology, its view of the world, throughout living, personal, dynamic. As to the connection of the particular books of the Bible, it is undeniable that the great profound, all-pervading formative element is the ideal fact of the saving self-revelation of God even to his incarnation, i. e., the soteriological messianic idea. As the direction of any given mountain range is determined by a certain concrete law of nature: so, much more is the formation of any individual part of the Canon. But as to its relation to the other parts, its outward connection and articulation, it cannot be denied that in the region of revelation, there must have been not only an inspiration of the records themselves, but of the records in their present form, and that it is just as one-sided to deny the traces of this inspired editing of the sacred records (Luke 1:1), as to enfeeble their testimony, by the supposition of an uncanonical biblical book-making; of a painful and laborious compilation and fusion of diverse elements or parts into one.
Biblical hermeneutics cannot well deny that the monotheistic and theocratic traditions are older than the oldest written records. Neither can it deny that even since the art of writing was known, the living discourse, the oral narrative, the revelation through facts, is older, and in some sense more original, than the written word. But it asserts and must assert, that the written word throughout belongs to the region of revelation—to the very acts through which the revelation is made—and forms indeed the acme and the limits of sacred revelation. And as to the sacred tradition, it is not to be confounded with the idea of tradition as it is usually associated with the idea of the myth. The sacred tradition, in its wealth of religious ideas, lies back of the myth; the popular tradition, in the ordinary sense of the word, lies on this side of the myth, nearer to authentic history. The heathen myth is the heathen dogmatics, as they belong to the earlier age of any given heathen people. The popular traditions are the heathen ethics of the same people, an ethics exemplified in fabulous personages as they were concerned in the chief events of that people during the transition period, from its mythical to its historical age. We can trace this relation both through the Greek and the German traditionary period. In the blooming period of the ethical traditions the poetic, sceptical, trifling, even ironical transformation of the myth takes its origin.
We can now distinguish by certain fixed characteristics the Old Testament symbolical statements from the mythical statements. The acute attempt of Schmieder to determine the relation between the religions method of writing history, and the ordinary methods in his essay: Preliminary to the Biblical history, 1837, does not lead to satisfactory results. See Lange: Positiv Dogmatik, p. 385. The general distinction:—it is all true but is not all actual,—leaves the relation both as to quantity and quality, between the ideal truth and the historical events, so undetermined, that it will not avail to fix firmly the characteristics of Scripture, in its distinction from all myths, as from all ordinary historical writings in which events are traced to their causes. We have treated hitherto only of the biblical method of writing history, but we must now treat of the biblical method of stating things generally, in order that we may place in contrast the idea of the myth, and the counter idea of the scripture word, according as they stand connected with, or opposed to, each other.
We may distinguish the historical and philosophical (or, more accurately, physical or philosophical) myths, and according to this distinction, we may view the Bible word in contrast to them, as to its facts, and as to its doctrines. The affinity between all mythology and the whole scripture, according to which the scripture and especially the evangelical history, may be viewed as the fulfilling of all myths; is the union of the idea and the fact, or of actual signs, or of words, to a symbol of the eternal, in the language of poetry. But even here the biblical fact is clearly distinguished from the historical myth. The latter has the minimum of reality only, perhaps the mere moral longing or wish, or it may be some facts of the popular or heroic natural life, brought by a poetical symbolism into union with an idea, and made to be the bearer of that idea; while the biblical fact always has an historical basis, whose greatness and importance is felt throughout the history of the kingdom of God; one particular event, which has reached its peculiar definite expression in the light of its universal significance. The biblical fact through its ideal transparency has been raised from an individual to a general fact, and thus became a biblical doctrine. Its unessential individual form may have disappeared in the splendor of its idea, but the total fact remains. On the contrary, the element of reality which lies at the foundation of the historical myth, is to such an extent transformed by the ideal poetry, and its historical actuality is so far unsusceptible of proof, that it becomes more or less a question whether there is such an element or not. But as the biblical facts have throughout the splendor of ideal truths, so the biblical doctrines have throughout the energy of facts. They are facts of the active religious consciousness, clothed with so decisive an energy and significance, that we may view them as the eternal deeds of the Spirit, presented in the clear distinct light of particular passages, e. g., the Psalms, Proverbs, the Sermon on the Mount. This historical character of the action is wanting in the philosophic myths. We understand them first, when we have rescued through Christianity the philosophical and moral doctrines which they contain. The myth itself waits for redemption from its bondage through the idolatrous sense, by the virtue of the scripture word. In its free form it appears as an ancient symbol. As to the chief distinction, we would prefer, for our own part, to distinguish in all myths physical, historical, and religious elements, and hence would class them as preëminently scientific, historical, or religious, as one or the other of these elements might come into prominence. To the style of the historical myth we would oppose the style of the Old Testament histories, to the style of the scientific (philosophical) myth the Old Testament doctrinal writings, to the predominantly religious myth the Old Testament prophetic word. As the preëminently religious myth forms the synthesis of the physical and historical, so the prophetic word forms the higher unity of the historical and didactic word. The science of hermeneutics therefore, as the hermeneutics of the prophetic word, must bring out clearly, that in this region all the historical is in the highest measure ideal and symbolical (e. g., the temple of Ezekiel, the concubine of Hosea) and all the didactic is destined in its eternal actual energy and results to reach beyond the Old Testament limits.
We trust that these suggestions for the wider culture of biblical, especially Old Testament hermeneutics, may find useful illustration in our Biblework. But this must be borne in mind: we hold that particular parts of the Old Testament must remain to us in a great measure dark and inexplicable, so long as the distinction between the ordinary style of history, and the higher religions style, is not more firmly established, and consistently carried out. This holds true in our opinion especially of the books of Chronicles and the book of Esther, and, among the prophetical books, of Daniel and Jonah.
Finally, as to the well-known distinction between the Semitic and Japhetic modes of speech, there is not only at the foundation, that misconceived and misapplied difference, the opposition between oriental directness and occidental reflectiveness, and further the opposition between the religious and secular view of the world in a mediæval sense, of the old and new time, i. e., of the spontaneous development of Pagan culture, and the derivative culture of Christian civilization; but also the opposition between the religious method of presenting history and doctrine, and the more pragmatic view of history, and the dialectic mode of teaching doctrine. It is evident, however, that such a distinction does not destroy the unity of the Spirit, the communion of ideas and faith between the two spheres. By the faith, Abraham must have understood essentially the same truths which any enlightened Christian, whether a theologian or philosopher, understands to-day.
(For the promotion of Old Testament Exegesis through more correct hermeneutical principles, see Appendix.) Old Testament Criticism
§ 23 BIBLICAL CRITICISM AND ITS RELATED LITERATURE Compare Hagenbach: Encyclopedia, pp. 145, 150, 151.
Hagenbach makes the science of Introduction preliminary to that of Criticism. We hold that this order must be inverted, since Introduction is impossible without Criticism. Biblical Criticism is the scientific examination of the Bible as to its historical and traditional form. It decides according to historical or outward, and according to real or inward, signs, as to the biblical origin of the sacred books, as one whole, and as individual parts, i. e., as to their authenticity and integrity. In the course of its procedure it passes from the examination and purging of the text, to its construction, confirmation and its restoration to its original form. It is thus, to follow Hagenbach, according to its sources of determination (or rules) outward and inward, according to its results (decisions) negative and positive, Criticism. We must observe, however, the manifold signification which has been attached to the contrasts between negative and positive Criticism (used now in a historical, and then in a dogmatic sense); between a lower and higher Criticism (now as a question upon the integrity and authenticity, now as a decision according to the existing witnesses, manuscripts, translations, or according to scientific combination, upon the spirit of various writings and passages). There can be no question that Criticism belongs to the most essential and vital functions of biblical theology. It Isaiah , 1. Necessary; 2. not merely a modern Criticism of recent date, but has existed from early time; and 3. like every theological function, it has been subjected to great errors, and requires therefore a criticism upon itself.
[There is a large class of English works here, among which those of Hamilton, Jones, Walton: Prolegomena; Kennicott: Dissertations; Stuart: Ernesti; Davidson: Criticism; Gerard: Institutes of Biblical Criticism; Horsley: Biblical Criticism, London, 1810, may be consulted.—A. G.]
§ 24 DESIRABLENESS OF AN ORGANON OF CRITICISM
It is remarkable that Theology, with an immense activity of the critical processes, is still without any well-formed theory of Criticism. We have on several occasions suggested that such an organon is still wanting. It should aim to establish all the leading principles for the theological and critical process, and then to exclude all unnecessary critical principles. The first fundamental position would be, that there must be an agreement as to the religious and philosophical criticism of Revelation and of Christianity itself. Starting from the modern philosophical assumptions of Deism and Pantheism, some have criticised exegetically and historically the biblical records, i. e., they have mingled in an unscientific manner philosophical and purely infidel prejudices, with real critical principles, in an unfair procedure. And it has occurred that the results of this critical blundering have been set forth and commended as the results of a higher criticism of the historical view (see Lange: Apostol Zeitalter, i. p. 9). It is most important therefore to determine first of all, in order to meet satisfactorily the religions and philosophical preliminary questions, whether one recognizes or not the idea and reality of a personal God, of his personal revelation, of his personal presence in the world, and his personal communion with the Elect, i. e., the souls of men awakened to the consciousness of their eternal personality. The organon of criticism places this recognition, or rather knowledge, at the very summit of its system, and denies to those who reject the living idea of revelation, the right and the power to engage in any scientific exegetical and historical criticism.
Then it would be the aim in this first division of the Organon of criticism, to fix firmly the ideas of the originality, especially of the authenticity and integrity of the Bible. The first fundamental characteristic of biblical originality is defined in the Evangelic word, “the Word was made flesh,” i. e., by the supposition that in the whole region of revelation, we are dealing with an indissoluble synthesis of idea and fact, i. e., with personal life; but never with ideas without historical facts, and never with historical facts without an ideal foundation and significance. This is the very A B C of a sound criticism, over against which the latest spiritualistic critical fraud, which has spread from Tübingen through a part of the Evangelical church, must be viewed as a paganistic idealism, modified by its passage through Christianity; and according to which also the ultra supernaturalistic interpretation of biblical history, as a mere narration of events in their order from cause to effect, without ideal contents or form, appears a lifeless and unspiritual tradition of a fundamentally worldly Empiricism. The succeeding question as to the authenticity, is determined accordingly by this, that in every biblical book we must take into view its peculiar inward form derived from the spirit of the book, as well as its historical declarations. Still further, the different Genera scribendi must be determined as they are ascertained from the actual appearance of the biblical books, and from the spirit of Revelation. It is accordingly critically incorrect to insist that the book Ecclesiastes, according to its declaration, must be regarded as the work of Solomon, since we are here dealing with a poetical book, which may put the experience of the vanity of the world in the mouth of the Son of David. But it is critically incorrect also to deny that the Apocalypse is the work of John, since we are here concerned with prophetic announcements, which rest expressly upon the authority of the Apostle. True poetry does not assume a fictitious name, when it puts its words in the mouth of a symbolical and fit personage, but prophecy would, should it resort to the same procedure. Then as to the integrity of the biblical books, criticism must determine, as is evident from the countless variations in the text of the New Testament, and from the free relation of the Septuagint to the Old Testament, that from the earliest time the records of revelation in the sanctuary of the church of God, were not regarded as literal and inviolable documents, but as the leaves and words of the Spirit, and that notwithstanding this freedom the authentic word, as to all essential point, was held sacred. For with all the differences of the Septuagint, it is not possible to bring out of the Old Testament any essentially modified Old Covenant, and amid all the variations of the New Testament, we still discern the same gospel in all its essential features. In reference to both questions, however, it is evident from the relation of Genesis to the original traditions, of the Gospel of Luke to the records he had before him, of the second Epistle of Peter to the Epistle of Jude, from the resemblance as to thought and form in many passages between different authors (e. g., one between Isaiah and Micah), that we must explain not only the first origin and elements of the biblical records, but also the theocratic and apostolic form in which we now have them, as properly belonging to the region of canonical revelation. With regard to the rules or criteria of biblical criticism, the idea of actual revelation, i. e., of the effects of the living interchange between the personal God and the personal human spirit, forms the first rule. This involves, first, the recognition of historical facts belonging to true human freedom, as the Pantheist cannot regard them; secondly, the original religious facts, which are entirely foreign to Deism; thirdly, the specific actual revelation as it rends asunder the supposition of Dualism. Without the recognition of the historical, the religious, the theocratic heroism, we have no rule for the critical examination of the contents of the sacred scripture.
Then, in the second place, we must fix firmly the idea of human personality awakened and freed through the personality of God, as it involves a complete originality both as to its own views and productions. As the Bible throughout is an original work of the Spirit of God, so each individual book is an original work of the chosen human spirit who wrote it. Innumerable questions which criticism is inadequate to solve, find their solution here. To ascribe, e. g., the production of the second part of Isaiah to the Scribe Baruch, or to Mark the authorship of the original Gospel, after which the other synoptics in a most extraordinary way have copied, or the Epistle to the Ephesians to an imperfect impression taken from that to the Colossians, or the Apocalypse to John Mark as its author, rests upon the failure to estimate properly the originality of the biblical writer, the originality of his works, and the connection between the two. It is clear that, with originality, we concede to the writers of the Bible that thorough consistency of Spirit which is peculiar to a living, spiritually free personality. From the originality of Revelation as a whole, in its connection with the originality of the writers of the particular books of Revelation, arises the originality of the collection of the biblical books. They are the closely connected products of one peculiar intellectual creative forming principle; and therefore form one complete Canon, as they are one complete Cosmos, i. e., the organon of criticism presupposes the analogy of faith. But as it presupposes this analogy, it has at the same time to ascertain its essential elements out of its fundamental thoughts, i. e., the peculiar fundamental truths of biblical theology. With the existence of the analogy of faith, which reveals itself further in the analogy of the Scriptures, is determined the human side of the Holy Scriptures, agreeably to the historical differences and manifold forms, i. e., the germ-like incipience, the historical gradual growth, the regular development, the indissoluble connection, finally the perfect completion of its facts and doctrines according to the idea of revelation.
§ 25 THE PRINCIPAL CRITICAL QUESTIONS IN THE TREATMENT OF THE OLD TESTAMENT In the introduction to the Old Testament the following important critical questions hold a prominent place: the unity of Genesis, the Mosaic authenticity of the Pentateuch, the authentic historical character of the historical books following the Pentateuch, the age of Job (also as to its historical basis), the limits as to time of the collection of the Psalms, the authenticity of the writings of Solomon (and the import of the Song in particular), the relation between the first and second parts of Isaiah (Isaiah 40-66), between the Hebrew text of Jeremiah and the text of the Septuagint, between the book of Daniel and Daniel himself, the import of the book of Jonah, and finally the relation of the first part of Zechariah to the second (Zechariah 9-14). The ecclesiastical and theological interest in these questions will be essentially met and satisfied, if, in the first place, genuine historical records of revelation, flowing from the time at which the revelation was made, are recognized as the foundation, and to some extent essential component parts, of the writings in question; and if, in the second place, it is firmly held that the bringing of these records into their present form took place on canonical ground, within the sphere of Old Testament revelation, under the direction and guarantee of the prophetic Spirit. Under the energetic influence of these two positions, the canonical faith in the Bible, and a free critical examination, have approximated each other, and under their more perfect influence they will celebrate their full reconciliation. And if in the process some prejudgments of the ecclesiastical tradition must be conceded, so criticism in its turn must yield up a mass of thoughtless errors and exaggerations. Traditional theology will come into liberty through a proper estimate of the historical character of the biblical books; and criticism itself will be freed from the mistakes into which it has thoughtlessly fallen through a low estimate of the ideal contents of the sacred writings.
Although there is much in Genesis in favor of the distinction of Elohistic and Jehovistic records, yet the fact made prominent by Hengstenberg and others cannot be denied, viz., that the names Elohim and Jehovah are throughout so distinguished, that the one prevails in those passages which speak of the general relation of God to the world, the other in those in which the theocratic relation of God to his people and kingdom rises into prominence. This contrast, embraced by the unity of the consciousness of faith in revelation, not only runs through the Pentateuch, but appears in a marked form in the opposition between the general doctrine of wisdom as viewed by Solomon, and the Davidic theocratic doctrine of the Messiah. It pervades the Old Testament Apocrypha, in the New Testament celebrates its transfiguration in the contrast between the Gospel of John, his doctrine of the logos on the one side, and the synoptical and Petrino-Pauline view on the other; and finally, in the opposition between the Christian and ecclesiastical dogmatism, and the Christian and social humanitarianism, runs through the history of the church, manifesting itself in the Reformation through the twin forms, Luther and Melanchthon, Calvin and Zwingle. The full influence of the increasingly perfect view of the great harmonious oppositions or contrasts in revelation, and the history of revelation, upon the minute analysis of the biblical test, is yet to be experienced. On the present state of the investigation, see Bleek: Einleitung, p. 227 ff. As to the Pentateuch, we recognize the following limiting positions of Bleek, while we differ from him in many particulars: 1. That there are in the Pentateuch very important sections which were written by Moses and in his time, in the very form in which we now read them. 2. That Moses did not compose the Pentateuch, as one complete historical work as it lies before us. The clearest instance in favor of the last position is obviously the record of the death and burial of Moses (Deuteronomy 34). As to the marks in Deuteronomy which point to a later origin, we must bear in mind that Moses was not only the Lawgiver, but the Prophet, and that at the close of his career in life, in the solemn review of his work, he would have a motive to prophetically explain and glorify the particularism of that economy which he had founded under the divine direction, by bringing out into bolder relief its universal aspect, which he does in Deuteronomy. In the essential portions of Deuteronomy, which we ascribe to Moses, he obviates, as far as possible, that pharisaic particularism which might grow up from a barely legal and literal interpretation of the books of the law, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. Deuteronomy is the repetition of the law, under the illumination of the prophetic spirit, in the light of the future of prophecy. As to those older records quoted in the Old Testament itself, as a basis for its statements, compare Bleek, p. 148 ff. We refer hero to 1. The book of the wars of Jehovah (Numbers 21:14-15, compare Numbers 5:17-18 and Numbers 5:27-30); 2. The book of Jasher (Joshua 10:13; 2 Samuel 1:18); 3. The book of the history of Solomon (1 Kings 11:41); 4. 1 Chronicles 29:29-30, for the history of David, a. The book of Samuel the seer, b. The book of Nathan the prophet, c. The book of Gad the seer; 5. For the history of Solomon, 2 Chronicles 9:29, a. The prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, b. the book of Iddo the seer against Jeroboam the son of Nebat; 6. For the history of Rehoboam, 2 Chronicles 12:15, the book of Shemaiah the prophet and Iddo the seer; 7. For the history of Abijah, 2 Chronicles 13:22, the story (commentary) of the prophet Iddo; 8. There are constantly cited in the books of Kings: a. The book of the history of the Kings of Israel; b. The book of the history of the Kings of Judah. The latter seems to be that referred to in the books of Chronicles, as the book of the Kings of Judah and Israel: cited also 2 Chronicles 24:27; 2 Chronicles 9. 2 Chronicles 20:34. The historical book of the prophet Jehu, which is inserted in the book of the Kings of Israel; 10. 2 Chronicles 32:32, a book of Isaiah, upon, the Kings of Judah and Israel; 11. For the history of Manasseh, the histories or sayings of Hosai or seers; and in 1 Chronicles 27:24, a book of the Chronicles of David the King.
If the post-Mosaic historical books of the Old Testament are rearrangements of original records, which belong to unknown authors, still the supposition of contradictions, of mythical portions, of the extremely late dates assigned as the time of their origin, is closely connected with a failure to estimate their more recondite historical relations, and their ideal and symbolical aspect. This is especially true in regard to the judgments formed upon the two books of Chronicles, and the book of Esther. That in the military sections of the book of Joshua he alone is spoken of, while in those which record the geographical divisions of the land, Eleazer acts with him; that in one place the official elders and judges coöperate, and in another the natural heads of the tribes; that under the military point of view the tribes are otherwise described than under the geographical,—these are distinctions grounded in actual differences. In the long period which the book of Judges embraces, the orthodox criticism obviously injures its own cause, when it denies the basis of more historical sources; since the supposition of such sources, so far from weakening, actually strengthens the trustworthiness of the book. That the point of view of the episode, Judges 17-21, is untheocratic, is entirely untenable. The two books of Samuel, which are plainly distinguished by the contrast between Saul and David, the rejected King, and the man after God’s own heart, point back through their ingenious and throughout characteristic style, to rich original records lying at their source. The books of Kings and Chronicles refer in various ways to the records upon which their statements rest. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah bear these names especially (as the books of Samuel), only because they speak of these men. This is obvious, first, because they were originally bound in one whole, and secondly, because in their present form they contain portions which point to a later date. It is equally clear that the original part of these books must belong to the men whose names they bear. The book of Esther, in the regulations for the feast of Purim, refers back to remarkable historical event. It contains too many historical indications to be regarded with Semler as fiction, and too much which appears literally improbable, to be regarded as pure history. It is probably the fruit of a fact, represented allegorically for the illustration of the truth, that the true people of God, even in its dispersion, is wonderfully preserved, and made victorious over the most skilful assaults of its enemies.[6] In this respect the book of Esther forms a contrast with the book of Jonah, which also represents allegorically a wonderful event, in order to illustrate the mercy of God to the heathen, and in opposition to the narrow-minded exclusiveness of the Jews. Hence we are able to explain the fact that the name of God does not occur in Esther, as indeed it scarcely occurs in the Song. The connection of an allegorical and poetical explanation, with the basis of historical fact on which it rests, is now generally admitted in reference to the book of Job. But here the character of a didactic poem comes into prominence. In the critical examination of this book, doubts in regard to the speech of Elihu will have to yield to any profound insight into its nature, since it obviously forms the transition from the preceding speeches, to the closing manifestation of God. From its universal character in connection with its theme, the innocent suffering of Job, it is well-nigh certain that its origin belongs to a time when the glory of Israel culminating in Solomon, was on the decline: the time of the fading glory of the Kingdom. That the Psalter in its original portions belongs to David, as the Proverbs to Solomon, is conceded even by the modern criticism. But it is evident from the division into five books, that the collection grew gradually to its present form. The existence of Psalms originating during the Exile is beyond question (Psalms 102, 137). But the attempt to place a large part of the Psalms in the time of the Maccabees, has been triumphantly refuted by Ewald and Bleek (Bleek, p. 619). The supposition that the heroic uprising of a people for its faith, must always have as its consequence a corresponding movement of the poetic spirit, is groundless. The Camisards, e. g., have sung the Old Testament Psalms of vengeance. But the Maccabees stand in a similar relation of dependence upon the Old Testament Canon, as the Camisards.
Solomon stands beyond question as the original prince of proverbial poetry, as David is the first great master of lyric poetry. They shared in founding the highest glory of the sacred poetry and literature of Israel, just as they shared in the highest glory of the theocratic and political kingdom—in war and peace. They have indeed through their sacred poetry transferred the typical character of their political power into a prophecy of the true Messianic Kingdom, militant and peaceful. But just as the later Psalms have been grafted on to the original stock of the Davidic Psalms, so later proverbs have been added to the collection of Solomon. (1 Kings 5:12 ff.) On this ground the didactic poem—the Preacher of Solomon—in the use of poetical license is represented to be the work of Solomon. That the book is of later origin is clear both from its language and its historical relations (Bleek, p. 642). That the Song also is not correctly attributed to Solomon as its author may be inferred from its fundamental thought.[7] The virgin of Israel—the theocracy—will not suffer herself to be included among the heathen wives, religions, as the favorite of Solomon, but ever turns to her true beloved, the Messiah who was yet to come. We hold, therefore, that this poem takes its origin in that theocratic indignation which the religious freedom of Solomon—going in this before his time—and his numerous marriages through which he mingled with heathenism, occasioned. We may trace clearly the expression of a similar sentiment in the nuptial Psalm. (Psalms 45:11-13.)
Modern criticism doubts less as to the originality and authenticity of the Prophetic writings. But it exercises its analyzing activity especially upon the prince of all Messianic prophets, the Evangelist of the Old Testament, Isaiah. We pass over here the different exceptions which have been made in the first part of the book which is recognized in the main as belonging to Isaiah (Isaiah 1-39). We remark in general that all critical grounds growing out of the prejudice against any prediction are unworthy of notice. The whole first part is throughout organically constructed upon that profoundly significant fundamental thought of the prophet, viz., that out of every judgment of God there springs to the same extent a corresponding redemption, so that we cannot easily assign the construction of this main part to a stranger. As to the second part of the book (Isaiah 40-66) we hold that the collected reasons urged against its genuineness will not stand the test. The first reason is this: the prophet would in these prophecies have placed himself upon that, to him, far distant standpoint of the Babylonish captivity as in his historical present, in order from that point to predict events still more distant in the future. This is not the method of the prophets, but it is the method of the Apocalyptics. If we distinguish the definite, artistic form of the apocalyptic vision from the more general form of prophecy, the first distinctive feature, as to form, is clearly the all-prevailing artistic construction, with which a poetical and symbolical expression corresponds. The second distinctive feature, as to form, appears in the regular progress from epoch to epoch in such a way that the seer ever makes the new point of departure in his vision, his ideal present. This latter formal distinction points to the first real, or material distinction between the two. Apocalyptic prophecy, more definitely than general prophecy, looks beyond the first restoration of Israel and the first coming of the Messiah, to the final restoration and completion. But with the more developed Christology, is closely connected a clearer and more definite statement of the great Antichristian power, which enters between the first and second coming of Christ.
We regard then the second part of the book of Isaiah (Isaiah 40-66) as the first Old Testament Apocalypse. That peculiar and easily distinguished part of the prophecy of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 45-51) is clearly an apocalypse representing especially the typical Antichristian power. The apocalypse of Ezekiel presents in contrast the deep valley of death (and indeed the valley of death of the people of God still lighted by hope, and that of Gog and Magog into which hope sheds no ray of light) and the high mountain of God with its mystical temple thereon (from Jeremiah 37 to the close of the book). The book of Daniel is one peculiar Apocalypse. Among the minor prophets, Obadiah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, may be viewed as apocalyptic books, which portray in a peculiar style the judgment of God upon Antichrist, as whose type, the first regards the people of Edom, the second Nineveh, the third Babylon, while the last sees the day of wrath breaking out upon the whole Antichristian power of the Old world. Edom is viewed also as the type of Antichrist in Isaiah (Isaiah 63:1–6) and in Jeremiah (Jeremiah 49:7–22). The entirely apocalyptic nature of Gog and Magog in Ezekiel (38, 39) is recognized and fixed in its place in the New Testament Apocalypse (Ezekiel 20:8), as indeed the stream issuing from the temple (Ez. Ezekiel 47) is then again taken up in its New Testament completion. As to the time which Isaiah in the second part of his book views as present, he has the prophecy of the Babylonian, exile (Ezekiel 39) as a presupposition. He takes his departure from this. In a similar way we find the future viewed as present in the Apocalypse of John; indeed, in the form in which he introduces the vision, I saw, the whole eschatological future in ideal progress passes before him. The most serious difficulty which meets us, in the second part of Isaiah, is the prediction of Cyrus by name, unless Cyrus is a symbolical and collective name. As to the differences in style, it would be a matter of some moment if the first part was marked by a soft, flowing expression, while the second was more intense, fiery, violent. But as the reverse is the case, the style of the first part belongs evidently to a young man, that of the second to riper years. Now and then indeed the youthful, ingenious play upon words, which marks the first part, appears in the second. It has been objected, that, upon the supposition of the genuineness of the second part, it is impossible to explain why in the justification of the threatenings of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 26:17-18), the elders did not refer to Isaiah as well as to Micah. But if according to tradition Isaiah suffered martyrdom in his old age under Manasseh, such a reference would have been out of place. That reference to the example of Micah seems to say, pious kings would never allow a bold, true prophet to be executed. The king of Jeremiah still claimed to be a pious king. The example of Manasseh therefore (we speak only of the possibility that the tradition was true) could neither be a proper measure, nor a fitting reference in the case. In favor of its genuineness we present the following argument. Men of the intellectual heroism of the authors of the second part of Isaiah, and the New Testament Apocalypse, cannot attribute their works to a name already renowned, if these works are presented as historical or prophetic testimonies. They must from their greatness stand in their own time as acting persons, who could not conceal themselves if they would, and would not if they could. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. There is the widest difference between the wretched apocryphal works, and such works of the highest grade in their kind. It is entirely another case also, when a poet introduces some historically renowned person as speaking. In his own time he was known generally as an author, and if a later time is not careful to preserve his name, but allows a poetical speaker to take his place, that is a peculiar literary event, from which no general principle can be drawn. As to the case of the poems of Ossian, McPherson owes his best thoughts to the old Celtic popular songs; his mystifying of his contemporaries was connected with peculiarities of character, of which we find no trace in the canonical apocalyptics. For the difference between the Hebrew text of Jeremiah and the text of the Septuagint, compare Bleek, p. 488. Our point of procedure in the decision of this question is the principal difference, viz., that the Septuagint inserts the peculiar Apocalyptic close of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 46-51) after (Jeremiah 25:13). We regard this interpolation as a decided weakening of the peculiar significance and importance of that whole section; and we think that as with this chief point of difference, so all the others must be decided in favor of the Masoretic text.
Since the prophecy of Daniel, as a whole, makes the impression of an apocalyptic work, retaining its unity throughout, this circumstance must not be left out of view in the critical examination of the book. It does not however enable us to decide between the original predictions of the prophet, and the casting of them into their present form. Three cases are possible. First, that a later prophet has attached his visions to the name of the historical Daniel. Against this supposition see the remarks above upon the second part of Isaiah. Secondly, it may be held that some later person has wrought the original prophetic works coming down from Daniel, into a new apocalyptic form. The perfect unity between the contents and form of the book lies against this supposition. Then it remains that the book must be from Daniel himself. The difficulties which oppose this supposition are the following: 1. Why does the book stand among the Kethubbim and not among the prophets? It seems probable, that at the time the collection, the highly apocalyptic nature of the book, which connects it closely with sacred poetry, determined those who formed of the collection to distinguish it from the prophets in a narrower sense, with their less highly colored apocalyptic works. It may be urged in favor of this, that it has been interpolated by portions,[8]—most probably at the time of the Maccabees—which in their style are plainly in contrast with the rest of the book. The entire paragraphs (Daniel 10:1 to Daniel 11:44, and Daniel 12:5-13) are thus interpolated. Grave circumstances of the time have probably occasioned this interpolation, drawn from actual appearances in history, as also an interpolation in the second Epistle of Peter (2 Peter 1:20 to 2 Peter 3:3) from the Epistle of Jude, was occasioned by similar circumstances. It grew out of this interpolation, that the book should have its place among the Kethubbim, if it had not always stood there. 2. Why has Jesus Sirach (ch. 49) not even named the book of Daniel?—This would be decisive certainly, if there were not generally serious deficiencies in this author, and if in making his selection he had not in his eye those men who had gained renown, in respect to the external glory of Israel. In his view Daniel had by far a too free—unrestricted by Jewish notions—universal character and tendency. 3. Why do we not find some trace of the use of Daniel by the later prophets? In this connection it should be observed that the four horns (Zechariah 1:18) and the four opposers of Zion (Zechariah 6:1) appear certainly to presuppose the representation of the four world-monarchies (Dan. ch. 2 and 7). And so also the more definite revelation of the idea of a suffering Messiah in the second part of Zechariah presupposes the previous progress of that idea in prophecy (Isaiah 53; Daniel 9:26), 4. The difficulties which some have raised from the historical particularity of Daniel 10, 11, are met by the supposition above—that these chapters are a part of the interpolation. The intimation of Antiochus Epiphanes, in the little horn (Daniel 8), contains certainly a striking prediction, although not a prediction of Antiochus Epiphanes himself, but of that despotic Antichristian power which should arise out of one of the three world monarchies (not out of the last) which was fulfilled in that Antiochus. But it is certainly incorrect to identify the preliminary Antichrist Antiochus (Daniel 8:8) with the Antichrist imaged in Daniel 7:7. This last springs out of the ten horns of the fourth beast. On the contrary the goat (Daniel 8), i. e., the Macedonian monarchy, has one horn, out of which come the four horns, the monarchies into which the kingdom of Alexander was divided. Since the number four is the number of the world, this can only mean that the one, third-world power should divide itself into its chief component parts. With this goat of four horns, whose form is clearly defined throughout, the fourth animal (Daniel 7), whose form is very indefinite (and in which, in the face of the modern exegesis, we recognize the Roman world power), has no resemblance, but the third animal (Daniel 7), the leopard with his four wings of a bird, and the four heads. The wings of the leopard correspond to the swiftness of the goat, and the number four of his wings and heads with the four horns of the goat; while the fourth animal (Daniel 7) has ten horns. The image of the Antichrist (in Daniel 7) and of his judgment is much more significant than the image of the typical Antichrist (Daniel 8) and his judgment—which forms only an episode.
Since at the time of Antiochus Epiphanes the Maccabeean family of the tribe of Levi gradually attained regal power, and therefore the announcement of the Messiah out of the tribe of Judah must have been thrown into the background (see the timid clause in favor of the future Messiah, 1Ma 14:41), it is very bold in the critics to refer a book so full of the Messiah, and in which all hope in any temporal Jewish dynasty disappears, to this very period of the Maccabees. In regard to the controversy as to the authenticity of the second part of Zechariah (Zechariah 9-14), it deserves to be considered, that the first suspicions against this section arose out of a purely theological misunderstanding. Since the quotation of the prophet Jeremiah by Matthew (Matthew 27:9-10) is not found verbally in Jeremiah, but appears to be taken from Zechariah (Zechariah 11:12-13), Mede conceived that the section (Zechariah 9-11) was written by Jeremiah. But Matthew actually intended to refer to Jeremiah, since for his purpose the chief thing was the purchase of the potter’s field, of which he found a type in the purchase of the field at Anathoth made by Jeremiah (Jeremiah 32). In this citation he now inserted the allusion to the passage in Zechariah which speaks of the thirty pieces of silver, without any express reference to it (see Lange: Leben Jesu, ii. Bd. 3. Thl. p. 1496). Out of this erroneous supposition that Zechariah 9-11 must have been written by Jeremiah, has arisen the prevailing question as to the second part of this prophet. Later, it was not so much the New Testament citation, as a collection of internal marks, which occasioned the doubt of the critics. But the criticism is so unfortunate as to undertake to transfer the second part of Zechariah to a much earlier date, and hence comes into collision with an important principle of biblical hermeneutics. The principle is this: The great biblical idea makes no retrograde movement in the course of its development, i. e., no movement from a more to a less developed, or from a more to a less definite, form. But as it would be retrograde movement of the Messianic idea, if the Servant of the Lord (Isaiah 53) should be taken merely for a collective name for the prophets, while already a definite developed announcement of a personal Messiah existed in the first part of Isaiah, so it would be a much more striking retrograde movement of the Messianic idea, if the second part of Zechariah were to be regarded as an earlier composition than the first. For here, in the second part, we have nearly a continuous biographical portraiture of the personal Messiah in typical images. In Zechariah 9:9, the Messiah comes to his city Jerusalem as an humble king of peace, riding upon a peaceful animal, the foal of an ass; in Zechariah 10:11, he goes before his returning people through the sea of sorrow, beating down the waves of the sea; in Zechariah 11:12 he is as the shepherd of his people valued at thirty pieces of silver, and the silver pieces were left in the potter’s chest (see Lange: Leben Jesu, 2.3, p. 1494); in Zechariah 12:10 is the deed done, because one has pierced him, and they begin to mourn for him as one mourns for his only son; in Zechariah 13:6-7, he complains: lo! I have been wounded in the house of my friends; the sword has awakened against the shepherd of God; the flock is scattered, and now he gathers his little ones; in Zechariah 14 he appears for judgment upon the Mount of Olives; it is light at the evening time; a new holy time begins, in which the bells upon the horses bear the same title as that upon the mitre of the High Priest: “Holiness to the Lord.” The critics propose to transfer this fully developed Christology back to the time of Uzziah, when the doctrine of a personal Messiah began to unfold itself. If some critics remove the section in question to a later date, or divide it into two parts and two periods, they do not change the case at all. They still deny the above—quoted fundamental principle of hermeneutics. If they turn us to the fact that the symbolism, which so clearly marks the first part, is less prominent in the second, we may remark the same receding of the symbolic text in Jeremiah and Hosea. But if Zechariah 10:6-7, speaks of the kingdom of Judah and Israel as still in existence, Zechariah 12:6 of Jerusalem as still standing, it must be observed, that for the symbolical, not for the purely historical, view of the prophet, these forms are permanent in the kingdom of God. We can only refer briefly to the fact, that, with respect to the original mysterious coloring, their obscurity and profoundness of statement, and other similar marks, the first and second parts of Zechariah have the same type and character.
§ 26 CRITICAL AIDS FOR ASCERTAINING AND CONFIRMING THE INTEGRITY OF THE BIBLICAL BOOKS
Here belong the records which form the internal history of the text of the biblical books: the Hebrew text, the Samaritan Pentateuch and the translations, the Chaldee paraphrases, the Greek translations, the Vulgate, the Masoretic text, and the printed text. Compare Bleek: Einleitung, p. 746 ff.
FOURTH CHAPTER
Historical and Critical Exegetics in the narrower sense, or the human side of the Holy Scriptures: the Holy Scripture as Sacred Literature
§ 27 LITERATURE OF THE HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL SCIENCE OF INTRODUCTION
See Bleek:Einleitung in das Alte Testament, p. 5; Keil: Einleitung in das Alte Testament, p. 6; Hagenbach: Encyclopedia, p. 139; Hartwig: Tabellen zur Einleitung in die kanonischen und apokryphischen Bücher des Alten Testaments, Berlin (1856, p. 1); [Havernick: Introduction, of which there is an English translation; Horne: Introduction; the recent edition. An Introduction by Prof. Stowe of Andover.—A. G.]
§ 28 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL SCIENCE OF INTRODUCTION The two essential elements of exegetics, both in reference to the Old Testament and the New, are general Introduction, or the history of the contents of the books in question, of the Old and New Testament Canon, and special Introduction, or the history of particular books. We now inquire in what order these parts should scientifically be placed. De Wette places general Introduction first, and this seems to be systematic. On the other hand it appears more scientific, according to the genesis of the Canon, to treat first of individual books and then of the whole. Hagenbach says the method of Reuss is preferable, but Reuss in his introduction to the New Testament furnishes a general substructure for the literature of individual books. This is undoubtedly the correct method which Bleek and Keil have followed. First we have the fundamental Introduction, which treats of the historical region, origin, character, limits, and means (language and writing) of sacred literature. Upon this, special Introduction proceeds in its work, as it treats of the history of particular books. Finally general Introduction embraces all the results attained, in the history of the formation of the Canon, in the history of the preservation of the Canon, in the history of the text, in the history of the spread of the Canon, of translations, in the history of the explanation of the Canon, or of the exposition or interpretation of the scriptures, and in the history of the energy and results of the Canon, for which still the greater part remains to be done. In regard to these different elements we must here limit ourselves to a few suggestions. As to the introduction which is fundamental, in that it underlies both special and general, the first question is as to the sphere of revelation, as to the ground and limits within which the sacred literature has grown up; then as to the homogeneous relation of the sacred word, as the word of the Spirit, to the scripture, as the language of the Spirit; then as to the specific character of the sacred writings as such, of their limitations, or of their opposition to apocryphal writings; and then finally of the means used in its formation, of the language itself, and of the art of writing, in their reciprocal influence and development. The history of the individual book must be introduced by a definition and distinction of the different modes of statement, the historical, poetic, didactic, and prophetic. For the critical part of this history, compare the paragraphs upon criticism above. For the organic part, see the following paragraphs. For the history of the Old Testament Canon, compare Bleek: Einleitung, p. 662. A. Dillmann: Ueber die Bildung der Sammlung heiliger Schriften Alten Testaments in den Jahrbüchern für Deutsche Theologie, 1858 (iii. Heft, p. 419) ff.; Keil, p. 538 ff.; Bunsen, p. 51. [Lardner’s Credibility, Jones, Wordsworth, Alexander, Gaussen, McClelland, on the Canon.—A. G.] On the history of the text, see Bleek, p. 717; Keil, p. 567. This history for a long time runs parallel with the periods of Hebrew literature. We may distinguish a Jewish period of the history of the text, in the behalf of Christians, and a Christian period, in behalf of the Jews. The first period may be divided again into the period in which the canonical text assumed its present form, the period of the formation of the Synagogue manuscripts (Babylonian writings), of the Targums, of the Talmud (division into Parasha and Haphtora), of the Masora (punctuation), of the Hebrew grammarians, and of the transition in the study of the Hebrew text to the Christians (division into chapters). The latter period falls into the history of the transmission of the manuscripts and of the printed editions. For the history of the translations, see Bleek, p. 750; Keil, p. 594; Bunsen, p. 72. For the history of the interpretation of the scripture, see paragraph hermeneutics; Keil, p. 710; Bunsen, p. 94; the full list Lange’s Matthew, Am. ed. p. 18. For the history of the results of the Old Testament or of the Bible in an ecclesiastical and practical point of view, see the references under § 1, and also the paragraphs on the theological and homiletical literature to the Old Testament. The articles Bible and Bible text in Herzog: Realencyklopàdie, by Danz and Winer—[which is in course of translation—A. G.].
§ 29 THE DATES OF THE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLICAL BOOKS
We must defer the discussion of these dates, to the works upon the particular books, but give here a table of the different dates accepted by De Wette, Keil, Bleek, and add a closing remark.
De Wette | Keil | Bleek |
The Elohistic writing lying at the foundation of the Pentateuch dates after the death of Joshua and the expulsion of the Canaanites. The Jehovistic portions originate during the kings, down to Joram, but not to Hezekiah. Deuteronomy dates after the exile of the two tribes. | Mosaic composition. | Genesis. The Elohistic original writings, which reach down to the possession of Canaan. Revised with Jehovistic interpolations. The first originated probably in the time of Saul. The revision and enlargement before the division of the kingdom. The following books were a continuation of the original Elohistic writings. Their revision probably by the same writer who made the revision of Genesis. Leviticus as indeed Exodus (so far as the giving of the law is concerned) contains much that is originally Mosaic. Deuteronomy belongs to the Jehovistic revision: Distinction between Deuteronomy and the earlier books. The rearrangement belongs to a later time, but took place before the Babylonian exile. |
The book of Joshua also comes down from the time of Ahab to the time of the origin of Deuteronomy. | Not later than the beginning of the reign of Saul. Probably earlier. | The work of the Elohistic author. Revision in the time of David. Re-edition by the author of Deuteronomy. Separated from the Pentateuch at a later period. Last redaction. |
The book of Judges doubtful. The original essential portions before Deuteronomy. | At the latest at the beginning of the reign of David. | |
The books of Samuel later than Judges. The last form after the composition of Deuteronomy. | Not before the time of Rehoboam or Abijam. | After the division of the two kingdoms, but not long after. |
The books of Kings during the Babylonian exile. | In the last half of the Babylonian captivity. | In the last half of the exile. Perhaps by Baruch. |
The books of Chronicles low down in the Persian period. | In Ezra’s time. | Probably the same author, who made the latest revision of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. |
Book of Ruth a long time after David. | Not before the last years of David’s reign. | Centuries after the period of the Judges. |
Ezra and Nehemiah the work of a late collector. | Ezra, Nehemiah. | The last revision quite late. |
Esther. Very late date. Probably the times of the Ptolemys and Seleucidae. | Not immediately after the subjection of the Persian kingdom. | Esther. Probably immediately after the Persian period. Perhaps much later. |
Isaiah from 759–710, B. C. The second part of Isaiah during the early times of Cyrus. | From the year of Uzziah’s death down to the 15th year of Hezekiah (758). | The second part during the Babylonian exile. |
Jeremiah from the 13th year of Josiah to the subjection of the kingdom (588). | The same. | The Alexandrian recension preferable to the Masoretic text. |
Ezekiel. From five years before the destruction of Jerusalem until 16 years after. | The same. | After the taking of Jerusalem. |
Hosea presupposes the state of things under Jeroboam II. | 790–725. | Probably in the last time of Jeroboam II. |
Joel. Under Uzziah about the year 800. | 867–838. | During the reign of Uzziah. About 800 B. C. |
Amos. About 790. A few years after Joel. | 810–783. | Nearly contemporary with Joel. |
Obadiah. After the captivity of the Jews. After 588. | 889–884. | Immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem. |
Jonah. One of the later books. Uncertain whether before or after the exile. | 824–783. | Commonly referred to the time of Jeroboam II. The origin of the book falls at least in the Chaldaic period; perhaps in the beginning of the Persian. |
Micah. The first years of Hezekiah (758). | 758–700. | In the reign of Hezekiah. The declarations in the title not reliable. |
Nahum. After the 14th year of Hezekiah. | 710–699. | Before the year 600, or before the conquest of Nineveh. |
Habakkuk. A younger contemporary of Jeremiah. | 650–627. | Probably during the reign of Jehoiakim. |
Zephaniah. In the first years of Josiah (639). | 640–625. | The time of Josiah, 642–611. |
Haggai. At the time of Zerubbabel and Joshua (536). | 519. | The second year of Darius Hystaspes. |
Zechariah. Some months later than Haggai. The second half of Zechariah probably belongs to the time after the exile. | From 519 on. | The second half (Zechariah 9) probably earlier than Joel. The oldest part of written prophecy? Time of the king Uzziah!! Zechariah 10. Time of Ahaz. Zechariah 11:1-2, later than the foregoing and following. Zechariah 11:4; Zechariah 11:17, same as Zechariah 9, 10. With a full misconception of symbolical representations. |
Malachi. Probably in the time of Nehemiah (444). | 433–424. | The collection at the time of Nehemiah. A somewhat earlier origin. |
Daniel. At the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. | At the time of the exile. | Probably not long after the erection of the altar of burnt offering in the temple of Jerusalem for the worship of Jupiter. The Maccabeean age. |
The Psalms. Down to the exile and probably after. Not to the Maccabeean period. | From David to the time after the exile, but not after Nehemiah. | Against the reception of Maccabeean Psalms. |
Lamentations by Jeremiah (588). | The same. | The same. |
The Song. The time of Solomon. | Solomon. | The time of Solomon. Not by Solomon. |
Proverbs of Solomon. The time of Solomon. Time of Hezekiah. Last chapter probably three years later. | From the time of Solomon to Hezekiah. | The oldest collection. Many genuine proverbs of Solomon. Still the collection not by Solomon. Collection at the time of Hezekiah. The rest probably later. |
Ecclesiastes. Belongs to a late, unhappy, but in religious and literary culture, advanced, age. | The times of Ezra and Nehemiah. | It falls perhaps in the last time of the Persian dominion; but perhaps still later in the time of the Syrian dominion. |
The book of Job. The time of the decline of the kingdom of Judah, near to the Chaldaic period. | The time of Solomon. | Probably between the Assyrian and Babylonian captivity. The speech of Elihu a later interpolation. |
Concluding Remarks.—In the investigation of the dates of the biblical books, the history of the development of the biblical ideas has not been allowed sufficient weight. This is true emphatically of the idea of a personal Messiah. In its more definite form it enters with the prophets Isaiah and Micah, i. e., about the middle of the eighth century, B. C. It is perhaps credible that the idea of the Messiah should not appear in a later historical book. But it is incredible that the Messianic idea in a later book should recede again to the idea of a typical Messiah, which meets us in 2 Samuel 7. Indeed, since the idea of the typical Messiah first appears here, and a whole period lies between the appearance of the typical Messianic image, and the ideal Messianic image, the origin of the 2d book of Samuel must be this whole period earlier than that of Isaiah and Micah. Generally the prophets form the strongest bulwarks against the excesses of the critics. Hengstenberg, Delitzch, and others, show how frequently they use the historical books, especially the Pentateuch, including Deuteronomy, and how therefore they presuppose the existence of these books. But what long periods must have elapsed between the founding of the legal theocracy, between its culmination point under David and Solomon; and the prophetic doubts and despondency as to its eternal and legal appearance!—Let us take the idea of personal repentance as the measure. If, on good grounds, we view the 51st Psalm as the penitential Psalm of David, is there any similar development of the idea of personal repentance in Deuteronomy? So likewise there is no similar statement of a personal experience of grace. Criticism rightly uses the citations of the prophets, but it should use also with greater care the history of religious ideas.
§ 30 THE PERIODS WHICH THE OLD TESTAMENT BOOKS EMBRACE 1. Genesis. The time of primary history from the beginning of the human race, to the death of Jacob.
2. Exodus to Deuteronomy. The interval between Jacob and Moses. (See above, § 6, Chronology.) Then 40 years. (Numbers with a space of 37 years.) 3. Joshua. A period of about 17 years.
4. The books of Judges and Ruth. Various estimations. See the § 6. Chronology. Das Calwer Handbuch, 320 years.
5. The two books of Samuel. About 100 years.
6. The two books of Kings. About 380 years.
7. The two books of Chronicles. From the beginning of the world to the end of the Babylonian exile.
8. Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther. Omitting the period of the Babylonian captivity (70 years, or deducting the 14 years of the removal before the destruction of Jerusalem, 56 years), a period of about 130 years.
§ 31 THE ORGANIC STRUCTURE OF THE BIBLICAL BOOKS See the IV. Division.
——————
THIRD SECTION THE THEANTHROPIC CHARACTER OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURE AS TO ITS FORM AND CONTENTS, OR THE BIBLICAL CHRISTOLOGICAL THEOLOGY, ESPECIALLY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT General Biblical Theology of the Old Testament
§ 32
CONTENTS
It treats: 1. Of the nature of the revealed salvation, its fundamental forms, and its foundation; 2. Its development, and the steps in that development; 3. Of its aim and tendency.
A. The revealed Salvation, its fundamental forms and its foundation
§ 33 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN THE WIDEST SENSE The revelation of God is both objective and subjective, i. e., the God of revelation, in revealing the knowledge of himself, stands over against the minds fitted to receive the revelation. God cannot reveal himself, without placing over against himself the glass upon which the rays of light fall, viz., angels and men. No created mind can know God, unless he reveal himself to him. But in the mutual action and influence between the spiritual and human world, the revelation of God progresses through different stadia.
1. The most general revelation of God; objective: The creation. Romans 1. | 1. The most general revelation of God; subjective: The mind and conscience. Romans 2. |
2. General revelation of God; objective: The history of the world. Romans 9-11. | 2. General revelation of God; subjective: Lives of individuals. |
3. Special revelation of God, or the revelation of salvation in its progress; objective: The old covenant. | 3. Special revelation of God, or the revelation of salvation in its progress; subjective: The faith in the promise. |
4. The most special revelation of God, or the revelation of salvation, in its introductory perfection: God in Christ reconciling the world. | 4. The most special revelation of God in its introductory or first consummation; subjective: Justifying and saving faith. |
5. The final, complete, introductory perfection of the revelation of God in Christ; objective: The great epiphany. God all in all. The consummation and transfiguration of the general revelation through the special. | 5. The final, complete consummation of the subjective revelation of God in Christ. The intuition of God in Christ, and in the whole city of God. |
Through the sin of man the most general revelation of God is veiled and hidden (Isaiah 25:7). Even the more definite, moral revelation of God in history, and his own destiny, becomes to man a further obscuration of the Deity (Psalms 18:26). This blindness or darkness appears in the views of man concerning the enigma in history, and in man’s evil destiny.
Through the objective side of the special revelation this darkening of the minds through unbelief often completes itself in hardness. The world is hell, viewed from the stand-point of hellish spirits. On the contrary, all the subjective and objective circles of revelation meet in ever increasing splendor, in the special sphere of revelation, in faith. But the special revelation, in its objective and subjective aspects, not only facilitates the knowledge of the general revelation, but carries on the general revelation to its consummation and glory.
§ 34 OPPOSITION AND DISTINCTION BETWEEN GENERAL AND SPECIAL REVELATION
General revelation is the foundation on which the special rests; the special is the reproduction and realization of the general.
Within the historical circle of the general revelation there arises, in consequence of the fall, the obscuration of the revelation of God, through nature and conscience, since the primeval religion of man was thus changed into a mere capacity for religion. But within the same circle are formed the sources of special revelation, since the primeval religion of the chosen becomes an active, practical exercise of their religious nature.
General revelation as a natural revelation, looking to the past, is an unveiling of the foundations of the world and life; of the original divine institutions. Special revelation, looking to the future, is a revelation of salvation, and therefore always both an ideal revelation and an actual redemption.
General revelation uses as its instruments symbolical signs and events, whose bloom and flower in the life of the spirit is the divine word. Special revelation makes use of the divine word, whose bloom and seal is the sacramental symbol and acts. There the symbol is prominent, here the word.
§ 35 THE SUBJECT OF REVELATION In the most general sense, the subject of revelation is the relation of God to man, as a foundation for religion, which is the relation of man to God. God reveals himself to man according to his living relations to him, according to his will in reference to him, hence in his purpose of salvation, the actual salvation, the promise of salvation; but also according to his claims upon man, in his law and in his judgment. He makes plain to man his peculiar destiny, his sinful nature, his guilt, since he plainly reveals his own will to man in order to prepare him to receive his salvation. This salvation is thus the central theme of revelation, and indeed as a fact, as a personal life, as an eternal inheritance, is destined to extent from the chosen until it becomes the common good of humanity. The subject of revelation is, therefore, redemption.
§ 36 THE INTERCHANGE BETWEEN REVELATION AND REDEMPTION As the eternal living spirit, God communicates himself, his life, when he communicates the living knowledge of himself. Man, as a spiritual being allied to God, cannot rightly know God without receiving into himself the divine life. But as man is sinful, he is blinded as to his intelligence, to the same extent that he is perverted and enslaved in his will. Hence there cannot be a revelation of salvation to him without redemption, nor redemption without revelation. It follows also that the introduction of this revelation must be very gradual. With the spiritual eye the heart must be purified, with the heart, the eye. Revelation is the ideal redemption, redemption the actual revelation. In this interchange between revelation and redemption, in general, revelation precedes redemption, but at the same time it must, through its preliminary redemption, prepare the way for every new stage in its development. And just as in the chosen spirits, the channels of the revelation of saving truth, revelation precedes redemption, so with the great mass of those who are the subjects of redemption, the redemption precedes, as a preparatory discipline, the illumination through revelation.
§ 37 THE OBJECTIVE FORM OF THE REVELATION OF SALVATION The objective form of this revelation is throughout the Theophany, as it rises form the form of the ideal, dynamic theophanies, to the grand real Theophany of God in Christ. It manifests itself in the elements of human faith, strengthened to open vision or sight. Its first form is the miraculous report, the divine voice, the word, whose dull echo—the Bath Kol—meets us only in the region of the Apocrypha. Its second more developed form is in the miraculous vision, in a narrower sense, angelic appearances, as an ideal dynamic Christophany, surrounded and even represented by wider encircling angelophanies and symbolical signs. Its third and perfect form is the incarnation of God in Christ. Its effect throughout is prophecy; the miracle of prophecy. But the Urim and Thummim is the theocratic, legal enlargement of prophecy; in which it was made permanent, and accessible to the people whenever it might be needed.
§ 38 THE SUBJECTIVE FORM OF REVELATION This is throughout the vision, whose basis or real aspect is ecstasy, the sudden transposition of the mind from the stand-point of faith to that of sight. The vision generally appears as a day-vision, during which the usual consciousness of sense is shadowed or suspended as in the night. But it appears in children, in common laborers, or men sunken in fatigue, as a dream of the night, in whom, however, the moral consciousness shines as clear as in the day. Its pre-condition is the higher intuition possessed by chosen religious minds, by the spirit of God made fruitful in some great historical moment, which indeed contains the seeds of the future, which the seer filled by the Theophany prophetically explains.
There is no conceivable theophany without a corresponding disposition for the reception of visions; no vision without the energy and effect of a theophany. But the one form may prevail at one time, the other at another. In general, revelation advances from the Old to the New Testament, from the prevailing objective form, or theophany, to the prevailing subjective form, or the vision. Hence the succession in the names of the prophets: Roeh, Nabi, Chozeh.
§ 39 THE OBJECTIVE FORM OF REDEMPTION The objective form of redemption appears in a series of saving judgments, introduced through revelation by means of theophanies. Its fundamental form is the miracle.
§ 40 THE SUBJECTIVE FORM OF REDEMPTION It manifests itself in a heroic, divine act of faith, whose symbol is the sacrifice, whose result is conversion.
§ 41 THE HISTORICAL GRADUAL PROGRESS AND FORM OF REVELATION The realization in history of the revelation of salvation is gradual, fundamentally the same with the gradual growth of history itself. This gradual progress is conditioned: 1. Through the fundamental law of all human growth, into which the divine revelation as a revelation of salvation necessarily enters. In this point of view revelation is the grandest nature, the crown and glory of nature; for the regular unfolding of the Old Testament advent of Christ, of the personal life of Christ, and of that kingdom of heaven founded by him, reaches from the beginning to the end of the world, and transcends all the limits of the events of natural history. 2. This gradual growth is conditioned through the necessary interchange between a holy God and unholy men, in whom the grace of God first gradually forms according to the law of freedom for itself a point of union and a point of departure for its wider progress, i. e., it is conditioned through the constant interchange between revelation in a narrower sense and redemption, we may say even between prophecy and miracle, between the vision and the sacrifice. 3. Then it is conditioned through the slow process of the interchange between the chosen as the starting-point of revelation, and the popular life, or the interchange between the apocalypse and the manifestation (phanerosis). Generally, however, its history is embraced in two periods. 1. From the beginning of the introductory revelation to its completion, i. e., to the completion of the personal life of Christ, i. e., to the introductory or first end of the world. This is the special history of revelation in the narrower sense. 2. From the beginning of the final complete revelation, or the historically introduced revelation, i. e., from the beginning of the church to its completion, the second advent of Christ, i. e., the final end of the world.
We now speak only of the periods of revelation in the narrower sense.
1. The period of that in one aspect symbolical, in the other mythical, primary religion: from Adam to Abraham, 2000 years B. C. The lighter aspect of this period is the symbolical religion, the knowledge of God in the light of nature and history, with sporadic lights of revelation through the word.
2. The period of the patriarchal religion of promise in its genealogical descent, introduced and established through the word of God and human faith: from Abraham to Moses, 1500 B. C. In the first period the symbol is prominent, the word subordinate; in this the word holds the first place, the symbol the second. In the first period faith was sporadic; in Abraham and his seed it becomes genealogical.
3. The period of the Mosaic legal religion: from Moses to Elijah, or to the decline of the glory of the Israelitish kingdom. The symbol preponderates above the word. The internal character of the religion of promise at the beginning, is now surrounded by the external forms of the law, for the purpose of bringing a whole people to share in the Abrahamic faith, and at the same time secure its wider development. Elijah turns himself to the past, as the last restorer of the law through the miraculous judgment by fire.
4. The period of prophecy, or in which the law began to be viewed in its internal character, in which the word preponderates, not the symbol: from the miracles of Elisha, marked by their design to save, pointing to the future, and from the Messianic prophecies of Isaiah (Hosea, Joel, Amos) to Malachi.
5. The period of national piety, or of the national realization of the prophetic faith, introduced in a historical manner, under the disappearance of canonical inspiration, but also under the appearance of the idea of martyrdom: from Malachi to the time of Christ.
6. The period of the concentration of the Messianic longing of Israel, or the seed-like formation of that state of mind which was fitted to receive the Messiah, whose very heart or central point is the Virgin, and around her the truly pious, especially the Baptist, enveloped, as in a shell, by Pharisaism, Sadduceeism, Essenism, Samaritanism, Alexandrianism, and Hellenism, which in a general sense may be viewed as springing from one another. The history previous to the New Testament.
7. The period of the life of Christ to its completion in his ascension, and to the great seal of its completion in the founding of the Christian church, through the out-pouring of the Holy Spirit.
§ 42 THE CONTRASTS BETWEEN THE ANNOUNCEMENT AND THE FULFILMENT OF SALVATION As nature found its goal in the first man, and the primeval time in Abraham and the Old Covenant, so the Old Covenant itself, as the preannouncement of the salvation in Christ, has found its goal in Christ. Christ is the end of the law, the preliminary goal or end of all things. But the introductory revelation of Christ in the time of the New Testament, must reach again its comprehensive final goal in the eternity of the New Testament, the eternal gospel, the second coming and epiphany of Christ with its eternal results. The Old Testament is the religion of the future. As to the word of promise, it finds its fulfillment in the word of the New Testament; as to its types, the shadowy images of good things to come, in the facts of the New Testament salvation.
Hence it follows that the Old Covenant, as to its national, legal, external value, is abrogated through the New Covenant, but that the Old Testament, as the word of God, is exalted through the New Testament, to be a constituent part of the eternal revelation, as it furnishes the foundation, introduction, and illustration of the New Testament. As the gospel itself is a provisional law for the unbeliever, so the Old Testament law was a provisional gospel for the believer.
§ 43 THE FUNDAMENTAL FORMS OF THE PREFIGURATION OF SALVAITON These forms, in words, are the original traditions, the promise, the law, prophecy, the testimony of martyrs.
These forms, in facts, are the allegories, symbols, types, i. e., the dawn, the representations, and the germ-like preparations for the New Covenant.
Typology commences with the personal types (Adam, Melchizedec, Abraham, &c.), passes on to the historical types (the sacrifice of Isaac, the exodus from Egypt), finds its central point in the types of the law (the Mosaic cultus), and completes itself in the mental type, and types in disposition, the preannouncements in the inward state and feeling, of New Testament states (Psalms 22; Isaiah 7, &c.). The types and the word stand in relations to each other, similar to those between redemption and revelation.
§ 44 THE FULFILLING OF SALVATION The fulfilling of salvation is the completion of the theanthropic life of Christ, in its world-atoning, world-redeeming, and world-glorifying power and result. It may be divided into the introductory fulfilling and the final completion, i. e., into the time of the first and of the second advent of Christ. The first period embraces the history of the one peculiar completion of the life of Jesus, and its development in the four fundamental forms of the four gospels, and the varied doctrinal fundamental forms in the different apostolical types of doctrine, especially of James, Peter, Paul, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews and of John, to which, however, we must add, in their historical significance, the doctrinal types of the other apostles. The wider and final completion of the life of Christ extends through the different periods of the New Testament kingdom of heaven. (See Lange: Matthew, Am. ed., pages 3, 4, 5.
B. Revelation of Salvation; its Development and its Goal
§ 45 THE DEVELOPMENT OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY
Biblical theology develops itself in essentially the same way with biblical religion. But it develops itself according to its nature after the following fundamental principles:
1. Biblical doctrine proceeds in its essential development, as in its chronological divisions, from a fundamental Christological principle: Man destined to the image of God, or to the perfection of his life in the revelation of the God-man.
2. The essential development of biblical doctrines, e. g., the doctrines of the name of God, of his attributes, of man, of sin, &c., advances in the same measure with the chronological development of biblical doctrine in different periods of time.
3. Every biblical doctrine in its germ-form existed already in the earliest period of revelation, e. g., the doctrine of immortality.
4. No biblical doctrine reaches its perfect form until the latest period of revelation, i. e., the New Testament fulfilment; and this fully developed form is reached in the apostolical period, e. g., the doctrine of the Trinity.
5. Every biblical doctrine in its course of development presents a marked, distinct continuity; although one doctrine may now rise into prominence, and then another. Hence a break and opposition between the Old and New Testament would be a monstrous supposition, if, e. g., the central part of the revelation of God in the Old Testament (the angel of the Lord), should be regarded as a created angel, and not as Christ himself in the preparatory stages of his incarnation, while the central figure in the New Testament revelation is the God-man.
6. Heterogeneous, not, strictly speaking, theocratic doctrines, may prepare the way for the development of revelation, and promote its progress. They have served this purpose from the beginning onwards (Chaldean, Syrian, Palestinian, Egyptian, Persian), but the grand forming principle of revelation would never allow any intrusion of foreign elements. It is only in the apocrypha that we find any traces of such an intrusion.
7. The development of biblical doctrine is ever in the direction of an onward progress, an unfolding, from the germ, of a growing spirituality, of a rejection of temporary forms, but never the form of a progress and growth through opposition. All the antitheses of sacred scripture, even that between the Old and New Testaments, are harmonious, not antagonistic or contradictory oppositions.
8. Within the period of any individual biblical doctrine, there is an opposition and a progressive movement, and between the most diverse periods there exists every-where the unity of the spirit, and hence an indissoluble connection.
9. The word of God, or the principle of revelation, rules and shapes the books of scripture, as a strong, active, moulding principle. But in the relations of that word to humanity, it is ever in its unfolding, breaking through the bonds of human error, and in its spirituality proceeds from one stage of revelation to another, to realize its divine fullness, in a more complete, transparent human perfection.
10. The word of God in its development never destroys human nature, while it dissolves the shadows within which it lies. It rather sets free, in the measure of its development, the original powers of the human nature. Hence these marks of originality, as they were already evident in the characters of the patriarchs, appear in their most striking forms in the lives of the prophets. It is an absurd and monstrous supposition, therefore, of which they are guilty who, denying the perfect originality of the four gospels, view the gospels of Matthew and Luke as copies from the original of Mark.
11. The doctrine of Jesus passes through well-defined periods of development. We can distinguish: 1. The explanation of the law in its inward all-prevailing significance. 2. The explanation of the Old Testament idea of the kingdom of heaven. 3. The explanation of the Old Testament types of circumcision, and the Passover. 4. The explanation of the Old Testament cultus. 5. The explanation of the entire Old Testament symbolism, and of the whole symbolism of creation. These chronological stages of the development of the doctrine of Christ are made the essential fundamental forms of the doctrine of Christ, in the doctrinal types of the apostles, James, Peter, Paul, the Epistle to the Hebrews, John. These types of doctrine supplement and complete each other, but they are as far removed as possible, in their harmonious agreement, from correcting each other.
12. In the book of Genesis biblical doctrine is a union of the word of God with the purest expression of human artlessness; in the Apocalypse, it is the union of the same word with a conscious, and, as to the Hebrew form, perfected, sacred art.
Remark.—The fundamental laws of the development of the introductory revelation in the sacred scriptures, are also the fundamental laws controlling the introduction of this revelation into humanity, in the course of the development of the Christian Church.
SPECIAL BIBLICAL THEOLOGY IN OUTLINE
§ 46 BIBLICAL DOCTRINE OF GOD, OR THEOLOGY IN THE NARROWER SENSE
Biblical theology in the narrower sense, or the doctrine of God, may be divided into the doctrine of the knowledge of God founded upon his revelation of himself; of the name of God, which has its ground and reasons in his nature; of the demonstration of the being of God, resting upon the evidence of his universal existence, perfection, and power;[9] of the method of his providence, and of the attributes of God, or the fundamental form of his vital relations to the world and man, grounded ultimately in his peculiar personality, or the threefold personal distinction in his essence.
Remarks.—1. The revelation of God is the ground upon which all our knowledge of God rests. 2. The name of God is not the nature of God, but designates objectively the entire revelation, and subjectively the whole of religion. 3. The nature of God is designated by the fundamental distinctions: The Lord, Love, Spirit. 4. The name of God, proceeding from the universal to the particular, passes through the names Elohim, Eloha, El Eljon, El Schadai, Elohim Zebaoth, to the name Father in heaven; and proceeding from the theocratic to the universal, it passes from the names Jehovah, Adonai, Jehovah Zebaoth, to the name God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 5. The Holy Scriptures recognize and distinguish definite Providence, which lay the foundation for the proofs of the divine existence. The general relation of God to the world may be divided into creation and providence. The creation may be viewed as the original creation and as the new formation of that which was originally created. Providence may be regarded as the supporting, ruling, co-working; and the co-working as judgment, redemption, and glorification. 6. With the unfolding of providence, the definition of the divine being according to his attributes comes clearly into view, in which, however, we must carefully distinguish between the essential and merely nominal marks or designations. In every period there prevails a peculiar definition, determined according to the divine attributes. In the primitive period God is designated as the exalted on (El Eljon). In the period of the promise as the Almighty (El Schadai). In that of the law as the Holy one. In the transition to the prophetic as the righteous, wise, good. In the period of the prophets as the most glorious, the Majesty. In the national period as the condescending; and in the New Testament as the gracious and merciful. 7. The distinctions in the divine nature or essence pass through different stages: God and his Angel; the Angel of the Lord (Genesis 16:7 ff.); of his countenance (Exodus 33:14 ff.); of the covenant (Malachi); God and his own Son; God and his threefold name.
§ 47 BIBLICAL DOCTRINE OF MAN, OR ANTHROPOLOGY The world as the basis and birthplace of man comes first into view here, and the world as Creation, as Nature, as the Cosmos, as the Aeon, or as the natural world defined through the spiritual. Then man in his normal state, in his nature (Biblical Anthropology and Psychology), in his destination, his paradisaic origin and condition, and his fitness for trial. Then further, man in his sin, his fall, his sinfulness, and his original sin; and corresponding to this, on the one hand, the guilt, judgment, death, condemnability, and on the other his inward discord and strife, his fitness as a subject of redemption, his outlook into the spiritual world, both as one of wretchedness and bliss, his coöperation with divine grace, or his preparation for the Advent of Christ.
Remarks.—1. The creation is a. a single act, b. acts, works, c. a continuous energy or work, d. it marks the world as conditioned in the highest sense. 2. Nature is the relative independence of the world. Its first feature calling for notice is the principle of nature. Its second, the law of nature. Its third, the stages in the development of nature. Its fourth, the goal of nature: the sphere of freedom in which the grand nature of the kingdom of God is developed. 3. The Cosmos is the beautiful harmony of the world. It holds its celebration in its ideal perfection. The sacred reflection of the Cosmos is the Sabbath—the sacred human festivals. 4. In the Aeon the living spiritual principles of the world are represented. We must distinguish first the spiritual and human world, and then further the Ontology of the spiritual world from the experience of man in regard to it, as it first enters with the fall. 5. Biblical Anthropology is both dualistic and a system of trichotomy. As to its dualism man belongs in one aspect to the material, in the other to the spiritual world. According to the trichotomy man is, as to his divine quality or nature, spirit, as to his heavenly or superearthly form, soul, and as to his earthly organism, body. 6. In the destination of man to the image and likeness of God, we must maintain, that man, as the image of God, is destined to his self-realization in communion with God; and that particularly, as to his bodily nature, he is destined to a generic self-realization in the spread of humanity from one pair, and as to his spirituality, to his ideal self-realization in the Godman, and as to his soul, to his social self-realization in the kingdom of God. 7. With the paradisaic state of man comes into consideration the pure beginning of his life, which is both potential and actual, i. e., in one aspect innocence, in another righteousness; then his need of being tested, and finally his fitness for the test. 8. In the doctrine of sin we must distinguish the ideas of sin, of evil in the wide sense, and strict moral evil. Then the nature of sin, its genesis, and its development. 9. The consequences of sin may be viewed as natural and positive, or as death and as judgment in the following stages:
Guilt and its imputation. This again branches itself a. into the continuation of sin:
1. Sinfulness, or the status corruptionis, and punishment;
2. original sin, and the curse of sin;
3. the hardening (stage of unbelief) and the rejection, fitness for condemnation;
4. The second death or condemnation. b. into the reaction against sin; the natural reaction, or the consciousness of guilt on the part of man, the positive reaction, or the preparative grace of God:
1. the desire after the lost Paradise and the Cherubim;
2. the desire after a new and higher salvation and the Protevangelium;
3. faith and the promise;
4. the stages of faith and the stages of the advent of Christ.
§ 48 BIBLICAL CHRISTOLOGY, AND SOTERIOLOGY
Christology may naturally be divided into the typical and prophetic Old Testament messianic Christology, the evangelical Christology, or the history of the conscious being and revelation of Christ in his life, and the apostolic Christology, or the biblically completed doctrine of his person.
Soteriology embraces the doctrine of the three Messianic offices of Christ, of the historical unity of the work of Christ, and of his eternal theanthropic work, in which he descends into the abyss of human judgments through his compassion, and raises believing humanity to the inheritance of his Sonship and blessedness.
Remarks.—1. The Old Testament Christology flows from the fact, that from every judgment of God there springs a divine promise, and that thus the religion of the past is transformed into a religion of the future. This religion of the future, under the providence of God, ever moves onward to the future in acts and in consciousness: in the one through the miracles, or in the allegorical, symbolic, and typical history of salvation; in the other through prophecy in its different stages. As to the allegory, the forms of the higher nature are in opposition to the forms of the lower nature, and thus represent the opposition of the kingdom of God to the kingdom of darkness. In the symbolical acts and works, the human civilization becomes the image of the divine cultus. In the region of the types, i. e., of the germlike prefiguration of that which is to be completed in the future, we must distinguish the typology of the Covenant (Covenant or Testament), the typology of the kingdom, and the typology of the Messiah. Messianic prophecy proceeds from the prophecy of the human conflict, the semitic reverence for God, the blessing upon Abraham, the warlike and peaceful sceptre of Judah, the typical Messiah in the genealogy of David, to the prophecy of the ideal personal Messiah; and again from the one prevailing form of the Messiah, it advances to the distinction of the lowly and suffering, and the exalted glorious Messiah. But with the idea of a suffering Christ there appears the idea of Antichrist and his typical signs or marks. With the prophecy of the Messiah there is unfolded also a prophecy of the redemption and transfiguration of the world through a series of saving judgments proceeding from those which are introductory, to those which are universal and complete. 2. In the Evangelical Christology, or the Christology of the life of Christ, we may view the Christology of the stages of his personal life (his miraculous birth, baptism, transfiguration, resurrection, ascension), and of his self-consciousness in his teachings, of his Christological acts, his miracles, and his redeeming work. 3. In the biblical Soteriology we must distinguish the unity of the work of Christ, from its division into his three offices. The one entire work of Christ has been profoundly described by Luther and others as an exchange of relations. Christ has taken our sin, i. e., the consciousness of condemnation, upon himself, in order that he might make us sharers in his righteousness; i. e., in his great compassion he has entered into our consciousness of guilt, as a consciousness of judgment, that he might take us into the consciousness of his righteousness. As to the offices, we must distinguish his prophetic redemption or world-atonement, his priestly expiation, and his kingly redemption in a narrower sense. (See Lange: Positiv Dogmatik, p. 793 ff.)
§ 49 BIBLICAL PNEUMATOLOGY AND THEOCRATOLOGY, OR THE DOCTRINE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD The doctrine of the Spirit of God, and his operations, treats of the Old Testament typical kingdom of God, based upon his universal and absolute kingdom over the world, in its friendly and hostile relations to the kingdoms of the world (Daniel 2; Daniel 7); of the New Testament kingdom of heaven established by Christ, in its opposition to the kingdom of Satan, and of the final appearance of the perfected kingdom of God, in the glorified world, and in its complete triumph over the kingdom of darkness. The doctrine of the Old Testament kingdom of God treats of the historical significance and importance of the opposition between Judaism and Heathenism. The doctrine of the New Testament kingdom of God branches into the doctrine of the particular definite method of salvation, the definite founding and saving institutions of the Church, and of the application and spread of this completed salvation to the utmost boundaries of the world. Its stages are the following:
1. a. individual death; | b. intermediate state; | c. the individual progressive resurrection; |
2. a. social death, or the fall of Babel; | b. Anti-Christendom; | c. the appearance of Christ and the millennial kingdom; |
3. a. death of the old world. End of the world; | b. the final completed resurrection, and the separation in the judgment; | c. the eternal energy and result of the city of God, and its glory to the honor of God. (Revelation 22.) |
The doctrine of the completed kingdom of God rests upon the biblical disclosure of the Aeon of the blessed, and the Aeon of the condemned, over which rules, imparting to them unity, the absolute fulfilment of the divine purposes, of the end of the world, and the glory of God.
Remarks.—1. Pneumatology is more widely developed through the doctrine of the Spirit, for which theology has as yet done comparatively little (see Lange: Theol. Dogmatik, p. 926), [see also Owen: Work on the Spirit.—A. G.]. 2. The doctrines of the absolute dominion of God, of the kingdom of the grace of God, and the kingdom of glory, must be more accurately distinguished than has been done hitherto. 3. The interchange between the progress of the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness, how they serve to facilitate each other’s progress, how in critical moments they reject and exclude each other, how the apparent subjection of the first is always the real subjection of the last, how the victory of the kingdom of God, through the cross of Christ, is as a preliminary victory decided, how the two kingdoms move on side by side to their widest completion, and how the last apparent triumph of the kingdom of darkness, in the revelation of Antichrist, introduces his final judgment under the triumph of the kingdom of God; all this needs a more adequate estimation, explanation, and statement. 4. The significance of the historical opposition between Judaism and Heathenism, Hebraism and Hellenism, requires a clearer and more detailed statement. Above the hostile opposition between Shem and Ham, there may be seen also the friendly opposition between Shem and Japhet, tending to supplement each other. 5. For the organism of the individual method of salvation, which generally lies still in great confusion (see Lange: Positiv Dogmatik, p. 950). [This is less true perhaps in England and in this country, than in Germany.—A. G.] For the Christological structure of the church in its various stages—the same, p. 1107, and finally for its organism during its eschatological stages, p. 1225.
[1]“The abnegation of reason is not the evidence of faith, but the confession of despair. Reason and reverence are natural allies, though untoward circumstances may sometimes interpose and divorce them.”—J. B. Lightfoot, D. D., St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians , 2 d ed., London and Cambridge, 1866. Preface, p. xi.
[2]Bishop Colenso represents this antithesis in one theological life; first serving the letter with an orthodox purpose, and then using it for mere critical ends.
[3]For a general survey of the development of the sciences of Old Testament Introduction, see Bleek, Einleitung, p. 5 ff.
[4]Comp. Chappiu’s De Vancient Testa. Lausanne, 1838, p. 79. Lange’s opening address at Zurich treats of the same distinction.
[5]We reserve the subject of Jealousy, and of the sexual offences, as indeed of the assumed difficulties in the Old Testament generally, for a separate Excursus.
[6][The internal character of any book must of course have great weight in deciding the question whether it is to be received as the word of God or not; but having so received it, the mere improbability to us of the events it narrates will not justify us in holding that to be an allegory which claims to be a history. This is certainly dangerous ground on which to stand. For if the mere fact that there is so much that is improbable here, authorizes us to assume that the book is an allegorical representation of an important and precious truth, it will be easy to reduce large portions of the Biblical History to allegorical representations. Nor is the supposition in any sense necessary here, since the narrative, viewed as literal history, teaches the same truth with equal or greater force.—A. G.]
[7][In regard to the authorship of these books there is a wide difference. The name of Solomon appears in the title to the Song, it does not in that to the Preacher. There he comes into view as Koheleth, a term which, as Hengstenberg argues with great force, shows that he is viewed only in his representative character, as the highest Old Testament representative of divine wisdom, in distinction from mere worldly wisdom. The real author of the book puts these words into his month, as one who was well known to hold this position. Those to whom the book came would understand this at once. There is more here than mere “poetical license.” Hengstenberg thinks that the book does not profess to be from Solomon. But the Song does. And the title here is confirmed, 1. By the general correctness of the titles; 2. By the historical references in the Song which point to the time of Solomon; 3. By the entire thought of the poem itself. Even Lange’s view as to its fundamental thought does not justify the inferences which he drawn from it. For there is nothing unnatural in the assumption that Solomon himself should have felt “the theocratic indignation” against his own errors and sins, or that the Holy Spirit should have used his experiences in giving form and expression to the truths here taught.—A. G.] [8][Compare, however, upon this point Hengstenberg: Authentic des Daniel.—A. G.]
[9][This is a very inadequate rendering of the expressive terms which Dr. Lange uses: Daseins, Soseins, Hierseins, in which he includes the whole field from which we draw the arguments for the being of God: not merely his existence, but his existence such as he is, the concrete idea of God given us in the Bible.—A. G.]