01.3. Theological & Homiletical Introduction to OT - Part 2
SECOND DIVISION PRACTICAL EXPLANATION, AND HOMILETICAL USE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT In the apostolic communities, and through the entire apostolic age, the reading of the Old Testament was confessedly an essential foundation for the public solemn edification of Christians. Hence we find, in the New Testament writings, the first fundamental outlines of the practical explanation of the Old Testament. We may go still further back, and say, that just as the New Testament gives a doctrinal and practical explanation of the Old, so the later writings in the Old Testament serve to explain the earlier and more fundamental portions. But as Christ enters, or is introduced, in the New Testament, as the absolute interpreter (Matthew 5:17), so his Apostles carry on his work as interpreters of the Old Testament. We call special attention, in this view, to the Gospels by Matthew and John, the Acts, the Epistle to the Galatians and that to the Hebrews. The apostolic Fathers also have proved in a large measure interpreters of the Old Testament. Besides some allegorical fancies in the epistle of Barnabas, we recognize some very valuable and profound suggestions. Clement of Rome, in his first letter to the Corinthians, after he has exhorted the Corinthians to repentance, quotes testimonies and examples from the Old Testament, from ch. 8–13 and passing over other citations, even in reference to the life of Christ, ch. 17–19 and still further on, he constantly mingles quotations from the Old Testament with those from the New. This is true also in some measure of the second epistle bearing the same name. The Ignatian epistles are in this respect remarkably reserved, perhaps out of regard to the Judaizers. In Polycarp also the citations from the New Testament are very prominent. The anonymous letter to Diognetus represents still more strikingly in this respect, an anti-judaistic stand-point, although there is no necessity for imputing to its author a Gnostic antagonism to the Old Testament. In the Pastor of Hermas there are not wanting Old Testament allusions, still he is more closely related to the Old Testament, in his imitation of the prophetic forms, and in his legal view, than in that living appropriation of it which characterizes the New Testament. The book of Hermas points to the great Christian apocryphal literature, in which the Jewish Apocrypha perpetuates itself, and in which indeed the most diverse imitations of the Old Testament writings are continued. (The Sybellines, the 4th book of Ezra, the book of Enoch, and others.)
Among the Apologists, Justin Martyr, about the middle of the second century, appears as a Christian philosopher who was familiar with the Old Testament. This is clear from his dialogue with Trypho. But also in his Cohortatio ad Graecos he, as also others of the Fathers, not recognizing the better peculiarities of heathenism, traces back the monotheism and wisdom of Plato to Moses and the prophets. In his apologies, which were directed to heathens, he makes use of Old Testament prophecies. Tatian, notwithstanding his Gnosticism, refers to the Old Testament. Theophilus of Antioch (ad Autolycum) contrasts the Old Testament account of the creation, with that of Hesiod (ii. 13), in which, although an Antiochian, and before that school, he explains the historical facts symbolically, while retaining at the same time the historical sense. He continues the history of Genesis, and of the Mosaic system, with constant reference to heathenism. Generally speaking, his representation moves upon the line of the sacred scriptures from the Old to the New Testament. Besides the general free use of the Old Testament in the Fathers, which even becomes excessive, in so far as the Old Testament conception of the cultus, its hierarchical and sacrificial ideas, and certain legal precepts, have been adopted in a more or less external way into the New Testament doctrine, order of worship, and constitution; there are special portions made prominent, in which the Old Testament continues its life in the New Testament theology, and in the cultus of the church. The first of these is the manifold exposition and explanation of the work of creation, especially of the six days’ work, by which we oppose both the heathen dualistic view of the world and Polytheism. The second is the Christian development of the doctrine of the kingdom of God, especially of the Messianic prophecies. The third is the Christian, human, pastoral, and catechetical development of the decalogue. The fourth is the transmission of the Old Testament Psalmody in the New Testament Hymnology and Cultus of the Church. To these we must add that allegorical method of exposition, which culminated in the Alexandrian school, by means of which the Christian consciousness appropriates to itself and reproduces in a Christian way the whole contents of the Old Testament. Finally the culture of the biblical method and style of preaching, under the influence of the Old Testament, in connection with the Greek and Roman rhetoric. As to the first point, Clemens of Alexandria had in view a commentary upon Genesis. There was a work of Tertullian, now lost, upon Paradise. About the year 196 Cadidus wrote upon the hexæmeron. Besides a work upon Genesis, Hippolytus published several works upon the Old Testament scriptures. Origen prepared a commentary upon Genesis, and also a series of mystical homilies upon the same book, as also upon a large number of other biblical books. Cyprian published a song upon Genesis. Victorinus, about 290, wrote a Tractatus de Fabrica mundi. Methodius, about the same time, Commentarii in Genesin. Hieracus (the heretic), in 302, Lucubrationes in Hexæmeron. Eustathius, 325, Commentarius in Hexœmeron. James of Edessa, about the same time, Hexœmeron ad Constantinum. Basil the Great, about 370, nine Homilies upon the six days. His brother Gregory of Nyssa also wrote upon the six days’ work. About 374, Ambrose wrote six books upon the same theme. Jerome, towards the end of the 4th century, prepared questions upon Genesis. Chrysostom wrote 67 Homilies upon Genesis. Augustine wrote upon Genesis in many of his works. These works show clearly how important Genesis, the doctrine of the creation, the statement of the six days’ work, appeared to the Fathers, in their controversies with heathenism. That the explanation of the ten commandments was in like manner, next to the gradually perfected apostles’ creed, one of the oldest branches of Christian catechetical instruction, needs scarcely any proof. The idea of one prevailing view of the Old and New Testament kingdom of God appears already in the apology of Theophilus of Antioch. The Chronography of Julius Africanus, the Chronicon of Eusebius of Cesarea, as well as his arrangement and demonstration of the gospel, lay a wider foundation for the same idea. The great work of Augustine, De Civitate Dei, belongs here, as also the sacred history by Sulpitius Severus, and generally the prevailing character of the historical statements or chronicles of the West, running down through the middle ages, since they all go back to the Old Testament and even to Adam. As to the importance of the Old Testament Psalter, and its history in the Christian Church, compare Otto Straus: The Psalter as a Song and Prayer Book. A historical tractate. Berlin, 1859.
Through the allegorical explanation of the scripture in the Alexandrian School, and still more in the middle ages, the entire Old Testament assumed a New Testament form and meaning, as to the inner Christian life and spiritual experience, while at the same time, as to the organization of the church and the cultus, the New Testament became simply a new publication of the old. On the Mediæval exposition of the scriptures, compare The Allegorical Explanation of the Bible, especially in Preaching, by Von Mogelin (1844). Elster: The Exegetical Theology of the Middle Ages (1855). Tholuck: The Old Testament in the New, 4th edition (1864). J. G. Rosenmüller: History of Interpretation in the Christian Church (1795–1814). Meyer: Geschichte der Schrifterklärung, 5 vol. 1802–1809. Schuler: Geschichte der Veränderung des Geschmackes in Predigen, 1792. For the critical and theological exposition of the Old Testament generally, consult M. Baumgarten: Commentary upon the Old Testament, the General Introduction to the Old Testament. [See also upon the use of the Old Testament in the New. Fairbairn: Typology, 2d edition, and Hermeneutical Manual. Alexander, W. L.: Connection and Harmony of the Old and New Testament. London (1853). Prideaux: Connection, new ed. London (1856).—A. G.] The mediæval mystics especially gave the widest limits to the letter of the Old Testament, and brought out into the light the multiplicity of the ideas lying at its root, as they rightly conjectured, through the theory of the fourfold sense of scripture.
Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, Moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia. The was a favorite book for spiritual exposition, even in the time of the Fathers. It was still more so during the middle ages, and has retained its position in the field of homiletical and ascetic literature to this day. The catalogue of the literature of this book alone would make a small volume.
There has lately been republished: The words of St. Bernard upon the Song; German, by Fernbacher, 1862. The exposition of the Bible was generally, during the middle ages, to a great extent practical, or designed for edification, and this indeed for the most part in a mystical way. This was true even with the expositions of the scholastics. This is in accordance with the practical direction of the middle ages, with the ignorance of the original languages, with the prevalence of dogmatics and church institutions and laws, and with that throughout, repressed respect for the Holy Scriptures. Gregory the Great, in this point of view, opens the middle ages, when, after the canon of Origen as to the threefold sense of scripture, he composed his Moralia in Jobum, after having provided in a collection of excerpts (Procopius of Gaza about 520; Primasius of Adrymettum about 550; Aurelius Cassiodorus after 562), the so-called Catenæ for a necessary aid to the learned exposition of the scripture. Isidorus of Hispalis, the venerable Bede, and others, follow later. A certain peculiarity attaches itself to the British method of exposition, as it was founded by the Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury; to the German exposition as it, e. g., is represented in the Saxon Evangelical poetry of Heliand; and later to the French and German mystics, who take their origin from the mystical writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius. The clear reference of the Holy Scriptures to the inner life, especially as a contemplative life, may be regarded as the great acquisition of the middle ages. This practical exposition of the Scriptures, it is true, as practised by Claudius of Turin, Alcuin, Paul Warnefried, Rabanus Maurus, Christian Druthmar, Peter Lombard, Cardinal Hugo, Abelard, John of Salisbury, Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, but especially by the mystics Bernard of Clairveaux and his followers, was used for the advantage of priestly and monkish classes.
Meanwhile the reformation of the exposition of the Scriptures was prepared during the middle ages. It must first of all be brought back to the original languages and the grammatical sense. The learned Jews of the middle ages, with their linguistic studies and expositions of the Old Testament, provided for this return (Aben Esra, Jarchi, Kimchi, and others). As to the New Testament, whose learned exposition in the spirit of Chrysostom, Œcumenius, Theophylact, and Euthymius Zigabenus, had prosecuted, that human learning, transplanted from Greece to the West, and awakened and cultivated in the West itself, served the same purpose which the labors of the Jews did for the Old Testament. Thus there was prepared, since Nicholas of Lyra (who died about 1340), Wicliffe, Huss, with Laurentius Valla, Reuchlin, Erasmus, a scientific exposition of the Scriptures, which began at once by its critical process to free itself from mediæval traditions. But the exposition of the Scriptures must at the same time be made popular, and, in the form of Bible readings, sermons, catechisms, household instructions and training, be introduced among the people. Besides a few great popular preachers (Berthold, the Franciscan, 1272, John Tauler, 1361, Vincentius Ferreri, 1419, Leonard, of Utino, 1470, and others), the pious sects of the middle ages, especially the Waldenses, and the well-known forerunners of the Reformation, labored to secure this result. The last-mentioned class prepared that introductory, profound, and scientific exposition of Scripture in which the Reformation arose, and through which alone it could successfully assert that full, new unveiling and revelation of the Holy Scripture as it lived in the heart, the word of justification by faith, and thus established its sole authority in matters of faith. With the great reformers, that introductory exposition of the Bible, purified through its critical processes, brought back to the grammatical and historical sense, while at the same time mystical and inward, on one side learned, on the other popular, first entered into the popular life, however the fetters of ecclesiastical exegetical tradition may have restrained the freedom of individuals. This exposition in its scientific aspect led to a new construction of the entire theology, in its ecclesiastical aspect to the laying anew all the foundations of church institutions and order, in its popular aspect to the production of countless sermons and hymns. Flaccus Illyricus reduced these acquisitions to their rules in the first protestant Hermeneutics in his Clavis Scripturæ Sacræ, 1567. From this time onward the history of the exposition of the Scriptures is so comprehensive that we can only describe it after its periods. To the period of the Reformation, in which the prevailing principle was the Analogia fidei, and during which the Lutheran Exegesis struck into a synthetical and critical direction, and the Reformed into an analytical and practical, succeeded at first the period of interpretation according to the Orthodox symbols, and in which the different confessions shaped and determined the exegesis. This period extends through the ultra-critical exegesis of the Unitarians, and partially also that of the Arminians, and through the allegorical exposition both of the Catholic and of the Protestant mystics (Madame Guion, Antoinette Bourignon, Jacob Boehme), which here again, as in the middle ages, forms the side-stream to the new scholastic main current. This last tendency passed over partially into the subjectively practical pietistic school, whose principle of interpretation was the word of God, the word of personal salvation, as the seed of personal regeneration. The Lutheran interpretation, as it was pre-eminently dogmatic, was ever seeking to find the New Testament dogmas in the Old Testament, i. e., it distinguished less accurately the times. The Reformed, with a more correct estimate of the historical, distinguished definitely times and economies, and found, therefore, in the Old Testament the typical prefigurations of the New, but fell also, in the Cocceian school, into a typology which knew no rules, or into allegorical fancies and excesses. This distinction was reversed in their views of the law. Luther made the opposition between Moses and Christ too great, while Calvin suffered himself to be influenced by the Mosaic system even in questions of ecclesiastical law. For the orthodox the Bible was a mine of dicta probantia, for the mystics it was a record of a visionary, inspired, mysterious, all-pervading view of the world. Pietism strove to unite these in its method of interpretation. That Rationalism, in its period, has both corrupted and promoted criticism, has made exegesis more shallow and superficial, while it has made it more pure and simple, has both falsified and uprooted scripture doctrine in its reference to life, as it has developed it practically and morally, is now confessed, i. e., it is confessed that it forms in one total representation a revolution of unbelief, and a reform of the believing consciousness. But if it advances from that grammatical historical principle, illy understood (since the biblical letter was not seen in its peculiar depth, the biblical facts or persons in their complete originality), to the last destructive results of the pseudo-criticism, so also it has in its interchange with supernaturalism from the same principle, correctly understood, wrought a more profound exposition of the scripture, according to the fundamental principle of scripture. It has introduced the Christological explanation of the scripture, which forms the livings centre of the present exposition of the Bible. However, it has not interrupted the flow of biblical investigation and exposition, but urged it on more rapidly, since it was animated by the idea, that the doctrine of the Bible would prove the most efficient means of overthrowing the churchly dogmatics. A striking testimony for the extraordinary activity in the interpretation of the Scriptures, from the Reformation until our own time, is found in the commentaries, the collections of sermons, concordances, systems of biblical theology, and especially the Bibleworks, which are now appearing so rapidly.
Catalogues of collected Bibleworks, exegetical and homiletical, may be seen in Walch: Bibliotheca theol. vol. iv. p. 181. Winer: Handbuch der theologischen Literatur, i. p. 186. The Supplement, p. 77. Danz, p. 134. In Starke: Biblework we find named as his predecessors the Bibleworks (Lutheran) of Bünemann, Cramer, Dietrich Veit, Nicolaus Hasius, Joachim Lange, Horch (Mystical Bible, Marburgh), Olearius, the two Osianders, Zeltner (Reformed), Castellio, Tremellius, Piscator, Tossanus (Catholic), Walafried Strabo, Lyra, Paulus a Sancta Maria. Further, the Ernestine Bible, the Würtemburg Summarien, Die Tübingische Bibel, under the direction of Matthew Pfaff (Lutheran).—Reformed works: Die Berleburgische Bibel, the English, Belgic, Genevan (with notes by Maresius) Bibles. Das Deutsche oder Herborn’sche Bibelwerk.—Besides these, Hall: Practical Applications, Freibergische Parallel-bibel, Ikenii thesaurus. Also a series of special Bibleworks upon the New Testament. Hedinger, Majus, Müller, Quesnel, Zeisius. Of modern Bibleworks we name: Von Hetzel (10 Theile, 1780–1791), with 2 Theile über die Apokryphen (von Fuhrmann in seinem Handbuch der theolog. Literatur ungünstig beurtheilt). Altenburger Bibel Commentar für Prediger, 1799 (von einem Verein von Predigern). Those of Oertel, Fischer, and Wohlfahrt. Dinter and Brandt. Also the list in Lange: Biblework, Matthew, Am. ed. p. 19. For the great number of works, preparatory to the Holy Scriptures, Lexicons, Concordances, and similar aids, see Danz and Winer. Lange: Matthew, Am. ed. pp. 18, 19. English Bibleworks: Nelson: Antideistic Bible. Burnet: New Testament. Henry: Exposition [in England, the general commentaries, by Poole, Gill, the two Clarkes, Samuel and Adam, Patrick Lowth, and Whitly, Scott, Burder, and others of less note. In this country the literature is rich in special commentaries, while there are no general commentaries, unless we include in the term popular works, like that published by the American Tract Society.—A. G.] The practical exposition of the Scriptures was limited, in the Lutheran church by the order in which they were read in the church service, in the Reformed by its stronger dogmatic tradition. But in the end the more profound view of the Analogia fidei there, and of the Analogia scripturae here, led to the great reform in biblical criticism, exposition, theology, preaching, and catechetical instruction, which places us to-day on the very threshold of a new epoch. (See Remarks, § 1.)
Recently the study of the Old Testament centres again upon Genesis, the Mosaic records of the creation, the six days; since the conflict with modern unbelief, for the defence of these principles of the kingdom of God, which are here laid down in the beginning of the Scriptures, must be met and settled here. For the literature: see Ludwig: Ueber die praktische Auslegung der heiligen Schrift, Frankfurt, 1859. Dickinson: Physica vetus et vera, sive tractatus de naturali veritate Hexaemeri mosaici, London, 1702. [The works of Hitchcock, Hugh Miller, Dana, J. Pye Smith. The Bridgewater treatises, Lord, the articles in the Bibliotheca sacra, urging the view of Prof. Guyot. The Commentary on Genesis, by Jacobus. Wiseman: Lectures. Tayler Lewis: Six Days of Creation, and The Bible and Science. Murphy: Bible mid Geology. Pattison: The Earth and the Word. Kurtz: Bible and Astronomy. Sumner: The Records of the Creation. Birks: On the Creation. Hancock: On the Deluge. The controversy, started by Colenso, has already been fruitful in its literary results. See Mahan: the spiritual point of view. Green: The Pentateuch vindicated (against Colenso).—A. G.]
THIRD DIVISION THEOLOGICAL AND HOMILETICAL LITERATURE UPON THE OLD TESTAMENT
See Lange: Matthew, Am. ed. pp. 17, 18. For the older literature consult the catalogue in Starke: Biblework, the appendix to the fifth part, entitled General register, &c., pp. 1–46. Also Heidegger: Enchiridion, pp. 15, 16. Walch: Bibliotheca theolog. vol. iv. p. 205. Fuhrmann: Handbuch der theolog. Literatur, ii. p. 3. Danz: Wörterbuch, p. 938, Supplement, p. 10. Winer: i. p. 67, Supplement, p. 31. Hagenbach: Encyclopädie, p. 176, to which is added the literature of biblical Philology, p. 122. Compare also a sketch of a history of Old Testament exegesis in Bleek: Einleitung, p. 129. Kurtz: History of the Old Testament, p. 62. De Wette: Einleitung, p. 159. [See also the comparatively full lists of the older literature, given in Horne: Introduction, and the partial lists in Kitto: Cyclopedia, and Smith: Bible Dictionary, Davidson: Hermeneutics, the historical part.—A. G.]
1. Introduction.—De Wette, Haevernick, Bleek, Staehelin (1862).—Special critical works. Staehelin: Kritische Untersuchungen über den Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings (1843). Koenig: Alttestamentliche Studien, 1. Heft: Authentic des Buches Josua (1836); 2. Heft: Das Deuteronomium und der Prophet Jeremias (1839). Also G. A. Hauff, Riehm, Caspari: Contributions to the introduction to Isaiah. Hengstenberg: Beiträge. Geiger (Jew): Urschrift und Uebersetzungen der Bibel, &c. (1857). [Davidson: Introduction. McDonald: Introduction to the Pentateuch. The Introduction to Baumgarten: Commentary—in the 1st vol. Hamilton: The friend of Moses.—A. G.]
2. General examination of the Old Testament.—Chappuis, Lausanne (1838). Kohlbruegge, Elberfeld (1853). Boehner, Zürich (1859). Friedrich, Gumpach, Westermeyer, Schaffhausen (1860).
3. More general Commentaries.—Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch, by Hitzig, Hirzel, Olshausen, Thenius, Knobel, Bertheau, &c. (Leipzig, 1841, ff., embraces also the Apocrypha). The Commentary now in progress by Keil and Delitzsch. For special commentaries: see Lange: Matthew, Am. ed. p. 19. [Besides those referred to, there may be consulted: On the Old Testament, on Genesis, and the Pentateuch: Bonar, Cummings, Graves, Hamilton, Jacobus, Jamieson, Murphy, Wordsworth.—Also Abbott: On Jonah. Birdges: On Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Rev. J. Burroughs: On Hosea. Burrows: On the Song. Caryl: On Job. Davidson: On Esther. Drake: On Jonah and Hosea. Greenhill and Guthrie: On Ezekiel. Horsley: On the Psalms. Moore: On the Prophets of the Restoration. Tregelles: On Daniel. Young: On Ecclesiastes.—A. G.]
4. Bibleworks.—Burmann: The five books of Moses down to Esther (1733). Michaelis: Translation of the Old and New Testament, with explanations. Berger and Augusti: Praktische Einleit. in’s Alte Testament (1799). Bleckert: Das Gesetz und die Verheissung (1852). Phillipson: Die heilige Schrift in deutscher Uebersetzung, &c. 3d ed. (1862). Thesaurus biblicus, 1 Dan., Suesskind (1856). General Bibleworks, Lange: Matthew, Am. ed. p. 19.
5. Works embracing the principal points in question.—a. The kingdom of God; Jewish History: Jost (1859). Dessauer (1852). Da Costa (1855). Chr. Hofmann. Kurtz: Sacred History of the Old Covenant. Hofmann: Weissagung und Erfüllung. Buehring (1862). [Edwards: History of Redemption. Alexander: History of the Israelitish Nation. Blakie: Bible History. Coe: Sacred History and Biography, London, 1850. Fleetwood: History of the Bible: Kitto, Johnston: Israel in the World. G. Smith: Hebrew People. Stanley: History of the Jewish Church.—A. G.]
6. The History of the kingdom of God.—Whately: Kingdom of Christ. Histories of the kingdom of God, by Hess, Zahn, Braem, and others. Structure of General History, by Weitbrecht, Ehrenfeuchter, Eyth, and others. Apel: Die Epochen der Geschichte der Menschheit. (The Gospel of the Kingdom, Leipzig.) Ehrlich: Leitfaden für Vorlesungen über die Offenbarung Gottes (1860). Lisco (1830). Kalkar (1838). Kircher (1845). Apel (1860). Caird and Lutz (1858). Theurer (1862).—b. Christology. Naegelsbach: Der Gottmensch, the fundamental idea of Revelation in its unity and historical development (1853). Trips: Die Theophanien in the historical books of the Old Testament (1858). Bade: Christologie des Alten Testaments. Scholz: Handbuch der Theologie des Alten Bundes (1861). Theologiæ dogmaticæ Judæorum brevis Expositio, by Roeth. Bertholdt: Christologia Judæorum. Ewald, Hengstenberg, Hofmann, Coquerel, Lutz, Steudel, Oehler, Haevernick. Mayer: Die patriarchalischen Verheissungen und Messianischen Psalmen, Hitzig: Die prophetischen Bücher des Alten Testaments (1854). Schegg: Die kleinen Propheten (1854).—c. Messianic types. Kanne: Christus im Alten Testament. Hiller: Die Reihe der Vorbilder Jesu Christi im Alten Testament, new ed. by A. Knapp. Lisco: Das Ceremonialgesetz des Alten Testaments (1842). Baehr: Symbolik (1837). Baehr. Salomonische Tempel,—also Kurtz, Friedrich, Sartorius, Keil, Kliefoth, and others.—A more particular reference will be made in the Biblework upon Leviticus. [Fairbairn: Typology. Marsh: Lectures, and works of less note and importance. Matthews, Keach, J. Taylor, Gould.—A. G.]—d. Messianic prophecies. Newton: Lecture on the Prophecies. Kœster, Knobel, Ewald, Tholuck. Staehelin: Die Messianischen Weissagungen, &c. (1847). Meinertzhagen: Vorlesungen über die Christologie des Alten Testaments (1843). Reinke: Die Messianischen Psalmen (1857).—Die Weissagungen (1862).—Hengstenberg: Christology, 2d ed. Baur: History of the Old Testament Prophecy (1861). [Smith: Scripture testimony to the Messiah; Magee: On the Atonement; Faber: On the Prophecies; Warburton: Divine Legation; Hurd: Introduction to the Study of the Prophets; Jones: Lectures; Graves: Lectures on the Pentateuch; McEwen: Essay; Samuel Mathers: On the figures and types of the Old Testament; Kidd: Christophany; Steward: Mediatorial Sovereignty; Turnbull: Theophany.—A. G.]
7. Principal writers of recent times.—J.D. Michaelis, Rosenmuller, Dathe, Meurer, J. J. Hess: Of the kingdom of God (1774–1791). Hengstenberg: Christology; Beiträge; Authenticity of the Pentateuch; of Daniel; Books of Moses and Egypt; History of Balaam and his prophecy; on the Psalms; work upon the sacrifices; on Job; Ecclesiastes; the Song of Solomon; and a work upon the Apocrypha. Ewald: History of the people of Israel; Poetical book; Prophets; Jahrbücher der biblischen Wissenschaft, 11 vols. Umbreit: Praktischer Commentar zu den Propheten. Hupfeld: Die Genesis; die Psalmen. Delitzsch: Genesis; Psalms; Song of Solomon. Baumgarten: Commentary upon Pentateuch and Zachariah. [On Genesis: Bush, Hackett Jacobus,—on Psalms: J. A. Alexander,—on Job: Barnes, Conant,—on Proverbs: M. Stuart, Bridges,—on the Song: Burroughs,—on Ecclesiastes: Young,—on Isaiah: Barnes, Henderson, Drechsler, Alexander,—on Ezekiel: Haevernick, Fairbairn,—the minor Prophets: Henderson, Percy, Moore.—A.G.]
8. Sermons upon Old Testament Books.—S. Fuhrmann: Handbuch, p. 263. Hohnbaum: Predigten, 2 vols. (1788–1789). Beyer: Die Geschichte der Urwelt in Predigten, 2 vols. (1795). The History of Israel in Sermons (1811). Predigten, von Sturm (1785). [Graves: Lectures on Pentateuch. Fuller: Discourses on Genesis. Lauson: Lectures on Ruth and Esther. Scott: Lectures on Daniel. Mcduff: On Elijah. Norton and Chandler: On David. Blunt: On Abraham; and a very wide literature of this kind in the works of the older English divines.—A.G.]
9. Homiletical and practical writings on the Old Testament.—Beyer: Predigten, an attempt to guard the unlearned against the attacks of enemies and scoffers. Bender: Old Testament examples in Sermons, 3 vols. (1857–1858). Gollhard: Outlines of sermons upon the historical books of the Old Testament (1854). W. Hofmann: Predigten, vols. 4 and 5. F. W. Krummacher: Neue, book of the advent (1847). H. Arndt: Christus im Alten Bunde (1861). G. D. Krummacher: Predigten. Emil Krummacher: Gideon, der Richter Israels (1861). Natorp: Predigten über das Buch Ruth (1803). Arndt: Der Mann nach dem Herzen Gottes (1836). Disselhof (1859): Upon Saul and David. Baumgarten: David der König (1862); Introduction to the book of Kings, Halle (1861). Paulus Cassel: König Jeroboam (1857). F. W. Krummacher: Homilies upon Elijah and Elisha [published by Tract Society, N. Y.—A. G.]. Diedrich: Das Buch Hiob (1858). Ebrard: The same. The Psalms, by J. D. Frisch, new ed. (1857). Burk: Gnomon Psalmorum (1760). Oetinger: Die Psalmen Davids, newly revised (1860). Veillodter: Predigten (1820). Iken: Trostbibel für Kranke, in einem passenden Auszug aus den Psalmen (1835). Psalmen von Thalhofer [Catholic] (1860). Taube and Guenther: On the Psalms. Hammer: Die Psalmen des Alten Testaments; The words of St. Bernard upon the Song (1862). F. W. Krummacher, Jahn, Maydorn: Das Hohe Lied. W. Hofmann: Die grossen Propheten, explained by the writings of the Reformers. Schroeder: Die Propheten Hosea, Joel, Amos, übersetzt und erläutert. Diedrich: Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, briefly explained (1861). J. Schlier: Upon the Minor Prophets. Lavater: Predigten über das Buch Jonas. Brieger: The 53d Ch. of Isaiah (1858). Rinck: Der Prophet Haggai (1857). [Chandler: Life of David; Hall: Contemplation; Faber: Horae Mosaicae; Ryder: Family Bible; Blunt: Coincidences of the Old and New Testament. The Royal Preacher. Hamilton. One of the volumes in Edwards’ works contains suggestive notes upon various passages. Guthrie: Gospel in Ezekiel. Brown: Evenings with the Prophets. Burt: Redemption’s Dawn. Caldwell: Lectures on the Psalms. Chalmers: Daily Readings. Cummings, Kitto, Hunter: Sacred Biography. Maurice: Prophets and Kings. Patriarchs and Lawgivers.—A. G.]
Remark.—The literature upon Genesis, and in a great measure for the Pentateuch, will be found in the special Introductions.
10. Apocrypha.—Beckhaus: Bemerkungen über den Gebrauch der apokryphischen Bücher. Das Exegetische Handbuch von Fritsche and Grimme.—(Volkmar: Handbuch, 1. Theil.) Against the Apocrypha by Mann (1853). Keerl (1855). Wild (1854). Oschwald, and others. For the same Hengstenberg. Für Beibehaltung der Apokryphen (1853). Stier (1853). Scheele (1855), and others. [Jones: On the Canon. Alexander: On the Canon. Wordsworth: On the Canon. Thornwell: On the Apocrypha. Prideaux: Connection.—A. G.]
FOURTH DIVISION THE ORGANISM, OR THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE BIBLICAL BOOKS a. Names of the Bible The Old Testament: the Law, Joshua 1:8; Matthew 22:36; Psalms 119:92; Matthew 5:18; Luke 16:17; John 10:34; John 12:34. The Scripture, or Holy Scripture, John 5:39; Romans 15:4; Galatians 3:22.—The word of God.—The law and the prophets: Matthew 5:17. Moses and the prophets: Luke 16:29; Luke 16:31. The law, prophets, and other writings, the prologue of Jesus Sirach. The law, prophets, and the Psalms: Luke 24:44. The book of the law: Joshua 8:34, &c. The law in many cases designates the giving of the law in the narrower sense. b. The Different Bibles When we speak of the Bible it is presupposed that we are treating of one definite fixed object. But this is not the case. In reference to the Old Testament, we must distinguish the Bible of the Jews in Palestine, the Bible of the Alexandrine Hellenists, the Septuagint, and that Christian arrangement of the Bible already introduced by Josephus.
We apprehend the Bible first preëminently as the book of the Religion of the future. Hence upon the basis of the Thorah, law (the five books of Moses), there is laid the great group of the prophets, Nebiim. The earlier or former prophets follow upon the earlier historical books, Joshua, Judges, the two books of Samuel, and the two books of Kings, not only because these books were written by the prophets, but much more because the Israelitish history was recognized as typical and prophetic. Then follow the later prophets—our minor and greater prophets—with the exception of Daniel. The third division includes the Kethubbim, i. e., the writings regarded purely as writings, not so named merely as the latest collection, writings in a general sense, but destined from the very beginning to work as writings in a higher rank. To the later historical books, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, are added the poetical books: Psalms, Job, Proverbs, then the prophet Daniel, and the Megilloth (rolls), the Song, Ecclesiastes, Ruth, Lamentations, Esther. The introduction of the theocratic life, the unfolding of that life to the New Covenant, the bloom and flower of the theocratic life, this is unquestionably the ideal ground and source of the arrangement. That the Alexandrine Bible rests upon a theory of inspiration, more free and wider than the canonical limits, is evident from its embracing the Old Testament Apocrypha with the canonical books, which the Septuagint could never have done, had it held fast the pure Hebrew idea of the Canon. From the circumstance that the Seventy have not made the canonicity of the apocryphal books of special importance, some have drawn the groundless inference that they held the same position as to the Canon with the Hebrew Jews. They were kept from asserting the canonicity of the Apocrypha by their ecclesiastical prudence, just as the Sadducees were prevented by the same prudence from denying the canonicity of the Old Testament books beyond the law. The Christian arrangement of the Old Testament into historical books (from Genesis to Esther), didactic books (from Job to the Song), and prophetic books (from Isaiah to Malachi), corresponds better with the Christian point of view, since a parallel is thereby secured to the arrangement of the New Testament. The term, didactic books, answers better to this parallel, than the expression poetical books. But even as to the Hebrew Jews, and their judgment upon the Hebrew Bible, the Pharisees had a different Bible from the Sadducees, and these again from the Essenes. The first enlarged and obscured the Old Testament through their traditions. Their direction ended legitimately in the Talmud. The second emptied the law of its deeper living contents, since they expounded it as exclusively a moral, and in that sense only a religious, law-book. They were the forerunners of the modern deistic Judaism. The third allegorized the Old Testament and divided it, with thorough rationalistic arbitrariness, into canonical and uncanonical portions. In their dualistic theosophy, as the Alexandrine philosophy of religion, they were the fore-runners of the Cabbalah. That the Bible of the post-Christian Jews, i. e., the Old Testament obscured and enlarged by their traditions, is an entirely different Bible from the Old Testament which unfolds and glorifies itself in the New Testament, is as clear as day. The injurious effects of the Catholic tradition upon the Holy Scripture, which is obscured by the attempt to place the Apocrypha upon a level with the Old Testament, is confessed. The Greek church at the synod at Jerusalem, 1672, emphatically adopted the same view of the Bible, as the way had been prepared for this, through its traditional development.
It cannot be denied, indeed, that the evangelical Protestant Bible may be and has often been obscured, e. g., when it is explained in accordance with a one-sided view of the Lutheran doctrine of Justification, or the Reformed doctrine of Predestination. The manifold sufferings, obscurations, disfigurations, and crucifixions of Christ in his church, are reflected in the entirely homogeneous sufferings of the Bible. In the evangelic sects of the middle ages and the forerunners of the Reformation, the buried Bible was unearthed from its tomb. With the profound development, spiritual quickening, and culture of the church, will it first be recognized in all its glory. c. The old and New testaments The one word of God, or Holy Scripture, falls into the records of the Old and New Covenants, into the Old and New Testaments. The unity of the two as the word of God is conditioned upon the nisus of the Old Testament towards the New (the promise, the prophecy of the Messiah, Jeremiah 31:31, &c.) and upon the reference of the New Testament to the Old (Matthew 1:1; Matthew 2:5, &c.; Isa. 6:39, and similar places). In this way the absolute superiority of the New Testament to the Old is as certainly preannounced in the Old (Psalms 51; Jeremiah 31:31; Isaiah 66:3 ff.; Daniel 7), as it is expressly declared in the New Testament (Matthew 11:11; Matthew 12:41-42; John 1:17-18; Acts 15:10-11; 2 Corinthians 3:6; the Epistles of James and the Hebrews). With this it is taught, on the one hand, that the value of the Old Testament as to its external aspect and for itself, in reference to the Jewish national and exclusive religion, is abolished. (Galatians 3:19; Galatians 4:5; Ephesians 2:15; Col. 2:44; Hebrews 8:13.) But it is taught also, on the other hand, and with the same distinctness, that the New Testament firmly establishes the Old in its eternal value, as the foundation, the preparation, the introductory revelation, on which it rests. (Matthew 5:17 ff.; John 5:39; Romans 3:31.) d. The Organism of the New Testament See Lange: Matthew, Am. ed. p. 24. e. The Organism of the Old Testament The book of the Old Covenant as the prefiguration of the New Covenant, or of the Advent of Christ.
1)The Announcement of the New Covenant in the Old. The Thorah (the law). a.Genesis, or the universal foundation of the theocratic particularism, and of the particularism in its universal destination or aim and tendency. b.Exodus, or the prophetic and moral form of the law of the Old Covenant (the tabernacle in Exodus is regarded chiefly as the place for the law, and the law-givers. It is the place of the human cultus only in a secondary point of view. Hence the tabernacle appears here, and not first in Leviticus). c.Leviticus, or the priestly and ritual form of the law of the Old Covenant. d.Numbers, or the kingly and political form of the law of the Old Covenant (the martial host of God and its march. Typical imperfection). e.Deuteronomy, as the reproduction of the law in the solemn light of the prophetic spirit.
2)The actual typical development of the Old Covenant until the decline of its typical glory and the preparation for its ideal glory. Historical books. a.The book of Joshua. The introduction of the theocratic people into the typical inheritance of the people of God. The conquest. The division. b.The book of Judges. The independent expansion of the Israelitish tribes in the land of promise. The stages of apostasy, and the appearance of the theocratic heroes, judges, in the different tribes. The tribes after their dark side. As an appendix, a gleam of light, the little book of Ruth. c.The books of Samuel, or the collection of the tribes and the introduction of the kingdom by Samuel, the last of the judges (the desecration of the priesthood, the introduction of the kingdom, the preparation for the prophets in the stricter sense, through the schools of the prophets). The first book, Saul the rejected king. The second book, David the king called of God. d.The two books of Kings. The theocratic kingdom from its highest glory to its decay. The first of Solomon, the type of the Prince of Peace, and of the kingdom of peace, until Elijah, the type of the judgment by fire; the second from the ascension of Elijah, or the apotheosis of the law, to the decline of the kingdom, of the people of the law. e.The two books of Chronicles. The Old Testament history of the kingdom of God, in a theocratic point of view, from Adam until the order for the return of Israel from the Babylonian captivity. f.The book of Ezra. The priestly and ritual restoration of the holy people and the temple. g.Nehemiah. The theocratic and political restoration of the people and the holy city. h.Esther. The wonderful salvation and change in the history of the people of God, during the exile, dispersion, and persecution.
3) The preliminary New Testament bloom of Old Testament life in its course of development.
1. The theocratic and Messianic Lyrics. The Psalms.
2.The didactics of Solomon in their universal scope and tendency. a.Job. The inscrutableness and vindication of the divine wisdom and righteousness, especially in the trials of the pious. b.The trilogy of Solomon.
4)The prophetic images or representations of the New Testament in the Old. a.The four great prophets, or the fundamental relations of the Messianic prophecy.
1. Isaiah. The personal Christ as prophet, priest, and king. The Apocalypse of Isaiah (Isaiah 40-66).
2. Jeremiah. The prophetic Messianic kingdom (Jeremiah 30-33). The prophetic Martyrdom. The Apocalypse of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 45-51). The Lamentations.
3. Ezekiel. The priestly Messianic kingdom. The Apocalypse of Ezekiel. The death-valley of Israel, and that of Gog. The glorious life of Israel. The new temple, and the living stream issuing from it for the heathen world.
4.Daniel. Throughout Apocalyptic. The royal Messianic kingdom. The world-monarchies in the light side (Daniel 2), and in the dark side (Daniel 7). Christ and the typical and final Antichrist. The present and future age. b.The twelve minor prophets, or the special relations of the future of the Messianic kingdom.
1. The portal of the prophetic period. The book of Jonah, or the raising of the universalism above the particularism.
2. The oppositions of the old sins and the new salvation.
3. The visions of judgments.
4. The three prophets of the second temple, as the clearest revealers of the advent of the Messiah.
APPENDIX THE OLD TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA 1)In relation to the canonical books of the Old Testament.
Additions to the books of Chronicles: the book Judith, Tobiah, Baruch, the prayer of Manasseh.
Additions to the book of Esther.
Additions to the writings of Solomon: the wisdom of Solomon.
Additions to Jeremiah: the book Baruch.
Additions to Daniel: history of Susannah, of the Bel at Babylon, of the Dragon at Babylon, the prayer of Azariah, the song of the three men in the furnace.
Viewed as original writings through the claims of the Septuagint: the books of Maccabees, the wisdom of Jesus Sirach.
2) In the opposition of Hebraism and Alexandrianism.
Hebraic: | Judith. The book of Tobiah. Jesus Sirach. The 1st book of Maccabees. Additions to Esther. Additions to Daniel. Additions to the prayer of Manasseh. | Hellenistic: | The wisdom of Solomon. The 2d book of Maccabees. |
3)In the division: historical books, didactic books, prophetic books. a.Historical books: the books of Maccabees. b.Poetical or didactic books: the book Judith, wisdom of Solomon, Tobiah, Sirach. Additions to Esther, to Daniel, the prayer of Manasseh. c.Prophetic books: elementary parts of Tobiah, the book Baruch.
There was a complete disappearance of prophecy until its last point, John the Baptist. The repression of Messianic hopes was due to the eminence of the Maccabean house of the tribe of Levi, in consequence of which the expectation of a Messiah out of the tribe of Judah was only a secret hope of the pious in the land.
See the timid clause 1Ma 14:41. Compare the Introduction to the Old Testament, by Richter, Lisco, Gerlach, in the Calwer Handbook.
FIFTH DIVISION AN APPENDIX ON THE SO-CALLED DIFFICULT PLACES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT, AS THE CENTRAL POINTS OF THE GLORY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION[1] To the paragraph Archæology (see § 14). The so-called difficulties in the Old Testament have been brought out with special distinctness in modern times by the Freethinkers and kindred opposers of the doctrine of revelation: these, namely, the acquisition of the Egyptian jewels, Balaam’s ass, and the arresting of the sun by Joshua. Although the most renowned attacks upon these and similar places bear upon their face the character, partly of careless malevolence, partly of childish absurdity, still it cannot be denied that these difficulties lie as hindrances in the way of faith, to many cultivated persons, and even to many honest and scientific thinkers of our day. But these honest sceptics find themselves in a truly critical position. For, while on one side they are driven over into unbelief by hypercritics and witlings, there is offered them from the other side the helping hand of an apologetic exegesis which has created in many cases the very misconceptions from which it would free doubting spirits. Thus, on the one side, stand the sceptical investigator of nature, who brings the nebulæ of the heavens and the strata of the earth as witnesses for the boundless antiquity of the world, in order that he may charge the Bible, even it its first line, with error in its computation of time; the pantheistic worldling, who finds in the human-like tongue of the biblical God the characteristic mark of childish tradition; the deistic moralist, who, in the history of the marriages of the patriarchs, and in the supposed robbery of the Egyptian treasures at the command of God, detects with boasting the original conflict of the Bible with pure morals; the infidel, who from of old has always taken his most cheerful ride upon Balaam’s ass; the swaggering skirmisher, who uses the arresting of the sun by Joshua in order that he may put the host of the Lord to flight. But, on the other side, the apologetic exegesis seeks in nearly all cases to rescue the assaulted positions only by the most modest defensive, while it brings into view now the incorrect exegetical understanding of the word, then the figurative allegorical expressions of the writer, then the natural side of the extraordinary events, and lastly the wonderful power of God. It cannot be denied indeed that in this way very important aid has been gained to the clearing and justification of the Old Testament text. But neither can it be denied that these isolated processes leave the difficulties in their totality essentially unremoved, while in many ways they contribute to them, and confirm them. We are very far from demanding that the Apologetics in this field should make the darkest secrets unobjectionable to the unbeliever, or plain and comprehensible to the sceptic. The offence of the cross of Christ will have its eternal significance for the ungodly world, even in these questionable places. But this isolated, disconnected method of defence can never bring into clear view, that it is the divine understanding of revelation itself which brings forward these vary facts, at which the human understanding in its worldly direction must take offence. The generic, that which is common in all these difficulties, and the divine reason and wisdom which appear distinctly in them—in a word, the positive glory of revelation is not sufficiently insisted upon. The studied way in which they (the apologists) only defend, but do not glorify them as the great proof of the work of God, the hurried joy with which they pass from them, the embarrassment with which they gladly avoid the dark riddles, in that they rest in general upon the almighty miraculous strength of God, neither meets the necessities of inquiring spirits, nor the requirements of faith in the church, nor the necessities of knowledge in theology. It is only when the central point of the offence at the Old Testament in our day, has been proved to be the central part of the glory of revelation, that we can satisfy the honest doubt, or answer the very end of the Old Testament. A glance at the most considerable difficulties in the New Testament will illustrate what has been said. Here truly we meet, first of all, the miracles of Christ, his supernatural birth, his resurrection, in a word the chief facts of his life, and the doctrines connected with them of his deity, the trinity, the atonement, and his coming to judgment, i. e., all the great mysteries which appear to the sceptic as pre-eminently an offence and foolishness. The old apologists have limited themselves here generally to a discursive defence; they have taken refuge even here on one side in evasions and mere attempts to invalidate objections, and on the other side in the direct support of God, and for the most part passed as rapidly as possible, and at any price, by the great riddles which they should have solved. But the modern churchly theology has long since risen above this miserable defensive. It brings out the mysteries and those things full of mystery, at which men stumble, as the very heart of the history and doctrine of Christ; it shows that the very glory of the New Testament reveals itself in them. The same must be altogether true of the difficulties of the Old Testament. By how much more remarkable the phenomenon, darker the riddle, stronger the objection, by so much greater must be the significance of the fact in question, so much richer its revealed contents, so much more glorious its divine fulness of the spirit. The difficulties in the Old Testament are the central points of the glory of the Old Testament religion. Each difficulty marks a peculiar rejection of false heathen views of the world, through the very point of the difficulty, in which the true revealed view of the world is disclosed. We will endeavor, from this point of view, to sketch the chief stages in the development of the Old Testament religion.
I The Account of the Creation. The Records of the pure idea of the Creation, of the pure idea of God, of the ideas of Nature and the World in opposition to the heathen view of the World, especially to the Theogonistic, Cosmogonistic, Deistic, Naturalistic, Pantheistic, and Dualistic Assumptions (Genesis 1) The Pantheist takes offence here, because the record speaks of an eternally present God, and, in opposition to his view, of a temporal world which the eternal God has called into being through his word; the dualist stumbles at the assumption that even matter itself, the original substance of the world, has sprung from the creative power of God; the deist, on the contrary, finds in the assumption that God, after the days’ works were completed, had then rested, a childish dream, which ignores the idea of omnipotence; the naturalist believes that with the co-working of omnipotence from moment to moment the idea of the natural orderly development of things is destroyed; philosophy generally thinks that it is here dealing with a myth, which is arranged partly through its orthodox positiveness, and partly through its sensuous pictures or images; the modern sceptical natural philosoper makes it a matter of ridicule that the sun, moon, and stars should first be formed in the fourth creative day, and indeed that the whole universe is viewed as rendering a service to this little world; that the heavenly light should have existed before the heavenly lights, but especially that the original world should have arisen only 6000 years ago, and that its present form, for which millions of years are requisite, should have been attained in the brief period of six ordinary days. But the opponents who differ most widely agree in this, that it is fabulous, that the Bible should make an entirely new report of pre-historical things, with the most perfect assurance.
We shall not enumerate the insufficient replies made from the stand-point of the earlier apologetics. It is worthy of remark, however, that the theology of the schools has here occasioned a circle of misconceptions, which the latest theology of the church has in great measure removed. The deciding word as to this first doctrinal portion of the Holy Scriptures has already been uttered long since in the epistle to the Hebrews. By faith we understand that the world was made (prepared) by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.[2] The record of creation is therefore a record of the very first act of faith, and then of the very first act of revelation, which, as such, lies at the foundation of all the following, and in its result reproduces itself in the region of faith, from the beginning on to the end of days. It is the monotheistic Christian creative word, the special watch word of the pure believing view of the world. Ex ungue leonem. The first leaf of scripture goes at a single step across the great abyss of materialism into which the entire heathen view of the world had fallen, and which no philosophic system has known how to avoid, until perfected by this. Pantheism here meets its refutation in the word of the eternal personal God of creation, who established the world by his almighty word; abstract theism, in the production of the world out of the living word of God; dualism, in the doctrine that God has created matter itself; naturalism, in the clear evidence of the positive divine foundation of the world, in the origin of every new step in nature. With the pure idea of God, we win at the same time the pure idea of the world, and with the pure idea of creation, the pure idea of nature. Creation goes through all nature, in so far as God, from one step in nature to another, ever produces in a creative way the new and higher; at last man, after his bodily organic manifestation. On the other hand also the idea of nature runs through the whole idea of creation, in so far as God has endowed every creative principle which he has placed in the world with its own law of development, and with a conditioned independence; to plants, to animals, and to man. The creation reaches its perfection and glory in the human spirituality, since in this it is prepared for the revelation of the divine life; in his freedom nature is glorified, since its relative independence is here raised to the free blessed life of men in God. Just as the biblical idea of God is free from the heathen element of a passive deity, who suffers the world to flow out from himself, so the biblical idea of the world is free from the heathen assumption that the world is some magical transformation of existing material, or even of a positive nonentity. And as the biblical idea will not tolerate the absolutist’s assumption of an abstract deified omnipotence, which neither limits nor communicates itself, so the biblical idea of nature cannot be reconciled with the naturalistic assumption, which derives all the forms in nature out of one general creative act, and holds that one step in nature produces another.
We will not dwell upon the objections which the most illustrious and popular natural philosophers have raised against the work of the fourth creative day. That the light was before the light-bearers; that the appearance of the firmament to the earth was first manifested in the same day in which the earth was discovered to the firmament; that for man, from his stand-point, the earth formed an important contrast with the vastness of the heavens; this does not require many words. But the day-works and the age of the world? The Mosaic computation, it is said, allows about 6000 years for the history of man. For the entire universe there is then the higher antiquity of—an added week—the six creative days. But these six days, the most recent scientific churchly exegesis[3] says, are symbolical days, i. e., six periods of the development of creation. The evenings, it is said further, mark the epochs of destruction, the revolutions of the world in its progress; on the other hand, the mornings mark the epochs of the new and higher structure of the world. The fact that, in the Hebrew designation, day often denotes a period of time, and that these days are here spoken of before the cosmical organization of the world into the planetary system, favors this view. To this we must add the prophetic biblical style of the narrative. Bearing this in mind, the defender of the pure sense of scripture can hear these natural philosophers speak of the thousands and millions of years of the earth’s development with a serene smile, as an investigator of the Bible, namely: but whether as an investigator of nature is another question. For the recent natural philosophy appears extremely rash in surrounding itself with its millions of years, not in the spirit of nature, nor in accordance with its formation. The defender of the biblical text, as the friend of nature, may be allowed the word: We grant you willingly your thousands of years for the formation of the earth and the world. But bethink yourselves well. According to the laws of present nature, it develops itself very rapidly in all the first effusions and stages of its life; on the contrary, you require for the first glowing seeds of life and living structures an endlessly slow lapse of time. In nature we see all subordinate things arise and disappear quickly; you require æons for the first rudest fundamental forms of creation. If the spirit of scripture absolve you in this lavish use of millions of years for the cooling of the globes of gas, and the formation of primitive monsters, ask yourselves whether the spirit of nature will grant you absolution!
But, from the records of creation, you can learn that nature rests upon the principles of creation, unfolds itself in living contrasts, completes itself in ascending lines, and is glorified in man and his divine destination, i. e., in other words, that nature springs out from the miracle, through miraculous stages (new principles of creation), ascends from step to step, and in the miracle of the perfect image of God reaches its new birth.
II Paradise, or the Records of the original ideal state of the Earth and the Human Race. (Genesis 2)
Paradise, it is said, is a beautiful myth, growing out of mythical ideas of the earth which the oldest geographers entertained. Thus also the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the tree of life, and the serpent are regarded as mythical traditions. Thus the great theocratic element, which lies in the account of Paradise, is entirely lost. Of the first great historical type we have only left a fantastic philosophic hypothesis concerning the commencement of the race, and the origin of evil. The theology of the schools, which views the account of Paradise not only as throughout historical, but as barely historical, in opposition to its symbolical import, has here pre-eminently prepared the way for misconceptions and misinterpretation. As the fourth stream of Paradise, the Euphrates and its source cannot be a myth, so neither can the four streams generally. And as the first man is not a myth, so neither is his first residence. But on the other side also the streams and trees of Paradise are just as little to be regarded as barely natural, or belonging to the natural history of Paradise, or the mere individual forms, particularities, of the pre-historical world. The significance of Paradise is this, that it declares the original ideal state of the earth and the human race, the unity of the particular and the general, the unity of spirit and nature, the unity of spiritual innocence and the physical harmony of nature, the unity of the fall and the disturbance of nature—lastly, the unity of facts and their symbolical meaning, which both the barely literal and mythical explanations of the record rend asunder.
There was a paradise and it was local, but it was at the same time the symbol of the paradisiac earth. The same thing is true of the four streams. Whether the original source of the four streams is not marked by the stream in the midst of the garden may be left undecided; it is enough that it was actually one, and at the same time the symbol of all the fountains of blessing upon the earth. Whether the tree of life was one physical plant, or rather the glorification of nature, in the determinate form of the manifestation of God in the garden, is a matter of question; as a symbol it designates the total healing and living strength of nature under the revelation of the Spirit. The tree of knowledge of good and evil existed in some one form, but with it all nature is in some measure designated as a test. But the serpent as the organ of that temptation is not only the type of temptation and of sin, but, as originally a worm, the type of its brutality, its degradation, and its subjection. As the account of the creation declares the opposition and harmony between God and the world, so the account of Paradise declares the opposition and the harmony between the spirit and nature. Here you have the connection between the actual primitive man and the ideal man, between man and the earth, between the fact and the idea: the consecrated bodily nature, the consecrated senses, the consecrated, indeed sacramental, pleasure, and on the other side human talent, freedom, and responsibility.
Break this golden band between spirit and nature, between the actual fact and the symbol, and you fall back into that old accursed opposition between spiritualism and materialism, which burdened the heathen world and will run through all your moral æsthetic and philosophic ideas as a fatal cleft.
III The First Human Pair: the Records of the ideal and actual Unity of the Human Race, and of the male and female Nature in the true Marriage (Genesis 2) With a stroke or two of the pen, the biblical view of the world places itself above the aboriginal doctrines of every heathen people, and all national pride and haughtiness, with the barbarism and hatred which are connected with it. In a few lines it records the equality by birth of the male and female sexes, the mystical nature of true marriage, the sanctity of the married and domestic life, and condemns the heathen degradation of woman, the sexual lawlessness or lust, as also the theosophic and monkish contempt of the sexual nature. Weighed in this balance, Aristotle, Gregory VII. and Jacob Boehm have been found wanting.
Strauss asserts that the generic varieties of the human race, as the foundation of the old aboriginal traditions, has now become anew the common doctrine of the natural philosopher, and philosophy. Then it would follow that Blumenbach, Cuvier, Shubert, Karl Von Raumer, John Muller (the anatomist), and Alexander Von Humboldt, who have taught the generic unity of the human race, are not natural philosophers.
IV The Fall and Judgment, or the Records of the historical character of the Sin of the Creature, opposed to both Idea and Nature; of the Holiness of the Divine Judgment, and of the connection and opposition between Sin and Evil (Genesis 3) The record of the actual fall stands there as an eternal judgment upon the theoretical fall, the human view of moral evil, especially upon the errors of Dualism and Manicheism, Pelagianism and Pantheism. Hence arise the numerous and strong objections which the most diverse systems in old and modern times have raised against this record. The earthly origin of evil out of the abuse of freedom offends Dualism, which derives it from an evil deity, from dark matter, or from the supremacy of sense. Although the serpent sustains the doctrine that, prior to the fall of man, sin had existed in a sphere on the other side, working through demoniac agency upon this (for the serpent was not created evil, Genesis 1:25, generally not even fitted for evil, and can only be regarded therefore as the organ of a far different evil power), yet the visible picture of the fall in this sphere, is a certain sign that the fall in that could only have risen through the abuse of the freedom of the creature. But, if we observe the progress of sin from the first sin of Eve to the fratricide of Cain; if we view the opposition between Cain and Abel, and the intimation of the moral freedom of Cain himself, so the Augustinian view, raising original sin to absolute original death, receives its illumination and its just limits. But how every Pelagian view of life falls before this record, as it brings into prominence the causal connection between the sin of the spirit world and that of man, between the sin of the woman and the man, between the sin of our first parents and their own sinfulness and the sinfulness of their posterity! If we take into view the stages of the development of evil in the genesis of the first sin, how limited and vapid appears the modern view, which regards the senses as the prime starting point of evil! But when Pantheism asserts the necessity of sin, or rather of the fall, as the necessary transition of men from the state of pure innocence to that of conscious freedom, the simple remark, that the ingenuousness of Adam would have been carried directly on in the proper way, if he had stood the test, just as Christ through his sinlessness has reached the knowledge of the true distinction between good and evil, and has actually shown that sin, notwithstanding its inweaving with human nature, does not belong to its very being, clearly refutes the assertion. But how clear is the explanation of evil, of punishment and of judgment, as it meets us in this account! that the natural evil does not belong to the moral, but, notwithstanding its inward connection with it, is still the divine counteracting force against it; that punishment is to redeem and purify; that from the very acme of the judgment breaks forth the promise and salvation. These truths, which are far above every high anti-christian view of the world, make it apparent that the first judgment of God, as a type of the world-redeeming judgment of God, has found its completion in the death of Christ upon the cross.
V The Macrobioi, or the long-lived Fathers and Enoch, or the Revelation of the Difference between the ideal and historical Human Death The long lives of the Fathers, the years of Methuselah, the translation of Enoch, are difficult riddles to the common view of the world, which recognizes no distinction between the ideal death (i. e., the original form, resembling a metamorphism, of the transition from the first to the second human life), and the historical death. But this difference is here clearly made known in these facts. Originally, there was granted to man a form of transition from the first to the second life, which is closed through the historical death, until it appears again in the glorification of the risen Christ and the declaration of the Apostles (1 Corinthians 15; 2 Corinthians 5). With sin the historical death makes its inroads upon humanity. But it can only, slowly creeping from within outward, break through the strong resistance of the original physical human nature; hence the long lives of the primitive fathers. Here the spiritual power of death has first gradually penetrated the physical nature; this is the significance of the long lives of the antediluvians. The spiritual power of the life of Christ, as it runs parallel with the old death in its progress from within outward, will at the last permeate the physical nature again; and then will the long lives appear again. But, as the last Macrobioi shall attain the original form of the ideal death, the translation, so in an exceptive way Enoch through his piety obtained it of old. Therefore he stands also as the citadel of immortality, of the victory over death, and of the ideal form of translation, in the midst of the death periods of the primitive fathers; in himself alone a sufficient voucher, that the Old Testament in its very first pages is stamped with this idea. In these leaves also we possess the records of that idea of death by which the faith of revelation strides victoriously away from all the ordinary ideas of death in ancient or modern times.
VI The Flood, and the Ark, or the Glorification of all the great Judgments of God upon the World; and of all the counter-working forms of Salvation, as they begin with the Ark and are completed in the Church (Genesis 6-8) The great water-flood is established, through the concurrent testimony of ancient people, as the great event of traditionary antiquity. But the deluge and the ark! Let it be observed here, however, that just as the idea of punishment explains the undeniably existing natural evil, so the light of the deluge illuminates the wild waves of the great water-flood. And just as out of the first curse sprang the blessing of the promise, so salvation, the saving ark, was borne upon the waves of the first final judgment. In this light the deluge is the great type of all the judgments of God upon the earth, and therefore especially of baptism, which introduces the Christian into the communion of the completed redeeming judgment of God, the death of Christ upon the cross. The first general world judgment was introduced through the universal dominion, and the unshaken establishment, of human corruption. But this was brought about through the ungodly marriages, the misalliances between the sons of God and the daughters of men, i. e., the posterity of Seth and of Cain. It is evident, indeed, that the Alexandrian Exegesis and that of the earliest Church Fathers have introduced the difficulty into the text, that the sons of God were angels. Kurtz still asserts that the Bni Elohim are elsewhere only used of angels. But if the vicegerents of God on the earth (Psalms 82:6) are called Elohim, and Bni Eljon, they may even much more be called Bni Elohim, in a position in which they should have defended the divine upon the earth, but rather betrayed it. The connection, according to which the fourth chapter treats of the descendants of Cain, and the fifth of those of Seth, authorizes us to expect that here both genealogies are united. After the history has shown how the curse of sin has spread itself with the human arts, in the line of Cain namely, even polygamy and murder glorified through the abuse of poetry, how on the contrary the blessing of the Lord advanced for a long time in the line of Seth, and with it the hope of redemption, it now shows how, through the misalliances referred to, the corruption became not only prevalent but giant-like and incurable. These false unions, based upon a principle of apostasy, and which made evident the profound connection between idolatry and whoredom, produced a race of spiritual bastards, who turned the very spirituality inherited from their fathers into sin. To look away from the fabulous in the assumption of a marriage connection between angels and men, it is inconceivable that the deception of the daughters of men through heavenly angelic forms, should be stated as a phenomenon of obduracy, and a cause of the flood. Here also the idea of apostasy, the yielding of the kingdom of God to the ungodly world, and the judgment springing therefrom, was introduced in the first great historical type; a significant portent, for the history of Israel as for the history of the Christian Church, to the end of the world. But that, in the very moment of the breaking forth of the judgment upon the world, an election from all creatures should enter into the ark, furnishes an example of the fact, that with the election of humanity a pure kernel of the creature world should be carried through the last final judgment, into a higher order of things. It should be observed by the way, that the three birds, the raven and two doves, must be regarded as the symbols of the three different exodes from the external church, so soon as we view the ark itself as the symbol of the church of salvation. This significance is not far-fetched. In the Roman Catholic view only ravens flee from the Church, in the assurance of antichristian spirits only doves, or the children of the Spirit.
VII The Tower of Babel, the Confusion of Tongues, and the Teleology of Heathenism (Genesis 11) The monotonous Augustinian view of the hereditary relations of humanity finds already its correction in the opposition between Cain and Abel, and still more in that between the line of Seth and the line of Cain. We see, indeed, how death reigns through sin, in the line of Seth, and how at last corruption, working in the line of Cain, brought it to destruction. While, however, the typical saviour of the race and of the earth, Noah, came from the line of Seth, and out of its ruins, and while before him there was opposed only a line of blessing and of the curse (both moreover only in a relative degree), there is formed in the sons of Noah a threefold spiritual genealogy: the line of the curse, of which Ham or more definitely Canaan is the representative, stands opposed not only to a genealogy of divine blessing in Shem, but also of worldly blessings in Japheth. Still, both are girt around by the circle of sin and death. And as in the primitive race the earliest development appears in the line of Cain, so now in the new race in the line of Ham. Nimrod founds the old Babylonian kingdom. But the people assemble at Babel in order to found, in the tower reaching to heaven, the symbol of an all-embracing human world monarchy.[4]
Beauty, lust, anarchy, brought the first race to destruction; an enthusiastic civilization, lust of empire, glory, desire for display, and despotism threaten to destroy the second. And now Shem and Japheth are in danger of losing their blessing in the earliest development of the power of Ham, in the Hamitic phantom of human glory. Hence the dispersion of the people, which as truly springs out of the deep spiritual errors of the people, as it was positively sent from above. Now Shem and Japheth could each in their own direction cultivate the blessing of spiritual piety which was their inheritance. And even within the race of Ham the curse of impiety was interupted through the mutual relations and influence in which it was placed with Shem and Japheth. Scattered around the tower, the people spread themselves into the world, according to their peculiarities, after the outline of the table (Genesis 10). The great value of this table has been recognized again in recent times. But this also must be kept in view, that in the dispersion of the people we have revealed the peculiar teleology of heathenism. It has a prevailingly admonitory, and yet preserving character. The people should not lose their peculiar character under the despotism of imperial uniformity. They should develop themselves according to all their peculiarities, in their different languages. Above all, the way was prepared for the development of Shem.
VIII The Separation of Abraham, and of the Israelitish People in him; the Teleology of Judaism (Genesis 12 ff) The mere worldly culture, down to the most recent times, has found great difficulty with the biblical doctrine that God had chosen Abraham from among the people, and in him chosen the people of Israel to be an elect people, above all the most cultivated nations. Critics, who usually find no difficulties in the diversities of the nations, and praise beyond measure the peculiar prerogatives of the Greeks and Romans, will not see in these facts, that Israel was in Abraham the chosen people, in a religious point of view. But even here historical facts correspond to the divine purpose, and bear practical testimony to it. Israel has realized the blessing of its peculiar religions disposition in its revealed religion. But in this blessing the good pleasure of God to Abraham and his seed has been made known. The later Jews have indeed preverted their election into the caricature of pharisaic particularism. And, in many cases, unbelief and doubt have been contending with this caricature, while they supposed that they were contending with the scripture doctrine itself. But the word of the scripture runs thus: “In thee (Abraham) and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” (Ch. 12:6.) That this passage does not say: “In thee shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves, or wish themselves blessed,” is evident from the preceding words: “I will bless them, that bless thee” (Ch. 12:3[5]). This then is the teleology of Judaism. As the heathen are scattered into all the world, in order, through their peculiar forms of culture, to prepare the vessels for the salvation of the Lord in Israel, so Israel is separated from among the nations, to be a peculiar people of faith, in order to become the organ of salvation for all nations.
IX The Offering of Isaac, or the Sanctification of the Israelitish Sacrifice, and the Rejection of the Abomination of the Heathen
We have here the most striking instance, in which the orthodox school theology, through its insufficient, narrow, literal explanation, has brought into the Bible difficulties at which even the noblest spirits have stumbled. The actual history of the offering of Isaac forms the peculiar starting point of the Israelitish religion, the glorious portal of the theocracy, the division between the sanctified Jewish sacrifices in their nature Messianic, and fulfilled in the atoning death of Christ, and the abomination of the human sacrificial worship of the heathen. What has the school theology made of this glorious history, the type of the whole Old Testament cultus? It has changed this in the highest sense isolated peculiar remarkable fact, into a dark and frightful riddle, which indeed appears like the heathen sacrifices, and through which already more than one has been betrayed into the path of fanatical sacrifices. The author here refers to the exegetical treatise of Hengstenberg, who has the merit of establishing the correct interpretation of this passage in his explanation of Jephthah’s vow.[6] Hengstenberg has in our view proved clearly that Jephthah did not kill his daughter, when he sacrificed her to the Lord, but devoted her entirely, under the usual consecration of a sacrifice, to perpetual temple service as a virgin, and he illustrates his method of proof through a reference to the sacrifice of Isaac.[7] The special proof lies in a reference to the fact, that the Hebrew cultus distinguishes between the spiritual consecration of man as a sacrifice, and the visible slaughter of an animal. Thus, e. g., according to 1 Samuel 1:24-25, the boy Samuel was brought by his parents to Eli the priest, and consecrated at the tabernacle, since the three bullocks were slain there as burnt offerings. The special grounds for the correct understanding of the sacrifice of Isaac are these: the root of the sacrifice, as to its nature, is the concession of the human will to the will of God (Psalms 40:7-9); fallen man cannot make this pure concession, therefore he represents it in a symbolical and typical way in the outward sacrifice. He brings at first to the deity fruits and animals. But a vague feeling assures him that Jehovah has claims upon the life of man itself. Meanwhile, however, he has lost the spiritual idea of sacrifice. The notion of sacrifice, or consecration, has become one to him with that of to slay and burn. Hence he falls upon the literal human sacrifice which he must offer the deity as a personal substitute. But the Old Testament rejects this literal human sacrifice throughout as an abomination. The Canaanites were punished especially for this abomination. This is not, as Ghillany thinks, that they themselves were offered to God as human sacrifices, as a punishment, because they had slain human sacrifices. The devotion of such idolaters to the curse and destruction, proves that the human sacrifice was the greatest abomination. Thus also the law treats this heathen corruption. But this corruption is thus unquestionably great, because it is the demoniac distortion of that thought of light, that God requires the sacrifice of the human heart, and in default of this the spiritual sacrifice of the substituted life of the atoning priest, or of the first-born in Israel, at last the absolute atonement of the concession of a pure man for sinful humanity. Hence this thought of light must be rescued from its distortion, and through the sacred care for its fulfilment, be preserved. The sacrifice of Isaac was destined to this end. God commanded Abraham: “Sacrifice to me thy son.” Abraham, as to the kernel of his faith, is the first Israelite, but, as to his inherited religious ideas, he is still a heathen Chaldee, who knows nothing else than that to offer, is to slay. But as he already, by his germ of faith, has distinguished the spiritual sacrifice from the abomination of the heathen, so in the critical moment he received the second revelation, which enlarges the first, since it prohibits the bodily killing of his son, with the declaration that he had already completed his spiritual sacrifice (Ch. 22:12). Nothing remains for him now, to meet his fullest religious necessities, than that he should enlarge and complete symbolically the spiritual sacrifice of his son through the corporeal sacrifice of the ram which the foresight of God had provided at hand (without commanding him to take its life). Now, the distinction and connection between the ideas of to sacrifice and to kill, which forms the peculiar consecration of the Israelitish sacrificial death, is made perfect. In this sense the human sacrifice of Abraham runs through the whole Israelitish economy, down to the New Testament (Luke 2:23-24). And the distinction between the holy sacrifice of the people of God, and the sacrificial abominations of the heathen, is completed. In the crucifixion, these two sacrifices outwardly come together, while really and spiritually they are separated as widely as heaven and hell. Christ yields himself in perfect obedience to the will of the Father, in the judgment of the world. That is the fulfilling of the Israelitish sacrifice. Caiaphas will suffer the innocent to die for the good of the people (John 11:50), and even Pilate yields him to the will of men (Luke 23:25); this is the completion of the Molochsacrifice. [8]
X The Sexual Difficulties in the History of the Patriarchs, as they arise out of the Israelitish striving after the true ideal Marriage, and after the consecrated Theocratic Birth; in Revolt against the cruel service of Lust, and the unsanctified Sexual Unions and Conceptions in the Heathen World In the review of the known sexual difficulties also, it is the Israelitish rejection again of the heathen nature, on which one sits in judgment, with the modern developed view of intellectual heathenism. But here the Apologists believe that they have fully met the demands of the case, when they remark, that we must not measure the life of the ancient saints by the standard of Christian morals. But that the germinating seeds of the Christian ideal life and morals occasion these very difficulties, that we are thus here also dealing with the phenomena of Old Testament glory (which stands indeed far below the spiritual glory of the New Testament), this is evident from the very contrasts in which these facts are brought before us. The spirit of the Old Testament places the natural sexual desire in opposition to the unnatural; the object of the sexual desire, procreation, in opposition to the passion for its own sake; the true marriage—based upon the mind’s choice, to the common or even barely external union of the sexes; the consecrated holy birth, in opposition to the birth or conception “after the will of the flesh.” In other words, it seeks the true sacred marriage, perfected indeed through its destination, the conception of the consecrated child of promise. It sanctifies the traditional marriage through the true sacred character of the higher union of soul, and the sexual desire through spiritual and conjugal consecration.
Thus the espousal of Hagar into the life of Abraham, which indeed Sarah, the wife of Abraham, suggests, is explained by the unlimited desire for the heir promised by Jehovah. The fruitless marriage falls into an ideal error which is far above faithlessness or lust, subordinated to the end of the union of the sexes, the attainment of the heir. In this ethical thought we must understand the error of Sarah and Abraham. But then the Lord brings the true sacred marriage of Abraham with Sarah into opposition with the transient sexual union of Abraham with Hagar, when he opposes the consecrated spiritual fruit of the first union, to the wild genial fruit of the last, Isaac to Ishmael. It is remarkable how Jacob under the dialectic form of the Israelitish principles obtains his four wives. He seeks the bride after the choice of his heart. Then was Leah put into the place of his beloved Rachel. Now he wins in Rachel his second wife, his first peculiar elected bride. The idea of the bridal marriage leads him to his second wife. But now enters the still stronger idea of obtaining children. Leah is fruitful, Rachel unfruitful, therefore she will establish her higher claims upon Jacob with the jewels of children. She imitates the example of Sarah and brings to him her own maid Bilhah. Then Leah appeals to the sense of justice in Jacob, and strengthens her side in that she enlarges it through Zilpah. The sin, the error, is here abundantly clear. But we must not overlook the fact that Jacob obtains his four wives under the impelling dialectic force of noble Israelitish motives misunderstood. The first is the pure sacred marriage, the second the theocratic blessing of children. If now, we view the most serious difficulties, the incest of Lot with his daughters, of Judah with his daughter-in-law Tamar, we name as the first explanatory principle element the overlooked facts, that in both cases the morally proscribed union of sexes stands opposed to the most unnatural and revolting crimes. The opposition to the sin of Lot was sodomy, which he shunned with holy horror; in this respect he escaped the judgment, and is a saint. Thus also the act of Judah stands in opposition to the sin of his son Onan (Genesis 38:9). He was punished with death for his, even in a natural sense, abominable misdeed, just as in a similar way the people of Sodom were destroyed. But Judah and Lot live. And even in their error they defend the judgment of the Israelitish spirit over the sodomy and onanism and the like abominable lusts of the heathen world. Moreover, they were ignorant in both cases of the incest which they committed, although the one in drunkenness, and the other in the joyful exultation of the feast of shearing, fell into lewdness. But the females, who in both cases knew of the incest and come into view as the chief figures, did not act from lust, but from fanatical error, under which lay the moral motive of the theocratic desire for children. Lot’s daughters, after the destruction of their home, fell under the delusion that the world, at all events the theocratic race, was in danger of perishing. Tamar plainly fanatically seeks, under the noblest impulse, as a heatheness, the house of Judah, and the promises which were given to him. Hence the unwearied perseverance with which she repeatedly, at last in the boldest form, pushes herself into this family. Finally, we may notice here still the well-known writing of divorcement of Moses. According to the way in which the Romish church, or even the latest legal spirit in the evangelic church, identifies the churchly or consecrated union of the sexes, with the perfect marriage, Moses, in the permission of divorce, comes very nearly into conflict with his own law, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” They say this law, minus the writing of divorce, constitutes marriage. The Bible on the other hand teaches that the theocratic marriage institution rests upon the seventh command, plus the ordinance for writings of divorce, under the permission of separation. That is, Moses knew a higher perfection of marriage than the barely legal and literal, and this he strove to attain, just as the whole Old Testament, with the higher spiritual marriage, strove also after a higher spiritual procreation. Under this spirit and its moral motives, the patriarchal families in succession fell into fanatical errors; but in these errors, the ethical spirit of the whole sexual life is reflected, which corrects the heathen disorderly sexual life, and its low view of the nature of conception.
XI The Mosaic System, the Giving of the Law, the Threatening of the Curse, or the Glorification of all the Divine Education of Men, through the Teaching and Leading Power of the Free Religion of the Covenant A very wide-spread prejudice, since the days of Marcion, confounds the Old Testament religion of faith with the Mosaic giving of the law, and then caricatures this law-giving itself, since it regards it as a despotic or dictatorial bending of an unwilling people under absolute statutes, which were strengthened by intolerable curses which should pass over to children and children’s children (see Hegel: Philosophie der Religion, ii. pp. 70 and 74).
History and the scripture teach on the contrary: 1. that it is not the Mosaic giving of the law, but the covenant of faith of Abraham with God, which is the foundation of the Old Testament religion (Galatians 3:19); 2. the Mosaic law is not the first thing in the Mosaic system (viewing it as a stage of development of the Abrahamic religion, in its transition as a system of instruction and training to a neglected people), but the Mosaic typical redemption, the miraculous deliverance of Israel out of Egypt (Exodus 20:2); 3. the Mosaic law-giving itself rests upon repeated free communications between Jehovah and his people (Exodus 19:8; Exodus 24:3); 4. the Mosaic commands are not immediate abstract and positive statutes, but are mediate, as religious fundamental commands, through the religious spirit, as moral, through the conscience; 5. transgressions were not visited immediately with the curse, but so far as they were not bold and obstinate, were taken away through an atonement; 6. to the curse which was spoken against the obstinate persistence in sin, stands opposed the superabundant blessings which were promised to the well-behaved Israelite; 7. the Mosaic system, with its own peculiar stages of development, proclaims its own goal, in the prophetic continuation and Messianic completion, and forms in its impelling strength the direct opposition to all laws of an absolute nature. “Moses wrote of Christ.” As to the addition to the second command, which visits the misdeeds of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me (Exodus 20:5), this threatening is opposed by the promise which extends the blessing of the pious to the thousandth of his successors. But in their violent passion over the threatening, these ungracious humanists have overlooked that it is the same law of tragical connection between guilt and the curse, which the tragic poets of Greece, in a much more cruel form, have poetically glorified. Let them first come to an arrangement with the idea of the tragedists, they will then find, that even here the partially fatalistic element of heathen tragedy, is laid aside, while its sad features are glorified. But the Mosaic system generally stands as the system of instruction and preparation for the religion of promise, as it trains an uninstructed people to the culture of Christendom, and hence also as the glorification of all divine systems of preparatory instruction and training.
XII The Egyptian Miracles and Plagues, or the Typical Revelation of the Fact, that all the Visitations of God upon the Nations are for the Good of the People and Kingdom of God
Hengstenberg has shown in his thorough and learned work (Egypt and the books of Moses, pp. 93–129) that the Egyptian plagues and miracles are not to be regarded as absolute miraculous decrees of God, but as extraordinary divine leadings and judgments, conditioned and introduced through the nature of the land of Egypt. There was a natural foundation for the miracles, for the blood-red color of the Nile, the appearance of the frogs, the plagues of flies, murrain, sores, the hail and thunderstorm, the locusts, the Egyptian darkness (the darkening of the air through the sandstorm), and the death of the first-born (the plague). This connection of natural events in an extraordinary succession, form, and extent, is not obscured but strengthened through their reference to the providence of Jehovah, and the redemption of his people. Rather the dark events of the earth are explained and glorified in the idea of punishments, and the judicial punishment glorifies itself in its purpose and goal to awaken and save. But in this form, the visitations of God upon Israel serve to bring out clearly the final end of all his judicial providence over the individual kingdoms of the world, in their opposition to his church.
XIII The Egyptian Treasures, or the Inheritance of the Goods of this World by the Kingdom of God, at the culminating Points of the Redemption of his People In the first place, as to the text, it does not say that the Israelites borrowed the gold and silver jewels of the Egyptians, but that they demanded or by entreaties obtained them,[9] In favor of this may be urged first the expression Schaal (
We pass in review the different explanations of this passage. The older, extremely positive and favorite explanation, proceeds from the assumption that God suspended in that case the prohibition of theft and deceit. The Apologists do not spend much labor here in the defensive. They have a greater work; they have the glory of this fearful moment to show, in which the despised slaves, the Jews, in the eyes of their proud oppressors, now humbled by God, pass into a people of God, or sons of God, who only need to ask, whether as a favor, or as a loan, or as a demand, for the gold and silver treasures, and they are cast before them as an acknowledgment of homage, a tribute of reverence and fear. Their sons and daughters are loaded and burdened with them. That Moses so long foresaw this moment marks the great prophet; that Israel uses it shows not only his human prudence, but even his sacred right; but that God brings about this result, reveals him as the protector of his people, who will provide for him, after his long sorrows and deprivations, the richest compensation, and at the very foundation of his kingdom appropriates with majesty the gold and silver of the world. Thus before this time Abraham had been blessed among the heathen, thus Jacob by Laban, and thus since the church of Christ, at the time of Constantine, after its victory over the Roman empire; and in like manner the church of the middle ages, after the irruption of the barbarians. But at the end of days all the treasures of the world shall become serviceable to the kingdom of God, and civilization shall be absorbed in worship.
XIV
Moses the Prophet, and the Prophetic People of God in opposition to the Magicians of Egypt and Balaam, or the Spirit of Magic, and the Prophecy of Heathenism, as it involuntarily does homage to the Spirit of the Kingdom of God, Balaam’s speaking Ass
We believe there is good ground for placing the magicians of Egypt in relation with the Aramaic seer Balaam. Just as the history of the magicians (Exodus 7:11 ff.) records the victory of the theocratic prophets over the antagonistic position of realistic wisdom and magic, so the history of Balaam (Numbers 22) proclaims the triumph of the theocratic people over the hostile position of that idealistic wisdom of the world, the worldly prophecy and poesy represented by Balaam. It would be difficult to distinguish accurately between the symbolic and the purely actual elements in the account of the contest of Moses with the Egyptian conjurers. Moses was endowed with miraculous power for this contest, whose sign, in any case, wore a symbolical coloring. Hengstenberg regards it as the central point in the endowment, that he could thus meet and defeat the Egyptian serpent-charmers upon their own field, in the region of their most cultivated magical art, and with higher means at his command.[12] Moses, with his miraculous rod, or staff, works in the three regions of life miracles of punishment and salvation; in the region of elementary nature (changing water into blood, bitter water into sweet); in the region of organic nature (making the rod to become a serpent, and the serpent a rod); in the region of human life (calling forth the leprosy and healing it). He can do this truly only in the service of the Lord, and therefore only in decisive preordained, moments. But then he can do this with an evidence which puts to shame all magical art and worldly culture. Thus gradually, and step by step, the Egyptian conjurers were put to naught before him. The first distinction is, that they could only imitate what Moses did before them; the second, that they could only do upon a small scale what Moses did upon a large; the third, that they could imitate in the destructive miracles, not in those which delivered and saved; the fourth, that they could not imitate the great destructive miracles; the last, that they themselves perished in the destructive miracles of Moses. At the very beginning, their rods were devoured by the terrible rod of Moses, and at the end they stand there without power, they themselves filled with sores, and their first-born given to death.
Balaam undoubtedly represents the ideal character of the art and culture of the world;[13] as it places and defines itself, in its common or ordinary life, as in the sphere of its conscious thought or purpose, it opposes the people of God and his kingdom, and especially, by the device of lustful and drinking banquets, it could work great injury to the church of God; and yet must ever, in the sphere of its conscious feeling, in the impetus of its inspiration through the Spirit of the Lord, be carried beyond itself, bless the people of the kingdom, and testify of its salvation and victory. This opposition between the purpose and the inspiration in the spheres of worldly genius and culture is world-historical, not less so than the fact that even the worldly genius in its philosophic systems, with its poetical and artistic culture, prophesies of Christ and blesses his kingdom. But Balaam’s ass is destined to portray the fact, that the ass itself must become a prophet, when the worldly prophet, who rides him, will become an ass. This grand irony, according to which Genius in its fallen state is more blind and dumb than the ass which it rides, according to which the prophet who rides the ass is changed into an ass who rides the prophet, does not stand there as a perplexity to the believer and a sport to the unbeliever. And it is truly the guilt of the apologetic school theology if it falls into distress about the ass of Balaam, when the free-thinkers lustily ride upon it. That the species of the horse, to which the ass, especially the oriental, ass, belongs, is inclined to be timid, and through its fright can draw attention to hidden dangerous circumstances—indeed, that it has an inexplicable power to recognize ghost-like appearances, or even in its way to see spirits, all this is confirmed through the strangest things. More than once has the stumbling of a horse been an evil omen to his rider, and Napoleon played the part of Balaam on the other side of the Niemen. That the voice of an act or event, thus even of the mighty utterance of the animal soul, may become, in the plastic forming impulse of a visionary genius, a miracle of vision, and most easily the Bath Kol, the voice, this needs no detailed explanation.[14] But that, finally, repeated terrors of conscience may awaken the inward life of the spirit and preserve it watchful, for the reception of the higher and clearer manifestations of the Spirit, thus in the prophetic region, even for angelic appearances, this experience teaches.
Balaam’s, ass is no subject for ridicule; least of all in a time when the nobler animals have a sensorium more open to the signs of the invisible world than materialistic geniuses, whom the hostility to Christianity has raised to temporary honor. The Spirit of God has made this ass to be a standing irony upon the thoughtlessness (to speak euphemistically) of the knights of free-thought, as they go upon the expedition to destroy Christianity.[15]
XV The Arresting of the Sun by Joshua (Joshua 10)
We will not speak here of the great exegetical history of this place. The papal chair, which esteems fish not to be flesh, and once rejected the doctrine of the antipodes (according to which all the Jesuit missions in America rested upon a flagrant heresy), compelled, it is well known, the philosopher Galileo to forswear the theory, that the earth rolls round the sun. Modern Catholic theologians hold a modification of the old view, that Joshua arrested the earth in its course. The spiritual primate of Ireland (Cullen), however, has returned to the orthodox view, and quite recently some Protestant voices are heard, which even in this point will recall “the good old time.”[16] The presupposition, of the established exegesis is the hermeneutical principle that the Bible throughout uses language in the same way only, in which it is used in ordinary records. In that case the symbolical contents of the record will be denied. It will be emptied of its true religious, indeed historical character. Thus here the peculiar triumphant feeling of Joshua will be entirely mistaken, since in that case they only find the thought that he, through an unheard-of astronomical and mechanical miracle, had arrested the rolling sun (or the rolling earth, as the case may be) for about a day (v. 13). They thus gain perhaps what they cannot use, indeed wherewith they are in the deepest trouble; while on the contrary they lose the glorious typical event, which brings out into bold relief the fact, that all nature, heaven, and earth, are in covenant with the people of God, and ever aid them to victory in the wars of his kingdom.
Although we do not share the view of those interpreters who think that we are only dealing here with a poetical and symbolical style of expression (which the papal exegesis could not use), which, in the sun of Gibeon and the moon of Ajalon, glorifies the sunniest and through midnight protracted, brightest day of victory, we would not deny the relation of the text to a song of victory. It has been overlooked perhaps, that in our history the storm of hail which terrifies and follows the hostile Amorites, is placed significantly over against the sun and moon of Joshua, which give light to the people of Israel. When the theocratic hero and conqueror, in the view of such a terrible storm of hail, on the part of heaven, utters the prophecy: we shall have the clearest sunshine upon our line of battle, and at the evening the light of the moon, that is a peculiar miracle, which is closely joined as to its stamp and character with the great Mosaic miracles of victory.[17]
XVI The Old Testament Theocratic Miracles of Salvation, as parallel Miracles, or as extraordinary Phenomena of Nature, which the Spirit of Prophecy recognizes, announces and uses as Saving Ordinances of God, and in which it proclaims the Truth, that the miraculous points in the Earth’s Development, from the Flood on to the Final Grand Catastrophe at the End of the World, runs parallel with the Development of the Kingdom of God in its Great Eventful Moments, and promotes its Salvation and Glorification That I may not unduly enlarge this essay, I remark that the above paragraph, while it may be regarded as clearly intelligible in the outline given, finds its detailed explanation in the work of the author upon miracles (Leben Jesu, 2 Bd.). In some particular Old Testament miraculous deeds, the signs of the New Testament miracles appear, i. e., the signs of the absolute victory of the theanthropic spirit over the human, natural world.
XVII The Destruction of the Canaanitish People This must be viewed as the symbol of the continuous destruction of malefactors in the Christian state. They were destroyed so far as they, as Canaanites, that is here as the servants of Moloch, claimed the holy land, and would live under the establishment, or in defiance of the establishment of Israel. Two ways of escape were opened to them: the way of flight from the land, or the way of conversion to the Faith of Israel. The cunning of the Gibeonites found a third way (Joshua 9).
XVIII The Ascension of Elijah in a Chariot of Fire, as the culminating Point of the consistent Development of the Mosaic Law The consistent unfolding of the Mosaic law, in its judicial punitive righteousness, is completed in the form of the prophet Elijah. Hence the punitive miracle is the prevailing type of his work. He punishes the people of Israel for its apostasy, with a three-years’ drought and famine, he slays the priests of Baal, announces to the house of Ahab its destruction, and calls down fire from heaven upon the two captains of Ahaziah with their companies. In this consistent unfolding of the prophetic judicial procedure, he is on the way to the final calling of the fires of the judgment upon the corrupt of the world. The third captain of fifty, sent by the king of Israel to bring the prophet, weeps and clings to his knees praying for mercy, and Elijah feels that he must arrest the judgment. But therewith he has the presentiment that he is about to leave the earth. He can no more endure the earth, nor the earth bear him, and the fiery spirit is borne to heaven in a storm of fire. The first persecution by Ahab drove him into the loneliness of the heathen world, the second by Jezebel, when she threatened him with death, drove him to Horeb, the cradle of the law, where he would willingly have died. In his fiery triumph over the officers of the third persecution, he appears already as a lofty Cherub with a flaming sword, who sends down from the mountain the fiery judgments of heaven. And still this is only the consistent fulfilling of his true Mosaic office. He has a tolerant heart, otherwise he could not have dwelt with a heathen widow and among a people that had given to his land the corrupt princess Jezebel as queen; a loving heart, as is shown in his miraculous raising of the dead, a heart opened for the presentiments of the gospel, which appears in his trembling and awe at the still small voice, in the feeling that Jehovah was now to appear, which he had not experienced in the storm, and earthquake, and fire; a merciful heart, and therefore he pauses in the midst of his fiery judgments and takes his departure from the earth. But the Lord prepares for him a worthy end, when he permits him to vanish from the earth in a fiery sign from heaven. We cannot so paint this history for ourselves as that school which speaks even of the hoofs of these fiery horses. Had the friends of Elijah seen the hoofs of the horses, they would surely not have sent fifty men for three days to search for the vanished prophet. But just as little are we to understand the narrative as a mere description of a disappearance in some peculiar storm. If we see, in this grand moment, a kind of end of the world, we shall also recognize in this chariot of fire the mystery of a primitive original phenomenon.[18] The opposition between Elijah and Elisha marks the turning point in the history of Israel, with which the judicial office and rank of the law retires into the back ground, and the providence of mercy comes into relief, out of which the prophecy of salvation unfolds itself. Elisha inherits a double portion of the spirit of Elijah, and this appears clearly, since he with his miracles of healing and salvation (in opposition, to the punitive miracles of Elijah) forms the type of the coming gospel. The punitive miracle indeed still appears in his life, but the essential and determining character of his work, forms a circle of helping, healing, and delivering miracles. Elijah enters the history as a glorified Moses, Elisha as the type of the Christ to come.
XIX The Types of the New Testament Miracles, and of the Victory of the New Testament Spirit, Book of Daniel
There appears very early in the Old Testament a definite kind of helping and saving miracles, which grows more distinct in the life of Elisha, and reaches its highest culture and perfection in the book of Daniel. Elisha appears as one who raises from the dead, in a greatly higher measure than Elijah; even his grave restores the corpse to life. He heals the fountains of bitter waters with salt, and the poisonous meal in the pot, makes the waters of Jordan a healing bath to Naaman the Syrian, raises the lost axe from the bottom of Jordan in a miraculous way, proves himself a spiritual reprover and saviour of Israel, triumphs over the hostile hosts who were besieging him, by the help of the hosts of the Lord, and sends away his enemies who fell into his hands, with mercy, to their homes. In the miracles of the book of Daniel, which bear more distinctly the character of the New Testament miracles, because they are the victorious miracles of suffering, the New Testament time, the victory of the kingdom of Christ over the monarchies of the world, is dearly announced. The three men in the fiery furnace, especially, proclaim with the greatest clearness, and in the grandest symbolism, the victory of the Christian martyrdom.
[1]Taken from the author’s article in the German Journal for Christian Science and Christian Life for 1857.
[2]When Delitzsch (Gen. p. 42) opposes to the view of Kurtz, that the account of the creation is the result of a circle of visions, looking backwards, the assertion, that it is an historical tradition, flowing from divine instruction, the questian still remains open, by what means that instruction was made available to man. We, with Delitzsch, are here opposed to the vision. For in the vision there is a voluntary subjective state, wishing to see, when there should be only a subjectivity or possibility of sight.
[3][Baumgarten indeed still holds to the ordinary days (Com. upon the Pentateuch i. 14). “The word day (
[4]Delitzsch says of Nimrod (p. 223), “through his name
[5]The here rejected explanation may certainly be received where the Hithpael of
[6]Hengstenberg: Beiträge, 3d vol. The moral and religious life of the period of the judges, especially on Jephthah’s vow, p. 127 ff.
[7]Delitzsch follows the traditionary view of the schools, and is not inclined to fall in with the modern churchly correction of that view (p. 300). The objection of Kurtz is answered in the places quoted below.
[8]For the untenableness of the ordinary view I refer to Hengstenberg: Beiträge; Lange: Positive Dogmatik, p. 518. Compare also the legal Catholic Church, p. 60.
[9]Compare Hengstenberg: Authenticity of the Pentateuch, 2 vol. p. 507.
[10]“The verb (
[11]Hengstenberg, p. 525.
[12]The books of Moses, p. 71.
[13]Especially the wisdom of the Chaldees upon the Euphrates, see Baumgarten, ii. p. 349.
[14]We may not here think of a barely inward event. The ways however, in which Baumgarten, ii. p. 359, defends the outward speaking of the ass against Hengstenberg, appears to us without weight or importance. If it is allowed to the prophet to speak in his own dialect, then surely it may be to the ass.
[15][Hengstenberg holds that there is a real miracle, but that it is inward in the mind or vision of the prophet, not outward in the ass. He defends his view—which is connected with a general theory as to the nature of prophecy or the state of the prophets—with great ingenuity and ability. But there are serious and insuperable objections to it. But even this view is preferable to that given above. Dr. Lange comes down here from the high vantage ground from which he has discussed so ably the previously stated difficulties, and stands very nearly upon a level with those who merely seek to explain the miracle. If there is nothing more here than the naturally timid disposition of the animal, and the working of a plastic fancy or genius upon the braying of the frightened and refractory ass, leading the prophet to imagine that he sees spirits or angels, and awakening his moral and spiritual powers, then the whole narrative is easily explained, but then the miracle is lost. It is vastly better to hold that the record narrates the fact literally, Nor is there anything improbable in such a miracle, that the ass should really use the words of men, if we regard the circumstances of the case, and the ends which were designed to be reached. It is a fitting way to rebuke this prophet, and who had yielded himself to the blindness and brutality of his sin, that the ignorant brute should reprove him. And the event thus viewed, stands, as Lange shows, only with far greater significance and force than it can have upon his theory, as a perpetual rebuke to those who, with like hatred to the people of God, and with similar blindness, under the brutalizing power of sin, carry on their warfare against Christianity. Those who would see this record vindicated, and its real significance brought out fully, may consult Baumgarten : Commentary.—A. G.] [16]For the different explanations compare Winer, Article Joshua.
[17][The great Mosaic miracles were wrought indeed in connection with natural agencies or forces, but were none the less real miracles. The fact, that the storm was miraculous, does not meet the demands of the narrative of the arresting of the sun and moon. There are great difficulties, unquestionably, involved in such a miracle as this, but difficulties are not a matter of great weight, to any one who admits the miracle at all, and when therefore the question is merely one of the power of God. Keil, who holds strongly that if the passage in question is to be taken as a part of the historical narrative, we are not to be troubled by the difficulties supposed, contends with great ability, and as a mere exegetical question, that the passage must be regarded as a quotation from the poetical book of Jasher, which is introduced into the narrative, not as a historical statement, but as a poetical description of the great victory. See Keil : The book of Joshua. If, however, we may take the passage as historical, and then of course hold to the literal miracle, that the earth was stayed in its course by the hand of God, how grandly it brings out the fact, as Lange states it. “that heaven and earth are in connection with the people of kingdom.”—A.G.]
[18][That is, perhaps, the mystery of the ideal death or of the mode of transition to the higher life. See pp. 75, 76—A. G.]