Samuel Ayres - The Expositor's Bible - Index

It is also maintained by many scholars that certain invaders of Palestine, the Habiri , who figure largely in these letters, are the Hebrews, although the period is at least a century earlier than the time of the so-called "Pharaohs of the Oppression and the Exodus."

In Palestine, at Lachish and Gezer, the explorers have unearthed the remains of the successive races which one after another ruled in the land.

In Babylonia, there has been quite recently a great "find" of the laws, official letters and other documents of Hammurabi, B. C. 2300, usually identified with the Amraphel of Genesis XIV, the contemporary of Abraham. These and other discoveries have led Paul Haupt, Winckler, Sayce, Fried. Delitzsch and other scholars to attribute to Babylon a predominant influence, social, political, and religious in the ancient East. Hence Fried. Delitzsch's famous lectures before the German Emperor, in which that distinguished Assyriologist treated the religion of Israel almost as an inferior offshoot from that of Babylon, and initiated a controversy which is still raging. These discoveries are so frequent and so extensive that there is little encouragement to anyone to attempt to write an adequate and comprehensive account of them. However complete it might be when written, fresh discoveries would probably come to hand even before it was published, and it would rapidly become more and more out of date. Nevertheless a full statement up to certain dates may be found in the works of the scholars mentioned above and others such as Hommel, Jastrow, Jensen, Budge, Zimmern, Flinders Petrie, etc.; in the proceedings and transactions of the various American, English, French, and German Exploration Societies; in the most recent commentaries and works on the History and Religion of Israel.

What is specially known in Germany as Archæology, viz., the study of manners and customs, has been brought up to date in two standard German works by Nowack and Benzinger, respectively.

We may briefly refer here to the rapid development in recent times of the science of Comparative Religion, to which amongst others, Prof. C. H. Toy, of Harvard, has rendered important services. A marked feature has been the tendency to emphasize the legends and ritual of savage tribes, and their survivals in the literature and services of more advanced religions. Attempts are made to ascertain from such data how religions in general, and any given religion in particular, have developed; and thus lay down principles by which to interpret the available information in any special case. In reference to this branch of learning Prof. Morris Jastrow of the University of Pennsylvania writes thus 9 9 The Study of Religion, p. 51. : "J. G. Frazer's great work more particularly, The Golden Bough , marks an epoch in the study of religious rites."

Many important additions have recently been made to the student's apparatus for the linguistic and textual study of the Old Testament. Numerous grammars, reading-books and lexicons of Assyrian and other Semitic languages have been published. In Hebrew itself a standard grammar has been provided by the translation of the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth editions Gesenius revised by Kautzsch. Dr. Solomon Mandelkern has published a new Concordance to the Hebrew Text of the Old Testament. A new standard edition of Gesenius Lexicon by Profs. Brown, Driver, and Briggs is being issued by the Clarendon Press.

Biblical Hebrew has also had light thrown on it by the discovery of the original Hebrew text of large portions of Ecclesiasticus . It was indeed maintained by Margoliouth that the documents discovered were a retranslation into Hebrew from Greek and other versions; but, after much controversy, the verdict of scholarship is in favor of the originality of the Hebrew text in these documents.

As regards the Septuagint: Prof. Swete has edited a small edition in three volumes with the readings of the most important manuscripts, together with a fourth volume containing the Introduction. A large edition which will give the same text 10 10 That of the "Vatican MS.," with its lacunæ supplied from the uncial MS. which occupies the next place in point of age and importance. "with an ample apparatus criticus intended to provide material for a critical determination of the text," is being prepared. Messrs. Hatch and Redpath have compiled a new Concordance to the Septuagint; but a modern grammar and lexicon are still "felt wants."

The progress of Biblical knowledge has necessitated the publication of new series of commentaries. In English there is the International Critical Commentary; 11 11 T. & T. Clark. Judges by Prof. G. F. Moore, Samuel by Prof. H. P. Smith, etc., etc., only four or five O. T. volumes published as yet. and some of the later volumes of the Cambridge Bible, e. g. , Prof. Driver's Daniel , are rather first-class commentaries for scholars than elementary works for general readers. In German there are Prof. Nowack's Handkommentar zum Alten Testament ; 12 12 Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen. Job by Prof. Budde, Psalms by Prof. Baethgen, Ezra , etc., etc., by Prof. Siegfried, etc. Prof. Karl Marti's Kurzer Handkommentar zum Alten Testament , 13 13 J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Freiburg, i. B. Genesis by Holzinger, Ezekiel by Bertholet, Proverbs by Wildeboer, etc., etc. and the Old Testament sections of Profs. Strack and Zöckler's Kurzgefaszter Kommentar . 14 14 Oskar Beck, Munich, Orelli on Isaiah and Jeremiah , etc., etc. Later on reference will be made to some volumes of these series.

In addition to the above works, there are others specially intended to show how criticism has divided up the books of the Old Testament into the various older documents from which they are believed to have been compiled. This analysis is shown in the German translation edited by Kautzsch by means of initials in the margin; Dr. Haupt's Sacred Books of the Old Testament (Hebrew text) and Polychrome Bible , 15 15 Genesis by C. J. Ball; Numbers by Prof. J. A. Paterson (Edinburgh), etc., etc. by means of colored backgrounds on which the text is printed; and in the Oxford Society of Historical Theology ; The Hexateuch 16 16 Edited by J. Estlin Carpenter and G. Harford Battersby. by means of parallel columns. The introduction to the last named work is the most complete popular statement of the grounds for the modern theory of the Pentateuch. Technical details and a formal contrast of the arguments for and against this theory may be found in the discussion between Profs. W. R. Harper and W. H. Green in Hebraica , 1888-90. Numerous Introductions to the Old Testament have expounded the current critical views, notably for English and American readers the successive editions of Prof. Driver's Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament .

Naturally these various works represent not merely the position of criticism and exegesis twenty years ago, but also the progress made since then. As regards the Historical Books critics have chiefly been engaged in the application of modern methods and principles which are now very generally accepted. Development has taken place in three directions. First, much labor has been given to the more exact distribution of the contents of the Hexateuch between the main documents used by its compilers, e. g. , Prof. B. W. Bacon's analysis of Exodus . Secondly, attempts have been made to divide up these main documents into still older documents from which they have been compiled. Steuernagel, for instance, regards Deuteronomy as a mosaic of paragraphs and clauses from earlier codes, and finds a criterion between different sources in the use, respectively, of the singular or the plural form of address. So far his views have not met with much acceptance. 17 17 For other examples of the analysis of the main documents into earlier works, see Gunkel's Genesis , the Polychrome Genesis , Joshua , and Prof. H. G. Mitchell's World Before Abraham , etc., etc. Thirdly, the theory has been very widely advocated that the historical books of Judges-I Kings are partly compiled from the documents used by the editors of the Hexateuch. 18 18 See the Polychrome Judges and Samuel . Gunkel's commentary on Genesis 19 19 German. is of special importance; it pleads for a fuller recognition of the indebtedness of Israel to the religions of its neighbors, and maintains that, as the stories of the Creation, the Fall, and the Flood were derived from Babylon, so the Patriarchal narratives were mostly borrowed from the Canaanites after the settlement of Israel in Palestine. The account of Joseph, however, is largely taken from Egyptian sources.