Companion to the Bible Part 8

1. A striking example of the superior accuracy of Jerome's independent version above his simple revision of the old Latin is the pa.s.sage Jer. 31:31-33 as compared with the quotation of the same, Heb. 8:8-10. In the former, where the translation is made immediately from the Hebrew, we read: "Behold the days shall come, saith the Lord, that I will make for the house of Israel and the house of Judah a new _covenant_ (_foedus_): not according to the _covenant_ (_pactum_) which I made with their fathers," etc. In the same pa.s.sage, as quoted in the epistle to the Hebrews, where we have only a revision of the old Latin, we read: "Behold the days shall come, saith the Lord, that I will accomplish for the house of Israel and for the house of Judah a new _testament_ (_testamentum_): not according to the _testament_ (_testamentum_) which I made for their fathers,"

etc.

3. The _unity_ of the Bible has its ground only in divine inspiration.

So far as human composition is concerned, both parts of it have a great variety of authors. The writers of the Old Testament, especially, lived in different, and some of them in very distant ages. They were widely separated from each other in native character and endowments, in education, and in their outward circ.u.mstances and position in life. It is of the highest importance that the student of Scripture not only know these facts, but ponder them long and carefully, till he fully understands their deep significance. He has been accustomed from childhood to see all the books of the Bible comprised within the covers of a single volume. He can hardly divest himself of the idea that their authors, if not exactly contemporary, must yet somehow have understood each other's views and plans, and acted in mutual concert. It is only by long contemplation that he is able to apprehend the true position which these writers held to each other, separated from each other, as they often were, by centuries of time, during which great changes took place in the social and political condition of the Hebrew people. Then, for the first time, he begins to discern, in the wonderful harmony that pervades the writings of the Old Testament, taken as a whole, the clear proofs of a superintending divine Spirit; and learns to refer this harmony to its true ground, that "holy men of G.o.d spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 2 Peter 1:21.

According to the received chronology, Moses wrote the book of Deuteronomy about 1451 B.C, and Malachi, the last of the prophets, wrote about 397 B.C. The difference, then, between the time of these two authors is 1054 years; or say, in round numbers, about 1000 years. From Moses to the anointing of David is, according to the shorter chronology, 388 years; and from Moses to the composition of the books of Kings, nearly nine centuries. From Joel to Malachi we must a.s.sume a period of about 400 years, within which s.p.a.ce our present prophetical books were composed. The earlier of the psalms written by David differ in time from those composed at the close of the captivity by about 530 years. Let the reader who has been in the habit of pa.s.sing from one book of the Bible to another, as if both belonged to the same age, ponder well the meaning of these figures. They confirm the arguments already adduced (ch. 12, No. 4) that the unity of Scripture has its ground not in human concert, but in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

4. The books of the Old Testament have been differently cla.s.sified and arranged. But in no system of distribution has the chronological order been strictly observed.

(A.) _The Jewish cla.s.sification and arrangement_ is as follows. They first distribute the books of the Old Testament into three great cla.s.ses, the _Law_, the _Prophets_, and the _Writings_; that is, the canonical writings not included in the other two divisions--the _Hagiographa_ (_holy writings_), as they are commonly designated at the present day.

The _Law_ is then subdivided into five books, as we now have them; for the names of which see the introduction to the Pentateuch. Chap. 19, No.

1.

With reference to this five-fold division of the Law, the Rabbins call it _the five-fifths of the Law_, each book being reckoned as one-fifth.

This term answers to the word _Pentateuch_, that is, _the five-fold book_. Chap. 9, beginning.

The _second_ great cla.s.s consists of the so-called _Prophets_. These are first divided into the _former_ and the _latter_ Prophets. The former Prophets consist of the historical books: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, in the order named. The latter comprise the prophetical books in the stricter sense of the word, with the exception of Daniel; and these are subdivided into the _greater_ and the _less_. The greater Prophets are Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. The less are the twelve Minor Prophets from Hosea to Malachi, in the same order as that followed in our English version.

The remaining books of the Old Testament const.i.tute the _third_ great cla.s.s, under the name of _Writings_, _Hagiographa_; and they are commonly arranged in the following order: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles. These books naturally fall into three groups.

_First_, devotional and didactic--the three so-called poetical books of Psalms, Proverbs, and Job, which have in Hebrew a stricter rhythm; _secondly_, the five rolls--Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther; so called because written on five separate rolls for use in the synagogue service on the occasion of special festivals; _thirdly_, books that are chiefly of an historical character--Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles.

The Talmud arranges the Greater Prophets thus: Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah. Of the Hagiographa, various other arrangements, Masoretic and Talmudic, are given, which it is not necessary here to specify.

That the writing of sacred history belonged to the prophetical office is clear from various scriptural notices. Compare 1 Chron. 29:29; 2 Chron, 9:29; 12:15; 20:34; 26:22; 32:32, 33:19.

The narrative concerning Sennacherib inserted in the second book of Kings (18:13-19:37) is manifestly from the pen of Isaiah. The Rabbins rightly ascribed the composition of the historical as well as the other books which compose, according to their division, the _Prophets_, to prophetical men. But the grounds upon which they separated from these certain books, as, for example, Daniel, and placed them among the Hagiographa, are not clear. Some of the rabbins made the distinction to lie in the _degree of inspiration_, Moses enjoying it in the fullest measure (Numb. 12:6-8), the authors of the books which are cla.s.sed among the prophets having _the Spirit of prophecy_, and those of the books belonging to the Hagiographa simply _the Holy Spirit_ (the Holy Spirit, but not in the degree necessary for prophetic revelation). But this distinction is untenable. Who had the spirit of prophecy if not Daniel? In the opinion of some modern scholars, they reckoned to the Prophets only books written by men who were prophets in the stricter sense of the term; that is, men trained to the prophetical office, and exercising it as their profession; while the writings of men like David, Solomon, and Daniel, who though they had the Spirit of prophecy, were yet in their office not prophets, but rulers and statesmen, were a.s.signed to the Hagiographa. But this is inconsistent with the fact that the book of Ruth (which in respect to authors.h.i.+p must go with that of Judges) and also the book of Lamentations are in the Hagiographa. Others, with more probability, find the main ground of cla.s.sification in the character of the writings themselves--the _Law_, as the foundation of the Theocracy; the _Prophets_, that record the history of the Theocracy and make prophetic revelations concerning it; the sacred _Writings_, occupied with the personal appropriation of the truths of revelation, and as such exhibiting the religious life of the covenant people in its inward and outward form. But even here we do not find perfect consistency.

(B.) _Cla.s.sification of the Greek Version of the Seventy._ The ancient Greek version of the Old Testament, called the _Septuagint_ (Latin _Septuaginta_, _seventy_), because, according to Jewish tradition, it was the work of seventy men, interweaves the _apocryphal_ with the _canonical_ books. Its arrangement is as follows, the apocryphal books and parts of books being indicated by italic letters. We follow the edition of Van Ess from the Vatican ma.n.u.script, which omits the apocryphal Prayer of Mana.s.seh:

1. Genesis.

2. Exodus.

3. Leviticus.

4. Numbers.

5. Deuteronomy.

6. Joshua.

7. Judges.

8. Ruth.

9. 1 Kings (our 1 Samuel).

10. 2 Kings (our 2 Samuel).

11. 3 Kings (our 1 Kings).

12. 4 Kings (our 2 Kings).

13. 1 Chronicles.

14. 2 Chronicles.

15. 1 _Esdras_.

16. 2 Esdras (our Ezra).

17. Nehemiah.

18. _Tobit_.

19. _Judith_.

20. Esther, _with apocryphal additions_.

21. Job.

22. Psalms.

23. Proverbs.

24. Ecclesiastes.

25. Canticles.

26. _Wisdom of Solomon_.

27. _Ecclesiasticus_.

28. Hosea.

29. Amos.

30. Micah.

31. Joel.

32. Obadiah.

33. Jonah.

34. Nahum.

35. Habakkuk.

36. Zephaniah.

37. Haggai.

38. Zechariah.

39. Malachi.

40. Isaiah.

41. Jeremiah.

42. _Baruch_.

43. Lamentations.

44. _Epistle of Jeremiah_.

45. Ezekiel.

46. Daniel, _with apocryphal additions_--_Song of the Three Children in the Furnace, History of Susannah, Story of Bel and the Dragon_.

47. 1 _Maccabees_.

48. 2 _Maccabees_.

49. 3 _Maccabees_.

The arrangement of books in the Latin _Vulgate_ agrees with that of the Septuagint with the following exceptions: the two canonical books of Ezra and Nehemiah appear together, as in the Septuagint, but under the t.i.tles of 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras. Next follow the two apocryphal books of Esdras (the latter wanting in the Septuagint), under the t.i.tles of 3 Esdras and 4 Esdras. The Greater Prophets, with Lamentations after Jeremiah and Daniel after Ezekiel, are inserted before the twelve Minor Prophets, which last stand in the order followed in our version.

Throwing out of account, therefore, the apocryphal books, the order of the Vulgate is that followed by our English Bible.

From the above it is manifest that in neither the Hebrew, the Greek, nor the Latin arrangement is the _order of time_ strictly followed. The Hebrew, for example, to say nothing of the Psalms, which were written in different ages, throws into the Hagiographa Ruth, Job, Proverbs, etc., which are older than any of the so-called latter prophets. The Hebrew places the books of Kings, and the Greek and Latin not only these, but also the books of Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, before all the proper prophetical books, though it is well known that several of these were much earlier. In the Hebrew arrangement, the three Greater Prophets precede all the Minor Prophets, though several of the latter were earlier than Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and even Isaiah. In the Greek, on the contrary, Isaiah and Jeremiah, as well as Ezekiel, are placed after even the prophets of the Restoration. The biblical student should carefully remember these facts. He must not hastily a.s.sume that the books of the Old Testament stand in the order in which they were written, but must determine the age of each for itself, according to the best light that he can obtain. See further in the introductions to the several books.

5. In high antiquity, the _continuous mode of writing_, (_scriptio continua_,) without divisions between the words, was common. We cannot indeed infer, from the continuous writing of the oldest ma.n.u.scripts of the New Testament, that the same method prevailed in the ancient Hebrew writing; for in very ancient inscriptions and ma.n.u.scripts, belonging to different languages, the words are distinguished from each other more or less completely by points. Yet the neglect of these is common. In most Greek and Phoenician inscriptions there is no division of words. The translators of the Septuagint may be reasonably supposed to have employed the best ma.n.u.scripts at their command. Yet their version shows that in these the words were either not separated at all, or only partially. The complete separation of words by intervening s.p.a.ces did not take place till after the introduction of the _a.s.syrian_, or _square_ character. Ch. 14, No. 2. With the separation is connected the use of the so-called _final_ letters, that is, forms of certain letters employed exclusively at the ends of words.

6. A very _ancient Jewish division_ of the sacred text is into _open_ and _closed_ sections. The former, which are the larger of the two, are so named because in the Hebrew ma.n.u.scripts, and in some printed editions, the remainder of the line at their close is left _open_, the next section beginning with a new line. The _closed_ sections, on the contrary, are separated from each other only by a s.p.a.ce in the middle of a line--_shut in_ on either hand. The origin of these sections is obscure. They answer in a general way to our sections and paragraphs, and are older than the Talmud, which contains several references to them, belonging at least to the earliest time when the sacred books were read in public. Davidson, Biblical Criticism, vol. 1, ch. 5.

Different from these, and later in their origin, are the _larger sections of the Law_, called _Pars.h.i.+yoth_ (from the singular _Parashah_, _section_), which have exclusive reference to the reading of the Law in the synagogue service. These are fifty-four in number, one for each Sabbath of the Jewish intercalary year, while on common years two of the smaller sections are united. Corresponding to these sections of the Law are sections from the _Prophets_, (the former and latter, according to the Jewish cla.s.sification,) called _Haphtaroth_, embracing, however, only selections from the prophets, and not the whole, as do the sections of the Law. The Jewish tradition is that this custom was first introduced during the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, (about 167 B.C.,) because the reading of the Law had been prohibited by him. But this account of the matter is doubted by many.

In the Pentateuch, the smaller sections called open and closed are indicated, the former by the Hebrew letter [Hebrew: P], that is, P, the initial letter of the word _pethuhah_, _open_; the latter by the Hebrew letter [Hebrew: S]=S, the first letter of the word _sethumah_, _closed_. The larger sections, arranged for the reading of the Law in the synagogues, are indicated by three [Hebrew: P]'s or three [Hebrew: S]'s, according as they coincide at their beginning with an open or closed section. In the other portions of the sacred text these divisions are simply indicated by the appropriate s.p.a.ces. But some printed editions do not observe the distinction between the two in respect to s.p.a.ce, so that the open and closed sections are confounded with each other.

7. _Chapters and Verses._ The division of the _poetical_ books and pa.s.sages of the Old Testament into separate _lines_, Hebrew, _pesukim_, (answering in general to our half-verses, sometimes to the third of a verse,) is very ancient, if not primitive. It is found in the poetical pa.s.sages of the Law and the historical books, (Exod., ch. 15; Deut., ch.

32; Judges, ch. 5; 2 Sam. ch. 22,) and belonged originally to the three books of Job, Psalms, and Proverbs, which alone the Hebrews reckon as poetical. See below, Ch. 21, No. 1. The division of the whole Old Testament into _verses_, (likewise called by the Hebrews _pesukim_,) is also the work of Jewish scholars. It existed in its completeness in the ninth century, and must have had its origin much earlier in the necessity that grew out of the public reading and interpretation of the sacred books in the synagogue service.

In the Hebrew text the verses are distinguished by two points called _soph-pasuk_ (:), except in the synagogue rolls, where, according to ancient usage, this mark of distinction is omitted.

The present division into _chapters_ is much later, and is the work of Christian scholars. By some it is ascribed to Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, who died in 1227; by others to Cardinal Hugo de St. Cher of the same century. The Jews transferred it from the Latin Vulgate to the Hebrew text. There are, however, some discrepancies between the chapters of the Hebrew text and those of the Vulgate and our English version.