practice of human sacrifice was in earlier times not unknown among either them or the Canaanites; and in their temples obscene idols and religious prostitution went together. Had Carthage conquered Rome it would have been a curse to human civilisation. That Christianity conquered the Roman Empire was a blessing to mankind. The difference between the blessing and the curse measures the importance of the work of the Hebrew prophets. The Old Testament, read aright, is the story of their work and its outcome. § 2 THE BEGINNING OF THE BIBLE: THE LAW The Books of the Old Testament To read the Old Testament aright we must know when, and by whom, its books were written. The first part of the Old Testament to be regarded as peculiarly sacred and inspired was "The Law," the first five books of the Bible. These books, as we all know, are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. In our Bibles they are, in their titles, ascribed to Moses. We begin with "the first book of Moses called Genesis." The Jews, in the time of Christ, also ascribed these books to Moses; but they did not then bear our modern titles. Genesis was denoted merely by its first words, "In the beginning." Until a century ago the belief lasted that Moses wrote practically the whole Pentateuch. There is now an almost complete agreement among scholars that it took its present form after the Exile of the Jews and before the return of Ezra, that is to say, between the years 600 B.C. and 450 B.C. The Law was probably promulgated by Ezra soon after he came to Jerusalem from Babylon, and was speedily deemed authoritative and sacred. Moreover, modern scholars are convinced that, in the Pentateuch, there is little that goes back to the time of Moses. It is, in its present form, the result of a series of religious reforma tions; and the whole framework was constructed by a school of Priestly writers in Babylonia during the Exile. These views differ so widely from those which were formerly accepted that many who have not weighed the evidence regard them as fanciful. The whole of the evidence can only be marshalled in an elaborate treatise; but a single important illustration may show its strength. Under the final system described in the Book of Leviticus all religious worship was concentrated at Jerusalem. There were no local altars or shrines where sacrifices could be offered to God. "If Moses had left such a system as a public code specially entrusted to the priests and leaders of the nation, that code must have influenced at least the élite of Israel." But the prophets before the Captivity know nothing of it. Even when Solomon built the Temple at Jerusalem, he did not conform to the law of Leviticus. The two brazen pillars which stood at the porch would have been forbidden by that law, for they were pagan emblems common in Canaanite and Phoenician religion. For centuries also the keepers of the sanctuary were uncircumcised foreigners and not "sons of Levi," as the law ordained. There is, in short, overwhelming proof that before the Exile the law of Leviticus was not merely disregarded: it was unknown. When such a result has been reached, the way is open for a right understanding of the Pentateuch. This understanding has been reached by an elaborate study of the literary styles of the various writers and groups of writers whose work survives; by paying attention to the use of critical words, such as those for "God"; by investigating the development of religious ritual and thought; and by minute antiquarian research. A language changes as the centuries go by: we cannot write like Swift or Addison, nor could they write like Shakespeare, nor Shakespeare like Chaucer. Of course, there is always some uncertainty in literary analysis; but the main outlines of the following sketch may be accepted with a large measure of confidence. Probably that part of the Old Testament which has the closest connection with Moses is the Book of the Covenant, preserved in Exodus, chapters 20-23. It contains, besides the Ten Commandments, "a few simple rules for worship, allowing freedom to meet God at many altars and giving no direction as to who shall perform the priestly service." There are also simple civil laws, in which justice and kindness are happily combined. The Priestly Writers A large part of the more interesting material in the Book of Genesis is due to two writers, whom scholars call J and E. These symbols stand for “Judæan” and “Ephraimite” respectively, and mean that they belonged to south and north Israel. J probably flourished about the middle of the ninth century B.C., and E somewhat less than a century later. “Of all Hebrew historians J is the most gifted and the most brilliant. He excels in the power of delineating life and character. In ease and grace his narratives are unsurpassed. He writes without effort, and without conscious art." To him we owe the story of Eden and the Fall, of Abraham's pleading for Sodom, of the wooing of Rebekah. E does not write so brilliantly as J. He has not the same felicity of expression or poetic vigour. To him is due the history of Joseph in Egypt. But the story of the selling of Joseph with its many inconsistencies is the result of a somewhat artless combination of narratives of J and E, which differed in that each assigned the blame of the transaction to ancestors of the other. The story of the Flood is similarly full of inconsistencies. Its present form results from combining a story of J with material due to a group of writers whom scholars call P. These men supplied the whole framework of the Pentateuch, and gave it its final form. They were priests, living in Babylonia during the Exile; conscientious, prosaic annalists. They describe with relish the different ceremonial institutions of the Hebrews. They take a consistent pleasure in chronological and other |