PREFACE.

IN publishing these Lectures there are two remarks which I ought at once to make, because they may serve to obviate much criticism which will have no relation to the objects which I have had in view.

1. By Exegesis I always mean the explanation of the immediate and primary sense of the sacred writings. If I were treating the subject from an entirely different point of view it would be easy to show that much of the material which has furnished forth many hundreds of commentaries remains practically unchanged from early days. But this material is mainly homiletic. It aims almost exclusively at moral and spiritual edification. In such practical instruction the writings of the Fathers and the Schoolmen abound, and it is often of the highest intrinsic value even when it has but a slender connexion with the text on which it is founded. When I speak of Scriptural interpretation I am using the phrase in its narrower and more limited meaning.

2. It is obvious that within the compass of Eight Lectures an exhaustive treatment of so wide a subject would be impossible. To write a full history of Exegesis would require a space of many volumes. I here only profess to deal

with the chief epochs in the progress of Biblical science, and my endeavour has been to give some account, however brief, of those who caused the chief moments of fresh impulse to the methods of interpretation. Hence, there have been many eminent commentators whose names do not occur in the following pages because their writings produced no change in the dominant conceptions. The remark applies especially to the great Romanist commentators since the Reformation, such as Vatablus († 1547), Maldonatus († 1583), Estius († 1613), Cornelius à Lapide († 1657), Martianay († 1717), Calmet († 1757), and others. I should be the last person to depreciate their conspicuous merits.1 In any complete History of Exegesis the names of these great and learned writers would of course find an honoured place. I have not been able to touch upon their labours partly from want of space, but chiefly because I only profess to furnish some outline of the epoch-making events of Scriptural study.

There does not exist in any language a complete History of Exegesis. Large materials for such a task are collected in such works as the Isagoge of Buddeus (1730), Schröck's Kirchengeschichte (1768-1812), Rosenmüller's Historia Interpretationis (1795-1814), Meyer's Geschichte der Schrifterklärung (1803), Klausen's Hermeneutik des Neuen Testaments (translated from the Danish 1841), Diestel's Geschichte des Alten Testamentes (1869), Reuss' Die Geschichte der Heiligen Schriften (1874), Merx's Die Prophetie des Joel und ihre Ausleger (1879), and others which will be found mentioned in the appended Bibliography. Much information on parts of the subject may also be derived from the various Histories

1 For some account of these Commentators, see Klausen, Hermeneutik (Germ. Tr. 1841), pp. 249-252. Werner, Gesch. d. Kath. Theol. 1866. 2 I give the dates of the editions which I have myself used.

of Grätz, Jost, Neander, Gieseler, Böhringer, Dorner, Milman, and others. But the entire history has never been completely and satisfactorily written, and it would furnish worthy occupation for a lifetime of study. If I have sometimes wearied the reader with too many references I have done so in the hope that they might prove useful to some student who may hereafter undertake a task so interesting and so instructive.

In writing these sketches of the History of Biblical Interpretation I have never forgotten that the Bampton Lectures are meant to be apologetic. My sole desire has been to defend the cause of Christianity by furthering the interests of truth. So far as former methods of exegesis have been mistaken they have been also perilous. A recognition of past errors can hardly fail to help us in disencumbering from fatal impediments the religious progress of the future.

I have desired to carry out the purposes of the Founder in

three ways.

First, by drawing attention to the inevitable change in the conditions of criticism which has been necessitated alike by the experience of the Christian Church and by that advance in knowledge which is nothing less than a new revelation of the ways and works of God.

Secondly, by showing that there is in the final and eternal teachings of Scripture a grandeur, which, in all ages, however learned or however ignorant, has secured for them a transcendent authority. A Book less sacred would have been discredited by the dangerous uses to which it has often been perverted; but no aberrations of interpreters have been suffered to weaken, much less to abrogate, the essential revelation which has exercised from the first, and

will" to the last syllable of recorded time" continue to

2de dem om barriers But we cannot meet these

Le Bible is a mere word-book, as a is bones is an even plane of orton, or emphasis, or light, or

The mistence of mork and other dificulties in

De Bible has been fully reengnised in all ages, and it is certain that they sa no Luger be met by such methods as were devised by Flo, or Origen, or Aquinas, or Calovius. Fut they vanish before the radical change of attitude which has taught us to regard the Bible as the record of a progressive revelation divinely adapted to the hard heart, the dull understanding, and the slow development of mankind. They are fatal to untenable theories of inspiration whether Rabbinic or Scholastic, but they are powerless against the clearer conceptions which we have neither invented nor discovered, but which have been opened to us by the teach1 Contributions of Science to Christianity, Expositor, Feb. 1885.