Page:A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi and Jonah.djvu/60

28 that the combined works of the two prophets once had a chronological arrangement, is mistaken, and, second, Budde has made it pretty clear that the narrative portions of Zc. 1–8, in their present form, were not written by the author of the prophecies. In fact, it is possible to go still farther and say that, if Budde is correct in his analysis, Rothstein's less definite form of this hypothesis also becomes untenable, the difference between the narrative portions of the books of Haggai and Zechariah being so marked that they cannot all be attributed to any single author. While, therefore, it is necessary to admit that the book of Haggai is his only in the sense that it contains his extant prophecies, it is equally necessary to insist that it is, and was intended to be, a separate literary production.

The book is so brief that it seems almost ridiculous to suspect its unity. Yet some have not only raised the question, whether all the prophecies it contains are correctly attributed to Haggai, but actually found reasons for answering it in the negative. The most ambitious of these critics is André, who claims (24 ff.) to have shown that 2$10–19$ is an interpolation, being, in fact, a prophecy delivered by an unknown person on the twenty-fourth of the ninth month, not of the second, but of the first, year of the reign of Darius. The following is an outline of his argument for this contention: 1. The passage interrupts the development of the preceding discourse, the conclusion of which is found in vv.$21–23$. 2. The point of view in this passage is different from that of the rest of the book. 3. This message is addressed to Haggai, not, like the others, to the leaders and the people through him. 4. There are palpable contradictions between it and other portions of the book. 5. The vocabulary of these verses is different from that of the rest of the book. These statements, if they were all correct and relevant, would be conclusive against the genuineness of the passage in question. This, however, is not the case. In fact, in every instance either the allegation or the inference from it is mistaken. Thus, although 2$21$ repeats a clause from v.$6$, the fact that vv.$21 ff.$ are addressed to Zerubbabel alone makes it a distinct prophecy, which, moreover, could not have been attached immediately to