Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/652

Rh      HE word, which in English, as in Mediaeval Latin, is treated as a singular noun, is in its original Greek form a plural. ra /3i/?Ata, the (sacred) boolcs, correctly expressing the fact that the sacred writings of Christendom are made up of a number of independent records, which set before us the gradual development of the religion of revelation. The origin of each of these records forms a distinct critical problem ; and for the discussion of these questions of detail the reader is referred to the articles on separate Biblical books. The present article seeks to give a general account of the historical and literary conditions under which the unique literature of the Old and New Testaments sprang up, and of the way in which the Biblical books were brought together in a canonical collection and handed down from age to age. The Biblical development is divided into two great periods by the manifestation and historical work of Christ. In its pre-Christian stage the religion of revelation is represented as a covenant between the spiritual God and His chosen people the Hebrews. In accordance with this and in allusion to Jer. xxxi. 31, Jesus speaks of the new dispensation founded in His death as a new covenant (1 Cor. xi. 25). Hence, as early as the 2d century of our era the two great i divisions of the Bible were known as the books of the Old and of the New Covenant respectively. Among Latin- speaking Christians the Greek word for covenant was often incorrectly rendered testament, and thus Western Christendom still uses the names of the Old and New Testaments.

.—Struggle and Progress of Spiritual Religion. Priests, Prophets, &c.—The pre-Christian age of the Biblical religion falls into a period of religious produc tivity and a subsequent period of stagnation and mainly conservative traditions. The period of productivity is also a period of contest, during which the spiritual principles of the religion of revelation were involved in continual struggle with polytheistic nature-worship on the one hand, and, on the other hand, with an unspiritual conception of Jehovah as a God whose interest in Israel and care for His sanctuary were independent of moral conditions. In this long struggle, which began with the foundation of the theocracy in the work of Moses, and did not issue in con clusive victory until the time of Ezra, the spiritual faith was compelled to show constant powers of new develop ment, working out into ever clearer form the latent con trasts between true and false religion, proving itself fitter than any other belief to supply all the religious needs of the people, and, above all, finding its evidence in the long providential history in which, from the great deliverance of the Exodus down to the Captivity and the Eestoration, the reality of Jehovah s kingship over Israel, of His redeeming love, and of His moral government, were vindi cated by the most indisputable proofs. As it was only the deliverance from Egypt and the theocratic covenant ot Sinai that bound the Hebrew tribes into national unity. ihe worship of Jehovah was always acknowledged as the national religion of Israel But from Joshua to Samuel national feeling was far weaker than tribal jealousy; and in the political disintegration of the people the religion of Jehovah seemed ready to be lost in local superstitions. During this period the chief centre of monotheism was the sanctuary and priesthood of the ark ; and it was from the priestly circle that Samuel arose to reunite the nation by recalling it to the religion of Jehovah, and thus to prepare the way for the splendid age of David and Solomon. But though Samuel was by education a priest, it was not as a priest, but as a prophet that he accomplished this work In all ages a priesthood is conservative, not creative ; and it was only as a growing and creative power that the still undeveloped spiritual religion could live. While it was the business of the priest faithfully to preserve religious traditions already acknowledged as true and venerable, the characteristic of the prophet is a faculty of spiritual intui tion, not gained by human reason, but coming to him as a word from God himself, wherein he apprehends religious truth in a new light, as bearing in a way not manifest to other men on the practical necessities, the burning questions of the present. Unlike the priesthood, the prophets never formed a regular guild. It was an axiom that the gift of prophecy was bestowed by the inward and immediate call of Jehovah. But from the time of Samuel we find a regular succession of prophets working out the spiritual problems of the national faith with ever increasing clearness, and gathering round them, sometimes in regularly formed com munities, a circle of disciples and sympathizers which, though never, perhaps, numerically considerable, embraced the names of David and other leaders of Hebrew history, and impressed the stamp of prophetic influence on every part of the national life. From this time the priests hold only the second place in the history of the Old Testament religion ; sometimes they even appear as the opponents of the prophetic party, whose progressive ideas are distasteful to their natural conservatism and aristocratic instincts. But on the whole, the more enlightened ministers of the central sanctuary continued to share with the prophets the task of upholding a lofty religious tradition, and not unfre- quently both characters were united in one person. It was, in fact, only through the priests that the ideas of the prophets could receive public sanction in the ordinances of religion, as it was only through rulers like David, or Hezc- kiah, or Jehu, that they could influence the political conduct of affairs.

A just insight into the work of the prophetic party in Fal Israel was long rendered difficult by traditional prejudices, vie On the one hand the predictive element in prophecy P ro received undue prominence, and withdrew attention from the influence of the prophets on the religious life of their own time ; while, on the other hand, it was assumed, in accordance with Jewish notions, that all the ordinances, and almost, if not quite, all the doctrines of the Jewish church in the post-canonical period, existed from the earliest days of the theocracy. The prophets, therefore, were conceived partly as inspired preachers of old truths, partly as pre dicting future events, but not as leaders of a great develop ment, in which the religious ordinances as well as the religious beliefs of the Old Covenant advanced from a relatively crude and imperfect to a relatively mature and adequate form.

The proof that this latter view, and not the traditional conception, is alone true to history depends on a variety of arguments which cannot here be reproduced. That the religious ideas of the Old Testament were in a state of growth during the whole prophetic period became manifest as soon as the laws of grammatico-historical exegesis were fairly applied to the Hebrew Scriptures. That the sacred ordinances were subject to variation was less readily The admitted, because the admission involved a change of view as to the authorship of the Pentateuch ; but here also the facts are decisive. For example, the law in Exod. xx. 24, ff., contemplates the worship of Jehovah on other altars than that of the central sanctuary (cf. Deut. xxxiii. 19). This practice, accordingly, was followed by Samuel, and was fully approved by Elijah (1 Kings xix. 1 4). But the worship 