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68 which we require in a modern historian," etc. However, Canon Cheyne assures his readers that the books may still be regarded as "inspired"—in the sense that a good sermon is inspired. Most men will admit that the books are "inspired," though not from heaven.

Ruth, Esther, Tobit, and Judith (the two latter are received as canonical by the Church of Rome) may be classed together as a group of pious stories with no appreciable historical value. "The decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions," says Professor Sayce, "has finally destroyed all claim on the part of the books of Tobit and Judith to be considered as history;" and he extends the statement to the fragments of Susanna and Bel and the dragon. The Anglican Church is, therefore, to be congratulated on its exclusion of them from the canon, for they have certainly no ethical value. Ruth, according to Canon Cheyne, "is practically as imaginative as the book of Tobit;" it is of post-exilic composition. Esther is another work of pious fiction, which, at the most, may be founded on a semi-historical legend (the most Professor Sayce can claim). It was probably written by a Jew in the third century B.C., to whom the customs and names of the Persians loomed very indistinct through "the mists of antiquity" (Sayce). The name Esther itself (which has become, on account of the Biblical heroine, a favourite with Christian maidens) is really the great goddess of impurity, Istar (the Astarte of the Syrians, and Aphrodite of the Greeks). The name could not have been borne by a woman, except in combination. Mordecai, the name given to the devout Hebrew, means "devoted to Merodach," the Babylonian god.

The book of Job is now generally admitted to be, in its present form, post-exilic. Cheyne says it most probably belongs to the Persian period, and that it is due to a number of different authors. That it is not an historical narrative is, of course, conceded by all. Cheyne thinks it probably founded on one of the simple folk-stories, and Sayce is inclined to believe it was originally a genuine specimen of North Arabian or Edomite literature which passed into Jewish hands. When we come to the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes, says Cheyne, "the difficulties of theories of inspiration are still greater." The Song of Songs is, indeed, one of the most incongruous elements