Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/270

Rh of good and bad, wise and absurd, and if men will maintain that God is their author, we must still apply to them the words which Ezekiel puts in his mouth: “I gave them statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live;” or say with Jeremiah, “I spake not unto your fathers in the day that I brought them up out of Egypt, concerning burnt-offerings, or sacrifices.”

The Hebrews divide the prophets into the earlier and the later: the first including the four historical works of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and the Kings; the second, the prophets properly so called, with the exception of Daniel, the three major, the twelve minor prophets.

No one knows the date or the author of any one of these books; they all contain historical matter of doubtful character, such as the miraculous passage of the Jordan; the destruction of Jericho; the standing still of the sun and moon at the command of Joshua; the story of Samson; the destruction of the Benjamites; the birth and calling of Samuel; the wonders wrought by the Ark; the story of Saul, David, and Goliah, the miraculous pestilence, of Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, and others. Of all these, perhaps the story of Samson is the most strikingly absurd,—a man of miraculous birth and miraculous strength, whose ability lay in his long hair, and which went from him when his locks were shorn off. When we read in Hesiod and elsewhere, the birth and exploits of Hercules,—who bears a resemblance to Samson in some respects, though vastly his superior on the whole—we refer the tale to human fancy in a low stage of civilization; a mind free from prejudice will do the same with the story of Samson. No one can reasonably contend that it requires a mind miraculously enlightened to produce such books as these of the early prophets. They belong to the