Old-testament Sentence Examples

The spirit in the Old Testament is a refined material thing that may come or be poured out on men.

The Pentateuch (or Hexateuch) was finally completed in its present form at some time before 400 B.C. The latest parts of the Old Testament are the books of Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah (c. 330 B.C.), Ecclesiastes and Esther (3rd century) and Daniel, composed either in the 3rd century or according to some views as late as the time of Antiochus Epiphanes (c. 168 B.C.).

But Jesus further maintains that this view of the law as a whole, and the interpretation of the Sabbath law which it involves, can be historically justified from the Old Testament.

Here you find articles in the encyclopedia about people from the Old Testament.

In 1870 he was appointed one of the first members of the committee for the revision of the English version of the Old Testament.

The literature begins with, as it is almost entirely based upon, the Old Testament.

It is not to be supposed that all the contents of the Old Testament were immediately accepted as sacred, or that they were ever all regarded as being on the same level.

It began, as a method, with the Sopherim (though there are traces in the Old Testament itself), and was most developed among the Tannaim and Amoraim, rivalling even the study of halakhah.

The Old Testament was an immense religious asset to the early church.

It ceases to lay much stress upon coincidences between Old Testament predictions or " types " and events in Christ's career.

In 1501 Bishop Luke of Prague edited the first Protestant hymn-book; in 1502 he issued a catechism, which circulated in Switzerland and Germany and fired the catechetical zeal of Luther; in 1565 John Blahoslaw translated the New Testament into Bohemian; in1579-1593the Old Testament was added; and the whole, known as the Kralitz Bible, is used in Bohemia still.

The best instances of these ideas in the Old Testament are in Psalms 1.

Nowhere in the Old Testament does the doctrine taught by Amos of Yahweh's universal power and sovereignty 1 Viz.

The asp (Pethen, ×ֶּתֶן) is mentioned in various parts of the Old Testament.

When the curtain rises again we enter upon the historical traditions of the Old Testament.

In the light of contemporary monuments, archaeological evidence, the progress of scientific knowledge and the recognized methods of modern historical criticism, the representation of the origin of mankind and of the history of the Jews in the Old Testament can no longer be implicitly accepted.

On the other hand, criticism has given a deeper meaning to the Old Testament history, and has brought into relief the central truths which really are vital; it may be said to have replaced a divine account of man by man's account of the divine.

At an age when - on literary-critical grounds - the Old Testament writings were assuming their present form, it was possible to divide the immediately preceding centuries into three distinct periods.

At all events, two quite distinct views seem to underlie the opening books of the Old Testament.

There are external historical circumstances and internal literary features which unite to show that the application of the literary hypotheses of the Old Testament to the course of Israelite history is still incomplete, and they warn us that the intrinsic value of religious and didactic writings should not depend upon the accuracy of their history.'

The Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis, that the hierarchical law in its complete form in the Pentateuch stands at the close and not at the beginning of biblical history, that this mature Judaism was the fruit of the 5th century B.C. and not a divinely appointed institution at the exodus (nearly ten centuries previously), has won the recognition of almost all Old Testament scholars.

There is also an unmistakable development in the laws; and the priestly legislation, though ahead of both Ezekiel and Deuteronomy, not to mention still earlier usage, not only continues to undergo continual internal modification, but finds a further distinct development, in the way of definition and interpretation, outside the Old Testament - in the Talmud.

The Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis (§ 4) does not pretend to be complete in all its details and it is independent of its application to the historical criticism of the Old Testament.

But through the Priestly hands the Old Testament history passed, and their standpoint colours its records.

Yet it is impossible to recover with confidence or completeness the development of Hebrew history from the pages of the Old Testament alone.

External research constantly justifies the cautious attitude which has its logical basis in the internal conflicting character of the written traditions or in their divergence from ascertained facts; at the same time it has clearly shown that the internal study of the Old Testament has its limits.

Hence, in the absence of more complete external evidence one is obliged to recognize the limitations of Old Testament historical criticism, even though this recognition means that positive reconstructions are more precarious than negative conclusions.

The complexity of modern knowledge and the interrelation of its different branches are often insufficiently realized, and that by writers who differ widely in the application of such material as they use to their particular views of the manifold problems of the Old Testament.

It has been easy to confuse the study of the Old Testament in its relation to modern religious needs with the technical scientific study of the much edited remains of the literature of a small part of the ancient East.

The differences between the form of the written history and the conditions which prevailed have impressed themselves variously upon modern writers, and efforts have been made to recover from the Old Testament earlier forms more in accordance with the external evidence.

And if the work of criticism has brought a fuller appreciation of the value of these facts, the debt which is owed to the Jews is enhanced when one proceeds to realize the immense difficulties against which those who transmitted the Old Testament had to contend in the period of Greek domination.

The growth of the Old Testament into its present form, and its preservation despite hostile forces, are the two remarkable phenomena which most arrest the attention of the historian; it is for the theologian to interpret their bearing upon the history of religious thought.

Of great value are a short notice in the fragments of Berossus and another in the Old Testament.

He was a member of the Old Testament Revision Company in 1874-1884; deputy professor of comparative philology in Oxford 1876-1890; Hibbert Lecturer 1887; Gifford Lecturer 1900-1902.

At the same time he endeavoured to acquire a knowledge of Hebrew, in order to be able to read the Old Testament in the original.

He commenced his great work on the textual criticism of the Scriptures; and at the instigation of his friend Ambrosius, who provided him with the necessary amanuenses, he published his commentaries on the Old Testament and his dogmatic investigations.

Origen's textual studies on the Old Testament were undertaken partly in order to improve the manuscript tradition, and partly for apologetic reasons, to clear up the relation between the LXX and the original Hebrew text.

In the Mandaean view the Old Testament saints are false prophets; such as Abraham, who arose six thousand years after NU (Noah) during the reign of the sun, Misha (Moses), in whose time the true religion was professed by the Egyptians, and Shlimun (Solomon) bar Davith, the lord of the demons.

The service opened with a procession of Old Testament characters, prophets, patriarchs and kings, together with heathen prophets, including Virgil, the chief figure being Balaam on his ass.

In addition to the books mentioned above he published a number of books which had a remarkable circulation in England and America, such as Speaking to the Heart (1862); The Way to Life (1862); Man and the Gospel (1865); The Angel's Song (1865); The Parables (1866); Our Father's Business (1867); Out of Harness (1867); Early Piety (1868); Studies of Character from the Old Testament (1868-1870); Sundays Abroad (1871).

On the other hand, he came to look upon the Old Testament prophets as approved by their antiquity, sanctity, mystery and prophecies to be interpreters of the truth.

The mosaics of the atrium date from 1200 to 1300; the subjects are taken from Old Testament story.

The interior, a basilica with nave and two aisles, contains columns said to come from a temple of Minerva and a fine mosaic pavement of 1166, with interesting representations of the months, Old Testament subjects, &c. It has a crypt supported by forty-two marble columns.

Besides the New Testament, the Pentateuch and Jonah, it is believed that he finished in prison the section of the Old Testament extending from Joshua to Chronicles.

The supernatural element that is prominent in the Old Testament is God's providential guidance and guardianship of His people, and His teaching and training of them by His prophets.

This usage is not Hebrew; it is not found either in the Old Testament or in the later (Mishnaic)Hebrew.

In addition to the Old Testament the Therapeutae had books by the founders of their sect on the allegorical method of interpreting Scripture.

The cities of Gilead expressly mentioned in the Old Testament are Ramoth, Jabesh and Jazer.

In the Old Testament it is regularly written with the article, i.e.

The Old Testament depicts the history of the people as a series of acts of apostasy alternating with subsequent penitence and return to Yahweh, and the question whether this gives effect to actual conditions depends upon the precise character of the elements of Yahweh worship brought by the Israelites into Palestine.

But from a comparison of prophetic passages of the Old Testament learned apocalyptic writers came to the conclusion that a distinction must be drawn between the earthly appearance of the Messiah and the appearance of God Himself amongst His people and in the Gentile world for the final judgment.

Dionysius of Alexandria had already referred a Messianic prediction of the Old Testament to the emperor Gallienus.

The cycle of Old Testament subjects is equally limited.

This is the last historical event related in the Old Testament of Bashan.

He quotes all the books of the Old Testament except Ruth and the Song of Solomon, and amongst the sacred writings of the Old Testament he evidently included the book of Tobit, the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus.

According to the Old Testament account the Assyrian king even advanced against Israel, and only withdrew in consideration of a tribute amounting to about f400,000.

The traditional history of Ammon as related in the Old Testament is not free from obscurity, due to the uncertain date of the various references and to the doubt whether the individual details belong to the particular period to which each is ascribed.

The word is commonly used in the Alexandrian Greek translation of the Old Testament (Septuagint) for the Hebrew word (ger) which is derived from a root (gur) denoting to sojourn.

The other objections, however, remain, and have provoked a variety of theories from Old Testament scholars, of which three call for special notice.

The closing verses strike that deep note of absolute dependence on God, which is the glory of the religion of the Old Testament and its chief contribution to the spirit of the Gospels.

This metal was known to the ancients, and is mentioned in the Old Testament.

Perowne was a good Hebrew scholar of the old type and sat on the Old Testament Revision Committee.

Already Wycliffe had declared that " whatever book is in the Old Testament besides these twentyfive (Hebrew) shall be set among the apocrypha, that is, without authority or belief."

Thus the Apocrypha Proper constitutes the surplusage of the Vulgate or Bible of the Roman Church over the Hebrew Old Testament.

Since this surplusage is in turn derived from the Septuagint, from which the old Latin version was translated, it thus follows that the difference between the Protestant and the Roman Catholic Old Testament is, roughly speaking, traceable to the difference between the Palestinian and the Alexandrian canons of the Old Testament.

The quotations from the Old Testament are made from the Massoretic text.

And the name of Javan is not found in any part of the Old Testament certainly older than Ezekiel.

Christians being released, in important particulars, from conformity to the Old Testament polity as a whole, a real difficulty attended the settlement of the limits and the immediate authority of the remainder, known vaguely as the moral law.

Marcionites, named by Clement of Alexandria Antitactae (revolters against the Demiurge) held the Old Testament economy to be throughout tainted by its source; but they are not accused of licentiousness.

Having studied theology at the university of Gottingen under Heinrich Ewald, he established himself there in 1870 as privat-docent for Old Testament history.

Wellhausen made his name famous by his critical investigations into Old Testament history and the composition of the Hexateuch, the uncompromising scientific attitude he adopted in testing its problems bringing him into antagonism with the older school of biblical interpreters.

Indeed it is at least equally probable that it was the recent translation of some of the poetical books of the Old Testament which fired him with a desire to translate his grandfather's book, and perhaps add the work of a member of the family to the Bible of the Egyptian Jews.

This theory, which he set forth with all his accustomed learning and force, is still accepted in many quarters, many other passages of the Old Testament being likewise assigned to the same date.

In the judgment of the present writer however, the results of Old Testament study (particularly in the Prophets) since Professor Robertson Smith's death have shown that this theory is untenable.

The received Syriac Bible or Vulgate (called the Peshitta or " simple " version from the 9th century onwards 4) contains all the canonical books of the Old Testament.

The Peshitta version of the Old Testament must have been originally made mainly by Jews, of whom we know there were colonies in Mesopotamia in the 2nd century.

Before passing to the special covering for the feet and head some further reference to the Old Testament usage may be made.

The promises of Old Testament prophets that the Gentiles would share in the blessing of the coming of Christ are also recalled, ii.

Eine Prophetenstimme aus der Gegenwart, in which, starting from texts in the Old Testament and assuming the tone of a prophet, he discussed topics of every kind.

This " bank " or kisad, together with the corresponding western bank of the Tigris (according to Hommel the modern Shatt el-Hai), gave its name to the land of Chesed, whence the Kasdim of the Old Testament.

The only ancient authority of value on Babylonian and Assyrian history is the Old Testament.

So far as the Old Testament goes, therefore, we gather that the Hittites were a considerable people, widely spread in Syria, in part subdued and to some extent assimilated by Israel, but in part out of reach.

We shall now consider (I.) Apocalyptic, its origin and general characteristics; (II.) Old Testament Apocalyptic; (III.) New Testament Apocalyptic.

He soon became the most popular teacher of Hebrew and of Old Testament introduction and exegesis in Germany; during his later years his lectures were attended by nearly five hundred students.

It is usually maintained that this work was written before the Old Testament poems. The arguments for this view are that the Heliand contains no allusion to any foregoing poetical treatment of the antecedent history, and that the Genesis fragments exhibit a higher degree of poetic skill.

His views on questions of Old Testament criticism were "advanced" in his own day; for on all the disputed points concerning the unity and authorship of the books of the Old Covenant he was opposed to received opinion.

The Old Testament references to Arabs were obscure.

This evidence is confirmed by (a) the canon of Theodore of Edessa (800) allowing metropolitans of China, India and other distant lands to send their reports to the catholikos every six years; (b) the edict of Wu Tsung destroying Buddhist monasteries and ordering 300 foreign priests to return to the secular life that the customs of the empire might be uniform; (c) two 9th-century Arab travellers, one of whom, Ibn Wahhab, discussed the contents of the Bible with the emperor; (d) the discovery in 1725 of a Syrian MS. containing hymns and a portion of the Old Testament.

But in the spring of 1824 he was recalled to Göttingen as repetent, or theological tutor, and in 1827 (the year of Eichhorn's death) he became professor extraordinarius in philosophy and lecturer in Old Testament exegesis.

Rather its contents came to him piecemeal and at various stages in his ministry as a Christian "prophet," extending over a period of years; and, like certain Old Testament prophets, he shows us how by his own experiences he became the medium of a divine message to his church and to God's " elect " people at large.

Generally speaking, Hermas's piety, especially in its language, adheres closely to Old Testament forms. But it is doubtful (pace Spitta and Volter, who assume a Jewish or a proselyte basis) whether this means more than that the Old Testament was still the Scriptures of the Church.

It was an attempt to provide a more accurate rendering of the Greek Bible than had hitherto existed in Syriac, and obtained recognition among the Monophysites until superseded by the still more literal renderings of the Old Testament by Paul of Tella and of the New Testament by Thomas of Harkel (both in 616-617), of which the latter at least was based on the work of Philoxenus.

Here you find articles in the encyclopedia on topics related to the Old Testament.

On the other Old Testament references to creation, and on the prophetic doctrine of creation, see Ency.

On the traces of dragon and serpent myths in the Old Testament and their significance, see Gunkel, Schopfung and Chaos (1895) - a pioneering work of the highest merit - and Ency.

Graf was one of the chief founders of Old Testament criticism.

In their origin they were designed to meet the needs of the unlearned among the people who had ceased to understand the Hebrew of the Old Testament.

But it is highly probable that this prohibition, in the case of the Targums, was mainly enforced with respect to those parts of the Old Testament which were read in the synagogal services, e.g.

Here he did most of his literary work and, throwing aside his unfinished plan of a translation from Origen's Hexaplar text, translated the Old Testament directly from the Hebrew, with the aid of Jewish scholars.

The story of Abraham is of greater value for the study of Old Testament theology than for the history of Israel.

Not many years ago it would have been accounted a heresy to suggest that the historical books of the Old Testament had conveyed to our minds estimates of Oriental history that suffered from this same defect; but to-day no one who is competent to speak with authority pretends to doubt that such is really the fact.

The case of the historical books of the Old Testament furnishes no exception.

From the standpoint of the historian even greater interest attaches to the records of the Assyrian and Babylonian kings when compared with the historical books of the Old Testament.

He sets his face against innovation in such matters as the accepted authorship of canonical writings, verbal inspiration, and the treatment of persons and events in the Old Testament as types of the New.

Here you find articles in the encyclopedia about places occuring in the Old Testament.

The critical studies of recent years have shown that most of the Old Testament prophetical books are composite.

The Manicheans' answer to such arguments was that miracles worked by Christ and the Apostles in the material world were only apparitional and not real, while those of the Old Testament were satanic.

Luther had meanwhile been concealed by his friends in the Wartburg, near Eisenach, where he busied himself with a new German translation of the New Testament, to be followed in a few years by the Old Testament.

The old tithe on grain shall continue to be paid, since that is established by the Old Testament.

Later he revised an existing French translation of both the New Testament (which appeared in 1523, almost contemporaneously with Luther's German version) and, two years later, the Old Testament.

The story is doubtless based on ancient traditions, current in various forms; the Old Testament references are not wholly consistant.

Speaking animals are a common feature of folk-lore; the only other case in the Old Testament is the serpent in Eden.

During his latter years he took great interest in the revision of the authorized version of the Bible, and was chairman of the revisers of the Old Testament.

After studying at Tubingen and Leipzig and travelling in Egypt and Syria, he entered the ministry of the Free Church of Scotland and was appointed professor of Old Testament subjects in the Free Church College at Glasgow 1892.

Among his works are The Book of Isaiah (2 vols., 1888-1890); The Book of the Twelve Prophets (2 vols., 1876-1877); Historical Geography of the Holy Land (1894); Jerusalem (2 vols., 1907); The Preaching of the Old Testament to the Age (1893); The Life of Henry Drummond (1898).

In the canonical Old Testament angels may inflict suffering as ministers of God, and Satan may act as accuser or tempter; but they appear as subordinate to God, fulfilling His will; and not as morally evil.

The Old Testament says nothing about the origin of angels; but the Book of Jubilees and the Slavonic Enoch describe their creation; and, according to Col.

He took part in revising the Dutch translation of the Old Testament in 1633, and after his death a book by him, called the Lyra Davidis, was published, which sought to explain the principles of Hebrew metre, and which created some controversy at the time, having been opposed by Louis Cappel.

In the following year he was called to the Freiburg chair of Oriental languages and Old Testament exegesis; to the duties of this post were added in 1793 those of the professorship of New Testament exegesis.

Christians have no standing in the Old Testament prophecies, and their talk of a resurrection that was only revealed to some of their own adherents is foolishness.

Returning to Heidelberg he became Privatdozent in theology in 1829, and in 1831 published his Begriff der Kritik am Allen Testamente praktisch erartert, a study of Old Testament criticism in which he explained the critical principles of the grammatico-historical school, and his Des Propheten Jonas Orakel uber Moab, an exposition of the 1 5th and 16th chapters of the book of Isaiah attributed by him to the prophet Jonah mentioned in 2 Kings xiv.

This opinion is not improbable, as the earlier books of the Old Testament cannot have been unknown in his age; and the critical analysis of the canonical book of Kings is advanced enough to enable us to say that in some of the parallel passages the chronicler uses words which were not written in the annals but by one of the compilers of Kings himself.

Biblical References to the Adam-story.-It is remarkable how little influence the Adam-story has had on the earlier parts of the Old Testament.

It is now generally recognized in histories of the Old Testament that a proper estimate of Solomon's reign cannot start from narratives which represent the views of Deuteronomic writers, although, in so far as late narratives may rest upon older material more in accordance with the circumstances of their age, attempts are made to present reconstructions from a combination of various elements.

Thus both are hortatory writings, the one argumentative in form, the other prophetic, after the manner of later Old Testament prophets whose messages came in visions and similitudes.

The Old Testament presents very varied teaching on this subject without attempting to co-ordinate its doctrines in a harmonious system.

The Old Testament has no theory of sacrifice; in connexion with sin the sacrifice was popularly regarded as payment of penalty or compensation.

The Old Testament nowhere explains why this importance is attached to the blood, but the passage is often held to mean that the life of the victim represented the forfeited life of the offerer.

The idea of vicarious atonement appears in the Old Testament in different forms. The nation suffers for the sin of the individual; 8 and the individual for the sin of his kinsfolk 7 or of the nation.

St Paul's teaching connects with the Jewish doctrine of vicarious suffering, represented in the Old Testament by Is.

The idea that presbyters and bishops are priests and the successors of the Old Testament priesthood first appears in full force in the writings of Cyprian, and here it is not the notion of priestly mediation but that of priestly power which is insisted on.

Becoming a Congregationalist, he accepted in 1842 the chair of biblical criticism, literature and oriental languages at the Lancashire Independent College at Manchester; but he was obliged to resign in 1857, being brought into collision with the college authorities by the publication of an introduction to the Old Testament entitled The Text of the Old Testament, and the Interpretation of the Bible, written for a new edition of Horne's Introduction to the Sacred Scripture.

Davidson was a member of the Old Testament Revision Committee.

We shall begin by giving a general account of the historical and literary conditions under which the unique literature of the Old Testament sprang up, of the stages by which it gradually reached its present form, and (so far as this is possible) of the way in which the Biblical books were brought together in a.

There exists no formal historical account of the formation of the Old Testament canon.

The first traces of the idea current in modern times that the canon of the Old Testament was closed by Ezra are found in the 13th century A.D.

The statement just quoted, however, that in the Jewish canon the books of the Old Testament are divided into three parts, though the arrangement is wrongly referred to Ezra, is in itself both correct and important.

The expansion of the Talmudic twenty-four to the thirty-nine Old Testament books of the English Bible is effected by reckoning the Minor Prophets one by one, by separating Ezra from Nehemiah, and by subdividing the long books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles.

The influence of Deuteronomy upon subsequent books of the Old Testament is very perceptible.

The style of Deuteronomy, when once it had been formed, lent itself readily to imitation; and thus a school of writers, imbued with its spirit, and using its expressions, quickly arose, who have left their mark upon many parts of the Old Testament.

If only upon linguistic grounds - for the Hebrew of the book resembles often that of the Mishnah more than the ordinary Hebrew of the Old Testament - Ecclesiastes must be one of the latest books in the Hebrew canon.

It is probable that the present text became fixed as early as the 2nd century A.D., but even this earlier date leaves a long interval between the original autographs of the Old Testament writers and our present text.

In dealing, therefore, with the textual criticism of the Old Testament it is necessary to determine the period at which the text assumed its present fixed form before considering the means at our disposal for 'controlling the text when it was, so to speak, in a less settled condition.

The earliest among the versions as well as the most important for the textual criticism of the Old Testament is the Septuagint.

The name Septuagint, strictly speaking, only applies to the translation of the Pentateuch, but it was afterwards extended to include the other books of the Old Testament as they were translated.

The position of the Septuagint, however, as the official Greek representative of the Old Testament did not long remain unchallenged.

It was not until after the 6th century that the Old Latin was finally superseded by the Vulgate or Latin translation of the Old Testament made by Jerome during the last quarter of the 4th century.

This new version was translated 1 Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek, p. 51.

The Peshito (P'shitta) or " simple " revision of the Old Testament is a translation from the Hebrew, though certain books appear to have been influenced by the Septuagint.

Of the remaining versions of the Old Testament the most important are the Egyptian, Ethiopic, Arabic, Gothic and Armenian, all of which, except a part of the Arabic, appear to have been made through the medium of the Septuagint.

The aim of scientific Old Testament criticism is to obtain, through discrimination between truth and error, a full appreciation of the literature which constitutes the Old Testament, of the life out of which it grew, and the secret of the influence which these have exerted and still exert.

For such an appreciation many things are needed; and the branches of Old Testament criticism are corre s ondin 1 numerous.

In brief, then, the criticism of the Old Testament seeks to discover what the words written actually meant to the writers, what the events in Hebrew history actually were, what the religion actually was; and hence its aim differs from the dogmatic or homiletic treatments of the Old Testament, which have sought to discover in Scripture a given body of dogma or incentives to a particular type of life or the like.

Biblical criticism, and in some respects more especially Old Testament criticism, is, in all its branches, very largely of modern growth.

Jerome, perceiving the unsatisfactory position of Latin-speaking Christian scholars who studied the Old Testament at a double remove from the original - in Latin versions of the Greek - made a fresh Latin translation direct from the Hebrew text then received among the Jews.

The spirit and the age of humanism and the Reformation effected and witnessed important developments in the study of the Old Testament.

This has done much to render possible a more critical interpretation of the Old Testament.

But, however slowly and irregularly, the new conditions and the new spirit affected the study of the Old Testament.

There are also, however, certain conditions peculiar to the text of the Old Testament.

The first task, of Old Testament textual criticism after the Reformation was to prove the independence of these two texts, to gain general Tecognition of the fact that vowels and accents formed no part .of the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament.

But the original text of the Old Testament long before it was combined with the text of the Jewish or Massoretic interpretation had already undergone a somewhat similar change, the extent of which was indeed far less, but also less clearly discoverable.

For reasons suggested partly by the study of Semitic inscriptions, partly by comparison of passages occurring twice within the Old Testament, and partly by a comparison of the Hebrew text with the Septuagint, it is clear that the authors of the Old Testament (or at least most of them) themselves made some use of these vowel consonants, but that in a great number of cases the vowel consonants that stand in our present text were inserted by transcribers and editors of the texts.

In view of all this, the first requisite for a critical treatment of the text of the Old Testament is to consider the consonants by themselves, to treat every vowel-consonant as possibly not original, and the existing divisions of the text into words as original only in those cases where they yield a sense better than any other possible division (or, at least, as good).

Capellus drew conclusions from such important facts as the occurrence of variations in the two Hebrew texts of passages found twice in the Old Testament itself, and the variations brought to light by a comparison of the Jewish and Samaritan texts of the Pentateuch, the Hebrew text and the Septuagint, the Hebrew text and New Testament quotations from the Old Testament.

Some important contributions towards a right critical method of using the material collected have been made - in particular by Lagarde, who has also opened up a valuable line of critical work, along which much remains to be done, by his restoration of the Lucianic recension, one of the three great recensions of the Greek text of the Old Testament which obtained currency at the close of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th centuries A.D.

In so far as it is possible to recover the Hebrew text from which the Greek version was made, it is possible to recover a form of the Hebrew text current about 280 B.C. in the case of the Pentateuch, some time before loo B.C. in the case of most of the rest of the Old Testament.

Haupt's Sacred Books of the Old Testament, edited by various scholars, was designed to present, when complete, a critical text of the entire Old Testament with critical notes.

For subsequent developments, and the fruitful results of documentary analysis as applied to the Pentateuch and other composite books, which cannot be dealt with in any detail here, reference must be made to the special articles on the books of the Old Testament.

Lowth's contribution to a more critical appreciation of the Old Testament lies in his perception of the nature and significance of parallelism in Hebrew poetry, in his discernment of the extent to which the prophetical books are poetical in form, and in his treatment of the Old Testament as the expression of the thought and emotions of a people - in a word, as literature.

Eichhorn who has, not without reason, been termed the " founder of modern Old Testament criticism."

Certainly the publication E of his Einleitung (Introduction to the Old Testament), in 1780-1783, is a landmark in the history of Old Testament criticism.

His Introduction, consisting of three closely packed volumes dealing with textual as well as literary criticism, is the first comprehensive treatment of the entire Old Testament as literature.

He closes one epoch of Old Testament criticism; by his influence he retards the development of the next.

The next stage brings us to the critical theories or conclusions which at first gradually and then rapidly, in spite of the keenest criticisms directed against them both by those who clung more or less completely to tradition and by the representatives of the earlier critical school, gained increasing acceptance, until to-day they dominate Old Testament study.

This sketch of the critical movement has now been brought down to the point at which the comprehensive conclusions which still dominate Old Testament study gained clear expression and were shown to be drawn from the observation of a large body of facts.

Nor was it till late in the 18th century that criticism seriously challenged the dominance of the Protestant scholastic treatment of the Old Testament on the one hand, and the rough and ready, uncritical explanations or depreciations of the Rationalists on the other.

Dean Stanley owed something to Ewald and spoke warmly of him, but the Preface to the History of the Jewish Church in which he does so bears eloquent testimony to the general attitude towards Old Testament criticism in 1862, of which we have further proof in the almost unanimous disapprobation and far-spread horror with which Colenso's Pentateuch, pt.

From about 1880 the prevailing temper had changed; within a decade of this date the change had become great; since then the influence of Old Testament criticism has grown with increased acceleration.

From 1875 onwards Smith contributed to the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica a long series of important articles, which, together with the articles of Cheyne, Wellhausen and others, made that work an important factor in the change which was to pass over English thought in regard to the Bible; in 1878, by his pleadings in the trial for heresy brought against him on the ground of these articles, he turned a personal defeat in the immediate issue into a notable victory for the cause which led to his condemnation; and subsequently (in 1880), in two series of lectures, afterwards published 2 and widely read, he gave a brilliant, and, as it proved, to a rapidly increasing number a convincing exposition of the criticism of the literature, history and religion of Israel, which was already represented in Germany 2 The Old Testament in the Jewish Church (1881); The Prophets of Israel (1882).

In 1891 Dr Driver published his Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (6th ed., 1897); less popular in form than Smith's lectures, it was a more systematic and comprehensive survey of the whole field of the literary criticism of the Old Testament.

Space forbids any attempt to sketch here the special growth of criticism in other countries, such as France, where the brilliant genius of Renan was in part devoted to the Old Testament, or within the Roman Catholic Church, which possesses in Pere Lagrange, for example, a deservedly influential critical scholar, and in the Revue Biblique an organ which devotes much attention to the critical study of the Old Testament.

More especially since the middle of the 19th century the decipherment of Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions and systematic excavation in Palestine and other parts of the East have supplied a multitude of new facts bearing more or less directly on the Old Testament.

It has contributed nothing whatsoever to our knowledge of any Hebrew individual of this period,' and consequently what elements of history underlie the stories in Genesis, in so far as they relate to the Hebrew patriarchs, must still be determined, if at all, by a critical study of the Old Testament.

As already indicated, the exposition of Literary Criticism in English is Driver's Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament.

The exact dates of events in Hebrew history can be determined only when the figures given in the Old Testament can be checked and, if necessary, corrected by the contemporary monuments of Assyria and Babylonia, or (as in the post-exilic period) by the knowledge which we independently possess of the chronology of the Persian kings.

In the following parts of this article the chronological character of each successive period of the Old Testament history will be considered and explained as far as the limits of space at the writer's disposal permit.

It forms in the Bible the distinctive possession of Christians, just as the Old Testament is the collection of Sacred Books which Christians share with Jews.

The model throughout was the Old Testament.

This is the consummation towards which events had been steadily moving - not at first consciously, for it was some time before the tendencies at work were consciously realized - but ending at last in the complete equation of Old Testament and New, and in the bracketing together of both as the first and second volumes of a single Bible.

It should be understood that the goal towards which events were moving all the time was the equalizing of the New Testament with the Old Testament.

It was a very short step to the compiling of a similar list for the New Covenant, which by another very short step becomes the New Testament, by the side of the Old Testament.

Its text in the Old Testament is thought by some scholars to show signs of representing the Hesychian recension, but this view seems latterly to have lost favour with students of the Septuagint.

Originally, it contained the whole Bible, but only sixty-four leaves of the Old Testament remain, and 145 (giving about two-thirds of the whole) of the New Testament.

In the Old Testament Jerome made a new translation directly from the Hebrew, as the Old Latin was based on the LXX., but in the New Testament he revised the existing version.

The Old Testament Peshito is a much older and quite separate version.

There is literary critical evidence for late insertions by exilic or later compilers; 1 the compiler of Chronicles apparently refers to accessible works; and there is a close material relationship between the Old Testament and later literature.

This is not the place to notice the course of Jewish literary activity in Palestine or Alexandria, whether along the more rigid lines of Pharisaic legalism (the development of the canonical " priestly " law), or the popular and less scholastic phases, which recall the earlier apocalyptical tendencies of the Old Testament and were cultivated alike by early Jewish and Christian writers.

This literature is especially valuable because it illustrates contemporary Halaka and Haggada, and it illuminates the circle of thought with which Jesus and his followers were familiar; it thus fills the gap between the Old Testament and the authoritative Rabbinical Midrashim which, though often in a form several centuries later, not rarely preserve older material.'

Like many less ancient discourses, the Midrashim are apt to suffer when read in cold print, and they are sometimes judged from a standpoint which would be prejudicial to the Old Testament itself.

The Haggada was likewise collected according to the textual sequence of the Old Testament.

The several portions are named after the ordinary Jewish titles of the Old Testament books with the addition of Rabbah " great."

Some are connected with Old Testament books; e.g.

The Babylonian deity Nabu (in Old Testament Nebo) is a contraction from Na-bi-u, which thus corresponds closely with the Hebrew nablti a and originally signified the speaker or proclaimer of destiny.

Old-Testament prophecy therefore forms only one stage in a larger development, and its true significance and value can only be realized when it is looked at in this light.

Neither of these methods could do much for the historical understanding of the phenomena of prophecy as a whole, and the more liberal students of the Old Testament were long blinded by the moralizing unhistorical rationalism which succeeded the old orthodoxy.

It was now taught that prophecy in general was a peculiarity of the Old Testament ("lex et prophetae usque ad Johannem"); that in the new covenant God had spoken only through apostles; that the whole word of God so far as binding on the Church was contained in the apostolic record - the New Testament; 2 and that, consequently, the Church neither required nor could acknowledge new revelations, or even instructions, through prophets.

Whether the same is the case with Ramman, identical with Rimmon, known to us from the Old Testament as the chief deity of Damascus, is not certain though probable.

The earliest New Testament (1767) and Old Testament (1783-1801) in Gaelic were published by the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (founded 1709).

Philo, who translated the Old Testament religion into the terms of Hellenic thought, holds as an inference from his theory of revelation that the divine Supreme Being is " supra rational," that He can be reached only through " ecstasy ", and that the oracles of God supply the material of moral and religious knowledge.

We must also reject the theory that this degradation of the planetary deities into daemons is due to the influence of Hebrew monotheism, for almost all the Gnostic sects take up a definitely hostile attitude towards the Jewish religion, and almost always the highest divinity among the Seven is actually the creator-God of the, Old Testament.

Clearly then the question which the myth of the Primal Man is intended to answer in relation to the whole universe is answered in relation to the nature of man by this account of the coming into being of the first man, which may, moreover, have been influenced by the account in the Old Testament.

In nearly all the Gnostic systems the doctrine of the seven world-creating spirits is given an anti-Jewish tendency, the god of the Jews and of the Old Testament appearing as the highest of the seven.

The demiurge of the Valentinians always clearly bears the features of the Old Testament creator-God.

The Old Testament was absolutely rejected by most of the Gnostics.

Even the so-called Judaeo-Christian Gnostics (Cerinthus), the Ebionite (Essenian) sect of the PseudoClementine writings (the Elkesaites), take up an inconsistent attitude towards Jewish antiquity and the Old Testament.

The attitude of Gnosticism to the Old Testament and to the creator-god proclaimed in it had its deeper roots, as we have already seen, in the dualism by which it was dominated.

With him, as far as we are able to conclude from the scanty notices of him, the manifold Gnostic speculations are reduced essentially to the one problem of the good and the just God, the God of the Christians and the God of the Old Testament.

Towards the close of the century the Old Testament found a translator in iElfric (q.v.), the most eminent scholar in the close.

Dietrich, iElfric's most competent biographer (Niedner's, Zeitschrift fiir historische Theologie, 1855-1856), looks upon the Pentateuch, Joshua and Judges as a continuation of his Lives of Saints, including as they do in a series of narratives the Old Testament saints.

Genesis is but slightly abridged, but Job, Kings, Judges, Esther and Judith as well as the Maccabees are mere homilies epitomized from the corresponding Old Testament books.

In fact before the middle of the r4th century the entire Old Testament and the greater part of the New Testament had been translated into the Anglo-Norman dialect of the period.

The Old Testament of the Early Version was, according to the editors (Preface, p. xvii.), taken in hand by one of Wycliffe's coadjutors, Nicholas de Herford.

The note may therefore be taken to refer either to the portion translated by the last or fifth hand, or to the whole of the Old Testament up to Baruch iii.

Judging from uniformity of style and mode of translation the editors of the Bible are inclined to take the latter view; they add that the remaining part of the Old Testament was completed by a different hand, the one which also translated the New Testament.

Erasmus in 1516 published the New Testament in Greek, with a new Latin version of his own; the Hebrew text of the Old Testament had been published as early as 1488.

To counteract and supersede all these unauthorized editions, Tyndale himself brought out his own revision of the New Testament with translations added of all the Epistles of the Old Testament after the use of Salisbury.

It should be added that Coverdale's Bible was the first in which the non-canonical books were left out of the body of the Old Testament and placed by themselves at the end of it under the title Apocripha.

The Old Testament was reprinted as part of a Bible in 1551, but no other editions are known than those named.

Coverdale consulted in his revision the Latin version of the Old Testament with the Hebrew text by Sebastian Minster, the Vulgate and Erasmus's editions of the Greek text for the New Testament.

It represented in the Old Testament a thorough and independent revision of the text of the Great Bible with the help of the Hebrew original, the Latin versions of Leo Judd (1543), Pagninus (1528), Sebastian Munster (1534-1535), and the French versions of Olivetan.

Stephanus' Greek-Latin New Testament (4th ed., 1551), whereas these divisions already existed in the Hebrew Old Testament.

The Old Testament had been " long since " completed, but " for lacke of good meanes " (Preface to the New Testament), its appearance was delayed till 1609-1610, when it was published at Douai.

The work of the Old Testament company was different in some important respects from that which engaged the attention of the New Testament company.

The Old Testament revisers were therefore spared much of the labour of deciding between different readings, which formed one of the most important duties of the New Testament company.

The revision of the Old Testament occupied 792 days, and was finished on June 20, 1884.

After a laudatory account of the past conduct of the Corinthian Church, he enters upon a denunciation of vices and a praise of virtues, and illustrates his various topics by copious citations from the Old Testament scriptures.

The orderliness of Old Testament worship bears a like witness; everything is duly fixed by God; high priests, priests and Levites, and the people in the people's place.

Clement's familiarity with the Old Testament points to his being a Christian of long standing rather than a recent convert.

The subjects in the nave begin with scenes from the Book of Genesis, illustrating the Old Testament types of Christ and His scheme of redemption, with figures of those who prophesied and prepared for His coming.

He took from it the moral teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, and a criticism of the Old Testament and of Judaism so far as he required it.

It admitted the stumbling-blocks which the Old Testament offers to every intelligent reader, and gave itself out as a Christianity without the Old Testament.

Ostensibly it is written in opposition to Whiston's attempt to show that the books of the Old Testament did originally contain prophecies of events in the New Testament story, but that these had been eliminated or corrupted by the Jews, and to prove that the fulfilment of prophecy by the events of Christ's life is all "secondary, secret, allegorical, and mystical," since the original and literal reference is always to some other fact.

The text of the Septuagint, a translation of the Old Testament made from MSS.

There are other parts of the Old Testament - notably I Sam.

But this proof that the true kingdom of God could not be realized in an earthly state, under the limitations of national particularism, was not the final refutation of the Old Testament hope.

But even the final form of Jewish theology shows much vacillation as to these details, especially as regards their sequence and mutual relation, thus betraying the inadequacy of the harmonistic method by which they were derived from the Old Testament and the stormy excitement in which the Messianic idea was developed.

Each scene from the history of Christ is prefaced by a tableau of typical import from the Old Testament.

Such sites in the Old Testament were Hebron with its tree, Sinai with its burning bush, Bethel, Shechem, Beersheba, Mount Gerizim.

Pictures and stories, carved or painted, seemed no longer necessary now that the open Bible was in the hands of the common people; they had been too often prostituted, moreover, to idolatrous uses, - and " idolatry " was the worst of blasphemies to the re-discoverers of the Old Testament.

The Old Testament is cited after the Alexandrian version more exclusively than by Paul, even where the Hebrew is divergent.

But, for a generation or so, it has been denied that this can be inferred simply from the fact that the epistle approaches all Christian truth through Old Testament forms. This, it is said, was the common method of proof, since the Jewish scriptures were the Word of God to all Christians alike.

In carrying out the regime of Rampolla, which was, in every respect, a bad imitation of that of Antonelli, the Vatican left no stone unturned in its attempt to coerce the conscience of the French royalists; it did not even stop at dishonour, as was evidenced by the case of the unhappy Mgr d'Hulst, who, in order to evade the censorship of his pamphlet on Old Testament criticism, had to abandon both his king and his principles, only to die in exile of a broken heart.

We find Philo Judaeus endeavouring to free the concept of the Old Testament Yahweh from anthropomorphic characteristics and finite determinations.

As each city or district had its own Ba'al, the author of its fertility, the " husband " (a common meaning of ba'al) of the land which he fertilized, so there were many Ba'als, and the Old Testament writers could allude to the Ba`alim of the neighbouring Canaanites.

The god who demanded these victims, and especially the burning of children, seems to have been Milk, the Molech or Moloch of the Old Testament.

His chief activity was as a translator; he was the leading spirit in the translation of the Zurich Bible and also made a Latin version of the Old Testament.

The errorists developed speculations and practical theories on the basis of the Old Testament law, which proved extremely seductive to many Christians.

The name " Hebrew " is derived, through the Greek `E$3paios, from `ibhray, the Aramaic equivalent of the Old Testament word `ibhri, denoting the people who commonly spoke of themselves as Israel or Children of Israel from the name of their common ancestor (see JEws).

The later derivative Yisra'eli, Israelite, from Yisra'el, is not found in the Old Testament.

The only mention of such differences in the Old Testament is in Judges xii.

In general, the later books of the Old Testament show, roughly speaking, a greater simplicity and uniformity of style, as well as a tendency to Aramaisms. For some centuries after the Exile, the people of Palestine must have been bilingual, speaking Aramaic for ordinary purposes, but still at least understanding Hebrew.

It is natural, therefore, that it should influence and finally supplant Hebrew in popular use, so that translations even of the Old Testament eventually appear in it (Targums).

It gradually became a literary rather than a popular tongue, as appears from the style of the later books of the Old Testament (Chron., Dan., Eccles.), and from the Hebrew text of Ecclesiasticus (c. 170 B.C.).

In the Old Testament the range of subjects was limited.

Similarly in the East, the Syriac version of the Old Testament is largely under the influence of the synagogue, and the homilies of Aphraates are a mine of Rabbinic lore.

In the Old Testament we can trace the gradual development of an ever more definite doctrine of "the final condition of man and the world."

The p p p p eschatology of the Old Testament is thus closely connected with, but not limited by, Messianic hope, as there are eschatological teachings that are not Messianic. As the Old Testament revelation is concerned primarily with the elect nation, and only secondarily (in the later writings) with the individual persons composing it, we follow the order of importance as well as of time in dealing first with the people.

The individual hoped that he would live to share the nation's good, and thus the two streams of Old Testament eschatology at last flow together.

Four words may serve to express the difference of the Apocry= doctrine of these writings and the teaching of the Old Testament.

The eschatology of the New Testament attaches itself not only to that of the Old Testament but also to that of contemporary Judaism, but it avoids the extravagances of the latter.

The Maori rebellion, fomented by French Catholics, was an outbreak against everything foreign, and the strange religion Hau-hauism, a blend of Old Testament history, Roman Catholic dogmas, pagan rites and ventriloquism, found many adherents.

But New Testament quotations of Old Testament predictions are often for us accommodations - striking or forced as the case may be - while the New Testament writer, "following the exegetical methods current among the Jews of his time, Matthew ii.

To say that he is merely "describing a New Testament fact in Old Testament phraseology" may be true of the result rather than of his design.

He studied theology and Oriental languages at Munster, was parish priest at Berkum near Bonn from 1833 to 1839, and professor of Old Testament theology in the Catholic faculty at Breslau from 1839 to his death on the 28th of September 1856.

First come two lessons from the Old Testament by a reader, the whole of the Old Testament being made use of except the books of the Apocrypha.

In 1541 he was appointed professor of Latin grammar at Wittenberg, and in 1557 professor of the Old Testament.

His range of learning was wide, and he published a handbook of Jewish history, a historical calendar intended to supersede the Roman Saints' Calendar, and a revision of the Latin Old Testament.

The story of Ruth (the Moabitess, great-grandmother of David) is one of the Old Testament Hagiographa and is usually reckoned as the second of the five Megilloth (Festal Rolls).

It shocks the moral sense with its sanguinary character more than, perhaps, any other Old Testament story.

According to the Old Testament narratives, however, Ahab with 7000 troops had previously overthrown Ben-hadad and his thirty-two kings, who had come to lay siege to Samaria, and in the following year obtained a remarkable victory over him at Aphek, probably in the plain of Sharon (1 Kings xx.).

He was one of the pioneers of the critical study of the Old Testament in England.

If this view be, rejected and it is necessary to fall back on the choice between 64 and 67, the problem is perhaps insoluble, but 64 has somewhat more intrinsic probability, and 67 can be explained as due to an artificial system of chronology which postulated for Peter an episcopate of Rome of twenty-five years - a number which comes so often in the early episcopal lists that it seems to mean little more than "a long time," just as "forty years" does in the Old Testament.

To counteract it celibacy was finally imposed on the clergy, and the great mendicant orders evolved; while the constant polemic of the Cathar teachers against the cruelty, rapacity and irascibility of the Jewish tribal god led the church to prohibit the circulation of the Old Testament among laymen.

It has been maintained that Greek influence is to be traced in parts of the Old Testament assigned to this period, as, for instance, the Book of Proverbs; but even in the case of Ecclesiastes, the canonical writing whose affinity with Greek thought is closest, the coincidence of idea need not necessarily prove a Greek source.

Beside the other canonical books of the Old Testament, translated in many cases with modifications or additions, it included translations of other Hebrew books (Ecclesiasticus, Judith, &c.), works composed originally in Greek but imitating to some extent the Hebraic style (like Wisdom), works modelled more closely on the Greek literary tradition, either historical, like 2 Maccabees, or philosophical, like the productions of the Alexandrian school, represented for us by Aristobulus and Philo, in which style and thought are almost wholly Greek and the reference to the Old Testament a mere pretext; or Greek poems on Jewish subjects, like the epic of the elder Philo and Ezechiel's tragedy, Exagoge.

These histories are chiefly about Scripture characters, especially those of the Old Testament.

It is, however, doubtful in what sense this word appeared to him, either as a name of God, as in the Old Testament it often occurs and regularly without the article, or actually as the epithet of a heavenly book, although this use cannot be substantiated from Jewish literature.

In1868-1870he was Boyle lecturer (The Witness of the Old Testament to Christ), in 1873 Hulsean lecturer (The Gospel its Own Witness), in 1874 Bampton Lecturer (The Religion of the Christ) and from 1876 to 1880 Warburtonian lecturer.

He was a member of the Old Testament revision committee from 1870 to 1885.

It does not, however, lie within the scope of the present article to examine the various sources underlying the narrative with any minuteness, but rather to sum up those results of modern criticism which have been generally accepted by Old Testament scholars.

In the former group Stanley would, without doubt or hesitation, have placed all questions connected with Episcopal or Presbyterian orders, or that deal only with the outward forms or ceremonies of religion, or with the authorship or age of the books of the Old Testament.

What the Old Testament says of the worship of God is little, and that little worthless, while its writers are unacquainted with the second fundamental truth of religion, the immortality of the soul.

He would have known that " Jesus " was the Greek form of Joshua; that " Christ " was the Greek rendering of Messiah, or Anointed, the title of the great King for whom the Jews were looking; he might further have remembered that " the Lord " is the expression which the Greek Old Testament constantly uses instead of the ineffable name of God, which we now call " Jehovah " (q.v.).

A wide knowledge of the Old Testament supplies him with a text to illustrate one incident after another; and so deeply is he impressed with the correspondence between the life of Christ and the words of ancient prophecy, that he does not hesitate to introduce his quotations by the formula " that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet."

The royal descent of the Messiah is thus declared, and from the outset His figure is set against the background of the Old Testament.

Such grouping of materials is a feature of this Gospel, and was possibly designed for purposes of public instruction; so that continuous passages might be read aloud in the services of the Church, just as passages from the Old Testament were read in the Jewish synagogues.

It presented the Gospel in a suitable form for the edification of the Church; and it confirmed its truth by constant appeals to the Old Testament scriptures, thus manifesting its intimate relation with the past as the outcome of a long preparation and as the fulfilment of a Divine purpose.

In his first two chapters he gives an account of the birth and childhood of St John the Baptist and of our Lord Himself, gathered perhaps directly from the traditions of the Holy Family, and written in close imitation of the sacred stories of the Old Testament which were familiar to him in their Greek translation.

His literature was almost confined to the Bible, and the Old Testament was preferred to the New.

On the doctrine of good works our author's views are allied to Old Testament conceptions rather than to the rabbinic doctrine of man's righteousness, which bulks so largely in Jewish literature from A.D.

Recent research in bringing to light considerable portions of long-forgotten ages is revolutionizing those impressions which were based upon the Old Testament - the sacred writings of a small fraction of this.

The close of Old Testament history (the book of Nehemiah) in the Persian age forms a convenient division between ancient Palestine and the career of the land under non-oriental influence during the Greek and Roman ages.

And this becomes more instructive when comparison is made between cuneiform or Egyptian sources extending over many centuries and particular groups of evidence (Amarna letters, Canaanite and Aramaean inscriptions, the Old Testament and later Jewish literature to the Talmud), and pursued to the customs and beliefs of the same area to-day.

Henceforth the history of Palestine is disconnected and fragmentary, and the few known events of political importance are isolated and can be supplemented only by inferences from the movements of Egypt, Philistia or Phoenicia, or from the Old Testament.

No images of Yahweh or of earlier Canaanite deities have been unearthed; but images belong to a relatively advanced stage in the development of religion, and the aniconic stage may be represented by the sacred pillars and posts, by the small models of heads of bulls, and by the evidence for calf-cults in the Old Testament.

These centuries represent an age which the Jewish historians have partly ignored (as regards Samaria) and partly obscured (as regards the return from exile and the reconstruction of Judah); but since this age stands at the head of an historical development which leads on to Christianity and Rabbinical Judaism, it is necessary to turn from Palestine as a land in order to notice more particularly certain features of the Old Testament upon which the foregoing evidence directly bears.

The Old Testament is essentially a Palestinian, an Oriental, work and is entirely in accord with Oriental thought and custom.'

Yet, in its characteristic religion and legislation there are essential spiritual and ethical peculiarities which give it a uniqueness and a permanent value, the reality of which becomes more impressive when the Old Testament is viewed, not merely from a Christian or a Jewish teleology, but in the light of ancient, medieval and modern Palestine.

The ideas which characterize the Old Testament are planted upon lower levels of thought, and they appear in different aspects (legal, prophetical, historical) and with certain developments both within its pages and in subsequent literature.

To ignore or to obscure the features which are opposed to these ideas would be to ignore the witness of external evidence and to obscure the old Testament itself.

These agree with the more or less clear allusions in the Old Testament to myths of creation, Eden, deluge, mountain of gods, Titanic folk, world-dragons, heavenly hosts, &c., and also with the unearthed seals, tablets, altars, &c. representing mythical ideas.

Specific influence on the part of Babylonia is not excluded; but the absence of striking points of agreement in other portions of the Old Testament may not be due to anything else than the particular character of the circles to which they belonged.

Gressmann, The uniqueness of the Old Testament religion is stamped upon the Mosaic legislation, which combines in archaic manner ritual, ethical and civil enactments.

But it is remarkable that, although within the Old Testament itself there are certain different backgrounds, important variations and developments of law, these are relatively insignificant when we consider the profound changes from the 15th-13th centuries (apparent by the period of the conquest) to the close of Old Testament history.

The Babylonian code is essentially class-legislation, and from the point of view of the idealism of the Old Testament prophets, which raises the rights of humanity above everything else, the steps which the code takes to safeguard the rights of property (slaves included therein) would naturally seem harsh.

Although on various grounds there is a strong probability that the code of Khammurabi must have been known in Palestine at some period, the Old Testament does not manifest such traces of the influence as might have been expected.

With this it is natural to connect the transmission and presence in the Old Testament of specifically Kenite tradition, of the " southern " stories in Genesis, and of the stories of Levi.

The unanimous recognition on the part of all biblical scholars that the Old Testament cannot be taken as it stands as a trustworthy account of the history with which it deals, necessitates a hypothesis or, it may be, a series of hypotheses, which shall enable one to approach the more detailed study of its history and religion.

It is the merit of Hugo Winckler especially to have lifted biblical study out of the somewhat narrow lines upon which it had usually proceeded, but, at the time of writing (1910), Old Testament criticism still awaits a sound reconciliation of the admitted internal intricacies and of the external evidence for Palestine and that larger area of which it forms part.