Stanley Arthur Cook

“ Historical criticism does not touch the reality of the ideas, and since they may be as worthy of study as the apparent facts they clothe, they thus indirectly contribute to the history of their period. In any case, while the true historical kernel of the Midrashic narrative (e.g. dealing with Adam, Moses or Isaiah) will always be a matter of dispute, the teaching to which it is applied stands on an independent footing as also does the application of that teaching to other ages. ”

“ They point in fact to a specific redaction, and thus it would seem that the editor who treated the foundation of the Temple, the central event of Solomon’s life, as a religious epoch of the first importance, regarded this as the beginning of a new era—the history of Israel under the one sanctuary.
When we assume that the book of Kings was thrown into its present form by a Deuteronomistic redactor we do not affirm that he was the first who digested the sources of the history into a continuous work, nor must we ascribe absolute finality to his work. ”

“ AMMONITES, or the “children of Ammon,” a people of east Palestine who, like the Moabites, traced their origin to Lot, the nephew of the patriarch Abraham, and must have been regarded, therefore, as closely related to the Israelites and Edomites. Both the Ammonites and Moabites are sometimes spoken of under the common name of the children of Lot (Deut. ii. 19; Ps. lxxxiii. 8) ; and the whole history shows that they preserved throughout the course of their national existence a sense of the closest brotherhood. ”

“ It embraced historical and other traditions; stories, legends, parables and allegories; beliefs, customs and all that may be called folk-lore. It fed itself, not upon the laws, but upon the narrative, the prophetical and the poetical writings of the Old Testament, and it had a more spiritual and ethical tone than the Halaka. In both classes, accepted tradition (written or oral) was reinterpreted in order to justify or to deduce new teaching (in its widest sense) , to connect the present with a hallowed past, and to be a guide for the future ”

“ Whatever future research may bring, it cannot remove the internal peculiarities which combine to show that Genesis preserves, not literal history, but popular traditions of the past. External evidence has proved the antiquity of various elements, but not that of the form or context in which they now appear; and the difference is an important one. We have now a background upon which to view the book, and, on the one hand, it has become obvious that the records preserve—as is only to be expected—Oriental customs, beliefs and modes of thought. ”

“ Proceeding upon such lines as these, the Jews wove together their Midrashic homilies or sermons where, though we may find much that seems commonplace, there are illuminating parables and proverbs, metaphors and similes, the whole affording admirable examples of the contemporary thought and culture, both of the writers and—what is often overlooked—the level of their hearers or readers. 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 history moves between Judah and Israel according to the date of each accession; as soon as a new king has been introduced, everything that happened in his reign is discussed, and wound up by another stereotyped formula as to the death and burial of the sovereign; and to this mechanical arrangement the natural connexion of events is often sacrificed. In this scheme the elaborate synchronisms between contemporary monarchs of the north and south give an aspect of great precision to the chronology. ”

“ PHILISTINES, [1] the general name for the people of Philistia (Ass. Palaštu, Piliśtu; Eg. p-r-s-t) , a district embracing the rich lowlands on the Mediterranean coast from the neighbourhood of Jaffa (Joppa) to the Egyptian desert south of Gaza (on the subsequent extension of the name in its Greek form Palaestina, see Palestine) .
1. Egyptian Evidence.—The name is derived from the Purasati, one of a great confederation from north Syria, Asia Minor and the Levant, which threatened Egypt in the XXth Dynasty. ”

“ So abundant is the testimony of modern travellers to the extent to which Eastern custom and thought elucidate the interpretation of the Bible, that it is very important to notice those features which illustrate Genesis. “The Oriental,” writes S. I. Curtiss (Bibl. sacra, Jan. 1901, pp. 103 sqq.) , “is least of all a scientific historian. He is the prince of story-tellers, narratives, real and imaginative, spring from his lips, which are the truest portraiture of composite rather than individual Oriental life, though narrated under forms of individual experience.” ”

“ The worship of other gods is represented, not as something which went on side by side with Yahweh-worship (cf. x. 6) , but as a revolt against Yahweh, periodically repeated and regularly chastised by foreign invasion. The history, therefore, falls into recurring cycles, each of which begins with religious corruption, followed by chastisement, which continues until Yahweh, in answer to the groans of his oppressed people, raises up a “judge” to deliver Israel, and recall them to the true faith. ”

“ Genesis preserves a selection of traditions relating to a few of the old Palestinian centres of cult. We cannot suppose that these first gained their sacred character in the pre-Mosaic “patriarchal” age; there is in any case the obvious difficulty of bridging the gap between the descent into Egypt and the Exodus, and it is clear that when the Israelites entered Palestine they came among a people whose religion, tradition and thought were fully established. ”

“ EZRA AND NEHEMIAH, BOOKS OF, in the Old Testament. The two canonical books entitled Ezra and Nehemiah in the English Bible [1] correspond to the 1 and 2 Esdras of the Vulgate, to the 2 Esdras of the Septuagint, and to the Ezra and Nehemiah of the Massoretic (Hebrew) text. Though for many centuries they have thus been treated as separate compositions, we have abundant evidence that they were anciently regarded as forming but one book, and a careful examination proves that together with the book of Chronicles they constitute one single work. ”

“ SAUL (Heb. shā’ūl, “asked”) , in the Old Testament, son of Kish, and king of Israel. [1] His history is closely interwoven with that of the prophet Samuel and the Judaean king David. Two distinct accounts are given of his rise. In one Samuel, after defeating the Philistines, rules as the last “judge” of Israel; the people demand a king, and Saul, a young giant of Benjamin, is chosen by lot ”

“ From this point of view the parts of the book are by no means all of equal value; critical analysis shows that often parallel or distinct narratives have been fused together, and that, whilst the older stories gave more prominence to ordinary human motives and combinations, the later are coloured by religious reflection and show the characteristic tendency of the Old Testament to re-tell the fortunes of Israel in a form that lays ever-increasing weight on the work of Yahweh for his people. ”

“ TREE-WORSHIP. Primitive man, observing the growth and death of trees, the elasticity of their branches, the sensitiveness and the annual decay and revival of their foliage, anticipated in his own way the tendency of modern science to lessen the gulf between the animal and the vegetable world. ”

“ AMALEKITES, an ancient tribe, or collection of tribes, in the south and south-east of Palestine, often mentioned in the Old Testament as foes of the Israelites. They were regarded as a branch of the Edomites (Gen. xxxvi. 12, see Edom) , and appear to have numbered among their divisions the Kenites. ”

“ Elsewhere, in the records of the Exodus, there are traces of specific traditions associated with Kadesh, Kenites, Caleb and Jerahmeel, and with a movement into Judah, all originally independent of their present context. Like the prominence of the traditions of Hebron and its hero Abraham, these features cannot be merely casual. [35]
The fact that one is not dealing with literal history complicates the question of the nomadic or semi-nomadic life of the Israelite ancestors. ”

“ The division into two books is not felicitous, and even the old Hebrew separation between Kings and Samuel must not be taken to mean that the history from the birth of Samuel to the exile was treated by two distinct authors in independent volumes. We cannot speak of the author of Kings or Samuel, but only of an editor or of successive editors whose main work was to arrange in a continuous form extracts or abstracts from earlier sources. ”

“ Numerous instructive examples of the active tendency to develop tradition may be observed in the relationship between Genesis and the “Book of Jubilees,” or in the embellishments of Old Testament history in the Antiquities of Josephus, or in the widening gaps in the diverse traditions of the famous figures of the Old Testament (Adam, Noah, Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Ezra, &c.) , as they appear in non-canonical writings. ”

“ The history of the Levite and the Benjamites is of quite another character, and presupposes a degree of unity of feeling and action among the tribes of Israel which it is not easy to reconcile with the rest of the book. In its present form this episode appears to be not very ancient; it resembles Ruth in giving a good deal of curious archaeological detail (the feast at Shiloh) in a form which suggests that the usages referred to were already obsolete when the narrative was composed. It appears to consist of an old story which has been heavily revised to form an edifying piece of exposition. ”

“ So in still later tradition, all the sons of Jacob with the exception of Joseph find their last resting-place at Hebron, and in Jewish prayers for the dead it is besought that their souls may be bound up with those of the patriarchs, or that they may go to the cave of Machpelah and thence to the Cherubim. [27] The increasing prominence of the old Calebite locality is not the least interesting phase in the comparative study of the patriarchal traditions.
The association of the ancestors of Israel with certain sites is a feature which finds analogies even in modern Palestine. ”

“ The rigid line between fact or fiction in religious literature, which readers often wish to draw, cannot be consistently justified, and in studying old Oriental religious narratives it is necessary to realize that the teaching was regarded as more essential than the method of presenting it. “Midrash” which may be quite useless for historical investigation may be appreciated for the light it throws upon forms of thought. ”

“ It is impossible to regard the warlike expeditions described in this section as supplementary campaigns undertaken after Joshua’s death; they are plainly represented as the first efforts of the Israelites to gain a firm footing in the land (at Hebron, Debir, Bethel) , in the very cities which Joshua is related to have subdued (Josh. x. 39) . [1] Here then we have an account of the settlement of Israel west of the Jordan which is parallel to the book of Joshua, but makes no mention of Joshua himself, and places the tribe of Judah in the front. ”

“ Popular tradition often ignores events of historical importance, or, as repeated experience shows, will represent them in such a form that the true historical kernel could never have been recovered without some external clue. ”

“ There are old centres of cult which have never lost the veneration of the people; the shrines are known as the tombs of saints or walis (patrons) with such orthodox names as St George, Elijah, &c. Traditions justify the reputation for sanctity, and not only are similar stories told of distinct figures, but there are varying traditions of a single figure. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It gives rise to what may be termed the “prophetical interpretation of history” (S. R. Driver, Genesis, p. 111) , where the character, fortunes or history of the apparent individual are practically descriptive of the people or tribe which, according to tradition, is named after or descended from him. The utterance of Noah over Canaan, Shem and Japheth (ix. 25 sqq.) , of Isaac over Esau and Jacob (xxvii.) , of Jacob over his sons (xlix.) or grandsons (xlviii.) , would have no meaning to Israelites unless they had some connexion with and interest for contemporary life and thought. ”