Hebrew Bible

“ The picture of Israel's history that yielded them their vision is dissolving before our eyes, at the touch of the new criticism, and men are fearing that the secret of the Bible is escaping from our age. I desire to-day to draw for you, in outline, the story of Israel's development, as traced by our new masters; that you may see the old vision re-emergent in truer, nobler forms. The re-construction of Hebrew history makes real and certain an organic, natural development of the religion of the Christ; a travail of the nation with the Son it bore to God. ”

“ Biblical writings are far above any individual praise. But I may with propriety say the reading of the Hebrew writings in English has meant much to me personally. As a boy I read fewer books than do youngsters of the present day, and among them the Bible was one of [46] extraordinary interest. I read the Psalms and Isaiah as wonderful poetry, and turned to the Bible as to a storehouse of historical literature.
Hebrew history has been of great importance in the early history of our country. The early settlement in America was due to the same causes as the settlement of Canaan by the Hebrews. ”

“ 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. But the advance in the study of Hebrew since the early part of the 17th century enabled them to give a more faithful translation of the received text. The value of their work is evident, especially in Job, Ecclesiastes and the prophetical books. ”

“ Many have been dropped as unworthy of preservation. We have the garnered grain of Hebrew literature in our Bible—a winnowed national library. It includes histories, juridical codifications, dramas of love and destiny, patriotic songs and state anthems, the hymnal of a people's worship, philosophic writings of the sages, collections of proverbial sayings, works of religious fiction, orations of statesmen, and oracles of mystic seers. ”

“ Unquestionably the Bible has gained more through Assyrian excavations than it has itself contributed to the history of that country. As has been said before, the Old Testament consists of Hebrew writings which portray various phases of Hebrew life, and mention is made of other nations only when the Chosen People by force of circumstances were thrown in direct contact with them. ”

“ If we contrast the Hebrew God described in primitive tradition, manlike in appearance, appetites and emotions, with the Hebrew Gods as characterised by the prophets, there is shown a widening range of power along with a nature increasingly remote from that of man. ”

“ No other nation that has ever existed on the earth would ever have thought of daring to publish a book like the Bible. So far as the plot is concerned, the fundamental literary conception, it is all the Bible comes to practically—two or three thousand years of it—a long row of people talking about themselves. The Hebrew nation has been the leading power in history because the Hebrew man, in spite of all his faults has always had the feeling that God sympathised with him, in being interested in himself. ”

“ Here he had studied and written; here, gone through fast and vigil, and come forth half alive; here, striven to pray; here, borne a hundred thousand agonies! There was the Bible, in its rich old Hebrew, with Moses and the Prophets speaking to him, and God's voice through all! ”

“ All that survives of Hebrew literature prior to the age of Alexander is preserved in the Jewish Bible. It is not until the beginning of the third century B.C. that we come upon books written by Jews in Hebrew or in Greek which are not included in the canon. It is, doubtless, only a small part of a rich and varied literature that has thus been rescued across the centuries; much the larger part of what was written in the days of the national kingdoms, for example, must have perished in the catastrophes which befell Israel in the eighth century and Judah in the beginning of the sixth. ”

“ No part of the Bible has called forth a greater diversity of opinions than the Song of Solomon, and this for two reasons. In the first place, the book holds so unique a position in the Old Testament, that the general analogy of Hebrew literature is a very inadequate key to the verbal difficulties, the artistic structure, and the general conception and purpose of the poem. In point of language the departures from ordinary Hebrew are almost always in the direction of Aramaic. Many forms unique in Biblical Hebrew are at once explained by the Aramaic dialects, but not a few are still obscure. ”

“ The knowledge of Hebrew and the most received ways of explaining the Old Testament were handed down from generation to generation along with the original text. I ask you to understand precisely what this means. Before the time of Christ, the Jews had already ceased to speak Hebrew. In the New Testament, no doubt, we read once and again of the Hebrew tongue as spoken and understood by the people of Palestine; but the vernacular of the Palestinian Jews in the first century was a dialect as unlike to that of the Bible as German is to English a different language, although a kindred one. ”

“ There is found in the Bible no intimation that there was the least difference in the days. They are all spoken of in the same way. It may be replied that our translation is incorrect. If this is so, then only those who understand Hebrew, have had a revelation from God, and all the rest have been deceived. ”

“ It is impossible to estimate the influence of such knowledge in tending to endear the Bible to our youth. To me indeed it has always been incomprehensible that our Prelates, who presumably have the welfare of the Church at heart, have never insisted on making Hebrew a compulsory subject for Responsions. ”

“ They saw that a proper school should teach nothing but bookkeeping, agriculture, geometry, dead languages made deader by leaving out all the amusing literature, and the Hebrew Bible as interpreted by men superbly trained to ignore contradictions, men technically called "Fundamentalists." ”

“ To the perfect view of God's character and government which the pages of the Bible unfold, no man can add anything, and whoever takes any thing away only mars and mutilates it. How now shall we explain the great fact that the Hebrew people, some thousands of years ago, had this true knowledge of God and his providence, while it was hidden from all other nations? ”

“ It is much to be regretted that so many otherwise useful expositors have either wanted that familiarity with the aspects of external nature by which all the Hebrew writers are characterized, or have taken too little pains to ascertain the actual meaning of the references to creation which they find in the Bible. ”

“ It is of particular importance to remark that this older tradition still retains an original a in many cases where the punctuation has the later i or e. We have examined this point somewhat in detail, in order to contradict the false but ever-recurring notion that the ordinary text of the Bible represents without any essential modification the pronunciation of ancient Hebrew, whereas in reality it expresses (in a very instructive and careful manner, it is true) only its latest development, and that for the purpose of solemn public recitation. ”

“ But every great scripture, whether Hebrew, Indian, Persian, or Chinese, apart from its religious value will be found to have some rare and special beauty of its own; and in this respect the original Bible stands very high as a monument of sublime poetry and of artistic prose. ”

“ The writings of the Old Testament are the only books remaining in the Hebrew language. There are no Hebrew books to throw light on dark passages, or to settle the meaning of doubtful words and phrases. ”

“ What had he learned?
Enough Hebrew and Greek to be able to crawl through the Bible by using lexicons—so that, like all his classmates once they were out of the seminary, he always read it in English. A good many of the more condemnatory texts of the Bible—rather less than the average Holy Roller carpenter-evangelist. The theory that India and Africa have woes because they are not Christianized, but that Christianized Bangor and Des Moines have woes because the devil, a being obviously more potent than omnipotent God, sneaks around counteracting the work of Baptist preachers. ”

“ Thirty years later, in his Commentary on the Old Testament, he pitched the claims of the sacred theory on a much lower key. He says: "Mankind was of one language, in all likelihood the Hebrew.... The proper names and other significations given in the Scripture seem incontestable evidence that the Hebrew language was the original language of the earth,—the language in which God spoke to man, and in which he gave the revelation of his will to Moses and the prophets." ”

“ The intense and convinced energy with which the Hebrew, both of the Old and the New Testament, threw himself upon his ideal of righteousness, and which inspired the incomparable definition of the great Christian virtue, Faith—the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen—this energy of devotion to its ideal has belonged toPg 163 Hebraism alone. ”

“ Lastly it should be recollected that the entire body of the fragments of tradition and literature belonging to northern Israel has come down to us through the channel of Judaean recensions.
The influence of the Deuteronomic tradition in redaction is seen in such passages as Genesis xxxiii. 20 (cf. xxxi. 45 fol.) ; Josh. iv. 9-20, xxiv. 26 fol.; 1 Sam. vii. 12, where the maṣṣēbhah or stone symbol of deity (forbidden in Deut. xii. 3, xvi. 22) is in some way got rid of (in Gen. xxxiii. 20 the word “altar” in Hebrew is substituted) . ”

“ And if we seek, beneath form and symbol and command, the thought of which they are but the expression, we find that the distinctive feature of the Hebrew religion, that which separates it by such a wide gulf from the religions amid which it grew up, is its utilitarianism, its recognition of divine law in human life. It asserts, not a God whose domain is confined to the far-off beginning or the vague future, who is over and above and beyond men, but a God who in His inexorable laws is here and now; a God of the living as well as of the dead; a God of the market-place as well as of the temple ”

“ Prophecy of the Hebrew type has not been limited to Israel; it is indeed a phenomenon of almost world-wide occurrence; in many lands and in many ages the wild, whirling words of frenzied men and women have been accepted as the utterances of an in-dwelling deity. What does distinguish Hebrew prophecy from all others is that the genius of a few members of the profession wrested this vulgar but powerful instrument from baser uses, and by wielding it in the interest of a high morality rendered a service of incalculable value to humanity. ”

“ The chapter on the Literature and Religion of the Ancient Hebrews cannot boast of a great variety of materials, because what of the subject is not known to the youngest reader of the Bible must be sought for, in the writings of Rabbinical authors, who have unfortunately directed the largest share of their attention to the minutest parts of their Law, and expended the labour of elucidation on those points which are least interesting to the rest of the world. ”

“ The Israelites among us talk of their own kingdom, and I wonder if the Hebrew means to set up a nation within us, or assail the throne of the Pharaohs, or go forth and settle in another country."
The lady shrugged her shoulders. "The Hebrews talk in similitudes. The prospect of freedom so uplifts them that they chant their purposes to you, and bewilder you with quaint words and hidden meanings. But these three facts, my Lord, are apparent and most potent in results when combined; they are oppressed beyond endurance; they are many; they are captained by a mystic. ”

“ There certainly is no evidence that either the Babylonian or the Egyptian monotheistic tendencies influenced in any direct way the development of Israel's religion.
Turning now to the religion of the Old Testament, we soon discover that Hebrew religion, including the conception of Deity, passed through various stages of development, the earliest of these belonging to the period before Moses. ”

“ The true scriptures, according to the Jewish canon (Yad. iii. 5; Toseph. Yad. ii. 3) , were those which defiled the hands of such as touched them. But other scholars, such as Zahn, Schürer, Porter, state that the secret books with which we have been dealing formed a class by themselves and were called “Genuizim” (גנוזים) , and that this name and idea passed from Judaism over into the Greek, and that ἀπόκρυφα βιβλία is a translation of ספרים גנוזים. But the Hebrew verb does not mean “to bide” but “to store away,” and is only used of things in themselves precious. ”

“ We may conceive the composition of the Pentateuch to have passed through approximately the following stages. Earliest of all and fundamental to all come the ancient traditions and the ancient poetry, such as the book of the wars of Jehovah, and the book of Jashar. Upon this basis, during the monarchy men of prophetic spirit in both kingdoms—not improbably at the sanctuaries—wrote the history of the Hebrew people. ”

“ The superiority of Hebrew is manifest from the logical point of view if we consider the people who employed it for discourses, particularly at the time when prophecy was rife among them, also for preaching, songs and psalmody. It is conceivable that their rulers such as for instance, Moses, Joshua, David, and Solomon lacked the words to express what they wished, as it is the case with us to-day, because it is lost to us? Dost thou not see how the Tōrāh, when describing the Tabernacle, Ephōd and breastplate and other objects, always finds the most suitable word for all these strange matters? ”