THE ANTIQUITY, CLASSIFICATION AND CHARACTER OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

SPECIAL TEXT: "Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."—JESUS.

NOTES.

1. Antiquity of the Hebrew Sacred Books: Josephus in his first book against Apion ascribes the most ancient books of the Hebrew race—the Pentateuch, the five books—to Moses, and in contrasting the Hebrew literature with that of the Greeks, he says:

"We, therefore, (who are Jews) must yield to the Grecian writers as to language and eloquence of composition; but then we shall give them no such preference as to the verity of ancient history, and least of all as to that part which concerns the affairs of our several countries. As to the care of writing down the records from the earliest antiquity among the Egyptians and Babylonians; that the priests were intrusted therewith, and employed a philosophical concern about it; that they were the Chaldean priests that did so among the Babylonians, and that the Phoenicians, who were mingled among the Greeks, did especially make use of their letters both for the common affairs of life and for the delivering down the history of common transactions, I think I may omit any proof, because all men allow it so to be. But now as to our forefathers, that they took no less care about writing such records, (for I will not say they took greater care than the others I spoke of,) and that they committed that matter to their high priests and to their prophets, and that these records have been written all along down to our own times with the utmost accuracy. * * * * * For our forefathers did not only appoint the best of these priests, and those that attended upon the divine worship, for that design from the beginning, but made provision that the stock of the priests should continue unmixed and pure; for he who is partaker of the Priesthood must propagate of a wife of the same nation, without having regard to money, or any other dignities: but he is to make a scrutiny, and take his wife's genealogy from the ancient tables, and procure many witnesses to it. And this is our practice not only in Judea, but wheresoever any body of men of our nation do live; and even there an exact catalogue of our priests' marriages is kept; I mean at Egypt and at Babylon, or in any other place of the rest of the habitable earth, whithersoever our priests are scattered; for they send to Jerusalem the ancient names of their parents in writing, as well as those of their remoter ancestors, and signify who are the witnesses also. * * * But what is the strongest argument of our exact management in this matter is what I am now going to say. That we have the names of our high priests from father to son set down in our records, for the interval of two thousand years; and if any of these have been transgressors of these rules, they are prohibited to present themselves at the altar, or to be partakers of any other of our purifications; and this is justly, or rather necessarily done, because every one is not permitted of his own accord to be a writer, nor is there any disagreement in what is written; they being only prophets that have written the original and earliest accounts of things, as they learned them of God himself by inspiration; and others have written what hath happened in their own time, and that in a very distinct manner also: For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another, (as the Greeks have,) but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times, which are justly believed to be divine. And of them, five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death. This interval of time was little short of three thousand years; but as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes; the prophets, who were after Moses, wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God, and precepts for the conduct of human life. It is true, our history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time; and how firmly we have given credit to these books of our own nation, is evident by what we do; for during so many ages as have already passed, no one hath been so bold as either to add anything to them, to take anything from them, or to make any change in them; but it is become natural to all Jews, immediately and from their very birth, to esteem these books to contain divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and, if occasion be, willingly to die for them. For it is no new thing for our captives, many of them in number, and frequently in time, to be seen to endure racks and deaths of all kinds upon the theatres, that they may not be obliged to say one word against our laws and the records that contain them." (Antiquity of the Jews, Flavius Josephus Against Apion, Book 1, pp. 582-583.)

2. The Effect of Recent Discoveries in Chaldea and Egypt on the Authorship of the Five Books in the Bible Ascribed to Moses:

"The Assyrian inscriptions which have been recently recovered and given to the English-speaking peoples by Layard, George Smith, Sayce, and others, show that in the ancient religions of Chaldea and Babylonia there was elaborated a narrative of the creation which, in its most important features, must have been the source of that in our own sacred books. It has now become perfectly clear that from the same sources which inspired the accounts of the creation of the universe among the Chaldee-Babylonian, the Assyrian, the Phoenician, and other ancient civilizations came the ideas which hold so prominent a place in the sacred books of the Hebrews. * * * * From this idea of creation was evolved in time a somewhat nobler view. Ancient thinkers, and especially, as is now found, in Egypt, suggested that the main agency in creation was not the hands and fingers of the Creator, but his voice. Hence was mingled with the earlier, cruder belief regarding the origin of the earth and heavenly bodies by the Almighty the more impressive idea that "he spake and they were made"—that they were brought into existence by his word." (A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, Vol. 1, pp. 2-3).

Referring again to the work of the noted Archaeologists mentioned above, with others, Mr. White goes on to say that they "have deciphered a multitude of ancient texts, especially the inscriptions found in the great library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh, and have discovered therein an account of the origin of the world identical in its most important features with the later accounts in our own book of Genesis. These men have had the courage to point out these facts and to connect them with the truth that these Chaldean and Babylonian myths, legends, and theories were far earlier than those of the Hebrews, which so strikingly resemble them, and which we have in our sacred books; and they have also shown us how natural it was that the Jewish accounts of the creation should have been obtained at that remote period when the earliest Hebrews were among the Chaldeans, and how the great Hebrew poetic accounts of creation were drawn either from the sacred traditions of these earlier peoples or from antecedent sources common to various ancient nations." (A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, Vol. 1, p. 20.)

There can be no doubt but what the accounts of creation found in these Assyrian and Egyptian sources are earlier than those written by Moses, or that they are similar in import, but because of these facts is it necessary to discredit either the Mosaic authorship of the five books of the Bible accredited to that Prophet, or doubt the inspiration of these accounts? And yet this has been the result of these discoveries on many minds. The truth is, that the outlined facts of the creation have been known by our race from earliest times, from the days of Adam in fact. They were matters of common knowledge among the antediluvian patriarchs, and through the family of Noah were preserved for the families and races of men subsequent to the flood; and variously distorted these creation facts were preserved by all people. But all this did not prevent the Lord from revealing the creation history to Moses, nor does it require us to doubt the inspiration which rested upon him and that enabled him to weave into splendid coherent form the fragmentary truths held among the ancient Egyptians and Assyrian peoples. That there were pre-Mosaic documents containing accounts of creation and the history of God's hand-dealings with ancient peoples, we have abundant proof of in the Book of Abraham, which so strangely came into the possession of the Prophet Joseph Smith (See Church History, Vol. II, pp. 235-6, 348-350). Also that the Lord revealed the creation facts, and also the early history of our race to Moses, is confirmed by revelation to the Prophet of the nineteenth century, Joseph Smith (See Pearl of Great Price, Book of Moses, pp. 1-48, also History of the Church, Vol. I, 98 et seq.)

The student will find a well written article by Professor A. H. Sayce, in "The Bible Treasury," pp. 37-42, that bears upon this subject. The matter is also discussed at some length in Young Men's Manual for 1903-4 (No. 7)., chap. I.

Furthermore, it should be noted that the writers of the New Testament bear emphatic testimony to the authenticity and divine authority of the Old Testament, since these writers so frequently quoted it as a work of divine authority. "Indeed," says an accepted authority in this class of literature, "the references are so numerous, and the testimonies so distinctly borne to the existence of the Mosaic books throughout the whole history of the Jewish nation, and the unity of character, design and style pervading these books is so clearly perceptible, notwithstanding the rationalistic assertions of their forming a series of separate and unconnected fragments, that it may with all safety be said, there is immensely stronger and more varied evidence in proof of their being the authorship of Moses than of any of the Greek or Roman classics being the productions of the authors whose names they bear." (Commentary on the Old and New Testaments, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, preface.)

3. Hagiographa: Hagiographa—the Greek name of the last of the three Jewish divisions of the Old Testament. They are variously reckoned, but usually comprise the Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles. (The Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia, Vol. IX.)

4. The Subdivisions of the Old Testament—Its Dignity and Authority: The student will observe that the classification of the books in the several authorities cited, all vary somewhat in the grouping and subdivisions of them; but I believe it will be found that the grouping in the analysis of the Seventies' Bible Dictionary will be found most complete and satisfactory. One thing should be borne in mind with reference to this whole volume of ancient Hebrew scripture, and that is, whatever the sub-division may be, history, legislation, poetry, prophecy, biography, or proverbs, it is written under the inspiration of God. That does not mean that human elements are not to be found in it, but rather that a divine spirit is present in the midst of those human elements giving forth light and truth and wisdom such as is to be found in no merely human production. There is a divine spirit always present in these scripture narratives, prophecies and poetry that make the whole to contain a revelation of God, and an account of his methods of doing things among men, all of which gives to those writings an authority that does not pertain to the ordinary writings of men.

Footnotes

1. It will be understood that by "Seventies' Bible," is meant throughout the Bible selected for the "Seventies' Indispensible Library," "The Teacher's Bible," Cambridge edition.2. Hackett edition always quoted.3. Third edition always quoted.4. This work will always be so quoted, it is a recent work produced in collaboration by Robert Jamieson, D. D., St. Paul's, Glasgow, Scotland; A. R. Fausset, D.D., St. Cuthberts, York, England; and David Brown, D.D., Professor of Theology, Aberdeen, Scotland. It is one of the best works of its kind, and represents the latest orthodox interpretations of the Scriptures, and while the Elders which make up our ministry may not accept the doctrinal interpretation of this or any other commentary, its historical and critical treatise are among the most recent and valuable.