The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 01/Book 4/Chapter 2

by Theodore Parker

CHAPTER II.

AN EXAMINATION OF THE CLAIMS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT TO BE A DIVINE, MIRACULOUS, OR INFALLIBLE COMPOSITION.

It is not possible to prove directly the divine and miraculous character of the Old Testament by showing that God miraculously revealed it to the writers thereof, for we do not know who were the writers of the greater part of the books; and when the authors are known, it is only by their own testimony, which we have no right to assume to be infallible. We have not the faintest direct evidence to show there was anything miraculous in their composition. The indirect evidence may be reduced to two branches:—first that which shows that all the statements of the Old Testament are true, and second that which shows it contains statements of things above human apprehension. From the nature of the case, the former proposition cannot be proved, since many things treated of in the Bible are known to us by that book alone. To say they are true, is to assume the fact at issue. Besides, a true statement is not necessarily miraculous; if it were, the multiplication table of Pythagoras would be a divine and miraculous composition. The latter proposition has also its difficulty. How do we know its statements are above human apprehension? But suppose they are, how do we know they are true? These difficulties are insuperable. To assume the divinity of the Old Testament is quite as absurd as to assume the same for the next book that shall be printed; to declare it miraculous on account of the beautiful piety in some parts of it is as foolish as to make the same claim for the Geometry of Euclid and the Poems of Homer, on account of their great excellence; to admit this claim because made by some of the Jews, is no more wise than to admit the claims of the Zoroastrian records and the Sibylline oracles, and the religious books of all nations; then, among so many, one is of no value, for the very excellence of a miraculous work is thought to consist in the fact of its being the only miraculous work.

To leave these assumptions and come to facts, this general thesis may be laid down, and maintained: Every book of the Old Testament bears distinct marks of its human origin; some of human folly and sin; all of human weakness and imperfection. If this thesis be true, the Bible is not the direct work of God; not the master of the Mind and Conscience, Heart and Soul of man. To prove this proposition it is necessary to go into some details. The Hebrews divided their scriptures into the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings, to each of which they assigned a peculiar degree of inspiration. The Law was infallibly inspired, God speaking with Moses face to face; the Prophets less perfectly, God addressing them by visions and dreams; the Writings still more feebly, God communicating to their authors by figures and enigmas.^[1] This ancient division may well enough be followed in this discussion.

I. Of the Law.

This comprises the first five books of the Bible. They are commonly ascribed to Moses; but there is no proof that he wrote a word of them. Only the Decalogue, in a compendious form, and perhaps a few fragments, can be referred to him with much probability. From the use of peculiar words, from local allusions, and other incidental signs, it is plain here are fragments from several different writers, who lived no one knows when or where, their names perfectly unknown to us. They all bear marks of an age much later than that of Moses, as any one familiar with ancient history, and free from prejudice, may see on examination.^[2]

But if they were written by Moses, we are not, on the bare word of a writer, to admit the miraculous infallibility of his statements. Besides, the character of the books is such that a very high place is not to be assigned them among human compositions, measured by the standard of the present day. The first chapter of Genesis, if taken as a history, in the unavoidable sense of its terms, is at variance with facts. It relates that God created the sun, moon, stars, and earth, and gave the latter its plants, animals, and men, in six days; while science proves that many thousands, if not millions of years must have passed between the creation of the first plants, and man, the crown of creation; that the surface of the earth gradually received its present form, one race of plants after the other sprang up, animals succeeded animals, the simpler first, then the more complex, and at last came man. This chapter tells of an ocean of water above our heads, separated from us by a solid expanse, in which the greater and lesser lights are fixed; that there was evening and morning before there was a sun to cause the difference between day and night; that the sun and stars were created after the earth, for the earth’s convenience; and that God ceased his action, and rested on the seventh day and refreshed himself. Here the Bible is at variance with science, which is Nature stated in exact language. Few men will say directly what the schoolmen said to Galileo, “If Nature is opposed to the Bible then Nature is mistaken, for the Bible is certainly right;” but the popular view of the Bible logically makes that assertion. Truth and the book of Genesis cannot be reconciled, except on the hypothesis that the Bible means anything it can be made to mean,^[3] but then it means nothing.

A similar decision must be pronounced upon many accounts in the Law,—on the creation of woman; the story of the garden, the temptation and fall of man; the appearances of God in human shape, eating and drinking with his favourite, and making covenants; the story of the flood and the ark; the miraculous birth of Isaac; the promise to the patriarchs; the great age of mankind; the tower of Babel and confusion of tongues; the sacrifice of Isaac; the history of Joseph; of Moses; the ten plagues miraculously sent; the wonderful passage of the Red Sea; the support of the Hebrews in the wilderness on manna; the miraculous supply of food, water, and clothing, and the delivery of the Law at Mount Sinai.^[4] On these it is needless to dwell. But there is one account in the Law too significant to be passed over. It is briefly this.^[5] As the Jews approached the land of Canaan, Moses sent twelve men, “heads of the children of Israel,” to examine the land, and report to the people. They spent a long time in their tour, reported that the land was fertile, exhibited specimens of its productions, but added, it was full of warlike nations. The Jews were afraid to invade it; “They wept all night and said, Would God we had died in the land of Egypt.” They rebelled, and wished to choose a leader and return. Moses and Aaron, and Caleb and Joshua—two of the twelve messengers—urge them to battle, and say, “Jehovah is with us.” The people refuse, and would stone them. Then the glory of Jehovah appeared before the face of the people, and God says to Moses, “How long will this people provoke me? … I will smite them with the pestilence and disinherit them, and make of thee a greater nation and mightier than they.” But Moses, more merciful than his God, attempts to appease the Deity, and that by an appeal to his vanity; And Moses said unto Jehovah, “Then the Egyptians shall hear of it, and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land. Now if thou shalt kill all this people as one man, then the nations will speak, saying, Because Jehovah was not able to bring this people into the land he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them.” Then he proceeds to soothe his Deity; “Pardon the iniquity of this people;” “Jehovah is long-suffering and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but by no means clearing the guilty.” Jehovah consents, but adds, “As truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of Jehovah,” but “ because all these men … have tempted me now these ten times, … surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, … your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness, … in this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there they shall die.”

If an unprejudiced Christian were to read this for the first time in a heathen writer, and it was related of Kronos or Moloch, he would say, What foul ideas those heathens had of God; thank Heaven we are Christians, and cannot believe in a deity so terrible. It is true there are now pious men, who believe the story to the letter, profess to find comfort therein, and count it part of their Christianity to believe it. But is God angry with men; passionate, revengeful; offended because they will not war, and butcher the innocent? Would he violate his perfect law and by a miracle destroy a whole nation, millions of men, women, and children, because they fall into a natural fit of despair, and refuse to trust ten witnesses rather than two witnesses? Does God require man's words to restrain his rage, violence, and a degree of fury which Nero and Caracalla, butchers of Men though they were, would have shuddered to think of? Is He to be teased and coaxed from murder? Are we called on to believe this in the name of Christianity? Then perish Christianity from the face of earth, and let Man learn of his Religion and his God from the stars and the violet, the lion and the lamb. View this as the savage story of some oriental who attributed a bloodthirsty character to his God, and made a Deity in his own image, and it is a striking remnant of barbarism that has passed away, not destitute of dramatic interest; not without its melancholy moral. There are some things which may be true, but must be rejected for lack of evidence to prove them true; but this story no amount of evidence could make credible.

Throughout the whole of the Law, fact and fiction, history and mythology, are so intimately blended, that it seems impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends. The laws are not perfect; they contain a mingling of good and bad, wise and absurd, and if men will maintain that God is their author, we must still apply to them the words which Ezekiel puts in his mouth:^[6] “I gave them statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live;” or say with Jeremiah, “I spake not unto your fathers in the day that I brought them up out of Egypt, concerning burnt-offerings, or sacrifices.”

II. Of the Prophets.

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

1. Of the Early Prophets.

No one knows the date or the author of any one of these books; they all contain historical matter of doubtful character, such as the miraculous passage of the Jordan; the destruction of Jericho; the standing still of the sun and moon at the command of Joshua; the story of Samson; the destruction of the Benjamites; the birth and calling of Samuel; the wonders wrought by the Ark; the story of Saul, David, and Goliah, the miraculous pestilence, of Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, and others. Of all these, perhaps the story of Samson is the most strikingly absurd,—a man of miraculous birth and miraculous strength, whose ability lay in his long hair, and which went from him when his locks were shorn off. When we read in Hesiod and elsewhere, the birth and exploits of Hercules,—who bears a resemblance to Samson in some respects, though vastly his superior on the whole—we refer the tale to human fancy in a low stage of civilization; a mind free from prejudice will do the same with the story of Samson.^[7] No one can reasonably contend that it requires a mind miraculously enlightened to produce such books as these of the early prophets. They belong to the fabulous period of Jewish history. Mythology, poetry, fact, and fiction, are strangely woven together. The authors, whoever they were, claim no inspiration. However, as a general rule, they contain less to offend a religious mind than the books of the Law.

2. The Prophets, properly so called.

It may be said of these writings, in general, that they contain nothing above the reach of human faculties. Here are noble and spirit-stirring appeals to men's conscience, patriotism, honour, and religion; beautiful poetic descriptions, odes, hymns, expressions of faith, almost beyond praise. But the mark of human infirmity is on them all, and proofs or signs of miraculous inspiration are not found in them. In the minor prophets, there is nothing worthy of special notice in this place, unless it be the story of Jonah, which is unique in the ancient Hebrew literature, and tells its own tale.^[8] These books do not require a detailed examination.^[9] The greater prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, are more important, and require a more minute notice. In these, as well as in other prophetical books, and the Law, claim is apparently made to miraculous inspiration. “Thus saith Jehovah,” is the authority to which the prophet appeals; “Jehovah said unto me,” “The command of Jehovah came unto me,” “I saw in a vision,” “The spirit of Jehovah came upon me.” These and similar expressions occur often in the prophets. But do these phrases denote a claim to miraculous inspiration as we understand it? We limit miraculous inspiration to a few cases, where something is to be done above human ability. Not so the Hebrews; they did not make a sharp distinction between the miraculous and the common. All religious and moral power was regarded as the direct gift of God; an outpouring of his spirit. God teaches David to fight; commands Gideon to select his soldiers, to arise in the night and attack the foe. The Lord set his enemies to fight amongst themselves. He teaches Bezaleel and Aholiab. They, and all the ingenious mechanics, are filled with “the spirit of God.” The same “spirit of the Lord” enables Samson to kill a lion, and many men. These instances show with what latitude the phrase is used, and how loose were the notions of inspiration.^[10] The Greeks also referred their works to the aid of Phœbus, Pallas, Vulcan, or Olympian Jove, in the same way.

It has never been rendered probable that the phrase, Thus saith the Lord, and its kindred terms, were understood by the prophets or their hearers to denote any miraculous agency in the case. They employ language with the greatest freedom. Thus a writer says, “I saw Jehovah sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple; above it stood the seraphim.” No thinking man would suppose the prophet designed to assert a fact, or that his countrymen understood him to do so. Certainly it is insulting to suppose a philosophic man would believe God sat on a throne, with a troop of courtiers around him, like a Persian king. When a prophet says Jehovah appeared to him in a dream, he can only mean, either he dreamed Jehovah appeared, which is somewhat different, or that he chose this symbolical way of stating his opinion. Thus a Grecian prophet might say, “The muse came down from high Olympus' shaggy top, and whispered unto me, her favourite son.”^[11] Not stating a fact, he would give an outness to what passed in his mind. However, if these writers claimed miraculous inspiration ever so strongly, we are not to grant it unless they abide the test mentioned above.

If they utter predictions—which they rarely attempt—we are not to assume their fulfilment, and then conclude the prophet was miraculously inspired, common as the method is. But what is the value of the claim made for them? Has any one of them ever uttered a distinct, definite, and unambiguous prediction of any future event that has since taken place, which a man without a miracle could not equally well predict? It has never been shown. Most of the prophetic writings relate to the past and the present; to the political, civil, and moral condition of the people, at the time; they exhort backsliding Israel to forsake his idols, return to Jehovah, live wisely and well. They state the result of obedience or of disobeying, for individuals and the nation. It is rare they predict distinctly and definitely any specific event; sometimes they foretell, in the most general terms, good or ill fortune, the destruction of a city, the defeat of an army, the downfall of a king. But in case the prediction came to pass, who shall tell us, at this distance of time, that it was not either a lucky hit, or the result of sagacious insight? Certainly the supposition is against a miracle. The Tripod of Delphi delivered some oracles that were extraordinarily felicitous; Seneca made a very clear prediction of the discovery of America, and Lactantius of the rise and downfall of Napoleon, and Lotichius of the capture of Magdeburg. Does the fulfilment prove the miraculous inspiration of the oracle in these cases?^[12]

But to recur to the other test, there are statements in the prophets which are not true; predictions that did not come to pass. Under this rubric may be placed three of the most celebrated oracles in the Old Testament.

1. Jeremiah's Prediction of the Seventy Years of Exile.

It was an easy thing in Jeremiah's position to see that the little nation of Judea could not hold out against the Babylonian forces, and therefore must experience the common fate of nations they conquered, and be carried into exile.^[13] But would the Lord forsake his people; the seed of Abraham? A pious Jew could not believe it. It was unavoidable, with the common opinion of his countrymen, that he should expect their subsequent restoration. But why predict an exile of just seventy years, unless miraculously directed?^[14] He may have used that term for an indefinite period; a common practice. In that case there is no miracle. But on the other hand, if he predicted an exile of just seventy years, the oracle was a failure. The people were not carried into captivity all at once. From which of the two or three times of deportation shall we set out? The books of Kings and Chronicles differ somewhat.^[15] But to take the chronology of Jeremiah himself, if the passage be genuine;^[16] the deportation began in the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar, 599 before Christ; it was continued in the year 588, and concluded in 583. The exile ended in the year 536. The longest period that can be made out extends to but sixty-three, and the shortest to but forty-seven years. To make out the seventy years we must date arbitrarily from the year 606.

2. Ezekiel's Oracle against Tyre.

This prophet predicts that Nebuchadnezzar shall destroy Tyre.^[17] The prediction is clear and distinct; the destruction is to be complete and total. “With the hoofs of his horses shall he tread down all thy streets; he shall slay thy people by the sword, and thy strong garrison shall go down to the ground. … I will make thee like the top of a rock; thou shalt be to spread nets upon; thou shalt be built up no more.” But it was not so. Nebuchadnezzar was obliged to raise the siege after investing the city for thirteen years, and go and fight the Egyptians. Then sixteen years after the first oracle, Ezekiel takes back his own words: “The word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar … caused his army to serve a great service against Tyrus; every head was made bald,” with the chafing of the helmet, “every shoulder was peeled,” with the pressure of burdens; “yet he had no wages, nor his army from Tyrus. … Therefore, behold, I will give the land of Egypt unto Nebuchadnezzar.”^[18]

These things speak for themselves, and show the nature of the prophetic discourses, that they were moral addresses, or poetical odes. Ezekiel's celebrated prediction of an impossible city,^[19] is a standing monument of the prophetic character, and of the lasting folly of interpreters. It were easy to collect other instances of palpable mistake.^[20]

3. The alleged Predictions of Jesus as the Messiah.

The Messianic prophecies are the most famous of all. It is commonly pretended that there are in the Old Testament clear and distinct predictions of Jesus of Nazareth. But I do not hesitate to say, it has never been shown that there is, in the whole of the Old Testament, one single sentence that in the plain and natural sense of the words foretells the birth, life, or death of Jesus of Nazareth. If the Scripture have seventy-two senses, as one of the Rabbins declares, or if it foretell whatever comes to pass, as Augustine has said, and means all it can be made to mean, as many moderns seem to think, why predictions and types of Jesus may be found in the first chapter of Genesis, in Noah and Abraham and Samson, as well as in Virgil’s fourth Eclogue, the Odes of Horace, and the story of the Trihemerine Hercules.

The Messianic expectations and prophecies seem to have originated in this way: After the happy and successful period of David and Solomon, the kingdom was divided into Judah and Israel, the two tribes and the ten, the national prosperity declined. Pious men hoped for better times; they naturally connected these hopes with a personal deliverer; a descendant of David, their most popular king. The deliverer would unite the two kingdoms under the old form. A poetic fancy endowed him with wonderful powers; made him a model of goodness. Different poets arrayed their expected hero in imaginary drapery to suit their own conceptions. Malachi gives him a forerunner. The Jews were the devoutest of nations; the popular deliverer must be a religious man. They were full of pious faith; so the darker the present, the brighter shone the Pharos of Hope in the future. Sometimes this deliverer was called the Messiah; this term is not common in the Old Testament, however, but is sometimes applied to Cyrus by the Pseudo-Isaiah.^[21]

These hopes and predictions of a deliverer involved several important things: A reunion of the divided tribes; a return of the exiles; the triumph and extension of the kingdom of Israel, its eternal duration and perfect happiness; idolatry was to be rooted out; the nations improved in morals and religion; Truth and Righteousness were to reign; Jehovah to be reconciled with his people; all of them were to be taught of God; other nations were to come up to Jerusalem, and be blessed. But the Mosaic Law was to be eternal; the old ritual to last for ever; Jerusalem to be the capital of the Messianic kingdom, and the Jewish nation to be reëstablished in greater pomp than in the times of David. Are these predictions of Jesus of Nazareth? He was not the Messiah of Jewish expectation and of the prophets' foretelling. The furthest from it possible. The predictions demanded a political and visible kingdom in Palestine, with Jerusalem for its capital, and its ritual the old Law. The kindgom of Jesus is not of this world. The ten tribes—have they come back to the home of their fathers? They have perished and are swallowed up in the tide of the nations, no one knowing the place of their burial. The kingdom of the two tribes soon went to the ground. These are notorious facts. The Jews are right when they say their predicted Messiah has not come. Does the old Testament foretell a suffering Saviour, his kingdom not of this world; crucified; raised from the dead? The idea is foreign to the Hebrew Scriptures. Well might a Jew ask, “Wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” To trust the uncertain record of the New Testament, Jesus was slow to accept the name of the Messiah; he knew the “people would take him by force and make him a king.” But what means the triumphal entry into Jerusalem? He forbids his disciples to speak of his Messiahship—“See that thou tell no man of it;” lets John draw his own inference, whether or not he must “look for another;” thinks Simon Peter could only find it out by inspiration. Was it that he knew he was not the Messiah of the prophets, and so never formally assumed the title; but, knowing that he was a true deliverer, far greater than their impossible Messiah, first suffered the name to be affixed to him, and then made the most of the popular Idea? Or, was he himself mistaken? It concerns us little; but this remains, that he was much more than the Jews looked for. The Jewish Christians mistook the matter; Paul would prove that he was the Messiah of the prophets. Mistakes in Theology, like bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, are repeated again and again, in fantastic combinations.^[22]

III. The Writings.

Under this head are comprised the remaining books of the Old Testament. Here is the dramatic poem of Job, a work of surprising beauty, and full of truth. But its author denies the immortality of the soul, and though he attempts “to justify the ways of God to man,” he yet leaves the question as undecided as he found it.

In the Psalms we have beautiful prayers, mixed up with their local occasions; penitential hymns, songs of praise, expressions of hope, faith, trust in God, that have never been surpassed. The devotion of some of these sweet lyrics is beyond praise. But at the same time here are the most awful denunciations that speech ever spoke. In he following passage the writer denounces his enemies.^[23] “Set thou a wicked man over him. Let Satan stand at his right hand; when he shall be judged, let him be condemned, and let his prayer become sin. Let his days be few; let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds and beg. … Let there be none to extend mercy unto him, neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children.” These are the words of a man angry and revengeful. The Psalms abound with similar imprecations. To maintain they came directly from the God of love is to forget Reason, Conscience, and Religion, which teach us to love our enemies, to pray for them that persecute us.

The book of Proverbs and the Song of Songs speak for themselves, and neither need nor claim any more inspiration than other collections of Proverbs or Oriental amatory Idyls. The latter belongs to the same class with the writings of Anacreon. The somewhat doubtful book of Ecclesiastes seems to be the work of a sceptic. He denies the immortality of the soul with great clearness; thinks wisdom and folly are alike vanity. Though he concludes most touchingly in praise of virtue on the whole, and declares the fear of God and keeping his commandments is the whole duty of man, yet this conclusion is vitiated by the former precept, “Be not righteous overmuch.” The Lamentations of Jeremiah have as little claim to inspiration.^[24]

The historical books of this division present some peculiarities. Ezra and Nehemiah are valuable historical documents, though implicit faith is by no means to be placed in them. The book of Esther is entirely devoid of religious interest, and seems to be a romance designed to show that the Jews will always be provided for. The brief book of Ruth may be an historical or a fictitious work.

The book of Daniel is a perfect unique in the Old Testament. It professes to have been written by a captive Jew, at Babylon, in the beginning of the sixth century before Christ; it contains accounts of surprising miracles, dreams, visions, men cast into a den of lions and a furnace of fire, yet escaping unhurt; a man transformed to a beast, and eating grass like an ox for some years, and then restored to human shape; a miraculous and spectral hand writing on the palace wall; grotesque fancies that remind us of the Arabian Nights, and the Talmud.^[25] To judge from internal evidence, it was written in the first part of the second century, perhaps about one hundred and eighty-seven years before Christ, in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. The author seems to have a political and moral end in view, and to write for the encouragement of his countrymen, perhaps designing his work should pass for what it is, a politico-religious romance.^[26]

All of these books hitherto mentioned seem written by earnest men, with no intention to deceive. Their manly honesty is everywhere apparent. But the book of Chronicles is of a very different character. Here is an obvious attempt on the writer's part to exalt the character of orthodox kings, and depress that of heretical kings; to bring forward the Priests and the Levites, and give everything a ceremonial appearance. This design will be obvious to any one who reads the stories in Chronicles, and then turns to the parallel passages in Samuel and Kings.^[27] To take but a single instance: the writer of the book of Samuel gives an account of David; tells of his good and evil qualities; does not pass over his cruelty, nor extenuate his sin. But in Chronicles there is not a word of this: nothing of the crime of imperial adultery; nothing of Nathan's rousing apologue, and Thou-art-the-man. The thing speaks for itself.

Now if these books have any divine authority, what shall we do with such contradictions; deny the fact? We live too long after Dr Faustus for so easy a device. Shall we say, with a modern divine, the true believer will accept both statements with the same implicit faith? This also may be doubtful.

To look back upon the field we have passed, it must be confessed that the claims made for the Old Testament have no foundation in fact; its books, like others, have a mingling of good and evil. We see a gradual progress of ideas therein, keeping pace with the civilization of the world. Vestiges of ignorance, superstition, folly, of unreclaimed selfishness, yet linger there. Fact and fiction are strangely blended; the common and miraculous, the divine and the human, run into one another. We find rude notions of God in some parts, though in others the more lofty. Here, the moral and religious sentiment are insulted; there, is beautiful instruction for both. Human imperfections meet us everywhere in the Old Testament. The passions of man are ascribed to God. The Jews had a mythology as well as the Greeks: they transform law into miracles; earth into a dream-land; it rains manna for eight and thirty years, and the smitten rock pours out water. We see a gradual progress in this as in all mythologies: first, God appears in person; walks in the garden in the cool of the day; eats and drinks; makes contracts with his favourites; is angry, resentful, sudden and quick in quarrel, and changes his plans at the advice of a cool man. Then it is the Angel of God who appears to man. It is deemed fatal for man to see Jehovah. His messenger comes to Manoah, and vanishes in the flame of the sacrifice; the angel of Jehovah appears to David. Next it is only in dreams, visions, types, and symbols that the Most High approaches his children. He speaks to them by night; comes in the rush of thoughts, but is not seen. The personal Form, and the visible Angel, have faded and disappeared as the daylight assumed its power. The nation advanced; its Religion and mythology advanced with it. Then again, sometimes God is represented as but a local deity; Jacob is surprised to find him in a foreign land: next he is only the God of the Hebrews. At last, the only living and true God.

There is a similar progress in the notions of the service God demands. Abraham must offer Isaac; with Moses, slain beasts are sufficient; Micah has outgrown the Mosaic form in some respects, and says, “Shall Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams; shall I give the first-born of my body for the sin of my soul? what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?” A spiritual man in the midst of a formal people saw the pure truth which they saw not. Does the Old Testament claim to be master of the soul? By no means; it is only a phantom conjured up by superstition that scares us in our sleep. Does the truth it contains make it a miraculous book? It is poor logic which thinks what is false can cease to be false, though never so many wonders are wrought in its defence.^[28]

1. See Philo, De Monarch. I. p. 820; De Vita Mosis, III. p. 681, II. p. 656, et seq.; Josephus, Cont. Apion, I. 8.
2. The proofs of this assertion cannot be adduced in a brief discourse like the present; see thereon de Wette, Introduction to the O. T., tr. by Theo. Parker, Vol. II. § 138, et seq.
3. See Augustine, Confessiones, Lib. XII. C. 18, et al. See in Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Lond. 1840, Vol. II. p. 137, et seq., the remarkable chapter on “the Relation of Tradition to Palæontology.” He thinks the interpretation of the Scriptures ought to change to suit the advance of physical science; and quotes, approvingly, the celebrated expression of Bellarmine: "When a demonstration shall be found to establish the Earth's motion, it will be proper to interpret the Sacred Scriptures otherwise than they have hitherto been interpreted in those passages where mention is made of the stability of the Earth and movement of the Heavens.” Thus he makes the interpretation of the Bible purely arbitrary: you can interpret into it, or out of it, what you will. If you may so deal with the Bible why not with Homer, Plato, Milton, and Hobbes? In fact, the sound interpretation of the Bible is no more arbitrary than that of Lyttleton's Tenures, and that of Nature itself.
4. See Geddes, Critical Remarks on the Hebrew Scriptures, Lond. 1800; Holy Bible, &c., &c. See some valuable remarks in Palfrey, ubi sup. Vol. II. p. 133; Norton, Vol. II. Note D.
5. Numbers xiv.
6. Ezekiel, ch. xx. 25; Jer. vii. 22.
7. See Palfrey, ubi sup., Vol. II. p. 194, et seq., and on these books in general, p. 134—300; Horne, ubi sup., Vol. II. p. 216, et seq.
8. Pausanias says he saw a dolphin carry a boy on his back as a recompense for being healed of a wound by the boy! Lib. III., C. 25, p. 573. A man who should believe such a story on such evidence would be thought not a little credulous by the men who declare it dangerous to doubt the stories in Jonah and Daniel. See too Pausanias, Lib. I. C. 44, § 8, and X. C. 13, § 10.
9. For this, see De Wette, Introd. Vol. II., and Palfrey, ubi sup., Vol. II. p. 362, et seq.
10. See Glassius, Philologia sacra, ed. Dathe, Vol. II. p. 815, et seq.; Bauer, Theologie des A. T., § 51–54, et al.
11. See Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, Lib. I. ch. i. and ii.; Ovid, Metamorph. Lib. II 640, et seq.
12. See De Wette, ubi sup., Vol. II. § 201, et seq.
13. On this custom of the Chaldees, see Heeren, Ideen, Vol. I.; Gesenius On Isa. xxxvi. 16.
14. Jer. xxv.
15. See 2 Kings xxiv. xxv.; 2 Chron. xxxvi.
16. Jer. lii. 28–30; but see verses 4–15. See the forced combinations in Jahn's Hebrew Commonwealth, Ch. V. § 43.
17. xxvi. 1, et seq.
18. xxix. 17, et seq. See Isaiah xxiii., and Gesenius's remarks, in his Commentar., Vol. i. p. 711, et seq.; Rosenmüller, Alterth. Vol. II. pt. i. p. 34.
19. Ch. xl.—xlviii.
20. On the Prophecies in general, see the Essay of Prof. Stuart, in Bib. Rep., Vol. II. p. 217, et seq.; of Hengstenberg, ibid. p. 139, et seq.; Noyes in Christian Examiner, Vol. XVI. p. 321, et seq. See also the able Essay of Knobel, Prophetismus der Hebräer, Vol. I. Einleit.
21. Many chapters of Isaiah have been shown to be spurious. The passages, Chapter xli.-lxvi., xiii. xiv., xxiii.—xxvii., xxxiv. xxxv., are of this character.
22. See De Wette, Dogmatik, § 137–142; Opuscula, I. p. 23–31; the numerous Christologies of modern times, and the introductions to the Old Testament. See also Strauss, Life of Jesus, § 60-68; Hennell, ubi sup. Chap. i. ii. and xii. xiii.; Bretschneider, Dogmatik, § 30, 34, (p. 356, et seq.,) § 137, (p. 166, et seq.); Hahn, Knapp, Hase, Wegscheider, &c., and Hengstenberg's Christology.
23. Ps. cix. 6, et seq. See also Ps. cxxxvii.
24. See Leclerc's Five Letters concerning the Inspiration, &c., London, 1690; and on the other hand, William Lowth's Vindication of the Divine Authority, &c., Lond., 1699; and Gaussen, Horne, and Stuart, ubi sup.
25. See De Wette, Vol. II. § 257, p. 505, note a, and Pliny, VIII. 34.
26. See De Wette, Vol. II. § 253, et seq.
27. The passages are conveniently arranged for this purpose, side by side, in Jahn's edition of the Hebrew Bible. De Wette, § 189, et seq.
28. On the Old Testament, its authors' inspiration, &c., see some valuable remarks in Spinoza, Tract. theol. polit. Ch. I.-X. XII. XIII. See Norton, Vol. II. Append. D, and his Letter to Blanco White in Thom, ubi sup. Vol. II. p. 250, et seq. See also Ewald, Gesch. des Volkes Israel, &c., Gött. 1843, et seq.; B. I. Vorbereitung: all the six laborious volumes are rich in historical results.