Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/633

HEBREW 599 in the Canticles. The political and social superiority of Ephraim before the conflict with Assyria is reflected in the literature. A new epoch begins with the rise of written prophecy in the 8th century. By this time writing and literary knowledge were widely diffused (Isa. viii. 1; xxx. 8 ; x. 19). 1 Amos, himself an excellent stylist, in whose book only perverse ingenuity can trace marks of rusticity (" imperitum sermone," says Jerome), was a simple herds man in the wilderness of Judah. Yet it appears that the origin of written prophecy was due less to the spread of education than to the rise of a new school of men whose whole method and aims were in conflict with the official prophetic societies, the unworthy successors of Samuel and Elijah. In the terrible struggle with Nineveh, when the kingdom of Ephraim perished and Judea seemed lost beyond hope, the new prophecy, clear of vision when all were blinded, calm in its unshaken faith of ultimate victory, and pursuing with unfaltering steadfastness a great purpose of righteous ness, established a spiritual and intellectual ascendency which is stamped on the whole literature of the Assyrian and Chaldsean periods. . In the book of Deuteronomy the ancient ordinances of Israel were rewritten in the prophetic spirit, and the reformation carried out by Josiah on the . basis of this book is the decisive proof of the influence of the written word as the organ of prophetic ideas. The same influence can be traced in other directions, in psalms that express the type of individual faith, and in the histori cal books as they were finally shaped after the fall of Jerusalem, when the old popular narrative was filled out and continued in a spirit of prophetic pragmatism, and with the direct object of enforcing prophetic teaching. The Exile, which robbed Israel of every other inheritance, gave increased value and authority to the written word, and in the author of Isa. xl.-lxvi, we find a prophet who no longer appears in person before his audience but does his whole work by the pen. There are other short prophecies of the Babylonian age, as Isa. xiii., xiv., which seem to have been first published as anonymous broadsides a characteristic change from the method of the former prophets, who wrote only what they had first spoken to the people. The earliest written prophecy is nervous rhetoric of the old pregnant Hebrew style interspersed with bursts of song. Even before the Exile this style had undergone a change ; the prophecies of Jeremiah have lost something of the old force, while they display a subtler habit of reflexion and a pathos which has its origin in the conflict of a sensitive and shrink ing temperament with the overpowering sense of prophetic duty. Jeremiah was much occupied with the dark pro blems of providence and the meaning of the sufferings of the faithful in Israel, a topic which goes beyond the sphere of the earlier prophecy, but forms a chief theme of Isa. xl.-lxvi., and from a different point of view is taken up and discussed in the book of Job. The last-named book is the highest utterance of another characteristic form of Hebrew literature, the Chokma, that is, wisdom or practi cal philosophy in parabolic", epigrammatic, and poetic form. The earliest distinct trace of literary cultivation of this philosophy, which from its nature must at first have passed unwritten from mouth to mouth, is the collection of ancient proverbs by scholars in the service of Hezekiah (Prov. xxv. 1 ). ^ Along with the simple epigrammatic proverbs which continued to be a favourite vehicle of Jewish thought long after Hebrew had given way to Aramaic, the earliest form of Hebrew wisdom seems to have been the fable about plants and trees (Jud. xi., 2 Kings xiv. 9, cf. 1 Kings iv. 33), so different from the animal fables of Kalilas; and 1 In the 7th century written instruments were used in sales of pro perty (Jer. xxxii. 10), and in divorce cases they are recognized in Deut. xxiv. 1. Damnag or Sindban, which the later Semitic literature borrowed from India. The further development of the Chokma ran parallel with the progress of prophecy, and though it is generally maintained that Jeremiah quotes the book of Job, it is perhaps more likely that the contrary is the case, and that the latest and most meditative phase of prophecy was absorbed into the poetry of the Chokma. The brief revival of spoken prophecy after the Exile lacks the old fire, and presents no notable literary feature except the use of somewhat fantastic symbolic imagery, the proto type of the later apocalyptic literature. The decadence of prophecy and the synchronous system- atization of the ceremonial law on lines first drawn by Ezekiel, mark the commencement of the third and last period of Hebrew literature. The age of religious produc tivity was past, and the narrow limits and political nullity of the new Jewish settlement under the Persians presented no favourable conditions for a fresh development of truly national literature. The scribes took the place of the prophets, and the growth of traditionalism imposed increas ing restrictions on original thought. The freshest and best products of this period are the post-Exile psalms, the hymns of the second temple, which occupy a large part of the Psalter, and, though generally inferior to the older lyrics in the highest poetical qualities, are often full of the charm of genuine feeling and sweet utterance, and sometimes rise to a sublime energy of devotion and faith. With these psalms the graceful prose idyll of Ruth has a natural affinity. The other writings of the last age are on the whole much inferior. As the language decayed, the graces of the older prose style were lost. The memoirs of Ezra and Nehemiah, the colourless narrative of the Chronicles, and even the book of Esther, are singularly destitute of literary merit. Yet letters were sedulously cultivated. The Mid- rash, or sermonizing treatment of the old history which holds so large a place in later Jewish literature, had come in before the time of the Chronicler, who quotes a work of the kind by name the Midrash of the Book of Kings (2 Chron. xxiv. 27, cf. xiii. 22). Along with this came the beginnings of Haggada, the formation of parables and tales attached to historical names, of which the book of Jonah is generally taken as an early example, and which attains much greater dimensions in the apocryphal additions to the Hagiographa. And so at the close of the Old Testament period the author of Ecclesiastes could speak of the weariness of much study and the endless sterility of bookmaking. His judgment was confirmed by posterity, for of these many books scarcely a trace remains. The Cultivation of Hebreio as a Dead Langiiage?- We have seen that when the latest books of the Old Testament were written Aramaic had already supplanted Hebrew as the language of common life. But the knowledge of the ancient idiom was kept alive not merely by the study of the sacred books but by the continued use of Hebrew for literary purposes. Several books of the Apocrypha appear to be translated from Hebrew originals Sirach, Judith, 1 Mac. the last according to the express testimony of Jerome. It is even probable that the Old Testament canon contains elements as late as the epoch of national revival under the Maccabees (Daniel, certain Psalms), for Hebrew was the language of religion as well as of scholarship. As for the scholars, they affected not only to write but to speak in Hebrew ; but they could not resist the influence of the Aramaic vernacular, and indeed made no attempt to imitate 2 On this topic compare in general Wolfii Bibliotheca Hebrcca, 1715-1733 ; Bartolocii Bibliotheca Mar/no, Jtabbinica, 1675-1693 ; Imbonati Bibliotheca Latino -Hebraica, 1694 ; Diestel, Geschichte des A. T. in der Christlichen Kirche, 1869 ; R. Simon, Ilistoire Critique

du V. T., 1678.