Effects of the Greek library molded to the unity of a dominant idea. These divisions followed one another in successive periods of time as their values came to clearness and standard, the last not being finally settled until near A.D. 100. Variation It is not in our scope here to trace modifying elements through the Septuagint and its dependent versions except in one particular, an important one indeed; namely, the arrangement. The change is especially noticeable in the third division. It consists in putting seven books of that division, by a juster literary valuation, where they intrinsically belong. We have already noted (see p. 431) the transfers that were made. The result was to put narrative works (Ruth, Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah; Chronicles) where they could be read with other works of their class in consecution and context, and to put works of prophetic strain (Lamentations, Daniel) where their subject matter is vital. This leaves of the third division only the five poetical books (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs), the mere withdrawal of the others sufficing to give them a class by themselves. How this facilitates reading the Scripture as a classified series of coördinated works is obvious enough. It makes the successive stages more homogeneous in literary theme and tone. But this is not all. The Hebrew divisions themselves are quite disregarded in favor of a more consecutive sense of the underlying idea. With the prophets put not second but last, and with the poetry central in the volume, one who now reads the Old Testament in course has before him, first, the storied and creative past, to whose annals the law however given or obeyed is merely an adjunct; second and central, the present living values of poetry in lyric and lesson; and finally in the body of the most unique and penetrative contribution of the Hebrew mind to the world's thought, the prophetic sense and power of the eternal future. Here is the true place to pause, as it were in position for the next movement. From this frontier the look is forward. NOTE. The apocalyptic visions of Daniel, at whatever time published, are ostensibly reckoned from the time of the captivity, and being by so much remote from the pausing point between the Testaments are correspondingly vague and mystical. Much less vague and undefined, though equally apocalyptic, are the prophecies noted under "The Subsidence of Prophecy," pages 352-359, namely, Zech. ix-xiv and Malachi. So much the more fitting is it, therefore, that the Greek variation has so rearranged the Old Testament canon that these, as completing the prophetic section, come last. (Cf. remarks on The Messenger and his Function," pp. 367–369.) And when the new order is at the fullness of the time, it begins where, as we now view it, the old leaves off. John the Baptist, its herald, speaks in the spirit of Elijah, its typical prophet, and is identified by the prediction of Malachi, its latest prophet. He regards himself as merely the Voice heard by the Second Isaiah, proclaiming the way of Jehovah (John i, 23; cf. Isa. xl, 3). Thus he breaks the pause by instituting a new surge of thought and power, pushing on toward completion the unfinality of the old movement. So by the time when, about the end of the first Christian century, the careful Jewish rabbis have fully determined the content and purity of their canon, enough literature of the new order is in hand to make up another which, just as carefully selected, is to the first as reality to vision, as fulfillment to promise. Ye search the Scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me. . . . I am the way.JESUS But this I confess unto thee, that after the Way which they call a sect, so serve I the God of our fathers, believing all things which are according to the law, and which are written in the prophets; having hope toward God, which these also themselves look for. - PAUL WAY THE PEOPLE OF THE WAY ECAUSE the Jewish people, during the period between BECAL the Exile and the coming of Jesus, set such extraordinary value on their literature, coördinating its classics together into a single library or canon, we have called them the People of a Book. From that book or its component parts, which later ages called the Old Testament, they drew all that was authoritative for life and instruction. It was, as of the Jewish race it still is, their Bible; and as such its body of literature was regarded as practically closed and complete. When Jesus came and made disciples he appealed to the same book. He was a thorough student of it; and it was as valuable to him as it was to the Jewish people of his time (cf. Luke xxiv, 27, 44; John v, 39). But it was valuable in a different way. To the scribes, who were the accredited Biblical scholars of his day, it was virtually a repository of dead rules, precepts, doctrines, to which they appended numerous minute distinctions and applications, technically called midrash1 (a word meaning "investigation," "interpretation"). These oral additions became so numerous and so exclusively valued that the spirit of the original was wellnigh gone (cf. Mark vii, 9, 13). The Bible had suffered, in fact, the fate of becoming a classic, the fate of being treated as a stereotyped and finished product of the past. To Jesus, on the other hand, it was a book whose spirit and principles were living things; to be apprehended therefore with the freedom of a pure heart and sound sense. It was a book not merely of scholarship and erudition, but of the 1 Cf. above, p. 407, footnote. |