The fact is to be noted that this final division of the Hebrew canon was being made up just as the Hebrew type of literature was coming out of its age-long seclusion into the notice of the larger world, a candidate, so to speak, for recognition and power among the cultural forces of mankind. As such it need not apologize for existence or compromise with other literatures for relative merit; it could trust its own intrinsic vitality. But neither, on the other hand, need it put its most provincial wares forward. This newest division, accordingly, may be regarded as a kind of culmination wherein are displayed the supreme achievements of the Hebrew religion and thought detached in a degree from the chosen people's narrow history and brought nearer to the common frontier where the mind of other nations can fraternize with it. It is also worthy of note that while the make-up of this third division was still a matter fluid and undetermined, the earliest version of the Old Testament ures (the Septua gint, 264 B.C. onward) was also being made, thus giving the Hebrew thought currency in the most highly developed language and by the side of the most cultivated literature of the world. In this fusing of languages the latest section of the canon, as a representative literary influence, would bear no unimportant part. An indication of this, I think, is afforded by the changes of distribution and arrangement which the collection underwent as soon as it was done into Greek, apparently to make the literary tissue more homogeneous. Job was put before Psalms; Ruth was transferred to its more proper place by the side of Judges; Lamentations was placed after Jeremiah; Esther after Nehemiah; Daniel was adjudged worthy of a place among the greater prophets 1; while the cultus books, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles, which had occupied a place at the end as a supplement,2 were transferred to their proper places after 2 Cf. above, p. 405. 1 Cf. above, p. 281. 2 Kings. Thus this third division ceased to function as a coördinate element of the canon, and its treasury of the choice classics the so-called poetical books occupies, in our modern Bible, a place in the center of the Old Testament, with the body of great prophecy succeeding. Such arrangement improves the order in which, for modern uses, the Bible may be read. As we are studying the Old Testament literature for the most part in the order dictated by history, we will continue to follow the history of arrangement also, taking up the books of this division in the order determined by the Jewish scribes. Some of the books have already been partly or sufficiently discussed; what remains to be said about them will come up in its due order. II. THE THREE GREAT CLASSICS In the case of these three books, Psalms, Proverbs, and Job, though so weighty, there is not the same reason for detailed description and analysis that there was in the case of the great prophets. Their independence of historic eras and epochs makes such treatment unnecessary; their subject matter in part forbids it. It will be more advisable rather to inquire after the literary form and workmanship, with its bearing on the idea, and after the leading idea itself. I The Five Books of Psalms. Cited by our Lord as if representing a specific type of scripture literature (Luke xxiv, 44), the Psalms merit their rank at the head of this division as a treasury of the choice lyric poetry of Israel, a deposit of the verse that all through the history from the awaking of the literary sense onward was most potent to find and form the inner mind of the Israelitish people. Thus they embody what is most genuine and hearty in the soul of man, what wells up from his deepest nature in the unforced yet finely ordered language of prayer and praise and song. The name given the book by the scribes at its completion was sepher t'hillim, "Book of Praises," as designating the ruling sentiment especially of the later collections, referring thus to their use in public or private worship. Other names occur for individual psalms, such as "a song," "a prayer," an instruction" (maschil). The Greek name, given to the individual poem when the book had become a part of the Septuagint version, was psalmos, a translation of the Hebrew specific term mismor, meaning "a song set to stringed instruments," or as we should say, with orchestra accompaniment, an obvious reference to the use made of these poems in the late organized Temple service. These final names for the Psalms, as single poems and as a compiled book, are an undesigned designation of the Hebrew native aptitude. As already in part intiThe Lyrical Genius and mated,1 this was not for war or government or Stimulus scholarship or art what might be called the aristocratic endowments. The one art in which they excelled sprang from and in turn laid hold on the mind of the common people. It was the art of sacred lyric poetry, which when it became steady and self-conscious took the names by which we know it, for the instrumental specification of mizmor is exactly paralleled by lyric (lurikos), “for the lyre"; and "praises," being the uprise of the heart to God, are the most buoyant and heartfelt subject matter for such expression. In a word, the Psalms embody the thoughts and feelings that the nation through all its history could sing; that is, put into the most spontaneous form of expression. How truly these lyrics give voice to the deep music of human nature is evident in the fact that the Book of Psalms has become, by translation or virtual paraphrase, the hymn book of a whole world. To say that these lyrics See above, pp. 36-38. are the Hebrew religious poetry as if they must needs be separated from poems of other sentiment, And lovers' songs be turned to holy psalms, is in fact no differentiation except in modern estimate. Secular and religious were not dissociated in ancient thought or emotion; all was religious among people who lived in the conscious presence of a personal and accessible God. As to the occasion of these lyrical uprises, Professor Palgrave's definition of the lyric may perhaps furnish a fit suggestion. "Lyrical,” he says,1 "has been here held essentially to imply that each Poem shall turn on some single thought, feeling, or situation." In the case of our Psalms it is as if the occasion of the lyric mood were determined by a kingly mind and sung into a people's heart. These single incitements, among the Hebrews, were such as may be predicated of a people to whom their divinely guided history was a very vital thing2; they were like a translation or rather transmutation of their history, with its dimly sensed destiny, into personal experience and devotion, — yet not so that specific events or situations are easily traceable but rather their fragrance and power. Thus it was that the chosen people's faith was found and formed through the molding power of lyric poetry. NOTE. As the lyric influence of song has accompanied the whole Hebrew history, it has come several times to consideration in the foregoing pages, both in general terms and as connected with the composition and collection of Psalms. See "The Song," pp. 66, 67, under "The Native Mold of Literary Form.". See also " David's Part în the Literary Awakening," pp. 81-83; "Of the Davidic Influence,” pp. 89-92, for the general beginnings of Psalm composition; and "The Collecting of Psalms " (by Hezekiah), pp. 197-201, for the conjectured further stage of the Psalm movement. This brings us to the matured phase, which is the subject now before us. 1 In the preface to his "Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics." The As regards the authorship of the Psalms, the fact that the titles prefixed to two thirds of them are evidently later additions and so not implicitly to be trusted has Source in a given rise to a veritable riot of conjecture on the Personality part of modern critics, who, recognizing merely scribal rather than original authority, perhaps felt freer to doubt and discard,1-a feeling which may be humored all the way from misgiving to stark denial. At any rate, these titles, which were once deemed as truly inspired as the rest, have very likely been suffered to pass under undue depreciation. We may accept them for what they are obviously worth. They have the distinction of being the earliest examples of Biblical editorship and estimate; they are judgments passed by scribes whose minds were steeped in the literary values of their race and history. As such they belong to the avails of the Jewish mind and culture. NOTE. Of the Psalm authorship imputed by the titles we may quote the account given by J. W. Thirtle, in "The Titles of the Psalms," p.3: Speaking of the titles as a whole, it is well . . . to notice that just one hundred of the psalms are in such a manner referred to their reputed authors-one (90) is ascribed to Moses, seventy-three to David, two (72, 127) to Solomon, twelve to Asaph, eleven to the sons of Korah, and one (89) to Ethan the Ezrahite. From this it appears that David is the psalmist — no other writer can overshadow his fame; and it is easy to understand how it has come about for the entire collection to pass by his name. Quite independently of the titles, however, one gets from an unbiased conversance with the Psalms the feeling that their organic sentiment is not scattered and miscellaneous but individualized and specific, in other words, that it derives ultimately from an author who has impressed the stamp of undying personality upon his words and, as these are winged with song, upon his people. As to whose this 1 A little like Adam Bede, maybe, who when of a Sunday morning he read his Bible, generally in implicit faith, “enjoyed the freedom of occasionally differing from an Apocryphal writer." |