PREFACE. THE master hand, it will easily be seen, has not put this work in order for the press. The subject was long in Professor Davidson's mind. He gave it a large place in his College Lectures. He was constantly engaged in writ ing upon it and in recasting what he had written, modifying his statements and revising his conclusions. He prepared a large mass of matter, but he did not survive to throw it finally into shape for publication. It has been difficult and anxious task to deal for the best with the abundant material. Dr. Davidson's manuscripts bear on every page impressive evidence of the immense pains he took with things, and the lofty standard he set before him in all his professional duty. Much of the matter came to me in a variety of editions,—four, five, or six in not a few cases, the long results of unceasing study and searching probation of opinion. It has been far from easy to decide between one form and another, all being left undated, and to bring the different parts into proper relation. I have not thought it right to take liberties with my departed friend's work. I have given it substantially as he left it, adding only an occasional note where that seemed specially appropriate or needful. Nor have I judged it within my province to depart from his ways in the use of Scripture or in anything else. When expounding any Biblical truth he was in the habit of making copious quotations from the sacred text, referring to the same passages again and again as they offered themselves in different aspects and connexions. He did this, too, with much freedom, using sometimes the Authorised Version and sometimes the Revised, furnishing sometimes a translation of his own, and sometimes giving the sense rather than the terms. His methods in such things are followed as they are found in his manuscripts. Had Dr. Davidson been spared to complete his work and carry it through the press, it would have been different, no doubt, in some respects from what it is. It would have been thrown into the best literary form. Its statements at some points would have been more condensed. It would have had less of that element of iteration of which he made such effective use in his class-room. But even without the last touches of the skilled hand, it will be seen to be a distinct and weighty contribution to a great subject. Fine thinking, penetrating exegesis, spiritual vision, a rare insight into the nature and operation of Revelation, make the book one which the student of Old Testament Scripture will greatly value. One thing that gave Dr. Davidson much concern was the question of the plan on which a work of this kind should be constructed. His object was to bring the history and the ideas into living relation, to trace the progress of Old Testament faith from stage to stage, and to exhibit the course along which it advanced from its beginnings to the comparative fulness which it obtained at the end of the prophetic period. But he never carried out the scheme. He had an increasing distrust of ambitious attempts to fix the date of every separate piece of the Hebrew literature, and link the ideas in their several measures of immaturity. and maturity with the writings as thus arranged. He became more and more convinced that there was no solid basis for such confident chronological dispositions of the writings and juxtapositions of the beliefs. In his judgment the only result of endeavours of this kind was to give an entirely fictitious view of the ideas, in their relative degrees of definiteness, the times at which they emerged or came to certainty, and the causes that worked to their. origin and development. The most that we had scientific. warrant to do, in view of the materials available for the purpose, was, in his opinion, to take the history in largetracts and the literature in a few broad divisions, and study, the beliefs and the deliverances in connexion with these. During its course the mist. My work is at an end. has been often in my eyes. The sense of loss has been revived. A voice has spoken to me out of the past. A face that was darkened has seemed to be turned upon me again with its old light. I have felt how long art is and how short is life. ABERDEEN, April 2, 1904. S. D. F. SALMOND. CONTENTS. 1. The Idea of Old Testament Theology 2. Studies preliminary to Old Testament Theology 3. Definitions and Characteristics of Old Testament Theology 6. The great Historical Periods. 7. General Course and Drift of the History |