cosmogonies, civilisation myths, a Flood legend, and the like, which are in many respects strikingly similar to the accounts of the Creation, the Flood, etc., in the first part of Genesis. We had already literary fragments containing similar material from Phoenicia, still more strikingly similar, as far as it went, to the Bible. Assyriologists point out singular resemblances in fact and phraseology between the Babylonian ceremonial laws and the Levitical legislation of the Hebrews, while the discovery of a few Phoenician antiquities and inscriptions has revealed an even more singular resemblance between certain Hebrew and Phoenician rites and rules. Were these things part of a common inheritance? Are the resemblances due to early Babylonian domination in the West-land? Are they due to later contact with and influence of Phoenicians and Canaanites or Assyrians and Babylonians on Israelites and Jews? Are they due partly to one and partly to another of these causes?

With the matter of writing I deal in another chapter. The problem of the language, the script and the material in or on which the Old Testament was written is a most interesting one, and important both as to the date of the writings and the preservation of the contents.

In conclusion, let me add that some well-meaning apologists for the Bible, in laying before the religious public the story of the marvellous increase of our knowledge of antiquity as a result of the discoveries of the last sixty years, have presented a picture of the conditions of the early Hebrews not borne out by the facts and quite contrary to the statements of the Bible. Because Egypt and Syria and Babylonia were civilised, it does not follow that the Hebrews of Moses' time and their ancestors of the patriarchal period, although living by and in those countries, were familiar with their culture and their arts. They are represented in the Bible as like the bedawin Arabs, who wander through or live in those countries to-day, and are yet absolutely untouched by their civilisation. The Hebrews dwelt in Egypt for generations, and there is no trace of Egyptian influence in their customs, laws, rites, or

religion, except possibly in the Ark and the Decalogue, both attributed to Moses, who alone of the Hebrews is represented in the Bible story as entering into any intimate relation with the Egyptians. As bedawin the Hebrews entered Egypt, as bedawin they came out. As bedawin they invaded Canaan. There first they acquired their civilisation, but not their religion. Such is the Bible representation. To give us pictures of Babylonian or Egyptian civilisation in those early days is beside the point. Our best analogy at present for the conditions of the Hebrews before the invasion of Canaan is what little we have been able to learn of pre-Islamic Arabia. Probably we shall never find archæological remains or inscriptions from, or bearing primarily upon this earliest period. For the period after the invasion of Canaan it would seem that we ought, as a result of sufficient excavating, to find remains, monuments, and inscriptions in Palestine which will illustrate and expand the Bible narrative in the same way that excavations in Greece and Italy have illustrated Greek and Roman literature and expanded our knowledge of the history of those countries.

IN

CHAPTER XI

HOW THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS

WRITTEN

II. ON WHAT?

N Jeremiah xxxii. 11 and following verses we have an account of the use of clay tablets for contract purposes among the Jews in the time immediately preceding the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, that is, the beginning of the sixth century B.C. To be sure neither the translation in the King James nor yet that in the Revised Version gives any hint of this. The former renders the eleventh verse, "So I took the evidence of the purchase, both that which was sealed according to the law and custom, and that which was open." The latter thus, "So I took the deed of the purchase," etc., almost exactly as in the earlier version. Literally, word for word, the Hebrew reads, "And I took the deed (book) of purchase the closed the commandment and the statutes and the open." This manifestly makes no sense; nor, for that matter, do the translations of the King James and Revised Versions. The Greek text of this verse reads, according to Swete's text, "And I took the deed of purchase, the sealed"; to which the Sinaitic and Alexandrine texts add, "and the published," or "read aloud," which was, I think, part of the original Septuagint translation, omitted in the Vatican text because of its unintelligibility to the scribe. The Septuagint did not have "the commandment and the statutes," and "the

This

open" or "revealed," which are added in some of the inferior later texts, manifestly out of our Masoretic Hebrew text. A comparison of the Septuagint Greek with our Masoretic Hebrew suggests, then, that the words, "the commandment and the statutes," were not part of the original text. suggestion becomes practically a certainty when we compare, in the Hebrew original, verse 14, which repeats verse II without the words in question, thus, "Take these writings, this deed of purchase, both the closed and this open record, and put them in an earthen vessel, that they may endure many days." The Greek reads, "Take this deed of purchase and the deed that is published (or read aloud)," etc.

The direction to "put them in an earthen vessel" first gave me the clue to the meaning of the whole. Hanameel ben Shallum, Jeremiah's cousin, came to Jeremiah while the latter was imprisoned in the Temple, during the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, and called upon the latter to buy his property without the walls, at Anathoth, in accordance with the law of redemption. The deed of sale, described as above, and subscribed by a number of witnesses, Jeremiah caused to be buried in an earthen jar. Now this

is precisely what the Babylonians used to do not infrequently with their deeds and records, where they wished to preserve them with great care. I have found at Nippur deeds buried in the earth in earthenware jars, as here described; but those deeds were on clay tablets. Ordinarily a deed or a record on a clay tablet was single. The clay tablet, anywhere from one to twelve inches or even more in length, was inscribed with the terms of the contract or deed, to which were attached the names of a number of witnesses and seals. These clay tablet contracts were ordinarily baked in the sun; sometimes they were burned in a kiln. Where particular care was desired the tablet was inclosed in an envelope of clay, on which envelope the terms of the contract were again recorded, and the names of witnesses and seals attached.

The outer and inner records do not, in any case with which I am familiar, correspond word for word, but for the substance

S

one is a repetition of the other. A comparison of the Hebrew and Greek accounts of the transaction between Jeremiah and Hanameel will, I think, convince the reader that the similarity to Babylonian methods extends further than the burial of the deed in a clay jar. Assume that the material on which the record of purchase was written was clay-a clay tablet-and the passage as it stands, or at least as it stood in the original text before it received the addition which we now have in the Hebrew in verse 11, that is, the words, "the commandment and the statutes," becomes plain at once. Because the record was to be preserved with especial care, therefore it was recorded not on a single tablet, but on what is known, in the parlance of Assyriology, as a case tablet, that is, as described above, a clay tablet covered with an envelope of clay, on which envelope the substance of the Ideed within, the names of witnesses, and the like were recorded. "The open and the closed" are two parts of the same thing, the one the duplicate of the other.

We have here, then, a notice of the use of clay tablets for the purpose of contracts, deeds, and the like among the Hebrews in the time of Jeremiah. The passage became unintelligible to the later scribes, after the use of clay tablets. was given up. Apparently it was already unintelligible at the time when the Greek translation was made. Nevertheless, that translation preserved literally what was found in the Hebrew, although translating with evident lack of appreciation of the meaning of the Hebrew words.

At a later date the Hebrew text in verse II was corrupted by the insertion of a pietistic gloss, which some scribe had written on the margin. This scribe was apparently seeking to find the hidden religious meaning in the words, so dark to him, "the open and the closed." The same word for "closed" occurs, so far at least as the consonants are concerned, in Isaiah viii. 16, where Isaiah is directed to "seal (or close) the law" in his disciples. This suggested to the scribe a reference in the dark passage to "the law," that is, "the commandment and the statutes," and he wrote on