Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Preacher, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles (in two parts), in the order and under the titles given.

The significance of this arrangement is not hard to find, and its historical value is very considerable in determining the date and the mutual relations of the books which compose the canon. The great divisions which we have observed mark three stages in the growth of the Old Testament canon, or perhaps we might say three canons of the Old Testament. The original Bible of the Hebrews was the Law. This was adopted as the canon of Holy Scripture about B.C. 440. Other books existed at that time, some of which were held in great reverence and ultimately accepted as Holy Scripture; but at the outset the Law alone was canonised, and to this day it has never lost the position of primacy thus given to it. In our Lord's time it was regarded as possessing a sanctity above the books of the later canon of the Prophets, a fact emphasised in the synagogue reading, as well as in the greater attention paid to the study of the Law by the schoolmen. The Law having been adopted as canon at an earlier date than the other books, became the Bible of the Samaritan as well as of the Jew, while the Prophets and the Writings, adopted by the latter after the hatred between the two churches had become intense, were not accepted by the former. It is owing to this fact that there have come down to us two independent Hebrew texts of the Pentateuch, the text of the Jewish and the text of the Samaritan Church, whereas we have but one Hebrew text of the remainder of the Old Testament. We are thus enabled to control the text of the Pentateuch from a critical standpoint, as we cannot in the Prophets and the Writings, where, besides the one official Jewish text, we have only translations into other languages. It ought to be added that, owing to the greater antiquity of the canon of the Law, the greater veneration in which it was always held, and the greater attention paid to its study, the text has come down to us in a better and purer condition than the text of any other part of the Old Testament.

The second canon of Holy Scripture adopted by the Jews, and added to the canon of the Law, was the canon of the Prophets. These were canonised officially, it is commonly supposed, about B.C. 200. This does not mean that the writings of the prophets, or most of them, had not been in existence long before this date, or that these writings or the greater part of them had not been held in respect or even counted sacred before this date, but that this is the date at which that canon was officially determined and the limit of the Prophets fixed. But although thus canonised, the Prophets were never regarded, as already pointed out, as quite so sacred as the Law. In the service of the synagogues the readings from the Prophets held an inferior position. For this reason also, as stated above, the text of the Prophets was not studied and handed down with so great care, so that while the text of the Pentateuch has come down to us in a practically perfect form, that of the Prophets presents many difficulties, owing to corruption of the original. But there is another reason also for the comparatively corrupt condition in which the text of some of the prophetical books has come down to us, namely, the long period which elapsed between the period of their composition and the period of their canonisation. It is now generally recognised that a great part of the writings known to the Jews as "The Prophets" was composed at an earlier date than that at which the Law was put into its final shape. Some of the prophetical books were composed before B.C. 700. A period of five hundred years, therefore, elapsed between the date of their composition and the date at which they were definitely accepted as sacred canon. During this long period they were not guarded and preserved with that careful conservatism with which we are familiar in the history of later Judaism, and the opportunity was afforded for many curious corruptions and changes of the text. What took place can be seen by anyone who will compare the Septuagint, or Greek translation, used by the Jews of Alexandria, with the Hebrew text which has come down to us, and which was the Bible of the Jews of Palestine. In the Law the two are identical, with

the exception of some altogether insignificant minutiæ, but in some of the books of the canon of the Prophets the divergencies between the two are quite startling to those whose ideas of the quality of inspiration depend on the letter rather than on the spirit. So, for instance, in the First Book of Samuel parts of the story of David's encounter with Goliath are lacking in the Septuagint, namely, the part which tells of the way in which David chanced to come to the camp of Israel, and his meeting with his brothers (1 Sam. xvii. 12-31), and the part which tells of his interview with Saul and Jonathan after he had slain Goliath (chaps. xvii. 55 to xviii. 5). Indeed, as a general rule, in the canon of the Prophets, the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew by the omission of material which the latter contains. The most striking instance of this in the whole canon is in the Book of Jeremiah, which is about one-eighth shorter in the Alexandrine Greek Bible than in the Palestinian Hebrew. Moreover, the arrangement of the contents of the book is quite different in the two versions. It is evident on examination that the translators of the Septuagint had a different Hebrew text before them from that which has come down to us. Which is the more correct? and which stands nearer to the original? On that point opinions differ, and it is not my intention to go into the matter here. I have called attention to the difference merely to show the careless manner in which the text of the Prophets was treated during the period before those books were canonised, in comparison with the care bestowed on the accurate preservation of the text of the Law.

The third and last canon of sacred Scripture adopted by the Jewish Church was that of the Writings, and it is in this that we find those disputed books about which a battle was waged very like the battle in the Christian Church about some of the Catholic Epistles, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Apocalypse. Even in the age of the Apostles the limit of the Writings was still in dispute, and we find St. Jude referring to the Book of Enoch as canonical Scripture. In this he may be said to represent the party of inclusion as over against that of

exclusion. It was the latter party, the especially anti-Christian party, which finally prevailed, when about 100 A.D. the limits of the Writings were fixed by the Palestinian Jews as we now have them. The books in our present canon about which the battle raged the hottest were the Song of Songs and the Preacher or Ecclesiastes.

This last canon, as a whole, naturally took a position of authority inferior to that of the Prophets, just as the Prophets were inferior to the Law. This distinction is clearly marked in synagogue use, no lessons from the Writings being appointed for the regular Sabbath lessons. On certain festivals, however, five of these books, the so-called Rolls, were appointed to be read, namely, the Song of Songs at Passover; Ruth at Pentecost; Lamentations at the commemoration of the destruction of Jerusalem; Ecclesiastes at the Feast of Tabernacles; and Esther at Purim. It must not be understood, however, that none of the books constituting the canon of the Writings were regarded as sacred by the Jews before 100 A.D. It was not canonisation of these books which made them sacred: canonisation was rather the official recognition of what had already become the belief of the Church. Its main effect was to define the limit of the Palestinian canon by cutting off some of the books which the Alexandrian Jews had accepted.

In a general way, as may be seen from this résumé of the history of the growth of the Old Testament canon, we should look for the older books in the older canon, and especially is this the case as between the two later canons, the Prophets and the Writings. In the case of the Law there is a question of difference in kind, the books of that canon having been set off from those that follow, not so much on the ground of age as on the ground of their difference of contents. But as between the Prophets and the Writings no such difference of contents exists. That which has placed Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings in the Prophets, while Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles, and Esther are in the Writings, is the difference of date. At the time when the canon of the Prophets was fixed the first-mentioned books had been already hallowed by age, whereas

A

the latter were either unwritten or comparatively new. similar argument would seem to hold good with regard to the exclusion of the prophecies of Daniel from the canon of the Prophets; that at the time when the Prophets were canonised Daniel was either not in existence, or else not yet sufficiently hallowed by the very important test of antiquity to be admitted to that canon. In a general way the division between the Prophets and the Writings is due to difference in age, or at least this is true as between books of the same general character appearing in the two different canons. It will be evident, then, I think, from this brief sketch, that the arrangement of the Hebrew Bible possesses a considerable historical value, and may be used in helping us to determine the mutual relation of the books of the Old Testament.

At the time when the Old Testament was translated into Greek the first canon of the Hebrew Bible, the canon of the Law, had become so sacred that it was taken over as it stood, with no change in the order of the books. But this was not the case with the remainder of the Old Testament, and indeed the Old Testament as we now have it was not in existence at the time that the Septuagint translation began to be made. The Law, and the Law only, was the Bible of the Jews. The canon of the Prophets was still in flux, and the canon of the Writings was scarcely yet in sight, although most of the books composing those two canons were already in existence very much in their present form. The Septuagint translation began, as is evident, with the Law, which is supposed to have been translated by learned Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria for the great library founded by the Ptolemies, somewhere in the first half of the third century B.C. The remaining books of the Old Testament, together with some other sacred literature, which, although it won high approval, at least for a time, was never adopted into the stricter canon of the Jews of Palestine, were translated from time to time to be added to the same royal library, the translation of the entire Septuagint Old Testament occupying in all probability more than a hundred years.

We have seen how, in the Palestinian canon, the Bible grew