These books have formed a center of criticism and discussion for more than two thousand years, and in the course of the ages, the interest seems to increase rather than diminish, our own genera tion being more active in this investigation than any which has preceded it.
(2) History. One reason why the Old Testa ment is so absorbing an object of literary study, is because it has a history back of it. It ap pealed to men in such a way that it was trans lated into Greek nearly three hundred years be fore Christ. In Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, it was widely circulated, so that in all parts of the known world it bore its part in the great work of preparation for the introduction of Chris tianity. The men of the Great Synagogue and the Tannite scribes did their work upon it Christ and his disciples made it the basis of their teachings. It became the Bible of the Church as well as the synagogue, and to this Christ alluded when he said: "Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are they which testify of me" (John v:39).
In the later centuries it has been translated into hundreds of languages, and has attracted the attention of those who study literary master pieces. Hence, it has a wonderful interest aside from its religious value. But over and above these claims it is surely a marvelous storage bat tery of spiritual power, and constituted the au thority to which Christ and the apostles con stantly appealed. We cannot wonder, therefore, that the scholars of the world have in the aggre gate devoted thousands of years of skilled lit erary work to the solution of the problems which it presents.
(3) Early Form. The first five books are still in the form with which the translator of Ecclesiasticus was familiar—still in the form in which Philo, and Josephus after him, knew them. These early workers knew them as a whole and not in the sources from whence some have -sup posed them to he derived. These books have been endorsed and preserved by three distinct and antagonistic classes of people, the Jews, the Samaritans and the Christians. It was these books, as distinguished from their sources, which molded Jewish thought during the Greek and Roman periods. It was the form in which we now have them and not in the form of sundry earlier documents, that Jesus and his disciples used them.
(4) Authorship. In the preparation of the Pentateuch, Moses may have used the records of the early patriarchs; he may have embodied genealogies which had been carefully preserved— nay, the books themselves may have been partly written by an amanuensis, but if they were pre pared by his authority or under his dictation, they were really his productions, and as such they were recognized by both his contemporaries and his successors.
It is from "the books of Moses" and "the law of Moses" that constant quotations are made by later Biblical writers, twenty-seven of the succeeding books having many such references. It is also as the writings of Moses that these works are frequently quoted and endorsed by the Christ. lie makes no reference to the possible sources from whence they may have been to a greater or less extent derived, and during all the ages of the Christian era these books, as a whole, have been establishing their claim upon mankind. Whether some restoration of the sources from which certain parts of them may have been drawn, can ever establish a similar claim, is a matter for future ages to decide.
(5) Polychrome Bible. Another instance of Biblical study in the same direction is found in the treatment of the Book of Isaiah. In the "Polychrome Bible" Dr. Cheyne has analyzed the book into hundreds of fragments, which he re gards as the product of several successive cen turies, and which he has arranged in an order entirely different from that to which we have been accustomed. in times past the hook of Isaiah has been regarded as having many dis tinctly marked discourses, each of them hieing a literary unit, but in Dr. Cheyne's work scarcely one of these units remain, many of them hav ing been taken apart and assigned to authors belonging to different centuries. But the book of Isaiah to which we are accustomed is that which is quoted by the author of Ecclesiasticus, the book which the translators of the Septuagint knew about three hundred years before Christ, and the one with which Josephus and other early writers were familiar. It is the one which Jesus of Nazareth used, and from which he read in the synagogue. It is the hook containing prophe cies of the Christ. of which he himself said: "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears" (Luke iv:21). It is the book from which the first preachers of Christianity proved to their Jewish converts that Jesus was the Messiah of whom the prophets spake, and it is one which in all the later ages has commanded the attention of lovers of good literature because of its sub lime prophecies, and the eloquent poetry of its diction. It is this book which has appealed to the human mind for thousands of years as hieing well worth studying. not in beautiful fragments hut as one grand whole.