HISTORY (his'tes-1).
The subject matter contained in the Biblical history is of a wide and most extensive nature. In its greatest length and fullest meaning it comes down from the Creation till near the close of the first century of the Christian era.
The Jewish history -contained in the Bible em braces more and less than the history of the Israelites; more, since it begins with the beginning of the earth and narrates with extraordinary brevity events which marked the period terminated by the flood, going on till it introduces us to Abraham, the primogenitor of the Hebrew race; less, since, even with the assistance of the poetical books, its narratives do not come down to a later date than some 400 years before the birth of Christ. The historical materials furnished re lating to the Hebrew nation may be divided into three great divisions: t. The books which are consecrated to the antiquity of the Hebrew nation —the period that elapsed before the era of the judges. These works are the Pentateuch and the book of Joshua, which, according to Ewald (Ge schichte des Volkes Israel, i, 72), properly con stitute only one work, and which may be termed the great book of original documents. 2. The books which describe the times of the judges and the kings up to the first destruction of Jerusalem; that is, Judges, Kings, and Samuel, to which belongs the book of Ruth; 'all these,' says Ewald, 'constitute also, according to their last formation, but one work, which may be called the Great Book of Kings.' 3. The third class comprises the books included under the head of Hagio grapha, which are of a much later origin, Chron icles, with Ezra and Nehemiah, forming the great boqk of general history reaching to the Grecian period. After these books come those which are classed together under the name of Apocrypha, whose use in this country we think unduly neglected. Then the circle of evangelical record begins, which...dosed within the century that saw it open. Other books found in the Old and New Testaments, which are not properly of a historical character, connect themselves with one or other of these periods, and give important aid to students of sacred history.
(1) Sources of Biblical History. The sources of Biblical history are chiefly the Biblical books themselves. Any attempt to fix the precise value of these sources in a critical point of view would require a volume Instead of an article. Whatever
hypothesis, however, may eventually be held touching the exact time when these books, or any of them, were put into their actual shape, as also touching the materials out of which they were formed, one thing appears very certain, that (to take an instance) Genesis, the earliest book (prob ably), contains most indubitable as well as most interesting historical facts; for though the age, the mode of life and the state of culture differ so widely from our own, we cannot do otherwise than feel that it is among men and women. parents and children—beings of like passions with our selves—and not with mere creations of fancy or fraud, that we converse when we peruse the nar ratives which this composition has so long pre served. The conviction is much strengthened in the minds of those who, by personal acquaintance with the early profane writers, are able to com pare their productions with those of the Hebrews, which were long anterior, and must, had they been of an equally earthly origin, have been at least equally deformed by fable. The sole com parison of the account given in Genesis of the creation of the world with the Cosmogonies of heathen writers, whether Hindoo, Greek or Latin, is enough to assure the impartial reader that a purer, if .not a higher, influence presided over the composition of Genesis than that whence pro ceeded the legends or the philosophies of heathen ism; nor is the conclusion in the slightest degree weakened in the writer's mind by any discrepancy which modern science may seem to show as be tween its own discoveries and the statements in Genesis. The Biblical history, as found in its Biblical sources, has a decided peculiarity and a great recommendation in the fact that we can trace in the Bible more clearly and fully than in connection with any other history, the first crude elements and the early materials out of which all history must be constructed. How far the litera ture supplied in the Bible may be only a relic of a literary cyclus called into being by the felici tous circumstances and favorable constitution of the great Shemitic family, but which has peribhed in the lapse of ages. it is now impossible to deter mine ; but had the other portions of this imagined literature been of equal religious value with what the Bible offers, there is little risk in affirming that mankind would scarcely have allowed it to be lost.