There is another fact which has an important bearing on the worth and credibility of the Bibli cal narratives, namely, that the people of which they speak were a comwemorative race, were, in other words, given to create and preserve memo rials of important events. Even in the patriarchal times we find monuments set up in order to com memorate events. Jacob (Gen. xxviii. 18) set up a pillar' to perpetuate the memory of the divine promise ; and that these monuments had a reli gious import and sanction appears from the state ment that he poured oil upon the top of the pil lar' (see Gen. xxxi. 45 ; Josh. iv. 9 ; I Sam. vii.
; Judg. ix. 6). Long-lived trees, such as oak and terebinth, were made use of as remembrancers (Gen. xxxv. 4 ; Josh. xxiv. 26). Commemorative names, also, were given to persons, places, and things ; and from the earliest periods it was usual to substitute a new and descriptive for an old name, which may in its origin have been descriptive too (Exod. ro ; Gen. ii. 23 ; iv. 1). Genealo gical tables appear, moreover, to have had a very early existence among the people of whom the Bible speaks, being carefully preserved first me moriter, afterwards by writing, among family trea slues, and thus transmitted from age to age. These, indeed, as might be expected, appear to have been the first beginnings of history—a fact which is illustrated and confirmed by the way in which what we should term a narrative or histori cal sketch is spoken of in the Bible, that is, as the book of the generation' (. of Adam,' Gen. v. I) : a mode of speaking which is applied even to the account of the creation (Gen. ii. 4), these are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.' The genealogical tables in the I3ible (speaking generally) are not only of a very early date, but are free from the mixtures of a theugonical and costnogonical kind which are found in the early literature of other primitive nations, wearing the appearance of being, so far at least as they go, true and complete lists of indivi dual and family descent (Gen. v. i). But, perhaps, the most remarkable fact connected with this sub ject is the employment of poetry at a very early period to perpetuate a knowledge of historical events. Even in Gen. iv. 23, in the case of La mech, we find poetry thus employed, that is, by the sixth in descent from Adam. Other in
stances may be found in Exod. xv. ; Josh. x. ; Judg. v. ; 2 Sam. i. 18, etc. This early use of poetry, which must be regarded as a considerable step in civilization, implies a still earlier pre-exis tent culture ; confutes the notion that human society began with a period of barbarism ; looks favourably on the hypothesis that language had an immediately divine origin ; explodes the position that the Hebrews were at first an igmorant, un tutored, and unlettered race ; and creates a pre sumption on behalf of their historical literature. Poetry is a good vehicle for the transmission of great leading facts ; for, though it may throw over fact a colouring borrowed from the imagination, yet the form in which it appears gives warning that such hues are upon its details, which hues, besides being themselves a species of history, are then easily removed, while the form shuts up and holds in the facts intrusted to the custody of verse, and so transmits them to posterity without addition and without loss. By means of these several forms of commemoration much knowledge would be pre serve& from generation to generation, and to their existence from the first may v.,e ascribe the brief, but still valuable, notices which the Bible pre sents of the primitive ages and condition of the world.
Other sources for at least the early Biblical his tory are comparatively of small value. Josephus has gone over the same periods as the Bible treats of, but obviously had no sources of consequence relating to primitive times which are not open to us, and in regard to those times does little more than add here and there a patch of a legendary or traditional hue which could have been well spared. His Greek and Roman predilections and his apolo getical aims detract from his value, while in relation to the early history of his country he can be re garded in no other light than a sort of philosophical interpreter ; nor is it till he comes to his 01\ M age that he has the value of an independent (not even then an im.partial) eye-witness or well-informed re porter. In historical criticism and linguistic know ledge he was very insufficiently furnished. The use of both Josephus and Philo is far more safe for the student of the N. T. than for the expounder of the old.