CHAP. VIII. he have escaped vehement attacks from rival teachers. Their work, however, was almost wholly defensive and negative; their object, to interpret Scripture as they had received it. We should not anticipate from the founders of the schools of Rabbinic exegesis any favour to a more liberal treatment of the Canon.

Even

books likely

to be admitted.

There is certainly no probability that any fresh book would have obtained admission into the Canon during a century distinguished above all others by the antagonism of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and by the establishment of the Rabbinic Schools.

(3) The character of the books themselves is not undisputed favourable to their having been received in the second century B. C. The Books of Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs were popularly ascribed to Solomon, and would naturally, therefore, be regarded as works for which room should be found in the same group with the Book of Proverbs. It was not as if they had only recently been composed. The more recent of the two had existed, in all probability, if we may judge from internal evidence, at least for more than a century before the Maccabean era; while the Song of Songs was the most ancient piece of poetry not yet included in the Canon.

The Book of Esther, which was also probably composed in the third century B. C., was evidently at one time a very favourite work. Several recensions of it existed; and at a time when the deliverance from the foreigner was still fresh in the memories of the Jews, it perhaps seemed to have peculiar claims for recognition. To the Jew of the Dispersion, it brought a special message of Divine Providence, which corresponded to the gentler message of Ruth to the proselyte stranger.

The Books of Chronicles, from which Ezra and Nehe

miah were severed, would very naturally be appended to CHAP. VIII. the books of Scripture. The important genealogies and the special features of its history in connexion with the Temple worship make it improbable that such a narrative would be for long excluded.

All four books are naturally associated with groups that had been received without hesitation into the Canon. Both Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs seemed to deserve their place as the writings of Solomon; and the Song, in its poetical treatment of joy, formed the complement to the plaintive note of the Lamentations. The Book of Esther seemed to fill a gap in the history of the exile, and thus to follow upon the Book of Daniel and the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah. The Books of Chronicles received a position as the appendix of the Hebrew Scriptures, in the same group with Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah.

In all four disputed works, the claim to antiquity was generally conceded. In this respect they would find a ready acceptance in comparison with the Wisdom of Sirach and the First Book of Maccabees, which were avowedly of recent composition.

6

Now if all the books of the Kethubim' were known and received in the first century A.D., and if, as we believe, the circumstances of the Jewish people rendered it all but impossible for the Canon to receive change or augmentation in the first century B. C., we conclude that 'the disputed books' received a recognition in the last two or three decades of the second century B. C., when John Hyrcanus ruled, and the Jews still enjoyed prosperity. The hostility between the Pharisee and Sadducee parties had then not yet assumed the proportions of an open conflict; the influence of the Rabbinic Schools was then still in an early stage.

N

CHAP. VIII.

160-105 B.C.

The period, then, to which we assign the formation of Kethubim the Kethubim is the interval between 160 B. C., the High admitted Priesthood of Jonathan, and 105 B.C., the death of John Hyrcanus. According to this view, fully two hundred years had elapsed, since the Scriptural character of the last books had been, in some measure, recognised, when the Rabbins, in the generation after the destruction of Jerusalem, pronounced their official sentence upon the limits of the Canon. It was then that the Writings we have called 'Disputed Books,' which, from the peculiarity of their contents and teaching, had previously exerted little influence upon religious thought, had been little used in public and, possibly, little studied in private, seemed all at once to receive an adventitious importance. Doubts were expressed, when their canonical position was finally asserted. But no sooner were such difficulties raised and scruples proclaimed and protests delivered against their retention in the Canon, than eager voices were lifted up to defend the character of writings which, after all, had long been recognised, although, in comparison with the acknowledged books of the Kethubim, little valued and rarely made use of.

Significance

of two periods

B.C., 90-110

If the two periods I have indicated, the one for the admission of the last group into the category of Scrip(160-105 ture (160-105 B. C.), the other for the final ratification of the completed Canon (90-110 A.D.), be approximately correct, their significance to the Christian student should be duly considered.

A.D.).

The full complement of Scripture had been arrived at, a century before the coming of Him who came not to destroy but to fulfil the Law and the Prophets' (Matt. v. 17). In the view of that Revelation, we need not

6

the New

wonder at the absence of confirmation in the New Testa- CHAP. VIII. ment for Esther, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs. The The Hebrew new Revelation taught a better spirit than that of the Canon and patriotic fierceness which is breathed in Esther. The Covenant. despair of the Preacher, which expressed the unsatisfied yearning of the soul for its Redeemer, finds no echo in the books of the New Covenant. The Song of Songs told of the beauty of earthly affection; but, in the presence of the full declaration of Divine Love, its slight ray was fully absorbed like that of a candle in the light of the midday sun.

The final determination of the Hebrew Canon preceded the Church's formal acceptance of it as the Canon of the Scripture of the Old Covenant.

It was thus divinely ordered that we should be enabled to know the exact limits of those Scriptures upon which has rested the sanction conveyed by the usage and blessing of our Divine Master, and of which He spake, these are they which bear witness of me' (John v. 39). Thus, too, an effectual barrier was raised to protect the Scriptures of the Apostles against the encroachments of any unauthorised additions. The use of the LXX version familiarised the Christian Church with writings that never found a place in the Hebrew Canon; but, through the action of the Jewish doctors at the close of the first cent. A.D., there was never any doubt what the limits of the Hebrew Canon were. only question which seemed to admit of two answers was, whether the Christian Church should regard the limits of the Hebrew Canon as determining the compass of the Old Testament.

The

Canon.

CHAPTER IX.

AFTER THE CONCLUSION OF THE CANON.

CHAP. IX. THE Hebrew Canon of Scripture, whose gradual No change growth we have traced from its earliest stage to its final in Hebrew ratification, has been preserved by the Jewish community intact. Since the beginning of the second century A. D., no alteration has been permitted in the range of its contents, which, as I hope I have shown, had probably remained the same for at least two centuries. In all probability, the only modifications which it has since received from Jewish hands were changes affecting the order of the books of the Hagiographa (the present order being the work of mediaeval Jews, and dating, perhaps, from the eighth or ninth century), and the sub-division, made so late as the sixteenth century A. D., of the Books of Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah.

Apocrypha

in Chris

It was natural that the Hebrew Canon, both as the tian Church. Bible of the Jewish Church, and as the Scriptures acknowledged by our Lord and the Apostles, and especially sanctioned by their use, should from the first have been adopted by the Christian Church. But the prevalent use of the Septuagint version tended quickly to obliterate the distinction between the books of the Hebrew Canon and the books which, from their popularity among the Christians, were wont to be often publicly read in the churches, e. g. Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom,