existence in some temple of Babylonia since the time of Abraham. The ten "words," or commandments, of Moses were engraved on two tablets of stone (Exod. xxxiv, 28), and laid away in the ark (Deut..x, 3-5) where more than three centuries later they still were (1 Kings viii, 9). Isaiah is directed to write important oracles on tablets for a sign of truth (Isa. viii, 1, 16) and permanence (xxx, 8). The same feeling of the finality of a written record, and longing for it, is expressed in connection with the celebrated Redeemer passage in the Book of Job (Job xix, 23, 24):

Oh that my words were now written!

Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
That with an iron pen and lead

They were graven in the rock forever!

This sentiment of extraordinary reverence for the book doubtless rose from the sense of what a serious matter writing was in primitive times. When its material was tablets of stone or clay, on which the words were laboriously incised, the subject matter would naturally be condensed to the briefest and weightiest records, and be confined to subjects of public and impersonal interest. With the use of parchment, however, and the invention of alphabetic writing, facility of writing was greatly increased, and with it a corresponding facility of the written idea: With the diminished labor and more tractable material writing could acquire more of the freedom and flow of speech, could more easily amplify and enrich the expression, could go on to greater range and fullness of treatment. All this was like an approach of the written to the spoken. At the same time, with the refinement of literary taste and art, the value of the works hitherto floating about in oral tradition, and their worthiness to be perpetuated in a more permanent way, would be increasingly recognized; while the oral composition itself, the poem or prophecy, was with advancing culture making approach to the carefulness and restraint of the written word. The great formative period of the literature, corresponding roughly to Israel's independence and autonomy as a state, is virtually a long transition

from literature of the purely oral type to literature of the written; to a form in which every variety of sentiment could be expressed at once with the vigor and limpidness of speech and the artistic depth and complexity of studied writing. Its beginning is marked by the remains of song, oracle, and folk tale which we find embedded in the historical books; its culmination, around the time of the Chaldean exile, by such great creative works as the Vision of Isaiah, the Book of Deuteronomy, and the Book of Job.

NOTE. The Interrelation of Speech and Writing. Some remarks of Cardinal Newman, in "Idea of a University," p. 272, distinguish in a lucid way the motive underlying these two elements in literature. "Literature," he says, "from the derivation of the word, implies writing, not speaking; this, however, arises from the circumstance of the copiousness, variety, and public circulation of the matters of which it consists. What is spoken cannot outrun the range of the speaker's voice, and perishes in the uttering. When words are in demand to express a long course of thought, when they have to be conveyed to the ends of the earth, or perpetuated for the benefit of posterity, they must be written down, that is, reduced to the shape of literature." He goes on to say, however, that its unit, its basis, is the spoken word, with its connotation of personality, making literature not a mechanical thing but essentially "the personal use or exercise of language." It is this intensely personal element which makes the Biblical literature vital.

The Movement to Collect

As long as the Israelite state remained intact, the prophets and men of letters had relatively little occasion to collect and classify the stores of literature that had accumulated through the centuries of their national life. Their regards were centered rather in maintaining the welfare of the people and the integrity of the government in its current and prospective needs; and for this a vigorous literary activity was ready, as the occasions for it rose. The spirit of the literature, as manifested most strongly in the literary prophets, was creative, originative, concerned with the immediate problems of the nation's life and destiny.

When, however, the nation's political hopes failed, and by two exiles, the Assyrian (722 B.C.) and the Chaldean (597 and 586 B.C.), the people found themselves a hopelessly scattered and subject race, the regards of the nation's men of letters were turned in a new direction. They were still united, and more than ever, in the great religious and moral ideas that had given them a spiritual superiority to other races; and whether dispersed over the earth or returned from exile in their home, they felt the exceeding value of the store of literature in which those ideas had been evolved. The works of their heroic past became classic; the great events and personalities of their history acquired a distinction which had not been realized while their history was being made. Accordingly the prophetic spirit, which had been concerned with issues of present and future, gradually subsided, and succeeding writers worked rather in the spirit of the scribe and the scholar, concerned with preserving the works inherited from the past and with making them educative for the changed conditions of the national life.

This movement to give the ancient literature a new lease of life had two phases, which we may call an editorial and a selective; both characteristic of a literary mood which from spontaneous and adventurous had become self-conscious and critical.

Already, a century or more before the Exile, the editorial mood, the movement to revise, round out, and complete the older literary works, was well under way. These works existed in more or less scattered and inchoate form; some of them were composed for conditions too primitive to suit later needs; many of them had to be reduced from oral tradition to written form. To bring these archaic remains up to date, making them available for more modern uses, was a natural impulse of the matured literary sense. Old stories of patriarchs and judges, kings and prophets, were gathered

and coördinated into a continuous history; ancient laws were put into popular form and modernized; hymns for public worship were adapted to new religious or historical situations; maxims and aphorisms of the sages were collected and compiled. Thus the older literature was not only gathered from its scattered depositories; it was also kept renewed and moving by appreciative editorial work.

NOTE. Preëxilic Evidences of this Editorial Work. All the early historic books, from Genesis to 2 Samuel, are composite, the work of editorial compilers who availed themselves of the ancient literary materials of various ages, incorporating much that was unchanged, but adding connecting links, summaries, notes of explanation, and the like; and most of this literature was so nearly complete that only the scholarly activity of the Exile, culminating in Ezra the scribe, was needed to finish it. The Book of Deuteronomy was probably edited from a book of the law" found in the Temple in 622 B.C. (see 2 Kings xxii). The section of the Book of Proverbs from chapter xxv to xxix is said to have been compiled by "the men of Hezekiah King of Judah" (727–699; see Prov. xxv, 1). These are only salient examples of what must have been a vigorous literary occupation.

After the return from exile, during the four centuries preceding the coming of Jesus, while the attitude of the Jews toward other races and creeds became more intolerant and exclusive, the literary mood became more critical and selective, the activities of the scribes being directed to determining what works should find a place in their canon, and to classifying them according to their subject matter and form. Into the history of this movement we cannot enter here. Its motive is apparent. The people of the widely dispersed race must be kept true to their inherited ideas, not only at home in Palestine where the Temple and priesthood were, but throughout the lands of their dispersion where their synagogues were the local centers of communal life, education, and worship; and this selected library must be the uniting and integrating factor. Besides this, maintaining so loyally as they everywhere did their racial

individuality, they must make their idea good against the invasion of other customs and literatures and prove their own worthiness to survive. To this end, out of the rich stores of their venerable literature they must select and coördinate what was worthy to become classic and reject what was below or aside from the standard. Thus in course of time the canon formed itself out of the books that were deemed to have a fitting function in the nation's library. Before the time of Christ this canon had not only been determined, as to range and order, but translated into Greek, which had become the cultural language of the world; and it was the Greek version (the so-called Septuagint) which was used and supplemented by the writers of the New Testament canon.

NOTES. 1. The Original Order of the Old Testament Canon. As originally arranged the Hebrew canon, covering our Old Testament, has a somewhat different order from what we have in our Bible. It falls into three great divisions, which represent three stages of selection and compilation, and which were named respectively the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings or Scriptures. The following is a brief tabulation of them:

(1) The Law, sometimes called the five fifths of the law, Greek Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. (2) The Prophets, namely, (a) Earlier Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel (two books in one), Kings (also undivided); (b) Later Prophets : Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, The Twelve (all the minor prophets being comprehended in one book).

(3) The Writings, Greek Hagiographa, namely, (a) the anthologies: Psalms, Proverbs, Job; (b) the Megilloth, or Rolls: Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther; (c) Unclassified: Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles.

In the preface to the apocryphal Book of Ecclesiasticus (130 B.C.) these divisions are referred to as "the law, and the prophets, and the other books of our fathers." In Luke xxiv, 44, Jesus speaks of these as the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the psalms," designating the third division by its first book.

2. The Supplementary (New Testament) Canon. The Old Testament canon, which was made up for uses of the Jewish religion and