The Expositor's Bible: Index. Ayres Samuel Gardiner

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and customs, has been brought up to date in two standard German works by Nowack and Benzinger, respectively.

      We may briefly refer here to the rapid development in recent times of the science of Comparative Religion, to which amongst others, Prof. C. H. Toy, of Harvard, has rendered important services. A marked feature has been the tendency to emphasize the legends and ritual of savage tribes, and their survivals in the literature and services of more advanced religions. Attempts are made to ascertain from such data how religions in general, and any given religion in particular, have developed; and thus lay down principles by which to interpret the available information in any special case. In reference to this branch of learning Prof. Morris Jastrow of the University of Pennsylvania writes thus9: "J. G. Frazer's great work more particularly, The Golden Bough, marks an epoch in the study of religious rites."

V. – PROGRESS IN PHILOLOGY, ETC

      Many important additions have recently been made to the student's apparatus for the linguistic and textual study of the Old Testament. Numerous grammars, reading-books and lexicons of Assyrian and other Semitic languages have been published. In Hebrew itself a standard grammar has been provided by the translation of the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth editions Gesenius revised by Kautzsch. Dr. Solomon Mandelkern has published a new Concordance to the Hebrew Text of the Old Testament. A new standard edition of Gesenius Lexicon by Profs. Brown, Driver, and Briggs is being issued by the Clarendon Press.

      Biblical Hebrew has also had light thrown on it by the discovery of the original Hebrew text of large portions of Ecclesiasticus. It was indeed maintained by Margoliouth that the documents discovered were a retranslation into Hebrew from Greek and other versions; but, after much controversy, the verdict of scholarship is in favor of the originality of the Hebrew text in these documents.

      As regards the Septuagint: Prof. Swete has edited a small edition in three volumes with the readings of the most important manuscripts, together with a fourth volume containing the Introduction. A large edition which will give the same text10 "with an ample apparatus criticus intended to provide material for a critical determination of the text," is being prepared. Messrs. Hatch and Redpath have compiled a new Concordance to the Septuagint; but a modern grammar and lexicon are still "felt wants."

VI. – RECENT CRITICISM AND EXEGESIS

      The progress of Biblical knowledge has necessitated the publication of new series of commentaries. In English there is the International Critical Commentary;11 and some of the later volumes of the Cambridge Bible, e. g., Prof. Driver's Daniel, are rather first-class commentaries for scholars than elementary works for general readers. In German there are Prof. Nowack's Handkommentar zum Alten Testament;12 Prof. Karl Marti's Kurzer Handkommentar zum Alten Testament,13 and the Old Testament sections of Profs. Strack and Zöckler's Kurzgefaszter Kommentar.14 Later on reference will be made to some volumes of these series.

      In addition to the above works, there are others specially intended to show how criticism has divided up the books of the Old Testament into the various older documents from which they are believed to have been compiled. This analysis is shown in the German translation edited by Kautzsch by means of initials in the margin; Dr. Haupt's Sacred Books of the Old Testament (Hebrew text) and Polychrome Bible,15 by means of colored backgrounds on which the text is printed; and in the Oxford Society of Historical Theology; The Hexateuch16 by means of parallel columns. The introduction to the last named work is the most complete popular statement of the grounds for the modern theory of the Pentateuch. Technical details and a formal contrast of the arguments for and against this theory may be found in the discussion between Profs. W. R. Harper and W. H. Green in Hebraica, 1888-90. Numerous Introductions to the Old Testament have expounded the current critical views, notably for English and American readers the successive editions of Prof. Driver's Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament.

      Naturally these various works represent not merely the position of criticism and exegesis twenty years ago, but also the progress made since then. As regards the Historical Books critics have chiefly been engaged in the application of modern methods and principles which are now very generally accepted. Development has taken place in three directions. First, much labor has been given to the more exact distribution of the contents of the Hexateuch between the main documents used by its compilers, e. g., Prof. B. W. Bacon's analysis of Exodus. Secondly, attempts have been made to divide up these main documents into still older documents from which they have been compiled. Steuernagel, for instance, regards Deuteronomy as a mosaic of paragraphs and clauses from earlier codes, and finds a criterion between different sources in the use, respectively, of the singular or the plural form of address. So far his views have not met with much acceptance.17 Thirdly, the theory has been very widely advocated that the historical books of Judges-I Kings are partly compiled from the documents used by the editors of the Hexateuch.18 Gunkel's commentary on Genesis19 is of special importance; it pleads for a fuller recognition of the indebtedness of Israel to the religions of its neighbors, and maintains that, as the stories of the Creation, the Fall, and the Flood were derived from Babylon, so the Patriarchal narratives were mostly borrowed from the Canaanites after the settlement of Israel in Palestine. The account of Joseph, however, is largely taken from Egyptian sources.

      As regards the Prophetical Books, there is little of general interest to record; the composite authorship of Isaiah XL-LXVI is more widely held.

      When we come to the Hagiographa, or third or closing section of the Hebrew Canon, Esther has been the subject of interesting speculations. Chiefly because Mordecai and Esther are the names of the Babylonian gods Merodach and Ishtar, it has been suggested that the book is based on a Babylonian myth which the Jews appropriated and adapted, as in earlier days, according to Gunkel, they made use of the legends of the Canaanites.

      The origin and history of the Psalms is still made the ground of much controversy, and the tendency of criticism is to deny the existence of any Pre-exilic Psalms;20 and to assign a large number to the Maccabean period. It is even held21 that, in the time of the Maccabees, the Psalm was the organ of political invective, and played the part of the leading article in a modern newspaper.

      In connection with Canticles a theory put forward some time since has been revived in an emended form, and with a fuller discussion of the evidence.22 This view is that "the book is a collection of songs, connected with a Syrian custom, called the 'King's Week.' During the first week after marriage the bride and bridegroom play at being king and queen, and are addressed as such by a mock court, in a series of songs similar to those of Canticles. Thus Canticles would contain a specimen of the cycle of songs used at a seven days' village feast in honor of a peasant bride and bridegroom, the latter being addressed as 'Solomon,' the type of a splendid and powerful king."23

VII. – THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL AND ITS RELIGION

      Many works have appeared expounding these subjects in the light of modern criticism.24 Here again recent work has largely been a development on lines already laid down.25 Much attention has been given to the hints furnished by the Pentateuch as to the early history of Israel, and these have been compared with recent discoveries from the monuments. Many scholars

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