"This age may be best characterized as the age of criticism, a criticism to which everything must submit. Religion, on the ground of its sanctity, and law, on the ground of its majesty, often resist this sifting of their claims. But, in so doing, they inevitably awake a not unjust suspicion that their claims are ill-founded, and they can no longer expect the unfeigned homage paid by reason to that which has shown itself able to stand the test of free inquiry."

IMMANUEL Kant.

CHAPTER X.

SOME ANCIENT AND MODERN ESTIMATES OF THE

OLD TESTAMENT.

I. WHAT, in the days since the dawn of Christianity, have men, whose opinions are worth heeding, believed the Old Testament to be? This is a question which possesses a living interest, and any impartial investigation in this field is sure to yield rich results.

They are blind Nothing can be

We find, in the first place, that the Orthodox Jews accept their Scriptures as a complete and sufficient revelation of the will of the Lord their God, containing a fully developed moral code, and a ritual, to comply with which is to save the soul. followers of the letter of the law. learned, in fact, outside the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud. The work of the Orthodox Jews upon their Scriptures has been almost wholly conservative. They have done nothing to aid the modern reconstruction of their history. Avoiding altogether modern scholarship, they rather prefer to revel in the speculations of the Talmud. They still believe, with the Jewish authors of the early Christian centuries, that the law existed in the depths of the divine nature before time was, that it is in very truth the eternal image of the spiritual being of God, that it is identical with heavenly wisdom, and that God's love goes out to it willingly and

spontaneously in tenderest affection. The law is, to the pious Jew, the daughter of God, in whom God loved himself as in his own image. By one writer the law is made to say, "God begat me from eternity as the firstling of his way, as the first beginning of his work." And, according to another writer, it was said that God himself spends the first three hours of the day in the study of the law.

The law is, to the Orthodox Jew, God's only revelation of salvation. Piety is love for the law; the essence of religion is to live according to the law, and it will be the essence of religion for all time. The Jews are the people of the law, and the study and practice of the law insure the presence of God in their midst. The prophets were but inspired commentators of the law, and the oral tradition was its authentic and God-given interpretation.1

The Reform Jews, on the other hand, are thoroughly in touch with modern aims and ideals. They are protestants in that they reject or thoroughly sift the Rabbinical traditions, and return to an independent study of the Bible itself. They hold to no hard and fast creed, but gladly accept the results of modern science, philosophy, and historical criticism. Their reverence for the Old Testament is akin to that of the liberal Christian for the New. And some of the best work on the Jewish Scriptures in our day is being done by Reformed Jews.

2. The New Testament idea of the Old Testament is the Orthodox Jewish idea, with such modifications as the new elements in Christianity would naturally neces1 Weber's Altsynagogale Theologie, SS. 16, 34, etc.

sitate. It must not be forgotten that the Old Testament was the only Bible that Jesus and the apostles possessed. And it proved to them a constant source of inspiration and hope. It furnished the basis for a pure moral and religious life, and, above all, it became a powerful weapon in the hands of the early Christians in their controversies with the Gentiles. It is to be expected, then, that the New Testament writers will hold the Old Testament in the highest esteem.

Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, says he came not to abrogate the law of the prophets but to fulfil them; that is, he came not to set aside the law as having no authority (karaλúav), but to live up to it, obey it, and so fulfil it (πλŋpoûv). In the same context he continues, one "i" or one piece of a letter shall not pass from even a word of the Old Testament, until all its mission for righteousness and the kingdom of God is accomplished (Távтa yévηtai).1 The thought seems to be, if the words are really those of Jesus, that the Old Testament retains its authority until the truth finds a higher authority in the new heart, and in the momentum of a righteous life (vs. 20). The Old Testament, then, has its supreme value, not in the fact that it foretells the Messiah and prepares the world for him, but in that it teaches by precept and example a form of righteousness which will endure till heaven and earth pass away. The fulfilment of a law is its abrogation only to him who, by obedience, is ready to put aside the milk of the word and partake of the solid meat.

1 Matt. v. 17-20 is a confused and confusing section. Weizsäcker, Hilgenfeld, and others, may be right in saying that vss. 18, 19, are not words of Jesus.

Prof. Edward Caird says, that, when Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God as resembling a kernel of wheat, which, put into the earth, multiplies by dying, he "gave a clearer expression to the idea of development than it had ever before received."1 Equally significant with the passage referred to by Caird and in the same direction are the words of Jesus recorded in Matt. xix. II, "All men cannot receive this saying." This certainly implies that Christianity is not primarily a doctrine, merely as such, but a higher type of religious life, founded upon the Old Testament, and supplementing its ideal, but never setting it wholly aside.

The continued usefulness of precepts of varying degrees of ethical and religious completeness is well illustrated also by a passage in the Teaching of the Apostles, vi. 2. "If indeed thou art able to bear the whole yoke of the Lord, thou wilt be perfect: but if thou art not able, do what thou canst" (o dúvy Toûto toleî).

This I believe was the view of Jesus. The Old Testament possesses permanent value, because there are always those in society who are sufficiently hard of heart and dull of hearing to be helped by it; while, on the other hand, Jesus certainly taught that the higher commands possessed authority for those who were able to receive them.

Paul seems to have at one time believed in the Old Testament in a more technical way than Jesus ever did. When he accepted Christianity, however, he sought to set aside this technique, though without being wholly able to do so. He speaks at one time in favor of the law, and at another time against it. And it is by no 1 Evolution of Religion, vol. i. p. 25.