brilliant writer and story-teller, but he had no conscience for historical accuracy, and had little interest in the discrimination. of truth from error, or fact from fiction. Philo wrote a life of Moses, but it has no historical value; it is altogether allegorical and didactic in its purpose.

Subsequent to Josephus there seems to have been no interest in biblical history among the Jews. Their whole life was in the study and practice of the Law, and the only use the rabbins made of history was to illustrate and enforce the Law. For this purpose they did not hesitate to embellish history and transform it into historic fiction. This method goes back into the Old Testament Canon itself, into the stories of Daniel and Esther, Ruth and Jonah, and even into the Chronicler and the Deuteronomic writers, who idealized the past in order to enforce the historic lessons they would teach. The only historical works used by the Jews until modern times were the Sedar olam rabba and Sedar olam zutta,2 which were again and again interpolated in the course of the centuries.

Among Christians the earliest historical efforts were naturally upon the life of Christ and the acts of the apostles. A large number of apocryphal books of this kind were produced, none of which gained extensive recognition. They were full of mythical and legendary material, and were all eventually pushed aside and crowded into oblivion by the canonical Gospels and book of Acts. The orthodox limited themselves to the construction of harmonies and poetical representations of various kinds. The Harmony of Tatian was extensively used in the Eastern Church, and among the Syrians crowded the four Gospels out of use for several generations. The earliest Christian efforts to present biblical history in a more systematic way were those of Hegesippus and Julius Africanus. Hegesippus, in the latter part of the second century, wrote five books of memoirs, the result of his historical investigations at Rome and elsewhere. But only fragments have been preserved. Julius Africanus, of the first half of the third century, wrote five volumes of chronology, which were extant in 1 See p. 341 seq. 2 See p. 235.

8 Eusebius, Church History, McGiffert's ed., II. 23; IV. 22, pp. 125, 198.

Jerome's time,1 but which have perished with the exception of fragments. Eusebius in the fourth century was the chief historian of the ancient Church, the father of Church history. He wrote a chronicle giving the history of the world up to his own times and chronological tables.2 He takes up into his ecclesiastical history all that was deemed valuable in the earlier writings, and in geographical work laid the foundation for biblical geography.3

and

In the Latin Church the first and chief writer upon biblical history was Sulpicius Severus (c. 400 B.C.). He wrote a sacred history in two books. The first book extends from the creation of the world until the exile, in 54 chapters; the second book, from the exile until the martyrdom of Priscillian, in 51 chapters. The story of Christ is told in a single chapter, 27, the story of the apostles in two chapters, 28-29. There is no discrimination between historic fact and fiction. Judith and Esther and the tales of the Maccabees take their place in the history on the same level as the most important events of the Old and New Testaments. Augustine, in his de civitate dei, uses biblical history merely in the interests of Christian doctrine.

In the Middle Ages biblical history was studied for dogmatic or devotional purposes. Many poetical representations were made for the instruction of the people, and ancient harmonies were reproduced and devotional studies were given. The greatest work upon biblical history in all this period was the Life of Christ, by Rudolf of Saxony, 1470, which went through many editions. It is innocent of any historic sense, and knows no difference between fact and fable.

II. THE STUDY OF BIBLICAL HISTORY IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES

The Reformation was not a revival of historical studies so much as of literary and dogmatic studies. There were several efforts to study the Gospels and the Pentateuch in a

1 Jerome, De viris illustribus, 63.

2 Xpovikдi kavóves, see McGiffert's Eusebius, 31.

3 περὶ τῶν τοπικῶν ὀνομάτων τῶν ἐν τῇ θείᾳ γραφῇ, translated in the Onomasticon of Jerome.

harmonistic way. The most important works of this kind were the Gospel Harmonies of Osiander, 1537, and Chemnitz, 1593; and especially the Harmony of the Pentateuch and the Harmony of the Gospels by Calvin.

It was not until the middle of the seventeenth century that Biblical History became of interest, and then chiefly from an archæological point of view, because of the increased attention to the study of the Hebrew and Greek languages and antiquities. A great collection of writings of archæological writers from this period was subsequently made by Ugolino.1

Scaliger laid the foundations for chronology 2 and Usher 3 wrote an invaluable work upon the chronology of the Old and New Testaments, which has been the basis of all chronological studies until recent times. But other scholars, such as Goodwin, Lightfoot, Selden, Buxtorf, Bochart, and Vitringa,9 made special investigations in various departments and enlarged the field of historical knowledge. They did not critically sift their material, but they gathered it and arranged it for subsequent sifting by historical criticism.

III. THE STUDY OF BIBLICAL HISTORY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

In the eighteenth century the conflict between Christianity and Deism, Atheism, and Rationalism, led to a re-investigation of the entire field of biblical history, in which England, France, Holland, Switzerland, and Germany shared. On the one side every effort was put forth to discredit the supernatural in

1 Thesaurus antiquitatt. sacra, 34 vols. folio, Venice, 1744-1769.

2 Thesaurus temporum Eusebii, 1606.

3 Annales Vet. et N. Test., 2 vols., 1650-1654.

4 Moses et Aaron, 1616.

5 Harmony of the Gospels, 1644-1650; Erubim, 1629; Acts of the Apostles, 1645; Harmony, chronicles, and order of the Old Testament, 1647; Harmony, chronicle, and order of the New Testament, 1655; and especially Hora Hebraica et Talmudicæ, 1658-1664.

6 De jure naturali et gentium juxta disciplinam Hebræorum, 1640; De successione in pontificatum Hebræorum, 1638; De Synedriis, 1650.

7 Synagoga Judaica, 1604.

8 Geographia sacra seu Phaleg et Canaan, 1646; Hierozoicon, 1663.

9 Hypotyposes historia et chronologiæ Sacræ, 1698.

biblical history and to put it in the category of all other ancient histories, and even to depreciate it as a mass of legends and fables. On the other side, every effort was made to defend the supernatural, and even to exaggerate it. middle course was pursued by a few. These strove to conserve all that was true and real in the history, and to let all that was untrue perish. A terrible sifting went on, and all the material gathered with so much industry in the previous century had to pass through the fire. In England the principal writers of solid merit were Prideaux,1 Schuckford,2 Stackhouse, Paley; in France, Basnage,5 Calmet; 6 in Holland, Reland and Spanheim; in Germany, Buddeus, Waehner,10 Bengel," Rous, 12 Hess, 13 and Michaelis.14

4

IV. BIBLICAL HISTORICAL CRITICISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Toward the close of the eighteenth century, Herder,15 and especially Eichhorn,16 laid the foundations for a more historical study of Holy Scripture, and began to use the historical material in the Bible with a genuine historical spirit. They endeavoured to put the biblical writings in the midst of the scenery of the ancient world, and to interpret them with a true understanding of their literary characteristics. They saw the many sources and variety of colours of the historical material;

1 The Old and New Testaments Connected, 1716-1718.

2 Sacred and Profane History of the World, 1728.

3 New History of the Holy Bible, 2 vols., 1732.

+ Hora Paulinæ, 1790.

5 Histoire des Juifs depuis Jésus-Christ jusqu'a présent, 1706.

6 Dictionnaire de la Bible, 1722.

7 Antiquitates Sacræ, 1708; Palestina ex monumentis, 1704.

8 Opera quatenus complectantur geographiam, chronologiam et historiam sacram, 1701-1703.

9 Hist. eccl. Vet. Test., 2 Bde., 1715.

10 Antiquitates Hebræorum, 2 vols., 1701-1703.

11 Ordo temporum, 1741.

12 Einleitung in d. Bib. Gesch., 1770.

18 Gesch. d. 3 letzten Lebensjahre Jesu, 1768; Apostelgeschichte, 3 Bde., 1775; Gesch. der Israeliten, 12 Bde., 1776-1788.

14 Spicilegium geographiae Heb., 1769; Mosaisches Recht, 6 Bde., 1770-1775. 15 Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts, 1774.

16 Eichhorn, Urgeschichte, first published in the Repertorium, 1779, and afterwards edited by Gabler, 1791, 1793.

they knew how to appreciate the mythical and legendary material in Holy Scripture, and they endeavoured to reconcile these historical features with their holy character and religious use.

The recognition, by such a preeminent biblical scholar as Eichhorn, of the mythical, legendary, and poetic material in the Holy Scriptures and their use of more ancient documents, gave a new impulse to the study of Biblical History. The study of Biblical History had thus far been unscientific and capricious, both on the side of the Supernaturalists and their Deistic, Atheistic, and Rationalistic opponents. The Supernaturalists were loath to recognize anything like legend and myth, and they were reluctant to admit even poetry and original documents. Their opponents were more concerned to discredit the materials of biblical history than to test their true characteristics.

Thomas Payne may be taken as a representative of the views of the Deists at the close of the century. A few sentences from his famous book may suffice. "It is not the antiquity of a tale that is any evidence of its truth; on the contrary, it is a symptom of its being fabulous; for the more ancient any history pretends to be, the more it has the resemblance of a fable. The origin of every nation is buried in fabulous tradition, and that of the Jews is as much to be suspected as any other."1 Speaking for myself, if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous than the sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be sufficient to determine my choice." 2

Speaking of the immaculate conception he says, "This story is, upon the face of it, the same kind of story as that of Jupiter and Leda, or Jupiter and Europa, or any of the amorous adventures of Jupiter, and shews, as is already stated in the former part of the Age of Reason, that the Christian faith is built upon the heathen Mythology." 3

Speaking of the resurrection he says, "The story of the appearance of Jesus Christ is told with that strange mixture of the natural and impossible that distinguishes legendary tale from fact."4

It is evident that Payne, like all his associates and predecessors of the Deistic school of writers, plays fast and loose with tales, legends, and myths, and is destitute of any real scientific or historic interest.

1 Age of Reason, Conway's edition, N.Y., 1896, p. 90.

2 l.c., p. 90.

3 l.c., p. 153.

4 l. c., p. 169.