minster Confession's reference of this passage to the Pope, he leaves the interpretation with such statements as that "the hierarchical system of the Papacy... is a seed-bed and nursery of precisely such characters as are here described." We can but suspect that if this matter were perfectly clear in the author's mind, the effect on the mind of the reader would not be such complete confusion.

(2) They contain errors dangerous to important truth. He adopts a system of interpretation which leads him to the conclusion that the Apostle's words have never been fulfilled, and adds, "Some will think that objection. final; and some will think it futile: I agree with the last" (p. 312). Precisely here we do not agree with them nor him. Much less do we agree with the sweeping and unfounded statement with which he answers the inev itable objection to his theory: "Is it not utterly misleading that a prophecy should stand in Holy Scripture which history was to falsify? I think the right answer is that there is hardly any prophecy in Holy Scripture which has not been in a similar way falsified; while nevertheless in its spiritual import true" (p. 313). The author must have far more faith than we in his own foggy notions of what this prophecy means, to warrant him in the announce-, ment that history has negatived this and most of the other prophecies. An author who expects to be followed in so broad a statement, ought to be able to make his own theory, before which most of the prophecies are to fall, intelligible at least, if not credible.

The vice of such theories is twofold: it encourages wholesale speculation without much regard for the facts, and it breeds a disregard for the statements of Holy Scripture which does not end with its specific application.. For instance, if Paul's "ignorance of the scale of the world, and the scale of God's purposes, made him apply this law to the riddle of history hastily, with a result which the event has not justified," we might adjust our theories of inspiration to that fact, when once established, and seek to find the overbalancing truth in the writings of the other authors of the books of the New Testament. But Peter made the same mistake, and John had the same ignorance of what he was commanded to write, and Matthew made the same hasty application of the law to the riddle of history, and Jesus himself gave them the material for their alleged delusion. We are as unable as we are unwilling to believe that He either deceived his disciples or was himself deceived upon this point.

We do not care to publish our own view on this point, but only to point out the mistake of the book. We venture to suggest, however, that an interpretation is not lacking which finds the fulfilment of this and like prophecies where the apostles expected to find it, in days not remote from their own; and where Jesus expected to find it, in the lifetime of that generation, and where our author plainly sees that Paul expected to find it, as he writes,"The temple of God is, therefore, the temple at Jerusalem; it was standing when Paul wrote; and he expected it to stand till all this was fulfilled" (p. 310). This is just what Jesus in Matt. xxiv., and John in Rev. xi., seem to

have anticipated. In close connection with the surrounding of Jerusalem with armies, and the abomination of desolation which came with the trampling of the holy city under foot in its destruction, Jesus and his inspired apostles looked for the mapovσía тoû Kvpíov. He must have read the history of those days to little purpose who finds in the event nothing to justify the prophecy. (3) The author's views are inconsistent with his own views of related points. He still believes Paul essentially right. "Christ is coming. There will be a gathering together of all his people unto him. The living and the dead shall be forever with the Lord" (p. 198). How does our author know? Has he not impeached every witness competent to testify on these points? If Paul was mistaken as to the time, might he not have been mistaken also as to the fact? If the rapovala did not occur in the sense which Christ and his apostles meant to teach, and at the time they meant to teach, have we any warrant for expecting it at all? Has not the author cut off the limb of his own hope between himself and the tree?

It is not necessary, in the light of the facts of history, to affirm that the prophecy was not fulfilled. He who does so has the unpleasant alternative of throwing overboard the words and authority of the Bible, or of placing himself in the way to be deceived by every cry of "Lo, here," "Lo, there," and led into a chase after ignis fatui in endless succession. There was a sense in which the rapovoía had been manifest when Paul wrote. Even when Jesus was teaching there was a sense in which it had been accomplished, and one in which it was still future. "The hour cometh, and now is." So long as the temple stood, those who had been accustomed to worship there could not bring themselves to believe fully that One greater than the temple, though invisible, was present—and wapovolɑ means presence. The apostles had realized dimly that his Presence was to be made manifest to them and not to the world: for Jesus in John xiv.-xvi. had explained that to them, and Peter recognized Pentecost as the fulfilment, not only of that, but of Joel's apocalyptic prediction. But even the apostles were tied as yet to the temple, and went there to worship and pay their vows. Christianity was still localized. The visible temple in some degree usurped the place of the Temple of the Holy Spirit. When Jerusalem was destroyed, in manner wonderfully true to prophetic word, the last bar to the universality of Christianity went down. And with this, also, came that signal judgment on the nation that had rejected Christ, and the city that had crucified him, that has ever since been the marvel of the world in its unmistakable though mysterious exhibition of the hand of God in human affairs. We still incline to the view that Paul was right; that in expecting the temple to stand till all was fulfilled, he expected what the utterance of Christ gave him full warrant to expect, and what the event fully justified.

THE

BIBLIOTHECA SACRA.

ARTICLE I.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW TESTAMENT JUDAISM.

BY PROFESSOR GEORGE H. schodde, PH. D., CAPITAL UNIVERSITY,
COLUMBUS, OHIO.

IN its way the development of the faith and religious life of Israel in the eventful centuries between the close of the Old and the beginning of the New Testament is as much an historical problem sui generis as are the origin, character, and growth of the Old Testament religion itself. Of all the peoples of Western Asia, only the Jews were able to resist the disintegrating process which set in with the conquest of the Orient by Alexander the Great, and to which the individuality and nationality of the others fell an easy prey. The forces that destroyed these had, among the Jews, only the effect of strengthening their consciousness of being a peculiar people, with a most important historical mission to perform. And yet the conditions seemed on the surface to be favorable for such a disintegration and dissolution in Israel also. In pre-exilic times, Israel, in itself of little or no political importance, had frequently come into contact with the Eastern nations and with Egypt in their endeavors to realize the highest ideal of ancient statescraft, namely, the establishment of a world-supremacy; and the prophets, VOL. L. NO. 198.

I

in their work of teaching the people to be faithful to their peculiar calling, not infrequently met with a popular opposition that was willing to admit influences from abroad endangering the individuality, and that eventually did destroy the political existence, of the people. And this was the case, although these nations that threatened Israel really employed no stronger agencies than mere physical force. When for the first time Israel in post-biblical times came in contact with the aggressive movement of the West, the danger was all the greater. In the wake of Alexander came Grecian philosophy, literature, and culture, all subtler but more efficient agencies than mere brute force. A new civilization in the shape of Hellenism readily subdued the effete civilization of the East, and found easy victims in all except in the Jews; and yet, outwardly at least, this people seemed not prepared to resist such powerful historical forces. Politically Israel was under the rule of nations who neither appreciated nor favored its peculiarities, and at best regarded these as "superstitions," as the well-known slurs of Horace, Juvenal, and other satirists show us. The Persian, the Greek, the Syrian, the Roman, each in his own way and manner, sought to rob this people of its existence and life. In Israel itself there was a party that favored Hellenistic innovations, and these found able leaders in the aristocratic and influential Sadducees. Even when political independence was gained for a few decades in the Maccabean revolt, the Asmonean house, with the exception of Alexandra, proved unfaithful to the principle of religious autonomy that had brought it into power. The Diaspora, or great dispersion, scattered tens of thousands of Jews among nations antagonistic to their religion, and possessing a culture which, in its outward forms and as mere "world-wisdom," was superior to their own, and which could, and did, exert a wonderful influence on Jewish thought, as the works of Philo, Josephus, and others show. Yet, notwithstanding this combination of

hostile forces, which would have crushed out the very existence of other nations, Israel's convictions of its mission and of the importance of maintaining its national and religious individuality grew from year to year and rapidly became the mainspring of its vitality and faith.

This state of affairs proves conclusively the existence and operation of factors in the historical development of Israel which were absent in the life of other peoples. The literary remains we still possess from those inter-Testament days, the Apocrypha, Apocalypses, etc., as also the pages of the New Testament, leave no room to question that these factors were the religious convictions and ideals of the people. This religion was in kind entirely different from other religions. The new development theory of the Old Testament, which starts out, on the basis of an hypothesis taken from the science of comparative religions, by denying this generic distinction, is not only a petitio principii, but it ignores the very feature that enables us intelligently to understand the origin and development of this religion. The consciousness of this possession on the part of the people was dimmed and even darkened at times during the Old Testament days, and it was the constant endeavor of the true prophets to recall Israel from the practice of religious syncretism, which natural depravity or political policy so often suggested. The prevailing view of the Gentile nations, as many passages of the Old Testament and other evidences tell us, was, that the gods of all the nations had an equal right of existence, and that in their own realm and nation they had divine power, but not elsewhere. The idea of one divinity as the controlling power of the whole universe and of all peoples is distinctively a revealed idea; and from the beginning of Israel's existence, and not merely since the prophets

1 Kuenen, De Godsdienst, i. 5 seq., where he defines "Ons Standpunkt,” says: "Judaism and Christianity indeed belong to the principal religions, but between them and all other religions there exists no specific difference."