Baruch is placed with the Canonical books after Lamentations. Of the rest, he says that "they are placed apart," as "not held in the same repute" as the other Scriptures; but this is only because there are "dark sayings" in them, which seem to differ from the 66 open Scripture." He has no wish that they "should be despised or little set by." 'Patience and study would show that the two were agreed."

Coverdale's version was first printed, probably at Zurich, in 1535; other editions appeared in 1537, 1539, 1550, 1553. The plural form "Biblia" appears in the title-page-possibly, however, in its later use as a singular feminine." There are no notes, no chapterheadings, no division into verses. The letters A, B, C, D, in the margin, as in the early editions of the Greek and Latin authors, are the only helps for finding places. Marginal references point to parallel passages. The Old Testament, especially in Genesis, has the attraction of wood-cuts. Each book has a table of contents prefixed to it.

In the year 1537 a large folio Bible appeared, as edited and dedicated to the king by Thomas Matthew. No one of that name appears at all prominently in the religious history of the period, and this suggests the inference that the name was pseudonymous, adopted as a veil to conceal the real translator. There is abundant evidence, external and internal, identifying this translator with John Rogers, the proto-martyr of the Marian persecution, and a friend and disciple of Tyndale. As far as the Old Testament is concerned, it seems to have been based, but with an independent study of the Hebrew, upon the previous versions of Tyndale (so far as that extended) and Coverdale. Signs of a more advanced knowledge are found in the explanations given of technical words connected with the Psalms, Neginoth, Shiggaion, Sheminith, &c. Ps. ii. is printed as a dialogue. The names of the Hebrew letters are prefixed to the verses in the acrostic chapters of Lamentations. Reference is made to the Chaldee paraphrase (Job vi.), to Rabbi Abraham (Job xix.), to Kimchi (Ps. iii.). After being printed abroad as far as the end of Isaiah it was taken up as a business speculation by Grafton and Whitchurch, the king's printers, and patronised by Cranmer and Cromwell. Through their influence, and probably through the fact that Rogers' name was kept in the background, it obtained, in spite of notes which were as strongly Protestant as any of Tyndale's, the king's sanction, and a copy of it was ordered to be placed in every church at the cost of the incumbent and the parishioners. It was accordingly the first Authorised version.

Taverner's version (1539), based upon "the labours of others," whom, however, he does not name, was probably undertaken in deference to the wishes of the more moderate Reformers, who were alarmed at the vehemence of some of Rogers' notes, and yet wished for a more accurate version, and one more definitely based upon the original, than Coverdale's. It left no marked impress on the theology or literature of the time, and its chief interest lies perhaps in the fact that, alone of all the English versions of the Bible, it was the work of a layman.

In the same year as Taverner's, and coming from the same press, appeared an English version of the Bible, in a more stately folio, printed after a more costly fashion, bearing a higher name than any previous edition. The title-page is an elaborate engraving, the spirit and power of which indicate the hand of Holbein. The king, seated on his throne, is giving the Verbum Dei to the bishops and doctors, and they distribute it to the people, while bishops, doctors, and

people are all joining in cries of Vivat Rex. It declares the book to be "truly translated after the verity of the Hebrew and Greek texts," by "divers learned men, expert in the foresaid tongues." A preface, in an edition of 1540, with the initials T. C., implies the archbishop's sanction. In a later edition (Nov., 1540) his name appears on the title-page, and the names of his coadjutors are given, Cuthbert (Tonstal), Bishop of Durham, and Nicholas (Heath), Bishop of Rochester. In the translation of the Old Testament there is, as the title-page might lead us to expect, a greater display of Hebrew than in any previous version. The books of the Pentateuch have their Hebrew names given, B'reshith ("In the beginning") for Genesis, Velle Sh'moth ("And the names") for Exodus, and so on. 1 and 2 Chronicles, in like manner, appear as Dibre Haiamim ("Words of days"). The strange mistake caused by the substitution of Hagiographa for Apocrypha, for which this version is memorable, has been already noticed. The sanction given to the book, and the absence of any notes (though a marginal hand [] indicated an intention to supply them some day), naturally gave it a greater popularity than had been acquired by any previous version. In 1541 it appears

as

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authorised," to be "used and frequented" in every church in the kingdom. It was the Authorised version of the English Church till 1568, the interval of Mary's reign excepted. From it were taken most, if not all, the portions of Scripture in the Prayer Books of 1549 and 1552. The Psalms as a whole, the quotations from Scripture in the Homilies, the sentences in the Communion Service, and some phrases elsewhere, still preserve the remembrance of it.

The

Cranmer's version, however, did not satisfy the more zealous Reformers. Its size made it too costly. There were no explanatory or dogmatic notes. It followed Coverdale too closely, and failed, therefore, in spite of the profession of the title-page, to represent the Hebrew of the Old Testament, or the Greek of the New. The English refugees at Geneva accordingly-among them Whittingham, Goodman, Pullain, Sampson, and Coverdale himself-undertook the task of making a new translation of the whole Bible. They entered on what they call their "great and wonderful work" with much "fear and trembling." It occupied them for more than two years. The New Testament was printed at Geneva in 1557; the whole Bible in 1560. Of all the versions prior to that of 1611 the Geneva gained the most general acceptance. Not less than eighty editions were printed between 1558 and 1611, and it kept its ground for some time even against the Authorised version. The causes of this popularity are not far to seek. volume was, in all its editions, cheaper and more portable-a small quarto, or octavo, instead of the large folio of Cranmer's "Great Bible." It was the first version that laid aside the obsolescent black-letter, and ap peared, though not in all the editions, in Roman type. It was the first which, following the Hebrew example, recognised the division into verses, so dear to preachers and to students. It was accompanied, in most of the editions after 1578, by a Bible Dictionary of considerable merit. The notes were often really helpful in dealing with the difficulties of Scripture, and were looked upon as spiritual and evangelical. It was, accordingly, the version specially adopted by the great Puritan party through the whole reign of Elizabeth and far into that of James. In regard to the Old Testament it may be noted that it attempted to reproduce the exact form of Hebrew names, such as Izhak (Isaac), Jaacob, and the like. The English edition, published by Barker, became popularly known as the

"Breeches" Bible, from its use of that word instead of "aprons" in Gen. iii. 7.

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Archbishop Parker, though he had supported an application from the publisher of the Geneva Bible for a licence to reprint in 12mo, was not satisfied, and contemplated, as he stated at the time, one other special Bible for the churches, to be set forth as convenient time and leisure should permit." In the meantime, he said, "it would nothing hinder, but rather do good, to have diversity of translations and readings" (Strype's Life of Parker, iii. 6). With the help, accordingly, of eight bishops, with some deans and professors, Cranmer's Bible, which was avowedly taken as the basis, was carefully revised, and the book appeared in a magnificent folio in 1568. It was adorned by portraits of Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester, with a map of Palestine, with not a few wood engravings, with an elaborate set of genealogical tables, prepared by Speed the antiquary, under the direction of Hugh Broughton, the greatest Hebrew scholar of the century. It adopted the verse division of the Geneva Bible. Alone of all the versions it classified the books, both of the Old and New Testaments, under the headings of legal, historical, sapiential, and prophetical. Like the Geneva, it aimed at a more accurate representation of the Hebrew of Old Testament names, as, e.g., in Heva (Eve), Isahac, Urijahu. The bulk and cost of the Bishops' Bible tended to confine its use to the churches, in all of which it was ordered to be used. It never entered into anything like a practical competition with the Geneva

version.

Of the Douay version of the Old Testament, published in 1609, by Roman Catholic scholars, as the complement of the Rhemish New Testament of 1582, there is not need to say much. It was based on the Vulgate, not on the Hebrew. The style was disfigured by pedantic Latinisms, and strange "ink-horn" phrases. It left no mark on the thought and language of the English people.

The history of the Authorised version of 1611 presents, in one respect, a striking contrast to the history of those which had preceded it. They had an average duration of about ten years each, and each then gave way to its successor. It has commanded the reverence and admiration of all English-speaking nations for more than two centuries and a half. Till within the last ten years no attempt even has been made at a revision. It must be admitted that it had just claims to this reverence. If it did not bear the impress of the genius of a single mind, as Tyndale's did, it was, to balance that defect, the outcome of the labours of scholars far more numerous and better qualified than had ever been joined together before for a like purpose. The list of the forty-seven members of the revising company included well-nigh every man of scholarly mark in England. Andrews, Saravia, Overal, Montague, and Barlow represented the "higher" party in the Church; Reinolds, Chaderton, and Lively that of the Puritans. Culture and scholarship unconnected with party were represented by Sir Henry Savile and John Boys. It was, perhaps, wise on the part of the revisers, with a view to the general acceptance of their work, that they confined themselves to the task of translating, and avoided the risk and responsibility of interpreting. Had they given notes after the manner of the Geneva Bible, they would certainly have offended one school of thought in their own generation, and might have laid a stumbling-block in the way of those that were to come. In that case we might have had the tremendous evil of a whole body

of exegesis reflecting the Calvinism of the Synod of Dort, the absolutism of James I., the high-flying prelacy of Bancroft. As it was, they left the work of the interpreter free and unfettered for all time to come.*

In that part of their work with which we are now more immediately concerned, the version of the Old Testament, the translators of 1611 were relatively more successful than in dealing with the New. The Hebrew scholarship of the time stood on a higher level than the Greek, and the reverence which men felt for what was known in their controversies with Rome as the "Hebrew verity" made them look to the original text as the basis of their work, caring little for the LXX. or the Vulgate. Making allowance for the inherent difficulties of their work, they succeeded in a marvellous degree in reproducing the loftiness and grandeur of the prophets and psalmists of Israel, and through that success have enriched the thoughts and language of the theological, and even of the non-theological, literature of England. They did not, however, claim finality for their work, and those who would urge that claim now on their behalf, as a bar to further revision, are unfaithful at once to their teaching and their example. It cannot be questioned that their work, excellent as it was, is yet capable of improvement. The labours of Gesenius, and Furst, and Ewald have given us better lexicons and grammars than those of the seventeenth century. The literature of England, and yet more of Germany, presents a vast mine of exegetical apparatus, which cannot be without an influence for good upon the work of revision. The company of revisers to whom the Old Testament has been committed represent a higher average of Semitic scholarship than that of 1611. The comparative scantiness of variations in the Hebrew text, the comparative simplicity of Hebrew grammar, free their work from occasions of controversy and offence which have, rightly or wrongly, proved a hindrance to the general acceptance of the Revised version of the New. The edition of the Bible published in 1876 by Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode, "with various readings and renderings from the best authorities," under the editorship of Messrs. Cheyne, Clarke, Driver, and Goodwin, may perhaps be fairly taken as giving a forecast of what may be expected as the result of the labours of the revisers; and those who have studied that volume will acknowledge that the forecast is, at least, promising, that we may look for light thrown in upon obscurities, for loyalty to the past, for pure and idiomatic English.

XX. The Authority and Inspiration of the Old Testament.-Such, briefly, is the history of the volume which we have come to know throughout Christendom as the Old Testament. It remains, in conclusion, to say a few words as to the nature of its claims on the attention of the thoughtful reader, and the temper in which it should be studied. It need hardly be said that if it came before us only as embodying all that remains of the literature of Israel in its brightest and palmiest days, it would have for us an interest beyond that which attaches (with the one exception of the New Testament) to any other of what are known as the sacred books of the history of mankind. It is something more than a collection of liturgical hymns like the Vedas of India, or the Zend. Avesta of the Parsees; something more than the

I am bound to acknowledge my obligations for much of the information as to the English versions of the Bible, to the article Version, Authorised, in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, and to the works on the same subject by Dr. Westcott and Dr. Moulton.

utterances of a single mind, reflecting its various moods and phases, like the Koran, or than the proverbial maxims which represent the teaching of Confucius, or the mystic legends which make up the sacred books of Buddhism. It represents, to say the least, the whole life-political, religious, and literary-of a people of singular gifts, and it has sustained the life of that people through the long succession of centuries. It embodies their strivings after wisdom, their aspirations after the Eternal, their belief in a Divine order asserting itself among the disorders of mankind. It has formed the basis of a religion wider than its own, and through Christendom has permeated the thoughts and feelings of the most civilised portion of mankind. It has left its impress upon their laws, their polity, their creeds. Were it nothing more than this, it would deserve and would repay the study of any thoughtful student of the religious history of mankind. But for us it is something more, much more, than this. It has its highest outcome in the life, the teaching, the character of Christ, and of those whom He sent to be His apostles and evangelists. That life and character were, humanly speaking, fashioned under its influence; they fulfilled all its dim foreshadowings and inextinguishable hopes, stamped it with the supreme sanction of His authority as a Divine revelation of the will and mind of God. It was not, indeed, a full revelation, for God" had provided some better thing for us" (Heb. xi. 40), and He who had “in sundry times and divers manners" spoken in times past to the fathers (Heb. i. 1), spake in the last days to us through the Son; but it was taken by that Son Himself as the norm and standard of His teaching (Matt. v. 17), as prophetic of His work. He testified that Law and Prophets and Psalms spake of Him (Luke xxiv. 27; John v. 39, 46), that they bore their witness to His Divine Sonship, that they prophesied, sometimes distinctly, sometimes in parables and dark sayings, of His sufferings and death and resurrection. Its sayings sustained Him in His conflict with evil (Matt. iv. 1-10; Luke iv. 1-12), in His endurance of shame and obloquy and pain (Matt. xxvi. 54; Luke xxiii. 37). Its brightest visions of a Divine kingdom of peace and purity and blessedness were, He taught men, (Luke iv. 21), realised in the kingdom which He founded, in the company of believers in Him, which, as the Church of the living God, was founded upon the Eternal Rock. And the witness which He thus bore was carried on by His Apostles. They taught men to find new and deeper meanings in the types of Jewish ritual, in the aspirations of psalmists, in the visions of prophets (Epistle to the Hebrews, passim). For them the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament were "able to make men wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus, and, being inspired of God," were "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness (2 Tim. iii. 16, 17). They taught that prophecy "came not of old time" (or indeed at any time) "by the will of man, but that holy men of God spake as they were borne on by the Holy Spirit" (2 Pet. i. 21).

"Inspired of God." That thought has, we know, been fruitful in many controversies. On the one hand, there have been theories of inspiration which have minimised or excluded the human element; which have made prophets, lawgivers, apostles, evangelists, only the machines through which the Divine Spirit uttered His own words; and have seen, accordingly, in every statement of fact as regards history or nature, an oracle of God not to be questioned or debated; in the

title even of every book, that which was a bar to any inquiry into its authorship or date. On à priori grounds it has been argued that a revelation from God must, in the nature of the case, include all the subordinate accessories that cluster round it, that it was not worth giving at all unless it were infallible in everything. That mechanical theory of inspiration has, it is believed, but little to recommend it, except that it meets the craving of men for an infallible authority; and that craving, as we know, goes farther, and leads to a demand for an infallible interpreter of the infallible book. The à priori assumption goes beyond the limits of what is in itself reasonable and right. We are in no sort judges, as Bishop Butler has taught us (assuming that God willed to impart to mankind a knowledge of Himself), of the methods and the forms, the measures and degrees in which that knowledge would be imparted (Analogy, ii. 6). And the theory is, to say the least, at variance with the impression made on us by the books themselves. They bear, as strongly as the books of any other literature, the stamp of individual character. They indicate, in not a few cases, the labours of compilation and editing which brought them into their present form. They reflect the thoughts and feelings of the times in which they were severally written. They are from first to last intensely national in their character.

What has been called, in contrast with this hypothesis, the theory of a dynamic inspiration,* presents, it is believed, a more satisfactory solution of the problem, one more in harmony with reason, with analogy, with the facts of the case, with the teaching of the Bible itself. The term requires, it may be, a few words of explanation. What is meant is this, that the writers of the Old and New Testaments were not mere machines, but men of like passions with ourselves; each with his own thoughts, temperament, character; each under a training that developed the gifts which he thus possessed by nature, or acquired by education and experience; but that there was, mingling with and permeating all that was essentially his own, a Power above himself, quickening all that was true and good in him to a higher life, so guiding him that he did the work to which he was called faithfully and well, making known to men what he was commissioned to declare as to the mind of God and His dealings with mankind, in such form and in such measure as men were able to receive it. On this view of the case, criticism may enter on its work free and unfettered; may rightly study the "manifold," the "very varied" wisdom of God (Eph. iii. 10) working through all diversities of human gifts and character; may learn, in the temper of a reverential courage, to distinguish between the accidental and the essential, the letter and the spirit, the temporal and the eternal. As the teaching of the New Testament corrects and completes what was partial and imperfect in the Old, even in relation to what was its highest subject-matter, so the student of science and history may enter on his work without fear, not surprised or startled if he finds in the records of the Old Testament not a scientific account of the origin of the universe and the history of mankind, but broad and general statements, to be recognised hereafter in their right relation to the perfect Truth, which is mighty and will prevail.

E. H. PLUMPTRE.

See especially Westcott's Introduction to the Study of the Gospels: Introduction.

THE Pentateuch derives its name from a word in the Greek language as spoken at Alexandria, signifying "the five-fold book," and with this agrees the fact that the breaking of it up into five parts was apparently the work of the Alexandrian translators. The titles of these parts at the present day are all taken from their version, the LXX., while in the Hebrew itself there is no trace of any such arrangement, and though the division has been accepted for the sake of convenience, the names of the several books are simply the opening words. Thus Genesis is called Berêshith, that is, In the beginning; Exodus, Eleh Sh'moth, These are the names; Leviticus, Wayikra, And he called; Numbers, Bemid bar, In the wilderness; and Deuteronomy, Eleh Haddebarim, These are the words. Everywhere in the Bible it is spoken of as a whole, of which the name occurs once only before the Captivity, in 2 Kings xxii. 8, where it is called "the book of the Torah," or Law. Naturally, after the return from Babylon, when the state had to be reconstituted, and the kingly office was virtually abolished to make way for a more exact observance of the Mosaic institutions, a more frequent reference is made to it, and we find it fully described as "the book of the Torah of Moses, which Jehovah had commanded to Israel" (Neh. viii. 1), and as ". the book of the Torah of Jehovah" in 2 Chron. xvii. 9.

At that period we have full evidence that the Pentateuch was accepted by Ezra and the Jews returning from Babylon as the fundamental law of the children of Israel, and that its influence was so paramount that the members of the royal family laid no claim to the throne of David. Jewish tradition also asserts that Ezra and the men of the Great Synagogue settled the texts both of it and of their other Scriptures, and, to use a modern phrase, re-edited them, adding many remarks to elucidate the meaning, which in our days would be placed as foot-notes at the bottom, but which were incorporated into the body of the work. Were such a thing possible, nothing could be more interesting than for us to possess the original text of the Pentateuch. Even as it is, the vocabulary is to some extent different from that of later books, and there still remain numerous traces of archaic grammatical forms and inflexions different from those of later times, even though the Masorites have done much to obliterate them. But when we find that the autograph copies of the Apostolic Epistles, which existed in Tertullian's days (Tert. de Praescrip. xxxvi.), have long passed away, we must be content with the Old Testament as we find it, though the hope is held out to us of the discovery of copies anterior to the Masoretic Recension. And even as it is, we have no reason to suppose that it has ever been falsified, or that it was treated by Ezra with anything but the most reverent respect; and the Samaritan Pentateuch and the LXX. version prove to demonstration that we at this day have the Pentateuch just as it was several centuries before the advent of Christ.

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Confessedly, then, in the days of Ezra, the Pentateuch was regarded as the work of Moses, and as given by the command of Jehovah. (See Neh. viii. 1-8.) We find, also, that the reading of it, with the interpretation into the Aramaic tongue, occupied a whole week (ibid. 18). But the assertion that it was the Torah of Moses" may be interpreted in two ways. It may mean that Moses was the virtual author, the various laws having been enacted or even written by him, though the collection and arrangement of the book was left to others; or it may mean that he was also the actual composer of the work, and that at his death he left the Pentateuch, not in a loose and scattered condition, but such, in the main, as we now have it.

It is incumbent upon us, therefore, first of all to examine the evidence of the book itself, and we find towards the end of it a most important passage. In Deut. xxxi. 24-26 we read that when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this Torah in a book until they were finished," he commanded the Levites to "take this book of the Torah and put it by the side of the Ark of the Covenant." Now these words show that Moses did not leave his laws unarranged, but himself collected them. There is previously allusion made to the practice of Moses to keep written accounts of memorable events, as in Exod. xvii. 14, where in the Hebrew we are told not of " a book," but of "the book," the official record of Israel's doings. In a similar manner, in Exod. xxxiv. 27, Num. xxxiii. 2, we find the assertion that the more important events which took place in the wilderness were recorded in writing by the commandment of Jehovah. But the evidence of the present passage is much more express, for it speaks of Moses completing the writing of the Torah. It no longer, however, speaks of the book, but of a book, as if from the official narratives and other sources Moses had compiled and digested into one volume both the history of Israel's selection to be God's people, and also the laws by which they were to be governed. This book is also referred to in Deut. xvii. 18. The autograph copy of Moses was to be laid up "by the side of the Ark" (Deut. xxxi. 26); but "the priests, the Levites" were also to have a copy for their use, and of this again a copy was to be made for the king's guidance.

The meaning of the words in Deut. xxxi. seems plainly to be that the actual writing by the hand of Moses ceased at the end of chap. xxx. Following it, we have in the other four chapters a history of his last days, and especially of the appointment of Joshua to be his successor. There are also preserved in them the song of Moses," and "the blessing wherewith he blessed the children of Israel" before his death. These two compositions would probably be on separate rolls, and may have been for many years the companions and occupation from time to time of Moses in the wilderness. It would only be after their solemn delivery at