KIIENEN'S RELIGION OF ISRAEL.*
As we felt bound-to protest against the badness of the translation of the first volume of this "Theological Translation Fund Library," we are glad to say of the volume before us that it is throughout good, readable, and intelligible English. It is no doubt easier to represent Dutch thought in English than to do the like for German. We cannot read a book like this before us without feeling that the " Low-Dutch " thought, like the " Low-Dutch " language, is of nearer kin to English than the "High-Dutch" or German. Ideas and principles, indeed, belong to no one time or place more than to another, but the modes of representing and expressing them—the thoughts as well as the words in which they are embodied—vary with the nation as well as with the age to which they belong. And thus, if we compare the volume before us with Ewald's History of Israel on the one hand, and with the treatment of the same subject by Dr. Stanley and Sir Edward Strachey on the other, we find that while the English writers are in more and deeper harmony with the German than with the Dutch author, the clear, common-sense statement in thought and word of the latter is far more like the English mode of criticism, than the dreamy pondering, and involved sentences of the German. Dr. Kuenen is learned and candid, as well as lucid in all his criticism ; nor is the spirit of his book other than re- The Religion of Israel, to the Fall of the Jewish State. By Dr. A. Huenen, rto- fessor of Theology at the University of Leyden. Translated from the Dutch by Alfred Heath May. Vol I. (Theological Translation Fund Library, Vol. III.) London: Williams and Norgate. 1874. ligious, though—apparently from an excessive anxiety to be impartial—he at times qualifies his expressions of sympathy with the religion of the Jews by others implying that there is no difference in kind between the worship of Jehovah and that of Jupiter, in a way which almost contradicts the historical fact that men still worship the one and not the other God. Yet he recognises, and that in strong and clear language, that fact, even while arguing against the more orthodox modes of stating it. Thus, he says :— " Centuries before the Christian era there existed among the Israelites a belief that the only true God ' had known them only of all the families
of the earth.' How this belief arose will appear farther on. Enough that there were those who entertained it,—not, however, only because it was flattering to their national vanity, but also because at that time their acquaintance with other nations and their religions did not pre- vent them from so believing. In the course of centuries that belief under- went more than one change. It was at one early period coupled with the hope that the nations would attach themselves to Israel and share in her privileges. Thus extended and modified, it was adopted by the Christians; they could only acknowledge the altogether unique and divine origin of the religibn of Israel, if they were permitted to see in
that religion the preparation for Christianity That the first Christians—who knew but a small portion of the inhabited world, and could hope' that within a comparatively short time the true religion would have reached that world's uttermost bounds — should have acquiesced in this view is most natural. But we ? Is this belief in harmony with the experience which we have now accumulated for centuries together, and with our present knowledge of lands and nations ? We do not hesitate to reply in the negative. Just as our ideas of God's relation to mankind underwent a complete revolution upon the discovery that our earth is not the centre of the universe, but one of the millions of globes which are suspended in immeasurable space, so our conception of God's designs with regard
to the world had to be modified as our horizon became wider Israel is no more the pivot on which the development of the world turns, than the planet we inhabit is the centre of the universe. In short, we have outgrown the belief of our ancestors. Our conception of God and of the extent of his activity, of the plan of the universe and its course, has gradually become far too wide and too grand for the ideas of Israel's prophets to appear any longer than misplaced in it. The conviction that the Israelitish or the Christian religion is destined one day to be- come the religion of all the world can still be ours, but then it rests on foundations other than those upon which it was built formerly. In the shape in which we cherish it, it does not underrate the comparative value of other religions. If they are to be replaced by ours, it is because the latter is purer and more simple, and at the same time, is capable at any time of assuming new forms in accordance with the wants of those who profess it. But also in the lower, which, whenever the time comes, yield to the higher forms of religion, we revere and admire the never-resting and all-embracing activity of God's Spirit in humanity. To confine that activity at first and for many centuries to a angle people, afterwards, and during a fresh series of centuries, still to a comparatively small portion of the human race, would be an absurdity from which any thoughtful man must shrink."
Illustrations are not arguments, or we might add that, together with the discovery that the Earth is not the centre of the universe, we have learnt that it is more fertile than the Moon, more tem- perate than Mars, more cheerful than Saturn, and more fitted for all that we call human life than any of those other globes which we have the means of judging of at all. But why should Dr. Kuenen assert that our wider and grander conceptions of God and of His activity are in contradiction to those of the Jews and. Christians of earlier times ? Surely the conviction, which we share with Isaiah and Paul, that their and our religion " is destined one day to become the religion of all mankind," did rest for them, as Dr. Kuenen says it does for us, on the fact that that religion " is purer and more simple, and at the same time is capable at any time of assuming new forms in accordance with the wants of those who possess it." We sincerely respect the religious temper as well as the thoughtful learning with which our author treats his subject, but we cannot think him wholly free from that too common fault,of men who are endeavouring to unite honest 'criticism and free thought with religious faith,—the fear of falling into superstition if they frankly and fully recognise the truth and reason in older and other modes of religious thought and expression than those which fit exactly into the logical forms which we are now using.
Like our modern leaders in physical science, Dr. Kuenen is not content with an exhaustive examination of known facts; but endeavours, by hypotheses carefully verified and tested in what- ever way he finds possible, to reconstruct what must have been in the times of which we have no records which he considers to be properly historical. His method may be described in his own words :- "It has been already remarked that of the first centuries of Israel's existence as a people, we possess either no contemporary memorials at all, or but very few. The development of the Israelitish religion during those centuries must be inferred from the phenomena which present themselves to us at a later period. It seems to me that this can be done with sufficient certainty, if we do not fix our demands too high, and give up for good the knowledge of detail which is no longer attain-
able For this purpose we must begin, not with the beginning,
but with a period which we know with sufficient certainty, from the writings which it has produced.. From the description of that strictly historical period the investigation can proceed to the previous centuries, for the latter will be really built on the former. At first, therefore, we shall follow in our sketch, not the course of history itself, but the path which we must take in order to learn to know it. By this method there falls upon each period in particular just as much light as should fall upon it.. And if our hypothesis as to the earlier and imperfectly- known centuries happen to appear loss admissible, the reader, at all events, will have at hand, in the description of the period which will have been placed before him at the commencement, the means of form- ing, if possible, a better opinion."
The period, then, which our author takes, as that of ascertainable phenomena from which the unknown are to be afterwards in- ferred, is the eighth century before our era (800 to 700 B.C.) ; because we know this period not only from historical narratives which are more or less contemporaneous with it, but also from " a tolerably extensive prophetic literature which was committed to writing within its limits') The prophets of this period came forward as the envoys and interpreters of Jehovah, the God of Israel ; and the historians refer the prosperity or the mis- fortunes of the nation to the right or wrong relations main- tained with Jehovah by the kings and peoples of the two kingdoms. From a detailed examination of these writerp, Dr. Kuenen draws a picture of the Israelitish conception of the being and character of the God they worshipped, and of the nature of the worship itself ; and he distinguishes, from the evidence before him, between the popular belief and worship, which were also those of the great body of the prophets, with the higher and purer knowledge and teaching of that minority of reformers whose writings we alone possess, and who, we can see, were leading Israel forward from a lower and, so to speak, heathenish worship of Jehovah, conceived to be little different from the gods of the neighbouring nations, into a constantly nobler and more worthy faith. We have no room for even a summary of what, indeed, can only be appreciated in detail ; but we may say, with- out accepting all Dr. Kuenen's inductions as conclusive, that his analysis of the facts is very acute as well as learned, and that he shows much reason for his confidence that he has thus been able to lay a firm foundation for his more hypothetical deductions as to the evolution of " the religion of Israel " in the earlier centuries of which we have such fragmentary information. He then proceeds to this evolution—" the course of Israel's religious development "—out of what he holds to have been originally fetishism in the form of tree and stone-worship, and thence pass- ing into a polytheism which recognised gods of fire and the other powers of nature, and so to the worship of " a principal deity, acknowledged as the protector of the whole tribe or confederation of tribes." But this, his superstructure, is not so solid as his foundation. Dr. Kuenen shows much ability in his hypothetical reconstruction of an unrecorded past history, and his verifications often carry conviction with them ; but still, one reader in one place and one in another will feel that it is hypothesis, not history ; and it must often be only a question of feeling—of individual habit of mind formed by a training antecedent to the study of Dr.
Kuenen's book—which conclusions are accepted and which rejected as fanciful. In this kind of historical criticism the intuitions of genius are a real power, and so is that trained faculty which enables the critic—like the prisoner whose eyes can distinguish objects in the darkness of his cell—really to see facts which escape the notice of the less skilled student ; yet neither genius nor skilled practice can supply the place of external evidence, nor the mutest eye-sight make up for want of the light of day.
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