EWALD'S HISTORY OF ISRAEL—JOSHUA AND THE JUDGES.*
THE first thing which strikes the reader of this, as of the preceding volume, so admirably translated and edited by Mr. Russell Martineau, is the large amount of solid historical materials which remain to us in the Pentateuch and in the books of Joshua and the Judges, after the trying criticism to which they have been subjected. A good deal of wood, hay, straw, and stubble has necessarily been consumed in the process, but the loss, if loss it is to be considered, is more than counterbalanced by the positive gain in the gold and precious stones which have endured the ordeal, and which constitute, so to speak, the true sanctuary of early Hebrew history. With Ewald's results we must record our eutire satisfaction. But we must express ourselves quite unable to accept his authority as to the means by which these results are obtained.
We frankly admit, as we previously did, the composite character of the books which have been respectively assigned to Moses and to -Joshua. It is quite undeniable that while, to use Ewald's own words, in some passages of the Pentateuch the language is so antique as scarcely to be able to crawl, in the larger proportion of Its contents it reveals the presence of successive stages of culture, flexibility, and maturity. But we have failed to discover those subtle, yet withal infallible tokens which are so obvious to this great scholar, and which warrant him in pronouncing magisterially that one set of verses is an extract from an old muster-roll of the Jewish tribes, a second is the workmanship of the author of the Book of Origins, and a third in the same narrative came from the pen of a fifth narrator, or from the Deuteronomist himself. It is in the following way, for example, that Professor Ewald allocates the several contributions of different historians, in the account which we now possess of the triumphant entry of Israel auto Palestine. First, there is a fragment of an old narrative
" The History of Israel. By Heinrich Ewald, Professor at the University of (halogen. Translated from the German. Edited, with a Preface and Appendix, by Hnssell Martineau, MA., Professor of Hebrew in Manchester New College, London. Vol IL London: Longman& 1569.
which, among other memorabilia, records the renewal of circumcision and the first Passover in the Holy Land. Then the story of Achan, who fraudulently possessed himself of certain articles of the accursed spoil of Ai, and that of the Gibeonites, who by artful devices obtained the safety of their lives in a subject condition, and were held to be legally entitled to their immunity because the oath of alliance had been taken by the rulers of the nation, are exquisite specimens of the historic method of the author of the Book of Origins, who is always careful to invest the abiding realities of law and duty with the charms of picturesque and appropriate incident. To the third narrator is due probably the story of the spies and their adventure with the harlot Rahab, and to the fourth that of the miraculous fall of Jericho. The fifth narrator here heightens the effect of the picture by the introduction of an entirely new figure, that of an angel of war who appeared to Joshua at Jericho, and finally, the Deuteronomist introduces passages of varying length, all designed to present in Joshua's history a living example of the power and victory which might accrue to a popular leader acting in accordance with Deuterouoiniatic ideas, while from the Book of the Upright (Jaaher) he interpolates the splendid poetical fragment in which, with a distinctness and reality which only contemporaries could assign to it, a great day of battle is sung of as a day when all sense of time was lost in the absorption of the fight, and the very sun and moon stood still at the voice of the warrior-chief.
Of course, it is perfectly competent for this critical ' CEdipus ' to say that he does not expect a mere Davus ' to be able to follow with clear vision the strands of his analysis. All the same, we must confess, for our own parte, that with reference to the foregoing resolution into its primary elements of a certain section of the Old Testament history, we can only utter the Scottish verdict Not proven." We intend no discourtesy to our author, but we cannot help saying his hypothesis is too ingenious, too complete, to be true. We are not forgetting, on the one hand, either the candour of Ewald, as, for instance, when he avows his inability to state positively to which of his contributors a given passage ought to be assigned, or, on the other, the solid-seeming strength of the proofs which, when added together, satisfy himself that he has discovered several nameless personal identities whom lie calls respectively the author of the Buok of Origins, the fourth or the fifth narrator. But after straining our allowance to its utmost limits, we find ourselves unable to acquiesce in his reconstruction as final. Let us imagine a somewhat parallel case. Suppose we possessed but one manuscript chronicle of British history, and that written in true Hebrew fashion, without note or reference, would it be possible to detect throughout the narrative not merely antique paragraphs, which proclaimed by their language their own antiquity, but also the workmanship of a given number of independent historians, with style and dilPrentia so invariably characteristic as to justify a critic in saying this passage is from the author of the Book of Origins of the British Church, that from the narrator of the Conquest, and a third from a Benedictine historian of the great and fruitful reign of Edward III.'? We are quite aware of the incompleteness of the parallel, but at all events it may suffice to indicate our sense of the hopelessness of a successful solution of the problem as to the genesis of the earlier books of the Old Testament.
Before leaving this part of our subject, we would venture to throw out a suggestion as to one of the peculiarities of Hebrew authorship,—that is what, for want of a smoother term, we must call its pseudonymousness. A few of the Psalms and a considerable portion of the Prophets are named, and authentically named. But Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solonum are, iu fact, historical novels, the authors of the two respectively simulating the person of Solomon. Now, the literary fiction perpetrated in these two cases seems to have been sanctioned as a perfectly legitimate means of inculcating moral truth ; and the Deuteronomiat, in assuming the name of Moses for his own rendering of the Mosaic history, with all its abiding substance of vital, spiritual truth, was only employing what he imagined to be the most effective means of rescuing his always backsliding countrymen from the degradations of a sensual polytheism. The Jew who thus sought to bridge over a passage between his own aspirations and enthusiasm and the hearts of his readers by the assumption of the name of Moses,— who, in fact, lost himself in the personality of the great lawgiver,— presents a remarkable contrast to not a few modern preachers, if report be true. And this is the contrast,—clearly, as we think, to the advantage of the Hebrew standard of the ethics of authorship :—The Jew, impressed by the transcendent importance of the truths which alone could save a people from anarchy and debasement, and feeling that these could not possibly be of " pri
vats interpretation " or merely the opinions of an individual, emancipated himself from the tyranny of self-conceit by ascribing to Moses, the eminent representative of the Divine Will, the glory of all that he had heard or seen in the great sanctuary of human experience ; whereas some modern preachers take to themselves the reputation of others, and stand and deliver as their own, to unwitting congregations, sermons which, as William Cowper said in a former day, they never wrote. Of course, he is a wise man who prefers reading to " his people " the matured thoughts of an able preacher, rather than his own platitudes. But surely conscience and common honesty have a good deal to do with pulpit ministrations, and we cannot but express the wish that before a divine proceeds to address his audience in the words of another man, he would be candid enough to inform us what we are about to receive.
Turning to the historical materials, as distinct from the authorship, of the books of Joshua and the Judges, it is quite impossible for us within the limits of a single article to do more than give a brief summary of the contents of this second volume. It embraces the long and stormy period from the entrance into Canaan to the later days of Samuel, and, under Ewald's masterly handling, the interest of the Hebrew story only deepens and widens page after page. To many, we must believe, Ewald here for the first time has made the history of Israel human, intelligible, coherent, as it is the product of a divine impulse and guidance, and in one special sense unique, among the records of all historical peoples.
The generation which Moses was able to inspire with faith in the Unseen Deliverer, and which broke out into rapturous song over the defeat of the Egyptian tyrant, was yet unfit for the proper work of freemen. The full curse of slavery has fallen upon the souls of men when slaves are happy ; and it would seem that the adults who were capable of the momentary enthusiasm which issued in successful insurrection against the oppression of the taskmaster, were too deeply tainted with the servile leaven to be able to purge it out, did, in fact, shrink from the awful trusts and self-responsibility of a life of liberty. Slavery, like pauperism, spares the cowardice of the human soul in its inmost retreat, and enervates the human energies so vitally that the man who, with all the rude blows to which his bondage subjects him, has yet no call upon his own foresight for to-morrow's daily bread, dreads the bare heights and keen air of freedom. Accordingly, the " generation which came out of Egypt" died in the wilderness, and only their sons, after the forty years of "wandering and apprenticeship," to use language which Goethe has made familiar to us all, were ready to undertake the duties which Providence assigns to a free people.
Under the captainship of Joshua, and though armed with the rudest weapons, yet fired to passionateness with faith in their God and Redeemer, the new race of warriors threw themselves with resistless force upon the splendidly equipped but decadent occupants of southern Palestine. The Jordan yielded them a ready passage, the walls of Jericho fell before them as by the blast of the enchanter's trumpet, and at length the land wherein reposed the bones of their ancestors became their inheritance,—the rich reward of all their fiery discipline in the great wilderness.
But when once the iuvisible hoop of a great mind like that of Joshua was withdrawn from the national fabric, disorganization almost immediately ensued. It was thus that Puritanism fell in pieces after the death of Cromwell. And the story of the time of the Judges in Israel is that of a period in which the national unity, imperilled onall sides from without, and specially from the immigration of fresh Philistine colonies on the south-west coast of Palestine, scarcely affords an adequate rallying-cry for the various tribes. We have at best only sporadic efforts, some of them, however, of extraordinary grandeur, as in the instances of Deborah, Gideon, and Samson, to drive back the tide of encroaching heathenism, and thus save Israel from its disgusting and debasing rites.
On the whole, though with varying fortunes, Israel held its own; but it is quite an open question whether the Levitical ceremonial did to any considerable extent prevail during the time of the Judges, or even iu the wilderness itself. A priori, there is no more reason for the assumption that the elaborate Ritualism prescribed in the Book of Leviticus was instituted by Moses than there is for ascribing mediaeval Christianity to St. Paul. The language of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Amos would indeed, if accepted literally, command us to believe that the main features of the Levitical system were wholly unknown in the age of Moses. Ewald touches this question with great reverence, as compared, for instance, with Vatke ; but no one can read what he says on the subject without feeling, as the present writer has long felt, that the sacerdotal prescriptions of later times, which every pro.. phet either denounces or ignores, were as foreign to Mosaism as the sacrifice of the Mass is at variance with the New-Testament teaching on the Lord's Supper.
Unmistakably, however, there was for Israel a visible, central, symbolic representative of the national life. The Ark of the Covenant was the undoubted legacy of Moses ; but it requires neither moral greatness nor intellectual insight to be the mere guardian of an outward sign. A priesthood must in fact degenerate or become tyrannical, which occupies a position of trust in which no demand is made either upon spiritual character or intellectual culture. Christianity was entrusted to " faithful men." The special qualifications for its ministry were superior spiritual insight and personal goodness. But all non-Christian priesthoods have, in practice at least, become castes apart, for discharging the routine duties of which neither intellectual eminence nor moral worth has been an indispensable requisite. Often the observation has had to be made :—" The more priest, the less man." It was certainly true in the case of the sons of Eli. But it is an old saying that the darkest hour of night is that which immediately precedes the dawn (of course the adage is only applicable on the large scale, where there is a latent vitality in a people, a capacity for a nobler form of existence); and thus it was ordained that while the representatives of the highest life of the nation were " causing the sacrifice of the Lord to be abhorred," a child, Samuel, was being trained for a great future of light and progress.
The divine guidance of the Israelitish people, as generically distinct from the pedantic and indolent, if, at times, not absolutely atheistic theory of the inspiration of the Biblical records, is nowhere more palpably obvious than in the story of Samuel, with which this volume closes. Intestine feuds, the practice of human sacrifices, self-indulgent apathy on the part of the priesthood, a tumultuous surrounding of hostile peoples,—all these, and sundry other perilous elements, were threatening the very existence of the people of God. It was then that Samuel arose. Iu the wonderfully touching language of the Bible, we read that " all Israel lamented after the Lord." The hour of preparation had come, and then the man was sent of God. What Alfred did for Englaud, what Wallace did for Scotland, what Washington did for North America, Samuel was enabled to do for Israel. He put the bond of a common national sympathy around the heretofore jarring and warring tribes. It was his great function to restore to Israel the unity of national life. He was, no doubt, all but broken-hearted because of the disappointment he sustained in Saul, the first king of Israel ; but, unlike Jeremiah, at a later epoch of the Hebrew history, he fell asleep in peace and hope. The young David would more than fulfil all his dreams for Israel, and thus he had even here the rare reward of seeing that his life-long, self-denying labours had not been in vain.
We must reluctantly bring our article to a close. We would fain have spoken of the charming chapters in which E wal l discourses of Samson, the Nazarite and joyous humorist, and of Gideon, the hero, who, as popularly represented in the legend of the " fleece," was always " cool " when others were " intemperate," and enthusiastic when others were cowardly and unbelieving, but our space is exhausted. And we have only room to say how cordially we thank Mr. Martineau for this scholarly volume, and to express the wish that it may find a place in every clergyman's library.
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