THE NEW DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE.*

IT is now forty years, save two, since Dr. W. Smith edited the Dictionary of the Bible. In his preface he spoke of Biblical

studies having received a fresh impulse, of new and unexpected light having been thrown on the history and geography of the East, and of the utility of a fresh examination of the original documents. We have moved on a good deal since Dr. Smith wrote, in each of the directions thus indicated. In fact, the difference of thought which a comparison of the two books brings to light is nothing less than startling. A few words on the personality of the contributors may not be out of place.

To Dr. W. Smith's Dictionary there were fifty-three contri-

butors, of whom thirty-seven were in orders of the Church of England. Six American divines appear in the list, but not a

single representative of the Nonconformist Churches in Eng- land (though Dr. Smith himself was a Nonconformist), or of the Presbyterian bodies in Scotland. A notable change has taken place in this respect. Out of one hundred and thirty- six contributors on the new list thirty-nine are in Anglican orders. This is a more numerous contingent than can be found in any one other class, but the proportion has fallen from about five-sevenths to two-sevenths. There are more than half as many representatives of English Nonconformity, and the Scottish Presbyterians number about thirty. Eighteen of Dr. Smith's colleagues—we speak of the first volume only —still survive (three of them being on the Episcopal Bench), but none have joined the new undertaking.

One important difference in the scope of the new Dictionary must be noted. It comprehends Theology, a subject which its predecessor excluded. The articles " Ascension," " Baptism," "Church," " Communion," " Election," "Eschatology," " Faith," are specimens of the class of articles which has been added to the older scheme of contents, and no one can doubt that the addition is one of great value. It is easy to see the motive of the exclusion. But to shut out the consideration of theology from a manual of the volume which has theology for its principal subject was theoretically absurd, however practically convenient. It is a sign of a salutary progress towards mutual comprehension and the sense of a unity that underlies doctrinal differences, that the subject is now permitted to take its proper place. A highly significant example of the advance is the article on "Election." This is written, it is true, by an Anglican clergyman, and the Seventeenth Article is confessedly less stringent in its language than the West- minster Confession. Still, this exposition of the doctrine is remarkable as found in a work which has an origin largely Scottish. That a few should be chosen for a purpose which means the benefit, not the exclusion, of the many, is a state- ment that finds a strict analogy in the history which shows an Israel chosen to preserve a saving truth for the world. But it would be useless to deny that the language of Scrip- ture does not always harmonise with this view. Happily we are learning more and more to exalt the spirit of Revelation over the letter, the central truth of an all-embracing and all- conquering Love over even the most positive denunciation of punishment and wrath. There are few that will not share, at least as a hope, Mr. Murray's conclusion :—

" The existence of the Church, however much it may, nay must, witness to a coming judgment, has in it a promise of hope, not a message of despair for the world. As Israel of old was chosen to keep alive in the hearts of men the hope of a coining Saviour of the world, so the Church is chosen to bear abroad into all the • A Dictionary of the Ba,14. Edited by James Hastings, ILA., D.D., with the assistance of John A. Selbie, M.A. Vol. L. 44.—Fesata. Edinburgh: T. and Clark.

world the gospel of a universal redemption, forbidden to leave out one single soul from the vast circle of her intercessions and her giving of thanks, because she is called to live in the light of a revelation which bids her believe and act in the belief that God will have all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth."

But it is in matters of criticism that the change brought about by investigations and studies that have been carried on for more than the third of a century is most marked. Two instances may be found in the articles, "Daniel" and " Deuteronomy." In Dr. Smith's Dictionary Daniel was

treated by a scholar who happily survives to adorn the Episcopal Bench. It is written throughout in a spirit of the strictest conservatism, and the view now taken by almost all scholars of any standing and repute is dismissed with contempt. A series of attacks on the authenticity of the book is described as culminating in the assertion that it is the "work of an impostor who lived in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes." The use of this word " impostor " carries us back to conditions of controversy from which we may be unfeignedly glad to have escaped. A divine who presumed to question the accepted authorship of a canonical book did so with his life in his hand when his criticism was supposed to imply the charge of fraud against

the writer who assumed a well-known name. This is, happily, a thing of the past. No one, we may venture to say, now holds that Solomon wrote the book of Ecclesiastes, yet it troubles no one to find that book beginning with "The words of the Preacher, the son of David, King in Jerusalem." The writer of the article " Ecclesiastes " (Professor A. S. Peale) puts the case in a form which would now be universally accepted : " Solomon was the typical representative of

Wisdom, and the author wished to set forth his conclusions as those of a man who had brought the deepest and sagest

reflection to bear upon life." (It is interesting to see how the late Dean Plumptre, writing in Smith's Dictionary, cautiously questions the Solomonic authorship of the book.) Professor Curtis (of Tale) feels no hesitation in saying that Daniel "in its present form. must be assigned to the age of Antiochus Epiphanes." The predictions are thus estimated :— " In the veiled form of a revelation of the future it gives an outline of history from the time of Cyrus to near the death of Antiochus The older commentators regarded these de- tails as signal examples of divine prediction ; but since such a revelation of the future is without analogy elsewhere in Scrip- tuure and without any apparent moral or spiritual import, this chapter or insertions in it are now allowed, even by those who regard Daniel as the author of his visions, or the rest of his book to belong to the age of Antiochus Epiphanes."

In striking contrast with this is the declaration of the earlier writers that any one who questions the character of these predictions is a disbeliever in prophecy.

" Deuteronomy " in Smith's Dictionary is also the work of a scholar who has been deservedly promoted to the Bench. He is less confident than his colleague in his adherence to the traditional view, though he seems on the whole to accept it. The author of the article in the new Dictionary is Professor Ryle. He sees the original Deuteronomy in chaps. 5-26 and chap. 28, and has no difficulty in identifying

this with the " Book of the Law " found in the Temple by Helkiah in the eighteenth year of Hezekiah. " The traditional view, that the work in its present form was written by Moses, is now recognised by critical scholarship as impossible."

The article " Chronology " introduces us to another aspect of the same conflict between the traditional and the

scientific. In Smith's Dictionary Bunsen's moderate demand of twenty thousand years for the total period of man's existence upon the earth is very curtly rejected. Now we

have five thousand years conceded to the archaeologist for the beginnings of Egyptian civilisation, while the geologists claim without difficulty periods enormously greater for pre- historic man. So much being granted, the details of the Old Testament chronology have comparatively little interest.

The figures are traditional or conventional. We get to fairly firm ground when we place the arrival of Israel in Egypt at about 1600 B.C., when the power of the Heksos was waning, and the Exodus to 1180. This, however, com- pels us to contract the period between the Exodus and the Dedication of the Temple from the four hundred and eighty years of 1. Kings vi. 1, to three hundred. The chronology of the New Testament better repays the

labour of investigation. Mr. C. H. Turner, who contributes the article, puts the Nativity at 5-7 B.C. and the Baptism at 26-27 A.D. Then comes the question of the Duration of the Ministry. Mr. Turner concludes by an elaborate argument, which we have not space to analyse, for a period of two years. The date of the Crucifixion is fixed by an independent investi- gation. Three years, 29, 30, 33, satisfy the Gospel evidenee ; external testimony directs the choice to the first of these. The Apostolic history centres in the person of St. Paul. " The crucial date of Festus' arrival seems to be established at A.D. 58." This brings us to 61 A.D. as the date of the close of Acts. The first missionary journey is put in 47 A.D. (Sergins Paulus was certainly in Cyprus before 51.) The second is dated 49 A.D. (Gallio could not have been -in Corinth before this year or the next.) St. Paul is brought before Felix not earlier than 54 A.D. (when the Governor married Drusilla). Finally, the martyrdom is put in 64-5 A.D. The article is throughout a model of close and cogent reasoning.

We see that in the article " Deborah " Mr. Cooke says- that " Jael, by a bold stratagem, slew Sisera with a shattering blow from a tent-mallet as he stood drinking in her tent." This, of course, agrees with the words, " At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down," but not with what goes before, " She put her hand to the nail and her right hand to the workman's hammer." This latter is in harmony with the- prose narrative, in itself a far more likely story. Jael gives• the fugitive not the water for which he asks, but milk, which acquires some intoxicating quality from being kept and so fermented, and slays him when he is fast asleep and weary. Dean Stanley explains the words "he bowed, he fell" by the "startling bound, the contortion of agony," ei the victim as the stroke reaches his brain.

All students of the Bible are under a great obligation, as indeed they have been often before, to the enterprise of Messrs. T. and T. Clark.