BOOKS.
M. RENAN'S "ISRAEL."* IT is not easy to ascertain distinctly M. Renan's standpoint, but it evidently lies somewhere between a very vague pan- theism and atheism. It is true that he says, accounting for the beauty of the Book of Job, that the " God of Job is really the absolute God," whereas " Iahveh shocks us because he is the national God of the sons of Jacob." But this does not attribute an objective existence to Deity. It rather means, we suppose, that Job arrived at a higher and more universal conception of God than did Israelite prophets and priests. The writer's own view is to be found in such a passage as that on p. 72, where we read that this same writer, if he had had the advantage of living down to M. Renan's time, would have seen that "no special will governs the world, and that what happens is the result of a blind effort tending on the whole towards good." This is our historian's nearest approach to theism. It is not a very logical conception ; it would not be easy to defend it against the attacks of the pessimists ; but it is possibly better than nothing, especially if we take the estimate of humanity at which M. Renan's contemptuous good-nature has arrived. "Poor Humanity ! " he exclaims, with the fine condescension of a superior being. "How anxious it is to do good ! But how little made it is, taking it on the whole, for the truth !" It is comforting for this race of weaklings that there is a tendency outside them to good, even though it be blind, and so erratic as to demand the de- pressing qualification, "on the whole," and that now and then, it may be only once in their history, a Monsieur Renan occurs to tell them of its existence.
Our impression, formed by a perusal of the earlier volumes, that a thinker so absolutely unsympathetic would have done well to avoid the subject of Hebrew history altogether, is deepened by what we have now been reading. M. Renan is often brilliant, always interesting, sometimes original, but his work can hardly be considered a serious contribution to the literature of its subject. When, indeed, he has occasion to
• History of the People of Israel, from the Time of Hesektah til/ the Return
Babylon. By Ernest Renan. Third DiYini011. London: Chapman and 11, deal with some congemal topic—with Job, for instance, or the two Isaiahs, or the literary epoch which coincided with the reign of Hezekiah—he has something valuable to say, and says it effectively ; but, on the whole, his judgments do not inspire confidence. It is not too much to say that they are often flippant and rash. Judgments rather than criticisms his utterances certainly are. In the posi- tiveness with which he decides questions of date, authen- ticity, and the like, he outdoes the most dogmatic of Germans With an intuition of more than feminine rapidity, he outstrips all tedious processes of reasoning. The asser- tions into which this habit leads him are nothing less than amazing. The Tabernacle, for instance, is "a singular fiction," invented, it would seem, to prop up the theory that there was unity of worship before the Temple was built at Jerusalem; invented, too, it appears, as late as the return from the Captivity. That the services of the Tabernacle, as described in Leviticus, show a late development of ritual may very well be argued, but a doubt of the very existence of the Tabernacle seems the very extravagance of scepticism. To accept it would necessitate the rewriting a good deal of the Bible. The story of Samuel, for instance, must go ; it becomes a romance of some post-Exilian writer. It would have indeed to be still further postponed. The Tabernacle must have been at least believed in when a writer introduced it as one of the circumstances of what purported to be a historical narrative. The Samuel story would then have to come down as far, say, as the period of the Maccabees. And we should have to suppose late interpolations of the word. in all the historical books. Really M. Renan reminds us here of a bold thinker who a year or two ago pro- pounded the theory that all Judaism and all Christianity are products of some highly imaginative monks of the thirteenth century. After this, it is not surprising to read that the notion of "a tribe of Levi taking toll of their brethren" was developed as late as the reign of Josiah. Here again, on the principle that myths must gain acceptance before they can be employed in serious history, we are driven either to postpone many references to an impossibly late date, or to imagine a habit of interpolation which scarcely accords with what we know of the Jewish way of treating their sacred books. M. Renan himself ascribes the Book of Judges to the ninth or tenth century, "touched up but very slightly" by a compiler of Hezekiah's time ; but surely the Levite appears in this book in something of the character which is declared afterwards to be wholly fictitious. Again, we find the "poor Levite " appearing as a constituent part of religions family life in the reign of Josiah, as depicted by M. Renan (p. 163). But how did the fiction gain so speedy an acceptance ? But M. Renan's scepticism extends to other than Biblical things, we- hear, e.g., of the "mythical Draco." Draco was as real lb person as Justinian.
It is, of course, nothing more than we might expect when we find our author attempting to rehabilitate Manasseh. Allowing himself little less than absolute liberty in reconstructing and interpreting the records with which he deals, he finds in the reign of Manasseh, the reaction led by a liberal and eclectic Sovereign against the oppressive pietism of the preceding reign. There may, he concedes, have been some excesses. "It is very possible that certain zealots expiated the domineering acts done by them during Hezekiah's reign, and that a few saintly personages fell victims to their intemperate zeal." The historian—who, after all, is our only authority—declares that "he shed innocent blood very much till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to the other." An "exaggerated accusation," says M. Renan, who has, it would seem, other sources of information. The reference of Jeremiah to these massacres (xix., 4) seems sufficiently distinct. The atrocity of having made his eldest son to pass through the fire "to Iahveh [!] or Moloch," is, it is suggested, a calumny. The eclecticism of Manasseh's religious observance is, of course, nothing to the philosophical eyes of Israel's latest historian. Yet surely M. Renan knows that this eclecticism did actually, mean a serious moral decline.
The best part of the volume is that which deals with tha literary side of the history. Here, too, we find what looks like extravagance. An ingenious conjecture, for instance, attributes the Song of Solomon to the pen of some writer of the Northern, Kingdom. This is probable enough, but it can hardly be said that the part assigned to Solomon in it is "almost ridi-
culous." More than twenty centuries of readers have studied the book without discovering this peculiarity. Whether affirming or denying the Solomon authorship, they at least never imagined what would have made the undoubted assump- tion of Solomon's name a gross absurdity. But, in other respects, the account of the "Men of Hezekiah," and the literary work accomplished by them, and that which deals with a similar subject in the time of Josiah, are very interesting.
Something, too, may be learnt from what the writer has to say about the great prophets. Though marred by his incurable flippancy and rashness, much of this part of his book is well worth consideration. It will not be =instructive to show him at what may almost be called his worst and his best :—
"The lyrical spirit of Ezekiel never lost an opportunity of using a poetic subject that suited his taste. He declaimed upon con- jectures, wrote odes and elegies upon events that had not happened, and that never did happen. The destruction of Egypt and Ethiopia by Nebuchadnezzar provided him with five declamations, which may be reckoned amongst the most valuable specimens of ancient literature. They resemble the Clatiments of Victor Hugo, who also felt for Ezekiel's eccentric genius an admiration which explains a great many analogies. Egypt consoled by Asshur, the descent of the King of Egypt to Sheol, and the reception which he meets with from the princes of Asshur, of Elam, Meshech-Tubal, and Sidon, the picture of the great armies of the epoch resting in Sheol, each hero with his sword beneath his head, are poems of marvellous effect, which our century admires, perhaps because they have precisely our own literary defects. But the fact that not one of the predictions contained in them was fulfilled, rather spoils them in the eyes of a man of good taste. They may be com- pared to poems, written by a romantic poet during the siege of Paris, upon the impending extermination of the Prussians and the tragic death of the Emperor William."
And now for something better :-
"The 'Servant of God' is hated now. He endures the most un- worthy treatment with patience, offering his cheek to receive blows and insults, and to be spat upon ; but he will be avenged. Jerusalem will gather in her bosom a new generation, born in exile, which she does not know. Every nation will bring back these last scions of Israel in its arms, upon its shoulders. Kings shall guard them and princesses shall nurse them. Potentates shall lick the dust from off their feet. Exciting himself more and more the author then combines, in touches borrowed from the type of Jeremiah, colours which might be said to portray Jesus in advance. The servant of God will create a law for all nations. He will found a righteousness, a salvation, which will last longer than heaven or earth. Now he is in prison, but he will not die in his dungeon. In one of the strangest pages that have ever been written, the Seer then shows us the servant of Iahveh under the form of a victim. Jeremiah had been dead for forty years, and his figure, daily becoming grander, was blended with these halluci- nations, and aided to complete the ideal of the Man of Sorrow."
This identification of the "Man of Sorrow" with Jeremiah has been anticipated by Bunsen among others.
M. Renan seems to imply (p. 25) what surely cannot be correct, that " Nehustan" was an honorific title given by its worshippers to the brazen serpent destroyed by Hezekiah. We notice some instances of English words used in somewhat curious fashion, as, e.g., " duplicity " (p. 44), for the use of two authorities in the compilation of a book, and " attested " for " protested " (p. 108).
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