EWALD AND KUENEN ON THE PROPHETS.*
THE two writers whose volumes on Hebrew Prophecy are before us have some important points in common. They both accept and assume the general correctness of that modern reconstruction and rearrangement of the Books of the Old Testament which claims to be critical, if heterodox : they maintain that the true method of studying Hebrew prophecy is to begin with the criti- cal examination of the writings of the Prophets themselves, after they have been chronologically arranged ; and that the historical accounts of these, and of the other Prophets who have left no writings, must be afterwards studied and tested, and traditionary legend sifted out from historical fact by critical investigation. Yet the contrasts are almost as great as the resemblances. The inductions of Ewald are intuitions of genius, more or less care- fully and successfully, or unsuccessfully, verified by the facts which be sometimes discovers with wonderful acuteness, and sometimes ingeniously imagines. Dr. Kuenen, on the other hand, proceeds by a cautious and exhaustive examination of details, one after another, while conscientiously reminding the reader at every step that the conclusion from the evidence is as yet only provisional, and must wait for subsequent confirmation before the desired result can be finally accepted. The latter mode of in- vestigation might seem the better suited to our English ways : and indeed, the first impressions on the English mind of these excellent translations respectively are likely to be that Dr. Kuenen's book might almost have been written by an Englishman, while that of Ewald needs a second translation—not of words and sentences, but of thoughts and ideas—in order to trans- form it from German into English. These might be the first, but not, we think, the abiding impressions, at least on those English minds which either author has most de- sired to influence. We gather from the preface of Dr. Kuenen's work, as well as from the introduction to it by Dr. Muir, that it was undertaken at the solicitation of the latter, in some degree at least, for the sake of English theologians, and in order to help them to abandon finally the " traditional" for the " historical " method of criticism, and yet to find in the new theory "that it is as grand and attractive, that it has as great significance and value for the religious life of man, as the traditional view which it endeavours to set aside." And the author proceeds through a volume of nearly six hundred pages, by a course of argument which is as temperate and conciliatory as it is fair and candid, but which, we must add, is not only very prolix, but not always satisfactory in its historical criticisms or assumptions, to show that what be calls the " supernatural " element of prediction,— which, with ever-increasing modifications and deviations, the upholders of the " traditional " view of prophecy still insist
• Commentary on the Prophets of the Old Testament. By the late Dr. Georg Heinrich August von Ewald, Professor of Oriental Languages in the University of GUttingen. Translated by J. Frederick Smith. Vol. I. London: Williams and Norgate. 1875.
The Prophets and Pivphecy in Israel : an Historical and Critical Enquiry. By Dr. A. Kuenen, Professor of Theology in the University of Leyden. Translated from the Dutch of the Rev. Adam Milroy, N.A., with an Introduction by P. Muir, ER., D.C.L. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1877. upon,—is not really to be found either in the writings of the Prophets, or in such portion of the histories as can be properly accepted as a narrative of facts from contemporary sources. He argues, from an exhaustive examination of particulars, that the predictions of the Hebrew Prophets as to the destinies of the heathen nations, of the judgments against Israel, of the promises of its restoration, and of its future blessings, temporal or spiritual, have for the most part been quite unfulfilled, and that the few cases of fulfilment are not such as that we can found on them any belief in a miraculous—or, as our author calls it, "super- natural "—power of prediction. And the final result at which be himself arrives is, that though the Prophets were only partially successful, either in influencing the politics of their own times, or in directly imbuing their fellow-countrymen with their own principles of spiritual religion, yet their work was real and worthy ; and the fact "that there existed eighteen centuries ago a Jewish nation from which a new religious life could spring, was the fruit of the work of the Prophets." It was to their teaching that, long after they had themselves disappeared from the stage of history, their own nation first, and then the other nations of our race, learnt to accept what Dr. Kuenen calls "ethical monotheism,"—that is, not a monotheism of the intellect but of the heart and life. "Heart- felt trust in God and moral earnestness ; these two things, con- nected with each other in the closest manner, inspired them from the beginning and sustained them to the end. The relation of jahveh to Israel was to them the highest reality his holy will had become the law of their innerlife." It was a monotheism, not merely such as we might perhaps have derived from the philoso- phers of other nations : "holiness, righteousness, mercy, formed the very nature of the God of the Prophets, and—a thing which we must never lose sight of—that which they themselves pos- sessed, and therefore could awaken in others also, was religion, no speculation, but a reality of life."
We are desirous to recognise the religious temper in which Dr. Kuenen concludes his argument, yet there is something wanting, not merely in comparison with the orthodox theologians, but hardly less with the non-orthodox Ewald. The difference is expressed in an inaccurate and nnphilosophical use of the word "supernatural." Whatever may be the view taken of "miracle,"—with which we are not here concerned,—it is not true that there is nothing "supernatural," no region -above nature and its invariable successions, into which the spirit of man has access. The want of this recognition of the distinction between spirit and nature throughout Dr. Knenen's book gives us a sense of dreary common-place, and compels us to feel that there is some meaning which he has not, with all his fairness of temper, been able to see and take account of, in the orthodox theologians. You turn to Ewald, and you have the explanation at once. Religion, or the relation of man to God, is not with Ewald, as with Dr. Kuenen, a part, though it were even the highest and most essential part, of the great order of "nature," but something different in kind,—namely, a condition of the " spirit " of man which is above nature. And then—per- haps inevitably, certainly in fact, with Ewald no less than with the orthodox theologians—with this recognition of this supernatural element, this spirit in man, as that which discovers and appro- priates a whole world of truth which is above nature, comes the faith that discovery is not merely the act of the spirit of man, but also of God unveiling the truth to man ; and thus the orthodox phrase of " revelation " is found to have a meaning quite other than that of miraculous,' in the sense at least in which it indicates a portent. Ewald does not overlook, he endeavours to work out and explain, the processes by which this discovery of the Word of God by God to the Prophets has been gradually in- corporated with the order of human nature, so that we no longer require, and therefore must no longer expect, that special form of discovery which we call Prophecy. Here, again, we find common ground with Dr. Kuenen ; and if only we may look on his results from this height, and take into our horizon what is excluded from his point of view, we agree with him that a far truer and nobler and more religious conception of Hebrew prophecy is thus obtainable than by any orthodox belief in a prophecy of merely marvellous predictions. But it will not be by Dr. Kuenen's method of minute criticism that the minds of men at once religious and thoughtful will be helped to rise above this adherence to belief in marvellous predictions.
But though Dr. Kuenen is not orthodox, he is clerical. "Virtue," says Hamlet, "cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it ;" and to the "Professor of Theology" in the University of Leyden, the Hebrew Prophets are mainly professors and preachers of theology, and hardly recognised in their character of political orators and teachers, in which they fill so large a place with Ewald, or Knobel, or Gesenius ; and still more with English writers, from Milton and Coleridge to Maurice and Mill, Stanley and Strachey, in our own days. It is true that Dr. Kuenen does quote from Professor J. C. Bliintschli —and with more approval than not—a denunciation of Hebrew prophecy, which begins, "For public order and for policy, pro- phecy was the most intolerable and destructive phenomenon that
can be imagined," and ends with, "The prophet in the firm confidence that he revealed the will of God, demanded this or that specific political measure, according as his heart sug- gested to him ; and when embittered by opposition, sometimes called to his aid the passions of the mob, in order to carry into effect by violence the Will of God which be had announced :"- an account of the mob and its leaders worthy of the Due de Broglie and M. Fourtou, and in contrast to which we think of Mr. Mill's "inestimably precious unorganised institution,—the Order (if it may be so called) of Prophets," who "kept up, in that little corner of the earth, the antagonism of influences which is the only security for continued progress ;" and of Mr. Mill's in- ference that "accordingly, the Jews, instead of being stationary, like other Asiatics, were, next to the Greeks, the most progressive people of antiquity, and jointly with them, have been the starting- point and main propelling agency of modern civilisation."
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