both from the elder orthodoxy and from the more negative criticism. It remains to be seen whether it will hold its ground here, as a dogmatic principle, in a more advanced stage of criticism and exegesis, whether in short our English Liebners will not be pushed either backward or forwardbackward to the elder orthodoxy, or forward to a view of the Church-dogmas as not to all intents and purposes infallible theories, binding on the Christian intellect, but logical and imperfect renderings of the imaginative Biblical symbols of superlogical phenomena. Speculative orthodoxy will perhaps regard this as a needless alarm, but critical historians who have to supply facts to the speculative theologians, must keep their minds in suspense. Let them not be hindered in their useful work, but rather encouraged to take some steps in advance. We want fresh Lightfoots, as thorough as the great Bishop but critically more versatile, who will not disdain. the use of new methods, and who, if I may, under a sense of duty, again affectionately say so, will enter more sympathetically into the labours of the Old Testament critics.' 1

1

IV.

A few words in conclusion on the contents of these Lectures. Some may perhaps wish to know whether I have retreated at all from the position taken up in the spoken discourses. For an adequate reason I should have been willing either to go forward or to go backward; but I have not found such a reason. Passages omitted in delivery have been restored; notes and appendices have been added; corrections have been introduced throughout; and in the eighth Lecture the relation of Judaism to Zoroastrianism has received a much more elaborate treatment. This is the sum of the changes in the printed volume. I venture to ask that the contents may be judged, not only from the point of view of 1 Contemp. Rev. Aug. 1889, p. 232 (see note on p. 218).

criticism, but from that of education. It is my hope that I have brought together much that is useful to the Bible-student quite apart from my argument. The notes abound in historical and exegetical matter, and the store of facts in the linguistic appendix can hardly fail to be helpful to the Hebraist. I have still a word to say respecting the first of the two appendices. I feel that conservative readers may neglect it, because the external evidence is treated in it from my own special point of view, and because it involves careful reference to parts of the Lectures. I respectfully deprecate this. Again and again have hasty arguments been drawn from the external evidence; I have endeavoured to show how little comparatively this external evidence is worth, and how scanty are the conclusions which, so far as it is real, can be drawn from it. I should be glad, however, if some younger scholar would give a more detailed but a not less keen examination to the supposed allusions to the Psalms in Ecclesiasticus and Baruch, in connexion with a fresh inquiry into the date of these books.

Turning now to the Lectures, and first of all to the 'higher criticism' in them, the reader will observe that, while in Lects. VI.-VIII. I have referred now and then to the Priestly Code as upon the whole a post-Exilic work, in the earlier Lectures I have not assumed for it any date whatever. Not that I had any uncertainty on this point; but I thought it best to let the reader find out how well the results of Psalm-criticism agree with a late date. That the Psalter as a whole presupposes the Law, is not to be doubted; it has in fact been sufficiently shown by such a conservative critic as Prof. Bissell. Now the psalms are, as has been said before, the response of the worshipping congregation to the demands made upon it in the Law. If the Law as a whole were pre-Exilic, the Psalter, or at any rate a considerable part of it, should be pre-Exilic too, unless indeed we go so far as to conjecture that a pre-Exilic Psalter, akin

to though possibly not so fine as our Psalter, has been lost. It may of course be maintained that a number of the extant psalms which I have taken to be post-Exilic should rather be referred to the age of Josiah. I cannot wonder if this should occur to many of my readers, because my own opinion has not always been the same. Before I had given a sufficiently thorough study to the various groups of psalms, and before I had sufficiently viewed the psalms, both singly and in groups, in the light of other Old Testament productions, the date of which has been approximately fixed, I had thought it possible that not a few psalms might belong to the period of Josiah and Jeremiah, and that nearly all the psalms which I now refer to the Greek or Maccabæan period might be placed in the Persian age. I have now given up these views for reasons which will be found in these Lectures. Suffice it to observe here that the new conservative school is apt to fill the reign of Josiah with more literary works than it can bear, and that the early Maccabæan enthusiasm ought to have produced an appreciable effect on sacred poetry. But what I specially wish to bring home to the orthodox reader is this -that if, putting aside Ps. xviii., and possibly lines or verses imbedded here and there in later psalms (see pp. 108, 203, 205), the Psalter as a whole is post-Exilic, the Christian apologist of the nineteenth century has everything to gain. Take Ps. xvi. for instance. If this be pre-Exilic, nay even if it be an early post-Exilic work, it is impossible to find in it anticipations worth mentioning of Christianity, except indeed upon the hypothesis of a 'heaven-descended theology.' As Gruppe has well said,'' Es liegt den älteren Sängern fern, das Unbegreifbare, oder wie man richtiger sagen würde, das Ungreifbare zu fassen.' But if Ps. xvi. falls within that part of the post-Exilic period when immortality began to take form as the highest hope of believers, how full of Christian significance does it become! I say this not without an effort, remember

Griechische Culte und Mythen, i. 221.

b

ing how violently Max Müller was attacked by a German philologist for finding traces of the hope of immortality in the Old Testament. But the effort is more than compensated by the help which I have derived from my critical results as a Christian teacher. Throughout the Psalter indeed I have been able to draw a fulness of spiritual meaning from the Psalms which was impossible to me before, as I hope that my eleven Psalm-studies in the Expositor (1888-1890) prove.2 But have you not, it may be asked, condescended unduly to the cravings of orthodoxy? I cannot see that I have. Orthodoxy and heterodoxy were alike far from my thoughts, nor did I at all anticipate these exegetical results. They are based not merely on literary criticism, but on a long and careful examination of the Old Testament in the light of Babylonian and (especially) Persian religion.3 For this I would diffidently ask the attention of students, as I have tried to fill up provisionally a lacuna in historical theology. It will be found that my conclusions are not those of most previous critics, and that they tend to diminish the amount of Hellenic and to increase that of Oriental influence on the Jews in the period which preceded Christianity. I have no antecedent prejudice myself against the view that Hellenic ideas and sentiments have filtered to some as yet uncertain extent into the New Testament (cf. p. 312), but I think that this infiltration, so far as it took place, was only possible because similar purely Oriental influences had gone before. Certainly I cannot join with Mr. Owen in the theory, derived apparently from M. Havet, that the Judaism

1 Lehrs, essay on Greek ideas on the future life, Aufsätze, p. 303. 2 These Studies represent as many cathedral sermons on the Psalms. "I regret that I am no Zend and Pahlavi scholar, but I have at least practised caution. That we have among us such eminent specialists as Drs. Mills and West is a subject for much congratulation. What Dr. Mills has printed in the Supplementary Introduction to Vol. I. of his great work on the Gâthâs fully justifies the non-specialist in trusting his guidance. America and England may both claim a share in him. Dr. West, however, as a native English scholar, needs not my poor eulogy. For other authorities see pp. 395, 433-435.

amidst which Jesus Christ lived was already permeated by Hellenizing teaching.' Nor even with such an eminent scholar as Professor Pfleiderer2 in the view that 'Hellenic eschatology had probably influenced the general popular belief of the Jews in the time of Jesus through the channel of Essenism.'

The view which I have given of the development of the belief in immortality among the Jews appears to me to be strongly confirmed by the accepted results of scholarship respecting the parallel development in Greece. It is most interesting to trace upon the monuments how the gradual extension of the Hellenic cult of heroes converted immortality from an aristocratic into a popular possession.3 A similar phenomenon is visible, as I think, in the Old Testament. At first only great men like Enoch, Elijah, and doubtless (see Isa. xxix. 22, 23, lxiii. 16, Jos., Ant. i. 13, 3) Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were regarded as the denizens of Paradise. But, partly through deeper religious thought and experience, and partly through Zoroastrian influence, what the ordinary man had formerly not dared to dream of, might become the assured hope of each believer. In the period of the Psalter there were no doubt differences of sentiment on the future lot of man; so there were also in Greece and in Egypt. But the road along which Jewish religion was henceforth to travel, was now definitely marked out. I trust that those parts of my book which deal with the history of religion will not be rejected by theological students. They will find many illustrations derived from ethnic religions, and contributions to a survey of Jewish thought down to the time of Christ.

Review of Hatch's Hibbert Lectures (Academy, Dec. 13, 1890).

Philosophy of Religion, iv. 162. I only refer to this statement (which the author would now probably alter) because of the deservedly wide circulation of the work in which it occurs.

3

3 See Lehrs, Aufsätze, p. 337 &c.; Weil, review of Rohde's Psyche, Journal des Savants, Oct. 1890. Prof. Max Müller's third volume of Gifford Lectures will, I believe, deal with this subject.