THE SURVEY OF THOUGHT.

SYCHAR. In the Critical Review for July the question of the identification of Sychar (John iv. 5) with Shechem (modern Nablus), or with the present village of 'Askar, is re-opened, but not conclusively settled. Attempts have been made to show that Sychar was a nickname applied to Shechem, as signifying either "drunken-town" (Isa. xxviii. 1, 2) or "lying-town" (Hab. ii. 18, 2), in allusion to the immorality or idolatry of the Samaritans. But there is no trace of any such nickname in the Talmud, which is fertile enough in terms of opprobrium and ridicule for the people in question. But even if this difficulty could be got over, Shechem itself does not seem to correspond with the place mentioned by St. John. There is a twofold difficulty, (1) because the Gospel speaks of arriving at the Well as arriving at Sychar, while Nablus is nearly two miles distant from it, and (2) it is remarkable when the very large number of sources in Nablus itself is remembered, that a woman should have come out to such a distance to draw water. On the other hand, some scholars have maintained that Sychar was an independent place, and is to be identified with the modern village of 'Askar, about half a mile north-east of the Well of Jacob. This would harmonise with the Gospel narrative, but there are very weighty reasons against the identification. The evidence of Jerome is distinctly against it. In the year A.D. 385 he travelled through the district, and visited the church which was built over Jacob's Well, but he knew nothing of 'Askar. In the year A.D. 388 he translated the treatise of Eusebius (about A.D. 264-340) on the names and positions of places in Palestine, in which Sychar is said to have been near Louza, three miles from Shechem. Eusebius says nine miles, but Jerome corrects it to three. His own opinion was that the name was a copyist's error for Shechem-a supposition controverted by the unanimity of the MSS. It is scarcely conceivable that all the time the real city of Sychar was in existence within a few hundred yards of the Well, that it was visible from it, and that it still exists, retaining even a recognisable semblance of its ancient name. If the name is recognisable now, it ought to have been recognisable by Eusebius and Jerome, and the other inquirers of those ancient days. Then, too, there is a serious etymological difficulty in the way of this identification. 'Askar begins with the letter 'Ain, which Sychar does not appear to have contained; a letter too stubborn and enduring to be easily dropped or assumed in a name (Grove, Dict. of the Bible, "Sychar"). Godet suggests that as there are ancient ruins between Shechem and the Well of Jacob, there may have been a suburb of the city which bore the name of Sychar. But, of course, this is only a conjecture. There may be some very

-VOL. II.-THE THINKER.

NO. III.-D

N

simple explanation of the difficulty, but, as matters stand, it seems hopeless to come to any definite conclusion. The question is not without importance in its bearing upon the historical character of the fourth Gospel.

THE TESTIMONY OF JOSEPHUS TO JESUS.-In L'Université Catholique there is a notice of a pamphlet by G. A. Muller on the famous passage in Josephus, in which reference is made to Jesus (Ant. xviii. 3). A great deal of discussion has taken place over the short paragraph in which the Jewish historian speaks of the actions, death, and disciples of our Lord. It is impossible, some have said, that a Pharisaic Jew, and, above all, that Josephus, whose opinions we know, should have expressed himself in such a way. Origen distinctly asserts that Josephus did not believe in the Messiahship of Jesus. And yet in this passage we have such words as these, "He was the Christ— a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man." Certainly, although we would have expected some notice of Jesus in the work of the Jewish historian, we should never have looked for such statements of a definitely Christian character. On the other hand, the external evidence for the passage is strong. All the manuscripts contain it: Eusebius, Jerome, and many other ancient writers quote it. The conclusion which the most recent writer on the subject has come to is that there is no doubt that Josephus spoke of Jesus, but that the text as it now stands has been re-touched by a Christian hand. He has carefully examined the passage, and compared with it all the recensions of it that are now extant, and his opinion is that the original words ran as follows: "Now, there was about this time (a certain) Jesus, a doer of wonderful works, who drew over to him many of the Jews and of the Hellenists. This was he who has been called the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day."

OLD TESTAMENT QUOTATIONS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.-A difficult question for the advocates of verbal inspiration to solve is suggested in the Homiletic Review by the Rev. J. M. Ludlow. It is that our Lord and His Apostles apparently made very little use of the Hebrew Bible, but generally followed the Septuagint translation, even where it differs from the original text. Thus, on the occasion of the Temptation, the first quotation follows the Septuagint closely, " Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." The Hebrew has it thus: “Man doth not live by bread alone, but by everything that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live." The second quotation is identical in the Hebrew and the Septuagint, so that the citation might have been from either of them. The third quotation, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve," follows exactly neither copy. The Hebrew leaves out the word "only." The Septuagint retains that word, but, like the Hebrew, has "fear" instead of "worship." All the Old Testament quota

tions in the Acts but one are from the Septuagint. The Epistle to the Hebrews-a book which, if any stress were to be laid upon exact Hebrew quotation, would assuredly have shown it-is remarkable for utterly ignoring that text and following the Septuagint. St. Paul was a Hebrew scholar with intense fondness for the heirlooms of Israel, but for some reason or other he also closes the Hebrew roll when he quotes and opens the Septuagint. In short, the New Testament writers did not care very much about the letter of Scripture. As Jerome remarks, they were intent on the general sense of a passage, and not the ipsissima verba. It is very significant that the principal New Testament references to the sacredness of the inspired writings occur in St. Paul's letters to Timothy (1 Tim. iv. 6; 2 Tim. iii. 14-17). Timothy was the son of a Greek father, and His Bible was undoubtedly the Septuagint. We cannot avoid the question, "Did Christ and the Apostles, who chose to draw their quotations from this version rather than from the Hebrew, believe in what some moderns are insisting upon, viz., the verbal inspiration of the Old Testament?" If they did, their ignoring of the Hebrew text is simply amazing.

ISAIAH lii. 13-liii. 12.—In the Canadian Methodist Quarterly, the Rev. N. Burwash calls attention to the very remarkable parallelism between Psalm xxii. and this section in the book of Isaiah. The correspondence both in linguistic forms of expression and general scope of thought is so pronounced that it is strange that it has not excited more general notice. The psalm seems to be almost the exact counterpart of the prophetic discourse. In the one the righteous sufferer pours out his own sorrows, in the other they are described by the prophet in almost identical terms. Compare Ps. xxii. 6 with Isa. liii. 3, and again Ps. xxii. 24 with Isa. liii. 3, 4. Compare also the use of the expression, "Seed of Jacob" and "Seed of Israel" (ver. 23) with the use of the same expression in Deutero-Isaiah; also vers. 30, 31, with Isa liii. 10. These verbal coincidences prepare us to appreciate fully the further general coincidence of subject matter, first suffering and then glory. In like manner in the book of Job, we find that in the end the righteous sufferer makes expiation for his offending friends (xlii. 8), where he is likewise called Jehovah's servant who has spoken the right. Compare Isa. liii. 11. In the book of Job, again, the progress of the theme is out of suffering into glory. Here, again, we are prepared for such literary correspondences as appear in Job xxix. 9, 10, and Isa. lii. 15; Job xix. 14 and Isa. liii. 3; Job. v. 17 and Isa. liii. 5; Job. xvi. 17 and Isa. liii. 19. In all these cases the correspondence is one founded on the peculiar use of Hebrew words and idioms, and is noted by the best critical commentators.

This relationship both in thought and in literary peculiarities between these three parts of Scripture presents us with this fact, that a writer of chochma, a psalmist, and a prophet, all treat the same subject of the righteous sufferer from the standpoint first of his suffering, and then of his reward; all three make use of various identical Hebrew terms in describing the suffering;

two agree in making mediatorial power a part of the reward, and two agree in making a world-wide extension of righteousness another part of the reward. In one case it is said spiritually, "He shall see his seed, He shall prolong his days," in the other, "After this, Job lived an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons and his son's sons, even four generations. So Job died, being old and full of days." Such a series of parallels which might be still further extended can scarcely be the result of mere accident. It seems to point unmistakably to some period in the history of the Hebrew people when this problem of the righteous sufferer was a matter of general consideration, when leading representatives of three out of four of the great literary classes, the philosophers (writers of chochma), the singers, and the prophets, each left a remarkable presentation of the subject couched in terms either borrowed from a common mode of expression prevailing at the time, or which one borrowed from the other. Such an extended result could only arise from a common historic background in which the problem of suffering was forced upon the attention of the literary mind of the age. All the indications point to the conclusion that this age was the age of the Exile. The book of Job is now placed at this date by the great majority of competent critics. The evidence in favour of this date for the second part of Isaiah is so overwhelming that only one here and there among well-informed students is to be found clinging to the old theory.

LATEST THEORIES ABOUT THE BOOK OF ISAIAH.-The latest commentary on the Book of Isaiah, which is at the same time the first volume of a series of manuals on the Old Testament under the supervision of Professor Nowack, of Strasburg, is from the pen of Professor Duhm, of Basle. Like most works of its class, from Teutonic universities, it is laboriously learned, boldly speculative, and unhesitatingly confident in many of its positions. The last German commentor almost invariably knows more than all his predecessors, and Professor Duhm is no exception to the rule. To the many theories about the origin of the Book of Isaiah he makes considerable additions, propounding some of them with oracular assurance, and occasionally treating the suggestions of accomplished scholars with scant courtesy. Lagarde, for instance, is handled with a severity for which Professor Duhm has found it necessary to apologise, as, since the criticisms were written, the subject of them had passed out of the reach of earthly praise and censure. The professor's views about the different elements of which the so-called Book of Isaiah is believed to consist may be summarized as follows. The prophecies composed by Isaiah the son of Amoz are all contained in the first thirty-five chapters which are named "the Isaiah-Book," and are supposed to comprise three separate compilations: (a) i.-xii., the vision about Judah and Jerusalem; (b) xiii.-xxiii., prophecies about foreign nations; (c) xxiv.-xxxv., prophecies of an eschatological character. Of course, these chapters are only in part from the pen of Isaiah, the editors, especially of the second and third collections, having associated documents from different sources. The great prophecy

in chapters xiii. and xiv. about the fall of Babylon is assigned, with most critics of the advanced school, to the close of the Exile, as also the similar prophecy in xxi. 1-15. Chapters xxiv. to xxvii. constitute as a whole an apocalypse dating probably from the year 128 B.C. Chapter xxxiii. is a prophetic poem probably from the year 162 B.C. The apocalyptic poem in chapters xxxiv. and xxxv. about Edom and the future of Zion, is pronounced very recent on account of its theological character, but must have preceded the subjugation of the Edomites by John Hyrcanus (135-105 B.c.). The historical chapters, xxxvi. to xxxix., are of unknown origin, from more than one pen. The Isaianic portions, properly so-called, include amongst other sections the vision in the sixth chapter and the Messianic prophecies in chapters ii., vii., ix. and xi., minus a few interpolations. With reference to the last twenty-seven chapters, Professor Duhm agrees with Professor G. A. Smith in finding traces of several hands, but differs from him considerably as to details. The term Deutero-Isaiah is applied only to the author of about three-fourths of chapters xl.-lv. He wrote in all probability when the war with Croesus had come to an end, that is, about 540 B.C. His home cannot be determined with certainty. Babylon is pronounced impossible and Palestine improbable. Perhaps he wrote in Northern Phoenicia. The four hymns about "the servant of the Lord," found respectively in xlii. 1-4, xlix. 1-6, 1. 4-9, and lii. 13-liii. 12, are ascribed to a poet of a wholly different type who wrote after the composition of the Book of Job, and before that of the prophecies of Malachi. The servant of the Lord is regarded as a historical personality, a teacher of the law, who died from leprosy, and was expected to be raised from the dead, perhaps between the Exile and the days of Ezra. As there is not the faintest allusion to any such person anywhere else Professor Duhm feels constrained to write: "We stand here before a historical enigma which cannot be solved." The last eleven chapters-lvi.-lxvi.-are put still later. The author, whom Professor Duhm proposes to call Trito-Isaiah, is believed to have lived about the time of Ezra. He was a theocratic Israelite of the purest water, and regarded the temple, the sacrifices, the law, and the Sabbath as things of the highest moment. Chapters lx.-lxii., which Kuenen and Cheyne are disposed to ascribe to Deutero-Isaiah, are considered to be in no way distinguished from their context. The arrangement of the whole book as we have it may not have been completed until the first decades of the first century before Christ. These extended and often hazardous speculations are made more intelligible by the employment of several sets of type to differentiate the various documents. Those parts, for example, ascribed to Isaiah are printed in large, leaded type, whereas those assigned to Deutero-Isaiah are printed in italics. Unfortunately, however, this ingenious arrangement is not carried out quite consistently. In the critical method of this commentary two features merit special notice: the stress laid on the significance of metre for the study of the text, and the careful use of the readings of the Septuagint.