W. H. J., Bible Treasury, [1st. Edition August 1856]
[1856 48] Most of the books of the Old Testament were committed to writing before the Babylonish captivity, when we have no contemporary literature: for profane history had not properly begun. The grounds for receiving them are, however, of the very strongest possible kind. For the original delivery of them was from men to whom Jehovah Himself had given their commission. They were delivered by prophets and seers, who spoke the Lord's message, and were regarded as those whose authority might not be questioned. Their books also, we doubt not, were held in scrupulous veneration, whenever there remained among the people a sense of the true religion.
There were, indeed, seasons, when God and His servants, and therefore their writings also, were despised and forsaken. But even then, there were faithful people who held fast to their Scriptures, and who could always restore the books, when the nation returned to its proper allegiance. The longest revolt from Jehovah was that which occurred in the reigns of Manasseh and Amon, when the nation seemed to have quite given up His service. Yet when Josiah commenced a great reform, and search was made for copies of the sacred books; there was found in the recesses of the temple, an authentic copy of the law, whose injunctions the king immediately proceeded to obey.
At the return from Babylon, a new era commences. Ezra, assisted by competent scribes, undertook the task of placing the sacred writings upon so sure a footing, that there should be no room for any loss hereafter. Situated as he was, there were ample means at hand, for securing correct copies of the several books, and of forming them into a canon, or authorised volume. The prophets who lived at that time — Zechariah and Haggai — and who received their messages direct from Jehovah, were quite sufficient to establish the authority he required.
We have moreover, to remember that there is no absolute necessity for our investigating the condition of the text of the Old Testament, before the time of our Lord and His apostles. After all, we have only to arrive at a knowledge of what the text was in the days of the first promulgation of Christianity. For we have their, and especially His, infallible mark of approbation fixed on the Scriptures as then existing; and it is clear that no possible evidence could be stronger.
Now we arrive at a knowledge of that text, through several separate and independent channels. In addition to the original Scriptures themselves, in the Hebrew; we have many very ancient translations, some made before the time of Christ; and these reach us quite independently of the original text; so that in any point where they all concur, we have, it is plain, a proof of the most convincing nature, that we have the text, as it existed, before the separation of these several witnesses. And where they differ, as they do in unimportant respects, we have all the more reason for being persuaded of their value. We are quite sure that there has been no collusion or deceit. Joined to this evidence, we have also that which is furnished by these books being quoted in ancient writers. They supply us with an additional testimony to the words which they have used. Thus we know that the Old Testament is very frequently quoted in the New. We receive the New Testament through altogether a different source from that whereby the Old comes to us; and we therefore feel sure that if the christian books report Moses or Isaiah to have said such and such words; and we find the books of Moses and Isaiah, which have been in possession of the Jews, (the avowed enemies of christianity), saying the same words, we have no hesitation in perceiving that we could have no better proof of the fact that those words were actually used.
We leave for the present these sources of evidence, and confine ourselves to a consideration of the Hebrew text itself, which has come down to us, almost entirely from the Jews.
We spoke, in our last article, of the division of Jews into two great classes:— the Hebrews, who spoke or used Aramaic; and the Grecians who spoke and used Greek. The latter seem to have disappeared soon after the publication of christianity. Those who were not absorbed into the church, gave up all their differences with other Jews, and were in no way distinguished from them. There were two centres about which they chiefly congregated. The one was at Tiberias in Galilee, within the Roman Empire; the other at Babylon, without it. At each of these places, schools of theology and literature flourished for many generations. From Tiberias there issued the Mishna, or second law; being in fact those very traditions, reduced to writing, against which our Lord had inveighed. This Mishna being regarded as itself a book to be reverenced; the doctors of Tiberias by degrees collected many notes and comments upon it, which form what is called the Gemara, i.e., supplement. And the Mishna and this gemara together, make up the first talmud (or doctrine) called the Jerusalem talmud, which was completed about the year A.D. 300.
About this time the school at Tiberias was losing its importance, and in its place rose up that of Babylon, where other and far more voluminous comments, making another gemara, were added to the mishna of Tiberias. And these make up the second or Babylon talmud — always meant, when the talmud only is mentioned — which was finished about the year A.D. 500.
Now in both these talmuds, written in Aramaic, there are a vast number of quotations from the Bible, which learned men have, with great labour, collected and compared with the Bible itself. They find the discrepancies quite unimportant.
When the Arabs conquered those parts of the world where these learned Jews were chiefly settled, and when the earlier Caliphs in the eighth and ninth centuries patronised all kinds of learning;— a great impulse was given to the cultivation of the Hebrew language and literature, and to the critical study of the Bible. A succession of Jewish doctors then flourished in the East, who are styled the Masoretes, because their collection of writings is called the masorah or tradition. They directed their attention almost exclusively to the text of the Bible, selecting the best manuscripts, and rejecting what was corrupt. The scrupulous care they took may be judged from the fact that they have counted the number of words, and the number of letters in the Bible or in any particular parts. They have left on record what is the middle word, or the middle letter of the entire book; how many words begin with a particular letter, and many other minute labours of the same kind, trifling indeed, but still showing most remarkably how careful they were of even words and letters.
When the Turks overpowered Western Asia in the eleventh century, they commenced a systematic persecution against the Jews, broke up their schools, and killed or banished their leaders. The doctors fled chiefly into Spain, where there was still a Caliph at Cordova: and to the adjoining provinces in the South of France. Here Aben‑Ezra, Maimonides, Kimchi, and others, preserved the learning of the Eastern Jews. But, when the fierce persecution of Ferdinand and Isabella, in the fifteenth century, drove all the Jews out of Spain, they carried with them, into more favourable countries, the valuable treasures they possessed; and therefore in the next or sixteenth century, when learning revived, and the reformation arose, then the Hebrew MSS. of the Jews were at hand, and were soon put into print, by means of which the Bible was corrected, and brought back, as nearly as possible, to its original condition.
We cannot but admire the providential ordering of events, which overruled the cruel and iniquitous persecutions raised against the learned Jews, first by the Turkish sultans in Asia, and then by the christian sovereigns of Spain, bringing to us the Hebrew MSS. of the Bible, which otherwise we might have sought in vain.
It must be also mentioned that we do not depend solely upon these Asiatic and Spanish Jews for our MSS. There existed from time immemorial in Poland and Germany, another separate community of Jews, whose traditions and schools of learning were quite independent of their brethren; and from them we have MSS. agreeing indeed in all essential respects with the others, but still so far varying as to show they come to us through different channels.
The history of the text of the New Testament is much simpler and shorter than that of the Old. We have the concurrent evidence of churches and congregations, who were scattered over the civilised world, and who preserved the apostolic records with affectionate reverence. We have numberless quotations and references in the christian writings from the second century onwards. We have very ancient translations in Latin and in Syriac, that have a perfectly independent existence. And we have MSS. reaching up almost to the days when the books themselves were originally written. We know also, that from a very early period the church was divided into several rival factions; each of whom acted apart from the others; and in each of whom we possess independent evidence for the text. And here, as in the case of the Jews, it is impossible not to see how wonderfully God brought good out of evil. For, by the time the dark ages came in, during that gloomy period, marked out by the ninth and tenth centuries, when learning and religion seemed almost lost, and Europe appeared to be lapsing back into barbarism; — the Benedictine and Cistercian Abbeys, founded at a previous happier season, had stored up, unnoticed and uncared for, the ancient Greek MSS. of the New Testament, which, when required, were produced by the investigation of the scholars who mainly brought about the Reformation.
When Constantinople was taken by the Turks in 1453, and the last remnant of ancient civilisation destroyed, many scholars fled to the West of Europe, and brought with them a knowledge of the Greek language, till then almost unknown, at the very time when the dispersion of the Jews from Spain was making public the Hebrew tongue. And contemporaneously with these events, that wonderful discovery of printing was made; putting machinery into the hands of men for the preparation of proper copies of the Bible, which would have been altogether wanting a few generations previously.
Since that epoch, the libraries of Europe, Asia, and North Africa, have been ransacked, and many valuable MSS. discovered which were then unknown; and the settlement of the text, as it is called, has become the subject of the attention of biblical students. A judgement has to be formed from the variety and abundance of materials that exist, and a text produced that shall be as nearly as possible like what it was when it left the hands of the original writers. And in order to accomplish this, not only have the ancient MSS. themselves to be examined, and their comparative value decided, but due weight has to be given to any differences that may appear in the ancient translations, or in quotations made in ancient authors. It frequently happens that the different sources of information vary in particulars, and then a judgement must be exercised as to which is to be preferred.
We shall, in future papers, show what these various sources of information are. In the mean time, we shall be content with remarking, that the result of these investigations has been of the very happiest nature. When they were first entered on, great alarm was felt that the faith of many would be unsettled by them; and for that reason the Church of Rome forbade any amendment of the text of the Vulgate, acknowledged on all hands to be corrupt. But, however embarrassing the differences may be to the scholar, they are insignificant to the divine or the christian. They are all really quite unimportant — and the happy result is that we have discovered them to be unimportant. Whereas had we refused to look at them, we might have been harassed by a suspicion that we had been imposed upon; and should not have been certain, as we are now, that for all practical purposes, our ordinary Bibles give us what God originally directed the prophet or the apostle to reveal.
God sent His book into the world, like all His other blessings, entrusted to human care, and liable to injury from human carelessness. We may be thankful that He has watched over His own gift, and has protected it from all real damage. W. H. J.