5.  God, the world, and the life of men in Old Israel

6.  The fall of Samaria

7.  The deliverance of Judah

8.  The prophetic reformation .

9.  Jeremiah and the destruction of Jerusalem .

10.  The captivity and the restoration

11.  Judaism and Christianity

12.  The Hellenistic period

13.  The Hasmonaeans

14.  Herod and the Romans

15.  The Rabbins

16.  The Jewish Dispersion

INTRODUCTION.

In the following pages it is proposed to discuss the place in history of the “law of Moses;” more precisely, the question to be considered is whether that law is the starting-point for the history of ancient Israel, or not rather for that of Judaism, ie., of the religious communion which survived the destruction of the nation by the Assyrians and Chaldaeans.

I. It is an opinion very extensively held that the great mass of the books of the Old Testament not only relate to the pre-exilic period, but date from it.  According to this view, they are remnants of the literature of ancient Israel which the Jews rescued as a heritage from the past, and on which they continued to subsist in the decay of independent intellectual life.  In dogmatic theology Judaism is a mere empty chasm over which one springs from the Old Testament to the New; and even where this estimate is modified, the belief still prevails in a general way that the Judaism which received the books of Scripture into the canon had, as a rule, nothing to do with their production.  But the exceptions to this principle which are conceded as regards the second and third divisions of the Hebrew canon cannot be called so very slight.  Of the Hagiograpba, by far the larger portion is demonstrably post-exilic, and no part demonstrably older than the exile.  Daniel comes as far down as the Maccabaean wars, and Esther is perhaps even later.  Of the prophetical literature a very appreciable fraction is later than the fall of the Hebrew kingdom; and the associated historical books (the “earlier prophets” of the Hebrew canon) date, in the form in which we now possess them, from a period subsequent to the death of Jeconiah, who must have survived the year 560 B.C. for some time.  Making all allowance for the older sources utilised, and to a large extent transcribed word for word, in Judges, Samuel, and Kings, we find that apart from the Pentateuch the preexilic portion of the Old Testament amounts in bulk to little more than the half of the entire volume.  All the rest belongs to the later period, and it includes not merely the feeble after-growths of a failing vegetation, but also productions of the vigour and originality of Isa. xl.lxvi. and Ps.Ixxiii.