is scarcely a great name which has not been compelled to father writings that do not belong to it. The genuine writings of Athanasius, Jerome, Augustine, and Ambrose have to be separated by careful criticism from the spurious; for example:

"Of the thirty to a hundred so-called Ambrosian hymns, however, only twelve in the view of the Benedictine editor of his works are genuine, the rest being more or less successful imitations by unknown authors. Neale reduces the number of the genuine Ambrosian hymns to ten."1

It is well known that Shakespeare's genuine plays have to be discriminated from the large number of others that have been attributed to him. Shakespearian criticism is of so great importance as to constitute a literature of its own.2 Sometimes the writings of a well-known author have been, in the process of time, attributed to another. We have an example of this in the Paradoxes of Herbert Palmer, which have been regarded as Lord Bacon's. 3

To question the traditional opinion as to authorship of a writing is not to contest the authenticity of the writing. Authenticity has properly to do only with the claims of the writing itself, and not with the claims of traditional theories. The Baba Bathra does not discriminate between editorship and authorship. It is evident that to the scribes of the second century the principal thing was official committing to writing and not the original writing of the writing. The Talmudic statements as to authorship are many of them absurd conjectures. Josephus and Philo, when they make Moses the author of the narrative of his own death, go beyond the Baba Bathra and indulge in folly.

The titles found in connection with the biblical books cannot always be relied upon, for the reason that we have first to determine whether they came from the original authors, or have been appended by inspired editors, or have been attached in the Rabbinical or Christian schools. Thus the difference in the titles

1 Schaff, History of the Christian Church, III., 1868, p. 591.

2 Knight's Shakespeare, Supplemental Volume.

3 See Grosart, Lord Bacon not the Author of the "Christian Paradoxes." Printed for private circulation, 1865. 4 See p. 253.

of the several Psalms between the Septuagint version and the Massoretic text are so great as to force the conclusion that many of the titles are of late and uncertain origin, and that most, if not all, are of doubtful authority.1

In considering the question of authenticity, we have first to examine the writing itself. If the writing claims to be by a certain author, to doubt it is to doubt the credibility and authority of the writing. If these claims are found to be unreliable, the credibility of the writing is gone, and its inspiration is involved. But if the credibility of the writing is not impeached, its inspiration has nothing to do with the question of its human authorship.2

The Higher Criticism has been compelled by Deism and Rationalism to meet this question of forgery of Biblical Writings. This phase of the subject has now been settled so far that no reputable critics venture to write of any of our canonical writings as forgeries.

IX. ANONYMOUS HOLY SCRIPTURES

There are large numbers of the biblical books that are anonymous: e.g. the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Jonah, Ruth, many of the Psalms, Lamentations, and the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Tradition has assigned authors for all of these. It is also maintained that the internal statements of some of these books point to their authorship by certain persons.

We have seen the traditional theories of Holy Scripture embedded in the Talmud.3 Christian tradition modified these in some respects, but the tradition was essentially this: the Pentateuch and Job were written by Moses; Joshua by Joshua ;

1 Murray, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of the Psalms, 1880, pp. 79 seq.; Perowne in l.c., pp. 94 seq.

2 It may be said that the pseudonym claims to be by the author, whose name is given. But in fact the pseudonym itself makes no such claim. It uses the name as a fiction, and usually as a transparent fiction. If any one is deceived it is his own fault or the fault of his teacher. He may be deceived in a similar way by any kind of fiction. The pseudonym has never been regarded as forgery. See pp. 323 seq.

8 See p. 252.

Judges and Samuel by Samuel; Kings, Jeremiah, and Lamentations by Jeremiah; the Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, by Ezra ; Esther by Mordecai; the Psalms by David; Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes by Solomon; the Prophets by those whose names are attached to the books. Each writing was fathered upon a well-known biblical character in whose inspiration it was supposed we might have confidence.

The traditional theory ascribes all the Law to Moses, all the Psalms to David, all the Wisdom to Solomon. One is impelled sometimes to ask why all the Prophecy was not attributed to Isaiah or to Jeremiah, according as the name of the one or the other preceded the list of prophetic writings. How narrow an escape has been made from attributing the whole of Prophecy to Jeremiah, may be estimated when attention is called to the fact that one of the ways by which the anti-critics try to avoid a miss-citation in the Gospels,1 where a prophecy is attributed to Jeremiah which was really anonymous, though united with Zechariah,2 is by the theory that the name of Jeremiah was given as a general title to the whole of the prophetic books, his prophecy beginning them in the list of the Baraitha, the earliest classification of books in the Talmud. From the point of view of the modern scientific Higher Criticism, it is no more absurd to attribute all the Prophecy to Jeremiah, than all the Law to Moses, all the Wisdom to Solomon, and all the Psalms to David. In none of these cases has there ever been any solid ground on which such theories could rest.

Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes of the Wisdom Literature are attributed by tradition to Solomon. The only reason Job escaped this traditional parentage was probably because it was not regarded by the ancients as belonging to the Wisdom Literature; and its patriarchal scenery made it most natural for them to think of a patriarchal age, and then easily of Moses, who stood on the borders of that age, and belonged to it while in the land of Midian before he took the leadership of Israel. But among the apocryphal books there is a Wisdom of Solo

3 See A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield, Art. Inspiration," Presbyterian Review, 1881, p. 259.

mon, and, among the pseudepigrapha, a Psalter of Solomon, which are cited as canonical by some of the ancient Fathers. But the Higher Criticism has shown that the Psalter of Solomon belongs to the times of Pompey, the first century B.C., and that the Wisdom of Solomon belongs to the early part of the first Christian century. We are thus prepared to question the traditional parentage of the sapiential literature of the Hebrew Canon. Ecclesiastes is the latest writing in the Old Testament, as shown by its language, style, and theology. As Delitzsch says, if Ecclesiastes could be Solomonic, there would be no such thing as a history of the Hebrew language.1 The Song of Songs is an operetta in five acts, describing the victory of a pure shepherd girl over all the seductions and temptations that were put forth by Solomon and his court to induce her to abandon her affianced shepherd. Solomon is not even the hero of the drama, but is the tempter of the Shulamite.

The Proverbs represent a collection of wisdom, the result of many centuries and oft-repeated editings. It was gathered under the name of Solomon as the traditional king of the wise

men.

Thus the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament and of the Apocrypha is resolved into a number of writings of different authors and of different collections extending through many centuries until the time of Christ, and preparing the way for the jewelled sentences of wisdom of Jesus of Nazareth, the wisest of men.2

The Psalter is ascribed by tradition to David, partly as author and partly as editor. But the testimony of the titles coming from the early editors, and the evidence of the Psalms themselves, make it evident that the Psalter contains the psalmody of Israel in all the centuries of his development in sacred lyrics of prayer and praise. There were several minor psalters representing different periods of literary activity; there were several layers of psalms representing different periods of lyric development. The present Psalter is not earlier than the Maccabean period; but while chiefly representing the Persian, Greek, and Maccabean periods in the history of Israel, yet it also contains 1 Hoheslied und Koheleth, 1875, s. 197. 2 See pp. 392, 396, 401.

Y

Psalms which go back to the times of the prophets and the kings, and which sprang from the fountain-head of psalmody in the tender, tuneful heart of King David himself. No name so worthy as David's under which to gather the psalmody of the nation which he had started by his impulses in its centuries of prayer and praise to God, even if he wrote few, if any, of the present Psalms. The Psalter is a synagogue book more than a temple book, and therefore it has been found appropriate for the Christian worship of the congregation in all times.

The Psalter of Solomon is a collection of beautiful Psalms which was made after the final editing of our Psalter; otherwise, they, like the Psalm appended to the Septuagint text, might have found their way into the Psalter itself.

The tradition that Moses wrote the Pentateuch has been so evidently disproved that it is altogether unscholarly for any one to hold to this opinion. The Pentateuch has been shown, after a century of critical work, to be composed of four great documents, which were written in different periods in the history of Israel. These four documents have each its own narrative and code of law. These narratives and law codes bear traces of earlier narratives and law codes, which they have taken up into themselves. These earlier narratives contain original sources in the form of ancient poetry, legends, genealogies, and other historical or traditional monuments. The law codes. contain various types of law, indicating their source in the session of the elders, the court of the judges, the Levites and the Priests, or in the prophetic word and divine command. Criticism is carefully tracing these back through all their varied development in the documents to their fountain-heads in their archæological forms. The gain of this position is immense. Instead of the old tradition that the Law and all the institutions, civil, religious, and domestic, were given in the wilderness of the wandering to a nation who had had an experience of several centuries of slavery, and had not yet had any experience whatever as a free nation settled in a land of their own, these laws and institutions are now seen to be the development of the experience of Israel during the centuries of his residence in the Holy Land itself. No one could think of