It is objected that our Lord in His use of Jonah, gives His sanction to the historicity of the story; but this objection has little weight, for our Lord's method of instruction was in the use of stories of his own composition. We ought not to be surprised, therefore, that he should use such stories from the Old Testament likewise. It is urged that our Saviour makes such a realistic use of it, that it compels us to think that he regarded it as real; but, in fact, he does not make a more realistic use of Jonah than he does of the story of Dives and Lazarus. Just such a realistic use of the story of Jannes and Jambres withstanding Moses is made in the Second Epistle to Timothy, and the author compares them with the foes of Christ in his time, 2 Tim. 3o. And Jude (v. 9) makes just as realistic a use of the story of Michael, the archangel, contending with the devil, and disputing about the body of Moses, and compares this dispute with the railers of his time. These stories are from the Jewish Haggada, and not from the Old Testament. No scholar regards them as historic events. If epistles could use the stories of the Jewish Haggada in this way, why should not our Lord use stories from the Old Testament? Our Saviour uses the story of Jonah just as the author of the book used it, to point important religious instruction to the men of his time. Indeed, our Lord's use of it rather favours his interpretation of it as symbolic. For it is just this symbolism that the fish represents, Sheol, the swallowing up,- death; and the casting forth, resurrection, — that we have seen in the story of Jonah interpreted by the prayer, which makes the story appropriate to symbolize the death and resurrection of Jesus.

For these reasons, the story of Jonah is commonly regarded by modern scholars as an ideal story, a work of the imagination. There are two great lessons taught in the book of Jonah, one in each scene of the story. The first lesson is similar to that taught by Amos and a later psalmist.1

God has power to bring up from the depths of the sea, from the womb of Sheol, from the belly of the fish, those who turn unto Him, to His holy temple. Israel's calling as the prophet of the nations cannot be escaped. He may be overwhelmed in the depths of affliction; he may descend into Sheol, the abode of the dead; he may be swallowed by the great monsters who subdue the nations, but God will raise him up, restore him to life and to his prophetic ministry. Jonah - Pharisaic Israel

1 Amos 92.3; Ps. 1397-10.

-may renounce his high calling and perish; but a second Jonah, a revived and converted preacher, will surely fulfil it.

But the greatest lesson of the story is in the repentance of Nineveh, and the attitude of Jonah toward that great event. Jonah again represents historic Israel, preaching with sufficient readiness the doom of the nations, and watching for the Dies Ira when that doom would be fulfilled. Jonah goes out of the city and selects a good place from whence he can see the grand sight, the overthrow of the capital of that nation which was the greatest foe of his people. But Jonah does not represent the ideal Israel. God has other views than Jonah. He does not look with complacency upon the death of 120,000 babes, who knew not enough to do right or wrong. He does not delight in the death of men, but rather in the repentance of men. A million or more human beings gathered in Nineveh, that great capital of the ancient world, cannot perish without giving sorrow to the heart of God. Jonah may delight in such a scene; God cannot. The repentance of Nineveh is sufficient to change all. In an instant the decree of its destruction is annulled, and divine love triumphs over the sentence of judg

This author caught such a wonderful glimpse of the love of God to the heathen world, that it makes the book of Jonah a marvel in the doctrine of the Old Testament.

IX. THE STORY OF ESTHER

The book of Esther is one of the Writings of the Rabbinical Canon. In the Hellenistic Canon, it is placed after the apocryphal pieces of fiction, called Tobit, and Judith, as if recognized to be of the same type. The style of Esther is dramatic and rapid in its development of incident. Scene after scene springs into place, until the climax of difficulty is reached, and the knot is tied so that it seems impossible to escape. Then it is untied with wondrous dexterity. All this is the art of the story-teller, and not the method of the historian. The things which interest the historian are not in the book. Esther is a didactic story, like Ruth and Jonah, Judith and Tobit, and raises more historical difficulties than can easily be re

moved. The monarch seems to be Xerxes, the voluptuous and absolute ruler of the Persian Empire. The story is one of court intrigue, in which Esther, the favourite wife, and her uncle, Mordecai, prevail over Haman, the prime minister. The book is connected with the Purim festival, and is supposed to give the historical account of its origin. This is denied by many modern scholars. It is held that Esther is a piece of historical fiction, designed to set forth the importance of the Purim festival, as a national feast, and to teach the great lesson of patriotism. It does not by any means follow from the connection of the book with the feast, that the book is historical. Indeed Esther does not explain the Purim feast.1 It does not give any adequate reason why the Jews of Palestine and Egypt and of the rest of the world should celebrate a feast which, according to Esther, was connected with the deliverance of the Jews remaining in exile in the Persian Empire, an event less worthy of commemoration than a hundred others. But it is not necessary to determine its exact origin. Many a Christian feast rests upon unhistoric legends. We need but mention the feast of the Ascension of Mary, the feast of Saint Veronica, the feast of the Finding of the Cross, and the feast of the Sleepers.

The sole redeeming feature of the book is its patriotism. Esther and Mordecai are heroes of patriotic attachment to the interests of the Jews. For this they risk their honour and their lives. The same spirit we find in Judith, and, in a measure, in Nehemiah and Daniel. If patriotism is a virtue, and belongs to good morals in the Jewish and Christian systems, then the book has its place in the Bible, as teaching this virtue, even if everything else be absent. No book is so patriotic as the book of Esther. Esther is the heroine of patriotic devotion. She is the incarnation of Jewish nationality, and thus is the appropriate theme of the great national festival of the Jews. And in all the Christian centuries Esther has been an inspiration to heroic women and an incentive to deeds of daring for heroic men. And if, as many signs seem to indicate, woman in the next century is to use her great endowments in a large

1 See C. H. Toy, "Esther as Babylonian Goddess" in The New World, March, 1898, pp. 130 seq.

measure for the advancement of the kingdom of God, Esther will exert a vaster influence in inspiring her to holy courage and unflinching devotion and service. For, granting that patriotism in its narrower sense may be a form of selfishness, yet when patriotism has been transformed into an enthusiasm for humanity and a passionate devotion to the Saviour of man, it then calls forth those wondrous energies of self-sacrifice with which woman seems to be more richly endowed than man.

X. THE STORIES OF DANIEL

The book of Daniel also belongs to the group of prose literature which may be called historical fiction. In the Hebrew Canon Daniel is not classed with the Prophets, but with the Writings. The Baraitha ascribes it to the men of the Great Synagogue; later tradition to Daniel himself. But both these theories are against the evidence. The language is of a later type. As Driver says: "The verdict of the language of Daniel is thus clear. The Persian words presuppose a period after the Persian Empire had been well established; the Greek words demand, the Hebrew support, and the Aramaic permit a date after the conquest of Palestine by Alexander the Great (B.C. 332)."2

The Hebrew book of Daniel encloses an Aramaic section, 24b-7. This section is in the western Aramaic dialect, and could not have been written in Babylon, where the eastern Aramaic was used. It seems probable that this Aramaic section is older than the enclosing Hebrew parts. The book is divided into two equal parts, Chapters 1-6, a series of stories, and Chapters 7-12, a series of visions, both in chronological order. This division does not correspond with the difference in language, and comes from the final author. The stories are all in the older Aramaic section, in which Daniel is always spoken of in the third person. They are not historical or biographical, but are episodes with prophetic lessons. They are grouped about the legendary Daniel of Ezek. 1414-20, 283, and 2 Introduction, 6th ed., p. 508.

1 See p. 252.

8 Strack, Einleitung, 5te Aufl., p. 150.

are of the same type of historical fiction as the later stories of Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon, which were added to Daniel in the ancient Greek Septuagint version.

This is the opinion of Sayce: 1

"Darius the Mede' is, in fact, a reflection into the past of Darius, the son of Hystaspes, just as the siege and capture of Babylon by Cyrus is a reflection into the past of its siege and capture by the same prince. The name of Darius and the story of the slaughter of the Chaldæan king go together. They are alike derived from that unwritten history, which in the East of to-day is still made by the people, and which blends together in a single picture the manifold events and personages of the past. It is a history which has no perspective, though it is based on actual facts; the accurate calculations of the chronologer have no meaning for it, and the events of a century are crowded into a few years. This is the kind of history which the Jewish mind in the time of the Talmud loved to adapt to moral and religious purposes. This kind of history thus becomes, as it were, a parable, and under the name of Haggadah serves to illustrate the teaching of the Law."

The Aramaic vision of Chapter 7 is entirely parallel with the vision of Chapter 2. If the story of Chapter 2 is fiction, the prediction must be fiction likewise. These two visions are, therefore, pseudepigraphic. The visions of Chapters 8-12 in the Hebrew language are of a still later date than Chapters 27, and are pseudepigraphic likewise. The book of Daniel is unknown to Ben Sirach, who mentions Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve; 2 and all Hebrew literature is silent with reference to it until the earliest Sibylline oracle, III. 388 ff., circa 140 B.C., and 1 Macc. 26o, circa 100 B.C., both referring to the Aramaic section. Daniel is frequently used in the subsequent pseudepigrapha and the New Testament. The writer is evidently familiar with the Greek period of history, but unfamiliarity with Babylonian and Persian periods leads him into grave historical blunders. The Hebrew sections seem to imply the troublous times of Antiochus Epiphanes. The angelology, eschatology, and Messianic ideas of the book are nearer to those

1 Sayce, The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, 1894, pp. 528, 529. 2 See pp. 123 seq.