In the present lecture these five aspects of the subject will be dealt with in general outline. The ensuing lectures will elaborate each in somewhat fuller detail. The classification does not pretend to be exhaustive, but it will probably be found to embrace the main points which are of special interest to Christian students of the Old Testament, and which are more or less affected by the discoveries of recent criticism and research. At any rate, ample scope will be provided for illustrating the new points of view in regard to scripture which we owe to the labours of modern scholarship. Our ideas of the methods actually employed in divine revelation will perhaps be enlarged, while some misconceptions may be removed which have hitherto hindered some minds from profitably studying the Old Testament. On the other hand, we may be led to a more intelligent use of the materials that are now available for those who desire to form a true estimate of Israel's place and function in the history of religion.

I. In the first place, then, we are to study the Old Testament as a history of redemption. This point of view enables us at once to discern the significance and purpose of that sublime statement of fundamental truths which forms the vestibule, so to speak, to the edifice of the Old Testament'. The early chapters of Genesis contain the presuppositions which alone could render welcome and intelligible the thought of a redemptive movement on the part of God for the salvation of men. They describe the creation of the world by God, the formation of man in the Creator's own image, the entrance of moral evil, and the divine purpose of restoration.

It will be convenient at this point to discuss these wonderful narratives, which are essentially poetical in

1

Cp. Dillman, Comm. on Genesis, p. viii: 'Die Genesis ist die Vorbereitung zu den folg. Büchern oder gleichsam die Vorhalle zu dem Tempel der Theokratie dessen Errichtung in den folg. Büchern dargestellt wird.'

their form, and clearly stand on a different level from the historical books properly so called, which are to be considered separately in a subsequent lecture. They deal not with the substance of redemptive history, but rather with the facts of human nature which lie behind it; and consequently any prolonged discussion respecting the nature, sources, or scientific value of the 'narrative of the origins' is for present purposes irrelevant, or at least of very secondary importance. Even a slight observation of the characteristics of the Hebrew mind will suffice to show us that the scientific interest, if it existed at all, occupied an entirely subordinate place in the religious thought of an Israelite1, and thus the story of the origins, though cast in a quasi-historical or mythical form, is in fact instinct with a religious aim. It does not appear to have had any peculiar or special connexion with Israel, but was in some form or other common to other branches of the Semitic race. The current traditions of the Creation, the Fall, and the Flood, are employed as a suitable medium for expressing the fundamental thoughts of true religion: the distinctness of God from the created universe; the immediate dependence on Him of all being at each stage of its development, and the essential goodness of that which owes its existence to Him. To the student of comparative religion it is no doubt of great interest to notice that in the story of the origins we have a narrative which shows clear traces of connexion with Chaldaean traditions; to the believer in divine inspiration it is of chief importance to notice how primitive myth is consecrated to spiritual uses, and how in the process it is purged of all that is puerile or immoral, the main outlines of the original Babylonian story being retained, while the lower elements in it are entirely overmastered by the sublime spiritual thoughts

1

Cp. Schultz, Old Testament Theology [Eng. Tr.], ii. 180; Köhler, Über die Berechtigung der Kritik des A. T. pp. 25, 26; Driver, Serm. on O. T. Subj. No. 1.

of a lofty religion'. Such elements are indeed only survivals, like the survivals in natural history, serving. for aught we know, some beneficent purpose, showing that Israel's religion had its roots in a Semitic paganism, from which under the impulse of the Spirit of God it gradually emancipated itself. No student of the Old Testament will find serious difficulty in the existence of mythical or even polytheistic elements which have in fact become the medium of pure religious ideas, and which have been so far stripped of their original character as to serve the purposes of a monotheistic system. 'Where the Assyrian or Babylonian poet saw the action of deified forces of nature, the Hebrew writer sees only the will of the one supreme God. It is only necessary to remark in passing that we have here the earliest, and in some. respects the most striking, illustration of a law which pervades the entire religious development of the people of God. The higher faith retains elements derived from the lower stages of religion, but only to regulate and to purify them, or in some cases even to pass explicit judgment upon them. While in fact it is abundantly clear that the religion of Israel presupposes the nature-worship of the ancient Semitic peoples, it is equally certain that it displayed from the very first an upward tendency in the direction of a spiritual monotheism. The ultimate outcome of Israel's long discipline manifests the reality of that continual and delicate divine pressure which lifted a rude and barbarous tribe above its surroundings and raised it to the throne of spiritual influence, in reference to which Athanasius declares that Israel was a sacred

1

3

Cp. Wellhausen, op. cit. pp. 304, 305, 314.

2 Schultz, op. cit. i. 118.

Sayce, The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 71. Cp. Renan, Histoire du peuple d'Israël, bk. i. ch. 4. Renan illustrates at length the influence of Babylonia on the Hebrew story of the origins, and points out how 'A free will, as implied by the words He created, substituted for ten thousand capricious fancies, is a progress of its kind' [Eng. Tr. p. 67].

school of the knowledge of God and of the spiritual life for all the world?'

The account of creation is followed by other fundamental statements relating to man's nature and destiny, the entrance of sin, and its culmination in death and divinely inflicted judgment. Distinctive of the Old Testament is the view that man was created in the divine image, that by the law of his original constitution he was a personal, self-conscious, and spiritual being, designed for communion with his Maker 2, and endowed with faculties enabling him to fulfil a spiritual destiny. Here again we do not look for scientific anthropology, but rather for a conception of human nature based upon experience and reflection. The narrative of the Fall is to be regarded as a particular solution, in poetical form, of a problem which at a very early period presented itself to human thought. In its essence the Fall consists in man's conscious choice of something lower than God Himself, something antagonistic to His revealed will. It is the perversion or defect of will; it is aversion from God 3. The inspired story of Genesis suggests profound spiritual truths in regard to the character rather than to the origin of human sin. It presents a picture entirely true to nature of the awakening of moral consciousness and of that which is its ordinary sequel: the recognition by man that his will is out of harmony with the requirements of the moral order; the instinctive dread of severance from the source of all life; the discovery of the true significance of death for a spiritual being; the consciousness of physical evil as an impediment and obstacle in the way of human development. The biblical narrative is, in fact, the Hebrew solution of a fact which is quite independent of the scriptural evidence and is attested by the moral experience of

1 de Incarn. c. xii.

2 Schultz, ii. 238: The seal of the Elohim nature is stamped as it were on the substance of the fleshly nature.'

3 Ath. c. Gent. v ǹ twv Kμelttóvwv åñoσtpo pý. Greg. Nyss. Orat. Catech. v ἡ ἀπὸ τοῦ καλοῦ τῆς ψυχῆς ἀναχώρησις.

humanity. The narratives then are apparently intended simply to justify and render credible the revelation of a divine love displayed in man's restoration. It is noticeable that they tell us nothing in regard to the conditions of primitive civilization. They merely indicate that man's original state was not what it is now. They do not suggest that he was perfect in the sense that he attained at once to complete development. They imply 'a living commencement which contained within itself the possibility of a progressive development.". Man was destined to develope upwards, and a certain measure of communion with his Creator was intended to guide and condition his progress, by giving to it impulse, direction, and stability. But the interest of the earliest compilers is primarily soteriological. Original sin is for them the starting-point of a divine purpose of recovery of an historical movement passing through stages of orderly development and working mainly from within the fallen race itself 3.

The story of the Flood brings into view the principal factor in salvation-the gracious action of God crowning and rewarding the faith of man. The details of the story may appear to curious inquirers contradictory or even impossible; nevertheless, the narrative gives expression to the religious thought that while God in His wrath visits sinful man with unsparing calamities, even at the very moment when he least expects it, yet in the midst of His judgments He guides and protects His own elect. Christians

1 Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, aphorism cix; Mozley, Lectures and other Theological Papers, ix, x. Observe, in his allusions to the fall St. Paul does not always connect the fact with Adam. He rather insists that 'all have sinned' (Rom. iii. 23). So Athanasius (e. g.) describes the fall in plural terms. See c. Gent. iii; de Incarn. v. It is the apostasy not of a man, but of mankind, that is the occasion of redemption. Rom. vii. 21 shows that the point of importance is the existence of a uniform law, which in the Hebrew story is represented as resulting from the physical connexion between the human race and its first progenitor.

2 Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, § 78.

3 Cp. Oehler, Theology of the O. T. § 7.