Read Ebook: The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of Kings by Farrar F W Frederic William Nicoll W Robertson William Robertson Sir Editor

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CONCLUSION 497

CHRONOLOGY OF THE FIRST BOOK OF KINGS 500

"Ich bin ?berzeugt, dass die Bibel immer sch?ner wird, je mehr man sie versteht, d.h. je mehr man einsieht und anschaut, dass jedes Wort, das wir allgemein auffassen und in Besondern auf uns anwenden, nach gewissen Umst?nden, nach Zeit- und Orts-verh?ltnissen einen, eigenen, besondern, unmittelbar individuellen Bezug gehabt hat."--GOETHE.

"God shows all things in the slow history of their ripening."--GEORGE ELIOT.

God has given us many Bibles. The book which we call the Bible consists of a series of books, and its name represents the Greek plural ?? ??????. It is not so much a book, as the extant fragments of a literature, which grew up during many centuries. Supreme as is the importance of this "Book of God," it was never meant to be the sole teacher of mankind. We mistake its purpose, we misapply its revelation, when we use it to exclude the other sources of religious knowledge. It is supremely profitable for our instruction, but, so far from being designed to absorb our exclusive attention, its work is to stimulate the eagerness with which, by its aid, we are able to learn from all other sources the will of God towards men.

It is probable that no age since that of the Apostles has added so much to our knowledge of the true meaning and history of the Bible as has been added by our own. The mode of regarding Scripture has been almost revolutionised, and in consequence many books of Scripture previously misunderstood have acquired a reality and intensity of interest and instructiveness which have rendered them trebly precious. A deeper and holier reverence for all eternal truth which the Bible contains has taken the place of a meaningless letter worship. The fatal and wooden Rabbinic dogma of verbal dictation--a dogma which either destroys intelligent faith altogether, or introduces into Christian conduct some of the worst delusions of false religion--is dead and buried in every capable and well-taught mind. Truths which had long been seen through the distorting mirage of false exegesis have now been set forth in their true aspect. We have been enabled, for the first time, to grasp the real character of events which, by being set in a wrong perspective, had been made so fantastic as to have no relation to ordinary lives. Figures which had become dim spectres moving through an unnatural atmosphere now stand out, full of grace, instructiveness and warning, in the clear light of day. The science of Biblical criticism has solved scores of enigmas which were once disastrously obscure, and has brought out the original beauty of some passages, which, even in our Authorised Version, conveyed no intelligible meaning to earnest readers. The Revised Version alone has corrected hundreds of inaccuracies which in some instances defaced the beauty of the sacred page, and in many others misrepresented and mistranslated it. Intolerance has been robbed of favourite shibboleths, used as the basis of cruel beliefs, which souls unhardened by system could only repudiate with a "God forbid!" Familiar error has ever been dearer to most men than unfamiliar truths; but truth, however slow may seem to be the beat of her pinions, always wins her way at last.

"Thro' the heather an' howe gaed the creepin' thing, But abune was the waft of an angel's wing."

"The pillared firmament is rottenness, And earth's base built on stubble."

"There is and will be much discussion," says Goethe, "as to the advantage or disadvantage of the popular dissemination of the Bible. To me it is clear that it will be mischievous, as it always has been, if used dogmatically and capriciously; beneficial, as it always has been, if accepted didactically and with feeling." There is abundance in the Bible for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness;--we shall weaken its moral and spiritual force, and gain nothing in its place, if we turn it into an idol adorned with impossible claims which it never makes for itself, and if we support its golden image upon the brittle clay of an exegesis which is morally, critically, and historically false.

I do not see how there can be any loss in the positive results of what is called the Higher Criticism. Certainly its suggestions must never be hastily adopted. Nor is it likely that they will be. They have to fight their way through crowds of opposing prejudices. They are first held up to ridicule as absurd; then exposed to anathema as irreligious; at last they are accepted as obviously true. The very theologians who once denounced them silently ignore or readjust what they previously preached, and hasten, first to minimise the importance, then to extol the value of the new discoveries. It is quite right that they should be keenly scrutinised. All new sciences are liable to rush into extremes. Their first discoverers are misled into error by premature generalisations born of a genuine enthusiasm. They are tempted to build elaborate superstructures on inadequate foundations. But when they have established certain irrefragable principles, can the obvious deductions from those principles be other than a pure gain? Can we be the better for traditional delusions? Can mistakes and ignorance--can anything but the ascertained fact--be desirable for man, or acceptable to God?

"Disce; sed ira cadat naso rugosaque sanna Cum veteres avias tibi de pulmone revello."

When we study the Bible it is surely one of our most primary duties to beware lest any idols of the caverns or of the forum tempt us "to offer to the God of truth the unclean sacrifice of a lie."

FOOTNOTES:

"Scriptura est sensus Scripturae."--St. Augustine.

Bacon.

The History was intended to be a continuation of the Books of Samuel. Some critics, and among them Ewald, assign them to the same author, but closer examination of the Book of Kings renders this more than doubtful. The incessant use of the prefix "King," the extreme frequency of the description "Man of God," the references to the law, and above all the constant condemnation of high places, counterbalance the minor resemblance of style, and prove a difference of authorship.

What has the Higher Criticism, as represented in historic sequence by such writers as Vatke, de Wette, Reuss, Graf, Ewald, Kuenen, Bleek, Wellhausen, Stade, Kittel, Renan, Klostermann, Cheyne, Driver, Robertson Smith, and others, to tell us about the structure and historic credibility of the Books of Kings? Has it in any way shaken their value, while it has undoubtedly added to their intelligibility and interest?

The Book of the Acts of Solomon .

The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah .

The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel .

They run normally as follows. For the Kings of Judah:--

"And in the ... year of ... King of Israel reigned ... over Judah." "And ... years he reigned in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was ... the daughter of.... And ... did that which was in the sight of the Lord."

This date of the book--which cannot but have some bearing on its historic value--is admitted by all, since the peculiarities of the language from the beginning to the end are marked by the usages of later Hebrew. The chronicler lived some two centuries later "in about the same chronological relation to David as Professor Freeman stands to William Rufus."

i. The books are composed of older materials, retouched, sometimes expanded, and set in a suitable framework, mostly by a single author who writes throughout in the same characteristic phraseology, and judges the actions and characters of the kings from the standpoint of later centuries. The annals which he consulted, and in part incorporated, were twofold--prophetic and political. The latter were probably drawn up for each reign by the official recorder , who held an important place in the courts of all the greatest kings , and whose duty it was to write the "acts" or "words" of the "days" of his sovereign .

ii. The compiler's work is partly of the nature of an epitome, and partly consists of longer narratives, of which we can sometimes trace the Northern Israelitish origin by peculiarities of form and expression.

iii. The synchronisms which he gives between the reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah are computed by himself, or by some redactor, and only in round numbers.

iv. The speeches, prayers, and prophecies introduced are perhaps based on tradition, but, since they reflect all the peculiarities of the compiler, must owe their ultimate form to him. This accounts for the fact that the earlier prophecies recorded in these books resemble the tone and style of Jeremiah, but do not resemble such ancient prophecies as those of Amos and Hoshea.

v. The numbers which he adopts are sometimes so enormous as to be grossly improbable; and in these, as in some of the dates, allowance must be made for possible errors of tradition and transcription.

vii. It must not be imagined that the late compilation of the book, or its subsequent recensions, or the dogmatic colouring which it may have insensibly derived from the religious systems and organisations of days subsequent to the Exile, have in the least affected the main historic veracity of the kingly annals. They may have influenced the omissions and the moral estimates, but the events themselves are in every case confirmed when we are able to compare them with any records and monuments of Phoenicia, Moab, Egypt, Assyria, or Babylon. The discovery and deciphering of the Moabite stone, and of the painted vaunts of Shishak at Karnak, and of the cuneiform inscriptions, confirm in every case the general truth, in some cases the minute details, of the sacred historian. In so passing an allusion as that in 2 Kings iii. 16, 17 the accuracy of the narrative is confirmed by the fact that the method of obtaining water is that which is to this day employed in the Wady el-Hasa at the southern end of the Dead Sea.

viii. The Book of Kings consists, according to Stade, of, 1 Kings i., ii., the close of a history of David, in continuation of 1 and 2 Samuel. The continuity of the Scriptures is marked in an interesting way by the word "and," with which so many of the books begin. The Jews, devout believers in the work of a Divine Providence, saw no discontinuities in the course of national events.

Two positions are maintained as regards the text, and as regards the chronology.

All Hebrew manuscripts, as is well known, are of comparatively recent date, owing to the strict rule of the Jewish Schools that any manuscript which had in the slightest degree suffered from time or use was to be instantly destroyed. The oldest Hebrew manuscript is supposed to be the Codex Babylonicus at St. Petersburg , unless one recently discovered by Dr. Ginsburg in the British Museum be older. Most Hebrew manuscripts are later than the twelfth century.

The variations in the Samaritan Pentateuch, and in the Septuagint version--the latter of which are often specially valuable as indications of the original text--furnish abundant proof that no miracle has been wrought to preserve the text of Scripture from the changes and corruptions which always arise in the course of constant transcriptions.

Rehoboam, Abijah 20 years. Asa 41 " Jehoshaphat, Jehoram} 40 " Ahaziah, Athaliah } Joash 40 " Amaziah, Uzziah 81 " Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah 38 "

After the Fall of Samaria we have:--

Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amon 80 "

and it can hardly be a mere accident that in these lists the number 40 is only modified by slight necessary details.

It is possible that the synchronistic data did not proceed from the compiler of the Book of Kings, but were added by the last redactor.

Are these critical conclusions so formidable? Are they fraught with disastrous consequences? Which is really dangerous--truth laboriously sought for, or error accepted with unreasoning blindness and maintained with invincible prejudice?

FOOTNOTES:

Difference of sources is marked by the different designations of the months, which are called sometimes by their numbers, as in the Priestly Codex , sometimes by the old Hebrew names Zif , Ethanim , and Bul .

Comp. 2 Kings viii. 25 with ix. 29.

See 2 Kings xv. 30 and 33, viii. 25 and ix. 29.

As, perhaps, the clause "In the thirty and first year of Asa king of Judah" in 1 Kings xvi. 23; and the much more serious "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt," which are omitted by Origen , and create many difficulties. The only narratives which critics have suggested as possible interpolations, from the occurrence of unusual grammatical forms, are 2 Kings viii. 1-6 and iv. 1-37 ; but these forms are perhaps northern provincialisms.

See Keil, pp. 9, 10.

He was not the author of the Book of Samuel, for the standpoint and style are quite different. In the First and Second Books of Samuel the high places are never condemned, as they are incessantly in Kings .

Baba Bathra, 15 a.

Even then he would have been ninety years old.

Driver, p. 189. Comp. Professor Robertson Smith: "The most notable feature in the extant redactions of the book is the strong interest shown in the Deuteronomic law of Moses, and especially in the centralisation of worship in the Temple on Zion, as pre-supposed in Deuteronomy and enforced by Josiah. This interest did not exist in ancient Israel, and is quite foreign to the older memories incorporated in the book."

Driver, p. 192.

Even the First Book of Maccabees begins with ??? ???????.

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