Early Hebrew Story : its Historical Background. By John P.
Peters, D.D. (Williams and Norgate. 5s.)—In this book, the seventh volume of the "Crown Theological Library," we traverse a part of the ground which we have gone over in the volume noticed above. Dr. Peters is not by any means a destructive critic, as critics are reckoned nowadays. In the history of David, for instance, he sees "all the evidences of the narrative of eyewitnesses, of a generation close to the events which are described." One might object to the statement that follows, that "in proportion as you go backward from that period legendary and mythical features appear in ever increasing quantity." In the "Isaac Story," for instance, there is nothing "legendary and mythical," nothing, at least, "marvellous and supernatural," though it may be allowed that the details of the " Blessing " scene are somewhat improbable ; a story, however, may be improbable without being marvellous. Dr. Peters has much to say that will shock the conservative interpreters. Thus his chapter on "The Formation of Israel" supposes the inter- mixture of large non-Hebrew elements in the people. It is an ingenious attempt to draw ethnological conclusions from the Palestinian geography. In this matter, as in others, Dr. Peters's personal experiences of travel in the country have been instructive to him. He sees, for instance, in the mention of Simeon and Levi in Genesis xlix. 5-7 a reference to an attempt to secure a settlement in the land of Canaan, "an attempt so conducted as to result in catastrophe to these tribes, which were, in con- sequence, scattered in Israel and practically blotted out of existence." This sounds to us a little far-fetched. Simeon, it is true, disappears ; but it is difficult to say that Levi was "practically blotted out of existence." Yet it is ingeniously supported by a geographical detail, that in the survey of Palestine, which can be seen as a whole from Mount Osha in Gilead, the road by Shechem seems the easiest way for an invader from the East to enter the country. The savagery of Simeon and Levi thus becomes the mythical setting of an historical fact, an ill-judged invasion of the country, conducted, it may be, with great barbarity, by two of the Hebrew clans. This kind of
"Take the Babylonian myth of creation. Read of the strange figures of monsters and gods who succeeded one another in Leon after non; of the struggle of god with god, of the weakness and the immoralities of those gods. Read of the caprices of the gods which bring about the Flood. Behold the picture of the gods huddled together, shuddering in terror because of the destruction which is wrought. See the powerlessness of the gods in the presence of nature and of fate. Hear how the gods sensuously and greedily clustered around the sacrifice like flies about sweetmeats. Then read the Hebrew story, even in the anthropomorphic repre- sentation of the earliest Hebrew narrative, where Yahaweh walks among men and counsels with them as a man. He and He only is the author of all things. His judgments are not the judgments of caprice, but moral judgments based on a conception of justice and right. Man's relations with Him are not merely those relations of terror which man must have with any being whose nature and character is alien to him and unfathomable by him. God made man in His image. Man can understand, man can come to God; and God's dealings with man are reasonable and intelligible to man. Go on upward from this into the higher and more spiritual, if less poetic and picturesque cosmogony of the Priest Code, with its picture of the all-power of God alone, who need not put forth His hand, whose breath, whose word create, from whom alone are all things. He transcends the universe, and transcends so far tho thought of man himself that he can form no picture of His likeness. Or take the Hebrew story of the Flood, whose cause is the wickedness of man, which God would punish, with its moral lesson of the relation of God to man and man to God, and that for all sin and evil that is wrought God will bring calamity and destruction, who is yet not unwilling to remember the good that is done, if it be but by one individual, whom He will surely recompense for his righteousness."
We ought never to forget the immeasurable superiority of the Hebrew story to all its Semitic parallels or origins.
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