THE SPEAKER'S COMMENTARY.*
Tax appearance of this long-expected book has been followed by the disappointment which was, indeed, inevitable when so much was expected and so little was possible. A "Commentary upon the Sacred Books in which the latest information might be made accessible to men of ordinary culture" was the modest object which the late Speaker of the House of Commons was seeking to attain when he consulted the Archbishop of York ; but the public has been expecting a work of larger scope and more ambitious aim,—for something of a settlement, to put the matter shortly, of the critical and ethical controversies which have been raging with a constantly increasing fierceness in the field of Biblical know- ledge. That orthodoxy had a sufficient answer to all the objec- tions, of the " destructives " was a belief cherished by none but those who were ignorant of all, the conditions of the controversy, or whom partisanship blinded more effectually than ignorance. That "Bishops and other clergy of the Anglican Church" should be able to put their names to explana- tions and concessions which would have satisfied opponents who differ from them toto ccelo in their views of the subject-matter con- cerned was equally out of the question ; nor can we fairly complain if we do not find an eirenicon for differences manifestly irrecon- cilable, or a meeting-point for hopelessly divergent lines of thought. It may safely be affirmed that no conceivable ingenuity could have settled the questions involved, and that no possible amount of concession could have satisfied the demands of hostile critics. It only remains to ask, have the commentators whom the Archbishop of York has summoned to his aid, and of whose labours Canon Cook now edits the first instalment, done their utmost to give moderate thinkers a safe and tenable ground to occupy? Have they come to their work with no prepossessions? Have they suffered no bias to appear in their conclusions? Are their explanations, on the whole, such as a man "of ordinary culture," who, to use plain language, believes in his Bible, but who is bound to no views, who wants to let the "latest information" have all the weight it deserves, and hates above all things anything like the straining of words, can accept? This is the point of view from • The Holy Bible according to the Authorised Version 64.). 1611), with an Explanatory and Critical Commentary, and a Revision of tho Translation. Edited by F. C. Cook, ILA., Canon of Exeter. Vol. L, Parts 1-2. The Pentateuch. London: John Murray. 1871.
which we regard the book. As a work of learning, we do not pretend to criticise it. In this repect, though it has probably lost something from the premature death of two of its most able—we speak of the first volume—contributors, it must be considered to take high rank. But we doubt whether, in the aspect in which we regard it, it can be considered equally satisfactory. Doubtless, the task set before the contributors and the editor is one of exceeding diffi- culty. Though a very great latitude of criticism is allowed within the borders of the Anglican Church, it was hardly possible for writers so circumstanced to use all the freedom that could be desired. But we might have had, and we had a right to expect, a scrupulous candour, a frank acknowledgment of difficulties, and an unbending determination to proffer no explana- tions which are not acceptable to an ordinary unprejudiced mind.. Now we will take as an example the passage in which the com- mentator—in this case the editor himself—deals with the question of the Deluge. To his acceptance of the theory that it was partial, confined in fact to such a portion of the earth as we may reason- ably suppose to have been at that time inhabited by man, we have, perhaps, no right to object. Our own impression is that the
writer of the book of Genesis believed it to have been universal. "All the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered," is a strong expression,—it would be difficult to find a stronger. We should hardly suppose that a writer intending to convey the impression that the Deluge was partial—and if he knew it he would of course so intend—would have used words so likely, nay, so certain to mislead. Still there are considerations on the other side. "The whole earth" may be a rhetorical expression, meaning something very different in the freedom of Oriental language from what it would in the more exact idiom of the West. And there is certainly a image of the phrase "whole earth" as about equivalent to the orbis not us. Let this, then, pass. But what do we find when we come to the words that follow immediately those already quoted? "All 'the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. Fifteen cubits upwards did the waters prevail ; and the mountains were covered." Would anyone, not driven by some
supposed necessity, interpret this to mean that the total depth of the Deluge was "from twenty-five to twenty-eight feet ; a depth apparently above the neighbouring mountains, perhaps depressed by convulsions, or otherwise"? These are the words of the foot- note. That we may not do Canon Cook any injustice, we will quote what he says on the same subject in the large note which follows chapter viii. The writer starts the theory, in itself in- genious and plausible enough, and certainly suiting some cha- racteristics in the style of the narrative, but not at all helpful in the explanation of difficulties, that the narrative which the writer of Genesis gives us was the work of an eye-witness :—
" He describes the building and the proportions of the ark. Ho narrates the forty days of rain and the swelling of the rivers and the ocean, in the words which most forcibly describe that great catastrophe. He then describes how the waters prevailed, till the ark was raised up and floated over them. At length, not only did the ark float, but the highest hills disappeared ; nothing was visible under the whole vault of heaven, but sea and air. The very words are, 'All the high hills under the whole heaven were covered? Where the ark was at this time, cr where Noah and his family had been dwelling before, we cannot tell. The country may have been mountainous, and so, in order to hide the hills from view, the water must have been very deep ; or it may have been a plain country, as many think, the region round about Babylon, with few hills in sight, and those not of great altitude, in which 011,861 but a moderate depth of water would have sufficed to cover all the highest hills under the whole canopy of heaven. The inhabitants of the ark probably tried the depth of the Deluge by a plumb-line, an invention surely not unknown to those who had acquired the arts of working in brass and iron, and they found a depth of fifteen cubits."
Now it is obvious to remark on this that if we accept the first supposition, to which the annotator is evidently disinclined, that the scene of the Deluge was a mountainous country, we are in as great a difficulty as ever. A deluge that covered really high hills," that was twelve thousand feet deep, for instance, would be about equally inexplicable, whether we suppose it to have been partial or universal. But is it possible even seriously to argue the second hypothesis ? Did any one, though he dwelt on the very flattest plain that there is, ever talk of mounds that twenty-five feet of water could cover as "high hills "? And how gratuitous the supposition that the mountains were "perhaps depressed by con- vulsions"! And bow are we to account for the destruction of the whole human race by so very moderate a catastrophe ? Compared with many historical inundations, the Deluge shrinks to a very common-place affair. Does not Canon Cook see that this explanation is inconsistent with his own argument—in itself drawn out with much ability and power of reasouing—as to the universality of the Deluge tradition ? To account for such a tradition, we must suppose a calamity of unparalleled magnitude;
and this is precisely the quality which the Noachian Deluge seems to lose by his explanation.
For our own part, we are firmly convinced that there is nothing for it in this case—and it is a sample of cases constantly occur- ring throughout the Bible—but frankly to say, "The narrative does not admit of historical explanation." That there was a great catastrophe of this kind that swept away the human race, and that it was the work of Divine wrath against a race become hopelessly corrupt, we may be able to believe, but that the writer of the Book of Genesis described it, as Thucydides, for instance, describes the siege of Plat.Ta, we think an utterly untenable position.
We might repeat, did our limits permit, the same criticism again and again, as we find the commentary dealing with disputed points. We willingly acknowledge that on occasion it is frank and liberal enough. Elsewhere it is even unaccountably narrow. We should have thought, for instance, that the words in Gen. xxxvi, 31, "These are the Kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there reigned any King over the children of Israel, "showed undoubted signs of a later hand. Nor can we imagine that anyone, oven though cherishing the conviction that the whole Pentateuch is the work of Moses, would be disturbed by having to make such an admission. Such glosses, it is well known, do creep in without at all weakening our belief in the general authenticity of the books in which they are found. It is positively astonishing to find the editor making such a demand on our faith as is implied in the comment that "it was not unnatural that, when recording the eight Kings who had reigned in the family of Esau up to his own time, he [Moses] should have noted that as yet no King had risen from the family of his brother Jacob, to whom a kingly progeny had been promised." Surely we have not here the &gnus vindiee nodes. How can we suppose that in the midst of a precise genea- logy the writer suddenly breaks into what is nothing more or less than a prophecy ?
It is a great relief to get away from these controverted points, where we are perpetually haunted by an uneasy sense of the writer's being in an attitude of defence, to themore serene regions where we may enjoy the genuine erudition which the commentators undoubtedly display. The notes on Egyptian history and on the Egyptian words of the Pentateuch, and the general annotation on the details of the Mosaic law and ritual, may be instanced as examples. Might we suggest a doubt whether the size of the book will not overpower "the general reader," for whom it is said to be intended. It pleases the editor to speak of two volumes, both amounting to nearly a thousand pages, as "Volume I." "The Historical and Poetical Works" are promised for this year in "two volumes," where " two " probably means four. There will still remain the Prophets and the New Testament. We do not see the difference between the twenty volumes of the lengthy Commentaries which this is intended to supersede, and the ten double volumes to which this will probably reach.
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