BUSHEL

ably be sought

in

the clear dry air of the desert or of

lofty mountains.’ W e need not rationalise and suppose

a

bush of the

overgrown with the

acacia, which has

an

abundance of fire-red blossoms

(so the botanist traveller Kotschy. in Furrer’s art.

Cp further Baudissin,

Stud.

2 223 Jacob,

BUSHEL

a measure

of capacity

Mt.515

See WEIGHTS

A N D

M

EASURES

.

BUTLER

Gen.

40

cp C

UPBEARER

,

and see M

EALS

,

BUTTER

Gen.

BUZ

I

.

Second

son

of Nahor, Gen.2221

[A]

[L]).

As

Buz is

mentioned in connec-

tion with Dedan and Tema in Jer.

(Pws

it must have been an Arabian

people.

Buz and H

A Z O

are connected by Del.

( P a r .

Riehm’s

124) with the

and

of the annals of Esarhaddon (Budge,

Hist.

59-61,

two districts not to be

exactly identified, but evidently in close proximity to N.
Arabia.

Esarhaddon’s description of the land

of

is not an inviting one it was a desolate, snake-haunted

M . ,

I ;

G.

B.

2.

See M

ILK

.

GADES

region.

Probably

should be vocalised

to

accord with

and the vowels

and

in the Gk.

forms (cp

der

116).

A

Gadite

[A

see

I

]),

I

Ch.

5

probably

a gentilic see

father of

the prophet

E

ZEKIEL

I

) ,

1 3

o

o

Boyzi

THC

gentilic noun from Buz

applied to E

LIHU

, the

fourth speaker in the poem of Job

who

is

also said to have been ‘of the family of Ram.’ From
the fact that

is

the name of a Judahite

to

which Boaz and David are said to have belonged (Ruth

and that

an Elihu appears in

I

as

‘one of the brethren of David,’ Derenbourg

conjectures that Buzite should rather be

Bozite

Boazite

T o complete this theory Elihu ought,

it would seem, to be David‘s brother.

Unfortunately

Elihu’ in

I

Ch.

is most probably corrupt, and,

even if not, ‘brethren’ is

a

vague and uncertain term

(see E

LIHU

,

Moreover, dramatic propriety naturally

suggested the description of Elihu as an

Arab.

R

AM

2 )

is

probably a fictitious name, like Elihu

and Barachel.

T.

C.

CAB, RV

Kab

[BAL]),

K.

a

dry measure, one-sixth

of a seah (see

W

EIGHTS

A

N

D

M

EASURES

).

So at least Jewish authorities (see

torf,

but in this

cab

is prob-

ably

a

scribe’s error for

(‘cor’).

See D

OVE

’

S

H

USKS

.

CABBON

un-

identified city in the lowland

of Judah,

between Eglon and Lahmas (Josh.

I t is

pos-

sibly the same

as

the M

ACHBENA

-AV M

ACHBENAH

mentioned among the Calebite towns enumerated in

I

Ch.

and

may

perhaps be represented by the

present

lying between Kh.

and

Kb. el-Lahm, sites that have been proposed for Eglon

and

Lahmas.

CABINS

Jer.

A V ; RV C

ELLS

[A],

[L]),

a

town in the territory of Asher (Josh.

the

(variants

mentioned by Josephus

(

43, 44, 45)

as

a village

on

the confines

of

40 stadia from

(modern

may safely be identified with

236 ft. above sea-level,

9

m.

SE. from

I t is probably the

(but other codd.

read

which Josephus

gives

as.

on

the sea coast of Tyre and forming the

E.

frontier

of

Lower Galilee.

The name was current at the time of

the Crusaders

as

or

a

fief presented

in

1186

to Count Joscelin by King Baldwin IV., and

it gave its name

to

a family (Rey,

en

I n

I

9

it

is

told how Solomon, on the com-

pletion

of his buildings in Jerusalem to which Hiram

contributed, gave to the latter twenty cities in the land
of Galilee,’ but Hiram was dissatisfied with them and

‘they were called the land of Cabul unto this day‘

(Heb.

for

Jos.

viii. 53,

described

as

bordering on Tyre

a

piece

of

land in Galilee

For the state-

ment

of

Josephus that in Phcenician the name means

‘

unpleasing’

there is

no

evidence. Yet

the true explanation ought not

to be far away.

If

we

could recover it we should see that the

popular wit was

not

so

poor as

Hiller, Ewald, and Thenius supposed

‘ a s

nought’).

Cheyne

would correct ‘land of Cabul’ into ‘land of

Zebulun’

may have been written

and when

the mark of abbreviation had been lost, some learned
scribe may have corrected

into

The witticism

would be like

that which explained

as ‘lord

of dung,’ and ’Izebel as ‘what dung’ (see

it would be

a new popular etymology

of

T h e twenty cities,’

on this hypothesis, were

in the lower part of

which, in the time of

Josephus, and probably also when

I

K.

was

edited, extended as far as

or Cabul.

Of

course the writer does not mean to say that the name

was now given for the first time he only offers

a new justification for the name.

For

a

less probable

view

corrupted from

cp

‘

’),

see

Klostermann.

(Cp

also

Bottg.,

Lex.

Chalabon.’) By its own evidence

unto

this day

the story,

in its present form, is by no means

contemporary with the events with which

it deals.

The Chronicler, whose views would not allow him to record

the cession

of a

of

the Holy Land to the Gentile,

so

alters

the story

as

to make it appear that it was Hiram who ‘gave the

cities to Solomon’!

The AV translators have

attempted to reconcile this with the story

in

Kings

by

rendering

gave restored (RV ‘had given

’).

CADDIS, RV

[AV],

sur-

name of

(

I

Macc. 22).

See M

ACCABEES

,

i.

I

3.

CADES, RV

I

Macc.

6 3 ) .

See K

EDESH

,

3.

A

scholiast (Field‘s Hex.,

interprets

616

CADES-BARNE

Czesarea

caput est,' says

(Hist.

It was thoroughly Roman the Talmud

(B.

calls it daughter

o f

Edom, the mystic name for Rome.

T h e

Procurator lived there there

was

a n Italian garrison

Acts

c p C

ORNELIUS

,

I

)

and in the temple

here were two statues-of Augustus and of

there were many Jews (Jos.

Ant.

xx. 879,

the inhabitants were mainly

Here, then, very fitly, was poured out

upon

the

the gift of the Holy Ghost

There

CADES-BARNE

(

Judith514

[A]),

I

[Ti.

WH])

is used in the

N T

as a

title

of

and

T h e latter emperor is, moreover, the

of Mt.

Mk.

Lk.

(cp

and Jn.

Czesar is named in Acts1128 (AV, but

RV

om.

with Ti.

WH),

and is alluded to

in

T h e

of Paul

2 6 3 2

2724

is

Nero, whose household

is

mentioned in Phil. 4

T h e reference here is hardly

t o members of his family, but,

as

in the case of

Stephanas in

I

Cor.

to the

or household

slaves.

See further A

POCALYPSE

,

I

SRAEL

,

AV

RV K

ADESH

-B

ARNEA

.

R V K

ADMIEL

.

CZSAREA.

I

.

Czesarea

[Ti.

in Talm.

mod. Arab.

the only real port south

of

Carmel, was built by Herod the Great

(on

the name, see

3)

in time for it to become

the capital of the Roman province of Judzea, and

to

play the great part

in

the passage

of

Christianity west-

ward from Palestine which is described in Acts.

T h e

site was that of

a

Phcenician (cp Jos.

Ant.

xiii.

settlement with

a

fortification called the Tower

of

Straton

Hellenic form of

a

Phoenician proper name, Astartyaton (Pietschmann,

der

81

Hildesheimer,

where the variant reading

or

Devil's-Tower,' given in Talmud B

vi.

and in Talmud B

is

explained a s

a

Jewish

nickname for

a

town called after

a worshipper of

Astarte).

There was, according to Strabo,

a

landing-

place

At the end of the second

century

B

.c., the town was under

a

'tyrant,'

(Jos.

Ant.

xiii.

122);

but Alexander

took it for

the Jews, along with the other coast towns
These were enfranchised by Pompey and made subject

to the province of Syria

(id.

xiv. 44). After the Battle

of Actium they were presented t o Herod the Great
along

and other places by Augustus (id.

xv.

7

3).

Up

this time Herod

had

confined his building designs to the

E.

side of the Central Range.

Now,

how-

ever, in

with Rome, he came over the watershed,

and out of Samaria built himself

a

capital which he

called after his patron,

Requiring for this

a

seaport that should keep him in touch with Rome, he
chose Straton's Tower

as

the nearest suitable site

H e laid the lines

of a magnificent city, which

took him twelve years to build

(id.

xv.

years,'

xvi.

5

I

).

Josephus describes the thorough and lavish. archi-

tecture.

I n

usual Greek fashion there

were

palaces temple;

theatre, amphitheatre,

and

and

altars. There

were

also

vaults

for

draining the city-as carefully constructed

as

the

buildings above ground. A breakwater

ft.

wide

was formed

in

fathoms depth by dropping enormous stones. The

end

was

connected by

a

mole with the shore, and the mouth

the harbour looked

N., the

prevailing winds

on

this

coast

being

from the SW.

B'i.215-8).

the

remains

the breakwater

are

yards

from shore and the mouth

of

harbour

measures

180

yards

(PEP

Herod called his citv, like

after

Augustus,

and his harbour

When

Philippi was built (see below,

E),

sea

Names.

port came

to

be distinguished from it by the

names

and

ever

K.

a

coin

of

Nero,

Saulcy

la

and Caesarea

The

name

of Straton survived long

(Jos.

Ant.

xvii.

4,

xv., Epiphanius

De

et mens.

v.

Talmud

the city

after

the harbour, Leminah.

Czesarea became the virtual capital

of

all Palestine.

had been

a Christian congregation from

the earliest possible time.

Philip, one of

the seven Deacons, took up his residence

there

c p

About

there

t o

a Roman centurion C

ORNELIUS

a divine

message to send to Joppa for Peter, who was prepared for
this by

a vision which taught him that God would make

clean

all that the Jewish law had hitherto prohibited as

unclean.

Peter came to

made the profound

and decisive acknowledgment that God accepts in every
nation him 'that feareth him and

righteous-

ness,' preached Jesus, saw the descent

of the Spirit

upon

the little Gentile company, and baptized them

This proved the turning-point in the opinion

of

the church

at

Jerusalem (chap.

and prepared the

way for the acceptance of the missionary labours

of

Paul, to which from this stage onwards the Book of
Acts is devoted.

is

next mentioned

as

the scene

o f

the awful

death of Herod Agrippa

I.

to whose government

it

had

been given over: some of its coins bear his

superscription (Madden,

Jews,

136).

After him it passed again

to the Roman procurator

of

and became the chief garrison

of

the troops

under him.

Paul arrived a t

on.

his voyage

from Ephesus

and there h e was tried with

a

fairness and security that were impossible in Jeru-

salem (chap. 25). T h e contrast between the two cities,
which is

so evident in this story, proves how thoroughly

Roman and imperial

was.

Besides receiving

so

fair

a trial, Paul, during his two years of residence

in the town, was not threatened by the Jews,

as

he had

been in Jerusalem.

From the harbour of

Paul

sailed

on

his voyage to Italy

I

) .

The subsequent history of the town in

soon

told. Contests

between its Jewish and Gentile inhabitants led

to,

and were

among the

first

incidents

of,

the

great

revolt of

6.

the Jews

against Rome

A

.D.

XX.

8 7 9 ;

13 1 4

'18

8

7).

Vespasian

made the town his

and

was

t h e r e

proclaimed

emperor

69. He established there

a

colony, hut

without the 'jus

the title Prima

Flavin

Augusta

Caesarea

to

which, under Alexander

was

added Metro-

polis

(Pliny,

:

and coins

in De Saulcy,

de la

T.S.

pl.

This deter-

mined the rank

of

Csesarea in the subsequent organisation

of

the Church. Its bishop became the Metropolitan

of

Sjria

:

Eusebius occupied

t h e

office from

to

318.

had made

it his home.

When the

came

it

was

still the headquarters of the commander of the imperial

troops

;

in

638

it

was

occupied

'Ahu

Like all the

coast towns, it lost under Arab domination the supremacy which

the Greek

masters of

in their necessity

for a

centre of

power

on the

sea,

had bestowed

upon

it.

It

became

a

country

town, known

only

for its agricultural

Strange,

Pal.

advent of

a

western

with

the Crusaders revived

it

for a little

;

Baldwin

took

it

and rebuilt

it

;

present

are mostly

of Crusaders'

masonry.

took it in

Richard I. in

;

and

Louis added to its fortifications. It was

demolished hy

t h e

Sultan

in

and since

his time

lain in ruin.

(See further on details

Pal.

Schiirer, Hist.

4

; GASm. HG

Procopius was born there.

Philippi

H

both in N T [Ti.

WH]

and Jos.),

so called after its

founder,

P

HILIP

(see H

ERODIAN

F

AMILY

,

6 ) the tetrarch,

son of Herod,

to

whom

the district was granted in

4

B

.c.,

pied

a

site which had been

of the utmost religious

ad

38,

mentions the

618

CAGE

CAIN

a n d

. importance from remote antiquity.

Just

under the

buttress of Hermon, a t the head of the

Jordan valley, about

1150

ft. above the sea, is

a high

cliff of limestone ( ' f r o m

to

150

ft.,' Robinson,

406) reddened by the water, infused with iron,

that oozes over it from above.

A cavern occupies

the lower part

of

the cliff, filled with the debris of its

upper portion, and from this debris there breaks one of
the sources

of the Jordan.

I t is probably the sanctuary

known as B

AAL

-

GAD

TJ

.

)

or Baal-hernion.

Close

by is

a

steep hill, crowned with the ruins of

a

mediaeval

castle,

and a t its foot the miserable

village of

Probably here (GASm.

rather than a t Tell

the site favoured

by

most

authorities, lay the city of Laish that was afterwards

D

AN

T h e place must have been early occupied

by

the

Greeks. both because

of its sanctitv. and because of its

strategical position.

Polybius

(16

18

281)

mentions it

as

the scene of the

great battle in which Antiochus the

Great won Palestine from the Ptolemies.

The Greeks

displaced the worship of

by that of Pan.

The cave, in which there is still legible an inscription,

was called

(Jos.

xv. 10

3,

21 3

10

a name afterwards extended

to

the whole hill

N E 7

17).

The village and the country around were

designated by a feminine form of the same adjective,

or

Ant.

xviii. 2

I

xv.

10

xvii.

8

I

,

etc. Pliny, v.

1874).

I n

Herod, having received the district from

Augustus on the death of

the previous lord

of

these parts

1 0 3

built

a

temple to

Augustus and set in it the emperor's bust.

T h e first

year that it came into his possession,

3-2

Philip

the Tetrarch founded his new town, and called it
Caesarea after Augustus

xviii.

2

I

ii.

9

I

coins

in De Saulcy,

de

xviii.).

So

it came to he known

as Philip's Caesarea

xx.

or as

Caesarea

(see the coins). When Philip

died the Romans administered the district directly, both
before Agrippa

I.

to whom it was given, and in the

interval between him and Agrippa

who embellished

it and changed the official designation to

in

honour of Nero

xx.

9 4 ) .

T h e town's full title was

Sacred and with Rights of Sanctuary

under

(De Saulcy,

xviii.

8).

Later the

name Caesarea was dropped a n d Paneas survived, the
Arabs when they came changing it to its present form
of

A shrine of El-Khidr

(

George)

now occupies the site of the temple t o Augustus.

Caesarea Philippi is twice mentioned in the Gospels.

is said to have come

not

to

the town itself. but

to

the parts

Mt.

or villages

thereof

8 2 7 ) .

Probably he avoided

it

as

h e avoided other Gentile centres

Tiberias) established by the Herods, hut in the

great saying which h e is said to have uttered in this

Thou a r t Peter and

on

this rock will

I

build my church,' it is possible to see some reference

by contrast to the heathen worship founded

upon

that

cliff

of

immemorial sanctity above the source

of

In the Jewish war Ves

his troops

(Jos.

9 7)

and in

of the close

of

the war Titus

and Agrippa If. exhibited shows on

a

large scale

2

I

)

.

Christian times

Philippi was the seat of a bishop and

Eusebius

( H E

6

I

S) relates that the woman whom Christ healed

of an issue of blood (Lk.

8 43)

was

a

native of the town, where

a

statue commemorated her cure. Castle and town were the sub.

ject of frequent contests hy both sides

the Crusades.

For further details see

Paneas

; Stanley,

'

CAGE.

Cages

(or

rather wicker-baskets, c p Am.

for confining birds in are mentioned twice in EV

(see

F

O

WLS

,

I

O

) :

(

I

)

in

Jer.527 the houses

of

the

wicked are

as

full of (the grains of) deceit

as

a cage

'coop,'

[BKAQ]) is full

birds and

in Ecclus.

11

30

the heart of

a

proud man

Once corruptly B

AAL

-

HAMON

G.

A.

a

decoy partridge in

a

cage

(or

basket

:

[BSA],

cp

Ar.

a fruit-basket).

A

age

for lions also is mentioned in Ezek.

RV

see

L

ION

).

rendered 'hold' and 'cage' in

(RV

denotes rather

a

prison

(so

Mt.

Lk.

Jn.

or perhaps

See

AND

C

AIAPHAS

.

[A],

a

town in

he hill country of Judah (Josh.

may possibly be

he mod.

3 m.

SE.

from Hcbron

but see GASm.

278).

6.

CAIN

;

Gen.

4

we

accounts of two different

linked together by

.he editor.

T h e proof of this will be briefly indicated

2-4)

it will be convenient to treat first the

more ancient and simpler of the two stories.

I

.

Cain is the name of the hero who in Gen.

is

represented

as the founder of the city

of

T h e name evi-

dently comes from a n early, though

not

a genuine Hebrew, tradition

another

document

(5

gives it

as

C

AINAN

Its

natural

meanings are smith,'

artificer'

(Ar.

Aram.

; for the connection with

to produce

(also to acquire

'),

suggested in Gen.

is philologi-

cally

difficult.

T h e more general sense artificer suits

best for Cain the city-builder, and the more special one

'smith' for the second part of the compound name

Tubal-cain.

Both these names

are

attached

to heroes

who a t the outset of the tradition must have possessed
a divine character (see

I

O

).

.

T h e central figure of the narrative in Gen.

4

C p A

MALEK

,

is called Cain.

The story has come

to

U

S

in

a

somewhat

abbreviated form.

Its

substance is as

Once upon a time Cain and his

brother Abel sacrificed to YahwS.

Cain, being a husband-

man brought of the fruits of the ground

;

Abel, as

a

shepherd,

the fat parts of some of his first-born lambs (cp Nu.

18

Both

as was

usual in ancient religion, looked for a visible sign

that

gifts were accepted. What the expected sign was at

the sanctuary to which they resorted, we are not told

and we may pass over later conjectures. At

any rate, we learn that only

sacrifice was accepted (see

Now Cain, had be been wise, would have demeaned

himself humbly towards

for who can say

to

God What

doest thou? (Job

of this, he

evil

as

oracle erhaps

by Cain, warned him.

'And Yahwi: said

to

Why art thou wroth? and why is

thy countenance fallen? Surely, if thou doest well, thou

lift up thy head, and if thou doest not well, thy sin must cause

it to

fall

:

from irritating words abstain, and thou take heed

to

thyself? And Cain quarrelled with his hrother Abel, and when

they were in the open country

. .

.

;

and Cain assaulted his

hrother Abel, and slew him. Then follows

a

fresh oracle,

containing

a

curse upon Cain, who is condemned, not only

to

banishment (cp

but

also

to

a life of restless

wandering. The curse,

is mitigated by the promise of

against outrage, hy means of

a

which will

indicate that Cain is under the care of

follows.

According to the older commentators, with whom

See however col.

623

note

3.

Del.

etymology by the very doubtful

commonly rendered 'his spear'

(so

where a better reading is

'his helmet' (Kau.

Bu.,

H.

P. Smith, after

Eve exclaims,

I ,

have wrought,

produced,

a

man with the help

This can hardly

be right ;

is

too

vague, and the variations of the comment-

ators prove their dissatisfaction with the text. On Marti'sview
see col.

n.

Considering that

is

one of the words

'

to

(see C

REATION

may assume

Eve,

pride of her motherhood,

to

her God, and

' I

have created a man even

as

Targ. Onk. reads

for

probably comes from

fell out, and

was confounded with

(cp Judg.

4

Che.

July

cp Box,

June

and Ball

This is nearer the

6 2 0

CAIN

CAINITES

even Delitzsch must be’grouped, this

is

the same Cain

as the builder of the first city, and he

is

also the first-born son of the first man.
This view is critically untenable

C

AINITES

,

2),

mainly on account of the improbab

of the course of events which it assumes.

The first man

been, as we know, driven

of

Paradise

for transgressing adivine command. According

to

the traditional

view, however,

his

first-born son Cain is

so

little

by

the punishment that he murders his own brother.

than

this, he becomes the direct ancestor of another murderer, who

apparently goes unpunished, and who is also (contrary

to

the

spirit of

a polygamist. Now

note

another point. The

original dwelling

of

Cain is not, as we are to suppose was that

of the first man and his wife after their expulsion from Paradise,

to the east of the garden of Eden

(see

in

a

cultivated

and well-peopled land where

is worshipped with

fices, and holds familiar intercourse with men (even with Cain)

-apparently

Palestine

(on

416 see later). Nor is there any

curse upon the ground which Cain rills

;

it is his own self-caused

that drives him unwillingly into the land of

into the desert. There, however without any explanation,

he gives up his unsettled life, and

further in civilisation

than before. He builds

a

‘city.’ This is not

to

be explained

by the ingenious remark1 that even nomad tribes

in

have central market stations (Ar.

lur.

for ‘city

is

evidently used as a general

is

a

city-

builder as Nimrod, and only as such

(or,

upon Budde’s theory

the father of

a

city-builder) could he find

a

place in

Hebrew legend of civilisation. How are these inconsistent

statements

to

be reconciled? Every possible way has been

tried and has failed. It was high time to apply the key

of

analysis; and no one who has once done this will wish to

to past theories (see

I t may be assumed, then, that the story of Cain and

Abel once had an independent existence, and circulated

at one of the sanctuaries of Southern
Palestine.

I t is probably not

a

borrowed

Canaanitish myth,

an independent

Israelitish attempt to explain the strange phenomena

of

nomad life-the perpetual wandering in the desert and
the cruelly excessive development of the custom (in itself

a

perfectly legitimate one, according to the Israelites)

of

vengeance for bloodshed.

As

Robertson Smith (follow-

ing Wellhausen) rightlyremarks, Cain is the embodiment
of ’ t h e old Hebrew conception of the lawless nomad
life, where only the blood-feud prevents the wanderer in
the desert from falling

a

victim

to the first

man

who

meets him,‘ and the mark which

sets

on

Cain’s

person for his protection is

‘

the

or tribal mark (cp

without which the ancient form of blood-feud,

as

the affair

of

a whole stock, however scattered, and not

of near relatives alone, could hardly have been

(cp K

INSHIP

,

and C

UTTINGS

,

I

).

Now we can guess why the nomad of the story is called

Cain .is the eponym of the Kenites

6.

Source

(who are in fact called

but cp

6

whose close alliance with -the

Israelites and location in

the

wilderness of Judah are

well known.

That the Kenites should be

so

well

acquainted with

a more civilised mode of life, and yet

adhere to their nomadic customs, was

a

surprise to the

and the story of Cain and Abel grew up to

account for it.

Nothing but a curse seemed to explain

this inveterate repugnance to city life, and

a

curse im-

plied guilt while the unbridled vindictiveness of the
nomads (see

)

was explicable only by

a

com-

passionate command of

who after all was the

God

of the Kenites

as

well as

of the Israelites,.

so

that

the distinguishing mark of this tribe was also

that

its members worshipped

and were under his

protection.

Cain, then, represents the nomad tribe best

known

to the Israelites.

H e is contrasted with Abel

the

see A

BEL

because the pastoral

14

W. R. Smith,

cp Stade

ZATW

(Lit.

May

finds

a

prophetic

reference to this mark in Gen. 4

I

,

pointing

and rendering

‘

I

have acquired a man,

a

bearer of the sign

of

So

inde-

pendently Zeydner

TW

but the sign

is

surely not circumcision.

The theory is most

fully worked out by Stade,

not,

however, without extravagances

6 2 1

See Stade,

267.

Ewald suggested

this

(Hist.

(see

7).

when

with a fixed domicile, seemed to

he Israelites the ideal one. That the Kenites them-

would have sanctioned this portrait

of their

is not probable.

They presumably represented

iim with some of the noble features natural to a hero of

origin. W e cannot, therefore, say with

1 1 2 8 3 )

that the story of Cain

Abel is

a

ragment of Kenite folk-lore.

T o the member of the Yahwist circle who worked

up

he two (not to say three) Cain stories together we, may

rscribe-4

I

and the words ‘ o n the east of Eden’

n

T h e addition of the latter words converts

n the poetical phrase

land of wandering ’-de-

presumably from the old tradition--into

a prosaic

name, which is boldly identified by Sayce and

Boscawen with the land of the Manda or
.he mountain ranges of

and

T h e

narrator meant presumably the land between

and Edom, where the Kenites lived.

The above

some fresh points; but Stade’s essay,

Das Kainszeichen,

gives the most complete

treatment

of

the subject.

en

Qain,’

’76, pp. 82-98.

T. K.

C.

CAINAN,

or rather, as in

I

Ch.

and RV,

[BAL]).

I

.

Enosh

(Gen.

That Kenan is

a

humanised god has

been shown already (see C

AIN

,

I

)

Cain and Kenan

are forms of one name (cp Lot and

or

it

may be added, is the name

of

a

god in Himyaritic

2 0 ;

A

son of Arphaxad in

of Gen.

1024

[A])

11 13,

and therefore in

3

The name

is

to an interpola-

tion, made in order to bring out ten members in the genealogy

of

Gen.

11

The real tenth from Noah, however, is Terah,

the father of Abraham.

.

CAINITES,

the name generally given to the

descendants

of

Cain mentioned in Gen. 4

17-24.

Tra-

dition, as Ewald said long ago, is the
commencement and the native soil of all
narrative and of all history, and its circle

tends continually to expand, as the curiosity of

a people

awakens to fresh objects, and

as

foreign traditions are

intermixed with those of home growth.

Questions about

the origins of things are especially prone to crowd into
the circle of tradition, and, when the various traditions
respecting remote antiquity come to be arranged, it is
natural to connect them by

a

thread of genealogy.

There is

a

real, though but half-conscious, sense among

the arrangers that what is being produced is not history
but

a

working substitute for it, and

so

there is the less

scruple in

considerable liberties with the form

of

the traditions, many of which indeed, being of diverse

origin, are inconsistent. T h e Hebrew traditionists, i n
particular,

evidently filled with

a

desire

to bring

the traditions into harmony with the

Hebrew

spirit.

I n minor matters they agree with the tradition-

of other nations : in particular they limit the super-

abundant material for genealogies by the

use

of round

especially ten..

Much progress has been made in the study

of

Gen.

4

and

5

since Ewald‘s time

that profound critic has

the credit of having already noticed
that the story of Cain and

is not

as

early

as the genealogy which follows. This conclu-

sion may now be taken

as settled

:

Gen.

4

and

are, generally speaking, derived from separate
tional

Both sections are indeed Yahwistic

but the tone and character of their contents is radically
different.

The true meaning of Gen.

417-24

was seen first by

The section contains relics of an

legend which made no reference to, the destruction

of the old order of things by

a deluge, and traced the

T. K.

C.

See Wellh.

1876,

p.

who was

followed

WRS

art.

and

art. ‘Deluge’

So

79

622

CAINITES

beginnings of the existing civilisations. The legend is

CAINITES

Gen.

are

We

are told that

based on

for the

were

not as

as

Renan once supposed.

Their

myths, however, were to

a large extent borrowed:

when the Hebrews stepped into the inheritance of
Canaanitish culture, they could not help adopting in
part the answers which the Canaanites had given to the
question, Whence came civilisation?’

The Canaanitish culture-legend is unhappily lost but

the fragments of Philo of

(Muller.

Hist.

G

Y

.

3

when critically treated,

reveal some

of

the elements of two

Phoenician culture-legends, in one of

which the invention of the useful arts and of occupations
was ascribed to divine beings, whilst in the other it was
ascribed

to

men (Gruppe,

; cp

too,

as

far

as

we

can judge from fragmentary reports, appears to have
accounted for knowledge of the arts by

a

series of mani-

festations of

a

divine being called Oannes, which took

place in the days of the first seven antediluvian kings

of

Babylon (Lenormant,

).

This sub-

stantially agrees with the statements of the tablets that
the bringers of culture were the great gods, such

as

Ea,

the lord of wisdom,’ and his more active firstborn son

Marduk (Merodach), the creator.

A striking confirma-

tion of this is supplied by the mythic story translated by
Pinches [see C

REATION

,

16

where Marduk is

said to have made, not only the Tigris and the
Euphrates, but also cities and temples.

City-building

is in fact everywhere one of the characteristic actions of
humanised nature-deities

Jemshid, etc.

and it

would be inevitable that the civilised Canaanites should
trace the origin of cities to semi-divine heroes

if not to the creator himself.

Still, though the Canaanitish culture-myth

lost, we

may be sure of one

that it was largely in-

fluenced by Babylonian myths, the supremacy of Baby-
lonian culture in Palestine at

a

remote age being amply

proved by the Amarna tablets.

When, therefore, we find in

a

list of ten

antediluvian kings at the head of the

history

of

Babylonia, it is not unnatural to suppose
that the genealogy of the ten patriarchs in
Gen.

5,

to which the shorter one in Gen.

4

is

so

closely allied,

is

derived from it, and to attempt

conjectural identifications of the Hebrew and of the

Babylonian names.

This course, which has been

adopted by Hommel, the present writer does not
it prudent to take,

(

I

)

because we are ignorant of the

phases through which the Berossian list has passed, and

because of the violent hypotheses to which this course

would often drive

us.

By taking the Hebrew names, however, one by one,

and using Babylonian clues, it does not seem hopeless

to reach probable results.

C

AIN

, for in-

stance-the

which meets

us

first-

means

‘

artificer.’ Can we avoid regarding this

as the

translation of

a title of the divine demiurge, borrowed

from Babylonia through the medium of the Canaanites

?

Moreover since

E

NOCH

,

the son of Cain,

evidently belongs to the same legend, and

indeed shares with his father the honour of the foundation
of the first

(to which his own name is given), we

cannot hesitate to regard Enoch too

as of divine origin.

This view, indeed, is as good

as proved if the statements

Cp these

lines (Obv.

39,

Zimmern in

Lord Merodach [constructed the house] he built the city,

[He built the city

of

he built

the temple,

H e built the city Erech,

E-anna the temple.

in Lenormant,

de

sur

3

Or did Enoch not rather

the city himself?

Budde,

who emends

‘after his

son’s

name,’ into

‘after his

own name’

thus, making

h e subject

of the verbs

and ‘called.

Enoch lived

ykars

(a solar

that he walked

with God, and (then) disappeared, for God had taken

The number is attested alike by the Hebrew, the

Sam. and the LXX text, and even if we lay but little
stress on that, the phrases quoted seem unmistakably
primitive, and imply that, in the original form of the
story, Enoch was a semi-divine hero who, at the close
of his earthly days, was taken to the paradise of
When, too, we consider the clear parallelisin between
Enoch and Noah, and between Noah and Xisuthrus or

(the hero

of the Babylonian Flood-story

see D

ELUGE

,

2 ) ,

it becomes reasonable to identify

Enoch with

great visitor in Paradise (he

went there to obtain healing for his leprosy), whose
name is perhaps most correctly read GilgameS.

Gil-

like Enoch, is

a divine being-whether we

regard him

as

a hero who becomes a god, or (more

plausibly)

as a god who becomes a hero, is a matter of

indifference-and like Enoch he is associated with the

As

Enoch in the Hebrew tradition is the an-

cestor

of

Noah,

so (inverting the relation)

the Babylonian Noah, is the ancestor of GilgameS. The
latter is said to have crossed the waters of death

5

to

pay a visit to

in Paradise, and we

presume that, in the earlier form of the Hebrew narra-
tive, his counterpart (whose original name was certainly
not Noah) received the same reward

as

Enoch for

walking with God.’ Both

and Enoch are

distinguished for their piety, and not only GilgameS but

also

Enoch (as we may infer from the emended text of

Ezek.283, and

as

is expressly stated in the Book

Enoch, which has a substratum of genuine, even if
turbid,

has been initiated into secret lore,

and knows both the past and the future.

Lastly, Enoch

gave his name to the city of Enoch, which at any rate

lordship (cp ‘city of David,’

S.

5 7 9 ;

castle

of Sennacherib,’ K B

and see

S.

1228)

and

perhaps in the primitive myth was even represented

as

its builder.

So

Erech, of which the ideographic name

is

or Unuk

the dwelling), is

called in the epic ‘the city of GilgameS,’

being

a t once its king and (according to an old text) its
builder.7 W h y the Hebrew compiler did not adopt
GilgameS as well

as Unuk from his Babylonian

we cannot tell.

T h e foundation of the

It is plain that there must have been some fairly complete

account

of

Enoch in

time; indeed the references in Ezek.

14

28 3

(emended

text)

imply such

account

times.

E

NOCH

,

I

.

The Chaldeans at first estimated the duration of the

revolution

of

the sun at

365

days afterwards at

days. To this they accommodated their

year of

360

days

means of an intercalated cycle (Lenormant,

Cp Y

EAR

,

The Egyptian kings,

as

sons of Rd, were said

(as

early

as

the Pyramid Texts) to ascend

to

heaven, borne

the mystic

griffin called

S

ERAPHIM

).

We know from another text that

the vicegerent

of

the sun-god (Jeremias,

3).

H

makes

a

form

of

Gihil the fire-god

On the epic

of

see

and

and

chap.

23,

p.

4 6 7 3

[The present article was

written

the appearance of Prof. Jastrow’s work.]

On the ‘waters

of

death’ in the legend see Maspero,

Jeremias,

87.

The same mythic stream is found in

a

very

mythological section

of a

psalm

where the

‘floods

of

are parallel

to

the ‘floods of Perdition’

; see B

ELIAL

So

Che.

was before his time

when in

he admitted

late le-end of Enoch

have some traditional basis

xxvii).

See Jeremias

cp the inscription quoted

from Hilprecht

377)

and Hommel

in which occur the words ‘the

walls

of Erech, the ancient

building of

The theory here advocated

is

that David’s Bahylonian scribe

brought several Babylonian myths and legends

to

Palestine, including that of the hero

king

of

Unuk

or

Erech. He thus opened a fresh period of

influence

on Palestine. Hilprecht’s discoveries give increased probability

to

the identification of Enoch with Unuk which was already

proposed by Sayce in

1887

On both points

CAINITES

CAINITES

extremely ancient city

of

Erech (before

Hilprecht), however, was at any rate well worthy of
mention in the Hebrew culture-legend.

I t is, in the

present writer's opinion, not improbable that Enoch
once occupied

a still more dignified position as hero of

the Israelitish Flood-story (see N

OAH

, D

ELUGE

,

The last of

them

is

evidently not a divine title, but

a simple

name.

This

prepares us to expect that

I n

Rabylonia, if

the first king in the

Berossian list, may be identified with some

one of the great deities, his successors at any rate are
only demi-gods or extraordinary men.

Moreover, to

appreciate the Hebrew culture-legend, it

is

necessary to

remind ourselves that when the city of Enoch had, by

divine help, been erected, there was still plenty of work
for semi-divine

to do

in

triumphing over wild beasts

and barbarians.

The hunting exploits of GilgameS

(who was first reduced from being a fire-god to the pro-
portions of a heroic man, and then restored in the same

legend to the divine company) have in

all probability a

historical kernel.

It is easy to believe, too, that the

hero called M

ETHUSAEL

as if

'the liegeman of God';

Gen.

4

or, following the better reading of

Methuselah

the liegeman of

'),

was originally

viewed as a king

who taught men good laws and

restrained wild animals and wild men.

The origin of the first of these names

is

obscure.

Jered

(so

I

Ch.

or J

ARED

for Gr. read-

ings

;

Gen.

might indeed he an adaptation of the

Babylonian Arad in Arad-Sin ('servant of Sin, the

moon-god'), which would be a possible title of the
hero GilgameS (see tablet ix. of the epic).

I

RAD

Gen.

or rather Erad (cp

is,

however,

text-critically a better reading, and to connect this with
the city of Eridu is not free from objections. Probably
the word is based on a contraction of some Babylonian
name.

The next name, which

is

best read, with

Lagarde and Robertson Smith, not M

EHU

JAEL

Mahalalel, can be well explained by the help of the

Berossian hero-names

is

a Hebraised form of the common Babylonian word

man (cp

E

VIL

-

MERODACH

)

the final syllable,

is a substitute for some Babylonian divine name.

in M

ETHUSELAH

Gen.

I

Ch.

[AL],

[R in

I

Ch.

is doubtless Babylonian; it is reasonable to see

in it a Hebraised form of

'

brilliant (Jensen) or

'gigantic, very

which is an epithet of

Gibil the fire-god, and

(?)

the god of the eastern

One of the royal names

in

the Berossian list is

which

Delitzsch and Hommel explain

liegeman of

with

great probability, identify with Methuselah.

The

moon-god in fact well deserves the title

and the

traditional connection of the Hebrews with Haran and

Ur makes some veiled references to the moon-god
indispensable in the culture-legend.

[BAL

Ti. W H ]

Lamech;

Gen.

Ch.

Lk.

must have been

an important personage in the old Hebrew
culture-legend, for in the earlier of the two

genealogies not only his three

sons,

also his two wives

and his daughter, are mentioned by name.

His own

name admits of

no

explanation from the best-known

Semitic languages, nor is it at all necessary that it should
be specially appropriate for the barbaric eulogist of
vengeance who speaks in Gen. 4235

It is a needless

So

Sayce

who infers from Gen.

that

Erech (Unuk) received its

culture from Eridu. Gen.

418

however makes Enoch the father

of

Irad.

So

Hommel

Times

8

adopts

the form

(this

is

found with the

determinative

god').

17).

W e take the next three names together.

first and second may be

so

too.

105,

464.

assumption that the song

of Lamecb

is

an exultant boast

and menace cnlled forth by Lnmech's savage delight at
finding himself possessed of the new and effective weapons
devised by his

son

Tubal-cain.'

The song must be

interpreted by itself, without preconceived opinions.

In

it the hero declares that not only seven lives (as in the
case of

Cain

'),

but seventy-seven, will

required to

avenge the blood of murdered Lamech.'

This implies

that Lamech's story was once told in connection with that
of Cain the murderer :

fact, that Lamech, like Cain,

is the representative of

a tribe, and speaks thus fiercely

out of regard for tribal honour, which to him consists
in the strict exaction of vengeance for

Still, the

Lamech who is descended from Enoch ought to have
some importance in the development of culture; he
cannot be merely a bloodthirsty nomad. I t would seem,
then, that the Lamech of Gen.

418

was originally dis-

tinct from the Lamech of

The latter

is,

properly,

the personification of

a

nomad tribe which named itself

after the divine hero Lamech, just

as

(or the

Kenites) named itself after the divine hero

or Cain.

What, then, does the divine hero's name mean? Sayce
and Hommel connect it with Lamga (=Ass.

artificer

'),

a non-Semitic title

of the moon-god. This is

plausible, though the Assyrian title

is applied

also to Ea.

A fragment may have been introduced here

from

a fresh culture-legend which took for its

point another divine teacher, the

'

begetter of gods and

men,' whose will created law and justice.'

The names of

two wives are, of course, de-

rived from the poem in Gen. 423.

Sayce

Hoscawen

would make them feminine lunar deities
-one named Darkness, the other Shadow

without indicating any similar titles

of the moon in the tablets.

Probably the poet simply

gave the tribal hero's wives the most becoming names
he could think of.

[AE],

[L]

Ada;

Gen.

may have been known to him

already

as the name of

a

wife of Esau (Gen.

hut from an older source see

2),

and

shadow

Gen. 4

was

a suggestive description of a noble

whose presence was like a

and protecting

shade

(Is.

67

,

[L]

;

Gen.

4

too, the daughter

of

may derive her name ('gracious') from

her supposed physical and moral charms; another
of

wives bears the equivalent name

(Gen. 363).

It is possible, however, that, as she is the

sister

of

Tubal-cain, her name may be of mythic

and that she had

a

of her own in the original story.

T

UBAL

-

CAIN

is described in Gen.

(emended text)

as

the father of all those who work

in bronze and iron.'

At first sight the name might seem to

to the heros

of Tubal

(so

which was

a people famous for its

instruments of bronze in the time of Ezekiel (Ezek.

27

however, was much too far from Pales-

tine to be mentioned here, and

in the time of

seems rather to have been famous for horses

Above all, it

is difficult to disregard the

tradition of antiquity that the first worker in

metal was a divine being

where the fallen

angel

teaches this art). Tubal-cain, then, is

probably like

(the Phcenician Hephaistos

a

humanised god, and the first part of the name is pre-
sumably

not of Persian but of Babylonian

I t

Drysdale,

Bible Songs,

following Ewald and

Budde.

Cp

259.

3

H y m n

to

the

doon-god,

Sayce,

4

So

WRS

art.

'Lamech'), comparing

See Philo of

in

and see

C

R

E

A

TI

O

N

.

originally a divine

title. Cp

Lenormant,

'

We

hardly derive the name from

with

Ball,

and

the merest coincidence that

or

in

626

CAINITES

should be noticed that

Tubal-cain is wanting

in

[AEL]).

Probably it was added to explain

why the hero was regarded as the father of smiths.

Tribal is, in fact, ,probably a pale form of the god of
the solar fire, Gibil or

but, of course, he is

not only a fire-god.

Like Gibil and like Hephaistos

(see Roscher,

Lex.), he is the heavenly smith

fitly

calls him

a term which in

is applied

to Hephaistos), and was perhaps once addressed in the
words of

a famous Babylonian hymn :-

‘Gibil, renowned hero in the land,-valiant, son of

the Abyss, exalted in the

thy clear fiame

breaking forth,-when it lightens

up

the

assigns to

all

that bears

a

name its own destiny ;-the

copper and tin, it is thou who

mix (?) them,-gold

and silver, it is thou who meltest them.’

W e may well suppose that in the earliest form

of

the

Hebrew legend Tubal was the instructor

of men in the

art of getting fire.

According to Philo of

fire

was discovered by three mortal men’ called Light,
Fire, and Flame, and was produced by rubbing two
pieces of wood together.

This,’ remarks Robertson

‘is the old Arabian way of getting fire, and

indeed appears all over the world in early times, and
also in later times in connection with ritual.

Probably

some ritual usage preserved the memory of the primeval
fire-stock in Phoenicia.’

There was

no

such ritual usage

among the Israelites, and

so

the legend of the inven-

tion of fire disappeared.

Jabal and Jubal have names descriptive of occupations,

and evidently of Palestinian origin.

The former

CALAH

Seth, Kenan

.

.

.

Lamech, Jabal,

This would have the advantage

of retaining the

ounder of the pastoral mode of life as the father of the

of

but seems to involve the excision

Jubal and Tubal.

W e might, more naturally

suppose that Jabal and Jubal were later
from another cycle of legends, and that the

genealogy began with Cain and ended with

both originally divine beings.

W e should then

a genealogy of seven.

I n

we must reject

:he common view that

is a fragment of

a Yahwistic

table which traced the genealogy of the Sethite side of
the first family, and that the Sethites, according to the
Yahwist, were good, the Cainites bad.

There is

no

valid evidence that the genealogist wished to represent
any of the Cainites as wicked,

or that culture

was

opposed to religion.

Cain, the city-builder, was a

worthy

son

of

who was the first to use forms

of

worship (see

E

NOS

).

For there was no more truly

religious act, from

a primitive point of view, than the

building of a city.

(For the continuation of this subject

see

)

Buttmann’s

vol.

first led the criticism

of the genealogies into

track. For recent discussions,

besides Stade’s article already referred to

13.

Literature.

and

Gen.,

see

1 5 ; Boscawen

Times, 5

(May ’94); Goldziher,

zoo;

Bu.

; Ryle,

Narratives

Genesis

78-83.

On

the Berossian list of ten antediluvian patriarch;

see Maspero,

Dawn

Del.

Par.

; Hommel

PSBA

The last-named scholar holds that

especially

and

Noah, prove that

the closest relation

between“ the ten Hebrew patriarchs and the ten Babylonian

antediluvian kings. He

infers

from this that the author

of

the

so-called priestly code must have written centuries before the

exile. This hasty inference will not captivate a careful student.

That the priestly writer had access

to

early traditions

is

a part

of the critical system

advocated.

identifications of

Hommel, however, need very careful criticism (see N

OAH

).

T.

C.

CAKE.

I t is impossible to ascertain precisely the

meaning and characteristic feature of certain

of the

Heb. words which are rendered

cake in

EV,

and it must suffice merely to record the terms

in

question.

,

(a)

(RV)

etc., see F

LAGON

F

RUIT

,

5.

(6)

I

S.

etc., see

F

RUIT

,

7.

(c)

etc., see B

AKEMEATS

,

B

READ

,

Jer.

18

see

F

RUIT

,

(e)

1368

see B

AKEMEATS

, 3.

Nu.

118,

see

3.

I

etc., and

Gen.

186

(i)

(Kt.,

Jndg.

see

I

Ch.

etc., see B

AKEMEATS

,

3,

etc., cp B

READ

,

B

READ

,

3.

CALAH

12

[E];

Ass.

is

named in Gen.

as one of the cities originally

founded by Nimrod in Assyria.

king

of

Assyria, ascribed its high standing, at any rate

as

a

capital, to Shalmaneser

I.

Layard, Rassam, and

G.

Smith proved by their

excavations of the mounds

of

2 0

m.

S.

of

Nineveh

that the city lay in the fork

between the Tigris on the W . and the Upper Zab on
the E.

Protected

on two sides by these rivers and on

the N. by hills, fortified by a long N. wall with at least
fifty-eight towers, it was

a

strong city.

The town was an oblong, well supplied with water

a

canal led through a covered conduit from the Upper

and

richly planted with orchards and gardens. At the

are

the remains

of a

platform, built of sun-dried bricks faced with

628

11.

Jabal,

Jubal.

. -

[A],

[E]

Gen.

is the reputed ancestor of tent-dwelling

shepherds.

His name describes him, not

as

a

wanderer

very questionably), but

a

man

(cp Heb.

‘ r a m ’ ) ; it is another

form

of the name A

BEL

end). The latter, Jubal

[AEL]

Gen.

is the father’

of

the guild

or

class of musicians (cp

Ex.

‘ram’s horn’). That the inventor of the

and

the

should be the younger brother of the first

shepherd, is certainly appropriate.

One

of the thirty-

seven

or Asiatics, represented in the tomb of

Hnum-hotep (see

8, J

OSEPH

,

I O)

desir-

ing admission into Egypt, carries

a lyre.

( W e must

not

the parallel of David, for

I

Sam.

does

not recognise him as

a

shepherd

see

D

AVI

D

,

I

a ,

note).

Tubal, however, is less appropriate in this

company, partly because of his lofty origin, partly be-
cause smiths belong more naturally to agricultural and
city life.

The three names Jabal, Jubal, and Tubal stand

outside the genealogy proper, just as

Ham, and

Japheth stand outside the genealogy of
Noah, and Abram, Nahor, and Haran

By this knot in

the genealogical thread the editor indicates that

a new

and broader development is about to begin (Ewald).

How is it, then, that the

genealogy

as

it stands

contains but six names

?

The parallel table in chap.

5 ,

which has virtually all these names, adds three to them
at the beginning, and one at the end.

Now it is

remarkable that the three prefixed names are also given
in

4

25

I t is not improbable (cp

that this

passage in a simpler form-omitting again,’ another,’
and instead of

etc., and adding and Enos

a son, and called his name Cain ’-once stood before

4

and that Noah, who is the sou of Lamech in

5

once

took the place of Jabal, Jtibal, and Tubal.

This would

make the table begin Adam, Seth, Enos, Cain, and
close Lamech, Noah.

W e might also restore it thus,

Persian means (

I

)

dross of metal

copper or iron.

‘

I

regard

the 6 as resulting from a radical

or

and as changing later

(Mr. J. T. Platts).

outside that

Maspero,

of

635 (see references).

Lectures,

second series

CALAMOLALUS

stone,

yards from N. to

S.,

by

yards wide and

13

feet

above the level of the Tigris, which once

its western

face. On this platform stood palaces built

or

restored by the

kings Shalmaneser I

Shalmaneser

Tiglath.

III.,

Esarhaddon, and

At its

NW. corner stood the

or

feet

square

at

the base and still

feet high. Next

to

’it

was

temple, of

but in the

period

was the

town-god

( K B

4

no.

I

,

16).

Of municipal history, apart from the history of the

country, we know little.

Calah was faithful to Shalmaneser

during his son’s

rebellion

( K B

45-50),

but revolted from

in

746

B

.

C.

( K B

It

was

the court residence under

the above-meationed kings; but in the

lists it never

stands first (cp Eponym lists

As a

centre

of

population it evidently was inferior to

and totally

sed

by Nineveh. When

rebuilt the town and

finished the great wall, and endowed Calah with its canal,

peopled it with captives.

Like other great cities

of

Assyria and Babylonia,

Calah probably had its archives which, with the literary
collections of the kings, formed the nucleus of

a library.

Few tablets have hitherto been found

at

and it is

inferred that Sennacherib removed the Calah library

Nineveh.

Many astrological and omen tablets in the Kuyunjik col-

lections

executed at Calah for

‘principal

librarian

For explorations and

of site cp Layard,

and

G.

Smith‘s Assyrian

Discoveries.

For further conclusions respect-

ing library, see G. Smith,

CALAMOLALUS (

[A]), or

I

represents the ‘ L o d

(see L

YDDA

)

of

has

CALAMUS

occurs in Cant.414 Ezek.

and sweet calamus in Ex.

Is.

43

24

but

EV sweet cane

in

Is. for the usual R

EED

I

CALCOL

on the name see

[A]),

a son of Zerah b. J

UDAH

,

I

Ch. 26

[B],

[L]),

clearly the same as the son

of Mahol

of

431

[L]).

See M

AHOL

.

CALDRON,

AV rendering

of the following words

:-

I

Mi.

so

;

Jer.

2

so

for all of which see C

OOKING

,

and

Job41

RV R

USHES

CALEB

66

on the meaning see below;

[BAL];

gent.

‘Calebite,’

EV

‘of the

house of Caleb,’

I

S.

(BAL)],

see N

ABAL

Kt. reads

cp the similar variant in

THN

40

n.

finds the

‘raging with

canine madness,’ objecting to Robertson Smith‘s identification

with

‘dog’ (see

Ph. 989;

Kin.

zoo,

Name.

Dog-totems nevertheless were not impossible

in

the ancien; Semitic

(see D

OG

,

5

and a

connection with

was early surmised (see

We

find the name

in Babylonian contract-tablets as late as

the times of Nebuchadrezzar

and Cambyses

4 199

Hommel (AHT

or

mean ‘priest

.

Sayce

265)

compares

as

used

54,

for ‘officer, messenger’ (but this is

improbable).

Caleb was a Kenizzite clan which at, or shortly

before, the Israelite invasion of Western Palestine

established itself in Hebron and the region
south

.of

it, and

in

the course of time

coalesced with its northern neighbour, the

tribe

of

Judah (naturally, not without admixture

of

blood

Caleb’s concubine,

I

Ch.

T h e b’ne K

ENAZ

, to

Caleb and O

THNIEL

belong

(Nu.

Judg.

were of Edomite extraction,

and the Calebites were nearly related to the nomadic

in the south-eastern quarter of the Negeb

(

I

Ch.

etc.); see

JERAHMEEL.

(On the Kenites, see

below,

4.

)

How Caleb came t o be settled in what was regarded

c.

H.

w.

J

.

The name seems

to

be primarily tribal.

629

CALEB-EPHRATAH

as the territory

of

Judah, is variously described (Josh.

1513, cp 146

D,, etc.). According to Josh. 1513

(cp Judg.

Caleb invaded from the N.,

company with Judah, the region which he subsequently
occupied (see

but in the story of the spies, in

the oldest version of which Caleb alone maintains the
possibility of a successful invasion of Canaan from the

S.

and receives Hebron as the reward of his faith’ (see

N

UMBERS

), we seem to have a reminiscence

of the fact

that Caleb made his way into the land from that quarter.
I n David‘s time Caleb was still distinct from Judah

(

I

S.

30

14

[B],

[L]

for the conjecture that

David was

a Calebite prince, see D

AVID

,

4,

O n the other hand, in the list of the spies (Nu. 136

and in the commission for the division

of the land

(Nu. 3419

Caleb b.

as the

of

a

chief

tribe

in the post-exilic

genealogical systems, Caleb and Jerahmeel,

‘sons

of

H

EZRON

ii.

[

I

]),

are great-grandsons of the

42

whilst Kenaz becomes

a

son of

Caleb

These representations reflect the fact that, in uniting

with Judah, Caleb became the leading branch

of

that

exceedingly mixed tribe.

T h e Chronicler indeed

hardly knows

any

other Judahite stocks than these

Hezronites.

The seats of the Calebites in pre-exilic

are to

be learned most fully from

I

Ch.

where we find

set down as sons and grandsons (branches)

of

Caleb

the well-known cities and towns,

(so

read for M

ESHA

),

Jokdeam

(so

for

Maon, Beth-zur

for

and Carmel

cp

also

I

The clan had possessions also

the Negeb

(

I

S.

3014).

After the Exile their old territory was chiefly in the

possession of the Edomites, and the Calebites were

pushed northwards into the old seats

This situation is reflected

in another stratum

of the composite genealogy

( I

Ch.

cp

where Caleb takes Ephrath (the

region about Bethlehem) as

a

second wife (observe the

significant name of the former wife A

ZUBAH

cp

also

J

ERI

OTH).

Through his

son

Hur the clan falls

into three divisions :

and Hareph, the

fathers of Kirjath-jearim, Bethlehem, and Bethgader.
T h e further notices of the subdivision of these clans are
fragmentary and complex (see

J

ABEZ

,

S

HOBAL

).

It is at all events noteworthy that the

passage concludes with the end of

a

list

of

and a connection between these and the Calebites
becomes plausible if C

HELUB

and R

ECHAH

in

I

Ch.

are indeed errors for Caleb and Rechab (cp

Meyer,

I t is not improbable that the names

Colhozeh,

Rephaiah b.

(temple-repairers, etc., temp. Nehe-

miah) are

of

Calebite origin

167).

See further

.

also Kuenen

1

Gratz, ‘Die

oder

and

especially We. De

CALEB

-

EPHRATAH,

RV

Caleb-Ephrathah

is

mentioned in

I

Ch.

as the place where

Hezron died.

Wellhausen and Kittel, after

L]

[L

read: ‘after the death of Hezron, Caleb came unto
Ephrath the wife of Hezron his father

(We.

Gent.

14).

thinks it more natural

to read

(for Caleb).

of Judah.

In P Joshua is named along with Caleb.

The name Jephunneh as that of Caleh’s father is not earlier

Note

also

that

the Targ. rendering of Kenites,

is

4

for

thus

disappears.

than

on Josh.

146, 13

and

see

JOSHUA,

possibly derived from S

A

LM

A

. Cp Neub.

427,

'Even after the Exile the Hebrew, like the

genealogists,

seem

t o

have used

the

marriage

of a son

with

his

father's

wife

as

one device

for

the relations

of

clans

and

townships

into

form.

Kin.

and see We.

!

ET

CALENDAR.

See D

AY

,

W

EEK

,

M

ONTH

, Y

E A R

;

CALF

Ex.

Rev.

47).

See

CALF, GOLDEN.

Portable images of

a

bull overlaid

with gold occupied, down

to

the time of the prophets,

c p

also C

HRONOLOGY

,

I

CATTLE,

2

a-c.

hand, the religion of Israel shows the strongest evidence

a

prominent position in the equipment

of the Israelitish sanctuaries.

W e

hear of them in the great sanctuaries

of

the northern

kingdom : in Dan and Bethel, where they are said to
have been set up by Jeroboam

(

I

K.

K.

Hos.

in Samaria, the capital of the kingdom

(Hos.

and perhaps

also in Gilgal (Am.

Hos.

4

9

1 2

On

the other hand, there were

none in the temple of Jerusalem (which had the brazen
serpent: see N

EHUSHTAN

), and, strange to say, we

do not find any allusion to such images

as

existing in

the other sanctuaries of

in

I

K.

where such reference would have been apposite,

or

in

Amos or Hosea.

The last named in particular, who

pursued the calf-worship of the northern kingdom with
such bitter invectives

would hardly have

been silent

on

the subject had the same worship prevailed

in Jerusalem also.

Though Judah appears to have

participated, more

or less, in the

a t Bethel, the

worship of such

seems

to

have been confined

chiefly

to the northern kingdom.

T h e bulls belonged to the class of images called

('molten images

see I

DOL

,

I

e), which might be either

solid

or

merely covered with

a coating of

T o

the latter class the golden bull of Jeroboam

(Hos.

probably belonged (see I

DOL

,

Because of the

value of the metal it

is

not probable that the images were

of great size.

Hence we can understand the choice of

the word

calf' : not the youth but the small size of

the animal represented

is

the point to be conveyed-not

perhaps without-an implication of contempt.

As for their origin, these images were originally

foreign

to

the Yahwb religion.

T o the nomads of the

wilderness, who did not breed cattle, the
idea of choosing the bull

as a n image of

divinity could hardly have occurred.

On this ground

alone the narrative of the golden calf

by Aaron

in the wilderness (Ex.32 J E ) can prove nothing for
the origin, of this form of worship in Mosaic times.
Apart from the impossibility of making such an image
in the wilderness, the narrative seems rather to be
intended

as a

scathing criticism

on the absurdity and

of bull-worship

as viewed from the prophetic

standpoint. According to the Deuteronomist, Jeroboam
was the originator of

but it is hardly

likely that he would have introduced an entirely strange
image into the sanctuaries of his kingdom.

Probably

the older Decalogue (Ex. 3417 cp

in speaking

of molten

as distinguished from

plain wooden

images, referred to images of this description, which
also are intended perhaps by the images of Micah

(Judg.

18).

I t has often been held

by Renan and Maspero,

and doubtfully by

that bull-worship may have

been a n imitation of the worship of Apis a t

or

of

Mendes at Heliopolis

but the Egyptians

shipped only living animals, and in any case the
adoption from Egypt is unlikely.

T h e nomad inhabit-

ants of

took over from the Egyptians

anything of their culture and religion.

the othei

The text

of

I

K.

30

is obviously

corrupt or at leas

imperfect.

adds 'and before

the

other to

Klo

conjectures

that the

text

said

nothing of a

Dan

His restored

text,

however only

accentuates

if

possible,

ancient fame

of

the

See

also

end.

ull

the symbol of Baal

the cow, the symbol

of

and these symbols were taken over from the

by the Greeks.

Thus the probabilities are

hat the Israelites derived the practice from the Canaan-

They changed the significance of the symbols,

eeing in them

a representation of

and his

onquering might and strength

(Nu.

248).

Though

the time of Jeroboam such worship was regarded as

the so-called older decalogue certainly forbids

images (see above).

The later decalogue, which

nay be regarded

as

.representative

of prophetic times,

all idolatrous worship of Yahwb.

Hosea

rails at

he worship of the bull

(85

The Deuteronomistic

iarrator, too, in the Book of Kings regards the conduct

Jeroboam as

an

apostasy to idolatry.

H e

describes bull-worship

as '

the sin of Jeroboam,

he made Israel to sin

(

I

1416

1526

1 6 2 6

etc.).

T o the Apis-worship of Egypt we

but one reference-in Jer.

4615,

where we should

read ' W h y hath Apis fled? (why) hath thy

not stood firm?

See

See Kon.

57

Baethg.

198

Robertson,

Was

.here

a Golden Calf at

tnd cp Sayce,

Jensen,

C.

W.

2252.

I. B.

[B]),

I

Esd.

and

I

Esd.

8 7

K

ELITA

.

CALLISTHENES

[AV]

a

of Nicanor

[

I

],

who, according to

Macc., was burnt

for firing the temple gates

Macc.

833).

[E]). A

city included in the earlier kingdom

of

Nimrod,

(J). See N

IMROD

,

I

,

Rawlinson

1

identifies it with

supposing

that

the Talmudic

statement,

Calneh

means

represents a

genuine

tradition. The context,

ever,

shows

that

it

is

a

pure guess

;

is

connected with

a

Greek loan-word

meaning

'bride,'

and

with

the

old Hebrew for 'bride' (see Levy).

claims

a

of

critics for

identifying Calneh with

Ctesiphon NE.

of

Babylon,

on

the

left

hank

of

the

Tigris

(so

Targ. Jer., Ephr. Syr.,

which

Pliny

places

in

the

province

of

conjecture, too,

may

be

dismissed.

T h e inscriptions alone should be consulted

and,

since none

of

the ordinary names of the Babylonian cities

resembles Calneh (or

we are justified in examin-

ing the non-Semitic (ideographic) names. Among these
we find

('dwelling of offspring'), which,

in

Assyrian times, was pronounced Zir-la-ba

or

( i n

an

inscription of

Za-ri-lab.

The situation

of Zirlaha is uncertain (see Del.

Par.

226) but the

fact that Sargon mentions Zirlaba

at

the end of

a

list

of

cities which apparently proceeds from

south to north

suggests to Hommel that

it was not far from Babylon

(Die

).

T o Fried. Del. in 1876

293)

this identifica-

tion appeared certain.

It is, indeed, not improbahle,

especially

if we may point

(cp

as above, and

but we should like some fuller evidence that

was really remembered

as

the old name of

as

if

a

N. Syrian city, con-

quered by the Assyrians

on which see A

MOS

,

6

See C

ALNO

.

T.

C.

CALNO

Is.

the

city called

in Am.

6 2

(on which see

CAMEL

may have been kept for purposes of trade

hey were put under the charge of an Ishmaelite, who
rom his calling bore the name of

Other kings

nay

have followed David’s example

camels

vere carried away by Sennacherib (Schr.

C O T

2

286).

Syrians should have used them

K.

8 9 )

is

iatural but in the hilly region of Palestine the camel

have been

a common quadruped.

I t is true

his animal appears again and again in the patriarchal

;tory, and there is no difficulty in supposing that Jacob

camels in Mesopotamia. There is, however,

difficulty in the statement (Gen.

12

16)

that camels

ormed part

of a present given to Abraham by the

(see below,

T h e camel’s saddle is mentioned only once, Gen.

31

34

EV ‘ t h e camel’s furniture’),

derives its name from its round basket-shaped form.

See L

ITTER

, S

ADDLE

.

T h e flesh of camels was unclean food to the Israelites

Lev.

1 1 4 ) .

By the Arabs,

o n the other hand,

were both eaten and sacrificed ( W R S

[The assertion that the ancient Egyptians knew the

The aicture of

a camel on one of

218).

N. M.-A. E.

camel is unfounded.

CALPHI

A

MOS

,

6

and

Calneh) in

Ezek.

27

23.

confounds it with C

ALNEH [

I

],

and connects it with the

building of the ‘tower,‘ which, since Babylon is mentioned

just

before, can onlymean the tower of Babel (see B

ABEL

); it is not

probable that

identifies Calneh with Borsippa, according

to

the Talmudic tradition that the tower of

was

at

Borsippa. This is, of course, worthless.

Hebrew text was

corrupt:

was misread

‘fort’;

became

Arabia.’

Doubtless

is Kullani,

a place near Arpad, con-

quered in

738

by

111.

(Tiele,

Fried.

CALPHI,

RV C

HALPHI

(a

name formed from the

root

whereby

a child is designated

as a

for one lost; cp

and see N

AMES

,

father of Judas

I

Macc.

[AV],

o

Ant.

xiii.

in

the Syr.

and

Cp

I.

CALVARY

[Ti.

WH],

23

AV, the Vg. rendering (Lat.

of

(RV

‘ T h e skull

).

The

passages preserve

the Semitic form G

OLGOTHA

CAMEL

etc., Ex.

9 3

Judg.

65

I

K.

I

Ch.

Ezra267

Tob.

and elsewhere, including six pro-

phetic passages ; Mt. 3 4

Mk.

1 6

etc. ; see

also D

ROMEDARY

).

The Hebrew

is common

to all the Semitic languages, which proves that the
animal was known before the parent stock divided
-one of the facts from

Hommel and others

have inferred that the original home of the Semitic
race was in Central

The name was borrowed

by the Egyptians; it passed also into Greek and
Latin, and most modern languages.

T h e origin of

the word is uncertain; von

4) connects it with Ar.

to heap,’

as

meaning the humped animal

whilst Lagarde

49) follows Bochart in his etymology from

‘ t o

requite,’ the name thus indicating the revengeful temper
often shown by the animal.

In the frequent mention of the camel in the historical

books of the

there can be little doubt that

is meant (see below,

6),

though an Israelite ambassador may
conceivably have seen

a two-humped

camel at Nineveh or

W e naturally expect

to hear of its use by the Arabian

4

and other nomad

tribes and accordingly the Ishmaelites (Gen.

3 7 2 5

the

(Judg.

and the Amalekites

(

I

1 5 3

by turns come before us

as

possessors

of

camels.

The mention of them

connection with

Job

and with the Queen of Sheba

(

I

K.

also needs no comment.

(

I

Ch.

the Ar.

(Lane,

1240)

and Ass.

(Del.

Ass.

H W B )

denotes the ‘young camel

’

Is.

EV renders

less

aptly

word

(Esth.

AV ‘camels,’

an adj. qualifying ‘swift steeds’

so

R V

‘swift steeds that were used in the king’s service’ (cp Pers.

realm BDB

Lex.).

The reading, however, is

puted. See H

ORSE

See this and

views

in Wright’s

Del.,

T. K. C.

3

See the

the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser

and this king’s monolith inscr. obv.

28

‘dromedaries

with two

;

cp Del.

96.

4

For an account of the numerous references

to

the camel

Arabian literature and

of

the many names of the camel

Arabic, see

5

‘Both they and their cattle were numberless says

narrator.

So

too the Reuhenites carry away

camel:

from the

(

I

Ch.

Precisely

so

states that he had taken

30

camels as prey from the Arab

(cp Hommel,

GBA

says that he

took

many camels from the Kedarenes that camels were sold

Assyria for from

(silver) shekels

to

half a shekel

2

225)

On the notice in Jndg.

see C

RESCENTS

.

the (Ethiopian) pyramids at Meroe

(Leps.

5

28)

and on Greek

terra-cotta

a

travelling

Arab (not,

as

has been supposed,

Egyptian)

Mariette

2

the references in Greek

prove nothing more than that the animal was

known in Egypt in Roman times.

I t is surprising

that it never appears

in representations of

battles with the nomadic Semites who rode on camels.
The Egyptian artists evidently disliked to represent the
animal-not because of its ungainly appearance, for
they have rather

a

fancy for delineating strange

creatures, but out of religious antipathy (WMM

As.

142).

T h e statement that the camel is

mentioned in Pap. Anast.

is groundless. T h e

passage contains an exclamation

of the Asiatic princes,

awe-struck at the bravery of an Egyptian

which seems to

mean, Thou art lost

God

a

hero

indeed

Even if this

be

rejected, the idea of Chabas

(Voyage,

that the

Asiatics are here calling for ‘camel’s meat’ is most
ridiculous. T h e other passages appealed to refer not
to the camel (the pretended

but to

a large

species of monkey

(Kay,

which is said to come

from Ethiopia (where there were no camels in

c.

see above), and is described

as docile-learning

an amusing kind of dance, and carrying its master’s
walking-stick. See the passages collected by W M M

( A s .

and the judicious remarks of

mann,

1 3 3 2 .

Even the Egyptian name of the

camel

(or

(plural

is foreign (not

from

[Lagarde.

but from an original

and does not seem very old.

[The difficulty of the narrative in Gen.

1 2

is very

great

so long as it is assumed that it correctly represents

the Hebrew tradition.

Supposing, how-

ever, that the mention of the pharaoh were
due to

a

misunderstanding, and that the

early Hebrew tradition knew only of

a

visit of Abraham

Roman period? Even

in

Persian times orthodox Ethiopians

were apparently deterred from using the animal

fear

of

contracting ceremonial defilement. The more southern tribes

had no camels. see,

Mariette

87.

The animal

can hardly

in the regions S.

Meroe.

in

etc.), camels appear

frequently in the

after

It

is, however, signifi-

cant that they sometimes hear

as

marks

(I

a).

The camels

on

the

roads to

the Red Sea

(Petrie,

Strabo, etc.) were driven by the

tribes,

Partly after

36.

4

Add the passage

from the

tale

and De Morgan, Cat.

(hi-animals from the

W.

M.

634

CAMEL

CAMP

the average specimen of

a

camel. He can abstain from food

water-the latter more especially-longer than any other

H e is stupid and patient

to

excess, submissive and

to a degree, docile and obstinate to

a

certain extent

and passionate when roused, not easily excited

alarmed, though at times liable to a panic or stampede

-an animal in fact whose characteristics are every hit as

as his structural peculiarities.’ Another admirable

of the character of the camel

as a

baggage animal is

in Kudyard Kipling’s Oont.

$ 3

A. E.

[L]),

an unknown locality in Gilead the

place of J

AIK

I

)

It was doubtless one

the

J

A I R

Reland

(679) rightly

combines it with the

which, in

217

Antiochus

the Great captured along with

and

Gefrun (Polyb.v.7012).

T o the W. of the place

identified by Buhl with the ancient Gefriin or E

PHRON

in N. Gilead, and

I

m.

S.

of the high road

from Irbid (Arbela) to the Jordan, lies

a village whose

name,

‘little summit,’ is doubtless

a

corrup-

tion

of the ancient

Ens. and Jer.

(OS27266

identify

with

a

place

in the ‘great plain’ called

situated

6

R.

N.

of Legio on the way to

This

however

which is

Tell

(see

is

the wrong side of the Jordan.

Ex.

Heb.

A

camp is

so

called from

the

of the tents over their

The term

is applied primarily to an assemblage of tents

of

nomads (Gen.

EV

company ;

13

EV camps

’).

Of the early Israelitish nomad camps

we have no contemporary records‘ Doughty

Des.

observes that some Bedouin tribes pitch dis-

persedly and without order

others in

a

circle, to protect

the cattle.

The latter style is that of the

of

which we hear in Gen.

25

16

Nu.

31

IO

I

Ch.

639

Ezek.

254

(AV

‘castle,’

in Ezek. ‘palaces,’

RV encampment

’).

The military camps of

a later age are referred to

elsewhere (see W

AR

).

Suffice it to

(

I

)

that

the encampments of the Hebrews were probably round
rather than square

:

this

was a legacy from their nomad

state (see above) the barricade which surrounded the
camp

was

called

([I

AV ‘trench,’

RV place

of the wagons,’ mg. ‘barricade

in

1720

and in 265 Aq. and

or Theod.

Tg.

e . ,

e . ,

a

round line of

defence, cp

Also

( 2 )

that their camps

have left no impress on names of places,

as

the Roman

has on English place-names.

owes its name to

a

misunderstanding.

W e do

find, however, the strange

phrases, the camp

of

Ch.

and ‘ t h e camp of the Levites’

( I

cp Nu.

in connection with the

description of the temple services.

Is.

has been

thought to describe Jerusalem

as

the

dwell-

ing-of David

(so

BDB)

;

but this is far from certain ;

the prophecy of

encampment against Jerusalem

is thereby obscured.

This leads

us

to speak of the camp

in

the wilderness,

as

conceived by P

Of course, it must be

CAMP

pants

cp M H

to the land of

(see

the difficulty

arising from the mention of camels

Gen.

1216

would

disappear.

T h e difficulty of

Ex. 9 3

(J),

where

a

murrain is predicted on pharaoh’s cattle including the
camels,’ cannot, however, be removed by

a n

expedient.

Here it appears simplest to suppose that

the narrator gave

a list of those kinds of animals which,

from

a

Palestinian point

of view, would be liable to the

murrain.

Two proverbial expressions about the camel occur

in the Gospels (the one in Mt.

1924

Lk.

1825,

the other in Mt.

The reading

(a rope?) for

has been

suggested for the former.

I t is

as old

as

Cyril

of

Alexandria and is evidently the conjecture of

a

Semitic scribe (see Nestle,

9474).

is

correct.

Analogous proverbs can be

I n

Media

a camel can dance on

a

bushel

45

all things are possible.

As has been indicated above there are two’ species of camel.

One, the

is found in SE. Asia ranging

from Afghanistan and Bokhara through NW.

6.

India, Persia, Arabia, Syria, and Asia Minor,

and in N. Africa this species reaches its mnst

southern point in Somali-land. The second, or Bactrian camel,

C.

lives in the high plateaus of central Asia: Both

species are

to exist wild hut it is generally thought that

the herds found in

a

are descended from

domesticated animals and are not truly feral. This view is

supported

the recent observations of Sven

They

have been introduced into many parts of both the Old and the

World, and where the climate has proved suitable have

been very useful as beasts

of

burden.

Numerous breeds of the C.

are found in the

East, and show as great diversities in character and use

as

do

the various breeds of horse. The breeds many of which are

distinguished by

a

complex system of branding, may be roughly

divided into two classes : the riding, called in Egypt and Arabia

and in Indian

and the baggage animal, called

respectively the

and Unf. The word dromedary is

often restricted

to

the former animal, which often maintains

a

pace of

8-10

an hour for a long period whereas the

baggage camel

3

miles an hour.

a

camel

for any

of

time usually induces sickness the movement

of the

legs of each side together producing

a

most

swaying motion. Enormous herds,

as we read

of

the OT are still kept by the natives both of the

and

of NW. Ihdia, and breeding stables exist in many parts of the

East. Camels produce hut one young a t

a

time and the period

of

gestation is twelve months

;

the young are suckled for

a

year

or

The average length of life seems

to

he considerable

-from forty

to

fifty years-and if well treated the camel will

continue

to

work hard until well over thirty.

The power which it undoubtedly possesses

of

doing without

food is to some extent dependent on the hump; when the

animal is underfed or overworked this structure begins

to

appear and the condition

of

the hump is thus an unfailing sign

of

the state of its health. Similarly the power of doing without

water is due to

a

structural peculiarity of the two first compart-

ments-the

and

the complex stomach

of

the camel. Each of these chambers has

its wall

pitted into a

series of crypts

cells which are each guarded by

a

special

sphincter muscle, and in these crypts

a

certain amount of water

is stored-perhaps two gallons

at

most. The fluid can he let

from time to time

to

mix with the more solid food. Camels

ruminate, and their masticated food passes straight into the

third division

of

the stomach. In spite of this provision for

storing water, no opportunity should he lost of watering camels,

as it is most inadvisable

to

trust

to

this reserve, and they are apt

overdrink themselves if kept without water for

too

long a

time. The stories about travellers saving their lives by opening

the stomachs

of

camels when dying of thirst are probably

imaginary

;

the camel exhausts its own

of

water, and

even if

a

little he left it is quite undrinkable. Their flesh is

eaten a t times by natives, who consider the hump

a

delicacy.

Their

is

for fuel in the desert.

From the earliest times the hair of the camel has been woven

into fabrics. The hair from the

and back is torn or

T.

cheese.

Although the camel has been domesticated from a very early

date, and although, without its aid, vast regions of the world

would prove untraversable and consequently it has always been

the servant of man, there

considerable divergence of opinion

as

to the real character of the animal. Perhaps the latest

writer, Major

may he

as one who has had

sixteen years’ ‘practical observation and experience

of

camels in

India, Afghanistan, Egypt, and the Soudan

;

he says, To sum

The

Uses and

(‘94).

635

that there was

a

sacred

tent in which the ark or chest contain-
ing the sacred

of the Israelitish

nomads was placed

the

halted in their

wanderings (see

4). This tent, glorified into the

so-called Tabernacle (see T

ABERNACLE

), forms the

K.

68

‘(shall he) my camp’ is corrupt; Th. Klo.

Benz. after Pesh. read

shall

hid.

On

in Jer.

37

see C

ELLS

.

‘midst

of

his carriages.’

in 17

20

has

;

26 5

and Aq. also

CAMPHIRE

CANAAN, CANAANITE

the modern Kefr

a

hamlet almost

m. NE.

of

a fine spring, and Khirbet

or

el-Gelil, on

a

promontory of Gebel

oyer the

plain of

about 8 m.

N.

of Nazareth, with

ruins, tombs, cisterns, and

a

pool.

The data of Antoninus

4), snit

at which the

writers Phocas, John of

burg, and Quaresmius lace it ;

so

also in modern times

De Saulcy Porter

and Conder.

Eusebius and

Jerome

it with

in Asher (Josh.

to

them, therefore, it would not have been at Kefr Kenna, hut may
have been

The data

of

Theodosius

A

.D.)

and

so

in the Middle Ages do those

of

Brocardus Fetellus

Sanutus

.

and others ad-

here. Robinson,

was

first modern

to

the claims

describes the position, details the traditional

evidence, and points

out

that the name is the equivalent

of

the

N T one, while Kenna, with the

is not

3

He has been followed

by

Ritter, Renan, Thomson, Stanley, and

T h e name

el-deli1

is

not above suspicion it

may be the creation of an early ecclesiastical tradition,
just

as

Robinson himself points out that an attempt has

been made by the native Christians in the present
century

to

transfer it to Kefr

On the other

hand, Josephus resided for

a time in a village of Galilee,

called Cana

(Vit.

if this be the same

as his

residence

the plain of Asochis

(id.

he means

el-Gelil.

Conder

1

288)

suggests another site

for

Cana in

on

the road between

and Tabor.

G.

A.

CANAAN, CANAANITE

Coins from Laodicea of the time of

Antiochus

IV.

and his successors, bear

the legend

of

a metropolis in Canaan '-probably the

town whose position is indicated by the

ruins of

S.

of Tyre. Well known,

too, is the statement (wrongly assigned to
of

that Phcenicia was formerly called

(Herodian,

similarly Steph.

Byz.

In accordance

with this, Philo of Byblos

27) calls the eponym of

the Phoenicians

who was later called Phoinix'

and

in Bekker,

(gen.

is

identified with

(the father of Phoenix), whence

the Phoenicians also are called Ochna'

Here we have the shorter form

cp Olsh.,

so

often met with in the Amarna tablets under the form

side by side with the fuller form

probably with the article prefixed

as in Egyptian

inscriptions (see below,

6).

As

a geographical term Canaan shares the indefinite-

ness that characterises much of the

OT,

and indeed of

centre of the camp

as

described by

P.

T h e case is

analogous to that of Ezekiel's ideal division of the Holy
Land in the future (Ezek.

in which his sacerdotal con-

ceptions find expression. The Tabernacle

is

the place

of

presence. This is why it is the central

point, immediately round which the Levites encamp,
forming an inner ring of protection for the ordinary

Hebrew lest by inadvertently drawing near he should
bring down upon himself the wrath

of

The positions

of

the various tribes are given in

Nu. 2 ;

on

each side

of

the tabernacle, but separated from it by the Levites,

three tribes encamp-a leadipg tribe flanked by two other tribes

with their 'ensigns'

Thus on the E. is Judah flanked

Issachar and Zehulun

on

the S. Reuben flanked

and

Gad

;

on the W. Ephraim flanked by Manasseh and Benjamin ;

and

on

the N.

flanked by Asher and

It has

generally been held that the four leading tribes were dis-
tinguished by the possession

of

large standards

whereas

the other tribes had only smaller ensigns

but this rests

perhaps

on

a misinterpretation

of

which, as the contexts

and, in part the versions show, means a company; see the

discussions

('98)

;

and cp

E

N

SIG

N

.

The foregoing details are to he gathered from what have been

generally regarded as parts of the primary narrative of P.

Further'details as to the Levites are given in

3

which has

been attributed

by We. C H

to

secondary strata

of

P.

According

to

'this section the various Levitical divisions

encamped

as

follows

Aaron and his sons

(3 38) on

the

E.

the Kohathites

on

the

the Gershonites on the

and the Merarites

the N.

35)

of

the

.

The Eastward is manifestly regarded as the superior position

the relative importance

of

the remaining three positions is less

obvious.

it may be observed that the E. and

S.

sides are

occupied by the children-of Leah (exclusive

of

together

with Gad ; the W. by the children of Rachel, and the N. by the

children of the handmaids (exclusive

of

Gad).

The priestly writers appear to have conceived of the

as

square, and this is probably another indication

that we have to do with an ideal (not a historical) camp
for there is some reason for believing that the actual
encampments of the Hebrews approximated to the
round rather than the square form (cp

I

) .

Though

the other hexateuchal sources furnish few details

as

to

the camp, the direct statement

of Ex.

337

(E)

that the

tabernacle was

is quite irreconcilable with

P's

that it formed the

centre of the camp.

T h e

Central position of the tabernacle, the intermediate
position

of the Levites between the tabernacle and the

secular tribes, and the superior position assigned
the Levites to the sons

of

Aaron, are

not matters

of

history, but the expression, in the form of an idealisation
of the past, of a religious idea.

CAMPHIRE

;

[BKAC]

Cant.

[om.

the earlier spelling

of camphor,' should

'be H

E N N A

(as in

Lamk.,

a plant described by Tristram

as still

growing on the shores of the Dead Sea at Engedi

114).

According to

Orient.

it

I

S

frequently cultivated in Egypt, Arabia Petrza, and

Persia; and it is probably indigenous

to

N. Africa,

Arabia, Persia, and

India

and Hooker,

1782).

of Cant.

114

is that of

the flowers.

Pesh. and Targ. have the same word as MT, with which

also

is identical :

and the Syriac lexicographers state

that this means the

of the Arabs-the plant from which

they obtain the dye for the nails.

The Greek references

to

will be found in

Scott,

N.

M.-W. T.

T.-D.

The cluster

OF GALILEE

(

K A N A

W H ]

:

Pesh.

appears only in the Fourth Gospel,

as the scene of Christ's first miracle (John 2

I 11

4

and of his healing

of the nobleman's son lying sick at

Capernaum

(4

46-54),

and

as

the home of Nathanael

2).

T h e only evidence

as

to its position is that it

lay higher than Capernaum; Jesus went down from

it

to

the latter

( 2

12).

Tradition and present opinion are divided between

which elsewhere means a cluster of grapes-possibly

of

dates

Cant.

7f:

See Budde.

all ancient, geographical nomenclature.
I n its widest sense the term seems to

have been used to denote all of what may be roughly
classed as Southern Syria, from the foot of Mt. Hermon
to the lower end of the Dead Sea, including territory
both

to

the

E.

and to the

W.

of the Jordan clear to

the Mediterranean.

Such appears to be the case in the

Book

of

Joshua

(113).

More commonly, however, it is

restricted

to

the lands lying to the W. of the

that is

Phoenicia, and Philistia proper.

As

however, became more sharply marked

off from

Phcenicia and Philistia, it is natural that to, Hebrew

writers Canaan should

come to mean the latter

districts more particularly.

So in Is.

the term is

applied to Phcenicia and perhaps to the entire coast, and
in Zeph.25 to Philistia. As an ethnic term, Canaanite

is

similarly applied to the inhabitants of the

W.

Jordan

district in general, while at times-as in

Nu.

seats

of

the Canaanites are more specifically limited to

the sea-coast and the Jordan valley.

Corresponding

to

This section is by the author of the article

CANAAN, CANAANITE

the identification of

Canaan

with Phcenicia, which

is

also

in accord with the usage of the term

in the

Tablets

I O

below), the term Canaanite

comes to be associated with the mercantile activity of
Phcenicia,

and in consequence appears

as,

in

Hos.

128 Is.238- in the general sense

of merchant.

According to Targ. and many moderns,

it has this sense likewise in Zech.

Wellhausen

and

would add, emending in accordance with

Zech.

T h e indefiniteness and the shifting character of both

the geographical and the ethnical terms point to

political changes in which were in-
volved the people to whom the term

Canaanites was originally applied

:

indeed, the indefiniteness is the direct outcome

of these

changes.

Analogy warrants

us in assuming

as

the

starting-point

a

limited district, and that with the

extension of Canaanitish conquest or settlement the
term became correspondingly enlarged, though it is
not necessary to assume that the correspondence between
actual settlement or possession and the geographical
application of the term Canaan must have been complete.
T h e

of Canaanites in important sections

of

the

W.

Jordan lands

have sufficed for imposing

their

on

the whole district.

The Egyptian inscriptions come to

aid in enabling

us

to determine where to seek for the origin of the term.

In

the accounts of their Asiatic campaigns,

which begin about 1800

the rulers

of the

restrict the name

to the

low

strip of coast that forms the eastern

of the Mediterranean

and, since it is only the northern

section of this coast that affords

a

sufficiency of

suitable harbours for extensive settlements, it is more
particularly to the Phcenician coast-land that the name
is applied.

From the Phcenician coast it

came to be extended by the Egyptians to the entire
coast down to the Egyptian frontier, the absence
of any decided break in the continuity of the coast
leading to the extension of the nomenclature,

as it led

in later times to the shifting character of the southern
boundary of Phcenicia proper.

The name of Philistia

for the southern part of the coast does not occur in the

I t was from the

coast, therefore, that the name

ex-

tended to include the high lands adjacent

to it and it is interesting to note that, whilst the geo-
graphical term never lost its restricted application to the
coast strip, the ethnographical

Canaanites-embraces for the Egyptians,

to Muller

( A s .

206

the population

of all of Western Syria, precisely

as

in biblical sources.

The combination of the Egyptian with the O T notices
seems to justify the conclusion that the coast population
sent into the interior offshoots which made permanent

settlements there.

In this way both Canaan and the

Canaanites acquired the wide significance that has been
noted, whilst the subsequent tendency towards restricting
the name to the sea-coast is

an unconscious return to

the earlier and more

nomenclature.

The etymology of the term Canaan bears out these

historical and geographical conclusions.

In

the

Egyptian inscriptions.

inscriptions (cp also above,

I

)

the

word

with the article-'

Canaan '-which points to its being

a descriptive term

and, even though we agree with Moore
pp.

that the testimony is incomplete, the

use of the stem

in Hebrew in the sense of ' t o be

humbled suggests the possibility that this stem may,

some other Semitic dialect, have been used to convey

the idea of low,' even though that may not have been
the original sense of the stem.

If we keep in view the

prefixing of the article to the term, and its original
application to

a strip of land between the sea and the

mountains,

no more appropriate designation than the

639

can well be imagined

and this explanation

Canaan, though not unanimously accepted, is at any

ate provisionally

Certainly it seems to

be

an

one for when it is said that the Canaanite is

he one who dwells by the sea and along the side of the

ordan

(Nu.

in the two 'lowland' districts

Palestine-the very artificiality of the indicated limits

that it was the etymology of the word which

ed the writer to such

a view in contradiction to so many

passages where Canaanites arc spoken

of as

mountainous districts

also.

By the side of the term Canaan, however, there is in

he

O T

another which is used, especially by the Elohist,

to cover precisely the same population-
namely,

the land of the Amorite.'

I t

is the merit of

12

267)

and of E. Meyer

to have definitely demonstrated this important

joint.

See A

MORITES

.

At the same time, it is to

borne in mind that when the coast-land is

referred to, the term Amorite is not used, but,

i s

already pointed out, either Canaan for the whole

or Canaan for the northern and Philistia for the

southern. Whether the Yahwist

( J )

is equally con-

sistent,

as

Meyer claims, in

'

Canaanite' for the

pre-Israelitish population of the W . Jordan lands is

to question. The theory cannot be carried through

without

a certain amount of arbitrariness in the

of the verses belonging to

J

and

E

respectively (see

note,

Hist.

Moreover, the cuneiform documents and Egyptian

inscriptions furnish

an

explanation for the double

that places the facts in

From the

a

somewhat different light.

Egyptian side it is clear that the term 'Amoritic land
was limited to the mountain district lying to the east of
the Phcenician coast-land but extending across the
Jordan to the Orontes

As.

217

The southern and the eastern boundaries are not sharply
defined. T h e former is placed by

on

the basis

of Egyptian inscriptions, at the entrance of the plain-
the so-called

the Lebanon and the

and, whilst the Orontes might seem to

furnish

a natural eastern boundary, it would appear

that the early Egyptian conquerors extended the limits
still farther to the east. At the time

of Thotmes

the Hittites had not yet made their appearance.

Later,

in the days of Rameses

when the Hittites form

the most serious menace to Egyptian supremacy in
Western Asia, the Orontes becomes

a more definite

boundary of the

district, while

as the

Hittites encroach upon the territory of the Amorites,
the term Hittite begins to displace Amorite for the

northern mountain district of Palestine.

This process

is completed about

B.

c.

At

time, however, the term Amoritic had

already been extended to the southern

range of Palestine-not by the Egyptians, but by the
Babylonians and Assyrians. It is in cuneiform docu-
ments

of

(about) the twelfth centnry that we first

come across the term 'land of A-mur-ri'

(as the signs

must

be read, instead of

as was formerly

supposed).

Nebuchadrezzar

I . ,

king of Babylonia,

whose date is fixed at

calls himself the

conqueror of the 'land of

and Tiglath-pileser I.

of Assyria, whose reign coincides

part 'with that of

Nebuchadrezzar, names the great sea of the Amoritic
land as the western boundary to his conquests.

Long ere this, however, as the use of the Babylonian

language in the Amarna tablets (circa 1400

B

.c.)

s h o w ,

[So

G.

A.

Smith, HG

5 ,

whilst RDB

and

Buhl

42)

decline a decision. Moore

and

E.

Meyer

( G A

reject the

derivation from

esse

which is the property

of

the

uncritical Augustine

Ps.

Augustine

says

ad Rum.)

that the peasants near Hippo, when

asked

as

to their origin, answered in Punic,

id

est,

esse.]

CANAAN, CANAANITE

Babylonia had

into close contact with the

coast and the interior.

a matter of fact, one

of

the earliest rulers in Southern Babylonia of whom we

have

record, Sargon I . , whose date is fixed at

3800

B.

is declared, in

a

tablet presenting

a

curious mixture

of

omens and historical tradition, to have penetrated

beyond the western sea

the Mediterranean), and

there are indications that he actually set foot on the
island of Cyprus (see Max Ohnefalsch-Richter,
83). Sargon speaks only in a general way of having
proceeded to the ‘west’ l a n d ; but the ideographic
designation in the text in

the

same

as that which the later Assyrian rulers employ for

the territory which includes Canaan in the proper sense.
The same compound ideogram is the ordinary term for

west’ in the legal literature of Babylonia

and the

suggestion that it is also to be read

a playful

of

and

TU,

indicat-

ing perhaps direction-is plausible.

I n any case there

appears to be some close connection between M

AR

T U

and the name Amurru.” The text in which Sargon’s
western conquests are spoken of is probably of

a very

much later date than Sargon himself; but the value of
the tradition, and at all events of the geographical
nomenclature, is unimpaired

this fact.

The Amarna

tablets, which constitute the remains of
Egyptian archives of the fifteenth
centurv

B.

confirm the

antiauitv

of the term

I n ‘the letters

their

master written by officers under Egyptiaa suzerainty,
the term is of not infrequent occurrence, and an ex-
amination of the passages proves that it is applied, just

the corresponding term in the Egyptian inscrip-

tions. to the mountainous district lying immediately to
the east of the coast-land of

Canaan in the Egyptian

of Northern Palestine.

T h e eastern limits

are again not sharply defined. I n the period to
the Amarna tablets belong, the Hittites are beginning
to extend their settlements beyond the Orontes

but

between Hatti and

land there was

a district

known

as

which reached to Damascus.

This

may,

be regarded as the eastern frontier

of the

Amnrru’ district. T h e agreement between

the Egyptian and the Amarna nomenclature extends to
the term Canaan,’ which, under the form

is

limited in the Amarna tablets to the northern lowland

’

or sea-coast.

It was quite natural that, from being

applied to the interior district of Northern Palestine, the
term Amurru’ should

to he employed for the

interior of Southern Palestineas well, just

as the Egyptians

extended the application of

Canaan to the entire

Palestinian coast. When the Assyrian conquerors in

the ninth century begin to threaten the

kingdoms, they include the
of the latter under the land of

Amurru.

The term land of Israel occurs only once

in Assyrian inscriptions, and even this passage is
not beyond dispute.

Again, since the ‘Amurru’

district in the proper sense was the first territory that
the earliest Babylonian and Assyrian conquerors set
foot in after crossing’ the Orontes, it also happens that
the term becomes for them the most general designation

for the ‘West.’ On the other hand, it must be noted

that this development in the use of Amurru is directly
dne to Babylonian influence, and forms part of the
heritage. bequeathed to later times by the period of early
Babylonian control over the land lying to the west

of

the Orontes.

At the comparatively late period when Assyria,

usurping the place formerly held by

lonia, begins her conquests, the

‘

Amoritic’

in

Palestine was serionslv

For a discussion

of

the subject and

a

somewhat different

view see Schrader

‘Das

land Amurru,’

SBA

1894.

Cp

Wi.

GZ 1

51-54.

An analogy for

‘westward’ by

a

to a

land

to the

west

is

to be

found

the

OT designation

for south.‘

threatened by the

H

I

TTITE

S

.

I n extending their

settlements beyond the Orontes they encroached upon

‘

Amoritic

’

territory.

The distinct traces of this west-

ward movement of the Hittites are to be found in the
Amarna tablets already mentioned.

Indeed, the move-

ment forms the key to the political situation of Palestine
in the fifteenth century

B

.C.

T h e Assyrian conquerors

accordingly, when proceeding to the West, invariably
began their campaigns by a passage of arms with the
Hittites.

This,

together with the waning strength

of the ‘Amorites,’ led to another change in the geo-
graphical nomenclature-the extension of the term

Hatti or Hittite to Northern Palestine

as

far

as

the

Mediterranean,

so

as to include, therefore,

proper.

For Southern Palestine the older designation

‘Amurru’ held its own, and the differentiation thus

resulting between Hatti and

‘

Amurru assumed

a

practical significance which was quite independent

of

the original application of the two terms.

I t will have become evident from

sketch

of

the

early fortunes of Palestine that care must be exercised

in drawing conclusions from geographical
nomenclature.

The Hittite power does

not extend to the sea-coast because of the
extension of the geographical term, and

so

the ethnographical application of Amoritic cannot be

determined from the geographical usage.

That Amur originally designated

a

particular tribe,

or possibly

a group of tribes, settled chiefly in the

district,

is

one of the few

facts to be deduced from the early

Egyptian monuments.

These Amorites of Northern

Palestine are frequently represented by the Egyptians

as

a blond people with

a

cast of countenance that marks

them off from what are generally considered to be
Semitic traits (see Petrie,

Egyptian

Monuments). I t would be hazardous, in the face of
our imperfect knowledge, to enter upon further specula-
tions as to their origin. There are good reasons for

believing that already at

a very early

period the population of Palestine

sented

a

mixture of races, and that

through intermarriage the dividing lines

between these races

the course

time,

until all sharp distinctions were obliterated.

Hence the

promiscuous grouping-so characteristic in the
teuch-of Amorites with

Hittites,

etc., of northern and southern Palestinians, without any
regard to ethnic distinctions. T h e problem

of

differentia-

ting between these various groups whom the Hebrews
encountered upon settling in Palestine is at present
incapable of solution.

Future discoveries will prob-

ably emphasise still more strongly the heterogeneous
character of the tribes.

Their unorganised condition

.made them a comparatively easy prey

to conquerors and yet difficult to ex-
terminate.

The early Babylonian and

Egyptian conquerors were content with

a

general

recognition of their supremacy on the part of the
inhabitants.

Native Palestinians were retained in con-

trol, and all that was demanded was a payment of
tribute from time to time.

When, however, the

Hebrews permanently settled in Southern Palestine.
about

the early inhabitants lost much of their

political prestige.

In the course of time,

also, many of

the groups were reduced to

a state of subjection, varying

in degree, but in all cases, except in the case of the
inhabitants of the coast, sufficiently complete to prevent
any renewal

of former conditions. With the successful

establishment

of the

b’ne

in the lands to the west

of the Jordan, the history of the pre-Israelitish inhabit-
ants comes to an end in Southern Palestine, except

so

far

as the influence of these Canaanitish groups upon

the religious life of the Israelites is involved.

T h e

Hittites in the north, of course, survive but the other

groups, including the Amorites, gradually disappear,

642

CANALS

either sinking into a position of utter insignificance

or

amalgamating with the Hebrew

G

OVERNMENT

,

I

SRAEL

,

The frequent injunctions in the

Hexateuch warning the people against intermarriage
with these conquered gronps are clear indications that
such intermarriages must have been common.

A

new element in the ethnographical environment of

Palestine that appears simultaneously with,

or shortly

8).

CANDLESTICK

CANDACE

[Ti.

WH]),

queen of the

Ethiopians

is incidentally mentioned in Acts

27.

For the kingdom of Ethiopia which continued to

maintain its independence against the Roman emperors,
see

E

THIOPIA

.

Its queen was often called

;

this seems, indeed,

to

have been regarded as an official

title, somewhat like Pharaoh’ (or rather Ptolemy’?)
in Egypt.

The name occurs in hieroglyphics

a

ruined pyramid near ancient Meroe : see Lepsins,

v. pl.

47

(pyram.

of

There, a

queen is called

and

I t is

difficult to say which of the two

or three queens called

Candace was buried in that tomb.

I

.

Strabo

(820

see also

Cass.

53

29

; 54 5)

speaks of the

one-eyed virago Candace

. .

in

B

.C.

attacked Egypt, overpowered the

three cohorts

of

Roman soldiers stationed at the first cataract

devastated the Thebaid, but

easily defeated by the

legate Petronius, and pursued to her northern capital, Napata

which was destroyed.

Pliny

(6

35)

seems

to

refer the reign

Candace (‘regnare

Candacem’) to the time when

Nero’s explorers passed through Nubia; his assertion that the

name had become somewhat common among the queens of

(‘quod nomen

jam

ad

transiit’)

is

usually pushed much

too

far against the monumental evidence.

T h e Ethiopian officer

of

Acts

8

cannot well have had

any connection with the Candace of Strabo; but his
mistress may not improbably have been the contemporary
of Nero.

Nero’s explorers reported the southern capital

in ruins, in

consequence

of

internal wars between the Ethiopians

;

most

likely, the royal residence had already been shifted

to

and

where ruined palaces and temples

of

the latest

style have been found, hut the kingdom appears still to have

taken its name from the capital Meroe where the kings were, a t

least, buried.

For the condition of the Meroitic kingdom at that

time and the part played by the queens (or rather

kings’

mothers), see

E

THIOPIA

.

W.

M. M.

CANDLE

Job

1 8 6

Mt.

etc.

cp

below, and see

L

AMP

.

CANDLESTICK,

the

EV

rendering of

(

I

)

Ex. 25

etc.

the well-known candela-

brum of the temple, and

Aram.

(deriv.

Dan.

5 5

[Theod.],

to the former of which the present article will con-

fine itself, leaving to the articles

L

AMP

and

T

EMPLE

further remarks upon the use of lights in temples or
shrines, and of lights (and ‘candlesticks’ or rather

lampstands

for secular purposes.

There is no critical evidence to support the supposition

that the temple candelabrum described by P in Ex.

25

37

existed before the Exile. On

the contrary, an old passage

S.

3

3

(written, perhaps, at the beginning

of

the seventh century

[Bu.,

SBOT;

cp S

AMUEL

,

3

( R ) ] )

speaks only of a ‘ l a m p ’

which seems to

have burnt from night-fall until the approach of dawn.

Solomon, it is true, is said to have had ten golden

in his temple, five on either side

but they are not mentioned in

K.

25

(in the Jer.

their introduction is due to a glossator), nor do we

find any trace of them in the temple described by Ezekiel
(Ezek.

or

the restoration of temple-treasures

by

(Ezra

1

These facts, as well as internal

evidence, support Stade’s conclusion that the passage in

I

K.

is

an interpolation

( Z A T W

Now.

H A

2

40

2 ,

and Benz. ad

).

T h e

before, the invasion of the Hebrews is
represented by the Philistines, who,

coming (it would appear) from some island or coast-land
to the west of Palestine, succeeded as a sturdy seafaring
nation in making settlements along the inhospitable
southern coast of Palestine. Their

character

has been quite definitely ascertained; but, once in

Palestine, they appear

to have exchanged their own

language for one of the Semitic dialects spoken in the
land to which they came.

I t is rather curious that

these Philistines, who generally lived

hostile relations

with the Hebrews, and at various times threatened
the existence of the Hebrew settlements, were eventu-
ally the people to give their name to

a district

which they never possessed

its entirety.

In

the latest Assyrian inscriptions, however,

still

appears in its restricted application to the southern
coast-land, and it is not until the days of the Roman
conquest that the equation

‘

Palestine

becomes established.

On the basis of the Egyptian and the Assyrian inscrip-

tions and of the

OT,

the history of Canaan may be

divided into three periods :

( R )

the

pre-Israelitish period, from about 3800

B

.C.

to the definite constitution of the

Israelitish confederacy

the Israelitish supremacy

from circa

B.C.

to

(c)

decline

of

this

supremacy, ending with the absorption of Canaan by
Assyria and Babylonia 587

B

.C.

After the return of

the Hebrews from the so-called Babylonian exile, the
history of the north and south becomes involved in the
various attempts to found

a universal empire, under-

taken in succession by Persia, Macedonia, and Rome.

The characteristic note in the history

of

Canaan

down to the period of Persian supremacy is the

bility of any permanent political union
among the inhabitants.

Even the

Hebrews, united by a common tradition and by religion,

yield to the inevitable tendency towards political division
instead of union. This tendency stands in
ship to the geographical conditions (see

G.

A.

Hist.

T h e land is split up into coast-land,

highland, and valleys; in consequence of which, it
presents climatic extremes sufficient to bring about
equally sharp contrasts in social conditions.

T h e

resulting heterogeneous disposition of the population
appears to have rendered united action (except in extreme
necessity) impossible even among those sections most
closely united by blood and traditions.

[For further

details regarding these three periods of Canaanitish
history see the articles

I

SRAEL

,

6, HITTITES,

See

E

GYPT

,

6.

The Hebrew word denotes the

o r

of the Nile

On

artificial water-courses in

Palestine see C

ONDUITS

.

[Ti. WH],

[Vg.],

[Pesh.]), the designation applied to Simon

the apostle

318

RV mg. Zealot

’).

T h e

word does not mean an inhabitant of Canaan

(so

AV

C

ANAANITE

, based upon T R

which in Gr.

is usually expressed by

nor has

anything to do with Cana.

It is a transliteration of

the

of

(cp Bib.

Lk.

6

Acts

is represented

by

the Gr. equivalent

Z

EALOT

NICIA,

PHILISTINES,

M.

JR.

CANALS

Ex.

Nah.

3 8

643

the

fifth sign.

and

the

themselves. mention is made

of the

‘

flowers

2

Apart from the instruments used in tending this

in

[in Zech.

bowl in Ch.

4

‘tongs’]).

3

Unmentioned also in Macc.

2 5

and the Apoc.

of

Baruch

CANDLESTICK

ten candlesticks

of

the temple of Solomon have probably

been evolved from the imagination of

a later scribe, who

seems to have adopted the number ten to agree with the
ten bases’

cp

I

7

39.

Obviously it is no

real objection to our view of the critical value of

I

K.

49

that the Chronicler mentions candlesticks of gold

and silver among David‘s gifts to Solomon in

I

Ch. 2 8 15.

That this verse in its present form has suffered ampli-
fication appears from

a comparison with

Tradition held that these ten candlesticks

augments the

number to

!

[Ant.

3

either were already present

along with the Mosaic candelabrum,

or

were exact copies of it

(cp Ch. 47,

Naturally Solomon’s great wealth was

considered a sufficient explanation of the otherwise curious fact

that, whereas he employed

ten

candlesticks, the Mosaic taber-

nacle and the second temple were content with

one.

15, adds that the candlestick was

one

of the five things

taken away and preserved at the destruction

of

Solomon’s temple.

The candlestick of gold, called also the

candle-

stick’ (Lev.

24

is described a t

bv P in Ex.

CANDLESTICK

Rashi, etc.,

on

Ex.

maintained that the candelabrum

stood three ells in height and measured

between the

outer

lights and that it stood upon a tripod (Maimonides cp

vi.

The seven lamps were provided with pur;

olive oil (Ex.

27

and for the general service were supplied

‘snuff dishes

and various oil vessels

The lamps were to be tended daily (Ex. 30

but

tradition varied as

to

how many

were

kept lit at one

The

light was never allowed

to

be extinguished, and tradition relates

that the

fall of the temple was prognosticated by the

sudden

of this mishap (Talm.

cp the

lament in

4

Esd.

(written after the fall of Jerusalem),

est.

It

was forbidden

to

reproduce the candlesticks exactly (cp

Onias and the temple of Leontopolis, B

10

but this law

could be evaded by making them with five, six,

or

even eight arms

T h e holy candelabrum

is

referred to comparatively

seldom in subsequent

It forms the motive in

Zechariah’s vision (Zech.

4,

cp Rev.

11

4).

In

170 Antiochus Epiphanes carried it

off

along with the golden altar etc.

(

I

Macc.

om.

V ) ;

but

a

fresh one

(tradition relates that

was of inferior material) was

reconstructed by Judas after the purification of the
temple

(164

B.

I

Macc.

4 4 9 ) .

Jesus the son of Sirach

employs the

as

a

simile for beauty in ripe old age (Ecclus. 2617).

The

same is doubtless the

seen by Pompey

(Ant.

xiv.

which, with its seven

was one of the

three famous objects in the temple of Herod
Its fate

at

of Jerusalem is well known.

T h e

holy candelabrum, or, more probably,

a copy of it, was

carried in the triumph of Titus

5

5), and was

depicted upon the famous arch which bears his name.
Vespasian deposited it in the temple of Peace, and after
various vicissitudes (see Smith,

)

it was placed

the Christian church a t Jerusalem

(533

A

.D.).

All

trace of it has since been lost.

Possibly it was destroyed

or

carried off by Chosroes

11. of Persia, when, in

614,

he

took and pillaged Jerusalem (see Levesque in Vigouroux,

Curiously enough, Josephus, in

his

account

of

the

triumph of Titus, states that the workmanship

of

the candlestick was not the

as that which had been

in the

As was the case with other objects in

the triumph, it was probably constructed from the de-
scriptions of the captives ; besides, such conventional

were not unknown at that

T h e

griffin-like figures depicted upon the base of the
candelabrum may be possibly ascribed to the artist

so

far as can be judged, they do not resemble the mythical

symbols from Palestine or Assyria.

Consequently, in

endeavouring to gain an idea

of

the original

branched candlestick, one must not adhere too strictly
to the representation upon the Arch of Titus.

The language employed to describe the sacred

shows that it must have closely resembled

a

Seven-branched trees are frequently

with in

sculptures,

from the

and, as Robertson Smith

observes, in most

of the Assyrian examples it is not easy

to draw the line between the candelabrum and the sacred
tree crowned with

a star or crescent

488).

it is only natural to look for traces of Assyrian

or

4

mentions also

‘pipes,’ for conveying the

oil

Cp Ex. 27

Ch.

13

11

and

Jos.

Ant.

8

3. Rabbinical

tradition held that

was lit bv dav. This. it has been

).

( =

I t was placed out-

side the veil,

front

of the table of

shewbread (see the Vg. addition to

Nu.

T h e

comprised the

(AV

shaft),’

(branch,

(AV

bowl,

RV

cup,

(knop,

Targ. Pesh.

apple

and

(flowers,

[similarly Targ. Pesh. Vg. lily

perhaps collectively ornamentation.

The workman-

ship was

@??,

‘beaten-work’ or

(so

@

but

in

Nu.

8 4

Ex.

Jos., on the

other hand, has

‘cast

’).

From a n upright

shaft three arms projected on either side.

Each branch

comprised three cups described as

shaped like

[or ornamented with] almonds’
-see

A

LMOND

), together with

Under

each pair

of branches was

a

(Ex.

and

four sets of

and

were to be found in the

candlestick’

on the shaft,

v.

34).

These

four may have included the three of

v.

35,

in which

case the fourth

was between the base and the lowest

pair,

or near the summit.

Possibly, however, the

four sets came between the topmost pair of branches
and the summit (cp the illustration in

facing p.

35).

The centre shaft in Zechariah’s

vision was surmounted by

a

bowl

( 4

From

Jos.

(Ant.

we learn that the candelabrum was

hollow,

comprised

with

and

seventy ornaments in

It

ended in seven

heads

and was situated obliquely

before

the table of shewbread and thus looked E. and S.

version

of

Ex.

37

(differing

from the present MT) supplies the

interesting statement that from the branches

there

proceeded three sprouts

on

either side

Rabbinical tradition (cp Talm.

(Ex. 25 31

37

4) is difficult.

renders

so

Pesh.

but AV finds

stipes,

in Ex.

37

17

[used also of

the

‘staves’ for carrying the ark]).

when used of

inanimate objects denotes the ‘flank’ (cp Ex.

40

24

Lev.

1

Nu.

3

35

of the candlestick accordingly seems uncertain,

unless

perhaps

we should read

‘stand,’

Ch.

G

instead

of

On

the other hand, the candlestick may have had originally no

base (cp above,

4).

Perhaps

ornament :

cp Syr.

and see

3

It

is difficult to see how

he

obtains this number. Six

branches each with 3 sets

of

(32

including the shaft with

4

similar sets

34) and the 3

(u.

amount

to 69

Perhaps

to

this

we must add the figure

at

the summit of the central shaft

(possibly ornamented in

a

different manner). The artist in

a

Hebrew MS

of

the first half of the thirteenth century (Brit.

Mus., Harley,

fol.

a),

following a different interpreta-

tion of Ex.

25

33, assigns only one

and

to

each

branch, including the shaft. Each

of

the seven branches has

3

at

extremity a lamp

Below the

joining the lowest pair of branches the artist has drawn

(reckoning downwards)

a

.

.

The specific mention of the ‘base

was the lamp upon the

73).

in the Feast of Tabernacles (see

5

The evidence for the existence of more than one ’in

post-

exilic times rests only

upon

83. With

Ant.

5 4

Macc.

contrast ib.

vii.55

The passage is not free from

obscurity.

Noteworthy is

remark that slender arms

resembling the form of a trident were drawn forth.

Cp their use as symbols in Rev.

2

45.

7

Cp similarly the candelabrum in the temple of the Palatine

Apollo (Pliny, 348).

A seven-branched palm upon a coin

of

the Maccabees

see

Madden,

Coins

n.

7.

CANDLESTICK

Babylonian influence in the second temple, it is not

improbable that the

was originally

a represent-

ation of the sacred seven-branched tree itself, possibly
indeed the tree of life.'

The six arms, instead of

coming

up

and forming

a straight line with the top of

the central shaft, probably tapered off, the extremities
of each pair being lower than those of the pair above
it, thus presenting more accurately the outline

of a tree.

Examples of candelabra with the arms thus arranged
are not

I t is not impossible that the

and

citron' and palm-branch'

cp A

PPLE

,

2

of

the Feast of Tabernacles (wherein candlesticks played

so

a

part) are to be connected

also with this

sacred seven-branched tree,

which, it has been sug-

gested, the

has been evolved. The specific tree

represented was one which, for various reasons,

was

con-

sidered the most unique and valuable.

The choice may

have depended more strictly upon the belief that it was
supposed to represent the tree

of temptation

the

Paradise myth

(so

at all events in Christian times cp

Didron,

CANON

CANE, SWEET

Is.

Jer.

See

R

E

ED

,

CANKERWORM

10634 Jer. 511427

[twice],

2 2 5

Nah.

in

Ps. and Jer.

AV has C

ATERPILLER

.

T h e

is usually regarded

as denoting

a young

stage in the

history

of the locust; but this seems doubtful.

See

L

OCUST

,

6.

CANNER

Ezek.

usually taken for the

name of

a

place

Mesopotamia with which Tyre had

commercial dealings, and identified with Calneh (see
Schr. in Riehm's

1256).

even reads

Calneh

appealing to

a single Heb.

which

reads thus, and to variants of

But

the name is really non-existent the

words rendered

'

and Canneh and Eden should rather

be and the sons

of Eden.'

Everywhere else we read either of Beth-Eden or

of

B'ne Eden

it is not probable that there is an exception here.

The

or

of

is not

hut

or

where

y

or

a

relic

and

a

corruption of

Most

MSS

of

give only two names and the second name is

Canneh (as Smith's

hut

a

of B'ne Eden. The

discovery (for such it

to be)

is due

to

Mez

der

Stadt

1892,

34).

T.

K. C.

See Reland, De

H.

. .

.

de

.

. .

Reinach

de

Titus

(Paris,

and Vigouroux,

with

literature there quoted.

S.

A.

C.

C A O N

I N T R O D U C T I O N

T H E I D E A

O F

A

CANON

A.

OLD TESTAMENT.

C

ONTENTS

O

F

OT

CANON

Extent and classification

5).

Order of

books

Elias Levitaand 'The Great Synagogue

Date

Third

canon

:

Hagiographa

43-59).

Principle observed

43-47).

18-21).

Scientific method

In Septuagint

iii.

O

F

CANON

48-55).

In Josephns, Jerome

12-14).

Early tradition

First canon:

the Law

Second canon:

the Prophets

28-42).

canonised with Law

28-35).

Traditions, etc.

36-38).

56).

Non-Palestinian views

5 7 3 )

canon in Christian

ii. C

LOSING

C A N O N

15-22).

B. NEW TESTAMENT.

Versions

70).

General traces

of

N T

71).

Muratorian canon

72).

Bibliography :

OT and

NT

Gradual growth

Evidence of orthodox writers

65-68).

Evidence

of

unorthodox writers

69).

Books

temporarily received

73).

Result

74).

The word canon is Greek; its application to the

Bible belongs to Christian times the idea originates in

The Greek

( 6 )

(allied to

' a reed'

borrowed from the

Semitic Heb.

means

a straight rod or pole, a rod

used for measuring,

a carpenter's rule; and, by met-

onymy,

a

rule, norm, or law ;

a still later meaning is

that of catalogue or list.

As

applied to the books of Scripture

is first met

with in the second half of the

century

:

thus,

(as

opposed to

in can.

59

of the

Council

of Laodicea (circa 360

A.D.

and

in Athanasius (ep.

39 365

for the

whole collection is still later. The original
signification is still

a question.

Did the

term mean ( a ) the books constituted into

a

standard

or

the books corresponding to the

standard

of the faith cp

Perhaps originally

a

symbol of the universe-the tree

of

life

being viewed as distinct in its origin

from

sacred mountain

of

with which in a later myth it was combined. (Cp

and

I t is noteworthy that a seven-branched palm

is

represented by the side of an altar on an old Greek vase

(Ohnefalsch-Richter,

pl.

fig.

3).

Cp

PEF

Years'

Land,

the representation upon an amethyst reproduced in Reland, De

facing p. 35, also

facing

42.

The older form may in

time have tended

to

approach the conventional form represented

upon the arch of Titus, which agrees with later Jewish tradition.

This

form, resembling a trident in its outline, is especiallynoted

by

as novelty

5

For illustrations of the latter

variety see Martigny,

Ant.

('77)

the plates in

Calmet's Dictionary

;

and one at

Art

in

1

K.

and measured by it (cp

in

Letter to Flora,

circa

zoo

in

p.

or perhaps underlying it or

(c) the books taken up into the authoritative catalogue
or into the normal number? The subject is discussed
with full references to the literature in Holtzmann, pp.

142

I t is not improbable that the word passed

through various phases of meaning in course of
time.

T h e idea involved is clearly fixed

(Amphilochius,

ob.

(Athanasius,

sup.

)

are expressions concurrently used

to convey the same meaning.

I t was,

as we saw above,

a loan from Judaism, and within the Christian domain
originally applied only to the sacred books of the
synagogue-the

OT.

So

already

in

the

N T

itself

( 2

3

The doctrine of the synagogue was that all

the writings included in its canon had their origin in
divine inspiration, and that it was God who spoke in
them (Weber,

I

).

This canon, with the doctrine

attached to it, passed over to the Christian church and
became its sole sacred

until new writings

of

Christian origin came to be added, and the Jewish
canon,

as

the Old Testament, was distinguished from

the New.

The composite expression canonical books has

an

in the usage of the synagogue.

From the first

century

A

.

D.

such books are designated

that defile the hands

:

Yadayim

3

4

4

6

cp

5

3,

and

But see also below,

57-59.

See below,

terms.

3

See below, 53.

CANON

CANON

Weber,

I

).

Of

this surprising expression still more

surprising explanations have been offered.

Thus

Buhl still prefers that drawn from

4

6 ,

according

to

which the designation was intended

to

prevent pro-

fane uses

of

worn-out synagogue rolls.

(6)

Weber, Strack, C .

H. H. Wright and

adopt that suggested

14a.

According

to

this the object was to

that, a6

unclean, the sacred writings should always be kept apart, and

thus kept from harm such

as

might arise,

if they were kept

near consecrated corn, and

so

exposed

to

attack from mice.

(c)

A. Geiger

4

actually maintains that

only such rolls

as

had been written on the skins of unclean

were intended to he declared unclean.

All such explanations are disposed of by

Yadayim

34,

where there is a special discussion of the question

whether the unwritten margins and outer coverings of

sacred rolls defile the hands.

Under none of the above

explanations could any such question as this possibly
arise. The fact that defilement

of

the hands is

attributed to the sacred writings demands
moreattention than it has hitherto received.

Interpreted in positive terms this can mean only that

contact with

them

a

ceremonial

washing

the

hands, especially as the ruling in the matter occurs in
that Mishna treatise which relates

to, and is named from,

-such hand-washings.

The expression would be an

unnatural one if it implied

a

command that the hands

should be washed

touching

(so

Fiirst,

p.

83). As

-enjoining washing

contact it is quite intelligible.

The Pharisees (under protest from the Sadducees cp

46)

attributed to the sacred writings a sanctity of

such a sort that whosoever touched them was not allowed
to touch aught else, until he had undergone the same
ritual ablution

as

if he had touched something

The same precept, according to the stricter view, applied

to

the prayer ribbands

on

the

(

3 3

see

F

RONTLETS

,

end).

T o this defilement of the hands

the correlative idea is that of holiness

both qualities

are attributed together, but only to

a

very limited number

of writings, namely the canonical

(cp Yud.

35).

See

also C

LEAN

,

3.

A . OLD

TESTAMENT.

-The extent of the O T canon,

so

fax

as the synagogue

is concerned, is exactly what we find in our

Hebrew printed texts and in the Protestant

The original reckoning of the

synagogue, however, does not regard the books

as

thirty-

nine.

The twelve minor prophets count as one book

called the twelve,'

(so already in Baba Bathra,

146,

text),

Dodekapropheton; so also Samuel, Kings,

and Chronicles; whilst Ezra and Nehemiah form one
book of

Ezra.

Thus

I

I

+

3

+

I

15

have to be deducted

from our

39,

leaving only

24.3

T h e twenty-four canonical books fall into three main

divisions :

(the law) with five books,

(the

E

XTENT

AND

ARRANGEMENT OF

THE

CANON.

translations.

See

prophets) with eight, and

(the

Hagiographa) with eleven.

The

consist of four historical books

(Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings)

prophetical

(Isaiah, Jeremiah,

and

Minor). Since

the Massoretic period (cp Strack,

7439) the first

group has borne the name of

('former

prophets') to distinguish it from the second,

( '

latter prophets

').

Among the Hagiographa a

distinct group is formed by the five (festal) rolls

He well adds that the

high priest on the Day

washed his flesh with water,

not

only when he put on the holy garments of the day, hut

also

when he put them

off

(Lev.

24

;

4).

With this corresponds the Mishnic name of the canon

while the names

tacitly supplement the idea

of holiness.

To

these exactly answer the NT expressions

a t

For other names see

below

and

for

fuller details cp

Strack,

3

Hence

a

very common old name for the collection, still fre-

quently in use: 'the

books,'

written also

4

Hence the old collective title

with its

Massoretic contraction

WRS,

452.

649

in modern impressions in the order of the

at which they are read in the synagogue : Canticles

:Passover), Ruth (Pentecost), Lamentations

Ab,

Destruction of Jerusalem), Ecclesiastes (Tabernacles),
Esther (Purim). Only once

(in

the

576) do we find the three larger poetical books-Psalms,
Proverbs, and Job-grouped together as

the three smaller-Cali

Ecclesiastes, Lamenta-

tions-as

Daniel, Ezra, Chronicles

close the list.

Compass and threefold division

of the canon are

already taken

as fully settled in a very old and

passage in the tradition of the

synagogue, viz. the

146

but as to the order

of the books

divisions the same

passage gives

a

decision for the first time.

The ex-

planation of this is that in the oldest times the sacred
writings were not copied. into continuous codices. Each
book had

a separate roll to

Accordingly, in the

Baraytha

Bathm,

we find the

question started whether it be permissible to write the
entire Holy Scriptures, or even the eight prophets,

on a

single roll.

On the strength of some precedent or other

the question is answered in the affirmative; and this
leads up to the further question as to the order in which
the single books in the second and the third divisions
ought to be written.

This plainly shows that there was

as

yet

on

the subject no fixed tradition, and therefore too

great importance ought not to be attached either to the
Mishnic determination of the question or to the departure
from Mishnic usage which we meet

Both, how-

ever, are worthy of attention.

T h e order of the prophets proper, according

to our

passage, ought to be : Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, the

have struck even the teachers of the

Gemara as remarkable, and is explained by them in

a

fanciful way.

The Massora gives Isaiah the first place,

and in this it is followed by the MSS of Spanish origin
(as by the printed texts), while the German and French
MSS adhere to the Talmudic order.

Just because of

its departure from strict chronology, we are justified in
assuming that the Talmudic order rests

on old and

good tradition.

W e may safely venture, therefore,

to

make use of it in the attempt to answer the question

of

the origin not only of the individual books but also

of

the canon.

For the first books of the Hagiographa, the order

given in our printed texts-Psalms, Proverbs,

which is that of the German and French
MSS, gives place in our passage

to

this

order: Ruth, Psalms, Job, Proverbs.

Sup-

posing this to be the original place of the Book of Ruth,
we might account for its later change of position by

a

desire to group together the five festal rolls. This

explanation, however, is impossible for the reason that
the Massora and the Spanish

MSS

put Chronicles

in-

stead of Ruth in the first place and before the Psalter.
Of course, the same purpose

is

served by either arrange-

ment : each of them prefixes

to

the (Davidic) Psalter

a

book which helps to explain it.

The Book of Ruth

performs this service inasmuch as it concludes with
David's genealogical tree and closes with his name and
the Book of Chronicles does

so in a still higher degree,

inasmuch

as,

in addition to the genealogy

(

I

Ch.

it gives an account of David's life, particularly of his
elaborate directions for the temple service and temple
music.

Thus the claim of the Psalter to the first place

Baraytha

is

a

Mishna tradition which has not been

taken into the canon

of

the Mishna. hut comes from the same

twelve.

The position of Isaiah seems

to

,

A

.D.).

On the

important passage referred

to cp Marx

Traditio

etc.

The

was an exception ; its five books as

a

rule consti-

tuted

one roll although the five fifths

were to be

met

with also

(cp

3

Cp the excellent synoptic

in Ryle

(Canon

CANON

CANON

is only confirmed by both variations (that of the Talmud
and that of the Massora) from the usual

On

the other hand, the Massora and the Spanish

MSS

support the order, Psalms, Job, Proverbs (Job before

Proverbs), which therefore must be held

to

be the older

arrangement, the other being explained by the desire to
make Solomon come immediately after David.

The arrangement of the five

rolls

in the order of

their feasts

is supported only by the German and the

French

MSS.

T h e Massora and the Spanish

MSS

have-Ruth, Cant. Eccl. Lam. Esth., whilst

after transposing Ruth in the manner we have

seen, gives the order-Eccl. Cant. Lam., then intro-
duces Daniel, and closes the

list

with Esther.

W e

may venture

to infer from this

(I)

that the arrangement

of the

in the order of their feasts in the

ecclesiastical year is late and artificial

( 2 )

that about

the year

zoo

they had not even been constituted

a

definite

(3)

that the inversion of the order of

Daniel and Esther, and the removal of

from the

head

of the list, were probably designed to effect this,

the position of Daniel before Esther having thus

a claim

to be regarded as the older

and

(4)

that the original

position of the

Book of Ruth is quite uncertain, because

the first place among the rolls may have been assigned
to it by the Massora simply because it had been deposed
from the first place among the Hagiographa.

W e may,

further, regard it

as

probable that Proverbs was origin-

ally connected,

as in

Bada

with the other Solomonic

writings.

Finally,

it

may be taken

as perfectly certain

that Ezra and Chronicles closed the

The definition, division, and arrangement of books

as given above, which rests

on

real tradition, and must

constitute the basis for our subsequent
investigations,

is violently at variance

with that of the LXX.

It will be sufficient merely

to

indicate the differences here, for, as compared with the
canon of the synagogue, that of the LXX represents
only

a secondary stage in the development.

(

I

)

T h e arrangement of the LXX is apparently in-

tended

to be based on the contents of the books. T h e

poetical books are,

on

the whole, regarded

as didactic

in character, the Prophets proper

as

mainly predictive,

whilst the Law leads up to the historical books and is
closely connected with the Former Prophets.

As the

Prophets are placed at the end, the progress of the

collection is normal-from the past (historical books)
to the present (didactic books) and the future (boobs
of prophecy).

Certain, however, of the miscellaneous collection which forms

the Hagiographa-those, namely that are historical-are trans-

ferred

to

the first

where

a

place is assigned them

on

chronological principles. Ruth (cp

1

I

) is

inserted immediately

after Judges, whilst Chronicles,

Ezra,

and Esther are appended

at the end. Lamentations,

on

the other hand, regarded

as

the

work of Jeremiah (cp Ch.

35

25 and the opening words of the

book

in

is transferred to the third division (prophetic hooks)

and appended

to

Jeremiah whilst Daniel closes the entire collec-

tion. Lastly, Job regarded

as

a

purely historical hook serves

to

effect the

from the historical to the didactic

Of

the prophetical hooks, the Dodecapropheton heads the

list

(in a somewhat varying order of the individual hooks),

on account nf the higher antiquity

of

the writings which

open

( z )

Samuel and Kings together are divided into four

books of Kings.

Chronicles is divided into two books,

as is

also (subsequently) Ezra.

(3)

In varying degrees

new writings unknown

to

the Hebrew canon are inter-

polated.

Cp

also Macc.

2

Lk. 2444.

This is supported by Jerome in

Gal.

(cp the text in

Other variations, it is true, occur in the

same

287

author.

It should be added that the MSS show the

irregularity in their arrangement

of

the Hagiographa

.

cp Ryle

C,

and, for some important details,

Alter u.

der vaticanischen Bibelhandschrift,'

1899

Heft

I

Klasse).

is, however, considerable vacillation

as to

its position.

variations, which

are

very numerous, cp Ryle,

and the table appended to

The very various arrangements

of

the Hebrew canon

have been adopted in the Christian Church can

all be traced back

to

the LXX, with

more or less far-reaching corrections
based

on the canon of the synagogue.

all the divergences of the LXX from the syna-

arrangement, there

is

only one concerning which

is worth while considering whether it

not possibly

represent the original state

of

things as against the syna-

tradition

:

Ruth is made to follow Judges, and

Lamentations Jeremiah.

If

the actual state of the case

be that these two books ranked originally among the
prophets, but were afterwards transferred to the Hagio-

the historical value of the threefold division of

the canon is very largely impaired.

Now, this order

of the books

is

supported

the oft-recurring reckoning

of twenty-two books instead of twenty-four (cp above,

a reckoning which can be explained only on the

assnmption that Ruth and Lamentations were not

counted separately, being regarded

as

internal parts of

and

Our

sole

to this

(c.

8

A.

D

.

).

H e gives the total as twenty-

two, made

out

as follows: Moses,

5

; Prophets after

Moses,

13

to God and precepts for men,

4.

The last-named category doubtless means the Psalms
and the three Solomonic writings.

Thus Daniel,

Esther, Ezra, Chronicles, and even Job, are, as his-
torical books, reckoned with the prophets, and Ruth
and Lamentations are not counted at all- that

is

to say, they are included in Judges and
Here clearly a compromise has been struck be-
tween the threefold division of the synagogue, which
places the prophets in the intermediate position, and
the division of the Alexandrians, which arranges the
books according

to subjects. T h e Alexandrian canon

is obviously in view

also in the pointed addition

by which the books

con-

tained in the canon of the synagogue are excluded.
We may conclude, therefore, that

also the reason why

Ruth and Lamentations are not reckoned as separate
books

is that the LXX

is

followed and thus we have

no fresh testimony here.

There

is a further remark

to be made.

That the seven books just mentioned

should be removed from the prophetic canon,' if
once were there, to a place among the
could be explained only by a desire to have the festal
rolls beside one another.

In the oldest tradition, how-

ever, there was no such group of rolls (see above, §

The supposed motive, therefore, could

not

have been operative.

On

the other

hand, the number twenty-two has an

artificial

external motive, not indicated by Josephus,

but mentioned by

all the Church fathers from Origen

downwards : there

is

thus one book for each letter of

the Hebrew alphabet.

This childish

is carried to

an

extreme point when the books are reckoned

as

twenty-

seven (an alternative which is offered by Epiphanius and
Jerome) to do justice

to

the five final letters

also

:

of Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and Ezra are divided,
the fifth being supplied in Epiphanius by Judges

Ruth, in Jerome by Jeremiah

and Lamentations.

That

this is mere arbitrary trifling

is

obvious.

On the other hand Jerome gives also the number

twenty-four

describing it

as

a

reckoning accepted by

Ruth and Lamentations thus being

For

various

to

another

on

the canon

of

428,

Ryle,

166.

(see

below,

75

p

inclines to the opinion that

Josephus did

not

as

canonical the Song

of

Songs

and

Ecclesiastes.

interpolation.

See below,

43.

in Strack, 435

See,

on

this point below,

The word

after

is disallowed

by

Niese

as

an

A

thing

in itself, as implying a degradation.

4

Cp the passages in Ryle,

and still

more

exhaustively

CANON

counted among the

A

symbolical sense,

based

on

Rev.

4

4

I

O

,

is found for this number also. In the

Prologue

to Daniel, however, Jerome adopts 24 as

the

reckoning : he counts

8, and

11

books to each of the

divisions respectively, though he does not mention the
total, Support is given

to the

Baba

146,

in like

by the contemporary testimony of

576, which quotes Cant. Eccl. and Lam.

as '

writ-

ings,' and by the

of Jonathan

on

the prophets,

where Ruth and Lam. are wanting.

Finally, our oldest

witness-4th Esdras, probably written under

and therefore contemporary with Josephus

-represents Ezra

as writing at the divine command

94

books (chap.

after deduction

of the 70 esoteric

books, the 24 books of the

The number twenty-two, therefore, certainly comes

from

a

Jewish source but it is

a

mere play of fancy.

The original place of Ruth and Lamentations, accord-
ingly, was in the third part of the canon.

T

RADITION RELATING TO

THE

CLOSE OF

CANON.-Even had there been

a

binding decision of

a

bv which the number

CANON

here called the law,'

in which perhaps lingers

trace of

an

older form of tradition) which had been

(with the temple, one understands). God bids

iim take to himself five companions, and in forty days

nights he dictates

to them ninety-four books (see

tbove,

of which seventy are esoteric writings, and

he remaining twenty-four are the canon of the

OT.

Of

his legend

no

further trace has hitherto been found in

he remains of Jewish literature

but within the Christian

it shows itself

as early as the time of

recurs in certain of the fathers

( s o

Tertullian,

Orig.,

Jerome, etc. and is prevalent

hroughout the scholastic period, although there it is

weakened by references

to the powers

of

ordinary human

nemory.

The period of the humanists and of the reformation

this as well

as many other legends

but

if the old legend disappeared, it was only
to make way for a modern one, not mystic

but rationalistic in character.

This latter

obtained credence through Elias Levita

ob.

who

that Ezra

and

the

among other things, had

in one volume the twenty-four books (which until

.hen had circulated separately) and had classified them

nto the three divisions above mentioned, determining

the order of the Prophets

and the Writings

:differently, it is true, from the Talmudic doctors in

Baba

Bathra). This assertion satisfied the craving of

the times for a duly constituted body, proceeding

in

a

manner.

Accordingly the statement of Elias

Levita, especially after it had been homologated by

J.

Buxtorf the elder in his

Tiberias

became the

doctrine of the orthodoxy

of

the seventeenth

m d eighteenth centuries. T o it were added, as

though Levita said nothing of them, the

(Hottinger), and the

separation of the

canonical writings

( s o

already Buxtorf, and .after him

Leusden and

I t is

to

for the tradition on which Elias

Levita based his representation.

T h e Talmud, which

says

a

great deal about 'the men of the great synagogue,'

has not

a word to say about this action of theirs with

reference to the whole

of Scripture.

T h e mediaeval

Rabbins also touch on the matter but lightly. W e
cludetherefore that, to suit the needs of his time, Levita
merely inferred such an action from the existence of the
body in

The evidence for the very existence of

a body

of the

kind required, however, is extremely slender.

From the

middle of the seventeenth century it
was continually disputed anew.

If

even

we moderns must admit that there was

a body of some kind, the kind

of

existence that we can

accord

to

it supplies the strongest refutation

of the state-

ment of Elias Levita.

T h e question

as

to what we are

to understand by the men of the great synagogue

'

(or

Strack

gives the originals of the most important passages

also

Fabricius,

Codex

1

Cp,' however, the elucidation of the passage in Bada

B.

$3

See' for

attacks directed against it on rationalistic

in the Protestant as well

as

the Catholic church,

3

third preface to

ed.

Ginsburg,

1867, p.

cp Strack,

Cp the passages quoted in Ryle

It

should he

added that the same step had been taken already in the late

post-Talmudic tractate

de

R.

(chap.

1)

where

it

is said of

'

the men of the great synagogue that they decided on

the reception of Proverbs Canticles and Ecclesiastes, against

objections that had been

(see'the passages in C. H.

H.

Wright

I

T

).

We shall see below that an artificial antedating

can be

demonstrated here,

When Levita points out that the order of the Prophets and

the Writings, as fixed there,

different from that in

this only goes to show that the sages of

Mishna still found

something for them to give decisions about. Elias Levita forgets

that these sages found the hooks written on separate rolls, and

that,

therefore, there was not yet any order

to

fix.

Cp

above,

654

of

(twenty-four) was declared to

be canonical and

all other books were

excluded from the canon, there could hardly have been

any tradition of it.

According to the idea of the

ing and origin of canonicity entertained by the synagogue
(the

sole

custodian of tradition), and inherited from it by

the Christian Church, canonicity depends on inspiration,
and this attribute each of the twenty-four books brought
with it into the world quite independently of any ruling,
and in

a

manner that unmistakably distinguished it from

every other writing.

T h e growth

of

the canon was

represented

as

being like that of

a plant; it began

with the appearance of the first inspired book, and
closed with the completion of the last.

T h e question

accordingly was simply this: When was the latest
canonical book composed? or, if this admits of being
answered, Who was its human author ?

T o this question the tradition of the synagogue actually

offers

an answer,-in the same

in which

of the Prophets

and the Writings is determined. The passage
proceeds thus :

-

And who wrote them

?

'

names the writers of the several books

exact

chronological

T h e last of them is Ezra.

With

him, therefore

according

to

traditional chronology,

about 444

the canon

One can easily understand that, once Ezra had been

named

as

the latest author

of any biblical book, men

did not remain content with the assertion (quite correct,
if we admit its premises) which attributed

to

him the

closing

of

the canon merely

de

facto, without deliberate

act or purpose.

Rather did each succeeding

age,

according

to

its lights, attribute

to

him (or to his time)

whatever kind of intervention it conceived to be neces-
sary in order to secure for the canon

a regular and

orderly closing.

The oldest form of

this

of tradition,

so

far as known

to

goes back earlier by

a whole century than the

tradition of the synagogue. I t is to be

in the

passage of

4 Esdras (chap.

14)

that has been referred

to

Ezra

prays God to grant him by

his Holy Spirit that he may again write out the books

The numbers differ in the various forms of the text. Besides

we find 904,

84, 974.

All,

however, agree in the decisive

figure 4 cp Ryle,

285.

The real date of Ezra and the promulgation of the law

related in Neh.

8-10

will be considered elsewhere (see C

HRON

-

OLOGY

N

EHEMIAH

). The results of the present article

altered essentially

fixing it

in the year

or even 397 instead of 444. In

therefore

444

means

the date of Neh.

8-10.

A

full

of the point and a survey of recent literature will be found in

C .

Kent,

A

History

during

the

Persian, and

New York, 1899,

pp.

For what follows cp Ryle,

A,

where

a

very copious literature with fully translated quotations

is

given.

CANON

CANON

rather assembly

in the sense in which the expression

was originally used, may be regarded

as

now fully

cleared

up.

By

a brilliant application and criticism of

a11 that tradition had to say and all the work of his
modern predecessors,

demonstrated that this

‘synagogue’

is

no other than the great assembly a t

Jerusalem described in Neh.

: the assembly in

which the whole body of the people, under the presidency
of Nehemiah and through the signatures of its repre-
sentatives, pledged itself to acceptance of the law-book
of Ezra.

This assembly,

as the latest authority men-

tioned in the

OT,

was afterwards, by the tradition of the

synagogue, made responsible for all those proceedings

of a

religious nature not referred to in the OT, which,

nevertheless,

so

far

as

dated from

a

period

earlier than the tradition laid down in the Talmud.
Since this last, however, with its most ancient (and
almost mythical) authorities,

five pairs and Anti-

of

Socho, does not go back farther than the second

century

B.

there gradually grew out

of the assembly,

whose meetings began and closed within the seventh
month of

a

single year,

a

standing institution to which

people in that later time, each according to his needs
and his chronological theories, attributed

a duration

extending over centuries.

This was made all the easier

by the chronology of the Talmud bringing the date of
the Persian ascendency too low by some

150

years, and

thus bringing the beginning and the end closer

T h e activity

as

regards the canon, then, which Elias

Levita and his followers ascribe to

‘

the men of the great

synagogue, implies for the most part

a

comparatively

late and false conception of the character

of that

sup-

posed body.

What ancient tradition has

to

say about

it remains well within the limits

of

time assigned to it by

criticism.

In

Baba

the men of the great

synagogue have assigned

to them a place immediately

before Ezra they

write

Ezekiel, the Dodecapropheton,

Daniel, and Esther.

When, therefore, Ezra had con-

tributed his share (Ezra and Chronicles), forming the
closing portion of the series of the twenty-four books,
the canon was forthwith complete.

I t

is

evident

(

I

)

that here the activity

o f

the men of the great synagogue

does not extend below Ezra’s time; and

that it

extends only to four

books,

not to the whole canon.

Therewith the absolute untenableness

of

as-

sertion becomes apparent.

Expedients have been

resorted to in vain

as,

for example,

that

‘ t o write,’ means

the

to collect,’ or to transcribe

and circulate,’ or both together

Marx,

41).

‘ T h e

writer’ of the Mishna most certainly means

author

books-so

far

as there can be

a

question of authorship

where, in the last resort, the author is the Holy Spirit.

Of authorship nothing but writing is left.

This, accord-

ingly, is the sense assumed by Gemara and by rabbinical
exegesis. What we are told concerning ‘ t h e

o f

the great synagogue is

not

startling than it is to

learn that Hezekiah and his companions wrote Isaiah,

Proverbs, Canticles, and Ecclesiastes,-books of which
tradition is unanimous in saying that the last two were

de

Synagoge

(Amsterdam,

translated into German

K. Budde

in

his edition of Kuenen’s

collected essays

Kuenen’s proof has in

Great

been accepted (among

others) by Robertson

Driver

xxxiii), and (at

least

essentials) by Ryle,

t o

fnl

A

(239-272)

the reader

is

especially referred. It has

indeed found an uncompromising opponent in

C.

H. H.

Wright

whose

arguments however,

amount to

little more

than

this-the necessity

in

fact

produced

the legend) for some

corporate

body by whom the religious

duties of

that

time

could

have

been discharged. This, however,

cannot convert what is demonstrably legend into history. What-

ever has to be conceded

is

granted already by Kuenen

;

and

writers

like Strack

18

foot-

note*)

are

skilful enough to reconcile the demand for such

‘organised powers’ between Ezra and Christ with Kuenen’s

results. The

most

recent apology for the

is

that

of S.

Krauss (‘The Great Synod,’

Jan.

98,

Of

course

he

does not defend the theory of Elias Levrta.

1894,

p.

wholly, and the second

in

great measure, written by

Solomon two centuries before Hezekiah.

Here, in fact,

it

is the miraculous that

is

deliberately related.

The

meaning is that

Solomon had only

spoken

(cp

I

K .

5

)

what is contained in these books, and that

zoo years

later, divine inspiration enabled the men of Hezekiah to

write it

out,

and

so make it into canonical books.

By

exactly

operation the men of the great syna-

gogue were enabled to write

out what an Amos and

a

Hosea,

a

and

a

and

so forth had spoken

in the name

o f

God.

There is nothing to surprise

us

about such

a view as this, if we remember what we have

already found in connection with

4 Esdras (above,

14).

I n the present instance, indeed, it is only

a portion

of

the

O T

that comes into question, not the whole mass

as

in

4

Esdras

;

but,

on

the other hand, in

4

Esdras it

is

only the reproduction of books that had been lost that
is spoken of, whilst here it

is

their very

That stories such as these should ever have passed

current

as real historical tradition resting

upon facts is

surprising enough.

Almost more astonish-

ing

is

it that such baseless fancies should

not yet have been abandoned, definitely and

for good, by the theology of the Reformed Churches.

Whether the tradition

is

genuine need

no longer

be

The only question

is,

How was it possible that

the Mishnic doctors, and perhaps those who immedi-
ately preceded them, arrived at such

a

representation?

This question in some cases already greatly exercised
the exegetes of the Gemara, and even led them to
attempted corrections; and Rashi

(ob.

1105)

gives

a

solution of some of the knottiest points which, if we are
to believe

represents the view of the Baraytha.

According

to

this explanation, Ezekiel, Daniel, and

Esther did not write their own books, because they
lived in exile, and outside the borders of the Holy Land
it was impossible for any sacred book to be written.
Even, however, if this view had some element

of

truth

in it, it hardly meets the main point.

T h e

writing

of

each book the scribes,

as

was natural to their order,

sought

to assign to

a

writer like themselves,

a veritable

(see

S

C

RIBE

),

and attributed the authorship of any

book only to one to whom writing could be assigned

on

the authority of

a

proof text.

In the case of books

whose reputed authors could not be shown

to have

been

the authorship was attributed to the

writers

of

such other books

as

stood nearest

to them in

point of time.

That

Moses was

a

scribe was held to

he

shown by Dt.

31

9 24

(the Book

of

Job

also was

attributed

to

him

on account

of its

supposed antiquity), and the same

is true of

Joshua (Josh.

24

26).

Similar proof

was

found

for

in

I

S. 1025,

and to him

accordingly

assigned,

not

only the book that bears his

name, but

also

Judges and Ruth. In the case

of

David, if the

words

in S.

were

not enough, there was at

all events

sufficient proof

I

Ch.

and especially

; means

were found

for reconciling

the

tradition that he

wrote

the whole Psalter with

the tradition

(oral

or

written) which

assigned certain psalms

to

other authors. It was declared that

he wrote the psalms, hut

of those other writers. Of

Solomon

all that

was

said

I

K.

5

was

that

he

spoke not

that he

no

one

felt at a n y loss, for

in Prov.’

25

I

the production

of

a

portion of his Book

of

Proverbs is

attri-

buted

to

king

These genuine

scribes

were

utilised

to

the

utmost.

They had ascribed to

them

not

only

all

Solomonic hooks, but also the book of

their

contemporary Isaiah although

Is. 8

I

might well

have

been

taken as saying

for the prophet

himself.

Whether

this instance

some

special

cause

contributed to the

result,

or

whether it

was

merely that prophet and scribe had

at

any

cost

to

be kept separate

it is

impossible to

say.

For Jeremiah the

one

prophet in

narrower sense

of the word

amongst

who are named Jer.

36

spoke

too

distinctly to be ignored ; that

Kings also

have been attributed to him

is

at

once

suffi-

ciently explained by

K.

24

and chap.

25

compared with Jer.

52.

Next in order

as

authors come

men

the

who, as

contemporaries

of

Ezra the scribe

excellence

(himself also one

of

their

number) but

at

the

same

That the two legends have

an

intimate connection is

no

improbable.

Ryle,

418,

with the quotation there given; cp also

CANON

CANON

time also as signatories

of

the act in Neh.

10

I

were expressly

called

to

this. Why Ezekiel (the scribe if any

there was

among the prophets)

to

whom the act’of

is repeatedly

attributed

(37

should not have

credited with

his own hook may

he rightly explained by Rashi. The

twelve

could not have written severally their own

hooks

all the hooks together form (see

6 )

hut one

book (a somewhat different turn is given to this in Rashi), and

as the latest of them belonged

to

the period of the great syna-

gogue,

and,

indeed, according

to

tradition were actually

members of that body the assignment of

to

it

presented no difficult;.

Finally Daniel and Esther regarded

as

books of the Persian period easily fell

to

their

Ezra,

with his account of his

time, closes the series. Some

explanation is needed of the fact that whilst ‘the genealogies in

Chronicles down

to

himself’ (this is no doubt the easiest

explanation)

also

are assigned to Ezra no

is taken

of

the remainder of that work. The most ’likely reason is that the

main portion of Chronicles was regarded

as

mere repetition

from Samuel and Kings, the origin of which had been already

explained.

It is not

of

the slightest importance to consider how

far this attempted explanation of the origin of the various
books is in agreement with the real thought of the

Baraytha in any case it remains pure theory, the pro-

duct of rabbinical inventiveness, not of historical tradi-
tion. Apart from a fixed general opinion about certain
individual books and about the Pentateuch, the tangible
outcome of the beliefs of the whole period with which
we are dealing is that the canon was held to have been
closed in the time of Ezra.

The theory upon which

this belief proceeded will occupy

us

later

As against this congeries of vague guesses and

abstract theories, science demands that we should

examine each book separately, and
endeavour, with the evidence supplied
bv itself. and with continual reference

to

the body of literature

a

whole, to ascertain its date

and to

fix

its place in the national and religious develop-

ment of the Jews.

This is the task of

‘

special introduc-

tion

’

but its results must always have

a

direct bearing

on

the history

of

the canon.

This history must give

close attention also to all the external testimonies relative
to the formation and to the close of the canon, and, after
weighing them, must assign to them their due place.
Above all, it must trace out all general opinions

and

theories, such as we have been considering, ascertain
their scope and meaning, and satisfy itself

as to the

period at which they arose, and as to their influence

on

the formation of the canon.

I n

so

far

as

we succeed in

these endeavours, we shall arrive a t

a

relatively trust-

worthy history of the canon.

H

I

STORY OF THE

O T

CANON.- (

I

)

canon

the

difficulties we may have

W.

below,

asolemnprotest against

the fundamental proposition

of

this article (as of all modern

discussions of the subject)-a triple canon, collected and closed

in three successive periods. He denies that there is any evidence

of a time when the Law alone was regarded as canonical or

of

a

time when the Law and the Prophets stood

in

above the Writings. He denies that the other

OT writings

were originally regarded as less authoritative than the

tench. He sees in the canon

of

the OT an aggregate of sacred

books growing gradually and continually

to a

definite time

when the part written latest was firrished

the collection was

deemed complete. Law [or rather, Message], Prophets, and

Writings are nothing but three different names for the same

the prophetic writings. We are not told how

these terms came

to

be the names of three different parts of

this collection. The fundamental fact that the Law alone was

promulgated and made authoritative by Ezra and Nehemiah,

is obscured by Beecher by the statement that the term book

of Moses’ is applied

to an

aggregate of sacred writings including

more than the Pentateuch. His only proof is Ezra

where

‘we are told that the returned exiles set

the courses of the

priests and Levites “as it is written

in

hook of Moses.”

The Pentateuch

nothing in regard

to

priestly

or

Levitical courses. Possibly the reference is to written precepts

now found in

I

Chronicles.’ Beecher does not translate accu-

rately. The text runs: ‘They set up the priests

in

their

and the Levites

in

(by) their

divisions.

This means

that the priests

the Levites are set up

it is written in

the book of Moses

.

hut it does not necessarily mean that their

courses and

on the same authority. Beecher

never mentions the fact that the Samaritans accepted only the

Law

(see below,

nor does he investigate what grain

of

truth is contained in the same statement as to the Sadducees

in

dealing with the later stages of the history of the canon

and with its close, there is

no

obscurity about its

I t was

by those

men of the

synagogue.’ to whom

orthodoxy assigns the close

canon, that its founda-

tions were laid, in the clear daylight

of well-authenticated

history.

From the twenty-fourth day of the seventh

month of the year

444

B.C.

onwards, Israel possessed

a

canon of Sacred Scripture.

It

was

on this day that the

great popular assembly described in Neh.

solemnly

pledged itself to the Book of the Law

of

their

God

( 9

which had been given by the hand of Moses

the servant of God’

and had been brought from

Babylon to Jerusalem shortly before by Ezra the scribe
(Ezra

7 6

T I

Neh.

In

virtue

of this resolution

the said law-book at that time became canonical but
only the law-book.

Already, indeed, in theeighteenth year of

Josiah,

between 623 and 621

there had been

a

solemn act

of

a similar character, when the king and people pledged

themselves

to

the law-book that had been found in the

temple, the book of the covenant’

K.

23).

T h e

entire editorial revision of the Books of Kings, and
especially the express references to the law-book

( I

K.

2325,

and above

all,

K.

146

compared with

clearly prove that it had canonical validity

during the exilic period, whilst the book of Malachi
(cp esp.

35

shows that also in the

exilic period down to the time of

it continued to

hold this place in

T h e critical labours of

the present century, however, have conclusively estab-
lished that this first canonical book contained simply
what we now have

as

the kernel of

Book of Deutero-

nomy.

l h e

canonised in

444

was

a very different docu-

ment.

T h e only possible question is whether it was the

entire Pentateuch

as

we now have it,

or

only the Priestly Writing, the latest

and most extensive of

sources which

make

up

the Pentateuch.

The latter is,

so

far

as we can at

present see, the more likely hypothesis.

In that case

what happened in

444

B.C.

was that the Deuteronomic

Law, which had

then ruled, was superseded by

the new Law of Ezra.

A

determination of this kind,

however, was unworkable in view of the firm place which
the older book that had been built up out

of

J E

and

D

had secured for itself in the estimation

of the people.

Accordingly, the new law was revised and enlarged by
the fusing together of the Priestly Writing and the earlier
work,

a process of which our Pentateuch, the canon

of

the Law, was the result.

This last stage was most probably accomplished in

the next generation after that of Ezra, and completed

before

400

B.C.

W e have evidence

of this in the fact that the schis-
matic community of the Samaritans

accepts the entire Pentateuch

as sacred.

I t is true that

the solitary historical account we possess (Jos.

Ant.

xi.

2-8

4 )

places the separation of this community

that of Jerusalem as low down

as

the time of Alexander

the Great (about

)

but the cause that led to

(see below,

38)

or

consider the reason why the Law is wanting

in Macc.

2

below,

On

other side,

it

may be

hoped that he will find the

by the

of

Joshua

a

difficulty greatly exaggerated by himself removed

(in

into

a

help) in

5

of this article,

two

years before his paper was published. This is only one of many

instances.

The theory of the triple canon of the OT, based

on incontestable facts,

is

not as mechanical as Beecher repre-

sents it. I t is able to satisfy every demand for organic growth

in the collection of

writings.

Beecher’s paper

(a

total

failure, it seems

to

the present writer,

in

the main point) may

do much good in cautioning against

too

mechanical

a

concep-

tion but it did not furnish to the present writer any occasion

to

alter the views developed

in

this article.

The reasons for saying that the references in Malachi are to

Dt. and not

to

Ezra’s law-book cannot be

here (see

Now.

hut cp M

ALACHI

).

On this and on the larger critical question cp H

EXATEUCH

.

65%

CANON

CANON

the separation-the expulsion of the high priest’s son,
the son-in-law of Sanballat, who founded the community
and

of the Samaritans-is rather, according to

Neh.

to be referred to the period of Nehemiah

(about

B

.c.).

It has already been mentioned

19)

that Jewish chronology has dropped a whole

and a half,

bringing the periods of Nehemiah and

Alexander into immediate juxtaposition

and this is the

explanation of the confusion found in Josephus.

W e

may suppose that before the final separation of the
Samaritans there elapsed an interval of some decades
which would give ample time for the completion of the

does

not exclude the possibility that adjust-

ments may have been made at a later date between the
Samaritan Pentateuch and that

of Jerusalem, or that

later interpolations may have found their way into the
Samaritan law. T h e compass of the work, however, must
have remained (to speak

a fixed quantity,

otherwise the Samaritans would pot have taken it

At the same time the Samaritan canon, which con-

tained nothing

hut the

law, is our oldest

witness to a period during which the
canon consisted of the Law alone,,
canon and Law being. thus coextensive

conceptions.

If alongside of the

there had been

other

writings, it would be inexplicable why

these last also did not pass into currency with the
Samaritans.

There are other witnesses also to the

same effect. T h e weightiest lies in the simple fact that
the name Torah or Law can mean the entire canon,
and be used

as

including the Prophets and the Writings.

W e find it

so

used in the N T (Jn.

1 5 2 5

I

Cor.

in the passage already cited from

4

Esdras

and, at a later date, in many passages of the

Talmud, the

and the Rabbins (cp Strack,

This would have been impossible if the words

canon’

law‘ had not originally had the same

connotation, other books afterwards attaining to some

share

in the sanctity of the Law.

T h e

same thing

is

shown by an often-quoted

and much-abused passage in

Macc.

There we read that Nehemiah,

in establishing

a library, brought together the books concerning the
kings and prophets
and the (poems) of David

and the letters

of kings concerning consecrated gifts ( t o the temple :

T h e passage

occurs in a letter from the Jews of Palestine to their com-
patriots in Egypt, and is an admitted interpolation in

a

book which is itself thoroughly unhistorical

it is thus

in the highest degree untrustworthy (cp M

ACCABEES

,

S

ECOND

,

7). As evidence of what could be believed

and said at the time of

its

composition, however, in the

first century

B

.c., it is unimpeachable.

When we

find the Former and Latter Prophets and the Psalms
catalogued as forming part of a library, and, alongside
of them and on the same level, letters of kings (heathen
kings of course), it is clear that there is no idea of

This explains why the

Book

of Nehemiah closes with the

expulsion of the son-in-law of Sanballat, but says nothing as to

the setting up of the temple

church of the Samaritans.

There is no occasion for scepticism as to the entire story in

Josephus (as in Kautzsch,

art.

See below

3

Against

completion

of

the law at this date Duhm

p.

urges objections. He thinks that as late

as the

of the Chronicler (third century

B

.c.) the so-called

Priestly Document had not yet been fused with J E and D

;

for

the intention of the Book of Chronicles is, in his opinion, to

continue the Priestly Document (which comes down only to the

end of Joshua), not the older work embracing the Book of

Kings, which indeed it sought to supersede.

however, can be attributed to the Chronicler. In fact, he begin;

with the creation, his method being

to

write out a t full length

the genealogies from Adam downwards, taking them from the

work that lay before

him

(J E D

P).

Since, however, he is writing

a

history only of Jerusalem and the temple he passes over all

that does not relate

t o

this. At the

time, even if the

Chronicler had used nothing but P, this would not prove more

than that, after its fusion with the other sources, P continued

to be used also separately for

a

long time.

Neither intention

books.

T h e Law is not mentioned in the same

as the sacred canon, it receives a place to

tself and has nothing

to

do with the library.

Whether

the contemporaries of this author shared his view

s

another matter in any case, the possibility of such
view being held is proof of the original isolation of

.he Law.

Moreover, it appears from this passage that

the time when it was written, or within the writer’s

the legend of the closing of the canon by Ezra can

have been prevalent only

in

the (narrower and historically

much more accurate) sense that the canon of the Law

its

such by Ezra’saction.

more-

over, that in the LXX the version of the Law appears

to

he

distinctivelyan official work, not theresult of private enter-
prise, confirms the inference already drawn from the
exclusive attention given to the Law in the period repre-
sented by Ezra.’

The secund

canon:

the

nucleus

for

a

second canon was laid to the-hand of the scribes

of the fifth century in the very fact that the
canon of the Law had been set apart to a

place by itself. It is one of the certain results of the
science of special introduction that the Priestly Document
on which Ezra’s reform rested, followed the history of
Israel, including the division of Canaan, down

to

end of the

Book

of Joshua : the portions derived from

it can still be distinguished

in

our present

Book

of

Joshua.

We can go

further.

I t may still be matter of dispute, indeed,

whether the material for the subsequent hooks (Judges,
Samuel,

also was derived from

and

E

but

so

much

is indisputably certain, that the Deuteronomic re-

daction embraced these books also, in fact, the whole

of

the Former Prophets, and that at the end of Kings the
narrative itself is from Deuteronomistic hands.

As

even now each of these books

is seen to link itself very

closely

to that which precedes it, it follows that J

E D,

ultimately at least, in the form in which the work
was used in the fifth century, included the Law

and the

Former Prophets.

That the Law might attain its final

T h e same holds good for J

E

D.

form as a separate unity, therefore, it was
not enough that P and J

E D should be

worked up into a single whole.

This

whole must be separated from the history that followed
it.

How and when this was

we can imagine

variously. According to the view taken above, what is
most probable is that in

444 the

Priestly Writ-

ing, including the closing sections relating to the
entrance into Canaan and the partition of the country,
was already

in existence and canonized in its full

Not until its subsequent amalgamation with the corre-
sponding sections of J

D did the hitherto quite insig-

nificant historical appendix

to

the ‘law,’ strictly

so

called, acquire such a preponderance that the division
was found to be inevitable. It was made at the end
of the account of the death of Moses, and

thus

a portion

of the Priestly Writing also (as well as of

J E

D ) was

severed from the body to which it belonged.

In any

case, however we may reconstruct the details, the great
fact abides that, after the Law had been separated, there
remained the compact mass of writings which afterwards

came to be known as ‘the former
prophets,’ a body of literature which
from the very first could not fail to

take an exceptional position from the simple fact that it
had once been connected with the sacred canon, and
must necessarily have been prized by the community as

a possession never to be lost.

Equally certain is it that by far the larger proportion

of

the ‘latter prophets’ was already in the hands

of

the scribes of the fifth century.

I n these

books God spoke almost uninterruptedly
by the mouth of his prophets-in itself

A last trace of some reminiscence

of

this short period during

which the

Book

of Joshua still belonged to the ‘law’ may be

seen in the Apocryphal Book of Joshua of the Samaritans.

660

CANON

CANON

reason enough for assigning to them the attribute of
holiness. If, nevertheless, the books were not reckoned

to the canon, the explanation is to be sought in the
practical character of the first canon

:

Ezra gave to the

community in the canon of the Law all that it
I t was not new when he gave it

he only gave over

again what God

once already given through Moses

to the people

as his one and all.

If

the people had

remained true to this Law, not only would they have
escaped

all the disasters of the past, but also they would

never have needed new

from God through

These prophets contributed nothing new

they were sent only to admonish the unfaithful people
to observe the Law, and to announce the merited

punishment of the impenitent.

The Law

thus had permanent validity, whilst the
work of the prophets was transitory; the

Law addressed itself to all generations, the prophets
each

only

to his own, which had now passed away.

The generations that had sworn obedience anew to the

Law under Ezra, therefore, had

no need for the prophets.

Should similar circumstances recur, i t . might be ex-
pected that God would send prophets anew; but the
prevailing feeling was,

no doubt, that the time of

un-

faithfulness, and

of the prophetic ministry,

gone for ever.

The view here set forth is that

of

the

OT

itself, pre-

eminently that

of

the Deuteronomistic school, where it

is constantly recurring.!

Indeed,

nomic and the Priestly Laws alike,

.in its own

way, had assimilated the results

o f

the work of the

prophets, this view must be called, from their point of
view, the right one.

Accordingly it has throughout

continued to be the view

of

the synagogue,

as can be

proved from many passages in the

and the

his prophets.

I t explains at the same

time why it is that the historical books
(Joshua-Kings) are called prophets.'
They speak just in the manner

of

the

prophets of the unfaithfulness of past generations to the
law, and of the divine means-chiefly the mission

of

prophets-used to correct this. Both relate in a similar
way to the past.

For the same reason the prophets,

conversely, are called history

for tradition in the

sense of

history' is what is meant by

the Massoretic

for the canon of the

prophets, the

as

a whole (cp further,

Strack, 439).

W e can thus very easily understand how it was that

the Prophets could not be canonized simultaneously

with the Law.

T o pledge people to the

Prophets was not possible, and the obliga-
tion to the Law would only have been

obscured and weakened by

a

canonization of the Prophets

at the same time.

The idea of canonicity had first to

be enlarged

it had to be conceived in

a

more abstract

manner,

on the basis of a historical interest in the past,

before the canonizing of the Prophets-that is to say,
their being taken in immediate connection with the
Law-could become

Of course

a

considerable period of time must have

been required for this and the same result follows from

the established facts of higher criticism.'
Of the Prophets properly

so

called, not

only are Joel and Jonah later than the

completion of the Law, but

also the older books, over

wide areas of their extent, bear more or less independent

With every reservation let it be noted here that in Mal.

323

the promise is

not

of

a

new prophet, but only of the return

of

Elijah, and that in Zech.

to

come forward as

a

prophet

is to risk one's life.

are

also however (especially) the confession of sin

which

precedes the taking

the covenant (particu-

larly

26

34).

3

See

Weber

4

Cp the

Macc.

2

already spoken of, in which

such

a

historical interest appears, but leads only to the foundation

of

a library, not to the canonizing

its

contents.

661

.

evidence of

a

secondary literary

These pheno-

mena are

so

manifold, and there are traces of periods

so

widely separated, that we must believe not

a

few

generations to have borne

a part in bringing the pro-

phetical books to their present form. Yet these extensive
additions and revisions, at least most of them, must of
course have taken place before the canonization.

This obvious conclusion is indeed contradicted by the

tradition of the

which tells

us that the books

,

of the prophets were written by the men

of the great synagogue,'

on

which view

the canon of the prophets was already

complete

444

B.C.

Nor does this assertion, the

baselessness of which we have already seen, stand alone.
I t is backed by others.

Josephus

1 8 )

says

expressly that it was down to the time of Artaxerxes,
the successor of Xerxes

Artaxerxes I., Longimanus,

465-424) that the literary activity of the prophets con-
tinued.

The passage in the Mishna in which the

un-

broken chain of tradition is set forth

1

I

)

represents the Law

as having been handed down by the

prophets to the men of the great synagogue; which

brings

us

to the same date, and dispenses with

the need of any further testimony.

I t is exactly this chain of tradition, however, that

supplies

interval

of

time that we need. The passage

goes on to say : Simon the Just was one of the last
survivors of

the men

o f

the great synagogue'

he

handed

on

the tradition to Antigonus of Socho, by

in turn it was transmitted to Jose b.

and Jose b. Johanan, the first of the so-called
That the chronology

of

this section leaves much to be

desired is

It seems to be

as good as certain,

however, that the fourth of the five pairs lived about

B

.c.,

the third about 80

The same ratio would

bring

us to somewhere about

or

B

.C.

for the

first

pair,' whilst the time of Antigonus and Simon

would fall about

200

B

.c., or

a little earlier. I n that

case, Simon the Just would be the high priest Simon

11.

b. Onias who is briefly mentioned by Josephus

( A n t .

4

I O

) .

of 'Just,' however, is given

by Josephus

(Ant.

to Simon

I. b. Onias, who

lived almost a century earlier,

soon after

300.

If

we

must consider that he is the Simon who is meant, it
is clear that the alleged chain of tradition is defective
in its earlier portion, only

a

single name having reached

us

for the whole

of

the third century.

Further,

the Just is the connecting link with ' t h e great syna-
gogue,' and

as

the assembly that gave rise to this name

was held in 444, there is again

a gap, this time of

a

century, even if we concede that Simon reached

a

very

advanced age.

The long interval between Simon the

Just and 444

however,

not to be held

as

arising

from

a different view about the synagogue it is to be

accounted for by the hiatus (already referred to,

25) in the traditional chronology between Nehemiah and

Alexander the Great. similar

to

that which brings

babel into immediate relation

the

time of

I t is within this vacant

period that we must place those redac-

tions, the fact of which has been

so

incontestably proved

by critical inquiry. The main reason why the synagogue
has

no recollection of this period, is that during this

time the activity of the scribes (with the history of
which alone the chronology busies itself from Ezra
onwards) had no independent life, but devoted itself
almost exclusively to the sacred writings of the past,
and left its traces only there,

so

that whatever it

This is

true

especially

of

Isaiah, Micah and Zechariah ; but

most of the other books show the same

some degree.

The details belong to the special articles.

By whom' is plural according to the text

reference

Simon the Just. Zunz

(37

interpret

from the successors of Antigonus, mediate

or

immediate ;

but this is hardly permissible.

See Schiirer

2

4

Cp also

Jos.'

A n t .

xi.

I

,

with

and

8

I

.

662

CANON

.

CANON

accomplished was put to the credit of the earlier times.
This holds good,

in the first instance, of the Law,

to

which considerable additions were still made

as

late

as

the third century (see above,

25).

Still more

extensive was this activity

in

the case of the prophetical

books;

it

was now that they took their final literary

The additions naturally corresponded

to

the

thoughts and wishes of the age

in

which they arose

on

the lines of older models, the elements of hope and of
comfort received

a

much fuller development, and thus

the prophets were made of practical interest for a
present time that, contrary

to expectation, had turned

out

I t

is

possible that we even possess

a

proof that the

canonization

of

the prophets did

not take place quite

without opposition and dispute,
thing in itself not improbable.

a

In

the

Church fathers we meet with the very
definite assertion that the Sadducees

had scruples about acknowledging any sacred writings

(especially the Prophets) in addition

to the

It

cannot be siipposed that there

is

here any confusion

with the Samaritans, who are expressly named along
with them

as

sharing the same view;

a somewhat

easier view is that what

is

referred to

is

their rejection

of the oral legal

Let it be borne

in

mind,

however, that we here have to do with our best Christian
authorities

on

matters Jewish-Origen and Jerome, the

former of whom was contemporary with the period
of the Mishna.

That neither the Mishna itself, nor

yet Josephus, has

a word to say

on such

a

subject, is intelligible enough.

I t

is, of course,

not for

a

moment to be supposed-even though this

is

suggested

by some of the passages cited-that the Sadducees re-

jected the prophets, or,

in

other words, refused

to

recognise them

as having been channels

of divine

communications.

the other hand,

it is not difficult

to

believe that these conservative guardians

of the old

priestly tradition should have resisted the addition

of

a second canon to that of the Law, which until then
had held

an

exclusive place.

In doing

so, they would

only have been maintaining the position of

444

B

.c.,

whilst in this, as

in

other matters, the Pharisees repre-

sented the popular party of the time.

The controversy

Cp We.

ed.

Montefiore

and

Growth

401

The

assertion, frequently repeated in the tradition of the synagogue

that it was expressly prohibited to commit to writing

traditional law cannot of course strictly speaking, be main-

tained (cp Strack, art.

*

in

18

&).

Still

it is,

impossible that there lies at the bottom of

it

a true

reminiscence. Hardly, indeed, such

a

one

as

Strack supposes

(p.

but rather this: that the addition of all sorts of

to

the canonical Law was definitely put

a

stop

to,

and

that,

as

a

reaction against this tendency

to

add, there arose

some time (say) in the course of the second century

a

reluctance

to

write the further developments of the) law-the

at last the codification of the Mishna put an end

to

this.

Ryle's conjecture (p.

that the gradual admission of the

Prophets to

a

place in the public reading of the synagogue pre-

ceded and led to their canonization, rests unfortunately

on an

insecure foundation, as we do not know whether the

goes back

to a

sufficiently early date. The first mention of the

public reading of the Prophets is in the N T (Lk. 4

Acts

13

the next, in

a

very cursory and obscure form, is in the

3

4

and, v y full and clear, in the Tosephta

ed.

This much may be

taken

that

of the Proohets came in very

considerably later than that of the Law. That what led to it

was the destructive search after copies of the Law in the time

of Antiocbns Epiphanes

(

I

Macc.

157)

is pure conjecture. Even

if proved it would

insufficient for Ryle's purpose. For the

age of the

see

5

Ryle,

;

and

on

the

in

see

I t

is

necessary

to raise

a

note of warning

to Gratz,

See the passages textually quoted in Schiirer

2

342

: Orig.

149 (ed.

18

Comm.

17,

chap.

85

on

chap. 22 29

(ed.

Lomm.

4

169)

;

Jer.

in

22

I

;

chap.

23

(v.

2

9

Pseudo-Tert.

chap.

1.

4

Yet in the last-cited passage there follows immediately:

qui additamenta

legis

a

defiling the hands

(M.

46)

may

been

a last echo of

Lastly, we must endeavour to fix

an

inferior limit

for the date

at which the

canon was fixed.

For the

close of the prophetical

collection, we fortunately have

an ex-

ternal testimonv almost three centuries

older and much more exhaustive than

4

Esdras and

Josephus, namely the hymn

to #he great men of the

past with which Jesus b. Sira (Ecclesiasticus), in chaps.

44-50,

concludes his

poem.

From Enoch

all the righteous are panegyrised, exactly

in

the order in which they occur

in the Law and the

Former Prophets.

The kings are treated quite

on

the

Deuteronomistic lines.

David, Hezekiah, and Josiah

receive unqualified praise Solomon

is

commended only

half-heartedly, whilst

is spoken of

as a fool,

and Jeroboam

as

a seducer. Elijah and

find

their place

in the series immediately after these

kings, whilst between

and Josiah comes

Of him we are told

in one and the same

what

we read in chaps.

36-39 (

15-20),

and that under

mighty inspiration he foresaw the far future and com-
forted them that

in

Zion

(cp

40

I

).

This proves

that not only chaps.

36-39,

but also chaps.

already

were parts

of

the Book of Isaiah, and thus that the last

essential steps to

its final

been made (cp

Che.

xviii.). Still more significant is

it

that

after Jeremiah (who

is

associated with Josiah,

as

is with Hezekiah) and after Ezekiel, the twelve prophets

are mentioned, and disposed of

collectively

in a single panegyric.

Here already, that

is

to say, we have the same consolidation

as

we have

seen

in the

(where

a single authorship in

the persons of the men

of the great synagogue has to

be found for the one book

of the twelve).

may be

sure that Jesus b. Sira found the twelve books already
copied

upon

a

single roll, and thus

in their final form.

By his time the prophetic canon had been

The conclusion of this hymn (chap.

50)

answers the

question

as to the date of its author.

I t is the panegyric

on Simon b. Onias who was high priest in Jesus b.
own day.

In

this instance, it

is

certainly not Simon the

Just (cp

3 6 ) that

is intended, if it were

only

on account

of the absence of the surname distinctively given in
Josephus and the Mishna. The question

i s

decided for

Simon

11. (circa zoo)

by the prologue of the translator,

grandson of the author, who made his version later than

B

.C.

(see

E

CCLESIASTICUS

,

W e therefore

The arguments for utter rejection of this statement can

be read in

2

The view taken in the text

seems to be shared by We. when he writes

ed.

286

3rd ed.

297)

:

'They (the Pharisees) stood up against the

Sadducees for the enlargement of the canon.' Another view is

expressed in

The precedence here given him has no bearing

on

the place

assigned

to

his book in the Prophetic canon (cp above,

8).

1

t is the chronological succession of the persons that is being

dealt with.

The doubt raised (not for the first time) by

(in

against the genuineness of

49

where

the

are referred

to,

was excellently disposed of by

( Z A

156

by the evidence of the Syriac translation

(which rests

on

the Hebrew), and by showing that

in

according to Cod. A and others, the correct reading

is the plural

(followed by

instead of

and

so

that

refers not

to

hut to the

XII.

Another circumstance ought to be noted.

If the praise

of

Ezekiel is completed in

it agrees

length and substance

exactly with that of

in

7,

with that of Hezekiah

(apart from Isaiah)

in 48 24

and finally with that of the XII,

if

is taken

as

applying wholly

to

them. To place

before

as

(Die

des

A T

etc.

p.

silently does is quite inadmissible. T o

now be added the testimony of the lately discovered Hebrew.

The genuineness of

is doubted by Duhm

p.

but without any reasons being given.

p.

he appears

to

able

to

accept the genuineness.

4

The arguments by which J.

de

1897)

endeavours to prove that Simon

I., the Just is the hero

of chap.

50,

have failed

to

convince the present

Still

it should

be

kept in mind that even if

were right the

CANON

conclude-and the conclusion agrees with the course

of

the development traced above-that the prophetic collec-
tion already existed

as such, pretty much in its present

form, about the year

zoo

Notable reasons for the same conclusion are supplied

of Daniel (writtenabout

164

B.C.

).

Inthefirst

place there is a reason of a positive character :
in

we find Jer.

cited as

in the

Scriptures

').

Of greater

weight, however, is

a

negative reason

:

the Book of

Daniel itself found

a

place-not among the

-among the Writings. Other reasons for this might be
conjectured

but the most probable one still is that

at the time of its recognition as canonical the canon
of the Prophets had in current opinion been already
definitely completed.

The time of admission, how-

ever, must be taken to have been considerably later
than the date of composition

(164

and so this

evidence does not go for much.

Still less impartant

is the further fact, that the work of 'the Chronicler (com-
posed during the first half

of the third century) is not

included among the Former Prophets.

Its special

character as

a

Midrash to already accepted biblical

books must long have prevented its attaining the dignity
of canonization but a further

helped to

impede its

The immediate contiguity of the

Former Prophets and the

Books

of Jeremiah and Ezekiel

(brought to their final form at an early date) must
comparatively soon have come to be regarded as fixed
and

whilst, on the other hand, to append

Chronicles to the later prophets was plainly impossible.

It remains, then, that the completion

of the

we might almost say also of the canon-of the Prophets

CANON

Law could be effected the way had to be prepared by

a

continually rising appreciation of the prophetic literature,
and by an ever-growing conception of its sanctity.

To

this result the Maccabean period must unquestionably

have contributed much.

Such passages

as

I

Macc.

9

27

and the Song of the Three Children

cp

Ps.

749)

show not only how far people then felt them-

selves to be removed from the prophetic times, but
also how highly those times were thought of.

Still we

must bear in mind the passage in

Macc.

( 2

13) already

referred to

which seems to show that, even in

the last century

it was still possible to speak of the

Prophets and of profane writings, in the same breath,

as

parts of the same library.

On the other hand, it can be shown that

was

once

a time in which the Prophets, but not the Hagio-

41.

Prophetic

canon

subordinate.

took place in course of the third
century.

This, however, does not yet

bring

us to an altogether unambiguous

findingwith reference to their 'canoniza-

tion.'

It is only

if we allow ourselves, with-

out qualification, to carry back the idea of

'

canonicity,'

in the fully-developed form which it finally reached, to
the earliest beginnings of the formation of

a

canon.

I t

was impossible for the Prophets ever to receive

a

canonical value in the same sense in which this was
given to the Law the

character of the Pro-

phetic canon remains fixed for all coming

Holi-

ness was, and continued to be, a relative conception,
and we do not need to give to the designation
in Dan.

the same fulness of meaning that it has in the

Talmud. The gulf between the Law and all the remain-
ing books could be bridged only artificially, and we

with certainty that the bridging idea-the idea of

a property common to all holy books, that of

defiling

the hands '-was an invention of Pharisaic scholasticism,
withstood by the Sadducees even after the destruction
of Jerusalem

46).

Until this bridge had been

securely constructed there was no idea of

'a canonicity

that included all three portions equally.

This is proved

by a fact to which we have already referred,-the Saddu-
cean recognition

of

nothing but the Law.

Before

a

definitive union of the Prophetic canon with that of the

date of Ecclesiasticus ought not to be pushed back more than

fifty

or

sixty years. The author may be describing

his old

age remembrances from his early youth. See Kautzsch in

8,

p.

The possibility

of

much later additions

to

the books

t o

this canon is unfortunately by no

means

excluded,

as

is

sufficiently evidenced by the simple fact that even the Pentateuch

continued

to

he added

to

long after its canonization (see

Thus there

is

nothing in the

of the case to prevent us from

attributing the appendices to Zechariah (chaps.

9-14)

to the later

Maccabean period,

as

We.

228,

n.

3rd

ed.

n.

appears

to

do (cp Z

E

C

H

A

RI

A

H

ii.)

or

the interpo-

lation

of

passages in Isaiah

by the addition

of

chaps.

as is indicated by Duhm's results.

I n

these cases,

however,

justified in demanding very

Cp for example, Duhm,

vi.

I

.

3

also

the exclusion

of

the Book

of

Ruth.

As to

this cp the very significant passage

quoted

in Marx,

n.

3.

grapha, could be spoken of along with
the Law

as

included among the sacred

writings.

As the name the Law can

be used to designate the whole tripartite

canon (see above,

so

also can the

'the Law and the Prophets.'

in

Mt. 517

Lk.

Acts 2823, and,

the tradition of the

synagogue

4 6

Baba

8

Talm.

J.

3

I

also

Baba

B.

13

I t may also be

pointed ont that the name

Tradition') in-

cludes the Prophets

the Writings (cp the

passages in

44

n.

but the synonymous expres-

sion

(see above,

s

33).

if we are correctly

informed (Strack,

the prophets only.

The

canon

:

the

-

Here,

again, there

is

n o possibility of doubt that, at the time

when the prophetic collection was
closed, much of what we now find
in our third canon was already in

existence, and yet it did not gain admission

the

collection and found no place in the canon of that day.
At bottom the reason is self-evident it was

a

collection

of prophets that was being made, a collection, that is to
say, of writings in which God himself spoke, enforcing
the Law by the mouth of his messengers.

Such other

writings as were then extant did not profess to be

oracle of

EV

thus saith the Lord'),

the immediate utterance of the God of Israel.

One

of

them, indeed, the earlier nucleus of the Psalter, was in
use as the hymn-book of the Temple services but to
have admitted it into the canon on that account would
have been very much the same as if now

a Christian

church were to place its hymnal among its symbolical
books.

There was necessary, accordingly,

a further

(cp

34) extension of the idea Sacred Writings or (using

the word with caution) of the idea of the canon,' and

(so

to say) a reduced intensity, before any further books

could find admission, not

o f

course into either of the

canons already existing, but into a third, subordinate in
rank to these.

I t is obvious, further, that again a con-

siderable period must have elapsed before this extension
of the idea could make way, and thus render possible
the admission of books which, at the time when the
prophetic canon was closed, were still unwritten.

Besides the (obvious) condition of a book's having

a

religious character, the only remaining condition de-

manded by the test implied in the
panded idea of canon is the condition
of date.

Those books were accepted

which were considered to have been

written during the prophetic period.

Our earliest witness to this is Josephus.

I n

the passage already

referred

to

above

(c.

1 8 )

after setting forth his tripartite

division of the sacred

he goes on to say

:-

p i x ~

r o c

rag

$+is

p a ~

That is to say, the

prophetic period

with Artaxerxes

(Ezra

and Nehemiah),

Gratz

wishes to exclude the Hagiographa in both

cases.

that the evidence

for

their inclusion

cannot

regarded

as

being

so

certain in the case of the 'Law

and

the Prophets'

as

it

is

in that of the 'Law' alone.

666

CANON

CANON

and canonicity (even in the case of non-prophetical books)

i s

only by contemporaneousness with the continuous

series of the prophets.

This view

is confirmed by the ‘Talmudic

tradition.

Tos.

Yadayim,

2 13

683)

rules that

‘hooks

such

as

Ben Sira [Ecclesiasticus] and all hooks written

do

not defile the hands.’ This

‘from that time

forward ’-

is the standing expression for the cessation of the

prophetic period. Corresponding with it is the other phrase

Further confirmation

is

found in

‘Books like Ben Sira and similar hooks

written

asonereadsaletter

on this, Buhl,

The

point

of time is fixed by

a

passage

as

the time

of

Alexander the Mace-

:

“The rough he-goat

(Dan. 8

is Alexander the

who reigned

twelve

years

; until then

the prophets

prophesied by the Holy Spirit

that time

incline

thine ear and hearken

to

words

If Alexander

the Great here takes the place

of

Artaxerxes in Josephus, the

explanation is simply that, according

to

the Jewish chronology

conception

of

history, Haggai and Zechariah, Ezra and

Malachi

all

lived at the same time, which is contiguous with that

of

W e now know, therefore, that it is not

of mere

caprice, but in accordance with a settled doctrine, that

4

Esd. 14 and

Baba

declare all the canonical

books to have been already in existence in Ezra’s time.
The time limit was

‘a fixed one difference of view was

possible only with regard to the person of the author.
From this doctrine we deduce the proposition :

Into the

third canon, that

of

the Hagiographa, were received

of

a

character of which the date was

to

back as

f a r

as

to

the Prophetic period, that

is,

to the time of E z r a and

the Great

The reason for the setting up of such a

is

easily intelligible.

Down to the time of the Great

Assembly, the Spirit of God had been
operative not only in the Law but also
outside of it, namely in the Prophets but

‘from that time onwards’ the Law took the command

alone.

Until then’ it was possible to point to the

presence of the factor which was essential to the pro-
duction

of sacred writings, but

‘

from that time onwards ’

it was

not.

Hence the conviction that the divine pro-

ductive force had manifested itself even in those cases
where the writing did not claim to be an immediate divine
utterance ; but only down to the close of the prophetic
period.

The proposition we have just formnlated is

sufficient to explain the reception or non-reception of

all

the books that we

now have to deal with.

Job was

received as, according to general belief,

a book of

venerable antiquity

Ruth as a narrative relating to the

period of the judges, and therefore (as was invariably
assumed

as

matter

of course in the case of historical

narratives) as dating from the same time the Psalms as
broadly covered by the general idea that they were

David‘s Psalms’ Proverbs, Canticles, and Ecclesiastes

as

resting on Solomon’s name Lamentations

as

rest-

ing

on

that of Jeremiah; Daniel as a prophet

of the

Persian period (which in its whole extent was supposed
to fall within the prophetic age) overlooked in the earlier
collection.

The same consideration held good for

Esther, regarded as a history book.

At the close comes

the

Book

of Ezra-separated from the general work of

the

in its account of the Great

Assembly, contained the original document on the close
of the Prophetical period and

so,

as it were, puts the

(‘until

this period.

colophon to the completed canon.

H a d

what we now call

the first

part of the Chronicler’s work-been in-

corporated with the canon simultaneously with the
incorporation of its second part, the Book of Ezra, the
two would never have been separated, and even arranged

in

an order contrary to the chronological (cp H

ISTORICAL

L

ITEKATURE

,

W e may therefore say with all

confidence that Chronicles did not come in till

‘The wise’ are the (post-canonical) scribes; cp Weber,

Cp copious proofs for this point already more than once

Cp

C

HRONICLES

,

and E

ZRA

,

8.

touched on

above,

in Marx (see below:

53,

n.

4.

as

an appendix to the canon.

The reason

for

ts original exclusion was no doubt the consciousness that,

trictly, it was but

a Midrash to other canonical books.

second part of the Chronicler’s work, once canonized,

ended to take the other along with it possibly too the

of Chronicles may have been helped by the

with which it goes into the temple service-a feature

o which at a later date, in the Massoretic arrangement
see above,

it was indebted for

a

first place among

he Hagiographa.

From this one certain case, the last,

nay be inferred the possibility that other books also,
:specially the immediately preceding ones (Ezra, Esther,
Daniel perhaps also Ruth : see above,

9),

were only

added, one by one, to the third canon by

of appendices.

At least, they all of them have the

of being, as to their contents, appendices

to

:he two halves of the Prophetic canon, whilst the remain-

six books form a class by themselves.

W e are not,

in a position to speak with certainty here.

Conversely, all other writings,

so

far as not excluded

reason of their language or some exception taken

-

-

to their contents, may safely be supposed
to have been excluded either because,
manifestly and

on their own confession,

they did not go back to

Prophetic time, or because

their claim to do

so was not

The

tioned reason must have been what operated in the case

works

of

so high a standing as

I

Macc. and Ecclesi-

asticus; as instance‘s of the application

of the second

principle, we may take (in contrast to Daniel) the books

Baruch and

The attempt to determine the date at which the

of the Hagiographa, and with it that of the

entire

OT,

was finally closed, is again

surrounded with the very greatest diffi-
culty.

Let

to begin with, fix the

ad

It is given

in the passages,

frequently referred to already, in Josephus

(c.

and

4

Esdras (chap.

where the entire corpus of the

O T

Scriptures, in twenty-two or twenty-four books, is

set apart from all other writings.

As

to the extent of

the canon, unanimity had been reached by at least
somewhere about

year

A.D.

For a superior limit we shall have to begin where our

investigation as to the prophetic canon ended-with

the

son of Sirach.

In his hymn he com-

memorates, as the last of the heroes of

Israel, Zerubbabel and

a s well as

Nehemiah, thereby conclusively showing that he was
acquainted with the work of the Chronicler

(49

).

Moreover, he makes use of passages from the Psalms.
Neither fact proves anything for a third canon; the
fact that he found his ideal and pattern in the prophets

is

rather against this

( 2 4 3 3 :

The prologue of his descendant (later

than

132

shows still more unmistakably that no

definite third canon was then in existence, even although
already a certain number

of books had begun to attach

themselves to the Law and the Prophets.

Three times

he designates the whole aggregate of the literature which
had been handed down, to which also his ancestor had
sought to add his quota, as

6

K

.

6.

v.

K

.

( o l

[ C ] )

K

.

What is thus

designated by three different indeterminate expressions
cannot have been a definite collection. That

of‘ these

books, in whole or in part, there were already Greek
translations we can gather from the Prologue ; but we

get

no

help either from this or from the

LXX

generally.

‘Some found their way in others not on grounds of taste-

the taste

of

the period,’

5 5 2 ,

6th ed.

doubt considerations of taste must have had influence

on

the decision whether the

books

in

came up

to

the

standard ; hut

it

was the doctrine that formally decided.

As

to Ecclesiasticus note the express testimony of Tosephta

and Gemara (above, 44).

6.

V . K.

668

CANON

CANON

In

I

Macc.

we find Ps.

cited with the

formula

[A])

in

other

Holy Scripture. In

Daniel and

his three friends are named

as patterns in immediate

connection with Elijah, David, Caleb, and others

1 5 4

seems to quote Daniel’s prediction (Dan.

927).

W e here

see, somewhere about the close of the second or the
beginning of the last century

B.

the Book of Daniel

for the first time coming into evidence

as

a

fully ac-

credited authority-we could not possibly have expected

so

to find it a t any earlier date.

Unfortunately these testimonies, such

as

they are,

are

followed by

a very wide hiatus.

Philo

(06.

A.D.)

is our next resort

but, great

as

is

the extent of his writings (all proceeding

uncompromisingly

on

the allegorical method

of

biblical

interpretation), they do not yield

us much that is satis-

factory in our present

Nowhere do we find

a

witness to

a tripartite

Of the canonical

books he nowhere quotes Ezekiel, any of the five

Megilloth, Daniel, or

The blank is

a

great

one.

Still we may find some compensation in the fact

that a t least the Book of Ezra is cited with the solemn
formula applicable to

a divinely inspired

A

certain conclusion

as to the incompleteness of the canon

cannot

be

drawn from this silence regarding many books.

On the other hand, real importance attaches to the
following piece of negative evidence

:

Philo, although

(as

an Alexandrian) he must have been acquainted with

many

books, and indeed actually betrays

such acquaintance, in

no instance uses them in the

same way

as

the canonical.

This allows

as

probable

the inference that

a

definitely closed canon

was known

to h i m ; only we are not able to

say

from any

supplied by

what was the extent of that canon in

its third part.

I n Lk.

2444

we have

evidence of the tripartite division, for the psalms

’

prob-

ably stands a

for the whole of the

third canon.

Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Esther,

and Ezra are not referred to a t all.

Of course here

again nothing certain is to be inferred from the silence

if other considerations came into play, this fact

also

ought to be taken into account.

On the other

side, the certain reference to Chronicles in Mt.
Lk.

is entitled to have weight.

The quotation

of

in

I

Cor.

62

also

be referred

There thus remains

a space of something like two

centuries-say from the end

of the second century

B.

c.

Cp Homemann

ad

doctrine

de

ex

copious extracts from which

are given

in

Eichhorn’s

Till the appearance

of Prof. H. E. Ryle’s Philo

and the

the

statements of Hornemann had never been verified with

care ; though, on the other hand, they had not

in

any point been

shown to he inaccurate. Prof. Kyle’s results do not, however,

differ much from those

of

Hornemann.

Apart from

De

3,

probably a work

of

a

much later time. Cp Lucius,

Die

1879,

and

review of Conybeare’s

Philo

Contemplafive

July

‘khat

is quoted in the tract De

gratia,

8,

is asserted by Herzfeld

( C V Z

3

96

but cp

also

Richter’s edition of Philo

1828)

and has been taken over from

him hy all subsequent

it is rather

enlarged form

(enlarged perhaps from Ch.)

of

Gen.

46

which varies from Ch.

Ryle

etc., p.

289)

finds Ch.

9

quoted

(De

et

Poen. 13,

420);

hut there is very little likeness

the

two passages (see however, the next note). Of the minor

prophets only

Jonah, and Zechariah are made use of;

hut this guarantees the entire Dodekapropheton.

4

Unless here

(De

28,

the whole

of

he intended, rather than

(as

is universally assumed)

Ezra8

(see in

I

Ch.

8

the one descendant of David men-

tioned

in

Ezra

.).

Cp the plur.

and

By many the expression ’from

.

.

.

to’ there used is

to mean

‘from

the first hook to the last hook

of

the OT. Then the passage would prove the close

of

the canon

with the Book

of

Chronicles, and,

fact its close altogether;

the expression may refer

to

the

implied in the

locality

of

Zechariah’s murder.

Our next witness is the NT.

to about

which we are unable to point

any

sure indications of the close of the third canon.

Ryle

thinks it can be made

out with

a

very high degree of

that the close took

as

sarly

as

the second century

B

.c.,

between

and

the year of the death of John

His one

positive reason is that the civil wars and scholastic con-
troversies of the last century

B

.

C

.

must have withdrawn

interest from such things and made impossible any
union of schools or

any

public step that could alter the

That there ever was

a

union of schools,

however, we have every reason to deny

the extension

of

the canon was in all probability only one

of the

internal affairs of the Pharisaic school (cp above,

37).

From this it necessarily follows that there is no question
about any public step being taken-say

a

deliberate

decision, reached once for all,

or a

decree of any

authoritative assembly..

W e actually have express information, however, of

such

a decision at

a

later time.

I t is obvious

that

no

such thing would have been

necessary if

a binding decision had al-

ready been long in existence.

W e refer at present to

the controversy of which we read in the Mishna

(

3 5

cp

63).

The general proposition there laid down

as

follows

:

‘All holy scriptures

defile the hands’ (cp above,

3)

; next

the particular

:

‘Canticles and Ecclesiastes

defile the hands. Then we have the Controversy. ‘R.

said

:

Canticles indeed defiles

as

regards

opinion is divided. R.

said

:

does not defile

hands

but as

regards Canticles opinion is divided. R.

Simon

:

Ecclesiastes the school of Shammai gives

the laxer the school of Hillel the severer decision (herecompare

the elucidation in

5 3,

that according to the former

[Shammai] Ecclesiastes does

not

defile the hands, according to

the latter it

R. Simon

h.

‘Azay said

: To

me it has been

handed down from the mouth of the seventy-two elders that on the

day on which R. Eliezer h

was made supreme head: it was

decided that (both) Canticles and Ecclesiastes defile the hands.

R. ‘Akiha said

:

God forbid that there should ever have been

difference of opinion in Israel about Canticles, as if it did not

defile the hands

;

for the entire world, from

the

now, does not outweigh the day

in

which Canticles was given to

Israel. For indeed

all

are holy

but Canticles is holy of holies

If

people

divided in opinion it was as to Ecclesiastes alone.
h.

the

of R.

father-in-law, said

: As

the

son of

says, people

were

thus divided

in

opinion, and it is

thus that the matter has been

It has been contended that the dispute here

was

not

about the question of canonicity, both books being clearly

included in the opening sentences under
the category of holy, and that the word

‘ t o preserve, lay aside, hide,’ the

technical expression for

treatment with which the

books in question were threatened, does not mean ‘ t o
pronounce apocryphal

but only something

to

exclude from public reading.’

Both contentions are

incorrect.

The word in question is not used with

reference to Ecclesiasticus or other apocryphal
simply because no one had ever spoken of canonizing

them, and thus there could not possibly be any question
about doing away with them or removing them.

And

that our passage certainly

is

discussing the. question

whether the two books are Holy Scripture or not,

is

A second argument adduced

Ryle, that obtained by

reasoning backwards from the position in Josephus, is toned

down by Buhl (p.

to the more moderate

view

that ‘the third

part

. . .

had already received its canonical completion before

the Christian era.

By this we are certainly, in accordance with 3 to under-

stand the entire canon. On the other hand, the

men-

tioned later

mean merely the Hagiographa.

erceives that

in

point of fact here

also

the

stricter school

remained true to its reputation, and

no

less

so

the laxer school of Hillel.

4

The tract

de

Rabbi Nathan (chap.

1)

as we saw

above

this decision hack,

as

in’the case

Proverbs,

to

the time of ‘the Great Synagogue.

Cp especially Buhl, 7

26,

and Ryle,

On the

other hand, Cheyne

457)

acknowledges that the question is

that of canonicity.

One easily

CANON

CANON

made unmistakably evident by the words of

R.

‘Akiba.

In

this final stage of the development the question

cannot possibly be whether perhaps, though integral
parts of Holy Scripture, they nevertheless do not defile
the hands : it is established that

‘all Holy Scriptures

defile the hands.’ Then follows the Mishnic

decision

that the boobs of Canticles and Ecclesiastes also belong
to this class

after this, the discussion which preceded

the decision, and the grounds

on which it was reached,

are given.

In this connection the precise fixing of the day on

which this decision was arrived at is important-the

on which at Jamnia (Yabna)

R.

was incidentally deposed from his

place

as president of the court of justice,

incident for

which we have also other early

This

event certainly falls within the decades that immediately
followed the destruction of Jerusalem-whether

so

early

as

A.D.

(the

usual

assumption)

questionable, hut

A.

D

.

will not

any case be very wide of the

This period, then, saw the settlement of

a twofold

controversy, which, as regards one half of it at least,
had already occupied the schools of Hillel and Shammai
about

a century before.

This last point is conceded

even by

a

zealot like

R.

‘Akiba; his unrestrained

exaggeration as regards Canticles

is

only a veil to cover

the weakness

of his

W e hear nothing of any

decision of the question preceding that of Jamnia.
That, after the proceedings of that

the

question should have been discussed again some decades
later

(R.

need not surprise

us.

No

new decision is arrived at : the question is answered
by

a confirmation of that of

Thus,

about the year

A.

D

.

there was

still, as an unsettled controversy, the same question

to the canonicity of two books, which

as

regards one

of them (Ecclesiastes

see

E

CCLESIASTES

,

3 ) had

been

a notorious point of difference between the two

great schools of the

By that time, however,

For brevity’s sake it will he enough to refer

to

the exceed-

ingly careful history of the activity of the scribes, with copious

proofs, given in Schiirer

The remark has

a

wider application to rabbinical Judaism

generally and the other Megilloth

:

cp We.

554,

6th ed.

The reader is referred

to

Wildehoer

(58

Ryle

and the articles

P U R I M

and

for

later and

less

attested disputes about Esther,

Proverbs, Ezekiel, and Jonah (mentioned

the order

of

the

their attestation). It is only in the case of the Book

that such disputes can have been really

serious. In the case

of

Ezekiel, there may he a genuine remin-

iscence of the embarrassment caused to the scribes by the

discrepancies between the Law and Ezek.

perhaps also of

the objections raised

the Sadducees on this account. In

part at least, we must admit the truth of

remark

(p.

that in many cases the discussions leave one with the

impression that the objections were raised merely that they

might be refuted.’ This impression, however, no way impairs

that

of

the real seriousness of the decision of Jamnia. That

the four books mentioned above are not named in

3

proves

any case that a t that time serious objections to them

no longer entertained and as we are here dealing only with

the close of the canon. not

the individual hooks of which it

was composed, this

must suffice for us.

4

This is not inconsistent with the fact (which we learn from

sources) that Simon

b.

Shetah (who belonged

to

the third

of the five ‘pairs in the first half

of

the

first

century

B

.c.)

quotes

Holy Scripture (for details see

H e represents the one side of

case. The subject

is

one

that

to ‘special introduction

; but,

in passing, the present

writer may he allowed to express the view that, in the present

text of Ecclesiastes, traces are

to

be clearly found

of

the

assistance which it was found necessary to give, in order

to

secure for this hook a place in the canon.

In 12

it is testified

of the preacher

that he was a well-meaning and respectable

man (of course otherwise unknown).

where he is represented as being ‘the son

of

David,’ ‘king

Jerusalem,’ is glaring. These words, as also

1 16,

a good deal

in

2

and perhaps also

7

and certainly

1 2

are inter-

polations, by means of which alone the reception of the hook

into the canon was rendered possible. I t is self-evident that

Canticles also became a part of the canon, only

virtue of its

superscription which ascribes it

to

Solomon.

A

is

thrown on R. ‘Akiba’s assertion that Canticles had never

been disputed, and at the same time

a

evidence,

The contradiction

to

1

I

67

:he question had long been (substantially)

a settled

one,

is

by the passages quoted from Josephus and

Esdras settled, however, not by any

decision,

only by the gradual clearing up of public opinion.

other books in addition to the twenty-four there

no question

and

as

regards those two about

which alone any difficulty is possible, common opinion

to be

so decidedly in favour of what claimed to

be the stricter but in reality was the looser opinion,
that the zealot

R. ‘Akiba comes forward fanatically on

the side

of

Hillel.

W e may now venture to figure to ourselves what was

the probable course of the development, and what the

attitude assumed by various sections of the
community towards the decisive questions.

It is probable that among the

(professional

of Scripture) of the last century

R

.c.,

but

without the co-operation of the Sadducean priestly
nobility, there was gradually formulated a scholastic
doctrine as to which of the many religious writings then

could establish a just claim to

a

sacred char-

acter. W e have already seen by what standard the
writings were judged.

As this doctrine gradually took

unanimity was reached on every point except

on

a dispute with reference to two minor books;

in which,

as

was natural, the victory was ultimately

gained by the more liberal view.

This doctrine of the

as being the view of those who were the only

qualified judges

on

the special subject, readily gained

admission amongst such as were in doubt and sought
to inform

Thus the learned Philo, though

Living in Alexandria, takes very good care not to con-
travene the stricter practice

:

what we know about the

opposition offered to the books of Ecclesiastes, Canticles,

Esther, even suggests the possibility (incapable of

course of proof) that his silence about certain hooks
(cp above,

50)

really arises from

a

still greater strict-

ness.

As a convert to Pharisaism, Josephus professes

the school doctrine

of his teachers with an emphasis all

the greater because his own personal leanings were
(perhaps) against such exclusiveness.

O n , the other

hand, though the doctrine made way, yet the ‘majority
of the people betook themselves quite naturally to the
mass of apocalyptic and legendary literature, which,
in the century immediately before and after the birth of

exercised

a very great influence, and did

to prepare the way for Christianity. The formulated
theory possessed obvious advantages, however, and the
Jewish war and the destruction of Jerusalem left the
Pharisees in sole possession of the leadership of Israel.
This is shown most clearly by

4 Esdras. Against his

will, the author of that

is constrained to acknow-

ledge the divine authority of the canon with its twenty-
four constituent parts. Being, however,

a thoroughgoing

partisan of the apocalyptic literature, he outdoes the
Pharisees.

T o

the seventy

which they exclude he

attributes

a still higher authority, placing them in

an

esoteric a s distinguished from

an exoteric canon.

By the end of the first century the scribes had settled

the last of the questions controverted in the schools,
and not long after the beginning of the second century
(R.

to refer to the decision at

is decisive.

Later, following in

footsteps, the

scribes succeeded, not only in obliterating every trace

showing how long its true character still continued

to

known,

is conveyed by the information that R. ‘Akiha himself hurled

an anathema against those who sang the Song of Songs with

wanton voice in houses of public entertainment (Tosephta,

chap.

cp WRS

186).

To this peribd and

the fourth or the third century

R

.C.

belongs the complaint, expressed

the epilogue

of

Ecclesiastes

(Eccles.

1 2

as

to

the making of many books.

If, as we have conjectured, the Sadducees were in general

opposed to, or suspicious

of,

the recognition of any sacred

writings besides the Law, there would he an open field

for a view like that of the Pharisees, which

took

a middle course

Sadducean

and the fashionable tendency

to

the

endless multiplication of religious literature.

3

In round numbers of course.

CANON

CANON

of

variations in the text, but also in driving from circu-

lation the whole body of extra-canonical

Christianity, however,. in the

of its youth,

emancipated from the authority of the scribes, continued

pursue the old ways.

In the rejected

literature it discovered prophecies of the

appearing of Jesus and what the Pharisees

destroyed in the original

it eagerly. handed

down in translations and revisions to succeeding genera-
tions.

The N T writers show no scruple in quoting

extra-canonical books as sacred, and we find ascribed
to Jesus some expressions quoted as Holy Writ (Lk.

Jn.

which are not contained in the

What is more, examples of this form of Jewish literature
fused with Christian elements, or worked over from the
Christian point of view, have found their way into the
canon of the N T itself-a fact which only lately has
begun to receive the attention it

This independent drift of tendency within the Christian

Church greatly increases the difficulty of estimating the

As

even the oldest extant

MSS

of the LXX contain, in addition to

the

canonical hooks, a greatly varying number

which are not

in the canon

of

the synagogue, and indeed in some cases were not even
originally written in Hebrew.

On the other hand, the

oldest of these

MSS

are several centuries later than the

Christian era, and are the work of Christian copyists.
It becomes

a question, therefore, which is the earlier :

the freer praxis

of the Alexandrian Jews or that

of

primitive Christianity ;+whether the greater compass

of

the LXX canon of the Alexandrians influenced the view
of the Christian communities or whether the influence
flowed the other

The probability is that, in fact,

the influence worked both ways.

What principally con-

cerns

us here, however, is this. About the middle of

the first century

A.

when the Greek-speaking Christian

community began

to break entirely with Judaism, the

narrow Pharisaic doctrine of the canon had certainly
not as yet penetrated into the domain of Hellenistic
Judaism

so

deeply as to delete completely, or to exclude

from the

MSS

of the LXX, all the books that Pharisaism

refused to recognise.

The vacillation in individual

MSS

must at that

have been even greater than it is in

those which have reached

u s ;

although on this point

definite knowledge is unattainable.

I t is certain, how-

ever, that to some extent precisely those books belong-
ing to this category which lay nearest to the heart

of the

Christian community in its most primitive clays (especi-
ally Enoch and 4 Esdras) have come down to

us in no

Greek

The conclusion is that the additions to the

LXX are for the most part older than Christianity.

The doctrine of the Pharisees, however, ultimately

won the day also in its proper home.

Not only did

Indeed it was supposed, until the recovery

of

part of

Ecclesiasticus, that they had actually succeeded in extirpating

it-so far, that is, as it was not

to

hide itself under the

veil of exegesis in the Haggada, Midrash and Talmud (We.

second

ed. 287).

Even Ecclesiasticus would he no

exception if we could admit the contention of D.

Origin

the

'Original

In his opinion the 'Original Hebrew' is a had retranslation

(from the Syriac version and a Persian translation of the Greek)

made after

A

.D.

an Arabic-speaking Jew

[or

Christian?]

who was taught Hebrew

a Jew with

a

pronunciation similar

to that of the Christians of Urmi. The reader will probably

hesitate

to

accept this theory; still it

be denied that

Margolionth has availed himself with qreat skill of many

of the Hebrew text. which in

case need a

so-called canon of the Alexandrians.'

well known,

investigation.

As to

this cp Wildehoer,

48

who must be held in all

essentials to have the better of the argument as against the

vigorous

of Ryle,

3

See, for example,

A

POC

ALY

PSE

.

In fact

to

speak strictly there never was such a canon.

The

collection

Books never underwent that

revision in accordance with the Pharisaic conception of defil-

ing the hands' which finally fixed the Hebrew canon.

5

On this point there seems to he some self-contradiction in

Ryle,

compare pp. 146,

with

22

673

it succeed in extending its influence over the Hellenists
bv means of the new Greek translation of Aouila

:

but

also the Church itself ultimately surren-
dered.

A strange and significant fact

!

From about

onwards there

constantly occur patristicstatemeuts on the

extent of the O T canon, which avowedly rest upon Jewish
authority.

This certainly had its advantages; for in

this way many hooks of merely temporary value were
excluded which, if rendered authoritative, could hardly
have furthered the interests of Christianity.

On the

same ground too, the return of the Reformers to the
canon of the synagogue is justifiable, especially when,
as in the case of Luther, the relative importance of the
Apocrypha is duly recognised.

On

the other hand, it

must be confessed that even the unanimously accepted
canon of the Church is not without books of

a

similar

character (notably Esther and Canticles also Ecclesiastes
and Daniel), and that thus the distinction between
canonical and uncanonical books (if they are

their intrinsic value) is

a

fluctuating

Besides

this, it is certain that in the excluded books, of which
we know

so

many already, and are continually coming

through new discoveries to know more, there has come
down to

us a treasure of unspeakable value for a know-

ledge

of religious life as it was shortly before and after

the time of Jesus, and

so for an understanding of the

origin of Christianity (see A

POCRYPHA

, A

POCALYPTIC

).

K.

B.

B. N E W TESTAMENT.

T h e problem of the N T canon is to discover by what

means and at what period

a

new collection of sacred

60.

Jesus'

Words

and

Deeds.

books

to he invested with all the

dignity which belonged to that of the
Synagogue. Jesus had claimed to speak
with an authority in no way inferior to

that of the O T , and had

his own utterances

side by side with some of its precepts

as fulfilling or

even correcting them.

T h e remembered words of Jesus

thus became at once, if the expression may be allowed,
the nucleus of

a new Christian canon. At first they

circulated orally from hearer

to hearer.

Then narra-

tives were compiled recording the Sacred Words, and
the no less Sacred Deeds which had accompanied or
illustrated them.

narratives of this kind underlie

our

Gospels, and are referred to in the preface to the

Third Gospel. In course of time these were superseded

by the fuller treatises which bear the
names of apostles or the chosen com-

panions

of apostles and their superior merit, as well

as

the sanction thus given to them, soon left them without
rivals

as the authorised records of the Gospel history.

They were read side by side with hooks of the

O T

in the public worship of the Church, and were appealed
to as historical documents by those who wished to show
in detail the correspondence between the facts of
the life of Jesus and the Jewish prophecies about the

Messiah. This stage has been definitely reached by the
time of Justin Martyr

but

as

yet there is no clear

proof that

a

special sanctity or inspiration was predicated

of the books themselves.

The final step, however,

could not long he delayed. T h e sacredness of the
Words and Deeds of Jesus which they contained, the
apostolic authority by which they were recommended,
and, above all, their familiar use in the services of the
Church, gradually raised them

to the level of the ancient

Scriptures and the process was no doubt accelerated
by the action of heretical and schismatical bodies,
claiming one after another to base their tenets upon

There is, however

a

singular passage in the sixth of the

Anglican Articles of

limiting

Holy

Scripture'

to

those

canonical hooks of the Old and the New Testaments, of whose

authoritywasnever

in the

Bishop

the

Canon

cannot undertake to explain.

See Cheyne,

Founders, 349,

and cp preceding note.

CANON

CANON

certain of these -documents or upon others peculiar to
themselves.

Meanwhile

a similar process had been going on

regard to other writings of the apostolic age.

These

were for the most part letters, written
in many instances to particular chmches,

designed to meet special needs.

T h e writers

betray no consciousness that their words would come to
he regarded

as

a permanent standard of doctrine or of

action

the Christian Church: they write for an

immediate purpose, and just as they would wish to
speak, were they able to he present with those whom
they address.

I n their absence, and still more after

their death, their letters were cherished and read again
and again

the churches which had first received them,

by others who naturally welcomed such precious

relics of the apostolic age.

For the apostles were the

authorised instructors of the Christian Church.

In

the

age which succeeded them, the Lord and the apostles'
became the natural standard of appeal to which reference
was to he made in all matters of faith and practice.

For some time the tradition of the apostles,'

as

handed

down in the churches of their foundation, was regarded

as

the test of orthodoxy.

Oral tradition, however, is

necessarily variable and uncertain.

I t was natural that,

when actual disciples of the apostles were

no longer

living, appeal should more and more be made to their
written words, and that these should be set side by side
with the Gospels

as the primary documents of the

Christian faith.

Here again the same elements

as

before come into play, though probably at

a slightly later

period-viz., the liturgical use of the epistles, and the
necessity of maintaining them intact against the muti-
lations or rejections of heretical sects.

I n the collection which was thus gradually being

formed

the pressure of various circumstances and
with

no

distinct consciousness of the creation

of

a canon,

a

place was found beside the

Gospels and the epistles for two other

hooks.

T h e Apocalypse

of

John opened with the

salutation of an epistle; and, even apart from this,
its apocalyptic character claimed for it

a special and

abiding sacredness moreover it contained

an express

blessing for those who should read and listen to it, and

a

warning against any who should presume to alter or

add to it.

T h e Acts of the Apostles would find

an

easy entrance, partly

as

an authorised account of the

deeds

of

apostles written by one who had contem-

poraneous knowledge of them, and still more

as being

in form the second part of the Third Gospel and properly
inseparable from the earlier hook.

Thus, side by side with the old Jewish canon, and

without in any way displacing it, there had sprung up

a

new Christian canon.

Although

limits were not yet precisely defined,
and

variations

opinion were to

be observed with regard-to the acceptance of par-
ticular books, we find the idea of such

a

new canon

in

play

in

the writings of great representative

men of the period from 180 to

zoo

Irenzus

speaking for Asia Minor and Gaul, of Tertullian in N.
Africa, and of Clement in Alexandria.

T h e

is

this time fully conscious that she is in possession of

written documents of the apostolic age documents to
which reference must be universally made,

as to a final

court of appeal, in questions of right faith and right
action. T h e authority of Jesus and his apostles is, in
the main, embodied for her in writings which she rends
together with the O T in her public services, quotes as
Scripture, and regards

as the

revelation of

divine truth.

Of the stages

which this

has

been reached the writers referred to have nothing to tell

us.

I t was,

as we have seen, the issue

an

un-

conscious growth, natural and for the most part un-
challenged, and

so

leaving no recorded history behind

it.

If the Church was awakened to

a

consciousness of

ier great possession, and to the importance of insisting

its integrity, by the attempts made

heretics to

her of

of it, there is no evidence

of

efforts

on her part to build

the conception

a

new canon in opposition to them; much less of

my formal declarations, such

as

those of later times,

what books should or should not he included

in it.

In the stress of controversy she fell back

on

the

treasures which she possessed, and realised that in the
books which she was accustomed to read for the in-
struction of her children she had, on the one hand, the
full and harmonious expression of all those positive
truths whose isolation or exaggeration formed the
groundwork of the several heretical systems, and, on
the other hand, the decisive contradiction of the
negations in which their capricious selections had
involved those who rejected any part of the common
heritage.

That the sketch given above of the gradual growth

of

a new canon with its twofold contents, in the

anterior to Irenzus, Tertullian, and
Clement, is justified not only by in-
trinsic probability but

also by the

references of early Christian writers

to hooks of the NT, may be

consulting the collections of such references accessible
in modern treatises upon the canon.

Here

a brief

outline of the evidence must suffice.

In the Epistle of Clement

of Rome to the Corinthians

(circa

95)

we have two precepts introduced

a com-

mand to remember the words of our Lord Jesus (cp
Acts

in neither case do they exactly agree

with the language of our Gospels; they may be the
result of a fusion due to citation from memory, or they
may possibly be derived from oral tradition.

T h e

epistle is saturated with the phraseology of the Pauline
Epistles

I

Cor., Eph.

less certainly Tim. and

others) and of the Epistle to the Hebrews but these
are not directly cited,

the expressions Scripture

and it is written are applied to the O T alone.

I n the genuine Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch (shorter

Greek recension,

circa

A.D.,

Lightfoot) the only

direct citation of words of Jesus

Lay hold and

handle me and see that

I

am not

a

spirit

without

Ad

3 )

is possibly derived from

an apocryphal hook or from an oral tradition.

T h e

language of these Epistles shows traces of acquaintance
with Mt. and Jn. and with several of the Pauline Epistles.
T h e Epistle of

(circa

A.D.,

Lightfoot) is

largely composed of quotations from N T books (especially
Mt., Lk.,

I

and

I

and the Pauline Epistles).

There is but one (somewhat uncertain) instance of the
citation of N T words

as Scripture.

T h e Epistle of Barnabas

(circa 98

Lightfoot :

though most scholars place it later) prefixes to the
saying Many called hut few chosen,' the formula it
is written.'

If this be cited from Mt. 2214-and

a

later

reference makes it not improbable-then we have here

the earliest use of this formula in reference to

a book

of

the NT.

T h e

Teaching

the

(date uncertain :

perhaps

introduces

a form of the L o r d s Prayer,

which has variants both from Mt. and Lk., by the
words, as the Lord commanded

in

his Gospel,

so pray

y e ' (chap.

8 ;

cp chaps.

15).

I t clearly presup-

poses

a written Gospel, and shows acquaintance with

Mt. and

I t has embodied

an ancient (perhaps

Jewish) manual, The Two Ways (used

also

in

Ep.

Barn. and elsewhere), and also certain early eucharistic
prayers which incorporate the language

of Jn.

T h e

of

the Athenian philosopher

(circa

A.D.

addressed to the emperor Hadrian

to Eus. and the title of Arm. vers.

the title of

the Syr. vers. would place it a few years later, under
Antoninus

twice refers expressly to writings of the

Christians in the first instance, after enumerating the

CANON

CANON

main events of the life of Jesus-including his birth

from

a

Hebrew virgin and his ascension-it distinctly

appeals to t h e written Gospel for corroboration.

It,

also embodies language from the Epistle to the

Romans.

T h e

Shepherd

of

(date uncertain

:

betrays a close acquaintance with many N T books,

though it makes no direct citations either from O T or
from NT.

T h e language of

our four Gospels (even of

the Appendix to Mk.

of the Pauline Epistles including

the Pastoral

of

I

Acts, Apoc., and above all

of Jas., is adopted by the writer and even

Pe. seems

to have been used.

Before we come to the fuller testimonies of Justin

Martyr and subsequent writers it is necessary to

examine the evidence to be derived from

His date and the interpretation

to be placed on his fragmentary remains have been
the subject of much criticism (see esp. Lightfoot,

Essays

on

Supernatural

H e was the hearer

of a t least two personal disciples of Jesus, and his
great work may be placed

circa

It was

entitled

Expositions of the

Oracles of (or 'concerning') 'the Lord.' As

is

a

term used in the N T of the O T writings, the title

of the book naturally suggests some kind of com-
mentary on the writings relating to

on

written Gospels which held a recognised position

of

sacredness in the Christian Church.

It is probable

that similar commentaries on one or more of the Gospels
had already been composed by Gnostic writers : thus
Basilides is said to have written twenty-four books

on

'the Gospel'

(circa

Such books are disparaged

by Papias as wordy and misleading he prefers to fall

the testimonies of the living disciples of those

who had seen the Lord.

H e gives accounts, not free

from difficulties, of the composition of Gospels by
Matthew and Mark.

On

the whole, the facts seem to

he most readily accounted for if we suppose that

Papias in his five books expounded and illustrated

by

traditional stories the

Gospels

as we at present

know them.

Eusebius further expressly informs

us that

Papias used

I

and

I

Pe.

There can b e little

doubt that his chiliastic views were based

on

the

Apocalypse.

Justin Martyr

(circa

when mentioning the

words of the institution of the Eucharist, says :

' S o

the

apostles handed clown in the Memoirs
made by them, which are called Gospels

166).

In describing the Sunday worship, too, he

refers to 'The Memoirs of the Apostles'

1 6 7

see

D

A

Y

),

and these Memoirs

are placed on a level with the Writings of the Prophets
as an alternative means of edification in the gatherings
of the Christian Church.

Justin's

of them, here

and in his

with the Jew Trypho, is conditioned

by the necessities of his argument.

In themselves they

would have no weight with heathen or Jewish opponents.
T h e O T prophecies, however, could be freely appealed
to in either case, as the argument rested

on

their fulfil-

ment rather than

on

their sacredness. Justin accordingly

uses ' T h e Memoirs of the Apostles'

as

historical

documents- in proof of the fulfilment o f . Messianic
predictions

in

the recorded events of the life of Jesus.

Twelve times he refers to them directly in the

Dialogue

the instances being in connection with his exposi-

tion of

Ps.

22.

I n every case, both here and in the

the reference is fully accounted for by the

supposition that these Memoirs were our four Gospels,
the phraseology of each of which can be traced in
his writings.

Where he most carefully describes

them, after referring to an event recorded only by
he says that

'

they were compiled by Christ's apostles

and those who companied with them.'

This exactly

agrees with the traditional authorship of our Gospels,
as written two by apostles (Mt.,

and two by

followers of apostles (Mk., Lk.). Justin likewise refers

Papias.

for corroboration

of his statements

official

Acta

he may perhaps have been acquainted with a

more primitive form of the apocryphal materials still
surviving under that designation.

There is, however,

no satisfactory evidence that he used any apocryphal
Gospel (unless perhaps a

Protevangel or Gospel of

the Infancy).

H e refers directly to the Apocalypse

as

written by the apostle John

and shows

acquaintance with most of the Pauline Epistles.

From Justin we pass to his pupil Tatian

(circa

160

A.D.),

who helps to confirm our conclusions as to

Justin himself by his use of our four

Gospels and no other in his

Diatessaron.

This remarkable book, which for a long period must
have been the only Gospel of many Syrian churches, is
known to

us mainly through a Commentary upon it

written by Ephraim, and preserved to

us

in an Armenian

translation

and also through an Arabic version of the

Diatessaron itself-made, however, after the later text
of the Peshitta Syriac had been substituted for Tatian's
own text, which had many interesting variants of

an

early type.

T h e two sources of evidence supplement

each other, and make it certain that Tatian's Gospels were
none other than our own.

There is some reason for

thinking that Tatian also 'introduced into Syria

a

col-

lection of the Pauline Epistles.

3.

Although Tatian adopted heretical opinions after

the death of his master, his great work

on

the Gospels

appears to he quite independent of these
and was accepted without question by the
Syrian Church.

I t will be well, however, to

notice at this point the evidence to he derived
from other heretical leaders in regard to the

estimation in which various

of the N T were held

by those who were dissatisfied with the teaching of the
main body of the Church.

I t will suffice to take three

writers of whom we have

a considerable amount

of

information preserved to

us.

Basilides of Alexandria

flourished in the reign of Hadrian.

His Expositions

on the Gospel, in twenty-four books, have already been
mentioned.

Accepting, with Hort, the account pre-

served in the Refutation

of

Heresies (generally ascribed

to Hippolytus) as representing portions of this work,
we meet with the striking fact that quotations from the
N T , introduced with the words The Scripture saith,'
and as it is written,' are found in

a

heretical writer at

a

period at which they cannot with certainty be said to

be

so

introduced by any writer within the Church.

Several passages from the Pauline Epistles are

so

cited

by Basilides.

H e also used Mt.,

Jn., and appar-

ently

I

Pe.

(circa

140)

undertook to restore the sim-

plicity of Christianity

on

the basis of Paul, whom he re-

garded as the only true apostle.

H e rejected the O T

and retained of the N T only Lk. in a mutilated form,
and ten Epistles of P a u l ; the Pastoral Epistles and
the Epistle to the Hebrews not being included in his
canon. There is no indication that he applied any other
standard than that of correspondence with his own
dogmatic position, in making what must be considered
the earliest attempt at the conscious definition of a N T
canon.

Heracleon

(circa

170,

or earlier),

a

disciple

of

wrote a Commentary

on

of which con-

siderable fragments are preserved by Origen.

His

system of interpretation shows that he held the exact
words of the Evangelist in the highest veneration, as
instinct with spiritual meaning.

H e also commented

on

and shows acquaintance with Mt.,

and

the Pauline Epistles

Tim.

Thus the first certain citations of N T writings with

the formula familiarly used of the OT, the first attempt
at defining a

canon, and the first commentary

on

a N T book, come to

not from within but from without

the Church.

These are striking evidences

the

authority generally accorded to the N T writings

in

CANON

CANON

the words of

27)

:

So

strong is the position

of our Gospels, that the heretics themselves bear witness
to them, and each must start from these to prove his
own doctrine.

4.

T h e early history of the Old Latin and the Old

Syriac versions is

in obscurity; but there

is

reason for believing that the translation

of

parts at least of both these versions must
be placed

not

much later than the middle

of the second century (see

T

EXT

,

32).

The Old

Latin version seems

to have been made in N. Africa,

and

to have included, probably before the time of

Tertullian, all the books of the later canon, excepting
Jas.,

Pe., and possibly Heb.

When the

Martyrs

(N.

Africa, 180

A .

D

. )

were examined

as

to

what was contained in their book-chest, their brief
recorded reply was

and Epistles of Paul,

a just

man.'

Such was their description of the writings which,

doubtless, were used by them in their services.

I t is

conditioned by the circumstance of its utterance before
heathen judges

it would be wrong to' conclude from

it that the Pauline Epistles were placed by them on

a

different level from the other sacred writings. The Old
Syriac of the Gospels has till lately been known only
from Cureton's imperfect MS

but the palimpsest

recently found at Mt. Sinai enables us to reconstruct
this version for the most part with approximate certainty.

A

selection of comments by Ephraim on the Acts of the

Apostles, and his Commentary on the Pauline Epistles,
preserved in Armenian translations, point to an Old
Syriac version of these books also.

T h e older MSS of

the revised Syriac version (the Peshitta) do not contain

and

3

Pe., Jude, and Apoc.

W e have been concerned hitherto with tracing the

growth of the conception of

a N T canon, without

considering, except incidentally, the

T h e

influence of the main body of the

N T

range of writings included in

i t .

literature upon the writers of the period with which we
have been dealing cannot be at all fully appreciated
from our scanty analysis. Their writings must them-
selves be studied line by line, if we are to understand
the debt which they owed,

as regards both ideas and

phraseology, to the documents of the apostolic age.

In that age new conceptions had been given to the

world, and

a new terminology had been formed for

their expression. The next age reprodnced these but
it was not itself creative. This

is seen, for instance, in

the technical terms of even the boldest of the Gnostic
speculations. Whatever may have been men's conscious
attitude towards the

JST

writings, it

is

clear that they

are dominated by

from the very first. Gradually

they come to recognise them more and more

as

their

masters and then, both within the Church and outside
it, we find them definitely declaring the limits of the
canon

to which they owe this allegiance.

Marcion's list of sacred books has already been

noticed. The next list of which we have any knowledge is

unfortunately a fragment, and

us

neither its date nor its author's name
or locality. It was published in

by Lodovico Antonio

the librarian at

Hence it is lcnown as the Muratorian canon.

I t is in

barbarous Latin, in a seventh or eighth century M S ;
but its original mnst have been Greelc, and it is generally
agreed that it was written

in the West (perhaps at

towards the close of the second century.

foot conjectured that it was a portion of the 'Verses
on all the Scriptures' assigned to Hippolytus.

T h e

fragment commences with the end of a description

of

Mark it goes on to speak of Luke and John, and refers
to the different beginnings of the four books

of

the

Gospel.

After Acts come the Epistles of

Paul;

the

seven churches

to which he wrote being paralleled with

the seven

of the Apocalvpse, and enumerated in the

following order-Cor.,

Phil.,

Gal., Thess.,

679

Rom.

Then come four private letters-Philemon and

.he Pastoral'. epistles.

Two other epistles are

those to the Laodiceans and

to

the Alexandriaus. Then we have Jude, two epistles

John

(

I

Jn. has been quoted from at an earlier

point,

so

that these

perhaps be

2

and 3

and

the Wisdom of Solomon, 'written

in his honour.'

Then the 'apocalypses of John and Peter alone we
receive, which

(sing.)

some among us will not have

read in the church.' T h e

Shepherd of

ought

to be read,' but not reckoned either with the prophets
or with the apostles.

After a few

lines

as to

rejected books, the text being very corrupt, the fragment
suddenly closes. T h e omissions are deserving of
nothing is said of

I

and

2

Peter, James, and

but the omitted epistles were undoubtedly (if we except

2

Peter) known at this time in the

church.

I t

is difficult, therefore,

to draw conclusions from their

omission in

a

fragment of whose history

so little can be

ascertained and whose text is

so obviously corrupt.

T h e

Muratorian canon is fully discussed by Zahn,

Hist.

the Canon

('90)

:

quite recently Dom

of

Monte Cassino has published fragments of it from other
MSS

1897).

The inclusion (though with an

of

variance

of

of the

of

Peter in the Muratorian Fragment leads

us

to say something of books which for

a time claimed a place in the canon, but

were ultimately excluded.

The Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, and the

miscalled his Second Epistle,' are contained,

after the Apocalypse, in Cod.

A (the great

Bible

of the 5th cent. in the Brit. Mus.). T h e Epistle

of

Barnabas and the

hold

a

similar

place in the

Bible

( K ,

4th cent.). The two

latter books are occasionally cited as Scripture in
patristic writings, and this

is

the case

also with the

Teaching

the Apostles.

Of apocryphal Gospels two deserve special notice.

T h e

according

is known

by a few fragments, which show that it bore a close
relation

to our First Gospel. Clement of Alexandria

and Origen quote from

it. although they insist on the

sole authority of our four Gospels.

T h e

accord-

ing

to

Peter, a considerable fragment of which was

published in 1892 from

a

MS

found in Egypt, is'known

to have been used in the church of Rhossns near
Antioch.

Serapion, Bishop of Antioch

(

at

first permitted its use, but subsequently disallowed it on
the ground

of

Docetic errors.

The extant portion

embodies the language of all our four Gospels, though
it often perverts their statements.

There is

no

trace

of

the use of any other Gospel in its composition, though
certain phrases may possibly be borrowed from some
earlier apocryphal book.

Its composition may with

probability be assigned to

circa 165.

Its testimony to

the canon is thus somewhat parallel

in

date and extent

to that of Tatian's

The

of

Peter, of which

a

fragment was

recovered at the same time, was an early book which
powerfully influenced subsequent literature of

a similar

the

Apocalypse of

I t seems to be

responsible for much of the

conception of

heaven and hell.

It presents curious coincidences with

2

Peter.

I t is quoted

as

Scripture by Clement of

Alexandria and as late

as the fifth century it was read

on Good Friday in certain churches of Palestine.

6.

Our inquiry has revealed

to

ns that towards the

close of the second century, by the time of

Tertullian, and Clement-writers whose
testimonies are

so abundant that we need

not dwell

upon

them here-the Church had attained to

a conscious recognition of

a

canon of the New Testa-

ment.

Three classes of hooks have come into view

:

(I)

the main bulk of the N T books, as to which no

680