kept the feasts of tabernacles amidst the forlorn and desolate ruins of a once noble city, but then destitute of houses, temple, gates, and wall? Does he not see that, to do so is much the same as maintaining that in one and the same week, of one and the same month, in one and the same year, Cyrus and Artaxerxes were contemporary and coequal kings of Persia and Babylon-Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah, were contemporary and coequal Tirshathas of Judæa-and Jeshua and his grandson Eliashib were contemporary and coequal high priests at Jerusalem?

Your correspondent thinks that the result of understanding the words of Nehemiah as intended to imply what they express (and we have already allowed this to be an excellent general rule) will be, that we must believe the feast of tabernacles in Ezra iii. 4, and the feast of tabernacles in Neh. viii. 17, to be one and the same feast. And we may add that if the language of Mr. Bosanquet's letter "is intended to imply what it expresses," he sincerely believes the festal celebrations in question to have been in reality one and the same feast, celebrated in one and the same month, and in one and the same year.

In describing the celebration of the feast of tabernacles in Neh. viii. 17, the sacred historian adds, that "since the days of Jeshua the son of Nun unto that day the children of Israel had not done so." These words may seem to express that, from the days of Jeshua, the successor of Moses, the feast of tabernacles had been utterly neglected until the day of which Nehemiah speaks. Yet if we take the trouble to compare together Levit. xxiii. 33, 41; 1 Kings viii. 2, 65 and 66; 2 Chron. vii. 8, 10, we shall find ground for thinking the above cited words of Nehemiah were not exactly intended to imply what they seem to express, but that they are rather to be understood as teaching us, that of the numerous celebrations of the feasts of tabernacles which had occurred between Jeshua and Nehemiah-(for who can doubt what took place in the reigns of David, Hezekiah and Josiah?)—not one of them had been marked by a more sincere exultation and gladness than that which is recorded in the eighth chapter of Nehemiah.

A very little reflection will teach your correspondent that, when he reads Ezra v. 13, "In the first year of Cyrus the king of Babylon, king Cyrus made a decree to build the temple," it is to be understood that these words are intended to imply what they express, viz., that Cyrus made this decree in the year in which he began to reign over Babylon.

By the help of this verse he will at once be assisted in interpreting correctly Ezra i. 1. We there find it thus written, "In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, Cyrus king of Persia made a proclamation concerning the building of the temple at Jerusalem." Comparing this with Daniel's narrative, and with Ezra v. 13, we may feel reasonably assured that this proclamation was issued after the Medo-Persian conquest of Babylon. And if so, Herodotus, Xenophon, and Berosus, not to mention Ctesias and Isocrates, teach us that Cyrus became king

* Zerubbabel is evidently designated as Tirshatha, in Ezra ii. 63.

of the Persians many years before that event. Ezra, therefore, must be understood here, not as intending to imply what we must allow that his words fairly express, viz., that Cyrus made this proclamation in the year in which he first became king of Persia, but rather, in the year in which he first began to reign over Babylon, after having been already many years king of Persia.

Again, your correspondent is doubtless aware that, in the New Testament (Matt. i. 12), Salathiel is designated as the father of Zerubbabel. Hence he will not hesitate to interpret literally the words, "Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel" (Ezra iii. 2). And should any friend point out to him that Jozadak entered upon the high-priesthood in the year in which Jerusalem and the temple were cast down by the Chaldeans (1 Chron. vi. 15; and 2 Kings xxv. 18, 21), he will probably not object to understand literally a similar expression occurring in the same verse (Ezra iii. 2), "Jeshua the son of Jozadak."

But if, when reading in Ezra vii. 1, concerning "Ezra the son of Seraiah, the son of Azariah," etc., his eye should happen to detect the marginal reference to 1 Chron. vi. 10, 15, your correspondent will at once discover that it was this very Seraiah-of whom Ezra "the priest and scribe" is here styled the son-who was put to death by Nebuchadnezzar in the year in which he caused the temple at Jerusalem to be burned. Your correspondent will thus see that, unless he can feel himself at liberty to bring down the date of the destruction of the holy city by the Chaldeans some fifty or sixty years later than has been done by the Jewish writer Demetrius, he can scarcely believe Ezra to have been literally the son of Seraiah, even if the words of the sacred historian very fairly, indeed positively, express this. But if we are really to understand that the words "Ezra son of Seraiah,” are intended to imply what they express, and to be taken in their literal acceptation, then was Ezra "the scribe and priest," as son of Seraiah, brother to Jozadak, uncle to Jeshua, great-uncle to Joiakim, and great-great-uncle to Eliashib, into the chamber of whose son Johanan (the grandson's great-grandson of Seraiah) Ezra entered (Ezra x. 6) in the seventh year of Artaxerxes, to mourn and fast. They who accept the common chronology, will have little difficulty in believing Ezra to have stood in the relation of third or fourth cousin to, and contemporary of, Eliashib, who was grandson's grandson to Seraiah.

Again, the context and other historical considerations teach us that the language of Ezra ii. 1, "These are the children of the province that went up (to Jerusalem) out of the captivity, (the children) of those which had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king had carried away into Babylon "-is to be interpreted mainly of the children, and grand-children, and great-grand-children of those who had been carried away from Judæa beyond the Euphrates by the Chaldeans to Babylon. But we also read in Ezra iii., that when the foundation of the second temple was laid, "many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men, that had seen the first house when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice." Several, therefore, of the aged persons

who returned, were themselves natives of Judæa, and had been themselves removed thence into Chaldea.

And why, then, should your correspondent persist, against the clear evidence from the context, in taking literally the words, "the congregation of them that were come again out of the captivity" (Neh. viii. 17), and suppose that these words must necessarily be spoken of the very individuals who actually came up from Babylon to Jerusalem, and not of "their grand-children ?" Where is the improbability that the returned Jews, humbled and oppressed, as they publicly confessed themselves to be (Neh. ix. 36, 37), should have a sorrowful gratification in designating themselves as "the congregation of them that were come again out of the captivity," which designation, while it acknowledged the faithfulness of God in fulfilling his promise, served also to distinguish them from their ancestors, who, before the Chaldean triumph, had lived under their own kings of David's lineage.

From the thirteenth verse of the eighth chapter of Nehemiah, as we have already observed, it is plain that "Ezra the scribe" was present in an influential position with this "congregation of them which were come again out of the captivity" (ver. 17) at their celebration of the feast of tabernacles. This celebration must, therefore, have occurred after the arrival of Ezra in Jerusalem, in the seventh of Artaxerxes, and after Ezra had on one particular occasion withdrawn from the temple to mourn and fast in the chamber of Johanan, the son of Eliashib (Ezra x. 6), the latter being the grandson, and Johanan the greatgrandson, of that Jeshua who was high priest to the congregation which really came up to Jerusalem from their Chaldean captivity. And if, as we need not doubt was the case, Ezra took care that the feast of tabernacles should be duly kept at Jerusalem in the eighth and ninth of Artaxerxes, we can readily believe that both Eliashib and Johanan were present there with Ezra, and that this father and son were not the only grandson and great-grandson of the congregation that actually came up from Babylon, who took part in those festal celebrations.

To continue "the clear evidence from the context," we refer to the ninth verse of the same eighth chapter of Nehemiah. There we learn beyond all question, that Nehemiah the Tirshatha was present at Jerusalem with "Ezra the priest the scribe," on the first day of that same seventh month in which Ezra assisted in the feast of tabernacles recorded in viii. 16, 17, which feast was therefore evidently kept in the twentieth or twenty-first of Artaxerxes (B.c. 445-4), when Ezra the scribe had been residing twelve years at Jerusalem, when Nehemiah was Tirshatha, Eliashib, the grandson of Jeshua, high priest, about nineteen or twenty days after the triumphant completion of the citywall and gates, as recorded in Neh. vi. 15, and about seventeen or eighteen days after Nehemiah had discovered and read through the old register contained in vii. 6, 7, which discovery is related in vii. 5, and the register parenthetically inserted in the remainder of the seventh chapter.

(To be continued.)

NOTICES OF BOOKS.

An Introduction to the Old Testament, Critical, Historical, and Theological; containing a discussion of the most important questions belonging to the several books. By SAMUEL DAVIDSON, D.D. Vol. I. London: Williams and Norgate.

1862.

THE critical investigations which Dr. Davidson has carried on with so much zeal, learning, and ability, for so many years, are on all hands admitted to be of the highest importance. They have won for him a reputation more than European, and their value is not contested even by those who question some of the conclusions arrived at. With regard to the Old Testament in particular, it is well known that Dr. Davidson is one of the few English scholars who have resolutely grappled with its problems. It is matter for daily lamentation that we have among us scarcely any who devote themselves on scientific principles to the general criticism of the Old Testament. Introductions to the New Testament are plentiful, and some of them are of a high order of literary merit; but for the Hebrew Scriptures we have done comparatively little. Independent research in this field has been very much left to our German neighbours, and we have relied upon translations of their works far more than upon independent investigations of our own. This may be very much owing to the limited extent to which Hebrew is cultivated among us; but whatever the cause, no one doubts the fact. It is high time that we wiped away a reproach which is as unnecessary as it is just. Gladly, therefore, do we welcome every work of real learning in this department of sacred criticism; and we consider Dr. Davidson's present publication as calculated in various ways to arouse us to a sense of our duty, and to help us in its performance. He has started and discussed many great questions, and he has revealed to us the magnitude and features of the work we have to do. He has set forth the difficulties with which Old Testament criticism is encumbered -the difficulties which we have to remove if current opinions on many points have to be maintained. We have too long either ignored or been ignorant of not a few of these perplexities, or we have been satisfied with traditional, standard, and common-place solutions of them. Traditions have their value, especially when they can be traced back to something like a reasonable origin. Standard replies to objections are all very well when they do not originate in ignorance and calculate upon it. The general common-places which are used so freely and readily are often mere fictions, and will bear no scrutiny. We live in an age when it is needful to go further. Criticism is a modern Argus, and its hundred eyes are ever wakeful to pry into all the minutest details of the Old Testament. It discovers analogies, paradoxes and contradictions which our fathers never dreamed of. It takes in detail books, chapters, verses, and words, and by alternate processes of ana

lysis and synthesis, by researches in grammar, lexicography, history, geography, and whatever else seems needful, subjects the sacred text to such a scrutiny as would have been simply impossible in bygone days. Its attitude is that of constant interrogation, and its cross questioning is sometimes as severe and unrelenting as that of an Old Bailey pleader. Its tendency is to put the Scriptures on the defensive, and to elicit that which shall appear inconsistent with the infallibility and the antiquity claimed for them. It requires either that they should pass through the fiery ordeal unscathed, or that something should be abated from the pretensions commonly urged in their favour.

There is nothing wrong in this. For if the Old Testament professes to be without any admixture of error, to have been wholly written by those whose names are attached to it, to have been preserved in its original purity, and to have continued without addition, revision, or diminution, we not only may, but we ought to endeavour, to ascertain whether these things are so. In itself, all this criticism is right, as much so as the researches of the astronomer, the botanist, or the anatomist. Faith, when worth the name, can fear nothing from honest criticism; it has, however, much to hope from it. Let every unstable element be removed from its foundation as soon as possible; there will still remain the immutable basis of eternal truth. Eventually it may be seen, that as the Word made flesh was truly man as well as very God, so the written Word combines the human with the divine. But just as the man Christ Jesus was free from all moral and spiritual obliquity, so will the human side of the Bible be found free from all like ingredients. Meanwhile, we hope inquiry will go on, and we have no apprehensions as to the final result.

The preceding remarks will prepare the reader to hear that in the volume before us there is a good deal which is not in harmony with prevailing opinions. The author says, "Should any think that his handling of the subject has been occasionally free, they are reminded that there is a time to utter the conclusions of the higher criticism; that superstition should not enslave the mind for ever; and that the Bible is far from being yet understood by the majority of readers in all its parts and bearings.' He is quite aware that such freedom of treatment as he proposes will be blamed and opposed, but he has resolved to publish the convictions which he has arrived at. He scarcely expects that his views will be accepted by all readers, but he gives them to the world because he believes them to be right. He has been in search of scriptural orthodoxy, not of that human idol falsely so called. After all, this is the orthodoxy which must stand the test of time and trial; and it would be difficult to condemn it. The only question is, has it been attained? or has the enquiry been conducted on false principles, and has it led to unsound results ?

Perhaps one of the greatest difficulties modern critics have to encounter is the sheer traditional, which has become in a manner so incorporated with orthodoxy, that to question the infallibility of a traditional interpretation of a text, or of any traditional statement upon