work do not recognize the Master" (Wisd. xiii. 1; cf. Song of Three Child., ver. 39, ff.). There is only one God (Ecclus. xxxiii. 5; Bar. iii. 35; Wisd. xii. 13; Song of Three Child., ver. 23), and his power over his creatures is unlimited (Jud. xvi. 13, 14; 2 Macc. viii. 18; xvi. 35; Prayer of Man., ver. 3-5). He is all-wise (Ecclus. xxiii. 19, 20; Jud. ix. 5, 6), holy, hating and punishing sin (Ecclus. xii. 6; Wisd. xiv. 9), righteous (Tob. iii. 2; Ecclus. xvi. 12-14; 3 Macc. ii. 3), kind and pitiful (2 Macc. i. 24; Song of Three Child., ver. 66; Wisd. xv. 1; Jud. ix. 11), and ready to forgive (Ecclus. ii. 11; v. 4-8; Tob. xiii. 6). Anthropopathic and anthropomorphic representations, especially the latter, as might have been expected, are less frequent in the Apocrypha than in the older books, and in some of them, as for instance in Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom, the idea of the divine Being as pure spirit, is at least approached. The Son of Sirach declares that no man has seen God (xliii. 31), and pseudo-Solomon speaks of his holy spirit (τd äyıov σov æveûμa, ix. 17); and elsewhere says that his incorruptible spirit is in all things and "filleth the world" (i. 7; xiii. 1). On the other hand, in some of the apocryphal books the notion of God is exceedingly limited, and He is set forth as scarcely more than a national deity as over against the idols of the heathen. This is especially true of the books of Judith and Baruch (Jud. viii. 18–20; xiii. 4, 5, 7; Bar. iii. 1 ff.; iv. 6); while in Tobit the propitiation of Him through prayers and almsgiving takes, as in idolatrous sacrifices, the form of an opus operatum (cf. xii. 8-13).

Providence.

The teaching of the Old Testament, for the most part, respecting creation as the work of God, remains unchanged in the Apocrypha, but pseudo-Solomon (xi. 17; cf. 2 Macc. vii. 28), in harmony with the philosophy of his time, seems to have held Creation and that it was on the basis of an original formless material (¿ àμóppov vλns), and not, as is represented in Genesis, a creation from nothing. The same Being who made, also upholds and governs (Wisd. vi. 9; viii. 1; xi. 25; Ecclus. i. 2; xlii. 23; Bar. iii. 32). His government, moreover, is a providence (póvota; Wisd. xiv. 3), itself being guided by wisdom and love (Wisd. xvi. 13; Tob. iv. 19; Jud. viii. 14; Ecclus. x. 4); the evils with which the world is afflicted, war, famine, pestilence, according to the books of Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom, are for the punishment of human wickedness, while serving, in the case of the godly, as means of discipline and spiritual culture (Ecclus. xl. 9, 10; Wisd. vi. 8). Death entered the world through the envy of the devil. God created man for immortality (Wisd. ii. 24). In both of the latter compositions, also, the wisdom (ropía) of God personified is represented as having the principal part in the works of creation and providence; and in that of pseudoSolomon the representation is carried so far as to leave the impression on some minds that he actually hypostasized it and recognized a second divine Person under that name (vii. 22, et passim). This seems, however, to be due to the natural tendency to exaggeration which we find in all these works, there being no particular in which they are more clearly distinguished from the canonical books than in their want of simplicity and accuracy, the rhetorical figures, moreover, forming one of the best illustrations of this defect.1

The existence of both good and evil angels is recognized in the apocryphal books. They are spiritual beings and capable of assuming human forms. The good angels Angelology. surround the throne of God in heaven, and serve not only as his messengers in general, but as mediators in the providential government of the world. Satan (didßoλos), as the first great deceiver, is alluded to in the Book of Wisdom (ii. 24), and also, as it would seem, in Ecclesiasticus (xxi. 27). In the books of the Maccabees (2 Macc. iii. 26; x. 29; 3 Macc. vi. 18), angels are represented as appearing for the defense of the harassed Jews and the punishment of their oppressors. In Tobit, as we show in the introduction to that book, the matter of angelic interposition in human affairs is given abnormal prominence, in fact, assumes a form that is both incredible and absurd. It is represented, for instance, that among the good angels there are seven presence-angels who present the prayers of the saints before God. One of them, Raphael, serves as guide to Tobias on a long journey, and prescribes, like a physician, for physical ailments. Among the evil angels, a certain Asmodæus acts an extraordinary part: has power to take human life, is also capable of sexual lust, but may be exorcised by means of certain medicaments which, being burned, make a stench that to him is unendurable (iii. 17; vi. 7, 16). It is not necessary to say that such views could not have been derived from any legitimate interpretation of the teachings of the canonical books of the Old Testament on this subject.

1 Cf. Bruch, Weisheitslehre der Hebrder; Qehler, Grundzüge der A. T. Weisheit; Langen, Judenthum, etc., p. 25 ff.; Herzog's Real-Encyk. and Schenkel's Bib. Lex., art. "Weisheit;" also, Dillmann, Das Buch Henoch, Einleit.,.x. ff., p 152, 1.

Anthro

pology.

Man's original endowments and fall.

Moral duties.

With respect to man the representations of the Apocrypha deserve particular attention as illustrating the influence of the then philosophy in the development of doctrines concerning human nature and destiny. Man was created by God and is composed of body and soul, the latter being sometimes designated by veûμa and sometimes by ux, the distinction between them being nowhere closely marked (cf. Wisd. ix. 15). He was made in the image of his Creator, endowed with reason, the power of distinguishing between right and wrong, and a free will, and was placed on earth to be its ruler (Ecclus. xv. 14 ff., xvii. 1-8; Wisd. ix. 2, 3). The image of God in which man was created consists, according to the Son of Sirach, in the superiority, in general, in which he stands with respect to the creation (xvii. 3), according to pseudo-Solomon (ii. 23) in his immortality. The latter work, moreover, clearly teaches the preëxistence of the soul, and more than intimates that it was its connection with a body which was the occasion of its fall and is the ground of its continued sunken moral condition (viii. 19, 20; ix. 15). That the author is in this respect inconsistent, inasmuch as elsewhere (ii. 23, 24), he represents the fall as having been brought about through the envy of the devil, and so recognizes the historical validity of the account in Genesis (iii. 1-6), may be ascribed to his unsuccessful efforts to mediate between the current philosophical axioms and the Scriptures. The principle by which one, according to the Apocrypha, was to be governed in the matter of moral obligations and duties, was that he, in all that he did, should have reference to the will of his Maker as expressed in the Mosaic law, and, at the same time, to his own happiness. The will of God as set forth in the various precepts of the Mosaic code was, properly, to be the goal of his striving, while the motive to the same was the personal advantages to be derived from such a course. It would not seem that the apocryphal books place the chief end of man in the love and service of God, in themselves considered, but regard these simply as a means by which the highest good, individual happiness, was to be attained. In the most of these books such a reward of right doing was set forth as attainable in this world; in some of them, as to be expected only in the life to come, or at least, in connection with the future Messianic kingdom (Tob. xiii. 14; Wisd. i. 15; iii. 1; vi. 18; Ecclus. iii. 18; Bar. v. 2 ff.). The apocryphal writers, moreover, conceived of sin, so far as they considered the matter at all, as something appertaining to the outward conduct, a transgression of the acknowledged standards, and seem rarely, if ever, to have reached the more radical conception of it as being a want of inward conformity to the divine will. The underlying motive, the governing purpose of the heart, being, for the most part, left out of account, and the consequences of one's conduct being thought of simply in their relation to individual happiness, it was possible for such philosophers as the Son of Sirach and pseudo-Solomon to set forth a gradation in virtue and vice, and to speak of cardinal virtues, as self-control, temperance, prudence, righteousness, fortitude, and cardinal sins like idolatry, etc. (Ecclus. xviii. 30 ff.; Wisd. viii. 7), than which nothing could be regarded as more injurious than the one, and nothing as more profitable to men in life (&v χρησιμώτερον οὐδέν ἐστιν ἐν βίῳ ἀνθρώποις) than the other. At the same time, too, as might have been expected on the basis of this low moral plane, while the mint, anise, and cummin were carefully tithed, the weightier matters of the law were depreciated or ignored. A Razis was justified in committing suicide if, persecuted for righteousness' sake, he were in danger of falling into the hands of his enemies; and a Judith might invoke the blessing of God on her Receptions and prostitute her person for the weal of her fatherland. Minute directions are given how one is to behave in society, how to eat to excess without evil consequences (Ecclus. xxxi. 21), and to preserve the health through the avoidance of melancholy (xxxviii. 18); but love to God in any other sense than veneration or reverence (Ecclus. vii. 30) seems scarcely to have been thought of. He was the happy man who lived to see the death of his enemies, (Ecclus. xxv. 7), and by his good deeds, especially the giving of alms, had purchased from heaven the forgiveness of his sins and won a permanent place in the memories of men (Ecclus. iii. 30; xxix. 12; Tob. iv. 10; xii. 9; xiv. 11).

In only two of the apocryphal books, 2 Maccabees and Wisdom, is to be found anything worthy of special attention on the subject of eschatology. In the rest, the point Eschatology.1 of view is much the same as that in the Old Testament Scriptures generally, with the exception of Ecclesiasticus, where a less advanced position is taken than in some of the

1 See my article in the Bibliotheca Sacra for April, 1879, on the "Eschatology of the O. T. Apocrypha,” and the authorities there cited.

canonical books, and 1 Maccabees, where an apparently intentional omission of all allusion to the future state seems to betray a Sadducæan origin. In 2 Maccabees, on the other hand, the belief in a bodily resurrection is set forth with a fullness, clearness, and emphasis, that are almost startling, leading to the inference, that, as over against its earlier and historically more trustworthy namesake, it was written with a partisan purpose and under direct Pharisaic influence (cf. vii. passim, and xiv. 46, ff.). This conclusion is confirmed, moreover, by what is said by the author of Judas Maccabæus' praying for the dead, "in that he was mindful of the resurrection" (xii. 43-45). The Book of Wisdom, on the other hand, while led by its philosophy to reject the opinion that the body would rise again from the dead (i. 13; ii. 23; viii. 20; ix. 15), clearly teaches the conscious, personal, unending existence of the soul after death both of the good and of the evil (iii. 1-4; iv. 8-10; v. 15; vi. 19), the former in happiness with God (vi. 20), the latter in misery (i. 12, 16, et passim). Pseudo-Solomon seems, also, to have held to a judgment-day following the present state of probation, at which time the wicked, both living and dead, would be judged and cast into hell (i. 9; iii. 7, 13, 18; iv. 1820), while the righteous would descend to reign in the everlasting kingdom which God would set up. It is not to be denied, however, that on this point whether the judgment was regarded as taking place during life and at death or after death - there is a want of clearness in his representations. Still, there might be a reason for this, not simply in the writer's own mind, but also in the nature of the subject itself. In an important sense, to the incorrigible, every act of God with respect to them might be considered an act of judgment, without however excluding, but rather requiring a final summing up at the Last Day.

It is a significant fact, in view of the claim that is made in some quarters for the books before us, that the traces of the Messianic hope which they contain are only of the The Messifaintest character. This hope, moreover, seems in no case to have centered anic hope.1 clearly in the coming of a personal Messiah, but to have developed itself rather in longings for, and descriptions of a certain future kingdom, such as had been the subject of the later prophecies. In addition to the expectation of the return of the dispersed Israelites and the reawakening of the spirit of prophecy which we find in Baruch and 2 Maccabees (Bar. iv. 36, 37; v. 5-9; 2 Macc. ii. 18), the conversion of the heathen is predicted in Tobit (xiii. 11-18; xiv. 6, 7), the eternal existence of the Jewish people as such in Ecclesiasticus (xxxvii. 25; xliv. 18), and elsewhere, the fact that this continued existence is somehow to be connected with the family of David (Ecclus. xlvii. 11; 1 Macc. ii. 57). The Son of Sirach also speaks in one place (xlviii. 10, 11) of the return of Elijah in the form foretold by Malachi, and adds: “we, also, shall surely live," i. e., at his coming we shall be alive. And in the Book of Wisdom (iii. 7; v. 1 ff.), as we have said, a day of final judgment seems to be taught, following which an eternal kingdom of the saints will be set up in which the Lord will be their king.

Reasons for

the disappearance of

such hope.

Various efforts have been made to explain this remarkable absence of allusion to the Messiah in the apocryphal books. Schürer, for instance, ascribes it to the fact that their contents are, for the most part, historical or didactic and not prophetic. But this did not prevent references from being made to the expected universal and eternal kingdom of Israel. Why should it shut out the idea of the Messiah if it was still entertained? Hengstenberg 2 held that it was due to a fear, on the part of the apocryphal writers, of giving offense to the heathen among whom they dwelt. This view, however, is wholly inconsistent with the attitude which some of these books assume as over against the oppression and idolatry of the heathen. It is more reasonable to suppose with Grimm, Oehler, and others that the Jews, at the time when the present books were written, had ceased to feel the need of the coming of a personal Messiah. The Messianic hope in the Old Testament is always united with that of deliverance. As deliverance in a political sense this would not have been desired for a long time subsequent to the Maccabean struggle. And as far as it referred to a deliverance from sin the later Jews seem to have lost all consciousness of the want of it. The law in its two parts, as written and oral, was looked upon as sufficient for all needs, the complete revelation of God not only for the Jews but for the whole world. With the Captivity the worship of idols was given up in order to make an idol of their own institutions, particularly of the Mosaic Code. This is especially seen to be the case

1 Cf. particularly, Oehler, in Herzog's Real-Encyk., art. "Messias; " Langen, Das Judenthum, etc., pp 391-461; Schenkel, Bib. Lex., art. "Messias; " Schürer, pp. 563-599; and Drummond, The Jewish Messiah.

2 Ev. Kirchen-Zeitung, 1863, p. 567.

in the Book of Wisdom, where the conception of wisdom is carried to such a point of development that there is absolutely no room left for any adequate idea of a Messiah alongside of it. If it does not include it, which cannot be supposed, it excludes it of necessity. We, therefore, agree in the main with Drummond, who says: "An argument from silence is always more or less doubtful; but we can hardly help inferring, from their total silence on the subject, that the authors of these works had no belief in the coming of a Messiah. It cannot be said that their subjects did not lead them to speak of this belief; for the above references show how fully they shared the prophetic aspirations after the future glory of their race; and when they describe the magnificence of the Jerusalem that is to be, or dwell upon the covenant made with David, or picture all nations turning from their idolatry to the fear of God, it is inconceivable that they should omit the central figure through whose agency every blessing was to come, if such a personality really entered into their belief. We cannot of course conclude that the belief had entirely died out of the hearts of the Jewish people; for as we observed in the writings of the prophets that the person of the Messiah advances and recedes, as we turn from one to another, so a difference of opinion may have prevailed in the later tine of which we are treating. But from the little, and in part doubtful evidence that remains to us, it would seem that in the period between the Captivity and the rise of the Maccabees the Messianic hope resolved itself into vague anticipations of a glorious and happy future, in which the presence of God would be more manifest, but of which a Messiah would form no essential feature.1

General conclusions.2

In addition to what has just been said respecting the almost total ignoring in the apocryphal books of that which forms the central figure of the later canonical Scriptures, attention should perhaps be called, in our estimate of the relative value of the former, to other points of dissimilarity. In very many respects, in fact, these books, so far from representing the continuity of the divine revelation and of the kingdom of God as set forth in the Old Testament, misinterpret and interrupt it. There is found in them, indeed, a further development of Old Testament ideas, but, at the same time, such lines of development are rather interesting than valuable. They are mostly abnormal, and hence, unhealthy growths. They connect themselves with the superficial, variegated life of the people rather than with the deeper currents of religious thought that show themselves in the Scriptures. A direct line from Malachi to John the Baptist is not taken, but, on the contrary, a path which, if pursued, would lead away from the manger of Bethlehem. Hence there seems to be no justification for the theory of Bleek (1. c. p. 317), which recognizes in these works only a somewhat lower grade of the same kind of divine revelation and inspiration that are found in the canonical Scriptures. On the contrary, false beacon lights are kindled by them such as those by which the Samaritans sought to confuse and mislead the Jewish colonists in Assyria. Judith glories in an act which was bewailed and denounced by a patriarch (ix. 2; cf. Gen. xlix. 5). In Tobit and Ecclesiasticus the idea of righteousness degenerates into simple mercifulness, and that mercifulness is mainly manifested in almsgiving. In the Maccabees, in addition to the disappearance of the accuracy and simplicity to be expected in works of this character, we find a naïve parade of legends, the most obvious anachronisms, the angelology of the Old Testament travestied and new doctrines taught which are utterly without Scriptural support.

The Israelitish history, in fact, is everywhere depicted on its worldly side, and the great moral goal of the same obviously lost sight of is, indeed, replaced by something else. There were, as we know, some, when Christ came, who were waiting for the "consolation of Israel" (Luke ii. 25), but they were, evidently, those whose thoughts had been busy with what Moses and the Prophets had written and not the admirers of the philosophy of Pseudo-Solomon, or such as had sought to mould their lives or stimulate their hopes by the precepts of the Son of Sirach. Here and there are to be found, it is true, feeble imitations of prophecy, but it was a true instinct that led Luther to say of the best specimens of it: "It is not credible 1 The Jewish Messiah, pp. 198, 199.

2 See works of Keerl, Stier, Kluge, Ebrard, Scheele, and others, as given in the Index of Authorities and articles by Hengstenberg in the Evangel. Kirchen-Zeitung, 1853, 1854; Bleek in Stud. u. Krit., 1853, pp. 267-864; Nitzsch in the Deutsche Zeitschrift, 1850, Nos. 47-49; the introduction to Eichhorn's Einleit. in die Apok. Schriften; and Igen, Die Geschichte Tobi's, Vorrede, iii.-xxiii.

8 So Nitzsch, idem, p. 875: "Dass sie aber, und die vorzüglichsten am entschiedensten, die älteste Erscheinung des schul- und sektenmässigen und von daher wieder dem. Volksleben sich mehr oder minder beimischenden Judenthum hergaben, kann nicht bezweifelt werden."

4 See, for example of the latter, 2 Macc. xii. 39-46; and the remark applies especially to 2 and 3 Macc.

that the servant of Jeremiah should not have had a higher and richer spirit than this Baruch." We look in vain, moreover, for any traces of the sublimity and power that display themselves in the poetry of Job and of the Psalms, and especially for that fineness of conception, modesty of coloring, and general excellence of literary taste that always characterize the rhetorical figures of the Old Testament. And, finally, there is an extraordinary narrowness of spirit, as well as the process of its growth from stage to stage, exhibited in the apocryphal books with respect to the Jewish people, their place in history, their relations to Jehovah, and their future destiny, that, in no sense, fairly represents the teachings of the Old Testament, but is rather a caricature of them, and that serves not a little to prepare the way for the Pharisaic bitterness which afterwards uttered itself against the One true Interpreter of the ancient faith and Founder of the universal religion in the contemptuous words, “Away with him! Crucify him!"

Still, one should not be blinded by any of these reasons to the fact that the Old Testament Apocrypha have a value, as we have before shown, quite independent of any questions of canonicity. They are witnesses that cannot be overlooked, if not in all respects such as we might desire. They have a value as witnesses, moreover, in what they fail to say as well as in that which, with no little confusion and contradiction, they do say. At least, as a foil they serve to set off in a clearer light the unrivaled dignity and worth of the writings with which they are associated. And as reflecting, too, in all its various phases the popular life of the Jewish people in the period when they appeared, they can never be otherwise than important. It was one of the most eventful of epochs in the history of Israel. During it they came in more or less direct contact with every civilized people of the earth; achieved, in the nost heroic of struggles, and lost again their national independence; determined the canon of the Sacred Books; evolved the order of the Scribes and the worship of the synagogues; began the so-called hedge around the law which still exists in Mishna and Gemara; developed in bitter strife over points of interpretation and precedent the later parties with their sharp antagonisms - and the present books are a kind of cross-section of the period by means of which, in the way of example, all this political and moral activity is reproduced before us. Besides they are the repository of not a few philological and grammatical treasures, furnish many a term and form employed by Christ and his Apostles as the vehicle of the grandest revelations, so that no thorough student of the New Testament can afford to overlook or despise them. And there is good in them too, of another sort. No one can help being attracted and charmed by the picture of wisdom drawn for us by the Alexandrian Solomon; and there are succinct, well-worded proverbs to be found here and there in the Son of Sirach that shine with the beauty and speak with the power of the deepest moral truth. It is related of John Bunyan, that being greatly comforted by a certain passage which occurred to him, he was nevertheless perplexed that he could not find it within the four corners of the Bible. It was this: "Look at the generations of old and see; did ever any trust in the Lord and was confounded?" He says in regard to it: "Then I continued above a year and could not find the place; but, at last, casting my eyes upon the Apocrypha books I found it in the tenth verse of the second chapter of Ecclesiasticus. This at the first did somewhat daunt me; because it was not in those texts that we call holy or canonical. Yet as this sentence was the sum and substance of many of the promises, it was my duty to take the comfort of it, and I bless God for that word, for it was good to me. That word doth still oft-times shine before my face."

3. History of the Old Testament Apocrypha.

First con

nection of

the Apocry

pha with the Scriptures.

The Apocryphal books of the Old Testament, either as a whole or in part, were never admitted by the Jews into connection with what is known as the Hebrew canon. They became associated with the Scriptures, at first, solely through the Septuagint version. The Jews speaking Greek who made use of that translation, having laxer views than their brethren of Palestine concerning inspiration and canonicity, and, at the same time, regarding it simply as a version of the Scriptures, did not hesitate to connect with it, for ecclesiastical use, such other moral works of Jewish authors as from time to time appeared, with but little discrimination as to their real merits. Josephus gives the number of books of the actual canon in his day as twenty-two (c. Ap. i. 8), and,

1 Cited by Keerl, Das Wort Gottes und die Apok., 1853, p. 10.

2 Cf. my art. in Congregational Review for January, 1870, "The Rhetorical Figures of the Old Testament." 3 See Stanley, iii. 265.