Now it came to pass in the days when the Judges ruled, that there was a famine in the land.

If it be asserted that these words form a very appropriate exordium to a separate work or book; I refer the reader back to the nineteenth chapter of Judges, which, he will find, commences in a similar manner:

And it came to pass in those days, when there was no king in Israel, that there was a certain Levite sojourning on the side of Mount Ephraim, &c.

The history of this Levite forms the subject of the last three chapters of Judges, and is as much distinct from the rest of that work as the book of Ruth. The history of the Levite and the history of Ruth, are, in fact, a sort of episode to Judges;' both of them contain prominent events which happened in Israel 'whilst the Judges ruled,' and 'whilst there was no king,' which evidently are synonymous expressions.

Equally applicable to our argument are the books of Samuel and Kings, as will appear from the following

extracts.

The first book of Samuel opens with the history of Samuel the last of the Judges:

Now there was a certain man of Ramathaim-zophim, of mount Ephraim &c.

It may be said to follow in chronological order, and to bear quite as close a connection with the book of Judges, as the history of Ruth, or that of the Levite which is admitted to form part of the book of Judges. It concludes with the death of Saul:

And when the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead heard of that which the Philistines had done to Saul; all the valiant men arose and went all night, and took the body of Saul and the bodies of his two sons from the wall of Bethshan, and came to Jabesh, and burnt them there and they took their bones, and buried them under a tree at Jabesh, and fasted seven days.

The opening of the second book of Samuel is in the closest harmony with the preceding:

Now it came to pass after the death of Saul, when David was returned from the slaughter of the Amalekites, and David had abode two days in Ziklag, it came even to pass on the third day, that, behold, a man came out of the camp from Saul with his clothes rent, and earth upon his head, &c.

The book concludes with the words:

David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt-offerings and peace-offerings: so the Lord was intreated for the land, and the plague was stayed from Israel.

This is generally believed to have happened in the latter part of David's life. Accordingly, we find, the first book of Kings confirms that opinion and takes up the history where the preceding book had left it:

Now king David was old and stricken in years, and they covered him with clothes, but he gat no heat.

The book concludes with the reign of Ahaziah, thus :

:

Ahaziah the son of Ahab began to reign over Israel in Samaria the seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and reigned two years over Israel and he did evil in the sight of the Lord, and walked in the way of his father, and in the way of his mother, and in the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin: for he served Baal, and worshipped him, and provoked to anger the Lord God of Israel, according to all that his father had done.

But all the events of Ahaziah's reign are found in the second book of Kings, the beginning of which follows so closely the extract just made, that it is difficult to conceive the two books of Kings in any other light than as a continued history; and it comprehends as we have seen in the last chapter, a space of about five hundred and forty years. The opening of the second book of Kings is as follows:

Then Moab rebelled against Israel after the death of Ahab. And Ahaziah fell down through a lattice in his upper-chamber that was in Samaria, and was sick, &c.

Thus all the writings of the Old Testament from Genesis to the two books of Kings form an uninterrupted narrative of events which are described as having happened first to the world at large from the Creation down to about 1900 years before Christ, and afterwards to the family and posterity of Abraham down to about the 600th year before the same era, when the tribes of Israel were torn by violence from the paternal land of Canaan, and carried to Babylon, where they remained in captivity until the first year of the reign of Cyrus king of Cyrus.

As no evidence remains to prove that the separate divisions, entitled Genesis, Joshua, Judges &c. are any more than consecutive parts of the same work, we justified in viewing them in this light, until good grounds shall be adduced for disconnecting them. If it be necessary to say more on this subject, an illustration may be drawn from the case of Herodotus, who wrote a History of the wars between the Greeks and Persians, in nine books. But these books bear, each the name of one of the nine Muses, Clio, Melpomene, &c. and no one has ever disputed the unity of these books, the identity of their author, or the continuity of their subject.

Next in order to the books of Kings succeed the books of Chronicles, which certainly do not form a sequel, nor yet, strictly speaking, a supplement to the books of Kings, for they comprise the same period of history again, often in the very same words, and record many particulars omitted in the books which precede. Yet the beginning of Chronicles is remarkably abrupt, and its connection with the end of Kings is not more incoherent than is the relation which its own internal parts bear to one another. I propose therefore to treat of the books of Chronicles. hereafter in a separate chapter, for the following reasons:

1. They do not connect themselves with the preceding books of Kings so as to form a continuous narrative, like all the other writings which we have just reviewed.

2. They contain so many allusions to the Babylonish captivity, that they must undoubtedly have been written after that event.

3. They are admitted by all the Commentators to have been written, as they suppose, by Ezra, after the Babylonish captivity, whereas most of the preceding books profess to have been written, before that great National Revolution.

The remaining books, which complete the volume of the Old Testament, do not at present require to be noticed.

CHAPTER V.

THAT THE OLD TESTAMENT IS COMPILED FROM MORE

ANCIENT WORKS.

If the reasons produced in the last chapter are sufficient to establish the belief that the several books of the Old Testament are but different sections of the same work, and form a continuous narrative; so, also, are there other

equally strong reasons for believing that the Old Testament is a compilation, and not an original work. These reasons are all deduced from the books themselves, and may be classed as follows.

§ 1. Interruptions in the narrative.

1. The narrative of the Old Testament, though historically continuous from the end of one book to the beginning of the next, is, in other places, interrupted by the insertion of separate and complete histories, which are even "distinguished by such appropriate titles as, in any other volume of antiquity, would be acknowledged to point out the beginning of detached compositions. *" Thus, at Genesis, ch. ii, verse 3, is concluded the account of the creation of the world with the words:

And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work, which God created and made.

"Then follows another brief history of the creation, the garden of Eden, and the fall of man, with an exordium which intimates a distinct and independent composition.

These are the generations of the heaven and of the earth, when they were created &c."

"This book concludes with chap. iii... Chapter v begins with an appropriate title, which more particularly indicates a distinct and independent composition."

This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him.

"Here again the history of the creation of man is briefly recited, as an introduction to this separate book, which is complete in its kind; for it begins from the creation and concludes with the birth of the sons of Noah. May it not be regarded as a transcript from an authentic genealogical

* Davies's Celtic Researches, page 40.