that proclaims, I trust the assertions of the man who wrote this book, including his assertions or implications that settle its date and authorship? There is no essential difference between the man who puts Deuteronomy in the 7th century, and the man who puts it in the 4th. Both alike have cast off faith in its author-one of the glorious religious characters of all time-and both alike are adrift upon the sea of conjecture, to find a precarious harbor where they may. Let this book under review be a warning to the critic whom we are accustomed to call "radical," but whom it makes to appear as "a cake not turned." Princeton.

J. OSCAR BOYD.

The Building Up of the Old Testament. By the Rev. R. B. GIRDLESTONE, M.A. London: Robert Scott. 1912. Pp. xx, 314. (Library of Historic Theology, edited by the Rev. Wm. C. Piercy, M.A.) The nature of this book cannot be better stated than in the words of its preface: "This is intended to be a reverent and rational restatement of the position of the Old Testament, dealing with its form, its substance, and the relationship of its various parts, examining how far the later Books presuppose the earlier so that the whole is fitly framed together by words, idioms, texts and ideas, exhibiting traces of purpose throughout. The book consists of two Parts. The first considers the phenomena of the Old Testament as a whole; the second analyzes each book, its language and contents, in order to find out its position and design. . . . In a book of this compass it is impossible to go into all details, but while a broad view is taken of the Old Testament as a whole, the writer has not consciously ignored or evaded any material objections to the position to which he has been led after fifty years of study and thought."

In carrying out this plan Canon Girdlestone has embodied his views on a great variety of questions, both theological and philosophical, archaeological, chronological, geographical, literary. The weakness of the book is its discursiveness. There is plenty of bread, but it is buttered too thin. Yet to put into the hands of a layman, perplexed about Biblical criticism as such without quite knowing what it isfor that describes the mental state of many in our churches-and lacking any coherent principles of Biblical interpretation, such a book as this, with its sound fundamentals, is perhaps the best sort of a guide to be found.

Princeton.

J. OSCAR BOYD.

A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life in Israel, in Judaism, and in Christianity or Hebrew, Jewish and Christian Eschatology from Pre-prophetic Times till the Close of the New Testament Canon. Being the First Jowett Lectures delivered in 1898-99. By R. H. CHARLES, D.D., D.Litt. Speaker's Lecturer in Biblical Studies, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, Fellow of the British Academy. Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged. London: Adam and Charles Black, pp. x, 484. 1913.

Immortality. The Drew Lecture, Delivered October 11, 1912. By R. H. CHARLES, D.Litt., D.D. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press. 1912. pp. 38.

The first edition of Dr. Charles' Eschatology appeared in 1899. Fourteen years lie between that date and the publication of this second edition. The "Revised and Enlarged" on the title-page of the latter does not mean that any considerable new material has been added, or that the main positions of the first edition have been to any important extent modified. The one extensive addition occurs in the treatment of the nature of Apocalyptic, more particularly its relation to Prophecy and the causes of its pseudonymity. Here the writer offers a new theory. But the other changes do not affect the main character of the work as representing a definite view in regard to the development of biblical eschatology. So far as the Old Testament is concerned this view is that of the Graf-Wellhausen school. It might be summed up in the following positions: a purely paganistic ethically-indifferent individual eschatology (Sheol) prior to the introduction of Jahvism; the development of an ethical collective eschatology through the influence of the higher prophetism from the eighth century onward, and this first of all in the adverse sense of an announcement of judgment upon Israel, and only later in the favorable form of Messianic prediction (the promissory passages in Amos and Hosea being rejected); the moral transformation of the original paganistic views of the state after death through the individualizing of the ethical nationalism of the great prophets; the successive and only partially successful attempts at effecting a synthesis between the national and individual hopes through the doctrine of the resurrection, the synthesis being perfectly attained in Christianity only; the broadening out of this particularistic into a universalistic and cosmical eschatology under the influence of the ethical principle. Within the limits indicated by these positions the author is moderate in his views. He assumes a stronger admixture of the ethical element in the Mosaic conception of Jahve than perhaps most of the critics of the school would allow, although on his own showing the ethical ingredient postulated remained practically dormant until the prophets resuscitated it. On the other hand it might be classified as a somewhat radical position when the author sides with Stade and Schwally a.o. in ascribing ancestor-worship to the pre-Mosaic Hebrews and construing from this point of view their primitive heathen eschatology. In the second edition this is still adhered to, although in the meanwhile, in result of what has been written on the subject, the theory has lost considerable of its erstwhile prestige. We think the author too curtly dismisses the objections raised by Frey and Grüneisen, especially by the latter. He is, of course, within his rights when choosing to abide by his original judgment, but the theory has certainly become sufficiently shaken to require of every scholar, who still thinks himself able to uphold it, a careful restatement of the arguments and a refutation of the counter-arguments adduced. Instead of this, the author simply repeats the reasoning of Stade and Schwally

in its original form. Especially Grüneisen's interpretation of the mourning-customs as defensive measures adopted to ward off the dangerous influence of the souls of the departed, is in many respects much more plausible than the interpretation of these same customs as acts of worship. And even if it should be urged that in this sphere of pagan superstition the line between defensive treatment of the spirits, or care and provision for the spirits, and of a positive religious cult of them, is hard to draw, it still would have to be remembered that the phenomena of the mourning-customs at any rate would not point to ancestor-worship in the specific sense, but could at best only be used to prove the worship of the departed in general, so that many of the far-reaching corrolaries of the theory in regard to the tribal and family-organization of Israel appear unwarranted. As the matter stands the non-expert reader will be apt to form from Dr. Charles' statements a very inadequate conception of the merits of the controversy. Even Eerdmans, whom none will suspect of conservative leanings, declares in a recent issue of the Theologisch Tydschrift (1913, II, p. 124) that the whole theory of the primitive religious cult of the departed turns out to have been “een groote misgreep” i.e. a huge mistake. The point at issue does not concern pre-jahvistic paganism exclusively, but also affects the view taken of the Old Testament teaching itself in regard to the state after death. Charles assumes that Jahvism, in order to combat ancestor-worship, conceived a theory of the nature of the soul, which implied the destruction of all life in Sheol. The trichotomy of Gen. ii. 7 makes the existence of the soul depend on the presence of the spirit, which at death withdraws to its source in God. Nothing therefore remains to desend into Sheol. According to the author the denial of immortality in Eccl. xii. 7 is the logical outcome of the anthropology of this creation-account. But, he assures us, the destruction by Jahvism of all life in Sheol was necessary with a view to the truly ethical doctrine of the future life. We do not believe that the intent of Gen. ii. 7 is to deny the continuation of the individual life after death. And we cannot help feeling that the ethicizing of the future state, by means of the (temporary) denial of the survival of man, would be a procedure beneath the dignity of revelation. Nor do we believe that there is, as the author seems to assume, a historical connection between what he calls "the later view" in regard to Sheol as a place of silence, inertia, forgetfulness (in distinction from the older ascription to it of a relatively high degree of life, movement and remembrance) and the anthropology of Gen. ii. 7. This passage, if it did imply the cessation of man in toto, could only have led to the abolishment of Sheol. How it could have operated towards depressing the degree of activity in Sheol we fail to see. The whole distinction, moreover, between an alleged later and an alleged older view, is without sufficient basis. Dr. Charles favors it evidently, because it falls in with the theory of primitive ancestor-worship. The whole thing amounts to a difference of emphasis in the various popular conceptions reflected in the Old Testament as concerning the degree of life

and activity ascribed to the dead, and with a difference of religious principles it has nothing to do. As a matter of fact, even on the alleged older view of Sheol the dead are so wholly deprived of energy and influence as to exclude every idea of their worship by the living. Grüneisen has convincingly shown the incongruousness between the general Old Testament view of Sheol and the theory of ancestorworship, although he falls into the same mistake as Charles, viz. of finding in Gen. ii. 7 the view that the soul does not survive death. Only according to him this is not the later doctrine, it is the general and original teaching of the Old Testament. And the popular belief about Sheol and the shades were inconsistent with it.

Another point in regard to which the enlargement claimed for the new edition might have been expected to show itself concerns the antiquity of the promissory (Messianic) eschatology and of the cosmical framework of the eschatological expectations in general. These appear in accordance with the modern theory as after-developments. But Gunkel, Gressmann and others have presented some very weighty arguments in support of the opposite view, and if their conclusions are correct, the whole scheme of development above outlined and almost conventionally followed by the Wellhausen-School will need considerable revision. Here again no fault could be found with the writer, if after due presentation of the evidence he chose to adhere to his original conviction. But Dr. Charles does not raise the question at issue anywhere. Throughout the discussion only casual references to Gunkel occur, e.g. pp. 182, 198. On p. 189 we read about the "cosmological myths” in Gen. i.-iii., and of other elements of a similar nature preserved in the prophets. From the next page we learn that "in later Judaism these cosmological myths were transformed into eschatological expectations." And a little later this is qualified by the statement that "this transformation of primitive myth into eschatological expectation was already known to the prophets at all events in poetical form." That under these vague and easy statements a farreaching problem, involving the whole development-hypothesis with which the writer is identified, hides itself, no uninformed reader would be led to surmise. Practically the author treats the controversy as non-existent. After what Gressmann has written, one is surprised to find on p. 99 the following statement: "In Zephaniah the judgment appears for the first time to be universal. Its universal scope is the necessary corollary to the Monotheistic faith of the prophet." We believe that the number of Old Testament scholars ready to subscribe to this statement at the present day is considerable less than it was in 1899, when the first edition appeared. There is an increasing recognition of the fact that much of the wider eschatology is older than the eighth century, and therefore cannot be explained as the product of the ethical monotheism of the prophets of that period. Either the monotheism of which that eschatology is claimed to be the correlate must be older likewise, or no real connection between it and ethical monotheism exists. In the latter case the universalistic, cosmical set

ting of the earlier eschatology will have to be explained from Babylonian influence. Dr. Charles, who is prevented by his general position, from adopting the former view, should have at least made clear on what grounds he rejects the other side of the alternative.

By far the most valuable, and we may add the most reliable, part of the work is that which deals with the apocryphal and apocalyptic literature. Here the writer is an acknowledged authority, and we can only be thankful to him for the illuminating way in which he has presented to us the essential points and the great lines of development in the confusing mass of phenomena. In view of his long preoccupation with the subject, it can hardly create surprise that the author magnifies the value of this literature for the student of biblical eschatology. His praise of it, not merely of its eschatological teaching, but also of the ethical content of some of its documents, and that in pointed contrast to the Old Testament, is so generous, that we do not see how it leaves room for any canonical distinction between this literature and the recognized Hebrew Scriptures. In this connection the author attaches no blame whatever to the pseudonymity of most of these writings. He offers for it the well-known excuse that in those days the modern conception of literary property was entirely unknown. We fail to see how this covers the point. The case is not one of appropriating the work of others as a literary product, but of usurping the authority of others as a moral asset. And the new hypothesis which the author brings forward to explain this feature of the apocalyptic writings is found to accentuate most painfully the moral aspect of the matter, and insofar to discount the force of the conventional excuse. According to Dr. Charles the pseudonymity arose from the absolute control which legalism with its doctrine of the completeness and finality of the law as a rule of faith and practice had gained over the congregation. This state of affairs made it necessary, if any new truth was to be presented, to introduce it under the auspices of primeval religious personages, so that its acceptance might not seem to be in contravention to the monopoly of the law. This amounts to saying, that the writers gained for their views a hearing under the guise of pseudonymity which they knew could not be accorded to it had they stood back of them with their own persons. In doing this they committed a fraud, not to be sure upon Enoch or Moses, but upon the representatives of legalism, whose control they dared not openly to dispute. And it is difficult to understand how the latter could be so naïve as to be taken in by this palpable disguise of the pseudepigraphical writers. Whether the author's new explanation of the phenomenon, be successful or not, at any rate it ought to have led him to tone down somewhat his high estimate of the literature in question.

The discussion of the New Testament Eschatalogy covers much less space than that of the intercanonical period. Considerable of it skims lightly on the surface. In regard to the teaching of our Lord, which the writer does not take special pains to separate from that of the