THE
LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE
AN ACCOUNT
OF THE
LEADING FORMS OF LITERATURE REPRESENTED
IN THE SACRED
WRITINGS
INTENDED FOR ENGLISH
READERS
By
RICHARD G. MOULTON.
PROFESSOR
OF LITERATURE IN ENGLISH IN THE
LATE UNIVERSITY EXTENSION LECTURER (
1896
Public Domain: Scanned and edited by
Ted Hildebrandt 3/2005
COPYRIGHT, 1895,
By Richard G. Moulton
ENTERED AT
STATIONERS' HALL
J. S. Cushing & Co. --
Berwick & Smith
PREFACE
AN author falls naturally into an
apologetic tone if he is pro-
posing
to add yet one more to the number of books on the Bible.
Yet
I believe the number is few of those to whom the Bible appeals
as
literature. In part, no doubt, this is clue to the forbidding
form
in which we allow the Bible to be presented to us. Let the
reader
imagine the poems of Wordsworth, the plays of Shake-
speare,
the essays of Bacon, and the histories of Motley to be
bound
together in a single volume; let him suppose the titles of
the
poems and essays cut out and the names of speakers and divi-
sions
of speeches removed, the whole divided up into sentences
of
a convenient length for parsing, and again into lessons contain-
ing
a larger or smaller number of these sentences. If the reader
can
carry his imagination through these processes he will have
before
him a fair parallel to the literary form in which the Bible
has
come to the modern reader; it is true that the purpose for
which
it has been split into chapters and verses is something
higher
than instruction in parsing, but the injury to literary form
remains
the same.
Of course earnest students of
Scripture get below the surface of
isolated
verses. Yet even in the case of deep students the literary
element
is in danger of being overpowered by other interests.
The
devout reader, following the Bible as the divine authority for
his
spiritual life, feels it a distraction to notice literary questions.
And
thereby he often impedes his own purpose: poring over a
passage
of Job to discover the message it has for him, and for-
getting
all the while the dramatic form of the book, as a result of
which
the speaker of the very passage he is studying is in the end
iii
iv PREFACE
pronounced
by God himself to have said the thing that is "not
right."
Another has been led by his studies to cast off the
authority
of the Bible, and he will not look for literary pleasure to
that
which has for him associations with a yoke from which he has
been
delivered. A third approaches Scripture with equal rever-
ence
and scholarship. Yet even for him there is a danger at the
present
moment, when the very bulk of the discussion tends to
crowd
out the thing discussed, and but one person is willing to
read
the Bible for every ten who are ready to read about it.
Now for all these types of readers
the literary study of the
Bible
is a common meeting-ground. One who recognises that
God
has been pleased to put his revelation of himself in the form
of
literature, must surely go on to see that literary form is a thing
worthy
of study. The agnostic will not deny that, if every particle
of
authority and supernatural character be taken from the Bible,
it
will remain one of the world's great literatures, second to none.
And
the most polemic of all investigators must admit that appre-
ciation
is the end, and polemics only the means.
The term ‘literary study of the
Bible’ describes a wide field
of
which the present work attempts to cover only a limited part.
In
particular, the term will include the most prominent of all
types
of Bible study, that which is now universally called the
‘Higher
Criticism.’ There is no longer any need to speak of the
splendid
processes of modern Biblical Criticism, nor of the mag-
nitude
even of its undisputed results. I mention the Higher
Criticism
only to say that its province is distinct from that which
I
lay down for myself in this book. The Higher Criticism is
mainly
an historical analysis; I confine myself to literary investi-
gation.
By the literary treatment I understand the discussion of
what
we have in the books of Scripture; the historical analysis goes
behind
this to the further question how these books have reached
their
present form. I think the distinction of the two treatments
is
of considerable practical importance; since the historical analy-
sis
must, in the nature of things, divide students into hostile camps,
PREFACE v
while,
as it appears to me, the literary appreciation of Scripture is
a
common ground upon which opposing schools may meet. The
conservative
thinker maintains that Deuteronomy is the personal
composition
of Moses; the opposite school regard the book as a
pious
fiction of the age of Josiah. But I do not see how either
of
these opinions, if true, or a third intermediate opinion, can pos-
sibly
affect the question with which I desire to interest the reader,
—
namely, the structure of Deuteronomy as it stands, whoever may
be
responsible for that structure. And yet the structural analysis
of
our Deuteronomy, and the connection of its successive parts, are
by
no means clearly understood by the ordinary reader of the Bible.
The historical and the literary
treatments are then distinct: yet
sometimes
they seem to clash. There are two points in particular
as
to which I find myself at variance with the accepted Higher
Criticism.
Historic analysis, investigating dates, sometimes finds
itself
obliged to discriminate between different parts of the same
literary
composition, and to assign to them different periods; hav-
ing
accomplished this upon sound evidence, it then often proceeds,
no
longer upon evidence, but by tacit assumption, by unconscious
insinuations
rather than by distinct statement, to treat the earlier
parts
of such a composition as ‘genuine’ or ‘original,’ while the
portions
of later date are made ‘interpolations,’ or ‘accretions,’ —
in
fact, are alluded to as something illegitimate. Thus, in the case
of
Job, few will hesitate to accept the theory that there is an earlier
nucleus
(to speak roughly) in the dialogue, while the speeches of
Elihu
and the Divine Intervention have come from another source.
But
nearly all commentators who hold this view seem to treat these
later
portions as if they were on a lower literary plane, and — so
sensitive
is taste to external considerations — they soon find them
in
a literary sense inferior. This whole attitude of mind seems to
me
unscientific: it is the intrusion of the modern conception of a
fixed
book and an individual author into a totally different liter-
ary
age. The phenomena of floating poetry, with community of
authorship
and the perpetual revision that goes with oral tradition,
are
not only accepted but insisted upon by biblical scholars. But
vi PREFACE
in
such floating literature our modern idea of 'originality' has no
place;
the earliest presentation has no advantage of authenticity
over
the latest; nor have the later versions necessarily any superi-
ority
to the earlier. Processes of floating poetry produced the
Homeric
poems, and in this case it is the last form, not the first,
that
makes our supreme Iliad. My contention
is that, whatever
may
be the truth as to dates, all the sections of such a poem as
Job are equally ‘genuine.’
And as a matter of literary analysis, I
find
the Speeches of Elihu and the Divine Intervention, from what-
ever
sources they may have come, carrying forward the previous
movement
of the poem to a natural dramatic climax, and in liter-
ary
effect as striking as any part of the book.
My second objection to the
characteristic methods of the Higher
Criticism
has to do with the divisions of the text. In analysing
the
contents of a book of Scripture many even of the best critics
betray
an almost exclusive preoccupation with subject matter, to
the
neglect of literary form; a powerful search-light is thrown upon
minute
historic allusions, while even broad indications of literary
unity
or diversity are passed by. I will take a typical example.
In
the latter part of our Book of Micah
a group of verses (vii.
7–10)
must strike even a casual reader by their buoyancy of tone,
so
sharply contrasting with what has gone before. Accordingly
Wellhausen
sees in this changed tone evidence of a new composi-
tion,
product of an age long distant from the age of the prophet:
"between
v. 6 and v. 7 there yawns a century."1 What really
yawns
between the verses is simply a change of speakers. The
latter
part of Micah is admittedly dramatic,
and a reader attentive
to
literary form cannot fail to note a distinct dramatic composition
introduced
by the title-verse (vi. 9): "The voice of the LORD
crieth
unto the city, and the man of wisdom will fear thy name„"
The
latter part of the title --"and the man of wisdom will fear
thy
name "—prepares us to expect an addition in the ‘Man of
Wisdom’
to the usual dramatis personae of
prophetic dramas, which
are
confined to God, the Prophet, and the ruined Nation. All
1 Quoted in
Driver's Introduction, in loc.
PREFACE vii
that
follows the title-verse bears out the description. Verses 10–16
are
the words of denunciation and threatening put into the mouth
of
God. Then the first six verses of chapter seven voice the woe
of
the guilty city. Then the Man of Wisdom speaks, and the dis-
puted
verses change the tone to convey the happy confidence of
one
on whose side the divine intervention is to take place:
But as for me, I will look unto the
LORD; I will wait for the God of
my salvation: my God will hear me.
Rejoice not against me, 0 mine
enemy: when I fall, I shall arise,
etc.
The
sequence of verses follows quite naturally the dramatic form
indicated
by the title, and no break in the text is required. I have
no
objection in the abstract to the hypothesis of defects in textual
transmission;
but in judging of any alleged example it is reason-
able
to give to indications of literary form a weight not inferior to
that
of suggestions drawn from subject matter.
Besides this historic analysis other
obvious lines of literary treat-
ment
are omitted from this book. I have scarcely touched such
poetic
criticism as was admirably illustrated by the digest of
Hebrew
imagery which Mr. Montefiore contributed some time
since
to the Jewish Quarterly Review. I
have little or nothing
to
say about the style of biblical writers, although I welcome Pro-
fessor
Cook's introduction of the Bible as a model in the teaching
of
Rhetoric. I have even felt compelled to drop the survey of
subject
matter which was at first a part of my plan. The more I
have
studied the Bible from a literary standpoint, and considered
also
the conditions for making such a standpoint generally acces-
sible,
the more one single aspect of the subject has come into
prominence
— the treatment of literary morphology: how to dis-
tinguish
one literary composition from another, to say exactly
where
each begins and ends; to recognise Epic, Lyric, and other
forms
as they appear in their biblical dress, as well as to distin-
guish
literary forms special to the Sacred writers. Hence the
book
is "An account of the leading Forms of Literature repre-
sented
in the Sacred Writings." The whole works up to what I
viii PREFACE
have
called a " Literary Index of the Bible." This ranges from
Genesis to Revelation, including the apocryphal books of Wisdom
and
Ecclesiasticus; it marks off exactly
each separate composition
(or
integral parts of the longer compositions), indicates the liter-
ary
form of each, and, where suitable (as in the case of an essay
or
sonnet), suggests an appropriate title. My idea is that a stu-
dent
might mark these divisions and titles in the margin of his
Revised
Version, and so do for his Bible what the printer would
do
for all other literature. I believe it is almost impossible to
overestimate
the difference made to our power of appreciation when
the
literary form of what we are reading is indicated to the eye,
instead
of our having to collect it laboriously from what we read.
The
underlying axiom of my work is that a clear grasp of the outer
literary
form is an essential guide to the inner matter and spirit.
I am of course not so sanguine as to
suppose that the arrange-
ment
of the Sacred Writings in this Index — involving, as it must,
critical
questions in relation to every book of the Bible — will be
accepted.
I desire nothing better than to set every student to
make
such an arrangement for himself, getting help from every
source
that is open to him and so to tide over the period before
public
opinion permits the Bible to be issued with such aids to
intelligent
reading from the printed page as are taken for granted
in
all other literature.
I have spoken so far from the point
of view of the general or
the
religious reader. But a consideration of a different kind has
had
weight with me in the production of this book: the place in
liberal
education of the Bible treated as literature. It has come
by
now to be generally recognised that the Classics of Greece and
inspiration
of our great masters, and bond of common associations
between
our poets and their readers. But does not such a posi-
tion
belong equally to the literature of the Bible? if our intellect
and
imagination have been formed by the Greeks, have we not in
similar
fashion drawn our moral and emotional training from
PREFACE ix
Hebrew
thought? Whence then the neglect of the Bible in our
higher
schools and colleges? It is one of the curiosities of our
civilisation
that we are content to go for our liberal education to
literatures
which, morally, are at an opposite pole from ourselves:
literatures
in which the most exalted tone is often an apotheosis
of
the sensuous, which degrade divinity, not only to the human
level,
but to the lowest level of humanity. Our hardest social
problem
being temperance, we study in Greek the glorification of
intoxication;
while in mature life we are occupied in tracing law
to
the remotest corner of the universe, we go at school for literary
impulse
to the poetry that dramatises the burden of hopeless fate.
Our
highest politics aim at conserving the arts of peace, our first
poetic
lessons are in an Iliad that cannot
be appreciated without a
bloodthirsty
joy in killing. We seek to form a character in which
delicacy
and reserve shall be supreme, and at the same time are
training
our taste in literatures which, if published as English
books,
would be seized by the police. I recall these paradoxes,
not
to make objection, but to suggest the reasonableness of the
claim
that the one side of our liberal education should have
another
side to balance it. Prudish fears may be unwise, but
there
is no need to put an embargo upon decency. It is surely
good
that our youth, during the formative period, should have
displayed
to them, in a literary dress as brilliant as that of Greek
literature
— in lyrics which Pindar cannot surpass, in rhetoric as
forcible
as that of Demosthenes, or contemplative prose not in-
ferior
to Plato's — a people dominated by an utter passion for
righteousness,
a people whom ideas of purity, of infinite good, of
universal
order, of faith in the irresistible downfall of all moral
evil,
moved to a poetic passion as fervid, and speech as musical,
as
when Sappho sang of love or AEschylus thundered his deep
notes
of destiny. When it is added that the familiarity of the
English
Bible renders all this possible without the demand upon
the
time-table that would be involved in the learning of another
language,
it seems clear that our school and college curricula will
not
have shaken off their medieval narrowness and renaissance
x PREFACE
paganism
until Classical and Biblical literatures stand side by side
as
sources of our highest culture.
My obligations will be obvious to
the main representative works
of
Biblical Criticism, more especially to the works of Cheyne,
Briggs,
George Adam Smith, and the late Professor Milligan; to
the
lectures of President Harper; above all to Canon Driver's
Introduction to Old
Testament Literature,
which has placed the
best
results of modern investigation within easy reach of the ordi-
nary
reader. I have made copious citations from the Revised
Version
of the Bible and Apocrypha, for the use of which I am
under
obligations to the University Presses of Oxford and
bridge.
I am indebted for assistance of various kinds to personal
friends,
amongst whom I ought to mention my brother, Dr. Moulton,
of
the
who
has become to his large circle of friends a universal referee
for
all departments of study. I have other obligations in my
memory,
which it is not so easy to specify; obligations to public
institutions
and private individuals whose encouragement has
assisted
me at every step. For the last four years I have been
lecturing
on Biblical literature in churches of various denomina-
tions,
in theological schools and universities, and in popular lecture
rooms;
my audiences in
clergy
and laity, Christian and Jewish, not without a representa-
tion
of that other public which never reads the Bible and hears
with
surprise its most notable passages. Though I have taken
pains
to inquire, I have never found examples of the difficulties
which
it was feared by some the handling of this topic on the
lecture
platform might create. On the contrary, my experience
has
uniformly confirmed what I have called above the foundation
axiom
of my work — that an increased apprehension of outer
literary
form is a sure way of deepening spiritual effect.
I think it right to state that the
issue of this work — announced
more
than a year ago--has been delayed by circumstances for
which
neither author nor publishers are responsible.
RICHARD
G. MOULTON.
August,
1895.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PAGE
THE
BOOK OF JOB: AND THE VARIOUS KINDS OF LITERARY INTEREST
ILLUSTRATED BY IT
3
BOOK FIRST
LITERARY CLASSIFICATION
APPLIED TO THE
SACRED
SCRIPTURES
CHAPTER
I.
VERSIFICATION AND RHYTHMIC PARALLELISM 45
II.
THE HIGHER PARALLELISM, OR PARALLELISM OF INTERPRE-
TATION 68
III.
THE LOWER AND THE HIGHER UNITY IN LITERATURE 81
IV.
CLASSIFICATION OF LITERARY FORMS 105
BOOK SECOND
LYRIC POETRY
OF THE BIBLE
V. THE BIBLICAL ODE 127
VI.
OCCASIONAL POETRY, ELEGIES, AND LITURGICAL PSALMS 153
VII. DRAMATIC LYRICS, AND LYRICS OF MEDITATION 174
VIII. LYRIC IDYL:
‘SOLOMON'S SONG’ 194
BOOK THIRD
BIBLICAL HISTORY AND
EPIC
IX.
EPIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE 221
X. BIBLICAL HISTORY IN ITS RELATION WITH
BIBLICAL EPIC 244
xi
xii CONTENTS
BOOK FOURTH
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BIBLE, OR
WISDOM
LITERATURE
CHAPTER PAGE
XI. FORMS OF WISDOM LITERATURE 255
XII.
THE SACRED BOOKS OF WISDOM 284
XIII.
‘THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON’ 305
BOOK FIFTH
BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF
PROPHECY
XIV.
FORMS OF PROPHETIC LITERATURE 327
XV.
FORMS OF PROPHETIC LITERATURE: THE DOOM SONG 353
XVI.
FORMS OF PROPHETIC LITERATURE: THE RHAPSODY 364
XVII.
THE RHAPSODY OF ‘
XVIII. THE WORKS OF THE PROPHETS 417
BOOK
SIXTH
THE BIBLICAL
LITERATURE OF RHETORIC
XX. THE EPISTLES: OR WRITTEN RHETORIC 439
XXI. SPOKEN RHETORIC: AND THE ‘BOOK OF
DEUTERONOMY’ 444
APPENDICES
1. LITERARY INDEX TO THE BIBLE 465
II. TABLES OF LITERARY FORMS 499
III.
ON THE STRUCTURAL PRINTING OF SCRIPTURE 512
IV. USE OF THE DIGRESSION IN ‘WISDOM’ 521
GENERAL
INDEX 527
INTRODUCTION
THE BOOK OF JOB: AND THE
VARIOUS KINDS OF
LITERARY INTEREST ILLUSTRATED BY IT
INTRODUCTION
I
THE story in the Book of Job opens
by telling how there was a
man
in the
and
upright, a man that feared God and eschewed Book of Job:
evil.
It tells of his great substance in sheep and The Story Opens
camels
and oxen, and how he was the greatest of 1, ii
all
the children of the east. Then it speaks of his seven sons
and
three daughters, and describes their joyous family life. And so
scrupulous
was the piety of Job that, when his sons and daughters
had
concluded a round of feastings at one another's houses, Job
rose
early and sanctified them, lest perchance
in their gaiety they
had
offended God.
Then the story passes to a Council in
Heaven, at which the
sons
of God came, each from his several province, to present
themselves
before the Lord; and amongst them came the Adver-
sary
from his sphere of inspection, the Earth. He in his turn
was
questioned as to his charge, and Job was instanced by the
Lord
as a type of human perfection. But the Adversary, as his
office
was, began to raise doubts as to this perfection. God had
made
a hedge of prosperity about the man: if he were to put
forth
his hand, and destroy all at a stroke, Job might yet renounce
his
worship.
The Lord gave consent for this
experiment to be made. So it
came
about that in the midst of Job's prosperity there came a
messenger
to him and said:
3
4 LITERARY
STUDY OF THE BIBLE
The oxen
were plowing,
and
the asses feeding beside them;
and the Sabeans fell upon them
and took them away;
yea, they have slain the servants
with the
edge of the sword;
and I only am escaped alone to tell thee!
While
he was yet speaking there came also another, and said:
The fire of God is fallen from heaven,
and hath burned up the
sheep, and the servants,
and
consumed them;
and I only am
escaped alone to tell thee!
While
he was yet speaking there came also another, and said:
The Chaldeans made three bands,
and fell upon the camels,
and have taken them away,
yea, and slain the servants with the
edge of the sword;
and I only am escaped alone to tell
thee!
While
he was yet speaking there came also another, and said:
Thy sons and thy daughters
were eating and drinking wine in their
eldest brother's house;
and behold,
there
came a great hind from the wilderness,
and smote
the four corners of the house,
and it fell upon the young
men,
and they are dead;
and I only am escaped alone to tell
thee!
Then
Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and
fell
down upon the ground, and worshipped; and he said:
Naked came I out of my
mother's womb,
and naked shall I return thither!
The Lord gave,
and the Lord hath taken away:
Blessed be the Name of the Lord!
INTRODUCTION 5
So
the experiment of the Adversary was over, and Job had not
fallen
into sin.
A second Council in Heaven followed,
and a second time came
the
sons of God, and the Adversary among them, and made their
reports.
When the Lord triumphed in the matter of Job, that he
still
retained his integrity notwithstanding the destruction done to
him,
the Adversary did honour to the goodness of the man by
suggesting
a yet severer test:
Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath
will he give for his life. But
put forth thine hand now, and touch
his bone and his flesh, and he
will renounce thee to thy face.
Even
in this case the Almighty had no fear for his servant. So
the
Adversary went forth, and smote Job with sore boils from the
sole
of his foot unto his crown. And Job silently passed out, as
one
unclean, and crept up the ash-mound, and there he sat and
suffered;
until his good wife — who had uttered no word of com-
plaint
when all the substance was swallowed up and her children
perished
— broke down in the presence of this helpless pain:
Dost thou still hold fast thine
integrity? renounce God, and die!
But
Job rebuked this momentary lapse from her wisdom:
What? shall we receive good at the
hand of God, and shall we not
receive evil?
So
the second experiment was over, and still Job sinned not with
his
lips.
But a third trial awaited Job, which
needed no Council in
Heaven
to decree it,—the trial of time. Day followed day, but
no
relief came; and Job sat patiently on the ash-mound, an out-
cast
and unclean. And gradually a reverence grew about the
silent
sufferer: the children no longer jostled him as they sported
to
and fro, and groups of sympathising spectators would gather
about
the mound to gaze for a while on the fallen child of the
east.
And the travellers as they passed by the way smote on
6 LITERARY
STUDY OF THE BIBLE
their
breasts at the sight; and they made a token of it, and
carried
the news into distant countries, until it reached the ears
of
Job's three Friends, all of them great chieftains like himself:
the
stately Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the sturdy Shuhite,
and
Zophar the Naamathite, with his venerable grey hairs. These
three
made an appointment together to visit Job; and, when they
came
in sight of him, with one accord they lifted up their voices
and
wept. And the crowd of spectators made way for the great
men
to ascend the mound; and they sat down upon the ground
opposite
Job. Day after day they took their station there, yet
they
could only weep with their friend; for, though they longed
to
speak, their utter courtesy forbade them to disturb the majesty
of
that silent suffering.
At last it was Job himself who broke
the long silence, in order
to
curse, not God, but his own life. And at this point the intro-
ductory
story in which the poem is framed begins to give place to
dialogue;
but not before the introduction has made its contribu-
(Problem of the tion to the general argument. The
topic of the
poem and
First whole book is the Mystery of Human Suffering:
Solution) the introduction has
suggested a First Solution of
the Mystery: Suffering
presented as Heaven's test of goodness;
the
test being made the severer where the goodness is strong
enough
to stand it.
Job opened his mouth, and cursed the
day of his birth. Would
that
it might be blotted from among the days of the year, that the
cloud,
and the thick darkness, and the shadow of
Jobs curse death, and all the degrees of blackness
might seize
iii for their own! If the best
of all gifts — never to