Interpreting Ancient Israelite History, Prophecy, and Law. John H. Hayes

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СКАЧАТЬ to make up the Pentateuch continued apace. The so-called four-source hypothesis that argued that four major documents (J, E, P, D) were redactionally combined to produce the Pentateuch gradually came to dominate discussions after mid-century. The character, content, and date of the individual documents were considered of great significance in understanding the religious development of Israelite and Judean life and in evaluating the historical reliability of the documentary materials.143

      A survey of Israelite and Judean history in the nineteenth century can best be made by examining some innovative works from the period. The first work to be noted, and perhaps the first really critical history of Israel ever written, is that by Henry Hart Milman (1791–1868). Milman, a graduate of Oxford University, was ordained in 1816. During his early days, he wrote poetry and plays and from 1821 to 1831 held a professorship of poetry at Oxford. In 1849, he was appointed dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Most of Milman’s rather extensive literary output were works in church history. His History of the Jews was first published in 1829 and met with significant opposition. The work, however, was issued in a number of editions by various publishers until the first decade of the present century. Of the twenty-eight books in his three-volume history, the final ten are concerned with the history of the Jews following the Bar Kochba Revolt.

      Milman’s history was addressed to the general reading public and tends to be rather sketchy and to avoid any detailed discussion of controversial points or of methodology. The extent of his familiarity with Old Testament studies cannot be really determined. Only a few isolated references are made to significant figures, although Milman was acquainted with travel reports on the Near East and Palestine and makes rather frequent reference to these. Milman adopted a developmental approach to Jewish history: “Nothing is more curious, or more calculated to confirm the veracity of the Old Testament history, than the remarkable picture which it presents of the gradual development of human society: the ancestors of the Jews, and the Jews themselves, pass through every stage of comparative civilization.”144 Excepting only their knowledge of God and their custodianship of the promises, “the chosen people appear to have been left to themselves to pass through the ordinary stages of the social state.”145 Milman approached the Bible with a very limited view of inspiration and noted that “much allowance must . . . be made for the essentially poetic spirit, and for the Oriental forms of speech, which pervade so large a portion of the Old Testament”146 and that God “addressed a more carnal and superstitious people chiefly through their imagination and senses.”147 He warned his readers that miracle would play little role in his interpretation of history, noting that those who have criticized the belief in revelation are “embarrassing to those who take up a narrow system of interpreting the Hebrew writings; to those who adopt a more rational latitude of exposition, none.”148 Whereas Prideaux and Shuckford were unwilling to accommodate their historical discussions to the views of the biblical critics, for Milman, there was no other option.

      Milman began his history with the patriarchs and made no reference to the materials in Genesis 1–10. Abraham is described as an “independent Sheik or Emir”149 or “the stranger sheik” who is allowed “to pitch his tent, and pasture his flocks and herds” in Canaan.150 Milman considered the different stories of the endangering of the wife to be “traditional variations of the same transaction”;151 “Abraham is the Emir of a pastoral tribe, migrating from place to place . . . He is in no respect superior to his age or country, excepting in the sublime purity of his religion.”152 In describing patriarchal society, Milman wrote:

      Mankind appears in its infancy, gradually extending its occupancy over regions, either entirely unappropriated, or as yet so recently and thinly peopled, as to admit, without resistance, the new swarms of settlers which seem to spread from the birthplace of the human race, the plains of central Asia. They are peaceful pastoral nomads, travelling on their camels, the ass the only other beast of burden . . . The unenterprising shepherds, from whom the Hebrews descended, move onward as their convenience or necessity requires, or as richer pastures attract their notice.153

      The description of the patriarchs as “the hunter, the migratory herdsman, and the incipient husbandman,” suggests that the record draws upon “contemporary traditions.”154 The Israelite ancestors are thus a Volk who differ from their contemporaries only in their theological view of God.

      In discussing the stay in Egypt, Milman argued against identifying the period with the Hyksos era but dated it later, refusing however to hypothesize a specific time.155 He noted that biblical tradition assigns either 430 (MT) or 215 (LXX) years to the stay, but that both of these are irreconcilable with the mere two generations that separated Moses from Levi, a factor that also raised uncertainty about the number of Israelites leaving Egypt.156 Milman described the plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea, but spoke of the “plain leading facts of the Mosaic narrative, the residence of the Hebrews in Egypt, their departure under the guidance of Moses, and the connexion of that departure with some signal calamity, at least for a time, fatal to the power and humiliating to the pride of Egypt.”157 In describing the crossing of the sea, he refers to a report by Diodorus Siculus concerning the erratic behavior of the water in the area.158 The quails and manna in the desert are explained in naturalistic terms and the changing of bitter water to sweet is explained chemically. In footnotes in the second edition, Milman reports on the chemical analysis of water especially secured from a Palestinian spring called Marah that suggested high concentrations of “selenite or sulphate of lime,” which could be precipitated by “any vegetable substance containing oxalic acid . . . and rendered agreeable and wholesome.” He also reports that a traveler had brought him a sample of manna produced by the tamarisk tree.159

      The pentateuchal legislation—“the Hebrew constitution”160—is attributed to Moses, “the legislator constantly, yet discreetly, mitigating the savage usages of a barbarous people.”161

      The laws of a settled and civilized community were enacted among a wandering and homeless horde who were traversing the wilderness, and more likely, under their existing circumstances, to sink below the pastoral life of their forefathers, than advance to the rank of an industrious agricultural community. Yet, at this time, judging solely from its internal evidence, the law must have been enacted. Who but Moses ever possessed such authority as to enforce submission to statutes so severe and uncompromising? Yet, as Moses incontestably died before the conquest of Canaan, his legislature must have taken place in the desert. To what other period can the Hebrew constitution be assigned? To that of the judges? a time of anarchy, warfare, or servitude! To that of the kings? when the republic had undergone a total change! To any time after Jerusalem became the metropolis? when the holy city, the pride and glory of the nation, is not even alluded to in the whole law! After the building of the temple? when it is equally silent as to any settled or durable edifice! After the separation of the kingdoms? when the close bond of brotherhood had given place to implacable hostility! Under Hilkiah? under Ezra? when a great number of the statutes had become a dead letter! The law depended on a strict and equitable partition of the land. At a later period it could not have been put into practice without the forcible resumption of every individual property by the state; the difficulty, or rather impossibility, of such a measure, may be estimated by any reader who is not entirely unacquainted with the history of the ancient republics. In other respects the law breathes the air of the desert. Enactments intended for a people with settled habitations, and dwelling in walled cities, are mingled up with temporary regulations, only suited to the Bedouin encampment of a nomad tribe.162

      Milman certainly realized that the dating of the law was the central issue in Old Testament interpretation and that when one dates the law is highly determinative for how one writes the history. Also, he raised practically all the possible options for dating the law.

      Milman follows the basic biblical account of the conquest and division of the land. The judges of early Israel, whose title is associated with “the Suffetes of the Carthaginians,” are described as “military dictators” operating in emergencies within the “boundaries of their own tribe.” Their qualifications were their “personal activity, daring, and craft,” and they appear “as gallant insurgents or guerilla leaders.” In the case of Deborah, СКАЧАТЬ