are conceivable on David's lips and in David's age; or how
far they are the product of, and the response to, teaching
which was given many years after his death. It does
not follow, because a certain religious idea, in its
Babylonian dress and form, can be found in (say) the
eleventh century B.C., that it therefore existed and was
expressed in an Israelitish dress and form at the same
date or even two centuries later.

Moreover, another important point has to be con-
sidered-the editing of the Psalter. We know that the
views of the ancient Jews about editing differed radically
from our own, If we discover an ancient manuscript-
document or poem-our object is to publish it exactly as
it was originally written. The ancient Jewish editors,
generally speaking, thought very differently. Their
great object was to 'publish' something which was
edifying and acceptable to their own age. Again, the
less sacred the document, the less venerable the author,
the more justifiable it was to change his wording. When
the parts of the Pentateuch had been joined together to
form the present Book, when all its laws were regarded
as the veritable words of Moses, dictated to him by God,
its text was scrupulously preserved without alteration
or addition. But how different was the fate of some
even of the prophetical books! What a conglomerate,
for instance, are the sixty-six chapters of Isaiah! How
difficult and delicate a matter it is to disentangle the
editors' words from the words of the many original
writers whose combined and often mangled utterances
now form the substance of the books we know!

The story of the Psalter's gradual evolution is com-
plicated and disputed; it cannot be discussed here. But
we may suspect that the various compilers and editors,
through whose busy hands our hundred and fifty Psalms
have passed, left their mark upon many of them. Prof.
Briggs is, perhaps, more sure than he ought to be
(I speak with hesitation, for the labour and the time
that he has given to the Psalter are enormous) as to the
number and character of the various glosses which the
Psalms contain. That there are many of these glosses and
adaptations is, however, unquestionable, though we may
not always be able to detect them with accuracy, and
we may sometimes imagine them where they do not

really exist. The editors and compilers were not likely
either to include any psalm which was too much opposed
to their own conceptions, or to refrain from giving to
any old psalm which they did desire to preserve a careful
religious revision. Thus, as Prof. Briggs says (and he
points out that, so far as prayer-books, liturgies and
hymns are concerned, even modern editors have acted
on similar lines), 'they had greater interest in editing
the Psalms for public worship than in preserving their
original form and meaning.'t Hence, even if the ground-
work of some psalms is, let us say, older than the sixth
century, it is very doubtful whether their religious ideas
can be rightly used to illustrate an earlier age.

Wellhausen wrote: The strong family likeness which
runs through the Psalms forbids our distributing them
among periods of Israelitish history widely separated in
time and fundamentally unlike in character.' This
characteristically plain and unqualified statement is
somewhat exaggerated; but that, in spite of subordinate
varieties of view, there are profounder agreements can
hardly be denied.

What, then, and of what nature, are these agree-
ments? To answer this question, whether directly or
indirectly, it will be well first to ask another. When we
want to estimate the date of any Old Testament book as
a whole, or of any portion of such book-the Law, for
example, or the Proverbs or the Psalter or 'Kings'-we
have first of all to ask: What is the relation of this book,
or of any particular section of this book, to the prophets
and to their teaching? More especially what is its rela-
tion to that group of prophets which extended from

* Many of the Psalms in their original form were composed as an
expression of private devotion. These features remained even after they
were adapted by editorial revision for use in the Synagogues. Many others
were composed for use in public worship in the Synagogues (where the
ceremonies of religion were reduced to a minimum). . . Only a few of
the Psalms were composed for, or even adapted to, worship in the Temple.
. . . Furthermore, local and temporal references were gradually eliminated
by editorial revision from the older Psalms, making them more and more
appropriate for worship' (Briggs, vol. i, p. xcv).

...

The changes made in the text of Psalms by their being adopted and
adapted for use in the Temple (and, perhaps, also in the Synagogues) are
well discussed and set forth in detail by Beer in his excellent essay, 'Indi-
vidual und Gemeindepsalmen' (1894)—a book still well worth reading.

Amos to Deutero-Isaiah, or, roughly, from 740 to 540 B.C.?
For, unless all our most cherished conclusions are false,
it is the prophets who were the great fashioners and
creators of the Israelite and Jewish religion; it is their
doctrines and their teaching which have left an indelible
mark and stamp upon every other section of the Old
Testament scriptures-upon Law, upon History, upon
the Psalms, upon the Proverbs.

What, then, in brief and general terms, were the

religious achievements of the prophets in those two

hundred years from 740 to 540 B.C.? First and fore-

most comes Monotheism. There is one God not only

for Israel, but for the world. He is the Creator and

the Ruler of all. And this God is not only one, but

unique. He is perfect in righteousness, supremely just,

compassionate and loving. Though God of the whole

world, He is, in a special sense, the God of Israel. He

has chosen the people of Israel for the sake of their

ancestors, for His own name's sake, for the spread

of His greatness and His oneness. And from the

Israelites, His servants and children, He demands a

single-hearted and exclusive service. No material repre-

sentation of Him is permitted. No idols are allowed, no

images, whether of Him, the true God, or of any other,

false, lesser, or unreal divinity. His true service is not

found or rendered in sacrifices or offerings, but in the

service of man; in righteousness, in justice, in com-

passion, in lovingkindness. This one God punishes

iniquity and rewards virtue; that is the fundamental

principle of His rule; and it is applied to Israel no less

than to the nations around Israel. But, while Israel

shall be chastised for his sins, a future of glory, of pros-

perity, and of peace, shall ultimately be his. In those

latter days inward virtue and outward happiness shall

correspond and abound. Israel shall be predominant in

the world, but the nations-or what is left of them-

shall all know and reverence Israel's God, and find in the

knowledge and in the worship of Him their salvation

and their peace.

Now, if we find all these teachings illustrated in the

Psalter; if there is hardly a psalm that does not imply or
contain one or other of them; if, with certain compromises
and weakenings (such as we also observe in the Law), all

are more or less in evidence, and if some of them are
even expanded and developed; then the Psalter, and, for
the matter of that, each component part of the Psalter,
can hardly be older than the prophets. For it was not the
psalmists (so far as we can judge) who were the creators
of these high teachings, but the prophets. As Amos
spoke, so did not speak David.* Nor can we be content
to say that the anterior limit for the Psalter, in its
present form, must be as early as 750 B.C.; for the teach-
ing of the prophets must be given time to be accepted
and absorbed. Hence, if some of our psalms are pre-
exilic, they can hardly go back further than about a
century before the capture of Jerusalem by the Baby-
lonians in 586. Roughly, then, we may, according to
this canon, assign our oldest psalms to the beginning of
the seventh century B.C. And, if we allot the youngest
to about the years 170-130 B.C., we shall get a stretch of
some 550 years for the composition of the whole book.
It is probable that no other canons of criticism can
be expected greatly to modify or invalidate these two
limiting dates.

Driver, the cautious and the learned, himself more or
less accepted and laid down the self-same canon:

'When the Psalms are compared with the prophets, the latter
seem to show, on the whole, the greater originality; the
psalmists, in other words, follow the prophets, appropriating
and applying the truths which the prophets proclaimed, and
bearing witness to the effects which their teaching exerted
upon those who came within range of its influence.' †

From somewhat different considerations, derived
mainly from a survey of the internal history of Hebrew
psalmody, its classes and characteristics, Kittel and
Gunkel, however anxious they are to allow the pos-
sibility of much older psalms, arrive at practically the
same conclusions. A few psalms are, somewhat tenta-
tively, reserved, either in their present, or in their un-
edited and original (and therefore unknown) form, for

The possibility that David, from a religious point of view, might have
been competent to write some of our existing psalms is very ably, but
hardly convincingly, put forward by Kittel in his article Psalmen,' in the
Protestantische Realencyklopädie, xvi, pp. 206-208.

† 'Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament,' 9th Ed. p. 384.

6

the pre-prophetic period. But the great majority are
post-prophetic, while the majority of this majority, says
Kittel, belong unquestionably' to the post-exilic period,
and especially to the centuries of Jewish contact with
heathen, and above all with Hellenic, ways and life.'
With this verdict we may concur.

6

It is interesting to observe the various ways in which
the psalms reflect the teachings of the prophets, or
apply them. Monotheism is assumed. The phase of
conflict is, broadly speaking, over. In a large number
of cases we may trace the influence, and hear the echoes,
of Isaiah xl-lv; and, even where this is not the case,
the monotheistic basis seems equally secured. Other
gods and idols are here and there referred to, but chiefly
in irony and derision; the idea of any rival to Yahweh
does not enter the writers' minds. The character, more-
over, of this one and unique God is represented in
accordance with prophetic teaching. The Lord is
righteous and loves righteousness; He is good to all, and
His mercies are over all His works; He is compassionate:
He is loving: He is faithful.

But the psalmists not only reproduce this teaching;
they apply it. And it is just here where a real and
important difference comes in, according as the 'I' of
the Psalter is interpreted to mean what it says, or is
given a rigidly 'national' or 'collective' interpretation.
Phrases such as, 'My soul pants after Thee, O God, as the
hart pants after the water brooks,' mean something very
different, and very much less spiritual, if the 'I' is not
intended to be the writer, but only the community; the
cry, Create in me a clean heart, O God,' has a very
much poorer significance, if it is not the heart of the
writer which thus calls out unto God, but is only a
dramatic and fictitious utterance put into the mouth of
Israel. In the one case, we have the record of a genuine
spiritual experience; in the other, an elegant and in-
genious suggestion. Moreover, the very meaning of a
pure heart or of a contrite spirit differs according as it is
applied to an individual or to a community. We have
only to turn to Wellhausen's interpretation of the famous
51st psalm (in the Polychrome or Rainbow' Bible) to see
to what a comparatively low spiritual level a rigid appli-
cation of the congregational or collective meaning of the