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In a compact the two parties stand on common and in a sense equal ground. Both are doing what they see is good,, and what they freely agree to do; both, for the sake of certain desirable objects, bind themselves to certain duties and obligations. The simple terms of the Israelites' compact were so well known to all, that prophets and leaders could appeal to them as a matter of loyalty and conscience. By it Jehovah promises to carry out the deliverance of which He has already given a foretaste and sample: to be their Guide, Defender, Saviour, Judge. On their part they bind themselves to have Him alone as their God, discarding all others; to learn His nature, and to obey His will both in worship of Him and in conduct toward one another.

The solemn instrument or document of this compact is embodied in what is called the Ten Words, first given in Exodus xx, and later repeated in Deuteronomy v. This, perhaps the oldest and most familiar portion of their literature, condenses their law of living to a nucleus of ten rules, so primitively ordered (if primitive minds are addressed) that they can be remembered by counting on the ten fingers; and yet so far-reaching and comprehensive that to the end of their history priest and magistrate and prophet can use them as a final appeal.

NOTE. As we have the Ten Commandments in Exodus and Deuteronomy, some of them have clauses of explanation and amplification appended to them; but in their original form they were more nearly a literal "ten words" code, being capable of expression nearly in single Hebrew words with the negative lo' prefixed (in all but two, for they are mostly taboos or prohibitions). It is not improbable that in their present form they represent a considerable history of gradual finish and perhaps selection.

Of the racial and religious ideas which the Israelites inherited, we have mentioned only the salient ones, the ideas to which their leaders could appeal and which all their literature could presuppose. By the thought of the land given

to their fathers and restored to them as the theater of a divine purpose, they were pledged to unity, patriotism, pride in making the land desirable in the eyes of naSummary of Israel's Fund tions. By the thought of a God who had revealed of Ideas Himself in a prophetic name and a momentous deliverance, they were pledged to acknowledge Him in the experiences of life, and in whatever He sent of blessing or warning. By the remembered covenant, the distinctive constitution of their corporate life, they were pledged to their part of it, to reverence and be true to it, as experience made it fitting. These ideas are vital in all their literature. They are appealed to and enforced by all the poets and prophets. And we begin the study of that literature just as these formative ideas are in the vigor of their prime.

III. BEFORE THE AGE OF BOOKS

For the beginnings of Biblical literature we have to go back far beyond the age of written books or scholarly learning to an age when ideas were conveyed orally and perpetuated in memory. We are to think of times not unlike those in the history of English literature from which we get our store of popular ballads. These ballads had circulated in the people's memory for a long time before it occurred to scholars and antiquarians to reduce them to writing. So with the earliest examples that we have of Biblical literature. They spring from the experiences of a people unlettered, in the book sense, but not unliterary. They merely assume a form adapted to oral transmission; and they undergo a molding process in the people's memory, subject to changes and refinements of wording until they become stereotyped and permanent. Thus they become literature, with a form and artistry of its own; an artistry adapted rather to the ear and the memory than to the eye and the library.

All the earlier literature of the Bible, down to the end of David's reign, abounds in evidences of this oral origin, molding, and transmission. In fact the personal word, spoken or chanted, was the norm of literary discourse, which the later written productions never lost. Of the form of such personal utterance it is essential that it be vividly realized, easily grasped, and retainable unchanged in memory. These are not book qualities, formal and academic; they are the limpid qualities of speech and story and song, addressed to the minds not merely of scholars but of common people.

NOTES. 1. The Common Folk Basis of Literature. In accounting for the origin of English ballad poetry Professor Kittredge ("English and Scottish Popular Ballads," Introd., p. xix) describes conditions of life very similar to what we may attribute to the Hebrews in their various experiences of communal life: "Folk' is a large word. It suggests a whole nation, or at all events a huge concourse of people. Let us abandon it, then, for the moment, and think rather of a small tribal gathering, assembled, in very early times, or what for the anthropologist amounts to the same thing — under very simple conditions of life, for the purpose of celebrating some occasion of common interest, a successful hunt, or the return from a prosperous foray, or the repulse of a band of marauding strangers. The object of the meeting is known to all; the deeds which are to be sung, the dance which is to accompany and illustrate the singing, are likewise familiar to every one. There is no such diversity of intellectual interests as characterizes even the smallest company of civilized men. There is unity of feeling and a common stock, however slender, of ideas and traditions. The dancing and singing, in which all share, are so closely related as to be practically complementary parts of a single festal act. Here, now, we have the 'folk' of our discussion, reduced, as it were, to its lowest terms, a singing, dancing throng subjected as a unit to a mental and emotional stimulus which is not only favorable to the production of poetry, but is almost certain to result in such production.”

2. Transmission by Memory. How literature in poetic form made its way among the Arabs before the age of books is described by Professor A. B. Davidson, "Biblical and Literary Essays," pp. 264, 265: "No poems were written before Islam. But, once shot from the poet's mouth, they flew across the desert faster than arrows. The maidens

sang them as they went, with their pitchers on their shoulders, to the well. The camel driver cheered himself and his weary beasts with them, as they wended their way over the monotonous sands under the bright Pleiades. . . . Before Islam, writing seems to have been little practised. Poems were written on the hearts of the people. Their brevity made this easy, their sententiousness, their proverb-like character, their succession of brilliant images, each like a rich pearl, and the whole, as the Arabs are never weary of saying, like a string of pearls."

In considering the primitive literature before the age of books, we need to note how much of it remains to us in primitive form, what native literary types it reveals, and what are its limitations as a vehicle for Biblical truth.

I

Literary Fragments and Remainders. In the first eight books of the Hebrew Bible, which narrate the history of Israel to the end of the reign of David,1 there are a good many quoted passages, mostly of poetry, which are evidently more ancient than the text in which they occur. The source from which some of these are derived is named; indicating that collections of such fugitive pieces were made before the history was written, and that these were drawn upon as sources or illustrations of the written history itself.

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The twenty-first chapter of Numbers contains three such quotations; and the first of these, verses 14, 15, is referred to a book now lost, called The Book of the Wars of Jehovah." It reads like little more than a collection of local names, and perhaps preserves in poetic form the determination of a boundary. "Perhaps," says Professor Geden, we are to understand that the Song of the Well also (vss. 17, 18), and the Ode of Triumph over Heshbon

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1 This takes us to the end of 1 Samuel; but from this account the books of Leviticus and Ruth are to be left out, Leviticus representing a later developed code of legislation, and Ruth belonging to the latest compiled division of the Hebrew canon.

(vss. 27-30), are derived from the same source," though the latter, it should be said, is attributed to those who

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speak in proverbs" (vs. 27). "The title would seem to indicate that the book was a treasury of war songs, national epics, celebrating the victories of Israel which Israel's God had given her over her foes." These quotations are mere fragments, and perhaps that is why their source is named; but if such an anthology was in existence, it seems not 'unlikely that it was headed by the Song of Miriam at the Red Sea (Exod. xv); and that the Song of Deborah belonged to the same collection. The subject matter of all these accords fitly with the implication of the title.

NOTE. If this Book of the Wars of Jehovah was thus a repository of poetic pieces compiled while the Israelites were fighting for possession of the land, it is perhaps not too presuming to attempt a list of the pieces that we have preserved from it:

Song at the Red Sea, Exod. xv, 1-18.
The Ark Song, Num. x, 35, 36.

Song of the Valley, Num. xxi, 14, 15,
Song of the Well, Num. xxi, 17, 18.

- where the source is named.

Satire (attributed to parable-speakers) on the Fall of Heshbon, Num. xxi, 27-30.

The Oracles of Balaam, Num. xxiii, xxiv.
The Song of Deborah, Judg. v.

Another collection of ancient song, called "The Book of Jashar" (lit. the "Upright"), is twice quoted from by name. The first time, in Joshua x, 12, 13, the quotation is a fervid address by Joshua to the sun and moon, the famous passage in which he bids these luminaries stand still (lit. "be dumb") until he has finished his conquest of the Amorites. Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon,

And thou, Moon, in the valley of Aijalon,

is his apostrophe; and the verse goes on to say:

And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed,

Until the nation had avenged themselves of their enemies,

1 Geden, "Introduction to the Hebrew Bible,” pp. 267, 268.

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