Maccabees, can we find Israelite rulers who were emphatically both priests and kings, and whose high priesthood, as a departure from regular succession, needed to be justified by the precedent of Melchizedek? Must we not admit that the contents of these Psalms furnish a strong case for their Maccabæan origin? and is not Cheyne right in saying that, interpreted of other times, they lose half their meaning?

But to pass from the question of mere existence of at any rate some Maccabæan Psalms to the more exact and difficult discussion of their number, if it is clear that there are a few, is it not probable that there are many? Must we not expect that many of the Psalms which have no clear historical allusions are also Maccabæan? If we admit the little group enumerated above, or even xliv., lxxiv., and lxxix., we furnish a strong argument for the existence of many more. And, in fact, as Cheyne tells us, Theodore accepted 17, Reuss 43, and Cheyne himself 27, and Hitzig the last 78 Psalms. We may accept Cheyne's legitimate principle that consecutive Psalms of similar character should be referred to the same period, and thus infer a Maccabæan date for Psalms which can be grouped with the above, e.g., cxv., cxvii., cxlviii., el., &c.; but to attempt an adequate discussion of the number of Maccabæan Psalms would carry us beyond the limits of this paper, and it will be convenient to postpone any remarks on this head till we deal with some serious difficulties in the way of admitting any Maccabæan Psalms. Some of the objections to Maccabæan Psalms need not detain us. The value of the titles as evidence of authorship is almost infinitesimal. The idea that Nehemiah closed the Canon is one of those baseless theories which commend themselves to many minds, because they do away with the necessity for much troublesome research and discussion. But the difficulties arising from the language of the period, the formation of the Psalter, and the almost complete identity of the Hebrew and Greek Psalters, need serious consideration.

First, as to the language. After the return from the Captivity, Hebrew was gradually corrupted by the Aramaic of the surrounding tribes. The ultimate results of this process were twofold. Aramaic replaced Hebrew as the vernacular of the Jews, and a literary Hebrew was formed with a large Aramaic element; this new or late Hebrew is the language of the Mishna, and the Talmud and Rabbinical works are written in a later development of the same dialect. It is difficult to estimate the exact stage in this process that had been reached at the time of the Maccabees, but we may be helped to an approximate conclusion by considering the Jewish writings nearest in time to the Maccabees. Ecclesiastes, Esther, the work divided in our Bibles into Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, are considerably older than the Maccabees; Daniel is certainly not later. The tendency of Aramaic to displace Hebrew as the vernacular of the Jews is illustrated by the fact that portions of Ezra and Daniel are written in Aramaic, and that an Aramaic gloss has been introduced into the text of Jeremiah x. 11. The deterioration of literary Hebrew is shown by the numerous Aramaisms of

Chronicles, Esther, Ecclesiastes; and these books, especially Ecclesiastes, have much in common with the style and vocabulary of the Mishna. Moreover, Prof. Margoliouth maintains that the Hebrew Ecclesiasticus (c. 200) was written in a still more advanced stage of New Hebrew; that the style of Daniel is classical and pure in comparison with it, and that therefore Daniel must be much earlier than the period of the Maccabees. Now, though many Psalms contain Aramaisms, and Prof. Robertson Smith calls Ps. cxxxix. "jargon," yet Cheyne utters a mild protest against this epithet, and the debased style of this jargon does not prevent him from dating it long before the Maccabees. But the style of most of Cheyne's Maccabæan Psalms is pure compared with the four books we have named above, so much so that in pointing out stylistic evidences of late date, Cheyne does not even refer to Ps. xliv. and lxxix. And yet, judging by Chronicles, Esther, and Ecclesiastes, Hebrew of the Maccabæan period must have been much more corrupt than that of these books. And yet this is not clearly true of the Hebrew of Daniel; but until Prof. Margoliouth's theories are disposed of, it is a little difficult to know what is the evidence afforded by the style of Daniel. There is, of course, a well-known and obvious way of accounting for the comparative purity of Maccabæan Psalms-it is that a classical style is as much part of the poetic form of a Hebrew Psalm as its parallelism. Psalmists were familiar with the older Psalms, and, partly through this familiarity and partly by a deliberate effort, wrote in the older style. Literary men have often used with tolerable facility the classical style of dead languages, e.g., Milton's Latin Sonnets. It is not unusual for modern religious writers to fall into the style of the Authorized Version; and a distinguished English scholar holds that the special prayers issued occasionally by the Archbishops are quite in the Elizabethan English of the Prayer Book. But this question needs further discussion. Was the passionate enthusiasm of the Maccabean age likely to adopt an artificial style? and is the adoption of such a style consistent with the freedom and spontaneity of such a Psalm as the 44th? Are the parallels adduced of the literary use of an antique style close enough? Would not the double process of a change in the vernacular and a corruption of literary Hebrew produce a confusion which would make it extremely difficult to maintain a pure style?

Next as to the formation of the Psalter, the most reasonable view, which is adopted by Cheyne, Driver, and Robertson Smith, is that the Psalter assumed its present form by a series of successive integrations, that is to say, at different times Psalms were gathered into small collections, and when a new collection was made it was added to the group of collections which made up the Psalter in its previous form. Driver and Robertson Smith virtually agree in recognizing three main strata in the Psalter, Ps. i.-xli., xlii.-lxxxix, xc.-cl. According to Cheyne, Ps. xc.-cl. were collected and the Psalter finally completed in Maccabean times. If so, xlii.-lxxxix. must be earlier, and i.-xli. earlier still. Moreover, xlii.-lxxxiii., to which

lxxxiv.-lxxxix. are an appendix, have been edited by a writer who substitutes Elohim for Jehovah. This being the case, we should expect to find Maccabæan Psalms in the third collection xc.-cl., or possibly inserted between the first and second; but Cheyne's Maccabæan Psalms are scattered all over the Psalter, and even confining ourselves to xliv., lxxiv., lxxix., these do not come in the right place, and if they are Maccabean, the author or editor has taken the trouble to make them Elohistic, though other Maccabæan Psalms are Jehovistic. The suggestion that the editor wished to popularize the ancient Psalter by introducing a modern element scarcely meets the case; this end would have been sufficiently attained by including them in the Psalter, with the Maccabean Psalms as an appendix.

Lastly, the practical identity as to contents of the Hebrew and Greek Psalters. With commendable self-denial, Cheyne declines to accept the enlarged sphere for critical ingenuity offered by Grätz's late date of the LXX. Psalter, and fixes its date not long after 142 B.C., or at any rate before Christ. Assuming some such date for the LXX. Psalter, and remembering that smaller Psalters had long been current among the Jews of Palestine, it is obvious from the edifying and popular character of Psalms that the earlier Psalters must have been translated into Greek for the Alexandrian Jews. If in Maccabæan times the Psalter was rearranged and completed, new Psalms being inserted in the older books, and this complete Psalter in its turn was translated, it seems natural to suppose that the previous Greek Psalters would influence the arrangement and possibly the contents of the new Psalter. Seeing that the Hebrew text in its final form, of Joshua, Samuel, Jeremiah, and other books, failed to establish itself against a text once adopted by the LXX., it is difficult to believe that the earlier Greek Psalter of Alexandria would have been so promptly and completely assimilated to the Maccabæan Psalter as to leave no trace of the very extensive editing to which the latter had been subjected.

Are we then, in the face of these three difficulties, to surrender the Maccabæan date of such Psalms as xliv., lxxiv., lxxix., and to suppose that, as our knowledge of the history supplies no other suitable date for them, their clear and definite allusions refer to events either ignored or inadequately described? No; the difficulties are not necessarily conclusive. That of language probably only needs investigation for its removal. The relations with the LXX. may perhaps be explained by the constant tendency to assimilate the LXX. MSS. to the Hebrew text. This tendency would have full scope in a Psalter in constant popular use. It may be possible to revise the theory of the formation of the Psalter so as to get rid of that difficulty. At any rate, these difficulties are raised not as fatal objections, but to elicit further information, and thus remove stumbling blocks in the way of those who would like to accept a plausible and attractive theory.

CANON CHEYNE'S BAMPTON LECTURES ON THE PSALTER.

BY REV. PROF. ARCH. R. S. KENNEDY, B.D.

On the appearance of these lectures a few months ago, I had the privilege of introducing them to the readers of a religious newspaper (The Modern Church, August 20, 1891), and the opinion then formed and expressed subsequent study has not modified to any appreciable extent. From eacli perusal of this epoch-making book one rises with increasing admiration of the author's encyclopædic learning and power of patient research, but likewise with a growing conviction that in many cases his results are too extreme, and have been occasionally obtained by canons of criticism too subjective and personal to approve themselves to other students of the Psalter.

The volume opens with an introduction of some thirty pages, which Canon Cheyne has since described as his Apologia ro doctrinâ suú, and which will be read with interest as showing the step. by which, from an admiring disciple of Heinrich Ewald, the learned Canon has developed into a thorough-going adherent of the new critical school. Of this school, indeed, the most distinguished ornament since the removal by death of Reuss and Kuenen, and of Wellhausen by the attraction of cognate studies, is at the present moment undoubtedly Professor Cheyne himself.

Passing from the introduction we come to the work itself, and find it composed of the usual eight lectures, each divided into two parts, followed respectively by an elaborate array of notes, which include references to authorities, amplifications and occasionally modifications of the opinions expressed in the text, and an almost overpowering wealth of other learned matter. The references in the text of the lectures to these notes are, in fact, so numerous, that one is practically compelled to read in both places at the same time, and also to keep an eye, if one can be spared, on the accompanying footnotes. It would have been less irritating and much less fatiguing to the reader if, before publishing his lectures, Canon Cheyne had seen his way to recast them to some extent, incorporating in the body of the lecture much of what is now relegated to the notes. My readers will readily admit that it is impossible here to do more than indicate very generally the results of the lecturer's exhaustive study of the complex problems of the Psalter. On this general statement may follow naturally a brief estimate of the permanent value of the book, with some indication of certain points to which the present writer is obliged to take exception.

These eight lectures, then, fall into two groups of five and three lectures respectively. The former group is devoted to an examination, in the light of the latest established results in Old Testament history and criticism, of the five books of the Psalter, with a view to ascertaining as near as may be the period at which, and the circumstances amid which, each psalm or group of psalms was composed. The latter group is occupied with the discussion of some of the more important theological ideas of the Psalter in the light of the

psalm-chronology established in the preceding lectures. As the author truly remarks in his introduction (p. ix.), "the first part might be enlarged, with the help of the underlying researches, into a synthetic introduction to the Old Testament; the second into a historical sketch of post-Exilic Jewish religion down to the time of Christ."

In his first lecture, Canon Cheyne starts from the present division of the Hebrew Psalter into five books, a division with which the Revised Version of the Old Testament has now made English readers familiar. Of these books the fourth and fifth, comprising Psalms xc.-cl., are acknowledged to have formed originally but one book, and it is of the psalms of this closing book of the united Psalter that Cheyne first seeks to determine the date. Unfortunately, he begins with a large assumption which, almost more than anything else in the book, demands the support of historical evidence. I say unfortunately, because his whole investigation resembles the successive propositions of a book of Euclid, each step in advance depending, to a large extent, on the validity of results previously obtained; and this being the case, it is, to say the least, unfortunate that the fundamental axiom on which so much of the edifice reposes is incapable of proof, cannot, in fact, be called other than probable. I refer to the assumption that our present books iv. and v. were first edited by Simon Maccabæus shortly after 142 B.C. Quite otherwise is it with the next step in advance, the analysis of these Looks, which introduces us to one of the most excellent features of this part of the lectures. It has long been recognized that certain minor groups of psalms were distinctly traceable in our present Psalter, more particularly in the latter books; but it is Canon Cheyne's special merit to have first employed these "psalters within the psalter" on a systematic plan as a key to the secret of their origin and incorporation into the larger hymn-book. Let us note, in passing, the non-linguistic criteria on which he depends for the detection of Maccabæan psalms. They are four in number: (1) "Fairly distinct allusions to Maccabæan circumstances; (2) an uniquely strong church feeling; (3) an intensity of monotheistic faith; and (4) in the later psalms an ardour of gratitude for some unexampled stepping forth of the one Lord Jehovah into history" (p. 16). The results of this fourfold test will be given presently.

The same minute examination to which the psalms of books iv. and v. are submitted, individually and in groups, is continued in the third and two following lectures dealing with books iii., ii., and i. respectively. It is impossible to give in this place any idea of the wealth of learning which these investigations exhibit, or of the ingenious, in many cases too ingenious, hypotheses and rare critical acumen, joined to a spiritual sympathy with the inspired hymn writers, which is too often sadly lacking in the work of foreign Old Testament critics. Stated in its most general form, the sum-total of the results obtained in these five lectures is this: The whole Psalter is post-Exilic. A possible exception is Psalm xviii., which may be as old as the time of Josiah. Or in greater detail thus: Of the hundred and forty-nine remaining