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ed also." This zeal of the Jews for the books of their religion forms a guarantee for their safe custody, and gives a confidence in their received catalogue of genuine and authentic scriptures which we should not have felt, had the people been indifferent to the possession or the preservation of them. With such a national character as theirs, there lies immense evidence for the canonicity of the Old Testament, in the one circumstance alone, that its books were generally received and acknowledged by the Jews as their scriptures, or the books of their religion, to the exclusion of all others. The state of their Bible in the days of our Saviour carries an evidence in itself, for its being indeed the true and the right state of it; nor can we imagine how that evidence could be made stronger, than by the disruption which took place between the Jews and the Christians-and yet the common recognition which both continued to make of the same Old Testament. Even could no express written testimonies have been adduced, in favour of the books which compose the Hebrew scriptures, there is a firm monumental evidence for them, in the general use and esteem of their own people-and more especially as authenticated by the actual agreement between these two hostile bodies of witnesses, the Christians and Jews, who, though in the fiercest controversy against each other on the most vital questions, nevertheless unite in the homage which they render to our present Old Testament. is an evidence patent to all eyes, and perhaps This

VOL. IV.

Joseph. Antiq. Book XII. c. v. § 4.

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highest value; and which we have stated and enforced in another place.* It will afterwards appear, how much the establishment of the canonicity, if it may be so termed, of the Old Testament, prepares the way for the inspiration both of the Old and of the New.

3. We are not to imagine, however, that the exscriptural evidence for the canon of the Old Testament is either weak or scanty. We have much of this evidence in the Apocrypha, from which also we gather, as we do abundantly from other history besides, the zeal and tenacity of the Jewish nation on the subject of their own sacred writings. In the first book of Maccabees, written, it is generally thought about a century before the birth of Christ, and, as the best judges hold, by a more authentic historian than even Josephus, we have a vivid description of the sufferings of the Jews, under the persecution which they sustained from Antiochus Epiphanes. Among other cruelties we are told that "when they (the persecutors) had rent in pieces the books of the law which they found, they burnt them with fire. And wheresoever was found with any the book of the testament, or if any consented to the law, the king's commandment was, that they should put him to death."t This is confirmed by Josephus, whose history indeed of this period is very much taken from the book that we are now quoting. "If there were any sacred book, or the law found, it was destroyed, and those with whom they were found miserably perish

See Book II. Chap. iv. § 16, 17. + 1 Mac. c. i. 56, 57.

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ed also." This zeal of the Jews for the books of their religion forms a guarantee for their safe custody, and gives a confidence in their received catalogue of genuine and authentic scriptures which we should not have felt, had the people been indifferent to the possession or the preservation of them. With such a national character as theirs, there lies immense evidence for the canonicity of the Old Testament, in the one circumstance alone, that its books were generally received and acknowledged by the Jews as their scriptures, or the books of their religion, to the exclusion of all others. The state of their Bible in the days of our Saviour carries an evidence in itself, for its being indeed the true and the right state of it; nor can we imagine how that evidence could be made stronger, than by the disruption which took place between the Jews and the Christians and yet the common recognition which both continued to make of the same Old Testament. Even could no express written testimonies have been adduced, in favour of the books which compose the Hebrew scriptures, there is a firm monumental evidence for them, in the general use and esteem of their own people-and more especially as authenticated by the actual agreement between these two hostile bodies of witnesses, the Christians and Jews, who, though in the fiercest controversy against each other on the most vital questions, nevertheless unite in the homage which they render to our present Old Testament. This is an evidence patent to all eyes, and perhaps

VOL. IV.

Joseph. Antiq. Book XII. c. v. § 4.

K

undervalued on that account-though, in our estimation, of ten-fold greater weight than all the array of those testimonies which can be produced by the learned from Jewish authors, and also from the earlier of the Christian fathers. It is well, however, that such an array can be exhibited. It is well that we are told by Josephus-" We have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from, and contradicting one another [as the Greeks have], but only twenty-two * books

* Wenow number thirty-nine books in the Old Testament ; but these are all comprised in the twenty-four or twenty-two books, their estimated number in earlier times. Ezra and his Jewish colleagues are understood to have made out an enumeration of twenty-four books, comprehending however, all the present books of our received Old Testament, and including none other. Their enumeration stood thus. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel (our two present books in one), Kings (a similar reduction), Chronicles (again two in one), Ezra (which included Nehemiah), Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, and lastly the twelve prophets (being the minor prophets, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi) in one book—making in all twenty-four books of our present thirty-nine. The later Jews reduced this number to twenty-two, so as to correspond with the Hebrew alphabet-not, however by abstracting from the canon any of its parts, but by combining in two instances, two books into one, appending Ruth to the book of Judges, and the Lamentations to Jeremiah. This method of classifying the books of the Old Testament variously, has somewhat obscured the distinctness of the testimonies in their favour. In the general divisions too there was a want of uniformity. Josephus, it will be seen, enumerates five Mosaical or Legal books, thirteen Prophetical, and four Poetical or Preceptive. Whereas with many of the Hebrew doctors, perhaps the most general reckoning amongst them was that of five legal, eight prophetical books, and eleven books termed by them holy writings, or Hagiographa. Still later the whole number of books was estimated at twenty-seven -not by the addition or abstraction of any of the parts from the whole, but by a variation in the reckoning of the parts. Buxstorf's Tiberias for further information on this subject.

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which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine. And of them five belong to Moses which contain his laws, and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death. This interval of time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes, the prophets who were after Moses, wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God, and precepts for the conduct of human life. It is true, our history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time: and how firmly we have given credit to these books of our own nation is evident by that we do; for during so many ages as have already passed, no one hath been so bold as either to add any thing to them, to take any thing from them, or to make any change in them; but it is become natural to all Jews, immediately and from their very birth, to esteem these books to contain divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and, if occasion be, willingly to die for them. For it is no new thing for our captives, many of them in number, and frequently in time, to be seen to endure racks and deaths of all kinds upon the theatres, that they may not be obliged to say one word against our laws and the records which contain them; whereas there are none at all among the Greeks who would undergo the least harm on that account, no nor in case all the writings that

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