and to the abiding faith of their ancestors and themselves in the promised Redeemer.
The conquering and widely dominating races of Babylon, Nineveh, Persia, and Egypt have utterly disappeared from the face of the earth. We can dig up from the Mesopotamian plains gigantic statues—the ornaments of palaces and temples contemporary with Heber and Abraham—and we discover far beneath the surface of the ruin-strewed earth whole chambers crowded with inscribed bricks and cylinders, the fragmentary annals of kingdoms grown old before Rome had been founded. But the wild nomadic tribes who aid the discoverer in his researches are not the descendants of the mighty races who ruled there upward of three thousand years ago. These have left upon earth no lineal heirs to the land, to its ruins, or to its glories.
So is it with Egypt. Modern curiosity and modern science have found their way into the very heart of the Pyramids, and rifled the tombs of the monarchs who built them; we have penetrated the deepest cave-sepulchres of the Valley of Kings at Thebes the Magnificent and Incomparable. But the sordid Arab and ignorant Fellah, who serve as guides and workmen to the explorer, have no thought of claiming descent from or kinship with the ancient people who inhabited the Nile Valley in its days of surpassing glory.
The descendants of Joseph and Aaron do, indeed, still live and thrive amid the modern cities along the shores of the great river; but of the warlike people who went forth under the Pharaohs to enslave the surrounding nations, no trace is left save in the tombs where the mummies of princes, priests, and warriors have slept for three thousand years beside the remains of the dumb animals they had, in life, worshiped in place of the living God!
Even so is it in the once imperial Rome. Not even the proudest of her living nobles, much less the lower and middle classes of her actual population, can establish any claim to direct descent from the families who dwelt there under the consuls or under the emperors.
Thus, in every civilized country beneath the sun, and every day on which that sun rises, we have these two immortal societies standing before us, side by side—the Jewish synagogue and the Catholic Church—and presenting to us the Old and the New Testaments as the Revealed Will of the one true and living God who is the Creator and the Judge of the whole race of man. For the divinity of the Old Testament Scriptures and the faith in the Promised Messiah the Jewish race has borne unfaltering and heroic witness for three thousand years; to the divinity of the New Testament and the fulfillment of all these promises in the person of Christ Jesus the Catholic Church has borne her witness during eighteen centuries. And this twofold testimony fills all historic time with a light as self-evident as the radiance of the noonday sun. What a spectacle to the religious mind! What a consolation to the Christian who sets more store on the promises of the eternal life and the glories of Christ’s everlasting kingdom than on all the greatness and the glories, the possessions and the enjoyments of time!
THE OLD TESTAMENT.
Of the inspired writings thus committed to the care of the people of God before the birth of Christ the first in importance, as well as in the order of time, are five books of Moses, therefore called The Pentateuch[1] or The Law. Then come the historical books, comprising: Josue, Judges, Ruth, the four Books of Kings, first and second Paralipomenon, first and second Esdras, first and second Machabees, together with Tobias, Judith, and Esther. Next in order are the doctrinal or didactic books: Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticle of Canticles, Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus. Lastly we have the prophetical books, which are subdivided into the greater and the lesser prophets.
Anciently the Jews divided these books into “the Law and the Prophets.” Down to the time of our Lord the Jewish teachers had devised various arbitrary divisions of the Old Testament books. They were agreed in giving to the Pentateuch, or five books of Moses, the appellation of Torah, “the Law.” But under the designation of “The Prophets” they included, together with the twelve lesser prophets and the three greater (Isaias, Jeremias, and Ezechiel), Josue, Judges, and the Four Books of Kings. Under the designation of Hagiographa (Hebrew, Chetubim, “writings”) they classed all the other Scriptures of the Hebrew canon, whether historical, prophetical, didactic, or poetical.
The Jewish authors of the Greek or Septuagint version of the Old Testament deviated from this classification, giving the books of Scripture in the order which we have them both in the Latin Vulgate and in the Douay Bible.
However, as modern biblical scholars have agreed to treat of these venerable books in the more convenient order of
The Pentateuch, The Historical Books, The Prophets, The Poetical Books,
We shall follow this classification in our remarks.
I. THE PENTATEUCH.
It is most probable that these “five books” formed in the original Hebrew only one volume or roll of manuscript. The present title—ἡ πεντάτευχος (βίβλος), “the fivefold book”—was bestowed on it by the Greek translators. To them also may be, in all likelihood, attributed the division of the books as each now stands, together with the Greek titles which distinguish them. In the Hebrew manuscripts the only division known was that into small sections called parshiyoth and sedarim, which had been adopted for the convenience of the public reader in the synagogue.
Of all books ever written, this fivefold book of Moses is the only one that enlightens us with infallible certainty on the origin of all things in this universe, visible and invisible; on the creation of mankind and their destinies; on their duties, during this life, toward their Almighty Creator and toward each other, and on the rewards and punishments of the eternal life hereafter.
In its first pages we see how our Divine Benefactor prepares this earth to become the blissful abode of our first parents and their descendants. We read of the compact or covenant which He makes with Adam and Eve; then comes the violation of that compact; and then the fall and banishment of the transgressors from their first delightful abode. We see the human race, divided into faithful servants of God, on the one hand, and despisers of his law, on the other, spreading themselves over the face of the globe, while wickedness goes on increasing to such a pitch that the offended Creator destroys the entire race, with the exception of one good man and his family.
With this man, Noe, and with his three sons, God once more renews the covenant made in the beginning. They are the parents of the human family as it now exists. But their descendants, counting, probably, on the long life of many centuries hitherto enjoyed by mankind as a privilege not to be taken away from themselves, soon fall into the old self-worship, the abominable sensuality, and the demon-worship begotten of pride, and following it as its sure chastisement. God, to preserve as a living faith the Promise in the Redeemer, and to secure a nation of faithful worshipers of his holy name, separates from the sinful crowd Abraham; and from his grandson, Jacob or Israel, spring the twelve patriarchs, the fathers of God’s people. Of the history of this chosen race, their captivity in Egypt, their sufferings, their miraculous deliverance, the new covenant made with them by their divine Deliverer, down to the death of Moses and their arrival on the confines of the national territory reserved to them, the Pentateuch tells in detail.
It is a wonderful story. But let us glance rapidly at it, as we review in succession each of these five books.
- ↑ From the Greek word τεῦχος, a vessel. The designation arose, most probably, from the fact that the ancient manuscripts or rolls of writing were placed in cylinders or vessels when not in use.
