HOW THE OLD AND THE NEW TESTAMENT CAME TO BE WRITTEN AND WHAT HAPPENED TO THE HOLY BOOK IN THE COURSE OF MANY CENTURIES
The pyramids were a thousand years old.
Babylon and Nineveh had become the centres of vast empires.
The valley of the Nile and that of the broad Euphrates and Tigris were filled with swarming masses of busy people,when a small tribe of desert wanderers,for reasons of their own,decided to leave their home along the sandy wastes of the Arabian desert,and began to travel northward in search of more fertile fields.
In time to come,these wanderers were to be known as the Jews.
Centuries later,they were to give us the most important of all our books,the Bible.
Still later,one of their women was to give birth to the kindest and greatest of all teachers.
And yet,curious to say,we know nothing of the origin of those strange folk,who came from nowhere,who played the greatest role ever allotted to the race of man,and then departed from the historical stage to become exiles among the nations of the world.
What I shall therefore tell you in this Chapter is somewhat vague in its general character and none too reliable as to detail.
But the archaeologists are busily digging in the soil of Palestine.They are learning more and more as time goes by.
A few facts are at our disposal,and of these I shall try to give you a trustworthy account.
Through the western part of Asia run two broad rivers.
They take their origin among the high mountains of the north.They lose themselves in the waters of the Persian Gulf.
Along the banks of those two muddy streams,life was very agreeable and quite lazy.Therefore the people who inhabited either the cold mountains of the north or the scorching desert of the south all tried to get a foothold in the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates.Whenever they had a chance,they left their old homes and wandered into the fertile plain.
They fought each other and conquered each other,and founded one civilisation right on top of the ruins of another that had gone before.They built large cities like Babylon and Nineveh,and more than forty centuries ago they turned this part of the world into a veritable paradise,the inhabitants of which were envied by all other men.
But when you look at the map you will see many millions of busy little peasants tilling the fields of another powerful country.They live on the banks of the Nile and their country is called Egypt.They are separated from Babylonia and Assyria by a narrow strip of land.There are many things which they need and which they can obtain only in the distant countries of the fertile plain.There are many things which the Babylonians and the Assyrians need,and which are manufactured only in Egypt.The two nations therefore trade with one another,and the highroad of commerce runs through the narrow strip of land which we have just mentioned.
Nowadays we call that part of the world Syria.In olden days it was known by many names.It is composed of low mountains and broad valleys.It has few trees,and the soil is baked by the sun.But a number of small lakes and many little brooks add a touch of loveliness to the sombre monotony of the rocky hills.
From the earliest times on,this region of the ancient highroads has been inhabited by different tribes,who have moved hither from the Arabian desert.They all belong to the Semitic race.They all speak an identical language.They worship the same gods.Often they fight each other.Then they make treaties of peace with each other,and fight each other again.They steal each other's cities and each other's wives and each other's flocks,and generally behave as such wandering tribes will behave when there is no higher authority in the land than the violence of their own will and the strength of their own good sword.
In a vague way they recognise the authority of the Kings of Egypt or the Kings of Babylonia or Assyria.When the tax-collectors of those mighty potentates come down the road with their armed retinue of men,the quarrelling herdsmen become very humble.With many profound bows,they acknowledge themselves the obedient servants of the Pharaoh of Memphis or the King of Akkad.But when His Excellency,the Governor,together with his soldiers,has gone,then the old life of tribal warfare continues as merrily as before.
Please do not take these struggles too seriously.They were the only outdoor sport these ancient people could enjoy,and the damage done was usually very slight.Besides,it kept the young men in good trim.
The Jews,who were to play such a great role in the history of the human race,began their career as one of the quarrelling,fighting,wandering,stealing little tribes who were trying to maintain themselves in the land of the High Roads.Unfortunately,we really know next to nothing of the beginning of their history.Many learned men have made many learned guesses.But a plausible guess does not fill an historic gap.And when we read that the Jews originally came from the land of Ur on the Persian Gulf,this may be true,but also it may be false.Rather than tell you many things which were not so,I tell you nothing at all,and only mention a very few facts,upon which all historians agree.
The earliest ancestors of the Jews probably lived in the desert of Arabia.We do not know in what century they left their old homesteads,that they might enter the fertile plain of western Asia.We know that they wandered for many centuries,trying to get hold of a bit of land which they could call their own,but the road which they followed has been lost.We also know that at one time or another,the Jews crossed the desert of Mount Sinai and that they lived for a while in Egypt.
From that moment on,however,Egyptian and Assyrian texts begin to throw some light upon the events which are enumerated in the Old Testament.