THE MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
The Old Testament was a national Jewish scrap-book.It contained histories and legends and genealogies and love poems and psalms,classified and arranged and reclassified and rearranged without any regard for chronological order or literary perfection.
Suppose that there had been no American histories at all and that a patriotic citizen of the year 2923should decide to compile such a volume.Very likely he would go through all the bound copies of our great magazines and newspapers (if any survived)gathering everything of a historial and literary nature that seemed to be of sufficient importance.
But unless he were very thoroughly prepared for his task,he would give us a compilation that would in many respects resemble the Old Testament.
There would be strange legends of some of the earliest Indians,dealing with their mysterious stories of creation.There would be special Sunday stories,telling of the discoveries of Columbus and giving an account of the hardships of the first settlers along the banks of the Charles River and the Hudson.
These would be followed by a detailed deion of the attempts to organise the thirteen little colonies (corresponding to the twelve tribes of the Jews)into a single nation,for which there would be a great deal of material.
The adventures of this new commonwealth would be described in detail with special reference to the Civil War,which almost turned the United States into another Judah and Israel.
Together with these historical narratives,there would be a miscellaneous collection of bits of poetry and of those songs that have become part of our great national inheritance.
And if our American patriot had had as little training for this sort of work as did the scribes of Jerusalem and of Babylon,we should find that those Chapters dealing with the conquest of the west contained snatches of verse,gathered from the works of Longfellow,Whittier and Emerson;that an account of the Revolution had been added to the Chapter dealing with the acquisition of Alaska;and that Roosevelt was mentioned as the author of almost every important measure of state.
Of course,this purely imaginary book would not be a very reliable historical guide.In our day and age,that would not matter very much.We could go to France and England and Spain and with the help of their libraries (taking it for granted that they had not been destroyed,as most of the libraries of Babylon have been)we could easily enough reconstruct our own past from these foreign sources.
In the case of the Old Testament,this is almost impossible.The Egyptians and Assyrians and Chaldeans and Persians paid very little attention to this strangely pious tribe,who held themselves aloof from the national life of their adopted fatherland.
In the main,therefore,we depend for our information exclusively upon the ancient Hebrew and Aramean texts.We have said this before,but we repeat it here for the last time,that you shall not miss this most important point.
Thus far we have,to the best of our ability,tried to reconstruct the era of legend and the period of written history.Now we must tell you something about those extra Chapters of pure poetry which form the most attractive part of all Jewish literature.
The story of Ruth has already been mentioned.A counterpart (but of a very different nature)of this idyllic life of the old Judean villages is found in the book of Job.
It was an old,old popular story of a pious man who was sorely tried by circumstances,but who never lost his faith in the ultimate good of all things.He does not understand why all these terrible things should happen to him,why he should be stricken with a terrible malady,why he,a “wise man,”should not be allowed to profit by his learning;why he,the kindest of fathers,should lose all his children.
He does not understand,yet he resigns himself quietly to his fate.
He does not argue.
He accepts.
But when he meets three of his old friends,then occurs that memorable conversation which has made the book of Job so dear to all lovers of imaginary literature.
Job steadfastly maintains that all his sufferings are for the benefit of his unworthy soul.He may not be able to follow the designs of Jehovah,but surely they are right,while he himself,in his ignorance,is wrong.
At last the days of his trial come to an end.Job is restored to the full possession of his former riches.He marries again and has seven stalwart sons and three beautiful daughters.And he lives to be a hundred-and-forty years old and dies,the most prosperous and important man in the country.
The book of Job is followed by the Psalms.
The Greek word “psalter”meant a stringed instrument,probably of Phoenician origin and at one time very popular in western Asia.It was used on festive occasions to accompany the people who chanted the holy songs,and it was played with a plectrum,like a modern mandolin.
It did not have a very wide range and was restricted to ten notes.But it served a good purpose.
It kept the congregation on the right pitch,like a modern organ.
As for the Psalms,they are as varied in subject as the poems of the last six centuries,which we find in “The Oxford Book of English Verse.”