religion appears to have been the occupation of their life. If they carried war to the Mediterranean, it was that they might cut down timber on Amanus or Lebanon, and hew stones on the western mountains to rear temples to the god; if they harried Arabia, it was to secure spices to offer as sweet incense to him, or precious jewels to deck his image. The king or ruler was merely the representative of the god. A delegation of his power to others was therefore impossible; if he had governors in distant cities they were mere collectors of tribute,- -a share in the rule could not be given them, much less to the people. The conception of citizenship was wanting; and freedom could not broaden slowly down, for the idea of popular freedom could not exist. Thus the author attributes the rudimentariness of the political idea to the exaggerated predominance of the religious idea. His reasoning may not convince every one. Religion, no doubt, reacted on all other elements of the people's life, but whether defect on the one hand was due to exaggeration on the other, or whether defect and exaggeration alike were not due to some more fundamental characteristics of the race, is a question worth considering. At any rate, the predominance of the religious idea was characteristic of all branches of the race. The Jews desire a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. development to the former is theurgic, every momentum of progress due to a divine coup; progress by ethical development, by the free expansion on all its sides, social, moral, and ideal, of the human mind, was an idea foreign to the Fast. Yet this emphasis, even though one-sided, on the divine is just the imperishable contribution made by this race to the common life of man; and when the other side, the free development from within of the human mind, the search for wisdom, is brought under the unbroken guidance of the divine Spirit, human perfection will be reached.

All

It is when Dr McCurdy begins his actual narrative in his second book that his history becomes of absorbing interest. His work has not, of course, the same wealth of illustration as that of Hommel, but by avoiding confusing details he tells a more intelligible story than either Hommel or Tiele. And were the story not read from contemporary monuments it would be incredible. Exploration of the mounds and buried cities of the Euphrates has not only added a new family to the great Shemitic race, but has shewn that this family has the oldest historical civilisation of them all. The first Sargon must have begun to reign about 3800 B.C. Hommel attaches to some carved articles which he figures in his pages the presumable date 5000 B.C. From the earliest times these eastern rulers seem to have regarded the Shemitic world as their natural heritage, for Sargon not only penetrated to the ocean, but appears to have sailed to Cyprus. Phenician bottoms must have carried

him and his troops, a proof that these maritime settlers were already traders at this early period. But though this antiquity be imposing, it is not impossible but that the eye can catch behind it the dying sunset of an antiquity more remote still. Assyriologists are divided on the question whether the Shemites were the first to people the Babylonian plains, or whether they did not impose themselves upon an older population of a different race (the Shumerians), whose science and literature and religion they partly appropriated and assimilated. Dr McCurdy argues the question with great fairness; and though he admits much intermixture of other races with the Shemitic inhabitants, particularly in Babylon,-for Asshur remained the purest type of the Shemite, he is inclined to deny the existence of a non-shemitic aboriginal population and language. A stranger can hardly venture to intermeddle in these esoteric disputes. The question turns largely on the cuneiform script. The characters of this writing in their oldest use were ideograms, that is, to the eye signs of objects, but of course to the ear expressing the sound of the name of the object. Later, these ideograms were used phonetically or syllabically. Now, if these ideograms had been invented by Shemites their phonetic value would naturally have been Shemitic sounds. But this is not the case. The ideogram for "house" does not sound bît but é; and so the phonetic value of the sign for "god" is not ilu, or something similar, but an. To an outsider this appears conclusive, and Dr McCurdy's answer to the argument is hardly convincing; and when he expresses the opinion that the cuneiform writing is a very sufficient means of representing Shemitic sounds, one who judges solely from transliterated texts can only reply that, if so, Babylonian Shemitic had already become considerably debased, and suffered from a confusion of sounds not unlike what prevailed in Galilee in the beginning of our era. Such names of deities, too, as Anu, Ea, Nergal, and even Maruduk (Merodach) have admittedly a very unshemitic look. No doubt a satisfactory etymology has not yet been found for Ishtar, though the masculine form of the name appearing in South Arabia and in Moab, and the feminine form in Palestine, the word is probably Shemitic. If it be not, its diffusion reveals not only an action of Shemites on other races, but a reaction of these races upon the Shemites, at so early a time that it affected every branch into which they became divided.

The history of the Shemitic world, as Dr McCurdy records it, must be read in his own pages. His work is clear, enlightening, and eminently suggestive. Space will allow a reference to one other thing only. The history is mainly a record of untiring energy and conquest. But there were times when the tide of energy was checked or receded-points in the history of the great predominat

ing states when, from internal paralysis, their grasp of distant provinces was relaxed, or when some two of them formed a counterpoise to one another. These were the opportunities of weaker states, and often turning-points in their destinies. There are no more instructive parts in the author's work than when he signalises these pauses and shews their significance. About the time when Israel was entering Canaan a paralysis had fallen on all the great world powers. The Amarna tablets shew that the grasp of Egypt on Palestine was even then becoming feeble, and shortly after, or at least before the exodus, it was altogether relaxed. In the north the Hittite power had been greatly shattered by attacks which are not very well understood. And on the east, Assyria, which had supplanted Babylon in the rule of the kingdom of the rivers, was passing through such a period of internal decline as more than once occurred in its history. No great power barred the way into Palestine or guarded its gates on any side. Another turning-point was much later. The sudden effloresence of Israel, both north and south, in the eighth century, under the contemporary monarchs Jeroboam II. and Uzziah, always appears singular. No doubt both were very able rulers. But Israel had been reduced to such a low ebb by the protracted wars with Syria (which had so gained the upper hand as to leave the King of Israel no more than ten chariots and fifty horsemen) that its brilliant expansion and recovery of the ancient boundaries, from the entering in of Hamath to the brook of the Arabah, was doubly remarkable. The explanation is partly that Damascus had been reduced to impotence by the Assyrians.

In the earlier chapters the author's style is perhaps a little heavy, but when he comes to his history proper it flows on in a clear and stately stream. He is never very animated, but, so far as we remember, he only once visibly nods,-when he says that "Judah was less than one hundred times as large as the realm" of Sennacherib, meaning apparently that Judah was a hundred times less than Sennacherib's realm (p. 75). He is little affected by the peculiarities of his near neighbours on the south. No doubt we have "locutions" for phrases or expressions. Also the characteristic "aside from." "Aside from " may be as ancient and as correct, for anything we know, as "apart from" or "besides," but it always gives one a turn, and is a vile "locution." Errors are very few. On p. 199, creditable" seems a mistake for credible; p. 229, Asshur should be Asher; p. 396, Hystaspis would be better; and everywhere Coele-Syria rather than Coelo-. The publishers have set forth the work in a style befitting its importance.

A. B. DAVIDSON.

Die Literatur des Alten Testaments nach der Zeitfolge ihrer Entstehung.

Von G. Wildeboer. Unter Mitwirkung des Verf. aus dem Holländischen übersetzt von Pf. Dr. F. Risch. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1895. Edinburgh and London: Williams & Norgate. 8vo., pp. x. 464. Price, Mk. 9.

PROF. WILDEBOER's excellent work, De Letterkunde des Ouden Verbonds, has quickly naturalised itself in Germany, and German being the second language of most well-trained theological students, we may hope that it will become known to many busy but studious clergymen and laymen. The idea of treating the component parts of the Old Testament, not as they have come to us from the hands of the latest arrangers and editors, but as they are now redistributed by most critics of what is conventionally called a more or less "advanced" type, is a good one, and it has been well carried out by Prof. Wildeboer. Readers of the Critical Review do not need to be told that the author is not merely a critic, but keenly interested in the continuous development of the Church on its historic lines, but the appearance of this German translation justifies, if it does not require, a fresh commendation of his work to all those who regret the tardiness with which the results of sound criticism are adopted into our educational systems. The work in its present form has, however, another claim on the attention of students. Early in the present year Prof. W. H. Kosters, who has succeeded to Kuenen's chair at Leyden, published an important work entitled Het herstel van Israël in het Perzische tijdvak, in which the subject of the chronology of the Persian period of Jewish history, already discussed by van Hoonacker, Imbert, Kuenen, and (lately) Sir Henry Howorth, is treated with the coolness and sagacity of a disciple of Kuenen. Prof. Wildeboer (in the Theologische Studien) was perhaps the first scholar to recognise the cogency of his Leyden colleague's arguments. He differs from Prof. Kosters only in thinking it probable (for critically admissible evidence there is none) that a small number of Jewish exiles returned to Judæa under Cyrus or Darius, but he agrees with him that the real builders of the Second Temple were the Jews who had never been to Babylon, and that most of the exiles who returned at all came under Ezra (about 433 B.C.). The Chronicler's statement that some 40,000 exiles returned under Zerubbabel in the time of Cyrus, thus becomes an immense exaggeration, or, as Kosters would say, a pure fiction, the offspring of an unhistorical and prejudiced mind. In the original edition of the Letterkunde Prof. Wildeboer could not take account of these arguments; thus the German translation obtains an independent

value of its own. It is as yet only the section on Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah which has been modified in accordance with these results, with a bold confidence that Kosters' conclusions will be at once accepted by moderate critics like himself. But I cannot entertain a doubt that the section on Isa. xl.-lxvi. will be equally affected by them in a new edition. At any rate I have myself found the necessity of adapting my own explanation of that large part of Isa. xl.-lxvi. which has been written (as I hope that I have satisfactorily proved) by the post-Exilic successors of the Second Isaiah, to the results of Kosters, and take this opportunity of mentioning the fact before my own work can appear. Prof. Wildeboer's modification of Kosters' theory seems to me sound, but it produces no appreciable effect on our general view of the course of history. In other respects I see no very striking alteration. In section 9 (p. 136) a reference to the complication introduced into the criticism of the passages in Genesis assigned to the second Yahwist by the discovery of the el-Amarna tablets would have been in place. In section 23 (Proverbs and Job) the reader might have been told that in accepting the speeches of Elihu as a genuine part of the original poem of Job, Prof. Wildeboer ceases to represent what may be called the average opinion of moderate critical scholars. But the objections which an honest critic would probably have to make to some of the details of any attempt such as Prof. Wildeboer's are slight indeed compared to his grateful recognition of the sterling value of this useful work. T. K. CHEYNE.

The Oracles ascribed to Matthew by Papias of Hierapolis: A Contribution to the Criticism of the New Testament.

With Appendices. London: Longmans. Cr. 8vo, pp. x. 274.

Price, 68.

THE writer of this book undertakes to examine the exact meaning of Papias in the sentence Ματθαῖος μὲν οὖν Εβραΐδι διαλέκτῳ τὰ λόγια συνεγράψατο, ἡρμήνευσε δ ̓ αὐτὰ ὡς ἦν δύνατος ἕκαστος, which we would render, "Matthew procured the compilation of the Utterances (of our Lord), and each man translated them according to his ability."

There was room in English theological literature for a new work on Papias, for nearly twenty years have passed since Bishop Lightfoot penned his famous Essays for the Contemporary Review; and the progress which has been made during the intervening period in the historical criticism of the Gospels has inevitably