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If there remained no trace of the original writings of the Old Testament books preserved for us in the Hebrew tongue, we should still possess very reliable witnesses of ancient date to testify to their existence in substantially the same form in which we have them; for the children of Jewish exiles, who were forced gradually to substitute the language of their conquerors for their mother tongue, had well authenticated translations for their use in the synagogues. The most remarkable of such translations is the so-called Greek Septuagint, commonly believed to have been made for the Alexandrian Library by seventy Jewish rabbis at the request of King Ptolemy Philadelphus. We shall have occasion, later on, to revert to the significance of this Greek version. For the present it is only necessary to mention that it was so highly esteemed by the Jews themselves that they used it for several centuries in their reading to the people, many of whom understood only the Greek.

Even the enemies of the Jews bear witness to the unchanged character of the oldest portion of the Hebrew Bible for centuries before the coming of our Lord.

About the year 536 B.C., on the return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon, the Samaritans, a mixed race of Jewish and Aramaic stock, sought from the temple authorities at Jerusalem the privilege of worshipping with the rest of the Jews in the holy city. This was refused. Shortly afterwards one of the priests at Jerusalem was excommunicated for having married the daughter of a Samaritan prince. He sought refuge in Samaria, and having built a temple on Mount Garizim, induced the people to worship according to the Mosaic Law. They were found to possess a copy of the Pentateuch, which they had transcribed in Samaritan characters; and whilst the Jews of Southern Palestine held no communication with them, and the Samaritans on their part looked upon the Jews as schismatics who had changed the ancient observances of the Law, yet both recognized the same sacred code as the rule of their conduct and religion.

A copy of this valuable version, which at a later date was translated into the actual Samaritan dialect, was discovered at Damascus in 1616, and has since been printed in several editions at Paris and London. It is of great importance, as it establishes a perfect accord with the reading of the Jewish Hebrew text. These versions, made at different times, in places widely apart, and by men who were decidedly hostile to each other on religious as well as on national grounds, force us to admit a well-fixed, universally known, and trusted original of the books of Moses; for where there is a copy there must be something copied from, just as when we see the well-defined shadow of an object we know that the object itself exists.

The antiquity of the Hebrew Bible is indeed attested by many no less conclusive arguments than those we have given, which, from the historian's point of view, stamp it as the most important monument of antiquity which we have, and whose genuine character is proved by the most trustworthy documentary evidence. There is no page of historical account in existence to-day that has such overwhelming testimony in favor of its authentic origin as these books of the Bible. Known by generations as the inviolable law of God, guarded with scrupulous solicitude as their greatest religious treasure, read sabbath after sabbath in the synagogues, not alone of Palestine, but of Arabia, Assyria, Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome—in short, wherever the sons of Abraham had been dispersed in the course of more than twenty centuries—who was it, friend or foe, that could have dared to change this royal mandate of the Most High to His chosen people! If a man were to-day to print a copy of the Constitution, or a history of the formation of the American Republic, introducing some hitherto unheard-of statements, or omitting some important words or facts, how long would such imposition remain unnoticed or unchallenged? Yet it would be infinitely easier in our times, and under our conditions, for such change to pass unnoticed than it would have been among the Jews. The Oriental races are intensely averse to anything that threatens to alter their traditions. The customs of the Eastern peoples to-day are the same as they are described by Isaias seven hundred years before Christ, and the Jew of Isaiah's time reflects in every act the manners of another seven hundred years before, when Moses describes his people as imitating the domestic virtues and habits of Abraham's day, a time which carries us back still another seven centuries. A thousand years make no perceptible change in Oriental civilization. You may see it every day. Take as a ready instance Algeria, visited annually by many Americans, who go to Europe by the southern route. It is a coast city, lying in the full glare of European civilization; nay, modern life has forced itself upon this town with the captivating aggressiveness of French manners, French magnificence, French soldiery, and a system of commerce which, within the last sixty years, has caused the European population to outnumber the original Arab inhabitants of Algiers by two-thirds. Yet the daily and forced contact, for two whole generations, between the Arab and the European has produced hardly any change in the habits of the former. The Mussulman passes through the splendid streets of the French portion of the town when necessity urges him, in silence and with apparent disdain. He prefers his cavern-like habitation, with small square holes for windows, and an iron grating instead of glass, to the spacious and lightsome palaces built by the French and English colonists. The Arab woman feels no desire for the pretty vanities of modern fashion, for the graceful freedom and intellectual intercourse with men; she conceals her form in the traditional wide robe of the East, with a veil over her head, a row of shining coins or beads hanging down from the forehead, and a kerchief over her face hiding all but the gazelle-like eyes. You see in that one city, open to the constant changes arising from the innumerable relations of travel and commerce, two worlds of men: one busy, fitful, gay, and splendidly modern; the other silent, immovable, almost scornful, and in dwelling and dress, in manner and language, just the same as you might have observed them ages ago.

Such precisely were the people who guarded and delivered to us the books of the Old Testament. Their religious, civil, and domestic practices, everywhere and at all times of their history, correspond so perfectly with what we read in any part of this volume that, even if portions of the Bible were lost, we should have the living tradition to witness to the omission, since we know that the life of the Hebrew was ever subject to the regulations of the law of Jehovah, which was to him the supreme expression of all that is great and good and wise. "Uniformity of belief and ritual practice," says the Protestant Geikie,[1]" was the one grand design of the founders of Judaism; the moulding the whole religious life of the nation to such a machine-like discipline as would make any variation from the customs of the past well-nigh impossible. A universal, death-like conservatism, permitting no change in successive ages, was established as the grand security for a separate national existence.... For this end, not only was that part of the Law which concerned the common life of the people—their sabbaths, feast-days, jubilees, offerings, sacrifices, tithes, the Temple and Synagogue worship, civil and criminal law, marriage, and the like—explained, commented on, and minutely ordered by the Rabbis, but also that portion of it which related only to the private duties of individuals in their daily religious life." And to this day the orthodox Jew observes the same rites and ceremonies which marked the service of his forefathers, whether in Judea or Samaria, on the banks of the Nile under the Ptolemies, at Babylon under the Seleucides, or at Niniveh under Nabuchodonoser. "What event of profane history," writes the Abbé Gainet, "can boast of an unbroken succession of 3,500 anniversaries such as those of which we have assurance in the history of the Jews?"[2]

[1] "Life of Christ," chap. xvii.

[2] La Bible sans la Bible, vol. I., Etude préliminaire.