6. "When I lie down, I say, When shall I arise? but the night is long. I am full of tossings too and fro unto the dawning of the 7. "So am I made to possess months of vanity, And wearisome nights are appointed unto me. 7. 3. 8. "He breaketh me with breach upon breach; 9. "Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard, I cry unto thee, but thou dost not answer me. 30. 20. 10. "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? 11. 7. 11. "Can mortal man be more just than God? Can a man be more pure than his Maker? 4. 17. 12. "Mine adversary sharpeneth his eye upon me, 13. "He putteth my feet in the stocks, He marketh all my paths." 33. 11. The heroes of the two poems were not attacked by the same disease. Job was tortured, according to the usual view, by the dread and incurable elephantiasis, but Tabi-utul-Bel seems to have suffered from a complete paralysis. As in Israel so in Babylonia-and for that matter, everywheresuffering of every kind, and especially grievous and incurable diseases were regarded as certain evidence of divine wrath. And yet in all ages the thoughtful could not reconcile the suffering of the righteous with the divine justice. Thus it is evident that the object of both poems is to throw some light upon the dark problem of suffering, and in some way to counteract the erroneous views upon the subject current among the masses, yea, among all classes, and especially to encourage faith in the justice of God, the final manifestation of the divine goodness, and the duty of perseverance in prayer no matter what the nature or severity of the suffering might be. For divine help, though delayed, is sure to come to all those who implicitly trust in God and persevere in prayer. The following couplet: "I knew the day [was near] when my misery would be over: suffused as it is with Babylonian mythology, involuntarily reminds us of the sublime passage in Job: "I know that my redeemer liveth, And that he shall stand up at the last upon the earth: And after my skin has been thus destroyed, Yet without my flesh I shall see God." This old Oriental poem, though one of the "choicest specimens of ancient Babylonian literature," is, nevertheless, greatly inferior to the book of Job, whether regarded from a philosophical, theological, or literary standpoint. And yet in some regards Tabi-utul-Bel appears in a better light than the patriarch of Uz. He is less rebellious and defiant, more submissive and humble than Job, who does not hesitate to accuse the Almighty of base cruelty and flagrant injustice, as in the following passages: "Thou knowest I am not wicked. 10. 7. My heart shall not reproach me as long as I live. 27. 6. "Thou art turned to be cruel to me, With the might of thy hand thou persecutest me." 30. 21. Tabi-utul-Bel though insisting that he has given loyal service to Bel and other deities, yet seems to have a vague misgiving that in some way, notwithstanding his sincerest efforts, he may have come short. He says: "For, indeed, I thought that this was pleasing to the god."" And then by way of consoling himself, he adds: "What, however, seems good to men may be displeasing to a god: The sentiment of the last two lines, if not in exact language, finds abundant parallels in the utterances of Job and the three friends, as too, in the speech of Elihu and the so-called speeches of the Lord at the end of the book. The outcome in the Babylonian poem bears, in the main, striking resemblance to that in the book of Job. The heroes of both poems are completely exonerated from any guilt corresponding to the awful suffering to which they were subjected. Both come forth from the furnace of affliction through which they had been made to pass better and nobler men. Both are fully restored. Job is once more made to enjoy the blessing of health, the comforts of the home circle, the respect and confidence of his fellow men. So Tabi-utul-Bel is also restored to the fullness of health and is once more permitted to throw away the badge of slavery to be invested anew with royal dignity as in the days of his former prosperity. FOREIGN OUTLOOK SOME LEADERS OF THOUGHT Hermann L. Strack. The publication of the second and revised edition of his translation and exposition of Genesis (Die Genesis übersetzt und ausgelegt, München, C. H. Becksche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1905), after twelve years from the date of its original publication, calls new attention to this able exegete. It is interesting to note that although he belongs to the so-called conservative school in Germany he recognizes the documentary hypothesis and prints the P and the J E portions in different type; and, so far as it seems to him possible to distinguish between J and E he indicates which is which by the letters J and E in the margin. But while thus admitting the results of the literary analysis of Genesis he denies certain consequences which are often deduced from the composite character of the book. He does not believe that we have enough of any one of the component elements of Genesis to know accurately its real significance. Hence he denies, or, at least, seeks to do away with the differences, inconsistencies, contradictions, and doubts which most commentators in these days admit. He shrewdly argues that the very fact that an editor or that editors undertook to weave these different elements into one whole proves that they, at least, saw none of the contradictions now so frequently pointed out; and he believes that if we had the documents before us just as they lay before the editor or editors who gave us our Genesis, we would see none of the alleged contradictions. One can respect this kind of argumentation. It is a serious attempt, not without a priori probability, to show that our ignorance is the reason for the apparent contradictions. It is not dogma, but reasoning to which he appeals. There will be a difference of opinion as to the validity of his reasoning. Many will say that the editors may not have felt themselves bound to ask the question whether the documents they undertook to combine were mutually contradictory, but were interested to preserve as much as was possible of the splendid literature of the Hebrew people which tended to set forth their religious faith; and that the matter of historical veracity was not in question at all. Still others will argue that, while the attempt at literary analysis has been carried by some to ridiculous extremes, P, which runs through practically the whole of the Pentateuch, and J and E, which are very prominent, at least in Genesis, are each practically complete accounts of the same, or nearly the same, facts from different standpoints, and that the supposition that the editors left out much of each document which is now lost to us is therefore unfounded. But while Strack denies that there are any real contradictions in Genesis he admits that, owing to the supposed incompleteness of the documents, there appear to be contradictions. These he does his utmost to set aside, usually by the means generally employed by harmonists for that purpose. Here again many conscientious believers in the revelation given in Genesis will object to his method as tending to lay the emphasis on the nonreligious, rather than on the religious content and significance of the book. Strack no doubt overlooks the similarities existing between the Babylonian myths and the history given in the first eleven chapters of Genesis; but it is to his credit that he notes what is often overlooked by others, namely, the vast differences between the two which render it certain that if the Hebrews did copy they also transformed their material almost beyond recognition, especially as regards its religious worth. However, it is to be regretted that he seems to make no allowance for the element of Oriental imagery so prominent throughout the Bible, but takes almost everything literally, even to making the wrestling of Jacob to be a real contest with Divinity, thus making himself guilty of an inexcusable anthropomorphism. As usual, the via media would have been better. D. Haussleiter. In some lectures on Die vier Evangelistur (The Four Evangelists), München, C. H. Beck, 1906, he has set forth his views of the four Gospels and their authors. There is very little that is new, but there is much in which his views represent a large group of thinkers. Unfortunately Haussleiter himself is extremely dogmatic and offensively contemptuous in his dealings with those opposed to him. With regard to Matthew he holds that the Gospel was written by an eyewitness and that it is all of a piece. So he rejects the commonly accepted opinion that whoever the author was he took his material from the Gospel according to Mark and from a collection of the sayings of Jesus. This latter view he characterizes as old and obsolete. We may dismiss this as one of his many dogmatisms. But the supposition which he cherishes that if Matthew is a composite work based upon earlier sources, it cannot have been written by an eyewitness needs a word of comment. It is, of course, natural to suppose that an eyewitness would not need to depend upon written sources. Yet when we consider that even according to Haussleiter himself the Gospel of Matthew was not written until a considerable time subsequent to the death of Jesus had elapsed it is not impossible that even an eyewitness might have felt the necessity of consulting authorities and even of following them closely. The ordinary interpretation of the testimony of Papias (about 140 A. D.) leads us to suppose that Matthew the apostle made a collection of the sayings of Jesus. If this interpretation is correct, it would seem that while Matthew had opportunity to associate with Jesus he was chiefly interested in what his Lord said. If, a good many years later, he determined to write both concerning the deeds and the sayings of Jesus, he might well feel it necessary to have recourse to a document like the Gospel of Mark, which, according to Papias, came indirectly from Peter and dealt chiefly with the deeds of Jesus. There is nothing, therefore, in the use of sources to make it either impossible or improbable that an eyewitness, as Matthew, might have written our first Gospel. But Haussleiter does not interpret the testimony of Papias as the majority do. He holds that when Papias tells us that according to his best information Matthew wrote in Hebrew the words of the Lord he is referring to our canonical Gospel of Matthew and not to a mere collection of sayings of Jesus afterward wrought into the Gospel of Matthew along with the deeds of Jesus. As to Mark he holds that this Gospel is later than Matthew, and that a comparison of the two Gospels will show, not, as ordinarily supposed, that the writer of Matthew employed the Gospel of Mark as the thread of his narration, but rather that the writer of Mark abbreviated the narrative portions of Matthew. To say the least this would be a somewhat surprising procedure; for if he was abbreviating the Gospel of Matthew, it is difficult to understand why he should have confined himself almost exclusively to the deeds recorded in Matthew. Of course Haussleiter does not make Mark a mere copy of portions of Matthew but allows that there are elements drawn from Peter in the Gospel also. This practically annihilates Papias's testimony as to the origin of the Gospel of Mark and so renders his testimony as to Matthew's share in preserving material concerning Jesus worthless. With regard to Luke Haussleiter does not differ materially from the view held by many scholars that the Gospel is written by Luke and that in the composition of the Gospel he used the Gospel of Mark and material gathered through Paul from eyewitnesses. As to the Gospel of John, he thinks there is no reason to suppose that when John speaks of the Logos he was in any way dependent upon the Alexandrian-Jewish philosophy; but that by calling him the Logos he meant to speak of Him as the revealer of God, the mediator of all revelation, of creation, and especially of redemption. It is very remarkable that anyone should think dependence upon the Alexandrian-Jewish philosophy would be inconsistent with the meaning which Haussleiter rightly gives the word Logos in the Gospel of John. RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE Beitrage zur Geschichte und Erklarung des Neuen Testamentes. III. 1. Die Bergpredigt begriffsgeschichtliche untersucht (Contributions to the History and Interpretation of the New Testament. III. 1. The Sermon on the Mount Investigated in the Light of Ideas Current in the Time of Christ). Liepzig, Dürrsche, Buchhandlung, 1905. By Georg Heinrici. This is an attempt to examine into the relation between the ideas contained in the Sermon on the Mount and the religious and ethical conception of the Jews as revealed in the Old Testament and in the late Jewish literature, and also the Græco-Roman world. Heinrici has gathered a vast amount of material which he regards as more or less directly parallel to various portions of the Sermon on the Mount. He gives various reasons for engaging in such a labor. One of them is that the literary criticism of the Gospels discloses the fact that along with thoughts of Jesus we find utterances which grew out of the missionary experiences of the disciples and, in general, evidences of reflection as well as memory in the composition of the Sermon on the Mount. The whole problem of the context of the Gospel can, therefore, be best studied in the light of contemporary thought. By this method it is possible to determine what is original, what borrowed, what adopted and adapted, either consciously or |