Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

tures," or the Old and New Testament would in the present day. They were the voces signatæ, that marked out certain books collected by the Jews into a volume or volumes, and in universal recognition among that people. That a whole nation should make use of the same names, and without any difference in the application of them, proved a common understanding as to what the books were (and no others) which were held to be of scriptural rank amongst them. Now the strength of our third general argument lies in this that our Saviour and His Apostles joined in this common use, and fell into this common understanding. They make use of the term "scriptures," without explanation, as if there had to be the adjustment of any difference between them and the Jewish people, on the question of what the Scriptures really were. There was in truth no such question betwixt them. What the Jewish people at large understood to be the scriptures, Christ and His Apostles understood to be the scriptures. other words, they all acknowledged the same scriptures. We do not speak, at present, of the properties ascribed by Christ and the authors of the New Testament, to these writings of the Old Testament for this comes more rightly under our view, when discussing the question of the inspiration of these books. But the circumstance of Christ and His Apostles having acknowledged the same Old Testament with the Jews, is all in all on the question of the canon, and of the legitimate place which each of the separate pieces held in this received and authorised col.

In

lection of writings. When Paul says of the Jews that "to them were committed the oracles of God," he had no different view of these oracles, these λoya, in as far as the written oracles were concerned, from what they had themselves. And in like manner when in speaking to the Jews, he says of the Gospel, that God hath promised it "afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures"*_he does not make use of a designation that expressed to them one set of writings, while to his own mind it expressed another set of writings. To us it is a very strong circumstance, that what they held to be the "oracles of God," and the "holy scriptures," he held to be the oracles of God and the holy scriptures also. There was a common understanding between them on this point; and the same common understanding between our Saviour and His countrymen, when He told them, to "search the scriptures"-when He asked them, "Did ye never read in the scriptures?" when He thus charged them, "Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures" when He argued with them, "How then shall the scriptures be fulfilled"-when He assured them "but the scriptures must be fulfilled" --when He quotes their sacred volume by their own designation, "as the scripture hath said"—and, lastly, when, making use of the same designation, He ascribes to it this property, that "the scripture cannot be broken."t Our Saviour would never, in directing His countrymen to search the scrip

[blocks in formation]

any

tures, have made use of a term, that had the effect of sending them to the perusal of a different set of works or writings from what He Himself intended. But this would undoubtedly have taken place, had He meant by the term "scriptures," other collection of books than what they meant by it. Instead of which He made use of their own term, and gave no explanation—which He would have done, had His sense of it been different from theirs. But He knew what the common understanding was; and on this He proceeded, for He Himself shared in it. The scriptures of their estimation were the scriptures of His estimation also. Or, in other words, we have the authority of Christ and His Apostles, for the received canon of the Old Testament in their days being the true canon. Nor can we imagine aught so resistless in the way of proof, as the utter absence of any charge against the Jews, on the part of the first teachers of Christianity as if they had vitiated or adulterated, or in any way mutilated and changed their own scriptures, When the Apostle Paul says, that to them were committed the oracles of God, there is not one whisper of insinuation that they had in the least corrupted, or been at all unfaithful in their care and custody of these writings. But, strongest of all, our Saviour never laid any such condemnation upon them. Had there been any ground for such a condemnation, He, of all others, would, with the utmost promptitude and power, have charged it home upon them. It is true that they had made void the commandments of God, but in another way than by altering or vitiating the re

cord of these commandments-by oral tradition; and he was not slow in charging them for this delinquency. We may be very sure, that, had there been any practising on their part with the scriptures themselves we may be very sure, that He, who denounced their traditions, would have denounced, as an offence still more flagrant, the sacrilegious liberties they had taken with the oracles of God. Instead of which, in opposing their traditions, He did it by means of an express quotation from the writings of Moses-making use of their scriptures as they stood, and never giving us the least intimation in the course of His public ministry, notwithstanding His frequent allusions and appeals to them, that the true scriptures were at all different from the acknowledged and received scriptures. He set aside their traditions, but He did unqualified homage to their scriptures-two things as apart from each other in the days of our Saviour as they are now-as distinct and distinguishable, in fact, as the Hebrew Old Testament is from the Jewish Talmud, in which the traditions have been embodied and have received a local habitation and

a name. Had the Jewish scriptures, in our Saviour's days, been mutilated by erasures, or vitiated by admixtures, or right books been displaced, or wrong books inserted in their room— our Saviour would have told us so-or, in other words, had there been a false canon in these days, He would have stated anew for our information the true canon of the Old Testament. The information given by the Jews themselves in regard to the genuineness of their scriptures, thus acquiesced

in and thus deferred to by the Author of Christianity, we receive as at the mouth of the Saviour. The Jews and Christians separated from each other, with the very same list however of Old Testament scriptures; and these, laying aside the great Popish adulteration and a few minor ones, remain unchanged with each of the parties to the present day. We cannot imagine a more secure basis for the canon of the Old Testament, than the authentication of that very list by Christ and His Apostles thus giving the benefit of all the evidence for the new, to the scriptures of the elder dispensation.

9. We shall now enter, in detail, on the scriptural evidence for each of the particular books of the Old Testament; but, before doing so, let us advert to certain larger divisions into which they were grouped by the Hebrews; and the traces of which are to be found in the Bible itself. There was the book of their law, consisting of our Pentateuch, or five books of Moses, and originally written in one volume. There was the book of the prophets, which yet comprehended certain of the historical, and excluded certain of the prophetical writings. There was lastly the book of the Hagiographa or Holy writings, the inspiration of which was not doubted by the Jews as to its reality, but which were distinguished from the former in their reckoning by the mode of the inspiration. Moses the author of the first class of these books was universally held to be the most illustrious of all their sacred writers, being the only one admitted to direct and personal converse

« AnteriorContinuar »