Yet after all the Hebrew monarchy, in its golden age, must have seemed a petty state as viewed from the contemporary standpoint of the Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and, perhaps, even the Hittites. The absence of contemporary references is sufficient evidence of this fact. And after the death of Solomon almost every vestige of world-historical importance vanished from the divided Hebrew nation. The weak and senescent people, whose whole time of glory had compassed but two brief generations, was from this time on to struggle for national existence, with no thought of conquest; it asked only that it might be allowed to live. And this boon was vouchsafed, despite vicissitudes of fortune that would have pressed out the very life of almost any other nation.
The Assyrians and the Babylonians repeatedly put the Israelites to the sword; yet that conquered people maintained its integrity long after these persecutors had ceased to have national existence. In one sense, this time of decline had greater importance than any other period that preceded it, because its vicissitudes gave rise to that impassioned poetry of denunciation which remained, and will always remain, the chief glory of Hebrew history. Thanks largely to this poetry, the Hebrews first began to have a truly world-historical importance some centuries after the Romans effected their final dispersion. All through their life as an autonomist nation they vainly strove to vie with their neighbours in royal power, looking out upon other peoples jealously, and accepting their own insignificance with angry protest. Yet by a strange irony of fortune the despised Hebrew was to be chiefly responsible for preserving the memory of his more glorious contemporaries. For two thousand years the swords of the Assyrians and Babylonians were remembered chiefly because the stylus of the Hebrew scribe had told of their prowess.
OUR SOURCES
A little over half a century ago James Ferguson, the historian of architecture, commented on the lack of Hebrew records as follows:
“It is one of the peculiarities of the Jewish history, and certainly not one of the least singular, that all we know of them is derived from their written books. Not one monument, not one sculptured stone, not one letter of an inscription, not even a potsherd, remains to witness by a material fact the existence of the Jewish kingdom. No museum ever possessed a Jewish antiquity, while Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and all the surrounding countries teem with material evidence of former greatness, and of the people that once inhabited them.”
Half a century of investigation has altered somewhat the aspect of Hebrew archæology. It is no longer quite true that there are no Hebrew antiquities in any museum. But the number of these antiquities is so small, and their importance so slight from an historical standpoint, that Ferguson’s criticism remains true in spirit if not in letter. The most patient researches in Palestine, beginning with the famous tour of Ernest Renan, have failed to bring to light more than two or three Hebrew inscriptions, as against the tens of thousands of records from Mesopotamia. Nor is it at all probable that any startling finds will ever be excavated. In all probability the ancient records of the Hebrews have almost utterly perished, whereas in Mesopotamia there are doubtless myriads of inscribed tablets to reward the future searcher. In Palestine it is almost certain there are no such stores of buried treasure undiscovered. Nor is the reason for this paucity of antiquities hard to find. The explanation is found in the seemingly paradoxical fact that the cities of the Israelites were not destroyed in ancient times, and continued to be inhabited far into the Middle Ages, or, as in the case of Jerusalem, until the present day. It will be recalled that the Babylonian and Assyrian tablets were preserved beneath the ruins of destroyed cities, and the most important collections have come from Nineveh, the city that was overthrown in the most cataclysmic manner. It requires but a moment’s consideration to make it clear that all of the tablets that were preserved beneath the ruins of Nineveh would long since have been scattered or broken had they continued to be accessible to successive generations of that destructive animal, man. Making the application to the case of the Hebrews it is clear that their antiquities were in fact scattered and destroyed in the course of time as those of Nineveh would have been under those circumstances.
It should be added, however, that it is doubtful whether the Hebrews produced inscriptions on relatively imperishable materials in such relative abundance as did the Mesopotamians. The Hebrews came upon the historical field at a comparatively late day. It has been doubted whether any of their records were written much before the eighth or ninth century B.C.; and it is probable that they largely employed such perishable materials as the papyrus and animal skins to receive their writings. Doubtless the clay tablet of Babylonia was well known to them; indeed, they cannot have failed to be familiar with this document through the experiences of the Babylonian captivity. But it does not follow that they largely adopted the customs of their Mesopotamian cousins. There is, then, perhaps, a double reason for the paucity of ancient Hebrew inscriptions: the destructive agency of time acting upon a supply which was relatively meagre in the beginning.
All this applies to original inscriptions comparable to those which have come down to us from Egypt and Mesopotamia. But as every one knows, the story is quite different when we consider the Hebrew records that have come down to us through the efforts of successive generations of copyists. Here again we find that the case of the Israelites is sharply contrasted with that of the Assyrio-Babylonians. The records of the latter, produced in such abundance, and preserved by burial, were soon forgotten, because no lineal descendants of the people who made them were at hand to interest themselves in their preservation. The Hebrew records were passed down from one generation to another through a never ending series of copies: so that, curiously enough, the same agency which resulted in the destruction of the original documents themselves effected at the same time a permanent preservation of their contents. Thus it has happened that the oriental nation which has left us the fewest antiquities has sent down to us the most voluminous and complete literature.
It is to this literature of the Hebrews themselves that we must chiefly look for the history of that people. Contemporary nations paid but little attention to the Israelites, and the historians of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome have left us only random references, which in the aggregate suffice to give only the barest glimpses of Hebrew history. Aside from the Bible, including the apocryphal books, the only considerable texts that have come down to us, even from classical times, is the work of Josephus; and that author, it will be recalled, was himself a Jew, though he wrote in the Greek language. But for that matter the oldest existing texts of the Bible itself are also in the Greek language. No Hebrew text is known from earlier than the ninth century A.D.; whereas three reasonably complete Greek codices date from the fourth century A.D.
The authenticity of the various texts of the Hebrew writings need not be discussed here. It is estimated that the various manuscripts in the Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and other languages that are to-day preserved, present, when their texts are critically compared, about one hundred and fifty thousand discrepancies. Under these circumstances there must obviously be certain doubts about the exact reading of many texts; but it is held that the discrepancies as a whole are of minor importance; and doubtless in most instances it may safely be assumed that such is the case. In the main, the chief substance of the original text has probably been preserved, even where details have been consciously or unconsciously altered.