From the misty ages of bygone centuries to the present day there
has been a gradual interlinking of the literatures of different
countries. From the Orient to the Occident, from Europe to
America, this slow weaving of the thoughts, tastes and beliefs of
people of widely different races has been going on, and forms,
indeed, a history by itself.
The forerunner and prophet of subsequent Christian literature is
the Hebrew. It is not, however, the first complete written
literature, as it was supposed to be until a few years ago.
The oldest Semitic texts reach back to the time of Anemurabi, who
was contemporaneous with Abraham, five hundred years before
Moses. These Semites possessed a literature and script which they
largely borrowed from the older non-Semitic races in the
localities where the posterity of Thare and Abraham settled.
Recent researches in Assyria, Egypt and Babylonia has brought
this older literature and civilization to light; a literature
from which the Hebrews themselves largely drew. Three thousand
years before Abraham emigrated from Chaldea there were sacred
poems in the East not unlike the psalms of David, as well as
heroic poetry describing the creation, and written in nearly the
same order as the Pentateuch of Moses.
The story of the Deluge, and other incidents recorded in the Old
Testament, together with numerous legends, were known and
treasured by the Ancients as sacred traditions from the earliest
ages of the world.
We learn from St. Paul that "Moses was skilled in all the
knowledge of the Egyptians." He must therefore have been familiar
not only with the ancient poems and sacred writings, but also
with the scientific, historical, legal and didactic literature of
the times, from which, no doubt, he borrowed all that was best in
the Mosiac Code that he drew up for the Chosen People of God.
This old literature Moses confirmed and purified, even as Christ
at a later period, confirmed and elevated all that was best in
the Hebrew belief. Hence from these Oriental scholars we learn
that the Hebrew was only one of several languages which enjoyed
at different times a development of the highest culture and
polish, although the teaching of the old Rabbis was that the
Bible was the first set of historical and religious books to be
written. Such was the current belief for many ages; and while
this view of the Scriptures is now known to be untrue, they are,
in fact, the most ancient and complete writings now in existence,
although the discovery in Jerusalem, thirty-five or forty years
ago, of the inscriptions of Siloe, take us back about eight
hundred years before Christ; but these Siloeian inscriptions are
not complete examples of literature.
"The Ancient culture of the East," says Professor A. H. Sayce,
"was pre-eminently a literary one. We have learned that long
before the day of Moses, or even Abraham, there were books and
libraries, readers and writers; that schools existed in which all
the arts and sciences of the day were taught, and that even a
postal service had been organized from one end of Western Asia to
the other. The world into which the Hebrew patriarchs were born,
and of which the book of Genesis tells us, was permeated with a
literary culture whose roots went back to an antiquity of which,
but a short time ago, we could not have dreamed. There were books
in Egypt and Babylonia long before the Pentateuch was written;
the Mosaic age was in fact an age of a widely extended literary
activity, and the Pentateuch was one of the latest fruits of long
centuries of literary growth."
There is no doubt that these discoveries of modern times have
been a distinct gain to Christianity, as well as to the older
Hebrew literature, for it confirms (if confirmation is needed),
the history of the creation, to find it was believed by the
ancient peoples, whom we have seen were a learned and cultivated
race.
In the present day the great College of St. Etienne in Jerusalem,
founded by the Dominicans expressly for the study of the
Scriptures, carries on a never ending and widely extended perusal
of the subject. Parties of students are taken over the Holy
Places to study the inscriptions and evidences of Christianity,
and the most learned and brilliant members of the Order are
engaged in research and study that fits them to combat the errors
of the Higher Criticism. Their work, which is of a very superior
order, has attracted attention among scholars of every country in
Europe.
In the ancient development of the world there came a time when
there was danger of truth being corrupted and mingled with fable
among those who did not follow the guidance of God, as did
Abraham and the patriarchs; then the great lawgiver, Moses, was
given the divine commission to make a written record of the
creation of the world and of man and to transmit it to later
ages; and because he was thus commanded and inspired by God, his
literature represents the most perfect and trustworthy expression
of the primitive revelations. From the very beginning, therefore,
we trace this interdependence of literature. Moses, authorized by
God, turns to all that is best in the older Babylonian, Egyptian
and Indic literature, and uses it to regenerate and uplift the
Hebrew race, so that we see the things contained in the Bible
remained the same truths that God had been teaching from the
beginning of time. The older Egyptian and Babylonian literature
became lost to the world for thousands of years until in the
nineteenth century modern research in the Pyramids and elsewhere,
brought it to light; but the Hebrew literature was passed down to
the Christian era, and thence to our own times, intact. It excels
in beauty, comprehensiveness, and a true religious spirit, any
other writing prior to the advent of Christ. Its poetry, which
ranges from the most extreme simplicity and clearness, to the
loftiest majesty of expression, depicts the pastoral life of the
Patriarchs, the marvellous history of the Hebrew nation, the
beautiful scenery in which they lived and moved, the stately
ceremonial of their liturgy, and the promise of a Messiah. Its
chief strength and charm is that it personifies inanimate
objects, as in the sixty-fourth Psalm, where David says:
"The beautiful places of the wilderness shall grow fat; and the
hills shall be girded about with joy. The rams of the flock are
clothed, and the vales shall abound with corn they shall shout,
yea they shall sing a hymn."
And again in the seventeenth Psalm, he says:
He bowed the Heavens and came down . . . and He flew upon the
wings of the winds . . . He made darkness His covert, His
pavilion round about Him: dark waters in the clouds of the air."
In time the Hebrew language began to be influenced by others,
although, as a people, they rank with the Greeks and Spaniards as
being very little moulded by any outside influence on their
literature. From the time of Abraham to the age of Moses the old
stock was changed by the intermarriage of some of their race with
the Egyptians and Arabians. During this period their literature
was influenced by Zoroaster, and by the Platonist and Pythagorean
schools. This is especially noticeable in the work of Philo of
Alexandria, who was born a few years B.C.E.
Josephus, who first saw the light in A.D. 37; and Numenius, who
lived in the second century, were Jews, who as such remained,
while adopting Greek philosophy. The learned writings of the
Rabbis became known as Rabbinical literature. It is written in a
language that has its roots in the Hebrew and Chaldaic; though it
has also borrowed largely from the Arabian, Greek and Latin. In
the sixteenth century Christian scholars began to make an
extensive study of Hebrew and Rabbinical literature, and they
were not slow to discover the value of these Oriental works.
These writings, however, are subject to change, and it is in the
Bible alone that we find the fundamental teaching of Hebrew
literature. Differing entirely from the Mythological and Oriental
Nations, it taught, as its cardinal principle, the unity of God.
Its historical worth has been recognized by the greatest scholars
in all ages, and it has influenced not only the ancient world,
but also the literature and poetry of the Middle Ages and of
modern times. It forms a contrast to the philosophy of the
Greeks, and to that of Europeans of a later age. When the latter
have tried to explain the great mystery of God and man, they have
invariably failed. In the beautiful writings of the Greeks,
wherein we find the height of artistic expression and polish,
there is a subsequent gradual decline; but such is not the case
in the Old Testament. In every age fresh beauty and hidden
treasure is found in its pages. Another phase of the Bible which
has had a far reaching and lasting effect upon all language and
literature, is its prevailing spirit of types and symbols. This
is conspicuous both in the poetical books and in those that are
didactic or historical. It has had the same influence on the
thoughts and imagination of all Christian people and upon the
poetry and imitative arts of the Middle Ages (and nearly the same
upon later and more cultivated times) that Homer had upon the
Ancients. For in it we find the standard of all our Christian
images and figures, and it gives us a model of imitation that is
far more beautiful in itself, and far more world-wide in its
application than anything we can borrow from the Greeks. We see
this in Dante and Tasso, and in other Christian poets. To the
Hebrew, as the original custodians of the Old Testament, we are
indebted for keeping the faith pure when all other nations either
forgot or abandoned it, or else mixed it up with errors and
idolatry. What Moses records of the creation of the world and the
first ten Fathers, is embodied by the Persians, Indians and
Chinese in whole volumes of mythology, and surrounded by a host
of fanciful traditions. Thus we see in the Hebrew as the chosen
people of God, a nation able to preserve its literature intact
through captivity, dispersion and persecution, for a period of
four thousand years.
