CHAPTER I.

A LOOK INTO THE HEBREW BIBLE.



The aim of this volume is to put into compact and popular form, for the
benefit of intelligent readers, the principal facts upon which scholars
are now generally agreed concerning the literary history of the Bible.
The doctrines taught in the Bible will not be discussed; its claims to a
supernatural origin will not be the principal matter of inquiry; the
book will concern itself chiefly with those purely natural and human
agencies which have been employed in writing, transcribing, editing,
preserving, transmitting, translating, and publishing the Bible.

The writer of this book has no difficulty in believing that the Bible
contains supernatural elements. He is ready to affirm that other than
natural forces have been employed in producing it. It is to these
superhuman elements in it that reference and appeal are most frequently
made. But the Bible has a natural history also. It is a book among
books. It is a phenomenon among phenomena. Its origin and growth in this
world can be studied as those of any other natural object can be
studied. The old apple-tree growing in my garden is the witness to me of
some transcendent truths, the shrine of mysteries that I cannot unravel.
What the life is that was hidden in the seed from which it sprang, and
that has shaped all its growth, coordinating the forces of nature, and
producing this individual form and this particular variety of fruit,--
this I do not know. There are questions here that no man of science can