ii. The Lciditii; lileris. — The Heb. «Titer8 are not mere annalists, but interpreters of history. Hence thi-ir permanent value. They may be criticised as chroniclers of outward events, but tliey sought and found God everywhere, and they iihiile to hiuid im their secret. In all tliree dociiiii<-iits we lind the same fundamental verities emiiliasized, which give to Ex its real unity. J" is the supreme God,
ruling in Egypt, and master over nature. He ia the faithful God who made His choice of the fathers of the Heb. race, and will not draw back. He is the God of grace, and so loves to give guidance, counsel, help, food, drink, every needed supply. He is the Holy One, and requires obedience to His wiU, and takes steps to make known that will. He is the Jealous God, and demands that due worship shall be paid to Him, and to none else. He is the Covenant God, and the two sides of the Covenant are : J" Israel's God, Israel J"'s people.
But each document has its individual standpoint, even as each of the synoptic Gospels presents its own picture of the life of Christ. The oldest, J, perhaps coming from the priestly circle con- nected with Solomon's temple, is written from the point of view of a highminded patriot, keenly interested in every detail of national history, so quick to see God's hand in providence as to be able to make his story religious with but little use of the miraculous, alive to all the shades of character in men, as well as to the ricliness of the Divine nature, in which mercy rejoiceth against judgment, valuing liighly the common ordinances of religion, and recognizing the great opportunities of the priestly otiice. The document E, probably ratliei later, and originally coming from Ephrainiite circles, reflects the views of the prophets. This work (extending from Gn to Kings) is a series of biographical studies of great prophetic heroes, with Moses as the central figure. Aluch stress is laid on morality. The people sin, and need to be called to repentance. God is righteous, and His re(iuirements must not be despised. The miraculous element is heightened, of course un- consciously. The moral of eacli incident must be made clear, the reality of tlie Divine government set unmistakably forth. S.ad experience of tlie faults of the priesthood leads to tlie priests being either passed over, or introduced for blame. Worship is strictly secondary to morality.
The priestly writer (P) hfis lost all hold upon the simplicities and roughnes.ses of the childhood of the nation. So possessed is he with reverence for the religious institutions of tlie now ruined temple, tliat he not only lias already in the vision-cliaiiiher of his imagination elaborated them to an ideal perfection which they never h.ad, but this ideal picture must be, he has become persuaded, the rellection of what actually existed in the primitive, the jierfect days. K.-ich new improvement is un- hesitatingly added with the same formula of Divine inspiration, the argument being : ' We see this to be best now, therefore it must have been ordered and done then.' Granted, then, that tliis stately centralized worship was the Divine purpose for the Second Temple, we may surely accept the unliistorical form of the priestly kgislation as being probably the only means by which it could have been successfully introduced. After all, the full com in the ear is present in the seed, if not in miniature, at least in jiromise and potency.
The Bk. of Ex is like a grand symphony, which was once thought to give harmony without dis- cord, but is now being found, in virtue of elciiiciits which by themselves are sharply discordant, to sound forth a yet richer harmony.
LiTKRATimi!.— .'ice Hexateuch. B. W. nncon's Tht Tripit Trruiili'm of the Kxndtm, iiml Ilia arta. in tlie Journal of liiftl. Lit. (1890-03) liavf hctin of ^rreut Hen'ico in the wrU«.T ; and Hniston's essay, Lf* r/uatrf gortrcf^ dfx Io\m d' Exnde, it* ptaimihle and suf^eutive. We still wait for a i;ood Kni;. com. on Kxodus.
G. Hahfohd-Batter.sby.
EXORCISM, EXORCIST The word f^opxl^u is a
l.Mti'i- form i)f the classical <'{opic4w. The hitter is employed in Deiuosthenes in the sense of 'admin- ister an oath to a person.' The verb ^fop/t/fu is u.sed by the high priest to Je.sus ' I adjure thee by
812
EXORCISM, KXORCIST
EXORCISM, EXORCIST
tlie living God . . .' (Mt 26'^), and corresponds to the Heb. !f^.?ri. Cf. Gn 24" LXX. The subst. exorcist is only once employed in the NT, viz. in Ac 19". The passage is instructive, since it shows that exorcism in those days was practised as a profession by strolling Jews. The method which tliey pursued we might infer from the example of Eleazar, to which Josephus specially refers in tlie passage cited from Atit. vill. ii. 5, in the article DEMON, p. 593'. The constant and essential element in all these exorcisms was the power wielded by the recitation of special names. In the instance recorded in Ac 19 the Jewish exorcists had observed the expulsions which Paul had effec- tuated through the pronunciation of tlie name of Jesus, and endeavoured, with ludicrously disastrous results, to work the same cures by saying, ' We adjure you (the evU spirit) by Jesus whom Paul preacheth.'
An example of the ancient Babylonian incanta- tions has already been given above, p. 591. Illus- trations of Jewish spells may be found in the Talmud. (Respecting these, see Brecher, Das Transcendentate, Magie u. magische Heilarten im Talmud, Vienna, 1850, pp. 195-203.) That these were ultimately derived from Babylonian magic can admit of no doubt. Some Aramaic inscriptions, published in the Zeitsch. fur Assi/ri- ologie (Dec. 1893 and April 1894) by Wohlstein, contain instructive examples of these exorcising formulae. They are inscribed on the interior surfaces of some ancient bowls that were brought from Baghdad in 1886 and placed in the Royal Museum in Berlin. The mode of expression in all of them possesses broad features of resemblance, but special details vary in each case. For the names of the angels which are recited in each bowl differ widely owing to the prevailing belief, which finds expression in the Jewish Kabbala, that the ruling angels are constantly changing, and those must be addressed who hold the reins of power at that time and place.