The prevalence of these military symbols and images was so widespread in the period under survey that it is gratuitous to refer tlieir poi)uIarity and spread to any single origin. Tlie allusions in the Stoic philosophers were probably derived in tlie main from the contemporary vocabulary of the cults. But the use of such militant expressions is
spontaneous, especially in a military age and empire. As for primitive Christianity, during tlie apostolic period at any rate, the Jewish devotional literature might be thought more likely to have suggested many of tlie details into which, as we have seen, the Christians worked tlieir parallel of religion and military service. With the OT and the later JeM'ish literature at hand, we might imagine that the early church would scarcely require to go far afield for suggestions of this kind. But their Jewish environment and their use of the OT are not upon the whole sutKcient to account for the majority of the military turns of expression which are to be found in the earliest strata of their devotional literature from the end of the 1st cent, onwards. Occasionally an OT passage is employed in this connexion, as we have already noted. The homiletic use of the historical books also enriched the spiritual vocabulary with martial terms. Bunyan owed more to this source than to his brief service in the army, when he wrote his military allegories, and Ave might expect it to have been so with most of the primitive Christians. Yet a glance at the devotional sections of the OT — e.g. at the Psalter — reveals the comparatively limited use of military meta- phors. It is always difficult to determine whether an allusion to war is literal or nietapliorical, for some of the psalms were battle-songs,* but, even when we set aside those which are probably literal, and which reflect the ordinary horrors of war, its havoc, its atrocities, the provocation of reprisals (125^), the passions of revenge and moral indigna- tion, the perplexities of * captive good and captain ill,' and so forth, the remainder of the psalms' allusions fall generally under the heading of God's aid for men — God as a shield or fortress, God shooting His arrows against the foes of the good man, God starting up out of sleep to champion the defenceless, God's mighty army of stars, angels, and the elements, God the conqueror riding home into the city after a victory, and so on. Such is the scope of the Psalter's war-metaphors. The armour is almost altogether God's, not man's.
This is not unnatural, for the psalms are mainly the cry of an oppressed little community, struggling against outside pagan foes and godless enemies of religion within their own nation. They are on the defensive. Faith ia besieged (Ps 31"i), of harried. Now and then, as in a psalm like the ISth or the 44th, a more vigorous note is struck ; the plaintive appeal for divine succour is exchanged for a resolute confidence that the army of the pious cannot triumph except by God's help. But thisis probably a literal expectation, in some period of revolt, a return to the traditional ideal of Dt 3329 ; ' Happy art thou, O Israel I
Who is hke thee?—
A people victorious by Yahweh,
Who is thy shield to help, thy sword to maintain thy power.
So shall thy enemies come cringing to thee,
And thou shalt march over their heights.'
Books like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes show a
certain fondness for military phraseology and illustration — e.g. Ec 3^ S^ (' there is no discharge t in war') 9^^ gu-is (siege) and Pr 18^^ (an instance of the difficulty of love ' winning its way with extreme gentleness [ Through all the outworks of suspicious pride'), 20^^ and 24^"^ {statesmansliip and war) Sl^i (the horse) 24^^ 25'^ (cf. La 3'-) 305- 27 — \)xix, this is not characteristic of them or even of the pacitic Philo. He is not always pacific indeed. He extols the bloody punishment inflicted by the Levites on Israel (Ex S^-"'-) as an ' immaculate slaughter, which ought to be regarded as the most brilliant and important of all gallant deeds' [cle Spec. Leg. iii. 22); it was a holy war, •voluntarily undertaken for God's honour' {Vita
* The same difficulty emerges in connexion with the 2nd cent. Christian hymn-book called The Otii'S of Solmtinn, several of which are drenched in a martial messianism. See p. 657.
t I.e. no furlough. Man cannot control the wind, or stave off death, or get leave of absence during a campaign.
3fos. iii. 20). And in de Plant, i. .'iSf., his exposi- tion of Dt 20' is a realistic, syn)iiallietic sketcli of militiiiv methods. But tlie Jewish philosopher also indulges in martial images (see ahove, p. Go-1). Thus, in order to illustrate tlie trutli that tompul- sion to help other people is not necessarily a mark of slavery, he appeals to the husine.vs of an army {Qiiuil omiiis pruhiis, U), in which the soldiers have to wear heavy armour and carry loails, besides cutting tienches and so forth, all for the sake of the common good ; they are under strict orders, but that does not make them slaves. Other war- like ligures recur in his comments on Gn 42" and Jer lo'" (dc Cuii/iis. Lhifj. 11 f.) and in de Giga/iti- bag (11). Still, this line of illustration is not I'hilo's forte. Now and then quite original touches occur in the OT literature — c.ff. in the magnilicent picture of the war-horse (.lob 311'""^ ; cf. Jer S''), or in the comparison (cf. Job 10") of overwhelming troubles to 'a king ready for battle' (l.">-^), or in the account of Job's pop\ilarity and honour, when he occupied a position of dignity among his fellows, 'and dwelt as a king in the army, as one that comforteth mourners' (2i)'^).* Similar allusions are present in Sirach (e.^. s]iies, Ijsu J4J2. tiie blare of trumpets, 26"; the beacon or fire-signal, 43'') ;t they are not infrequent in the prophets, wdio lived in periods of war and occasion- ally were .stirred by the militant esdiatology even to depict Jahweh as a redoubtable warrior, blood- stained (Is 03"') and exultant, sometimes whirling a monarch like Cyrus (? Jer 51^'-) as his battle-axe against the nation.s. Now and then the gnomic wisdom was couched in military figures {c.<f. 1 K 20", Ps 127'') like the erotic passion (Ca 6^- ''). The 'bow,'c.p'., denoted the manly vigour which could protect itself and champion the interests of the oppressed (Job 2!)-°). Nevertheless, a survey of the militarj- metaphors and illustrations in the Jewish literature before the Christian era or con- temporary with the primitive Church shows that this source does not account for the range and detail in which the Christians of the first three centuries worked, when they drew u|ion war to body forth their religious convictions. Their environment in the Koman world, where the legions were constantly in evidence, the spontane- ous instinct whie^li prornjits ardent religious feeling to clothe itself in such terms, and possibly — in the later stages probably — the lead given by the mystery-religions need also to be taken into account in tins connexion.