7. The loss of the simplicity and accuracy which
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characterize the history of the. Old Testament is shown also in the errors and anachronisms in which these hooks abound. Thus, to take a few of the most strik- ing instances, Hainan is made a Macedonian, and the purpose of his plot is to transfer the kingdom from the Persians to the Macedonians (Esth. xvi, 10); two con- tradictory statements are given in the same book of the death of Antiochus Epiphanes (2 Mace, i, 15-17 ; ix, 5-29) ; Nabuchodonosor is made to dwell at Nineve as the king of the Assyrians (Judith i, 1).
8. In their relation to the religious and ethical de- velopment of Judaism during the period which these books embrace, we find (1.) the influences of the struggle against idolatry under Antiochus, as shown partly in the revival of the old heroic spirit, and in the record of the deeds which it called forth, as in Maccabees, partly again in the tendency of a narra- tive like Judith, and the protests against idol-worship in Baruch and Wisdom. (2.) The growing hostility of the Jews toward the Samaritans is shown by the confession of the Son of Sirach (Ecclus. 1, 25, 26). (3.) The teaching of Tobit illustrates the prominence then and afterward assigned to alms-giving among the duties of a holy life (Tob. iv, 7-11 ; xii, 9). The clas- sification of the three elements of such a life, prayer, fasting, alms, in xii, 8, illustrates the traditional eth- ical teaching of the Scribes, which was at once recog- nised and purified from the errors that had been con- nected with it in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt, vi, 1-18). (4.) The same book indicates also the growing belief in the individual guardianship of angels and the germs of a grotesque damionology. resting in part on the more mysterious phenomena of man's spiritual na- ture, like the cases of dremoniac possession in the Gos- pels, but associating itself only too easily with all the frauds and superstitions of vagabond exorcists. (5.) The great Alexandrian book of the collection, the Wisdom of Solomon, breathes, as we might expect, a strain of higher mood ; and though there is absolutely no ground for the patristic tradition that it was writ- ten bjr Philo, the conjecture that it might have been was not without a plausibility which might well com- mend itself to men like Basil and Jerome. The per- sonification of Wisdom as "the unspotted mirror of the power of God and the image of his goodness" (vii, 26), as the universal teacher of all "holy souls" in "all ages" (vii, 27), as guiding and ruling God's people, ap- proaches the teaching of Philo, and foreshadows that of the Apostle. John as to the manifestation of the unseen God through the medium of the Logos and the office of that divine Word as the light that lighteth every man. In relation again to the symbolic character of the Temple as " a resemblance of the holy tabernacle" which God "has prepared from the be^innin^" (ix, &), the language of this book connects itself at once with that of Philo and with the teaching of the au- thor of the Epistle to the Hebrews. But that which is the great characteristic of the book, as of the school from which it emanated, is the writer's apprehen- sion of God's kingdom and the blessings connect- ed with it as eternal, and so as independent of men's conceptions of time. Thus chapters i, ii, contain the strong protest of a righteous man against the mate- rialism which then, in the form of a sensual selfish- ness, as afterward in the developed system cf the Saddueees, was corrupting the old faith of Israel. Against this he asserts that the "souls of the right- eous are in the hands of God" (iii, 1) ; that the bless- ings which the popular belief connected with length cf days were not to be measured by the duration of years, seeing that " wisdom is the gray hair unto men, and an unspotted life is old age." (6.) In re- gard to another truth also this book was in advance of the popular belief of the Jews of Palestine. In the midst of its strong protests against idolatry, there is the fullest recognition of God's universal love (xi, 23-26), of the truth that His power is but the instru-
ment of His righteousness (xii, 16), of the difference between those who are the " less to be blamed" as " seeking God and desirous to find Him" (xiii, 6), and the victims of a darker and more debasing idolatry. Here also the unknown writer of the Wisdom of Sol- omon seems to prepare the way for the higher and wider teaching of the New Testament. See Logos.
III. Spurious and Pseudepigraphal Books, as distinct from Antilegomena or Ecclesiastical. — Among this class are doubtless to be considered the 3d and 4th books of Esdras ; and it is no doubt in reference to these that, in his letter to Viyilantius, Athanasius speaks of a work of Esdras which he says that he had never even read. Of the same character are also the book of Enoch, the Testament of the Twelve Patri- archs, the Assumption of Moses, etc. ; which, as well as 3 and 4 Esdras, being by many considered as the fictions of Christians of the second and third centuries, it is doubtful whether they ought to be classed in the Apocrypha of thcOld orof theNewTestament. Origen, however, believed the New Testament to have contain- ed citations from books of this kind written before the times of the apostles, as is evident from his reference to such in his preface to the Canticles. Then, in his Letter to Apianus, he observes that there were many things kept from the knowledge of the public, but which were preserved in the hidden or apocryphal books, to which he refers the passage (Heb. xi, 37), " They were sawn asunder." Origen probabl}- alludes here to that description of books which the Jews called ginuzim, CT^il, a word of the same signification with apocry- pha, and applied to books laid aside, or not permitted to be publicly read or considered, even when divinely inspired, not fit for indiscriminate circulation : among the latter were the first chapter of Genesis, the Song of Solomon, and our last eight chapters of the prophet Ezekiel. The books which we have here enumerated, such as the book of Enoch, etc., which were all known to the ancient fathers, have descended to our times ; and, although incontestably spurious, are of consider- able value from their antiquity, as throwing light upon the religious and theological opinions of the first cen- turies. The most curious are the 3d and 4th books of Esdras, and the book of Enoch, which has been but recently discovered, and has acquired peculiar interest from its containing the passage cited by the apostle Jude. See Enoch. Nor are the apocryphal books of the New Testament destitute of interest. Although the spurious Acts extant have no longer any defend- ers of their genuineness, they are not without their value to the Biblical student, and have been applied with success to illustrate the stj-le and language of the genuine books, to which they bear a close analogy. The American translator of Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History terms them " harmless and ingenious fictions, intended either to gratify the fancy or to silence the enemies of Christianity."