tions to " the Chronist," as he designates the unknown interpolator after Ezra.
It is a sutlicient refutation of all such attempts to note their extremely subjective character, depending chiefly upon the caprice or conjecture of the critic him- self; for the peculiarities cited, when closely exam- ined, are found to be too general and accidental to be relied upon as proofs of authorship, especialh' in view of the foregoing remarks respecting the scheme of the book. jMoreover, if, as all admit, Ezra did incorporate older documents into his history (so even ]\Ioses does in the Pentateuch), yet, as he moulded them into a ho- mogeneous narrative, this does not militate against his claim to be regarded as the proper autlioi-, and not simply editor of the book that bears his name. (See the Einleitungen of Hiivernick and Keil.)
V. Personality of the Writer. — In the first six chap- ters the use of the third person predominates in the narrative, except in passages where, by synecdoche, oc- curs XDTSN, Heb. 12T2X, ave suid, or where the nar- rative contains abstracts from documents to which Ezra had access. In these abstracts the Aramaic or Chaldee language of the original documents has been preserved from ch. iv, 8 to vi, 18, and vii, 12-2G. These portions exist in Kennicott's Cod. p. 240, in a collateral Hebrew translation, reprinted in Kennicott's edition of the Hebrew Bible, and separately in Chaldaicorum Daniells et Esrce cajntum intcrpretatio Ilebraica (Lu- dovicus Schulze, Halaa, 1782, 8vo). An argument has been raised against the opinion tliat Ezra was the au- thor of the whole book that bears his name from the use of the first person plural in the 4th verse of the 5th chapter, whicli would seem to imply that the nar- rator was present on the occasion described ; but, set- ting aside other replies to this argument, it appears that the word tee refers to Tatnai and his companions, and not at all to the Jews. Ezra speaks from ch. vii, 27, to ch. ix, 15, in the first person. " There is an es- sential difference between public events which a man recollects, though only as in a dream, to have heard of at the time when they occurred, and those wliich pre- ceded his birth. The former we think of with refer- ence to ourselves ; the latter are foreign to us. The epoch and duration of the former we measure bj' our own life ; the latter belong to a period for whicli our imagination has no scale. Life and definitcncss are imparted to all that Ave hear or read with respect to the events of our own life" (Niebuhr, On the Distinction between Annals and History'). These remarks, whicli Niebuhr made in reference to Tacitus, are in a great msasure applicable also to Ezra. Instances of simi- lar change of person are so frequent in ancient au- thors that rhetoricians have introduced it among the rhetorical figures under the name of enalhiye persona- rum. The prophetical writings of the Old Testament furnish examples of such ti'ciWayi]. For instance, Ezek. i, 1-3 ; Zech. i, 1 ; vi, 1 ; vii, 1, 4, 8 ; Jer. xx, 1 sq., conip. with v, 7 sq. ; xxi, 1 ; xxviii, 1-5 ; xxxii, 1-8; Hos. i,2-3; iii, 1. So also in Habakkuk, Dan- iel, etc. The frequency of this tpaWayi), especially in the prophetical parts of the Old Testament, arises from either the more objective or more subjective ten- dency of the style, which of course varies in harmony with the contents of the chapter. (See Eromman, Disi]. qua Orientis regibus plurium numero de se loqui non inusitatum fuisse, i^robahiliter ostenditur, Cob. 1762.) We express our opinion that even Hiivernick does not rightly set forth the truth of the matter when, in his Einh itvnr;, he saj-s that this tvciWayi) arose from Ez- ra's imitation of the prophetic usage, and when he ap- provingly (juotcs Schirnier's Observatiow>s cxf'tjetic(e et criticd' in librnm Esdne, ii, 8 (Vratisl. 1830). There was certainly as little imitation of the prophets in the enal- liif/i' personnrum of Ezra as tliere is imitation of the propliets if we change from the first to the third person in our own communications. 'EvaWayij never arises
EZRA
439
EZRAHITE
from imitation, but only from the more subjective or more objective turn of our mind, and from that vivaci- ty of style which renders it incumbent upon the reader rather than upon the writer to supplj' that "iwN'T, •which, as in Jonah ii, 3, forms the transition from the use of the third to the adoption ot t\\Q first person.
VI. Date. — The reckless assertions of some writers that this composition as a whole must be referred to a period about a century later than Ezra, or more, need not be noticed, because they have not even a pretence of argument in their favor. One writer, Zunz {Die gottesdienstl. V^ortrage der Juden, 1832), has indeed al- leged tliat there is some exaggeration about the sa- cred vessels said to have been restored by Cj'rus; but his fellow-unbelievers have refused to agree with him, and have defended the historical credibility of the book throughout. Another critic, Bertheau, sees an evidence of the composition of ch. vi, 22 under the Greek successors of Alexander, because the king of Persia is called the king oi Assyria ; an argument •which might have been left to its own weakness, even though we had been unable to give the parallels 2 Kings xxiii, 29 ; Lam. v, G, as Keil has done.