Histories, a name applied to anthems composed either out of Scripture or from lives of the saints. — Wal- cott, tSacred A rchxeol. p. 312.
History, in its modern sense, is hardly a term that expresses the conception of the sacred writers, who nev- ertheless have given us invaluable materials for its con- struction. The earliest records of the O. T. are rather family pedigrees (nilVn, generations'), and the Gospels and Acts are properly memoirs and personal memoranda. See Chronology.
1. It is evident, however, that the Hebrew people were a cotnmemorative race ; in other words, they were given to creating and preserving memorials of important evmts. Even in the patriarchal times we find monuments set up in order to commemorate events. Jacob (Gen. xx viii, 18) "set up a pillar" to perpetuate the memorj' of the divine promise ; and that these monuments had a relig- ious import and sanction appears from the statement that "he poiu'ed oil upon the top of the pillar" (see Gen. xxxi,45; Josh.iv,9; lSam.vii,12; Judg.ix,6). Long- lived trees, such as oaks and terebinths, were made use of as remembrancers (Gen. xxxv, 4 ; Josh, xxiv, 26). Com- memorative names, also, were given to persons, places, and things ; and from the earliest periods it was usual to substitute a ne\v and descriptive name for an old one, which may in its origin have been descriptive too (Exod. ii, 10; Gen. ii, 23; iv, 1). Genealogical tables apjtear, moreover, to have had a very early existence among the people of whom the Bible speaks, being careiiilly preserved first memoriter, afterwards by writing, among family treasures, and thus transmitted from age to age. These, indeed, as might be expected, appear to have been the first beginnings of liistory— a fact which is illustra- ted and confirmed by tlie way in which what we should term a narrative or historical sketch is spoken of in the Bible, that is, as "the book of the generation" ("of Adam," Gen. v, 1) : a mode of speaking which is applied even to the account of the creation (Gen. ii, 4), "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth wlien they were created." The genealogical tables in the Bi- ble (speaking generall}-) are not only of a very early date, but are free from the mixtures of a tlieogonical and cosmogonical kind which are found in the earh' lit- erature of other primitive nations, wearing the appear- ance of being, as far at least as they go, true and com- plete Usts of individual and family descent (Gen. v, 1\ But perhaps the most remarkable fact connected with this subject is the employment of poetrj' at a verj' early period to perpetuate a knowledge of historical events. Even in Gen. iv, 23, in the case of Lamech, we find po*
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etry thus employed, that is, by the great-grandson of the primitive father. Other instances may be found in Exod. XV ; Judg. v; Josh, x, 13; 2 Sam. i, 18.
2. The sources of Biblical history are chiefly the Bib- lical books themselves. Any attempt to fix the precise value of these sources in a critical point of view would require a volume instead of an article. Whatever hy- pothesis, however, may eventuall}- be held touching the exact time when these books, or any of them, were put into their actual shape, as also touching the materials out of whicii they were formed, one thing appears very certain, that (to take an instance) Genesis, the earliest book (probably), contains most indubitable, as Avell as most interesting historical facts ; for though the age, the mode of life, and the state of culture differ so widely from our own, we cannot do otherwise thnn feel that it is among men and women, parents and children — beings of like passions with ourselves — and not with mere crea- tions of fancy or fraud, that we converse when we pe- ruse the narratives which this composition has so long preserved. The conviction is much strengthened in the minds of those who, by personal acquaintance with the early profane writers, are -able to compare their produc- tions with those of the Hebrews, which were long ante- rior, and must, had they been of an equally earthly ori- gin, have been at least equallj^ deformed bj' fable. The simple comparison of the account given in Genesis of the creation of the world with the Cosmogonies of heathen writers, whether Hindu, Greek, or Latin, is enough to assure the impartial reader that a purer, if not a higher influeueo, presided over the composition of Genesis than that whence proceeded the legends or the philosophies of heatlienism ; nor is the conclusion in the slightest de- gree weakened on a closer scrutiny by any discrepancy which modern science may seem to show between its own discoveries and the statements in Genesis. The Biblical history, as found in its Biblical sources, has a decided peculiarity and a great recommendation in the fact that we can trace in the Bible more clearly and fully than in connection with any other history, the first crude elements and the early materials out of which all history must be constructed.
How far the literature supplied in the Bible may be only a relic of a literary cyclus called into being by the felicitous circumstances and favorable constitution of the great Shemitic family, but which has perished in the lapse of ages, it is now impossible to determine ; but had the other portions of this imagined literature been of equal religious value with what the Bible offers, there is little risli in affirming that mankind would scarcely have allowed it to be lost. The Bible, however, bears traces that its were not the only boolvs current in the time and country to which it relates; for writing, writ- ers, and books are mentioned without the emphasis and distinction which always accompany new discoveries or peculiar local possessions, and as ordinary, well-known, and matter-of-course things. It is certain tliat we do not possess all the works which were Jvuown in the early periods of Israelitish history, since in Numb, xxi, 14 we read of- the book of the wars of the Lord," and in Josh. X, 13, of •• the book of Jasher."