of the 13ible, even the oldest of them, is comparatively modern. It is the sur- vival of a much older Hebrew. The manifold verbal abbreviations are evidence (see Raabe's 'Zuriickfiihrung des Hebriiischen Textes des Buches Ruth auf die ursprlinglichen W ortformen '). And nothing is more evident than that the expressions in eh. ii. 8, 9, 21 ; iii. 3, 4, called Chaldaisms, and not improperly so called, are in reality Hebrew archaisms. We see then no reason whatever for postponing the date of the Book of Ruth to exilic or post-exilic times. All the weightiest evidence seems to be in. the scale that assigns the composition of the Book to the literary age of King David. And yet, even with these strong convictions, we would bear in mind that the real interest of the story is independent of any chronological theory. The Book is a literary gem in ancient Hebrew literature; and it speaks, by what Ewald call~ "the pre-eminent beauty of its pictures and descriptions," not to the hearts of Hebrews only, but to universal man.
§ 5. THE AUTHOR. The authorship is utterly unknown, and guesses need not be multiplied. Many attribute it to Samuel. Abarbanel ascribes it to the writer of Joshua. Others have imagined that Hezekiah, and others still that Ezra, is the author. Heumann thinks that King David himself was the penman. He conceives that any other writer would, in the genealogical table at the close, have given its royal honour to his name. It is too slender and too precarious a basis on which to establish his guess. It is in vain. to guess, although we deem it probable that the incidents of the story would be preserved with interest in the family of David, and often narrated within the precincts of his home.
§ 6. THE BooK's Pu.cE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON. Editors of the Old Testament Canon have freely availed themselves of their right to hold their own opinions, and to act upon them. The Hebrew editors have relegated the little Book of Ruth to the ' Hagiographa,' the group of ' Sacred Miscellanies,' which comprehends, among other works, the Psalms, the Proverbs, Job, the Song of Songs, Lamentations, and Ecclesiastes. In the Hebrew Bibles in current use Ruth stands between the Song of Songs and Lamentations, as if with sorrow on the left hand, and joy on the right. In other editions it stands at the head of the entire group. In the Septuagint, on the <ither hand, followed by the Vulgate, the Book is found at the close of the Book of Judges, as if it were a little biographical additament to that larger his- torical work. Origen expressly says that the Hebrews-he must mean the Hellenistic Hebrews-count Judges and Ruth as forming one book.• Luther followed in the wake of the V ulgate, and so did Bishop Miles Coverdale and the • See Eusebius's 'Eccleoiastical History,' \"i. 25, ::tiv INTRODUCTION TO
authors of King James's English version. Hence the Book's position in our English Bibles. '\Ve may doubtless assume that Josephus attached the Book to Judges as one parcel, as did Origen's Jews, for we could not otherwise make out his enumeration when, in his 'Cont. Apion.,' i. 8, he says that the Hebrew sacred writings consisted of twenty-two books.
§ 7. STYLE OF COMPOSITION. There is no artistic elaboration in the style. There is not a vestige of aim at fine writing. No whip is laid on the imagination to impart gleam or lustre to what is said. Yet there are in the Book graces of diction that are the native and apparently unconscious outcome of ardent and devoted attachment on the one hand, and of kindly feeling and admiration on the other. The composition is simple, clear, transparent, and with quite a noticeable amount of that additive or aggregative and agglutinative method of joining thing to thing, that is a feature of Hebrew composition in general There are eighty-five verses in the Book, a.nd yet there are only eight of them that do not commence with the conjunction and. Throughout the little Book this earliest of conjunctions occurs about 250 times in all.
§ 8. LITERATURE. Passing over those expositions of the Book of Ruth which form part and parcel of serial commentaries on the whole, or on certain great sections, of the Bible, it will suffice, for our purpose, to take note almost exclusively of such exegetical, homiletical, and critical works as are monographs, constituting a specialist literature on Ruth. The annotations of Victorinus Strigel, 1571, and :Feuardentius, 1582, are only of antiquarian interest. So, too, are the homilies of Rudolph Gualter, John Wolph, and Ludowick Lavater, who all flourished in the second half of the sixteenth century. All three were famous in their day for Latin sermons, and were, to a remarkable degree, prolific in that kind of literature. Lavater's book on Ruth, for example, contained "homilias xxv1rr.," and it had, as companion volumes, one on Joshua containing LXXIII. homilies, one on Judges containing CVII., one on Ezra containing xxxvm., one on Nehemiah containing LVIII., one on Esther containing XLVII., and one on Job--enough to try a little his readers' "patience "-containing CXLI. He was fortunate in finding, for his sermons on Ruth, an English translator of the name of E. Pagett, who published his version in the year 1586. To these homilies may be added Alexander Manerba's volume, published in Venice, and entitled, ' Peregrinatio Ruth Moabitidis per Commentarium et Sermones descripta,' 1604; as also Didacus de Celada's 'Commentarii litterales et morales in Rutbam,' with o. twofold appendix, 'de Boozi convivio mystico, THE BOOK OF :RUTH. IV