The Blank between the Testaments.
By John F. Hurst
Of all the historical periods, the four centuries intervening between the close of the Old Testament inspiration and the birth of Christ seem to be the most obscure, and to have the least significance. Why this hiatus? The question has to do with that larger mystery, the irregularity in time, in attainments of the writers, and in social status, that prevails through all the Scriptural authorship. There appears to be no law as to the order or place of the coming of these writers. In one period, several of them are contemporaries, and the age is all astir with their presence and revolutionary speech. In another, hardly a syllable of divine authority is heard. Moses, the historian of the creation, and the genesis and escape of the church, was not born until B. C. 1738; so that while the entire Old Testament was written within the space of somewhat over thirteen centuries, even this period was irregularly divided in sacred authorship. The short time of less than three-quarters of a century, covers the whole writing of the New Testament, and this, again, is unequally distributed. But we nowhere find such a period of complete silence, such a total pause in the divine teaching, as that between the Old Testament and the New. Even when the evangelists begin to write, they vary totally from their predecessors, who had taken up the finest thread in order, so that from Moses, and indeed from Adam, to Malachi, we have a consecutive history. But this blank in sacred history is not filled by any or all the evangelists. If we would know what took place, we must learn it from the doubtful Apocrypha, or glean it from the Roman memoranda. The inspired biographers of Christ, pass it over as not relevant to their purpose. Matthew, in his genealogy of Christ, gives only four verses to the four centuries, while Luke, reversing Matthew's order, comprises it in six. In both cases it is simply the family history, as if nothing were of moment besides proving the royal line of Jesus. Those centuries of great sorrow, of national aspiration, of unsurpassed heroism, and of final subjection and despair, are passed by without any inspired characterization. It is not difficult to trace this interjacent history. It lies so near the later period, that we hear its hollow echoes as we listen to the song of the angels above the hill-side at Bethlehem. During this time Palestine had emerged from its provincial seclusion, and come within the whirl of the struggles of the great nations, and Greek historiography was already assuming systematic force. Since then, too, even in our own days, much new light has been thrown on those apparently wasted centuries. The researches of George Smith in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates touch but slightly on the time in question; but his information is of such a character that we have new views of the exile, and we know that the later centuries bore traces enough of that exile. The Jew and his country come out from the eddies along the shore, and enter the current of the world's life. Sir George Rawlinson, when he describes the sixth great oriental monarchy (Parthia), goes over this very ground; and in his Seventh Monarchy, which is a description of the Sassanian or New Persian Empire, he gives invaluable information concerning the period. The four centuries present a great variety of historical forces. We see all the passion, the bloodshed, the caprice, and the power of gifted women, in shaping events, that we do on the broader arena of the world's conflicts. The historians have divided the whole time in various ways. As good as any is that according to the rulers of the country, namely, The further Persian domination, to B. C. 331; the Greek supremacy, B. C. 331-167; the Maccabæan independence, B. C. 167-63; and the Roman rule, represented by the Herodian house, B. C. 40 to A. D. 70. The Persians ruled, by virtue of their military power, as far west as the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, and the Greeks succeeded them as a direct result of the conquests of Alexander. The East, under Xerxes, had striven for European mastery, but was defeated within sight of Athens, at the battle of Salamis: "A king sat on the rocky brow
Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;
And ships by thousands, lay below,
And men and nations—all were his!
He counted them at break of day—
And when the sun set, where were they?"
The European reaction took shape in the Asiatic conquests of Alexander. The Greek domination was overthrown by the assertion of the national feeling, when the Maccabæan family strove for the restoration of the old Davidic glory and the rehabilitation of the Hebrew faith. This national revival ended, not by a restoration of Greek rule, but by the power of Rome, which controlled the country by the corrupt and cruel native family of Herodians. The Herods were always willing to please the Cæsars, and, in turn, were supported by Roman soldiers. If we inquire into the causes of the cessation and withdrawal of inspiration during this period, it will be easy to see that prominent among them is that the necessity no longer existed. There had already been a sufficient divine communication. The history of the development of the church from one family, and the one man Abraham, and the migration from Egypt, and the growth into a kingdom, and the exile, and the return, had been given. A rich psalmody, by which the servants of Jehovah might express the joy and sorrow of the soul, had been produced. The prophets had spoken, and had so minutely described the coming of Christ, and his history and office, that even the manner of his sufferings was communicated by them to the people. All the light needed for instruction and reproof, and for the awakening of hope, had been furnished. Had a new race of prophets arisen, their revelations could not have altered either the reception given to our Lord, or in any vital sense have been an improvement upon the bold utterances of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and the lesser seers. Further, it was during this time that the Jew had his first successful opportunity to learn that his prosperity did not depend on temporal glory. The brief national revival, under the Maccabæan family, is a striking proof of the final failure of patriotism without the element of religion. We must sympathize with the aspirations of the aged Jewish priest, Mattathias, who escaped with his five sons, John, Simon, Judas, Eleazar, and Jonathan, from the persecution in Jerusalem, and dwelt in Modin. He longed for deliverance from the heel of the foreigner. His ancestor, Chasmon, had given the Asmonæan name to the family, and it was now the hope of Mattathias that one of his sons, at least, might restore the kingdom. Judas was the leader. He was as brave as David had been. He passed into history as Maccabæus, or The Hammerer, just as, later, Charles was called Martel, because he gave the death-blow to his foes at Tours. The reign of the Maccabæans was brilliant. It became a terror to the surrounding nations. But it was political, and its inspiring motives were purely secular. There was no great moral background to it from beginning to end. In fact, there was a secularization of even the religious worship of the people. With the rulers of that family, the revival of Judaism was the political overthrow of the Greeks. In due time the Romans came, and not only captured the country, but supported on the throne the Herods, a family which combined all the corrupt qualities of both the Jewish and Roman races. One can read in those centuries of intermitted inspiration, the divine purpose to preserve a remnant of the sacred people, as the starting-point of a new dispensation, in spite of the persistent attempts, on the part of both the Oriental conquerors and the Greeks, to blot out the worship of Jehovah. One would naturally expect that, if the Persians did not complete the overthrow of the worship of Jehovah in Palestine, the Greeks would certainly succeed. Their culture and military glory would be likely to captivate, and make a long-despondent people look in other directions for the beginnings of a more hopeful career. But this rule, with its one hundred and sixty-four years of persistent effort to eradicate the worship of God, and substitute the mythology of Greece, proved a failure. The Jewish people were more positive monotheists afterward than before. With all their infirmities, with their misreading of the prophetic scriptures, and with their realistic interpretation of Messianic predictions, they were still lovers of the temple service, and lived in hope of a better time for the old faith of the fathers. There is just this philosophy, then, underlying the Greek rule, the Jew was a Jew still. He had faith, often mistaken and misguided, in Jehovah. No enchanting myth from beautiful Greece had any charm for him. He wanted the Greek, with all his splendid history and idealism, away. He was ready to die, but not to become a cultivated pagan. When we remember that it was during this period that the world's soil was prepared for the propagation of the gospel, the significance of the interval assumes greater force. The Greek language became the vehicle for thought in all the centers, as a direct result of Alexander's conquests. Alexandria was built up into a strong Hellenistic center, whence went out in later years the Septuagint version of the Old Testament. Jewish colonies, the point of pagan persecution, swarmed around the Mediterranean, and became the nuclei of the Pauline societies, and the beginning of universal Christianity. The Jewish nationality passed away forever, and paganism had proved its incapacity to take its place. It was a universal breaking up of the old soil, and its full preparation for the broadest sowing known to men, whose ripest harvest we have not yet seen.—Bishop John F. Hurst, D. D., LL.D.