A. QUERY by Editor

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 26, 1860

A. QUERY.

By Editor

How is it that St. Matthew says in a certain place, It was prophesied by the prophet Jeremiah, and no such prophesy is found in Jeremiah, but in Zechariah?

To this we reply that the divisions which now obtain in both the Old Testament and the New, are of modern origin. Cardinal Cairo, in the twelfth century, divided the scriptures of the New Testament into chapters; and Robert Stephens, in the sixteenth century, divided them into verses. These distributions were made to facilitate references to these writings, but in thousands of instances they have obscured the sense of them.

The Jews divided all the writings of the law, the Prophets and the Psalms into fifty-four sections, for the purpose of reading them once in a year in their synagogues. Four of these sections were shorter than the others; and whether designed for two of their greatest solemnities, to be read together two on each occasion, we cannot say; but so it was that the whole volume was read once every year in their public meetings. But in quoting these writings, they sometimes quoted them under the general running title of these sections, or more loosely, under three heads—the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms. At other times they were quoted with the most minute reference, as, for instance, "It is so written in the second Psalm." Sometimes the whole writings are called the Law. The Saviour once quotes the Psalms thus: "It is written in the Law, They hated me without a cause; yet this is found in the book of Psalms. The running title to the sections of the prophetic writings is said by some to have been Jeremiah; others have said that the Jews called Jeremiah the weeping prophet, and used his name as an appellative to denote all those predictions which had respect to the suffering of the Messiah. But one thing is obvious, that there was among all persons in that age a loose or general reference, as well as a strict and accurate reference to sayings in the prophets. If then, Matthew did actually use the name of Jeremiah instead of the name of Zechariah, it may have proceeded from some of those causes assigned. But whether or not, it effects no more the credibility of the testimony of Matthew concerning Jesus Christ, than the fact of Paul's forgetting how many he had baptized in Corinth, proves that he was not inspired with an infallible knowledge of the gospel.

Such objections as these exhibit a very strange state of mind, and show that the objector is entirely ignorant of the real grounds on which we assent to the divine authority of these records.—Campbell's debate with Owen, p. 357.