IN any adequate study of the narrative of the Bible there must be a considerable amount of analysis and discrimination; for the narrative of the New Testament differs from that of the Old Testament, and within the Old Testament itself there is great variety of type. Nevertheless, one can say that all the narrative of the Bible shows a combination of two sets of qualities: on the one hand it has a simplicity and a limpid and vivid clearness which make it appeal to all sorts and conditions of men; on the other hand through its whole range it has an undercurrent of earnestness and strong feeling. Thus the style clothes and transfigures even homely events with beauty and spiritual power; and the concreteness and clearness crystallize the deep feeling expressed by the strong rhythm and the varied music of the style. These two sets of characteristics, then, the simplicity and vivid clearness on the one hand,

and the earnestness and rich depth of feeling on the other, we may take as the most characteristic, attributes of these narratives.

By a discussion of these attributes in the light thrown on the various books by modern scholarship we shall be able partly to trace some of the causes from which they proceed. We shall find that from the substance and ideas of the Hebrew books of history and from the nature of their language spring the causes of the directness and the concreteness of the Old Testament narratives: and we shall see that the history of the Jews helps to explain the increasingly deeper and more spiritual insight into the meaning of their history which produced the solemnity and elevation of these works. At the same time, the way in which the various types of narrative have been put together has produced a literary effect different from anything else that we have in English literature. A final consideration which I shall put off to the chapter on the translation is the fact that in the English this narrative, though a translation, has a freshness and vigor of motion above all other narratives in the language. Here again, we shall find some explanation in the history of the period when the translation was made, and in the character and the circumstances of the men who made it.

In our ordinary speech the phrase "Biblical narrative" seems to express a definite enough fact for our present purpose; yet when one thinks over the various books of the Bible, their differences begin to stand out and give us pause. The contrast between the two opening chapters of Genesis, or between the simple, primitive stories of Judges and Samuel and the intensity and earnestness of Deuteronomy, or between the pastoral and limpid simplicity of Ruth and the repetitious and ponderous narrative of Daniel, stare one in the face, and seem to make it impossible to generalize. In the end, as I have said, we shall find that all these narratives agree in combining concrete simplicity and deep earnestness of feeling to a degree which sets them apart from anything else in English literature; in the meantime we shall gain a deeper understanding of all the Biblical narrative by briefly examining these contrasts as they appear in three important types of it in the Old Testament. The New Testament narrative I will touch on later. We shall find that these three types of Old Testament narrative spring from three different ages of the history and the religious thought of the Jews, and that the contrasting qualities of the different types are to a large extent explicable by the different circumstances under which they were produced. I will discuss first that which

is earliest in time, then for the sake of contrast that which is latest, and finally that which is intermediate.

The type of narrative that springs most readily to one's mind when one speaks of the Biblical narrative is the vivid kind of story which for the most part fills Genesis, Samuel, and Kings. For swiftness, for the unerring sense of effective detail, these stories are our standard in English. The story of the Garden of Eden, and the fall of man, and the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob show us this vivid narrative at its clearest and simplest. Even in this vivid and simple narrative, however, there is considerable variety. The stories of this type in Genesis are pastoral, almost idyllic, in contrast to the histories of the bloody Joab and his slaughter of Amasa and Absalom, or of the primitive feuds of Gideon and Jephthah in Judges, or of Elisha and Jehu and their merciless extermination of the worshippers of Baal. These later stories produce an effect of a stern reality, beside which the stories of the patriarchs have, as has been said, "the freshness of the elder world." Nevertheless all of them are separated from the other types of which I shall speak, by their vividness, by their intense interest in human life, by their being told primarily for the interest in the events and in the people. One thinks first of all of their simplicity, clearness, and vividness,

These characteristics can be made more palpable by putting an example from the earliest type beside one from the latest type. If one begins to read Genesis with one's critical sense alert, the transition from the first to the second chapter shows a surprising change of style and of atmosphere. The first chapter is a solemn epitome of the whole process of the creation which tends to fall into a series of formulas, and which has many repetitions.

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it

was so.

And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.1

What is more significant even than the formal precision of this chapter is the fact that the belief un1 Gen. i. 14-19.