it into a new system. Such tradition serves but to show the inability of genuine Judaism to assimilate philosophic thought. Rationalising should not be styled the operation of tradition.

The truth of these remarks is evident from a comparison of two books, exemplifying Alexandrian and Palestinian Judaism respectively. The Wisdom of Solomon shows the enlarging effect of Greek philosophy. Overpassing Jewish particularism, it often approaches Christianity in doctrine and spirit, so that some have even assumed a Christian origin for it. The Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach has not the doctrine of immortality. Death is an eternal sleep, and retribution takes place in this life. The Jewish theocracy is the centre of history; Israel the elect people; and all wisdom is embodied in the law. The writer is shut up within the old national ideas, and leans upon the writings in which they are expressed. Thus the Hagiographical canon of Judea, conservative as it is,

and purer in a sense, presents a narrower type than the best specimens of the Alexandrian one. The genial breath of Aryan culture had not expanded its Semitism.

The identity of the Palestinian and Alexandrian canons must be abandoned. It is said, indeed, that Philo neither mentions nor quotes the Greek additions; but neither does he quote several canonical books. According to Eichhorn, no fewer than eight of the latter are unnoticed by him.1 Besides, he had peculiar views of inspiration, and quoted loosely from memory. Believing as he did in the inspiration of the Greek version as a whole, it is difficult to think that he made a distinction between the different parts of it. The argument for the identity of the two canons deduced from 4 Esdras xiv. 44, &c., as if the twenty-four open books were distinguished from the other writings dictated to Ezra, is of no force, both because the reading is

1 Einleitung in das alte Testament, vol. i. p. 133.

uncertain; and even if seventy be distinguished from twenty-four in the passage, verisimilitude required that an Egyptian Jew himself must make Ezra conform to the old Palestinian canon. It is also alleged that the grandson of Jesus Sirach, who translated his grandfather's work during his abode in Egypt, knew no difference between the Hebrew and Greek canon, though he speaks of the Greek version; but he speaks as a Palestinian, without having occasion to allude to the difference between the canonical books of the Palestinian and Egyptian Jews. The latter may have reckoned the apocryphal writings in the third division; and therefore the translator of Jesus Sirach could recognise them in the ordinary classification. The mention of three classes is not opposed to their presence in the third. The general use of an enlarged canon in Egypt cannot be denied, though it was somewhat loose, not regarded as a completed collection, and without

express rabbinical sanction. The very way in which apocryphal are inserted among canonical books in the Alexandrian canon, shows the equal rank assigned to both. Esdras first and second succeed the Chronicles; Tobit and Judith are between Nehemiah and Esther; the Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach follow Canticles; Baruch succeeds Jeremiah; Daniel is followed by Susanna and other productions of the same class; and the whole closes with the three books of Maccabees. Such is the order in the Vatican MS.

The threefold division of the canon, indicating three stages in its formation, has continued. Josephus, indeed, gives another, based on the nature of the separate books, not on MSS. We learn nothing from him of its history, which is somewhat remarkable, considering that he did not live two centuries after the last work had been added. The account of the canon's final arrangement was unknown to him.

CHAPTER IV.

NUMBER AND ORDER OF THE SEPARATE

BOOKS.

THE number of the books was variously estimated. Josephus gives twenty-two, which was the usual number among Christian writers in the second, third, and fourth centuries, having been derived from the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Origen, Jerome, and others have it. It continued longest among the teachers of the Greek Church, and is even in Nicephorus's stichometry. The enumeration in question has Ruth with Judges, and Lamentations with Jeremiah. In Epiphanius2 the number twentyseven is found, made by taking the alphabet

1 See Credner's Zur Geschichte des Kanons, p. 124.

2 De mens. et pond., chapters 22, 23, vol. ii. p. 180, ed. Petav.