Robertson Smith's "Prophets of Israel"

Abstract

Considerable attention has been given to the study of the Prophets of Israel since the masterly work of Ewald on that subject, especially by Duhm, Kiiper and Reuss in Germany, Kuenen in Holland and Bruston in France. Misled by Rabbinical scholars of the 17th century, Christian scholars have given their chief attention to the legal element in the Old Testament, to Moses as a law-giver and the Levitical institutions ; and have regarded the Prophets as mere interpreters of the Law, and have neglected themr save so far as they could extract from them references to the Messiah and his work, or practical and pious reflections and maxinls. It is now becoming more and more evident that the most important element in the Old Testament is the Prophetic, even in Moses himself; and accordingly Biblical students are more and more giving themselves to this department of study. Robertson Smith has succeeded during the past winter in enlisting the interest of large audiences in Glasgow and Edinburgh, in a course of 8 lectures upon the Prophets to the close of the 8th century B. C., including Amos, Hosea, Micah and Isaiah. These lectures are now given to the public in an attractive volume of 444 pages, octavo, enriched with valuable critical notes and an index. Robertson Smith exhibits in this volume the same characteristic features of excellence and of fault that are found in his previous volume on the Old Testament in the Jewish Church, and which, indeed, belong to the character of the man as a scholar of deep spiritual earnestness, evangelical fervor and supreme love of the truth, yet with a hasty inpetuous nature that not unfrequently jlumps at coinclusions and involves him in inextricable tangles which a sober second thought and a more cautious judgment might have avoided. In order that we may do him justice in the review of his imlportant and stirring book we will first present the features of excellence and tlen those that are blameworthy. The lectures are excellent in tliat: (1) They set the Prophets in tile friame of the history in a nmost charming style with vivid delineation in their personal peculiarities, their relations to one another and tlhe varied circumstances of their times. They show tllat thle author has thoroughly studied the Prophets from within as well as from withoutt, and with intense sympathy of soul with them in their conceptions and their work. No one