were held in suspense. A period of reaction followed the reign of Edward VI (1547-1553), and under Mary (15531558) bitter persecution broke out afresh. Rogers and Cranmer were sent to the stake, and many English protestants were driven into exile. These found a refuge in Geneva, and the scholars among them brought out in 1560 a complete translation, which represented a thorough revision of the whole Bible, done with the distinct purpose of giving the exact verbal meaning. This Genevan Bible, as it is called, at once became the popular Bible, and this in spite of the fact that with the new Queen, Elizabeth, the Great Bible continued to be the authorized Bible of the English Church. It was followed in 1568 by the Bishops' Bible, a revision prepared under the direction of Bishop Parker to offset the popularity of the Genevan revision. The effort was not successful, however, for the latter remained the Bible of the people till the King James translation of 1611.

In the effort to stem the rising tide of protestantism in England the Catholic Church authorized the translation into English of the New Testament known as the Rhemish revision (1582) and of the Douay revision of the Old Testament (1609). These were both based upon the Vulgate, and as translations were aggressively doctrinal in character. Their influence, particularly that of the first, was really to hasten the forces moving toward the Authorized revision. It helped, for one thing, to bring up for consideration the merits and defects of the Bishops' Bible. With this the growing Puritan party in the Church of England were greatly dissatisfied. James I, in the hope of compromise, desired a version that would be acceptable to all parties. The work was begun in 1607 in a broad and liberal spirit. All previous editions and all available helps were used, and in 1611 that richest literary inheritance of our English speech, the Authorized Version, was given to the world.

The Old Testament, popularly thought of as the first part of one book, the Bible, is a collection of many books, and taken together they represent a national literature. The traditions, history, experiences, thoughts, and ideals of a race, running through a long period of time, are reflected, recorded, and interpreted in them. The first impression, therefore, which these books make is that they are largely historical and their form chiefly narrative in character. They record the origin of the world from the Hebrew standpoint, the creation of the first man and woman, the entrance of evil into the world; the dim backgrounds of the beginnings of race life, in which the shepherd family is the unit; the emergence, out of this primitive life, of one family, that of Abraham, specially chosen to be favored of God as the forbears of the elect nation; the rapid increase of this family in numbers and wealth under patriarchal chiefs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, until, through the leadership of Joseph, they are settled in Egypt; their multiplying here, under favoring conditions, -until the family becomes the tribe, with the result that, when through oppression they are driven out of Egypt, they really go out as a nation, led by a specially appointed national leader, toward a land selected to be their home as a nation. From this time on, the record is a narrative of the history of a race possessed with a national consciousness. From this standpoint it gives the story of their conquest of the Promised Land (Joshua), the first steps in organized civil government (Judges), leading naturally to the Kingdom with Saul and David, until under Solomon, through various stages of development, the chosen family of the early days has become something like a world empire, rich, splendid, powerful. Their history then changes to a record of disintegration and decay, the revolt of the ten tribes under Jeroboam from the rule of Rehoboam, Solomon's son, internal quarrels, dissensions, civil wars, invasions by great foreign

nations, Assyria, Chaldea, Persia,-the scattering of the race through captivity, until finally the Romans in the first century of our era complete the work of national disintegration by destroying every vestige of organized national government.

Out of such a history and such race experiences has grown the literature of the Old Testament as an accepted record and an intimate revelation. Being progressive in character and covering in time such a wide extent of race experience, there is naturally represented in it an extraordinary variety of incident and narrative as to its contents and a corresponding variety of form. There are, for example, the strictly historical books like Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and within these books special events and episodes of particular biographical interest, stories, allegories, parables, poems; there are whole books devoted to individual characters like Ruth and Esther, or Daniel and Jonah; books of the Law, civil and ecclesiastical, — Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; prophetical books of warning, rebuke, religious aspiration and faith, interpreting in more or less rhythmic language special events or the general course of the life of the race in the light of their departure from or adherence to the divine injunctions, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah; there is poetry of many kinds, songs celebrating historical events, - Deborah's Song of Exultation over the destruction of Sisera, lyric poems of personal experience like many of the Psalms attributed to David, religious chants belonging to the liturgy of the Temple, as illustrated in a large portion of the Psalms, and even semi-dramatic poetry like the collection of love-poems known as the Song of Solomon and the profoundly philosophical Book of Job; finally, there are the so-called Wisdom Books, the Proverbs of Solomon and the Book of Ecclesiastes, wise, incisive comments on character and conduct for practical use and guidance, expressed in balanced, poetic form.

The narrative portions from which the body of these selections is taken present certain peculiar literary characteristics. In the first place, they are almost without exception anonymous. Their author, being a sort of impersonal annalist, was at no pains to attach his name to the record. Moreover, he was perhaps more of a compiler than an author. His function was to take the traditions, the facts, the records as he found them and weave them into something like a consistent history. It is this respect for the old and the evident purpose to combine rather than rewrite the ancient material, that preserves the archaic impression of primitive composition produced by the mass of the Old Testament narratives.

The most of them thus have the qualities that belong to a literature with the freshness and charm of the youth, or even of the childhood, of a nation on it. In their very structure their art is the art of artlessness. They are simple, straightforward, natural, vivid, real, imaginative, poetic, and free from the self-consciousness of prearranged effects. Whoever kept the records, or whoever compiled them later, was not concerned with literary form. The fact, the narrative itself, was everything. He was conscious, too, that he was relating real events, telling the life story of real persons, — events and persons vitally connected with the history of the race and explaining all that was significant in it. With these things in mind it is not hard to understand the source of the characteristic qualities of the Old Testament narratives, the beautiful naturalness of the picture of the meeting of Isaac and Rebekah, for example, the idyllic charm in Abraham's entertainment of angelic visitors by the oaks of Mamre, the human story of Jacob and Esau, the vivid, at times dramatic, romance of Joseph and his brethren, the rare simplicity of the art of Ruth, the epic movement in the leadership of Moses, the march through the wilderness, the con

quest of the "Promised Land," and the wars of Saul and of David.

It is to be noted, moreover, that interest centers around outstanding human personalities. So far is this true that one might almost say that the Old Testament is made up of a series of biographies. It is a history of a chosen people, to be sure, and one may not lose sight of this. But they are always a led people, and it is upon the leader, Priest, Prophet, Judge, King, that our attention is persistently directed. From the patriarch of the eldest day to the final disintegration of the race in the dawn of the New Dispensation, they walk across the pages of the Bible a living procession of thoroughly individualized men, essentially human in their greatness as well as in their weakness. Consequently, when we have studied these narratives, ostensibly the record of a race, there is left the distinct impression that the record has been written in terms of men, and that after all it is Abraham, Lot, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joseph, Joshua, Jephthah, Jehoshaphat, Samuel, Samson, Saul, David, Jonathan, Absalom, Solomon, that we know. It is therefore this contact with commanding and vital personalities, clearly defined in character and achievement, that helps to explain the vivid interest of the Old Testament narratives.

But this history and these biographies are not written for their own sakes. If the Old Testament is history, it is history with a distinct plan, and its vivid life-stories are essentially a part of the same plan. They are written in terms of the relation of a chosen people to Jehovah, to their God. It is this conception that furnishes the central unity to every fact and incident and experience, binding the narratives together into the developing consistency of one book and ordering their manifold variety of incident into an impressive uniformity of mood and purpose. The idea of a chosen people, set apart by Jehovah for a special mission, their