PREFACE

THE present volume has been prepared for the special use of theological students, who, being already acquainted with the leading facts of the Biblical narrative as found in most Bible Histories, need to be introduced to the scientific study of Holy Writ upon which they enter, by a more accurate and thorough knowledge of the History of the Jews. Not, indeed, that the present work is intended to supply students with a detailed and continuous narrative of all the historical facts recorded in the Bible such as would enable them to dispense with a careful perusal of the Sacred Books themselves. The writer is fully persuaded, on the contrary, that the Inspired Text should ever remain pre-eminently the text-book of Biblical students, and that whatever else may be placed at their disposal should be only helps calculated to promote their closer acquaintance with the Sacred records. Whilst therefore describing the events of Jewish history in such a way as to recall them sufficiently to the minds of the careful readers of the inspired books of the Old Testament, whilst also constantly referring to the Bible for further details, the writer has aimed at supplying theological students with much of what is needed for a scientific study of the History of the Jews.

It is with this distinct purpose in view that he has embodied concisely in this work the best ascertained results of modern criticism and recent exploration through Bible Lands, and has availed himself of every source of information to make Jewish history at once more intelligible and more attractive. It is for the same purpose that he has taken notice of the principal difficulties which are daily being made on historical grounds to the facts narrated in the Biblical records, and has suggested briefly the best answers which have been offered. It is believed that the Biblical student will also be greatly benefited by the references to sources, which he will constantly find in the text-book now placed at his disposal.

Whilst aiming principally at meeting the requirements of clerical students, the writer is not without hopes of doing service to a much larger number of readers. For example, teachers of Sacred History in Sunday-schools, colleges, academies, and the like, who constantly feel the need of something more consecutive and methodic than is supplied by the Sacred Text itself or by the popular manuals, will rejoice to meet it in the present volume. Perhaps even the deeper student of Biblical history will occasionally find in its pages views and suggestions new and helpful.

Finally, if the writer of the present work has not dealt with the great facts of the Creation of the World, or the Fall of Man, etc., which are narrated in the opening chapters of Genesis, it is chiefly because their study is not directly connected with the history of the Jewish people as a nation, for this history begins strictly with Abraham, the first distinct ancestor of the chosen people, and also because this study may be more profitably postponed to a later period in the Biblical training of theological students.

OCTOBER, 19, 1897.