Introduction to the Old Testament

Introduction to the Old
Testament [with accents]

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Title: Introduction to the Old Testament
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INTRODUCTION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT
By
JOHN EDGAR McFADYEN, M.A. (Glas.) B.A. (Oxon.)
_Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis, Knox College,
Toronto_

To My Pupils Past and Present

PREFACE
This Introduction does not pretend to offer anything to specialists. It is
written for theological students, ministers, and laymen, who desire to
understand the modern attitude to the Old Testament as a whole, but
who either do not have the time or the inclination to follow the details
on which all thorough study of it must ultimately rest. These details are
intricate, often perplexing, and all but innumerable, and the student is
in danger of failing to see the wood for the trees. This _Introduction_,
therefore, concentrates attention only on the more salient features of the
discussion. No attempt has been made, for example, to relegate every
verse in the Pentateuch[1] to its documentary source; but the method of
attacking the Pentateuchal problem has been presented, and the larger
documentary divisions indicated. [Footnote 1: Pentateuch and
Hexateuch are used in this volume to indicate the first five and the first
six books of the Old Testament respectively, without reference to any
critical theory. As the first five books form a natural division by

themselves, and as their literary sources are continued not only into
Joshua, but probably beyond it, it is as legitimate to speak of the
Pentateuch as of the Hexateuch.]
It is obvious, therefore, that the discussions can in no case be
exhaustive; such treatment can only be expected in commentaries to the
individual books. While carefully considering all the more important
alternatives, I have usually contented myself with presenting the
conclusion which seemed to me most probable; and I have thought it
better to discuss each case on its merits, without referring expressly and
continually to the opinions of English and foreign scholars.
In order to bring the discussion within the range of those who have no
special linguistic equipment, I have hardly ever cited Greek or Hebrew
words, and never in the original alphabets. For a similar reason, the
verses are numbered, not as in the Hebrew, but as in the English Bible.
I have sought to make the discussion read continuously, without
distracting the attention--excepting very occasionally-by foot-notes or
other devices.
Above all things, I have tried to be interesting. Critical discussions are
too apt to divert those who pursue them from the absorbing human
interest of the Old Testament. Its writers were men of like hopes and
fears and passions with ourselves, and not the least important task of a
sympathetic scholarship is to recover that humanity which speaks to us
in so many portions and so many ways from the pages of the Old
Testament. While we must never allow ourselves to forget that the Old
Testament is a voice from the ancient and the Semitic world, not a few
parts of it--books, for example, like Job and Ecclesiastes--are as
modern as the book that was written yesterday.
But, first and last, the Old Testament is a religious book; and an
Introduction to it should, in my opinion, introduce us not only to its
literary problems, but to its religious content. I have therefore usually
attempted--briefly, and not in any homiletic spirit--to indicate the
religious value and significance of its several books.
There may be readers who would here and there have desiderated a
more confident