E

EARTH in OT usually stands for one or other of the Heb. words ’eretz and ’adāmāh. In AV these are rendered indiscriminately ‘earth’ and ‘ground,’ but RV distinguishes them by using, to some extent, ‘earth’ for the former, and ‘ground’ for the latter. Both words have a wide range of meanings, some of which they possess in common, while others are peculiar to each. Thus ’eretz denotes: (a) earth as opposed to heaven (Gn 1:1), and (b) dry land as opposed to sea. (1:20). ’adāmāh is specially used: (a) for earth as a specific substance (Gn 2:7, 2 K 5:17); and (b) for the surface of the ground, in such phrases as ‘face of the earth.’ Both words are employed to describe: (a) the soil from which plants grow, ’adāmāh being the more common term in this sense; (b) the whole earth with its inhabitants, for which, however, ’adāmāh is but rarely used; and (c) a land or country, this also being usually expressed by ’eretz. In one or two cases it is doubtful in which of the two last senses ’eretz is to be taken, e.g. Jer 22:29 (EV ‘earth,’ RVm ‘land’).

In NT the Gr. words for ‘earth’ are gē and oikoumenē, the former having practically all the variety of meanings mentioned above, while the latter denotes specially the whole inhabited earth, and is once used (Heb 2:5) in a still wider sense for the universe of the future. See, further, art. WORLD.

JAMES PATRICK.

EARTHQUAKE.—The whole formation of the country running in a straight line from the Taurus range to the gulf of Akabah, which therefore includes Central Judæa, reveals a volcanic character of a striking kind. That this large tract was, in days gone by, the scene of frequent and terrible earthquakes, admits of no doubt. Apart from the actual occurrences of earthquakes recorded in the Bible and elsewhere (e.g. at the time of the battle of Actium, in the seventh year of the reign of Herod the Great, Jos. Ant. XV. v. 2), the often-used imagery of the earthquake bears eloquent testimony to a fearful experience.

It is necessary to distinguish between actual earthquakes and those which belong to the descriptive accounts of theophanies or Divine manifestations of wrath, etc. Of the former only one is mentioned in the OT, that which occurred in the reign of Uzziah (Am 1:1, Zec 14:5); among the latter must be included such references as Ex 19:18, 1 K 19:11, Nu 16:31, Ps 18:7, 68:8, 77:18, 104:4, Is 29:6 etc. In the NT it is recorded that an earthquake occurred at the Crucifixion (Mt 27:51, 54), at the Resurrection ( Mt 28:2), and on the night of St. Paul’s imprisonment in Philippi (Ac 16:26); further, it is foretold that there shall be earthquakes at Christ’s second coming (Mt 24:7, Mk 13:8 , Lk 21:11); their mention in Rev. Is characteristic of apocalyptic literature.

W. O. E. OESTERLEY.

EAST, CHILDREN OF THE.—A common designation of the inhabitants of the

Syrian desert, who were partly Aramæan and partly Arabian (Jg 6:3, 8:10, Ezk 25:4 , 10, Is 11:14, Jer 49:28, Job 1:3). Certain of them had obtained great renown for wisdom (1 K 5:10).

J. F. MCCURDY.

EAST SEA, EASTERN SEA.—See DEAD SEA.

EASTER (AV of Ac 12:4; RV ‘the Passover’).—The anachronism of AV was inherited from older VSS which avoided, as far as possible, expressions which could not be understood by the people.

EBAL.—1. Name of a son of Joktan (1 Ch 1:22, in Gn 10:28 Obal), probably representing a place or tribe in Arabia. 2. A son of Shobal son of Seir (Gn 36:23, 1 Ch

1:40).

EBAL.—Now Jebel esh-Shemali, a mountain north of Nablus (Shechem), 1207 ft. above the valley, 3077 ft. above the sea. Ruins of a fortress and of a building called a ‘little church’ exist on its summit, as well as a Mohammedan shrine said to contain the skull of John the Baptist. The mountain commands an extensive view over almost the whole of Galilee, which includes points from Hermon to Jerusalem and from the sea to the Hauran. On this mountain Joshua built an altar and erected a monument bearing the law of Moses (Jos 8:30); and the curses for breaches of the moral law were here proclaimed to the assembled Israelites on their formally taking possession of the Promised Land (Dt 11:29, 27:4, 13, Jos 8:33).

R. A. S. MACALISTER.

EBED.—1. The father of Gaal (Jg 9:26–35). 2. One of those who returned from Babylon with Ezra (Ezr 8:6); called in 1 Es 8:32 Obeth.

EBED-MELECH.—An Ethiop. ennuch, by whom Jeremiah was released from

the pit-prison (Jer 38:7ff., 39:15ff.). It is possible that the name Ebed-melech, which means ‘servant of [the] king.’ may have been an official title.

EBEN-EZER (‘the stone of help’ (LXX ‘of the helper’]).—1. The scene of a disastrous battle in which the ark was lost (1 S 4:1, 5:1). 2. The name of the stone erected to commemorate an equally glorious victory (7:12). The precise situation is uncertain, but if Shen (7:12), i.e. Yeshana (according to LXX and Syriac) is the modern ‘Ain Semije a little N. of Bethel, the locality is approximately defined. Samuel s explanatory words should be read thus: ‘This is a witness that Jahweh hath helped us.’

J. TAYLOR.

EBER.—1. The eponymous ancestor of the Hebrews (the first letter in both words being the same in the Heb.), the great-grandson of Shem, and ‘father’ of Peleg and Joktan (Gn 10:21, 25, 11:14ff.). The word ‘ēber signifies ‘the other side,’ ‘across’; and ‘ibri. ‘Hebrew,’ which is in form a gentile name denoting the inhabitant of a country or member of a tribe. is usually explained as denoting those who have come from ‘ēber han-nāhār (see Jos 24:2, 3), or ‘the other side of the River’ ( the Euphrates), i.e. from Haran (Gn 11:31), in Aram-naharaim the home of Abraham and Nahor (Gn 24:4, 7, 10). According to Sayce, however (Exp. T. xviii. [1907] p. 233). the word is of Bab. origin, and denoted originally the ‘traders’ who went to and fro across the Euphrates. In the genealogies in Gn 10, 11 the district from which the ‘Hebrews’ came is transformed into an imaginary eponymous ancestor. Why Eber is not the immediate, but the sixth ancestor of Abraham, and why many other tribes besides the Hebrews are reckoned as his descendants, is perhaps to be explained (König) by the fact that, though the Israelites were in a special sense ‘Hebrews,’ it was remembered that their ancestors had long made the region ‘across’ the Euphrates their resting-place, and many other tribes (Peleg, Joktan, etc.) had migrated from it. What Eber means in Nu 24:24 is uncertain: most probably perhaps, the country across the Euphrates (|| with Asshur, i.e. Assyria).

2 A Gadite (1 Ch 5:12). 3. 4. Two Benjamites (1 Ch 8:12, 22) 5 Head of a priestly family (Neh 12:20).

S. R. DRIVER.

EBEZ.—A city of Issachar (Jos 19:20). Possibly the ruin el-Beidhah, east of Carmel.

EBIASAPH.—See ABIASAPH.

EBONY (hobnīm, Ezk 27:15) is the black heart-wood of the date-plum, Diospyros ebenum, imported from S. India and Ceylon. It was extensively imported by Phœnicians, Babylonians, and Egyptians for the manufacture of valuable vessels and of idols.

E. W. G. MASTERMAN.

EBRON (Jos 19:28).—A town in the territory of Asher, elsewhere called Abdon (wh. see, 5), which is probably the correct form. It was a Levitical city (Jos 21:30, 1 Ch 6:74). The site has not been identified.

R. A. S. MACALISTER.

ECBATANA.—See ACHMETHA.

ECCLESIASTES

1. Title and Canonicity.—The title has come to us through Jerome from the LXX, in which it was an attempt to express the Heb. nom de plume ‘Kōheleth,’ i.e. ‘one who speaks in an assembly’ (kāhāl)—the assembly being all who give their hearts to the acquisition of wisdom. The book is one of the third group in the Heb. Bible—the Kethūbhīm or’ Writings’—which were the latest to receive recognition as canonical Scripture. It appears to have been accepted as Scripture by c. B.C. 100. At the synod of Jamnia (c. A.D. 100) the canonicity of Ec., the Song of Songs, and Esther was brought up for discussion, and was confirmed.

2. Author and Date.—The book contains the outpourings of the mind of a rich Jew, at the beginning of the 2nd cent. B.C. We may perhaps gather that he was in a high station of life, for otherwise his very unorthodox reflexions could hardly have escaped oblivion. He could provide himself with every luxury (2:4–10). But he had private sorrows and disappointments; 7:26–28 seems to imply that his life had been saddened by a woman who was unworthy of him. He was apparently an old man, because his attempts to find the summum bonum of life in pleasure and in wisdom, which could hardly have been abandoned in a few years, were now bygone memories (1:12–2:11). And he lived in or near Jerusalem, for he was an eye-witness of events which occurred at the ‘holy place’ (8:10). That is all that he reveals about himself. But he paints a lurid picture of the state of his country. The king was ‘a child’—much too young for his responsible position; and his courtiers spent their days in drunken revelry (10:16); he was capricious in his favouritism (vv. 5–7), violent in temper ( v. 4), and despotic (8:2a, 4). The result was that wickedness usurped the place of justice (3:16), and the upper classes crushed the poor with an oppression from which there was no escape (4:1); the country groaned under an irresponsible officialism, each official being unable to move a finger in the cause of justice. because he was under the thumb of a higher one, and the highest was a creature of the tyrannous king (5:7): and in such a state of social rottenness espionage was rife (10:20). The only passage which distinctly alludes to contemporary history is 4:13–16, but no period has been found which suits all the facts. In 8:10 an historical allusion is improbable, and 9:13– 15 is too vague to afford any indication of date.

The book or, more probably, 1–2:11 only, is written under the guise of Solomon. In 2:12 (according to the most probable interpretation of the verse) the writer appears to throw off the impersonation. But the language and grammatical peculiarities of the writing make it impossible to ascribe it to Solomon. The Heb. language which had been pure enough for some time after the return from Babylon, began to decay from the time of Nehemiah. There are signs of the change in Ezr., Neh., and Mal., and it is still more evident in Chron., Est., and Eccl., the latter having the most striking Mishnic Idioms. It must therefore be later (probably much later) than Esther (c. B.C. 300), but before ben-Sira, who alludes to several passages in it (c. B.C. 180). It may thus be dated c. B.C. 200.

3. Composition.—One of the most striking features of the book is the frequency with which a despairing sadness alternates with a calm pious assurance. Many have seen in this the struggles of a religiously minded man halting between doubt and faith; e.g. Plumptre compares this mental conflict with Tennyson’s ‘Two Voices.’ But the more the book is read, the more the reader feels that this is not so. The contrasts are so sudden; the scepticism is so despairing, and the piety so calm and assured, that they can be explained only on the assumption of interpolations by other hands. Moreover, in the midst of the despair and the faith there are scattered proverbs, somewhat frigid and didactic, often with no relevance to the context. The literary history of the writing appears to be as follows: (a) The gnomic character of some of Koheleth’s remarks, and the ascription to Solomon, attracted one of the thinkers of the day whose minds were dominated by the idea of ‘Wisdom’—such a writer as those whose observations are collected in the Book of Proverbs. He enriched the original writing with proverbs culled from various sources. (b) But that which attracts also repels. The impression which the book made upon the orthodox Jew may be seen in the Book of Wisdom, in which (2:1–9) the writer collects some of Koheleth’s despairing reflexions; and, placing them in the mouth of the ungodly, raises his protest against them. There were living at the time not only gnomic moralizers, but also men of intense, if narrow, piety—men of the temper afterwards seen in the Maccabees. One of these interpolated observations on (i.) the fear of God. (ii.) the judgment of God. In every case except 5:1–7 [Heb. 4:17–5:6] his remarks explicitly correct some complaint of Koheleth to which he objected. 12:11, 12 is a postscript by the ‘wise man,’ and vv. 13, 14 by the pious man. The additions which appear to be due to the former are 4:5, 9–12, 6:7, 9 , 7:1a, 4–12, 19, 8:1, 9:17f., 10:1–3, 8–14a, 15, 18f., 12:11f., and to the latter 2:26 , 3:14b, 17, 5:1–7, 7:18b, 26b, 29, 8:2b, 3a, 5, 6a, 11–13, 11:9b, 12:1a, 13 f.

4. Koheleth’s reflexions

(a) His view of life.—After the exordium (1–2:11), in which, under the guise of Solomon, he explains that he made every possible attempt to discover the meaning and aim of life, the rest of his writing consists of a miscellaneous series of pictures, illustrating his recurrent thought that ‘all is a vapour, and a striving after wind.’ And the conclusion at which he arrives is that man can aim at nothing, guide himself by nothing. His only course is to fall back upon present enjoyment and industry. It is far from being a summum bonum; it is not an Epicurean theory of life; it is a mere modus vivendi, ‘whereby he shall not take much account of the days of his life’ (5:19). And to this conclusion he incessantly returns, whenever he finds life’s mysteries insoluble:

2:24f., 3:12f., 22, 5:17–19, 8:15, 9:7–10, 11:1–10 (exc. 9b) 12:1b–7.

(b) His religious ideas.—It is improbable that he came into immediate contact with any of the Greek schools of thought. It has often been maintained that he shows distinct signs of having been influenced by both Stoic and Epicurean philosophy. Of the latter it is difficult to discern the slightest trace; but for the former there is more to be said. But there is nothing at which a thinking Jew, of a philosophical temper of mind, could not have arrived independently. And it must not be forgotten that even Stoicism was not a purely Greek product; its founder Zeno was of Phœnician descent, and his followers came from Syria, Cilicia Carthage, and other Hellenistic (as distinct from Hellenic) quarters. Koheleth occupies (what may be called) debatable ground between Semitic and Greek thought. He has lost the vitality of belief in a personal God, which inspired the earlier prophets, and takes his stand upon a somewhat colourless monotheism. He never uses the personal name ‘Jahweh.’ but always the descriptive title ‘Elohim’ (4 times) or ‘the Elohim’ (16 times), ‘the deity’ who manifests Himself in the inscrutable and irresistible forces of Nature. At the same time he never commits himself to any definitely pantheistic statements. He has not quite lost his Semitic belief that God is more than Nature, for His action shows evidence of design (3:11, 18, 22, 6:12b, 7:14, 8:17, 11:5). Moreover, God’s work—the course of Nature—appears in the form of an endless cycle. Events and phenomena are brought upon the stage of life, and banished into the past, only to be recalled and banished again (1:4–11, 3:15). And this, for Koheleth, paralyzes all real effort; for no amount of labour can produce anything new or of real profit—no one can add to, or subtract from, the unswerving chain of facts (1:15, 3:1–9, 14a, 7:13); no one can contend with Him that is mightier than he (6:10). And he gains no relief from the expectation of Messianic peace and perfection, which animated the orthodox Jew. There are left him only the shreds of the religious convictions of his fathers, with a species of ‘natural religion’ which has fatalism and altruism among is ingredients.

5. The value of the book for us lies largely in its very deficiencies. The untroubled orthodoxy of the pious man who corrected what he thought was wrong, the moral aphorisms of the ‘wise man,’ and the Weltschmerz of Koheleth with his longing for light, were each examples of the state of thought of the time. They corresponded to the three classes of men in 1 Co 1:20—the ‘scribe’ (who clung faithfully to his accepted traditions), the ‘wise man,’ and the ‘searcher of this world.’ Each possessed elements of lasting truth, but each needed to be answered, and raised to a higher plane of thought, by the revelation of God in the incarnation.

A. H. M‘NEILE.

ECCLESIASTICUS—See APOCRYPHA, § 13.

ECLIPSE.—See SUN.

ED.—In the Hebrew (and also in the Greek) text of Jos 22:34 the name given by the two and a half tribes to the altar erected by them on the east bank of the Jordan has dropped out. Our English translators have filled the gap by inserting Ed as the name of the altar in question. For this they have the authority of a few MSS.

The location of this altar on the east bank of the Jordan is required by the whole tenor of the narrative. The west bank is suggested by v. 10 in its present form, and maintained also by RV in v. 11, by a translation of doubtful admissibility, ‘in the forefront of the land of Canaan, on the side that pertaineth to the children of Israel.’

EDDINUS.—One of the ‘holy singers’ at Josiah’s passover (1 Es 1:15). In the parallel passage 2 Ch 35:15 the corresponding name is Jeduthun, which is read also, contrary to MS authority, by AV in 1 Esdras. The text of the latter is probably corrupt.

EDEN.—2 Ch 29:12, 31:15, a Levite, or possibly two. It is not certain that Eden is the true form of the name: LXX has Jodan in the first, Odom in the second passage.

When it transliterates Eden elsewhere it is usually in the form Edem.

J. TAYLOR.

EDEN, CHILDREN OF.—The people occupying Bit-Adini (2 K 19:12, Is 37:12: for Ezk 27:23 see CANNEH). See EDEN [HOUSE OF]. Telassar (2 K 19:12) may perhaps be Til Bashir of the inscriptions.

J. TAYLOR.

EDEN, GARDEN OF.—Gn 2f. relates how God planted a garden in the East, in Eden. A river rose in that land, flowed through the garden, and then divided into four streams. Within the enclosure were many trees useful for food; also the tree of life, whose fruit conferred immortality, and the tree of knowledge, which gave power to discriminate between things profitable and things hurtful, or, between right and wrong. The animal denizens were innocuous to man and to each other. When the first man and woman yielded to the tempter and ate of the tree of knowledge, they were expelled, and precluded from re-entering the garden.

In this account Gn 2:10–14, 3:22, 24 seem to be interpolations. But the topographical data in 2:10–14 are of especial importance, because they have supplied the material for countless attempts to locate the garden. It has been almost universally agreed that one of the four rivers is the Euphrates and another the Tigris. Here the agreement ends, and no useful purpose would be served by an attempt to enumerate the conflicting theories. Three which have found favour of late, may be briefly mentioned. One is that the Gihon is the Nile, and the Pishon the Persian and Arabian Gulfs, conceived of as a great river, with its source and that of the Nile not far from those of the Euphrates and the Tigris. Another regards Eden as an island not far from the head of the Persian Gulf. near the mouths of the Euphrates, the Tigris. the Kerkha. and the Karun. The third puts Eden near Erldu (once the seaport of Chaldæa on the Persian Gulf), and takes the Pishon to be the canal afterwards called Pallakottas, and the Gihon to be the Khoaspes (now Kerkha). In support of the last-named view a cuneiform tablet is quoted which speaks of a tree or shrub planted near Eridu by the gods. The sun-god and ‘the peerless mother of Tammuz’ dwell there: ‘no man enters into the midst of it.’ But the correspondences with the Biblical Eden are not sufficiently striking to compel conviction. At the same time it can hardly be doubted that the Biblical writer utilized traditional matter which came originally from Babylonia. The very name Eden, which to him meant ‘delight,’ is almost certainly the Bab. ēdinnu = ‘plain.’ The Bab. author would conceive of the garden as lying in a district near his own land, hard by the supposed common source of the great rivers.

And this, to the Hebrews, is in the East.

Eden, or the garden of Eden, became the symbol of a very fertile land (Gn 13:10 , Is 51:3, Ezk 31:9, 16, 18, Jl 2:3). The dirge over the king of Tyre (Ezk 28:13ff.) is founded on a Paradise legend which resembles that in Gn., but has a stronger mythological colouring: the ‘garden of God’ (v. 13) is apparently identified with the well-known mythical mountain of the gods (v. 14); the cherub and the king of Tyre are assimilated to each other; the stones of fire may be compared with the flame of a sword (Gn 3:24: see also Enoch 24.16). In later literature we find much expansion and embellishment of the theme: see Jubilees 3:9, 4:26, Enoch 24f., 32, 60, 61, 2 Es 8:52 , Assump. Mos. ix ff., Ev. Nic. xix. etc. NT thought and imagery have been affected by the description of Eden given in Gn 2f.: see Lk 23:43, 2 Co 12:4, Rev 2:7. The Koran has many references to the garden of Paradise Lost, and the gardens of the Paradise to come (ix, xiii, xlvii, lv, lxviii, etc.).

J. TAYLOR.

EDEN, HOUSE OF.—A place or district connected politically with Damascus

(Am 1:5 RVm Beth-eden). Of the five suggestions for locality the likeliest is ‘Eden or Ehden, 20 miles N.W. of Baalbek, on the N.W. slope of Lebanon. Its most formidable competitor, Bit-Adini, a district on either bank of the Middle Euphrates, frequently mentioned in the cuneiform inscriptions, is too far—200 miles—from Damascus, and in the days of Amos had long been subject to Assyria.

J. TAYLOR.

EDER.—1. Gn 35:21 ‘And Israel journeyed, and spread his tent beyond the tower of Eder.’ ’Eder means ‘a flock’; and the phrase Midgal-eder (‘flock-tower,’ cf. Mic 4:8) would have been the appellation given to a tower occupied by shepherds for the protection of their flocks against robbers (cf. 2 K 18:8, 2 Ch 26:10). The tower here mentioned lay between Bethlehem and Hebron (cf. vv. 19, 27). Jerome mentions a Jewish tradition that this Eder was the site of the Temple, but himself prefers to think that it was the spot on which the shepherds received the angels’ message. 2. Jos 15:21. The name of one of the towns of Judah ‘in the south,’ close to the Edomite frontier; perhaps Kh. el-‘Adâr, 5 miles S. of Gaza. 3. 1 Ch 23:23, 24:30. The name of a Merarite Levite in the days of David. 4. A Benjamite (1 Ch. 8:15).

EDNA.—Wife of Raguel of Ecbatana, and mother of Sarah, who became wife of Tobias (To 7:3ff., 10:12, 11:1). See APOCRYPHA, § 8.

EDOM, EDOMITES.—The Edomites were a tribe or group of tribes residing in early Biblical times in Mount Seir (Gn 32:3, Jg 5:4), but covering territory on both sides of it. At times their territory seems to have included the region to the Red Sea and Sinai (1 K 9:26, Jg 5:4). Edom or Esau was their reputed ancestor. The Israelites were conscious that the Edomites were their near kinsmen, hence the tradition that Esau and Jacob were twin brothers (Gn 25:24). That the Edomites were an older nation they showed by making Esau the firstborn twin. The tradition that Jacob tricked Esau out of his birthright (Gn 27), and that enmity arose between the brothers, is an actual reflexion of the hostile relations of the Edomites and Israelites for which the Israelites were to a considerable degree responsible.

Before the conquest of Canaan, Edom is said to have refused to let Israel pass through his territory (Nu 20:18, 21). Probably during the period of the Judges, Edomites invaded southern Judah (cf. Paton, Syria and Palestine, 161 ff.). Possibly Edomites settled here and were incorporated in Judah, for Kenaz is said in Gn 36:11 to be a son of Esau, while in Jg 3:9 he is counted a Judahite.

During the monarchy Saul is said to have fought the Edomites (1 S 14:47); David conquered Edom and put garrisons in the country (2 S 8:13, 14); Edom regained its independence under Solomon (1 K 11:14–22); Jehoshaphat a century later reconquered Edom (cf. 1 K 22:47, 48), and Edomites helped him in his war with Moab (2 K 3); in the reign of Joram, his successor, the Edomites regained their independence after a bloody revolution (8:20, 21); at the beginning of the next century Amaziah reconquered them for a short time, capturing Sela, and slaughtering a large number of them (2 K 14:7). A little later Amos (Am 1:11ff.) accuses Edom of pursuing his brother with the sword. During the next century Edom was independent of Israel, but paid tribute to Tiglath-pileser III., Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal, kings of Assyria (cf. KIB ii. 21, 91, 149, 239).

In connexion with the wars of Nebuchadnezzar, which resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem in 586, many Jews migrated to Edom; but the Edomites rejoiced in the overthrow of the Jews. This deepened the old-time enmity, and called forth bitter denunciations and predictions of vengeance from Israel’s prophets (cf. Ezk 25:12–14 , Ob 1ff., Is 63:1–7). A little later great suffering was inflicted on the Edomites by the

Nabatæans, who overran the country and crowded the Edomites up into southern Judah. This invasion of Nabatæans is probably referred to in Mal 1:4ff., for by 312 they were in this region, and Antigonus and Demetrius came in, contact with them ( cf.

Diodorus Siculus, x. 95, 96, 100).

The Edomites, because of this, occupied the territory of Judah as far as the town of Beth-zur, to the north of Hebron, which became the Idumæa (wh. see) of the NT period. Here Judas Maccabæus fought with the Edomites (1 Mac 5:3, 65), and John Hyrcanus shortly before the end of the 2nd cent. B.C. conquered them, and compelled them to be circumcised and to accept the Jewish religion (cf. Jos. Ant. XIII. ix. 1 , XIV. i. 3, and XV. vii. 9). This was the end of the Edomites as a nation, but they obtained a kind of revenge on the Jews by furnishing the Herodian dynasty to them.

GEORGE A. BARTON.

EDOS, 1 Es 9:35 = Iddo, Ezr 10:43.

EDREI.—1. A royal city of Og, king of Bashan (Dt 1:4, 3:10, Jos 12:4, 13:12), the scene of the battle at which Og was defeated (Nu 21:33, Dt 3:1); assigned to the eastern division of Manasseh (Jos 13:31). It seems to be the modern ed-Der’a, where are several important remains of antiquity, including a great subterranean catacomb. 2.

A town in Naphtali (Jos 19:37), not identified.

R. A. S. MACALISTER.

EDUCATION.—In the importance which they attached to the education of the young, it may fairly be claimed that the Hebrews were facile princeps among the nations of antiquity. Indeed, if the ultimate aim of education be the formation of character, the Hebrew ideals and methods will bear comparison with the best even of modern times. In character Hebrew education was predominantly, one might almost say exclusively, religious and ethical. Its fundamental principle may be expressed in the familiar words: ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge’ (Pr 1:7). Yet it recognized that conduct was the true test of character; in the words of Simeon, the son of Gamaliel, that ‘not learning but doing is the chief thing.’

As to the educational attainments of the Hebrews before the conquest of Canaan, it is useless to speculate. On their settlement in Canaan, however, they were brought into contact with a civilization which for two thousand years or more had been under the influence of Babylonia and in a less degree of Egypt. The language of Babylonia, with its complicated system of wedge-writing, had for long been the medium of communication not only between the rulers of the petty states of Canaan and the great powers outside its borders, but even, as we now know from Sellin’s discoveries at Taanach, between these rulers themselves. This implies the existence of some provision for instruction in reading and writing the difficult Babylonian script. Although in this early period such accomplishments were probably confined to a limited number of high officials and professional scribes, the incident in Gideon’s experience, Jg 8:14 (where we must render with RVm ‘wrote down’), warns us against unduly restricting the number of those able to read and write in the somewhat later period of the Judges. The more stable political conditions under the monarchy, and in particular the development of the administration and the growth of commerce under Solomon, must undoubtedly have furthered the spread of education among all classes.

Of schools and schoolmasters, however, there is no evidence till after the Exile, for the expression ‘schools of the prophets’ has no Scripture warrant. Only once, indeed, is the word ‘school’ to be found even in NT (Ac 19:9), and then only of the lectureroom of a Greek teacher in Ephesus. The explanation of this silence is found in the fact that the Hebrew child received his education in the home, with his parents as his only instructors. Although he grew up ignorant of much that ‘every school-boy’ knows to-day, he must not on that account be set down as uneducated. He had been instructed, first of all, in the truths of his ancestral religion (see Dt 6:20–25 and elsewhere); and in the ritual of the recurring festivals there was provided for him object-lessons in history and religion (Ex 12:26f., 13:8, 14). In the traditions of his family and race—some of which are still preserved in the older parts of OT—he had a unique storehouse of the highest ideals of faith and conduct, and these after all are the things that matter.

Descending the stream of history, we reach an epoch-making event in the history of education, not less than of religion, among the Jews, in the assembly convened by Ezra and Nehemiah (Neh 8:1ff.), at which the people pledged themselves to accept ‘the book of the law of Moses’ as the norm of their life in all its relations.

Henceforward the Jews were pre-eminently, in Mohammed’s phrase, ‘the people of the Book.’ But if the Jewish community was henceforth to regulate its whole life, not according to the living word of priest and prophet, but according to the requirements of a written law, it was indispensable that provision should be made for the instruction of all classes in this law. To this practical necessity is due the origin of the synagogue (wh. see), which, from the Jewish point of view, was essentially a meeting-place for religious instruction, and, indeed, is expressly so named by Philo. In NT also the preacher or expounder in the synagogue is invariably said to ‘teach’ (Mt 4:23, Mk 1:21, and passim), and the education of youth continues to the last to be associated with the synagogue (see below). The situation created by this new zeal for the Law has been admirably described by Wellhausen: ‘The Bible became the spelling-book, the community a school.… Piety and education were inseparable; whoever could not read was no true Jew. We may say that in this way were created the beginnings of popular education.’

This new educational movement was under the guidance of a body of students and teachers of the Law known as the Sōpherim (lit. ‘book-men’) or scribes, of whom Ezra is the typical example (Ezr 7:6). Alongside these, if not identical with them, as many hold, we find an influential class of religious and moral teachers, known as the

Sages or the Wise, whose activity culminates in the century preceding the fall of the Persian empire (B.C. 430–330). The arguments for the identity in all important respects of the early scribes and the sages are given by the present writer in Hastings’ DB i. 648; but even if the two classes were originally distinct, there can be no doubt that by the time of Jesus hen Sira, the author of Ecclesiasticus (cir. B.C. 180–170) , himself a scribe and the last of the sages, they had become merged in one.

To appreciate the religious and ethical teaching of the sages, we have only to open the Book of Proverbs. Here life is pictured as a discipline, the Hebrew word for which is found thirty times in this book. ‘The whole of life,’ it has been said, ‘is here considered from the view-point of a pædagogic institution. God educates men, and men educate each other’ (O. Holtzmann).

With the coming of the Greeks a new educational force in the shape of Hellenistic culture entered Palestine—a force which made itself felt in many directions in the pre-Maccabean age. From a reference in Josephus (Ant. XII. iv. 6) it may be inferred that schools on the Greek model had been established in Jerusalem itself before B.C. 220. It was somewhere in this period, too, that the preacher could say: ‘Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh’ (Ec 12:12)— reflexions which necessarily presuppose a wide-spread interest in intellectual pursuits. The edict of Antiochus Epiphanes at a later date (1 Mac 1:57) equally implies a considerable circulation of the Torah among the people, with the ability to profit by its study.

Passing now, as this brief sketch requires, to the period of Jewish history that lies between the triumph of the Maccabees and the end of the Jewish State in A.D. 70, we find a tradition—there is no valid reason for rejecting it as untrustworthy—which illustrates the extent to which elementary education, at least, was fostered under the later Maccabean princes. A famous scribe of the period (cir. B.C. 75), Simon benShetach, brother of Queen Alexandra, is said to have got a law passed ordaining that ‘the children shall attend the elementary school.’ This we understand on various grounds to mean, not that these schools were first instituted, but that attendance at them was henceforth to be compulsory. The elementary school, termed ‘the house of the Book’ (i.e. Scripture), in opposition to ‘the house of study’ or college of the scribes (see below), was always closely associated with the synagogue. In the smaller places, indeed, the same building served for both.

The elementary teachers, as we may call them, formed the lowest rank in the powerful guild of the scribes. They are ‘the doctors (lit. teachers) of the law,’ who, in our Lord’s day, were to be found in ‘every village of Galilee and Judæa’ (Lk 5:17 RV), and who figure so frequently in the Gospels. Attendance at the elementary school began at the age of six. Already the boy had learned to repeat the Shema (‘Hear, O Israel,’ etc., Dt 6:4), selected proverbs and verses from the Psalms. He now began to learn to read. His only textbooks were the rolls of the sacred Scriptures, especially the roll of the Law, the opening chapters of Leviticus being usually the first to be taken in hand. After the letters were mastered, the teacher copied a verse which the child had already learned by heart, and taught him to identify the individual words. The chief feature of the teaching was learning by rote, and that audibly, for the Jewish teachers were thorough believers in the Latin maxim, repetitio mater studiorum. The pupils sat on the floor at the teacher’s feet, as did Saul at the feet of Gamaliel ( Ac 22:3).

The subjects taught were ‘the three R’s’—reading, writing, and arithmetic, the last in a very elementary form. The child’s first attempts at writing were probably done, as in the Greek schools of the period, on sherds of pottery; from these he would be promoted to a wax tablet (Lk 1:63 RV), on which he wrote ‘with a pointed style or metal instrument, very much as if one wrote on thickly buttered bread with a small stiletto.’ Only after considerable progress had been made would he finally reach the dignity of papyrus.

For the mass of young Jews of the male sex, for whom alone public provision was made, the girls being still restricted to the tuition of the home, the teaching of the primary school sufficed. Those, however, who wished to be themselves teachers, or otherwise to devote themselves to the professional study of the Law, passed on to the higher schools or colleges above mentioned. At the beginning of our era the two most important of these colleges were taught by the famous ‘doctors of the law,’ Hillel and Shammai. It was a grandson of the former, Gamaliel I., who, thirty years later, numbered Saul of Tarsus among his students (Ac 22:3). In the Beth hammidrash (house of study) the exclusive subjects of study were the interpretation of the OT, and the art of applying the regulations of the Torah, by means of certain exegetical canons, to the minutest details of the life of the time.

A. R. S. KENNEDY.

EGG.—See FOOD, § 7.

EGLAH (‘heifer’).—One of the wives of David, and mother of Ithream (2 S 3:5, 1 Ch 3:3).

EGLAIM (Is 15:8).—A town of Moab. The name has not been recovered.

EGLATH-SHELISHIYAH occurs in an ancient oracle against Moab, which is quoted in Is 15:5 and Jer 48:34. In both these passages RV takes the word to be a proper name, giving in margin the alternative tr. ‘[as] an heifer of three years old,’ which is AV in Jer 48:34 and AVm in Is 15:5. In the latter passage, AV text omits ‘[as].’ It is still somewhat uncertain whether the word is an appellative or a proper name, although the latter view has commended itself to the majority of modern scholars.

EGLON.—King of Moab, under whose leadership the Ammonites and

Amalekites joined with the Moabites in fighting and defeating the Israelites. The latter

‘served,’ i.e. paid tribute to, Eglon for eighteen years. Towards the end of this period Ehud assassinated Eglon, and brought to an end the Moabite ascendency over Israel (Jg 3:12 ff. ).

W. O. E. OESTERLEY.

EGLON.—A town near Lachish, mentioned only in connexion with the campaign of Joshua. Its king, Debir, joined the coalition against the Gibeonites (Jos 10:3), and after the reduction of Lachish Joshua captured and destroyed it (10:34f.). The site is probably Tell Nejileh, near Tell el-Hesy (Lachish); the neighbouring Khurbeh ‘Ajlan better preserves the name, but the site is of no great antiquity.

R. A. S. MACALISTER.

EGYPT.—Habitable and cultivable Egypt consists practically of the broad fanshaped’ Delta opening on to the Mediterranean, and the narrow valley of the Nile bordered by deserts as far as the First Cataract (beyond which is Nubia, i.e. Ethiopia), with a few oases westward of the valley. Amongst the latter may be counted the Fayyum, which, however, is separated from the river only by a narrow ridge, and is connected therewith by a canal or natural channel conveying the waters of the river to the oasis. The Greek name Aigyptos may perhaps be connected with Hakeptah, a name in vogue during the New Kingdom for Memphis, the northern capital. Egypt was divided anciently into Upper and Lower, the latter comprising the Delta and a portion of the valley reaching above Memphis, while Upper Egypt (the northern portion of which is often spoken of as Middle Egypt) terminated at the First Cataract (Aswan). Each of these main divisions was subdivided into nomes, or counties, varying to some extent at different times, 22 being a standard number for the Upper Country and 20 for the Lower. Each nome had its capital city—the god of which was important throughout the nome—and was generally governed by a nomarch. The alluvial land of Egypt is very fertile and easy to cultivate. Its fertility is independent of rainfall, that being quite insignificant except along the Mediterranean coast; it depends on the annual rise of the Nile, which commences in June and continues till October. If the rise is adequate, it secures the main crops throughout the country. In ancient times there may have been extensive groves of acacia trees on the borders of the alluvium kept moist by soakage from the Nile; but at most seasons of the year there was practically no natural pasture or other spontaneous growth except in marshy districts.

In this brief sketch it is impossible to bestow more than a glance upon the various aspects of Egyptian civilization. The ancient Egyptians were essentially not negroes, though some affirm that their skulls reveal a negro admixture. Their language shows a remote affinity with the Semitic group in structure, but very little in vocabulary; the writing for monumental and decorative purposes was in pictorial ‘hieroglyphic’ signs, modified for ordinary purposes into cursive ‘hieratic’ and in late times further to ‘demotic’: the last form preserves no traces of the pictorial origins recognizable by any one but a student. The Egyptian, like the old Hebrew writing, cannot record vowels, but only the consonantal skeletons of words.

The Egyptian artist at his best could rise to great beauty and sublimity, but the bulk of his work is dead with conventionality, and he never attained to the idea of perspective in drawing. The Egyptian engineers could accurately place the largest monoliths, without, however, learning any such mechanical contrivances as the pulley or the screw. The ‘wisdom of the Egyptians’ was neither far advanced nor profound, though many ideas were familiar to them that had never entered the heads of the nomads and inferior races about them. Their mathematics and astronomy were of the

simplest kind; yet the Egyptian calendar was infinitely superior to all its contemporaries, and is scarcely surpassed by our own. The special importance attached by the Egyptians to the disposal and furnishing of the body after death may have been inspired by the preservative climate. From an early time the elaboration of doctrines regarding the afterlife went on, involving endless contradictions. We may well admire the early connexion of religion with morality, shown especially in the ‘Negative Confession’ and the judgment scene of the weighing of the soul before Osiris, dating not later than the 18th Dynasty; yet in practice the Egyptian religion, so far as we can judge, was mainly a compelling of the gods by magic formulæ. The priesthood was wealthy and powerful, and the people devout. The worship of animals was probably restricted to a few sacred individuals in early Egypt, but a degree of sanctity was afterwards extended to the whole of a species, and to almost every species.

1. The History of Egypt was divided by Manetho (who wrote for Ptolemy I. or II.) into 31 dynasties from Menes to Alexander. The chronology is very uncertain for the early times: most authorities in Germany place the 1st Dyn. about B.C. 3300, and the 12th Dyn. at B.C. 2000–1800. These dates, which depend largely on the interpretation of records of astronomical phenomena, may perhaps be taken as the minimum. The allowance of time (200 years) for the dark period between the 12th and the 18th Dyns. seems insufficient: some would place the 12th Dyn. at B.C. 2500–

2300, or even a whole ‘Sothic’ period of 1460 years earlier than the minimum; and the 1st Dynasty would then be pushed back at least in equal measure. From the 18th Dyn. onwards there is close agreement.

The historic period must have been preceded by a long pre-historic age, evidenced in Upper Egypt by extensive cemeteries of graves containing fine pottery, instruments in flint exquisitely worked, and in bone and copper, and shapely vessels in hard stone. Tradition points to separate kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt towards the close of this period. Menes, the founder of the 1st Dyn., united the two lands. He came probably from This, near Abydos, where royal tombs of the first three Dyns. have been found; but he built Memphis as his capital near the dividing line between the two halves of his kingdom. The earliest pyramid dates from the end of the 3rd dynasty. The stupendous Pyramids at Gizeh are of Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus of the 4th Dyn., from which time we have also very beautiful statues in wood, limestone, and diorite. In the 5th Dyn. the relief sculpture on tombs reached its highest excellence. The 6th Dyn. is notable for long inscriptions, both religious texts in the pyramids and biographical inscriptions in the lesser tombs. The first eight Dyns., of which the 7th and 8th are utterly obscure, constitute the Old Kingdom. After the first two Dyns., best represented at Abydos, its monuments are concentrated at Memphis, but important records of the 6th Dyn. are widely spread as far south as the First Cataract, parallel with the growing power and culture of the nomarchs. Expeditions were made even under the 1st Dyn. to the copper and turquoise mines in the peninsula of Sinai, and cedar wood was probably then already obtained from Lebanon by sea. Under the 6th Dyn. Nubia furnished troops to the Egyptian armies from the distant south as far perhaps as Khartum. But at the end of it there was a collapse, probably through insufficient control of the local princes of that time by the nomarch.

In the next period, the Middle Kingdom (Dyns. 9–17), we see the rise of Thebes; but the 9th and 10th Dyns. were from Heracleopolis, partly contemporary with the 11th Dyn., which eventually suppressed the rival house. The monuments of the 11 th

Dyn. are almost confined to the neighbourhood of Thebes. Under the Amenemhēs and Senwosris of the 12th Dyn., Egypt was as great as it was in the 4th Dyn., but its power was not concentrated as then. The break-up of the old Kingdom had given an opportunity to a number of powerful families to grow up and establish themselves in local princedoms: the family that triumphed over the rest by arms or diplomacy could control but could not ignore them, and feudalism was the result, each great prince having a court and an army resembling those of the king, but on a smaller scale. The most notable achievement of these Dyns. was the regulation of the lake of Mœris by Amenemhē III., with much other important work for irrigation and improvement of agriculture. Literature also flourished at this period. The traditional exploits of the world-conqueror Sesostris seem to have been developed in late times out of the petty expeditions of Senwosri III. into Nubia, Libya, and Palestine. The 13th and 14 th Dyns. are represented by a crowd of 150 royal names: they are very obscure, and some scholars would make them contemporary with each other and with the following. The 15th and 16th Dyns. were of the little-known Hyksos or ‘Shepherd kings,’ apparently invaders from the East, who for a time ruled all Egypt (c. B.C. 1650). Excepting scarabs engraved with the names of the kings, monuments of the Hyksos are extremely rare. Their names betray a Semitic language: they were probably barbarian, but in the end took on the culture of Egypt, and it is a strange fact that inscribed relics of one of them, Khyan, have been found in places as far apart as at Cnossus in Crete and Baghdad; no other Egyptian king, not even Thetmosi III., has quite so wide a range as that mysterious Hyksos. The foreign rulers are said to have oppressed the natives and to have forbidden the worship of the Egyptian deities. The princes of Thebes, becoming more or less independent, formed the 17th Dyn., and succeeded in ousting the hated Hyksos, now probably diminished in numbers and weakened by luxury, from Upper Egypt. The first king of the 18th Dyn., Ahmosi, drove them across the N.E. frontier and pursued them into Palestine (c. B.C. 1580). The 18th Dyn. ushers in the most glorious period in Egyptian history, the New Kingdom, or, as it has been called on account of its far-reaching sway, the Empire, lasting to the end of the 20th Dynasty. The prolonged effort to cast out the Hyksos had welded together a nation in arms under the leadership of the Theban kings, leaving no trace of the old feudalism; the hatred of the oppressor pursued the ‘pest’ far into Syria in successive campaigns, until Thetmosi I., the second successor of Ahmosi, reached the Euphrates. Thetmosi II. and a queen, Hatshepsut (c. 1500), ruled for a time with less vigorous hands, and the latter cultivated only the arts of peace. Meanwhile the princes of Syria strengthened themselves and united to offer a formidable opposition to Thetmosi III. when he endeavoured to recover the lost ground. This Pharaoh, however, was a great strategist, as well as a valiant soldier: as the result of many annual campaigns, he not only placed his tablet on the bank of the Euphrates, by the side of that of Thetmosi I., but also consolidated the rule of Egypt over the whole of Syria and Phœnicia. The wealth of the conquered countries poured into Egypt, and the temple of the Theban Ammon, the god under whose banner the armies of the Pharaohs of two dynasties had won their victories, was ever growing in wealth of slaves, lands, and spoil. Amenhotp III. enjoyed the fruits of his predecessors’ conquests, and was a mighty builder. His are the colossi at Thebes named Memnon by the Greeks. The empire had then reached its zenith. Under Amenhotp IV. (c. 1370), in some ways the most striking figure in Egyptian history [the latest discoveries tend to show that the king was not more than 14 years old when the great innovation took place. He may thus have been rather a tool in the hands of a reformer], it rapidly declined: the Hittites were pressing into Syria from the north, and all the while the Pharaoh was a dreamer absorbed in establishing a monotheistic worship of Aton ( the sun) against the polytheism of Egypt, and more especially against the Theban and national worship of Ammon. He changed his own name to Akhenaton, built a new capital, the ‘Horizon of Aton,’ in place of Thebes, and erased the name and figure of Ammon wherever they were seen. Art, too, found in him a lavish patron, and struck out new types, often bizarre rather than beautiful. But for the empire Pharaoh had no thought or leisure. The cuneiform letters found in the ruins of his newfangled capital at el-Amarna show us his distracted agents and vassals in Syria appealing to him in vain for support against the intrigues and onslaughts of rebels and Invaders. His father Amenhotp III. had carried on an active correspondence with the distant kings of Babylonia, Assyria, and Mitanni in Mesopotamia; but after a few years Akhenaton must have lost all influence with them. Shortly after Akhenaton’s death the new order of things, for which he had striven so long and sacrificed so much, was abolished, its triumph having lasted for but 10 or 15 years. Ammon worship was then restored, and retaliated on the name and figure of the heretic king and of his god.

Although the 18th Dyn. was so powerful and active, and had built temples in Nubia as well as in Syria, the Delta was neglected. Only on the road to Asia, at Heliopolis and Bubastis, have relics been found of these kings. Until Akhenaton’s heresy, their religious zeal was devoted to honouring Ammon. The 19th Dyn., on the other hand, was as active in the Delta as in other parts of Egypt, and although Ammon remained the principal god of the State, Ptah of Memphis and Rē the sun-god of Heliopolis were given places of honour at his side. There is a famous series of reliefs at Karnak of the Syrian war of Seti I. (c. 1300); but his son Ramesses II. (c. 1290– 1220) was the greatest figure in the Dynasty: he was not indeed able to drive back the Hittites, but he fought so valorously in Syria that they could make no advance southward. They were compelled to make a treaty with Pharaoh and leave him master of Syria as far as Kadesh on the Orontes. Ramesses II. was the greatest builder of all the Pharaohs, covering the land with temples and monuments of stone, the inscriptions and scenes upon them in many cases extolling his exploit against the Hittites at the battle of Kadesh, when his personal prowess saved the Egyptian camp and army from overwhelming disaster. Towards the end of his long reign of 67 years disorders multiplied, and his son and successor Mineptah had to face encroachments of the Libyans on his own soil and revolt in his frontier possessions in Palestine. Mineptah, too, was old, but by the fifth year of his reign he was able to boast of peace and security restored to his country. The 19th Dyn. ended, however, in utter confusion, a Syrian finally usurping the throne. In the 20th Dyn. the assaults on Egypt were renewed with greater violence than ever by Libyans from the west and by sea-rovers from the islands and coasts of the eastern Mediterranean. But Setnekht and his son and successor Ramesses III. (c. 1200–1165) were equal to the occasion. The latter was victorious everywhere, on sea and on land, and a great incursion from the north, after maiming the Hittite power, was hurled back by the Egyptian king, who then established his rule in Syria and Phœnicia over a wider area than his celebrated namesake had controlled. Ramesses XII. was followed by sons and others of his own name down to Ramesses XII., but all within glorious reigns. Under them the empire flickered out, from sheer feebleness and internal decay.

Egypt now (c. 1100) enters upon a new period of history, that of the Deltaic

Dynasties. Thebes was no longer the metropolis. The growth of commerce in the

Levant transferred the centre of gravity northward. After the fall of the New

Kingdom, all the native dynasties originated in various cities of Lower, with perhaps Middle, Egypt. The later Ramessides had depended for their fighting men on Libyan mercenaries, and the tendency of the Libyans to settle on the rich lands of Egypt was thus hastened and encouraged. The military chiefs established their families in the larger towns, and speedily became wealthy as well as powerful; it was from such families of Libyan origin that the later ‘native’ dynasties arose. Dyn. 21 was from Tanis (Zoan); parallel with and apparently subject to it was a dynasty of priest-kings at Thebes. The pitiful report of a certain Unamun, sent from Thebes to obtain wood from Lebanon, shows how completely Egypt’s influence in Syria and the Levant had passed away at the beginning of this dynasty. The 22nd Dyn. (c. 950–750) arose in Bubastis, or perhaps at Heracleopolis in Middle Egypt. Its founder, Sheshonk I., the Biblical Shishak, was energetic and overran Palestine, but his successors quickly degenerated. The 23rd Dyn., said to be Tanite, was perhaps also Bubastite. There were now again all the elements of feudalism in the country except the central control, and Egypt thus lay an easy prey to a resolute invader. We find at the end of the 23 rd Egyptian Dyn. Pankhi, king of Ethiopia, already in full possession of the Thebaid (c. 730). Tefnakht, prince of Sais, was then endeavouring to establish his sway over the other petty princes of the Delta and Middle Egypt. Pankhi accepted the implied challenge, overthrew Tefnakht, and compelled him to do homage. Tefnakht’s son Bocchoris alone forms the 24th Dynasty. He was swept away by another invasion led by Shabako (c. 715), who heads the Ethiopian or 25th Dynasty. Shabako was followed by his son Shabitku and by Tahrak. The kings of this dynasty, uniting the forces of Egypt and Ethiopia, endeavoured to extend their influence over Syria in opposition to the Assyrians. Tahrak (Tirhakah) was particularly active in this endeavour, but as soon as Esarhaddon was free to invade Egypt the Assyrian king had no difficulty in taking Memphis, capturing most of the royal family, and driving Tahrak southward (c. 670). The native princes were no doubt hostile at heart to the Ethiopian domination: on his departure, Esarhaddon left these, to the number of 20 , with Assyrian garrisons, in charge of different parts of the country; an Assyrian governor, however, was appointed to Pelusium, which was the key of Egypt. None the less the Ethiopian returned as soon as the Assyrian host had withdrawn, and annihilated the army of occupation. Esarhaddon thereupon prepared a second expedition, but died on the way. Ashurbanipal succeeding, reinstated the governors, and his army reached Thebes. On his-withdrawal there was trouble again. The Assyrian governor of Pelusium was accused of treachery with Niku (Neko), prince of

Sais and Memphis, and Pekrūr of Pisapt (Goshen), and their correspondence with Tahrak was intercepted. They were all brought in chains to Nineveh, but Niku was sent back to Egypt with honour, and his son was appointed governor of Athribis. Soon after this failure Tahrak died: his nephew Tandamane recovered Memphis, but was speedily expelled by Ashurbanipal, who advanced up the river to Thebes and plundered it.

Meanwhile the family of Neko at Sais was securing its position in the Delta, taking advantage of the protection afforded by the Assyrians and the weakening of the

Ethiopian power. Neko himself was killed, perhaps by Tandamane, but his son Psammetichus took his place, founding the 26th Dynasty. Counting his reign from the death of Tahrak (c. 664), Psammetichus soon ruled both Upper and Lower Egypt, while in the absence of fresh expeditions all trace of the brief Assyrian domination disappeared. The 26th Dyn. marks a great revival; Egypt quickly regained its prosperity after the terrible ravages of civil wars and Ethiopian and Assyrian invasions. Psammetichus I., in his long reign of 54 years, re-organized the country, safeguarded it against attack from Ethiopia, and carried his arms into S.W. Palestine. His son Neko, profiting by the long weakness of Assyria, swept through Syria as far as Carchemish on the Euphrates, and put the land to tribute, until the Babylonian army commanded by Nebuchadrezzar hurled him back (B.C. 605). His successors, Psammetichus II. and Apries (Hophra), attempted to regain influence in Syria, but without success. Apries with his Greek mercenaries became unpopular with the native soldiery, and he was dethroned by Ahmasi (Amasis). This king, although he made alliances with Crœsus of Lydia, Polycrates of Samos, and Battus of Cyrene during a reign of 46 years, devoted himself to promoting the internal prosperity of Egypt. It was a golden age while it lasted, but it did not prevent the new Persian masters of the East from preparing to add Egypt to their dominions. Cyrus lacked opportunity, but Cambyses easily accomplished the conquest of Egypt in B.C. 527, six months after the death of Amasis.

The Persian Dynasty is counted as the 27th. The memory of its founder was hateful to the Egyptians and the Greeks alike; probably the stories of his mad cruelty, though exaggerated, have a solid basis. Darius, on the other hand (521–486), was a good and considerate ruler, under whom Egypt prospered again; yet after the battle of Marathon it revolted. Xerxes, who quelled the revolt, and Artaxerxes were both detested. Inaros the Libyan headed another rebellion, which was backed by an Athenian army and fleet; but after some brilliant successes his attempt was crushed. It was not till about B.C. 405 that Egypt revolted successfully; thereafter, in spite of several attempts to bring it again under the Persian yoke, it continued independent for some 60 years, through Dyns. 28–30. At length, in 345, Ochus reconquered the province, and it remained subject to Persia until Alexander the Great entered it almost without bloodshed in 332 after the battle of Issus.

Throughout the Hellenistic (Ptolemaic and Roman) period the capital of Egypt was Alexandria, the intellectual head of the world. Under the Ptolemys, Egypt on the whole prospered for two centuries, though often torn by war and dissension. [In the reign of Philo-metor (c. B.C. 170) a temple was built by the high-priest Onias for the Jews in Egypt after the model of the Temple at Jerusalem (Josephus, BJ VII. x. 3). The ruins have been recognized by Flinders Petrie at Tell el-Yahudieh.] From B.C. 70 there is a conspicuous absence of native documents, until Augustus in B.C. 30 inaugurated the Roman rule. Egypt gradually recovered under its new masters, and in the second cent. of their rule was exceedingly prosperous as a rich and well-managed cornfield for the free supply of Rome.

2. Egypt in the Bible is Egypt under the Deltaic Dynasties, or, at earliest, of the

New Kingdom. This applies not only to the professedly late references in 1 and 2

Kings, but also throughout. Abraham and Joseph may belong chronologically to the Middle Kingdom, but the Egyptian names in the story of Joseph are such as were prevalent only in the time of the Deltaic Dynasties. There were wide differences in manners and customs and in the condition of the country and people at different periods of the history of Egypt. In the Biblical accounts, unfortunately, there are not many criteria for a close fixing of the dates of composition. It may be remarked that there were settlements of Jews in Pathros (Upper Egypt) as early as the days of Jeremiah, and papyri indicate the existence of an important Jewish colony at Syene and Elephantine, on the S. border of Egypt, at an equally early date. The OT writers naturally show themselves much better acquainted with the eastern Delta, and especially the towns on the road to Memphis, than with any other part of Egypt. For instance, Sais, the royal city of the 26th Dyn. on the W. side of the Delta, is not once mentioned, and the situation of Thebes (No-Amon) is quite misunderstood by Nahum.

Of localities in Upper Egypt only Syene and Thebes (No) are mentioned; in Middle

Egypt, Hanes; while on the eastern border and the route to Memphis (Noph) are

Shihor, Shur, Sin, Migdol, Tahpanhes, Pi-beseth, On; and by the southern route, Goshen, Pithom, Succoth, Rameses, besides lesser places in the Exodus. Zoan was not on the border routes, but was itself an important centre in the East of the Delta, as being a royal city. There are but few instances in which the borrowing of Egyptian customs or even words by the Hebrews can be traced; but the latter were none the less well acquainted with Egyptian ways. The Egyptian mourning of 70 days for Jacob is characteristic (Gn 50:3), so also may be the baker’s habit of carrying on the head (40:16, 17). The assertion that to eat bread with the Hebrews was an abomination to the Egyptians (43:32) has not yet been satisfactorily explained. The Hebrews, no doubt, like the Greeks in Herodotus, slew and ate animals, e.g. the sheep and the cow, which Egyptians in the later days were forbidden to slay by their religious scruples. Circumcision was frequent in Egypt, but how far it was a general custom (cf. Jos 5:9) is not clear. Prophecies of a Messianic type were current in Egypt, and one can be traced back to about the time of the Hyksos domination. It has been suggested that in this and in the custom of circumcision are to be seen the most notable influences of Egypt on the people of Israel.

3. Religion.—The piety of the Egyptians was the characteristic that struck the Greeks most forcibly, and their stupendous monuments and the bulk of the literature that has come down to us are either religious or funerary. An historical examination of all the phenomena would show that piety was inherent in the nature of the people, and that their religious observances grew and multiplied with the ages, until the Moslem conquest. The attempt will now be made to sketch some outlines of the Egyptian religion and its practices, as they appear especially in the last millennium B.C. The piety of the Egyptians then manifested itself especially in the extraordinary care bestowed on the dead, and also in the number of objects, whether living or inanimate, that were looked upon as divine.

The priests (Egyp. ‘the pure ones’ or ‘the divine fathers’) were a special class with semi-hereditary privileges and duties. Many of them were pluralists. They received stipends in kind from the temples to which they were attached, and in each temple were divided into four phylæ or tribes, which served in succession for a lunar month at a time. The chief offices were filled by select priests entitled prophets by the Greeks (Egyp. ‘servants of the god’; Potiphera (Gn 41:45) was prophet [of Rē] in On), of which there was theoretically one for each god in a temple. Below the priests in the temple were the pastophori (Egyp. ‘openers,’ i.e. of shrines), and of the same rank as these were the choachytes (Egyp. ‘water-pourers’) in the necropolis. These two ranks probably made offerings of incense and libations before the figure of the god or of the deceased. The priestly class were very attentive to cleanliness, wearing white linen raiment, shaving their heads, and washing frequently. They abstained especially from fish and beans, and were probably all circumcised. The revenues of the temples came from endowments of land, from offerings and from fees. The daily ritual of offering to the deity was strictly regulated, formula) with magic power being addressed to the shrine, its door, its lock, etc., as it was being opened, as well as to the deity within; hymns were sung and sistrums rattled, animals slaughtered, and the altar piled with offerings. On festal occasions the god would be carried about in procession, sometimes to visit a neighbouring deity. Burnt-offerings, beyond the burning of incense, were unknown in early times, but probably became usual after the New

Kingdom. Offerings of all kinds were the perquisite of the priests when the god (image or animal) had bad his enjoyment of them. Oracles were given in the temples, not by an inspired priest, but by nods or other signs made by the god; sometimes, for instance, the decision of a god was sought in a legal matter by laying before him a papyrus in which the case was stated. In other cases the enquirer slept in the temple, and the revelation came in a dream. The oracles of the Theban Ammon and (later) of Buto were political forces: that of Ammon in the Oasis of Siwa played a part in Greek history. The most striking hymns date from the New Kingdom, and are addressed especially to the solar form of Ammon (or to the Aton during Akhenaton’s heresy); the fervour of the worshipper renders them henothelstic, pantheistic, or even theistic in tone. Prayers also occur; but the tendency was overwhelmingly greater to magic, compelling the action of the gods, or in other ways producing the desired effect. Preservative amulets, over which the formulæ had been spoken or on which such were engraved, abound on the mummies of the later dynasties, and no doubt were worn by living persons. The endless texts inscribed in the pyramids of the end of the Old Kingdom, on coffins of the Middle Kingdom, and in the Book of the Dead, are almost wholly magical formulæ for the preservation of the material mummy, for the divinization of the deceased, for taking him safely through the perils of the under world, and giving him all that he would wish to enjoy in the future life. A papyrus is known of spells for the use of a mother nursing her child; spells accompanied the employment of drugs in medicine; and to injure an enemy images were made in wax and transformed by spells into persecuting demons.

Egyptian theology was very complex and self-contradictory; so also were its views about the life after death. These were the result of the amalgamation of doctrines originally belonging to different localities; the priests and people were always willing to accept or absorb new ideas without displacing the old, and to develop the old ones by imagination in different directions. No one attempted to reach a uniform system, or, if any had done so, none would abide long by any system. Death evidently separated the elements of which the living man was composed; the corpse might be rejoined from time to time by the hawk-winged soul, while at other times the latter would be in the heavens associating with gods. To the ka (life or activity or genius) offerings were made at the tomb; we hear also of the ‘shade’ and ‘power.’ The dead man was judged before Osiris, the king of the dead, and if condemned, was devoured by a demon, but if justified, fields of more than earthly fruitfulness were awarded to him in the under world; or he was received into the bark of the sun to traverse the heavens gloriously; or, according to another view, he passed a gloomy and feeble existence in the shadows of the under world, cheered only for an hour as the sun travelled nightly between two of the hour-gates of the infernal regions. No hint of the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis, attributed by Herodotus to the Egyptians, has yet been found in their writings; but spells were given to the dead man by which he could voluntarily assume the form of a lotus, of an ibis or a heron or a serpent, or of the god Ptah, or ‘anything that he wished.’ Supplies for the dead were deposited with him in the grave, or secured to him by magic formulæ; offerings might be brought by his family on appropriate occasions, or might be made more permanent by endowment; but such would not be kept up for many generations.

As to the deities, the king was entitled the ‘good god,’ was a mediator between god and man as the religious head of the State and chief of the priesthood, and his image might he treated as divine even during his lifetime. A dead man duly buried was divine and identified with Osiris, but in few cases did men preserving their personality become acknowledged gods; such was the case, however, conspicuously with two great scribes and learned men—Imhotep, architect of king Zoser of the 3rd dynasty, and Amenhotp, son of Hap, of the time of Amenhotp III. (18th dynasty), who eventually became divine patrons of science and writing: the former was considered to be a son of Ptah, the god of Memphis, and was the equivalent of Asklepios as god of healing. Persons drowned or devoured by crocodiles were accounted specially divine, and Osiris from certain incidents in his myth was sometimes named ‘the Drowned.’ The divinities proper were (1) gods of portions of the universe: the sun-god Rē was the most important of these; others were the earth-god Geb, the sky-god Shoon, and the goddess Nut, with stellar deities, etc. (2) Gods of particular qualities or functions: as Thoth the god of wisdom, Mei goddess of justice and truth, Mont the god of war, Ptah the artificer god. (3) Gods of particular localities: these included many of classes (1) and (2). Some of them had a wide vogue from political, mythological, or other reasons: thus, through the rise of Thebes, Ammon, its local god, became the King of the Gods, and the god of the whole State in the New Empire; and Osiris, god of Busiris in the Delta, became the universal King of the Dead, probably because his myth, shown in Passion Plays at festivals, made a strong appeal to humanity. Around the principal god of a temple were grouped a number of other deities, subordinate to him there and forming his court, although they might severally be his superiors in other localities; nine was the typical number in the divine court, and thus the cotemplar deities were called the Ennead of the principal god, though the number varied considerably. Each principal god or goddess, too, had a consort and their child, forming a triad; these triads had been gradually developed by analogy from one group to another, as from that of Osiris, Isis, and Horus described below.

Some of the deities were of human form, as Ptah, Osiris, Etom, Muth, Neith, besides those which were of human origin. Bes, the god of joy and of children, was a grotesque dwarf dancer. Others were in the form of animals or animal-headed— canine, as Anubis and Ophois; feline, as Mihos (Minsis) and the goddesses Sakhmis and Bubastis. Thoth was ibis-headed; Horus, Rē, and Mont had the heads of falcons. Besides the sacred animal whose head is seen in the representations of the god, there were others which did not affect his normal form, although they were considered as incarnations of him. Thus the bull Apis was sacred to Ptah, Mnevis to Etom, Bacis to Mont; and in addition to the ibis, the ape was, in a more complete sense than these, an embodiment of Thoth. In the late ages most mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes, and several insects were looked upon as sacred,—some only in particular localities, others universally, such as the cow sacred to Hathor, Isis, etc., and the cat sacred to Bubastis; after death, the sacred animals were mummified, fully or in part, separately or in batches, according to their size and sanctity.

Rē, the sun-god, was the ruler of heaven and the archetype of the living king; other ruling gods, such as Ammon, Suchos the crocodile-god, Mont the war-god, were identified with Rē, whose name was then generally added to theirs. The popular Osiris legend was the supreme factor in the Egyptian religion, however, from the 26 th Dynasty and onwards. Osiris was the beneficent king of Egypt, slain and cut in pieces by his wicked brother Seth, sought for by his sister-wife Isis, and restored by her magic to life; Isis bore him Horus, who avenged his father by overcoming Seth. The dead Osiris was an emblem of the dead king and of the sun in the night, Horus of the succeeding or reigning king and of the next day’s sun; thus the tragedy and the triumph were ever renewed. Not only dead kings, but also all the blessed dead, were assimilated to Osiris, and triumphed through Horus and his helpers. With the Osiris legend are connected the best features in the Book of the Dead, the remarkable judgment scene, and the negative confession, implying that felicity after death depended on a meritorious life. Seth, once god of several localities and a type of power, as an element of the myth, was the type of darkness and wickedness; and in late times he, together with his animals the ass and the hippopotamus, and Suchos the crocodile-god, were execrated, and his worship hardly tolerated even in his own cities. Ptah the god of Memphis had an uninteresting personality; the inhabitants of that populous capital reserved their emotions for the occasions when Apis died and a new Apis was found, assimilating the former to Osiris and probably the latter to Horus.

The dead Apis, which was buried with such pomp and expenditure, was called the Osiris Apis—Osirapis or Serapis. With some modification, this Serapis, well known and popular amongst natives and foreign settlers alike, was chosen by Ptolemy Soter to be the presiding deity of his kingdom, for the Egyptians, and more especially for the Greeks at Alexandria. He was worshipped as a form of Osiris, an infernal Zeus, associated with Isis. His acceptance by the Greek world, and still more

enthusiastically by the Romans and the western half of the Roman world, spread the Osiris Passion—otherwise the Isiac mysteries—far and wide. This Isiac worship possessed many features in common with Christianity: on the one hand, it prepared the world for the latter, and influenced its symbols; while, on the other, it proved perhaps the most powerful and stubborn adversary of the Christian dogma in its contest with paganism.

F. LL. GRIFFITH.

EGYPT, RIVER (RV ‘brook,’ better ‘wady’) OF.—The S.W. boundary of

Palestine (Nu 34:5, Is 27:12 etc.; cf. ‘river (nahar) of Egypt,’ Gn 15:18, and simply ‘the wady,’ Ezk 47:19, 48:28). It is the Wady el-Arish, still the boundary of Egypt, in the desert half-way between Pe usium and Gaza. Water is always to be found by digging in the bed of the wady, and after heavy rain the latter is filled with a rushing stream. El-Arish, where the wady reaches the Mediterranean, was an Egyptian frontier post to which malefactors were banished after having their noses cut off; hence its Greek name Rhinocorura. See also SHIHOR, SHUR.

F. LL. GRIFFITH.

EGYPTIAN, THE.—An unnamed leader of the ‘Assassins’ or ‘Sicarii’ for whom Claudius Lysias took St. Paul (Ac 21:38). This man is also mentioned by Josephus as a leader defeated by Felix, but not as connected with the ‘Assassins’ (Ant. XX. viii. 6). The Egyptian escaped, and Lysias thought that he had secured him in St. Paul’s person. The discrepancies between Josephus and St. Luke here make mutual borrowing improbable. See THEUDAS.

A. J. MACLEAN.

EGYPTIAN VERSIONS.—See TEXT OF NT, §§ 27–29.

EHI.—See AHIRAM.

EHUD.—1. The deliverer of Israel from Eglon, king of Moab (Jg 3:12–30). The story of how Ehud slew Eglon bears upon it the stamp of genuineness; according to it, Ehud was the bearer of a present from the children of Israel to their conqueror, the king of Moab. On being left alone with the king, Ehud plunges his sword into the body of Eglon, and makes good his escape into the hill-country of Ephraim. Israel is thus delivered from the Moabite supremacy. 2. Son of Bilhan, a Benjamite (1 Ch 7:10 , cf. 8:6).

W. O. E. OESTERLEY.

EKER.—A Jerahmeelite (1 Ch 2:27).

EKREBEL (Jth 7:18).—Apparently the town of ‘Akrabeh, E. of Shechem, the capital of Akrabattine.

EKRON.—A city in the Philistine Pentapolis, not conquered by Joshua (Jos 13:3) , but theoretically a border city of Judah (15:11) and Dan (19:43); said, in a passage which is probably an interpolation, to have been smitten by Judah (Jg 1:18). Hither the captured ark was brought from Ashdod (1 S 5:10), and on its restoration the Philistine lords who had followed it to Beth-shemesh returned to Ekron (1 S 6:16). Ekron was the border town of a territory that passed in the days of Samuel from the Philistines to Israel (1 S 7:14), and it was the limit of the pursuit of the Philistines after the slaying of Goliath by David (17:52). Its local numen was Baal-zebub, whose oracle Ahaziah consulted after his accident (2 K 1:2). Like the other Philistine cities, it is made the subject of denunciation by Jeremiah, Amos, Zephaniah, and the anonymous prophet whose writing occupies Zec 9–11. This city is commonly identified with ‘Akir, a village on the Philistine plain between Gezer and the sea, where there is now a Jewish colony. For the identification there is no basis, except the coincidence of name; there are no remains of antiquity whatever at ‘Akir.

R. A. S. MACALISTER.

EL.—See GOD.

ELA.—1. 1 Es 9:27 = Elam, Ezr 10:26. 2. 1 K 4:18, father of Solomon’s commissariat officer in Benjamin.

ELAH.—1. A ‘duke’ of Edom (Gn 36:41, 1 Ch 1:52). 2. Son of Baasha, king of Israel. He had nominal possession of the throne two years or fractions of years (1 K 16:8–14). He gave himself to drunken dissipation, until Zimri, one of his generals, revolted and killed him. The usual extirpation of the defeated dynasty followed. 3. Father of Hoshea (2 K 15:30, 17:1, 18:1, 9). 4. Second son of Caleb (1 Ch 4:15). 5. A Benjamite (1 Ch 9:8).

H. P. SMITH.

ELAH (‘terebinth’).—A valley in the Shephēlah, the scene of the battle between David and Goliath (1 S 17, 21:9). It is most likely the modern Wady es-Sunt, which, rising in the mountains about Jeba, about 11 miles due S.W. of Jerusalem, runs westward, under various names, till it opens on the Maritime Plain at Tell es-Safi. In the middle of the valley is a watercourse which runs in winter only; the bottom is full of small stones such as David might have selected for his sling.

R. A. S. MACALISTER.

ELAM.—1. A son of Shem (Gn 10:22 = 1 Ch 1:17), the eponymous ancestor of the Elamites (see following article). 2. A Korabite (1 Ch 26:3). 3. A Benjamite (1 Ch 8:24). 4. The eponym of a family of which 1254 returned with Zerub. (Ezr 2:7, Neh 7:12, 1 Es 5:12) and 71 with Ezra (Ezr 8:7, 1 Es 8:33). It was one of the Benê-Elam that urged Ezra to take action against mixed marriages (Ezr 10:2), and six of the same family are reported to have put away their foreign wives (Ezr 10:26). Elam acc. to Neh 10:14 ‘sealed the covenant.’ 5. In the parallel lists Ezr 2:31, Neh 7:34 ‘the other Elam’ has also 1254 descendants who return with Zerubbabel. 6. A priest who took part in the dedication of the walls (Neh 12:42).

ELAM.—An important country of Western Asia, called Elamtu by the Babylonians and Elymais by the Greeks (also Susiana, from Shushan or Susa the capital). It corresponds nearly to the modern Chuzistan, lying to the east of the lower Tigris, but including also the mountains that skirt the plain. The portion south of Susa was known as Anshan (Anzan). In Gn 10:22 (1 Ch 1:17) Elam is called a son of Shem, from the mistaken idea that the people were of the Semitic race. They belonged to the great family of barbarous or semi-barbarous tribes which occupied the highlands to the east and north of the Semites before the influx of the Aryans.

Historically Elam’s most important place in the Bible is found in Gn 14:1ff., where it is mentioned as the suzerain of Babylonia and therewith of the whole western country including Palestine. The period there alluded to was that of Elam’s greatest power, a little later than B.C. 2300. For many centuries previous, Elam had upon the whole been subordinate to the ruling power of Babylonia, no matter which of the great cities west of the Tigris happened to be supreme. Not many years later, Hammurabi of Babylon (perhaps the Amraphel of Gn 14) threw off the yoke of Elam, which henceforth held an inferior place. Wars between the two countries were, however, very common, and Elam frequently had the advantage. The splendidly defensible position of the capital contributed greatly to its independence and recuperative power, and thus Susa became a repository of much valuable spoil secured from the Babylonian cities. This explains how it came about that the Code of Hammurabi, the most important single monument of Oriental antiquity, was found in the ruins of Susa. A change in relations gradually took place after Assyria began to control Babylonia and thus encroach upon Elam, which was thenceforth, as a rule, in league with the patriotic Babylonians, especially with the Chaldæans from the south-land. Interesting and tragic is the story of the combined efforts of the Chaldæans and Elamites to repel the invaders. The last scene of the drama was the capture and sack of Susa (c. B.C. 645). The conqueror Ashurbanipal (Bibl. Osnappar) completed the subjugation of Elam by deporting many of its inhabitants, among the exiles being a detachment sent to the province of Samaria (Ezr 4:9). Shortly thereafter, when Assyria itself declined and fell, Elam was occupied by the rising Aryan tribes, the Medes from the north and the Persians from the south. Cyrus the Persian (born about B.C. 590) was the fourth hereditary prince of Anshan.

Elam has a somewhat prominent place in the prophetic writings, in which Media + Elam = Persian empire. See esp. Is 21:2ff., Jer 49:34ff., and cf. Is 22:6, Jer 25:25, Ezk

32:24. Particular interest attached to the part taken by the Elamites in the overthrow of

Babylonia. An effect of this participation is curiously shown in the fact that after the Exile, Elam was a fairly common name among the Jews themselves (Ezr 2:7, 31, Neh 7:12, 1 Ch 8:24 et al.).

J. F. MCCURDY.

ELASA (1 Mac 9:5).—The scene of the defeat and death of Judas Maccabæus. The site may be at the ruin Il’asa, near Beth-horon.

ELASAH (‘God hath made’).—1. One of those who had married a foreign wife (Ezr 10:22). 2. The son of Shaphau, who, along with Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, carried a message from king Zedekiah to Babylon (Jer 29:3).

ELATH (called also Eloth, ‘the great trees’).—An important Edomite town on the N.E. arm of the Red Sea, near Ezion-geber. It is mentioned as one of the places passed by the Israelites during their wanderings (Dt 2:8). Close to it king Solomon’s navy was constructed (1 K 9:26). Subsequently the town must have been destroyed, as we read in 2 K 14:22 of its being built by Azariah. Later on it was conquered by the Edomites (so RVm).

W. O. E. OESTERLEY. EL-BERITH.—See BAAL-BERITH.

EL-BETHEL.—The name which Jacob is said to have given to the scene of his vision on his way back from Paddau-aram, Gn 35:7 ( P? ).

ELDAAH.—A son of Midian (Gn 25:4, 1 Ch 1:33).

ELDAD.—One of the seventy elders appointed to assist Moses in the government of the people. On one occasion he and another named Medad were not present with Moses and the rest of the elders at the door of the Tabernacle to hear God’s message and receive His spirit. But the spirit of the Lord came upon them where they were, and they prophesied in the camp. Joshua regarded this as an irregularity, but Moses declined to interfere (Nu 11:26–29).

ELDER (in OT).—The rudimentary form of government which prevailed amongst the Hebrews in primitive times grew out of family life. As the father is head of the household, so the chiefs of the principal families ruled the clan and the tribe, their authority being ill-defined, and, like that of an Arab sheik, depending on the consent of the governed. In our earliest documents the ‘elders of Israel’ are the men of position and influence, who represent the community in both religious and civil affairs (Ex 3:16, 18, 12:11, 17:5f., 18:12, 19:7, Nu 11:16, Dt 5:23, 27:1, 31:28): the ‘elders’ of Ex 24:1 are the ‘nobles’ of v. 11. Josephus sums up correctly when he makes Moses declare: ‘Aristocracy … is the best constitution’ (Ant. VI. viii. 17). The system existed in other Semitic races (Nu 22:4, Jos 9:11, Ezk 27:9, Ps 105:22). After the settlement in Canaan the ‘elders’ still possessed much weight (1 S 4:3, 8:4, 15:30, 2 S 3:17, 5:3, 17:14f., 1 K 8:1). And now we find ‘elders of the city’ the governing body of the town (Ru 4:2, 9, 1 S 11:3, 1 K 21:8, 11, 2 K 10:1, 5); the little town of Succoth boasted no fewer than seventy-seven (Jg 8:14). Deuteronomy brings into prominence their judicial functions (Dt 16:18, 19:12, 21:2ff., 22:15ff., 25:7ff.), which were doubtless infringed upon by the position of the king as supreme judge (1 S 8:20, 2 S 15:4, 1 K 3:9, 2 K 15:5, Is 11:5, Am 2:3), but could not be abolished (1 K 20:7ff., 2 K

10:1ff., 23:1). During the Exile the ‘elders’ are the centre of the people’s life ( Jer 29:1, Ezk 8:1, 14:1, 20:1, Ezr 5:9ff., 6:7ff.; cf. Sus 5), and after the Return they continue active (Ezr 10:8, 14, Ps 107:32, Pr 31:23, Jl 1:14, 2:16). It is not improbable that the later Sanhedrin is a development of this institution.

J. TAYLOR.

ELDER (in NT).—See BISHOP; CHURCH GOVERNMENT, 6 (2).

ELEAD.—An Ephraimite (1 Ch 7:21).

ELEADAH.—An Ephraimite (1 Ch 7:20).

ELEALEH (Nu 32:3, 37, Is 15:4, 16:9, Jer 48:34).—A town of the Moabite plateau, conquered by Gad and Reuben, and rebuilt by the latter tribe. It is now the ruined mound of el-‘Al, about a mile N. of Heshbon.

ELEASAH.—1. A Judahite (1 Ch 2:39, 40). 2. A descendant of Saul (1 Ch 8:37 ,

9:43).

ELEAZAR (‘God hath helped’).—1. A son of Aaron. It was natural that priestly traditions should have much to say about him. But in earlier writings his name appears only twice, both probably from E: Dt 10:6 (his succession to the priestly office at Aaron’s death), Jos 24:33 (his death and burial). In P he is the third son of Aaron by Elisheba, his brothers being Nadab, Abihu, and Ithamar (Ex 6:23, Nu 3:2). With them he was consecrated priest (Ex 28:1), and was chief over the Levites (Nu 3:32). Nadab and Abihu having died (Lv 10:1f.), he succeeded Aaron as chief priest (Nu 20:25–28). He took part in the census in Moab (Nu 26:1, 63), and afterwards played a prominent part in the history of the settlement under Joshua (Jos 14:1, 17:4, 19:51, 21:1). He married a daughter of Putiel, and she bore him Phinehas (Ex 6:25). When the Zadokite priests returned from Babylon, they traced their descent to Aaron through Eleazar, ignoring the house of Eli (1 Ch 6:3–8); in some cases, however, the claim was made through Ithamar (1 Ch 24:5f.). 2. Son of Abinadab (1 S 7:1). 3. One of David’s three heroes (2 S 23:9, 1 Ch 11:12f.). 4. A Levite (1 Ch 23:21, 24:28). 5. 1 Es 8:43 =

Eliezer, Ezr 10:18. 6. A priest (Ezr 8:33, Neh 12:42, 1 Es 8:63). 7. 1 Es 9:19 = Eliezer, Ezr 10:18. 8. One who took a non-Israelite wife (Ezr 10:25, 1 Es 9:26). 9. A brother of Judas Maccabæus (1 Mac 2:5, 6:43–46, 2 Mac 8:23). 10. A martyr under Antiochus Epiphanes (2 Mac 6:18–31). 11. Father of Jason (1 Mac 8:17). 12. Sirach Eleazar (Sir 50:27). 13. An ancestor of Jesus (Mt 1:15).

A. H. M‘NEILE.

ELECTION.—The idea of election, as expressive of God’s method of accomplishing His purpose for the world in both providence and grace, though ( as befits the character of the Bible as peculiarly ‘the history of redemption’) especially in grace, goes to the heart of Scripture teaching. The word ‘election’ itself occurs but a few times (Ac 9:15 ‘vessel of election,’ Ro 9:11, 11:5, 7, 28, 1 Th 1:4, 2 P 1:10);

‘elect’ in NT much oftener (see below); but equivalent words in OT and NT, as

‘choose,’ ‘chosen,’ ‘foreknow’ (in sense of ‘fore-designate’), etc., considerably extend the range of usage. In the OT, as will be seen, the special object of the Divine election is Israel (e.g. Dt 4:37, 7:7 etc.); but within Israel are special elections, as of the tribe of Levi, the house of Aaron, Judah, David and his house, etc.; while, in a broader sense, the idea, if not the expression, is present wherever individuals are raised up, or separated, for special service (thus of Cyrus, Is 44:28, 45:1–6). In the NT the term ‘elect’ is frequently used, both by Christ and by the Apostles, for those who are heirs of salvation (e.g. Mt 24:22, 24, 31||, Lk 18:7, Ro 8:33, Col 3:12, 2 Ti 2:10, Tit 1:1, 1 P 1:2), and the Church, as the new Israel, is described as ‘an elect race’ (1 P 2:9). Jesus Himself is called, with reference to Is 42:1, God’s ‘chosen’ or ‘elect’ One (Mt 12:18 , Lk 9:35 RV, 23:35); and mention is once made of ‘elect’ angels (1 Ti 5:21). In St. Paul’s Epistles the idea has great prominence (Ro 9, Eph 1:4 etc.). It is now necessary to investigate the implications of this idea more carefully.

Election, etymologically, is the choice of one, or of some, out of many. In the usage we are investigating, election is always, and only, of God. It is the method by which, in the exercise of His holy freedom, He carries out His purpose (‘the purpose of God according to election,’ Ro 9:11). The ‘call’ which brings the election to light, as in the call of Abraham, Israel, believers, is in time, but the call rests on God’s prior, eternal determination (Ro 8:28, 29). Israel was chosen of God’s free love (Dt 7:6 ff.); believers are declared to be blessed in Christ, ‘even as he chose’ them ‘in him’—the

One in whom is the ground of all salvation—‘before the foundation of the world’ (Eph 1:4). It is strongly insisted on, therefore, that the reason of election is not anything in the object itself (Ro 9:11, 16); the ground of the election of believers is not in their holiness or good works, or even in fides prœvisa, but solely in God’s free grace and mercy (Eph 1:1–4; holiness a result, not a cause). They are ‘made a heritage, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will’ (Eph 1:11); or, as in an earlier verse, ‘according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace’ (v. 6). Yet, as it is axiomatic that there is no unrighteousness with God (Ro 9:14); that His loving will embraces the whole world (Jn 3:16, 1 Ti 2:4); that He can never, in even the slightest degree, act partially or capriciously (Ac 10:34, 2 Ti 2:13); and that, as salvation in the case of none is compulsory, but is always in accordance with the saved person’s own free choice, so none perishes but by his own fault or unbelief—it is obvious that difficult problems arise on this subject which can be solved, so far as solution is possible, only by close attention to all Scripture indications.

1. In the OT.—Valuable help is afforded, first, by observing how this idea shapes itself, and is developed, in the OT. From the first, then, we see that God’s purpose advances by a method of election, but observe also that, while sovereign and free, this election is never an end in itself, but is subordinated as a means to a wider end. It is obvious also that it was only by an election—that is, by beginning with some individual or people, at some time, in some place—that such ends as God had in view in His Kingdom could be realized. Abraham, accordingly, is chosen, and God calls him, and makes His covenant with him, and with his seed; not, however, as a private, personal transaction, but that in him and in his seed all families of the earth should be blessed (Gn 12:2, 3 etc.). Further elections narrow down this line of promise—Isaac, not Ishmael; Jacob, not Esau (cf. Ro 9:7–13)—till Israel is grown, and prepared for the national covenant at Sinai. Israel, again, is chosen from among the families of the earth (Ex 19:3–6, Dt 4:34, Am 3:2); not, however, for its own sake, but that it may be a means of blessing to the Gentiles. This is the ideal calling of Israel which peculiarly comes out in the prophecies of the Servant of Jehovah (Is 41–49)—a calling of which the nation as a whole so fatally fell short (Is 42:19, 20). So far as these prophecies of the Servant point to Christ—the Elect One in the supreme sense, as both Augustine and Calvin emphasize—His mission also was one of salvation to the world.

Here, however, it will naturally be asked—Is there not, after all, a reason for these and similar elections in the greater congruity of the object with the purpose for which it was designed? If God chose Abraham, was it not because Abraham was the best fitted among existing men for such a vocation? Was Isaac not better fitted than Ishmael, and Jacob than Esau, to be the transmitters of the promise? This leads to a remark which carries us much deeper into the nature of election. We err grievously if we think of God’s relation to the objects of His choice as that of a workman to a set of tools provided for him, from which he selects that most suited to his end. It is a shallow view of the Divine election which regards it as simply availing itself of happy varieties of character spontaneously presenting themselves in the course of natural development. Election goes deeper than grace—even into the sphere of nature. It presides, to use a happy phrase of Lange’s, at the making of its object ( Abraham, Moses, David, Paul, etc.), as well as uses it when made. The question is not simply how, a man of the gifts and qualifications of Abraham, or Moses, or Paul, being given, God should use him in the way He did, but rather how a man of this spiritual build, and these gifts and qualifications, came at that precise juncture to be there at all. The answer to that question can be found only in the Divine ordering; election working in the natural sphere prior to its being revealed in the spiritual, God does not simply find His instruments—He creates them: He has had them, in a true sense, in view, and has been preparing them from the foundation of things. Hence St. Paul’s saying of himself that he was separated from his mother’s womb (Gal 1:15; cf. of Jeremiah, Jer 1:5; of Cyrus, Is 45:5 etc.).

Here comes in another consideration. Israel was the elect nation, but as a nation it miserably failed in its vocation (so sometimes with the outward Church). It would seem, then, as if, on the external side, election had failed of its result; but it did not do so really. This is the next step in the OT development—the realization of an election within the election, of a true and spiritual Israel within the natural, of individual election as distinct from national. This idea is seen shaping itself in the greater prophets in the doctrine of the ‘remnant’ (cf. Is 1:9, 6:13; 8:16–18 etc.); in the idea of a godly kernel in Israel in distinction from the unbelieving mass (involved in prophecies of the Servant); and is laid hold of, and effectively used, by St. Paul in his rebutting of the supposition that the word of God had failed (Ro 9:6 ‘for they are not all Israel that are of Israel,’ 11:5, 7 etc.). This yields us the natural transition to the NT conception.

2. In the NT.—The difference in the NT standpoint in regard to election may perhaps now be thus defined. (1) Whereas the election in the OT is primarily national, and only gradually works round to the idea of an inner, spiritual election, the opposite is the case in the NT—election is there at first personal and individual, and the Church as an elect body is viewed as made up of these individual believers and all others professing faith in Christ (a distinction thus again arising between inward and outward). (2) Whereas the personal aspect of election in the OT is throughout subordinate to the idea of service, in the NT, on the other hand, stress is laid on the personal election to eternal salvation; and the aspect of election as a means to an end beyond itself falls into the background, without, however, being at all intended to be lost sight of. The believer, according to NT teaching, is called to nothing so much as to active service; he is to be a light of the world (Mt 5:13–16), a worker together with God (1 Co 3:9), a living epistle, known and read of all men (2 Co 3:2, 3); the light has shined in his heart that he should give it forth to others (2 Co 4:6); he is elected to the end that he may show forth the excellencies of Him who called him (1 P 2:9), etc. St. Paul is a ‘vessel of election’ to the definite end that he should bear Christ’s name to the Gentiles (Ac 9:15). Believers are a kind of ‘first-fruits’ unto God (Ro 16:5, 1 Co 16:15, Ja 1:18, Rev 14:4); there is a ‘fulness’ to be brought in (Ro 11:25).

As carrying us, perhaps, most deeply into the comprehension of the NT doctrine of election, it is lastly to be observed that, apart from the inheritance of ideas from the OT, there is an experiential basis for this doctrine, from which, in the living consciousness of faith, it can never be divorced. In general it is to be remembered how God’s providence is everywhere in Scripture represented as extending over all persons and events—nothing escaping His notice, or falling outside of His counsel (not even the great crime of the Crucifixion, Ac 4:28)—and how uniformly everything good and gracious is ascribed to His Spirit as its author (e.g. Ac 11:18, Eph 2:8, Ph 2:13, He 13:20, 21). It cannot, therefore, be that in so great a matter as a soul’s regeneration (see REGENERATION), and the translating of it out of the darkness of sin into the light and blessing of Christ’s Kingdom (Ac 26:18, Col 1:12, 13, 1 P 2:9, 10), the change should not be viewed as a supreme triumph of the grace of God in that soul, and should not be referred to an eternal act of God, choosing the individual, and in His love calling him in His own good time into this felicity. Thus also, in the experience of salvation, the soul, conscious of the part of God in bringing it to Himself, and hourly realizing its entire dependence on Him for everything good, will desire to regard it and will regard it; and will feel that in this thought of God’s everlasting choice of it lies its true ground of security and comfort (Ro 8:28, 33, 38, 39). It is not the soul that has chosen God, but God that has chosen it (cf. Jn 15:16), and all the comforting and assuring promises which Christ gives to those whom He describes as ‘given’ Him by the Father (Jn 6:37, 39 etc.)—as His ‘sheep’ (Jn 10:3–5 etc.)—are humbly appropriated by it for its consolation and encouragement (cf. Jn 6:39, 10:27– 29 etc.).

On this experiential basis Calvinist and Arminian may be trusted to agree, though it leaves the speculative question still unsolved of how precisely God’s grace and human freedom work together in the production of this great change. That is a question which meets us wherever God’s purpose and man’s free will touch, and probably will be found to embrace unsolved element till the end. Start from the Divine side, and the work of salvation is all of grace; start from the human side, there is responsibility and choice. The elect, on any showing, must always be those in whom grace is regarded as effecting its result; the will, on the other hand, must be freely won; but this winning of the will may be viewed as itself the last triumph of grace— God working in us to will and to do of His good pleasure (Ph 2:13, He 13:20, 21). From this highest point of view the antinomy disappears; the believer is ready to acknowledge that it is not anything in self, not his willing and running, that has brought him into the Kingdom (Ro 9:16), but only God’s eternal mercy. See, further, PREDESTINATION, REGENERATION, REPROBATE.

JAMES ORR.

ELECT LADY.—See JOHN [EPISTLES OF, II.].

EL-ELOHE-ISRAEL.—Upon the ‘parcel of ground’ which he had bought at

Shechem, Jacob built an altar and called it El-elohe-Israel, ‘El, the god of Israel,’ Gn 33:20 (E). This appears a strange name for an altar, and it is just possible that we should emend the text, so as to read with the LXX, ‘he called upon the God of Israel.’ EL ELYON.—See GOD, and MOST HIGH.

ELEMENT.—A component or constituent part of a complex body. The ancient philosophers inquired after the essential constituent elements, principles, or substances of the physical universe; and many supposed them to consist of earth, air, fire, and water. As used in the NT the word always appears in the plural.

1. In 2 P 3:10, 12 the physical elements of the heavens and the earth are referred to as destined to destruction at the sudden coming of the Day of the Lord, ‘by reason of which the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.’ In the same sense the apocryphal Book of Wisdom (7:17) employs the word, and speaks of ‘the constitution of the world and the operation of the elements.’ It should be observed also that the later Jewish angelology conceived these different elements and all the heavenly bodies as animated by living spirits, so that there were angels of the waters, the winds, the clouds, the hail, the frost, and the various seasons of the year. Thus we read in the NT Apocalypse of the four angels of the four winds, the angel that has power over fire, the angel of the waters, and an angel standing in the sun. And so every element and every star had its controlling spirit or angel, and this concept of the animism of nature has been widespread among the nations ( see ANGEL).

2. The exact meaning of the phrase ‘elements of the world’ in the four texts of Gal 4:3, 9 and Col 2:8, 20 has been found difficult to determine. (a) Not a few interpreters, both ancient and modern, understand the ‘elements’ mentioned in these passages to refer to the physical elements possessed and presided over by angels or demons. It is argued that the context in both these Epistles favours this opinion, and the express statement that the Galatians ‘were in bondage to them that by nature are no gods,’ and the admonition in Colossians against ‘philosophy, vain deceit, and worshipping of the angels,’ show that the Apostle had in mind a current superstitious belief in cosmic spiritual beings, and a worshipping of them as princes of the powers of the air and world-rulers of darkness. Such a low and superstitious bondage might well be pronounced both ‘weak and beggarly.’ (b) But probably the majority of interpreters understand by these ‘elements of the world’ the ordinances and customs of Jewish legalism, which tied the worshipper down to the ritualism of a ‘worldly sanctuary’ ( cf. He 9:1). Such a bondage to the letter had some adaptation to babes, who might need the discipline of signs and symbols while under the care of a tutor, but it was a weak and beggarly thing in comparison with conscious living fellowship with the Lord Christ. For the sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ are not to remain little children, or in a state of dependence nothing different from that of a bond-servant, but they receive the fulness of the Holy Spirit in their hearts, and cry ‘Abba, Father.’ Such are no longer ‘held in bondage under the rudiments of the world,’ for Christ sets them free from dependence upon rites, ordinances, vows, sacrifices, observance of times and seasons, which all belong to the elementary stages and phases of the lower religious cults of the world. It should be noticed that both these interpretations of the texts in Gal. and Col. claim support in the immediate context, and both will probably long continue to find favour among painstaking and critical expositors. But the lastmentioned interpretation seems to command widest acceptance, and to accord best with the gospel and teaching of St. Paul.

3. The word is found also with yet another meaning in He 5:12, where the persons addressed are said to need instruction in ‘the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God.’ Here the term ‘rudiments,’ or ‘elements,’ is obviously used in an ethical sense. By these ‘elements of the beginning of the oracles of God’ the writer means the primary and simplest truths of God’s revelation of Himself in the prophets and in Christ. These are the A B C of the Christian religion.

M. S. TERRY.

ELEPH (Jos 18:28 only).—A town of Benjamin, probably the present village Lifta, W. of Jerusalem.

ELEPHANT.—Job 40:16 AVm, but RVm correctly ‘hippopotamus’ ( see BEHEMOTH). The use of elephants in warfare is frequently noticed in the Books of Maccabees (e.g. 1 Mac 3:34, 6:30, 8:6, 11:56, 2 Mac 11:4, 13:15). See also IVORY.

ELEUTHERUS (1 Mac 11:7, 12:30).—A river which separated Syria and Phœnicia, and appears to be the mod. Nahr el-Kebîr or ‘Great River,’ which divides the Lebanon in two north of Tripoli.

ELHANAN (‘God is gracious’).—1. The son of Jair according to 1 Ch 20:5, of

Jaare-oregim according to 2 S 21:19; in the former text he is represented as slaying Lahmi the brother of Goliath, in the latter as slaying Goliath himself. A comparison of the Hebrew of these two texts is instructive, because they offer one of the clearest and simplest examples of how easy it is for corruptions to creep into the OT text. It is difficult, without using Hebrew letters, to show bow this is the case here; but the following points may be noticed. Oregim means ‘weavers,’ a word which occurs in the latter half of the verse in each case, and may easily have got displaced in the 2 Sam. passage; in both the texts the word which should be the equivalent of Jair is wrongly written; the words ‘the Bethlehemite’ (2 Sam.) and ‘Lahmi the brother of’ (1 Chr.) look almost identical when written in Hebrew. The original text, of which each of these two verses is a corruption, probably ran: ‘And Elhanan the son of Jair, the Bethlehemite, slew Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.’ But if this is so, how are we to reconcile it with what we read of David’s killing Goliath? Judging from what we know of the natural tendency there is to ascribe heroic deeds to great national warriors, realizing the very corrupt state of the Hebrew text of the Books of Samuel, and remembering the conflicting accounts given of David’s first introduction to public life (see DAVID, § 1), the probability is that Elhanan slew Goliath, and that this heroic deed was in later times ascribed to David.

2. In 2 S 23:24 and 1 Ch 11:26 Elhanan the son of Dodo of Bethlehem is numbered among David’s ‘mighty men.’ Remembering that the word Jair above is wrongly written in each case, and that it thus shows signs of corruption, it is quite possible that this Elhanan and the one just referred to are one and the same.

W. O. E. OESTERLEY.

ELI (possibly an abbreviated form of Eliel, ‘God is high’).—The predecessor of Samuel as ‘judge,’ and high priest in the sanctuary at Shiloh. Excepting in the final scene of his life, every time he comes before us it is in connexion with others who occupy the position of greater interest. Thus in his interviews with Hannah, in the first one it is she in whom the chief interest centres (1 S 1:12ff.); in the second it is the child Samuel (v. 24ff.). The next time he is mentioned it is only as the father of Hophni and Phinehas, the whole passage being occupied with an account of their evil doings (2:12ff.). Again, in 2:27ff., Eli is mentioned only as the listener to ‘a man of God’ who utters his prophecy of evil. And lastly, in his dealings with the boy Samuel the whole account (ch. 3) is really concerned with Samuel, while Eli plays quite a subsidiary part. All this seems to illustrate the personality of Eli as that of a humbleminded, good man of weak character; his lack of influence over his sons only serves to emphasize this estimate.

W. O. E. OESTERLEY.

ELI, ELI, LAMA SABACHTHANI.—See ELOI, ELOI, etc.

ELIAB (‘God is father’).—1. The representative, or ‘prince,’ of the tribe of Zebulun, who assisted Moses and Aaron in numbering the children of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai (Nu 1:1ff.). 2. The father of Dathan and Abiram (Nu 16:1). 3. The eldest brother of David, and thought by Samuel to have been destined for kingship in Israel on account of his beauty and stature (1 S 16:6, 7). He is mentioned as being a warrior in the Israelite camp on the occasion of Goliath’s challenge to and defiance of the armies of Israel; he rebukes his younger brother David for his presumption in mixing himself up with the affairs of the army; his attitude towards David, after the victory of the latter over Goliath, is not mentioned. 4. One of the musicians who were appointed by the Levites, at David’s command, to accompany the procession which was formed on the occasion of bringing the ark from the house of Obededom up to Jerusalem (1 Ch 15:18). 5. One of the Gadites who joined David, during his outlaw life, in the hold in the wilderness (1 Ch 12:9). 6. An ancestor of Samuel (1 Ch 6:27 ; see ELIHU No. 1). 7. One of Judith’s ancestors (Jth 8:1).

W. O. E. OESTERLEY.

ELIADA.—1. A son of David (2 S 5:16); called Beeliada in 1 Ch 14:7. 2. Father of Rezon, an ‘adversary’ of Solomon (1 K 11:23). 3. A warrior of Benjamin (2 Ch

17:17).

ELIADAS (1 Es 9:28) = Ezr 10:27 Elioeani.

ELIAHBA.—One of David’s ‘Thirty’ (2 S 23:32, 1 Ch 11:33).

ELIAKIM (‘God will establish’).—1. The son of Hilkiah, he who was ‘over the household’ of king Hezekiah, and one of the three who represented the king during the interview with Sennacherib’s emissaries (2 K 18:18, Is 36:3). In Is 22:20–24 ( v. 25 seems to be out of place) he is contrasted favourably with his predecessor Shebnah (who is still in office), and the prophet prophesies that Eliakim shall be a ‘father’ in the land. 2. The name of king Josiah’s son, who reigned after him; Pharaoh-necho changed his name to Jehoiakim (2 K 23:34). 3. In Neh 12:41 a priest of this name is mentioned as one among those who assisted at the ceremony of the dedication of the wall. 4. The son of Abind (Mt 1:13). 5. The son of Melea (Lk 3:30). The last two occur in the genealogies of our Lord.

W. O. E. OESTERLEY.

ELIALI (1 Es 9:34).—The name either corresponds to Binnui in Ezr 10:38 or is unrepresented there.

ELIAM.—1. Father of Bathsheba, whose first husband was a Hittite, 1 S 11:3 (= 1

Ch 3:5, where Eliam is called Ammiel). 2. Son of Ahithophel the Gilonite, and one of David’s heroes (2 S 23:34). It is not impossible that this Eliam is the same as the preceding.

ELIAONIAS (1 Es 8:31).—A descendant of Phaathmoab, who returned from Babylon with Esdras. In Ezr 8:4 Eliehoenai.

ELIAS.—See ELIJAH.

ELIASAPH.—1. Son of Deuel, and prince of Gad at the first census (Nu 1:14 , 2:14, 7:42, 47, 10:20 P). 2. Son of Lael, and prince of the Gershonites (Nu 3:24 P).

ELIASHIB.—1. The high priest who was contemporary with Nehemiah. He was son of Joiakim, grandson of Jeshua the son of Jozadak, the contemporary of

Zerubbabel (Neh 12:10, Ezr 3:1), and father of Joiada (Neh 12:10, 13:28). He assisted in the rebuilding of the walls of Jerus, during Nehemiah’s governorship (Neh 3:1). He can have had no sympathy with the exclusive policy of Ezra and Nehemiah, for both he himself and members of his family allied themselves with the leading foreign opponents of Nehemiah. See JOIADA, No. 2, TOBIAH, and SANBALLAT. 2. A singer of the time of Ezra, who had married a foreign wife (Ezr 10:24); called in 1 Es

9:24 Eliasibus. 3. An Israelite of the family of Zattu (Ezr 10:27; in 1 Es 9:28

Eliasimus); and 4. another of the family of Bani (Ezr 10:36; called in 1 Es 9:34 Enasibus), who had married foreign wives. 5. A son of Elioenai (1 Ch 3:24). 6. The name of a priestly house (1 Ch 24:12). 7. Father of Jehohanan, to whose chamber in the Temple Ezra resorted (Ezr 10:6); possibly identical with No. 1.

ELIASIB (1 Es 9:1).—A high priest in the time of Neh.; in Ezr 10:6 Eliashib.

ELIASIBUS (AV Eleazurus, 1 Es 9:24).—One of the ‘holy singers,’ who put away his strange wife. In Ezr 10:24 Elaishib.

ELIASIMUS, 1 Es 9:28 = Ezr 10:27 Eliashib.

ELIASIS (1 Es 9:34).—This name and Enasibus may be duplicate forms answering to Eliashib in Ezr 10:36.

ELIATHAH.—A Hemanite, whose family formed the twentieth division of the Temple service (1 Ch 25:4, 27).

ELIDAD.—Son of Chislon, and Benjamin’s representative for dividing the land, Nu 34:21 P (perh. = Eldad, one of the elders, Nu 11:26f. E).

ELIEHOENAI.—1. A Korahite (1 Ch 26:3). 2. The head of a family of exiles that returned (Ezr 8:4); called in 1 Es 8:31 Eliaonias.

ELIEL.—1. A Korahite (1 Ch 6:34), prob. = Eliab of v. 27 and Elihu of 1 S 1:1. 2. 3. 4. Mighty men in the service of David (1 Ch 11:46, 47, 12:11). 5. A chief of eastern Manasseh (1 Ch 5:24). 6. 7. Two Benjamite chiefs (1 Ch 8:20, 22), 8. a Levite mentioned in connexion with the removal of the ark from the house of Obed-edom (1 Ch 15:9, 11). 9. A Levite in time of Hezekiah (2 Ch 31:13).

ELIENAI.—A Benjamite (1 Ch 8:20).

ELIEZER (cf. ELEAZAR).—1. Abraham’s chief servant, a Damascene (Gn 15:2 AV, RVm. The construction here is difficult, but the words can hardly be rendered as a double proper name as RV, ‘Dammesek Eliezer.’ Whatever the exact construction, the words, unless there is a corruption in the text, must be intended to suggest that Eliezer was in some way connected with Damascus). This same Eliezer is prob. the servant referred to in Gn. 24. 2. A son of Moses by Zipporah; so named to commemorate the deliverance of Moses from Pharaoh (Ex 18:4, 1 Ch 23:15, 17). 3. The son of Becher, a Benjamite (1 Ch 7:8). 4. The son of Zichri, captain of the tribe of Reuben in David’s reign (1 Ch 27:16). 5. The son of Dodavahu of Mareshah, who prophesied the destruction of the fleet of ships which Jehoshaphat built in cooperation with Ahaziah (2 Ch 20:37). 6. One of the ‘chief men’ whom Ezra sent to Casiphia to find Levites and Nethinim to join the expedition to Jerusalem (Ezr 8:16 f. [= 1 Es 8:43 Eleazar]). 7. 8. 9. A priest, a Levite, and a son of Harim, who had married ‘strange women’ (Ezr 10:18. [= 1 Es 9:19 Eleazar] 23, 31 [= 1 Es 9:32 Elionas]). 10. One of the priests appointed to blow with the trumpets before the ark of God when David brought it from the house of Obed-edom to Jerus. (1 Ch 15:24). 11. A Levite (1 Ch 26:25). 12. An ancestor of our Lord (Lk 3:29).

ELIHOREPH.—One of Solomon’s scribes (1 K 4:3).

ELIHU.—1. An ancestor of Samuel (1 S 1:1); called in 1 Ch 6:34 Eliel, and in 1 Ch 6:27 Eliab. 2. A variation in 1 Ch 27:18 for Eliab, David’s eldest son (1 S 16:6). 3. A Manassite who joined David at Ziklag (1 Ch 12:20). 4. A Korahite porter (1 Ch 26:7). 5. See JOB [BOOK OF]. 6. An ancestor of Judith (Jth 8:1).

ELIJAH.—1. Elijah, the weirdest figure among the prophets of Israel, steps across the threshold of history when Ahab is on the throne (c. B.C. 876–854), and is last seen in the reign of Ahaziah (854–853), although a posthumous activity is attributed to him in 2 Ch 21:12ff. A native of This be in Gilead (1 K 17:1), he appears on the scene unheralded; not a single hint is given as to his birth and parentage. A rugged Bedouin in his hairy mantle (2 K 1:8), Elijah appears as a representative of the nomadic stage of Hebrew civilization. He is a veritable incarnation of the austere morals and the purer religion of an earlier period. His name (‘Jah is God’) may be regarded as the motto of his life, and expresses the aim of his mission as a prophet. Ahab had brought on a religious crisis in Israel by marrying Jezebel, a daughter of the Tyrian king Ethbaal, who, prior to his assuming royal purple, had been a priest of Melkart, the Tyrian Baal, and in order to ascend the throne had stained his hand with his master’s blood. True to her early training and environment, Jezebel not only persuaded her husband to build a temple to Baal in Samaria (1 K 16:32), but became a zealous propagandist, and developed into a cruel persecutor of the prophets and followers of Jehovah. The foreign deity, thus supported by the throne, threatened to crush all allegiance to Israel’s national God in the hearts of the people.

Such was the situation, when Elijah suddenly appears before Ahab as the champion of Jehovah. The hearts of the apostate king and people are to be chastened by a drought (17:3). It lasts three years; according to a statement of Menander quoted by Josephus (Ant. VIII. xiii. 2), in the reign of Ithobal, the Biblical Ethbaal, Phœnicia suffered from a terrible drought, which lasted one year. Providence first guides the stern prophet to the brook Cherith (Wady Kelt in the vicinity of Jericho), where the ravens supply him with food. Soon the stream becomes a bed of stones, and Elijah flees to Zarephath in the territory of Zidon. As the guest of a poor widow, he brings blessings to the household (cf. Lk 4:25, Ja 5:17). The barrel of meal did not waste, and the cruse of oil did not fail. Like the Great Prophet of the NT, he brings gladness to the heart of a bereaved mother by restoring her son to life (1 K 17:8ff., cf. Lk 7:11 ff. ).

The heavens have been like brass for months upon months, and vegetation has disappeared. The hearts of Ahab’s subjects have been mellowed, and many are ready to return to their old allegiance. The time is ripe for action, and Elijah throws down the gauntlet to Baal and his followers. Ahab and his chief steward, Obadiah, a devoted follower of the true God, are traversing the land in different directions in search of grass for the royal stables, when the latter encounters the strange figure of Jehovah’s relentless champion. Obadiah, after considerable hesitation and reluctance, is persuaded by the prophet to announce him to the king (1 K 18:7–15). As the two meet, we have the first skirmish of the battle. ‘Art thou he that troubleth Israel?’ is the monarch’s greeting; but the prophet’s reply puts the matter in a true light: ‘I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father’s house.’ At Elijah’s suggestion the prophets of Baal are summoned to Carmel to a trial by fire. The priests of the Tyrian deity, termed ‘prophets’ because they practised the mantic art, select a bullock and lay it upon an altar without kindling the wood. From morn till noon, and from noon till dewy eve, they cry to Baal for fire, but all in vain. Elijah cuts them to the quick with his biting sarcasm: ‘Cry aloud; for he is a god: either he is musing, or he is gone aside, or he is on a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth and must be awaked.’ Towards evening a dismantled altar of Jehovah is repaired, and a trench is dug round it. After the sacrificial animal has been prepared, and laid upon the wood, water is poured over it, until every thing about the altar is thoroughly soaked and the trench is full. At the prayer of Elijah, fire falls from heaven, devouring the wood, stone, and water as well as the victim. The people are convinced, and shout, ‘Jehovah, he is God; Jehovah, he is God.’ That evening, Kishon’s flood, as of old (Jg 5:21), is red with the blood of Jehovah’s enemies. The guilt of the land has been atoned for, and the long hoped for rain arrives. Elijah, in spite of his dignified position, runs before the chariot of Ahab, indicating that he is willing to serve the king as well as lead Jehovah’s people (1 K 18:41–46). The fanatical and implacable Jezebel now threatens the life of the prophet who has dared to put her minions to death. Jehovah’s successful champion loses heart, and flees to Beer-sheba on the extreme south of Judah. Leaving his servant, he plunges alone into the desert a day’s journey. Now comes the reaction, so natural after an achievement like that on Carmel, and Elijah prays that he may be permitted to die. Instead of granting his request, God sends an angel who ministers to the prophet’s physical needs. On the strength of that food he journeys forty days until he reaches Horeb, where he receives a new revelation of Jehovah (1 K 19:1–8). Elijah takes refuge in a cave, perhaps the same in which Moses hid (Ex 33:22), and hears the voice of Jehovah, ‘What doest thou here, Elijah?’ The prophet replies, ‘I have been very jealous for Jehovah, God of Hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.’ Then Jehovah reveals His omnipotence in a great wind, earthquake, and fire; but we read that Jehovah was not in these. Then followed a still small voice (Heb. lit. ‘a sound of gentle stillness’), in which God made known His true nature and His real purpose (1 K 19:9–14). After hearing his complaint, Jehovah gives His faithful servant a threefold commission: Hazael is to be anointed king of Syria, Jehu of Israel; and Elisha is to be his successor in the prophetic order. Elijah is further encouraged with information that there are still 7000 in Israel who have not bowed the knee to Baal (1 K 19:15, 18). As far as we know, only the last of these three commissions was executed by the prophet himself, who, after this sublime incident, made his headquarters in the wilderness of Damascus (v. 15); the other two were carried out either by Elisha or by members of the prophetic guilds (2 K 8:7ff., 9:2).

Elijah is also the champion of that civic righteousness which Jehovah loved and enjoined on His people. Naboth owns a vineyard in the vicinity of Jezreel. In the spirit of the Israelitish law (Lv 25:23, Nu 36:8) he refuses to sell his property to the king. But Jezehel is equal to the occasion; at her suggestion false witnesses are bribed to swear that Naboth has cursed God and the king. The citizens, thus deceived, stone their fellow-townsman to death. Abah, on his way to take possession of his ill-gotten estate, meets his old antagonist, who pronounces the judgment of God upon him: ‘In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine,’ is the prophet’s greeting. For Ahab’s sins, every male child of his house will be swept off by an awful fate (1 K 21:19, 21, 24). By the ramparts of Jezreel itself, the dogs will devour the body of Jezebel (v. 23). These predictions, although delayed for

a time on account of the repentance of Ahab, were all fulfilled (1 K 22:38, 2 K 9:25 f.,

30f., 10:7 ff. ).

Ahaziah is a true son of Ahab and Jezebel. Meeting with a serious accident, after his fall he sends a messenger to Ekron to inquire of Baal-zebub, the fly-god, concerning his recovery. Elijah intercepts the emissaries of the king, hidding them return to their master with this word from Jehovah: ‘Is it because there is no God in Israel, that ye go to inquire of Baal-zebub the god of Ekron? Thou shalt not come down from the bed whither thou art gone up, but shalt surely die.’ Ahaziah recognizes the author of this message, and sends three captains of fifties to capture the prophet, who calls down fire from heaven on the first two. The third approaches him in a humble spirit, and at God’s bidding Elijah accompanies the soldier to the palace and reiterates the message of doom (2 K 1).

Like all the great events of his life, the death of this great man of God was dramatic. Accompanied by his faithful follower Elisha, he passes from Bethel to Jericho, and from thence they cross the Jordan, after Elijah has parted the waters by striking them with his mantle. As they go on their way, buried in conversation, there suddenly appears a chariot of fire with horses of fire, which parts them asunder; and Elijah goes up by a whirlwind to heaven (cf. ELISHA).

In the history of prophecy Elijah holds a prominent position. Prophetism had two important duties to perform: (1) to extirpate the worship of heathen deities in Israel, (2) to raise the religion of Jehovah to ethical purity. To the former of these two tasks Elijah addressed himself with zeal; the latter was left to his successors in the eighth century. In his battle against Baal, he struggled for the moral rights and freedom of man, and introduced ‘the categorical imperative into prophecy.’ He started a movement which finally drove the Phœnician Baal from Israel’s confines.

Elijah figures largely in later Scriptures; he is the harbinger of the Day of the Lord (Mal 4:5); in the NT he is looked upon as a type of the herald of God, and the prediction of his coming in the Messianic Age is fulfilled in the advent of John the Baptist (Mt 11:10ff.). On the Mount of Transfiguration he appears as the representative of OT prophecy (Mt 17:3, Mk 9:4, Lk 9:36). The prophet whose ‘word burned like a torch’ (Sir 48:1) was a favourite with the later Jews; a host of Rabbinical legends grew up around his name. According to the Rabbis, Elijah was to precede the Messiah, to restore families to purity, to settle controversies and legal disputes, and perform seven miracles (cf. JE, s.v.; Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. on Mt 17:10; Schoettgen, Hor. Heb. ii. 533 ff.). Origen mentions an apocryphal work, The Apocalypse of Elijah, and maintains that 1 Co 2:9 is a quotation from it. Elijah is found also in the Koran

(vi. 85, xxxvii. 123–130), and many legends concerning him are current in Arabic literature.

2. A Benjamite chief (1 Ch 8:27). 3. 4. A priest and a layman who had married foreign wives (Ezr 10:21, 26).

JAMES A. KELSO.

ELIKA.—One of David’s ‘Thirty’ (2 S 23:25).

ELIM.—One of the stations in the wanderings of the children of Israel (Ex 15:27 , Nu 33:9); apparently the fourth station after the passage of the Red Sea, and the first place where the Israelites met with fresh water. It was also marked by an abundant growth of palm trees (cf. Ex 15:27, twelve wells and seventy palms). If the traditional site of Mt. Sinai be correct, the likeliest place for Elim is the Wady Gharandel, where there is a good deal of vegetation, especially stunted palms, and a number of waterholes in the sand; but some travellers have pushed the site of Elim farther on, and placed it almost a day’s journey nearer to Sinai, in the Wady Tayibeh, where there are again palm trees and a scanty supply of brackish water.

ELIMELECH.—The husband of Naomi and father of Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem-Judah (cf. 1 S 17:12). He is spoken of as if he were the head of a clan in the tribe of Judah (cf. Ru 2:1, 3). This would be the Hezronites (1 Ch 2:9 , cf. Gn 46:12).

ELIOENAI.—1. A Simeonite chief (1 Ch 4:36). 2. A Benjamite (1 Ch 7:8). 3. A descendant of David who lived after the Exile (1 Ch 3:23, 24). 4. A son of Pashhur who had married a foreign wife (Ezr 10:22); called in 1 Es 9:22 Elionas. 5. A son of Zattu who had committed the same offence (Ezr 10:27); called in 1 Es 9:28 Eliadas.

6. A priest (Neh 12:41).

ELIONAS.—1. Es 9:22 = Ezr 10:22 Elioenai. 2. 1 Es 9:32 = Ezr 10:31 Eliezer.

ELIPHAL.—One of David’s mighty men (1 Ch 11:35), called in 2 S 23:34

Eliphelet.

ELIPHALAT.—1. 1 Es 8:39 = Ezr 8:13 Eliphelet. 2. 1 Es 9:33 = Ezr 10:33

Eliphelet.

ELIPHAZ.—1. Eliphaz appears in the Edomite genealogy of Gn 36 (and hence 1 Ch 1:35f.) as son of Esau by Adah (vv. 4, 10), and father of Amalek by his Horite concubine Timnah (vv. 12, 22). 2. See JOB [BOOK OF].

ELIPHELEHU.—A doorkeeper (1 Ch 15:18, 21).

ELIPHELET.—1. One of David’s sons (2 S 5:16, 1 Ch 14:7 (AV Eliphalet), 1 Ch 3:6, 8 = Elpelet of 1 Ch 14:5). The double occurrence of the name in Chronicles, as if David had had two sons named Eliphelet, is probably due to a scribal error. 2. One of David’s mighty men (2 S 23:34 = Eliphal of 1 Ch 11:35). 3. A descendant of

Jonathan (1 Ch 8:39). 4. One of the sons of Adonikam who returned from exile ( Ezr 8:13 = Eliphalat of 1 Es 8:39). 5. A son of Hashum who had married a foreign wife (Ezr 10:33 = Eliphalat of 1 Es 9:33).

ELISABETH.—The wife of Zacharias and mother of John the Baptist (Lk 1:5 ff. ). The Hebrew form of the name is Elisheba (Ex 6:23). Elisabeth was of a priestly family, ‘the kinswoman’ of Mary (Lk 1:36), whom she greeted as the mother of the Messiah (v. 43).

J. G. TASKER.

ELISEUS.—The AV form of Elisha (wh. see) in NT.

ELISHA.—Elisha was a native of Abel-meholah, which was situated in the Jordan valley 10 Roman miles from Scythopolis, probably on the site of the modern ‘Ain Helweh. His father was a well-to-do farmer, and so Elisha is a representative of the newer form of Hebrew society. On his return from Horeb, Elijah cast his mantle upon the youth, as he was directing his father’s servants at their ploughing. The young man at once recognized the call from God, and, after a hastily-devised farewell feast, he left the parental abode (1 K 19:16, 19), and ever after he was known as the man ‘who poured water on the hands of Elijah’ (2 K 3:11). His devotion to, and his admiration for, his great master are apparent in the closing scenes of the latter’s life. A double portion of Elijah’s spirit (cf. the right of the firstborn to a double portion of the patrimony) is the summum bonum which he craved. In order to receive this boon he must be a witness of the translation of the mighty hero of Jehovah; and as Elijah is whirled away in the chariot of fire, his mantle falls upon his disciple, who immediately makes use of it in parting the waters of the Jordan. After Elisha has recrossed the river, he is greeted by the sons of the prophets as their leader (2 K 2:15).

After this event it is impossible to reduce the incidents of Elisha’s life to any chronological sequence. His ministry covered half a century (B.C. 855–798), and during this period four monarchs, Jehoram, Jehu, Jehoahaz, and Joash, sat on the throne of Israel (2 K 3:1ff., cf. 13:14ff.). The story of Elisha was borrowed by the author of the Book of Kings from some prophetic work of the Northern Kingdom; and, without any regard for sequence in time, he has arranged his material according to subject-matter. In our canonical Book of Kings, the larger part of Elisha’s activities is placed within the reign of Jehoram (2 K 3:1ff., cf. 9:1ff.). He may have reached the zenith of his career in these twelve years, but all the recorded events of his life cannot be crowded into this short period.

His name, Elisha (= ‘God is salvation’), like that of his master, tersely describes his character and expresses his mission. Elijah’s was a flint-like nature, which crushed its opponents and won its victories by hard blows. Elisha is a gentler and more gracious man, and gains his ends by diplomacy. He loves the haunts of men, and resides in cities like Dothan and Samaria. His miracles are deeds of mercy, and, like that of the Prophet of Nazareth, his ministry breathes a spirit ‘of gracious, soothing, holy beneficence.’ We find him at the headquarters of the sons of the prophets, making his benign presence felt. He sweetens a spring of brackish water at Jericho (2 K 2:19ff.) at a time of drought; he renders a poisonous mess of pottage harmless for the members of the prophetic guild (4:38ff.); he multiplies the oil for the prophet’s widow, who finds herself in dire extremity (4:1ff). At the prophet’s command, as at the bidding of a greater than Elisha, the loaves are multiplied (4:42). His sympathy goes out in a practical way for the man who has lost his axe (6:1ff.). One of the most beautiful stories in the whole range of Scripture is that of the entertainment of Elisha in the home of the Shunammite. Her hospitality and the practical manifestation of gratitude on the part of the prophet form a charming picture. In the restoration of her son to life, Elisha performs one of his greatest miracles (4:8ff., 8:1ff.). In his treatment of the Syrian troops which had been despatched to capture him, he anticipated the spirit of the Saviour (2 K 6:14ff.). The familiar incident of the healing of the leprosy of Naaman not only gives an idea of the influence and power of the man of God, but the story is suggestive of the pro-foundest spiritual truths (2 K 5:6–17).

The contrast between the spirit of master and disciple may be over-emphasized.

Elisha could be as stern as Elijah: at Bethel he treats the mocking youth in the spirit of Sinai (2:23), and no touch of pity can be detected in the sentence that falls on Gehazi (5:27). The estimate of Sirach (48:12) is according to all the facts of the OT narrative:

‘Elijah it was who was wrapped in a tempest:

And Elisha was filled with his spirit:

And in all his days he was not moved by the fear of any ruler,

And no one brought him into subjection.’

This severer side of the prophet’s character appears in his public rather than in his private life. In the Moabitish campaign, the allied kings seek his counsel. His address to Jehoram of Israel. ‘What have I to do with thee? Get thee to the prophets of thy father and the prophets of thy mother,’ indicates that Elisha had not forgotten the past and the conflicts of his master (3:13ff.). Later, the relations between the reigning monarch and the prophet seem more cordial, for the man of God reveals the plans of the Syrians to Israel’s king (6:8ff.). This change of attitude on the part of the prophet may be due to the fact that Jehoram attempted to do away with Baal worship (3:2); but Elisha has not forgotten the doom pronounced upon the house of Ahab by Elijah. While Jehu is commanding the forces besieging Ramoth-gilead, Elisha sends one of the sons of the prophets to anoint the general as king, and thus he executes the commission which Elijah received from Jehovah at Horeb (1 K 19:16).

Elisha’s relations with the Syrians are exceedingly interesting. On one occasion he appears to be as much at home in Damascus as in Samaria. Ben-hadad, suffering from a severe ailment, hears of his presence in his capital, and sends Hazael to the man of God to inquire concerning the issue. The prophet reads the heart of the messenger, and predicts both the king’s recovery and his assassination by Hazael (2 K 8:7ff.). Nothing is said of a formal anointing, but in this connexion Elisha seems to have carried out the commission of Elijah (1 K 19:17). The blockade of Samaria (2 K 6:24–7:20) probably falls in the reign of Jehoahaz. That the prophet is held by king and statesmen responsible for the straits to which the city has been reduced, is an eloquent tribute to his political influence. In this connexion Elisha’s prediction of deliverance is speedily fulfilled. Under Joash, Israel was hard pressed, and her might had dwindled to insignificance (13:7), but Elisha was still the saviour of his country. Joash weeps over him as he lies on his deathbed: ‘My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof.’ Directing the monarch to perform a symbolical act, the prophet gives him assurance of victory (13:15ff.). Even after his burial his bones had the power to perform a beneficent miracle (13:20, 21).

An incident in the life of Elisha throws light on the prophetic state. Before declaring the final result of the campaign to the three kings, he asks for a minstrel. The music induces the ecstatic state, and then he prophesies (3:15). The supernatural abounds in his life; in many instances he manifests the power of prediction (4:16 , 5:26, 6:8ff., 7:1ff., 8:10, 12ff., 9:6f., 13:15ff.). But some of his deeds are not miracles in the modern sense (2:19ff., 4:38ff., 6:6 ff. ).

JAMES A. KELSO.

ELISHAH.—The eldest ‘son’ of Javan (Gn 10:4), whence the Tyrians obtained the purple dye (Ezk 27:7). The latter favours identification with S. Italy and Sicily, or Carthage and N. African coast, both districts famous for the purple dye. Elissa, or

Dido, the traditional foundress of Carthage, may indicate Elissa as an early name of

Carthage, and Syncellus gives the gloss ‘Elissa, whence the Sikeloi.’ The Targum on Ezk. gives ‘the province of Italy.’ The Tell el-Amarna tablets include letters to the king of Egypt from the king of Alashia, Egyptian Alsa, which has been identified with Cyprus; known to Sargon, king of Assyria, as the land of the Ionians, Javan. There are difficulties in all these identifications, possibly because the name itself denoted different districts at different epochs, and no certainty can yet be attained.

C. H. W. JOHNS.

ELISHAMA.—1. A prince of the tribe of Ephraim at the census in the wilderness, son of Ammihud and grandfather of Joshua (Nu 1:10, 2:18, 1 Ch 7:26). 2. One of David’s sons, born in Jerusalem (2 S 5:16, 1 Ch 3:8, 14:7). 3. In 1 Ch 3:6 by mistake for Elishua of 2 S 5:15, 1 Ch 14:5. 4. A descendant of Judah, son of Jekamiah (1 Ch 2:41). 5. The father of Nethaniah, and grandfather of Ishmael, ‘of the seed royal,’ who killed Gedaliah at the time of the Exile (2 K 25:25, Jer 41:1). Jerome, following Jewish tradition identifies him with No. 4. 6. A scribe or secretary to Jehoiakim ( Jer

36:12, 20, 21). 7. A priest sent by Jehoshaphat to teach the Law in the cities of Judah (2 Ch 17:8).

ELISHAPHAT.—One of the captains who helped Jehoiada to install king Joash (2 Ch 23:1).

ELISHEBA.—Daughter of Amminadab and wife of Aaron (Ex 6:23).

ELISHUA.—A son of David (2 S 5:15, 1 Ch 14:5; also 1 Ch 3:6 [corrected text; see ELISHAMA, 3]).

ELIUD.—An ancestor of Jesus (Mt 1:15).

ELIZAPHAN.—1. Prince of the Kohathites (Nu 3:30, 1 Ch 15:8, 2 Ch 29:13) = Elzaphan (Ex 6:22, Lv 10:4 P). 2. Zebulun’s representative for dividing the land ( Nu 34:25 P).

ELIZUR (‘God is a rock,’ cf. Zuriel).—Prince of Reuben at the first census ( Nu 1:5, 2:10, 7:30, 35, 10:18 P).

ELKANAH (‘God hath acquired’).—1. A son of Korah (Ex 6:24). 2. An Ephraimite, husband of Peninnah and Hannah; by the former he had several children, but Hannah was for many years childless. Her rival mocked her for this as they went up year by year with Elkanah to sacrifice in Shiloh. Elkanah loved Hannah more than Peninnah, and sought, in vain, to comfort her in her distress. At length Hannah conceived, and bore a son, Samuel. Afterwards three sons and two daughters were born to them (see HANNAH, and SAMUEL). 3. The son of Assir (1 Ch 6:23). 4. The father of Zophai (Zuph), a descendant of 3 (1 Ch 6:26, 35). 5. A Levite who dwelt in a village of the Netophathites (1 Ch 9:16). 6. One of the mighty men who came to David to Ziklag (1 Ch 12:6). 7. A door-keeper for the ark (1 Ch 15:23). 8. A high official, ‘next to the king,’ at the court of Ahaz (2 Ch 28:6, 7).

W. O. E. OESTERLEY.

ELKIAH.—An ancestor of Judith (Jth 8:1).

ELKOSHITE.—See NAHUM.

ELLASAR.—Arioch king of Ellasar was allied with Chedorlaomer in the campaign against the kings of the plain (Gn 14:1). He has been identified with Rimsin, king of Larsa, and consequently ‘Ellasar’ is thought to be for al-Larsa, ‘the city of Larsa.’ Larsa, modern Senkereh in Lower Babylonia on the east bank of the

Euphrates, was celebrated for its temple and worship of the sun-god Shamash.

C. H. W. JOHNS.

ELM.—Hos 4:13 AV, but RV ‘terebinth.’ See also PINE.

ELMADAM.—An ancestor of Jesus (Lk 3:28).

ELNAAM.—The father of two of David’s mighty men (1 Ch 11:46).

ELNATHAN.—1. The father of Nehushta, the mother of Jehoiachin (2 K 24:8). 2. The son of Achbor, the chief of those sent to Egypt to fetch Uriah, who had offended Jehoiakim by his prophecy (Jer 26:22ff.); and one of those who had entreated the king not to burn the roll (36:25). It is possible that he is identical with No. 1. 3. The name occurs no fewer than three times in the list of those sent for by Ezra when he encamped near Ahava (Ezr 8:16). In 1 Es 8:44 there are only two corresponding names, the second of which is Ennatan.

ELOHIM.—See GOD.

ELOHIST.—See HEXATEUCH.

ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI.—These Aram. words occur in Mk.

15:34, being an Eng. transliteration from the Greek. The underlying Aram. would be Elahi, Elahi, l^ema shabaqtani. The ō in Eloi is probably a local pronunciation of ā as aw or ō, as in some Syriac dialects. Dalman, however, maintains that our Lord spoke the first two words in Hebrew and the other two in Aramaic. In this case Eloi represents the Heb. Elohai = ‘my God.’ For sabachthani the Codex Sinaiticus reads sabaktani, which may be the original reading. It is more correct; but on that very account it may be a gloss. Lama for Aram. l^ema = ‘for what?’ ‘why?’ has many variants in Gr. MSS, as lema, lamma, lima.

In the parallel passage in Mt 27:46 we find Eli, Eli (though Cod. Sin. reads Eloi and B Eloei). Eli is a Heb. word, here, as elsewhere, borrowed in Aramaic. The Aram. word for ‘forsake’ is sh^ebaq for which the Heb. equivalent is ‘azabh. In Heb. ‘hast thou forsaken me?’ would be ‘azabhtani. This explains the reading of Codex D, zaphthanei, which some officious literary scribe substituted for sabachthani, both in Mt. and Mk.

J. T. MARSHALL.

ELON.—(‘terebinth’.)—1. Of the tribe of Zebulun, one of the minor judges ( Jg 12:11, 12). All that is told of him is simply that he judged Israel for ten years, that he died, and was buried in Elon in Zebulun. 2. A son of Zebulun (Gn 46:14, Nu 26:26 , where the gentilic name Elonites occurs). 3. A Hittite, the father-in-law of Esau ( Gn 26:34, 36:2).

ELON.—1. A town in the territory of Dan, now unknown (Jos 19:43). It is perhaps the same as Elon-beth-hanan (1 K 4:9). 2. An unknown locality in Zebulun (Jg 12:12).

R. A. S. MACALISTER.

ELON-BETH-HANAN.—See preceding article.

ELOTH.—See ELATH.

ELPAAL.—A Benjamite family (1 Ch 8:11, 12, 18).

EL-PARAN (Gn 14:6).—See PARAN.

ELPELET (1 Ch 14:5, AV Elpalet).—One of David’s sons = Eliphelet No. 1.

EL-SHADDAI.—See GOD.

ELTEKE(H).—A town in Dan associated with Ekron and Gibbethon (Jos 19:44 , 21:23), probably the Altaqū mentioned by Sennacherib as the locality of his defeat of the Philistines and Egyptians in the time of Hezekiah just before his capture of Ekron.

It was a Levitical city. Its modern site is uncertain.

C. H. W. JOHNS.

ELTEKON (Jos 15:59).—A town of Judah, noticed with Maarath and Beth-anoth. Site unknown.

ELTOLAD (Jos 15:30).—A town in the extreme S. of Judah, given to Simeon (19:4): probably = Tolad (1 Ch 4:29). The site is unknown.

ELUL (Neh 6:15, 1 Mac 14:27).—See TIME.

ELUZAI.—One of the mighty men who joined David at Ziklag (1 Ch 12:5).

ELYMAIS.—This name, which represents the OT Elam, was given to a district of

Persia, lying along the southern spurs of Mt. Zagros, S. of Media and N. of Susiana. In 1 Mac 6:1, according to the common reading, which is adopted by the AV, Elymais is named as a rich city in Persia. No such city, however, is mentioned elsewhere, except by Josephus, who is simply following 1 Mac. There can be no doubt, therefore, that we should correct the text and read with RV, ‘in Elymais in Persia there was a city.’ ELYMAS.—See BAR-JESUS.

ELZABAD.—1. A Gadite chief who joined David (1 Ch 12:12). 2. A Korahite doorkeeper (1 Ch 26:7).

ELZAPHAN.—See ELIZAPHAN.

EMADABUN (1 Es 5:58).—One of the Levites who superintended the restoration of the Temple. The name does not occur in the parallel Ezr 3:9: it is probably due to a repetition of the name which follows, lliadun.

EMATHEIS (1 Es 9:29) = Athlai, Ezr 10:28.

EMBALMING.—This specifically Egyptian (non-Israelitish) method of treating dead bodies is mentioned in Scripture only in the cases of Jacob and Joseph ( Gn 50:2f., 26).

EMBROIDERY AND NEEDLEWORK.—Embroidery is the art of working

patterns or figures on textile fabrics with woollen, linen, silk, or gold thread by means of a needle. The process was exactly described by the Romans as painting with a needle (acu pingere).

The Hebrew word for embroidery (riqmah) is rendered by AV in Jg 5:30 and Ps 45:14 by ‘needlework,’ for which RV substitutes ‘embroidery,’—in the former passage, however, render ‘a piece of embroidery or two’ for ‘embroidery on both sides,’—and in Ezk 16:10, 13, 18, 27:7, 16, 24 by ‘broidered work’ or ‘broidered garments,’ which RV retains. Similarly in connexion with certain fabrics of the Tabernacle and the high priest’s girdle, for ‘wrought with needlework’ RV has the more literal rendering ‘the work of the embroiderer’ (Ex 26:36, 27:16, 28:39 etc.), whom AV also introduces in 35:35, 38:23.

An entirely different word, the real significance of which is uncertain, is also rendered in AV by ‘embroider.’ ‘thou shalt embroider the coat of fine linen’ ( Ex 28:39), for which RV has: ‘thou shalt weave the coat in chequer work’ (for which see SPINNING AND WEAVING). So for a ‘broidered coat’ (Ex 28:4) RV has ‘a coat of chequer work.’

The art of embroidery was an invention of the Babylonians, from whom it passed, through the medium of the Phrygians, to the Greeks and the other nations of the West. Mummy cloths are still preserved showing that the art was also practised in Egypt. No actual specimens of Babylonian embroidery have survived, but the sculptures of Assyrian palaces, notably a sculptured figure of Ashurnazirpal. show the royal robes ornamented with borders of the most elaborate embroidery. The various designs are discussed, with illustrations, by Perrot and Chipiez, Hist. of Art in Chaldœa and Assyria, ii. 363 ff.

If, as is generally believed, the Priests’ Code was compiled in Babylonia, we may trace the influence of the latter in the embroideries introduced into the Tabernacle screens and elsewhere (reff. above). In the passages in question the work of ‘the embroiderer’ (rōqēm) is distinguished from, and mentioned after, the work of ‘the cunning workman’ (chōshēb, lit. ‘designer,’ in Phœnician ‘weaver’), who appears to have woven his designs into the fabric after the manner of tapestry (see SPINNING AND WEAVING). The materials used by both artists were the same, linen thread dyed ‘blue, purple, and scarlet,’ and fine gold thread, the preparation of which is minutely described, Ex 39:3.

An illustration in colours of the sails which Tyre imported from Egypt, ‘of fine linen with broidered work’ (Ezk 27:7), may be seen in the frontispiece to Wilkinson’s Ancient Egyptians, vol. ii.

A. R. S. KENNEDY.

EMEK-KEZIZ (Jos 18:21, AV ‘Valley of Keziz,’ mentioned among the towns of Benjamin).—A place apparently in the Jordan Valley near Jericho. The site is unknown.

EMERALD.—See JEWELS AND PRECIOUS STONES.

EMERODS.—See MEDICINE.

EMIM.—Primitive inhabitants of Moab, a gigantic people of Hebrew tradition (Rephaim, Dt 2:10f., cf. Gn 14:5).

J. F. MCCURDY. EMMANUEL.—See IMMANUEL.

EMMAUS.—1. A village sixty furlongs from Jerusalem, where the risen Christ made Himself known to two disciples (Lk 24:13). There is no clue to the position of this place, and it has been sought in Kubeibeh, N.W. of the city; in Kuloniyeh, W. of it; in Khamasah to the S.W.; and in ‘Urtas to the S. The traditional site is Emmaus Nicopolis (‘Amwas), W. of Jerusalem, which, however, is much too far—20 miles— from the city.

2. Emmaus Nicopolis, now ‘Amwas, on the main Jerusalem-Jaffa road, the scene of the defeat of Gorgias by Judas (1 Mac 3:40, 57, 4:3–27), held and fortified by Bacchides (1 Mac 9:50).

R. A. S. MACALISTER.

EMMER (1 Es 9:21) = Ezr 10:20 Immer.

EMMERUTH (1 Es 5:24).—A corruption of Immer in Ezr 2:37.

ENAIM.—A Judæan town in the Shephēlah (Jos 15:34. ‘Enam’; Gn 38:14, AV ‘in an open place,’ RV ‘in the gate of Enaim’; v. 21, AV ‘openly,’ RV ‘at Enaim’). From the narrative in Gn 38 we gather that it lay between Adullam and Timnah. The site is not identified. Conder suggests Khirbet Wādy Alin, near Beth-shemesh and Engannim.

W. EWING.

ENAN.—Prince of Naphtall at the first census (Nu 1:15, 2:29, 7:78, 83, 10:27 P).

ENASIBUS (1 Es 9:34) = Ezr 10:36 Eliashib. The form is probably due to reading AI as N.

ENCAMPMENT BY THE SEA.—One of the stations in the itinerary of the children of Israel, where they encamped after leaving Elim, Nu 33:10. If the position of Elim be in the Wady Gharandel, then the camp by the sea is on the shore of the Gulf of Suez, somewhere south of the point where the Wady Tayibeh opens to the coast. The curious return of the line of march to the seashore is a phenomenon that has always arrested the attention of travellers to Mt. Sinai: and if Mt. Sinai be really in the so-called Sinaitic peninsula, the camp can be located within a half-mile.

ENCHANTMENT.—See MAGIC DIVINATION AND SORCERY.

EN-DOR.—A town of Manasseh in the territory of Issachar (Jos 17:11); the home of a woman with a familiar spirit consulted by Saul on the eve of the battle of Gilboa (1 S 28); and, according to a psalmist (83:10), the scene of the rout of Jabin and

Sisera. It is identified with Endūr, south of Tahor, where are several ancient caves.

R. A. S. MACALISTER.

EN-EGLAIM.—A locality on the Dead Sea, mentioned along with En-gedi ( Ezk 47:10). It has not been identified, but is not improbably ‘Ain Feshkah (Robinson, BRP ii. 489). Tristram (Bible Places, 93) would make it ‘Ain Hajlah (Beth-hoglah). In any case, it probably lay to the N. towards the mouth of the Jordan.

ENEMESSAR.—Name of a king of Assyria in Gr. MSS of To 1:2, where the Syriac and Lat. give Shalmaneser, who is probably meant. The corruption is best accounted for by the loss of Sh and l and the transposition of m and n; but naturally many explanations may be offered without conviction.

C. H. W. JOHNS.

ENENEUS (1 Es 5:8).—One of the twelve leaders of the return from Babylon under Zerubbabel. The name is omitted in the parallel list in Ezr 2, which gives only eleven leaders; but answers to Nahamani, Neh 7:7.

EN-GANNIM.—1. Jos 15:34. A town of Judah noticed with Zanoah and Eshtaol; perhaps the ruin Umm Jina in the valley near Zanoah. 2. Jos 19:21, 21:29 (in 1 Ch 6:58 Anem). A town of Issachar given to the Levites; now Jenîn, a town on the S. border of Esdraelon, with a fine spring, gardens, and palms. It marked the S. limit of Galilee, and appears to have been always a flourishing town.

EN-GEDI (‘spring of the kid’).—A place ‘in the wilderness’ in the tribe of Judah (Jos 15:62), where David for a time was in hiding (1 S 23:29, 24:1). Here the Moabites and Ammonites came against Jehoshaphat (2 Ch 20:2). The Shulammite compares her beloved to henna flowers in En-gedi (Ca 1:14); and in Ezekiel’s idealistic vision of the healing of the Dead Sea waters, a picture is drawn of fishers here spreading their nets (Ezk 47:10). An alternative name is Hazazon-tamar, found in Gn 14:7 and 2 Ch 20:2. There is no doubt of the identification of En-gedi with ‘Ain Jidy, a spring of warm water that breaks out 330 ft. above the level of the Dead Sea, about the middle of its W. side. It once was cultivated, but is now given over to a wild semi-tropical vegetation.

R. A. S. MACALISTER.

ENGINE.—See FORTIFICATION, etc., § 6.

ENGLISH VERSIONS.—1. The history of the English Bible begins early in the history of the English people, though not quite at the beginning of it, and only slowly attains to any magnitude. The Bible which was brought into the country by the first missionaries, by Aidan in the north and Augustine in the south, was the Latin Bible; and for some considerable time after the first preaching of Christianity to the English no vernacular version would be required. Nor is there any trace of a vernacular Bible in the Celtic Church, which still existed in Wales and Ireland. The literary language of the educated minority was Latin; and the instruction of the newly converted English tribes was carried on by oral teaching and preaching. As time went on, however, and monasteries were founded, many of whose inmates were imperfectly acquainted either with English or with Latin, a demand arose for English translations of the Scriptures. This took two forms. On the one hand, there was a call for word-for-word translations of the Latin, which might assist readers to a comprehension of the Latin Bible; and, on the other, for continuous versions or paraphrases, which might be read to, or by, those whose skill in reading Latin was small.

2. The earliest form, so far as is known, in which this demand was met was the poem of Caedmon, the work of a monk of Whitby in the third quarter of the 7th cent., which gives a metrical paraphrase of parts of both Testaments. The only extant MS of the poem (in the Bodleian) belongs to the end of the 10th cent., and it is doubtful how much of it really goes back to the time of Caedmon. In any case, the poem as it appears here does not appear to be later than the 8th century. A tradition, originating with Bale, attributed an English version of the Psalms to Aldhelm, bishop of Sherborne (d. 707), but it appears to be quite baseless (see A. S. Cook, Bibl. Quot. in

Old Eng. Prose Writers, 1878, pp. xiv–xviii). An Anglo-Saxon Psalter in an 11th cent. MS at Paris (partly in prose and partly in verse) has been identified, without any evidence, with this imaginary work. The well-known story of the death of Bede ( in 735) shows him engaged on an English translation of St. John’s Gospel [one early MS (at St. Gall) represents this as extending only to Jn 6:9; but so abrupt a conclusion seems inconsistent with the course of the narrative], but of this all traces have disappeared. The scholarship of the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow, which had an important influence on the textual history of the Latin Vulgate, did not concern itself with vernacular translations; and no further trace of an English Bible appears until the 9th century. To that period is assigned a word-for-word translation of the Psalter, written between the lines of a Latin MS (Cotton MS Vespasian A.I., in the British Museum), which was the progenitor of several similar glosses between that date and the 12th cent.; and to it certainly belongs the attempt of Alfred to educate his people by English translations of the works which he thought most needful to them. He is said to have undertaken a version of the Psalms, of which no portion survives, unless the prose portion (Ps 1–50) of the above-mentioned Paris MS is a relic of it; but we still have the translation of the Decalogue, the summary of the Mosaic law, and the letter of the Council of Jerusalem (Ac 15:23–29), which he prefixed to his code of laws. To the 10th cent. belongs probably the verse portion of the Paris MS, and the interlinear translation of the Gospels in Northumbrian dialect inserted by the priest Aldred in the Lindisfarne Gospels (British Museum), which is repeated in the Rushworth Gospels (Bodleian) of the same century, with the difference that the version of Mt. is there in the Mercian dialect. This is the earliest extant translation of the Gospels into English.

3. The earliest independent version of any of the books of the Bible has likewise generally been assigned to the 10th cent., but if this claim can be made good at all, it can apply only to the last years of that century. The version in question is a translation of the Gospels in the dialect of Wessex, of which six MSS (with a fragment of a seventh) are now extant. It was edited by W. Skeat, The Holy Gospels in Anglo-Saxon (1871–1877); two MSS are in the British Museum, two at Cambridge, and two (with a fragment of another) at Oxford. From the number of copies which still survive, it must be presumed to have had a certain circulation, at any rate in Wessex, and it continued to be copied for at least a century. The earliest MSS are assigned to the beginning of the 11th cent.; but it is observable that Ælfric the Grammarian, abbot of Eynsham, writing about 990, says that the English at that time ‘had not the evangelical doctrines among their writings, … those books excepted which King Alfred wisely turned from Latin into English’ [preface to Ælfric’s Homilies, edited by B. Thorpe, London, 1843– 46]. In a subsequent treatise (Treatise concerning the Old and New Testament, ed. W.

Lisle, London, 1623) also (the date of which is said to be about 1010, see Dietrich,

Zeitsch. f. hist. Theol. 1856, quoted by Cook, op. cit., p. lxiv.) he speaks as if no English version of the Gospels were in existence, and refers his readers to his own homilies on the Gospels. Since Ælfric had been a monk at Winchester and abbot of Cerne, in Dorset, it is difficult to understand how he could have failed to know of the Wessex version of the Gospels, if it had been produced and circulated much before 1000; and it seems probable that it only came into existence early in the 11th century. In this case it was contemporaneous with another work of translation, due to Ælfric himself. Ælfric, at the request of Æthelweard. son of his patron Æthelmær, ealdorman of Devonshire and founder of Eynsham Abbey, produced a paraphrase of the Heptateuch, homilies containing epitomes of the Books of Kings and Job, and brief versions of Esther, Judith, and Maccabees. These have the interest of being the earliest extant English version of the narrative books of the OT. [The Heptateuch and Job were printed by E. Thwaites (Oxford, 1698). For the rest, see Cook, op. cit.]

4. The Norman Conquest checked for a time all the vernacular literature of England, including the translations of the Bible. One of the first signs of its revival was the production of the Ormulum, a poem which embodies metrical versions of the Gospels and Acts, written about the end of the 12th century. The main Biblical literature of this period, however, was French. For the benefit of the Norman settlers in England, translations of the greater part of both OT and NT were produced during the 12th and 13th centuries. Especially notable among these was the version of the Apocalypse, because it was frequently accompanied by a series of illustrations, the best examples of which are the finest (and also the most quaint) artistic productions of the period in the sphere of book-illustration. Nearly 90 MSS of this version are known, ranging from the first half of the 12th cent. to the first half of the 15th [see P. Berger, La Bible Française au moyen âge, p. 78 ff.; L. Delisle and P. Meyer, L’Apocalypse en Français (Paris, 1901); and New Palœographical Society, part 2 , plates 38. 39], some having been produced in England, and others in France; and in the 14th cent. it reappears in an English dress, having been translated apparently about that time. This English version (which at one time was attributed to Wyclif) is known in no less than 16 MSS, which fall into at least two classes [see Miss A. C. Paues, A Fourteenth Century English Biblical Version (Cambridge, 1902), pp. 24–30]; and it is noteworthy that from the second of these was derived the version which appears in the revised Wyclifite Bible, to be mentioned presently.

5. The 14th cent., which saw the practical extinction of the general use of the French language in England, and the rise of a real native literature, saw also a great revival of vernacular Biblical literature, beginning apparently with the Book of Psalms. Two English versions of the Psalter were produced at this period, one of which enjoyed great popularity. This was the work of Richard Rolle, hermit of Hampole, in Yorkshire (d. 1349). It contains the Latin text of the Psalter, followed verse by verse by an English translation and commentary. Originally written in the northern dialect, it soon spread over all England, and many MSS of it still exist in which the dialect has been altered to suit southern tastes. Towards the end of the century Rolle’s work suffered further change, the commentary being re-written from a strongly Lollard point of view, and in this shape it continued to circulate far into the

16th century. Another version of the Psalter was produced contemporaneously with Rolle’s, somewhere in the West Midlands. The authorship of it was formerly attributed to William of Shoreham, vicar of Chart Sutton, in Kent, but for no other reason than that in one of the two MSS in which it is preserved (Brit. Mus. Add. MS 17376, the other being at Trinity College, Dublin) it is now bound up with his religious poems. The dialect, however, proves that this authorship is impossible, and the version must be put down as anonymous. As in the case of Rolle’s translation, the Latin and English texts are intermixed, verse by verse; but there is no commentary.

[See K. S. Bülbring, The Earliest Complete English Prose Psalter (Early English Text Society), 1891.]

6. The Psalter was not the only part of the Bible of which versions came into existence in the course of the 14th century. At Magdalene College, Cambridge ( Pepys MS 2498), is an English narrative of the Life of Christ, compiled out of a rearrangement of the Gospels for Sundays and holy days throughout the year. Quite recently, too, a group of MSS, which (so far as they were known at all) had been regarded as belonging to the Wyclifite Bible, has been shown by Miss Anna C. Paues [A Fourteenth Century English Biblical Version (Cambridge, 1902)] to contain an independent translation of the NT. It is not complete, the Gospels being represented only by Mt 1:1–6:8, and the Apocalypse being altogether omitted. The original nucleus seems, indeed, to have consisted of the four larger Catholic Epistles and the Epistles of St. Paul, to which were subsequently added 2 and 3 John, Jude, Acts, and

Mt 1:1–6:8. Four MSS of this version are at present known, the oldest being one at Selwyn College, Cambridge, which was written about 1400. The prologue narrates that the translation was made at the request of a monk and a nun by their superior, who defers to their earnest desire, although, as he says, it is at the risk of his life. This phrase seems to show that the work was produced after the rise of the great party controversy which is associated with the name of Wyclif.

7. With Wyclif (1320–1384), we reach a land mark in the history of the English Bible, in the production of the first complete version of both OT and NT. It belongs to the last period of Wyclif’s life, that in which he was engaged in open war with the Papacy and with most of the official chiefs of the English Church. It was connected with his institution of ‘poor priests,’ or mission preachers, and formed part of his scheme of appealing to the populace in general against the doctrines and supremacy of

Rome. The NT seems to have been completed about 1380, the OT between 1382 and 1384. Exactly how much of it was done by Wyclif’s own hand is uncertain. The greater part of the OT (as far as Baruch 3:20) is assigned in an Oxford MS to Nicholas Hereford, one of Wyclif’s principal supporters at that university; and it is certain that this part of the translation is in a different style (more stiff and pedantic) from the rest.

The NT is generally attributed to Wyclif himself, and he may also have completed the OT, which Hereford apparently had to abandon abruptly, perhaps when he was summoned to London and excommunicated in 1382. This part of the work is free and vigorous in style, though its interpretation of the original is often strange, and many sentences in it can have conveyed very little idea of their meaning to its readers. Such as it was however, it was a complete English Bible, addressed to the whole English people, high and low, rich and poor. That this is the case is proved by the character of the copies which have survived (about 30 in number). Some are large folio volumes, handsomely written and illuminated in the best, or nearly the best, style of the period; such is the fine copy, in two volumes (now Brit. Mus. Egerton MSS 617, 618), which once belonged to Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, uncle of Richard II. Others are plain copies of ordinary size, intended for private persons or monastic libraries; for it is clear that, in spite of official disfavour and eventual prohibition, there were many places in England where Wyclif and his Bible were welcomed. Wyclif, indeed, enjoyed advantages from personal repute and influential support such as had been enjoyed by no English translator since Alfred. An Oxford scholar, at one time Master of Balliol, holder of livings successively from his college and the Crown, employed officially on behalf of his country in controversy with the Pope, the friend and protégé of John of Gaunt and other prominent nobles, and enjoying as a rule the strenuous support of the University of Oxford, Wyclif was in all respects a person of weight and influence in the realm, who could not be silenced or isolated by the opposition of bishops such as Arundel. The work that he had done had struck its roots too deep to be destroyed, and though it was identified with Lollardism by its adversaries, its range was much wider than that of any one sect or party.

8. Wyclif’s translation, however, though too strong to be overthrown by its opponents, was capable of improvement by its friends. The difference of style between Hereford and his continuator or continuators, the stiff and unpopular character of the work of the former, and the imperfections inevitable in a first attempt on so large a scale, called aloud for revision; and a second Wyclifite Bible, the result of a very complete revision of its predecessor, saw the light not many years after the Reformer’s death. The authorship of the second version is doubtful. It was assigned by Forshall and Madden, the editors of the Wyclifite Bible, to John Purvey, one of Wyclif’s most intimate followers; but the evidence is purely circumstantial, and rests mainly on verbal resemblances between the translator’s preface and known works of Purvey, together with the fact that a copy of this preface is found attached to a copy of the earlier version which was once Purvey’s property. What is certain is that the second version is based upon the first, and that the translator’s preface is permeated with Wyclifite opinions. This version speedily superseded the other, and in spite of a decree passed, at Arundel’s instigation, by the Council of Blackfriars in 1408, it must have circulated in large numbers. Over 140 copies are still in existence, many of them small pocket volumes such as must have been the personal property of private individuals for their own study. Others belonged to the greatest personages in the land, and copies are still in existence which formerly had for owners Henry VI., Henry VII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth.

9. At this point it seems necessary to say something of the theory which has been propounded by the well-known Roman Catholic historian, Abbot Gasquet, to the effect that the versions which pass under the name of ‘Wyclifite’ were not produced by Wyclif or his followers at all, but were translations authorized and circulated by the heads of the Church of England, Wyclif’s particular enemies. [The Old English Bible, 1897, pp. 102–178.] The strongest argument adduced in support of this view is the possession of copies of the versions in question both by kings and princes of England, and by religious houses and persons of unquestioned orthodoxy. This does, indeed, prove that the persecution of the English Bible and its possessors by the authorities of the Catholic Church was not so universal or continuous as it is sometimes represented to have been, but it does not go far towards disproving the Wyclifite authorship of versions which can be demonstratively connected, as these are, with the names of leading supporters of Wyclif, such as Hereford and Purvey; the more so since the evidence of orthodox ownership of many of the copies in question dates from times long after the cessation of the Lollard persecution. Dr. Gasquet also denies that there is any real evidence connecting Wyclif with the production of an English Bible at all; but m order to make good this assertion he has to ignore several passages in Wyclif’s own writings in which he refers to the importance of a vernacular version (to the existence of his own version he could not refer, since that was produced only at the end of his life), and to do violence alike to the proper translation and to the natural interpretation of passages written by Wyclif’s opponents (Arundel, Knyghton, and the Council of Oxford in 1408) in which Wyclif’s work is mentioned and condemned. Further, Dr. Gasquet denies that the Lollards made a special point of the circulation of the Scriptures in the vernacular, or were charged with so doing by the ecclesiastical authorities who prosecuted them; and in particular he draws a distinction between the versions now extant and the Bible on account of the heretical nature of which (among other charges) one Richard Hun was condemned by the Bishop of London in 1514. It has, however, been shown conclusively that the depositions of the witnesses against the Lollards (which cannot be regarded as wholly irrelevant to the charges brought against them) constantly make mention of the possession of vernacular Bibles; and that the changes against Richard Hun, based upon the prologue to the Bible in his possession, are taken verbatim from the prologue to the version which we now know as Purvey’s. It is true that Dr. Gasquet makes the explicit statement that ‘we shall look in vain in the edition of Wyclifite Scriptures published by Forshall and Madden for any trace of these errors’ (i.e. the errors found by Hun’s prosecutors in the prologue to his Bible); but a writer in the Church Quarterly Review (Jan. 1901, p. 292 ff.) has printed in parallel columns the charges against Hun and the corresponding passages in Purvey’s prologue, which leave no possibility of doubt that Hun was condemned for possessing a copy of the version which is commonly known as Purvey’s, or as the later Wyclifite version. The article in the Church Quarterly Review must be read by everyone who wishes to investigate Dr. Gasquet’s theory fully; the evidence there adduced is decisive as to the unsoundness of Dr. Gasquet’s historical position. It is impossible to attribute to the official heads of the English Church a translation the prologue to which (to quote but two phrases) speaks of ‘the pardouns of the bisschopis of Rome, that ben opin leesingis,’ and declares that ‘to eschewe pride and speke onour of God and of his lawe, and repreue synne bi weie of charite, is matir and cause now whi prelatis and summe lordis sclaundren men, and clepen hem lollardis, eretikis, and riseris of debate and of treson agens the king.’ In the face of this evidence it will be impossible in future to deny that the Wyclifite Bible is identical with that which we now possess, and that it was at times the cause of the persecution of its owners by the authorities of the Church. That this persecution was partial and temporary is likely enough. Much of it was due to the activity of individual bishops, such as Arundel; but not all the bishops shared Arundel’s views. Wyclif had powerful supporters, notably John of Gaunt and the University of Oxford, and under their protection copies of the vernacular Bible could be produced and circulated. It is, moreover, likely, not to say certain, that as time went on the Wyclifite origin of the version would often be forgotten. Apart from the preface to Purvey’s edition, which appears only rarely in the extant MSS, there is nothing in the translation itself which would betray its Lollard origin; and it is quite probable that many persons in the 15th and early 16th cent. used it without any suspicion of its connexion with Wyclif. Sir Thomas More, whose good faith there is no reason to question, appears to have done so; otherwise it can only be supposed that the orthodox English Bibles of which he speaks, and which he expressly distinguishes from the Bible which caused the condemnation of Richard Hun, have wholly disappeared, which is hardly likely. If this be admitted, the rest of More’s evidence falls to the ground. The history of the Wyclifite Bible, and of its reception in England, would in some points bear restatement; but the ingenious, and at first sight plausible, theory of Abbot Gasquet has failed to stand examination, and it is to be hoped that it may be allowed to lapse.

10. With the production of the second Wyclifite version the history of the manuscript English Bible comes to an end. Purvey’s work was on the level of the best scholarship and textual knowledge of the age, and it satisfied the requirements of those who needed a vernacular Bible. That it did not reach modern standards in these respects goes without saying. In the first place, it was translated from the Latin Vulgate, not from the original Hebrew and Greek, with which there is no reason to suppose that Wyclif or his assistants were familiar. Secondly, its exegesis is often deficient, and some passages in it must have been wholly unintelligible to its readers. This, however, may be said even of some parts of the AV, so that it is small reproach to Wyclif and Purvey; and on the whole it is a straightforward and intelligible version of the Scriptures. A few examples of this, the first complete English Bible, and the first version in which the English approaches sufficiently near to its modern form to be generally intelligible, may be given here.

Jn 14:1–7. Be not youre herte affraied, ne drede it. Ye bileuen in god, and bileue ye in me. In the hous of my fadir ben many dwellyogis: if ony thing lasse I hadde seid to you, for I go to make redi to you a place. And if I go and make redi to you a place, eftsone I come and I schal take you to my silf, that where I am, ye be. And whidir I go ye witen: and ye witen the wey. Thomas seith to him, Lord, we witen not whidir thou goist, and hou moun we wite the weie. Ihesus seith to him, I am weye truthe and liif:

no man cometh to the fadir, but bi me. If ye hadden knowe me, sothli ye hadden knowe also my fadir: and aftirwarde ye schuln knowe him, and ye han seen hym.

2 Co 1:17–20. But whanne I wolde this thing, whether I uside unstidfastnesse? ether tho thingis that I thenke, I thenke aftir the fleische, that at me be it is and it is not. But god is trewe, for oure word that was at you, is and is not, is not thereinne, but is in it. Forwhi ihesus crist the sone of god, which is prechid among you bi us, bi me and siluan and tymothe, ther was not in hym is and is not, but is was in hym. Forwhi hou many euer ben biheestis of god, in thilke is ben fulfillid. And therfor and bi him we seien Amen to god, to oure glorie.

Eph 3:14–21. For grace of this thing I bowe my knees to the fadir of oure lord ihesus crist, of whom eche fadirheed in heuenes and in erthe is named, that he geue to you aftir the richessis of his glorie, vertu to be strengthid bi his spirit in the yoner man; that criste dwelle bi feitn in youre hertis; that ye rootid and groundid in charite, moun comprehende with alle seyntis wniche is the breede and the lengthe and the highist and the depnesse; also to wite the charite of crist more excellent thanne science, that ye he fillid in all the plente of god. And to hym that is myghti to do alle thingis more pleuteuousli thanne we axen, or undirstande bi ths vertu that worchith in us, to hym be glorie in the chirche and in crist ihesus in to alle the generaciouns of the worldis. Amen.

11. The English manuscript Bible was now complete, and no further translation was issued in this form. The Lollard controversy died down amid the strain of the French wars and the passions of the wars of the Roses; and when, in the 16th century, religious questions once more came to the front, the situation had been fundamentally changed through the invention of printing. The first book that issued from the press was the Latin Bible (popularly known as the Mazarin Bible), published by Fust and Gutenberg in 1456. For the Latin Bible (the form in which the Scriptures had hitherto been mainly known in Western Europe) there was indeed so great a demand, that no less than 124 editions of it are said to have been issued before the end of the 15 th century; but it was only slowly that scholars realized the importance of utilizing the printing press for the circulation of the Scriptures, either in their original tongues, or in the vernaculars of Europe. The Hebrew Psalter was printed in 1477, the complete OT in 1488. The Greek Bible, both OT and NT, was included in the great

Complutensian Polyglot of Cardinal Ximenes, printed in 1514–17, but not published till 1522. The Greek NT (edited by Erasmus) was first published by Froben in 1516 , the OT by the Aldine press in 1518. In the way of vernacular versions, a French Bible was printed at Lyons about 1478, and another about 1487; a Spanish Pentateuch was printed (by Jews) in 1497; a German Bible was printed at Strassburg by Mentelin in 1466, and was followed by eighteen others (besides many Psalters and other separate books) between that date and 1522, when the first portion of Luther’s translation appeared. In England, Caxton inserted the main part of the OT narrative in his translation of the Golden Legend (which in its original form already contained the Gospel story), published in 1483; but no regular English version of the Bible was printed until 1525, with which date a new chapter in the history of the English Bible begins.

12. It was not the fault of the translator that it did not appear at least as early as

Luther’s. William Tindale (c. 1490–1536) devoted himself early to Scripture studies, and by the time he had reached the age of about 30 he had taken for the work of his life the translation of the Bible into English. He was born in Gloucestershire, where his family seems to have used the name of Hutchins or Hychins, as well as that of Tindale, so that he is himself sometimes described by both names); and he became a member of Magdalen Hall (a dependency of Magdalen College) at Oxford, where he definitely associated himself with the Protestant party and became known as one of their leaders. He took his degree as B.A. in 1512, as M.A. in 1515, and at some uncertain date he is said (by Foxe) to have gone to Cambridge. If this was between 1511 and 1515, he would have found Erasmus there; but in that case it could have been only an interlude in the middle of his Oxford course, and perhaps it is more probable that his visit belongs to some part of the years 1515 to 1520, as to which there is no definite information. About 1520 he became resident tutor in the house of Sir John Walsh, at Little Sodbury in Gloucestershire, to which period belongs his famous saying, in controversy with an opponent: ‘If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou doest.’ With this object he came up to London in 1523, and sought a place in the service of Tunstall, bishop of London, a scholar and patron of scholars, of whom Erasmus had spoken favourably; but here he received no encouragement. He was, however, taken in by Alderman Humphrey Monmouth, in whose house he lived as chaplain and studied for six months; at the end of which time he was forced to the conclusion ‘not only that there was no room in my lord of London’s palace to translate the New Testament, but also that there was no place to do it in all England.’

13. About May 1524, therefore, Tindale left England and settled in the free city of Hamburg, and in the course of the next 12 months the first stage of his great work was completed. Whether during this time he visited Luther at Wittenberg is quite uncertain; what is certain, and more important, is that he was acquainted with Luther’s writings. In 1525, the translation of the NT being finished, he went to Cologne to have it printed at the press of Peter Quentel. Three thousand copies of the first ten sheets of it, in quarto, had been printed off when rumours of the work came to the ears of John Cochlæus, a bitter enemy of the Reformation. To obtain information he approached the printers (who were also engaged upon work for him), and having loosened their tongues with wine he learnt the full details of Tindale’s enterprise, and sent warning forthwith to England. Meanwhile Tindale escaped with the printed sheets to Worms, in the Lutheran disposition of which place he was secure from interference, and proceeded with his work at the press of Peter Schoeffer. Since, however, a description of the Cologne edition had been sent to England, a change was made in the format. The text was set up again in octavo, and without the marginal notes of the quarto edition; and in this form the first printed English NT was given to the world early in 1526. About the same time an edition in small quarto, with marginal notes, was also issued, and it is probable (though full proof is wanting) that this was the completion of the interrupted Cologne edition. Three thousand copies of each edition were struck off; but so active were the enemies of the Reformation in their destruction, that they have nearly disappeared off the face of the earth. One copy of the octavo edition, complete but for the loss of its title-page, is at the Baptist College at Bristol, whither it found its way from the Harley Library, to which it once belonged; and an imperfect copy is in the library of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Of the quarto, all that survives is a fragment consisting of eight sheets (Mt 1:1–22:12) in the Grenville Library in the British Museum.

14. The hostility of the authorities in Church and State in England was indeed undisguised. Sir T. More attacked the translation as false and heretical, and as disregarding ecclesiastical terminology. Wolsey and the bishops, with Henry’s assent, decreed that it should be burnt; and burnt it was at Paul’s Cross, after a sermon from Bishop Tunstall. Nevertheless fresh supplies continued to pour into England, the money expended in buying up copies for destruction serving to pay for the production of fresh editions. Six editions are said to have been issued between 1526 and 1530 ; and the zeal of the authorities for its destruction was fairly matched by the zeal of the reforming party for its circulation. It was, in fact, evident that the appetite for an English Bible, once fairly excited, could not be wholly balked. In 1530 an assembly convoked by Archbishop Warham, while maintaining the previous condemnation of Tindale, and asserting that it was not expedient at that time to divulge the Scripture in the English tongue, announced that the king would have the NT faithfully translated by learned men, and published ‘as soon as he might see their manners and behaviour meet, apt, and convenient to receive the same.’

15. Tindale’s first NT was epoch-making in many ways. It was the first English printed NT; it laid the foundations, and much more than the foundations, of the AV of 1611; it set on foot the movement which went forward without a break until it culminated in the production of that AV; and it was the first English Bible that was translated directly from the original language. All the English manuscript Bibles were translations from the Vulgate; but Tindale’s NT was taken from the Greek, which he knew from the editions by Erasmus, published in 1516, 1519, and 1522. As subsidiary aids he employed the Latin version attached by Erasmus to his Greek text, Luther’s German translation of 1522, and the Vulgate; but it has been made abundantly clear that he exercised independent judgment in his use of these materials, and was by no means a slavish copier of Luther. In the marginal notes attached to the quarto edition his debt to Luther was greater; for (so far as can be gathered from the extant fragment) more than half the notes were taken direct from the German Bible, the rest being independent. It is in this connexion with Luther, rather than in anything to be found in the work itself, that the secret of the official hostility to Tindale’s version is to be found. That the translation itself was not seriously to blame is shown by the extent to which it was incorporated in the AV, though no doubt to persons who knew the Scriptures only in the Latin Vulgate its divergence from accuracy may have appeared greater than was in fact the case. The octavo edition had no extraneous matter except a short preface, and therefore could not be obnoxious on controversial grounds; and the comments in the quarto edition are generally exegetical, and not polemical. Still, there could be no doubt that they were the work of an adherent of the Reformation, and as such the whole translation fell under the ban of the opponents of the Reformation.

16. Tindale’s work did not cease with the production of his NT. Early in 1530 a translation of the Pentateuch was printed for him by Hans Luft, at Marburg in Hesse. The colophon to Genesis is dated Jan. 17, 1530. In England, where the year began on

March 25, this would have meant 1531 according to our modern reckoning; but in Germany the year generally began on Jan. 1, or at Christmas. The only perfect copy of this edition is in the British Museum. The different books must have been set up separately, since Gn. and Nu. are printed in black letter, Ex., Lev., and Dt. in Roman; but there is no evidence that they were issued separately. The translation was made (for the first time) from the Hebrew, with which language there is express evidence that Tindale was acquainted. The book was provided with a prologue and with marginal notes, the latter being often controversial. In 1531 he published a translation of the Book of Jonah, of which a single copy (now in the British Museum) came to light in 1861. After this he seems to have reverted to the NT, of which he issued a revised edition in 1534. The immediate occasion of this was the appearance of an unauthorized revision of the translation of 1525, by one George Joye, in which many alterations were made of which Tindale disapproved. Tindale’s new edition was printed by Martin Empereur of Antwerp, and published in Nov. 1534. One copy of it was printed on vellum, illuminated, and presented to Anne Boleyn, who had shown favour to one of the agents employed in distributing Tindale’s earlier work. It bears her name on the fore-edge, and is now in the British Museum. The volume is a small octavo, and embodies a careful revision of his previous work. Since it was intended for liturgical use, the church lections were marked in it, and in an appendix were added, ‘The Epistles taken out of the Old Testament, which are read in the church after the use of Salisbury upon certain days of the year.’ These consist of 42 short passages from the OT (8 being taken from the Apocrypha), and constitute an addition to Tindale’s work as a translator of the OT. The text of the NT is accompanied throughout by marginal notes, differing (so far as we are in a position to compare them) from those in the quarto of 1525, and very rarely polemical. Nearly all the books are preceded by prologues, which are for the most part derived from Luther (except that to Heb., in which Tindale expressly combats Luther’s rejection of its Apostolic authority).

17. The edition of 1534 did not finally satisfy Tindale, and in the following year he put forth another edition ‘yet once again corrected.’ [The volume bears two dates, 1535 and 1534, but the former, which stands on the first title-page, must be taken to be that of the completion of the work.] It bears the monogram of the publisher, Godfried van der Haghen, and is sometimes known as the GH edition. It has no marginal notes. Another edition, which is stated on its title-page to have been finished in 1535, contains practically the same text, but is notable for its spelling, which appears to be due to a Flemish compositor, working by ear and not by sight. These editions of 1535, which embody several small changes from the text of 1534 , represent Tindale’s work in its final form. Several editions were issued in 1536, but Tindale was not then in a position to supervise them. In May 1535, through the treachery of one Phillips, he was seized by some officers of the emperor, and carried off from Antwerp (where he had lived for a year past) to the castle of Vilvorde. After some months’ imprisonment he was brought to trial, condemned, and finally strangled and burnt at the stake on Oct. 6, 1536, crying ‘with a fervent, great, and a loud voice, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.” ’

The chief authority for the life of Tindale is the biography by the Rev. R. Demaus (2nd ed., revised by R. Lovett, 1886). The fragmentary quarto of 1525 is published in photographic facsimile by E. Arber (The First Printed English NT, 1871), with an important introduction. The octavo of 1525 is reproduced in facsimile by F. Fry (1862), as also is the Jonah of 1531 (1863). The Pentateuch is reprinted by Mombert (Bagster, 1884), and the NT of 1534 in Bagster’s English Hexapla. See also the general bibliography at the end of this article.

18. Coverdale’s Bible (1535). Tindale never had the satisfaction of completing his gift of an English Bible to his country; but during his imprisonment he may have learnt that a complete translation, based largely upon his own, had actually been produced. The credit for this achievement, the first complete printed English Bible, is due to Miles Coverdale (1488–1569), afterwards bishop of Exeter (1551–1553). The details of its production are obscure. Coverdale met Tindale abroad in 1529, and is said to have assisted him in the translation of the Pentateuch. His own work was done under the patronage of Cromwell, who was anxious for the publication of an English

Bible; and it was no doubt forwarded by the action of Convocation, which, under Cranmer’s leading, had petitioned in 1534 for the undertaking of such a work. It was probably printed by Froschover at Zurich; but this has never been absolutely demonstrated. It was published at the end of 1535, with a dedication to Henry VIII. By this time the conditions were more favourable to a Protestant Bible than they had been in 1525. Henry had finally broken with the Pope, and had committed himself to the principle of an English Bible. Coverdale’s work was accordingly tolerated by authority, and when the second edition of it appeared in 1537 (printed by an English printer, Nycolson of Southwark), it bore on its title-page the words, ‘Set forth with the Kinges moost gracious licence.’ In thus licensing Coverdale’s translation, Henry probably did not know how far he was sanctioning the work of Tindale, which he had previously condemned. In the NT, in particular, Tindale’s version is the basis of Coverdale’s, and to a somewhat less extent this is also the case in the Pentateuch and

Jonah; but Coverdale revised the work of his predecessor with the help of the Zurich

German Bible of Zwingli and others (1524–1529), a Latin version by Pagninus, the Vulgate, and Luther. In his preface he explicitly disclaims originality as a translator, and there is no sign that he made any noticeable use of the Greek and Hebrew; but he used the available Latin, German, and English versions with judgment. In the parts of the OT which Tindale had not published he appears to have translated mainly from the

Zurich Bible. [Coverdale’s Bible of 1535 was reprinted by Bagster (1838).]

19. In one respect Coverdale’s Bible was epoch-making, namely, in the arrangement of the Books of the OT. In the Vulgate, as is well known, the books which are now classed as Apocrypha are intermingled with the other books of the OT.

This was also the case with the LXX, and in general it may be said that the Christian

Church had adopted this view of the Canon. It is true that many of the greatest Christian Fathers had protested against it, and had preferred the Hebrew Canon, which rejects these books. The Canon of Athanasius places the Apocrypha in a class apart; the Syrian Bible omitted them; Eusebius and Gregory Nazianzen appear to have held similar views; and Jerome refused to translate them for his Latin Bible. Nevertheless the Church at large, both East and West, retained them in their Bibles, and the provincial Council of Carthage (A.D. 397), under the influence of Augustine, expressly included them in the Canon. In spite of Jerome, the Vulgate, as it circulated in Western Europe, regularly included the disputed books; and Wyclif’s Bible, being a translation from the Vulgate, naturally has them too. On the other hand, Luther, though recognizing these books as profitable and good for reading, placed them in a class apart, as ‘Apocrypha,’ and in the same way he segregated Heb., Ja., Jude, and Apoc. at the end of the NT, as of less value and authority than the rest. This arrangement appears in the table of contents of Tindale’s NT in 1525, and was adopted by Coverdale, Matthew, and Taverner. It is to Tindale’s example, no doubt, that the action of Coverdale is due. His Bible is divided into six parts—(1)

Pentateuch; (2) Jos.-Est.; (3) Job-‘Solomon’s Balettes’ (i.e. Cant.); (4) Prophets; (5) ‘Apocripha, the bokes and treatises which amonge the fathers of olde are not rekened to be of like authorite with the other bokes of the byble, nether are they founde in the Canon of the Hebrue’; (6) NT. This represents the view generally taken by the

Reformers, both in Germany and in England, and so far as concerns the English Bible,

Coverdale’s example was decisive. On the other hand, the Roman Church, at the Council of Trent (1546), adopted by a majority the opinion that all the books of the larger Canon should be received as of equal authority, and for the first time made this a dogma of the Church, enforced by an anathema. In 1538, Coverdale published a NT with Latin (Vulgate) and English in parallel columns, revising his English to bring it into conformity with the Latin; but this (which went through three editions with various changes) may be passed over, as it had no influence on the general history of the English Bible.

20. Matthew’s Bible (1537). In the same year as the second edition of Coverdale’s Bible another English Bible appeared, which likewise bore upon its title-page the statement that it was ‘set forth with the Kinges most gracyous lycence.’ It was completed not later than Aug. 4, 1537, on which day Cranmer sent a copy of it to Cromwell, commending the translation, and begging Cromwell to obtain for it the king’s licence; in which, as the title-page prominently shows, he was successful. The origin of this version is slightly obscure, and certainly was not realized by Henry when he sanctioned it. The Pentateuch and NT are taken direct from Tindale with little variation (the latter from the final ‘GH’ revision of 1535). The books of the OT from Ezra to Mal. (including Jonah) are taken from Coverdale, as also is the Apocrypha. But the historical books of the OT (Jos.-2 Chron.) are a new translation, as to the origin of which no statement is made. It is, however, fairly certain, from a combination of evidence, that it was Tindale’s (see Westcott³, pp. 169–179). The style agrees with that of Tindale’s other work; the passages which Tindale published as ‘Epistles’ from the OT in his NT of 1534 agree in the main with the present version in these books, but not in those taken from Coverdale; and it is expressly stated in Hali’s Chronicle (completed and published by Grafton, one of the publishers of Matthew’s

Bible) that Tindale, in addition to the NT, translated also ‘the v bookes of Moses,

Josua, Judicum, Ruth, the bookes of the Kynges and the bookes of Paralipomenon,

Nehemias or the fyrst of Esdras, the prophet Jonas, and no more of ye holy scripture.’ If we suppose the version of Ezra-Nehemiah to have been incomplete, or for some reason unavailable, this statement harmonizes perfectly with the data of the problem. Tindale may have executed the translation during his imprisonment, at which time we know that he applied for the use of his Hebrew books. The book was printed abroad, at the expense of R. Grafton and E. Whitchurch, two citizens of London, who issued it in London. On the title-page is the statement that the translator was Thomas Matthew, and the same name stands at the foot of the dedication to Henry VIII. Nothing is known of any such person, but tradition identifies him with John Rogers (who in the register of his arrest in 1555 is described as ‘John Rogers alias Matthew’), a friend and companion of Tindale. It is therefore generally believed that this Bible is due to the editorial work of John Rogers, who had come into possession of Tindale’s unpublished translation of the historical books of the OT, and published them with the rest of his friend’s work, completing the Bible with the help of Coverdale. It may be added that the initials I. R. (Rogers), W. T. (Tindale), R. G. and E. W. (Grafton and Whitchurch), and H. R. (unidentified,? Henricus Rex) are printed in large letters on various blank spaces throughout the OT. The arrangement of the book is in four sections: (1) Gen.-Cant., (2) Prophets, (3) Apocrypha (including for the first time the Prayer of Manasses, translated from the French of Olivetan), (4) NT. There are copious annotations, of a decidedly Protestant tendency, and Tindale’s outspoken Prologue to the Romans is included in it. The whole work, therefore, was eminently calculated to extend the impulse given by Tindale, and to perpetuate his work.

21. Taverner’s Bible (1539). Matthew’s Bible formed the basis for yet another version, which deserves brief mention, though it had no influence on the general development of the English Bible. Richard Taverner, formerly a student of Cardinal College [Christ Church], Oxford, was invited by some London printers (‘John Byddell for Thomas Barthlet’) to prepare at short notice a revision of the existing Bible. In the OT his alterations are verbal, and aim at the improvement of the style of the translation; in the NT, being a good Greek scholar, he was able to revise it with reference to the original Greek. The NT was issued separately in two editions, in the same year (1539) as the complete Bible; but the success of the official version next to be mentioned speedily extinguished such a personal venture as this. Taverner’s Bible is sometimes said to have been the first English Bible completely printed in England; but this honour appears to belong rather to Coverdale’s second edition.

22. The Great Bible (1539–1541). The fact that Taverner was invited to revise Matthew’s Bible almost immediately after its publication shows that it was not universally regarded as successful; but there were in addition other reasons why those who had promoted the circulation and authorization of Matthew’s Bible should be anxious to see it superseded. As stated above, it was highly controversial in character, and bore plentiful evidence of its origin from Tindale. Cromwell and Cranmer had, no doubt, been careful not to call Henry’s attention to these circumstances; but they might at any time be brought to his notice, when their own position would become highly precarious. It is, indeed, strange that they ever embarked on so risky an enterprise. However that may be, they lost little time in inviting Coverdale to undertake a complete revision of the whole, which was ready for the press early in 1538. The printing was begun by Regnault of Paris, where more sumptuous typography was possible than in England. In spite, however, of the assent of the French king having been obtained, the Inquisition intervened, stopped the printing, and seized the sheets. Some of the sheets, however, had previously been got away to England; others were re-purchased from a tradesman to whom they had been sold; and ultimately, under Cromwell’s direction, printers and presses were transported from Paris to London, and the work completed there by Grafton and Whitchurch, whose imprint stands on the magnificent title-page (traditionally ascribed to Holbein) depicting the dissemination of the Scriptures from the hands of Henry, through the instrumentality of Cromwell and Cranmer, to the general mass of the loyal and rejoicing populace. [A special copy on vellum, with illuminations, was prepared for

Cromwell himself, and is now in the library of St. John’s College, Cambridge.]

23. The first edition of the Great Bible appeared in April 1539, and an injunction was issued by Cromwell that a copy of it should be set up in every parish church. It was consequently the first (and only) English Bible formally authorized for public use; and contemporary evidence proves that it was welcomed and read with avidity. No doubt, as at an earlier day (Ph 2:15), some read the gospel ‘of envy and strife, and some also of good will’; but in one way or another, for edification or for controversy, the reading of the Bible took a firm hold on the people of England, a hold which has never since been relaxed, and which had much to do with the stable foundation of the Protestant Church in this country. Nor was the translation, though still falling short of the perfection reached three-quarters of a century later, unworthy of its position. It had many positive merits, and marked a distinct advance upon all its predecessors.

Coverdale, though without the force and originality, or even the scholarship, of Tindale, had some of the more valuable gifts of a translator, and was well qualified to make the best use of the labours of his predecessors. He had scholarship enough to choose and follow the best authorities, he had a happy gift of smooth and effective phraseology, and his whole heart was in his work. As the basis of his revision he had Tindale’s work and his own previous version; and these he revised with reference to the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, with special assistance in the OT from the Latin translation by Sebastian Münster published in 1534–35 (a work decidedly superior to the Zurich Bible, which had been his principal guide in 1534), while in the NT he made considerable use of Erasmus. With regard to the use of ecclesiastical terms, he followed his own previous example, against Tindale, in retaining the familiar Latin phrases; and he introduced a considerable number of words and sentences from the Vulgate, which do not appear in the Hebrew or Greek. The text is divided into five sections—(1) Pent., (2) Jos.-Job, (3) Psalms-Mal., (4) Apocrypha, here entitled ‘Hagiographa,’ though quite different from the books to which that term is applied in the Hebrew Bible, (5) NT, in which the traditional order of the books is restored in place of Luther’s. Coverdale intended to add a commentary at the end, and with this view inserted various marks in the margins, the purpose of which he explains in the Prologue; but he was unable to obtain the sanction of the Privy Council for these, and after standing in the margin for three editions the sign-post marks were withdrawn.

24. The first edition was exhausted within twelve months, and in April 1540 a second edition appeared, this time with a prologue by Cranmer (from which fact the Great Bible is sometimes known as Cranmer’s Bible, though he had no part in the translation). Two more editions followed in July and November, the latter ( Cromwell having now been overthrown and executed) appearing under the nominal patronage of Bishops Tunstall and Heath. In 1541 three editions were issued. None of these editions was a simple reprint. The Prophets, in particular, were carefully revised with the help of Münster for the second edition. The fourth edition (Nov. 1540) and its successors revert in part to the first. These seven editions spread the knowledge of the Bible in a sound, though not perfect, version broadcast through the land; and one portion of it has never lost its place in our liturgy. In the first Prayer Book of Edward

VI. the Psalter (like the other Scripture passages) was taken from the Great Bible. In 1662, when the other passages were taken from the version of 1611, a special exception was made of the Psalter, on account of the familiarity which it had achieved, and consequently Coverdale’s version has held its place in the Book of Common Prayer to this day, and it is in his words that the Psalms have become the familiar household treasures of the English people.

25. With the appearance of the Great Bible comes the first pause in the rapid sequence of vernacular versions set on foot by Tindale. The English Bible was now fully authorized, and accessible to every Englishman in his parish church; and the translation, both in style and in scholarship, was fairly abreast of the attainments and requirements of the age. We hear no more, therefore, at present of further revisions of it. Another circumstance which may have contributed to the same result was the reaction of Henry in his latter years against Protestantism. There was talk in

Convocation about a translation to be made by the bishops, which anticipated the plan of the Bible of 1568; and Cranmer prompted Henry to transfer the work to the universities, which anticipated a vital part of the plan of the Bible of 1611; but nothing came of either project. The only practical steps taken were in the direction of the destruction of the earlier versions. In 1543 a proclamation was issued against Tindale’s versions, and requiring the obliteration of all notes; in 1546 Coverdale’s NT was likewise prohibited. The anti-Protestant reaction, however, was soon terminated by Henry’s death (Jan. 1547); and during the reign of Edward VI., though no new translation (except a small part of the Gospels by Sir J. Cheke) was attempted, many new editions of Tindale, Coverdale, Matthew, and the Great Bible issued from the press. The accession of Mary naturally put a stop to the printing and circulation of vernacular Bibles in England; and, during the attempt to put the clock back by force, Rogers and Cranmer followed Tindale to the stake, while Coverdale was imprisoned, but was released, and took refuge at Geneva.

26. The Geneva Bible (1557–1560). Geneva was the place at which the next link in the chain was to be forged. Already famous, through the work of Beza, as a centre of Biblical scholarship, it became the rallying place of the more advanced members of the Protestant party in exile, and under the strong rule of Calvin it was identified with Puritanism in its most rigid form. Puritanism, in fact, was here consolidated into a living and active principle, and demonstrated its strength as a motive power in the religious and social life of Europe. It was by a relative of Calvin, and under his own patronage, that the work of improving the English translation of the Bible was once more taken in hand. This was W. Whittingham, a Fellow of All Souls’ College, Oxford, and subsequently dean of Durham, who in 1557 published the NT at Geneva in a small octavo volume, the handiest form in which the English Scriptures had yet been given to the world. In two other respects also this marked an epoch in the history of the English Bible. It was the first version to be printed in Roman type, and the first in which the division of the text into numbered verses (originally made by R. Stephanus for his Græco-Latin Bible of 1551) was introduced. A preface was contributed by Calvin himself. The translator claims to have made constant use of the original Greek and of translations in other tongues, and he added a full marginal commentary. If the matter had ended there, as the work of a single scholar on one part of the Bible, it would probably have left little mark; but it was at once made the basis of a revised version of both Testaments by a group of Puritan scholars. The details of the work are not recorded, but the principal workers, apart from Whittingham himself, appear to have been Thomas Sampson, formerly dean of Chichester, and afterwards dean of Christ Church, and A. Gilby, of Christ’s College, Cambridge. A version of the

Psalter was issued in 1559 [the only two extant copies of it belong to the Earl of Ellesmere and Mr. Aldis Wright], and in 1560 the complete Bible was given to the world, with the imprint of Rowland Hall, at Geneva. The Psalter in this was the same as that of 1559; but the NT had been largely revised since 1557. The book was a moderate-sized quarto, and contained a dedication to Elizabeth, an address to the brethren at home, the books of the OT (including Apocrypha) and NT in the same order as in the Great Bible and our modern Bibles, copious marginal notes (those to the NT taken from Whittingham with some additions), and an apparatus of maps and woodcuts. In type and verse-division it followed the example of Whittingham’s NT. 27. The Genevan revisers took the Great Bible as their basis in the OT, and

Matthew’s Bible (i.e. Tindale) in the NT. For the former they had the assistance of the Latin Bible of Leo Juda (1544), in addition to Pagninus (1527), and they were in consultation with the scholars (including Calvin and Beza) who were then engaged at Geneva in a similar work of revision of the French Bible. In the NT their principal guide was Beza, whose reputation stood highest among all the Biblical scholars of the age. The result was a version which completely distanced its predecessors in scholarship, while in style and vocabulary it worthily carried on the great tradition established by Tindale. Its success was as decisive as it was well deserved; and in one respect it met a want which none of its predecessors (except perhaps Tindale’s) had attempted to meet. Coverdale’s, Matthew’s, and the Great Bible were all large folios, suitable for use in church, but unsuited both in size and in price for private possession and domestic study. The Geneva Bible, on the contrary, was moderate in both respects, and achieved instant and long-enduring popularity as the Bible for personal use. For a full century it continued to be the Bible of the people, and it was upon this version, and not upon that of King James, that the Bible knowledge of the Puritans of the Civil War was built up. Its notes furnished them with a full commentary on the sacred text, predominantly hortatory or monitory in character, but Calvinistic in general tone, and occasionally definitely polemical. Over 160 editions of it are said to have been issued, but the only one which requires separate notice is a revision of the NT by Laurence Tomson in 1576, which carried still further the principle of deference to Beza; this revised NT was successful, and was frequently bound up with the Genevan OT in place of the edition of 1560. [The Geneva Bible is frequently called (in booksellers’ catalogues and elsewhere) the ‘Breeches’ Bible, on account of this word being used in the translation of Gn 3:7.]

28. The Bishops’ Bible (1568). Meanwhile there was one quarter in which the Geneva Bible could hardly be expected to find favour, namely, among the leaders of the Church in England. Elizabeth herself was not too well disposed towards the Puritans, and the bishops in general belonged to the less extreme party in the Church. On the other hand, the superiority of the Genevan to the Great Bible could not be contested. Under these circumstances the old project of a translation to be produced by the bishops was revived. The archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, was himself a scholar, and took up the task with interest. The basis of the new version was to be the authorized Great Bible. Portions of the text were assigned to various revisers, the majority of whom were bishops. The archbishop exercised a general supervision over the work, but there does not appear to have been any organized system of collaboration or revision, and the results were naturally unequal. In the OT the alterations are mainly verbal, and do not show much originality or genius. In the NT the scholarship shown is on a much higher level, and there is much more independence in style and judgment. In both, use is made of the Geneva Bible, as well as of other versions. The volume was equipped with notes, shorter than those of the Geneva Bible, and generally exegetical. It appeared in 1568, from the press of R.

Jugge, in a large folio volume, slightly exceeding even the dimensions of the Great Bible. Parker applied through Cecil for the royal sanction, but it does not appear that he ever obtained it; but Convocation in 1571 required a copy to be kept in every archbishop’s and bishop’s house and in every cathedral, and, as far as could conveniently be done, in all churches. The Bishops’ Bible, in fact, superseded the Great Bible as the official version, and its predecessor ceased henceforth to be reprinted; but it never attained the popularity and influence of the Geneva Bible. A second edition was issued in 1569, in which a considerable number of alterations were made, partly, it appears, as the result of the criticisms of Giles Laurence, professor of Greek at Oxford. In 1572 a third edition appeared, of importance chiefly in the NT, and in some cases reverting to the first edition of 1568. In this form the Bishops’ Bible continued in official use until its supersession by the version of 1611, of which it formed the immediate basis.

29. The Rheims and Douai Bible (1582–1609). The English exiles for religious causes were not all of one kind or of one faith. There were Roman Catholic refugees on the Continent as well as Puritan, and from the one, as from the other, there proceeded an English version of the Bible. The centre of the English Roman Catholics was the English College at Douai, the foundation (in 1568) of William Allen, formerly of Queen’s College, Oxford, and subsequently cardinal; and it was from this college that a new version of the Bible emanated which was intended to serve as a counterblast to the Protestant versions, with which England was now flooded. The first instalment of it appeared in 1582, during a temporary migration of the college to Rheims. This was the NT, the work mainly of Gregory Martin, formerly Fellow of St. John’s College, Oxford, with the assistance of a small band of scholars from the same university. The OT is stated to have been ready at the same time, but for want of funds it could not be printed until 1609, after the college had returned to Douai, when it appeared just in time to be of some use to the preparers of King James’ version. As was natural, the Roman scholars did not concern themselves with the Hebrew and Greek originals, which they definitely rejected as inferior, but translated from the Latin Vulgate, following it with a close fidelity which is not infrequently fatal, not merely to the style, but even to the sense in English. The following short passage ( Eph 3:6–12), taken almost at random, is a fair example of the Latinization of their style. ‘The Gentils to be coheires and concorporat and comparticipant of his promis in Christ Jesus by the Gospel: whereof I am made a minister according to the gift of the grace of God, which is given me according to the operation of is power. To me the least of al the sainctes is given this grace, among the Gentils to evangelize the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to illuminate al men what is the dispensation of the sacrament hidden from worldes in God, who created al things; that the manifold wisedom of God may be notified to the Princes and Potestats in the celestials by the Church, according to the prefinition of worldes, which he made in Christ Jesus our Lord. In whom we have affiance and accesse in confidence, by the faith of him.’

The translation, being prepared with a definite polemical purpose, was naturally equipped with notes of a controversial character, and with a preface in which the object and method of the work were explained. It had, however, as a whole, little success. The OT was reprinted only once in the course of a century, and the NT not much oftener. In England the greater part of its circulation was due to the action of a vehement adversary, W. Fulke, who, in order to expose its errors, printed the Rheims NT in parallel columns with the Bishops’ version of 1572, and the Rheims annotations with his own refutations of them; and this work had a considerable vogue. Regarded from the point of view of scholarship, the Rheims and Douai Bible is of no importance, marking retrogression rather than advance; but it needs mention in a history of the English Bible, because it is one of the versions of which King James’ translators made use. The AV is indeed distinguished by the strongly English ( as distinct from Latin) character of its vocabulary; but of the Latin words used (and used effectively), many were derived from the Bible of Rheims and Douai.

30. The Authorized Version (1611). The version which was destined to put the crown on nearly a century of labour, and, after extinguishing by its excellence all rivals, to print an indelible mark on English religion and English literature, came into being almost by accident. It arose out of the Hampton Court Conference, held by James I. in 1604, with the object of arriving at a settlement between the Puritan and Anglican elements in the Church; but it was not one of the prime or original subjects of the conference. In the course of discussion, Dr. Reynolds, president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, the leader of the moderate Puritan party, referred to the imperfections and disagreements of the existing translations; and the suggestion of a new version, to be prepared by the best scholars in the country, was warmly taken up by the king. The conference, as a whole, was a failure; but James did not allow the idea of the revision to drop. He took an active part in the preparation of instructions for the work, and to him appears to be due the credit of two features which went far to secure its success. He suggested that the translation should be committed in the first instance to the universities (subject to subsequent review by the bishops and the Privy Council, which practically came to nothing), and thereby secured the services of the best scholars in the country, working in co-operation; and (on the suggestion of the bishop of London) he laid down that no marginal notes should be added, which preserved the new version from being the organ of any one party in the Church.

31. Ultimately it was arranged that six companies of translators should be formed, two at Westminster, two at Oxford, and two at Cambridge. The companies varied in strength from 7 to 10 members, the total (though there is some little doubt with regard to a few names) being 47. The Westminster companies undertook Gn.-2 Kings and the

Epistles, the Oxford companies the Prophets and the Gospels, Ac., and Apoc., and the Cambridge companies 1 Chron.-Eccles. and the Apocrypha. A series of rules was drawn up for their guidance. The Bishops’ Bible was to be taken as the basis. The old ecclesiastical terms were to be kept. No marginal notes were to be affixed, except for the explanation of Hebrew or Greek words. Marginal references, on the contrary, were to be supplied. As each company finished a book, it was to send it to the other companies for their consideration. Suggestions were to be invited from the clergy generally, and opinions requested on passages of special difficulty from any learned man in the land. ‘These translations to be used when they agree better with the text than the Bishops’ Bible, namely, Tindale’s, Matthew’s, Coverdale’s, Whitchurch’s [i.e. the Great Bible], Geneva.’ The translators claim further to have consulted all the available versions and commentaries in other languages, and to have repeatedly revised their own work, without grudging the time which it required. The time occupied by the whole work is stated by themselves as two years and three-quarters. The several companies appear to have begun their labours about the end of 1607, and to have taken two years in completing their several shares. A final revision, occupying nine months, was then made by a smaller body, consisting of two representatives from each company, after which it was seen through the press by Dr. Miles Smith and Bishop Bilson; and in 1611 the new version, printed by R. Barker, the king’s printer, was given to the world in a large folio volume (the largest of all the series of English Bibles) of black letter type. The details of its issue are obscure. There were at least two issues in 1611, set up independently, known respectively as the ‘He’ and ‘She’ Bibles, from their divergence in the translation of the last words of Ruth 3:15; and bibliographers have differed as to their priority, though the general opinion is in favour of the former. Some copies have a wood-block, others an engraved title-page, with different designs. The title-page was followed by the dedication to King James, which still stands in our ordinary copies of the AV, and this by the translators’ preface (believed to have been written by Dr. Miles Smith), which is habitually omitted. [It is printed in the present King’s Printers’ Variorum Bible, and is interesting and valuable both as an example of the learning of the age and for its description of the translators’ labours.] For the rest, the contents and arrangement of the AV are too well known to every reader to need description.

32. Nor is it necessary to dwell at length on the characteristics of the translation. Not only was it superior to all its predecessors, but its excellence was so marked that no further revision was attempted for over 250 years. Its success must be attributed to the fact which differentiated it from its predecessors, namely, that it was not the work of a single scholar (like Tindale’s, Coverdale’s, and Matthew’s Bibles), or of a small group (like the Geneva and Douai Bibles), or of a larger number of men working independently with little supervision (like the Bishops’ Bible), but was produced by the collaboration of a carefully selected band of scholars, working with ample time and with full and repeated revision. Nevertheless, it was not a new translation. It owed much to its predecessors. The translators themselves say, in their preface: ‘We never thought from the beginning that we should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one, … but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones one principal good one, not justly to be excepted against; that hath been our endeavour, that our mark.’ The description is very just. The foundations of the AV were laid by Tindale, and a great part of his work continued through every revision. Each succeeding version added something to the original stock, Coverdale (in his own and the Great Bible) and the Genevan scholars contributing the largest share; and the crown was set upon the whole by the skilled labour of the Jacobean divines, making free use of the materials accumulated by others, and happily inspired by the gift of style which was the noblest literary achievement of the age in which they lived. A sense of the solemnity of their subject saved them from the extravagances and conceits which sometimes mar that style; and, as a result, they produced a work which, from the merely literary point of view, is the finest example of Jacobean prose, and has influenced incalculably the whole subsequent course of English literature. On the character and spiritual history of the nation it has left an even deeper mark, to which many writers have borne eleoquent testimony; and if England has been, and is, a Bible-reading and Bible-loving country, it is in no small measure due to her possession of a version so nobly executed as the AV.

33. The history of the AV after 1611 can be briefly sketched. In spite of the name by which it is commonly known, and in spite of the statement on both title-pages of 1611 that it was ‘appointed to be read in churches,’ there is no evidence that it was ever officially authorized either by the Crown or by Convocation. Its authorization seems to have been tacit and gradual. The Bishops’ Bible, hitherto the official version, ceased to be reprinted, and the AV no doubt gradually replaced it in churches as occasion arose. In domestic use its fortunes were for a time more doubtful, and for two generations it existed concurrently with the Geneva Bible; but before the century was out its predominance was assured. The first 4to and 8vo editions were issued in 1612; and thenceforward editions were so numerous that it is useless to refer to any except a few of them. The early editions were not very correctly printed. In 1638 an attempt to secure a correct text was made by a small group of Cambridge scholars. In 1633 the first edition printed in Scotland was published. In 1701 Bishop Lloyd superintended the printing of an edition at Oxford, in which Archbishop Ussher’s dates for Scripture chronology were printed in the margin, where they thenceforth remained. In 1717 a fine edition, printed by Baskett at Oxford, earned bibliographical notoriety as ‘The Vinegar Bible’ from a misprint in the headline over Lk 20. In 1762 a carefully revised edition was published at Cambridge under the editorship of Dr. T. Paris, and a similar edition, superintended by Dr. B. Blayney, appeared at Oxford in 1769. These two editions, in which the text was carefully revised, the spelling modernized, the punctuation corrected, and considerable alteration made in the marginal notes, formed the standard for subsequent reprints of the AV, which differ in a number of details, small in importance but fairly numerous in the aggregate, from the original text of 1611. One other detail remains to be mentioned. In 1666 appeared the first edition of the AV from which the Apocrypha was omitted. It had previously been omitted from some editions of the Geneva Bible, from 1599 onwards. The Nonconformists took much objection to it, and in 1664 the Long Parliament forbade the reading of lessons from it in public; but the lectionary of the English Church always included lessons from it. The example of omission was followed in many editions subsequently. The first edition printed in America (apart from a surreptitious edition of 1752), in 1782, is without it. In 1826 the British and Foreign Bible Society, which has been one of the principal agents in the circulation of the Scriptures throughout the world, decided never in future to print or circulate copies containing the Apocrypha; and this decision has been carried into effect ever since.

34. So far as concerned the translation of the Hebrew and Greek texts which lay before them, the work of the authors of the AV, as has been shown above, was done not merely well but excellently. There were, no doubt, occasional errors of interpretation; and in regard to the OT in particular the Hebrew scholarship of the age was not always equal to the demands made upon it. But such errors as were made were not of such magnitude or quantity as to have made any extensive revision necessary or desirable even now, after a lapse of nearly three hundred years. There was, however, another defect, less important (and indeed necessarily invisible at the time), which the lapse of years ultimately forced into prominence, namely, in the text (and especially the Greek text) which they translated. As has been shown elsewhere (TEXT OF THE NT), criticism of the Greek text of the NT had not yet begun. Scholars were content to take the text as it first came to hand, from the late MSS which were most readily accessible to them. The NT of Erasmus, which first made the Greek text generally available in Western Europe, was based upon a small group of relatively late MSS, which happened to be within his reach at Basle. The edition of Stephanus in 1550, which practically established the ‘Received Text’ which has held the field till our own day, rested upon a somewhat superficial examination of 15 MSS, mostly at Paris, of which only two were uncials, and these were but slightly used. None of the great MSS which now stand at the head of our list of authorities was known to the scholars of 1611. None of the ancient versions had been critically edited; and so far as King James’ translators made use of them (as we know they did), it was as aids to interpretation, and not as evidence for the text, that they employed them. In saying this there is no imputation of blame. The materials for a critical study and restoration of the text were not then extant; and men were concerned only to translate the text which lay before them in the current Hebrew, Greek, and Latin Bibles. Nevertheless it was in this inevitable defectiveness of text that the weakness lay which ultimately undermined the authority of the AV.

35. The Revised Version (1881–1895). The textual article above referred to describes the process of accumulation of materials which began with the coming of the Codex Alexandrinus to London in 1625, and continues to the present day, and the critical use made of these materials in the 19th century; and the story need not be repeated here. It was not until the progress of criticism had revealed the defective state of the received Greek text of the NT that any movement arose for the revision of the AV. About the year 1855 the question began to be mooted in magazine articles and motions in Convocation, and by way of bringing it to a head a small group of scholars [Dr. Ellicott, afterwards bishop of Gloucester, Dr. Moberly, head master of

Winchester and afterwards bishop of Salisbury, Dr. Barron, principal of St. Edmund’s Hall, Oxford, the Rev. H. Alford, afterwards dean of Canterbury, and the Rev. W. G. Humphrey; with the Rev. E. Hawkins, secretary of the S.P.G., and afterwards canon of Westminster, as their secretary] undertook a revision of the AV of Jn., which was published in 1857. Six of the Epistles followed in 1861 and 1863, by which time the object of the work, in calling attention to the need and the possibility of a revision, had been accomplished. Meanwhile a great stimulus to the interest in textual criticism had been given by the discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus, and by the work of Tischendorf and Tregelles. In Feb. 1870 a motion for a committee to consider the desirableness of a revision was adopted by both Houses of the Convocation of Canterbury; and definite motions in favour of such a revision were passed in the following May. The Convocation of York did not concur, and thenceforward the Southern Houses proceeded alone. A committee of both Houses drew up the lists of revisers, and framed the rules for their guidance. The OT company consisted of 25 (afterwards 27) members, the NT of 26. The rules prescribed the introduction of as few alterations in the AV as possible consistently with faithfulness; the text to be adopted for which the evidence is decidedly preponderating, and when it differs from that from which the AV was made, the alteration to be indicated in the margin ( this rule was found impracticable); alterations to be made on the first revision by simple majorities, but to be retained only if passed by a two-thirds majority on the second revision. Both companies commenced work at Westminster on June 22, 1870. The NT company met on 407 days in the course of eleven years, the OT company on 792 days in fifteen years. Early in the work the co-operation of American scholars was invited, and in consequence two companies of 15 and 16 members respectively were formed, which began work in 1872, considering the results of the English revision as each section of it was forwarded to them. The collaboration of the English and American companies was perfectly harmonious; and by agreement those recommendations of the American Revisers which were not adopted by the English companies, but to which the proposers nevertheless wished to adhere, were printed in an appendix to the published Bible. Publication took place, in the case of the NT, on May 17, 1881, and in the case of the canonical books of the OT almost exactly four years later. The revision of the Apocrypha was divided between the two English companies, and was taken up by each company on the completion of its main work. The NT company distributed Sirach, Tob., Jud., Wisd., 1 and 2 Mac. among three groups of its members, and the OT company appointed a small committee to deal with the remaining books. The work dragged on over many years, involving some inequalities in revision, and ultimately the Apocrypha was published in 1895.

36. In dealing with the OT the Revisers were not greatly concerned with questions of text. The Massoretic Hebrew text available in 1870 was substantially the same as that which King James’ translators had before them; and the criticism of the LXX version was not sufficiently advanced to enable them safely to make much use of it except in marginal notes. Their work consisted mainly in the correction of mistranslations which imperfect Hebrew scholarship had left in the AV. Their changes as a rule are slight, but tend very markedly to remove obscurities and to improve the intelligibility of the translation. The gain is greatest in the poetical and prophetical books (poetical passages are throughout printed as such, which in itself is a great improvement), and there cannot be much doubt that if the revision of the OT had stood by itself it would have been generally accepted without much opposition. With the new version of the NT the case was different. The changes were necessarily more numerous than in the OT, and the greater familiarity with the NT possessed by readers in general made the alterations more conspicuous. The NT Revisers had, in effect, to form a new Greek text before they could proceed to translate it. In this part of their work they were largely influenced by the presence of Drs. Westcott and Hort, who, as will be shown elsewhere (TEXT OF THE NT), were keen and convinced champions of the class of text of which the best representative is the Codex Vaticanus. At the same time Dr. Scrivener, who took a less advanced view of the necessity of changes in the Received Text, was also a prominent member of the company, and it is probably true that not many new readings were adopted which had not the support of Tischendorf and Tregelles, and which would not be regarded by nearly all scholars acquainted with textual criticism as preferable to those of the AV. To Westcott and Hort may be assigned a large part of the credit for leading the Revisers definitely along the path of critical science; but the Revisers did not follow their leaders the whole way, and their text (edited by Archdeacon Palmer for the Oxford Press in 1881) represents a more conservative attitude than that of the two great Cambridge scholars. Nevertheless the amount of textual change was considerable, and to this was added a very large amount of verbal change, sometimes (especially in the Epistles) to secure greater intelligibility, but oftener (and this is more noticeable in the Gospels) to secure uniformity in the translation of Greek words which the AV deliberately rendered differently in different places (even in parallel narratives of the same event), and precision in the representation of moods and tenses. It was to the great number of changes of this kind, which by themselves appeared needless and pedantic, that most of the criticism bestowed upon the RV was due; but it must be remembered that where the words and phrases of a book are often strained to the uttermost in popular application, it is of great importance that those words and phrases should be as accurately rendered as possible. On the whole, it is certain that the RV marks a great advance on the AV in respect of accuracy, and the main criticisms to which it is justly open are that the principles of classical Greek were applied too rigidly to Greek which is not classical, and that the Revisers, in their careful attention to the Greek, were less happily inspired than their predecessors with the genius of the English language. These defects have no doubt militated against the general acceptance of the RV; but whether they continue to do so or not (and it is to be remembered that we have not yet passed through nearly so long a period as that during which the AV competed with the Geneva Bible or Jerome’s Vulgate with the Old Latin), it is certain that no student of the Bible can afford to neglect the assistance given by the RV towards the true understanding of the Scriptures. In so using it, it should be remembered that renderings which appear in the margin not infrequently represent the views of more than half the Revisers, though they failed to obtain the necessary two-thirds majority. This is perhaps especially the case in the OT, where the RV shows a greater adherence to the AV than in the NT.

37. It only remains to add that, after the lapse of the 14 years during which it was agreed that no separate American edition should be brought out, while the American appendix continued to appear in the English RV, the American revisers issued a fresh recension (NT in 1900, OT in 1901, without the Apocrypha), embodying not only the readings which appeared in their appendix to the English RV, but also others on which they had since agreed. It is unfortunate that the action originally taken by the English revisers with a view to securing that the two English-speaking nations should continue to have a common Bible should have brought about the opposite result; and though the alterations introduced by the American revisers eminently deserve consideration on their merits, it may be doubted whether the net result is important enough to justify the existence of a separate version. What influence it may have upon the history of the English Bible in the future it is for the future to decide.

Literature.—No detailed history of the manuscript English versions is in existence. A good summary of the pre-Wyclifite versions is given in the introduction to A. S. Cook’s Biblical Quotations in Old English Prose Writers, part 1 (1898); and the principal separate publications have been mentioned above. For the Wyclifite versions the main authority is the complete edition by J. Forshall and F. Madden (4 vols., 1850); the NT in the later version was separately printed by Skeat (1879). A good short conspectus of the subject is given in the introduction to the official Guide to the Wycliffe Exhibition in the British Museum (1884). The printed Bible has been much more fully investigated. The best single authority is Bishop Westcott’s History of the English Bible (3rd ed., revised by W. Aldis Wright, 1905); see also the art. by J. H. Lupton in Hastings’ DB (Extra Vol., 1904); W. F. Moulton, History of the English

Bible (2nd ed., 1884); and H. W. Hoare, The Evolution of the English Bible (2nd ed., 1902). The Printed English Bible, by R. Lovett (R.T.S. ‘Present Day Primers,’ 1894) is a good short history, and the same may be said of G. Milligan’s The English Bible (Church of Scotland Guild Text Books, new ed., 1907). For a bibliography of printed Bibles, see the section ‘Bible’ in the British Museum Catalogue ( published separately), and the Historical Catalogue of the Printed Editions of Holy Scripture in the Library of the British and Foreign Bible Society, vol. i., by T. H. Darlow and H. F. Moule (1903). For special and minute studies of certain parts of the subject, the works of F. Fry (The Bible by Coverdale, 1867, Description of the Great Bible, 1865 , Bibliographical Description of the Editions of the NT, Tyndale’s Version, 1878) and

E. Arber (The First Printed English NT, 1871) are invaluable. Bagster’s English Hexapla (which can often be obtained second-hand) gives in parallel columns, beneath the Greek text as printed by Scholz, the NT according to (1) the second Wyclifite version; (2) Tindale, from the edition of 1534; (3) the Great Bible of 1539 ; (4) the Geneva NT of 1557; (5) the Rheims NT of 1582; and (6) the AV of 1611. This gives the student a better idea of the evolution of the English Bible than any description. F. H. A. Scrivener’s Authorised Edition of the English Bible (1884) gives a careful and authoritative account of the various editions of the AV. For the history of the RV, see the Revisers’ prefaces and Bishop Ellicott’s Revised Version of Holy Scripture (S.P.C.K. 1901). A more extensive bibliography is given in Dr. Lupton’e article in Hastings’ DB.

F. C. KENYON.

EN-HADDAH (Jos 19:21).—A city of Issachar noticed with En-gannim and Remeth; perhaps the present village Kefr Adhān on the edge of the Dothan plain, W. of En-gannim.

EN-HAKKORE (‘spring of the partridge’; cf. 1 S 26:20, Jer 17:11).—The name of a fountain at Lehi (Jg 15:19). The narrator (J (?)) of the story characteristically connects hakkōrē with the word yikrā (‘he called’) of v. 18, and evidently interprets ‘En-hakkōrē as ‘the spring of him that called.’ The whole narrative is rather obscure, and the tr. in some instances doubtful. The situation of En-hakkōrē is also quite uncertain.

EN-HAZOR (‘spring of Hazor,’ Jos 19:37).—A town of Naphtali, perhaps the mod. Hazīreh, on the W. slopes of the mountains of Upper Galilee, W. of Kedesh.

EN-MISHPAT (‘spring of judgment,’ or ‘decision’ (by oracle), Gn 14:7).—A name for Kadesh—probably Kadesh-barnea. See KADESH.

ENNATAN (AV Eunatan), 1 Es 8:44.—See ELNATHAN.

ENOCH (Heb. Chănōk) is the ‘seventh from Adam’ (Jude 14) in the Sethite genealogy of Gn 5 (see vv. 18–24). In the Cainite genealogy of 4:17ff. he is the son of Cain, and therefore the third from Adam. The resemblances between the two lists seem to show that they rest on a common tradition, preserved in different forms by J (ch. 4) and P (ch. 5)., though it is not possible to say which version is the more original.—The notice which invests the figure of Enoch with its peculiar significance is found in 5:24 ‘Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.’ The idea here suggested—that because of his perfect fellowship with God this patriarch was ‘translated’ to heaven without tasting death (cf. Sir 44:16, 49:14, He 11:5)— appears to have exerted a certain influence on the OT doctrine of immortality (see Ps

49:15, 73:24).—A much fuller tradition is presupposed by the remarkable development of the Enoch legend in the Apocalyptic literature, where Enoch appears as a preacher of repentance, a prophet of future events, and the recipient of supernatural knowledge of the secrets of heaven and earth, etc. The origin of this tradition has probably been discovered in a striking Babylonian parallel. The seventh name in the list of ten antediluvian kings given by Berosus is Evedoranchus, which ( it seems certain) is a corruption of Enmeduranki, a king of Sippar who was received into the fellowship of Shamash (the sun-god) and Ramman, was initiated into the mysteries of heaven and earth, and became the founder of a guild of priestly diviners. When or how this myth became known to the Jews we cannot tell. A trace of an original connexion with the sun-god has been suspected in the 365 years of Enoch’s life (the number of days in the solar year). At all events it is highly probable that the Babylonian legend contains the germ of the later conception of Enoch as embodied in the apocalyptic Book of Enoch (c. B.C. 105–64), and the later Book of the Secrets of Enoch, on which see Hastings’ DB i. 705ff.—A citation from the Book of Enoch occurs in Jude 14f. (= En 1:9, 5:4, 27:2).

J. SKINNER.

ENOSH (Gn 4:26 J, 5:6–11 P), ENOS (Lk 3:38).—The name is poetical, denoting ‘man’; the son of Seth, and grandson of Adam. As the time of Cain was marked by sin and violence, so that of Seth was marked by piety. In the days of Enosh men began to ‘call with the name of J″,’ i.e. to use His name in invocations. The name J″ having been known practically from the beginning of human life, the writer (J) always employs it in preference to the title ‘Elohim.’ In E (Ex 3:14) and P (6:2f.) it was not revealed till long afterwards.

A. H. M‘NEILE.

EN-RIMMON (‘spring of [the] pomegranate’).—One of the settlements of the Judahites after the return from the Exile (Neh 11:29). In Jos 15:32 amongst the towns assigned to Judah we find ‘Ain and Rimmon,’ and in 19:7 (cf. 1 Ch 4:32) amongst those assigned to Simeon are ‘Ain, Rimmon.’ In all these instances there can be littls doubt that we ought to read En-rimmon. En-rimmon is probably to be identified with the modern Umm er-Rumāmin, about 9 miles N. of Beersheba.

EN-ROGEL (‘spring of the fuller’).—In the border of the territory of Judah ( Jos 15:7) and Benjamin (18:16). It was outside Jerusalem; and David’s spies, Jonathan and Ahimaaz, were here stationed in quest of news of the revolt of Absalom (2 S 17:17). Here Adonijah made a feast ‘by the stone of Zohsleth,’ when he endeavoured to seize the kingdom (1 K 1:9). The identification of this spring lies between two places, the Virgin’s Fountain and Job’s Well, both in the Kidron Valley. The strongest argument for the former site is its proximity to a cliff face called Zahweileh, in which an attempt has been made to recognize Zoheleth. This, however, is uncertain, as Zahweileh is a cliff, not an isolated stone.

R. A. S. MACALISTER.

ENSAMPLE.—‘Ensample’ and ‘example’ (both from Lat. exemplum) are both used in AV. Tindale has ‘ensample’ only, and so all the Eng. versions until the Rhemish appeared. That version used ‘example’ probably as being nearer the Vulg. word exemplum. The AV frequently reveals the influence of the Rhemish version.

EN-SHEMESH (‘sun-spring,’ Jos 15:7, 18:17).—A spring E. of En-rogel, on the way to Jericho. It is believed to be the spring on the Jericho road E. of Olivet, generally known as the ‘Apostles’ fountain’ (‘Ain Hōd).

ENSIGN.—See BANNER.

ENSUE.—The verb ‘ensue’ is used intransitively, meaning to follow, in Jth 9:4 ; and transitively, with the full force of pursue, in 1 P 3:11.

EN-TAPPUAH.—A place on the boundary of Manasseh (Jos 17:7). Generally identified with a spring near Yāsūf, in a valley to the S. of Mukhna, which drains into Wady Kanah. The place is probably the Tappuah (wh. see) of Jos 16:8, 17:8.

ENVY.—Envy leads to strife, and division, and railing, and hatred, and sometimes to murder. The Bible classes it with these things (Ro 1:29, 13:13, 1 Co 3:3, 2 Co 12:20, Gal 5:21, 1 Ti 6:4, Tit 3:3, Ja 3:14, 16). It is the antipode of Christian love. Envy loveth not, and love envieth not (1 Co 13:4). Bacon closes his essay on ‘Envy’ with this sentence: ‘Envy is the vilest affection and the most depraved; for which cause it is the proper attribute of the Devil, who is called, The envious man, that soweth tares amongst the wheat by night; as it always cometh to pass, that Envy worketh subtilly and in the dark, and to the prejudice of good things, such as is the wheat.’ Chrysostom said: ‘As a moth gnaws a garment, so doth envy consume a man, to be a living anatomy, a skeleton, to be a lean and pale carcass, quickened with a fiend.’ These are Scriptural estimates. Envy is devilish, and absolutely inconsistent with the highest life. Examples abound in the Bible, such as are suggested by the relations between Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Rachel and Leah, Joseph and his brothers, Saul and David, Haman and Mordecai, the elder brother and the prodigal son, the Roman evangelists of Ph 1:15 and the Apostle Paul, and many others.

D. A. HAYES.

EPÆNETUS.—A beloved friend of St. Paul at Rome, greeted in Ro 16:5; he was the ‘firstfruits of Asia (RV) unto Christ,’ i.e. one of the first converts of that province.

He was probably a native of Ephesus.

A. J. MACLEAN.

EPAPHRAS.—Mentioned by St. Paul in Col 1:7, 4:12, Philem 23; and described by him as his ‘fellow-servant,’ and also as a ‘servant’ and ‘faithful minister’ of Christ. He was a native or inhabitant of Colossæ (Col 4:12), and as St. Paul’s representative

(1:7) founded the Church there (1:7). The fact of his prayerful zeal for Laodicea and Hierapolis suggests his having brought the faith to these cities also (4:13). He brought news of the Colossian Church to the Apostle during his first Roman imprisonment, perhaps undertaking the journey to obtain St. Paul’s advice as to the heresies that were there prevalent. He is spoken of as St. Paul’s ‘fellow-prisoner’ (Philem 23), a title probably meaning that his care of the Apostle entailed the practical sharing of his captivity. The Epistle to the Colossians was a result of this visit, and Epaphras brought it back with him to his flock. Epaphras is a shortened form of Epaphroditus (Ph 2:25) , but, as the name was in common use, it is not probable that the two are to be identified.

CHARLES T. P. GRIERSON.

EPAPHRODITUS.—Mentioned by St. Paul in Ph 2:25–30, 4:18, and described by him as his ‘brother, fellow-worker, and fellow-soldier’ (2:25). He was the messenger by whom the Philippians sent the offerings which fully supplied the necessities of St. Paul during his first Roman imprisonment (2:25, 4:18). In Rome he laboured so zealously for the Church and for the Apostle as to ‘hazard’ his life (2:30) ; indeed, he came ‘nigh unto death,’ but God had mercy on him, and the Apostle was spared this ‘sorrow upon sorrow’ (v. 27). News of his illness reached Philippi, and the distress thus caused his friends made him long to return (v. 26). St. Paul therefore sent him ‘the more diligently,’ thus relieving their minds, and at the same time lessening his own sorrows by his knowledge of their joy at receiving him back in health.

Apparently the Epistle to the Philippians was sent by him.

CHARLES T. P. GRIERSON.

EPHAH.—1. A son of Midian, descended from Abraham and Keturah (Gn 25:4 = 1 Ch 1:33), the eponymous ancestor of an Arabian tribe whose identity is uncertain. This tribe appears in Is 60:6 as engaged in the transport of gold and frankincense from Sheba. 2. A concubine of Caleb (1 Ch 2:46). 3. A Judahite (1 Ch 2:47).

EPHAH.—See WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.

EPHAI.—Described in Jer 40 (Gr 47):8 as ‘the Netophathite,’ whose sons were amongst the ‘captains of the forces’ who joined Gedaliah at Mizpah, and were murdered along with him by Ishmael (Jer 41:3).

EPHER.—1. The name of the second of the sons of Midian mentioned in Gn 25:4 ,

1 Ch 1:33, and recorded as one of the descendants of Abraham by his wife Keturah (Gn 25:1). 2. The name of one of the sons of Ezrah (1 Ch 4:17). 3. The first of a group of five heads of fathers’ houses belonging to the half tribe of Manasseh (1 Ch 5:24).

EPHES-DAMMIM.—The place in Judah where the Philistines were encamped at the time when David slew Goliath (1 S 17:1). The same name appears in 1 Ch 11:13 as Pas-Dammim.

EPHESIANS, EPISTLE TO.—This Epistle belongs to the group of Epistles of the Captivity, and was almost certainly, if genuine, written from Rome, and sent by Tychicus at the same time as the Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon ( see COLOSSIANS).

1. Destination.—To whom was it addressed? That it was specifically written to the Ephesian Church is improbable, for two reasons—(1) The words ‘at Ephesus’ in 1:1 are absent from two of the earliest MSS, and apparently from the Epistle as known to Marcion (A.D. 140), who refers to it as addressed to the Laodiceans. Origen also had access to a copy of the Epistle from which they were absent. (2) The Epistle is almost entirely devoid of the personal touches—references to St. Paul’s long stay at Ephesus, greetings to friends, etc.—that we should expect to find in an Epistle to a

Church with which the Apostle’s relations had been as close as they had been with the

Ephesian Church. On the other hand, early tradition, as shown in the title, associated the Epistle with Ephesus, and, except Marcion, no early writer associated it with any other Church. Moreover, personal touches are not wholly absent. St. Paul has heard of the faith and love of those to whom he writes (1:15); they had been saddened by news of his imprisonment (3:13); they apparently know Tychicus (6:21, 22). Perhaps the best explanation of all the facts is to be found in the suggestion made by Ussher, and adopted by Lightfoot (Biblical Essays), that the Epistle is really a circular letter to the Churches of Asia (cf. the First Epistle of St. Peter). Possibly the space where ‘at Ephesus’ now appears was left blank for Tychicus to fill in as he left copies of the letter at the various churches on his line of route. If this solution is the true one, this Epistle is most probably the letter referred to in Col 4:16.

2. Purpose.—This Epistle, unlike most of St. Paul’s, does not appear to have been written with a view to any particular controversy or problem of Church life. Of all the Pauline Epistles it has most of the character of a treatise or homily. Its keynote is the union of the Christian body, Jewish and Gentile, in Christ, in whom all things are being fulfilled. It may be regarded as carrying on the doctrinal teaching of the Epistle to the Romans from the point reached in that Epistle; and, indeed, may not improbably have been so intended by St. Paul.

3. Authenticity.—The authenticity of the Epistle is well attested by external testimony, but has been disputed during the last century on internal grounds. The chief of these are—(1) Difference of style from the earlier Epistles. This is very marked, but (a) the style is like that of the Epistle to the Colossians, and resembles also the Epistle to the Philippians; (b) there are many definitely Pauline phrases and turns of expression; (c) arguments from style are always unreliable (see COLOSSIANS). (2) Doctrinal differences. The chief of these are: (a) the prominence given to the ‘Catholic’ idea of the Church; (b) the doctrine of the pre-existent Christ as the agent of creation; (c) the substitution of the idea of the gradual fulfilment of the Divine purpose for the earlier idea of an imminent return (Parousia) of Christ. In these and other directions there is certainly a development, but is it not such a development as might easily take place in the mind of St. Paul, especially when three years of imprisonment had given him opportunities for quiet thought, and had brought him into contact with Roman imperialism at its centre? (3) The references to ‘apostles and prophets’ in 3:5, 4:11, which seem to suggest that the writer is looking back on the Apostolic age from the standpoint of the next generation. But in 1 Co 12:28 ‘apostles’ and ‘prophets’ stand first in the order of spiritual gifts, and both there and here the word ‘apostle’ ought probably to be taken in a wider sense than as including only the Twelve and St. Paul. Apostles and prophets were the two kinds of teachers exercising general, as distinguished from localized, authority in the early Church.

Those who deny the genuineness of the Epistle have generally regarded it as the work of a disciple of St. Paul early in the 2nd century. Some critics admit the genuineness of Colossians, and regard this Epistle as a revised version drawn up at a later date. But the absence of any reference to the special theological controversies of the 2nd century, and of any obvious motive for the composition of the Epistle at a later time, make this theory difficult to accept. Nor is it easy to see how an Epistle purporting to be by St. Paul, that had not been in circulation during his lifetime, could have secured a place in the collection of his Epistles that began to be made very soon after his death (2 P 3:16). There does not, then, seem to be any adequate ground for denying the Pauline authorship of this Epistle.

4. Characteristics.—The following are among the distinctive lines of thought of the Epistle. (1) The stress laid on the idea of the Church as the fulfilment of the eternal purpose of God—the body of which Christ is the head (1:23, 2:16, 3:6, 4:12, 16), the building of which Christ is the corner-stone (2:20–22), the bride (5:23–27). (2) The cosmic significance of the Atonement (1:10, 14, 2:7, 3:10). (3) The prominence given to the work of the Holy Spirit (1:13, 17, 2:18, 3:16, 4:3, 30, 5:9). In this the Epistle differs from Colossians, and resembles 1 Corinthians. (4) Repeated exhortations to unity, and the graces that make for unity (4:1–7, 13, 25–32, 5:2 etc.). (5) The conception of the Christian household (5:22–6:9) and of the Christian warrior (6:10– 18).

5. Relation to other books.—The Epistle has lines of thought recalling 1 Cor. See, e.g., in 1 Cor. the idea of the riches (1:5) and the mystery (2:7–10) of the gospel, the work of the Spirit (2:10, 11, 12:4ff.), the building (3:9–11, 16), the one body (10:17, 12:4–6, 12–16), all things subdued unto Christ (15:24–28). The relation to Colossians is very close. ‘The one is the general and systematic exposition of the same truths which appear in a special bearing in the other’ (Lightfoot). Cf. the relation of Galatians and Romans. Ephesians and Philippians have many thoughts in common. See, e.g., the Christian citizenship (Eph 2:12, 19, Ph 1:27, 3:20), the exaltation of

Christ (Eph 1:20, Ph 2:9), the true circumcision (Eph 2:11, Ph 3:3), unity and stability

(Eph 2:18ff., 4:3, 6:13, Ph 1:27). Cf. also Eph 6:18 with Ph 4:6, and Eph 5:2 with Ph 4:18. In regard to Romans and Ephesians, ‘the unity at which the former Epistle seems to arrive by slow and painful steps is assumed in the latter as a starting-point, with a vista of wondrous possibilities beyond’ ( Hort ).

There is a close connexion between this Epistle and 1 Peter, not so much in details as in ‘identities of thought and similarity in the structure of the two Epistles as wholes’ (Hort). If there is any direct relation, it is probable that the author of 1 Peter used this Epistle, as he certainly used Romans. In some respects this Epistle shows an approximation of Pauline thought to the teaching of the Fourth Gospel. See, e.g., the teaching of both on grace, on the contrast of light and darkness, on the work of the pre-incarnate Logos; and compare Jn 17 with the whole Epistle. Cf. also Rev 21:10 , 14 with Eph 2:20, 21, Rev 19:7 with Eph 5:25–27, and Rev 13:8 with Eph 3:11.

J. H. B. MASTERMAN.

EPHESUS.—The capital of the Roman province Asia; a large and ancient city at the mouth of the river Cayster, and about 3 miles from the open sea. The origin of the name, which is native and not Greek, is unknown. It stood at the entrance to one of the four clefts in the surrounding hills. It is along these valleys that the roads through the central plateau of Asia Minor pass. The chief of these was the route up the Mæander as far as the Lycus, its tributary, then along the Lycus towards Apamea. It was the most important avenue of civilization in Asia Minor under the Roman Empire. Miletus had been in earlier times a more important harbour than Ephesus, but the track across from this main road to Ephesus was much shorter than the road to Miletus, and was over a pass only 600 ft. high. Consequently Ephesus replaced Miletus before and during the Roman Empire, especially as the Mæander had silted up so much as to spoil the harbour at the latter place. It became the great emporium for all the trade N. of Mt. Taurus.

Ephesus was on the main route from Rome to the East, and many side roads and sea-routes converged at it (Ac 19:21, 20:1, 17, 1 Ti 1:3, 2 Ti 4:12). The governors of the provinces in Asia Minor had always to land at Ephesus. It was an obvious centre for the work of St. Paul, as influences from there spread over the whole province ( Ac 19:10). Corinth was the next great station on the way to Rome, and communication between the two places was constant. The ship in Ac 18:19, bound from Corinth for the Syrian coast, touched first at Ephesus.

Besides Paul, Tychicus (Eph 6:21f.) and Timothy (according to 1 Ti 1:3, 2 Ti 4:9) , John Mark (Col 4:10, 1 P 5:13), and the writer of the Apocalypse (1:11, 2:1) were acquainted with Asia or Ephesus.

The harbour of Ephesus was kept large enough and deep enough only by constant attention. The alluvial deposits were (and are) so great that, when once the Roman Empire had ceased to hold sway, the harbour became gradually smaller and smaller, so that now Ephesus is far away from the sea. Even in St. Paul’s time there appear to have been difficulties about navigating the channel, and ships avoided Ephesus except when loading or unloading was necessary (cf. Ac 20:16). The route by the high lands, from Ephesus to the East, was suitable for foot passengers and light traffic, and was used by St. Paul (Ac 19:1; probably also 16:6). The alternative was the main road through Colossæ and Laodicea neither of which St. Paul ever visited (Col 2:1).

In the open plain, about 5 miles from the sea, S. of the river, stands a little hill which has always been a religious centre. Below its S. W. slope was the temple sacred to Artemis (see DIANA OF THE EPHESIANS). The Greek city Ephesus was built at a distance of 1–2 miles S. W. of this hill. The history of the town turns very much on the opposition between the free Greek spirit of progress and the slavish submission of the Oriental population to the goddess. Crœsus the Lydian represented the predominance of the latter over the former, but Lysimachus (B.C. 295) revived the Greek influence. Ephesus, however, was always proud of the position of ‘Warden of the Temple of Artemis’ (Ac 19:35). The festivals were thronged by crowds from the whole of the province of Asia. St. Paul, whose residence in Ephesus lasted 2 years and 3 months (Ac 19:8, 10), or roughly expressed, 3 years (Ac 20:31). at first incurred no opposition from the devotees of the goddess, because new foreign religions did not lessen the influence of the native goddess; but when his teaching proved prejudicial to the money interests of the people who made a living out of the worship, he was at once bitterly attacked. Prior to this occurrence, his influence had caused many of the famous magicians of the place to burn their books (Ac 19:13–19). The riot of 19:32 was no mere passing fury of a section of the populace. The references to Ephesus in the Epistles show that the opposition to Christianity there was as long-continued as it was virulent (1 Co 15:32, 16:9, 2 Co 1:8, 10).

The scene in Ac 19:23ff. derives some Illustration from an account of the topography and the government of the city. The ruins of the theatre are large, and it has been calculated that it could hold 24,000 people. It was on the western slope of Mt. Pion, and overlooked the harbour. The Asiarchs (see ASIARCH), who were friendly to St. Paul, may have been present in Ephesus at that time on account of a meeting of their body (Ac 19:31). The town-clerk or secretary of the city appears as a person of importance, and this is exactly in accordance with what is known of municipal affairs in such cities. The Empire brought decay of the influence of popular assemblies, which tended more and more to come into the hands of the officials, though the assembly at Ephesus was really the highest municipal authority ( Ac 19:39), and the Roman courts and the proconsuls (Ac 19:38) were the final judicial authority in processes against individuals. The meeting of the assembly described in Acts was not a legal meeting. Legal meetings could be summoned only by the Roman officials, who had the power to call together the people when they pleased. The secretary tried to act as intermediary between the people and these officials, and save the people from trouble at their hands. The temple of Artemis which existed in St. Paul’s day was of enormous size. Apart from religious purposes, it was used as a treasure-house: as to the precise arrangements for the charge of this treasure we are in ignorance.

There is evidence outside the NT also for the presence of Jews in Ephesus. The twelve who had been baptized with the baptism of John (Ac 19:3) may have been persons who had emigrated to Ephesus before the mission of Jesus began. When St. Paul turned from the Jews to the population in general, he appeared, as earlier in Athens, as a lecturer in philosophy, and occupied the school of Tyrannus out of school hours. The earlier part of the day, beginning before dawn, he spent in manual labour. The actual foundation of Christianity in Ephesus may have been due to Priscilla and Aquila (Ac 18:19).

‘Ephesian’ occurs as a variant reading in the ‘Western’ text of Ac 20:4 for the words ‘of Asia,’ as applied to Tychicus and Trophimus. Trophimus was an inhabitant of Ephesus (Ac 21:29), capital of Asia; but Tychicus was probably merely an Inhabitant of the province Asia; hence they are coupled under the only adjective applicable to both. It is hardly safe to infer from the fact that Tychicus bore the letter to the Colossians that he belonged to Colossæ (province Asia); but it is possible that he did.

A. SOUTER.

EPHLAL.—A descendant of Judah (1 Ch 2:37).

EPHOD.—1. Father of Hanniel (Nu 34:23 P). 2. See DRESS, § 2 (c), and PRIESTS AND LEVITES. 3. The ‘ephod’ of Jg 8:27, 17:5, 18:14, 17, 18, 20 is probably an image.

EPHPHATHA.—Mk 7:34, where Jesus says to a man who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, ‘Ephphatha,’ that is, ‘Be opened.’ The word is really Aramaic, and if we transliterate it as it stands we obtain eppattach or epp^ethach. Both these forms are contracted: the former for ithpattach, the latter for ithp^ethach, which are respectively second sing, imperative Ithpaal and Ithpeal of the verb p^ethach, ‘to open.’ Some Gr. MSS present ephphetha, which is certainly Ithpeal, whereas ephphatha may be Ithpaal. Jerome also reads ephphetha.

It is not certain whom or what Jesus addressed when He said ‘Be opened.’ It may be the mouth of the man as in Lk 1:64 (so Weiss, Morison, etc.); or the ear, as in Targ. of Is 50:5 (so Bruce, Swete, etc.); or it may be the deaf man himself. One gate of knowledge being closed, the man is conceived of as a bolted room, and ‘Jesus said to him. Be thou opened.’

J. T. MARSHALL.

EPHRAIM.—A grandson of Jacob, and the brother of Manasseh, the first-born of

Joseph by Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera, priest of On (Gn 41:50f. [E], cf. v. 45 [J]). The ‘popular etymology’ of E connects the name with the verb pārāh, ‘to be fruitful,’ and makes it refer to Joseph’s sons. In the Blessing of Jacob (Gn 49:22) there may be a play upon the name when Joseph, who there represents both Ephraim and Manasseh, is called ‘a fruitful bough.’ The word is probably descriptive, meaning ‘fertile region’ whether its root be pārāh, or ’ēpher, ‘earth’(?).

Gn 48:14ff. (J) tells an interesting story of how Jacob adopted his Egyptian grandsons, Ephraim and Manasseh, into his own family, and at the same time, against the remonstrances of Joseph, conferred the blessing of the firstborn upon Ephraim— hence Ephraim’s predestined superiority in later history.

P’s Sinai census gives 40,500 men of war (Nu 1:33), but this is reduced at the Plains of Moab to 32,500 (26:37), which is less than any of the tribes except Simeon, which ‘hardly existed except in name’ (Sayce, Hist. of Heb. p. 77). Contrary to what we should have expected from the Blessing of Jacob, Ephraim, according to P, lost in the meantime 20 per cent. while Manasseh gained 40 per cent.

The appearance of Joseph in the Blessing of Jacob, with no mention of his sons, who according to J had been adopted as Jacob’s own, and were therefore entitled on this important occasion to like consideration with the others, points to a traditional echo of the early days in the land when Ephraim and Manasseh were still united. In the Song of Deborah (Jg 5) it is the ‘family’ Machir, the firstborn (Jos 17:1), the only (Gn 50:23) son of Manasseh, that is mentioned, not a Manasseh tribe. From 2 S 19:20 (cf. art. BENJAMIN) it is plain that Shimei still regarded himself as of the house of Joseph; and, despite the traditional indications of a late formation of Benjamin ( wh. see), the complete political separation of Manasseh from Ephraim appears to have been still later. At all events, Jeroboam the Ephraimite, who afterwards became the first king of Israel (c. B.C. 930), was appointed by Solomon superintendent of the forced labour of the ‘house of Joseph,’ not of Ephraim alone. Ephraim, Machir, and Benjamin were apparently closely related, and in early times formed a group of clans known as ‘Joseph.’ There are no decisive details determining the time when they became definitely separated. Nor are there any reliable memories of the way in which Ephraim came into possession of the best and central portion of the land.

The traditions in the Book of Joshua are notably uninforming. Canaanites remained in the territory until a late date, as is seen from Jg 1:29 and the history of Shechem (ch. 8 f.). Ephraim was the strongest of the tribes and foremost in leadership, but was compelled to yield the hegemony to David. From that time onwards the history is no longer tribal but national history. Eli, priest of Shiloh and judge of Israel, Samuel, and Jeroboam I. were among its great men. Shechem, Tirzah, and Samaria, the capitals of the North, were within its boundaries; and it was at Shiloh that Joshua is said to have divided the land by lot. See also TRIBES OF ISRAEL.

JAMES A. CRAIO.

EPHRAIM.—1. A place near Baal-hazor (2 S 13:23) It may be identical with the Ephraim which the Onomasticon places 20 Roman miles N. of Jerusalem, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Sinjil and el-Lubbān. If Baal-hazor be represented, as seems probable, by Tell ‘Asūr, the city by relation to which such a prominent feature of the landscape was indicated must have been of some importance. It probably gave its name in later times to the district of Samaria called Aphærema (1 Mac 11:34, Jos. Ant. XIII. iv. 9). The site is at present unknown. 2. A city ‘near the wilderness,’ to which Jesus retired after the raising of Lazarus (Jn 11:54). ‘The wilderness’ is in Arab. el-barrīyeh, i.e., the uncultivated land, much of it affording excellent pasture, on the uplands to the N. W. of Jerusalem. The Onomasticon mentions an ‘Efralm’ 5 Roman miles E. of Bethel. This may be the modern et-Taiyibeh, about 4 miles N.E. of Beitīn, with ancient cisterns and rockhewn tombs which betoken a place of importance in old times. See also EPHRON, 4.

The Forest of Ephraim (Heb. ya’ar Ephraīm.) was probably not a forest in our sense of the term, but a stretch of rough country such as the Arabs still call wa‘r, abounding in rocks and thickets of brushwood. The district is not identified, but it must have been E. of the Jordan, in the neighbourhood of Mahanaim. It was the scene of Absalom’s defeat and death (2 S 18:6ff). The origin of the name cannot now be discovered. Mount Ephraim, Heb, har Ephraīm, is the name given to that part of the central range of Western Palestine occupied by Ephraim, corresponding in part to the modern Jebel Nāblus—the district under the governor of Nāblus. Having regard to Oriental usage, it seems a mistake to tr. with RV ‘the hill country of Ephraim.’ Jebel el-Quds does not mean ‘the hill country of Jerusalem,’ but that part of ‘the mountain’ which is subject to the city. We prefer to retain, with AV, ‘Mount Ephraim.’

W. EWING.

EPHRATH, EPHRATHAH.—See BETHLEHEM, and CALEB-EPHRATHAH.

EPHRATHITE.—1. A native of Bethlehem (Ru 1:2). 2. An Ephraimite (Jg 12:4 , 1 S 1:1, 1 K 11:26).

EPHRON.—1. The Hittite from whom Abraham purchased the field or plot of ground in which was the cave of Machpelah (Gn 23). The purchase is described with great particularity; and the transactions between Ephron and Abraham are conducted with an elaborate courtesy characteristic of Oriental proceedings. Ephron received 400 shekels’ weight of silver (23:15): coined money apparently did not exist at that time. If we compare the sale of the site with other instances (Gn 33:19, 1 K 16:24), Ephron seems to have made a good bargain. 2. A mountain district, containing cities, on the border of Judah, between Nephtoah and Kiriath-jearim (Jos 15:9). The ridge W. of Bethlehem seems intended. 3. A strong fortress in the W. part of Bashan between Ashteroth-karnaim and Bethshean (1 Mac 5:46ff., 2 Mac 12:27). The site is unknown. 4. In 2 Ch 13:19 RV reads Ephron for AV Ephrain. The place referred to is probably the Ephraim of Jn 11:54. See EPHRAIM (city), No. 2.

EPICUREANS.—St. Paul’s visit to Athens (Ac 17:15–34) led to an encounter with ‘certain of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers,’ representatives of the two leading schools of philosophy of that time.

Epicureanism took its name from its founder Epicurus, who was born in the island of Samos in the year B.C. 341. In B.C. 307 he settled in Athens, where he died in B.C. 270. A man of blameless life and of a most amiable character, Epicurus gathered around him, in the garden which he had purchased at Athens, a brotherhood of attached followers, who came to be known as Epicureans, or ‘the philosophers of the Garden.’ His aim was a practical one. He regarded pleasure as the absolute good. Epicurus, however, did not restrict pleasure, as the earlier Cyrenaic school had done, to immediate bodily pleasures. Whatever may have been the practical outcome of the system, Epicurus and his more worthy followers must be acquitted of the charge of sensuality. What Epicurus advocated and aimed at was the happiness of a tranquil life as free from pain as possible, undisturbed by social conventions or political excitement or superstitious fears.

To deliver men from ‘the fear of the gods’ was the chief endeavour and, according to his famous follower the Roman poet Lucretius, the crowning service of Epicurus. Thus it may be said that, at one point at least, the paths of the Christian Apostle and the Epicurean philosopher touched each other. Epicurus sought to achieve his end by showing that in the physical organization of the world there is no room for the interference of such beings as the gods of the popular theology. There is nothing which is not material, and the primal condition of matter is that of atoms which, falling in empty space with an inherent tendency to swerve slightly from the perpendicular, come into contact with each other, and form the world as it appears to the senses. All is material and mechanical. The gods—and Epicurus does not deny the existence of gods—have no part or lot in the affairs of men. They are relegated to a realm of their own in the spaces between the worlds. Further, since the test of life is feeling, death, in which there is no feeling, cannot mean anything at all, and is not a thing to be feared either in prospect or in fact.

The total effect of Epicureanism is negative. Its wide-spread and powerful influence must be accounted for by the personal charm of its founder, and by the conditions of the age in which it appeared and flourished. It takes its place as one of the negative but widening influences, leading up to ‘the fulness of time’ which saw the birth of Christianity.

W. M. MACDONALD.

EPILEPSY.—See MEDICINE.

EPIPHI (2 Mac 6:38).—See TIME.

ER.—1. The eldest son of Judah by his Canaanitish wife, the daughter of Shua.

For wickedness, the nature of which is not described, ‘J″ slew him’ (Gn 38:3–7, Nu 26:19). 2. A son of Shelah the son of Judah (1 Ch 4:21). 3. An ancestor of Jesus ( Lk

3:28).

ERAN.—Grandson of Ephraim (Nu 26:36 P). Patronymic, Eranites, ib.

ERASTUS.—The name occurs thrice in NT among the Pauline company. An Erastus sends greetings in Ro 16:23, and is called ‘the treasurer (AV ‘chamberlain’) of the city’ (Corinth). The Erastus who was sent by St. Paul from Ephesus to Macedonia (Ac 19:22), and who later remained in Corinth (2 Ti 4:20), is perhaps the same.

A. J. MACLEAN.

ERECH.—Named second in the list of Nimrod’s cities (Gn 10:10). the very ancient Babylonian city of Arku, or Uruk, regarded as exceptionally sacred and beautiful. Its ruins at Warka lie half-way between Hillah and Korna, on the left bank of the Euphrates, and W. of the Nile Canal. The people of Erech are called Archevites in Ezr 4:9.

C. H. W. JOHNS.

ERI.—Son of Gad, Gn 46:16 (Nu 26:16, P). Patronymic Elites, ib.

ESAIAS.—The familiar AV spelling of Isaiah in Apocr. and NT; it is retained by RV only in 2 Es 2:18.

ESARHADDON, son and successor of Sennacherib (2 K 19:37, Is 37:38), reigned over Assyria B.C. 682–669. He practically re-founded Babylon, which Sennacherib had destroyed, and was a great restorer of temples. He was also a great conqueror, making three expeditions to Egypt, and finally conquered the whole North, garrisoning the chief cities and appointing vassal kings. He subdued all Syria, and received tribute from Manasseh, and Ezr 4:2 mentions his colonization of Samaria. He ruled over Babylonia as well as Assyria, which explains the statement of 2 Ch 33:1 that Manasseh was carried captive there.

C. H. W. JOHNS.

ESAU.—1. The name is best explained as meaning ‘tawny’ or ‘shaggy’ ( Gn 25:25); Edom or ‘ruddy’ was sometimes substituted for it (v. 30), and Esau is represented as the progenitor of the Edomites (36:9, 43, Jer 49:8ff., Ob 8). He displaced the Horites from the hilly land of Seir, and settled there with his followers (Gn 32:3, 36:8, Dt 2:12). His career is sketched briefly but finely by weaving incidents collected from two sources (J and E; in the early part, chiefly the former), whilst the Priestly writer is supposed to have contributed a few particulars ( Gn 26:34f., 28:9, 36). The standing feature of Esau’s history is rivalry with Jacob, which is represented as even preceding the birth of the twins (Gn 25:22, Hos 12:3). The facts may be collected into four groups. The sale of the birthright (Gn 25:29ff.) carried with it the loss of precedence after the father’s death (27:29), and probably loss of the domestic priesthood (Nu 3:12, 13), and of the double portion of the patrimony ( Dt 21:17). For this act the NT calls Esau’ profane’ (He 12:16), thus revealing the secret of his character; the word (Gr. bebēlos) suggests the quality of a man to whom nothing is sacred, whose heart and thought range over only what is material and sensibly present. To propitiate his parents, Esau sought a wife of his own kin ( Gn 28:8, 9), though already married to two Hittite women (26:34, 35). His father’s proposed blessing was diverted by Jacob’s artifice; and, doomed to live by war and the chase (27:40), Esau resolved to recover his lost honours by killing his brother. Twenty years later the brothers were reconciled (33:4); after which Esau made Seir his principal abode, and on the death of Isaac settled there permanently (35:29, 36:6 , Dt 2:4, 5, Jos 24:4).

By a few writers Esau has been regarded as a mythical personage, the personification of the roughness of Idumæa. It is at least as likely that a man of Esau’s character and habits would himself choose to live in a country of such a kind ( Mal 1:3); and mere legends about the brothers, as the early Targums are a witness, would not have made Esau the more attractive man, and the venerated Jacob, in comparison, timid, tricky, and full of deceits. Against the historicity of the record there is really no substantial evidence.

2. The head of one of the families of Nethinim, or Temple servants, who accompanied Nehemiah to Jerusalem (1 Es 5:29); see ZIHA.

R. W. MOSS.

ESCHATOLOGY is that department of theology which is concerned with the ‘last things,’ that is, with the state of individuals after death, and with the course of human history when the present order of things has been brought to a close. It includes such matters as the consummation of the age, the day of judgment, the second coming of Christ, the resurrection, the millennium, and the fixing of the conditions of eternity.

1. Eschatology of the OT.—In the OT the future life is not greatly emphasized. In fact, so silent is the Hebrew literature on the subject, that some have held that personal immortality was not included among the beliefs of the Hebrews. Such an opinion, however, is hardly based on all the facts at our disposal. It is true that future rewards and punishments after death do not play any particular rôle in either the codes or the prophetic thought. Punishment was generally considered as being meted out in the present age in the shape of loss or misfortune or sickness, while righteousness was expected to bring the corresponding temporal blessings. At the same time, however, it is to be borne in mind that the Hebrews, together with other Semitic people, had a belief in the existence of souls after death. Such beliefs were unquestionably the survivals of that primitive Animism which was the first representative of both psychology and a developed belief in personal immortality. Man was to the Hebrew a dichotomy composed of body and soul, or a trichotomy of body, soul, and spirit. In either case the body perished at death, and the other element, whether soul or spirit, went to the abode of disembodied personalities. The precise relation of the ‘soul’ to the ‘spirit’ was not set forth by the Hebrew writers, but it is likely that, as their empirical psychology developed, the spirit rather than the soul was regarded as surviving death. In any case, the disembodied dead were not believed to be immaterial, but of the nature of ghosts or shades (rephaim).

The universe was so constructed that the earth lay between heaven above, where Jehovah was, and the great pit or cavern beneath, Sheol, to which the shades of the dead departed. The Hebrew Scriptures do not give us any considerable material for elaborating a theory as to life in Sheol, but from the warnings against necromancers, as well as from the story of Saul and the witch of Endor (1 S 28:3–18), it is clear that, alongside of the Jehovistic religion as found in the literature of the Hebrews, there was a popular belief in continued existence and conscious life of the spirits of men after death, as well as in the possibility of recalling such spirits from Sheol by some form of incantation. The legislation against necromancy is a further testimony to the same fact (Dt 18:11). Early Hebrew thought also dealt but indistinctly with the occupations and conditions of the dead in Sheol. Apparently they were regarded as in a state resembling sleep.

There is no thought of resurrection of the body in the OT, the clause in Job 19:26 generally used to prove such a point being more properly translated ‘apart from my flesh.’ The resurrection expected was not individual, but national. The nation, or at least its pious remnant, was to be restored. This was the great evangel of the prophets. In the midst of this prophetic thought there was occasionally a reference to individual immortality, but such a belief was not utilized for the purpose of inculcating right conduct. Yet the new and higher conception of the worth of the individual and his relation with Jehovah paved the way to a clearer estimate of his immortality.

The later books of the Canon (Pss 49, 73:18–25) refer more frequently to immortality, both of good and of evil men, but continue to deny activity to the dead in

Sheol (Job 14:21, 26:6, Ps 88:12, 94:17, 115:17, Ec 9:10), and less distinctly ( Is 26:19) refer to a resurrection, although with just what content it is not possible to state. It can hardly have been much more than the emergence of shades from Sheol into the light and life of the upper heavens. It would be unwarranted to say that this new life included anything like the reconstruction of the body, which was conceived of as having returned to dust. In these passages there are possibly references to postmortem retribution and rewards, but if so they are exceptional. OT ethics was not concerned with immortality.

In the Hebrew period, however, there were elements which were subsequently to be utilized in the development of the eschatology of the Pharisees and of Christianity. Chief among these was the Day of Jehovah. At the first this was conceived of as the day in which Jehovah should punish the enemies of His nation Israel. In the course of time, however, and with the enlarged moral horizon of prophecy, the import of this day with its punishments was extended to the Hebrews as well. At its coming the Hebrew nation was to be given all sorts of political and social blessings by Jehovah, but certain of its members were to share in the punishment reserved for the enemies of Jehovah. Such an expectation as this was the natural outcome of the monarchical concept of religion. Jehovah as a great king had given His laws to His chosen people, and would establish a great assize at which all men, including the Hebrews, would be judged. Except in the Hagiographa, however, the punishments and rewards of this great judgment are not elaborated, and even in Daniel the treatment is but rudimentary.

A second element of importance was the belief in the rehabilitation of the Hebrew nation, i.e. in a national resurrection. This carried within it the germs of many of the eschatological expectations of later days. In fact, without the prophetic insistence upon the distinction between the period of national suffering and that of national glory, it is hard to see how the later doctrine of the ‘two ages,’ mentioned below, could have gained its importance.

2. Eschatology of Judaism.—A new period is to be seen in the OT Apocrypha and the pseudepigraphic apocalypses of Judaism. Doubtless much of this new phase in the development of the thought was due to the influence of the Captivity. The Jews came under the influence of the great Babylonian myth-cycles, in which the struggle between right and wrong was expressed as one between God and various supernatural enemies such as dragons and giants. To this period must be attributed also the development of the idea of Sheol, until it included places for the punishment of evil spirits and evil men.

This development was accelerated by the rise of the new type of literature, the apocalypse, the beginnings of which are already to be seen in Isaiah and Zechariah. The various influences which helped to develop this type of literature, with its emphasis upon eschatology, are hard to locate. The influence of the Babylonian mythcycles was great, but there is also to be seen the influence of the Greek impulse to pictorial expression. No nation ever came into close contact with Greek thought and life without sharing in their incentive to æsthetic expression. In the case of the Hebrews this was limited by religion. The Hebrew could not make graven images, but he could utilize art in literary pictures. The method particularly suited the presentation of the Day of Jehovah, with its punishment of Israel’s enemies. As a result we have the very extensive apocalyptic literature which, beginning with the Book of Daniel, was the prevailing mode of expression of a sort of bastard prophecy during the two centuries preceding and the century following Christ. Here, however, the central motif of the Day of Jehovah is greatly expanded. Rewards and punishments become largely transcendental, or show a tendency towards transcendental representation. In this representation we see the Day of Judgment, the Jewish equivalent of the Day of Jehovah, closing one era and opening another. The first was the present age, which is full of wickedness and under the control of Satan, and the second is the coming age, when God’s Kingdom is to be supreme and all enemies of the Law are to be punished. It was these elements that were embodied in the Messianic programme of Judaism, and passed over into Christianity (see MESSIAH).

The idea of individual immortality is also highly developed in the apocalypses. The condition of men after death is made a motive for right conduct in the present age, though this ethical use of the doctrine is less prominent than the unsystematized portrayal of the various states of good and evil men. The Pharisees believed in immortality and the entrance of the souls of the righteous into ‘new bodies’ (Jos. Ant. XVIII. i. 3), a view that appears in the later apocalypses as well (Eth. Enoch 37–60 , cf. 2 Mac 7:11, 14:46). This body was not necessarily to be physical, but like the angels (Apoc. of Baruch and 2 Esdras, though these writings undoubtedly show the influence of Christian thought). There is also a tendency to regard the resurrection as wholly of the spirit (Eth. Enoch 91:18, 92:3, 103:3f.). Sheol is sometimes treated as an intermediate abode from which the righteous go to heaven. There is no clear expectation of either the resurrection or the annihilation of the wicked. Resurrection was limited to the righteous, or sometimes to Israel. At the same time there is a strongly marked tendency to regard the expected Messianic kingdom which begins with the Day of Judgment as super-mundane and temporary, and personal immortality in heaven becomes the highest good. It should be remembered, however, that each writer has his own peculiar beliefs, and that there was no authoritative eschatological dogma among the Jews. The Sadducees disbelieved in any immortality whatsoever.

3. Eschatology of the NT.—This is the development of the eschatology of Judaism, modified by the fact of Jesus’ resurrection.

(a) In the teaching of Jesus we find eschatology prominently represented. The Kingdom of God, as He conceived of it, is formally eschatological. Its members were being gathered by Jesus, but it was to come suddenly with the return of the Christ, and would be ushered in by a general judgment. Jesus, however, does not elaborate the idea of the Kingdom in itself, but rather makes it a point of contact with the Jews for His exposition of eternal life,—that is to say, the life that characterizes the coming age and may be begun in the present evil age. The supreme good in Jesus’ teaching is this eternal life which characterizes membership in the Kingdom. Nothing but a highly subjective criticism can eliminate from His teaching this eschatological element, which appears as strongly in the Fourth Gospel as in the Synoptic writings, and furnishes material for the appeal of His Apostles. It should be added, however, that the eschatology of Jesus, once it is viewed from His own point of view, carries with it no crude theory of rewards and punishments, but rather serves as a vehicle for expressing His fundamental moral and religious concepts. To all intents and purposes it is in form and vocabulary like that of current Judaism. It includes the two ages, the non-physical resurrection of the dead, the Judgment with its sentences, and the establishment of eternal states.

(b) In the teaching of primitive Christians eschatology is a ruling concept, and is thoroughly embedded in the Messianic evangel. Our lack of literary sources, however, forbids any detailed presentation of the content of their expectation beyond a reference to the central position given to the coming day of the Christ’s Judgment.

(c) Eschatology was also a controlling element in the teaching of St. Paul. Under its influence the Apostle held himself aloof from social reform and revolution. In his opinion Christians were living in the ‘last days’ of the present evil age. The Christ was soon to appear to establish His Judgment, and to usher in the new period when the wicked were to suffer and the righteous were to share in the joys of the resurrection and the Messianic Kingdom. Eschatology alone forms the proper point of approach to the Pauline doctrines of justification and salvation, as well as his teachings as to the resurrection. But here again eschatology, though a controlling factor in the Apostle’s thought, was, as in the case of Jesus, a medium for the exposition of a genuine spiritual life, which did not rise and fall with any particular forecast as to the future. The elements of the Pauline eschatology are those of Judaism, but corrected and to a considerable extent given distinctiveness by his knowledge of the resurrection of Jesus. He gives no apocalyptic description of the coming age beyond his teaching as to the body of the resurrection, which is doubtless based upon his belief as to that of the risen Jesus. His description of the Judgment is couched in the conventional language of Pharisaic eschatology; but, hasing his teaching upon ‘the word of the Lord’ (1 Th 4:15), he develops the doctrine that the Judgment extends both over the living, who are to be caught up into the air, and also over the dead. His teaching is lacking in the specific elements of the apocalypses, and there is no reference to the establishment of a millennium. Opinions differ as to whether St. Paul held that the believer received the resurrection body at death or at the Parousia of Christ. On the whole the former view seems possibly more in accord with his general position as to the work of the Spirit in the believer. The appearance (Parousia) of the Christ to inaugurate the new era St. Paul believed to be close at hand (1 Th 4:15, 17), but that it would be preceded by the appearance of an Antichrist (2 Th 2:1f.). The doctrine of the Antichrist, however, does not play any large rôle in Paulinism. While St. Paul’s point of view is eschatological, his fundamental thought is really the new life of the believer, through the Spirit, which is made possible by the acceptance of Jesus as the Christ. With St. Paul, as with Jesus, this new life with its God-like love and its certainty of still larger self-realization through the resurrection is the supreme good. (d) The tendencies of later canonical thought are obviously eschatological. The Johannine Apocalypse discloses a complete eschatological programme. In the latter work we see all the elements of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology utilized in the interest of Christian faith. The two ages, the Judgment and the Resurrection, and the final conquest of God are distinctively described, and the programme of the future is elaborated by the addition of the promise of a first resurrection of the saints; by a millennium (probably derived from Judaism; cf. Slav. Enoch 32, 33) in which Satan is bound; by a great period of conflict in which Satan and his hosts are finally defeated and cast into the lake of fire; and by a general resurrection including the wicked for the purpose of judgment. It is not clear that in this general resurrection there is intended anything more than the summoning of souls from Sheol, for a distinction should probably be made between the resurrection and the giving of the body of the resurrection. This resurrection of the wicked seems inconsistent with the general doctrine of the Pauline literature (cf. 1 Co 15), but appears in St. Paul’s address before Felix (Ac 24:15), and in a single Johannine formula (Jn 5:29). The doctrine of the ‘sleep of the dead’ finds no justification in the Apocalypse or the NT as a whole.

4. Eschatology and Modern Theology.—The history of Christian theology until within the last few years has been dominated by eschatological concepts, and, though not in the sense alleged by its detractors, has been otherworldly. The rewards and punishments of immortality have been utilized as motives for morality. This tendency has always met with severe criticism at the hands of philosophy, and of late years has to a considerable extent been minimized or neglected by theologians. The doctrine of the eternity of punishment has been denied in the interest of so-called second or continued probation, restorationism, and conditional immortality. The tendency, however, has resulted in a disposition to reduce Christian theology to general morality based upon religion, and has been to a large extent buttressed by that scepticism or agnosticism regarding individual immortality which marks modern thought. Such a situation has proved injurious to the spread of Christianity as more than a general ethical or religious system, and it is to be hoped that the new interest which is now felt in the historical study of the NT will reinstate eschatology in its true place.

Such a reinstatement will include two fundamental doctrines: (1) that of individual immortality as a new phase in the great process of development of the Individual which is to be observed in life and guaranteed by the resurrection of Jesus.

Distinctions can easily be drawn between the figurative media of NT thought and the great reality of eternal life taught and exemplified by Jesus. (2) The doctrine of a ‘Kingdom of God.’ This expectation, since it involves the elements of a loving personality like that of a God of love, involves a belief in a new humanity that will live a genuinely social life on the earth, although the conditions of such a life must be left undefined. In a word, therefore, the modern equivalent of Jewish eschatology for practical purposes is that of personal (though truly social) immortality and a completion of the development of society. Utterly to ignore the essential elements of NT eschatology is in so far to re-establish the non-Christian concept of material goods as a supreme motive, and to destroy all confidence in the ultimate triumph of social righteousness.

SHAILER MATHEWS.

ESCHEW.—In the older Eng. versions of the Bible ‘eschew’ is common. In AV it occurs only in Job 1:1, 8, 2:3 of Job himself, as 1:1 ‘one that feared God, and eschewed evil,’ and in 1 P 3:11 ‘Let him eschew evil, and do good.’ The meaning is ‘turn away from’ (as RV at 1 P 3:11 and Amer. RV everywhere).

ESDRAELON.—The Greek name for Merj Ibn ‘Amr, the great plain north of the range of Carmel. It is triangular in shape, the angles being defined by Tell el-Kassis in the N.W., Jenin in the S.E., and Tabor in the N.E. The dimensions of the area are about 20 miles N.W. to S.E., 14 miles N.E. to S.W. It affords a passage into the mountainous interior of Palestine, from the sea-coast at the harbours of the Bay of ‘Acca. It is drained by the Kishon, and is, over nearly all its area, remarkably fertile. It was allotted to the tribe of Issachar.

Esdraelon has been the great battlefield of Palestine. Here Deborah and Barak routed the hosts of Jabin and Sisera (Jg 4), and here Gideon defeated the Midianites (7). Saul here fought his last battle with the Philistines (1 S 28–31). Josiah here attacked Pharaoh-necho on his way to Mesopotamia and was slain (2 K 23:30). It is the scene of the encampment of Holofernes (Jth 7:3), in connexion with which appears the name by which the valley is generally known: it is a Greek corruption of Jazreel. Here Saladin encamped in 1186; and, finally, here Napoleon encountered and defeated an army of Arabs in 1799. It is chosen by the Apocalyptic writer (Rev 16:14– 16) as the fitting scene for the final battle between the good and evil forces of the world.

R. A. S. MACALISTER.

ESDRAS.—See APOCRYPHA, and APOC. LITERATURE.

ESDRIS.—Mentioned only 2 Mac 12:36. The text is probably corrupt. AV has Gorgias, and this is likely enough to be correct.

ESEK (‘contention,’ Gn 26:20).—A well dug by Isaac in the region near Rehoboth and Gerar. The site is unknown.

ESEREBIAS (AV Esebrias), 1 Es 8:54. See SHEREBIAH.

ESHAN (Jos 15:52).—A town of Judah in the Hebron mountains, noticed with Arab and Dumah. The site is doubtful.

ESHBAAL.—See ISHBOSHETH.

ESHBAN.—An Edomite chief (Gn 36:26, 1 Ch 1:41).

ESHCOL.—1. The brother of Mamre and Aner, the Amorite confederates of Abraham, who assisted the patriarch in his pursuit and defeat of Chedorlaomer’s forces (Gn 14:13, 24). He lived in the neighbourhood of Hebron (Gn 13:18); and possibly gave his name to the valley of Eshcol, which lay a little to the N. of Hebron (Nu 13:23). 2. A wady, with vineyards and pomegranates, apparently near Hebron (Nu 13:23, 24, 32:9, Dt 1:24). Eshcol is usually rendered ‘bunch of grapes.’ The name has not been recovered.

ESHEK.—A descendant of Saul (1 Ch 8:39).

ESHTAOL.—A lowland city of Judah (Jos 15:33) on the borders of Dan (19:41) , near which Samson began to feel ‘the spirit of the Lord’ (Jg 13:25), and was buried (16:31); the home of some of the Danites who attacked Laish (18:2, 11). It is supposed to be the same as Eshu‘a, near Ain esh-Shems (Beth-shemesh). The Eshtaolites are enumerated among the Calebites (1 Ch 2:53).

R. A. S. MACALISTER.

ESHTEMOA.—In the tribe of Judah (Jos 15:50—here called Eshtemoh), a Levitical city in the district of Hebron (21:14), to which David sent a share of the spoil of the Philistines (1 S 30:28). The name as es-Semu‘a survives about 8 miles S.

of Hebron; extensive remains of antiquity are here to be seen.

R. A. S. MACALISTER.

ESHTON.—A Judahite (1 Ch 4:11, 12).

ESLI.—An ancestor of Jesus (Lk 3:25).

ESSENES.—To the student of NT times the Essenes present a problem of extreme difficulty. The very existence of a monastic order within the pale of Judaism is an extraordinary phenomenon. In India such things would have been a matter of course. But the deep racial consciousness and the tenacious national will of the Jews make it hard to account for. When, approaching the subject in this mood, the student straightway finds as features of the order the habit of worshipping towards the sun and the refusal to share in the public services of the Temple, he is tempted to explain Essenism by foreign influences. Yet the Essenes were Jews in good standing. They were inside, not outside, the pale of strictest Judaism. Hence they give the student a problem as interesting as it is difficult.

No small part of the difficulty is due to the character of our witnesses. Essenism was the first form of organized monasticism in the Mediterranean world. The Greeks who followed Alexander to India marvelled at the Ascetics or Gymnosophists. But not until Essenism took shape did the men of the Mediterranean world see monasticism at close quarters. Wonderment and the children of wonderment—fancy and legend— soon set to work on the facts, colouring and distorting them. One of our sources, Pliny (Nat. Hist. v. 17), is in part the product of the imagination. Another, Philo (Quod omnis probus liber, 12f., and in Euseb. Prœp. Ev. VIII. ii. 1), writes in the mood of the preacher to whom facts have no value except as texts for sermons. And even Josephus (Ant. XIII. v. 9, XV. x. 4, 5, XVIII. i. 2, 5, Vita, c. 2, BJ II. viii. 2–13), our best source, is at times under suspicion. But a rough outline of the main facts is discernible. The foundations of Essenism were laid in the half-century preceding the Maccabæan War. The high priesthood was disintegrating. In part this was due to the fact that the loose-jointed Persian Empire had been succeeded by the more coherent kingdom of the Seleucidæ. With this closer political order, which made Jewish autonomy more difficult of attainment, went the appealing and compelling forces of Hellenism, both as a mode of life and as a reasoned view of the world. The combined pressure of the political, the social, and the intellectual elements of the Greek overlordship went far towards disorganizing and demoralizing the ruling class in Jerusalem.

But a deeper cause was at work, the genius of Judaism itself (see PHARISEES). When the Hebrew monarchy fell, the political principle lost control. To popularize monotheism, to build up the OT Canon, organize and hold together the widely separated parts of the Jewish race—this work called for a new form of social order which mixed the ecclesiastical with the political. The man whom the times required in order to carry this work through was not the priest, but the Bible scholar. And he was necessarily an intense separatist. Taking Ezra’s words, ‘Separate yourselves from the people of the land’ (Ezr 10:11) as the keynote of life, his aim was to free God’s people from all taint of heathenism. In the critical period of fifty years preceding the War this class of men was coming more and more into prominence. They stood on the Torah as their platform; the Law of Moses was both their patrimony and their obligation. In them the genius of Judaism was beginning to sound the rally against both the good and the evil of Hellenism, against its illumining culture as well as against the corroding Græco-Syrian morality. The priestly aristocracy of Palestine being in close touch with Hellenism, it naturally resulted that the high priesthood, and the Temple which was inseparable from the high priesthood, suffered a fall in sacramental value. Into this situation came the life-and-death struggle against the attempt of Antiochus to Hellenize Judaism. In the life of a modern nation a great war has large results. Far greater were the effects of the Maccabæan War upon a small nation. It was a supreme point of precipitation wherein the genius of Judaism reached clear selfknowledge and definition. The Essenes appear as a party shortly after the war. It is not necessary to suppose that at the outset they were a monastic order. It is more likely that they at first took form as small groups or brotherhoods of men intent on holiness, according to the Jewish model. This meant a kind of holiness that put an immense emphasis on Levitical precision. To keep the Torah in its smallest details was part and parcel of the very essence of morality. The groups of men who devoted themselves to the realization of that ideal started with a bias against the Temple as a place made unclean by the heathenism of the priests. This bias was strengthened through the assumption of the high priesthood by the Hasmonæan house, an event which still further discounted the sacramental value of the Temple services. So these men, knit into closely coherent groups, mainly in Judæa, found the satisfactions of life in deepening fellowship, and an ever more intense devotion to the ideal of Levitical perfection. In course of time, as the logic of life carried them forward into positions of which they had not at first dreamed, the groups became more and more closely knit, and at the same time more fundamentally separatistic regarding the common life of the Jews. So we find, possibly late in the 1st cent. B.C., the main group of Essenes colonizing near the Dead Sea, and constituting a true monastic order.

The stricter Essenes abjured private property and marriage in order to secure entire attention to the Torah. The Levitical laws of holiness were observed with great zeal. An Essene of the higher class became unclean if a fellow-Essene of lower degree so much as touched his garment. They held the name of Moses next in honour to the name of God. And their Sabbatarianism went to such lengths that the bowels must not perform their wonted functions on the Seventh Day.

At the same time, there are reasons for thinking that foreign influences had a hand in their constitution. They worshipped towards the sun, not towards the Temple. This may have been due to the influence of Parsism. Their doctrine of immortality was Hellenic, not Pharisaic. Foreign influences in this period are quite possible, for it was not until the wars with Rome imposed on Judaism a hard-and-fast form that the doors were locked and bolted. Yet, when all is said, the foreign influence gave nothing more than small change to Essenism. Its innermost nature and its deepest motive were thoroughly Jewish.

It is probable that John the Baptist was affected by Essenism. It is possible that our Lord and the Apostolic Church may have been influenced to a certain extent. But influence of a primary sort is out of the question. The impassioned yet sane moral enthusiasm of early Christianity was too strong in its own kind to be deeply touched by a spirit so unlike its own.

HENRY S. NASH.

ESTATE.—‘State’ and ‘estate’ occur in AV almost an equal number of times, and with the same meaning. Cf. Col 4:7 ‘All my state shall Tychicus declare unto you,’ with the next verse, ‘that he might know your estate.’ In Ac 22:5 ‘all the estate of the elders’ (Gr. ‘all the presbytery’) means all the members of the Sanhedrin. The pl. occurs in the Pref. to AV, and in Ezk 36:11 ‘I will settle you after your old estates,’ i.e. according to your former position in life, The heading of Ps 37 is ‘David persuadeth to patience and confidence in God, by the different estate of the godly and the wicked.’

ESTHER (‘star’).—The Jewish name, of which this is the Persian (or Babylonian) form, is Hadassah (cf. Est 2:7), which means ‘myrtle.’ She was the daughter of Abihail, of the tribe of Benjamin, and was brought up, an orphan, in the house of her cousin Mordecai, in Shushan. Owing to her beauty she became an inmate of the king’s palace, and on Vashti the queen being disgraced, Esther was chosen by Xerxes, the Persian king, to succeed her. The combined wisdom of Mordecai and courage of Esther became the means of doing a great service to the very large number of Jews living under Persian rule; for, owing to the craft and hatred of Haman, the chief court favourite, the Jews were in danger of being massacred en bloc; but Esther, instigated by Mordecai, revealed her Jewish nationality to the king, who realized thereby that she was in danger of losing her life, owing to the royal decree, obtained by Haman, to the effect that all those of Jewish nationality in the king’s dominions were to be put to death. Esther’s action brought about an entire reversal of the decree. Haman was put to death, and Mordecai was honoured by the king, while Esther’s position was still further strengthened; the Jews were permitted to take revenge on those who had sought their destruction. Mordecai and Esther put forth two decrees: first, that the 14 th and 15th days of the month Adar were to be kept annually as ‘days of feasting and gladness, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the poor’ (Est 9:22); and, second, that a day of mourning and fasting should be observed in memory of the sorrow which the king’s first decree had occasioned to the Jewish people (9:29–32, cf.

4:1–3).

The attempt to identify Esther with Amestris, who, according to Herodotus, was one of the wives of Xerxes, has been made more than once in the past; but it is now universally recognized that this identification will not bear examination. All that is known of Amestris—her heathen practices, and the fact that her father, a Persian general named Otanes, is specifically mentioned by Herodotus—proves that she cannot possibly have been a Jewess; besides which, the two names are fundamentally distinct. As to whether Esther was really a historical personage, see the next article.

W. O. E. OESTERLEY.

ESTHER, BOOK OF

1. Place in the Canon.—The Book of Esther belongs to the second group of the third division of the Hebrew Canon—the Kethubim, or ‘Writings’—a group which comprises the Megilloth, or ‘Rolls,’ of which there are five,—Song of Songs, Ruth, Lam., Eccles., Esther. It was not without much discussion that Esther was admitted into the Canon, for its right to be there was disputed both by the Jewish authorities and by the early Christian Church. As late as the 2nd cent. A.D. the greatest Jewish teacher of his day, Rabbi Jehudah, said, ‘The Book of Esther defileth not the hands’ [the expression ‘to defile the hands’ is the technical Jewish way of saying that a book is canonical; it means that the holiness of the sacred object referred to produces by contact with it a state of Levitical impurity]. In some of the earlier lists of the Biblical books in the Christian Church that of Esther is omitted; Athanasius (d. 373) regarded it as uncanonical, so too Gregory Nazianzen (d. 391); Jacob of Edessa (c. 700) reckons it among the apocryphal books. It is clear that Esther was not universally accepted as a book of the Bible until a late date.

2. Date and authorship.—The language of Esther points unmistakably to a late date; it shows signs, among other things, of an attempt to assimilate itself to classical Hebrew; the artificiality herein betrayed stamps the writer as one who was more familiar with Aramaic than with Hebrew. Further, the Persian empire is spoken of as belonging to a period of history long since past (cf. ‘in those days,’ 1:2); the words, ‘There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of thy kingdom’ (3:8), show that the ‘Dispersion’ had already for long been an accomplished fact. Moreover, the spirit of the book points to the time when great bitterness and hatred had been engendered between Jew and Gentile. The probability, therefore, is that Esther belongs to the earlier half of the 2nd cent. B.C. Of its authorship we know nothing further than that the writer was a Jew who must have been in some way connected with Persia; the book shows him to have been one whose racial prejudice was much stronger than his religious fervour; it is extraordinary that a book of the Bible should never once mention the sacred name of God; the secular spirit which is so characteristic of the book must have been the main reason of the disinclination to incorporate it into the Scriptures, which has been already referred to. 3. Contents.—The book purports to give the history of how the Jewish feast of Purim (‘Lots’) first originated. Xerxes, king of the Medes and Persians, gives a great feast to the nobles and princes of the 127 provinces over which he rules; the description of the decorations in the palace garden on this occasion recalls the language of the Arabian Nights. Vashti, the queen, also gives a feast to her women. On the seventh day of the feast the king commands Vashti to appear before the princes in order that they may see her beauty. Upon her refusing to obey, the king is advised to divorce her. In her place, Esther, one of Vashti’s maidens, becomes queen. Esther is the adopted daughter of a Jew named Mordecai, who had been the means of saving the king from the hands of assassins. But Mordecai falls out with the court favourite, Haman, on account of his refusing to bow down and do reverence to the latter. Haman resolves to avenge himself for this insult; he has lots cast in order to find out which is the most suitable day for presenting a petition to the king; the day being appointed, the petition is presented and granted, the promised payment of ten thousand talents of silver into the royal treasury (Est 3:9) no doubt contributing towards this. The petition was that a royal decree should be put forth to the effect that all Jews were to be killed, and their belongings treated as spoil. On this becoming known, there is great grief among the Jews. Esther, instructed by Mordecai, undertakes to interpose for her people before the king. She invites both the king and Haman to a banquet, and repeats the invitation for the next day. Haman, believing himself to be in favour with the royal couple, determines to gratify his hatred for Mordecai in a special way, and prepares a gallows on which to hang him (5:14). In the night after the first banquet, Ahasuerus, being unable to sleep, commands that the book of records of the chronicles be brought; in these he finds the account of Mordecai’s former service, which has never been rewarded. Haman is sent for, and the king asks him what should be done to the man whom the king delights to honour; Haman thinking that it is he himself who is uppermost in the king’s mind, describes how such a man should be honoured. The king thereupon directs that all that Haman has said is to be done to Mordecai. Haman returns in grief to his house. While taking counsel there with his friends, the king’s chamberlains come to escort him to the queen’s second banquet (6:1ff.). During this Esther makes her petition to the king on behalf of her people, as well as for her own life, which is threatened, for the royal decree is directed against all Jews and Jewesses within his domains; she also discloses Haman’s plot against Mordecai. The king, as the result of this, orders Haman to be hanged on the gallows which he had prepared for Mordecai, the latter receiving the honours which had before belonged to Haman (ch. 7). Esther then has letters sent in all directions in order to avert the threatened destruction of her people; but the attempt is yet made by the enemies of the Jews to carry out Haman’s intentions. The Jews defend themselves with success, and a great feast is held on the 14th of Adar, on which the Jews ‘rested, and made it a day of feasting and gladness.’ Moreover, two days of feasting are appointed to be observed for all time; they are called Purim, because of the lot (pūr) which Haman cast for the destruction of the Jews (chs. 8, 9). The book concludes with a further reference to the power of Ahasuerus and the greatness of his favourite, Mordecai (ch. 10).

4. Historicity of the book.—There are very few modern scholars who are able to regard this book as containing history; at the most it may be said that it is a historical romance, i.e. that a few historical data have been utilized for constructing the tale. The main reasons for this conclusion are, that the book is full of improbabilities; that it is so transparently written for specific purposes, namely, the glorification of the Jewish nation, and as a means of expressing Jewish hatred of and contempt for Gentiles ( see also § 5); that a ‘strictly historical interpretation of the narrative is beset with difficulties’; that the facts it purports to record receive no substantiation from such books as Chron., Ezr., Neh., Dan., Sirach, or Philo (cf. Hastings’ DB s.v.). Besides this, there is the artificial way in which the book is put together: the method of presenting the various scenes in the drama is in the style of the writer of fiction, not in that of the historian.

5. Purim.—The main purpose for which the book was written was ostensibly to explain the origin of, as well as to give the authority for, the continued observance of the Feast of Purim; though it must be confessed that the book does not really throw any light on the origin of this feast. Some scholars are in favour of a Persian origin, others, with perhaps greater justification, a Babylonian. The names of the chief characters in the book seem certainly to be corrupted forms of Babylonian and Elamite deities, namely, Haman = Hamman, Mordecai = Marduk, Esther = Ishtar; while Vashti is the name of an Elamite god or goddess (so Jensen). Thus we should have the Babylonian Marduk and Ishtar on the one hand, the Elamite Haman and Vashti, on the other. Purim may, in this case, have been, as Jensen suggests, a feast commemorating the victory of Babylonian over Elamite gods which was taken over and adapted by the Jews. In this case the origin of the name Purim would be sought in the Babylonian word puru, which means a ‘small round stone,’ i.e. a lot. But the connexion between the feast and its name is not clear; indeed, it must be confessed that the mystery attaching to the name Purim has not yet been unravelled.

W. O. E. OESTERLEY.

ESYELUS.—1 Es 1:8 = Jehiel (2 Ch 35:8).

ETAM.—An altogether obscure place name, applied to a rock in a cleft of which Samson took refuge (Jg 15:8), whence he was dislodged by the Judahites (v. 11), and therefore presumably in Judahite territory (cf. 1 Ch 4:3). Also applied to a village in the tribe of Simeon (1 Ch 4:32), and a town fortified by Rehoboam (2 Ch 11:6). Whether there are here one or two or three places, and where it or they were, are unanswered questions.

R. A. S. MACALISTER.

ETHAM.—Ex 13:20, Nu 33:6; the next station to Succoth in the Exodus. The name is not known in Egyptian. It lay ‘in the edge of the wilderness,’ evidently at the E. end of the Wady Tumilat, and probably northward of the ‘Red Sea,’ whether that means the Bitter Lakes or the Gulf of Suez.

F. LL. GRIFFITH.

ETHAN.—1. ‘The Ezrahite’ of 1 K 4:31 and Ps 89 (title). In the first of these passages he is mentioned along with other contemporaries (?) of Solomon, who were all surpassed in wisdom by the Jewish monarch. In 1 Ch 2:6 he is said to have been a Judæan of the family of Zerah, which is prob. another form of Ezrah (hence the patronymic Ezrahite). Instead of ‘the Ezrahite’ it has been proposed to render ’ezrāhī of 1 K 4:31 ‘the native,’ i.e. the Israelite, in opposition to some of the other wise men named, who were foreigners. 2. An ancestor of Asaph (1 Ch 6:42), in v. 21 he is called Joah. 3. The eponymous ancestor of a guild of Temple-singers (1 Ch 6:44 , 15:17, 19 etc.).

ETHANIM (1 K 8:2).—See TIME.

ETHANUS.—One of the ‘swift scribes’ who wrote to the dictation of Ezra (2 Es

14:24).

ETHBAAL (‘with Baal,’ i.e. enjoying his favour and protection).—King of the Sidonians, and father of Jezebel, wife of Ahab king of Israel (1 K 16:31).

ETHER (Jos 15:42, 19:7).—A town of Judah noticed with Libnah, apparently near the plain of Philistia, given to Simeon, and near Rimmon. The site is unknown.

ETHICS.—The present article will be confined to Biblical Ethics. As there is no systematic presentation of the subject, all that can be done is to gather from the Jewish and Christian writings the moral conceptions that were formed by historians, prophets, poets, apostles. The old history culminates in the story of the perfect One, the Lord Jesus Christ, from whom there issued a life of higher order and ampler range.

I. OT Ethics.—As the dates of many of the books are uncertain, special difficulty attends any endeavour to trace with precision the stages of moral development amongst the Hebrews. The existence of a moral order of the world is assumed; human beings are credited with the freedom, the intelligence, etc., which make morality possible. The term ‘conscience’ does not appear till NT times, and perhaps it was then borrowed from the Stoics; but the thing itself is conspicuous enough in the records of God’s ancient people. In Gn 3:5 we have the two categories ‘good’ and ‘evil’; the former seems to signify in 1:31 ‘answering to design’ and in 2:18 ‘conducive to wellbeing.’ These terms—applied sometimes to ends, sometimes to means—probably denote ultimates of consciousness, and so, like pain and pleasure, are not to be defined. Moral phenomena present themselves, of course, in the story of the patriarchs; men are described as mean or chivalrous, truthful or false, meritorious or blameworthy, long before legislation—Mosaic or other—takes shape.

1. In Hebrew literature the religious aspects of life are of vital moment, and therefore morals and worship are inextricably entangled. God is seen: there is desire to please Him; there is a shrinking from aught that would arouse His anger (Gn 20:6 , 39:9). Hence the immoral is sinful. Allegiance is due—not to an impersonal law, but to a Holy Person, and duty to man is duty also to God. Morality is under Divine protection: are not the tables of the Law in the Ark that occupies the most sacred place in Jehovah’s shrine (Ex 40:20, Dt 10:5, 1 K 8:9, He 9:4)? The commandments, instead of being arbitrary, are the outflowings of the character of God. He who enjoins righteousness and mercy calls men to possess attributes which He Himself prizes as His own peculiar glory (Ex 33:18, 19, 34:6, 7). Hosea represents the Divine love as longing for the response of human love, and Amos demands righteousness in the name of the Righteous One. Man’s goodness is the same in kind as the goodness of God, so that both may be characterized by the same terms; as appears from a comparison of Pss 111 and 112.

2. The OT outlook is national rather than individual. The elements of the community count for little, unless they contribute to the common good. A man is only a fractional part of an organism, and he may be slain with the group to which he belongs, if grievous sin can be brought home to any part of that group (Jos 7:19–26). It is Israel—the people as a whole—that is called God’s son. Prayers, sacrifices, festivals, fasts, are national affairs. The highest form of excellence is willingness to perish if only Israel may be saved (Ex 32:31, 32, Jg 5:15–18). Frequently the laws are, such as only a judge may administer: thus the claim of ‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth’ (Dt 19:21), being a maxim of fairness to be observed by a magistrate who has to decide between contending parties, is too harsh for guidance outside a court of law (Mt 5:38, 39). When Israel sinned, it was punished; when it obeyed God, it prospered. It was not till Hebrew national life was destroyed that individual experiences excited questions as to the equity of Providence (Job, Pss 37, 73) and in regard to personal immortality. In the later prophets, even when the soul of each man is deemed to be of immense interest (Ezk 18), national ideals have the ascendency in thought. It is the nation that is to have a resurrection (Is 25:8, Ezk 37:1–14, Hos 13:14 , Zec 8:1–8). This ardent devotion to corporate well-being—a noble protest against absorption in individual interests—is the golden thread on which the finest pearls of Hebrew history are strung.

3. The Covenant is always regarded as the standard by which conduct is to be judged. Deference to the Covenant is deference to God (Hos 6:7, 8:1, Am 3:1–3). As God is always faithful, His people prosper so long as they observe the conditions to which their fathers gave solemn assent (Ex 24:8, 7). The Decalogue, which is an outline of the demands made by the Covenant on Israel, requires in its early clauses faith, reverence, and service; then (Ex 20, Commandments 5 to 9) the duty of man to man is set forth as part of man’s duty to Jehovah, for Moses and all the prophets declare that God is pleased or displeased by our behaviour to one another. The Tenth Commandment, penetrating as it does to the inward life, should be taken as a reminder that all commandments are to be read in the spirit and not in the letter alone ( Lv 19:17, 18, Dt 6:5, 6, Ps 139, Ro 7:14). Human obligations—details of which are sometimes massed together as in Ex 20–23, Pss 15 and 24–include both moral and ceremonial requirements. Nothing is more common in the prophets than complaints of a disposition to neglect the former (Is 1:11f., Jer 6:20, 7:21f., Hos 6:6, Am 5:21f.). The requirements embrace a great number of particulars, and every department of experience is recognized. Stress is laid upon kindness to the physically defective ( Lv 19:14), and to the poor and to strangers (Dt 10:18, 19, 15:7–11, 24:17ff., Job 31:16 ff., 32, Ps 41:1, Is 58:6ff., Jer 7:5ff., 22:3, Zec 7:9f.). Parents and aged persons are to be reverenced (Ex 20:12, Dt 5:16, Lv 19:32). The education of children is enjoined ( Ex 12:26f., 13:8, 14, Dt 4:9, 6:7, 20–25, 11:19, 31:12, 13, 32:46, Ps 78:5, 6). In Proverbs emphasis is laid upon industry (6:6–11), purity (7:6 etc.), kindness to the needy (14:21), truthfulness (17:7 etc.), forethought (24:27). The claims of animals are not omitted (Ex 23:11, Lv 25:7, Dt 22:4, 6, 25:4, Ps 104:11, 12, 148:10, Pr 12:10, Jon 4:11). Occasionally there are charming pictures of special characters (the housewife, Pr 31; the king, 2 S 23:3–4; the priest, Mal 2:5, 6, 7). God’s rule over man is parallel with His rule over the universe, and men should feel that God embraces all interests in His thought, for He is so great that He can attend equally to the stars and to human sorrows (Ps 19, 33, 147:3–6).

4. The sanctions of conduct are chiefly temporal (harvests, droughts, victories over enemies, etc.), yet, as they are national, self-regard is not obtrusive. Moreover, it would be a mistake to suppose that no Hebrew minds felt the intrinsic value of morality. The legal spirit was not universal. The prophets were glad to think that God was not limiting Himself to the letter of the Covenant, the very existence of which implied that Jehovah, in the greatness of His love, had chosen Israel to be His peculiar treasure. By grace and not by bare justice Divine action was guided. God was the compassionate Redeemer (Dt 7:8, Hos 11:1, 14:4). Even the people’s disregard of the Law did not extinguish His forgiving love (Ps 25:6ff., 103:8ff., Is 63:9, Jer 3:12, 31:3 ,

33:7f., Mic 7:18f.). In response to this manifested generosity, an unmercenary spirit was begotten in Israel, so that God was loved for His own sake, and His smile was regarded as wealth and light when poverty and darkness had to be endured. ‘Whom have I in heaven but thee?’ ‘Oh, how I love thy law!’ are expressions the like of which abound in the devotional literature of Israel, and they evince a disinterested devotion to God Himself and a genuine delight in duty. To the same purport is the remarkable appreciation of the beauty and splendour of wisdom recorded in Pr 8.

II. NT Ethics.—While admitting many novel elements (Mt 11:11, 13:17, 35, 52 , Mk 2:21, 22, Jn 13:34, Eph 2:15, He 10:20, Rev 2:17, 3:12, 5:9), Christianity reaffirmed the best portions of OT teaching (Mt 5:17, Ro 3:31). Whatsoever things were valuable, Christ conserved, unified, and developed. The old doctrine acquired wings, and sang a, nobler, sweeter song (Jn 1:17). But the glad and noble life which Jesus came to produce could come only from close attention to man’s actual condition.

1. Accordingly, Christian Ethics takes full account of sin. The guilty state of human nature, together with the presence of temptations from within, without, and beneath, presents a problem far different from any that can be seen when it is assumed that men are good or only unmoral. Is our need met by lessons in the art of advancing from good to better? Is not the human will defective and rebellious? The moral ravages in the individual and in society call for Divine redemptive activities and for human penitence and faith. Though the sense of sin has been most conspicuous since Christ dwelt among men, the Hebrew consciousness had its moral anguish. The vocabulary of the ancient revelation calls attention to many of the aspects of moral disorder. Sin is a ravenous beast, crouching ready to spring (Gn 4:7); a cause of widespreading misery (Gn 3:15–19, 9:25, 20:9, Ex 20:5); is universal (Gn 6:5, 8:21, 1 K 8:46, Ps 130:3, 143:2); is folly (Prov. passim); a missing of the mark, violence, transgression, rebellion, pollution (Ps 51). This grave view is shared by the NT. The Lord and His Apostles labour to produce contrition. It is one of the functions of the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin (Jn 16:8). It is not supposed that a good life can be lived unless moral evil is renounced by a penitent heart. The fountains of conduct are considered to have need of cleansing. It is always assumed that great difficulties beset the soul in its upward movements, because of its past corrupt state and its exposure to fierce and subtle temptations.

2. In harmony with the doctrine of depravity is the distinctness with which individuality is recognized. Sin is possible only to a person. Ability to sin is a mark of that high rank in nature denoted by ‘personality.’ Christianity has respect to a man’s separateness. It sees a nature ringed round with barriers that other beings cannot pass, capacities for great and varied wickednesses and excellences, a world among other worlds, and not a mere wave upon the sea. A human being is in himself an end, and God loves us one by one. Jesus asserted the immense value of the individual. The Shepherd cares for the one lost sheep (Lk 15:4–7), and has names for all the members of the flock (Jn 10:14). The Physician, who (it is conceivable) could have healed crowds by some general word, lays His beneficent hands upon each sufferer ( Lk 4:40). Remove from the Gospels and the Acts the stories of private ministrations, and what gaps are made (Jn 1:35ff., 3, 4, Ac 8:25–39, 16, etc.). Taking the individual as the unit, and working from him as a centre, the NT Ethic declines to consider his deeds alone (Mt 6, Ro 2:28, 29). Actions are looked at on their inner side (Mt 5:21 , 22, 27, 28, 6:1, 4, 6, 18, 12:34, 35, 23:5, 27, Mk 7:2–8, 18–23, Lk 16:15, 18:10–14, Jn 4:23f.). This is a prolongation of ideas present to the best minds prior to the Advent (1 S 16:7, Ps 7:9, 24:3, 4, 51:17, 139:2, 3, 23, Jer 17:10, 31:33).

3. The social aspects of experience are not overlooked. Everyone is to bear his own burden (Ro 14:4, Gal 6:5), and must answer for himself to the Judge of all men (2 Co 5:10); but he is not isolated. Regard for others is imperative; for an unforgiving temper cannot find forgiveness (Mt 6:14, 15, 18:23–35), worship without brotherliness is rejected (Mt 5:23, 24), and Christian love is a sign of regeneration (1 Jn 5:1). The mere absence of malevolent deeds cannot shield one from condemnation; positive helpfulness is required (Mt 25:41–45, Lk 10:25–37, 16:19–31, Eph 4:28, 29). This helpfulness is the new ritualism (He 13:16, Ja 1:27). The family with its parents, children, and servants (Eph 5:22–6:9, Col 3:18–4:1); the Church with its various orders of character and gifts (Ro 14, 15, Gal 6:1, 2, 1 Co 13, 14, 15); the State with its monarch and magistrates (Mk 12:14–17, Ro 13:1–7, 1 Ti 2:1, 2), provide the spheres wherein the servant of Christ is to manifest his devotion to the Most High.

‘Obedience, patience, benevolence, purity, humility, alienation from the world and the “flesh,” are the chief novel or striking features which the Christian ideal of practice suggests’ (Sidgwick), and they involve the conception that Christian Ethics is based on the recognition of sin, of individuality, of social demands, and of the need of heavenly assistance.

4. The Christian standard is the character of the Lord Jesus Christ, who lived perfectly for God and man. He overcame evil (Mt 4:1–11, Jn 16:33), completed His life’s task (Jn 17:4), and sinned not (Jn 8:46, 2 Co 5:21, He 4:15, 1 P 2:22, 1 Jn 3:5). His is the pattern life, inasmuch as it is completely (1) filial, and (2) fraternal. As to (1), we mark the upward look, His readiness to let the heat of His love burst into the flame of praise and prayer, His dutifulness and submissiveness: He lived ‘in the bosom of the Father,’ and wished to do only that which God desired. As to (2), His pity for men was unbounded, His sacrifice for human good knew no limits. ‘Thou shalt love God’; ‘thou shalt love man.’ Between these two poles the perfect life revolved. He and His teachings are one. It is because the moral law is alive in Him that He must needs claim lordship over man’s thoughts, feelings, actions. He is preached ‘as Lord’ (2 Co 4:5), and the homage which neither man (Ac 10:25, 26) nor angel (Rev 22:8, 9) can receive He deems it proper to accept (Jn 13:13). Could it be otherwise? The moral law must be supreme, and He is it. Hence alienation from Him has the fatal place which idolatry had under the Old Covenant, and for a similar reason, seeing that idolatry was a renunciation of Him who is the righteous and gracious One. Since Jesus by virtue of His filial and fraternal perfectness is Lord, to stand apart from Him is ruinous (Lk 10:13–16, Jn 3:18, 8:24, 15:22–24, 16:8, 9, He 2:3, 6:4–8, 10:26). Wife or child or life itself must not be preferred to the claims of truth and righteousness, and therefore must not be preferred to Christ, who is truth and righteousness in personal form (Mt 10:37–39, Lk 9:59, 60, 14:26, 27). To call oneself the bond-servant of Jesus Christ (Ro 1:1, Ja 1:1, 2 P 1:1) was to assert at once the strongest affection for the wise and gracious One, and the utmost loyalty to God’s holy will as embodied in His Son. The will of God becomes one’s own by affectionate deference to Jesus Christ, to suffer for whom may become a veritable bliss (Mt 5:10– 12, Ac 5:41, 2 Co 4:11, Ph 1:29, 1 Th 2:14, He 10:32–34).

5. Christian Ethics is marked quite as much by promises of assistance as by loftiness of standard. The kindliness of God, fully illustrated in the gift and sacrifice of His Son, is a great incentive to holiness. Men come into the sunshine of Divine favour. Heavenly sympathy is with them in their struggles. The virtues to be acquired (Mt 5:1–16, Gal 5:22, 23, Col 3:12–17, 2 P 1:5, 6, 7, Tit 2:12) and the vices to be shunned (Mk 7:21, 22, Gal. 5:19, 20, 21, Col 3:5–9) are viewed in connexion with the assurance of efficient aid. There is a wonderful love upon which the aspirant may depend (Jn 3:16, Ro 5:7, 8, 2 Co 5:19f.). The hearty acceptance of that love is faith, ranked as a virtue and as the parent of virtues (2 P 1:5, Ro 5:1, 2, 1 Co 13, He 11). Faith, hope, love, transfigure and supplement the ancient virtues,—temperance, courage, wisdom, justice,—while around them grow many gentle excellences not recognized before Christ gave them their true rank; and yet it is not by its wealth of moral teaching so much as by its assurance of ability to resist temptation and to attain spiritual manhood that Christianity has gained preeminence. Christ’s miracles are illustrations of His gospel of pardon, regeneration, and added faculties (Mt 9:5, 6). The life set before man was lived by Jesus, who regenerates men by His Spirit, and takes them into union with Himself (Jn 3:3, 6, 8:36, 15:1–10, Ro 8:2, 9, 29, 1 Co 1:30 , 2 Co 5:17, Gal 5:22, 23, Ph 2:5, 12, 13, Col 3:1–4, Ja 1:18, 1 P 2:21, 1 Jn 2:6). The connexion between the Lord and the disciple is permanent (Mt 28:20, Jn 14:3, 19 , 17:24, He 2:11–18, 1 Jn 3:1–3), and hence the aspiration to become sober, righteous, godly (relation to self, man, and God, Tit 2:12–14) receives ample support. Sanctity is not only within the reach of persons at one time despised as moral incapables ( Mk 2:16, 17, Lk 7:47, 15, 19:8, 9, 23:42, 48, 1 Co 6:11, Eph 2:1–7), but every Christian is supposed to be capable, sooner or later, of the most precious forms of goodness ( Mt 5:1–10), for there is no caste (Col 1:28). Immortality is promised to the soul, and with it perpetual communion with the Saviour, whose image is to be repeated in every man He saves (Ro 8:37, 38, 39, 1 Co 15:49–58, 2 Co 5:8, Ph 3:8–14, 1 Th 4:17, 1 Jn 3:2, 3 , Rev 22:4).

The objections which have been made to Biblical Ethics cannot be ignored, though the subject can be merely touched in this article. Some passages in the OT have been stigmatized as immoral; some in the NT are said to contain impracticable precepts, and certain important spheres of duty are declared to receive very inadequate treatment.

(i.) As to the OT, it is to be observed that we need not feel guilty of disrespect to inspiration when our moral sense is offended; for the Lord Jesus authorizes the belief that the Mosaic legislation was imperfect (Mt 5:21ff., Mk 10:2–9), and both Jeremiah and Ezekiel comment adversely on doctrines which had been accepted on what seemed to be Divine authority (cf. Ex 20:5 with Jer 31:29, 30 and Ezk 18:2, 3, 19, 20). It is reasonable to admit that if men were to be improved at all there must have been some accommodation to circumstances and states of mind very unlike our own; yet some of the laws are shocking. While such institutions as polygamy and slavery, which could not be at once abolished, were restricted in their range and stripped of some of their worst evils (Ex 21:2ff., Lv 25:42–49, 1 Ch 2:35, Pr 17:2), there remain many enactments and transactions which must have been always abhorrent to God though His sanction is claimed for them (Ex 22:18–20, 31:14, 15, 35:2, 3, Lv 20:27 , Nu 15:32–36, 31, Dt 13:5, 16, 17:1–5, 18:20; 21:10–14, 2 S 21:1–9). Had men always remembered these illustrations of the fact that passions and opinions utterly immoral may seem to be in harmony with God’s will, the cruelties inflicted on heretics in the name of God would not have disgraced the Church’s history; and, indeed, these frightful mistakes of OT days may have been recorded to teach us to be cautious, lest while doing wrong we imagine that God is served (Jn 16:2). The limited area of the unworthy teaching would be noticed if care were taken to observe that (1) some of the wicked incidents are barely recorded, (2) some are reprobated in the context, (3) some are evidently left without comment because the historian assumes that they will be immediately condemned by the reader. In regard to the rest, it is certain that the Divine seal has been used contrary to the Divine will. It must be added that the very disapproval of the enormities has been made possible by the book which contains the objectionable passages, and that it is grossly unfair to overlook the high tone manifested generally throughout a great and noble literature, and the justice, mercy, and truth commended by Israel’s poets, historians, and prophets, generation after generation.

(ii.) As to the NT, it is alleged that, even if the Sermon on the Mount could be obeyed, obedience would be ruinous. This, however, is directly in the teeth of Christ’s own comment (Mt 7:24–27), and is due in part to a supposition that every law is for every man. The disciples, having a special task, might be under special orders, just as the Lord Himself gave up all His wealth (2 Co 8:9) and carried out literally most of the precepts included in His discourse. The paradoxical forms employed should be a sufficient guard against a bald construction of many of the sayings, and should compel us to meditate upon principles that ought to guide all lives. It is the voice of love that we hear, not the voice of legality. The Christian Etnic is supposed to be careless of social institutions, and Christianity is blamed for not preaching at once against slavery, etc. Probably more harm than good would have resulted from political and economic discourses delivered by men who were ostracized. But it is improbable that the Christian mind was sufficiently instructed to advance any new doctrine for the State. Moreover, the supposition that the world was near its close must have diverted attention from social schemes. The alienation from the world was an alienation from wickedness, not indifference to human pain and sorrow. The poverty of believers, the scorn felt for them by the great, the impossibility of attending public functions without countenancing idolatry, the lack of toleration by the State, all tended to keep the Christian distinct from his fellows. Mob and State and cultured class, by their hatred or contempt, compelled Christianity to move on its own lines. At first it was saved from contamination by various kinds of persecution, and the isolation has proved to be a blessing to mankind; for the new life was able to gather its forces and to acquire knowledge of its own powers and mission. The new ideal was protected by its very unpopularity. Meanwhile there was the attempt to live a life of love to God and man, and to treasure Gospels and Epistles that kept securely for a more promising season many sacred seeds destined to grow into trees bearing many kinds of fruit. The doctrine of the Divine Fatherhood implicitly condemns every social and political wrong, while it begets endeavours directed to the promotion of peace among nations, and to the uplifting of the poor and ignorant and depraved of every land into realms of material, intellectual, and moral blessing. There is no kind of good which is absent from the prayers: ‘Thy kingdom come’; ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ W. J. HENDERSON.

ETHIOPIA is tr. of the Heb. Cush, which is derived from Kosh, the Egyp. name of Nubia (beginning at the First Cataract). The cultivable land in this region is very meagre. The scanty and barbarous population of the valley and the deserts on either side was divided in early times among different tribes, which were completely at the mercy of the Egyptians. Individually, however, the Sudanese were sturdy warriors, and were constantly employed by the Pharaohs as mercenary soldiers and police. In the time of the New Kingdom, Cush southward to Napata was a province of Egypt, dotted with Egyptian temples and governed by a viceroy. With the weakening of the Egyptian power Cush grew into a separate kingdom, with Napata as its capital. Its rulers were probably of Egyptian descent; they are represented as being entirely subservient to Ammon, i.e. to his priests, elected by him, acting only upon his oracles, and ready to abdicate or even to commit suicide at his command. We first hear of a king of Ethiopia about B.C. 730, when a certain Pankhi, reigning at Napata and already in possession of the Egyptian Thebaid, added most of Middle Egypt to his dominions and exacted homage from the princes of the Delta. A little later an Ethiopian dynasty (the XXVth) sat on the throne of the Pharaohs for nearly fifty years (B.C. 715–664). The last of these, Tahraku (Tirhakah [wh. see]), intrigued with the kinglets of Syria and Phœnicia against the Assyrians, but only to the ruin of himself and his dynasty. Tahraku and his successor Tandamane were driven into Ethiopia by the Assyrian invasions, and Egypt became independent under the powerful XXVIth Dynasty. For the Persian period it is known that Ethiopia, or part of it, was included in one satrapy with Egypt under Darius. In the 3rd cent. B.C. king Ergamenes freed himself from the power of the priests of Ammon by a great slaughter of them. From about this time forward Meroë, the southern residence, was the capital of Ethiopia. The worship of Ammon, however, as the national god of ‘Negroland,’ as Ethiopia was then called, still continued. In B.C. 24 the Romans invaded Ethiopia in answer to an attack on Egypt by queen Candace, and destroyed Napata, but the kingdom continued to be independent. The Egyptian culture of Ethiopia had by that time fallen into a very barbarous state. Inscriptions exist written in a peculiar character and in the native language, as yet undeciphered; others are in a debased form of Egyptian hieroglyphic.

The name of Cush was familiar to the Hebrews through the part that its kings played in Egypt and Syria from B.C. 730–664, and recently discovered papyri prove that Jews were settled on the Ethiopian border at Syene in the 6th cent. B.C. See also CUSH.

F. LL. GRIFFITH.

ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH.—According to Ac 8:27, an Ethiopian eunuch, minister of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was over all her treasure, was met shortly after the martyrdom of Stephen by the deacon Philip when returning from a religious journey to Jerusalem, and converted to Christianity. The confession of faith put into his mouth in v. 37 (AV) is now universally admitted to be an early interpolation. Assuming the Lukan authorship of the Acts, the source of the above narrative may have been personal information received from Philip (cf. Ac 21:8). Like the baptism of Cornelius by St. Peter, the case of the Ethiopian eunuch marked an important stage in the question of the admission of the Gentiles to the Christian Church.

ETHIOPIAN WOMAN.—According to Nu 12:1 (JE), when the children of Israel were at Hazeroth, Miriam and Aaron ‘spake against’ Moses on account of his marriage with an Ethiopian (RV ‘Cushite’) woman. As the ‘Ethiopian woman’ is mentioned nowhere else, and the death of Moses’ wife Zipporah is not recorded, some of the early interpreters thought the two must be identical; and this view is favoured by the Jewish expositors. But it is more likely that a black slave-girl is meant, and that the fault found by Miriam and Aaron was with the indignity of such a union. It may perhaps be inferred from the context that the marriage was of recent occurrence.

ETH-KAZIN.—A town on the E. frontier of Zebulnn, whose site has not been identified (Jos 19:13).

ETHNAN.—A Judahite (1 Ch 4:7).

ETHNARCH is a Greek word translated by ‘governor’ in 2 Co 11:32. It is used also of Simon the high priest (1 Mac 14:47, 15:1, 2). Its exact meaning is uncertain, but it appears to indicate the ruler of a nation or tribe which is itself living with separate laws, etc., amidst an alien race.

A. SOUTER.

ETHNI.—An ancestor of Asaph (1 Ch 6:41, called in v. 21 Jeatherai).

EUBULUS.—A leading member of the Christian community at Rome, who sends greeting to Timothy through St. Paul at the time of the second imprisonment (2 Ti 4:21). His name is Greek, but nothing further is known of him.

EUCHARIST.—This is the earliest title for the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ. It is found in Ignatius and the Didache, and is based upon the eucharistia or giving of thanks with which our Lord set apart the bread and wine at the Last Supper as memorials of Himself (Mt 26:27, Lk 22:17, 19, 1 Co 11:24). The name Lord’s Supper, though legitimately derived from 1 Co 11:20, is not there applied to the sacrament itself, but to the Love-feast or Agape, a meal commemorating the Last Supper, and not yet separated from the Eucharist when St. Paul wrote. The irregularities rebuked by the Apostle (11:21, 29) are such as could only have accompanied the wider celebration, and doubtless contributed to the speedy separation of the essential rite from the unnecessary accessories. The title Communion comes from 1 Co 10:16, where, however, the word is a predicate not used technically. The breaking of (the) bread (Ac 2:42, 46) probably refers to the Eucharist (cf. 20:7, Lk 24:35?), but until modern times does not seem to have been adopted as a title.

1. The institution is recorded by each of the Synoptic Gospels, but not by St. John.

A fourth account appears in 1 Corinthians.

Mk 14:22–25. Mt 26:26–29.

²²As they were eating, he took bread, ²⁶As they were eating, Jesus took and when he had blessed, he brake it, bread, and blessed, and brake it; and he and gave to them, and said. Take ye: gave to the disciples, and said, Take, this is my body. ²³And he took a cup, eat: this is my body. ²⁷And he took a and when he had given thanks, he gave cup, and gave thanks, and gave to them, to them: and they all drank of it. ²⁴And saying, Drink ye all of it; ²⁸for this is he said unto them, This is my blood of my blood of the covenant, which is the covenant, which is shed for many. shed for many unto remission of sins. ^{29 25}Verily I say unto you, I will no more But I say unto you, I will not drink drink of the fruit of the vine, until that henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until

day when I drink it new in the kingdom that day when I drink it new with you of God. in my Father’s kingdom.

Lk 22:14–20. 1 Co 11:23–25.

¹⁴When the hour was come, he sat ²³I received of the Lord that which also

down, and the apostles with him. ¹⁵I delivered unto you, how that the Lord And he said unto them, With desire I Jesus in the night in which he was have desired to eat this passover with betrayed took bread; ²⁴and when he you before I suffer: ¹⁶for I say unto had given thanks, he brake it, and said. you, I will not eat it, until it be fulfilled This is my body, which is for you: this in the kingdom of God. ¹⁷And he do in remembrance of me. ²⁵In like received a cup, and when he had given manner also the cup, after supper, thanks, he said, Take this, and divide it saying, This cup is the new covenant in among yourselves: ¹⁸for I say unto my blood: this do, as oft as ye drink it, you, I will not drink from henceforth of in remembrance of me. the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come. ¹⁹And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and gave to them, saying, This is my body [which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. ²⁰And the cup in like manner after supper, saying. This cup is the new covenant in my blood, even that which is poured out for you].

A comparison shows variations of minor importance between Mark and Matthew. But the most remarkable differences are those of Luke, which mentions what is apparently a second cup. It seems scarcely credible that at a supreme moment, like that in which a sacred rite was being established, our Lord should have created the possibility of confusion by solemnly delivering two of the Paschal cups, dividing between them the words which, according to the other Synoptics, belong, as it would seem appropriately, to one. Nor, if He were about to ballow a succeeding cup as Eucharistic, is it likely that He would have spoken of the fulfilment of the Paschal wine in relation to another (v. 17). In spite, therefore, of the fact that the majority of MSS and Versions favour its inclusion, Westcott and Hort are probably right in regarding the passage inclosed in brackets above as an interpolation. With this omitted, the narrative is assimilated to the other Synoptics. The inversion of bread and cup, which now becomes apparent and which probably belongs not to Luke but to his source, is perhaps due to the fact that the writer, dwelling on the Lord’s intention that the Passover should be fulfilled in a Messianic rite, records at the opening of his narrative a declaration similar to that which Matthew and Mark assign to a later stage, the delivery of the cup (Mt 26:29, Mk 14:25). These words, though referring more particularly to the Eucharistic bread, yet, as extending to the whole meal ( ‘this passover’), require no mention of the action that would accompany them; whereas the companion statement concerning the fruit of the vine (Lk 22:18) necessitates the mention of the cup (v. 17). The first half of v. 19 (the consecration of the bread), which, if the account were symmetrical, would appear (as arranged in Rush-brooke’s Synopticon) before v. 15, is then added to complete the institution. A copyist, assuming a part of the narrative to be wanting, would then introduce, probably from a contemporary liturgical formula, the second half of v. 19 and v. 20, which bear a striking resemblance to the Pauline account, of which Luke is otherwise independent.

A similar inversion is found in the sub-Apostolic Teaching of the Apostles.

2. From the Synoptic record the following inferences may be drawn: (1) The words of institution cannot themselves determine the meaning of the rite. Luke (unless v. 20 be genuine) omits ‘This is my blood of the covenant.’ [Notice also that the other traditional form varies the phrase—‘the new covenant in my blood’ (1 Co 11:25).] This may be due to the fact that Luke introduces the cup primarily in relation to our Lord’s utterance concerning the fruit of the vine. But the sentence may be an interpretation of Christ’s action, based on its correspondence with the hallowing of the bread. Matthew further amplifies by adding the words, ‘unto remission of sins’ ( Mt 26:28). It is clear that, although formulas were probably already in use, the language was not yet stereotyped. We cannot, therefore, be certain of the precise form of words that our Lord adopted.

(2) The rite, like the gospel of which it is an ordinance, is Apostolic. The whole Twelve, but none other, are present with Jesus (Mk 14:17||). Judas had not yet gone out (Lk 22:21). The significant relation of the Apostles to the congregation of the spiritual Israel, prominent in Mark from the first (3:14), is not only emphasized by their seclusion with Jesus in this supreme hour, but explicitly stated by Luke (22:24– 34). Though, therefore, there is nothing beyond the form of the record itself to indicate the permanent and monumental character of the institution, yet the place which from the first the rite assumed as the bond of Christian fellowship, and for which Christians like Ignatius in the sub-Apostolic age claimed the authority of the Apostles, accords with and interprets the Synoptic narrative. To go behind the Apostolic Eucharist is no more possible for historic Christianity than to separate the actual Christ from the Apostolic witness.

(3) The Eucharist is Paschal in origin and idea.—It is unnecessary to determine whether the Last Supper was in fact the Passover, according to the impression of the Synoptists, or, as St. John seems to imply, anticipated by twelve hours the Jewish Feast. (See Sanday, in Hastings’ DB, art. ‘Jesus Christ,’ 11. E. ii.) No mention is made of the lamb, and the significant identification of the elements accessory to the feast, whether typically or effectually, with the sacrifice of Christ, suggests that its chief feature was absent. And this would seem to bind the rite thus instituted more closely than ever to that suffering before which He earnestly desired to celebrate it ( Lk 22:15), and wherein St. John contemplated the fulfilment of the Paschal type ( Jn 19:36; cf. Ex. 12:46). The bread and wine, as eaten in fellowship by Christ and His disciples on the night of the betrayal, and distributed, as often as the rite is renewed, to those who believe on Jesus through the Apostolic word, is the Christian Passover celebrated beneath the Cross, where the very Paschal Lamb is offered for the life of the world. Its interpretation must, therefore, begin from the great Hebrew festival, in which it finds its origin, and which was regarded as a corporate communion of the Covenant People beneath the shelter of the sprinkled blood, an extension of that first sacred meal eaten when the destroying angel was passing over and working redemption for Israel (see Schultz, OT Theol., Eng. tr. vol. i. pp. 196, 197, 363–366).

3. St. Paul’s account of the institution (see above) was written not later than A.D. 58, and is therefore older than the Synoptics. He claims to have received it as part of the inviolable deposit of the gospel (1 Co 11:23), which he must hand on unimpaired to those to whom he ministers the word. The phrase ‘from the Lord’ can hardly imply, as some have maintained, that a direct revelation was given to himself, extending to the form of words; but only that the record is part of that original message of which the Apostles were the guardians rather than the interpreters (1 Co 15:3, Gal 1:6–9.). The form of tradition here reproduced brings out explicitly the fact that the Eucharist was regarded in the Apostolic Church as an ordinance to be observed in Christian congregations till the Lord’s Coming (‘as oft as ye drink,’ with comment v. 26). It is St. Paul only that introduces the command, ‘This do in remembrance of me’ (v. 24) , an expression fruitful in controversy. It has been urged that the word rendered ‘do’ means ‘offer,’ and that the Eucharist is, therefore, by its terms sacrificial. Not only is this an uncommon use of the Greek, unsuspected by the Greek commentators themselves, but the word ‘this’ (Gr. neuter) which follows can only be ‘this action,’ not ‘this bread,’ which would require the masculine form of the Gr. pronoun. Clearly, however, the phrase refers to the whole Eucharistic action, not to the particular acts of eating and drinking, the latter of which is differentiated from it in v. 26. It is further argued that the word used for ‘remembrance’ (anamnēsis, vv. 24, 25) implies a ritual memorial before God. The word, however, almost invariably used in the LXX with this signification is different (mnēmosynon, Lv 2:2, 9, 16, 5:12, Nu 5:26; anam. is found in Lv 24:7 and Nu 10:10). And, though the form of words in which, according to the traditional ritual, the house-father recalled the redemption from Egypt is probably present to the Apostle’s mind, it is uncertain whether this recital of Divine deliverance was directed towards God. As now used it would seem to be intended to carry out the injunction of the Law given in Ex 12:26, 27 (see Haggadah for Passover). The same uncertainty attaches to St. Paul’s explanatory statement—‘ye proclaim the Lord’s death’—though the natural interpretation of the Greek is in favour of the idea suggested by the RV, viz. announcement to men rather than commemoration before God (cf. 1 Co 9:14). The evidential value, not the mystical significance, of the rite is here asserted.

4. The sacrificial character of the Eucharist is involved in the declaration that the bread broken is a communion of the body, the cup of blessing a communion of the blood, of Christ (1 Co 10:16). The table of the Lord is contrasted with the table of demons (v. 21) through the medium of the sacrificial system of the OT, of which it is a fundamental principle that to eat of the offerings is to have communion with the altar (v. 18). The words ‘Lord’s table’ and ‘altar’ are found as synonyms in Malachi (1:7, 12). The Levitical code includes many forms of oblation in which feeding on the sacrifice, if it ever existed, has disappeared; but provision is made for it in the case of the peace-offerings (Lv 7:15–21). A closer study of the OT brings into greater prominence the connexion between sacrifice and feasting (Ex 32:6ff., Dt 12:5, 12 , 26:10, 11, 1 S 1:3ff., 16:2, 11; see Schultz, OT Theol., Eng. tr. i. c. xii.). The end of sacrifice in Israel, as among other nations, is the union of the worshipper with the object of worship, through the covering which the priest supplies (W. R. Smith, RS ²Lect. xi.). This is especially evident in the Passover, which is a sacrifice (Ex 12:27 , 34:25, Nu 9:7, 13), and, as including a repast, should rank among the peace-offerings.

The Eucharist, therefore, is a sacrifice, not as the commemoration of the death of Christ, but as the means of participation in the Paschal Lamb slain for us (1 Co 5:7) , in the offering of the body of Christ once made on the Cross (He 10:10; cf. Jn 19:36, 1 Co 10:17). The crucifixion of Christ’s natural body results in the institution of that instrument of union, the sacramental body, in respect of which the unworthy partaker is guilty (1 Co 11:27, but see below), and through which the faithful have fellowship with Christ in His mystical body (10:16, 17). The transition from one application of the word ‘body’ to the others—‘one bread, one body’—is very subtle, and they are no doubt so vitally connected in the mind of St. Paul as hardly to be capable of exact distinction. But it is unlikely that in a passage where the argument would have been satisfied by the use of one word—‘body’—on the analogy of the common pagan identification of the god with the sacrifice, he should have used the longer phrase— ‘communion of the body’—if he had not felt that the single word would have failed to give the exact meaning. The sense of the whole passage depends upon the reality of the gift conveyed through the feast in which it is symbolically presented. St. Paul holds that there is a real communion in the sacrificial feasts of the heathen, though in this case with demons (v. 20), whose presence is incompatible with that of Christ ( v.

21).

5. The crucial words of the second passage (11:17–34) are ‘if he discern not the body.’ ‘Lord’s’ is an interpolation of the TR, which the RV properly rejects (v. 29).

The RV also brings out the fact that the verb tr. ‘discern’ (v. 29) is again used in v.

31—‘if we discerned ourselves’—thus showing that the word does not mean

‘perceive’ but’ discriminate.’ ‘Body’ is left undefined, including, as it apparently does, the mystical body which the unworthy despise in the Church of God, the sacramental elements which they dishonour by profane use, and the sacrifice of Christ with which they reject communion, thereby becoming guilty in respect of each ( vv.

21, 22, 26, 27).

6. Both passages express what is implicit in the division of the sacrament into two kinds. It is the body and blood as separated in death through which communion is attained. In 1 Co 10:16, by placing the cup first, as in St. Luke’s account of the institution, St. Paul emphasizes the sacrificial death of Christ as a necessary element in the Eucharistic feast. The Epistle to the Hebrews shows that access to the Holy Place is gained through the offered body and sprinkled blood (He 10:19–22); St. John, that union with Christ is found in that Living Bread which implies death because it is flesh and blood (Jn 6:52–58). Commenting on the unique phrase ‘drink his blood,’ Westcott says that to Jewish ears the idea conveyed is the appropriation of ‘life sacrificed’ (see note on 6:63 in Gospel acc. to St. John). There is nothing to warrant the mediæval inference that the phrase ‘flesh and blood’ is equivalent to ‘personality,’ and that therefore ‘the whole Christ’ is sacramentally present in the Eucharistic elements. But it does imply vital union with Him who became dead and is alive for evermore (Rev 1:18), a Lamb ‘as though it had been slain’ (5:6), a Priest upon His throne (Zec 6:13; cf. He 8:1), who through the one offering of Himself has perfected for ever (10:14) those that come to God through Him.

7. In conclusion, however, it must be frankly admitted that, while one view of the sacrament may seem on the whole to express more fully than others the general tenor of NT teaching on the subject, none of the explanations which have divided Christendom since the 16th cent., not even the theory of transubstantiation when precisely defined, can be regarded as wholly inconsistent with the language of Scripture.

J. G. SIMPSON.

EUERGETES (Prol. to Sirach).—See BENEFACTOR.

EUMENES II.—The king of Pergamus, to whom Rome gave a large slice of the territory of Antiochus III., king of Syria (B.C. 190), including, not ‘India’ (1 Mac 8:6– 8), but the greater part of Asia north of the Taurus (Liv. xxxvii. 44).

J. TAYLOR.

EUNICE.—The Jewish mother of Timothy (2 Ti 1:5, Ac 16:1), married to a Gentile husband, and dwelling at Lystra. She had given her son a careful religious training, but had not circumcised him.

A. J. MACLEAN.

EUNUCH.—In the proper sense of the word a eunuch is an emasculated human being (Dt 23:1), but it is not absolutely certain that the Heb. sārīs always has this signification, and the uncertainty is reflected in our Eng. tr., where ‘officer’ and ‘chamberlain’ are frequently found. It is interesting to note that the group of scholars who rendered Jeremiah for the AV adhered to ‘eunuch’ throughout: unhappily the Revisers have spoiled the symmetry by conforming Jer 52:25 to 2 K 25:19. The following reasons, none of which is decisive, have been advanced in favour of some such rendering of sārīs as ‘officer’ or ‘chamberlain.’ 1. That Potiphar (Gn 37:36) was married. But actual eunuchs were not precluded from this (see Ter. Eun. 4, 3, 24; Juv. vi. 366; Sir 20:4, 30:20 etc.). And the words in Gn 39:1 which identify Joseph’s first master with the husband of his temptress are an Interpolation. 2. That in 2 K 25:19 etc. ‘eunuchs’ hold military commands, whereas they are generally unwarlike (imbelles, Juv. l.c.). But there have been competent commanders amongst them. 3. That the strict meaning cannot be insisted on at Gn 40:2, 7. Yet even here it is admissible.

The kings of Israel and Judah imitated their powerful neighbours in employing eunuchs (1) as guardians of the harem (2 K 9:32, Jer 41:16); Est 1:12, 4:4 are instances of Persian usage; (2) in military and other important posts (1 S 8:15, 1 K 22:9, 2 K 8:6, 23:11, 24:12, 15, 25:19, 1 Ch 28:1, 2 Ch 18:8, Jer 29:2, 34:19, 38:7; cf. Gn 37:36, 40:2, 7, Ac 8:27, Dn 1:3 does not of necessity imply that the captives were made eunuchs). For the services rendered at court by persons of this class and the power which they often acquired, see Jos. Ant. XVI. viii. 1. But their acquisitions could not remove the sense of degradation and loss (2 K 20:18, Is 39:7). Dt 23:1 excluded them from public worship, partly because self-mutilation was often performed in honour of a heathen deity, and partly because a maimed creature was judged unfit for the service of Jahweh (Lv 21:20, 22:24). That ban is, however, removed by Is 56:4, 5. Euseb. (HE vi. 8) relates how Origen misunderstood the figurative language of Mt 19:12; Origen’s own comment on the passage shows that he afterwards regretted having taken it literally and acted on it. See also ETHIOPIAN

EUNUCH.

J. TAYLOR.

EUODIA.—This is clearly the correct form of the name, not Euodias as AV ( Ph 4:2f.), for a woman is intended. St. Paul beseeches her and Syntyche to be reconciled; perhaps they were deaconesses at Philippi.

A. J. MACLEAN.

EUPATOR.—See ANTIOCHUS V.

EUPHRATES, one of the rivers of Eden (Gn 2:14), derives its name from the Assyr. Purat, which is itself taken from the Sumerian Pura, ‘water,’ or Pura-nun, ‘the great water.’ Purat became Ufrâtu in Persian, where the prosthetic vowel was supposed by the Greeks to be the word u, ‘good.’ In the OT the Euphrates is generally known as ‘the river.’ It rises in the Armenian mountains from two sources, the northern branch being called the Frat or Kara-su, and the southern and larger branch the Murad-su (the Arsanias of ancient geography). The present length of the river is 1780 miles, but in ancient times it fell into the sea many miles to the north of its existing outlet, and through a separate mouth from that of the Tigris. The salt marshes through which it passed before entering the sea were called Marratu (Merathaim in Jer 50:21), where the Aramæan Kalda or Chaldæans lived. The alluvial plain between the Euphrates and the Tigris constituted Babylonia, the water of the annual inundation (which took place in May, and was caused by the melting of the snows in Armenia) being regulated by means of canals and barrages. The Hittite city of Carchemish stood at the point where the Euphrates touched Northern Syria, and commanded one of the chief fords over the river; south of it came the Belikh and Khabur, the last affluents of the Euphrates. The promise made to the Israelites that their territory should extend to ‘the great river’ (Gn 15:18 etc.) was fulfilled through the conquests of David (2 S 8:3 , 10:16–19, 1 K 4:24).

A. H. SAYCE.

EURAQUILO (Ac 27:14 RV).—There is some doubt as to the reading. The

Greek MSS which are esteemed to be the best read Euraklyon; so do the Bohairic Version, which was made in Egypt in the 6th or 7th cent. from a MS very like these, and the Sahidic Version made in the 3rd cent.; the Vulgate Latin revision, made towards the close of the 4th cent., reads Euroaquilo, which points to a Greek original reading Euroakylon. Our later authorities, along with the Pesh. and Hark. Syriac, read Euroclydon (so AV). No doubt Eur(o). akylon is the correct name, and the other is an attempt to get a form capable of derivation. The word is, then, a sailor’s word, and expresses an E.N.E. wind, by compounding two words, a Greek word (euros) meaning E. wind, and a Latin word (aquilo) meaning N.E. wind. This is exactly the kind of wind which frequently arises in Cretan waters at the present day, swooping down from the mountains in strong gusts and squalls. The euraquilo which drove St.

Paul’s ship before it was the cause of the shipwreck.

A. SOUTER.

EUTYCHUS.—A young man who fell down from a third storey while sleeping during St. Paul’s sermon at Troas, and was ‘taken up dead’ (Ac 20:9). St. Paul fell on him and, embracing him, declared life to be in him. It is not actually said that Eutychus was dead, but that seems at least to have been the general belief. The incident is described in parallel terms with the raising of Dorcas and of Jairus’ daughter.

A. J. MACLEAN.

EVANGELIST (‘one who proclaims good tidings’ [‘evangel,’ ‘gospel’]).—The word occurs 3 times in NT (Ac 21:8, Eph 4:11, 2 Ti 4:5), and in each case with reference to the proclamation of the Christian gospel.

Ac 21:8 gives what appears to be the primary Christian use of the word. Philip, one of the Seven (cf. Ac 6:1–6), is there called ‘the evangelist.’ And how he obtained this title is suggested when we find that immediately after Stephen’s martyrdom he went forth from Jerusalem and ‘preached the gospel’ (literally evangelized) in Samaria, in the desert, and in all the cities of the coast-land between Azotus and Cæsarea (Ac 8:4–5, 12, 25, 35, 40). In the first place, then, the evangelist was a travelling Christian missionary, one who preached the good news of Christ to those who had never heard it before.

In Eph 4:11 Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers are all named as gifts bestowed on the Church by the ascended Christ. It is impossible to distinguish these 5 terms as referring to so many fixed ecclesiastical offices. There is no ground,

e.g., for thinking that there was an order of pastors and another of teachers in the early Church. St. Paul, again, while discharging the exceptional functions of the Apostolate, was himself the prince of evangelists and the greatest of Christian teachers. We conclude, therefore, that the evangelist as such was not an official, but one who, without having the higher powers of Apostleship or prophecy, or any special talent for teaching or pastoral work, had a gift for proclaiming the gospel as a message of saving love—a gift which was chiefly exercised, no doubt, by moving as Philip had done from place to place.

That ‘evangelist’ denotes function and not special office is confirmed by 2 Ti 4:5. Timothy is exhorted to ‘do the work of an evangelist,’ but also to engage in tasks of moral supervision and patient doctrinal instruction (vv. 2, 3) which suggest the settled pastor and stated teacher rather than the travelling missionary. In his earlier life, Timothy, as St Paul’s travel-companion (Ac 16:1ff., 19:22, 20:4, Ro 16:21 etc.), had been an evangelist of the journeying type. But this passage seems to show that there is room for the evangelist at home as well as abroad, and that the faithful minister of Christ, in order to ‘make full proof of his ministry,’ will not only watch over the morals of his flock and attend to their upbuilding in sound doctrine, but seek to win outsiders to Christ by proclaiming the gospel of His grace.

The special use of ‘evangelist’ in the sense of an author of a written ‘Gospel’ or narrative of Christ’s life, and specifically the author of one of the four canonical Gospels, is much later than the NT, no instance being found till the 3rd century.

J. C. LAMBERT.

EVE (Heb. Chawwāh; the name probably denotes ‘life’: other proposed explanations are ‘life-giving,’ ‘living,’ ‘kinship,’ and some would connect it with an Arah. word for ‘serpent’).—1. Eve is little more, in Genesis, than a personification of human life which is perpetuated by woman. See ADAM. 2. In the NT Eve is mentioned in 2 Co 11:3, 1 Ti 2:13–15. The former is a reference to her deception by the serpent. The latter teaches that since ‘Adam was first formed, then Eve,’ women must live in quiet subordination to their husbands. And a second reason seems to be added, i.e. that Adam was ‘not deceived,’ in the fundamental manner that Eve was, for ‘the woman being completely deceived has come into [a state of] transgression.’ Here St. Paul distinctly takes Eve to be a personification of all women. The personification continues in v. 15, which is obscure, and must be studied in the commentaries.

A. H. M‘NEILE.

EVENING.—See TIME.

EVI.—One of the five kings of Midian slain (Nu 31:8, Jos 13:21).

EVIDENTLY.—Ac 10:3 ‘He saw in a vision evidently about the ninth hour of the day’; Gal 3:1 ‘before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth.’ The meaning is clearly, or openly as in RV. Cf. Rob. Crusoe (Gold. Treas. ed. p. 250), ‘He saw evidently what Stock of Corn and Rice I had laid up.’

EVIL is an older form of the word ‘ill’; used, both as substantive and adjective, to tr. various synonyms and ranging in meaning from physical unfitness to moral wickedness. The former is archaic, but occurs in Gn 28:8 (AVm), Ex 21:8 (AVm), Jer 24:3 (AV), and Mt 7:18, though the two last passages are not without an ethical tinge. But the word almost invariably connotes what is either morally corrupt (see SIN) or injurious to life and happiness.

1. In the OT the two meanings are at first scarcely differentiated. Whatever comes to man from without is, to begin with, attributed simply to God (Am 3:6, La 3:38, Ezk 14:9, Is 45:7). Destruction is wrought by His angels (Ex 12:23, 2 S 24:16, Ps 78:49). Moral temptations come from Him (2 S 24:1, 1 K 22:23), though there is a tendency to embody them in beings which, though belonging to the host of heaven, are spoken of as evil or lying spirits (1 S 16:14, Jg 9:23, 1 K 22:22). The serpent of the Fall narrative cannot be pressed to mean more than a symbol of temptation, though the form which the temptation takes suggests hostility to the will of God external to the spirit of the woman (2 Co 11:3, cf. Gn 3:1–3). Then later we have the figure of the

Adversary or Satan, who, though still dependent on the will of God, is nevertheless so identified with evil that he is represented as taking the initiative in seduction (Zec 3:1 ,

1 Ch 21:1, but cf. 2 S 24:1). This marks the growth of the sense of God’s holiness ( Dt 32:4 etc.), the purity which cannot behold evil (Hab 1:13); and correspondingly sharpens the problem. Heathen gods are now identified with demons opposed to the God of Israel (Dt 32:17, Ps 106:37; cf. 1 Co 10:20). This tendency, increased perhaps by Persian influence, becomes dominant in apocryphal literature (2 P 2:4 and Jude 6 are based on the Book of Enoch), where the fallen angels are a kingdom at war with the Kingdom of God.

2. In the NT moral evil is never ascribed to God (Ja 1:13), being essentially hostile to His mind and will (Ro 1:18–21, 5:10, 1 Jn 1:5–7, 2:16, 29, 3:4, 9); but to the Evil One (Mt 6:13, 13:19, 1 Jn 5:19), an active and personal being identical with the Devil (Mt 13:39, Jn 8:44) or Satan (Mt 4:10, Mk 4:15, Lk 22:31, Jn 13:27), who with his angels (Mt 25:41) is cast down from heaven (Rev 12:9, cf. Lk 10:18), goes to and fro in the earth as the universal adversary (1 P 5:8, Eph 4:27, 6:11, Ja 4:7), and will be finally imprisoned with his ministering spirits (Rev 20:2, 10, cf. Mt 25:41). Pain and suffering are ascribed sometimes to God (Rev 3:19, 1 Th 3:3, He 12:5–11), inasmuch as all things work together for good to those that love Him (Ro 8:28); sometimes to Satan (Lk 13:16, 2 Co 12:7) and the demons (Mt 8:28 etc.), who are suffered to hurt the earth for a season (Rev 9:1–11, 12:12).

The speculative question of the origin of evil is not resolved in Holy Scripture, being one of those things of which we are not competent judges (see Butler’s Analogy, i. 7, cf. 1 Co 13:12). Pain is justified by the redemption of the body ( Ro 8:18–25, 1 P 4:13), punishment by the peaceable fruits of righteousness (He 12:7–11) , and the permission of moral evil by the victory of the Cross (Jn 12:31, Ro 8:37–39 , Col 2:15, 1 Co 15:24–28). Accept the facts and look to the end is the teaching of the Bible as a guide to practical religion (Ja 5:11). Beyond this we enter the region of that high theology which comprehensive thinkers like Aquinas or Calvin have not shrunk from formulating, but which, so far as it is dealt with in the NT, appears rather as a by-product of evangelical thought, than as the direct purpose of revelation (as, e.g., in Ro 9, where God’s elective choice is stated only as the logical presupposition of grace). St. Paul is content to throw the responsibility for the moral facts of the universe upon God (Ro 9:19–24; cf. Job 33:12, Ec 5:2, Is 29:16), who, however, is not defined as capricious and arbitrary power, but revealed as the Father, who loves the creatures of His hand, and has foreordained all things to a perfect consummation in Christ the Beloved (Eph 1:3–14 etc.).

J. G. SIMPSON.

EVIL-MERODACH, the Amel-Marduk of the Babylonians, son and successor of

Nebuchadrezzar on the throne of Babylon (2 K 25:27–30), promoted Jehoiachin in the 37th year of his captivity. He reigned B.C. 562–560. Berosus describes him as reigning lawlessly and without restraint, and he was put to death by his brother-in-law Neriglissar, who succeeded him.

C. H. W. JOHNS.

EVIL SPEAKING in the Bible covers sins of untruthfulness as well as of malice. It includes abuse, thoughtless talebearing, imputing of bad motives, slander, and deliberate false witness. Warnings against it are frequent; it is forbidden in the legislation of the OT (Ninth Commandment; Dt 19:16–19) and of the NT (Mt 5:22 , 12:32, 15:19). Christians must expect this form of persecution (Mt 5:11), but must be careful to give no handle to it (Ro 14:16, Tit 2:8, 1 P 2:12, 3:16).

C. W. EMMET.

EVIL SPIRITS.—As a natural synonym for demons or devils, this phrase is used in the NT only by St. Luke (7:21, 8:2, Ac 19:12, 13, 15, 16), and presents no difficulty. But in the OT, especially the historical books, reference is made to an evil spirit as coming from or sent by God; and the context invests this spirit with personality. The treachery of the men of Shechem is so explained (Jg 9:23), though in this case the spirit may not be personal but merely a temper or purpose of ill-will. Elsewhere there is not the same ground for doubt: ‘an evil spirit from the Lord’ is the alleged cause of Saul’s moodiness (1 S 16:14, where notice the antithetical ‘the spirit of the Lord’), and of his raving against David (1 S 18:10, 19:9). Similarly Micaiah speaks of ‘a lying spirit’ from God (1 K 22:21–23, 2 Ch 18:20–23). It has been suggested that in all these cases the reference is to God Himself as exerting power, and effecting good or evil in men according to the character of each. The nearest approach to this is perhaps in Ex 12:13, 23, where Jehovah and the destroyer are apparently identified, though the language admits equally of the view that the destroyer is the agent of Jehovah’s will (cf. 2 S 24:16). But the theory is inconsistent with what is known to have been the current demonology of the day (see DEVIL), as well as with the natural suggestion of the phrases. These spirits are not represented as constituting the personal energy of God, but as under His control, which was direct and active according to some of the writers, but only permissive according to others. The fact of God’s control is acknowledged by all, and is even a postulate of Scripture; and in using or permitting the activity of these spirits God is assumed or asserted to be punishing people for their sins. In this sense He has ‘a band of angels of evil’ ( Ps 78:49), who may yet he called ‘angels of the Lord’ (2 K 19:35, Is 37:36), as carrying out His purposes. Micaiah evidently considered Zedekiah as used by God in order to entice Ahab to his merited doom. Ezekiel propounds a similar view (14:9), that a prophet may be deceived by God, and so made the means of his own destruction and of that of his dupes, much as David was moved to number Israel through the anger of the Lord against the people (2 S 24:1). As the conception of God developed and was purified, the permitted action of some evil spirit is substituted for the Divine activity, whether direct or through the agency of messengers, considered as themselves ethically good but capable of employment on any kind of service. Accordingly the Chronicler represents Satan as the instigator of David (1 Ch 21:1). Jeremiah denies the inspiration of lying prophets, and makes them entirely responsible for their own words and influence (23:16, 21, 25f.); they are not used by God, and will be called to account. They speak out of their own heart, and are so far from executing God’s justice or anger upon the wicked that He interposes to check them, and to protect men from being misled.

An evil spirit, therefore, wherever the phrase occurs in a personal sense in the earlier historical books of the OT, must be thought of simply as an angel or messenger of God, sent for the punishment of evil (cf. 1 S 19:9 RVm). His coming to a man was a sign that God’s patience with him was approaching exhaustion, and a prelude of doom. Gradually the phrase was diverted from this use to denote a personal spirit, the ‘demon’ of the NT margin, essentially evil and working against God, though powerless to withdraw entirely from His rule.

R. W. MOSS.

EXCELLENCY, EXCELLENT.—These English words are used for a great variety of Heb. and Gr. expressions, a complete list of which will be found in Driver’s Daniel (Camb. Bible). The words (from Lat. excello, ‘to rise up out of,’ ‘surpass’) formerly had the meaning of pre-eminence and pre-eminent, and were thus good equivalents for the Heb. and Gr. expressions. But since 1611 they have become greatly weakened; and, as Driver says, ‘it is to be regretted that they have been retained in RV in passages in which the real meaning is something so very different.’ The force of ‘excellency’ may be clearly seen in the margin of AV at Gn 4:7, where ‘have the excellency’ is suggested for ‘he accepted’ in the text; or the marg. at Ec. 2:13, where instead of ‘wisdom excelleth folly’ is suggested ‘there is an excellency in wisdom more than in folly.’ In Dn 1:20 it is said that ‘in all matters of wisdom and understanding, that the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm’; and this is summed up in the heading of the chapter in the words, ‘their excellency in wisdom.’ The force of ‘excellent,’ again, may be seen from the table in Hamilton’s Catechism, ‘Of the preeminent and excellent dignitie of the Paternoster’; or from Sir John Mandeville, Travels, p. 1, ‘the Holy Land, … passing all other lands, is the most worthy land, most excellent, and lady and sovereign of all other lands.’

EXCHANGER.—See MONEY-CHANGER.

EXCOMMUNICATION.—In the OT the sentence against those who refused to part with their ‘strange’ wives (Ezr 10:8)—‘his substance shall be confiscated and he himself separated’—is the earliest instance of ecclesiastical excommunication. This was a milder form of the ancient Heb. chērem, curse or ban, which in the case of man involved death (Lv 27:29), and devotion or destruction in the case of property. The horror of this curse or chērem hangs over the OT (Mal 4:6, Zec 14:11). Anathema, the LXX equivalent of chērem (e.g. in Dt 7:26, Jos 6:17, Nu 21:3), appears in 1 Co 16:22 ‘If any love not the Lord, let him be anathema’ (which refers, as does also Gal 1:8, to a permanent exclusion from the Church and doubtless from heaven), and in 1 Co 12:3 ‘No one speaking in the Spirit of God says, Jesus is anathema,’ i.e. a chērem or cursed thing under the ban of God. Here there may be a reference to a Jewish brocard which afterwards gave rise to the Jewish tradition that Jesus was excommunicated by the Jews. The forms said to be in vogue in His day were: (1) niddūi, a short sentence of thirty days; (2) chērem, which involved loss of all religious privileges for a considerable time; (3) shammattā, complete expulsion or aquae et ignis interdictio.

This last form, however, lacks attestation.

References in the NT to some form of Jewish procedure are: Jn 9:22, 12:42, 16:2 , Lk 6:22, Mt 18:15–17 may be a reference to some Jewish procedure that was taken over by the Church. It mentions admonition: (1) in private, (2) in the presence of two or three witnesses, (3) in the presence of the Church. The sentence ‘let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican’ involved loss of social and spiritual privileges (cf. Tit 3:10). 1 Co 5:4 shows a formal assembly met ‘in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ’ to deliver one guilty of incest unto Satan, for the destruction of the flesh. The purpose of the punishment, ‘that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord’ (v. 5)—is remedial, and shows that the sentence is not a life one, as anathema seems to be (cf. 1 Ti 1:20, where Hymenæus and Alexander are delivered to Satan, that they may be taught not to blaspheme). The Gr. word exarate, ‘remove,’ used in 1 Co 5:13 ,

suggests ara, which means both ‘curse’ and ‘prayer.’ In this case, at all events, the curse was intended to lead to penitence and prayer. 2 Co 2:6–11 seems to refer to a different case. Here the censure or punishment was given by ‘the majority’ without Paul’s intervention, as in 1 Co 5:4; the purpose of his writing here is ‘that your (v.l. ‘our’) care for us (v.l. ‘you’) might be made manifest in the sight of God’; but there he writes for the man’s sake; here the sinner is discussed with leniency, there the case is stated with due severity. If the case be a new one, it shows a growing independence of the Christian communities, and also that the Corinthians had received a salutary lesson. The phrase ‘lest an advantage should he gained over us by Satan’ (2 Co 2:11) refers to the term of excommunication which St. Paul wished to end, lest the punishment should defeat its end and lead to ruin instead of recovery, and so Satan should hold what was only, metaphorically speaking, lent to him to hurt. In 2 Th 3:14 , 15 the Apostle orders an informal and less severe excommunication of those who obey not his word. Its purpose, too, is remedial: ‘that he may be ashamed.’ St. John (2 Jn 10) orders a similar form, and 3 Jn 9, 10 describes the manner in which Diotrephes receives neither him nor the brethren, does not permit others to receive them, and casts them out of the Church—the first instance of one party in the Christian Church excommunicating another for difference of doctrine. The loss of social and spiritual intercourse was intended to lead, in such cases, to recantation of opinions, as in others to repentance for sin.

F. R. MONTGOMERY HITCHCOCK.

EXILE.—See ISRAEL, I. 23.

EXODUS.—The book relates the history of Israel from the death of Joseph to the erection of the Tabernacle in the second year of the Exodus. In its present form, however, it is a harmony of three separate accounts.

1. The narrative of P. which can be most surely distinguished, is given first.

Beginning with a list of the sons of Israel (1:1–5), it briefly relates the oppression (1:7, 13f., 2:23b–25), and describes the call of Moses, which takes place in Egypt, the revelation of the name Jahweh, and the appointment of Aaron (6–7:13). The plagues (7:10, 20a, 21b, 22, 8:5–7, 15b–19, 9:8–12, 11:9f.), which are wrought by Aaron, forma trial of strength with Pharaoh’s magicians. The last plague introduces directions for the Passover, the feast of unleavened bread, the sanctification of the firstborn; and the annual Passover (12:1–20, 28, 40–51, 13:1f.). Hence emphasis is laid, not on the blood-sprinkling, but on the eating, which was the perpetual feature.

The route to the Red Sea (which gives occasion to a statement about the length of the sojourn. 12:40f.) is represented as deliberately chosen in order that Israel and Egypt may witness Jahweh’s power over Pharaoh (12:37, 13:20, 14:1–4). When Moses stretches out his hand, the waters are miraculously divided and restored (14:8 f, 15a, 16b–18, 21ac, 22f., 26, 27a, 28a, 15:19).

Between the Red Sea and Sinai the names of some halting places are given (16:1– 3, 17:1a, 19:2a). Ch. 16 is also largely (vv. 6–13a, 16–24, 31–36) from P. But the mention of the Tabernacle in v. 34 proves the story to belong to a later date than the stay at Sinai, since the Tabernacle was not in existence before Sinai. Probably the narrative has been brought into its present position by the editor.

On the arrival at Sinai, Jahweh’s glory appears in a fiery cloud on the mountain. As no priests have been consecrated, and the people must not draw near, Moses ascends alone to receive the tables of the testimony (24:15b–18a) written by Jahweh on both sides. He remains (probably for 40 days) to receive plans for a sanctuary, with

Jahweh’s promise to meet with Israel (in the Tent of Meeting) and to dwell with Israel (in the Tabernacle) (25:1–31:18a, 32:15). He returns (34:29–35), deposits the testimony in an ark he has caused to be prepared, and constructs the Tabernacle (35– 40). The differing order in the plans as ordered and as executed, and the condition of the text in the LXX, prove that these sections underwent alterations before reaching their present form.

This account was evidently written for men who were otherwise acquainted with the leading facts of the history. It is dominated by two leading interests: (1) to insist in its own way that everything which makes Israel a nation is due to Jahweh, so that the religion and the history are interwoven; (2) to give a history of the origins, especially of the ecclesiastical institutions, of Israel.

2. The narrative of JE.—The rest of the book is substantially from JE, but it is extremely difficult to distinguish J from E. For (1) with the revelation of the name of Jahweh, one of our criteria, the avoidance of this name by E disappears; (2) special care has been taken to weld the accounts of the law-giving together, and it is often difficult to decide how much is the work of the editor. We give the broad lines of the separation, but remark that in certain passages this must remain tentative.

A. Israel in Egypt

According to J, the people are cattle-owners, living apart in Goshen, where they increase so rapidly as to alarm Pharaoh (1:6, 8–12). Moses, after receiving his revelation and commission in Midian (2:11–22, 3:2–4a, 5, 7f., 16–20, 4:1–16, 19, 20 a, 24–26a, 29–31), demands from Pharaoh liberty to depart three days’ journey to sacrifice (5:3, 5–23). On Pharaoh’s refusal, the plagues, which are natural calamities brought by Jahweh, and which are limited to Egypt, follow Moses’ repeated announcement (7:14, 16, 17a, 18, 21a, 24f., 8:1–4, 8–15a, 20–9:7, 13–35, 10:1–11 , 13b, 14b, 15a, 15c–18, 24–26, 28f., 11:4–8). In connexion with the Passover (12:21– 27), blood-sprinkling, not eating, is insisted on. The escape is hurried (29–34, 37–39) , and so a historical meaning is attached to the use of unleavened bread (13:3–16 [ based on J]).

According to E, the people live among the Egyptians as royal pensioners and without cattle. Their numbers are so small that two midwives suffice for them (1:15– 20a, 21f.) Moses (2:1, 10), whose father-in-law is Jethro (3:1), receives his revelation

(3:6, 9b–15, 21f) and commission (4:17f., 20–23, 27f.). Obeying, he demands that Israel he freed (5:1f, 4) in order to worship their God on this mountain—a greater distance than three days’ journey. E’s account of the plagues has survived merely in fragments, but from these it would appear that Moses speaks only once to Pharaoh, and that the plagues follow his mere gesture while the miraculous element is heightened (7:15, 17b, 20b, 23, 9:22–25, 10:12, 13a, 14a, 15b, 20–23, 27). The Israelites, however, have no immunity except from the darkness. The Exodus is deliberate, since the people have time to borrow from their neighbours (11:1–3 , 12:35f.).

B. The Exodus

According to J, an unarmed host is guided by the pillar of fire and cloud (13:21f.). Pharaoh pursues to recover his slaves (14:5f.), and when the people are dismayed, Moses encourages them (14:10–14, 19b, 20b.). An east wind drives back the water, so that the Israelites are able to cross during the night (14:21b, 24, 25b, 27b, 28f., 30 f. ) but the water returns to overwhelm the Egyptians. Israel offers thanks in a hymn of praise (15:1); but soon in the wilderness tempts Jahweh by murmuring for water ( vv.

22–25a, 27, 17:3, 2b, 7).

According to E, an armed body march out in so leisurely a fashion that they are able to bring Joseph’s bones. For fear of the Philistines they avoid the route of the isthmus (13:17–19). Pharaoh pursues (14:9a, 10b.). but the people, protected by an angel, cross when Moses lifts his rod (vv. 15b, 16a, 19a, 20a, 25a, 29). The women celebrate the escape (15:2–18, 20f.); and in the wilderness Jahweh tests Israel, whether they can live on a daily provision from Him (16:4, 15a, 19a, 16a, 19b–21 , 35a). Water, for which they murmur, is brought by Moses striking the rock with his rod (17:1b, 2a, 4–6, 7b). Jethro visits and advises Moses (ch. 18 [in the main from E]). The condition of the account of the journey between the Red Sea and Sinai, and the fact that events of a later date have certainly come into P’s account, make it likely that JE had very little on this stage, the account of which was amplified with material from the wilderness journey after Sinai.

C. At Sinai [here the accounts are exceptionally difficult to disentangle, and the results correspondingly tentative].

According to J, Jahweh descends on Sinai in lire (19:2b, 18), and commands the people to remain afar off, while the consecrated priests approach (vv. 11b, 12, 20–22 , 24f.). Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and 70 elders ascend (24:1f.) and celebrate a covenant feast (vv. 9–11). Moses then goes up alone to receive the Ten Words on tables which he himself has hewn, and remaining 40 days and 40 nights receives also the Book of the Covenant (ch. 34) [J’s statement as to the 40 days has been omitted in favour of E’s, but its presence in his account can be inferred from references in 34:1, 4]. Ch. 34 is also inserted at this point, because its present position is eminently unsuitable after the peremptory command in J and E to leave Sinai (32:34, 33:1–3). Hearing from Jahweh of the rebellion (32:7–12, 14), Moses intercedes for forgiveness, and descends to quell the revolt with help from the Levites (vv. 25–29). He further intercedes that Jahweh should still lead His people, and obtains a promise of the Divine presence (33:1, 3, 12–23). This was probably followed by Nu 10:29ff. The Law he deposits in an ark which must already have been prepared.

J’s law (ch. 34) is the outcome of the earliest effort to embody the essential observances of the Jahweh religion. The feasts are agricultural festivals without the historical significance given them in Deuteronomy, and the observances are of a ceremonial character, for, according to J, it is the priests who are summoned to Sinai. Efforts have been frequently made (since Goethe suggested it) to prove that this is J’s decalogue—a ceremonial decalogue. Any division into 10 laws, however, has always an artificial character.

According to E. Jahweh descends in a cloud before the whole people (19:3–11 a), whom Moses therefore sanctifies (vv. 14–17). They hear Jahweh utter the Decalogue (v. 19, 20:1–17), but, as they are afraid (20:18–21), the further revelation with its covenant is delivered to Moses alone (20:22–23:33 in part). The people, however, assent to its terms (24:3–8). Moses ascends the Mount with Joshua to receive the stone tables, on which Jahweh has inscribed the Decalogue (24:12–15a), and remains 40 days (v. 18b) to receive further commands. He returns with the tables (31:18b), to discover and deal with the outbreak of idolatry (32:1–6, 16–24). On his intercession he receives a promise of angelic guidance (vv. 30–35). From verses in ch. 33 (vv. 4 , 6–11) which belong to E and from Dt 10:3, 5 (based on E), this account related the making of an ark and Tent of Meeting, the latter adorned with the people’s discarded ornaments. When JE was combined with P, this narrative, being superfluous alongside 25 ff., was omitted.

E’s account thus contains three of the four collections of laws found in Exodus, for

21–23 consists of two codes, a civil (21:1–22:16) and a ceremonial (22:17–23:33

[roughly]). Probably the ceremonial section was originally E’s counterpart to ch. 34 in J, while the civil section may have stood in connexion with ch. 18. As it now stands, E is the prophetic version of the law-giving. The basis of the Jahweh religion is the Decalogue with its clearly marked moral and spiritual character. (Cf. art. DEUTERONOMY.) This is delivered not to the priests (like ch. 34 in J), but to the whole people. When, however, the people shrink back, Moses, the prophetic intermediary, receives the further law from Jahweh. Yet the ceremonial and civil codes have a secondary place, and are parallel. The Decalogue, a common possession of the whole nation, with its appeal to the people’s moral and religious sense, is fundamental. On it all the national institutions, whether civil or ceremonial, are based. Civil and ceremonial law have equal authority and equal value. As yet, however, the principles which inform the Decalogue are not brought into conscious connexion with the codes which control and guide the national life. The Book of Deuteronomy proves how at a later date the effort was made to penetrate the entire legislation with the spirit of the Decalogue, and to make this a means by which the national life was guided by the national faith.

The following view of the history of the codes is deserving of notice. E before its union with J contained three of these codes: the Decalogue as the basis of the Covenant; the Book of the Covenant, leading up to the renewal of the Covenant; and the Book of Judgments, which formed part of Moses’ parting address on the plains of Moab. The editor who combined J and E, wishing to retain J’s version of the Covenant, used it for the account of the renewal of the Covenant, and united E’s Book of the Covenant, thus displaced, with the Decalogue as the basis of the first Covenant. The editor who combined JE with D, displaced E’s Book of Judgments in favour of Deuteronomy, which he made Moses’ parting address; and combined the displaced Book of Judgments with the Book of the Covenant.

The view represented in the article, however, explains the phenomena adequately, is much simpler, and requires fewer hypotheses.

A. C. WELCH.

EXORCISM.—The word may be defined as denoting the action of expelling an evil spirit by the performance of certain rites, including almost always the invocation of a reputedly holy name. An anticipation of the later methods occurs in David’s attempt to expel Saul’s melancholia by means of music (1 S 16:16, 23); and in the perception of the benefit of music may possibly be found the origin of the incantations that became a marked feature of the process. A more complicated method is

prescribed by the angel Raphael (To 6:16f., 8:2). In NT times the art had developed; professional exorcists had become numerous (Ac 19:13, 19), whilst other persons were adepts, and practised as occasion needed (Mt 12:27, Lk 11:19). An old division of the Babylonian religious literature (cf. Cuneif. Texts from, Tablets in Brit. Mus., pts. xvi., xvii.) contains many specimens of incantations; and the connexion of the Jews with that country, especially during the Exile, is an obvious explanation of the great extension both of the conception of the influence of demons and of the means adopted for their treatment. Exorcism was a recognized occupation and need in the Jewish life of the first century, as it became afterwards in certain sections of the Christian Church.

In the procedure and formulæ of exorcism, differences are traceable in the practice of the Jews, of Christ, and of His disciples. An illustration of the Jewish method may be found in Josephus (Ant. VIII. ii. 5), who claims Solomon for its author, and describes a case that he had himself witnessed. Other instances occur in the papyri (e.g. Dieterich, Abraxas, 138ff.), and in the Talmud (e.g. Berakhoth, 51a; Pesachim, 112b). The vital part of the procedure was the invocation of a name (or a series of names, of a deity or an angel, at the mention of which the evil spirit was supposed to recognize the presence of a superior power and to decline a combat, as though a spell had been put upon him. Christ, on the other hand, uses no spell, but in virtue of His own authority bids the evil spirits retire, and they render His slightest word

unquestioning obedience. Sometimes He describes. Himself as acting ‘by the finger of God’ (Lk 11:20) or ‘by the Spirit of God’ (Mt 12:28), and sometimes His will is indicated even without speech (Lk 13:13, 16); but the general method is a stern or peremptory command (Mt 8:16, Mk 1:25, 9:25, Lk 8:29). He does not require any previous preparation on the part of the sufferer, though occasionally (Mk 9:23f.) He uses the incident to excite faith on the part of the relatives. His own personality, His mere presence on the scene, are enough to alarm the evil spirits and to put an end to their mischief. In the case of His disciples, the power to exercise was given both before and after the resurrection (Mt 10:1, 8, Mk 3:15, 16:17, Lk 9:1), and was successfully exercised by them (Mk 6:13, Lk 10:17, Ac 5:16, 8:7, 19:12); but the authority was derived, and on that ground, if not by explicit command (cf. ‘in my name,’ Mk 16:17). the invocation of the name of Jesus was probably substituted for His direct command. That was clearly the course adopted by St. Paul (Ac 16:18 ,

19:13–16), as by St. Peter and the Apostles generally in other miracles (Ac 3:6, 4:10 , Ja 5:14). The name of Jesus was not recited as a spell, but appealed to as the source of all spiritual power, as not only the badge of discipleship but the name of the everpresent Lord of spirits and Saviour of men (Mt 28:19f., Jn 14:13).

R. W. MOSS.

EXPECT.—‘From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool’

(He 10:13), that is, waiting. In the Donai Bible the comment on Sir 11:8 is: ‘Expect the end of another man’s speech before you begin to answer. Expect also if anie that is elder, or better able, will answer first.’

EXPERIENCE.—This word, which plays so large a part in modern philosophy and religion, occurs 4 times (including ‘experiment’) in EV. Of these instances only one survives in RV, viz., Ec 1:16, where ‘hath had great experience of’ = ‘hath seen much of (wisdom),’ etc. In Gn 30:27 ‘I have learnt by experience’ (= ‘experiment’) becomes ‘I have divined,’ the Heb. vb. being the same as in Gn 44:5, 15, Dt 18:10. In Ro 5:4 (RV ‘probation’) ‘experience,’ and in 2 Co 9:13 (RV ‘proving’) ‘experiment.’ was the rendering of a Gr. word borrowed from the assaying of metal, which signified the testing, or test, of personal worth; the same noun appears in AV as ‘trial’ ( RV ‘proof’) in 2 Co 2:9, 8:2, and ‘proof’ in 2 Co 13:3 and Ph 2:22. ‘Christian experience,’ in modern phraseology, covers what is spoken of in Scripture as the knowledge of God, of Christ, etc., and as ‘the seal’ or ‘witness (testimony) of the Holy Spirit,’ ‘of our conscience,’ etc., or as peace, assurance, salvation, and the like. Cf. next article.

G. G. FINDLAY.

EXPERIMENT.—In 2 Co 9:13 ‘experiment’ means proof: ‘by the experiment of this ministration they glorify God.’ It is proof arising out of experience, as in Hall, Works, iii. 467: ‘We have known, indeed, some holy souls, which out of the generall precepts of piety, and their own happy experiments of God’s mercy, have, through the grace of God, grown to a great measure of perfection this way; which yet might have been much expedited and compleated, by those helps which the greater illumination and experience of others might have afforded them.’ Cf. preced. article.

EYE.—The eye was supposed to be the organ or window by which light had access to the whole body (Mt 6:22). For beauty of eyes cf. 1 S 16:12 [RVm], Ca 1:15 , 5:12, and the name Dorcas in Ac 9:36; in Gn 29:17 the reference seems to be to Leah’s weak eyes (so Driver, ad loc.). The wanton or alluring eyes of women are referred to in Pr 6:25, Is 3:16. Their beauty was intensified by painting, antimony being used for darkening the eyelashes (2 K 9:30, Jer 4:30, Ezk 23:40 [all RV]). Keren-happuch (Job 42:14) means ‘horn of eyepaint.’ Pr 23:29 speaks of the drunkard’s redness of eye. In Dt 6:8, 14:1 ‘between the eyes’ means ‘on the forehead.’ Shaving the eyebrows was part of the purification of the leper (Lv 14:9).

‘Eye’ is used in many figurative phrases: as the avenue of temptation (Gn 3:6, Job 31:1); of spiritual knowledge and blindness, as indicating feelings—pride (2 K 19:22) , favour [especially God’s providence (Ps 33:18)], hostility (Ps 10:8). An evil eye implies envy (Mk 7:22; cf. 1 S 18:9, the only use of the verb in this sense in English) or niggardliness (Dt 15:9, Pr 28:22, and probably Mt 6:22, where the ‘single eye’ may mean ‘liberality’; cf. Pr 22:9). In Gn 20:16 ‘covering of the eyes’ means ‘forgetfulness of what has happened.’ In Rev 3:18 eye-salve or collyrium is a

Phrygian powder mentioned by Galen, for which the medical school at Laodicea seems to have been famous. (See Ramsay, Seven Churches.) The reference is to the restoring of spiritual vision.

C. W. EMMET.

EZBAI.—The father of Naarai, one of David’s mighty men (1 Ch 11:37).

EZBON.—1. Eponym of a Gadite family (Gn 46:16), called in Nu 26:16 Ozni. 2. A grandson of Benjamin (1 Ch 7:7).

EZEKIAS.—1. (AV Ezechias) 1 Es 9:14 = Jahzeiah. Ezr 10:15, 2. (AV Ezecias 1 Es 9:43, called Hilkiah in Neh 8:4.

EZEKIEL (= ‘Jahweh strengthens’).

I. THE MAN.—Ezekiel was the son of Buzi, a priest of the family of Zadok, and was carried into exile with Jehoiachin, B.C. 597 (2 K 24:8ff.). Josephus (Ant. X. vi. 3) states that he was a boy at the time; but this is doubtful, for in the fifth year from then he was old enough to be called to the prophetic office (1:2), and could speak of his youth as long past (4:14): in the ninth year his wife dies (24:16); his acquaintance with the Temple is best explained by supposing that he had officiated there, and the predictions in ch. 38f. read as though he remembered the inroad of B.C. 626. He and his fellow-exiles formed an organized community, presided over by elders, at TelAbib, on the banks of the canal Chebar (3:15). Ezekiel lived in a house of his own (3:24), and, for at least 22 years (1:2, 29:17), endeavoured to serve his people. His call was prefaced by an impressive vision of the Divine glory, and the expression, ‘the hand of J″ was upon me’ (1:3, 8:1, 37:1, 40:1), indicates that the revelations which he received came to him in a state of trance or ecstasy; cf. also 3:15, 25 with 24:27. His message met at first with contemptuous rejection (3:7), and the standing title, ‘a rebellious house,’ shows that he never achieved the result which he desired. Yet there was something in his speech which pleased the ears of the captives, and brought them to his house for counsel (8:1, 14:1, 20:1, 33:30–33). No doubt his character also commanded attention. His moral courage was impressive (3:8); he ever acted as ‘a man under authority,’ accepting an unpleasant commission and adhering to it in spite of speedy (3:14) and constant suffering (3:18ff., 33:7); even when he sighs it is at God’s bidding (21:6, 7), and when his beloved wife dies he restrains his tears and resumes his teaching (24:15–18). Part of his message was given in writing, but the spoken word is in evidence too (3:10, 11:25, 20:3, 24:18, 33:30–33). It has been said that he was ‘pastor rather than prophet,’ and this would not be far from the truth if it ran, ‘pastor as well as prophet,’ for he both watched over individual souls and claimed the ear of the people. Again, he has been called ‘a priest in prophet’s garb,’ for the thoughts and principles of the priesthood controlled his conduct (4:14), come out amidst the vigorous ethical teaching of chapter 33, and give its distinctive colouring to the programme unfolded at the close of the book. We know nothing of his later life.

Clem. Alex. refers to the legend that he met Pythagoras and gave him instruction.

Pseudo-Epiphanius and others assert that he was martyred by a Hebrew whom he had rebuked for idolatry. His reputed grave, a few days’ journey from Baghdad, was a pilgrimage resort of the mediæval Jews.

II. THE BOOK

1. Division and Contents.—Two halves are sharply differentiated from each other in matter and tone. The change synchronized with the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem (24:1, 2). Chs. 1–24 contain denunciations of sin and predictions of judgment; 25–48 are occupied with the hopes of the future. In the first division we distinguish: 1. The Introduction (1–3:21). 2. The first series of prophecies in act and word (3:22–7). 3. The abominations practised in Jerusalem (8–11). 4. Sins, reasonings, stern threats (12–19). 5. The same subject, and the beginning of the end (20–24). In the second division: 1. The removal of hostile neighbours (25–32). 2. The moral requirements now to be met; the destruction of the last enemy (33–39). 3. A sketch of the community of the future (40–48). In both parts there is a scrupulous exactness of dating, unexampled in any earlier prophet (1:1, 2, 8:1, 20:1, 24:1, 26:1 , 29:1, 17, 30:20, 31:1, 32:1, 17, 33:21, 40:1).

Ezekiel’s verdict on the national history is of unmixed severity. From their starting-point in Egypt the people had behaved ill (cf. 20:5–13 with Jer 2:2). Jerusalem—to him almost synonymous with the nation—was pagan in origin and character (16). The root of their wickedness was an inveterate love of idolatry (passim). Even Ezekiel’s own contemporaries longed to be heathens: their God could hold them back only by extreme violence (20:32–38). The exiles were somewhat less guilty than their brethren in Jerusalem (14:22f.). But, on the whole, princes, priests, and people were an abandoned race. They loved the worship of the high places, which, according to Ezekiel, had always been idolatrous and illegitimate. They ate flesh with the blood in it, disregarded the Sabbath, polluted the Temple with ceremonial and moral defilements, committed adultery and other sexual abominations, were guilty of murder, oppression, the exaction of usury, harshness to debtors. The list can be paralleled from other Prophetic writings, but the stress is here laid on offences against God. And this is in accordance with the strong light in which Ezekiel always sees the Divine claims. The vision with which the whole opens points to His transcendent majesty. The title, ‘son of man,’ by which the prophet is addressed 116 times, marks the gulf between the creature and his Maker. The most regrettable result of Israel’s calamities is that they seem to suggest impotence on Jahweh’s part to protect His own. The motive which has induced Him to spare them hitherto, and will, hereafter, ensure their restoration, is the desire to vindicate His own glory. In the ideal future the prince’s palace shall be built at a proper distance from Jahweh’s, and not even the prince shall ever pass through the gate which has been hallowed by the returning glory of the Lord. Hence it is natural that the reformation and restoration of Israel are God’s work. He will sprinkle clean water on them, give them a new heart, produce in them humility and self-loathing. He will destroy their foes and bless their land with supernatural fertility. It was He who had sought amongst them in vain for one who might be their Saviour. It was He who in His wrath had caused them to immolate their children in sacrifice. God is all in all. Yet the people have their part to play. Ezekiel protests against the traditional notion that the present generation were suffering for their ancestors’ faults: to acquiesce in that is to deaden the sense of responsibility and destroy the springs of action. Here he joins hands with Jer. ( Jer 31:29f.), both alike coming to close quarters with the individual conscience. He pushes almost too far the truth that a change of conduct brings a change of fortune (33:14–16). But there is immense practical value in his insistence on appropriate action, his appeal to the individual, and the tenderness of the appeal (18:23, 31 , 33:11). Nowhere is Jahweh’s longing for the deliverance of His people more pathetically expressed. And, notwithstanding their continual wrongdoing, the bond of union is so close that He resents as a personal wrong the spitefulness of their neighbours (25–32, 35). The heathen, as such, have no future, although individual heathen settlers will share the common privileges (47:22f.).

The concluding chapters, 40–48, ‘the weightiest in the book,’ are a carefully elaborated sketch of the polity of repatriated Israel—Israel, i.e, not as a nation, but as an ecclesiastical organization. In the foreground is the Temple and its services. Its position, surroundings, size, arrangements, are minutely detailed; even the place and number of the tables on which the victims must be slain are settled. The ordinances respecting the priesthood are precise; none but the Zadokites may officiate; priests who had ministered outside Jerusalem are reduced to the menial duties of the sanctuary (cf. Dt 18:8). Adequate provision is made for the maintenance of the legitimate priests. Rules are laid down to ensure their ceremonial purity. The office of high priest is not recognized. And there is no real king. In ch. 37 the ruler, of David’s line, seems to count for something; not so here. True, he is warned against oppressing his subjects (45:9, 46:16–18), but he has no political rôle. A domain is set apart to provide him a revenue, and his chief function is to supply the sacrifices for the festivals. The country is divided into equal portions, one for each tribe, all of whom are brought back to the Holy Land. No land is to be permanently alienated from the family to which it was assigned. God’s glory returns to the remodelled and rebuilt sanctuary, and Ezekiel’s prophecy reaches its climax in the concluding words, ‘The name of the city from that day shall be, Jahweh is there.’ It would be difficult to exaggerate the effect which this Utopia has produced. Some details, such as the equal division of the land, the arrangements respecting the position and revenue of the prince, the relation of the tribes to the city, were impracticable. But the limitation of the priesthood to a particular class, the introduction of a much more scrupulous avoidance of ceremonial defilement, the eradication of pagan elements of worship, the exclusion of all rival objects of worship, went a long way towards creating Judaism. And whilst this has been the practical result, the chapters in question, together with

Ezekiel’s visions of the chariot and cherubim, have had no little influence in the symbolism and imaginative presentment of Jewish apocalyptic literature and Christian views of the unseen world.

2. Style.—Notwithstanding the favourable opinion of Schiller, who wished to learn Heb. in order to read Ezekiel, it is impossible to regard this prophet as one of the greatest masters of style. His prolixity has been adduced as a proof of advanced age. Repetitions abound. Certain words and formulas recur with wearisome frequency: ‘I, Jahweh, have spoken,’ ‘They shall know that I am Jahweh’ (56 times), ‘Time of the iniquity of the end,’ ‘A desolation and an astonishment’; Ezekiel’s favourite word for ‘idols’ is used no fewer than 38 times. The book abounds in imagery, but this suffers from the juxtaposition of incongruous elements (17:3–6, 32:2), a mixture of the figurative and the literal (31:17f.), inaptness (11:3, 15:1–5): that in chs. 16 and 23 is offensive to Western but probably not to Eastern taste; that of the Introductory Vision was partly suggested by the composite forms seen in the temples and palaces of Babylonia, and is difficult to conceive of as a harmonious whole. But as a rule Ezekiel sees very distinctly the things he is dealing with, and therefore describes them clearly. Nothing could be more forcible than his language concerning the sins that prevailed. The figures of 29:3f., 34:1–19, 37:1–14 are very telling. There is genuine lyric force in 27:26–32, 32:17–32, and other dirges; there is a charming idyllic picture in 34:25– 31. The abundant use of symbolic actions claims notice. Ezekiel’s ministry opens with a rough drawing on a tile, and no other prophet resorted so often to like methods of instruction.

3. Text, integrity, and canonicity.—Ezekiel shares with Samuel the unenviable distinction of having the most corrupt text in the OT. Happily the LXX, and in a minor degree the Targum and the Pesh., enable us to make many indisputable corrections. Parallel texts, internal probability, and conjecture have also contributed to the necessary reconstruction, but there remain no small number of passages where it is impossible to be certain. The integrity of the book admits of no serious question. Here and there an interpolation may be recognized, as at 24:22f., 27:9b–25a. One brief section was inserted by the prophet out of its chronological order (29:17–20). But the work as a whole is Ezekiel’s own arrangement of the memoranda which had accumulated year after year. Although the Rabbis never doubted this, Ezekiel narrowly escaped exclusion from the Canon. Chag., 13a, informs us that but for a certain Hananiah it ‘would have been withdrawn from public use, because the prophet’s words contradict those of the Law.’ Mistrust was also aroused by the opening which the Vision of the Chariot afforded for theosophical speculation; no one might discuss it aloud in the presence of a single hearer (Chag., 11 b).

J. TAYLOR.

EZEL.—The spot where Jonathan arranged to meet David before the latter’s final departure from the court of Saul (1 S 20:19). The place is not mentioned elsewhere, and it is now generally admitted that the Heb. text of this passage is corrupt. The true reading seems to have been preserved by the LXX, according to which we should read in v. 19 ‘yonder cairn,’ and in v. 41 ‘from beside the cairn.’ EZEM (1 Ch 4:29).—See AZMON.

EZER.—1. A Horite ‘duke’ (Gn 36:21, 1 Ch 1:38). 2. A son of Ephraim who, according to 1 Ch 7:21, was slain by the men of Gath. 3. A Judahite (1 Ch 4:4). 4. A Gadite chief who joined David (1 Ch 12:9). 5. A son of Jeshua who helped to repair the wall (Neh 3:19). 6. A priest who officiated at the dedication of the walls ( Neh 12:42).

EZION-GEBER, later called Berenice (Jos. Ant. VIII. vi. 4).—A port on the Red Sea (on the Gulf of Akabah) used by Solomon for his commerce (1 K 9:26). Here also the Israelites encamped (Nu 33:35, Dt 2:8).

A. J. MACLEAN.

EZNITE.—See ADINO.

EZORA.—The sons of Ezora, in 1 Es 9:34, take the place of the strange name Machnadebai (or Mabnadebai, AVm) in Ezr 10:40, where there is no indication of a fresh family.

EZRA (perhaps an abbreviation of Azariah = ‘Jahweh helps’), 1.—A Jewish exile in Babylon in the reign of Artaxerxes I. Longimanns (B.C. 464–424), who played, as is well known, a prominent part in Jerusalem during the critical period of reform associated with the governorship of Nehemiah. Our sources of information regarding him are (1) the autobiographical narratives embodied in Ezr 7–10, and Neh 8–10; and (2) later tradition as embodied in the narrative of the compiler of Ezr.-Neh., and the accounts in the apocryphal books.

According to Ezr 7:1–5, Ezra was of priestly descent, and in fact a member of the high-priestly family (a ‘Zadokite’). But the Seraiah there mentioned cannot be his father, as this Seraiah had been executed by Nebuchadnezzar in B.C. 586 (133 years before Ezra’s appearance). The genealogy may only intend to assert that Ezra belonged to the high-priestly family (cf. also 1 Es 4:40, 49). But his priestly descent has been called in question. His work and achievements rather suggest the character of the ‘scribe’ (sōphēr) par excellence. In the apocalyptic work known as 2 (4) Esdras he is represented as a ‘prophet’ (2 Es 1:1).

In order to form a just estimate of Ezra’s work and aims, we must picture him as a diligent student of the Law. He doubtless stood at the head—or, at any rate, was a leading figure—of a new order which had grown up in the Exile among the Jews of the ‘Golah’ or captivity in Babylonia. Among these exiles great literary activity apparently prevailed during the later years of the Exile and onwards. The so-called ‘Priestly Code’—which must be regarded as the work of a whole school of writers— was formed, or at least the principal part of it, probably between the closing years of the Exile and the arrival of Ezra in Jerusalem (B.C. 536–458), and was doubtless the ‘law of God’ which Ezra brought with him to Jerusalem. The centre of Jewish culture, wealth, and leisure was at this time—and for some time continued to be—Babylonia, where external circumstances had become (since the Persian supremacy) comparatively favourable for the Jews. In this respect the position of the Jerusalem community, during these years, afforded a painful contrast. The tiny community in Judæa had to wage as a whole a long and sordid struggle against poverty and adverse surroundings. Its religious condition was much inferior to that of the ‘Golah.’ Moved by religious zeal, and also, it would seem, with the statesman-like view of making Jerusalem once more the real spiritual metropolis of Judaism, Ezra conceived the idea of Infusing new life and new ideals into the Judæan community, by leading a fresh hand of zealously religious exiles from Babylonia back to Judæa on a mission of reform. With the aid, possibly, of Jews at court, he enlisted the goodwill of Artaxerxes, and secured an Imperial firman investing him with all the authority necessary for his purpose. This edict has been preserved in an essentially trustworthy form in Ezr. 7:12–26. All Jews who so wished could depart from Babylon; offerings were to be carried to the Temple in Jerusalem, and the Law of God was to be enforced. In the 7th year of Artaxerxes (B.C. 458) Ezra collected a hand of 1496 men (Ezr 8:1–14; in 1 Es 8:28–41 the number is given as 1690), besides women and children, and started on his journey across the desert. In four months they reached their destination.

Here, after the sacred gifts had been offered in the Temple, Ezra soon learned of the lax state of affairs that prevailed in the holy city, and among the Judæan villages. The ‘holy seed’ (including even priests and Levites) had ‘mingled themselves with the peoples of the lands,’ and ‘the hand of the princes and deputies’ had ‘been first in this trespass’ (Ezr 9:2). Ezra’s consequent prayer and confession, in the presence of a large assemblage of the people, lead to drastic measures of reform. A general congregation of the community authorizes the establishment of a divorce court, presided over by Ezra, which finishes its labours after three months’ work:’ and they made an end with the whole business’ (10:17 [corrected text]), many innocent women and children being made to suffer in the process.

In the present form of the narrative Ezra does not emerge again till after an interval of 13 years, after Nehemiah had arrived in Jerusalem and re-erected and dedicated the city walls. Shortly after these events (according to the usual chronology, in B.C. 444) the Book of the Law was read by Ezra before the people in solemn assembly, who pledged themselves to obey it. Within the same month (i.e. Tishri, the seventh month) the first of its injunctions to be carried out was the due celebration of the Feast of Booths (Neh 8:13–18).

The sequence of events as described above is not without difficulties. How is the long interval between Ezra’s arrival in Jerusalem (B.C. 458) and the promulgation of the Law (B.C. 444) to be explained? It may be, as Stade has suggested, that the compulsory divorce proceedings alienated a considerable body of the people, and that the opportune moment for introducing the code was in consequence postponed. Or— and there is some probability in this view—the chronology may have become dislocated in the present composite narrative, and Ezra may really have accomplished the bulk of his work before Nehemiah’s arrival. Perhaps with even greater plausibility a case may be made out for placing Ezra’s work subsequent to Nehemiah’s governorship. Cheyne (JRL p. 54 f.) places it between the two visits (445 and 432). See, further, NEHEMIAH [BOOK OF], § 3. It is certainly remarkable that in their respective memoirs Ezra and Nehemiah mention each other but once.

Ezra’s is an austere and commanding figure, which has left a lasting impress upon the religions life of the Jewish people. Ezra is the true founder of Judaism. By investing the Law with a sanctity and influence that it had never before possessed, and making it the possession of the entire community, he endowed the Jewish people with a cohesive power which was proof against all attacks from without.

G. H. BOX.

2. Eponym of a family which returned with Zerub. (Neh 12:1, 13, 33).

EZRA, BOOK OF.—Our present Book of Ezra, which consists of 10 chapters, is really part of a composite work, Ezra-Nehemiah, which, again, is the continuation of Chronicles. The entire work—Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah—is a compilation made by the Chronicler. See, further, NEHEMIAH [BOOK OF], § 1.

1. Analysis of the book.—The Book of Ezra falls into two main divisions: (a) chs. 1–6; (b) chs. 7–10.

(a) Chs. 1–6 give an account of the Return and the re-building of the Temple. Ch. 1 tells how Cyrus, after the capture of Babylon in B.C. 538, issued an edict permitting the exiles to return; of the latter about 40,000 availed themselves of the opportunity and returned to Judæa under Joshua the high priest and Zerubbabel, a member of the royal Davidic family, who was appointed governor (pechah) by Cyrus (B.C. 538– 537). Ch. 2 contains a list of those who returned and their offerings for the building of the Temple. Ch. 3 describes how in October 537 the altar of burnt-offering was reerected on its ancient site, the foundation-stone of the Temple laid (May 536), and the work of re-building begun. Ch. 4 tells that, owing to the unfriendly action of neighbouring populations, the building of the Temple was suspended during the rest of the reigns of Cyrus and Cambyses. It contains the correspondence between Rehum, Shimshai, and their companions, and king Artaxerxes. In 5:6–12 we are informed that, as a consequence of the earnest exhortations of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, the building of the Temple was energetically resumed in the second year of Darius I. (B.C. 520). In 5:6–6:12 we have the correspondence between the satrap Tattenai and

Darius. We read in 6:13–22 of how the Temple was successfully completed on the 3 rd March 515 B.C. [An interval of silence, lasting nearly sixty years, ensues, of which there seems to be little or no record elsewhere.]

(b) Chs. 7–10 deal with Ezra’s personal work. In ch. 7 the silence of nearly sixty years is broken in the year B.C. 458, when Ezra, the teacher of the Law, at the head of a fresh band of exiles, leaves Babylonia bearing a commission from Artaxerxes I. to bring about a settlement in the religious condition of the Judæan community. Ch. 8 gives a list of the heads of families who journeyed with him, and tells of their arrival in Jerusalem. Ch. 9 describes the proceedings against the foreign wives, and contains

Ezra’s penitential prayer. In ch. 10 we read that an assembly of the whole people, in December 458, appointed a commission to deal with the mixed marriages. The narrative abruptly breaks off with an enumeration of the men who had married strange women.

2. Sources of the book.—In its present form the Book of Ezra-Nehemiah is, as has been pointed out, the work of the Chronicler. The compilation, however, embraces older material. The most important parts of this latter are undoubtedly the autobiographical sections, which have been taken partly from Ezra’s, partly from Nehemiah’s, personal memoirs.

(a) Extracts from Ezra’s memoirs embodied in the Book of Ezra.—The long passage Ezr 7:27–9:15 (except 8:35, 36) is generally admitted to be an authentic extract from Ezra’s memoirs. The abrupt break which takes place at 9:15 must be due to a compiler. ‘The events of the next thirteen years were clearly of too dismal a character to make it desirable to perpetuate the memory of them’ (Cornill). [It is probable that an even larger excerpt from these memoirs is to be seen in Neh 9:6– 10:39.]

It seems probable that these memoirs were not used by the Chronicler in their original form, but in a form adapted and arranged by a later hand, to which Ezr 10 is due. This latter narrative is of first-rate importance and rests upon extremely good information. It was probably written by the same hand that composed the main part of Neh 8–10 (see NEHEMIAH [BOOK OF], § 2).

The Imperial firman—an Aramaic document (7:12–26)—the essential authenticity of which has now been made certain—is an extract from the memoirs preserved in the same compiler’s work, from which Ezr 2 (= Neh 7:6–73) was also derived. The introductory verses (7:1–11) are apparently the work of the Chronicler.

(b) Other sources of the book.—The other most important source used by the Chronicler was an Aramaic one, written, perhaps, about B.C. 450, which contained a

history of the building of the Temple, the city walls, etc., and cited original documents. From this authority come Ezr 4:8–22, 5:1–6:16 (cited verbally).

The Chronicler, however, partly misunderstood his Aramaic source. He has misconceived 4:6, and assigned a false position to the document embodied in 4:7–23.