to the
by
TRANSLATED FR0M THE GERMAN, UNDER THE AUTHOR'S SUPERVISION,
by
J. SUTHERLAND BLACK, M.A.,
and
ALLAN MENZIES, B.D.
with a preface by
PROF. W. ROBERTSON SMITH.
The work which forms the greater part of the present volume firstappeared in 1878 under the title "History of Israel. By J.Wellhausen. In two volumes. Volume I." The book produced a greatimpression throughout Europe, and its main thesis, that "the Mosaichistory is not the starting-point for the history of ancientIsrael, but for the history of Judaism," was felt to be sopowerfully maintained that many of the leading Hebrew teachers ofGermany who had till then stood aloof from the so-called "Grafianhypothesis"—the doctrine, that is, that the Levitical Law andconnected parts of the Pentateuch were not written till after thefall of the kingdom of Judah, and that the Pentateuch in itspresent compass was not publicly accepted as authoritative tillthe reformation of Ezra—declared themselves convinced byWellhausen's arguments. Before 1878 the Grafian hypothesis wasneglected or treated as a paradox in most German universities,although some individual scholars of great name were known to havereached by independent inquiry similar views to those for whichGraf was the recognised sponsor, and although in Holland thewritings of Professor Kuenen, who has been aptly termed Graf'sgoel, had shown in an admirable and conclusive manner that theobjections usually taken to Graf's arguments did not touch thesubstance of the thesis for which he contended.
Since 1878, partly through the growing influence of Kuenen, butmainly through the impression produced by Wellhausen's book, allthis has been changed. Almost every younger scholar of mark is onthe side of Vatke and Reuss, Lagarde and Graf, Kuenen andWellhausen, and the renewed interest in Old Testament study whichis making itself felt throughout all the schools of Europe must betraced almost entirely to the stimulus derived from a new view ofthe history of the Law which sets all Old Testament problems in anew light.
Our author, who since 1878 had been largely engaged in the studyof other parts of Semitic antiquity, has not yet given to the worldhis promised second volume. But the first volume was a completebook in itself; the plan was to reserve the whole narrative of thehistory of Israel for vol.ii., so that vol.i. was entirelyoccupied in laying the critical foundations on which alone a realhistory of the Hebrew nation could be built. Accordingly, thesecond edition of the History, vol.i., appeared in 1883 (Berlin,Reimer), under the new title of "Prolegomena to the History ofIsrael." In this form it is professedly, as it really was before,a complete and self-contained work; and this is the form of whicha translation, carefully revised by the author, is now offered tothe public.
All English readers interested in the Old Testament will certainlybe grateful to the translators and publishers for a volume which inits German garb has already produced so profound an impression onthe scholarship of Europe; and even in this country the author'sname is too well known to make it necessary to introduce him atlength to a new public. But the ti