Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV THE COMPLETION OF THE FIRST CANON. The Law. THE Jews who returned from the exile (536 B. C.) Chap. iv. formed at Jerusalem a religious rather than a political ag B.c. community. To them the first object to be achieved T*a' DEGREES"r" was to restore the Temple worship and to rebuild the Extu. House of God. For the achievement of that object, and for that only, had Cyrus granted them his merciful decree. (Ezr. i. 1-4.) A small number only of the children of Israel returned to their own land. A century later the nation had become a sect, their constitution a Church, their ' law' a Bible. During all the first years of privation and hardship endured by this community, the only Scripture, recognised as such by the people, seems to have been the Deuteronomic law. It was on the strength of this law' that Ezra took action against marriage with the 'strange women' (Ezra ix. i, 2, x. 3)'; and it is the teaching and phraseology of Deuteronomy which colour the language of Ezra's confession in Ezra ix. 6-15, and of Nehemiah's prayer in Neh. i. $-11. Undoubtedly an oral tradition of priestly and ceremonial law was kept up by the priests 1 Cf. Neh. xiii. 1-3 with Deut. xiv. i, xxiii. 3-6. Chap. iv. who ministered at the restored Temple. But either this had no close resemblance to the completed priestly code familiar to us in the Pentateuch; or, if it had, it was most negligently and carelessly administered by the priests. There is no escape from the alternative. At Neh. via. least, this would appear from Neh. viii. 13-18, where we learn, that until the people received instruction ' DEGREES"mputadc from Ezra they had been ignorant, or had been kept of law. in ignorance, of the right way to celebrate the great Feast of Tabernacles. Such a degree of ignorance...
