THE

CHRISTIAN DISCIPLE.

NEW SERIES-No. 12.

For November and December, 1820.

HERDER'S LETTERS RELATING TO THE STUDY OF DIVINITY.

[Translated from the German,]

LETTER II.

The Hebrew is to be spoken of and used, as the language of a peculiar time and people. The merit of Schultens. We must not judge the poetry of the Bible, by the present standard of taste. An examination of the history of Paradise, of the first transgression, aud of the story of Ba laam.

THAT the Hebrew language was spoken by men,—that is, by a nation, has been fully demonstrated: but that it was spoken by Gods, by Angels, and Elohim, cannot be proved. I stand therefore by the first.

And here it does not concern me, whether Adam, Seth, Noah, or Abraham at Ur in Chaldæa, spoke Hebrew; enough that their posterity spoke it, Moses wrote it, and the oldest writings of the Old Testament, and nearly its whole contents, are preserved in this once living, human dialect. Now what is more natural, than that men should use it as a living national language? and when it ceased to be so, that they should have recourse to the languages, which represent it most to the life? You will not therefore fail to study with diligence the Arabic, and the kindred dialects :-Not, indeed, to gather roots which you may force into the Hebrew; nor to make easy passages difficult, and natural things unnatural, by dint of Arabic conjugation; nor, above all, to beg beauties of stone out of Arabia, to kill living beauties with. Let it be your chief object to make yourself master of the geNew Series-vol. II.

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nius of the language; to feel the expression and imagery of the East; and to hear in its living tones, at least from a distance, the old and simple Hebrew, by the help of its younger and more artificial dialects.

It can hardly be expressed, how much good has been effected by the plain consideration-it is a living, human, national tongue, that we are learning. Schultens overturned the prejudice, that the Hebrew language was the language of heaven; and recommended her younger sister or daughter upon the earth. Since then, the study of that, for the illustration of the bible, has received an entirely new impulse. Endeavour to have always at hand, for reference, his works; particularly his "Origines Hebræo." Their Latin style is like that of a learned Arabian, too fine, too artificial; and they abound too much with unimportant disquisitions connected with etymology; yet the spirit of his writings is full of the knowledge and philosophy of the oriental languages. This author has tasted the kernel, and not kept gnawing upon the shell; while we in Germany often get nothing from his disparagers or followers, but shells polished a little. Observe it as a general rule in every art and science, to pay chief attention to him who first led the way in it,-to the source: now for the most part he rises as the fountain, and the rest are but babbling brooks. Notwithstanding his unlucky assiduity here and there, which it is hard to follow him through with, he is a gold mine to any body, who is willing to dig for the general history of the earliest languages.

Enough that we read the Old Testament in the ancient, simple, pastoral, unphilosophical, unabstract language of the Hebrews. From this point of view, which bears closely upon the spirit of what it contains, let none divert you. If you would en joy these writings in their original air, you must become a shepherd with shepherds, a peasant with an agricultural people, an oriental with the primitive inhabitants of the East. Be particularly on your guard against the dull abstractions of modern monkery; and still more against those pretended beauties, which would be obtruded and forced upon these sacred specimens of the highest antiquity, from our own state of society. Of that taste for abstractions I shall speak by and by. At present we live in the especial age of elegance and flowers, with which even Moses, David and Solomon must be bestrown, in spite of all their protestations. This psalm is an ode, that an elegy after the newest fashion: Moses and the prophets become epic bards; and the subject is often treated, as if these holy men had composed their pieces according to the elements of Batteux, or in the form of an anthology. A withered florilegium from the Greeks and Ro

mans is scattered over them; and the author, when he has moreover prattled sufficiently of various readings and versions, is sure of the paper crown of gazette commendation. I am no enemy of fine passages and parallel beauties, whenever and however they are found: but a noble original, especially one whose simplicity and important truth are its best ornaments, loses more than it gains, when attempted to be illustrated by the painted, and often irrelevant copies, of later times and artificial manners; and in this way there is an end at once (the subject of divinity out of the question) of the most beautiful originalities of the Bible. David and Job little thought that they must be made the colleagues of Horace and Eschylus, in order to be proved the first to see and feel what those poets described. I doubt, however, if they, who cannot be interested in them for their own sake, will be moved by all the tinsel and electric flashes, with which they can be made to sparkle. Lowth" de sacra poësi Hebræorum" has done much towards extending this poetic air:* but he must certainly be acquitted from any participation in the latest abuses on this subject, by which things the most substantial and nutritive have come to be dissolved into mere fragrant vapour. He gave Prælections after the English fashion; and, wishing to take up his subject ab ovo, treated it after the manner of Greece and Rome. He chose Greek and Roman names, and was fond of the method of the modern poetics, though not always adapted to his antique, oriental, sacred originals. Hence the questions and points often so impertinent,-whether the book of Job is a real drama? whether the song of Solomon is a true Theocritean pastoral ? and to what class of odes or songs this psalm or that prophecy belongs? They have absolutely nothing to do with any of these classes and distinctions: not only because none of those classes and distinctions were at that time in existence; but because no one of the biblical writers, in the sense of the Greeks and Romans at least, set up for a poet. Their poetry was not art, but nature; the spontaneous flow of expression; the earnestness of intention, of strong impulse. Every one of their finest strokes

* Lest any of our readers should fear that Herder does not think respectfully enough of so distinguished a critic as Lowth; and that they may not have to wait till the third letter comes to relieve them of such an error ; we translate the first sentence of his remarks preliminary to his celebrated work" on the spirit of the Hebrew poetry."-" Every body is acquainted with Bishop Lowth's beautiful and inestimable book de sacrâ poesi Hebræorum: it will be readily seen, however, on recurring to that work, that this is neither a translation, nor an imitation of it;-and to be with him or behind him could not prove unpleasant or unprofitable to the lovers of the oldest, simplest, and loftiest poetry; nor to any who love to trace the march of divine and human knowledge among our race.”

is individual; and by such a classification, made in other times by other people, must lose more than it can possibly gain :-the living image that it presents, is darkened behind a cloud of arbitrary taste.

Let us now pass to examples; for these always give the most definite instructions. The history of Paradise and the first transgression, for instance, can be nothing but an allegorical song, a moral fable. The garden, the tree of knowledge, the serpent, had no real existence: they were only used as the means of conveying to mankind, under the veil of a fable, a beautiful lesson;-how sin arises, and how it is punished by God;-and, naturally enough, the veil too was made beautiful. Thus a man gives to the text, considered as a matter of taste and poetry, what he takes away from it, and from the account connected with it, as an historical narrative.*-Now I ask you, my young friend, if to your uncrazed youthful judgment, on the first impression, any such song, any such beautifully designed and beautifully finished fable, appears in this simple narration. I read, and read again: no tone of song comes to my ears; no more than in the whole history of the Israelites or the patriarchs; where indeed in the song of Lamech, the songs of Moses, of David, of the prophets, the language rises at once into so different a strain, that no one who has the least sensibility to poetry and song can mistake that higher sound. Where is it to be found here, in the beginning of the Bible? where does the song begin? where does it end? where begins the fable; and where does it end? If there is no paradise, no tree, no serpent; if these are but the creatures of fable; why not then sin too? why not Adam and Eve? But upon these last, as historical personages, there is much depending as we go on; and in the sequel many consequences are ascribed to the transgression, and the banishment from this original dwelling place. Is it a fable, then, that Adam was created? that he was created thus, and there, and for such a purpose? that under such circumstances he was the father of the human race? We know then nothing of all these things; and we have nothing, in the whole account, but the old story of Prometheus and Pandora. Of course, all that is connected with this fiction is fiction too : and besides, the histories of Cain and Abel, of the flood, of the march of the Israelites out of Egypt, and through the wilderness, have interspersed with them such bold and poetical passages and descriptions, as can find no place in a tale told with such infant

* Our readers may, if they please, compare the literal account, which our author proceeds to defend, with "A glance at the history of opinions concerning the fall of man," published in the Disciple, New Series, vol. Į. p. 170.

simplicity as this. In short, if all is a poem, a fable, a fiction, which has come to us from the infancy of the world, and come to us in its own appropriate tones, which must be simple, juvenile, poetical ;-for all historians admit, and the nature of things demands, that every composition must wear the natural colouring of the circumstances that produced it ;-what will be left to us of all this most ancient of histories?

On the contrary, my friend, if you will take the history just as it is, not concerning yourself with any of the late ingenious interpretations or inventions, how natural and philosophical-and by that I mean, how agreeable to the subject, the language, the time, the circumstances, does every thing become !* A human pair is formed; for God does every thing with the least expenditure of power. A third man, or a second pair, would have been lavishness; and we should all dwell on the earth as brethren of one family. Adam and Eve are thus historical persons; and their creation, their mutual offices, the union of their earliest perceptions and feelings, could not be told more simply, truly, intelligibly, faithfully to fact, for the uncultivated listeners of ancient times, than they are told here. Paradise comes naturally in for must not this first human pair, which trod the earth under the immediate education of divinity, have a select, secure place assigned to them, fitted and furnished to be the first school of their knowledge and duties? There is philosophy here for all this was required according to the simplest plan of an élève of nature. Household could not derive its origin from agriculture: it must have begun in a garden, or it could not have begun at all. In an inhospitable climate, or under the teeth of wild beasts, could not unprotected man have been cast forth; nor exposed a prey to all the elements; for he would soon have perished, The creator of the earth now adopted man as his child and favourite. It was his pleasure that he should bear his image, and appear as his representative, by being endowed with understanding and speech, and invested with dominion over the animal creation. From the first moment of his life, therefore, he must cul

*A whole dialogue in the first volume of the "Spirit of the Hebrew poetry," is devoted to the Mosaic account of Paradise; in which the writer endeavours more at length to distinguish what is historical, and to explain what is figurative in it. We think, however, that he is at least as successful here; and our readers will probably think that here is quite enough of it. An imperfect and very bald translation of the first volume of that work was published at London in 1801, under the title of" Oriental DiaJogues."

"O that this were a fable!" cries Alciphron, in the dialogue mentioned in the last note, "it would be beautiful as a fable." " In point of drapery," replies Eugenius, always regard it as such but it was a fable that was really acted."