The analogy principle of the mashal, however, was used most effectively when it was expressed as a familiarly told tale or apologue, setting forth its lesson in an indirectly didactic way, as a case analogous to the one to be taught. A fine example of this kind of prose mashal is Jotham's fable, Judg. ix, 8-15, in which the trees are represented as talking together and choosing a king. The use of a parable as a delicate means of conveying reproof is illustrated by Nathan's parable, 2 Sam. xii, 1-4, and the wise woman of Tekoa's fictitious story, 2 Sam. xiv; in both of which instances King David, pronouncing judgment on a hypothetical case, is made to pass adverse judgment on himself. The answer of King Jehoash to King Amaziah about a proposed gage of battle, 2 Kings xiv, 8-10, is a prose mashal used as a weapon of sarcasm.

NOTE. Later Developments. All these are taken from the early historical books, as examples of the pre-literary mashal; but like the song, the mashal was later taken up and cultivated to a very artistic form of literature. The Book of Proverbs (m'shalim) is a collection of mashals of a specific type, the Solomonic mashal, which was the most condensed and finished of all. The last discourses of Job (see xxvii, I and xxix, 1), which are called mashals, present the verse in a more flowing and continuous form. The sage Ecclesiastes made it his occupation to compile, compose, and arrange mashals, both prose and poetic (Eccl. xii, 9). The parables of Jesus may be regarded as the most charming as well as the most matured form of the mashal.

4. The Folk Tale

As a reflection of the Hebrew mind not only the literary quotations embedded in the history but the history itself is to be reckoned with; and indeed this history embodies, especially from Judges through 2 Samuel, the most intimate product, the nearest to the people's common life, of the ages before books. For its groundwork is essentially folk story, such as grows immediately out of the event, with its atmosphere of folk customs, relations, ideas. Though gathered later into a continuous history, with a framework of chronology, connecting links,

and elucidative comment, these folk tales still retain the color and raciness of their oral origin, and are doubtless a true reflection of the history as it essentially was. Thus all that is vivid and moving in the history comes down to us straight from concrete experience. In this sense, then, we can read the bulk of the early history as contemporary literature. It is folk tale, such as comes from the camp, the home, and the city-gate; shaped and pruned and tempered by long oral transmission, but also reflecting a native genius for simple and telling narration.

NOTES. I. The Native Genius for Narration. Some remarks of Professor Sanday, in "The Life of Christ in Recent Research," p. 15, are as applicable to Old Testament narrative as to New: "Where the Hebrew historian is writing of events that are still fresh in men's memory, and where he is drawing upon good contemporary sources, he is an excellent narrator. There is no redundance of language, no straining after effect, no obscurity of detail, and yet the human feeling of the story, the pathos and the tragedy, come out of themselves in a way that is strangely moving. It is like the simple, dignified, reserved, and yet expressive speech that seems natural to the East, and that in the Bible always has the religious sense behind it.”

2. The Oral Standard of Narrative. That the type of Biblical narrative was set by the oral or folk tale, may be seen from the following, about the gospel story, from Professor Hill, "Introduction to the Life of Christ," p. 26: "At the outset the story was, of course, wholly oral. The presence of eye-witnesses obviated the necessity of resorting to written documents; and, moreover, the Jews shared the Oriental feeling, that religious truth ought to pass from teacher to learner by word of mouth and not by writing. All the great mass of the Talmud was for generations handed down orally, and its final reduction to writing was opposed by many. And the same preference for oral teaching is expressed by Papias, a Christian of the second century, when speaking of learning about Christ's life: 'I did not think that what was to be gotten from the books would profit me as much as what came from the living and abiding voice.' Such oral accounts of what Jesus said and did would have a more or less stereotyped form, partly because any account often repeated grows stereotyped in form, and still more because the tenacious Oriental memory reproduces exactly whatever has been delivered to it."

Of the Bible history as a completed whole, a future chapter is the place to speak.1 We are dealing here merely with an important component element: the current or traditional folk tales which were so intimately woven with it as to impart to it their own prevailing tone. These stories are of course Oriental in color, reflecting the imaginative intensity of the Semitic mind. As compared with other Oriental stories, however, like for instance the Arabian Nights, they are singularly free from the fantastic or grotesque, are simple and sane, and use the utmost economy of detail to get the essentials of the story told. There seems to have been, as far back as we can trace, a steadying influence at work at the core of the people's life, which kept their thought and imagination poised and realistic. It is by virtue of such qualities that the men and events of so small a nation and so remote a time have become more memorable, and have added more to the moral and spiritual outfit of the ages, than any other men and events in the world.

III

Avails and Deficits of the Pre-Literary Times. It will be noted that while we have traced the quoted fragments of poetry from prehistoric times, we have not pushed the folk tale back beyond the Book of Judges. The stories of Genesis and of the experience in the Wilderness do not belong so truly to the folk tale; they are legends gathered by scholars and teachers and containing more of the interpretative and symbolical; the time to speak of them is later. Meanwhile, in the general tone of the folk tale, the rude heroism and adventure, the savage elemental passions, the primitive customs, the undeveloped religion not unmixed with superstition, of a people just emerging from nomadism

1 See Looking Before and After, Chapter III, I.

to a settled and organized life, are faithfully reproduced. As we go on from the times of the Judges through the two books of Samuel this folk-tale coloring enables us to realize the gradual refinement of the people's customs and ideas, as they gain a surer hold on land and religion and reach more civilized conditions in life: a period coinciding with the gradual fusion of tribal and clannish elements into national unity, and the establishment of monarchy under the first two kings, Saul and David.

Heroic and
Personal
Stimulus

We have put the historic period from Joshua to Solomon before the age of books, not because there was no written literature in that period, but because literature in any finished or efficient form was not a felt element of life and culture. The literary ages, with the diffused sense of literary values, came later. Meanwhile, in those primitive social conditions, the great moving and educative power among men was the power of masterful personality. In the men of mind and achievement who, born and reared among them and sharing in their common lot, emerged to distinction as warriors, judges, and seers, the people recognized not only their natural masters but the personal ideal to which insensibly their lives conformed. This was the primal source of Israel's early morals and enlightenment, the unspoken pattern of human worth and honor.

A characteristic trait, accordingly, of these pre-literary ages is that they are rich in personality, especially in strong and rough-hewn characters; men like all others limited and faulty, but with strong convictions and deeds to their credit which endow them with influence. Instead of books and diffused ideas, such as we have, these heroic times had among them such real embodiments of faith and character as Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, Samuel, Saul, Jonathan, David; each in his way infusing some personal light and stimulus into the common life of the people.

NOTE. Two or three instances of this personal ascendancy, out of many, may be cited, to show how dependent the people were upon it and how responsive to it. Gideon's boldness in breaking down the altar of Baal and setting up an altar to Jehovah in its place (Judg. vi, 25-32) changed the religious allegiance of the people and earned him a name and leadership. The incident of the people's rescue of Jonathan from the death he had incurred for his unwitting violation of a taboo (1 Sam. xiv, 45) is an indication of his extraordinary hold on the people's affection, a passion which overrode a deep-seated religious feeling. The whole life of David as an outlaw, his magnanimity toward the jealous king, his generous treatment of foes, his enforced Robin Hood rôle (see especially 1 Sam. xxii, 1, 2), is a telling example of what a lovable and generous personality may do to tame and ennoble the crude passions of men.

What a people can get from personal contact and influence is after all only as great as the person; and the person, however distinguished in some ways, is at best Need beyond Personal only a step in advance of his time. Besides, too, Ascendancy without a sincere conscience or a fixed standard of principle, personal ascendancy is as apt to be degrading as elevating. If there may be a Gideon, strong in rugged faith, there may also be an Abimelech, strong only in base self-aggrandizement; and Gideon himself, after his victories in the pure worship of Jehovah, may lapse into a subtle and corrupting idolatry (see Judg. viii, 24-27). The defect in mere personal ascendancy is well illustrated by the downward trend of the nation, in spite of the occasional faith and valor of the Judges, during the period from the death of Joshua to Samuel. Of the sad depth that the nation by Samuel's time had reached the Biblical description is:

The word of Jehovah was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision" (1 Sam. iii, 1; cf. Prov. xxix, 18); while of a somewhat earlier time the repeated description is: "In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes" (Judg. xvii, 6; xxi, 25). There was lack of a common enlightenment and steadying power in the mind of the people.