NOTICES OF BOOKS. IN M. RENAN ON ECCLESIASTES. * N a postscript to the article on Ecclesiastes, in the last number of this Review, we were enabled to append, from the Revue des Deux Mondes, the conclusions of M. Renan, with regard to the three fundamental questions concerning this very interesting portion of the Old Testament. Having discussed these questions with some fulness, we do not think it necessary to revert to them in connection with M. Renan's work on Ecclesiastes, which has since appeared. The work consists of a translation of the Book, accompanied here and there by scanty notes, and preceded by an Introduction, which is identical substantially with the article in the Revue des Deux Mondes already alluded to. That this Introduction is a most brilliant piece of French writing need scarcely be said. It is from the pen of M. Renan. But beyond this we are afraid that the work has very scanty claim to the regard of either scholars or the public. In M. Renan's opinion Ecclesiastes is, as to its general drift, not at all difficult to understand. It is a work of elegant scepticism, apparently with a rather strong Gallic flavour. In its relation to the general contents of the Bible, Ecclesiastes resembles a little brochure of Voltaire, which has lost its way among the folios of a theological library. And as to the passage on old age, towards the end of the book-a description, M. Renan says, full of enigmas and allusions, resembling the dazzling passes of a professor of legerdemain juggling with sculls-one might think it to be the workmanship of Banville or Théophile Gautier. But, while Ecclesiastes is thus so remarkably French, it is also, strange to say, fundamentally and profoundly Jewish. Its author very much resembles the modern Israelite, the Israelite of that class which the great commercial cities of Europe have come to know so well during the last fifty years. The Proteus-like Koheleth does, indeed, here assume a new form, or rather, we suppose, appears at last in his true colours. His philosophical pride and contempt of worldly pursuits were but a sham. L'Ecclésiaste, traduit de l'Hébreu, avec une Étude sur l'Age et le Caractère du Livre. Par ERNEST RENAN, Membre de l'Institut, etc. Paris: Calmann Lévy. 1882. Trafficking in Rentes would have been his delight; he would have found a true home in Capel Court. The modern Israelite, M. Renan himself tells us, ne croit plus qu'à la richesse. Ecclesiastes being a profoundly Jewish work, it was reserved, according to our author, for Jewish critics to discern its character and meaning. Mendelssohn and Luzzatto understood it a great deal better than the Protestant theologians. But it was for Graetz to make the most considerable advance in the exegesis of the book. M. Renan does not, however, accept Graetz's Herodian theory, nor his explanation of the two last chapters. If this explanation were true, Ecclesiastes would become a book of immoral tendency, not merely one of elegant, or even free and bold, scepticism. Of English interpreters of Ecclesiastes M. Renan makes no mention; but we doubt whether this proceeds from his being altogether ignorant of what has been done in this country for the elucidation of the book. In more than one place we discerned coincidences with Dean Plumptre's recent work, which seem somewhat remarkable, if they are accidental. Of the performances of previous translators M. Renan seems not to have a very high opinion. To render literally a book like Ecclesiastes may be, he thinks, the worst of treasons. A pedantic translation in heavy theological prose is as bad as turning Béranger into homilies, or the Sermons of Bossuet into madrigals. M. Renan has certainly not erred by translating too closely and literally, nor has he adhered too tenaciously to the ordinary text, which, in his judgment, swarms with errors of copyists. To the presentation of the book, partly as prose and partly as poetry-as M. Renan presents it-there can scarcely be any valid objection, except that which arises from the difficulty of determining the form which should be sometimes adopted. M. Renan, however, goes very far beyond all reasonable limits when he renders xii. 11, after the following fashion : Les dires des sages Le concile antique Nous les a transmis This is, indeed, like turning the Discourses of Bossuet into madrigals; but to call it translation would be absurd. The Authorised Version renders the passage thus :-"The words of the wise [are] as goads, and as nails fastened [by] the masters of assemblies, [which] are given from one shepherd." This is not very poetical; but it may be doubted whether the Hebrew, in this verse, cught to be regarded as poetical in In form, though there is true poetry in the rural imagery of the "goads,” the "nails," and the "one Shepherd." The "one Shepherd," the great apxinоluny, has become, in M. Renan's version, un unique esprit! The reading of the present Hebrew text, we are told, n'est pas satisfaisant; but we doubt whether M. Renan's arbitrary alteration will satisfy a single competent scholar. There is at the end of the volume an appendix giving some forty or more critical alterations, to be referred to by the reader, with regard to places where M. Renan's version differs from the received text. But the reader is likely to consult it not unfrequently in vain. Take, as an example, the last part of ii. 8: Je me procurai des troupes de chanteurs et de chanteuses, et toutes les délices des fils d'Adam de quelque genre que ce fut. The student may wonder how shiddah veshiddoth can possibly mean de quelque genre que ce fut; but he will refer to the appendix in vain for information. other places readings pregnant with significance are suppressed or changed into trivialities. The verses iv. 15, 16 of the present text may be thus translated: "I saw all the living that walk under the sun, with the second child who is to stand in their stead. There is no end to all the people; as to all that was before them, even those who come next rejoice not therein; so that this also is vanity, and a pursuit of the wind." The general subject of the fourth chapter may be said to be, that men are left to themselves in the world; that there is no evidence of a Divine Agent, caring for men and providing for their wants. The down-trodden and oppressed have no comforter. Success and prosperity excite the unsocial passion of envy. When united, men are strong; but the solitary individual falls alone, with none to help him up. The old and foolish king who shuts himself off from the lessons of experience is not restrained from inflicting mischief on his subjects. There is no all-pervading harmony, no equable adjustment in the world; it is a world of disorder and disorganised isolation. We are now in a position to understand the verses quoted above. On a survey of three generations ("all the living . with the second child") Koheleth observes that the number of the people is not designed and definite, but seemingly unlimited: "There is no end to all the people." The successive generations are not moulded into one whole; but each with its separate interests is isolated from the rest: "As to all that was before them, even those who come next rejoice not therein." Now, let us turn to M. Renan :-J'ai vu tout le monde s'empresser à la suite du jeune héritier qui doit succéder au vieux roi. Infinis ont été les maux qu'on a soufferts dans le passé; mais, dans l'avenir, on n'aura pas plus à se réjouir de celui-ci.... Toujours vanité et pâture du vent. M. Renan is certainly not alone in supposing the passage to speak of an obsequious attendance on the heir or successor to the throne. But if this view were in other respects unobjectionable, one would be tempted to ask, Why should the heir be spoken of as "the second child"? M. Renan, however, gets over this difficulty by suppressing the word "second" and giving us du jeune héritier. Instead of "There is no end to all the people," and its reasonable accord with the context, we have Infinis ont été les maux qu'on a soufferts dans le passé; to gain which sense, or something approaching it, the text has to be violently altered. We were intending to discuss another of M. Renan's conjectural emendations, at viii. 10, on entend faire l'éloge de ces misérables dans la ville, etc., instead of (in accordance with the present text), "They were forgotten in the city," etc., the word "forgotten" having probably a special emphasis. But we forbear. M. Renan's performance does not suggest the conclusion that he has given to Ecclesiastes that special and long-continued study which its difficulty and profundity of thought demand. Other onerous undertakings may have prevented his so doing. But, however this may be, we fear that his work, whatever its charms of style and diction, can scarcely be regarded as other than a failure. THOMAS TYLER. LENORMANT ON THE ORIGINS OF HISTORY.+ THE first instalment of M. Lenormant's second volume on the Genesis contains only four chapters; but they are rich in learning and suggestiveness. Each constitutes, in fact, a dissertation by itself. The first comprises a discussion of Ararat and Eden, and the investigation of the original locality of Eden and its mysterious rivers. In the second a series of comparisons brings before us the various fathers of humanity from India to Greece who may be placed by the side of Noah; while a striking, if adventurous, set of combinations carries back the forms of his three sons into the recesses of the earliest mythology of Babylonia. The third chapter, which is very short, lays down the general principles on which the Table of Nations in Genesis x. must be interpreted. The fourth and last is devoted to three of the sons of Japhet, Gomer, Magog, and Madai. Here are, as before, the same affluence of illustration, the same command of the literature of the vast ranges of mythologic lore, the same brilliance and dash in the solution of difficulties, the same prodigious industry of accumulation, the same ardent zeal for the advance of truth. The rapidity of M. Lenormant's productiveness and his fertility of suggestion naturally lead him occasionally into conjectures which riper thought sets aside. Thus, for instance, he withdraws (p. 72) * Dr. Ginsburg, who, of course, would not treat the text as M. Renan has done, gives the extraordinary rendering "the sociable youth." Dean Plumptre feels the difficulty, and remarks, "The clause may point either to the wise young ruler of the previous verse, as succeeding (ie, coming second to) the old and foolish king, or possibly to his successor -a rather awkward alternative. A more reasonable conclusion would have been, that this view of the passage is altogether erroneous. Les Origines de l'Histoire d'après la Bible, et les Traditions des Peuples Orientaux. L'ar FRANCOIS LENORMANT. Tome 2me, 1ère partie. the assimilation which he supported ten years ago of Moriah with the great mountain of Indian mythology, Meru. But in these retractations, or, rather, in the tentatives which give occasion to them, there is nothing to regret. It is by such bold proposals that thought is stimulated, and from the conflict of ideas a more stable view emerges. The result of M. Lencrmant's investigations into the story of the Garden of Eden is, perhaps, somewhat different from what might have been anticipated. He allows, indeed, that it is immediately derived from Babylonian sources, though he rejects the tempting identification of Gan-Eden with Gan-Dunyas (p. 106). But he does not regard the myth as native to Mesopotamia. He lays great stress on the difficulty of finding any satisfactory equivalents for the Pishon and the Gihon in the neighbourhood of the Tigris and the Euphrates, though he thinks it probable that the missing names will yet be discovered in the cuneiform inscriptions (p. 115). This theme is enforced in an interesting appendix dealing with the treatise of Dr. Friedrich Delitzsch on the site of Paradise, and it is rather surprising that, under these circumstances, M. Lenormant should be in such haste himself to supply a possible Assyrian representative for Havilah by the audacious conversion of it, through Havlah and Harlah, into the Assyrian Aralu, near the mountain of the north (p. 137). Its wealth of gold certainly corresponds to one necessary element in the description; but, to say nothing of the orthographic assumptions by which the change is effected, the fact that Arali is the land of the dead seems to mark it off from proximity to any of the Eden rivers. M. Lenormant's general conclusion is that the existing representation contains two historical strata superposed one over the other; the older marked by the names Pishon and Gihon, and the later by the Hiddekel and Prath. The story was transported to Babylonia, and there localised much in the same way that the Musulmans placed one of their four earthly paradises between Lebanon and Antilebanon. In this he does but follow the views slowly elaborated by a long series of his predecessors, among whom he finds himself most in accord with M. Renan, regarding the Pishon as the Indus, and the Gihon as the Oxus. M. Lenormant cannot, however, handle even this well-worn topic without adding fresh suggestions of his own. Accordingly, after comparing the Indian and Iranian stories of the sacred mountain, and the mysterious rivers issuing from it, which formed the cradle of humanity, he points out that though the narrator in Genesis is silent on the subject, yet Ezekiel (xxviii. 13 sqq.) identifies Eden with "God's holy mountain" sparkling with precious stones. From this, by a series of dexterous transitions, we are led to the deluge mountain, on which the ark rests. Here M. Lenormant notes that whereas the Chaldean account places it in Mount Nizir, east of the Tigris valley, the Elohist So, thinks M. Lenormant, did the Yahvist also. But this is an inference of his own from the translation of miqgedhem, "from the east" (Gen. xi. 2). It seems probable that this should rather be "eastward," as in Gen. xiii. 11, which would make against M. Lenormant's view. |