A Lawyer s Studies in Biblical Law. Jacob was in a condition partly of depen dence and partly of independence. Reuben, although stHl a member of Jacob's family, had his own family over whom he exercised the patriarchal power, even, as we have seen, offering his sons to be killed upon his default in bringing back Benjamin to his father. The sons of Jacob rebelled against their father's wishes, and killed the men of Shechem on account of the insult to their family by the violation of Dinah (Genesis xxx, 4). The last act of authority of the patriarch was the apportionment of the inheritance among his children, and the appointment of his successor as the head of the family. In both these cases his will was law until, in the one case the Mosaic legislation, and in the other the progress of time, put an end to his arbitrary power and substituted public law. The rights of the members of the family against the patriarch were acquired only after a long struggle under the spur of the instinct of self-preservation, aided and strengthened by the influences of religion and more en lightened notions of public policy and human rights. It was not because those subject to the patriarchal authority had any natural right to life or to liberty, but simply because they were enabled, in the course of time, to compel their master to make unwilling con cessions to them. The Mosaic law takes a high position in these matters, and its prin ciples which find their culmination in such perfect moral maxims as " Thou shalt love the stranger," and " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," destroyed the old system by the gradual insinuation of its higher ideals among the people, through prophets, and elders, and priests. The Mosiac laws repre sent the struggle that took place between
233
the conservatism of inherited ideas and the elements of the new times. They record the victory of a higher morality. The laws recorded among the* Biblical traditions and in the Mosaic codes followed a process of evo lutionary development. The Bible can never be understood if the Biblical laws are pre sumed to be a complete system given to the people at one and the same time, without antecedent history or subsequent develop ment. The Bible itself contains ample evi dence of the fact that it is the result of cen turies of growth, and that these laws are so many links in a chain of legal and social development which began in the darkness of the prehistoric times, and has continued un interruptedly, broadening with the life of the people and growing more refined and more complex. Nor is it easy to determine the chrono logical succession of the Biblical laws. The mere fact that a law appears in Genesis by no means proves that it is anterior in time to one in Deuteronomy. The literary divi sions of the books of the Bible are of practically no value in determining the chronologi cal sequence of their contents. The old chronologies, like all Sunday-school methods of reading the Bible, must give way to ra tional, historical and critical study. The letter is no longer sacred, and the Biblical records, therefore, must be subjected to the canons of criticism that govern the study of all ancient literature. The rabbis of the Talmud recognized and admitted the fact that matters which were chronologically an terior to others were so recorded in the Bible that they seemingly were of a later date, and they formulated the maxim that the present place of any particular matter in the Biblical books is not conclusive evidence of its date.
