Key of Knowledge

SR No.: 006702
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Publication Year: 1919
Total Pages: 1204
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 25 MB

Page 236

REDEMPTION.
manner that the points of juncture are often clearly discernible, and the sources are in consequence capable of being separated from one another. The authors of the Hebrew historical books, as we now have them, do not. as a rule, as a modern author would do, re-write the matter in their own language; they excerpt from pre-existing documents such passages as are suitable to their purpose, and incorporate them in their work, sometimes adding at the same time matter of their own.......Sometimes, for instance, the excerpts from the older documents form long and complete narratives; in other cases (as in the account of the flood) they consist of a number of short passages, taken alternately from two older narratives, and dove-tailed together to make a continuous story; in the books of Judges and Kings the compiler has fitted together a series of older narratives in a frame-work supplied by himself the Pentateuch and book of Joshua (which form a literary whole, and are now often spoken of together as the Hexateuch) have passed through more stages than the books just mentioned, and their literary structure is more complex."
215
The question which now arises is: why did the ancient chroniclers act in this manner at all? No one who has read the Old Testament even casually can be impressed with the idea that the narrators were anxious to chronicle historical events with the historian's veracity. There is a set purpose discernible in their writings, and it seems to be to draw upon history only in so far as it can be useful for the requirements of mythology and allegory, which had apparently become the recognised language of mystic theology in their age. If our surmise be correct, it would follow that the records of the Old Testament contain mostly the hidden and secret canons of mysticism, given out in the garb of history, so that their purport be clear to those who have been initiated into the mysteries of the Spiritual science, but remain unknown to others.