On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
controversy we find numberless appeals , on the part of Jesus and bis followers , to the books of the Jewish prophets ; and judging from the skill and promptness with which these appeals are made , and from the passive and quiescent manner in which they are generally received , no room is left for
the reader to doubt that , during the lives of Jesus and his apostles , the writings of the prophets were in familiar use among the Jews of Palestine , Syria , and Asia Minor ; and that they were regarded by them with feelings of veneration similar to those with which the Scriptures of the New Testament are now regarded by the mass of professing Christians .
The unbelief of the Jews , it is well known , originated almost entirely in the glowing pictures which their own imaginations had drawn of the splendour of the Messiah ' s reign . It was to correct these mistaken views that our Lord so frequently appealed to the writings of the prophets , and referred his countrymen to the Scriptures , as containing the credentials of his heavenly mission . ( John v . 39 . ) It was the same motive which dictated
that severe , but justly merited reproach which our Lord put into the mouth of Abraham , in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus : " If they hear not Moses and the prophets , neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead * " ( Luke xvi . 31 . ) To the same cause we must also ascribe the expostulation addressed to the two disciples whom our Lord overtook on the road to Emmaus . " We trusted that it had been he who should have
redeemed Israel , " said they , ( Luke xxiv . 21 , ) still clinging to the fond and foolish notion that their Messiah was to be a temporal prince . But what said Jesus in reply ? " O fools , and slow of heart , to believe all that the prophets have spoken ! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things , and to enter into his glory ? " ( Vers . 25 , 26 . ) Having said this , he began , as we are told , with Moses , and proceeded through the prophets , and other
Jewish Scriptures , expounding those passages which had * a reference to himself , as the Messiah ( ver . 27 ) ; and in an interview with the eleven , on the evening of the same day , he is represented as entering into a similar explanation , and saying , " These are the words which I spake unto you , while I was yet with you , that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses , and in the prophets , and in the Psalms concerning me , " ( Ver . 44 . )
In the passage last quoted , the reader cannot foil to recognize a threefold division of the Jewish Scriptures , similar to the one which we have already had occasion to notice under the preceding heads ; and , although this does not of itself prove that the copies of the Jewish Scriptures , in the time of our Lord , were precisely the same , with respect to the number , order , and extent of the books , as tnose which existed at a later period , it nevertheless establishes , in the most satisfactory manner , a general identity . Of this threefold division of the books of the Jewish Scriptures it is singular that no express
mention is made in any part of the New Testament , with the exception of the verse above quoted . The existence of such a division , however , is not contradicted by those passages in which there is a joint mention of the law and the prophets only ; as , when it is said that on the two commandments which embrace the love of God and of our neighbour , *• all the law and the prophets hang" ( Matt . xxii . 40 ) ; and when our Lord declares that he came not " to destroy the law and the prophets . " ( Matt . v . 17 . ) In these and similar passages , which are numerous in different parts of the New Testament , * the reference is confined to " the law and the prophets , " not be-* See Matt . vii . 12 ; Luke xvi . 29—31 ; John i . 45 ; Acts xxiv . 14 , xxvi . 22 , xxviii . 23 * Rom . iii . 21 .
Untitled Article
498 Canonical Authority of the Books of the Prophefk .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1827, page 498, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1798/page/26/
-