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
at the trouble of comparing the words printed in Italics with others of similar construction and import in Jeremiah xxv . 1 , 9 , 12 , he will find that the books to which Daniel refers must have been rolls upon which eertain predictions of Jeremiah were written , and , consequently , that a very important part , if not the whole of the book which we now have under tne name of Jeremiah , was known to Daniel , and regarded by him as the genuine production of that writer .
It appears , from a variety of passages in the Old Testament , that the character of prophet among the Jews was attended with great responsibility and danger . Those who sustained this character were often seen in the palaces of their sovereigns , restraining the profligacy of the court , and boldly censuring such measures as were calculated to entail disgrace and ruin upon the Jewisn people . No apprehensions of personal danger could deter Jeremiah from warning his countrymen of the calamities impending over the Jewish
state , and the approaching destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar . This he did openly and unreservedly , braving the fury of an incensed populace and a wicked priesthood , at the hazard of his life . " Then , " we are told , " rose up certain of the elders of the land , and spake to all the assembly of the people , saying , Micah , the Morashthite , prophesied in the days of Hezekiah , king of Judah , saying , '— ' Thus saith the Lord of hosts , Zion shall be ploughed like a field , and Jerusalem shall become heaps , and the
mountains of the house as the high places of the forest . ' " ( Jer . xxvi . 17 , 18 . ) These words were a literal quotation from Micah iii . 12 , and produced the intended effect . The appeal grounded upon them ( v . 19 ) was successful , and the prophet ' s life was saved . Here , then , we are incidentally furnished with a proof of the authenticity of the book which we now have under the name of Micah , and likewise of the high repute in which the predictions of its author were held within less than a century from the time of their publication .
If it were necessary to multiply remarks of this kind , it might be shewn that Jeremiah * and Micah f contain quotations from Isaiah ; and that clear references to the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah are found in the book of Ezra . J But , as the instances already adduced are amply sufficient to prove that the books which we now have under the names of Isaiah ,
Jeremiah , and Micah , were received as theirs in times almost immediately succeeding those in which it is said that they were written , and as Haggai and Zechariah are acknowledged to have been comparatively late writers , we may here consider the chain of evidence in favour of the antiquity and authenticity of the books of the prophets as terminating , and proceed to make our inferences accordingly .
In the first place , then , we have the independent testimony of Jews and Christians to the existence and genuineness of these books for a space of more than eighteen centuries . This fact , it must be acknowledged , is a highly important as well as interesting one . To set it aside , " we must admit a principle , which , in no question of ordinary criticism , would be suffered for a single moment to influence our understandings . We must conceive , that two parties , at the very time that they were influenced by the
* Lowth ' a Isaiah , Introd . Rein , to chap . xv . $ Blayney ' s Jeremiah , note on chap , xlviii . 31 , &c . f Lowth ' s Isaiah , note on chap . ii . 2—4 ; Newcome ' s Minor Prophets , note on . Micah iv . H- —3 . t Ezra v . 1 , vi . 14 .
Untitled Article
662 Canonical Authority of the Books of the Prophets .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1827, page 662, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1800/page/30/
-