EDWARD T. BARTLETT, D.D. DEAN OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL DIVINITY SCHOOL IN PHILADELPHIA AND JOHN P. PETERS, PH.D. PROFESSOR OF THE OLD TESTAMENT LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE IN THE PRO- VOL. I. HEBREW STORY FROM CREATION TO THE EXILE COMPRISING MATERIAL FROM THE FOLLOWING BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT PSALMS, PROVERBS, ISAIAH, JEREMIAH, EZEKIEL PREFACE. THE Contents of this volume are Hebrew tradition and history from the Creation to the Captivity. The story is told in the words of the Bible, but with considerable condensation and rearrangement. Explanatory glosses have been added here and there. When these glosses consist of more than one or two words, and are not mere condensations of longer statements in the original, they are included in marks of parenthesis. We have endeavored to utilize the best results of critical scholarship, both in the determination of the original text and its interpretation. In our translation we have preserved, for the most part, the wording of either the Authorized Version or the recent Canterbury Revision; making, however, a considerable number of minor changes, mainly in the direction of simplifying passages or idioms unintelligible to the average reader. In our selection and arrangement of passages we have been governed by practical rather than critical considerations. For example, the story of Joseph follows for the most part but one of the several documents which critics recognize in Genesis. But the original selection of passages to be used was made without reference to the results of recent criticism; and when the editors, in working over their selections, observed the agreement between their practical division and the division of the iii _84646 |