The Biography of the Bible

their place, quite free from the prevailing ecclesiasticism. Less impassioned than the men of old but more philosophical, they brought into literature a new tone of urbanity.

The Books of Ruth and Jonah were direct protests against the narrow nationalism of the priestly legislators. During the period of the Exile, the Hebrews left in Jerusalem had intermarried freely with the surrounding peoples; the stern new lawgiver Ezra annulled these marriages and disinherited their offspring. Hence the social significance of the Book of Ruth with its pastoral tale of a foreign woman taken in marriage by the Hebrew Boaz and becoming an ancestress of David himself. A work of propaganda—but never before or since was propaganda presented in so sweet and winning a manner. Similarly humanistic was the Book of Jonah, whose intolerant prophetic hero was shown to be rebuked by God himself. In the same emotional key, though less definite in its meaning, was the delightfully fantastic tale of Tobit, one of the earliest of those included in the Apocrypha.

Of uncertain date but certainly postexilic is the most perplexing work in the Old Testament, the Song of Songs. Manifestly a collection of secular love lyrics recited at some wedding ceremony, the

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