Problem of Ezekiel an Inductive Study

oi.uchicago.edu ^The PROBLEM OF EZEKIEL AN INDUCTIVE STUDY By WILLIAM A. IRWIN n •f> / THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO • ILLINOIS oi.uchicago.edu BSyr./*- .TT'7 i THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS • CHICAGO Agent: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS • LONDON COPYRIGHT 1943 BY THB UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ALL RIGHTS RESBRVBD. PUBLISHED DBCBMBBR 1943 ?ur- « oi.uchicago.edu * c^JZCZ£^-A-* «C~*- &r, / <( t* 9 | ^ A' (j 1660048{JUj bapirr inns nbron nc;s -ufas d.lZl'ff oi.uchicago.edu oi.uchicago.edu To PROFESSOR T. H. ROBINSON FOR HIS GENEROUS FRIENDSHIP THROUGH MANY YEARS and to HIS COLLEAGUES, THE OLD TESTAMENT SCHOLARSHIP OF GREAT BRITAIN THIS MODEST STUDY IS DEDICATED IN HUMBLE TRIBUTE TO THE FORTITUDE AND COURAGE AND FAITH WITH WHICH THEY AND THEIR COMPATRIOTS THROUGH THESE TRYING YEARS ARE INSCRIBING A NEW DIGNITY OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT oi.uchicago.edu oi.uchicago.edu PREFACE The results presented herewith have matured through more than ten years of special Interest In the problem of Ezekiel. At first the study concerned itself with vhat in the outcome proved to be minor critical matters, such as the poetic structure of chapter 7 or the interpretation of chap ter 19. But presently, chancing upon that feature with which the present investigation begins, attention was directed toward employing it to unlock all the mysteries of the struc ture of the book. However, disappointment came soon, for the clue quickly diminished and presently disappeared. Fortu nately, by that time it had provided, however, a nucleus of results which through constant criticism and re-examination commended themselves as reliable. With these the investiga tion pushed out once more into unfamiliar critical areas and little by little succeeded in building up further evidences of the differentiation of genuine from spurious in the Book of Ezekiel. Progress has been slow. The whole problem has been worked through again and again. But, with the recrlti- cism of results entailed and the fresh approach thus provided, there has fortunately been at each new assault on the problem some little gain. To the very end minor points have been yielding new insights and solutions. Those who choose to do so may readily discover that the position now set forth di verges at several points from that sketched in my chapter in the second edition of J* M. Powis Smith's The Prophets and Their Times published in 1941. On this background it would, obviously, be an absurd ity to claim finality. And the reader will not advance far into my discussion without meeting frank admissions, reiter ated indeed to the point of tedium, of the uncertainty of many features of my results. There is still much work to be done. The activity of the commentators, as I have called: those workers commonly dismissed as "editors,* is shrouded in mystery. It would seem that at the best we can never at tain satisfactory knowledge of them; like hosts of other vil oi.uchicago.edu viJLi PREFACE thinkers in the long story of Judaism, they have been con cerned not to parade themselves or their circumstances be fore the eyes of posterity but only to speak the truth as they apprehended it. I realize that I have done little more than indicate within broad limits the times in which they lived and outline the features of their thought. It may be that other workers will uncover evidence which I have over looked. I sincerely hope so. But even in regard to the genuine oracles of Ezekiel I am ready to admit that my re sults lie open to reconsideration. Still, whatever their incompleteness, the time has come to set them before my colleagues in Old Testament scholarship and to invoke their assistance toward such finality as is now possible after the interval of many centuries since the last discussion by men who possessed some approximation to direct knowledge of the history of the book: the rabbis of Jamnia and the author of the Baraitha in Baba Bathra. For my part, I shall be happy if my contribution may serve in some way to release the criti cism of Ezekiel from the impasse in which it now stands and so to contribute to the unlocking of its resources for the life of today. It is possible that some readers—in the mood of pre- publication optimism every author, I presume, imagines that he will have some readers]—will dismiss the conclusions to which the evidence has compelled me as too drastic. Some may indeed consider that I have not so much employed as forced the evidence. But in reality my results are highly "ortho dox/1 It has been a personal satisfaction to find that, with as objective and unbiased a use of the evidence as I could command, I found in the end the figure of Ezekiel emerging essentially as he has been known for twenty-five hundred years. In only one important regard does my account of him depart from that of age-long tradition; he went to Babylonia with tha second deportation, not the first. And, indeed, there is little novel in even this; the view is familiar, and has been somewhat generally accepted for ten years past, that the major bulk of Ezekiel1s work was done in Jerusalem. True, he was, according to my results, not a psychic abnormality but moved among his contemporaries as a man of healthy mind. oi.uchicago.edu PREFACE 1* This may perhaps be considered an "important" departure from tradition, but it is such clear gain for our appraisal of Ezekiel that no one, it is hoped, will complain that I have led him away from the fleshpots of Egypt to die of famine in the wilderness. However, I am not thus requesting others to spread their covering wings around, nor seeking to shelter from hot arrows of indignation behind the mistakes or merits of previous study of the Book of Ezekiel. I am fully con scious that in chapter after chapter I fly obstinately right in the face of such poor consensus as at present exists. For this I can but bare my head to the bludgeonings of chance or whatever else may determine the reaction of objectors. I have chosen my course deliberately and must accept its conse quences. However, my use of evidence may prove a contentious issue. For in literary research what is evidence and what its validity? Obviously, we lack that objectivity which is the pride and assurance of workers in the natural sciences. Compared with their results, our findings seem hazy and ill attested. The line between fact and subjective interpreta tion of that fact is often obscure, and at the best we seem to deal only with probability rather than proven conclusions. Yet out predicament has its compensations, for it keeps ever before the conscientious worker the fact that any result is uncertain] The natural scientist, through the character of his evidence and through his ability to check it, is in dan ger of supposing that his theories are demonstrated truth, immutable as the universe, when equally with ourselves he is but working with greater and less probability. There is in the total of knowledge not a single proven fact. At every point and in every consideration there enters the complicating element of the human faculties. The tricks that our senses can and do play on us in even most serious moments is a pain ful recollection for probably every throughful person. And when, further, the delicate and highly intricate mechanism of thought and judgment is called into play to build up our ob servations into supposed facts and truths, it is apparent how at every step we move further from certainty. More especially when one's subject matter is human conduct, as in the case of oi.uchicago.edu X PREFACE the historian and student of literature, the problem is so confused and complicated by human psychology at both ends of the investigation that all effort might well be surrendered in despair of solid result. But it is encouraging to reflect that such areas of scholarship are but a projection of common everyday intercourse of mind on mind. Men were using means of communication, were depending upon them, and were finding that with reasonable safeguards they were satisfactory guides long ages before critical faculties awakened to the point of disparaging their reliability. The historian and the liter ary critic have but sublimated the methods of that preschol- arly period, and their results are correspondingly acceptable, They recognize so freely as to feel the raising of the issue an impertinence that they deal with only relative probabili ties. But they can claim, too, that such probabilities have worked through the entire course of human life and that prac tical affairs of our own, as of every day, go on nothing but this same insecure basis. In the end, then, reasonably high probability is (and rightly) accepted as established fact, though every scholar knows that it is nothing of the sort. But the assumption works. So in strict reality I have not proved anything in my study of Ezekiel. Nor have I attempted to do so] The issue is confused with the psychology of the prophet, which some believe to have been highly unusual; and practically every student of the book now admits that other minds, of greater or less number, have added their confusion to the problem. What any one of this indeterminate number may have done is beset with all the uncertainties of human motivation and conduct. They may well have taken just the opposite course to that which I have ascribed to them.

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