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CRITICAL NOTICES 579
CRITICAL NOTICES,
E. G. KING ON "THE INFLUENCE OF THE
TRIENNIAL CYCLE UPON THE PSALTER."
In the January number of the Journal of "theological Studies
Dr. E. G. King has an important essay on the above subject. The
two clever diagrams which are here reproduced will explain Dr. King's
theory, and he, together with the editors of the Journal named, are
cordially thanked for permission to use the blocks of the diagrams.
Dr. King has made a most welcome and original contribution to the
literary history of the Psalter.
The first diagram explains the division of the Pentateuch into
Sedarim on the triennial system. Dr. King follows the lines ably
laid down by Prof. Buchler in this Review (Vol. VI). The readings in
the three years are represented by three concentric circles, and the cycle,
as Prof. Buchler urged, is taken as beginning on Nisan 1. Dr. King
shows (like Prof. Buchler before him) that the triennial cycle accords
in a really striking manner with Jewish traditions ; many incidents
traditionally associated with certain dates are found to come round
in the cycle to the very dates assigned by tradition. These precise
dates were evolved by the Rabbis from the cycle of Sabbath-readings ;
that is the theory, and it is certainly very probable in the light of
the facts.
Dr. King has accepted Prof. Buchler's results and has added original
points of his own. Some of the most important new points must be
cited. "In the first year of the cycle the readings from Genesis
would have reached chap, xi, i.e. the Story of Babel and the Con-
fusion of Tongues, at the season of Pentecost. Now it is certain that
the writer of Acts ii associated the Confusion of Tongues with the
Day of Pentecost, the Gift of the Spirit being a reversal of the curse
of Babel." This is a very notable coincidence indeed. Again, in the
second year of the cycle the Decalogue is read on Pentecost — whence,
as Dr. Buchler suggested, the traditional association with Pentecost
of the Giving of the Law. It is curious too that Exodus xxxiv comes
round to the 29th of Ab, exactly eighty days after the 6th of Sivan
5 8o
THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
(Pentecost), and the eighty days are accounted for by the two periods
of forty before and after the sin of the Golden Calf. Now Exodus xxxiv
" will be found to contain the elements of a second Decalogue by J,
originally independent of the Decalogue by E in Exodus xx. Thus
the 29th of Ab practically marks a second Giving of the Law, and we
Table I.
may note the fact that, in the third year of the cycle, Deuteronomy
began on that day." The objection to this suggestion is that it
proves too much. It would mean that the triennial cycle very much
affected the arrangement of the Pentateuch, and this is hardly
tenable. Also the argument seems to imply two inconsistent prin-
ciples : one that the accidents of the cycle affected certain traditional
CKITICAL NOTICES
58l
dates, the other that the accidents of traditional dates affected the
cycle. It is remarkable, however, that the Decalogue should be read
on the 1st of Elul in the third year of the cycle, and the 1st of EM
■was a New Tear (Mishnah, Ro$h Hashana, I. i). What is most signi-
ficant is that Genesis ended (with the death of Jacob and Joseph)
on the first Sabbath in Shebat, and that Leviticus also ended on this
same Sabbath.
Table II.
cj
146_±"1H_J01
If we now turn to the second diagram we have Dr. King's attempt
to arrange the Psalter for a triennial cycle of 147-150 Sabbaths.
Here Dr. King's success is very remarkable. He certainly gives us
very strong ground for believing that the arrangement of the Psalter
was influenced by the triennial cycle. Dr. King does not claim more
than this. " I have no thought of suggesting," he writes, " that the
Psalms were originally written for consecutive Sabbaths, but I do
582 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
maintain that certain groups of Psalms belonged to certain definite
points of the Calendar, that the triennial cycle was a natural develop-
ment of this earlier thought, and that this triennial cycle was known
to the editor who arranged the Psalter in Five Books."
Beginning the cycle as before with Nisan, it is seen that " the first
and third Books of the Psalter end in Shebat, exactly as the first and
third Books of the Pentateuch end in Shebat." Further, " the second
Book of the Psalter ends (Ps. lxxii) at the close of Elul, exactly as the
second Book of the Pentateuch ends at the close of Elul." The
benediction, as Dr. King ingeniously urges, Psalm lxxii. 19, obtains
a new meaning if compared with Exod. xl. 34, read on the same
day. Again the Asaph Psalms (lxxiii-lxxxiii) begin at the season of
the Feast of Asiph in the seventh month, when in the first year of
the cycle Gen. xxx. 22 ff. was read, which tells of the birth of Joseph,
and derives the name from the root Asaph. Dr. King had already
urged the connexion on independent grounds, and his argument is
thus strangely if not strongly confirmed. Very noteworthy indeed
is the fact brought out by a comparison of Diagrams I and II with
regard to Ps. xc. This Psalm comes at the very time which tradition
assigned to the death of Moses, and was read on or about the Sabbath
on which Deut. xxxiii was read. The heading of Ps. xc, " A Prayer
of Moses the man of God" (almost identical with Deut. xxxiii. i), is
thus for the first time plausibly accounted for. For this, if for no
other reason, Dr. King's theory deserves respectful consideration
from Biblical students. Equally strong is Dr. King's further con-
tention that the group of Psalms xc-c has been influenced by
Deut. xxxii-xxxiii which were read at the same season. Dr. King is
thus applying a new and enlightening principle to the criticism of
the Psalms. Further, " the Kingship of God is characteristic of the
Korah Psalms exactly as it is of the group xc-c. But if we turn to
Table II we shall see that the Elohistic Korah Psalms xlii-xlix occupy
exactly the same place in the first year of the cycle that the
Psalms xc-c do in the second year, while Pss. cxliv-cl, which were sung
in the third year of the cycle, also speak of the New Song and of the
Kingship of God (cxlv. 1, cxlvi. 10) ; and this too at a time when, in
the order of the Sedarim, the Song of Moses, which is the locus
classicus for the Kingship of God, was recited." Can all this be
accident, asks Dr. King. It is not perhaps accident, but some of
it is a little forced.
More plausible than the last two points is, as it seems to me, the
coincidence that the fifteen Songs of Ascents, the Pilgrim Psalms
(cxx-cxxxiv) occupy the fifteen Sabbaths from 1st Elul to Hanucca.
"Thus, in the third year of the triennial cycle, these Psalms would
CRITICAL NOTICES 583
be the Sabbath Psalms in the Temple during those very months in
which the constant processions of pilgrims were bringing the first-
fruits." Again, there is a tradition (T. B. Megilla, 31 b) that the
Pentateuchal " curses " were read in connexion with the Decalogue (at
Pentecost and Rosh Hashana). The two Psalms of Imprecation
(lxix and cix, see Acts i. 20) come the one immediately after 29th Ab,
the other immediately after Pentecost. Again, the similarity between
the closing Psalms of Book I and the closing Psalms of Book II,
which are penitential in character, is explained by Dr. King on his
theory, for these Psalms come at Penitential periods in the cycle;
Pss. xxii and lxix-lxxii in Elul just before the New Year, and so forth.
Here one feels that Dr. King is on doubtful ground, for surely the
first book of Psalms was arranged on the principle of grouping
together the oldest Psalms. The cycle can hardly have affected this
grouping.
Without following Dr. King into his further suggestion of a Psalm-
cycle beginning, not as the triennial cycle did in Nisan, but on the
second Sabbath in Shebat, enough has been said to indicate the
importance and plausibility of his theory. That there was " some-
thing in it" was clear enough from Prof. Btichler's investigations.
Dr. King has greatly strengthened the case. Students of the Bible
owe him their thanks for having placed before them a new principle
of criticism which has had fruitful results in Dr. King's hands and
may have further results in store.
I. Abrahams.
F. R. TENNANT ON THE FALL AND ORIGINAL SIN.
The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin, by
F. R Tennant, MA., B.Sc. (Cambridge: at the University
Press. 1903.)
In this well-written and learned treatise, Mr. Tennant enunciates
sound conclusions with regard to the Jewish attitude on the problems
of the Fall and of Original Sin. He is to be specially congratulated
on his emancipation from Weber, and Rabbinic studies must gain
enormously from the fact that Christian theologians of the rank of
Dr. Porter of Yale, and Mr. Tennant of Cambridge, are determined
to work independently of such unsafe guides as have previously been
accepted as infallible. Mr. Tennant's book is thus doubly welcome.
It is intrinsically very good, and extrinsically it is epoch-making in
that it marks another stage in the adoption of a truly critical and
