Article September 29, 1906 ISSUE

THE FIRST COMMANDMENT

LEWIS R. WORKS.

In his translation of the Bible into modern English, Ferrar Fenton, the English linguist and scholar, ascribes the authorship of the Books of Joshua, Judges, I Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and 2 Kings to Isaiah. These books the translator groups together under the title, "The History of the People of Israel," and he finds authority for placing the authorship in Isaiah, among other things, in 2 Chronicles, 32:32, which he renders, differently from the old translators, as follows: "But the rest of the doings of Hezekiah, and his piety, they can be seen written in the Visions of Isaiah-ben-Amoz, the Preacher, in the History of the Kings of Judah and Israel."

Mr. Fenton refers to the fact that in the old Hebrew arrangement the six books mentioned immediately preceded the book so well known under the name of the great prophet, and suggest "that Isaiah wrote this History of the Hebrews as an introduction to his warnings to his Nation, and to explain what would be the blessings he foretold, if it repented; for had he not done so by showing its former glorious condition and subsequent crimes, those warnings would have been incomprehensible to the mass of his readers in his own day, and far more so to us."

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