_Hebrew Literature_.--The literature of the Hebrews is essentially religious in its whole motive and spirit. This is true even of their historical writings. The marks of the one defining characteristic of their national life--faith in Jehovah and in his sovereign and righteous control--are everywhere seen. Hebrew poetry is mainly lyrical. Relics of old songs are scattered through the historical books. In the _Psalms_, an anthology of sacred lyrics, the spirit of Hebrew poesy attains to its highest flight. Examples of didactic poetry are the Book of _Job_, and books like the _Proverbs_, composed mainly of pithy sayings or gnomes. Nowhere, save in the Psalms, does the spirit of the Hebrew religion and the genius of the people find an expression so grand and moving as in the _Prophets_, of whom _Isaiah_ is the chief. ART.--In art the Hebrews did not excel. The plastic arts were generally developed in connection with religion. But the religion of the Hebrews excluded all visible representations of deity. Nor were they proficients in science. "Israel was the vessel in which the water of life was inclosed, in which it was kept cool and pure, that it might thereafter refresh the world." The HISTORICAL BOOKS of the Old Testament comprise, first, the _Pentateuch_, which describes the origin of the Hebrew people, the exodus from Egypt, and the Sinaitic legislation. Questions pertaining to the date and authorship of these five books, and of the materials at the basis of them, are still debated among historical critics. It may be regarded as certain, however, that materials belonging to nearly every period of Hebrew literature, from the earliest times, are here combined. The early part of Genesis is designed to explain the genealogy of the Hebrews, and to show how, step by step, they were sundered from other peoples. The narratives in the first ten chapters--as the story of the creation, the flood, etc.--so strikingly resemble legends of other Semitic nations, especially the _Babylonians_and _Phoenicians_, as to make it plain that all these groups of accounts are historically connected with one another. But the Genesis narratives are distinguished by their freedom from the polytheistic ingredients which disfigure the corresponding narratives elsewhere. They are on the elevated plane of that pure theism which is the kernel of the Hebrew faith. This whole subject is elucidated by Lenormant, in _The Beginnings of History_ (1882). The Book of _Joshua_ relates the history of the conquest of Canaan; _Judges_, the tale of the heroic age of Israel prior to the monarchy; the Books of _Samuel_ and of _Kings_, of the monarchy in its glory and its decline; the Books of _Chronicles_ treat of parts of the same era, more from the point of view of the priesthood; _Ruth_ is an idyl of the narrative type; _Ezra_, _Nehemiah_, and _Esther_ have to do with the return of the Jews from exile, and