E-text prepared by Stephen Hope, Fox in the Stars, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) Transcriber's note. Text enclosed by underscores was italicized in the original book (_italics_), and text enclosed by forward slashes was in bold face (/bold face/). A minor printing error was corrected (Gen. xliv 29). The Modern Reader's Bible A Series of Works from the Sacred Scriptures Presented in Modern Literary Form SELECT MASTERPIECES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE Edited, with an Introduction and Notes by RICHARD G. MOULTON, M.A. (CAMB.), Ph.D. (PENN.) Professor of Literature in English in the University of Chicago New York The MacMillan Company London: MacMillan & Co., Ltd. 1902 Copyright, 1897, By THe MacMillan Company. Set up and electrotyped September, 1897. Reprinted December, 1897; August, 1898; February, 1899; August, 1900; July, 1901; April, 1902. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A. INTRODUCTION That which we call 'The Bible' has the outward appearance of a book: in reality it is--what the word 'bible' implies in the original Greek--a whole library. More than fifty books, the production of a large number of different authors, representing periods of time extending over many centuries, are all comprehended between the covers of a single volume. There is no greater monument of the power of printing to diffuse thought than this fact, that the whole classic literature of one of the world's greatest peoples can be carried about in the hand or the pocket.