《圣经的故事》
第1章 一部文学遗产
《旧约》和《新约》是如何写成的?数百年来,这部神圣的作品都经历了什么金字塔已有上千年的历史。巴比伦和尼尼微已成为庞大帝国的中心。尼罗河谷和幼发拉底河、底格里斯河那宽阔的谷地中,到处都是忙碌的人群。这时,一支在沙漠中流浪的小部落,为了生存而决定离开位于阿拉伯沙漠边缘的家园,向北迁徙,寻找更加肥沃的土地。后来,人们称这些流浪者为犹太人。几个世纪后,他们为我们提供了一本最重要的书——《圣经》。再后来,他们中的一个女子,生了一位最伟大、最善良的导师。但奇怪的是,我们对这个陌生民族的起源,竟然一无所知。他们不知从何而来。他们扮演了人类民族中最伟大的角色,然后离开了历史舞台,流亡于世界各国。因此,我在本章所介绍的,总体性质有点儿模糊,具体细节也未必可靠。但是,考古学家们正在巴勒斯坦的土地上忙碌地挖掘,随着时光的推移,他们知道得越来越多。我们已经获得了一些事实资料,我将尽力如实地告诉你们。
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1 A LITERARY INHERITANCE
HOW THE OLD AND THE NEW TESTAMENT CAME TO BE WRITTEN AND WHATHAPPENED TO THE HOLY BOOK IN THE COURSE OF MANY CENTURIESTHE pyramids were a thousand years old.Babylon and Nineveh had become the centres of vast empires.The valley of the Nile and that of the broad Euphrates and Tigris were filled with swarmingmasses of busy people, when a small tribe of desert wanderers, for reasons of their own, decidedto leave their home along the sandy wastes of the Arabian desert, and began to travel northwardin search of more fertile fields.In time to come, these wanderers were to be known as the Jews. Centuries later, they wereto give us the most important of all our books, the Bible.Still later, one of their women was to give birth to the kindest and greatest of all teachers.And yet, curious to say, we know nothing of the origin of those strange folk, who came fromnowhere, who played the greatest rule ever allotted to the race of man, and then departed fromthe historical stage to become exiles among the nations of the world.What I shall therefore tell you in this chapter is somewhat vague in its general characterand none too reliable as to detail.But the arch''ologists are busily digging in the soil of Palestine. They are learning moreand more as time goes by. A few facts are at our disposal, and of these I shall try to give you atrustworthy account.
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