HERODIANS

by the Jews with open arms. He continued to hold the Imperial favour, and his territory was expanded until his rule had a wider range than that of his grand-father. His reign was the Indian summer of Judaism. Even the Pharisees thought well of him. When he was at Eome he lived as one who knew Rome well. But in Jerusalem he wore his Judaism as a garment made to order. He was quite willing to gratify the Jews by putting leading Christians to death (Ac 12). In high favour both at Jerusalem and at Rome, he seemed to be beyond attack. But the veto put on his proposal to rebuild the walls of his capital showed clearly that he was on very thin ice. And the pagan streak in him was sure, sooner or later, to come to light. The story of his death, wherein the Book of Acts (12™-23) and Josephus (Ant. xix. viii. 2) substan-tially agree, brings this out. At Csesarea he paraded himself before a servile multitude as if he were a little Caesar, a god on earth. Smitten by a terrible disease, he died in great agony (a.d. 42). Jews and Christians aUke looked on his end as a fitting punishment for his heathenism. The house of Herod was 'half-Jew' to the last.

7. Herod Agrippa II., son of the last named, before whom St. Paul delivered the discourse contained in Ac 26.

[The genealogical table will bear out the opinion that Herod and his family brought into history a very con-siderable amount of vigour and ability.]

Henry S. Nash.

HERODIANS. — The name of a political party among the Jews, which derived its name from the support it gave to the dynasty of Herod. Perhaps they hoped for the restoration of the national kingdom under one of the sons of Herod. The Herodians appear in the Gospels on two occasions (Mk 3K Mt 22" || Mk 12") as making common cause with the Pharisees against Jesus.

HERODIAS. — See Herod, No. 3, and John the Baptist.

HERODION. — A Christian mentioned in Ro 16", apparently a Jew, and perhaps a freedman of the Herods.

HERON. — The Heb. word 'anSpMh designates an unclean bird (Lv 11", Dt 14i8), not otheiwise mentioned in the Bible, but sufficiently well known to be taken as a type of a class. The occurrence of this name immedi-ately after stork, and followed by the expression 'after her kind,' makes it probable that the EV rendering is correct. The heron belongs to the same group as the stork, and no fewer than six species of the genus Ardea alone are found in Palestine.

HESHBON is the modem Hesban, finely situated close to the edge of the great plateau of Eastern Palestine. The extensive ruins, mainly of Roman times, lie on two hiUs connected by a saddle. The site commands views, E. and S., of rolling country; N., of hills, in-cluding e.g. that on which el-' Al (Elealeh) lies; and W., in the distance, of the hills of Judah, and nearer, through a gap in the near hills, of the Jordan valley, which lies some 4000 feet below, the river itself being barely 20 miles distant. Allotted to Reuben (Jos 13"), Heshbon appears in the OT most frequently as being, or having been, the capital of Sihon (wh. see), king of the Amorites (Dt 2^' and often), or, like many other towns in this neighbourhood, in the actual possession of the Moabites (Is 15' 16"-, Jer 482- 8"-), to whom, according to Nu 21™, it had belonged before Sihon captured it. Jer 49', which appears to make Heshbon an Amorite city, is probably corrupt (cf . Driver, Book of the Prophet Jere-miah). According to Josephus (Ant. xiii. xv. 4), it was in the hands of the Jews in the time of Alexander JannEeus (b.c. 104-78). The pools in Heshbon, men-tioned in Ca 7', were perhaps pools near the spring

HEXATEUCH

which rises 600 feet below the city, and in the neigh-bourhood of which are traces of ancient conduits.

G. B. Gray.

HESHMON. — An unknown town in the extreme south of Judah (Jos 16").

HETH.— A 'son' of Canaan, Gn 10" (J)=l Ch 1". The wives of Esau are called in Gn 27« (R) ' daughters of Heth'; and in Gn 23^- 25i» 49^2 (all P) 'children of Heth,' i.e. Hittites, are located at Mamre. See, further,

HiTTITES.

HETHLON.— A place mentioned by Ezekiel (47" 48') as situated on the ideal northern boundary of Israel. Furrer identifies it with the present Heitela, N.E. of Tripoli; and von Kasteren and others favour ' Adlun, north of the mouth of the Kasimiyyeh.

W. M. Nesbit.

HEXATEUCH.— The first five books of the OT were known in Jewish circles as 'the five-flfths of the Law.' Christian scholars as early as TertuUian and Origen adopted the name Pentateuch, corresponding to their Jewish title, as a convenient designation of these books. ' The Law ' was regarded as a unique and authoritative exposition of all individual and social conduct vrithln Israel: a wide gulf seemed to divide it from the Book of Joshua, which inaugurated the series of historical books known as ' the Latter Prophets.' As a matter of fact, this division is wholly artificial. The five books of the Law are primarily intended to present the reader not with a codification of the legal system, but with some account of the antiquities and origins of Israel, as regards their religious worship, their political position, and their social arrangements. From this standpoint, nothing could be more arbitrary than to treat the Book of Joshua as the beginning of an entirely new series: 'its contents, and, still more, its literary structure, show that it is intimately connected with the Pentateuch, and describes the final stage in the history of the Origines of the Hebrew nation' (Driver, lOT^ 103). Critics have accordingly invented the name Hexateuch to emphasize this unity; and the name has now become universally accepted as an appropriate description of the first six volumes of the OT. In this article we propose to consider (I.) the composition, (II.) the criticism, and (III.) the characteristics of the Hexateuch.

I. Composition of the Hexateuch. — 1. The Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch was for long regarded as an unquestioned fact. The basis of this belief was the Jewish tradition of their origin which the Church took over with the books themselves. But this wide-spread and long-prevailing tradition cannot be sustained after an impartial investigation of all the facts. Indeed, the Pentateuch itself never claims such an authorship.

The account of the death of Moses and Joshua must, of course, have been added by a later writer. The description of Moses' character in Nu 12^ cannot be the comment of the legislator himself; while the appreciation of his character which closes Deuteronomy (S^'") suggests that a long line of prophets had intervened between the writer's own time and Moses' death. Similarly, Gn 12'' is a reminder to the readers that the Canaanites^ were the original inhabitants of Palestine — a fact which it would have been obviously needless for Moses to record, but which subsequent genera-tions might have forgotten. Again, in Gn 36^' a reference is made to the time 'before there reigned any king over the children of Israel,' which is explicable only as the com-ment of an author who lived under the monarchy. The words contain no hint of any predictive suggestion such as might be held to dispute the legitimacy of the same inference being drawn from the law of the kingdom (Dt 17'*), though even then it would be difficult to deny that, if Moses pro-vided forthe contingency of a monarchical constitution, the form in which his advice is recorded is largely coloured by reminiscences of the historical situation in the reign of Solomon.

Certain passages do, indeed, lay claim to Mosaic authorship — e.g. the defeat of the Amalekites (Ex 17") and the Book of the Covenant (Ex 24''), the central part of the Deuteronomic legislation, i.e. chs. 12-26 (Dt 3P*).

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