AN EXAMINATION OF MODERN CRITICISM 273
has been often stated, that diversity of subject is sufficient to account for differences of form and style where such exist. Headings and indications of authorship and date were necessary as introducing the series of visions at the beginning of the prophet s ministry, and to the address which formed the reply to the deputation from Bethel (chaps, vii., viii.) ; but no argument can be based on their absence from the oracles in the second part.
Some of the other prophets, too, use headings and attach dates to some of their utterances, and omit them in others. 1 Introductory formulas are, for instance, " made use of by Hosea in the first five chapters of his book, which are completely wanting in the last nine chapters, and yet no doubt is entertained of the integrity of that book. The style, moreover, of that prophet is very different in chaps, i.-iii. from what it is in chaps, iv.-xiv. ; and the style of Ezek. iv., v., is totally different from that of chaps, vi., vii., or of xxvii., xxviii." *
But even those critics who agree in denying the unity of Zechariah do not agree among themselves on the points of style. Thus, Rosenmuller speaks of the first eight chapters as being " prosaic, feeble, poor," and of the last six chapters as " poetic, weighty, concise, glowing " ; while Bottcher, on the other hand, speaks of the " lifeless language " of the last chapters, and compares them with the " amaz ingly fresh " style of the Psalms attributed to the time of the Maccabees.
The argument from style, however, to quote from W. H. Lowe s Hebrew Student s Commentary, must always remain a doubtful one. Pusey has given an instance of the precarious nature of such arguments in the following : " An acute German critic imagined to have proved from their style that the Laws of Plato were not the work of Plato; and yet Jowett (trans., Plato, Dialog, iv. p. i) has shown their genuineness by twenty citations in Aristotle (who must have been intimate with Plato for some
1 Isa. i. i, vi. I ; Ezek. i. 1-3, viii. i, 2, xl. I, 2.
2 C. H. H. Wright. 18
