Brief Notices

BRIEF NOTICES Introducing Tke Old Teatament. By FREDERicK L. MoRIARTY, S. J. Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1969. Pp. xi, 268. $4.20. Recent biblical research has cast new light upon Old Testament life and literature. This book, incorporating modem Old Testament scholarship, attempts to introduce its results to the educated non-specialist. Father Moriarty has chosen to present the history of the Old Testament in terms of its great, heroic figures: Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Saul, David, Elijah; Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezechiel, Second Isaiah, Nehemiah, Job, Qoheleth, .and Daniel. The result is a highly dramatic account of the great events and personalities of the ancient Israelites. Father Moriarty must of necessity make a choice of solutions so far proposed. His choice is generally a happy one: modem but never extreme. The following points in the first study "Abraham Our Father," are of interest in themselves and also indicate the tenor of the whole work: (1) due to the work of the archeologists and linguists, the period known as the Patriarchal :Age can no longer be treated " with a generous dose of scepticism "; (2) there cannot be the slightest doubt that our present biblical text of Genesis is the result of a long process, beginning with orally transmitted material; (8) the he}>rew historian does not retell the past for its own sake but for the very practical purpose of instructing, edifying, and inviting men to see God's hand in their history; (4) the contents of our Pentateuch are, in general, very much older than the date at which they were finally edited (i. e., sometime after the Exile in the sixth century B. C.); (6) it is extremely important to distinguish carefully between the age of the biblical material incorporated into a work and the date of the incorporation itself, for failure to appreciate this distinction can give rise to misunderstandings which are entirely unnecessary. Some of these points exert considerable ·influence on the remaining studies of this work. Almost any serious student of the Old Testament will profit from the careful .study of this book. We are indebted to Fr. Moriarty for giving us a modem and well written introduction to the Old Testament. Providence College, Providence, R.I. THoMAS AQUINAS CoLLINS, 0. P. 187 188 BRIEF NOTICES What Is Philosophy? By DIETRICH VON HILDEBRAND. Milwaukee: Bruce, 1960. Pp. viii +242. $4.25. What Is Philosophy? By JosE ORTEGA Y GAsSET. Translated from the Spanish by Mildred Adams. New York: W. W. Norton,1960. Pp. 252. $4.50. What is philosophy? In simplest terms, it is metaphysics, mathematics, logic and the natural, moral and social sciences-all according to the mind, method and principles of St. Thomas Aquinas. This is, of course, a rather rigid and narrow view. A broader view would bring Descartes, Kant, etc., into the world of philosophy, and a still wider view would extend the notion to include the hazy world view of the common phrase, " a philosophical outlook." These distinctions and all the possible variations of them must be kept in mind if we are to attempt any sort of evaluation of the two works here being briefly noted, since both have the ambitious title, What Is Philosophy? Von Hildebrand's book has a curiously ambiguous character. The introduction is belligerently polemical (against those "betrayers of philosophy," the logical positivists), while the rest of the work contains a straightforward, unemotional exposition of von Hildebrand's personal brand of phenomenology . This type of phenomenology is openly proclaimed by von Hildebrand as a philosophical novelty. While for him it was " at the basis of every great philosophical discovery" of the past, it is yet "new, and even revolutionary " because all " former philosophers used this arch-method of philosophy only occasionally and always unsystematically" (p. ~~8). Ortega y Gassett also preaches a new philosophy, or rather, a novel philosophy. For the work of this Spanish writer of extremely vigorous prose (who died in 1955) has been known in this country for some thirty years. His best known work is undoubtedly The Revolt of the Masses, published in English in 1942. In the present work the more theoretical aspects of his philosophy are developed, but the main...