1877] OLD TESTAMENT STUDY IN 1876 375 



Amos and Nahum are little more than an abridgment of 

 Dr. Pusey. This dependence on his predecessor has 

 lodged Mr. Gandell in the curious inconsistency of dating 

 Nahum in the time of Sennacherib, while he yet admits 

 a reference in iii. 8 to the capture of Thebes at a much 

 later date by Assurbanipal. Mr. Huxtable s Hosea, on 

 the other hand, is a distinct advance on Dr. Pusey ; and 

 though Mr. Meyrick follows the Oxford professor against 

 the best commentators in the date he assigns to Joel, 

 and in regarding the description of the plague of locusts 

 as a prediction, he rejects the figurative interpretation 

 of their ravages. 



Notwithstanding the extreme conservatism on critical 

 questions which the Speaker s Commentary is throughout 

 designed to advocate, Canon Drake regards the integrity 

 of Zechariah as at least very doubtful, and in his exegesis 

 distinctly admits that the historical groundwork of 

 chapter xi. is to be sought in the disastrous times which 

 preceded the fall of the kingdom of Ephraim. It is very 

 noteworthy that a conclusion of the critical school, so 

 important as the plurality of authorship in Zechariah, 

 and which was so long resisted as a fruit of rationalism, 

 has at length gained almost universal acceptance, and is 

 generally allowed to be free from danger to the faith. It 

 may be remembered that there appeared in 1870 a com 

 mentary on Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, by Pfarrer 

 Pressel, a well-known and honoured name among the 

 evangelical clergy of Wiirtemberg, which had been pre 

 pared for Lange s Bibelwerk, but was rejected because it 

 did not accept the unity of Zechariah. No one apparently 

 has been found willing to submit to the conditions imposed 

 by the editor, for the missing part of the series has been 

 supplied, after an interval of six years, by a commentary 

 from the hand of Dr. Lange himself (&quot; Die Propheten 

 Haggai, Sacharia, Maleachi.&quot; Bielefeld, 1876). In another 

 section of the Bibelwerk, which appeared last year (&quot; Die 

 Biicher Esra, Nehemia, und Esther,&quot; by Professor 



