290 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY viii 



anthropologist. Our task is to rescue these from 

 their relatively unimportant surroundings, and by 

 careful comparison with existing forms of theology 

 to make the dead world which they record live 

 again. In other words, our problem is pabeon- 

 tological, and the method pursued must be the 

 same as that employed in dealing with other 

 fossil remains. 



Among the richest of the fossiliferous strata 

 to which I have alluded are the books of Judges 

 and Samuel. 1 It has often been observed that 

 these writings stand out, in marked relief from 

 those which precede and follow them, in virtue 

 of a certain archaic freshness and of a greater 

 freedom from traces of late interpolation and 

 editorial trimming. Jephthah, Gideon and 

 Samson are men of old heroic stamp, who 

 would look as much in place in a Norse Saga 

 as where they are ; and if the varnish-brush of 

 later respectability has passed over these memoirs 

 of the mighty men of a wild age, here and there, 

 it has not succeeded in effacing, or even in seriously 



1 Even the most sturdy believers in the popular theory that 

 the proper or titular names attached to the books of the Bible 

 are those of their authors will hardly be prepared to maintain 

 that Jephthah, Gideon, and their colleagues wrote the book of 

 Judges. Nor is it easily admissible that Samuel wrote the two 

 books which pass under his name, one of which deals entirely 

 with events which took place after his death. In fact, no one 

 knows who wrote either Judges or Samuel, nor when, within 

 the range of 100 years, their present form was given to these 

 books. 



