562 OLD TESTAMENT 



ecclesiastical tradition, now become a dogma which they themselves 

 have not outgrown. From the other side the onset is made by the 

 my thologists, who endeavor in one way or another to resolve the plain 

 historical facts into dull, monotonous trains of thought. They will 

 all offer us an occasional contribution; but in the main their work will 

 be vain, because they lack training for the right use of the sources as 

 well as comprehension of the spirit of the Old Testament. There- 

 fore we intend to hold on to our task of writing the history of the 

 people of Israel in its whole extent, and to perform this task increas- 

 ingly well. In this connection we make grateful use of all that the 

 related sciences of every kind have to offer geography, ethnology, 

 archaeology, and all the rest; indeed, we feel ourselves everywhere as 

 fellow workers, and hope to do our duty to the utmost of our power. 

 We follow with particular interest the prodigious progress in the exca- 

 vations on the ruined sites of those nations which lived at the same 

 time as Israel, and, in part, long before; the new branches of science 

 which have sprung up from these researches astonish us with their 

 magnificent results. We are often reproached with the opposite atti- 

 tude, with indifference and apathy, and the consequent stagnation 

 and retrogression in our own work. But our legitimate caution 

 does not deserve such censure. Joyfully as we hail everything which 

 comes forth from the excavations, we still have no desire to fill the 

 yawning trenches with our present possession, with the books of 

 the Old Testament. Sueh things as are there brought up are at first 

 riddles, sphinx forms; what we have in our hands speaks to us a 

 plain language, incapable of misconception. We gladly accept the 

 correct interpretation of the monuments as a substantial enrichment 

 of our own possessions; but the groundwork for an understanding of 

 the people of Israel we must always derive from what has been 

 handed down by this people. Overwhelmingly great as was the phys- 

 ical and intellectual power of the world -empire on the Euphrates 

 and the Tigris; superior as was the kingdom on the Nile, and many 

 another, in comparison with the petty kingdom of Israel, we still 

 have here, in spite of all influences from the most diverse directions, 

 to do with an independent national individuality, and with one so 

 energetic and so vigorous that it ultimately set up for itself its own 

 laws and its own aims. 



This is preeminently true (to return to the kernel of the matter 

 and to the beginning of this survey) of the religion of Israel, in which 

 its life reached its supreme and exhaustive expression. Supported 

 by such presuppositions and preliminaries as are here developed, we 

 can, I dare say, with greater confidence than at the beginning of this 

 survey, associate ourselves and our department with the represent- 

 atives of the general science of religion; and this in spite of our 

 Christian theological stamp, which we neither can, nor desire to, dis- 



