I9O HUXLEY 



As for the historical existence of the " Father of 

 the Faithful " and other ancestors of Israel, Canon 

 Driver animadverts as follows on the assumptions of 

 pseudo-concessionists of the type of Professor Sayce : 



Mr. Tomkins and Professor Sayce have produced 

 works on The Age of Abraham and Patriarchal Pales- 

 tine, full of interesting particulars, collected from the 

 monuments, respecting the condition, political, social, 

 and religious, of Babylonia, Palestine, and Egypt, in 

 the centuries before the age of Moses ; but neither of 

 these volumes contains the smallest evidence that 

 either Abraham or the other patriarchs ever actually 

 existed. Patriarchal Palestine, in fact, opens with a 

 fallacy. Critics, it is said, have taught " that there 

 were no Patriarchs and no Patriarchal age, but, the 

 critics notwithstanding, the Patriarchal age has actually 

 existed," and " it has been shown by modern discov- 

 ery to be a fact." Modern discovery has shown no 

 such thing. It has shown, indeed, that Palestine had 

 inhabitants before the Mosaic age, that Babylonians, 

 Egyptians, and Canaanites, for instance, visited it, or 

 made it their home ; but that the Hebrew patriarchs 

 lived in it there is no tittle of monumental evidence 

 whatever. They may have done so ; but our knowl- 

 edge of the fact depends at present entirely upon what 

 is said in the Book of Genesis. Not one of the 

 many facts adduced by Professor Sayce is independent 

 evidence that the Patriarchs visited Palestine — or even 

 that they existed at all. 1 



Canon Driver will find materials for stronger 

 criticism of Professor Sayce in the Introduction con- 

 tributed by the latter to the Temple Bible, wherein not 

 1 Authority and Archeology, p. 149. 



