184 REV. A. IRVING, D.SC., B.A., ON 
controversy in the Guardian of 1907, to which reference is 
made in the present paper, was the apparent incapacity of 
Professor Driver to think in terms of scientific thought. That 
eminent Hebraist is not serving the cause of truth, by including 
in the earlier chapters of his Genesis feeble attempts to give 
the results of later investigations of great scientific questions 
cast in the mould of his own mind, and then resorting to the 
art of dialectic “fence” to maintain them for consumption by 
his pupils in the Oxford lecture-room. Such a process amounts 
to dogmatism on matters on which he has no claim whatever 
(so far as I know) to speak as an expert; and involves the 
fallacy of assuming finality for the conclusions of scientists 
themselves. It would be better, I think, if Dr. Driver would 
substitute for his little homceopathic doses of “science ” a good 
“bibliography ” of the subject, which could be simply added to 
from time to time, and would do far more to open the minds of 
theological students to the meaning and nature of science. 
It is only fair to recollect that in his last letter dealing with 
this subject,* Dr. Driver corrects himself to some extent, when 
he speaks of “the imperfect science of antiquity.” I think, 
however, that he would find very few Fellows of the Royal 
Society who would not be prepared to tell him that the science 
even of the twentieth century is “imperfect.” Every Presi- 
dential Address to the British Association emphasises the fact. 
(B) The “ Firmament” (Hebrew Lxpanse). 
Dr. Christopher Wordsworth (no mean Hebrew scholar) tells 
us in his Commentary that the Hebrew word sakia means 
“literally an expanse, not necessarily solid, but simply extended.” 
The ZXX render it by the Greek word crepéwpa, in which we 
may perhaps trace the influence of Egyptian mythology. Then 
the Vulgate translated that by firmamentwm, which carries 
more the idea of something rigid, as a prop or support. But 
I would suggest that we are under no logical necessity of 
forcing into the Hebrew word rakia the conceptions of later 
ages and cultures involved in the words orepéwpa and 
firmamentum. It was therefore with no little surprise that 
I found a professor of theology, who is moreover a fair Hebrew 
scholar, saying in a letter to me a short time ago,t “ Why the 
very idea of a‘ firmament,’ the inverted bowl of the sky, belongs 
* Guardian, Dec. 11th, 1907. 
+ Following apparently the writer of the article “Creation,” in 
Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible. 
