-274 THE VERY REV. H. WACE, D.D., OX THE OLD TESTAMENT 



of the Tabernacle is '" a pure fiction," and asks what are the 

 grounds for this custonmrv contention of the Wellhausenians ? " 

 There are, he says, no reliable evidences against the existence 

 of the Tabernacle as described in Exodus xxv to xxvii. 

 Delitzsch's attack has thus served to bring out the fact that the 

 most learned German criticism, as represented in a veteran 

 scholar like Dr. Konig, has been forced to retreat very far indeed 

 behind what may be described as the Wellhausen and Driver 

 lines. 



It is inexcusable in these circumstances that handbooks 

 should be pubUshed, and encouraged by high authorities 

 in our Church, which teach the pupils in our schools and 

 colleges that the positions occupied by the critics of a 

 generation ago are still strongholds of critical truth, and that the 

 early narratives of the Bible are pious fictions, Tsithout historical 

 value. On the contrary, one of the most learned — perhaps the 

 most learned — of German scholars maintains with con\'iction 

 the substantial historical truth of those early narratives ; and 

 even the hypothesis of the composite character of the Pentateuch 

 is no longer incompatible with a belief in the reahty of the 

 revelations made to Abraham, and of the divine education of the 

 Patriarchs, as narrated in the Book of Genesis. It is an immense 

 gain in this long and obstinate controversy that these points 

 should have been recovered. It cannot be too widely known, 

 or too strongly asserted, that although the actual composition 

 of the Pentateuch is still the subject of acute differences of 

 opinion, there is no longer any critical agreement, even in Germany, 

 that its narratives are unhistorical. Assertions that this is one 

 of the assured results of criticism " must be chaiitably 

 stigmatised as due to ignorance of the state of critical investi- 

 gation. 



But the question is being carried to important further stages 

 by two eminent scholars. Dr. Kyle, in America, has not only 

 adduced indisputable e^'idence of the correspondence of the 

 Pentateuchal history with archaeological discoveries, but has 

 proposed a new, and very interesting, explanation of those varying 

 characteristics of the several sections of the Pentateuch on 

 which the critics rely for its composite character. His book has 

 so lately been published that it is premature to estimate the 

 extent of his success. But his theory appears to be that the 

 peculiar features of language and treatment, on which the critics 



