AND THE PRESENT STATE OF CRITICISM. 



279 



At what other period of Jewish history would the pre- 

 paration of such a record have been opportune ? As 

 M. Naville puts the matter in a lecture he lately delivered 

 in Paris : Listen for a moment to what the critics tell us 

 of the author who has transmitted these words to us. He 

 is a writer of the Kingdom of Judah, who lived in the ninth 

 century before Christ. The Jewish Kingdom was then 

 divided : ten tribes were separated ; and a worship was 

 established among them which was not that of Jehovah. Both 

 kingdoms Avere hard pressed to defend their independence 

 against powerful neighbours. Moreover, it is not from this 

 writer himself that we learn these words. It is from another, 

 who incorporated them in a book of pieces and patchwork, 

 the so-called ' redactor ' of Genesis, who is supposed to have 

 lived in the fourth century, at a time when Canaan was in the 

 hands of the successors of Alexander, and the Maccabees were 

 making vain efforts to save the independence of their country. It 

 must be asked , was that the moment to announce to the Israelites 

 such words as these : ' Arise ! walk through the land in the 

 length of it and the breadth of it ; for unto thee will I give it ' ? 

 or would not the promises of Jehovah to Abraham have seemed 

 to the people like a mockery ? " But the whole argument of 

 M. Naville has been summarized by M. Doumergue, the Dean 

 of the Free Faculty of Protestant Theology at Montauban, 

 in a tract of which M. Naville has read the proofs, published 

 at the office of Foi et Vie, and this tract contains a most in- 

 structive account of the present position of the controversy.* 

 * From this review of current criticism I would urge 

 again one broad conclusion which cannot be too urgently 

 pressed upon the thoughtful public. The critics and their 

 echoes in the press are continually speaking in the style of 

 Roma locuta est ; causa finita est. German criticism has pronounced 

 that Genesis and the Pentateuch are a late compilation ; let the 

 world and the Church accommodate themselves to the fact. What 

 needs to be loudly asserted is that this claim of finality is 

 palpably untrue. To take only the recent article of Professor 

 Konig in the Expositor for February last, German critics are 



* The title of the tract is Mdise et La Genese, D'apres les Travaux de 

 M. Le Professeur Edotuard Naville, par E. Doumerque, Doyen Honoraire 

 de la Faculte Libre de Theologie Protestanie de Montauban. Paris. Editions 

 de Foi et Vie, 1920. 



