METHODS OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 



105 



an advancing and comprehending aim in the events themselves ; 

 a development which cannot fail to be traced in every stage 

 of the history, primitive, patriarchal, Mosaic, and in later days. 



" There is then displayed throughout the whole of these Old 

 Testament Scriptures an historical continuity, a firmness and co- 

 herence of texture, a steadily-evolving, and victorious, self-fulfilling 

 purpose, which has nowhere, even in the remotest degree, its 

 parallel in the history of religions." 



The Truth about the Nam.es Jehovah and Elohim. 



With regard to the use of the names Jehovah and Elohim in 

 tlie Pentateuch, of which so much has been made, until the 

 text becomes a literary patchwork which is absolutely unique 

 in the history of writing, Orr quotes Klostermann, who 

 illustrates the phenomenon from the Psalms. There are 

 groups of Psalms using the name Jehovah, and there are groups 

 using Elohim. Some of the Psalms obviously are recensions 

 of others, or contain quotations. The obvious conclusion is 

 that there was a period wlien the compilers and makers of 

 recensions shrank from using the name Jehovah, and sub- 

 stituted that of Elohim ; and then that later compilers again 

 employed both recensions. So it evidently was in the 

 Pentateuch. There was a recension of old documents by two 

 sets of compilers, one preferring Jehovah, the other Elohim. 



" When the final editing of the Pentateuch took place texts of both 

 recensions were employed, and sections taken from one or the other 

 as was thought most suitable. In other words, for the Jehovah and 

 Elohim documents of the critics Klostermann substitutes Jehovah 

 and Elohim recensions of one and the same old work. To him, as to 

 us, the piecing together of independent documents, in the manner 

 which the critical theory supposes, appears incredible. If 

 hypothesis is to be employed, this of Klostermann's, in its general 

 idea, seems to us as good as any."* 



Professor Orr on Deuteronomy. 



With regard to Deuteronomy, Professor Orr adduces solid 

 and well considered arguments for the following propositions : — 



1. The discovery of the Book of the Law in Josiah's day 

 was a genuine discovery, and the book then found was already 

 old. 



2. The age of Manasseh was unsuitable for the composition 

 of Deuteronomy, and there is no evidence of its composition in 



* Orr, 228. 



