234 VERY EEV. THE DEAN OF CANTERBURY^ ON POSITION AND 



Girdlestone continues to exhibit as quiet a confidence in the 

 substantial truth of the traditional belief respecting the Old 

 Testament as the critics do in their own hypotheses, and like 

 them he for the most part reserves his fire. A Jewish barrister, 

 Mr. Wiener, has, however, for some years been directing a vehe- 

 ment assault on the whole critical position, and has certainly made 

 some important breaches in its defences. But until the last month 

 or two the leaders of the critical school have maintained a self- 

 satisfied silence, as though the question w^ere finally settled. 

 In Germany the case has been very different. A steady 

 resistance has been maintained by some leading scholars to 

 various parts of the critical theory. Klostermann, in particular, 

 rejects the whole theory of the four sources, and regards the 

 Pentateuch as having, as it were, crystalHzed by gradual 

 accretion round an original Mosaic and Sinaitic law ; and 

 Koenig, while accepting the four sources in the main, assigns to 

 parts of them a far more ancient and liistoric character than is 

 allowed by the Wellhausen school. But still more radical 

 attacks have been initiated during the last few years, 

 Eerdmans has started an entirely new, and, it must be said, still 

 more improbable, theory of an original polytheistic book ; which 

 was subsequently revised in a monotheistic sense. But more 

 serious attacks have been directed by other scholars, especially 

 by Johannes Dahse, against the groundw^ork of the documentary 

 theory, and at length a leading English critic has thought it 

 necessary to reply to him. In the last two numbers of the 

 Expositor, for April and May, Dr. Skinner of Cambridge has 

 replied fully to Dahse, and perhaps successfully, so far as the 

 efficiency of Dahse's alternative theory is concerned ; but he 

 has to make admissions which appear seriously damaging to 

 his own position. Well may it be said by Dr. Sellin, of Rostock, 

 one of the leading members of the moderate critical school, in 

 his recent Introduction : " It will be seen that w^e are passing 

 through a period of ferment and transition, and in what follows 

 we present our own view as only the hypothesis which appears 

 to us as the best founded." 



It must be added that a still more strenuous opposition to 

 the current theory is being maintained by able American 

 scholars. Dr. Green, of Princeton, who was Chairman of the 

 American Company of Revisers of the Old Testament, was to 

 the last a resolute opponent of the whole " divisive hypothesis " : 

 and his example is being followed by Dr. G. F. Wright and his 

 co-editors in the valuable American Quarterly, the BiUiotheca 

 Sacra. This journal has given Mr. Wiener a constant welcome. 



