98 



THE SILENCES OP SCRIPTURE. 



Mr. Theodore Roberts suggested as a reason for the omissions in 

 Scripture that Scripture was intended to have a moral bearing and 

 not merely to satisfy our curiosity. He said that too much could 

 not be implied from silences, instancing the statement in Nehemiah 

 that there had been no feast of Tabernacles kept since Joshua. He 

 spoke of the unity of authorship underlying the whole of Scripture. 



He considered that by the constitution of our minds we learned 

 much by contrast, and referred to the way in which the Old Testa- 

 ment recorded the breakdown of the first man as " Head of the 

 Race " (in Genesis), as " Priest " (Exodus to 1 Samuel), as " King " 

 (1 Samuel to 2 Kings), and as " Prophet " (ending in the silence 

 after Malachi) ; and the re-establishment of these things in Christ, 

 the Second Man, recorded in Mark (as Prophet), Matthew (as King), 

 Luke (as Priest), and John (as Head of the new race, the last Adam). 



Reply by the Lecturer. 



The comments on the paper are, for the most part, so much in 

 agreement with the general argument that there is little need for 

 a reply. 



The Samaritan and Septuagint differences as to the patriarchal 

 ages alluded to by Mr. Bishop were of course known to me, and 

 indeed they are fully discussed in my little work The Starting 

 Place of Truth. If the longer period advocated by Mr. Bishop 

 be accepted, that would only increase the significance of the silence 

 concerning it. 



The silences instanced by Mr. Hoste (p. 96) and Mr. Leslie (p. 97) 

 really fall under the head of " the exclusion of the ordinary and 

 regular " (p. 76). I am afraid I cannot agree that ambiguities can 

 fairly be classed as silences. 



Neh. viii, 17, does not assert that " there had been no feast of 

 Tabernacles kept since Joshua " : it only asserts that since that 

 time the people had not dwelt in booths. 



