" THE MOSAIC calendar; 



161 



the current view is wrong, in the third it is treated as an open 

 question. Even more important than Holland in higher critical 

 leadership is Germany. When the war came the younger theologians 

 in that country had begun to publish monographs debating positions 

 once deemed unshakably established. In America, where the 

 conditions used to be as bad as in England, we have at last suc- 

 ceeded in forcing higher critics to see that not all scholars are agreed, 

 and to discuss the necessity of modifying the assured results " of 

 modern criticism. 



In the main these changes are being wrought by two factors, 

 textual criticism and archaeology, and it will perhaps be best that 

 I should utilise the few minutes at my disposal in giving you some 

 idea of one of the results of recent research, which, owing to the 

 conspiracy of silence, cannot be published in this country, though 

 it has appeared ,in Holland and America. 



You are all familiar with the fact that in 1753 Jean Astruc, a 

 French physician, made a suggestion which has formed the starting- 

 point of all subsequent higher critical work, viz., that different 

 divine names in Genesis point to difference of source. In its modern 

 form the theory is that where the ordinary English versions print 

 Lord (in small capitals) we are to see a document J, while where 

 they have God, we must recognise E or P. The hypothesis never 

 explained the facts adequately, for it was necessary to postulate 

 redactors, revisions, improbable interweaving, &c. ; and of late years 

 it has been greatly discredited by the evidence that Jerome and the 

 LXX had texts that differed greatly from our current Hebrew in 

 this matter. Nevertheless it was possible for the documentary 

 theorists to argue that even if individual modifications were necessary, 

 they would not affect the main outlines of the hypothesis, which 

 would stand even if a number of verses had to be transferred from 

 J to E or P, or vice versa. 



We now come to something that has not yet been published in 

 this country. There is strong evidence that Old Testament texts 

 have undergone extensive revision at the hands of men whose minds 

 were dominated by supposed Divine commands drawn from their 

 interpretation of Biblical texts. If a man be persuaded that a text 

 containing a message from God has a particular meaning, then for 

 him that interpretation is itself a message from God, and it becomes 

 his duty to execute any directions he may understand it to contain. 



M 2 



