52 



REV. A. H. Fl^'Kj ON THE 



forces. Healthy constructive work is now being done, and the more 

 the ancient documents are investigated without bias, and even with- 

 out favour, the more all these peculiar vain imaginings recede into 

 the distant past. It is refreshing to follow up the new line of 

 investigation, and also to turn aside from the extraordinary con- 

 clusions at which the latest disciples of Higher Criticism are 

 now arriving. 



It would not be the place here to mention any of these latest 

 adepts in the art of destruction. It is curious to me to see how 

 people will turn away from plain simple facts in order to give them 

 a most fantastic interpretation. Neither the facts nor the words of 

 the Bible mean to them what they really represent. Quite difiereiit 

 meanings are placed upon them. I am sometimes reminded of 

 recent studies in folk-lore where simple facts are made to carry 

 a meaning totally strange to them. But this is a passing phase. 

 A real independent examination of the relation between the Greek 

 and the Hebrew has yielded already results different from those 

 anticipated and taken for granted by the Higher Critics. 



A critical edition of the Hebrew Bible, a desideratum of the highest 

 order, will place us in even a better position to meet some of the 

 verbal quibbles of these critics ; and still more a patient and laborious 

 investigation of the text as it stands cannot fail in the long rim to 

 vindicate the antiquity of the Tor ah. I specially hold strong views 

 about the Samaritan Pentateuch, which I believe to have been the 

 text of the Northern Tribes, and therefore to represent a recension 

 almost as old as the Judsean version, and akin to that popular Bible 

 (a Hebrew Vulgate) which I consider to have been the basis of the 

 Greek translation. It is far anterior to the date you mention ; 

 and in my forthcoming History of the Jews, at which I have been 

 working for many years, I hope to throw some new light on that 

 famous incident mentioned in Ezra. The philological arguments 

 break down as soon as they are no longer examined from a pre- 

 conceived point of \dew. And even under the levelling activity 

 of the Massorites, one can distinguish various strata, not only of 

 language, but also of dialects. 



Moreover, the compilation of a book like the Law out of mere 

 tatters and fragments would not only be a unique phenomenon 

 in the literarv history of the world, but would scarcely be accepted 



