162 REV. ANDREW CRAIG ROBINSON_, M.A., ON THE BEARING OF 



into past times of the expedition of Sennacherib (2 Kings 

 xviii, 13), each being an expedition of an Eastern king to put 

 down a vctaM undertaken in a fourteenth year. This fourteenth 

 chapter of Genesis was, according to liis idea, composed from 

 the fourteentlh year of He'xh w.li, GescliieJite cles Volkes Israel 

 (Leipzig, 1869), p. 45. 



Strange that Dr. Driver sliould have written as he did in 

 The Guardian, March 11th, 1896:— 



" The difficulties which some Critics have found in Gen. xiv, 

 consist not in the names mentioned in v, 1 , irhicJi no critic so far as I 

 am aware, has ever insisted an' nnldstoriealJ^ (The itahcs are mine.) 



Especially as the passage in Hitzig is referred to by Dillmann 

 in his discussion of this very chapter. Dillmann, Genesis (1897), 

 vol. ii, p. 32, note. 



Noldeke,* writing in the same year, was incredulous as to an 

 Elamite king having any such far-fetched dominion. The 

 events related could just as well have happened in the year 

 4000 as 2000: the relater avoided intentionally the name of the 

 familiar rulers of the world, the Assyrians ; he sought above all 

 for remote naraes and regions. The names of the kings might 

 have been actually furnislied to him, though in quite another 

 connection. But however that might be, at the most we might 

 assume that he had begun with a few true names intermingled 

 with false or artificial ones, but by the pretence of autiienticity 

 contained in this, Xoldeke said, he was as little deceived as by 

 tlie proper names and dates in the Book of Esther. 



Such was the tone in which tliese critics wrote in the year 

 1869. And Wellhausen writing 20 years later — in 1889 — 

 fully endorsed the view of Noldeke, and was equally sceptical 

 as to tlie historical character of these four kings. He says — 



" Noldeke's criticism (of Gen. xiv) remains unshaken and 

 unanswerable ; that four kings from the Persian Gulf should ' in the 

 time of Abraham ' have made an incursion into the Sinaitic 

 Peninsula ; that they should have attacked five kinglets on the 

 Dead Sea littoral, and have carried them off prisoners . 

 all these incidents are slieer impossibilities which gain nothing in 

 credibility from the fact that they are placed in a world which 

 had passed away." Die coiajmition iles Hexateiichs, pp. 310, 312. 

 (The italics are mine.) 



Zimniern, on the otlier hand, candidly confesses that earlier 

 views held on the subject must be given up. He writes — 



Untcraachaiajcii zur Ki'itih des Alteii Tcstami'iit.'^ p}). 151), 160. 



