170 EEV. ANDREW CRAIG ROBINSON, M.A., ON THE BEARING OF 



rest of the " Hexateuch." If grave doubt is thrown by the 

 stubborn evidence of the monuments on the reality of the 

 critical analysis in this case, the vjlwle Hexateuclial theory is 

 assailed omd is intimately and vitally concerned. 



The Literary Conditions of the Mosaic Age. 



We have seen how the analysis of the Flood story in Genesis 

 by the critics has shown their theories to be in direct anta- 

 gonism to the evidence of archaeology. The evidence of 

 archaeology goes to show that the story of the Flood is one — 

 the theory of the critics is that it is " a doublet " — and we 

 have seen how far-reaching is the significance of this anta- 

 gonism, affecting as it does the reality of the whole Hexateuchal 

 criticism. 



Let us now consider another case — which is also of far- 

 reaching consequences — in which once more the theories of the 

 critics are in direct antagonism to the evidence of archceology. 



Dr. Driver, in the latest edition of his Introduction to the 

 Literature of the Old Testament, takes occasion to remark that the 

 assertion not unfrequently made that the primary basis of 

 Pentateuchal criticism is the assumption that Moses was 

 unacquainted with the art of writing, and that this had been 

 overthrown by the Tel-el-Amarna tablets, rests (so he says) on 

 an entire misrepresentation of the facts. That Moses was 

 unacquainted with the art of writing, he says, is not the premiss 

 upon which the criticism rests, and the antiquity of writing was 

 known long before the Tel-el-Amarna tablets were discovered, 

 p. 158. 



It is not, however, the crude fact as to whether Moses could 

 or could not write that is in question ; the critics may be taken 

 as admitting that he could. The point in question is that the 

 barbarous state from a literary point of view, which the critical 

 theories bring out as the condition of the Israelites in the Mosaic 

 age, is in direct opposition to what archaeology in the present 

 day shows to have been the condition of Egypt and Western 

 Asia at that time. 



Opiiiions of the Critics. 



As to wliat the views of the critics are in regard to the literary 

 condition of Israel in the Mosaic age we can judge by tlie 

 following : — 



