66 



THE REV. CHANCELLOR J. J. LIAS, M.A., ON 



their " Priestly Document." It is remarkable, by the way, how 

 often " the fixed and unalterable conclusions of modern 

 scientific criticism" have had to be altered and unfixed. 

 Prof. Driver and his followers now deny that the Pentateuch 

 was completed nntil after the return from the Captivity. 

 Prof. James Kobertson has complained of the want of 

 frankness with which this change has been adopted.* Made as 

 it has been, it would elude the attention of any but the closest 

 observers. But Nemesis is always waiting for us. The slightest 

 change in the elaborate house of cards, so often built up and 

 knocked down again by the analytic critics during the last few 

 centuries, brings it once more to the ground with a crash. In 

 the days of Wellhausen and Kuenen, when Ezekiel, as we have 

 seen, was regarded as the practical inventor of the Law of Moses, 

 the words and phrases said to be characteristic of " P " would 

 naturally appear in the book, written by its " founder." Now 

 it has become entirely post-exilic in its origin, and the theory 

 that Ezekiel, not Moses, was the " founder " of Israelite 

 institutions has been dismissed to the limbo into which so 

 many exploded theories have already disappeared. ]\Iany of the 

 alleged characteristic expressions of " P " are not found in the 

 post-exilic writings, and are not characteristic of the post-exilic 

 period.f Therefore the theory so laboriously built up falls to the 

 ground. Were " P " indeed post-exilic, it would undoubtedly 

 betray distinct traces of its origin. No such distinct traces 

 exist. Thus the phenomena presented by P " are not in- 

 consistent with its Mosaic origin. The occurrence of its phrases 

 in the later Hebrew may be accounted for by the fact that 

 tlie later Hebraists, Ezekiel for instance, were diligent students 

 of the Mosaic law. And the same diligent study would 

 account for the fact that even the post-exilic prophets, 

 though betraying their date by the use of foreign words,| 



* Early Religion of Israel, Preface, p. x. His words are noteworthy : 

 " Statements such as these I have quoted amount in my opinion to a set 

 of critical canons quite different from those of Wellhausen, and Dr. Driver 

 would have been no more than just to himself if he had (as Konig has 

 done) accentuated the difference." 



t Prof. Driver {Introduction, p. 138) says that " Ezekiel's book contains 

 clear traces that he was acquainted with ' what the critics now call the 

 Law of Holiness' (Leviticus, xvii-xxvi)," therefore "P" contains laws 

 which were made before and after the Return from Captivity, (/an the 

 critics tell us which are the earlier laws and which the later ? If they can, 

 why have they not done so I And until they liave done so, of what use 

 is their discovery ? 



I Pachadh, for instance in Haggai, i, 1, for " governor " shehat 

 (Zechariah i, 7), the name of a month. 



