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THE EEV. CHANCELLOE J. J. LIAS, M.A., ON 



Jews were then able to predict the new moon. This they probably 

 did by means of the luni-solar cycle for 19 years that gives us the 

 Golden Number of the rules for finding Easter, in our book of 

 Common Prayer. The present Jewish calendar is founded on this 

 same Metonic cycle, as it is usually called. The dates of these con- 

 cracts extend from the reign of Xerxes to that of Darius Nothus, so 

 that the very period of the supposed origin of P is covered. It is 

 clear that the Jubilee cycle was not, and could not have been, 

 used for dating these papyri; and that once the 19-year cycle 

 had been discovered, no new ceremonial system based on the 49-year 

 cycle, which was only fitted for a small country, would have been 

 invented amongst the Jews of the Dispersion. 



Dr. Thirtle remarked that when examining the claims of the 

 Priestly Code, we are compelled to consider other aspects of 

 analytical theory as it regards the Pentateuch. Then we find that 

 the entire budget of critical speculation goes together — and thanks 

 to the labours of scholars in many lands, it is all going together in 

 another sense ! 



Mr. Harold Wiener, to whom we have just listened, has put 

 criticism " off its feet " in regard to its prodigious inferences from 

 the distribution of the Divine designations. 



In the Pentateuch we have the priesthood and offerings ; in the 

 so-called "Code" the same features appear. The difference lies 

 here, however : while the Pentateuch exhibits the institutions in 

 relation to Moses, the law-giver of Israel, criticism represents them 

 as coming on the scene after the time of the great prophets. The 

 confusion is not one of documents merely, but of the objective con- 

 tent of history, as it relates to the ways of God in dealing with the 

 Israelitish nation. 



A short time ago, Pev. Iverach Munro read before the Institute a 

 paper on the Samaritan Pentateuch and its problems. We do well 

 now to recall that the facts of that well-known recension of the 

 Pentateuch supply an unanswerable case against the post-exilic date 

 of the Priestly Code, and for that matter of any part of the early 

 books of the Bible. The schismatic history of the Northern Kingdom 

 of Israel demands the institutions — that is, the material content — 

 of the Priestly Code centuries before the exile. Without the aspect 

 of schism, joined to that of rebellion, we cannot understand Israel- 

 itish history, either as regards the Ten Tribes or the Two. 



