86 IS THE SO-CALLED " PRIESTLY CODE " OP POST-EXILIC DATE ? 



the Psalm, very expressly said to have been sung at the bringing up 

 of the ark, is, that the Chronicler is correct to his source. It was so 

 sung. And the constituent parts of it were, either before or after, 

 taken up into the official Psalm-book in a different way, i.e., it was 

 either adapted from existing Psalms, or taken up into Psalms 96 and 

 105 later. 



The Chronicler all along modernises and explains every one of his 

 ancient sources. Perhaps the most striking instance is when in 

 I Chronicles xxix, 7, he calculates the offering of David's princes in 

 darics, which were certainly not the Davidic currency. Nor did 

 the Chronicler think so himself. We have the authority of Buhl for 

 saying the word means darics, the Persian currency. It will not be 

 necessary to labour the point that the Pentateuch discovers not a trace 

 of this modernising and explaining. The Torah, on the contrary, is 

 allowed on all hands to hand on traces of a much more ancient past 

 in words and things. A large part of it is only applicable to a 

 camp in the desert. In the Chronicles much is altered. But none 

 of these alterations, modernisings, or explanations have invaded the 

 Pentateuch text in any way, though there are traces of later editing 

 here and there. 



I hold, therefore, that it is a good and scientific inference that 

 these facts point to the Pentateuch having come down to the 

 Chronicler's time as a sacred deposit — far too sacred to be tampered 

 with — from the ancient times, which its own witness professes. 



If P was only recent in the Chronicler's time, or if P was only 

 then coming into being, traces of the Chronicler's method and style, 

 which was the method and style of his time, would infallibly have 

 been found in it. 



Mr. Martin L. Eouse thought that no evidence of chronological 

 custom should be based upon the Assouan papyri, since, to his 

 mind, the genuineness of those documents was open to question. 



Prof. Langhorne Orchard congratulated the Institute upon 

 this important paper, read to them by a distinguished scholar who 

 knew so well how to yoke learning with logic, and harness them 

 both in the service of truth. They all hoped that he would be 

 spared to give them yet other papers as valuable as this, for which 

 they heartily thanked him. 



The Meeting adjourned at 6.30 p.m. 



