526th ORDINAEY (IENERAL MEETHSTG. 



MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5th, 1912, 4.30 p.m. 



David Howard, Esq., Vice-President, in the Chair. 



The Minutes of the preceding Meeting were read and confirmed. 

 Announcement was made of the election of the following : — 

 Member : Mrs. Brocklebank. 



Associate : J. Bancroft-Hill, Esq. (a Life Associate). 



Owing to the Author's inability to be present, the Chairman called 

 upon the Secretary to read the paper, entitled : — 



THE HISTORICITY OF THE MOSAIC TABERNACLE. 



By the Rev. Professor James Orr, D.D. 



IT has come to be regarded as a truism by the newer school 

 of Old Testament criticism that the tabernacle described 

 in Exodus xxv f!'. and xxxv ff., as set up by Moses in the 

 wilderness, is unhistorical. It never had a real existence, but 

 is a devout imagination spun from the brains of post-exilian 

 scribes. It is but the Temple of Solomon made portable,'' 

 halved in dimensions, and carried back in fancy to the time 

 of the wilderness wanderings. It belongs, critically speaking, 

 to the document P, or Priestly Writing, which, originating after 

 the exile, is of no authority as a picture of Mosaic times. It 

 is not denied that there was a tent of some simple sort as 

 a covering for the ark — rather, perhaps, a succession of tents — 

 and evidence of this is thought to be found in the mention 

 of such a tent in the narrative of E, the Elohist, in 

 Exodus xxxiii, 7 If., with later notices in Numbers xi, 16, 24 fF. ; 

 xii, 1 ff. ; and Deuteronomy xxxi, 14 f. Everything in these 

 older descriptions, it is said, is of a simpler order. The tent is 



