118 



PROFESSOR JAMES ORR, D.D., ON THE 



or any other priestly scribe have set down as of solemn authority 

 the ordinance, that the mass of the people should give a tithe of all 

 their annual produce to the Levites, and they again a tithe of their 

 tithe, or only a hundredth part of the produce, to the priests 1 In 

 speaking of the earlier part of the Pentateuch, also. Dr. Orr 

 remarked that Genesis x, with its accurate and comprehensive 

 table of affinities among the nations of the world, stood out as a 

 grand witness to the authentic and contemporar}'- character of 

 the records in Genesis; since it would have been impossible to 

 construct such a table even a single century after the dispersion 

 of the peoples, when settled in their widely severed habitats and 

 speaking tongues so diversified. 



The difficulty of the existence of a " tent of meeting " in the 

 wilderness before Moses was bidden to make one is obviated, if 

 in Exodus xxxiii, 7, we read " his own tent " with the Samaritan 

 Hebrew text instead of "the tent" with the Masoretic Hebrew, 

 making the verse run " And Moses took his own tent and pitched 

 it outside the camp afar off" from the camp, and he called it the 

 tent of meeting" (see Inipl. Bible Bid., Samaritan Pentateuch). 



Doctor Orr's idea that the beautiful tabernacle curtains and 

 the goats' hair tent that covered them had to be renewed from 

 time to time appears (at first sight) to be borne out by the Divine 

 statement made through Nathan to David, " I have gone from tent 

 to tent, and from one tabernacle to another," i Chron. xvii, 5. 

 But the two outer coverings, of ram skins and skins of the 

 fakhash, must have given them a nearly perfect protection against 

 sun and storm ; while the Divine words may well refer to the fact 

 that, after the ark of the covenant was brought back by the 

 Philistines, it went no more to the tabernacle at Shiloh or Gibeon, 

 but first to the house of Abinadab at Kirjath Jearim, then to the 

 house of Obed-Edom at Perez-Uzza, and lastly to a tent that David 

 had pitched for it in Zion — i Sam. vii, 1 ; ii Sam. vi, 8-10, 12, 17 

 et pll. 



Dr. Thirtle : I am struck by the want of consistency in the 

 critical position as a whole. At one time we are told that the 

 ancient Hebrews were an unimaginative people ; that they had no 

 faculty for the romantic. Yet, all the same, their literature has 

 been dealt with in a manner which cannot but suggest that they 

 included men who were veritable adepts in the work of fiction, men 



