HISTORICITY OF THE MOSAIC TABERNACLE. 



123 



of religious romance, and demands to be read as a record of what 

 took place. 



Mr. H. M. Wiener said : As it is getting late I must confine 

 myself to one or two points. There can, I fear, be no doubt that 

 Dr. Woods Smyth was quite right in saying that Dr. Orr accepted 

 the documentary theory, though in a modified form. Indeed there 

 is evidence of this in the sentence on p. 113, relating to the history 

 of the Ark, where the composition of Deuteronomy is treated as 

 an event that took place between the age of David and Solomon 

 and the destruction of the Temple. 



I desire to express my entire concurrence in what Sir Eobert 

 Anderson said as to the inability of the Higher Critics to weigh 

 evidence. 



The main point with which I wish to deal is the question of the 

 tent in Exodus xxxiii, 7 if. The first of these verses is not 

 accurately translated in the current English version. It should 

 run, "And Moses used to take the tent" — or a tent, for Hebrew 

 idiom uses the definite article in certain cases where the English 

 would require the indefinite " a " — " and pitch it for himself, etc." 

 The little Hebrew monosyllable meaning "for himself" is un- 

 fortunately omitted in the English versions, but in the most recent 

 English edition of Exodus — that of Dr. Driver — the inaccuracy of 

 the current rendering is pointed out. Now I put it to you, is it 

 really conceivable that if the tent here spoken of had been the 

 shelter of the Ark, Moses would have taken it and pitched it for his 

 own use outside the camp, afar off from the camp, leaving the Ark 

 itself bared and unguarded in the midst of the camp If that question 

 is answered in the only possible way, it follows of necessity that 

 this narrative does not relate to that tent of meeting, which we call 

 the Tabernacle in ordinary parlance. A difficulty then arises from 

 the name "tent of meeting." It is hard to believe that after seven 

 chapters (xxv-xxxi) almost wholly devoted to instructions for the 

 tent which was to bear that name, Moses should have taken an 

 entirely different tent for his own purposes and applied to that the 

 designation of the intended home of the Ark. If he had done so, 

 the narrative would surely have given us some intelligible explana- 

 tion of his procedure. I, myself, believe that Exodus xxxiii, 7-11, 

 is at present misplaced, and should stand much earlier (see Essays 

 in Fentateuchal Criticism, pp. 93-102, 106 f . ; The Origin of the 



