MODERN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP. 



223 



and Champollion were just beginning to unravel the intricacies 

 of the Egyptian hieroglyphics ; Niebulir, Tychsen, and Grotefend 

 were making their first imperfect efforts to decipher the cuneiform 

 inscriptions of Persia ; while Eich, Botta, and Layard had hardly 

 begun to reveal beneath the mounds of Babylonia and Assyria 

 those rich stores of historical knowledge which were destined to 

 revolutionize our conceptions of the civilizations of the past. 

 These stores are so vast and their testimony so incontrovertible 

 that we are justified in saying that Archaeology has shown that — 



I. 



The practice of literature existed at a much earlier period than 

 modern Biblical scholarship at first supposed. The supposition 

 was, bhat except perhaps within the colleges of the Egyptian 

 priesthood and in a few incoherent scratchings upon rocks, 

 human knowledge w^as generally communicated from generation 

 to generation by unwritten tradition, folklore and the songs of 

 wandering bards. 



Canon Driver says : " The date at which an event or institution 

 is first mentioned in writing must not be confused with that at 

 which it occurred or originated : in the early stages of a nation's 

 history the memory of the jpast is preserved hahitimlly hy oral 

 tradition; and the Jews, long after they icere possessed of a 

 literature, were still apt to depend much upon tradition'' (p. 118). 

 The first part of this statement needs qualification, and the 

 second is the rock upon which the " Higher Criticism " splits. 

 Even the elegance, power, and precise descriptions of the Iliad 

 and Odyssey were attributed to a blind bard who could not 

 write. As late as 1884 the Kevisers of the Old Testament 

 changed the perfectly accurate translation of Judges v, 14, in the 

 Song of Deborah and Barak, " out of Zebulon they that handle the 

 pen of the writer," into " they that handle the marshal's staff".'' 

 Thus a number of the accredited authors of Scripture have been 

 substituted by a countless array of unknown writers of later 

 date whose discovery, had it been true, would have been a more 

 astonishing display of the acuteness of the human intellect than 

 the discovery of the Eontgen rays, or of radium, or even of the 

 infinitesimal electrons that are supposed to operate in the 

 invisible electric current. The products of the pens of these 

 hypothetical authors and redacteurs are represented by such 

 symbols as J, J^ J^, E, E^, E^, JE, P, D, D^, D\ etc., E, E^, 

 E^E, JED, etc., etc. 



This amazing analysis, to quote Professor Eerdmanns again, 

 " leads to highly improbable results. Words ; half verses, 



