240 EEV. JOHN TUCKWELL, M.E.A.S., OX AECHJ:OLOGY AXD 



Well DOAv. as we all know, one of the great difiBculties in treating 

 a subject like archseology and modern BibKcal scholarship in half 

 an hour or three quarters of an hour is the great number of 

 important things that must necessarily be left unsaid. Still, in 

 spite of these obvious limitations, I feel a little surprised that 

 Mr. Tuckwell should so uniformly identify " Biblical scholarship " 

 with the methods and results of one particular party among Biblical 

 scholars, namely, those who, assuming that the course of progress 

 in religious thought and belief is in all nations and ages necessarily 

 the same, consider themselves authorized in rejecting any historical 

 statement, however well supported, which is not in accord with this 

 assumption, and those, very commonly the same men, who believe 

 themselves able, in dealing with documents written three thousand 

 years ago, and in a language no longer used, one in which there is 

 nothing else that can be used for test or comparison, to pick out 

 clauses and passages in close connection Avith one another, and say 

 that the one was written by a quite different person to the other, 

 and many hundred years before or after the other. 



I must say that it is to me A'ery remarkable that the men who 

 allege this are very often men who deny the possibility of miracles. 



I think we must allow the existence of Biblical scholarship, and, 

 thank God, ripe and soimd scholarship too, which endeavours to 

 base itself on really ascertained facts, including those of archaeology, 

 and is very cautious in admitting the results of so-called literary 

 analysis. 



My second caveat is that " Biblical " seems used throughout the 

 paper as equivalent to the Old Testament alone. I admit, of course, 

 that the bearing of archaeology on Xew Testament scholarship could 

 not have been included in Mr. Tuckwell's paper in the limits of time 

 and space imposed upon it. But do not let us forget that what is 

 true of this matter in regard to the Old Testament is true to an 

 even greater extent in regard to the Xew, and that the school of 

 Biblical critics referred to have been forced, b}' general consent, to 

 abandon many of their most confidently asserted positions as to 

 the Xew Testament mainly by the results of the discovery of old 

 books, long lost sight of, and by the results of excavating and 

 inscriptions which have brought out the historical character of 

 narratives whose truth had been questioned because they did not 

 fit a " critical " theory. 



