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REV. CANON GARRATT, M.A., ON 



What do the higher critics say about a question which so 

 much concerns them ? I can find no reference to it in 

 Wellhausen's Die composition des Hexateuch, nor in his 

 Prolegomina. In his criticism in both these books, on 2 Kings 

 xvii, a chapter in which it could not be forgotten, it is not 

 even mentioned. Nor do I find any allusion to the subject in 

 Driver's Introduction. Chancellor Lias says in PrinciijUs of 

 BiUical Criticism : " This independent edition of the books of 

 Moses is most characteristically ignored by the new Criticism." 

 It is evidently not a welcome subject with modern critics. Bishop 

 Herbert Eyle (now Bishop of Winchester) in his Canon of the 

 Old Testament, is an honourable example of breaking through 

 what I can only call a conspiracy of silence among the critics. 

 He published a second edition of his book in 1895, and added 

 to chapter iv an appendix on the Samaritan Pentateuch, and 

 speaks of the importance of the subject as apparent to every 

 thoughtful student, which makes the silence of the best known 

 nien of the modern critical school the more remarkable. 

 "Important, however," he says, "as the subject is, it will be 

 felt to belong more properly to the province either of an enquiry 

 into the history of the Hebrew text, or of an investigation into 

 the history of the Hebrew characters. But in recent years the 

 evidence of the Samaritan Pentateuch has been loudly 

 proclaimed to be the rock upon which the modern criticism of 

 the Pentateuch must inevitably make shipwreck. Under these 

 circumstances an apology is hardly needed for briefly touching 

 upon the subject." 



I will not enter on his attempt to represent the Pentateuch 

 as having been brought by a renegade Jew to the Samaritans in 

 the time of Nehemiah, in whose days he places the institution of 

 Samaritan worship on Mount Gerizim. He supposes that 

 events which Joseph us places in the time of Alexander the 

 Great really took place in the time of Nehemiah, who makes 

 no mention of them, and that " at the time when the Samaritan 

 worship was instituted, or when it received its final shape from 

 the accession of Jewish malcontents, the Canon of the Jews at 

 Jerusalem consisted of the Torah only."* This is from the first 

 edition. To such straits is the most reasonable and candid 

 higher critic driven to avoid shipwreck on the rock of the 

 Samaritan manuscripts. 



Bear in mind that admittedly there have been no new 

 facts since Kennicott's days, and that Gesenius himself gives no 



* Canon of the O.T. (2nd Edition, p. 93). 



