CONCERNING THE COMPOSITION OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 181 



desert life, having only the crudest religions ideas, and these of 

 a polytheistic order, and probahly practising the horrid rite of 

 human sacrifice. Thus Abraham, Isaac and Jacob if not 

 Canaanitish lieroes engrafted at a later period on the Hebrew 

 stock, are not to be viewed in the light of the glorified descriptions 

 of the Book of Genesis, for was not that book on the composite 

 document theory compiled some 1,000 or 1,500 years after their 

 shadowy personalities had slept with tlieir fathers ? Moreover, 

 since upon this principle it is impossible that the Hebrew nation, 

 however extraordinary, should have started upon its free national 

 existence with such a constitution as that of the so-called jMosaic 

 Legislation — therefore the bondage in Egypt; the mission of 

 Moses to Pharaoh ; the passage of the Eecl Sea ; the giving of 

 the Law at Sinai ; the journey through the wilderness ; and the 

 conquest of Canaan, are not to be regarded as tlie accurate 

 accounts of sober history. Much of the professed history of the 

 kings must on the same principle be similarly treated, and we 

 are even warned that David himself, the man after God's own 

 heart, the " sweet singer of Israel," and the alleged ancestor of 

 our Lord, being described as of a ruddy countenance," may 

 turn out after all to be only " a solar myth." As to the 

 prophecies of Scri]:>ture they are for the most part pre-dated. 

 history, or where this theory will not work, as in the case of the 

 prophecies of Isaiah, we must suppose two Isaiahs or whatever 

 larger number may be necessary, while with regard to the exilic 

 stories of Esther and Daniel, Esther was a sort of "Fairy 

 Queen," and Daniel was not — there was no Daniel and no den 

 of lions, and no Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and no fiery 

 furnace, and no " Form of the Fourth like unto the Son of God," 

 causing the proud king in humble and penitential tones to 

 exclaim, " Ye servants of the Most High God, come forth and 

 come hither." If it be objected that in the New Testament the 

 writers and speakers treat the records of all these events and 

 persons as historir-,, we are told by one learned divine at least, 

 and he the principal of a theological college in London, that 

 even with regard to our Lord, " historically we know more of 

 the Old Testament than He did " ! 



To establish these premisses then it was deemed necessary to 

 reconstruct the history. But how to do this without rejecting 

 or destroying the records was a difficulty. The new theories, 

 however, have accomplished the task. Eduard Eeuss (1804- 

 1891 A.D.) declares that the solution came to him rather as an 

 intuition than as a logical conclusion, and it was this — " that 

 the prophets are earlier than the Law and the Psalms later 



