190 REV. JOHN TUOKWETL, M.R.A.S.^, ON MODEEN THEORIES 



say more upon the archaeological test, because I see some here who 

 are experts in the matter, except this, that people say, " Is it really 

 thought that Genesis is Babylonian " 1 I say yes, of course it is, for 

 Abraham came from that part of the world. 



But I will pass to another topic which is hardly ever touched on. 

 Mr. Tuckwell touched on it on one page, viz., the linguistic side. 

 So little is said about the linguistic side of this matter. Any 

 student would naturally expect that the oldest part of the Old 

 Testament \vould show marks of its age, and that the later part 

 would show marks that it is latei:* I have devoted a great deal of 

 my spare time to this particular question, investigating the 

 linguistic side of the subject, and I have found, almost to my 

 surprise, and to my intense satisfaction, a very strong linguistic 

 evolution, as I will call it for convenience, running from Genesis 

 onwards, so that you have a number of non-technical words there, 

 which are afterwards dropped out, and another series of words 

 rising up in the days of the Kings, and a still further series in the 

 days of the Captivity. Just let me give you, for a moment or two, 

 one or two instances. It is often thought remarkable that " clean " 

 and "unclean" beasts should have been referred to so long ago as 

 the days of the Deluge. What did they know about clean and un- 

 clean beasts 1 The curious thing is that when you examine your 

 text carefully you find that expression "unclean " is not used, but 

 the non-technical expression " not clean." 



Again, how remarkable it is that the month Ahib, the month of 

 the Passover, is so called in Exodus, but it drops out in the later 

 books, and the name Nisan is substituted for it. Ahih is an 

 Egyptian word and therefore is in its place in Exodus, but it drops 

 out afterwards because the people got to Assyrianize their words 

 more. 



Another instance is the shewbread used in Exodus and other 

 books. You can trace the word up to the time of David, and from 

 that time onwards it is totally different. The word is in the Bible, 

 although, unfortunately, our revisers have not noticed the change. 

 They ought to have put Shewbread in the one case and Bowbread in 

 the other, 



I hope the days will come when our critics will spend more time 

 in studying what the words mean than in substituting their own 

 ideas. I feel sure that the paper that has been read will be a great 



