Biblical Sentence Examples

Its object was to fix the biblical text unalterably.

The occupants of Edom during practically the whole period of Biblical history were the Bedouin tribes which claimed 1 A curious etymological speculation connects the name with the story of Esau's begging for Jacob's pottage, Gen.

The critical investigation of these records is the indispensable prelude to all serious biblical study, and hasty or sweeping deductions from monumental or archaeological evidence, or versions compiled promiscuously from materials of distinct origin, are alike hazardous.

Where the material is fuller, serious discrepancies are found; and where external evidence is fortunately available, the independent character of the biblical history is vividly illustrated.

It is a Latin poem in ten books of hexameters, and contains a curious admixture of Biblical history.

Charles Augustus Briggs, tried for heresy for his inaugural address in 1891 as professor of biblical theology at Union Seminary, was acquitted by the presbytery of New York, but was declared guilty and was suspended from its ministry by the General Assembly of 1893.

His first work was an inquiry into the authorship of the Commentary on St Paul's Epistles and the Treatise on Biblical Questions, ascribed to Ambrose and Augustine respectively.

There were no doubt in the earliest times popular songs orally transmitted and perhaps books - of annals and laws, but except in so far as remnants meat- of them are embedded in the biblical books, they have Scrip- entirely disappeared.

With this third Moses (the other two being the Biblical lawgiver and Moses Maimonides) a new era opens in the history of the Jewish people.

Now blood was everywhere in antiquity associated with life, and the biblical passage, Genesis ix.

The line is traced through biblical teachers to Ezra, the first of the Sopherim or scribes, who handed on the charge to the "men of the Great Synagogue," a much-discussed term for a body or succession of teachers inaugurated by Ezra.

His original works are mostly biblical commentaries and some additional matter on the Moreh.

Without sufficient external and independent evidence wherewith to interpret in the light of history the internal features of the intricate narratives, any reconstruction would naturally be hazardous, and all attempts must invariably be considered in the light of the biblical evidence itself, the date of the Israelite exodus, and the external conditions.

Here again biblical criticism cannot at present determine precisely when or precisely why the changed attitude began; see Edom; Jews, §§ 20, 22.

The events form one of the fundamental problems of biblical history.

From the earliest times the term tsar - a contraction of the word Caesar - had been applied to the kings in Biblical history and the Byzantine emperors, and Ivan III.

The true nature of this relation can be readily observed in other fields (ancient Britain, Greece, Egypt, &c.), where, however, the native documents and sources have not that complexity which characterizes the composite biblical history.

A diversion was caused by Shishak's invasion, but of this reappearance of Egypt after nearly three centuries of inactivity little is preserved in biblical history.

The value of this external evidence for the history of Israel is enhanced by the fact that biblical tradition associates the changes in the thrones of Israel and Damascus with the work of the prophets Elijah and Elisha, but handles the period without a single reference to the Assyrian Empire.

Even the biblical traditions alone do not always represent the same attitude, and our present sources preserve the work of several hands.

All that can be recognized from the biblical records, however, is the period of internal prosperity which Israel and Judah enjoyed under Jeroboam and Uzziah (qq.v.) respectively.

It is difficult to trace the biblical history century by century as it reaches these last years of bitter conflict and of renewed prosperity.

Hebrew religious institutions can be understood from the biblical evidence studied in the light of comparative religion; and without going afield to Babylonia, Assyria or Egypt, valuable data are furnished by the cults of Phoenicia, Syria and Arabia, and these in turn can be illustrated from excavation and from modern custom.

A development of ideals and a growth of spirituality can be traced which render the biblical writings with their series of prophecies a unique 1 This is philosophically handled by the Arabian historian Ibn Khaldun, whose Prolegomena is well worthy of attention; see De Slane, Not.

Among those who paid tribute were Rasun (the biblical Rezin) of Damascus, Menahem of Samaria, the kings of Tyre, Byblos and Hamath and the queen of Aribi (Arabia, the Syrian desert).

Israel was once more in league with Damascus and Phoenicia, and the biblical records must be read in the light of political history.

On these and on other grounds besides, it has long been felt that south Palestine, with its north Arabian connexions, is of real importance in biblical research, and for many years efforts have been made to determine the true significance of the evidence.

Recent criticism goes to show that there is a very considerable body of biblical material, more important for its attitude to the history than for its historical accuracy, the true meaning of which cannot as yet be clearly perceived.

It raises many serious problems which concentrate upon that age which is of the greatest importance for the biblical and theological student.

It is the work of rebuilding and reorganization, of social and of religious reforms, which we encounter in the last pages of biblical history, and in the records of Ezra and Nehemiah we stand in Jerusalem in the very centre of epoch-making events.

The Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis, that the hierarchical law in its complete form in the Pentateuch stands at the close and not at the beginning of biblical history, that this mature Judaism was the fruit of the 5th century B.C. and not a divinely appointed institution at the exodus (nearly ten centuries previously), has won the recognition of almost all Old Testament scholars.

The importance which the biblical writers attach to the return from Babylon in the reign of Artaxerxes forms a starting-point for several interesting inquiries.

Although these and other phenomena cannot yet be safely placed in a historical frame, the methodical labours of past scholars have shed much light upon the obscurities of the exilic and post-exilic ages, and one must await the more comprehensive study of the two or three centuries which are of the first importance for biblical history and theology.

An interest in the past is not necessarily confined to any one age, and the critical view that the biblical history has been compiled from relatively late standpoints finds support in the still later treatment of the events - in Chronicles as contrasted with Samuel-Kings or in Jubilees as contrasted with Genesis.'

Biblical, or rather Palestinian, thought has been brought into the world of ancient Oriental life, and this life, in spite of the various forms in which it has from time to time been shaped, still rules in the East.

The principal Philistine tribe is indeed known in the biblical records as the Cherethims or Cretans, and the Minoan name and the cult of the Cretan Zeus were preserved at Gaza to the latest classical days.

In 1854 he became a teacher at a Berlin public school, but this did not interrupt his biblical studies.

The biblical narrative is admittedly not so constructed as to enable us to describe in chronological order the thirty-three years of David's reign over all Israel.

In the preceding account the biblical narratives have been followed as closely as possible in the light of the critical results generally accepted.

He guided it through the controversies as to Robertson Smith's heresies, as to the use of hymns and instrumental music, and as to the Declaratory Act, brought to a successful issue the union of the Free and United Presbyterian Churches, and threw the weight of the united church on the side of freedom of Biblical criticism.

Both alike are merely old Babylonian divinities in a new Biblical garb.

While studying theology at the university he devoted special attention to Biblical archaeology.

There are numerous mission stations throughout Basutoland, to several of which Biblical names have been given, such as Shiloh, Hermon, Cana, Bethesda, Berea.

Other of the Biblical Wisdom books (Job, Proverbs) are compilations - why not this ?

Schmidt gives a full bibliography of the numerous writings of Menius, who translated several of Luther's biblical commentaries into German.

During the past few years a new movement has been started in the shape of lecture schools, lasting for longer or shorter periods, for the purpose of studying Biblical,.

The reactionary policy thus indicated gave the impression that a similar aim underlay the appointment about the same date of a commission to inquire into Biblical studies; and in other minor matters Leo XIII.

Coptic papyri mainly contain Biblical or religious texts or monastic deeds.

The reign of Josiah is important for the biblical account of the great religious reforms which began in his eighteenth year, when he manifested interest in the repair of the Temple at Jerusalem.

Exegesis of this sort is not the characteristic of any single circle, people or century; unscientific methods of biblical interpretation have prevailed from Philo's treatment of the Pentateuch to modern apologetic interpretations of Genesis, ch.

Between 1805 and 1811 he issued his Biblical Dictionary in four volumes, which still remains the standard work of its kind in Welsh.

The two parts are distinguished by difference of style; the Hebrew principle of parallelism of clauses is employed far more in the first than in the second, which has a number of plain prose passages, and is also rich in uncommon compound terms. In view of these differences there is ground for holding that the second part is a separate production which has been united with the first by an editor, an historical haggadic sketch, a midrash, full of imaginative additions to the Biblical narrative, and enlivened by many striking ethical reflections.

Either of these will supply the names of works upon Clement's biblical text, his use of Stoic writers, his quotations from heathen writers, and his relation to heathen philosophy.

The Biblical narratives reveal traces of a considerable development in the traditions regarding this sacred object, and those which furnish the most complete detail are of post-exilic date when the original ark had been lost.

Subsequently in 1887 his distrust of modern biblical criticism led to his withdrawing from the Baptist Union.

Not considering its situation sufficiently strong, he moved to the neighbouring new settlement of the Hussites, to which the biblical name of Tabor was given.

He worked intensely on the Talmud and contributed no less than 190 papers to Chambers's Encyclopaedia, in addition to essays in Kitto's and Smith's Biblical Dictionaries, and articles in periodicals.

Yet in October 1902 he established a "Commission for the Progress of Biblical Studies," preponderantly composed of seriously critical scholars; and even one month before his death he still refused to sign a condemnation of Loisy's Etudes evangeliques.

Autour consists of seven letters, on the origin and aim of L'Evangile et l'Eglise; on the biblical question; the criticism of the Gospels; the Divinity of Christ; the Church's foundation and authority; the origin and authority of dogma, and on the institution of the sacraments.

The Biblical Commission, soon enlarged so as to swamp the original critical members, and which had become the simple mouthpiece of its presiding cardinals, issued two decrees.

The Inquisition, by its decree Lamentabili sane (2nd of July 1907), condemned sixty-five propositions concerning the Church's magisterium; biblical inspiration and interpretation; the synoptic and fourth Gospels; revelation and dogma; Christ's divinity, human knowledge and resurrection; and the historical origin and growth of the Sacraments, the Church and the Creed.

And on the 21st of November 1907 a papal motu proprio declared all the decisions of the Biblical Commission, past and future, to be as binding upon the conscience as decrees of the Roman Congregations.

This Biblical city, Akkad, was most probably identical with the northern Babylonian city known to us as Agade (not Agane, as formerly read), which was the principal seat of the early Babylonian king Sargon I.

Literature - modern as well as ancient - occupied his attention; one of his works was a translation of four parts of Clarissa; and translations of some of the then current English paraphrases on biblical books manifested his sympathy with a school which, if not very learned, attracted him by its freer air.

His oriental studies were reshaped by diligent perusal of the works of Schultens; for the Halle school, with all its learning, had no conception of the principles on which a fruitful connexion between Biblical and Oriental learning could be established.

It is an Haggadic revision of the Biblical history from Adam to the death of Saul.

It is inlaid with designs in colour and black and white, representing Biblical and legendary subjects, and is supposed to have been begun by Duccio della Buoninsegna.

Andrew Farkas and the homilist Peter Melius (Juhasz) attempted didactic verse; and Batizi busied himself with sacred song and Biblical history.

Wellhausen made his name famous by his critical investigations into Old Testament history and the composition of the Hexateuch, the uncompromising scientific attitude he adopted in testing its problems bringing him into antagonism with the older school of biblical interpreters.

Being a Pharisee, he sometimes introduces traditions of the Elders, which are either inferences from, or embroideries of, the biblical narrative.

The " Dopper " Church, an offshoot of the Separatist Reformed Church of Holland, is distinguished from the other Dutch churches in being more rigidly Calvinistic and " Biblical," and in not using hymns.

Sumer has been supposed to be the original of the Biblical Shinar; but Shinar represented northern rather than southern Babylonia, and was probably the Sankhar of the Tell el-Amarna tablets (but see Sumer).

Sayce and P. Jensen alone have enlisted any large body of adherents; and the former, who has worked upon his system for thirty years and published in the Proceedings of the Society for Biblical Archaeology for 1907 a summary of his method and results, has proceeded on the more scientific plan.

His Hebrew Grammar inaugurated a new era in biblical philology.

As an exegete and biblical critic no less than as a grammarian he has left his abiding mark.

That these two accounts are absolutely contradictory is now generally recognized by Biblical scholars, and it is to the former (and later) of them that the simple story of Samuel's youth at Shiloh will belong.

So early as 1841 his reputation in this department was sufficient to secure for him the government nomination to the newly founded chair of Biblical criticism in the university of Edinburgh.

But Rabbi Jonah saw the true vocation of his life in the scientific investigation of te Hebrew language and in a rational biblical exegesis based upon sound linguistic knowledge.

Each side of the octagon is covered with a large relief of a Biblical subject, very dull in style and coarse in execution.

About this time he read Bucer's commentaries on the Gospels and the Psalms and also Zwingli's De vera et falsa religione; and his Biblical studies began to affect his views.

Vermigli published over a score of theological works, chiefly Biblical commentaries and treatises on the Eucharist.

At Dayton are the Union Biblical seminary, a theological school of the United Brethren in Christ, and the publishing house of the same denomination.

The New Englander (1843-1892), the Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review (1825), the Ncitional Quarterly Review (1860) and the New York International Review (1874-1883), may also be mentioned.

The Chicago Biblical World is published monthly.

To many the interest of such stories will depend on their parallelism to the Biblical account in Genesis i.; the anthropologist, however, will be attracted by them in proportion as they illustrate the more primitive phases of human culture.

Suzanne represents the torso of a Biblical poem on a very large scale, in six cantos.

He then turned to Biblical, patristic and kindred studies.

He was a strenuous advocate of ecclesiastical control in elementary education, and an opponent of the new school of higher biblical criticism, though so far an evolutionist as to believe in growth and development as applied to the history of nations.

If we could come back to the Bible and use biblical terms only, as Cyril of Jerusalem wished in his early days, we know from experience that the old errors would reappear in the form of new questions, and that we should have to pass through the dreary wilderness of controversy from implicit to explicit dogma, from " I believe that Jesus is the Lord " to the confession that the Only Begotten Son is " of one substance with the Father."

He was a pioneer in the fields of patrology and of biblical archaeology.

The double name AbramAbraham has even suggested that two personages have been combined in the Biblical narrative; although this does not explain the change from Sarai to Sarah.

Many fanciful legends about Abraham founded on Biblical accounts or spun out of the fancy are to be found in Josephus, and in post-Biblical and Mahommedan literature; for these, reference may be made to Beer, Leben Abrahams (1859); Gri nbaum, Neue Beitrdge z.

Various computations were made at different times, from Biblical sources, as to the age of the world; and Des Vignoles, in the preface to his Chronology of Sacred History, asserts that he collected upwards of two hundred different calculations, the shortest of which reckons only 3483 years between the creation of the world and the commencement of the vulgar era and the longest 6984.

Day, appeared in the Bibliotheca Sacra and American Biblical Repository, Nos.

Cappel was also the author of Annotationes et Commentarii in Vetus Testamentum, Chronologia Sacra, and other biblical works, as well as of several other treatises on Hebrew, among which are the Arcanum Punctuationis revelatum (1624) and the Diatriba de veris et antiquis Ebraeorum literis (1645).

Papyri from a Jewish colony in Elephantine (407 B.C.) clearly show the form which royal permits could take, and what the Jews were prepared to give in return; the points of resemblance are extremely interesting, but compared with the biblical documents the papyri reveal some striking differences.

As a result of his favourable review of Bunsen's "Biblical Researches" contributed to Essays and Reviews (1860) he was prosecuted for heterodoxy.

The works on which Bengel's reputation rests as a Biblical scholar and critic are his edition of the Greek New Testament, and his Gnomon or Exegetical Commentary on the same.

The place is called Jiljulieh, and its position north of the valley of Achor (Wadi Kelt) and east of Jericho agrees well with the biblical indications above mentioned.

The Urschrift has moreover been recognized as one of the most original contributions to biblical science.

This fluctuation, due partly to the different circles in which the biblical narratives took shape, and partly to definite reshaping of the traditions of the past, seriously complicates all attempts to combine the early history of Israel with the external evidence.

The biblical evidence does not favour any continued Philistine domination since the time of Rameses III., who indeed, later in his reign, made an expedition, not against the Purasati, but into North Syria, and, as appears from the Papyrus Harris, restored Egyptian supremacy over Palestine and Syria.

Similarly, the biblical evidence represents the traditions in the form which they had reached in the writer's time, the true date of which is often uncertain.

It is impossible that Palestine should have remained untouched by the external movements in connexion with the Delta, the Levant and Asia Minor, and it is possible that the course of internal history in the age immediately before and after 1000 B.C. ran upon lines different from the detailed popular religious traditions which the biblical historians have employed.

Besides a volume of sermons under the title Christ's Healing Touch, Mackennal published The Biblical Scheme of Nature and of Man, The Christian Testimony, the Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia, The Kingdom of the Lord Jesus and The Eternal God and the Human Sonship. These are contributions to exegetical study or to theological and progressive religious thought, and have elements of permanent value.

Like others of the Reformers he had been led independently to preach justification by faith and to declare that Jesus Christ was the one and only Mediator between sinful man and God; but his construction rested upon what he regarded as biblical conceptions of the nature of God and man rather than upon such private personal experiences as those which Luther had made basal.

That the so-called Biblical Chaldee, in which considerable portions of the books of Ezra and Daniel are written, was really the language of Babylon was supposed to be clear from Dan.

In 1783 he entered the university of Freiburg, where he became a pupil in the seminary for the training of priests, and soon distinguished himself in classical and Oriental philology as well as in biblical exegesis and criticism.

The biblical picture of the Sabaean kingdom is confirmed and supplemented by the Assyrian inscriptions.

Three distinct biblical usages may be noted.

That the work so often cited is not the Biblical book of the same name is manifest from what is said of its contents.

That the lost source of the Chronicles was not independent of these works appears probable both from the nature of the case and from the close and often verbal parallelism between many sections of the two Biblical narratives.

Biblical References to the Adam-story.-It is remarkable how little influence the Adam-story has had on the earlier parts of the Old Testament.

In the years1880-1881Lord Selborne wrote to his son a series of letters on religious subjects, dealing in an elementary way with natural and revealed religion, the inspiration of the Bible and Biblical criticism.

The fact that Nestorius was trained at Antioch and inherited the Antiochene zeal for exact biblical exegesis and insistence upon the recognition of the full manhood of Christ, is of the first importance in understanding his position.

Ordained priest in 1520, and appointed preacher (1522) at Hall in Swabia, he gave himself to biblical exposition.

There is no proper ground for regarding it, as some Biblical scholars of a former generation did, through a false interpretation of the book of Jonah, as a part or suburb of Nineveh.

About the same time Sulpicius Severus wrote his Historia Sacra, covering both biblical and Christian history.

He was educated at the Royal College of Belfast, entered the Presbyterian ministry in 1835, and was appointed professor of biblical criticism at his own college.

Becoming a Congregationalist, he accepted in 1842 the chair of biblical criticism, literature and oriental languages at the Lancashire Independent College at Manchester; but he was obliged to resign in 1857, being brought into collision with the college authorities by the publication of an introduction to the Old Testament entitled The Text of the Old Testament, and the Interpretation of the Bible, written for a new edition of Horne's Introduction to the Sacred Scripture.

His great admiration for Erasmus first led him to Greek and biblical studies, and his election in May 1519 as rector of the university was regarded as a triumph for the partisans of the New Learning.

The above explanation of the special degradation of the Nethinim, though they were connected with the Temple service, seems to be the only way of explaining the Talmudic reference to their tabooed position, and is an interesting example of the light that can be reflected on Biblical research by the Talmud.

We shall begin by giving a general account of the historical and literary conditions under which the unique literature of the Old Testament sprang up, of the stages by which it gradually reached its present form, and (so far as this is possible) of the way in which the Biblical books were brought together in a.

Biblical criticism, and in some respects more especially Old Testament criticism, is, in all its branches, very largely of modern growth.

For a long time Biblical study lacked the first essential of sound critical method, viz.

It is only in accordance with what constantly recurs in the history of Biblical criticism that this effort to approximate to the truth met at first with considerable opposition, and was for a time regarded even by Augustine as dangerous..

Subsequently, however, this version of Jerome (the Vulgate) became the basis of Western Biblical scholarship. Henceforward the Western Church suffered both from the corruptions in the official Hebrew text and also from the fact that it worked from a version and not from the original, for a.

Yet even so the publication of the Hebrew text by Christian scholars marks an important stage; henceforth the study of the original enters increasingly into Christian Biblical scholarship; it already underlay the translations which form so striking a feature of the 16th century.

Biblical criticism is part of a wider critical movement, but it is noticeable how, from stage to stage, Biblical scholars adopted the various critical methods which as applied to other literatures have been proved valid, rather than themselves initiated them.

But the next distinct stage is reached when we come to De Wette, whose contributions to Biblical learning were many and varied, but who was pre-eminent in historical criticism.

Biblical chronology is, unfortunately, in many respects uncertain.

From the facts" that have been here briefly noted it must be evident how precarious and, in parts, how impossible the Biblical chronology of this period is.

Lehmann holds that there are reasons for believing that the engraver, by error, put a stroke too many, and that 2200 should be read instead of 3200.5 The real Biblical date.

Much has been written on the chronology of the kings and many endeavours have been made to readjust the Biblical figures so as to bring them into consistency with themselves and at the same time into conformity with the Assyrian dates.

But, though the fact of there being errors in the Biblical figures is patent, it is not equally clear at what points the error lies, or how the available years ought to be redistributed between the various reigns.

But in the following period, from the fall of Samaria in 722 to the capture of Jerusalem by the Chaldaeans in 586, the Biblical dates, so far as we can judge, are substantially correct.

Moreover, Barnard's researches into the Biblical text of Clement of Alexandria show that there is reason to doubt whether even in Alexandria the Neutral text was used in the earliest times.

This rendering of Erasmus, together with his annotations and prefaces to the several books, make his editions the first great monument of modern Biblical study.

Often the biblical text cannot be said to supply more than a hint or a suggestion, and the particular application in Halaka or Haggada must be taken on its merits, and the teaching does not necessarily fall because the exegesis is illegitimate.

The homiletic Midrashim are characterized by (a) a proem, an introduction based upon some biblical text (not from the lesson itself), which led up to (b) the exposition of the lesson, the first verse of which is more fully discussed than the rest.

Further, the Megillath Ta'anith (" roll of fasts "), an old source with a collection of miscellaneous legends, &c.; Megillath Antiokhos, on the martyrdom under Hadrian; Seder`Olam Rabbah, on biblical history from Adam to the rebellion of Bar Kokba (Barcocheba); the " Book of Jashar "; the Chronicle of Jerahmeel," &c. Liturgical Midrash is illustrated by the Haggada shel Pesah, part of the ritual recited at the domestic service of the first two Passover evenings.

It is worth while to mention these few early incidents of the Rational legend of Guatemala, because their Biblical incidents show how native tradition incorporated matter learnt from the white men.

A further testimony to the activity which prevailed in the field of Biblical lore is the fact that at the close of the century probably about the year r000 - the Gospels were rendered anew for the first time in the south of Eng land.

The 13th century, from the point of view of Biblical renderings into the vernacular, is an absolute blank.

The Latin original is a glossed version of the Vulgate, and in the English translation the words of the gloss are often substituted for the strong and picturesque expressions of the Biblical text;.

This explains the fact that in collections of medieval homilies that have come down to us, no two renderings of the Biblical text used are ever alike, not even Wycliffe himself making use of the text of the commonly accepted versions that went under his name.

It would appear, however, as if at first at all events the persecution was directed not so much against the Biblical text itself as against the Lollard interpretations which accompanied it.

He is, perhaps, the first purist among the Biblical translators, endeavouring, whenever possible, to substitute a word of native origin for the foreign expression of his predecessors.

Campbell, who in 1829 had been elected to the Constitutional Convention of Virginia by his anti-slavery neighbours, now established The Millennial Harbinger (1830-1865), in which, on Biblical grounds, he opposed emancipation, but which he used principally to preach the imminent Second Coming, which he actually set for 1866, in which year he died, on the 4th of March, at Bethany, West Virginia, having been for twenty-five years president of Bethany College.

His lectures were generally on Biblical subjects.

His work in conjunction with Hort upon the Greek text of the New Testament will endure as one of the greatest achievements of English Biblical criticism.

His commentaries rank with Lightfoot's as the best type of Biblical exegesis produced by the English Church in the 19th century.

The value of all such evidence will naturally depend largely upon the estimate formed of the biblical narratives, but it is necessary to observe that these have not yet found Egyptian testimony to support them.

Although the information which has been brought to bear upon Egyptian life and customs substantiates the general accuracy of the local colouring in some of the biblical narratives, the latter contain several inherent improbabilities, and whatever future research may yield, no definite trace of Egyptian influence has so far been found in Israelite institutions.

But although the evidence of the Amarna tablets might thus support the biblical tradition in its barest outlines, the view in question, if correct, would necessitate the rejection of a great mass of the biblical narratives as a whole.

Thus, whatever evidence may be supplied by archaeological research, the problem of the Exodus must always be studied in the light of the biblical narratives.

Michaelis's Introduction to the New Testament, with notes of his own, in which he may be said to have introduced German methods of research into English biblical scholarship. His History of the Politics of Great Britain and France (1799) brought him much notice and a pension from William Pitt.

In 1807 he was appointed Lady Margaret professor of divinity at Cambridge, and lectured to large audiences on biblical criticism, substituting English for the traditional Latin.

He was pastor of the Presbyterian church of Roselle, New Jersey, 1869-1874, and professor of Hebrew and cognate languages in Union Theological Seminary 1874-1891, and of Biblical theology there from 1891 to 1904, when he became professor of theological encyclopaedia and symbolics.

The widow then loosens and removes the shoe, throwing it some distance, and spits on the ground, repeating thrice the Biblical formula "So shall it be done," &c. Ilalisah, which is still common among orthodox Jews, must not take place on the Sabbath, a holiday, or the eve of either, or in the evening.

The Anglican Church retains only the Biblical symbolism of " the blessing of the hand."

Yet the wave of reaction which soon overwhelmed the freer tendencies of the first reformers, brought back the old view until the revival of biblical criticism more than a century ago.

He graduated in 1856 at the Biblical Institute at Concord, New Hampshire (now a part of Boston University), became a minister in the Episcopal Church in 1857, and during the next three years was a rector first at North Adams, and then at Newton Lower Falls, Mass.

The chief literature of all the heretical sects throughout the ages has been that of apocryphal Biblical narratives, and the popes Jeremiah or Bogumil are directly mentioned as authors of such forbidden books "which no orthodox dare read."

The Guadalquivir valley is often, in part at least, identified with the biblical Tarshish and the classical Tartessus, a famous Phoenician mart.

To warn Eugenius against pride, Bernard reminds him in biblical terms that an insensate sovereign on a throne resembles " an ape upon a housetop," and that the dignity with which he is invested does not prevent him from being a man, that is, " a being, naked,!

Biblical criticism, by throwing doubt on the infallibility of the Scriptures, was undermining the traditional foundation of orthodox Protestantism, and most of the Protestant Churches,.

Arius had received his theological education in the school of the presbyter Lucian of Antioch, a learned man, and distinguished especially as a biblical scholar.

Of its origin nothing is known; it has been suggested that it represents the biblical Ramoth Gilead.

In 1693 his series of Biblical commentaries began with that on Genesis; the series was not completed until 1731.

Le Clerc's commentary had a great influence in breaking up traditional prejudices and showing the necessity for a more scientific inquiry into the origin and meaning of the biblical books.

There he remained for eighteen months, but shortly after his return to England he accompanied Groves and other friends on a private missionary enterprise to Bagdad, where he obtained personal knowledge of Oriental life and habits which he afterwards applied with tact and skill in the illustration of biblical scenes and incidents.

The Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature, edited under his superintendence, appeared in two volumes in1843-1845and passed through three editions.

From that time the school as such ceased to have a real existence, though the results of its work are traceable more or less in all modern Biblical criticism, and its influence upon the attitude of modern theologians and Biblical critics can scarcely be overestimated.

Richard Simon undertook to teach him Hebrew and Biblical criticism with no better success.

Biblical traditions connect it closely with the patriarch Abraham and make it a "city of refuge."

It was still living Hebrew, although mainly confined to the schools, with very clear differences from the biblical language.

As the popular use of Aramaic was gradually restricted by the spread of Arabic as the vernacular (from the 7th century onwards), while the dispersion of the Jews became wider, biblical Hebrew again came to be the natural standard both of East and West.

See Biblical Dictionaries of Hastings and Cheyne, s.v.; Jew.

In the Targums. - The word "Shekinah" is of constant occurrence in the Targums or Aramaic paraphrases of the Biblical lections that were read in the synagogue-service to the people.

The Biblical usage appears to show that the terms "Canaanites" and "Amorites" were used synonymously, the former being characteristic of Judaean, the latter of Ephraimite and Deuteronomic writers.

In 1843 Eadie was appointed professor of biblical literature and hermeneutics in the Divinity Hall of the United Presbyterian body.

Though not a profound scholar, he was surpassed by few biblical commentators of his day in range of learning, and in soundness of judgment.

In the professor's chair, as in the pulpit, his strength lay in the tact with which he selected the soundest results of biblical criticism, whether his own or that of others, and presented them in a clear and connected form, with a constant view to their practical bearing.

His publications were connected with biblical criticism and interpretation, some of them being for popular use and others more strictly scientific. To the former class belong the Biblical Cyclopaedia, his edition of Cruden's Concordance, his Early Oriental History, and his discourses on the Divine Love and on Paul the Preacher; to the latter his commentaries on the Greek text of St Paul's epistles to the Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians and Galatians, published at intervals in four volumes.

He also became prominent as an historical critic on Biblical subjects.

That Shumer actually did mean all Babylonia appears evident from the biblical use of Shinar=Shumer to describe the district which contained the four chief Babylonian cities, viz.

In short, there can be no doubt that the biblical name Shinar was practically equivalent to the mat Shumeri u Akkadi= non-Semitic Kengi-Uri of the Babylonian inscriptions.

As was natural, his editions after his removal to Rome were mostly Latin works of theology and Biblical or patristic literature.

Moses Kimhi also composed commentaries to the biblical books; those on Proverbs, Ezra and Nehemiah are in the great rabbinical bibles falsely ascribed to Abraham ibn Ezra.

Under the title Et Sofer, " Pen of the Writer" (Lyk, 1864), David Kimhi composed a sort of grammatical compendium as a guide to the correct punctuation of the biblical manuscripts; it consists, for the most part, of extracts from the Miklol.

The explanation is to be found within Israel itself, in factors which succeeded in re-shaping existing material and in imprinting upon it a durable stamp, and these factors, as biblical tradition recognizes, are to be found in the work of the prophets.

The Biblical Beersheba probably exists at Bir es-Seba`, 2 m.

He now devoted himself to an exact study of biblical and patristic writers, especially Basil and Chrysostom.

Owing to his pure biblical style he had an abiding influence on subsequent liturgical writers.

From 1847 to 1867 Concord was the seat of the Biblical Institute (Methodist Episcopal), founded in Newbury, Vermont, in 1841, removed to Boston as the Boston Theological Seminary in 1867, and after 1871 a part of Boston University.

How the hostile kings of Israel and Syria came to fight a common enemy, and how to correlate the Assyrian and Biblical records, are questions which have perplexed all recent writers.

As a Biblical critic he is sometimes classed with the destructive school, but, as Otto Pfleiderer says (Development of Theology, p. 102), he "occupied as free a position as the Rationalists with regard to the literal authority of the creeds of the church, but that he sought to give their due value to the religious feelings, which the Rationalists had not done, and, with a more unfettered mind towards history, to maintain the connexion of the present life of the church with the past."

Accordingly, in 1867, Smith was appointed assistant in the Assyriology department, and the earliest of his successes was the discovery of two inscriptions, one fixing the date of the total eclipse of the sun in the month Sivan in May 763 B.C., and the other the date of an invasion of Babylonia by the Elamites in 2280 B.C. In 1871 he published Annals of Assur-bani-pal, transliterated and translated, and communicated to the newlyfounded Society of Biblical Archaeology a paper on "The Early History of Babylonia," and an account of his decipherment of the Cypriote inscriptions.

In 1872 Smith achieved world-wide fame by his translation of the Chaldaean account of the Deluge, which was read before the Society of Biblical Archaeology on the 3rd of December.

But the deviations from the Biblical narratives are very marked.

Near Hasbeya are bitumen pits let by the government; and to the north, at the source of the Hasbani, the ground is volcanic. Some travellers have attempted to identify Hasbeya with the biblical Baal-Gad or Baal-Hermon.

By May the chief clerical leader, Henderson of Leuchars, was denouncing Royalists as " Amalekites," and by biblical precedent Amalekites receive no quarter.

He also founded (in 1833) and edited the American Quarterly Observer; in 1836-1841 edited the Biblical Repository (after 1837 called the American Biblical Repository) with which the Observer was merged in 1835; and was editor-in-chief of the Bibliotheca Sacra from 1844 to 1851.

In Palestine game has always been plentiful, and the Biblical indications that it was much sought and duly appreciated are numerous.

Pressense laboured for the revival of biblical studies.

He was the author of a number of Biblical commentaries (no longer extant), which are said to have been characterized by great erudition.

Another well-known work is the Sacra parallela, a collection of biblical passages followed by illustrations drawn from other scriptural sources and from the fathers.

Its stability and the necessary furtherance of commerce, usual among Oriental kings, depended upon the attitude of the maritime coast (Philistia and Phoenicia), Edom, Moab, Ammon, Gilead and the Syrian states; and the biblical and external records for the next four centuries (to 586) frequently illustrate situations growing out of this interrelation.

In such vicissitudes as these Palestinian history proceeds upon a much larger scale than the national biblical records relate, and the external evidence is of the greatest importance for the light it throws upon the varying situations.

Some of the personal names are foreign and find analogues in Asia Minor; but even as the Philistines appear in biblical history as a " Semitic " people, so inscriptions from north Syria (c. 800-700) are in Canaanite and early Aramaean dialects, and are in entire agreement with " Semitic thought and ideas.

Unfortunately, there is very little evidence in the biblical history for the subsequent career of Samaria, but it is clear that the old Israel of the dynasties of Omri and Jehu received crushing blows.

Biblical history itself recognizes in the times of Artaxerxes, Nehemiah and Ezra the commencement of a new era, and although only too much remains obscure we have in these centuries a series of vicissitudes which separate the old Palestine of Egyptian, Hittite, Babylonian and Assyrian supremacy from the land which was about to enter the circle of Greek and Roman civilization.

It is in keeping with the old conceptions of the divine kingship, which, though they survive only in isolated biblical references, live on in the ideals of the Messianic king and his kingdom and in the post-exilic high priest. ?

The biblical history is a " canonical " history which looks back to the patriarchs, the exodus from Egypt, the law-giving and the covenant with Yahweh at Sinai, the conquest of Palestine by the Israelite tribes, the monarchy, the rival kingdoms, the fall and exile of the northern tribes, and, later, of the southern (Judah), and the reconstructions of Judah in the times of Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes.

Jews, §§ 1-24, the biblical history is taken as the foundation, and the internal historical difficulties are noticed from stage to stage.

In the present state of biblical historical criticism this plan seemed more advisable than any attempt to reconstruct the history; the necessity for some reconstruction will, however, be clear to the reader on the grounds of both the internal intricacies and the external evidence.

The unanimous recognition on the part of all biblical scholars that the Old Testament cannot be taken as it stands as a trustworthy account of the history with which it deals, necessitates a hypothesis or, it may be, a series of hypotheses, which shall enable one to approach the more detailed study of its history and religion.

It is the merit of Hugo Winckler especially to have lifted biblical study out of the somewhat narrow lines upon which it had usually proceeded, but, at the time of writing (1910), Old Testament criticism still awaits a sound reconciliation of the admitted internal intricacies and of the external evidence for Palestine and that larger area of which it forms part.

Consequently, in addition to the ordinary requirements of historical criticism, biblical study has to take into account the intricate composite character of the sources and the background of these positions.

Failing this, one must descend to the time of Nehemiah, which the biblical history itself regards as epoch-making.

Any comparison of the treatment of biblical figures or events in the later literature will illustrate the retention of certain old details, the appearance of new ones, and an organic connexion which is everywhere in accordance with contemporary thought and teaching.

If this raises the presumption that even the oldest and most isolated biblical evidence may rest upon still older authority, it shows also that the fuller details and context cannot be confidently recovered, and that earlier forms would accord with earlier Palestinian belief.'

Finally, biblical history is an intentional and reasoned arrangement of material, based upon composite sources, for religious and didactic purposes.

The history of these centuries is of fundamental importance in any attempt to " reconstruct " biblical history., The fall of Samaria and Judah was a literary as well as a political catastrophe, and precisely how much earlier material has been 6 Cf.

Scientific exploration does not begin before Edward Robinson, an American clergyman, who, after devoting many years to study to fit himself for the work, made a series of journeys through the country, and under the title of Biblical Researches in Palestine (1841-1856) published his itineraries and observations.

An admirable biblical and archaeological school, under the control of the Dominican order, exists at Jerusalem; and German and American archaeological institutions, educational in purpose, are also there established.

While polygamy was the rule in biblical days among the ancient Jews, and was permitted and even enjoined in certain cases by the Mosaic law, the Christian Church, though it is nowhere forbidden, except for "bishops," in the New Testament, has always set its face against it.

His orthodoxy was, however, unimpeachable, his talent conspicuous, and in 1761 he was appointed lecturer on biblical exegesis, and preacher (Katechet) at the church of St Peter..

His eloquence soon gave him a reputation, and in 1766 he was appointed professor extraordinarius of biblical philology.

In spite of this he succeeded in obtaining the chair of biblical antiquities in the philosophical faculty at Erfurt.

He was trained at the Roman Catholic seminary at Scalan and at the Scottish College in Paris, where he studied biblical philology, school divinity and modern languages.

In 1764 he officiated as a priest in Dundee, but in May 1765 accepted an invitation to live with the earl of Traquair, where, with abundance of leisure and the free use of an adequate library, he made further progress in his favourite biblical studies.

The chapel is basilican; in it and in another building in the necropolis are crude frescoes of biblical subjects.

The text bears a general resemblance to the two well-known Assyrian versions on tablets in the British Museum, but it has been claimed that its phraseology presents a closer parallel to the biblical version of the Deluge story in the "Priestly Code."

The limits of the Biblical Ararat are not known, but they must have included the lofty Armenian plateau which overlooks the plain of the Araxes on the north, and that of Mesopotamia on the south.

The greater part of his life-history is preserved in late Biblical narratives, which carry back existing conditions and beliefs to the time of the Exodus, and find a precedent for contemporary hierarchical institutions in the events of that period.

Several difficulties in the present Biblical text appear to have arisen from the attempt of later tradition to find a place for Aaron in certain incidents.

Many Protestants rebelled against this radical departure from the principles of the Reformation and of Biblical Christianity.

Wright, Biblical Studies (1886) argues ably for the symbolic theory.

A generation later the French Oratory became the home of Malebranche and of Richard Simon, father of Biblical criticism.

He points to features of the lake of Gennesareth, which were first touched in the Christian Year; and he observes that throughout the book "the Biblical scenery is treated graphically as real scenery, and the Biblical history and poetry as real history and poetry."

Nor were there wanting men who dedicated their powers to Hebrew and Oriental erudition, laying, together with the Grecians, a basis for those Biblical studies which advanced the Reformation.

Here the sequence of the reigns in the Biblical writer and in the profane historians - in the one, Cyrus, Ahasuerus, Artaxerxes, Darius; in the other, Cyrus, Cambyses, Smerdis, Darius - led in the past (Ewald, &c.) to the identification of Ahasuerus with Cambyses (529-522 B.e.), son of Cyrus.

The Old Saxon Biblical poetry belongs to the middle of the 9th century; the Old English translation of a portion of it is consequently later than this.

As the Genesis begins with a line identical in meaning, though not in wording, with the opening of Cmdmon's Hymn, we may perhaps infer that the writer knew and used Cmdmon's genuine poems. Some of the more poetical passages may possibly echo Cmdmon's expressions; but when, after treating of the creation of the angels and the revolt of Lucifer, the paraphrast comes to the Biblical part of the story, he follows the sacred text with servile fidelity, omitting no detail, however prosaic. The ages of the antediluvian patriarchs, for instance, are accurately rendered into verse.

This revival was largely due on the one hand to the improvement of her worship which began with the efforts of Dr Robert Lee (1804-1868), minister of Old Greyfriars, Edinburgh, and professor of Biblical criticism in Edinburgh university.

The Church of Scotland has made few contributions of importance to the movement of Biblical Criticism which has entered so deeply into the religious life of Scotland, but she has had dis tinguished writers on theology.

Robert Lee (1804-1868), minister of Old Greyfriars and professor of Biblical criticism in Edinburgh University, fought a long battle for the liberty and the improvement of worship, of which the churches generally now reap the advantage.

Not only are such names as Horeb, Zion, Penuel, Siloh, &c., bestowed on Nonconformist chapels, but these Biblical terms have likewise been applied to their surrounding houses, and in not a few instances to growing towns and villages.

This was not conducive to critical inquiry; questions of the historical background of the biblical passage or of the trustworthiness of the text scarcely found a place.

The treatise thus constitutes the first document in the modern science of Biblical criticism.

The biblical references to Sidon are Gen.

Blumenthal of Neander's Life of Christ (1847), and of Bungener's History of the Council of Trent (1855), but by his great project, McClintock and Strong's Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature (10 vols., 1867-1881; Supplement, 2 vols., 1885-1887), in the editing of which he was associated with Dr James Strong (1822-1894), professor of exegetical theology in the Drew Theological Seminary from 1868 to 1893, and the sole editor of the last six volumes of the Cyclopaedia and of the supplement.

Society in Persia, being based almost exclusively on religious law, is much as it was in Biblical times among the Jews, with this difference, however, that there exists no sacerdotal caste.

But lately this narrow range of dramatic subjects has been considerably widened, Biblical stories and even Christian legends have been brought upon the Persian stage; and there is a fair prospect of a further development of this most interesting and important movement.

Covering a great stretch of time and space, they do for the worshipper in the field of church history what the Scripture readings do in that of biblical history.

The antiphons are short liturgical forms, sometimes of biblical, sometimes of patristic origin, used to introduce a psalm, The term originally signified a chant by alternate choirs, but has quite lost this meaning in the Breviary.

Monastic influence accounts for the practice of adding to the reading of a biblical passage some patristic commentary or exposition.

The articles on Biblical subjects which he contributed to the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica distressed and alarmed the authorities of the Free Church.

He did not perceive in the biblical books any religious ideas of much importance for modern times; they interested him merely historically and for the light they cast upon antiquity.

Its central motive is to prove that all the objections raised against revealed or supernatural religion apply with equal force to the whole constitution of nature, and that the general analogy between the principles of divine government, as set forth by the biblical revelation, and those observable in the course of nature, leads us to the warrantable conclusion that there is one Author of both.

In 1842 he was Privatdozent in the university of Berlin, and in .1843 he was called to become professor of church history and Biblical literature in the German Reformed Theological Seminary of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, then the only seminary of that church in America.

It is an anonymous elaboration in Hebrew of the early part of the biblical narrative, probably composed in the 12th century.

Some of the best authorities believe that it was this ambitious but incomplete and ruinous ziggurat, existing before the time of Nebuchadrezzar, which gave occasion to or afforded local attachment for the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel.

He gained such a reputation as an Oriental scholar that the elector palatine in 1655 appointed him professor of Oriental languages and biblical criticism at Heidelberg.

Ryder (Journal of Biblical Literature, 1898, pp. 184 f.) suggests that xv.-xvi.

Graetz attained considerable repute as a biblical critic. He was the author of many bold conjectures as to the date of Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Esther and other biblical books.

His critical edition of the Psalms (1882-1883) was his chief contribution to biblical exegesis, but after his death Professor Bacher edited Graetz's Emendationes to many parts of the Hebrew scriptures.

The manna of the Biblical narrative, notwithstanding the miraculous circumstances which distinguish it from anything now known, answers in its description very closely to the tamarisk manna.

Pamphilus gathered about him a circle of earnest students who devoted themselves especially to the study of the Bible and the transcription of Biblical codices, and also to the defence and spread of the writings of Origen, whom they regarded as their master.

He graduated at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) in 1815, and in 1819 at the Princeton Theological seminary, where he became an instructor in 1820, and the first professor of Oriental and Biblical literature in 1822.

In 1825 he established the quarterly Biblical Repertory, the title of which was changed to Biblical Repertory and Theological Review in 1830 and to Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review in 1837.

Biblical criticism is a part of the historic process.

The slightness and slowness of variation in human races having become known, a great difficulty of the monogenist theory was seen to lie in the apparent shortness of the Biblical chronology.

In biblical use the word is applied to the company of angels in heaven; or to the sun, moon and stars, the "hosts of heaven," and also to translate "Jehovah Sabaoth," the Lord God of hosts, the lord of the armies of Israel or of the hosts of heaven.

It cannot be denied in the light of modern historical research that if the Book of Daniel be regarded as pretending to full historical authority, the biblical record is open to all manner of attack.

There is not only no room in history for this Median king of the Book of Daniel, but it is also highly likely that the interpolation of "Darius the Mede" was caused by a confusion of history, due both to the destruction of the Assyrian capital Nineveh by the Medes, sixty-eight years before the capture of Babylon by Cyrus, and also to the fame of the later king, Darius Hystaspis, a view which was advanced as early in the history of biblical criticism as the days of the Benedictine monk, Marianus Scotus.

The direct originator of the movement was Philip Jacob Spener, who combined the Lutheran emphasis on Biblical doctrine with the Reformed tendency to vigorous Christian life.

Yet Pietism could claim to have contributed largely to the revival of Biblical studies in Germany, and to have made religion once more an affair of the heart and the life, and not merel y of the intellect.

It is unmethodical and badly digested, homiletical in style, and abounding in biblical quotations.

Khuzistan (meaning "the land of the Khuz") was a part of the Biblical Elam, the classical Susiana, and appears in the great inscription of Darius as Uvaja.

The Byzantine Greeks manufactured several out of the poems of Homer, among which may be mentioned the life of Christ by the famous empress Eudoxia, and a version of the Biblical history of Eden and the Fall.

Such were the Cento Nuptialis of Ausonius, the sketch of Biblical history which was compiled in the 4th century by Proba Falconia, wife of a Roman proconsul, and the hymns in honour of St Quirinus taken from Virgil and Horace by Metellus, a monk of Tegernsee, in the latter half of the 12th century.

The Biblical references to shekels must refer to uncoined ingots.

These and numerous other works and editions of the Bible are known only to students, but as a pioneer in a branch of Biblical study which received a wide development in the 19th century, Calmet is worthy of remembrance.

The theme in its main outlines is a popular one in biblical prophecy, but when these 53 verses are carefully examined and compared with prophetical thought elsewhere, several difficult problems arise, an adequate solution of which cannot as yet be offered.

His principal work, Philologia sacra (1623), marks the transition from the earlier views on questions of biblical criticism to those of the school of Spener.

The importance of Semler, sometimes called "the father of German rationalism," in the history of theology and the human mind is that of a critic of biblical and ecclesiastical documents and of the history of dogmas.

But the biblical materials worked up in the doctrine betray little sign of any except a religious interest.

Wildly conjectural as it may seem, his thinking - though partly Greek and only in part biblical - is The passages referred to have sometimes, but with no great probability, been regarded as Christian infiltrations.

But while to Origen creation also was a continuous process, an unspeculative orthodoxy struck out the latter point as inconsistent with biblical teaching; and we must grant that the eternal generation of the Divine Son adds a more distinctive glory to the Logos when it is no longer balanced by an eternal creation.

But the Trinity and the Hypostatic Union are vast speculative constructions reared upon slender biblical data.

The biblical authorities plainly set forth " the man Christ Jesus," but theological science failed to explain how Godhead and manhood came together in unity.

But ultimately they persuaded themselves to accept these definitions as normal and biblical, and as presuppositions of Christ's saving work.

Biblical Theology is a historical statement of the different Bible teachings, not a dogmatic statement of what the writer holds for truth, qua truth.

Biblical " Dogmatics " also is said to be nearer this than it is to Dogmatics proper.

Till 1889 they maintained two theological chairs in Belfast, where John Scott Porter (1801-1880) was a pioneer in biblical criticism; they now send their students to England for their theological education, though in certain respects their views and practices are more conservative than those of their English brethren.

There is no trace of Beelzebul or Beelzebub outside of the Biblical passages mentioned, and the literature dependent on them.

It is noteworthy that the problems of Hexateuchal criticism are gradually changing their character, as one after another of the main contentions of Biblical scholars regarding the date and authorship of the Hexateuch passes out of the list of debatable questions into that of acknowledged facts.

In 1650-54 he published the work which was long accounted his most important production, the Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti, in which he propounded a now disproved scheme of Biblical chronology, whose dates were inserted by some unknown authority in the margin of reference editions of the Authorized Version.

The Croatian dialects, like the Servian, have gradually developed from the Old Slavonic, which survives in medieval liturgies and biblical or apocryphal writings.

But Biblical facts have at last triumphed over tradition, and the non-Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy is now a commonplace of criticism.

This theory he founded on 2 Kings xxii.; and ever since, this chapter has been one of the recognized foci of Biblical criticism.

As an historical record its value must depend upon a careful criticism of its contents in the light of biblical history and external information.

From a careful consideration of all the evidence, both internal and external, biblical scholars are now almost unanimous that the more finished picture of the Israelite invasion and settlement cannot be accepted as a historical record for the age.

Some later philosophers, especially of the 17th century, misled by the resemblance between Biblical narratives and ancient myths, came to the conclusion that the Bible contains a pure, the myths a distorted, form of an original revelation.

Sometimes the missionary, on the other hand, is anxious to demonstrate that the myths of his heathen flock are a corrupted version of the Biblical narrative.

In the latter case he is perhaps unconsciously moved to put burlesque versions of Biblical stories into the mouths of his native informants, or to represent the savages as ridiculing the Scriptural traditions which he communicates to them.

The Graf-Wellhausen literary theory has gained the assent of almost all trained and unbiased biblical scholars, it has not been shaken by the more recent light from external evidence, and no alternative theory has as yet been produced.

In its present form Genesis is an indispensable portion of the biblical history, and consequently its literary growth cannot be viewed apart from that of the books which follow.

Nevertheless, though one cannot look to Genesis for the history of the early part of the second millennium B.C., the study of what was thought of the past, proves in this, as in many other cases, to be more instructive than the facts of the past, and it is distinctly more important for the biblical student and the theologian to understand the thought of the ages immediately preceding the foundation of Judaism in the 5th century B.C. than the actual history of many centuries earlier.

In so far as the traditions can be read in the light of biblical history it is evident that they belong to different ages and represent different national, tribal, or local standpoints.

These labours are indispensable for scientific biblical study, and are most fruitful when they depend upon comprehensive methods of research.

If we reinterpret the history of the family and its descent into Egypt, and belittle its increase into a nation, and if we figure to ourselves a more gradual occupation of Palestine, we destroy the entire continuity of history as it was understood by those who compiled the biblical history, and we have no evidence for any confident reconstruction.

These and other indications point to a late date in biblical history.

We are taken to a period in biblical history when, though the historical sources are almost inexplicably scanty, the narratives of the past were approaching their present shape.

The conclusion that P's narratives and laws in the Pentateuch are post-exilic was found by biblical scholars to be a necessary correction to the original hypothesis of Graf (1866) that P's narratives were to be retained (with J and E) at an early date.

Even here, however, his achievements are of no mean order, especially when we remember his juridical training and his comparatively late handling of Biblical and doctrinal subjects.