ARCHEOLOGY AND BIBLICAL RESEARCH.

ARCHEOLOGY AND OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM.

TWENTY-FIVE years have produced a remarkable change in the attitude and tactics of the destructive school of biblical critics. During the past decade a complete revolution has taken place, and the old positions have been altogether abandoned. Formerly great stress was placed upon the linguistic argument, upon style, diction, and vocabulary. But "phraseological statistics" no longer play an important rôle in determining the age of a book. The development theory has almost displaced the literary or linguistic, and consequently the critics put less stress upon the words used than upon the subject-matter. The books of the Bible, as we have them, it is said, are not from the pens of Moses, David, Isaiah, or other authors whose names they chance to bear, but are rather compilations, masses of ill-arranged data, often put together by an unskilled editor centuries after the events recorded took place. Our critics rewrite, or rather rearrange, these ancient writings and reproduce them in their original form. To do this in a scientific manner they have to picture the real state of civilization among the Hebrews in all the centuries down to our era. The critic throws the history of the chosen people upon a huge canvas; and, in panoramic style, the varied scenes from Moses to the close of the canon are made to pass before our eyes, and thus we obtain a clear view of the development of ideas and the progress of thought from age to age, as well as of the ruling ideas in any period. It goes without saying that some old-fashioned people cannot help believing that these fine pictures are mere reflections, based upon theories evolved from the brains of those hostile to evangelical truth and of unbelievers in supernatural revelation. This is not strange, since their conclusions are for the most part purely subjective, and not based upon historical data, sound reasoning, or even probabilities.

The method of this school is nowhere better illustrated than in the writings of Canon Cheyne. His recent article in the Contemporary Review, entitled "The Archæological Stage of Old Testament Criticism," is therefore interesting. This learned Oxford professor, the high priest of higher criticism in Great Britain, is a man who has thrown away all ecclesiastical fetters, and who prides himself on a profound knowledge of the science of biblical criticism from the standpoint of those not in bondage to the traditions of orthodoxy. This article, like almost everything from this author's pen, is profusely apologetic. He protests against being regarded as one who has changed his views on the subject of Assyriology; indeed, he assures us that he has been preserved from that generally exaggerated distrust into which, quite excusably, men like Wellhausen and Robertson Smith fell." It is refreshing to see with what tenacity he tries to cling to his utterances of former days, while at the same time he is

gracefully getting ready to abandon theories already exploded and all at once to become the champion of "criticism and exegesis in an archæological direction." His language is very temperate, almost pathetic, but patronizing withal; it is that of a tender-hearted father to a wayward child. Both parties are cautioned against too hasty conclusions, and the hostile schools are exhorted to take their stand upon a common platform. Though Assyriology and archæology have made egregious blunders in the past, and thereby have rightly aroused our suspicions, we must not turn the cold shoulder upon these two inexperienced sisters-errors are expected of the young-but we must rather attempt to use them for the furtherance of biblical criticism. We, however, want not only a more archæological criticism, but also a more critical archæology.

The learned canon defines his position by a reference to the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis, where we may compare "the mythic and semimythic narratives of the Israelites and the Babylonians." Dillmann, whom Professor Cheyne very justly calls the most learned of modern critics, as is well known, wisely maintained that the story of creation, the deluge, and some others recorded in Genesis had their origin in an old tradition common to the Semitic peoples. Such a view, however, according to our learned reviewer, cannot hold its ground even provisionally. It is surprising with what facility Canon Cheyne, by a single stroke of his pen, can sweep away the objections of all those who happen to differ with him. Thus, when Riehm, Kittel, Sayce, Dillmann, McCurdy, or Gunkel does not agree with him he concludes that they are in the wrong.

But, to return to the origin of these myths. We are assured that "the glaringness of those mythic features in their original form has no doubt been toned down in Gen. i, and they have been harmonized fairly well with the higher Israelitish religion; but they are still, for all that, Babylonian, and not Israelitish." The object of this remark is clear. It is a determination to depress the date of Genesis, to bring it down to post-Mosaic times, so as to preclude the possibility of Mosaic authorship. Though the professor is willing to concede that myths concerning the creation of the world had made their way from Babylonia to Canaan previous to the fifteenth century before Christ, or as early as the time of the Tel-elAmarna tablets, and that the Israelites on their first settlement in Palestine might have received some of these legendary accounts from the Canaanites, yet he insists that the story as told in the first chapter of Genesis bears unmistakable evidence of Babylonian origin. This is the more evident, we are informed, since the Babylonian myths show greater originality. Though the story of creation might have been known to Moses, we must, after all, not lose sight of the fact that there were "three other periods when either an introduction of new or a revival of old myths is historically conceivable." It will be difficult for most readers to see why three periods are named any more than ten; for, were there not constant communications all through the ages, and not simply at intervals of several hundred years, between Babylonia, Canaan, southern Arabia, and Egypt? Babylonian myths would be more 9-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. XII.

likely to influence Hebrew literature centuries before than during, much less than after, the captivity. Professor Gunkel, the latest writer on this subject, says in Schöpfung und Chaos (p. 144, f.) that the dates usually given to these myths are mere "compromises and must be abandoned, since most of the legends are very old.'”

The principal value of Canon Cheyne's article is the fact that it has called forth a rejoinder from Professor Sayce, whom the canon had charged with desertion from the ranks of the critics. The professor disclaims any change in his article toward real criticism, but admits that he no longer sympathizes with self-styled critics whose criticism starts with preconceived ideas and groundless assumptions, who treat imperfect evidence as if perfect, or who base opinion upon unproved theories; or, in other words, Professor Sayce, having been led to the edge of a dangerous precipice, and having realized the tendencies and results of the criticism advocated by his Oxford colleague and his friends, deemed it wise and necessary to change front.

The following are in brief some of the reasons which influenced Professor Sayce in rejecting the teachings of the more advanced higher critics:

1. He can no longer regard the Pentateuch as a kind of a literary hodgepodge, mostly compiled during the monarchy, though much of it is postexilic. He cannot believe that the story of Israel in the wilderness is legendary or mythical and that Israel had no history previous to the exodus. He has no sympathy with the analysis of the nineteenth century which slices up the Pentateuch into minute fragments and tickets them with a kind of algebraic symbols, finding no less than three or four distinct writers in even one short verse. He challenges the critics to analyze modern stories known to have a dual authorship, that are written in good English in our own times, as one of the novels of Besant and Rice. He justly characterizes such guesswork-done by students now living, at so distant a date and possessing comparatively little Hebrew literature, and "compiled from the imperfect literature of an imperfectly known language "—as a rope of sand ingeniously woven. Any method condemned by common sense must be unsound and unsafe.

2. Archæology has clearly demonstrated that Moses could have written the books bearing his name. The art of writing was practiced extensively in Egypt, Babylonia, and other countries centuries before the birth of Moses. The universality of writing in the fifteenth century B. C. is established beyond controversy by the Tel-el-Amarna tablets. The center of the literary activity, as revealed on these tablets, was Canaan. No wonder, therefore, that Professor Sayce asserts that "Canaan in the Mosaic age, like the countries which surrounded it, was fully as literary as was Europe in the time of the Renaissance." This being true, it requires less faith to believe in the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch than to believe, as some critics did a few years ago, that the art of writing was unknown to the great legislator, or that there was no writing or Israelitish history previous to the age of Samuel.

3. The Semitic literature found in Babylon and Assyria is not a patchwork of compilations such as Cheyne would have us believe the Pentateuch to be. The slicing and patching process is practically unknown in the works discovered in the buried clay libraries of Babylonia and Assyria. No wonder, therefore, that so distinguished an authority as Professor Hommel, though admitting the possibility of older documents in the composition of Genesis, says that "it passes the wit of man to separate and distinguish them."

4. Many of the narratives, once characterized by the higher critics as "unhistorical figments of popular tradition," are now by the help of archæology proved to be genuine history. We need 'no longer relegate Melchizedek, Chedorlaomer, and Tidal to the realm of myth.

Let us ask, in conclusion, would it not be well for some American critics to follow the example of Professor Sayce and, in the words of Dr. Green, "revise their own ill-judged alliance with the enemies of evangelical truth, and inquire whether Christ's view of the Old Testament may not, after all, be the true view?"

WRITING IN HOMER.

THE question of writing in the Homeric times has once more been reopened. This time, by a mere accident, Professor William Ridgeway, of Cambridge, England, in a most interesting article in the Academy, entitled "What People Produced the Works called Mycenæan?” incidentally referred to two words in that well-known passage in the Iliad-the only one, we believe, in the entire work where there is reference to writing of any kind—which relates the story of Bellerophon, the Joseph of the Iliad, who, being falsely accused by Anteia, the wife of Prœtus, was sent by the monarch to the court of his father-in-law, Iobates, King of Lycia, with a sealed message containing a request to have Bellerophon put to death. The passage in question has been variously translated, and all translators are agreed that it contains a reference to a document of some kind. The two words are onμara λvypá (book vi, line 168), which Professor Ridgeway renders "baleful pictographs." The learned professor assumes that this message, written in Argos, but sent to distant Lycia, was pictographic rather than alphabetic.

Mr. Samuel Butler calls the Cambridge professor to account, and demands some further proof in confirmation of his rendering. Professor Ridgeway has a difficult task before him, and probably he will never be able to satisfy intelligent readers that his assumption is well founded. › His rendering of the two words was suggested by that of Mr. A. J. Evans, who, by the way, has made valuable discoveries within a year or two, especially in Crete, and who has written a very learned paper, called "Primitive Pictographs." Mr. Butler maintains that ohuara, though plural in form, simply means a document, just as the word "letters" is used for alphabetic symbols, or a document; and, while he is not able to present conclusive evidence that the double, or folding, tablet sent by

Prœtus to his wife's father was written in alphabetic symbols, he has the argument on his side. His translation of the passage, though not quite literal, may convey the correct idea. It is thus: "He gave him treacherous letters of introduction, to which end he wrote much damaging matter upon a folding tablet."

Professor Monro, of Oriel College, Oxford, in his article on Homer, in the Encyclopædia Britannica, translated the same passage: "Prœtus. gave him baneful tokens, scratching on a folded tablet many spiritdestroying things.'" And he adds: "There is no difficulty, therefore, in understanding the message of Protus without alphabetical writing. But, on the other hand, there is no reason for so understanding it."

Professor Ridgeway argues that onμa, the singular of ohuara, always · means a mark or a picture, and that ypáμua would have been used were the writing in alphabetic characters. This is disproved by Mr. Butler, who cites several passages in which oñua has not this meaning. It makes but little difference whether Mr. Butler or Professor Ridgeway is correct. The great fact is the same, namely, that communication by letter or tablets, in legible characters of some form, was known in Iliadic times, and that one king thus corresponded with another. An art thus mentioned by the poet might have been practiced by himself or by some one for him. Whether the writing was pictographic, hieroglyphic, or alphabetic is of no importance any more than whether Chinese books are written in script peculiar to these people or in that commonly known as Roman.

But we should not neglect to mention that the most interesting part of Professor Ridgeway's article is that in which he refers to the ancient Pclasgians, who at one time occupied large portions of Greece, the surrounding islands, and much of Asia Minor. He thinks that the works commonly known as Mycenæan, including gems, ornaments, shields, different kinds of implements, and pottery, were produced by the Pelasgians. These objects have been discovered in widely separated places, not only in Greece, but in Thessaly, Crete, many localities in Asia Minor, and even in Italy and Egypt; this, if not a proof of the vastness of the Pelasgian empire, is certainly evidence of the extensiveness of their commerce. Ever since Dr. Schliemann made such wonderful discoveries in Mycenae the efforts of the excavator have been rewarded by Mycenæan articles almost every year, at great distances from that ancient Pelasgian stronghold. Some of the most important finds of Mr. Evans in Crete were of this same class. On engraved gems and other objects are what appear to be a series of pictographic symbols not allied to Egyptian hieroglyphs, but showing many points of resemblance to the symbols found on seals and other objects commonly known as Hittite." Is it possible that those people, so powerful in pre-Hellenic times, called by Homer and other classic writers Pelasgians, but of which so little is positively known, were the same as the Hittites of Egyptian, Assyrian, and biblical records? Strange indeed that Greek history knows nothing of the powerful Hittites, at least under that name. It would be wonderful if the archeologist should prove that the Pelasgians and the Hittites were one people.