fold and Knobel, we learn from a note to a later addition, arc" unsatisfactory 1,ud perl'crsc.'' We have already seen what Knobel's opinion of Ewald is. It nrny, therefore, not be entirely unscientific if wo venture to suspend our judgment, and examine the facts anew, with the desire to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. For first of all it may be remarked that the conclusions of writers like Ewald, Knobel, and Noldeke are extremely improbable in themselves, and would require very clear and cogent evidence before a truly scientific mind could be induced to adopt them. We are required to believe that in a nation which had early reached a high degree of civilisation, which in the days of Solomon had added to that civilisation a considerable amount of material prosperity/' which e'\'en in its decline maintained no small amount of intercourse with the great nations around it (see, for instance, 2 Kings xx. 12), which still possessed great wealth and resources (Isa. ii. 7; iii. 18-23 ; vii. 23), a historical document came into existence which at once obtained credit, and superseded the regular clu·onicles which, we are repeatedly assured, were regularly kept in those days. This document was made up of disconnected fragments of earlier compositions of various dates, and thrown together without the slightest attempt to fuse together differences of style, or to harmonise the most glaring contradictions. So badly was the work done that it is possible, after a lapse of 2,500 years, to disintegrate the whole and to assign the various fragments, with au accuracy beyond dispute, to their respective authors. Yet neither the patch 0 -work character of the history, nor its frequent and palpable contradictions, were able, in an age of some pretensions to cultivation, to hinder its im- mediate reception as authentic and even inspired history. All this is necessary to the theory; and we have also to explain the very remarkal>le historical and psychological fact that the law, to which the Jews have for centuries cherished so profound and even passionate attachment, and for the neglect of which they conceive their banishment from their own land to be owing, never, according to this theory, existed at all, but was the invention of the priests in the hour of national degradation, to account for the miseries suffered by the people, and that this falJle was greedily swallowed, and has ever since been most firmly believed among them. Surely so unique a fact in the world's history ought to be established on better evidence than this. The industry and research which has been expended upon the task of establishing these theories is beyond all praise. Knobel, especially, has devoted the most minute attention to the words and phrases of the Hebrew Scriptures. But the objection is made, not to the utmost possible minute- • Pax alma et commercium dona Bua ubique largiebont11r. Inter tot h11m11nitatie et opulentire emolumenta procul dubio litterre et poesis non eordebant. (Donaldson, • Jashar,' p. 2G.) '1.'0 THE BOOK OF ,JOSHUA. V ---------------- ness of Htudy of the phrases of Holy Writ, but. to the method pursued by the observers. In minuteness of observation the German critics have been anticipated and surpassed by the Rabbis, in whose hands this minute observation yields results in precisely the opposite direction. It is not mere minute observation, but the use that is made of it, which is required. And thi_s so-called " scientific " criticism is carried on by methods diametrically opposite to all which science has hitherto recognised. For if there be one principle better estaqlished in science than another, it is that in scientific processes nothing must be taken for granted'but the most self-evident truths. Now the "scientific'' critics of the Old Testament proceed upon two assumptions which ea~ by no means be regarded as self-evident truths. First, they assume that there is no such thing as the supernatural in :revelation, that all prophecies were written after the event, and all miracles !l,re the result of legends gradually gathering round the facts of history in later ages. And next, they assume that it is possible, on purely subjective grounds, to determine without risk of error the authors of the respective fragments of which the Hebrew Scriptures are composed. But it may be observed, in reference to this second point, that in no two hands do the same premises yield t4e same results, a fact which in any other branch of science would lead us to suspect the accuracy either of the data or of the method. As to the method itself, when we find Knobel assigning, for instance, without the smallest doubt or hesitation, a passage in which "l-l::l~~ occurs to one author, S?t~ to another, and nr,~-Sv to a third, we are naturally driven to ask what would be the result if a similar process were applied to an E!!glish author who uses indifferently the phrases on account of, because of, by reason of, and the like. Again, in science it is usual, when a law is believed to be established by a sufficiently wide induction, to reverse the process, assume the truth of the law, apply it to known facts, and see if the results correspond to observation. i, Harn the so-called " scientific'' critics of the Old Testament clone this ? Will their methods enable us to analyse historians like Motley or Macaulay, and to assign without fail the various portions of their history to the sources from which they bave avowedly obtained them? Is there any method in existenc, which will enable us, without risk of e1Tor, to assign to Shakspere and hiE contemporaries the various portions of the works known to have been written by them in common? And if no method has been discovered which
• Whewell, 'Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences,' ii. 440. This was Newton's method. Bacon, in the first book of his 'Novum Organum,' speaks of science ascending " con- tinuously and by degTees" to the discovery of general laws. The brief abstract givell above of German criticism on t!Je Hebrew Scriptures, shows that what bas been called scientific criticism has had to recede "continuously and by degrees" from the hasty generalisations to which it 11t first coIIIIll.itted itself. INTRODUCTION