Tabernacle in the Wilderness
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which is perhaps tlie most convincing testimony of all-we have given us in the New Testament one whole book, the Epistle to the Hebrews, which concerns, especially explain ing from a Christian point of view, the typology and religious si gn ificance of that old building. IL THE HIGHER-CRITIC VIEW With so much evidence, therefore, to be adduced, even from the Scriptures, in support of the Tabernacle'i historicity, one would think that it requires at least some literary bravery, not to say presumptuous audacity, for any individual or class of men to assail, with the expectation of overthrowing, a fact so solidly established as would seem to be that of the Taber nacle's real existence. Nevertheless, difficul t as such task may appear, the critics have not hesitated most vigorously to undertake it. According to their notion the whole story of the Tabernacle, as recorded in the Bible, is simply a fiction, or, more properly speaking, a literary forgery-a concoction gotten up perhaps by some of those priestly scribes who returned with Ezra from the Babylonian exiles; their special purpose i n devising such a story being to help i n the introduc tion of a new temple ritual at Jerusalem, or perhaps it was also to glorify the distant past i n the history of the Israelites.* III. THE QUESTION MORE FULLY STATED Thus we have presented to us two widely different and opposing views respecting the Tabernacle's existence. One of them, which is the view of a t least most higher critics, is that this old structure never existed at all; while, on the other hand, the orthodox and Biblical conception is that not only in the days of Moses but long afterwards this fabric had a most interesting and important history. Which, then, of these two so widely different doctrines are we pleased to accept? *As explainea by Nodelke, another purpose of this forgery was "to give pre-existence to the temple and to the unity of worship." But this is virtually included in the two purposes above named
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