38 The Fundamentals a true supernatural revelation of God in the history and re ligion of the Bible. There is necessary, third, the recognition of a true supernatural inspiration in the record of that reve lation. These three things, to my mind, go together—a more positive view of the structure of the Bible; the recognition of the supernatural revelation embodied in the Bible; and a recognition in accordance with the Bible’s own claim of a supernatural inspiration in the record of the Bible. Can we affirm these three things? Will they bear the test? I think they will. THE STRUCTURE OF THE BIBLE First as to the structure of the Bible, there is needed a more positive idea of that structure than is at present pre valent. You take much of the criticism and you find the Bible being disintegrated in many ways, and everything like structure falling away from it. You are told, for example, that these books—say the Books of Moses—are made up of many documents, which are very late in origin and cannot claim historical value. You are told that the laws they contain are also, for the most part, of tolerably late origin, and the Levitical laws especially are of post-exilian construc tion; they were not given by Moses; they were unknown when the Children of Israel were carried into captivity. Their temple usage perhaps is embodied in the Levitical law, but most of the contents of that Levitical law were wholly un known. They were the construction—the invention, to use a term lately employed—of priests and scribes in the post- exilian period. They were put into shape, brought before the Jewish community returned from Babylon, and accepted by it as the law of life. Thus you have the history of the Bible turned pretty much upside down, and things take on a new aspect altogether. Must I then, in deference to criticism, accept these theories, and give up the structure which the Bible presents ? Taking
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