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The Fundamentals. In light of these well-attested facts, one reads with aston ishment the following words of Wellhausen, written no longer ago than 1889: “Tha t. four kings from the Persian Gulf should, ‘in the time of Abraham,’ have made an incursion into the Sinaitic Peninsula, that they should on this occasion have attacked five kinglets on the Dead Sea Littoral and have car ried them off prisoners,; and finally that Abraham should have set out in pursuit of the retreating victors, accompanied by 318 men servants, and have forced them to disgorge their prey,—all these incidents are sheer impossibilities which gain nothing in credibility from the fact that they are placed in a world which had passed away.” And we can.have little respect for the logic of a later scholar (George Adam Smith), who can write the following: “We must admit that while archaeology has richly illustrated the possibility of the main outlines of the Book of Genesis from Abraham to Joseph, it has not one whit of proof to offer for the personal existence or the characters of the patri archs themselves. This- is the whole change archaeology has’ wrought; it has given us a background and an atmosphere for the stories of Genesis; it is unable to recall or certify their heroes.” But the name Abraham does appear in tablets of the age of Hammurabi. (See Professor George Barton in Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 28, 1909, page 153.) It is true that this evidently is not the Abraham of the Bible, but that of a small farmer who had rented land of a well-to-do land owner. The preservation of his name is due to the fact that the most of the tablets preserved contain contracts relating to the business of the times. There is little reason to expect that we should find a definite reference to the Abraham who in early life migrated from his native land. But it is of a good deal of significance that his name appears to have been a common one in the time and place of his- nativity. In considering the arguments in the case, it is important to
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