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The Fundamentals. This is startling and far reaching in its consequences. Clay’s work must be put to the test; and so it will be, before it can be finally accepted. It has, however, this initial advantage, that it is in accord with the apparent self-consciousness of the Scripture writers and, as we have seen, exactly in the direction in which recent discoveries in Palestinian civilization point. IV. PALESTINE AND EGYPT. Again archaeology has of late furnished illumination of certain special questions of both Old and New Testament criticism. 1. “Light from Babylonia” by L. W. King(51) of the British Museum on the chronology of the first three dynasties helps to determine the date of Hammurabi, and so of Abra ham’s call and of the Exodus, and, indeed, has introduced a corrective element into the chronology of all subsequent his tory down to the time of David and exerts a far-reaching influence upon many critical questions in which the chron ological element is vital. SACRIFICE IN EGYPT. 2. The entire absence from the offerings of old Egyptian religion of any of the great Pentateuchal ideas of sacrifice, substitution, atonement, dedication, fellowship, and, indeed, of almost every essential idea of real sacrifice, as clearly estab lished by recent very exhaustive examination of the offering scenes(B2), makes for the element of revelation in the Mosaic system by delimiting the field of rationalistic speculation on the Egyptian side. Egypt gave nothing to that system, for she had nothing to give. THE FUTURE LIFE IN THE PENTATEUCH. 3. Then the grossly materialistic character of the Egyp tian conception of the other world and of the future life, and the fact, every day becoming clearer, that the so-called and
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