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The Fundamentals. of the foundation of his Pentateuchal criticism in these words: “The returning exiles were thoroughly imbued with the ideas of Josiah’s reformation and had no thought of worshiping except in Jerusalem. It cost them no sacrifice of their feel ings to leave the ruined High Places unbuilt. From this date, all Jews understood, as a matter of course, that the one God had only one sanctuary.” So much Wellhausen. But here is this petition of the Jews at Syene in the year 407 B. C. after Nehemiah’s return declaring that they had built a temple there and established a system of worship and of sacrifices, and evi dencing also that they expected the approval of the Jews at Jerusalem in rebuilding that temple and re-establishing that sacrificial worship, and, what is more, received from the gov ernor of the Jews permission so to do, a thing which, had it been opposed by the Jews at Jerusalem was utterly incon sistent with the Jewish policy of the Persian Empire in the days of Nehemiah.
NEW TESTAMENT GREEK.
5. Then the redating of the Hermetic writings(55>whereb they are thrown back from the Christian era to 500-300 B. C. opens up a completely new source of critical mate rial for tracing the rise and progress of theological terms in the Alexandrian Greek of the New Testament. In a recent letter from Petrie, who has written a little book on the sub ject, he sums up the whole case, as he sees it, in these words: “My position simply is that the current religious phrases and ideas of the B. C. age must be grasped in order to under stand the usages of religious language in which the New Tes tament is written. And we can never know the real motive of New Testament writings until we know how much is new thought and how much is current theology in terms of which the Eu-angelos is expressed.” Whether or not all the new dates for the writings shall be permitted to stand, and Petrie’s point of view be justified, a discussion of the dates and a criti- y
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