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The Fundamentals. like multitudes of others in which children, early orphaned, have not known their fathers* but have known the relations of their fathers. This statement of Sargon I quote from a translation of it made by Cheyne himself in the “Encyclo pedia Biblica.” He continues, “There is reason to suspect that something similar was originally said by the Israelites of Moses.” To substantiate this he adds, “See Encyclopedia Bib lica, Moses,’ section 3 with note 4.” On turning to this ref erence the reader finds that the article was written by Cheyne himself, and that it contains no evidence whatever. FIFTH FALLACY: THE TESTIMONY OF ARCHAEOLOGY DENIED. V. The limitation of the field of research as far as pos sible to the biblical books as literary productions has ren dered many of the higher critics reluctant to admit the new light derived from archaeology. This is granted by Cheyne.* “I have no wish to deny,” he says, “that the so-called ‘higher critics’ in the past were as a rule suspicious of Assyriology as a young, and, as they thought, too self-assertive science, and that many of those who now recognize its contributions to knowledge are somewhat too mechanical in the use of it, and too skeptical as to the influence of Babylonian culture in rela tively early times in Syria, Palestine and even Arabia.” This grudging recognition of the testimony of archaeology may be observed in several details. 1. It was said that the Hexateuch must have been formed chiefly by the gathering up of oral traditions, because it is not to be supposed that the early Hebrews possessed the art of writing and of keeping records. But the entire progress of archaeological study refutes this. In particular the discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tablets has shown that writing in cunei form characters and in the Assyrio-Babylonian language was common to the entire biblical world long before the exodus. *“Bible Problems,” page 142.
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