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The Fundamentals. still reluctant to admit this new light. Thus Kent1 says, “The primary value of these stories is didactic and religious, rather than historical.” 3. The books of Joshua and Judges have been regarded by the higher critics as unhistorical on the ground that their por traiture of the political, religious, and social' condition of Pal estine in the thirteenth century B. C. is incredible. This can not be said any longer, for the recent excavations in Palestine have shown us a land exactly like that of these books. The portraiture is so precise, and is drawn out in so many minute lineaments, that it cannot be the product of oral tradition floating down through a thousand years. In what details the accuracy of the biblical picture of early Palestine is exhibited may be seen perhaps best in the excavations by Macalister2 at Gezer. Here again there are absolutely no discrepancies between the Land and the Book, for the Land lifts up a thou sand voices to testify that the Book is history and not legend. 4. I t was held by the higher critics that the legislation which we call Mosaic could not have been produced by Moses, since his age was too early for such codes. This reasoning was completely negatived by the discovery of the code of Hammurabi, the Amraphel3 of Genesis 14. This code is very different from that of Moses; it is more systematic; and it is at least seven hundred years earlier than the Mosaic legisla tion. In short, from the origin of the higher criticism till this present time the discoveries in the field of archaeology have given it a succession of serious blows. The higher critics were shocked when the passion of the ancient world for writing and the preservation of documents was discovered. They were shocked when primitive Babylonia appeared as the land of Abraham. They were shocked when early Palestine appeared as the land of Joshua and the Judges. They were shocked when 1Biblical World, Dec., 1906. 2“Bible Side-Lights from the Mound of Gezer.” 3On this matter see any dictionary of the Bible, art. “Amraphel.”
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