Fallacies o f the Higher Criticism. 61 Amraphel came back from the grave as a real historical charac ter, bearing his code of laws. They were shocked when the stele of the Pharaoh of the exodus was read, and it was proved that he knew a people called Israel, that they had no settled place of abode, that they were “without grain” for food, and that in these particulars they were quite as they are represented by the Scriptures to have been when they had fled from Egypt into the wilderness.* The embarrassment created by these discoveries is manifest in many of the recent writings of the higher critics, in which, however, they still cling heroically to their analysis and their late dating of the Pentateuch and their confidence in the hypothesis of evolution as the key of all history. SIXTH FALLACY: THE PSALMS WRITTEN AFTER THE EXILE. VI. The Psalms are usually dated by the higher critics after the exile. The great majority of the higher critics are agreed here, and tell us that these varied and touching and magnificent lyrics of religious experience all come to us from a period later than 450 B. C. A few of the critics admit an earlier origin of three or four of them, but they do this wav- eringly, grudgingly, and against the general consensus of opin ion among their fellows. In the Bible a very large number of the Psalms are ascribed to David, and these, with a few insignificant and doubtful exceptions, are denied to him and brought down, like the rest, to the age of the second temple. This leads me to the following observations: *The higher critics usually slur over this remarkable inscription, and give us neither an accurate translation nor a natural interpreta tion of it. I have, therefore, special pleasure in quoting the follow ing from Driver, “Authority and Archaeology,” page 61: “Whereas the other places named in the inscription all have the_ determinative for ‘country,’ Ysiraal has the determinative for ‘men’ : it follows that the reference is not to the land of Israel, but to Israel as a tribe or people, whether migratory, or on the march.” Thus this distinguished higher critic sanctions the view of the record which I have adopted» He represents Maspero and Naville as doing the same.
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