Tabernacle in the Wilderness 13 the prototype, of the temple at Jerusalem” (Proleg., Eng. trans., p. 37). So also Graf, who preceded Wellhausen in higher-critic work, affirms that the Tabernacle is only “a diminutive copy of the Temple,” and that all that is said about this structure in the middle books of the Pentateuch is merely post-exilic accretion.” Once more, to hear from a more recent authority, Dr. A. R. S. Kennedy, in Hastings Dictionary of the Bible, has these words: “The attitude of modern Old Testament scholarship to the priestly legislation as now formulated in the Pentateuch, and in particular to those sections of it which deal with the sanctuary and its worship, is opposed to the historicity of P s [that is, the old Mosaic] Tabernacle.” The same or a similar representation is given by Benzinger in the Encyclopaedia Bibliea; and in fact this is, and must necessarily be, the attitude of all con sistent higher critics toward the matter under consideration. For it would never do for the adherents of the critic theory to admit that away back in the old Mosaic times the Taber nacle, with all its elaborate ritual, and with the lofty moral and spiritual ideas embodied in it, could have existed; because that would be equivalent to admitting the falsity of their own doctrine. Accordingly with one voice the critics all, or nearly all, stoutly proclaim that no historicity whatever must be allowed to Moses’ Tabernacle. VI. CERTAIN GREAT PRESUMPTIONS To come then to the actual discussion of our subject, it might be said, in the first place, that there are certain great presumptions which lie in the way of our accepting the higher- critic theory as true. 1. One of these presumptions is, that this whole critic hypothesis goes on the assumption that what the Bible tells us regarding the real existence of the Tabernacle is not true, or, in other words, that in a large part of its teachings the Bible speaks falsely. Can we believe that? Most assuredly
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