Tabernacle in the Wilderness
9
which is perhaps the most convincing testimony of all—we have given us in the New Testament one whole book, the Epistle to the Hebrews, which concerns, especially explain ing from a Christian point of view, the typology and religious significance of that old building. II . TH E HIGHER-CRITIC V IEW With so much evidence, therefore, to be adduced, even from the Scriptures, in support of the Tabernacle s historicity, one would think that it requires at least some literary bravery, not to say presumptuous audacity, for any individual or class of men to assail, with the expectation of overthrowing, a fact so solidly established as would seem to be that of the Taber nacle’s real existence. Nevertheless, difficult as such task may appear, the critics have not hesitated most vigorously to undertake it. According to their notion the whole story of the Tabernacle, as recorded in the Bible, is simply a fiction, or, more properly speaking, a literary forgery a concoction gotten up perhaps by some of those priestly scribes who returned with Ezra from the Babylonian exile; their special purpose in devising such a story being to help in the introduc tion of a new temple ritual at Jerusalem, or perhaps it was also to glorify the distant past in the history of the Israelites* III. THE QUESTION MORE FULLY STATED Thus we have presented to us two widely different and opposing views respecting the Tabernacle’s existence, f One of them, which is the view of at least most higher critics, is that this old structure never existed at all; while, on the other hand, the orthodox and Biblical conception is that not only in the days of Moses but long afterwards this fabric had a most interesting and important history. Which, then, of these two so widely different doctrines are we pleased to accept? *As explained by Nodelke, another purpose of this forgery was "to eive pre-existence to the temple and to the unity of worship. But this Fs virtually included in the two purposes above named,
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker