troclus slain. Thus they fight on and speak on, each out of the fullness of his heart and the bent of his nature, the words that show what sort of spirit reigned in each in that age of untrammeled thought, free action, and unbridled speech.

It would add to the reputation of Homer as a rhetorician if the discourse of his deities could be estimated; but he esteems them so slightly above heroes in mental and ethical directions, that the gain would be chiefly in the matter of variety. The Thunderer himself excels mortals in voice more than in sense or language, while Juno's billingsgate to Diana is worthy of a fishwife brawl, to say nothing of boxing the huntress' ears. Not all, to be sure, followed these high examples, but it is evident that the poet made no choice reserves of oratory for the dwellers on Olympus. He had not the advantages which Milton enjoyed of a later revelation, nor of a still later Calvinism to furnish him with "freewill, foreknowledge absolute," and predestination, although "fixed fate" was probably an article of his creed. This is left for warriors to discuss on the battlefield.

As we read the two finished epics with which Greek literature began its full-grown life, the truth is forced home which a guest announces in Xenophon's Symposium: "If any of you wishes to become an orator or a general, let him study Homer." In the suddenness of his unheralded appearance, it is not possible to say where he found examples for an eloquence which he could not have created; but it may reasonably be wondered that, amid the comments and annotations of all the centuries, so little heed has been paid to so large an element as the oratorical.1 These speeches are not mere rhetoric. Deliberative de

1 For instance, out of three hundred and forty-nine review articles on Homeric topics, none appear, judging by their titles, to discuss at length the speeches which occupy so large a portion of the poems.

bate, military address, the formalized converse of man with man, friend with friend, and foe with foe; solid, dignified, earnest, they betoken a great orator-poet and the existence of a pristine age of speaking men. Judicial, commemorative, and advisory in form, in spirit they are sincere and sagacious, emotional and persuasive. Their ethical tone is high, their atmosphere self-respecting, their diction that of gentlemen and noblemen. Therefore there is something to learn from the courtesy, the honesty, and the skill of an age whose attainments in debate and discussion, in conference and personal address, have not been surpassed in all the centuries since Homer made speech the stay of the state, as the sword was its defense.

ARTICLE VII.

DR. DRIVER'S PROOF-TEXTS.

BY G. FREDERICK WRIGHT.

THE demand for a sixth edition of Dr. Driver's "Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament" indicates an interest in the subject which warrants renewed attention to the arguments upon which his conclusions are based. The ability of the volume also amply accounts for the interest which it has aroused in Old Testament criticism; for it is, without doubt, the ablest defense which has yet been made in the English language of the inferences concerning the Old Testament which have been drawn by the Graf-Wellhausen school of critics; while the studious effort made by the author so to minimize the destructive tendencies of the German school as to allay the alarm produced by their radical and extreme statements does much to win public favor. Of the extent to which Dr. Driver is really successful in removing objections we will speak later.

From much which is appearing in current literature upon this subject, it is evident that the conclusions of this school of critics are already rapidly passing into the traditional stage, in which the statements are accepted upon authority, with little attempt to verify the references by which they are supported. The mass of readers will be in danger of accepting Dr. Driver's book as they have formerly done the decrees of the councils of the Catholic Church or of the general assemblies of the Presbyterian Church,

ascribing to them such infallibility that any questioning of the results seems presumptuous, and indeed scarcely less than sacrilegious. To question the correctness of conclusions agreed upon by so many eminent critics, and supported by such an array of references as darken the pages of Dr. Driver's volume, is to incur an odium criticum which is coming to be no less effective in the suppression of independent investigation than the odium theologicum has been in past times.

Nevertheless loyalty to truth and to the right of private judgment demands that each one of us should assume the responsibility of proving all things, and holding fast only to what is good; for, the conclusions of critical investigators, like those of Congregational councils, should have no more weight than there is in the reasons underlying them. This responsibility is all the more imperative from the fact, that the conclusions of the prevalent critical school concerning the Old Testament do not depend upon newly discovered facts which are beyond the reach of ordinary students, but are arrived at by examination and analysis of documents which are in possession of all. We have the high authority of Professor W. Robertson Smith in his preface to Wellhausen's "Prolegomena to the History of Israel,” for saying that, "The matters with which Professor Wellhausen deals are such as no intelligent student of the Old Testament can afford to neglect; and the present volume [the Prolegomena] gives the English reader an opportunity to form his own judgment on questions which are within the scope of any one who reads the English Bible carefully, and is able to think clearly and without prejudice about its contents." The praise here bestowed upon Wellhausen's "Prolegomena" is still more applicable to Driver's "Introduction." To the most salient portions of this work we will now give attention.

On page 124, Dr. Driver presents his formal proof of the

position maintained by him and his associates, that, when the oldest portions of the Pentateuch were written, "the period of the Exodus lay in the past [that is, as the context shows, in the remote past1], and that Israel is established in Canaan." Whereupon he cites certain passages which he says cannot all be treated as glosses, and in which language is used certainly implying the correctness of this proposition, that is, these passages carry to Dr. Driver's mind convincing proof that even what he considers to be the oldest portions of the Pentateuch were written at a time long subsequent to the death of Moses. The following are the passages:

(1) Gen. xii. 6: "And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Shechem, unto the oak of Moreh. the Canaanite was then in the land."

And

(2) Gen. xiii. 7: "The Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelt in the land."

The inference from these passages is, that the statement that the Canaanite and the Perizzite were then in the land would not have been made until after they had been driven out, and hence the passages could not have been written until after Moses' time. But this is a gratuitous and incorrect assumption. The period referred to in the time of Abraham was four or five hundred years previous to Moses, and the statement is that the Canaanites and the Perizzites, whom the children of Israel were about to expel from the land, had been there from that time on, a fact which is amply supported by recent archæological discoveries. These first proof-texts of Dr. Driver, therefore, are wholly without weight, and fit in with the ordinary theory of the date of the Pentateuch better than into his.

In

(3) His third proof-text is Gen. xxxiv. 7, where there occurs the phrase "he had wrought folly in Israel." parenthesis we are referred to Deut. xxii. 21; Judges xx. 6

1 Elsewhere he assigns the date to that of the early kingdom.