which, being of an indefinite character, may have either a narrow local meaning, or a large and even universal one. This last is what it has in God's promise to Abram, that "in thee shall all families of adamah (ground) be blessed." It evidently was the opinion of the translators of the Septuagint edition of the Bible, that the larger meaning must not be permitted to go into the Greek; and so the five adamahs on which the universal character of the deluge could rest, were treated as our English translators treated them, rendering them all by one word. In the English that one word was "earth." But in the Greek it was ge, with the article, the universal symbol by which they distinguished the country of God's ancient people.

There is, then, good authority for giving the limited, rather than the larger, significance to those five words, and considering them, either as hyperbole, or words of some older account which were set aside by him who wrote the final one in which the flood is limited by the customary use of erets with the article, to the land known and accepted as the land of promise. If the whole were written by one writer, then the interpretation given to adamah must be limited by what is found in chaps. vi. 5, 11, 12, 13, 17; vii. 3, 4, 6, 10, 12, 14, 17, 18, 19. This last part is so much more concerned with locating the flood that it must have force to limit the significance of adamah. And so the extent of the flood, according to the usual significance of the name by which the country east of the Mediterranean Sea was known, must have been limited to the country designated by the second writer; and by the Septuagint translators, who evidently thought that their own land, and no other, was the scene of that great flood which they, in their love of their native land, took pains to show, by correcting the folly of spreading the flood over all the adamah, since it was in what they were pleased to call in their GræcoHebraic way, "the land.”

The conclusion, then, comes easy and natural, that the Noachian flood was not a universal flood, but one which drowned the unbelieving world in that land of the Jews, while saving "the heavens and the earth," in the persons of Noah and his family, to continue the ordinances of religion, and the functions of the civil powers.

That was Peter's version of the work of the water which saved him, and the religious and civil institutions of society.

And the flood he was looking for in the approaching judgment, as well as the one about which John was prophesying, was also to be a local affair, which would destroy all the "old heaven and land," to give room for the new, which had been constituted of those who believe that Jesus was the Christ.

PERRYSBURG, OHIO.

G. A. ADAMS.

ARTICLE X.

NOTICES OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

LINES OF DEFENSE OF BIBLICAL REVELATION. By D. S. MARGOLIOUTH, M.A., Laudian Professor of Arabic in the University of Oxford. Second edition. 8vo. Pp. xii, 318. New York: Edwin S. Gorham. 1902. $1.50, net.

The learned author of this volume has here given one of the most important and convincing defenses of the conservative view of the Old Testament which have ever been made. In the chapter upon "The Bible of the Gentiles," he shows that "a book of the Old Testament presented to a Jew of the year 300 B.C., or thereabouts, much the same appearance as it presents to one of us. It is in a dead language" (p. 25). Even the pronunciation of the Hebrew vowels, which were unwritten previous to 750 A. D., had been correctly preserved by tradition for a period of twelve hundred and fifty years after the old Hebrew became a dead language. From this it is cogently argued that a tradition which is scientifically proved to be correct concerning such small matters should be given great weight, if not implicitly trusted, concerning the more important matters relating to authorship. The flippant way in which tradition is set aside by many modern critics has little justification in the facts.

In the second chapter the author with equal learning shows that the Pentateuch as known to the author of the " Wisdom of Solomon" was practically the same as that which we now possess, and this book he gives reason to believe originated in Solomon's time, if it was not indeed the work of Solomon himself. And in this the temple is said to have been in imitation of the tabernacle, rather than the tabernacle in imitation of the temple, as so many modern critics suppose.

In the third chapter, upon "Unity against Plurality," which occupies a hundred pages, he deals merciless blows to those who dismember the book of Isaiah on such ill-considered subjective grounds. "Our first reason, then, for assailing the theories that split Isaiah is that the result to which they lead is uncritical, and even ludicrous. That two authors of stupendous merit might accidentally get bound up together, and so the works of the second get attributed to the first, is exceedingly unlikely, but not so unlikely as to be impossible; in the case of Isaiah, however, not only is the analogy of the Minor Prophets decidedly against it, but that of Ezra and Nehemiah still more so. Owing to the similarity of the subject of which these authors treat, they appear in several canons under the single head of Ezra; but the Jews, though they probably often bound

them up together, never confused them. Still, if the division of Isaiah between two authors gave satisfaction, and further dissection did not immediately follow, this solution would not go so far outside the bounds of experience as to be called uncritical. But the fact that this first dissection leads to innumerable others renders it useless. The assumption that we can locate disjointed fragments of Hebrew is to be summarily rejected. Even if we knew the Hebrew language as well as we know, say, Greek, and Israelitish history as well as we know, say, Greek history, and if we could be sure that we were familiar with all the forces which go to the making of history, such an assumption would be arrogant. But the case is infinitely less favorable than that supposed. We know so little Hebrew that the simplest correction of a biblical text is a hazardous undertaking. Of Israelitish history we know little in any case; on the showing of the biblical critics that little has been fraudulently altered over and over again to suit religious prejudices current at different epochs. Moreover, the world—and a world including men like Bacon, Locke, and Newton-has till very recently been convinced that forces entered into the development of Israelitish history, of which the history of other nations exhibits but faint traces. What chance is there, then, of any form of criticism that ventures far from documents and monuments finding its way? There is none. And science disdains all results that are neither certain nor probable" (pp. 83-85).

Upon this follows a forcible positive argument from the claims of the author to the foretelling of important events; the author of Isaiah even staking his claims to the confidence of the people upon the occurrence of the events which he foretold. (See especially chapters xli. 23; xlii. 9; xliv. 7; and xlviii. 3-5.) It is noticeable, also, that in the so-called "second Isaiah" these declarations that the author has foretold events begin very early; so that it can scarcely be denied that they refer to passages in the first part.

With great learning the author goes on to show later that the geography of the "second Isaiah" is not that of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, but that of a long-previous period. After summing up the arguments in favor of the unity of Isaiah, the author forcibly asks,

"Is there, then, nothing in the splitting theories? To my mind nothing at all. The phenomenon of prophecy is one which is at present scarcely understood; it belongs to a class of experiences which are not yet brought into the region of science, though it is conceivable that they may be. The words used by the prophets to describe their experiences imply that they were not ordinary; that they were bestowed only on particular individuals; and that they were often claimed by persons who did not really entertain them. The process, therefore, by which the ostensible results of these experiences are denuded of their supernatural character and treated as ordinary utterances is only scientific if the profession of the prophets be shown to be false, e. g., if the scene described in VOL. LIX. No. 235.

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chapter vi. be shown to have been either a delusion or a dishonest invention. How this can be demonstrated is not obvious; but until it is demonstrated, the assumption that such experiences must be delusions is to be classed with the theory that nature abhors a vacuum, or with the belief that the orbits of the planets must of necessity be circular. Such assumption may lead to the writing of books, but they are not science" (pp. 136-137).

In the fourth chapter, "The Argument from Silence," the author shows that the early date usually assigned to the Psalms is amply sustained by the omission in them of all reference to conditions which arose at a later date. There is not only no reason to doubt the Davidic origin of most of the psalms assigned to David, but every reason to doubt their later origin; while, to the common flippant references to David as an unspiritual man who could not have been the author of psalms, Dr. Margoliouth justly remarks,

. . . . Much of the conduct of David that may with justice be impugned is excused on the ground that morality is progressive, and conduct, like scholarship, must be judged according to the standard of its age. But if the worst act of David's life, the painful story of Bathsheba, be considered, the underlying character which David exhibits is much better than that displayed by most men in any age. Max Duncker remarks that the crime which caused David so much penitence and contrition was one of which, probably, no other Oriental monarch would have thought anything, and, if there be any truth in history, it would have occasioned few scruples to most defenders of the Faith. The second crime ought not to be judged apart from the first, of which it was the natural and inevitable consequence; David had to choose between an honorable death for Uriah and a horrible one for Bathsheba; and he chose the former. He who thinks Bathsheba could have been safe while Uriah lived does not see the whole hand. And when David is rebuked for the crime, he yields the point without argument; he is told that he has done wrong, and he receives the prophet in a prophet's name. When has this been done before or since? Mary Queen of Scots would declare that she was above the law; Charles I. would have thrown over Bathsheba; James II. would have hired witnesses to swear away her character; Mohammed would have produced a revelation authorizing both crimes; Charles II. would have publicly abrogated the seventh commandment; Queen Elizabeth would have suspended Nathan. Who has ever acknowledged an error of any magnitude, if it had been in his power to maintain that he was right? A recent writer has described the course of the ordinary man who falls into the devil's meshes, and that writer probably knows the human heart rather well. Loyalty to the weaker sinner is not a spring that works in the hero of that romance. Cain's plan-that of silencing the accuser, and Adam's plan-that of shifting the responsibility, seem to exhaust the range of human expedients when

an error is brought home. He who escaped from both, though semustulatus, was a 'man after God's own heart'" (pp. 209-210).

In succeeding chapters, upon "The Bible of the Jews," "The Calendar of the Synagogues," and "The Principles of Criticism," the author brings his discourse to an effective conclusion. The volume should be read by every one who is paying any attention to the questions raised by the prevalent destructive criticism. In fact, no one can count himself well informed upon this subject until he has read and thoroughly digested this masterly work of this devout and learned scholar.

THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY, with its Bearings on the Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch. By JOHN WILLIAM MCGARVEY, President of the College of the Bible, Lexington, Ky.; author of "Text and Canon of the New Testament," etc., and various commentaries. Crown 8vo. Pp. xxii, 304. Cincinnati, O.: The Standard Publishing Co.

In this volume the author has given an exhaustive and masterly treatise traversing the hypotheses of the revolutionary critics who would assign a late date to the book of Deuteronomy. It should be read by all who have been carried away, or are in danger of being carried away, by the bold sophistries which are coming to prevail concerning the place of the Pentateuch in history. The author is familiar with the entire literature of the subject, and leaves no argument unexamined; thus producing a work which must reëstablish confidence in the historical statements of the Pentateuch, in the minds of those who give careful attention to the facts and arguments that are here presented.

We will limit ourselves to the single point of his treatment of Dr. Driver's argument that there is an irreconcilable conflict between the book of Deuteronomy and the historical books from Exodus to Samuel, respecting the offering of sacrifice at a central sanctuary. Dr. Driver's argument is summed up by himself in the following paragraph:

"In these books (Joshua-1 Kings) sacrifices are frequently described as offered in different parts of the land, without any indication (and this is the important fact) on the part of either the actor or the narrator that such a law as that of Deuteronomy is being infringed. After the exclusion of all uncertain or exceptional cases, such as Judges ii. 5; vi. 20–24, where the theophany may be held to justify the erection of an altar, there remain, as instances of either altars or local sanctuaries, Josh. xxiv. 26; 1 Sam. vii. 9, 17; ix. 12-14; x. 3, 5, 8; xiii. 9; xi. 15; xiv. 35; xx. 6; 2 Sam. xv. 12, 32" (pp. 34-35).

But, as usual, on verifying these references, Dr. McGarvey finds that, upon a fair interpretation, they are very far from proving Dr. Driver's point. Judges ii. 5 and vi. 20-24 are irrelevant, not only for the reason admitted by Dr. Driver, that they were in connection with special theophanies, but from the additional consideration that no one knows where