Archaeology and the Higher Critics
Old Testament studies before the War were mainly textual. Since the Mar opened Palestine to modern research they, have been mainly archaeologiCal. The difference between the two schools has been illustrated in a lively correspondence in The Times, in which Sir Charles Marston, the liberal supporter of Professor Garstang's excavations at Jerusalem and Jericho, _ has championed the .archaeologists :against Dr. Lofthouse for the Biblical critics. It is perhaps hardly realized by the scholars pure and simple that archaeology, has now made the narratives of Joshua and Judges fit into the history of Palestine . and Syria as we know it from the Egyptian and Babylonian records. Professor Gar- stang's recent book showed by a wealth of detail gained from digging on the spot how the Biblical account of the Hebrew settlement in the Holy. Land accorded—as in the taking of Jericho or that of Ai—with the evidence of the spade and with the annals of the neighbouring Empires. The higher, critics have, of course, rendered indispensable service in destroying the old literalism for all time, but the archaeologists are having their turn now in arresting a radicalism that may have gone too far.
* * * *
Previous page
