The qualities of Holy Scripture may be divided into two classes distinctive and non-distinctive.

And the qualities of this second class, though not distinctive in kind, are distinctive in degree. (C. F. L.)

Mr. Tuckwell's first criticism is a curious one-that I am not likely to persuade English-speaking people to enlarge their use of the word Inspiration to cover all persons concerned. That is quite possible. I have offered my readers the alternative namely, to drop it. Evidence is already coming in that that alternative is being adopted. Our muddled thought and slipshod speech has so discredited the word that Bible-loyalists are beginning to discard it.

Mr. Tuckwell's reading of my paper has been so hurried that he is under the impression that I used the analogy of the inflation of a bicycle-tyre to prove my point. I used it, of course, only to account for that use of the word which I am deprecating. In each case we have a word used in a sense which does not correspond with its form.

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When Mr. Tuckwell points out that Holy Scripture is the product of the God-breathing and did not exist before it," his interpretation of 2 Tim. iii, 16, tallies with mine exactly. I trust that this was not an accident.

Mr. Tuckwell's translation of OEÓTVEVσTOs must be judged by translational considerations. At that bar we stand, and that verdict I claim.

Mr. Tuckwell having admitted that Holy Scripture is the product of God-breathing, insists on reading a quality also into OEÓTVEVOTOS on the ground that the figure of breath implicit in the word would be unsuitable to the creation of a pebble. That is a very curious argument-that a word exactly suitable to the creation of a literature must mean something more than creation because it is not suitable to the creation of a pebble!

Mr. Tuckwell protests that in 2 Pet. i, 21, he is not thinking solely of the origin of Holy Scripture. I have certainly not said otherwise. On the contrary, that is the very thing that I deplore, on the ground that in verse 21-the verse that is always quotedthe Apostle is thinking solely of the origin of Holy Scripture.

These verses, says Mr. Tuckwell, do help us to a definition of the Inspiration of Holy Scripture. Most decidedly; and the definition that emerges is mine, not his.

Mr. Tuckwell's illustration of the vase in a dark room illustrates my point that the Bible does not perform the function of a standard without the operation of the Holy Spirit enabling the reader so to use it.

It does not, however, disprove my point that that which Revelation, Inspiration and Illumination have in common is basic, namely, the conveyance of God's thought to man's mind, and that their differences, due to the different figures implicit in them, are mere matters of detail. I submit that the confusion of thought is not mine.

As to the correcting action of the Holy Spirit, Mr. Tuckwell cannot escape from the facts. Some errors the Holy Spirit (employing the sane and reverent treatment" of devout scholars) removes from the text.

Those which He does not remove become innocuous only by his benign interposition.

This is what I call (I think quite justifiably) His correcting action.

S This applies to H., page 44, line 6.

HELD IN COMMITTEE ROOM B, THE CENTRAL HALL, WESTMINSTER, S.W. 1, ON MONDAY, JANUARY 29TH, 1923,

AT 4.30 P.M.

LIEUT.-COLONEL F. A. MOLONY, O.B.E., IN THE CHAIR.

The Minutes of the previous Meeting were read, confirmed and signed, and the following Elections were announced. As Members: Benjamin I. Greenwood, Esq., the Rev. James M. Pollock, M.A., Major Arthur F. Smith, D.S.O., M.C., Coldstream Guards, W. G. H. Cook, Esq., LL.D., M.Sc., Barr., and Leonard W. Kern, Esq. As Associates: The Rev. H. H. Skinner, M.A., C. E. Welldon, Esq., and S. Hay Wrightson, Esq.

The CHAIRMAN explained the circumstances of the recent death of the author of the paper, the Rev. Andrew Craig Robinson, M.A.

The paper, which was entitled "Three Peculiarities of the Pentateuch which show that the Higher Critical Theories of its late Composition cannot be reasonably held," was then read by the Honorary Secretary.

THREE

PECULIARITIES

OF THE

PENTATEUCH

WHICH SHOW THAT THE HIGHER CRITICAL
THEORIES OF ITS LATE COMPOSITION CANNOT
BE REASONABLY HELD. By the REV. ANDREW CRAIG
ROBINSON, M.A.

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(1) THE ABSENCE OF THE NAME JERUSALEM FROM THE

PENTATEUCH.

(2) THE ABSENCE OF ANY MENTION OF SACRED SONG FROM THE RITUAL OF THE PENTATEUCH.

(3) THE ABSENCE OF THE DIVINE TITLE LORD OF HOSTS FROM THE PENTATEUCH.

(1) THE ABSENCE OF THE NAME JERUSALEM FROM THE PENTATEUCH.

JE

ERUSALEM! What a world of sacred and pathetic history gathers round the word! Jerusalem which Jehovah chose out of all the tribes of Israel to put His Name in for ever. One feels as if the entire history of the people of Israel was

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inseparably linked with that sacred Name. Yet, if we examine the Old Testament, we shall find that the name Jerusalem never occurs in The Pentateuch. In one unique chapter of Genesis —the fourteenth-the city is called Salem," which seems to be an echo of the cuneiform name Uru-salem, and some archæologists of note are of opinion that this whole chapter in all probability was once an ancient cuneiform record. Except in this chapter, however, no name in the Pentateuch for Jerusalem ever occurs. The first occurrence of the name. in the Old Testament is found in Joshua x, 1, Now it came to pass, when Adoni-zedec king of Jerusalem had heard how Joshua had taken Ai, and had utterly destroyed it; as he had done to Jericho and her king, so had he done to Ai and her king." The name Jerusalem afterwards occurs seven other times in the Book of Joshua. Now to those who hold the "conservative" view of the Pentateuch, the non-occurrence of the name Jerusalem is nothing unaccountable. The reason why shrines like Shechem, Hebron, Beersheba and Bethel are mentioned in Genesis with such distinguished honour is simply, no doubt, because they really were sacred places of venerable antiquity, consecrated, perhaps, by reason of the patriarchs having sojourned there and erected their altars for sacrifice and worship. And, on the other hand, the reason that the name Jerusalem does not occur in the Book of Genesis, except in the form " Salem" in one especial passage, would simply seem to be because, even though Jerusalem may have been of old a sacred place, it was not one near which the patriarchs had ever chanced to pitch their tents or build their altars to the Lord. But on the assumptions of the Critics of the present day, as to the motives and colouring which are to be detected in the various writers whom they suppose to have had a hand in the composition of Genesis, and the perfectly free hand which they are supposed to have had, the non-occurrence of the name Jerusalem" would seem to constitute a strange anomaly.

وو

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The "Yahvist or "Jehovist," for example, supposed by the Critics to have written from the point of view and with the bias of a native of the Southern Kingdom-having behind and around him all the sacred and historic glories of Jerusalem-lauds the shrine of Pethel in the Northern Kingdom, whilst he had not one word to say about his own Jerusalem. Between Bethel and Ai is the altar which, according to him, appears to be most dear to Abram; and he makes Jacob say, Surely the Lord is in

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this place; and I knew it not.

And he called the name

of that place Beth-el" (Gen. xxviii, 16, 19).

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And what is still more singular, the "Priestly Writer,” “P,” ---said to have written in Exilic times-to whom, according to the Critics, such shrines as Bethel ought to be anathema, is actually found consecrating Bethel by a very notable theophany, in a passage which is attributed by Kuenen to "P2" (Hex., p. 185): "And God went up from him in the place where He spake with him. And Jacob called the name of the place where God spake with him Beth-el" (Gen. xxxv, 13, 15). And whilst he thus glorified Bethel, this Priestly Writer-to whom Jerusalem with her priesthood is supposed to have been the ideal shrine-strange to say, never once, in all his writings in the Pentateuch, even names Jerusalem! "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem," wails the plaintive Exile psalm, "let my right hand forget her cunning."

Was Jerusalem then forgotten in Exilic days, with all her sacred and pathetic story? If not, how strange that she is never named.

Still more remarkable, however, is the non-occurrence of the name "Jerusalem" in the Book of Deuteronomy, because, according to the Critics, the Book of Deuteronomy was found— some say composed-in the reign of Josiah, for the purpose of being used to stamp Jerusalem as the one and only sanctuary of the nation. Now, in the Book of Deuteronomy, the central sanctuary is referred to under three forms of words-the simplest is, "the place which the Lord thy God shall choose." This form occurs in Deut. xii, 18, 27, and nine other passages-xiv, 25; xv, 29; xvi, 7, 15, 16; xvii, 8, 10; xviii, 6; xxxi, 11. A fuller form is, "the place which the Lord thy God shall choose to put His Name there," or to cause His Name to dwell there' (Deut. xii, 5, 11, 21, and six other passages; xiv, 23, 24; xvi, 2, 6, 11; xxvi, 2). And the third form, which occurs only in two places, slightly varied, is, "But in the place which the Lord shall choose in one of your tribes" (Deut. xii, 14); or “the place which the Lord your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put His Name there" (Deut. xii, 5).

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By referring to the passages mentioned it will be seen that, not only is Jerusalem not named, but there is not even any intimation given that the central sanctuary is to be in a great city, nor any intimation as to which of the Tribes should be honoured by possessing that sanctuary within its borders. To