that this would be quite a false impression; that the matters with
which Professor Wellhausen deals are such as no intelligent student
of the Old Testament can afford to neglect; and that the present
volume gives the English reader, for the first time, 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 history of Israel is part of the history of the faith by
which we live, the New Testament cannot be rightly understood
without understanding the Old, and the main reason why so many
parts of the Old Testament are practically a sealed book even to
thoughtful people is simply that they have not the historical key
to the interpretation of that wonderful literature.

The Old Testament does not furnish a history of Israel, though it
supplies the materials from which such a history can be
constructed. For example, the narrative of Kings gives but the
merest outline of the events that preceded the fall of Samaria; to
understand the inner history of thc time we must fill up this
outline with the aid of the prophets Amos and Hosea. But the more
the Old Testament has been studied, the more plain has it become
that for many parts of the history something more is needed than
merely to read each part of the narrative books in connection with
the other books that illustrate the same period. The Historical
Books and the Pentateuch are themselves very composite structures,
in which old narratives occur imbedded in later compilations, and
groups of old laws are overlaid by ordinances of comparatively
recent date. Now, to take one point only, but that the most
important, it must plainly make a vast difference to our whole
view of the providential course of Israel's history if it appear