that instead of the whole Pentateuchal law having been given to
Israel before the tribes crossed the Jordan, that law really grew
up little by little from its Mosaic germ, and did not attain its
present form till the Israelites were the captives or the subjects
of a foreign power. This is what the new school of Pentateuch
criticism undertakes to prove, and it does so in a way that should
interest every one. For in the course of the argument it appears
that the plain natural sense of the old history has constantly
been distorted by the false presuppositions with which we have
been accustomed to approach it--that having a false idea of the
legal and religious culture of the Hebrews when they first entered
Canaan, we continually miss the point of the most interesting
parts of the subsequent story, and above all fail to understand the
great work accomplished by the prophets in destroying Old Israel
and preparing the way first for Judaism and then for the Gospel.
These surely are inquiries which no conscientious student of the
Bible can afford to ignore.

The process of disentangling the twisted skein of tradition is
necessarily a very delicate and complicated one, and involves
certain operations for which special scholarship is indispensable.
Historical criticism is a comparatively modern science, and in its
application to this, as to other histories, it has made many false
and uncertain steps. But in this, as in other sciences, when the
truth has been reached it can generally be presented in a
comparatively simple form, and the main positions can be justified
even to the general reader by methods much less complicated, and
much more lucid, than those originally followed by the
investigators themselves. The modern view as to the age of the
Pentateuchal law, which is the key to the right understanding of