"MARAN-ATHA" AND PROFESSOR DICKIE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23687, 20 December 1938, Page 8

" MARAN-ATHA" AND PROFESSOR DICKIE

TO THE EDITOR Sir,—in a letter which appeared in your issue of the 16th inst., under the heading "' Maran-atha ' and Professor Allan," Dr Dickie refers to an address he gave some years ago, " dealing with the nature and interpretation of the literary type to which the books of Daniel and the Revelation belong." After accusing "'Maran-atha" of a " misunderstanding or distortion such as one has learned to expect from him" —a rather discourteous and stupid assertion—he says of these books: " I have never said or implied that, they had no right to be in the Bible. I hope I have never on any subject said anything so silly as that would have been. . Every student of the Bible . . accepts the Bible as a historically-given entity, neither to be shortened nor to be lengthened.' Just so! But I fear the professor, when writing in the press, forgets that his readers are, many of them, of a more discriminating and understanding type than the ordinary theological student. Dr Dickie's views are presumably those of his fellow professors, which, on the subject of the book of Daniel, are sadly at variance with the foregoing statements. For example, in a magazine called the New Zealand Journal of Theology, now happily defunct, of which Dr Dickie was a " co-operating editor," there appeared in the issue of February, 1933, an article by * S. F. Hunter. D.D.," whom I take to be Professor Hunter, Dr Dickie's colleague on the staff of Knox College, an article entitled "Babylonia During the Latter Half of the Jewish Exile." In this article, Dr Hunter quotes from a writer called Dougherty, who is evidently an authority *on the subject, to the effect that "the fifth chaper of Daniel ranks next to caniform literature in accuracy, so far as outstanding events are concerned." Yes! but alas! The reverend professors subtle scholarship does not permit him to accept this claim, and in keeping with his particular views, Dr Hunter sums up the article in the following amazing assertion: —" Thus we come to the conclusion, that the fifth chapter of Daniel, and with it the first four and the sixth, is no more to be accepted as historical than is an historical novel of to-day." How does this higher critical—cum imagination statement, harmonise with that of Dr Dickie already quoted, to wit, that " the Bible as an historically-given entity, neither to be shortened nor to be lengthened. Intelligent people will, I fear, prefer to accept the scriptural position set out by "Maran-atha," in preference to evanescent imaginings of the socalled "higher criticism" cult.—l am, etc., A Business Man. Dunedin, December 18.