RELIGION

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 105, 6 May 1933, Page 14 (Supplement)

RELIGION

INTRODUCTION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT, by Professor J. E. McFadyen, B.A. (Oxon), ALA., D.D. (Hodder and Stoughton); pp. 400. .... This is a completely revised and reset edition of Professor McFadyen’s book of 27 years ago. So many different phases of the critical discussion of the Old Testament have taken place in the intervening years that such revision was most essential. Whether the learned author has taken into account sufficient of that discussion will be a moot point in the minds of many readers. To some the evidence of archeological discoveries has brought about a more conservative attitude toward the Pentatenchal and other problems. (Several scholarly works have desiderated a more cautious attitude in regard to redactions and other matters. For example the spelling of Nebuchadrezzar is given as “the correct form and is found almost invariably in the book of his contemporary, Jeremiah; the incorrect form with ‘n’ is uniform throughout the late Book of Daniel.” Maybe, Professor McFadyen has not noted that the above mentioned discoveries almost certainly show that “n” was also a contemporary method of alternative spelling. The treatment of each book is necessarily limited because this is an “introduction” and fuller treatment would mean a commentary in each instance. The method is to give a summary of the book, with approximate dates for the whole or the component parts, show its significance for the time of its appearance, and finally to indicate something of its spiritual import. ; “Above all things, I have tried to be interesting. Critical discussions are I too apt to divert those who pursue them ' from the absorbing human interest of I the Old Testament. Its writers were men of like hopes and fears and passions with ourselves, and not the least important task of a sympathetic scholarship is to recover that humanity which speaks to us in so many portions and so many ways from the pages of the Old Testament. While we must never allow ourselves to forget that the Old Testament is a voice from the ancient and Semitic world, not a few parts of it—books for example, like Job and Ecclesiastes —are as modern as the book that was written yesterday.”

There is a happy economy in the use of technical language, w'hile the few citations of Greek and Hebrew words are never in the original alphabets. Th© book is also singularly free of that bugbear of the average reader — involved and tedious explanatory footnotes. With a fair working knowledge of the text of each book, the reader can peruse each chapter as a continuous discussion. Professor McFadyen has an easy flowing style with clarity of exposition, two happily wedded faculties. The whole volume is rich in that spiritual verse so essential in such writings. Those desirous of exploring the intricate ways of Biblical criticism could not do better than commencing with this scholarly, .stimulating “Introduction.”