Excerpt from Journal Biblical Literature, 1919, Vol. 38

To this I venture to add a word on the religious valuation of the Bible. Ive have essayed to treat it as philology, as archae ology, as history, as literature, and as many new and fascinating phases of study have developed. But the Bible remains pri marily a religious book, and the student must approach it with religious sympathy. As it is absurd to think of a student of art approaching his subject without the aesthetic sense. So it is equally absurd for the student of the Bible to handle it without some reaction upon his religious sensibilities. There is the danger of the scientific fetish of mind deadening this sensibility, as if the student of Greek art should think he has accomplished his task when he has minutely and painfully measured an Attic vase, while in spirit he falls infinitelv behind the untutored soul that is ravished bv its beauty. The mere measurements of the Bible must not deter us from the appreciation of it as that which it. Claims to be, a book of religion. And none can fully interpret it who is not possessed bv that prepossession. Not the childish fear of the appearance of faith or confessionalism should keep us from this full approach to the Bible. It is after all, on the whole. Those who have believed in it who have been its-greatest interpreters. And the duty lies upon us Biblical scholars to show the world that we believe in its worth and assert its value with an enthusiasm that. Is tinged by emotion as well as mod crated by reason.

Such are some of the internal conditions of our American Bib lical scholarship and the criticism that. May be applied to it. In the present circumstances. But there is also a foreign relation ship to whose bearings upon our subject we cannot shut our eyes. Germany has been our mistress in Biblical scholarship, we have gone. To school to her. Her textbooks have been ours. Now the moral ties binding us with her have been broken, and with that has snapped the intellectual relationship. If it were otherwise. We were pedants. Not men. No better than mummies.

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