Excerpt from Moses and the Monuments: Light From Archaeology on Pentateuchal Times

DO you think I do not know my own stitches? Was the indignant remonstrance of a tailor to one who questioned his ability to identify his own work. A textile manufacturer who was walking with a friend through a great department store in a distant city suddenly exclaimed, as they passed a pile Of table covers, Oh, there are our damasks. Did not these men in reality speak for work Of every kind and for workmen everywhere? Does not the product always bear the personal impress?

And may not others than the producer also learn to recognize the product? Upon such ability, in fact, rests all musical criticism, all art criticism, all literary criticism, that has to do with author and origin. In a junk shop in London an Old violin was found. It represented but a few shillings among the merchandise Of the place. But the musical instrument dealers examined it; the violinists played upon it; and together they pronounced it a Stradivarius and it was sold for In the museum at the site Of the Old Olympian games stands in solitary state an almost perfect ancient marble statue of Hermes. It came from the ruins Of Olympia; it represents the best age Of Greek art; and the artists Of the world have set it in its solitariness, where nothing else may stand beside it, as a genuine work Of Praxiteles.

And shall the hand that carves the wood or wields the chisel leave more plainly the mark Of its own individuality than the hand that uses the pen to register the mind and heart? Among the rub bish Of an Egyptian refuse heap, kept through the ages by the sheltering drift of sand from the desert, a fragment Of papyrus bearing ancient Greek litera ture was quickly identified as a lost play Of Euri pides. From the same heap Of refuse were gathered many Of an early collection Of sayings Of Jesus which Christian sentiment, that subtle, sensitive, critic Of all Christian literature, quickly and uni formly, shall we not say infallibly, has separated into genuine sayings of our Lord and corrupt records Of other sayings now lost. Thus, whether the hand carves the wood or wields the chisel or uses the pen, it leaves a recognizable impress upon the product.

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