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Show Bible Critics Silenced in Face of Evidence The crucial question about the potsherds pot-sherds Inscribed with Hebrew writ-?n writ-?n discover of which is "c are the experts of Doctor Staikey s Expedition to deal with It as field archeologlsts. Something must be allowed, al-lowed, perhaps, for enthusiasm en rendered by a truly remarkable dis covery. and time must be granted for would-be critics of the ancient dates assigned to examine the evidence evi-dence for themselves and express approval or marshal their contrary arguments. If It be true that the documents found date from 900 to 1000 B. C, the discovery Is difficult to overestimate in Its Importance to Biblical studies. Like so many happenings hap-penings of recent archeolog.ca years, It gives the Biblical text that lias come down to us added stature as a historical document Most of the previous discoveries which have done this were Babylonian. Baby-lonian. It has been a generation since the originals of the Bible stories of the Creation and of the Flood were found on cuneiform tablets, but it is nly a few years since the Flood was identified, both at Ur and Kish, as an unquestionable historical event, even though it may not have submerged sub-merged quite so much of the world is literal interpreters of the Biblical Bibli-cal text sometimes imagine. The story of Creation emerges as a Sumerian account of how Mesopotamia Mesopo-tamia was reclaimed from the sea and the rivers. Most recent of all the confirmations are the discoveries at Ur which reinforce ." previous knowledge of Sumerian customs and law to show almost perfect veri similitude In the Bible stories of Abraham. Even the dream of Jacob's Ladder, Doctor Wooliey suggests, may have been a memory of white-robed white-robed Sumerian priests marching up nnd down the great ladder-like stairs of the Ziggurnt at Babylon, original of the Tower of Babel. Considered quite aside from Its devotional and religious characteristics characteris-tics and purely as a historical document, docu-ment, the Bible has experienced within two generations one complete swing of the pendulum of expert opinion. From slavishly literal acT ceptance of every word and punctuation punctua-tion mark, opinion of Bible scholars swung far to the opposite extreme of doubting every historical event recorded, even the Exodus . or the existence of Abraham. Now the balance bal-ance is becoming truer. Proof satisfactory satis-factory to the most rigid logician now Is available for many of the Bible episodes. More appears with every thorough bit of excavation that is done. The dream of the first excavators of Bible lands that they would add light and solidity to the stories In the Book they loved gradually grad-ually is coming true. New York Herald Her-ald Tribune. |