President Harper's "Constructive Studies in the Priestly Element in the Old Testament" shows him to be more radical in criticism than does any other of his [380] publications that I have seen. In nothing, perhaps, does he follow so unquestioningly his German teachers as in his accounts of animal sacrifice. On this subject his most constantly quoted authorities are Wellhausen and his imitators, such as Kent and Menzies. Speaking of sacrifice in the early times, he says:

      At first this was a social meal, a banquet in which the offerer and his friends participated, and to which the deity was invited. There are frequent references to such sacrificial meals in which the members of a family, or of a clan, or, indeed, of a whole nation, took part. This meal was full of joy, sometimes boisterous. Those who participated were eating and drinking with the deity; it was a communion of the worshiper and his god.

      If this had been said of sacrificial feasts among the heathen, we might pass it by without dispute, for almost every imaginable folly has been connected with heathen sacrifices; but the author shows that he refers to sacrifice as practiced by the patriarchs and early prophets of the Old Testament, by citing in support of his assertions none but passages in Genesis, 1 Samuel and 2 Chronicles. His first citation is the account in Genesis 18 of Abraham's entertainment of the three angels, in which no sacrifice at all was offered, and in which the thought of "eating, and drinking with the deity" was not hinted at; for Abraham took the three visitors to be no more than human beings until after the feast was over. If it is the "modern scientific" way of proving a proposition, to quote a passage in which the subject of the proposition is neither mentioned nor hinted at, this may serve as a specimen.

      The second citation is from 1 Sam. 1:3-8, which describes the annual feast of Elkanah's family. In this instance there was a sacrifice, that of a peace-offering, a part of which was always eaten by the offerer and his [381] family, but there is not a word said about the deity being invited, neither was the meal "full of joy." It was quite otherwise, on account of the jealousy between Elkanah's two wives. And if any of the family had the idea that it was "a communion of the worshiper with his god," nothing is said about it in the text. It is a new kind of exegesis which makes a text prove something by saying nothing about it. Why the terms "deity" and "god," in this extract, are spelt with small initial letters is not explained.

      The third reference is to the sacrificial feast prepared by Samuel on the hilltop at Ramah, in anticipation of God's promise to show him that day the man who was to be king of Israel. Samuel invited the thirty elders, and he invited Saul; but there is not a word said about his inviting "the deity." The thirty elders communed with their future king, and he with them; but there is no intimation that they were communing with their "god." The occasion was not "full of joy," but full of perplexity, for no man present except Samuel understood what it all meant. This is another example of the same kind of exegesis.

      Finally, our author refers to 1 Chron. 16:1-3, where we find David, after bringing the ark into Jerusalem, offering burnt-offerings and peace-offerings, and then giving to every one of the men and women who were present a loaf of bread, a portion of flesh or wine, it is uncertain which, and a cake of raisins, and blessing them in the name of Jehovah. Apart from the sacrifice itself, not one of the elements mentioned by President Harper is hinted at on this occasion. Thus endeth the Scripture proofs of the wild statements quoted at the beginning of this article.

      In the next paragraph on the same page (I am [382] quoting from page 4), President Harper says: "In later times sacrifice became more formal, and gradually grew into an exclusively religious act."

      If there ever was a time when, in the practice of patriarchs and prophets, or of those who accepted their teaching, it was anything else than an exclusively religious act, the proof is not forthcoming in this book; neither can President Harper, or any other man, make it come forth. There are other statements about sacrifice in this book which are as far from the truth as these which I have mentioned, but I have said enough to show what kind of teaching this famous professor is trying to inject into the advanced classes of our Sunday-schools. If we follow him, we move at every step away from the Bible.

[SEBC 380-383]