Excerpt from The Newer Criticism and the Analogy of the Faith: A Reply to Lectures by W. Robertson Smith, M.A., On the Old Testament in the Jewish Church It is true the author of these lectures claims it as the great value of historical criticism that it makes the Old Testament more real to us but if the reality be as it is represented in this outline, we are brought face to face with the fearful alternative of accepting as the word of God a palpable forgery claiming to be divinely inspired, or of rejecting it as a mockery and a fraud. To use the language of the author (p. 309) in reference to the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, if we are shut up to choose between such a theory of the origin and composition of the books of the Bible, and the sceptical opinion that the Bible is a forgery, the sceptics must gain their case. The fact is, the theory leaves no room for choice; for, as it is set forth in these lectures, it is simply an elaborate and detailed account of the way in which a guild of men availed themselves of a meagre historical outline to give an air of antiquity and authority to practices and doctrines which were either unknown and unheard of within the historical limits to which they have been fraudulently referred, or were, in ruder forms, denounced by the prophets of Jehovah, who, after authorizing His prophets to utter the denunciation, reversed His judgment, and gave his sanction to the doctrines and practices previously denounced' About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.