the changing of the name of the place to Dan, “after the name of Dan their father." The date of the victory is not stated more exactly than in Judg. xviii. 1; but what chronological data the text affords, do not necessitate assigning it to a time subsequent to the death of Joshua. The story about an Ephramite and his concubine follows that about Dan in the narrative in the Book of Judges, and the events. apparently (cf. Judg. xix. 1) took place in the same order. The unpleasant incident occurred while Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, was the chief priest (Judg. xx. 28); but from Josh. xxii. we learn that Phinehas had reached that dignity during Joshua's lifetime (cf. Josh. xxiii. 1). On the way to Laish the Danites robbed a man of his household gods, and, according to Judg. xviii. 31, "they set them up Micah's graven image, which he made, all the time that the house of God was in Shiloh"- we know that the sanctuary was located there in the time of Moses' successor (Josh. xviii. 1). They also took from Micah the person who was serving as his private priest, "Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses" (Judg. xviii. 30). Gershom was born while Moses was dwelling in the land of Midian (Ex. ii. 22) and Jonathan therefore almost certainly before the entrance into Canaan, yet the latter is spoken of as a ", "youth." (Joshua lived for about thirty-two years after the crossing of the Jordan.)

A more positive indication of the authorship of this appendix is found in the expressions "Moses the servant of the LORD" of xxxiv. 5 and "Moses the man of God" of xxxiii. I. Neither of these phrases occurs in the preceding part of the Pentateuch, the nearest approaches to the former being in Ex. xiv. 31; Num. xii. 7, 8, and Deut. iii. 24. In the Book of Joshua the words "Moses the servant of the LORD" are used more than a dozen times, and are found both in the narrative matter and in speeches attributed to Joshua (i. 1, 13, 15; viii. 31, 33; xi. 12, etc.). The other

expression also was known in his day, for Caleb referred to "Moses the man of God" in addressing him (Josh xiv. 6). A natural inference from these facts is the unity of authorship of the two chapters and the following book.

As to the time when Joshua wrote Deut. xxxiv., the indications already noted point to a late period in his life near its close. Josh. xxiv. 26 contains a final authentication of that person's literary productions similar to what Moses wrote in Deut. xxxi. As simple and as satisfactory a supposition as any we can make is that, on the occasion there referred to, when he gave the rest of his work its final form, he added this chapter to the Pentateuch and also, if it had not been previously affixed, the thirty-third chapter.

ARTICLE V.

A QUESTION OF INTERPRETATION.

BY THE REV. J. M. STIFLER, D. D.

THE question is not about a single text nor a group of texts on a single subject. It is broad and underlies the whole Bible, a question that confronted Paul in every synagogue from Antioch to Rome: Does Christianity displace and take the place of Judaism? Was Judaism the egg from which the bird having been hatched, the shell has served its final purpose, and must now mingle with the soil and disappear? Or if this antithesis is too sharp, was Judaism the draft of the great temple of Christianity, so that the temple having now been erected, the draft serves only to explain and illustrate it? To one who reads the Epistle to the Ephesians, and especially the Epistle to the Galatians and the Epistle to the Hebrews, the affirmative would appear to be the only possible answer. The Epistle to the Hebrews seems to be decisive. "In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old, is ready to vanish away" (Heb. viii. 13). The shell must perish after the bird is hatched. Again we read in Hebrews, "For the priesthood being changed," changed from the order of Aaron to that of Melchisedec, "there is made of necessity a change also in the law" (Heb. vii. 12). The outline draft in Moses may seem to illustrate and explain the new, but the new is said to supersede it. The Aaronic law was suited

only to the

Aaronic priesthood, and Jesus did not belong to that descent, but to a higher and better.

But while Christianity sprang from Judaism, there are such radical differences between the two that there can hardly be said to be an evolution. They have the same God, the same means of approach to him, faith in the Messiah, and certainly in the first days of the church the same Bible, though each party contended that the other misread the sacred rolls. But beyond this there were striking differences. Judaism was the religion of a nation. Christianity was the religion of all nations or rather of none. It made a new nation in which "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is no male and female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. iii. 28). Nationality was vital in Judaism; it could not be tolerated in Christianity. In the former blood was everything; in the latter nothing. Again, the constituents of Judaism were determined by birth. All who were born in the line of Isaac belonged to the kingdom. In Christianity the constituency is determined by a divine election. Judaism was an oak growing from the ground, thrusting out its limbs from the parent trunk. Election was repugnant to its idea. Christianity was a temple built of selected stones with no natural and necessary relation before they were laid.

Again, the Old Testament everywhere gave Judaism supremacy among the nations. It had promise of headship. When Messiah came he was to deliver the Jew from all his enemies. With this in mind the apostles, even after the resurrection, ask Jesus: "Wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" The church was given no such charter. Rather, like its Founder, it was to be the servant of all, and to be a suffering church. Jesus taught the apostles: "If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you (John xv. 20); "If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of his household” (Matt. x. 25). But the church, aside from its character as a suffering church, and its lack of a promise of world supremacy,

had this fundamental principle of election in its constitution which made its universal sway impossible. There could be election from the world, but how can an elect church ever take in the world?

A fourth distinction might be named. Judaism was connected with a particular land which it hoped to possess. "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." The church has no promise of inheriting any land. Its reward is in heaven. But I cannot consider this line any further than to say that Dr. David Brown, of Aberdeen, in a masterly monograph, "The Restoration of the Jews," a book little known, declares that every argument for their restoration at all is also an argument for their restoration to their own country.

Now the sign of nationality and of birthright was circumcision. And the pledge of supremacy over the nations and of the lordship of the earth appeared to the Jew to be recorded on every page of his Bible. And around these points the opposition finally gathered, finally, for it was different at first. Persecution was slow in getting a foothold. It was limited at the beginning to the sect of the Sadducees. They were "grieved" because the apostles preached in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. But beyond a subsequent beating the apostles never had any serious trouble in Jerusalem. Even when Stephen was stoned and the church temporarily scattered, the twelve did not have to leave the city. Indeed the Sanhedrim seems to have lost its power to do anything against the church, for, after the first outbreak over Stephen's speech, there never was any trouble from the council again. It was about fifteen years after the ascension when James. was beheaded, but his death was compassed, not by the Sanhedrim, but by the state: "Herod killed James the brother of John with the sword." For more than a quarter of a century, with these two exceptions in Stephen and James, the church lived peaceably in Jerusalem and Judæa, growing to