It may be said that the positive arguments of the modern hypothesis remain as they were. That is possible, but their background is gone. And how conscious the Hexateuchal analysts were of the importance of this background, before the discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, may be seen from their desperate efforts to rid themselves of the counter evidence afforded by the Song of Deborah. ‘Out of Machir,’ it is there said (Judg. v. 14), ‘came down lawgivers, and out of Zebulun they that handle the stylus of the scribe.’ In defiance of philology, the latter words were translated ‘the baton of the marshal’! But _sopher_ is ‘scribe’ here, as elsewhere in Hebrew; and his _shebhet_, or ‘stylus,’ is often depicted on the Egyptian monuments. In the Blessing of Jacob, which is allowed to be of early date, like the Song of Deborah, the _shebhet_ is associated with the _m’khoqêq_ or ‘lawgiver’ (Gen. xlix. 10). The word _m’khoqêq_, however, meant literally an ‘engraver,’ one who did not write his laws on papyrus or parchment, as the scribe would have done, but caused them to be engraved on stone, or metal, or clay.[134] In either case they were written down; and written documents are thus implied not only in the expression ‘the stylus of the scribe,’ but in the word ‘lawgiver’ as well. The Song of Deborah, by general consent, belongs to the oldest period of the Hebrew settlement in Palestine; it belongs also to an age of anarchy and national depression; and, nevertheless, it is already acquainted with Israelitish lawgivers and scribes, with engravers of the laws and handlers of the pen. It is little wonder that its evidence was explained away in accordance with a method which is neither scientific nor historical. As historians, we are bound to admit the antiquity of writing in Israel. The scribe goes back to the Mosaic age, like the lawgiver, and in this respect, therefore, the Israelites formed no exception to the nations among whom they lived. They were no islet of illiterate barbarism in the midst of a great sea of literary culture and activity, nor were they obstinately asleep while all about them were writing and reading. But even the analysis of the Hexateuchal critics fails to stand the test of archæological discovery. Nowhere does there seem to be clearer evidence of the documentary hypothesis than in the story of the Deluge. Here the combination of a Yahvistic and an Elohistic narrative seems to force itself upon the attention of the reader, and the advocates of the disintegration theory have triumphantly pointed to the internal contradictions and inconsistencies of the story in support of their views. If anywhere, here, at any rate, the external testimony of archæeology ought to be given on the side of modern criticism.