"Before we can understand it (a collection of sacred books) properly, we must separate the elements of which it consists, and assign to each its chronological position. "The very fact, however, that religious texts are usually of immemorial antiquity, and that changes inevitably pass over them as they are handed down in successive editions, makes such a task peculiarly difficult. Nevertheless it is a task which must be undertaken before we have the right to draw a conclusion from the texts with which we deal. We must first know whether ... they are composite or the products of a single author and epoch; whether, lastly, they have been glossed and interpolated, and their primitive meaning transformed. We must have a chronology for our documents ... and beware ... of interpreting the creations of one age as if they were the creations of another." The application of these principles to the Hebrew Scriptures has had startling results. If two tables were compiled showing the date and authorship of the various books, one according to the traditional school of higher criticism,[3] the other according to the school with which we are now dealing,[4] the two would present a marked contrast to each other. The new school would hold, for instance, that the bulk of the Pentateuch is not in its present form the work of Moses; that the last twenty-seven chapters of our Book of Isaiah were not composed by that prophet; and that very few of the Davidic Psalms were really written by David. At the time when the first volumes of the Expositor's Bible were published this school had become large and influential; and public attention had been called to their teaching by the attacks on Prof. W. Robertson Smith, one of their leading representatives. The new criticism affected not only purely literary questions but also the views to be taken of the history and religion of Israel. The history before Saul, it was maintained, was not so fully and definitely known as had been supposed; and the religion of Israel had developed, under the influence of Revelation, from a primitive faith which had much in common with that of other Semitic peoples. Here again we can illustrate the alleged results of the new criticism by a passage from Prof. Sayce: "It is to Babylonia, therefore, that we must look for the origin of those views of the future world and of the punishment of sin[5] which have left so deep an impression on the pages of the Old Testament.... They were views from which the Israelite was long in emancipating himself. The inner history of the Old Testament is, in fact, in large measure a history of the gradual widening of the religious consciousness of Israel in regard to them and their suppression by a higher and more spiritual form of faith."[6] [3] As represented for instance by the earlier editions of Dr. Angus's Bible Handbook, or by Keil's O. T. Introduction. [4] As represented by Driver's Introduction.