We have noted that modern historians are disposed to begin their accounts of the history of the Israelites with the Egyptian sojourn. It is impossible, however, to avoid questioning as to the home of the people prior to that period, and at least a brief reference must be made to the traditional wanderings of the race in the earlier epoch. Whoever is disposed to feel that the modern historian in his iconoclastic treatment of the Hebrew records is passing beyond justifiable bounds, may be reminded that some of the greatest of living scholars are able to separate their ideas as to it into two classes, and to entertain two seemingly antagonistic sets of judgments regarding the entire subject of Hebrew history. As archæologists and historians they study the Hebrew records as human documents, to be judged by ordinary historical standards; while as theologians, they view the same documents through a prism of faith that gives them an altogether altered position. Perhaps this attitude of a certain school cannot be better expressed than in the words of the Rev. A. H. Sayce, Professor of Assyriology at Oxford, who is recognised everywhere as one of the highest authorities on oriental archæology. In the preface to his _Early History of the Hebrews_ Professor Sayce points out that “There is no infallible history any more than there is infallible philology; and if we are to understand the history of the Hebrews aright, we must deal with it as we should with the history of any other ancient people. The Old Testament writers were human; and in so far as they were historians, their conceptions and manner of writing history were the same as those of their oriental contemporaries. They were not European historians of the nineteenth century, and to treat them as such would be not only to pursue a radically false method, but to falsify the history they have recorded. No human history is, or can be, inerrant, and to claim inerrancy for the history of Israel is to introduce into Christianity the Hindu doctrine of the inerrancy of the Veda. For the historian, at any rate, the questions involved in a theological treatment of the Old Testament do not exist.” But after making these statements, Professor Sayce continues: “The present writer, accordingly, must be understood to speak throughout simply as an archæologist and historian. Theologically he accepts unreservedly whatever doctrine has been laid down by the Church as an article of the faith. But among these doctrines he fails to find any which forbids a free and impartial handling of Old Testament history.” If so great an authority finds this attitude justifiable, surely it is open to every one to read the history of the Hebrews as interpreted according to modern ideas, and then to apply to it whatever prism of faith may suit his own fancy.[a] THE AGE OF THE PATRIARCHS [Sidenote: [_ca._ 2300 B.C.]]