32. Inexcusable Ignorance of Evidence on the Part of Notable Critics Exposed

Inexcusable Ignorance of Evidence on the Part of Notable Critics Exposed

Thus, with regard to this title, by a mass of incontestable evidence, the writers of Chronicles and Ezra, and of Daniel, also, are shown to be in harmony with the contemporaneous usage of documents written in the Persian period and to be out of harmony with the common usage in Greek times. The Bible is right, and Professor Ewald of Gottingen, the greatest German Old Testament scholar of his time, and Professors Driver and Gray of Oxford, the writers of many books and of many articles in the Encyclopedia Britannica, Hastings, and the Expository Times, are proved to be wrong. They all might have read that part of the evidence which is found in Herodotus, Thucydides, Aeschylus, Xenophon, and other Greek authors. Drs. Driver and Gray ought, also, to have read for themselves, or to have had Professor Sayce, or Dr. King, or Dr. Budge, read or gather for them the evidence on the subject to be found in the Babylonian, Persian, Susian, and Egyptian. Unless one has sufficiently mastered the languages in which the texts containing the evidence on such subjects as the titles of the kings of Persia are written, he cannot be called an expert witness and should be ruled out of court.

Having read carefully and repeatedly what these critics have to say on this title, I have failed to find any hint indicating that they have ever appealed for their information to any original sources outside of Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic; and as to these, they pay no attention to the great Greek writers mentioned above. If they are so careless and unreliable where their assertions can be investigated, what ground have they for expecting us to rely upon them where their assertions cannot be tested? If the statements of the Biblical writers are found to be confirmed when they can be tested by outside evidence, is it not right to presume that they are correct when no evidence for, or against, their statements is within our knowledge?