So perfect was the proof of
this that the most eminent scholars in the foremost seats of
Christian learning were obliged to acknowledge it.[[371]]
The more general conclusions which were thus given to biblical
criticism were all the more impressive from the fact that they had
been revealed by various groups of earnest Christian scholars
working on different lines, by different methods, and in various
parts of the world. Very honourable was the full and frank
testimony to these results given in 1885 by the Rev. Francis Brown,
a professor in the Presbyterian Theological Seminary at New York.
In his admirable though brief book on Assyriology, starting with
the declaration that "it is a great pity to be afraid of facts," he
showed how Assyrian research testifies in many ways to the
historical value of the Bible record; but at the same time he
freely allowed to Chaldean history an antiquity fatal to the sacred
chronology of the Hebrews. He also cast aside a mass of doubtful
apologetics, and dealt frankly with the fact that very many of the
early narratives in Genesis belong to the common stock of ancient
tradition, and, mentioning as an example the cuneiform inscriptions
which record a story of the Accadian king Sargon--how "he was born
in retirement, placed by his mother in a basket of rushes, launched
on a river, rescued and brought up by a stranger, after which he
became king"--he did not hesitate to remind his readers that
Sargon lived a thousand years and more before Moses; that this
story was told of him several hundred years before Moses was born;
and that it was told of various other important personages of
antiquity.
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