No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2024
Including the Editors, some fifty-six writers have contributed to this bulky volume. Their object is thus stated : ‘Though the historical and archaeological importance of the books is immense, it is the spiritual use of them which is their proper use, and it is principally to this spiritual use of the Bible that we intend our Commentary to minister.’
The commentary itself is, in general, brief and to the point. But the prime feature of the work lies in the various Prefaces, beginning with Dr. Gore’s opening chapter on The Bible in the Church. Needless to say that in the space of a brief review we can but single out certain points for consideration, and we shall confine ourselves to the Old Testament.
First of all let us take at random some of the pronouncements formulated in these pages : ‘Chronicles is very bad evidence for the truth of what happened in the reign of David, but it is excellent evidence for the opinions held in priestly circles at the beginning of the third century b.c.’ (p. 19). Again, Chronicles is described by Wellhausen—and his words are endorsed in the Commentary—as a transparent mutilation of the original narratives as preserved for us in the Books of Samuel.’ And the Commentary adds: ‘He (the chronicler) gained his objective at the cost of historic truth, and Nemesis followed on his success. Certainly we do not find here the gift of inspiration at its highest,’ but, ‘in spite of his lack of the sense of historical veracity (he), must be recognised as really inspired to write’ (p. 275).
A New Commnentary on Holy Scripture, including the Apocrypha, edited by Charles Gore, Henry Leighton Goudge, and Alfred Guillaume. (S.P.C.K., 1928; PP. 1,598; cloth 16/-, buckram 25/-.)
2 The Rev. Arnold Pinchard, writing on behalf of the English Church Union in The Church Times of February Ist, 1929, speaks of this ‘Commentary on Catholic lines,’ and regards it as the work of ‘the most learned and expert Catholic scholars in this country.’ He even claims that ‘the great fundamental truths of the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth, the Physical Resurrection, as also of the Personality of our Lord, upon which the edifice of Catholic doctrine and worship stands based, under the scrutiny of the best modern scholarship, emerge even more clearly defined and more firmly established than ever on the basis of historic veracity.’ Truly we live and learn! For we had always thought that these doctrines were themselves based on the truth of Scripture—at least St. Paul thought so, I Cor, xv, 3-4.
You have
Access