'Back to the Fathers'

Extract

The last part of a book that an author writes is the Introduction, and usually it is read to the best advantage at the end of the text. A well-known Professor of Serif ture in Rome used to advise his audience to study Biblical Introduction after one had acquired a working knowledge of the Biblical text itself.

Not by their own choosing but by force of circumstances ove the last fifty years Professors of Scripture have had to concentrate on Biblical Introduction. Rationalists and Modernists were attacking the very nature of the Bible as the Word of God, afl. the Higher Critics were elaborating theories about the origins of movements among the Israelites and about the origin of the particular Books of the Bible, and the Church had to give guidance. This has not always had its desired affect; for good people went away with the impression that the less they had to do with the Bible the safer they would be, and those whose calling demand study of the Bible used to remark that they learned a great deal about Wellhausen and the Documentary Theory but knew very little about the text of the Pentateuch, and apparently were not eager to make up the deficiency.