ent sources of information that the story of the Elamitic invasion, told in Genesis, is not myth but veritable history.1 Concerning the relation of archæology to the Bible, in matters about which there has been discussion by the critics, we may repeat here what Professor Driver says: "The fact is, while archæology has frequently corroborated Biblical statements, of the truth of which critics never doubted, such as Shishak's invasion of Judah, the existence of such Kings as Omri, Ahab, Jehu and Sargon, and Sennacherib's invasion of Judah, it has overthrown no conclusion, at variance with tradition, which has met with the general acceptance of critics." 2 Archæological discoveries have brought to us a considerable amount of literature similar in contents and form to parts of the Old Testament and revealing to us much concerning the life and thoughts of men in the ancient world. In Professor Petrie's Egyptian Tales are many old stories, one of which, The Tale of the Two Brothers, is similar in several ways to the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife.3 Genesis, ch. 39. A tablet in ancient Sumerian, now in the Yale University collection and translated by Dr. A. T. Clay, throws light on the parable of the Prodigal Son. The tablet contains the oldest laws known, antedating by hundreds of years even the Code of Hammurabi. The laws of inheritance were of great importance, as we know from the Old Testament, Numbers 27:1-11, 36:1-10, and are given at length in the Code of Hammurabi. This 1 G. A. Barton, Archæology and the Bible, Philadelphia, 1916, is a reliable source of information on this and similar subjects. 2 S. R. Driver, Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, New York, 1914, preface, p. xxi. Flinders Petrie, Egyptian Tales, Second Series, London, 1895, pp. 36ff. older Sumerian Code shows, as Dr. Clay says, that the parable has a legal aspect not "surmised by the commentarians." The law concerning inheritance reads: "If a son say unto his father and his mother, [thou art] not my father, not my mother; from the house, field, plantation, servants, property, animals he shall go forth, and his portion to its full amount he [the father] shall give him. His father and his mother shall say to him 'not our son.' From the neighborhood of the house he shall go." The Prodigal Son received his share, and then went to a far country, in accordance with the law, and not as the result of an importunate demand on an indulgent father. "It heightens the contrast between the father, who, on the one hand, complied with what the law permitted the son to demand; and, on the other hand, the forgiving father, who rejoiced over his return, not as a legal heir, but as a son." Another ancient inscription on clay, in the Yale collection, which dates. earlier than 2000 B. C., is a dialogue, the earliest example known, between a father and his son. Tablets concerning dreams and their interpretations have also been found, which are of great interest in connection with the many dreams of which the Bible contains accounts. The Babylonian epic of Creation has been known since 1872, when George Smith of the British Museum deciphered tablets telling of the Flood, and it is easily accessible in translated form.2 Since then a number of additional inscriptions containing Creation and Eden stories have rewarded the work of the archeologists. The excavations of the University of 1 A. T. Clay, Yale Alumni Weekly, May 7, 1915. Pennsylvania on on the site of Nippur brought to light many tablets, on some of which are accounts of Creation, Paradise and the Deluge, which have been published, the most recently deciphered inscription being presented by Dr. Barton, who says of it, and of the other tablets found at Nippur:-"This tablet, together with those discovered by Poebel and Langdon . . . proves that at Nippur there existed in the third millennium в. c. a cycle of creation myths."1 These, and many more things which help us to understand the Bible, have become known from the discovery and reading of inscriptions, which have been preserved in clay and stone for thousands of years, and which antedate, not only any existing copies of the Biblical writings, but antedate also by many centuries the most ancient of those writings. The Babylonian narratives of Creation, and the Flood are older than the Hebrew, and show the existence of those stories in literary form in the East, probably before any such book as Genesis ever contained the record of them. There is also a Babylonian story 2 similar to that of Job. From many examples of ancient literature, preserved on the tablets dug in recent years from the ruins of ancient cities, in the plains of Babylonia, and elsewhere, we know that, long before the time of Abraham, the world had reached a high state of development in all that concerned the organization and government of society, and that the human soul was finding expression in art and literature. Not rude, barbarous, uncivilized 1 "Material concerning Creation and Paradise." The American Journal of Theology, October, 1917, p. 595. 2 This Babylonian poem may be found in G. A. Barton's Archeology and the Bible, pp. 392-297, and is discussed at length by Professor Morris Jastrow in the Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 25, pp. 135-191, "A Babylonian Parallel to the Story of Job." and undeveloped were the people from whom came the Old Testament writings, and this is shown clearly, not only by the remains of Babylonia and Egypt, whether in inscriptions, in examples of sculpture and design, in magnificent structures like the Pyramids or Sphinx, or superb ruins like the temples of Egypt and the palaces of the Pharaohs, but it is shown also by what the Old Testament writings tell us concerning themselves. The form in which we have these ancient Hebrew books is almost certainly, in many cases, not that in which they first appeared in writing, for they have come to us through the work of many editors and copyists in the intervening centuries. We may not be certain that they are contemporary accounts of the events of which they tell, but we do know that what we have has been preserved by the reverent efforts of men who regarded these writings as inspired by God, and therefore holy and authoritative, and as containing the history of God's dealings with his chosen people, and the utterances of great men, through whom the word of God was communicated. That the past should never be forgotten and that the history of Israel and its prophets should be preserved, is the meaning of the words: "We have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of Jehovah, and his strength, and his wondrous works that he hath done." Psalm 78:3, 4. That special care was taken to preserve writings is shown in Exodus 17:14, where Jehovah tells Moses to "write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua"; and in: "Take thee again another roll, and write in it all the former words that were in the first roll, which Jehoiakim, the king of Judah hath burned." Jeremiah 36:28. That writings were collected in later times and protected against loss is indicated by the following statement, in which what was evidently a literary commission of King Hezekiah is mentioned in connection with a supplementary collection of proverbs: "These also are proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied out." Proverbs 25:1. Added to this collection are Proverbs ch. 30, The Words of Agur and ch. 31, The Words of King Lemuel. This note about Hezekiah, who was himself a poet (see Isaiah 38:9), is of great interest because of what it suggests concerning a library at Jerusalem and a trained group of copyists such as were the scribes in Nineveh. Professor Sayce thinks that there must have been a royal library at Jerusalem in the time of Hezekiah, and says: "The vassalage of Judah to the king of Assyria in the reign of Ahaz had necessarily led to the introduction of Assyrian culture into Jerusalem. Ahaz himself had led the way. In the court of the palace he had erected a sundial, a copy of the gnomons, which had been used for centuries in the civilized kingdoms of the Euphrates and the Tigris. But the erection of the sundial was not the only sign of Assyrian influence. The most striking feature of Assyrian and Babylonian culture was the libraries, where scribes were kept constantly employed, not only in writing and compiling new books, but in copying and reëditing older ones. The 'men of Hezekiah' who 'copied out' the proverbs of Solomon per |