Bible Literature; An Introductory View of the Bible and Its Books: For the General Reader, and Sixth Grade Text-Book for Schools and Colleges

Excerpt from Bible Literature; An Introductory View of the Bible and Its Books: For the General Reader, and Sixth Grade Text-Book for Schools and Colleges The place of this book in the Graded Series determines its character; but all who seek a simple and short statement of Biblical literature from an orthodox point of view may be aided by it. Its use as the last and highest text-book of a system explains its form and also its limitations. Among the latter are the running of the matter into a mould of 52 Chapters to correspond to the Sundays of one year, the precedence of the New Testament to conform in a measure to the Church year, the necessarily uniform length of each lesson to meet the time-limit of Sunday-school teaching, and the following of the order of the books as they are in the Bible rather than their historical order. The attainment of those to be taught and the restrictions of space made it necessary to simplify, and as a rule to refer only to the inner, readily apparent and controllable testimony of a book as to its time and author. But while the outer historical testimony has not been given, the positions taken accord with the clearest and best external historical evidence. Where critical questions have become or are becoming more or less known they are indicated in this book and the line of defense shown, mostly in footnotes. Those who know the literature will readily see what has been consulted. The best and latest works have been considered. The positions taken are the conservative ones. In the New Testament they have solid ground The discussions on the Old Testament are still in progress.