narrative seemed to be closely associated with the legislation of
Leviticus which could be proved to belong to the fifth century. In 1862
Colenso published the first part of his Pentateuch and the Book of
Joshua Critically Examined. His doubts of the truth of Old Testament
history had been awakened by a converted Zulu who asked the intelligent
question whether he could really believe in the story of the Flood,
“that all the beasts and birds and creeping things upon the earth, large
and small, from hot countries and cold, came thus by pairs and entered
into the ark with Noah? And did Noah gather food for them all, for the
beasts and birds of prey as well as the rest?” The Bishop then proceeded
to test the accuracy of the inspired books by examining

[194] the numerical statements which they contain. The results were
fatal to them as historical records. Quite apart from miracles (the
possibility of which he did not question), he showed that the whole
story of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt and the wilderness was
full of absurdities and impossibilities. Colenso’s book raised a storm
of indignation in England—he was known as “the wicked bishop”; but on
the Continent its reception was very different. The portions of the
Pentateuch and Joshua, which he proved to be unhistorical, belonged
precisely to the narrative which had caused perplexity; and critics were
led by his results to conclude that, like the Levitical laws with which
it was connected, it was as late as the fifth century.

One of the most striking results of the researches on the Old Testament
has been that the Jews themselves handled their traditions freely. Each
of the successive documents, which were afterwards woven together, was
written by men who adopted a perfectly free attitude towards the older
traditions, and having no suspicion that they were of divine origin did
not bow down before their authority. It was reserved for the Christians