hrone, are quite overlooked.

Our present concern with the archaeological evidence thus briefly
outlined, and with much more of the kind, may be summed up in the
question: What in general terms is the inference to be drawn by the
world-historian from the Assyrian records in their bearings upon the
Hebrew writings? At first sight this might seem an extremely difficult
question to answer. Indeed, to answer it to the satisfaction of all
concerned might well be pronounced impossible. Yet it would seem as if a
candid and impartial historian could not well be greatly in doubt in the
matter. On the one hand, the general agreement everywhere between the
Hebrew accounts and contemporaneous records from Mesopotamia proves
beyond cavil that, broadly speaking, the Bible accounts are historically
true, and were written by persons who in the main had access to
contemporaneous documents. On the other hand, the discrepancies as to
details, the confusion as to exact chronology, the manifest prejudice
and partizanship, and the obvious limitations of knowledge make it clear
that the writers partook in full measure of the shortcomings of other
historians, and that their work must be adjudged by ordinary historical
standards. As much as this is perhaps conceded by most, if not all,
schools of Bible criticism of to-day. Professor Sayce, one of the most
distinguished of modern Assyriologists, writing as an opponent of the
purely destructive "Higher Criticism," demands no more than that the
Book of Genesis "shall take rank by the side of the other monuments of
the past as the record of events which have actually happened and been
handed on by credible men"; that it shall, in short, be admitted to be
"a collection of ancient documents which have all the value of
contemporaneous testimony," but which being in themselves "wrecks of
vast literatures which extended over the Oriental world from a remote
epoch," cannot be understood aright "except in the light of the
contemporaneous literature of which they form a portion." From the point
of view implied by such words as these, it is only necessary to recall
the mental attitude of our grandfathers to appreciate in some measure
the revolution in thought that has been wrought in this field within the
last half-century, largely through the instrumentality of Oriental
archaeology.

Archaeology and classical history.

We have seen that the general trend of Oriental archaeology has been
reconstructi