Leupold Genesis part 15 critical approach

Unfortunately, it is impossible to treat the Old Testament in an expository way without taking the major features of the critical approach into consideration, especially since these critical findings have been popularized and appear on the shelves of public libraries, as does Dummelow's One Volume Commentary. Surely, the main errors of criticism should be shown in order to combat the evil at its source. Those who do not stand in need of the aid that a refutation may offer or are not impressed by the critical claims may, of course, leave those paragraphs that deal with critical matters aside. We have sought to let this apologetic material occupy a place of very inferior importance. Hardly five per cent of the total deals with critical problems.

We shall leave aside all the very able constructive works that orthodox teachers of the church have provided under this head: the works of Haevernick, Hengstenberg, Keil, Rupprecht, and Moeller. These men have ably refuted all critical contentions; only the critics fail to discern that they have been answered. Those who would specialize on these matters will find most ample treatment of the subject in the works of these men. We for our part prefer in this exposition to follow the course of showing in our own way the beautiful and the consistent harmony of the individual accounts, a harmony which is in itself the strongest index of single rather than of composite authorship. Occasional critical questions naturally come in for their share of attention. Our treatment will show that we have drawn upon the above mentioned Old Testament scholars, a fact that we have acknowledged wherever feasible. It will also appear that much can be learned from the more recent Eduard Koenig, though in a number of cases his works must be used with caution.