Evening star., 1941-04-06
Dr.. Yahuda, Eminent
Biblical Student,
Here for Study
Friend of Einstein Is
Seeking to Restore
Authority of Scriptures
Rx THOMAS r. HENRY.

BY THOMAS X. HENRY.
Even his Princeton neighbor and
old friend, Albert Einstein. doesn't
quite understand the writings of
Prof. Abraham S. E. Yahuda.
He is, perhaps, the worlds most
eminent student of biblical origins
who has gone to the roots of the
food, the location of the Garden of
Eden, and how Joshua made the sun
stand still.
Adolf Hitler didn't like his ideas,
he says, because they cut the foun-
dations from the higher criticism"
Of some of Germany's foremost
scholars. So his masterpiece, Die
Sprache des Pentateuch in Thren
Besiehungen yum Aegyptischen,
was burned in the Heidelberg auto
de fe few years ago. Prof. Yahuda
Immediately sent an autographed
copy to a fellow biblical student
one Wilhelm Hohenzollery, now the
most eminent citizen of Doom,
Netherlands-asking that it be pre-
served in his private library for the
Germany of the future.
The former kaiser, he says. wrote
him very friendly letter, agreeing
to take care of the book.
ut was really only in fun" says
DR.. Yahuda, because there were
plenty of copies of it outside of
Germany"
Exploring Library Collections.
When he came to the United
States from England few months
ago Prof. Yahuda, formerly of the
University of Madrid, took up his
residence at Princeton to be near his
friends Einstein and Thomas Mann,
who was working on his master
piece, Joseph in Egypt, along lines
similar to those which he himself
was exploring as scientist. Now
he is exploring the Hebraic collec-
tions of the Library of Congress
here.
His life work. he says, is to
establish the literary authenticity
of the Old Testament and to explain
some of its alleged paradoxes in
the light of the times and language
In which 1t was written.
II have no concern" he says,
"over whether anything in the
Bible is true or false, whether it
was divinely inspired, whether any
particular miracles happened or not.
But the most devastating attacks
on the Bible have come from Ger
man scholars who have advanced
very convincing evidence that the
books of Moses, for example, were
not written at the time of Moses,
about the 18th century, B. c., but
were compendiumS patched together
only about 300 years before Christ"
Wants to Restore Authority.
"Once this is admitted" he says,
"the Bible loses all It's moral author
ity. My work has been to restore
that, regardless of the factual truth
of details. Once people are assured
that it is really a contemporary
record they are free to believe or
not, as they please. I think that
the destruction of the authority of
the Bible Is the foundation Of
Nazi-isn."
His approach has been through
the ancient Egyptian, of which he
is one of the worlds foremost
scholars.
The Hebrew in which the books
Of Moses were written, he explains,
was living language, bound to be
Influenced over the course of CEN
turies by the languages around it..
He has made an exhaustive survey
Of these languages-the Assyro-
Babylonian, Arabic and Aramaic--
peculiar idioms. When he turned
to ancient Egyptian, however, he
found the Hebrew of the Pentateuch
filled with its idioms and character
istic ideas. This establishes, says
Prof. Yahuda, that the books must
have been written so soon after
the captivity of the IsraeHtes in
Egypt that they had not lost the
Egyptian flavor and had not had
time to pick up idioms from their
new environment in Palestine.
Strong Egyptian Traces.
When the Hebrews went to Egypt,
he says, their native dialect had not
been reduced to writing and only be-
came a literary language under
Egyptian influence. Consequently,
the traces of Egyptian ideas are very
strong.
When DR.. Yahuda came to the