d Samuel. [1] It has often been observed that
these writings stand out, in marked relief from those which precede and
follow them, in virtue of a certain archaic freshness and of a greater
freedom from traces of late interpolation and editorial trimming.
Jephthah, Gideon and Samson are men of old heroic stamp, who would
look as much in place in a Norse Saga as where they are; and if the
varnish-brush of later respectability has passed over these memoirs of
the mighty men of a wild age, here and there, it has not succeeded in
effacing, or even in seriously obscuring, the essential characteristics
of the theology traditionally ascribed to their epoch.

There is nothing that I have met with in the results of Biblical
criticism inconsistent with the conviction that these books give us a
fairly trustworthy account of Israelitic life and thought in the times
which they cover; and, as such, apart from the great literary merit of
many of their episodes, they possess the interest of being, perhaps, the
oldest genuine history, as apart from mere chronicles on the one hand
and mere legends on the other, at present accessible to us.

But it is often said with exultation by writers of one party, and often
admitted, more or less unwillingly, by their opponents, that these
books are untrustworthy, by reason of being full of obviously unhistoric
tales. And, as a notable example, the narrative of Saul's visit to the
so-called "witch of Endor" is often cited. As I have already intimated,
I have nothing to do with theological partisanship, either heterodox or
orthodox, nor, for my present purpose, does it matter very much whether
the story is historically true, or whether it merely shows what the
writer believed; but, looking at the matter solely from the point of
view of an anthropologist, I beg leave to express the opinion that
the account of Saul's necromantic expedition is quite consistent with
probability. That is to say, I see no reason whatever to doubt, firstly,
that Saul made such a visit; and, secondly, that he and all who were
present, including the wise woman of Endor herself, would have given,
with entire sincerity, very much the same account of the business as
that which we now read in the twenty-eighth chapter of the first book of
Samuel; and I am further of opinion that this story is one of the most
important of those fossils, to which I have referred, in the material
which it offers for the reconstruction of the theology