Note 28 — Chapter IV · RELATIVE FREETHOUGHT IN ISRAEL

4. The specialist critics, all trained as clergymen, and mostly loth to yield more than is absolutely necessary to skepticism, have surrendered the antiquity claimed for Joel, recognizing that the arguments for that are “equally consistent with a date after the Captivity.”28 One of the conclusions here involved is that “Egypt is probably mentioned only as the typical instance of a Power hostile to Judah.” Thus, when we remember the later Jewish practice of speaking of Rome as “Babylon,” or “Edom,” allusions by Amos and Hosea to “Assyria” have no evidential force. The same reasoning applies to the supposed ancient portions of Isaiah.