'Biblical and literary Essays,' 'Old Testament Prophecy,' and 'The Theology of the Old Testament.' Davidson understood it to be the first duty of an exegete to ascertain the meaning of the writer, and he showed that this could be done by the use of grammar and history and the historical imagination. He supplied guidance when it was much needed as to the methods and results of the higher criticism. Being a master of its methods, but very cautious in accepting assertions about its results, he secured attention early in the Free Church for scientific criticism, and yet threw the whole weight of his learning and his caustic wit into the argument against critical extravagance. He had thought himself into the ideas and points of view of the Hebrews, and his work in Old Testament theology is unrivalled. Development of his critical views It is a moot question as to how and when Davidson's critical views on the authorship of the Pentateuch actually evolved. It is equally a moot question as to what these actually were. At the beginning of his teaching career he wrote in defence of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. However, by 1863 he had retreated to a partial Mosaic authorship in a further article in the same journal. From the notes of lectures taken by one of his students (Henry Drummond) it is clear that Davidson was then discoursing to his class on Pentateuchal criticism, but with a leaning to more conservative positions. In fact Drummond had recorded that, "Davidson did not then take his students beyond the positions reached by Ewald." The next piece of evidence comes from Davidson's review of Franz Delitzsch's Neuer Commentar űber Genesis and August Dillmann's Numeri, Deuteronomium, und Joshua which is regarded by Strahan as "important as perhaps the first indication of his accepting Wellhausen's general position, which he is careful to guard against misconception and exaggeration." In the first of those reviews he noted "the improbability of Moses having given one system of laws (Exodus chaps. 20ff.) at Sinai and another so very different (Deuteronomy) on the plains of Moab; and the impossibility of conceiving of Deuteronomy as extant in the days of the judges and early monarchy". In the second on the work of Dillmann he noted that, "he is dissatisfied with that scholar's theory of the origin for the Priestly code in the eighth century and leans