Dead Men Tell Tales

Anthropoid Sarcophagus, or Cartonnage
by HARRY RIMMER, D. D., Sc. D.
With 37 Plate Illustrations in the Text
Eleventh Edition
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Grand Rapids, Michigan
Dead Men Tell Tales BY HARRY RIMMER, D.D., SC.D.
Copyright 1939 by Research Science Bureau, Incorporated Printed in the United States of America All rights in this book are reserved No part of the book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. For information address the publishers.
ELEVENTH EDITION
In an older generation, especially among the writers of the more lurid types of fiction, it was an accepted axiom that “Dead men tell no tales!” But this was before the great era of modern archeology had impressed its findings on the general public, and indeed before most of those discoveries had been made.
Our generation knows better. Dead men do tell tales, and marvelous and wonderful are the stories they bring to us. By means of an archeological resurrection, the great men of antiquity are with us again. Once more we hear the accounts of their fascinating lives and adventures, and read again the records of their culture. The tongueless tombs of the distant past have suddenly become vocal, and this mighty chorus of the dead great has forced us to revise many of our once cherished opinions.
Nowhere is this more strikingly true than in the case of the coincidence of these old ages with the page of the Holy Bible. The richest finds of archeology come to us from the very periods of history that are dealt with in the pages of Holy Writ, and names that were known only from the record of the Scripture are now the common possession of the scholarly world. So much is this the case, that we have a new technique of Bible study in our day. Just as the microscope is the instrument for the study of biology, and the spectroscope has become the means of study in physics, so the Bible is best read today in the light that is reflected upon its pages from the blade of a spade! This, of course, is intended to apply to the historical sections of the Book, and refers to the problem of its authenticity and historicity. It still remains true that spiritual understanding of its message can be derived only from study that is supervised and directed by the Holy Spirit.