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ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 MOopDERNISM AND ITS RESTATEMENT OF CHRISTIAN 
 DoctRINE: IS IT THE TRUTH OF GoD? 
 
 CHRISTIAN UNITY 
 
 Tue MAN Curist Jesus: A Medilation on His Life 
 and Death, and a Study of His Abiding Suffi- 
 
 ciency 
 
 Is THE CHRISTIAN A WORSHIPER OF GOD OR AN 
 IDOLATER? 
 
 CHRISTIAN COMPANIONSHIP 
 
 MAN AND THE FuTuRE STATE: An Abridgment 
 of “Facts and Theories as to a Future State” 
 by F. W. Grant. 
 
 
 

 
 ALTERNATIVE VIE 
 FOR WEE BIBI 
 
 BY, 
 
 JOHN ‘BLOORE 
 
 Nem York 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1925 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
Copyricut, 1925, 
 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. 
 Published September, 1925. 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY 
 THE BERWICK & SMITH CO. 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 The modern use of the Bible ! depends for a foundation 
 upon the modern view of the Bible considered in this book. 
 
 Louis Wallis in his book entitled Sociological Study of 
 the Bible sets forth this modern view of the Scriptures 
 concisely and systematically. We shall rely upon it 
 chiefly for the material used in the present review and 
 criticism. That this book is thoroughly reliable and 
 scholarly, and a faithful presentation of results according 
 to the Modern Critical School, is amply assured by the 
 standing of the men to whom its contents were submitted 
 for examination and criticism.*? For this side of the ques- 
 tion we may then feel quite sure of our ground. We may 
 confidently proceed on the basis of being correctly in- 
 formed concerning the foundations upon which the modern 
 
 approach to, and use of, the Bible is erected. 
 
 1 This is ably advocated by Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick in his 
 recent volume The Modern Use of the Bible (Macmillan, Septem- 
 ber, 1924). For an examination of it see ch. v of this present book. 
 
 2University of Chicago Press, Fourth impression, 1922. 
 
 3 Consult its Prefatory xxxiii. 
 
 5 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Our present interest is in these foundations, rather than 
 in the superstructure. An honest effort has been made to 
 supply by copious quotation and reference as full a pres- 
 entation of the modern view as would be demanded by 
 an ordinary reader who desired to obtain a good grasp of 
 the subject. If the foundation is found defective, the 
 superstructure is imperiled; if it is destroyed, the building 
 itself must fall. 
 
 The conclusions reached in this book will not be accept- 
 able to those committed to modern liberalism. It hopes 
 to be of service, however, to some of those who are dis- 
 turbed by present controversy, and find it difficult to wend 
 their way through its maze. It especially desires to come 
 to the assistance of the bewildered and discouraged who 
 may be on the verge of abandoning hope, not knowing 
 which way to turn. If to any of these this book proves 
 to be a stepping stone from the shifting sands of uncer- 
 tainty to the solid ground of assurance concerning the 
 Bible the writer’s desire will be fulfilled. 
 
 JoHN BLOORE 
 
 Plainfield, New Jersey. November, 1924. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 I. THE MopERN VIEW OF THE BIBLE ........... 11 
 IJ. PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM.......... 18 
 EEEFEOTS (OF MODERNISM NOC ile Cila ceueelare bute & 59 
 TVS SREFUTATION OF MODERNISM) s/s). ieee nee wiaels 74 
 V. THE MopERN USE OF THE BIBLE............. 86 
 VI. SoME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION......... 120 
 
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CHAPTER I 
 THE MODERN VIEW OF THE BIBLE 
 
 It will not be necessary here to review the various stages 
 marking the course of Biblical scholarship during the past 
 century. It will suffice if we present the highly developed 
 system which is the culmination of those studies. This 
 system was articulated and put into its present widely 
 accepted form by Prof. Wellhausen? who is regarded, 
 therefore, as the one who securely laid the foundation for 
 the entire reconstruction of Biblical knowledge. He also 
 greatly helped in building the superstructure. 
 
 There has been no material advance since beyond the 
 point reached by him, except in matters of detail. The 
 position, which he took, may perhaps best be described as 
 the documentary-historical-evolutionary viewpoint of Bible 
 literature and history. By this is meant: 
 
 1His epoch-making book, Geschichie Israels, appeared in 1878. 
 “In that masterly work the new literary and historical study of the 
 Bible was formulated and extended in such a way as to command the 
 attention and assent of learned specialists; and it produced a revolu- 
 tion.’ It came as “the climax of a long campaign for scientific study 
 of the Bible.” 
 
 11 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 (1) That this literature is made up of various early 
 documents in which myth and legend are recorded side 
 by side with actual historical events, and that these earlier 
 documents were afterward combined with later literary 
 productions of the ninth to the fifth or fourth centuries 
 B. c. This is the process by which the Pentateuch, 
 Joshua and the other historical books (Judges to Esther) 
 were compiled. During those same centuries there was 
 added to the Scriptures, the writings of the prophets and 
 the wisdom or experience books; 
 
 (2) That since narratives of a supernatural and mirac- 
 ulous nature must be regarded not as history, but simply 
 as myths and legends of the Israelitish tribes, similar in 
 character to those of other peoples such as the Greeks 
 or Romans, therefore this miracle element must be elim- 
 inated from the Biblical literature and along with it much 
 of the narratives with which it is interwoven. Accordingly 
 for the real starting point of reliable history, for solid 
 ground upon which historical criticism can stand, we must 
 begin with the picture of the condition of the Hebrew 
 tribes presented in the book of Judges. 
 
 This position is taken because, it is declared, no clear 
 evidence of either the knowledge or practice of such an 
 
 12 
 
THE MODERN VIEW OF THE BIBLE 
 
 economy of religion as is presented in the legislation of the 
 Pentateuch is anywhere discoverable from Joshua’s day 
 up to the Josiah period (over six centuries). This also 
 becomes the reason given for assigning the compilation of 
 these history Books to the later epoch mentioned. 
 
 The conclusion reached from these premises is that there 
 was a gradual rise of the Hebrews from an idolatrous con- 
 dition, little better than that of neighboring peoples, to 
 the purity of concept found in the prophetic writings 
 and to the elaboration of ritual and temple service given in 
 the priestly reformation and legislation of the Josiah-Ezra 
 period. The authors of this reformation and legislation 
 must have woven from some very slender threads of fact 
 their whole story of the Tabernacle in the wilderness and 
 the rest, for the sake of throwing round the nation’s reli- 
 gious development the sanctity of an ancient age by con- 
 necting it with the name of the greatest hero in Israelitish 
 mythology—Moses. From this there results: 
 
 (3) The theory that an evolutionary process in the 
 history and religion of Israel explains how the Old Testa- 
 ment literature developed perfectly naturally in the above 
 historical manner. 
 
 This evolution, of course, went through various stages. 
 
 13 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Since we can know very little, according to the canons of 
 historical criticism, about the wilderness and Egyptian 
 experiences of the Israelite families—these told only in 
 the legend-laden Pentateuch—we must begin with the 
 Judges period, and pass through the decline and fall of 
 the Judges to the rise of the kingdom period, passing on 
 again to find, however, that the decline and fall of the 
 nation was but the occasion when the religious develop- 
 ment reached the climax to which it had been slowly 
 evolving side by side with the progress and decay of the 
 social order. We are assured that “the ruin of ancient 
 Israel was necessary to the birth of the Old Testa- 
 ment.” 
 
 This religious history, it is claimed, is the story of an 
 upward climb from polytheism with its many altars and 
 sanctuaries to monotheism with one central sanctuary, an 
 organized priesthood, an established system of sacrifice 
 and service, and a large body of law. Further, that while 
 certain documents were in existence during these centuries, 
 purporting to give the earliest history of the people and 
 even carrying back the record to the creation as well as 
 containing perhaps a limited number of simple laws, the 
 work of compiling, editing, and greatly amplifying them 
 
 14 
 
THE MODERN VIEW OF THE BIBLE 
 
 was not undertaken until the decline of the kingdom, the 
 ensuing exile and subsequent restoration. 
 
 This is stated thus: 
 
 The Mosaic Law, instead of being the force that set 
 the peculiar development of Israel in motion, was itself 
 the product of that evolution. 
 
 Again, 
 
 Religion was in the world many ages before the He- 
 brew nation was born. Our problem is not, How did reli- 
 gion arise? but, How did Bible religion arise? When we 
 go behind the scenes, and begin to consider the circum- 
 stances amid which, and through which, the Bible 
 religion came into the world, we are thrown back upon a 
 local, definite, concrete situation of great interest. 
 Yahweh? (i.e., Jehovah) emerges into distinction 
 through a struggle against Baal-worship which was 
 derived from the Amorite side of the nation’s ancestry. 
 
 2 The form accepted for the sacred Name by modern scholars who 
 consider the usual form “ Jehovah” to be a hybrid combination of the 
 four consonants which alone compose the sacred Name, and the 
 vowels of the Hebrew word Lord. These vowels were added by the 
 Jews who feared, through superstition, to pronounce the Name in 
 its original form and substituted the word Lord. Thus it comes that 
 in our A. V. with few exceptions Lord is used in the almost seven 
 thousand occurrences of the Name. 
 
 15 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 We do not connect him with warfare against Marduk of 
 Babylon, or Amon of Egypt, or any other far-away 
 deity. It is the Baal-idea that serves as the foil against 
 
 which the Yahweh-idea takes on its distinctive char- — 
 
 acter. 
 The Bible religion then, 
 
 took form around the idea of “Yahweh.” We shall 
 never know how the worship of Yahweh first became 
 current,* any more than we can trace the steps by which 
 the Greeks got the worship of Zeus, the Egyptians that 
 of Osiris, or the Babylonians that of Marduk. But there 
 is no evidence that the worship of Yahweh stood at 
 first upon any different footing than did other cults of 
 the ancient world ... The Bible religion came into 
 existence by the sifting of ancient religious ideas through 
 the peculiar national experience of the Hebrews. This 
 national experience was unlike that of any other ancient 
 people; and it set the Hebrew mind at work in channels 
 different from those opened before their contemporaries. 
 [It] took form gradually through a series of emergencies, 
 or crises, in which the idea of Yahweh passed from stage 
 
 ’ This is because the Pentateuch must be considered mythical and 
 legendary, and not history, according to the critics. 
 
 16 
 
THE MODERN VIEW OF THE BIBLE 
 
 to stage. The epochs in this process have left their 
 marks in the Bible as clearly as the various geological 
 
 periods have left their traces in the strata of the earth.‘ 
 4The foregoing extracts are from Sociological Study of the Bible 
 by Louis Wallis (1922 impression), pp. 86, 87, 213. Further quota- 
 
 tions will be given from this book, which is without doubt a remark- 
 ably cogent presentation of the views here to be considered. 
 
 17 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 
 
 Before summarizing the results of this revolutionary 
 treatment of the Bible and its effect upon our own re- 
 ligious faith it may be well to enlarge a little upon its prin- 
 cipal features under the following four heads: (1) The 
 road traveled by criticism; (2) The method used by 
 criticism; (3) The course of Bible history as traced by 
 criticism; (4) The origin and making of the Bible accord- 
 ing to the latest explanation of criticism. 
 
 Simply a statement of the modernistic view of the Bible 
 is given in the following consideration of these features. 
 The refutation of that view will occupy us in subsequent 
 chapters. 
 
 (1) The road traveled by Criticism. It is thus de 
 scribed: 
 The view of the Bible taken by our ancestors a few 
 generations ago differed greatly from the view toward 
 18 
 
PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 
 
 which the professional scholarship of the modern world 
 has been moving in the last hundred years or so. During 
 the Middle Ages, and up to the opening of the nine- 
 teenth century, it was the universal belief of the Chris- 
 tian church that the Bible was the product of a mechan- 
 ical sort of inspiration which left little or nothing of 
 essential importance for the human writers of it to do. 
 In the same way, it was believed that the religion! of 
 the Bible came into the world by a sudden stroke of 
 power, in a purely miraculous and quite supernatural 
 manner. These views were formed at a time when the 
 prevailing ideas about human history, and about the 
 earth on which we live, and about the universe at large, 
 were much different from the ideas that now reign 
 supreme in all well-informed circles. The progress of 
 scientific research has gradually and unobtrusively 
 changed the vast body of belief that characterized the 
 Middle Ages . . . The world in which we live is now 
 revealed as a floating speck in a cosmos that staggers 
 the greatest intellect. The disclosure of this fact is one 
 
 1 This term is to be understood as comprehending the belief of the 
 supernatural, and the practice resulting from its acceptance, em- 
 bracing life and experience, doctrines and ordinances, duties and 
 ceremonies. It involves, therefore, revelation and related themes. 
 
 19 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 of a series of brilliant scientific discoveries in relation 
 to such matters as the geologic formation and age of 
 the world, the vast length and evolutionary character 
 of human history, man’s place in nature, and other 
 subjects of equally vital importance. 
 
 The rising tide of discovery brought with it a slowly 
 mounting scientific interest in the Bible and its religion. 
 The truth forced itself into the minds of careful inves- 
 tigators that the Bible was compiled from other books 
 far more ancient than the Scriptures. It became clear 
 that the books now standing first in the sacred library 
 were among the latest to be composed, while other 
 books, which had hitherto been supposed to be of late 
 composition, were among the earliest written. The old 
 formula, ‘The Law and the Prophets,”’ was reversed, so 
 as to read “The Prophets and the Law.” It was dis- 
 covered that the prophets were chiefly preachers to 
 their own times; that they were but little concerned 
 with predicting future events; and that it was largely 
 through their efforts that the religion of the Hebrews 
 was purified from its original heathen, or pagan, ele- 
 ments. 
 
 [This] new view of the Bible is bound up with a new 
 
 20 
 
PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 
 
 idea of Hebrew history and a new conception of the 
 religious life of Israel. The religious experience of 
 Israel is now seen to have been a rise toward a higher 
 and purer faith, instead of a decline toward a lower one. 
 The new views have largely displaced the older doc- 
 trines in all the leading universities and theological 
 seminaries. They are held in various forms by different 
 scholars; but there is a common basic agreement which 
 rapidly grows larger as the fundamental facts are better 
 understood by professional minds. 
 
 The interested public, standing outside the academic 
 world, is aware that great changes have taken place and 
 are even now going on; but the real nature of the new 
 scientific view of the Bible, and the evidence upon which 
 that view is based are but little understood by the 
 laity.2 The public as yet scarcely realizes the extent 
 to which the evolutionary principle has been applied 
 to the religion of Israel. Professional investigators, 
 who have given the most and closest attention to the 
 Bible, firmly believe that the idea of God by which 
 ancient Israel finally came to be distinguished, is the 
 2 The book quoted (Soc. Study of the Bible) evidently intends to do 
 
 its best to furnish the much needed enlightenment. 
 
 21 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 result of a slow process of psychological, or spiritual, 
 development, corresponding in some way to stages in 
 the national history of the Hebrews. . .. As a rule, 
 the modern biblical investigator holds that the religion 
 began on the level of what we commonly call “‘pagan- 
 ism,” or ‘‘heathenism.”’ He believes that ‘‘ Yahweh,” 
 the national deity of Israel, was at first regarded as a 
 local god, one of a large number of divinities that 
 populated the mind of the ancient world; that the 
 people’s thought about him slowly rose to the height 
 at which we find it in the great prophets‘and Jesus; 
 and that this religious evolution was a process guided 
 and controlled by the one true God of the universe who 
 was gradually raising men’s thoughts upward through 
 the medium of their daily experiences. | 
 
 We shall now quote another sample of ‘‘the belief and 
 faith of a devout scholar,” representing ‘‘the attitude of 
 by far the large majority of those who have approached 
 the problem of the Bible in a scientific way.” It is that of 
 George Adam Smith, M. A., D.D., LL.D., Prof. of Hebrew 
 and Old Testament Exegesis, Free Church College, Glas- 
 
 gow: 
 
 The god of early Israel was a tribal god; and His rela- 
 22 
 
PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 
 
 tion to His people is described in the same way as Israel’s 
 neighbors describe the relation of their gods to them- 
 selves. Israel looked to Jahweh [Yahweh] as the Moab- 
 ites looked to Chemosh. . . . They prayed to Him to 
 let them see their desire on their enemies, ascribed 
 their victories to His love for them, their defeats to His 
 anger, and they devoted to Him in slaughter their 
 prisoners of war, and the animals they captured from 
 their foes; all exactly as their Moabite neighbors are 
 reported, in very much the same language, to have done 
 to Chemosh, the god of Moab. Moreover, they re- 
 garded the power of Jahweh as limited to their own 
 territory, and His worship as invalid beyond it (I Sam. 
 
 xxvi. 19 [in the Hebrew and Modern Revised Versions)). 
 
 Though, like all Semites, they felt their duty to one God 
 
 as the supreme Lord of themselves, they did not deny 
 
 the reality of other gods.? 
 
 This relates, it is said, to the historical, objective aspects 
 of the Hebrew situation; but the same writer’s theological 
 view of the subject is: 
 
 Behind that national deity of Israel, and through the 
 
 3 From Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the Old Test., pp. 
 128, 129. 
 
 23 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 obscure and vain imaginations the early nations had of 
 
 him, there was the Character and Will of God Himself, 
 
 using the people’s low thoughts and symbols to express 
 
 Himself to them, lifting them always a little higher, 
 
 and finally making Himself known as He did through 
 
 the prophets as the God of the whole earth, identical 
 with righteousness and abounding in mercy.* 
 
 While there are considerations which lend apparent 
 support to this reading of Israel’s history, the preponder- 
 ance of the evidence is in favor of regarding that history 
 as a story of decline instead of origin. After they touched 
 bottom, a gradual lifting of the people free from idolatrous 
 practices and associations did occur which culminated in 
 the great prophets and was finally completed through the 
 purging process of the exile. Upon their return from it, 
 and in fact ever since, no form of polytheism or idolatry 
 has prevailed among the Hebrews. But from the altitude 
 of pure religion thus reached in their history, they entered 
 upon a second decline which had reached the low ebb of 
 Pharisaism and worldliness in the days of John the Baptist, 
 and culminated in the Crucifixion of Jesus and the final 
 Dispersion of the Jewish people. There accompanied 
 
 4From Biblical World (Aug., 96), pp. 100-101. 
 
 24 
 
PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 
 
 this closing phase of their history in Palestine the develop- 
 ment of the new and revivifying ministry of Christianity 
 which began, indeed, with a remnant of this very people 
 who had so greatly departed through successive stages of 
 decline from the faith committed to them. 
 
 There is one simple but unvarying process in constant 
 evidence, three-fold in character, in Biblical history, con- 
 sisting of: (1) perfection at the point of origin; (2) decline 
 or decay in the after history thus set in motion; and (3) 
 restoration to another, better, and higher plane in the 
 final issue of the process. Within the scope of this great 
 development, as it affects the universe, or the nations, or 
 Israel in particular, or the Church, or individuals, doubt- 
 less many minor instances occur of the operation of 
 what might almost be termed this Jaw of history. 
 
 The modern scholar then goes on to explain that 
 while he: 
 
 does not identify “‘Yahweh” with the true God, he 
 
 believes that the true God was using the idea of Yahweh 
 
 in such a way as to cause that idea more and more to 
 
 take the character of a worthy symbol of religion. This 
 
 theological position, as a matter of fact, puts far less 
 
 strain on the modern intellect than does the older ortho- 
 25 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 doxy, and makes it possible for men to remain within 
 the church who would otherwise be outside of it. The 
 reverent scholar believes that God uses the history of 
 Israel, and the history of the world, for an ineffable, 
 divine purpose which works out slowly across the ages. 
 . .. We take for granted that Bible students “must 
 acquire the art of historical construction by which... 
 they may . . . reproduce the history of Israel’s religious 
 experience, from those early days when Jehovah [Yah- 
 weh] was a tribal God who went out to battle against the 
 gods of other desert tribes.”’ : 
 
 Now, why the true God should have chosen this particu- 
 lar ‘‘idea,”” why He should have selected and used as His 
 symbol this Yahweh of Israel in preference to the god 
 Chemosh of Moab, or, for that matter, any other national 
 god, is an enigma to modern scholarship. Even Well- 
 hausen confesses he cannot explain it. Nor have these 
 scholars explained how Israel came to have this Yahweh, 
 and there seems very little hope that they will ever know. 
 
 The case is stated thus: 
 
 The Bible declares that Israel and Yahweh became 
 connected by a covenant, which was made at a specified 
 moment of time 2nd ina particular place. In the words 
 
 26 
 
PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 
 
 of Hosea: “I am Yahweh thy god from the land of 
 Egypt” (Hos. xii.9). In thorough accord with this, we 
 are told by the book of Exodus that Israel and Yahweh 
 entered into a solemn covenant at Mount Horeb-Sinai, 
 just after the Exodus from Egyptian territory. . . “I 
 will take you to me for a people; and I will be to youa 
 god”’ (Ex. vi. 7). “And thou, Yahweh, became their 
 god”’ (2 Sam. vii. 24). Now, the question here is, How 
 came the religion of Israel to have this covenant char- 
 acter? ...It is to this that Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, 
 Jeremiah, and other prophetic writers refer, either ex- 
 pressly or by implication. The covenant of the prophets 
 fis that] of Sinai, in which Yahweh became the god of 
 Israel. If Yahweh thus became the god of Israel at a 
 certain time and place, it follows, according to the 
 logic of primitive religion, that he must have been 
 connected with some other people before the Israelites 
 entered into relation with him. The Old Testament 
 says that the covenant was made in the Arabian wilder- 
 ness, prior to the invasion of Canaan. Whatever this 
 transaction was, it lies on the borderland between 
 Israel’s prehistoric, nomadic age in the desert and the 
 historic period after the settlement; and there is diff- 
 27 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 culty in reconstructing its details upon the basis of the 
 evidence at our disposal. 
 
 The material referring to this period is of too uncertain 
 a character for us to form a definite idea of the situation; 
 and the history of the Israelites in the Arabian desert 
 must remain shrouded in darkness. We have seen that 
 the Hexateuchal [Hexateuch is the critical name given 
 to the Pentateuch with Joshua added, which are con- 
 sidered as forming one body of literature distinct from 
 the remainder of the Old Testament] view of the Israelite 
 invasion and settlement of Canaan has much lower 
 historical value than the corresponding narratives in 
 Judges and Samuel; and this consideration, along with 
 many others, leads us to use the Hexateuch with ex- 
 treme caution at all points. The outstanding impres- 
 sion left upon us, after going over the evidence, is that 
 the cult of Yahweh became current among the Israelites 
 through their contact with a pastoral clan whose wander- 
 ing ground was in the Sinai peninsula. But Old Testa- 
 ment scholarship is coming to agreement that we cannot 
 envisage the nomadic history of Israel in any clear 
 light. 
 The conclusion reached is that Yahweh came to the 
 
 28 
 
PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 
 
 Israelites through a covenant with another clan, probably 
 the Kenites, and that “it is becoming evident that the 
 historic fact in the Hexateuch is the importation of a 
 desert god and a nomadic morality into the midst of 
 settled Amorite civilization” when, of course, Israel 
 entered Canaan. Further: 
 
 The work of Moses was rather that of introducing or 
 emphasizing the cult of Yahweh than of expounding a 
 new system of ethics; and whatever he may have done, 
 the vital conditions of Hebrew religious development 
 are to be sought in Canaan, and not in the desert. For 
 this process, our chief authorities are the books of the 
 Judges, Samuel, Kings, and the various prophets; while 
 the Hexateuch has only a secondary value.® 
 This, then, is criticism’s remarkable answer to the ques- 
 
 tion of the origin of the religion of Israel. It relegates 
 the matter to some kindness of an obscure desert tribe 
 (the Kenites) to Israel who adopted its god, but how 
 Yahweh happened to be the deity of that tribe remains 
 a mystery upon which not one ray of light has yet fallen, 
 for all that scientific investigation has progressed so 
 marvelously. Since the Hexateuchal account of origins 
 5 Soc. Study af the Bible, pp. 80-82. 
 29 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 must be rejected because it is pervaded by supernatural 
 and miraculous elements, and since only explanations 
 by natural processes are acceptable to the critical mind, 
 there does not seem to be any other tribe than the Kenites 
 to select as a source, for the other peoples with whom 
 Israel came in contact had gods whose names are known. 
 The Kenite deity, not being directly known, or mentioned, 
 must have been this Yahweh of Israel. He never would 
 have been known to us but for the generous act of Moses 
 in adopting and proclaiming this insignificant deity in- 
 stead of originating some new god. 
 
 But while this is an account of the road over which 
 biblical investigators have thus traveled, we are advised 
 to remember ‘‘that they have not yet reached their des- 
 tination. This reminder is given by the leading exponents 
 of modern biblical research and interpretation. . . . The 
 ‘partial and imperfect dawn of a new era of interpre- 
 tation’”’ is stated to be the general attitude ‘‘of all candid 
 biblical investigators whose method and standpoint are 
 those of the prevailing school of scientific research. We 
 have compared the modern school to travelers who have 
 not reached their destination; but another figure may 
 also be employed. The scientific view of the Bible is like 
 
 30 
 
PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 
 
 a house in process of construction. Most opponents of 
 the evolutionary view of Israel’s religion make the tactical 
 mistake of assuming that the house is completed; and 
 they criticize it on the basis of that assumption.” ® 
 
 Our criticism will not be of the superstructure. That 
 it is incomplete we make no question. Our criticism will 
 be of the foundation upon which this as yet unfinished 
 house is being erected. It would be a long and tedious 
 process to demolish piecemeal the extensive shell of a 
 building already constructed by the critics. This can be 
 left to totter and fall of itself when once the foundation 
 is destroyed. The foundation in this case is the evolu- 
 tionary view of Israel’s national history which in turn is 
 taken to explain the development of its religion, and the 
 growth of Bible literature. 
 
 Having marked out the road over which modern Bib- 
 lical criticism is traveling, let its method of procedure now 
 be stated. 
 
 (2) The method used by Criticism. 
 
 Modern scientific investigation of the Bible, after all, 
 is only a special application of methods already em- 
 ployed in examining the literature and history ot 
 6 Tbid., pp. xxvii. 
 
 31 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 the world’s great nations. Scientific biblical research, 
 therefore, is not a thing in a corner. It is answerable 
 to the progress of method in the study of all human 
 history. The ‘historical method’ took its rise among 
 the ancient Greeks, who were the first to achieve eman- 
 cipation from the reign of mythology. 
 
 The Greeks had a literature, once considered as credible 
 history, which described the early age of heroes, recounted 
 divine interventions and communications between gods 
 and men, and told of various miracles. ‘This store of 
 legend and myth formed a sort of Bible to them. It 
 exercised a very great influence upon both their religious 
 and literary life. But the time came when their historians 
 sought to disengage fact from fiction in this mass of 
 mythic story and poem. Thus they established the 
 critical method which has been ‘‘taken up by modern 
 historical scholars.”’ 
 
 The same is true of ancient Roman history. The Roman 
 people, like the Greeks, made their mythology a matter 
 of literal and serious belief for many centuries. Though 
 the Greeks made an effort to disengage their own history 
 
 from “its mythic envelope,” 
 
 only in modern times and 
 within the last few generations has Roman history been 
 
 32 
 
PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 
 
 carefully investigated and rewritten. In this work Nie- 
 buhr was a foremost leader, reconstructing Roman history 
 according to the new method of historical criticism, in 
 the application of which he was a pioneer and pathfinder. 
 
 Now, ‘‘the earliest way of treating history [consisted] in 
 accepting uncritically all traditions that come down from 
 the past, and weaving these traditions together into a 
 connected narrative. The mythological part of tradition 
 may relate to ‘the gods,’ or it may turn around actual 
 historical characters . . . [so] whoever would really know 
 human history ... must reckon with the important 
 fact of mythology. It was the perception of this principle 
 with more or less vividness that led the ancient Greek 
 historians to lay the foundations of the critical, historical 
 method. The realization of the same truth in a fuller 
 degree has been a factor of high importance in the modern 
 progress of historical science. Thus, opposition to the 
 historical method necessarily carries one back toward 
 mythology. . . . The scientific historian, first of all, seeks 
 to ascertain ‘facts,’”’ not interpret them, but simply “lay 
 bare what may be called ‘the raw material of history.’ 
 This fundamental inquiry is dealt with by analyzing the 
 evidence that bears upon the situation. . . . The primary 
 
 33 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 work of the scientific investigator of history, then, is to 
 draw the distinction between myths and fact. On the 
 one side, he accumulates a mass of real or supposed myths; 
 and on the other, he gathers a mass of real or supposed 
 facts. The myths are not cast into the limbo of mere 
 curiosities. They are held aside for later study and inter- 
 pretation. As a rule, they are not mere idle tales; and 
 they teach positive lessons about history even when they 
 are not accepted as literally true.” 
 
 “‘After facts [real or supposed] have been separated 
 from their mythic envelope, the demands upon the histo- 
 rian become different. There now emerges the leading 
 question, What are the connections between the facts? 
 How are the facts related to each other? How is history 
 to be controlled and interpreted? In other words, after 
 the historian has taken his material apart (analysis), he 
 is called upon to put it together (synthesis).” 
 
 Now in the development of scientific writing of history 
 there have sprung up a number of different departments 
 each of which has its specialists; but it must be recognized 
 that the work of each (whether political, religious, moral, 
 domestic, economic, or legal, etc.) is not independent; 
 instead, it stands related to the whole science of history, 
 
 34 
 
PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 
 
 which, in fact, is “the biography of human society” and 
 “‘must be treated as an ‘organic whole.’” With this must 
 be combined the science of sociology which treats of 
 the origin and. development of what history records. It 
 “‘approaches history from the standpoint of the ‘social 
 group,’” that is, it considered history as relating “‘to the 
 evolution of organized groups or communities” which 
 people form. ‘These may be of only local interest, as in 
 the case of the Greeks, whose social mechanism consisted 
 of independent clans reaching back to the nomadic period 
 and whose development worked out in the construction 
 of small ‘‘city states” such as Athens and Sparta, but 
 never achieved any real national unity; or they may as- 
 sume the importance of development in a national form 
 as with the Romans and the Hebrews. 
 
 The idea, then, is that group-development is the only 
 basis for the interpretation of history, and that as to all 
 phases of life. This principle is applied to the particular 
 religious interest which centers in the Bible, and leads to 
 the explanation of its origin, development, and interpreta- 
 tion from the evolution of the social group known as the 
 Hebrew nation.’ This, then, explains the method pursued 
 
 7Extracts from Sociological Study of the Bible, pp. xviii-xxiii, 
 pp. 14, 15. 
 35 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 by the historical criticism of the Bible. The entire ex- 
 planation of its religion and literature is made to turn 
 upon the answer to the question, How did the social 
 group known as the Hebrew nation originate and develop? 
 “This method of approach to the Bible is a logical applica- 
 tion of modern results in historical and social science; 
 and it opens before us the chapters of an intensely absorb- 
 ing story.” This may now be briefly sketched. 
 
 (3) The course of Bible history as defined by Criticism. 
 This deals not simply with secular aspects, but with the 
 religious elements which so manifestly dominate its course, 
 and constitute the preéminent theme of the Bible. The 
 course, then, of Bible history is mow outlined and inter- 
 preted by scientific historians in the following manner: 
 
 The older view of the Bible and its religion did not 
 suppose that the history of the Hebrew people had 
 anything to do with shaping, or ‘causing,’ the religious 
 ideas peculiar to Israel; and the thought of such a con- 
 nection is even yet a novelty to most Bible readers. But 
 it should be observed at once that the old view of the 
 nature and origin of the Hebrew religion is bound up 
 with a view of Hebrew /istory which has been discredited 
 in all the foremost institutions of learning. According 
 
 36 
 
PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF. MODERNISM 
 
 to the old view, the nation called ‘Israel’ consisted of 
 the descendants of a single race, or family. It was 
 organized at a single stroke, in the wilderness of Arabia. 
 Taking the form of a mighty army, under the general- 
 ship of a single commander, the militant nation attacked 
 the land of Canaan, drove out the ‘Amorites,’ and then 
 divided the entire land by lot among the different clans 
 or tribes which constituted the invading army. This 
 view is based on the first six books of the Old 
 Testament known as the Hexateuch.” . . . This view, 
 sociologically, means ‘‘that the group-organization of 
 the Hebrews was determined and fixed by law at the 
 very beginning of the national history, and was not the 
 result of development. ® 
 
 “But modern historical investigation has demonstrated 
 that the Hexateuch in its present form is a very late 
 product of Hebrew life;® that it was unknown to the 
 Hebrews throughout the larger part of their time of 
 residence in Palestine; !° and that the conception of the 
 8 This explains why Hebrew history is “unlike that of any other 
 ancient people,” rather than the sociological reason given later. 
 
 9 This will be enlarged upon shortly in treating of how the Bible 
 
 was made, according to Criticism. See also note !° below. 
 10 This is taken for granted because the history of the nation is 
 
 37 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 national history just cited is impossible.” 1! Further, 
 the books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings must be ac- 
 counted ‘“‘older than the Hexateuch;” and “the story 
 which they tell about the origin ” of the Hebrew nation 
 [which] departs conspicuously from that of the narratives 
 
 embodied in the first six books of the Old Testament” ?° 
 
 considered a sharp contradiction of what might be expected if the 
 Pentateuch was in existence, and had been accepted as the Law of 
 God in the manner recounted in its narratives. A very different and 
 quite reasonable explanation of this history will be given later. 
 
 11 Simply because it involves the acceptance of the supernatural 
 and miraculous, and therefore bears the same character as the myths 
 which belong to Greece, Rome, and other nations. 
 
 12 But the question is, Do they tell of origin or decline? This 
 critical displacement of the Pentateuch and Joshua, in favor of mak- 
 ing an historic beginning with Judges leaves several problems de- 
 manding solution, in default of which, after a century of critical 
 investigation, we have only the vague speculations of the Critics, like 
 the ‘‘Kenite hypothesis” of original source referred to above. (See 
 Hastings’ Dict. of the Bible, Ext. vol, pp. 626, 627.) Are not the 
 Critics making their own mythology? 
 
 13'This is stated because the history of the Judges-Kings period 
 does not show the people living up to the Pentateuchal covenant 
 relation, or observing its accompanying legislation, or following its 
 ritual and central sanctuary plan. Instead, the people had many 
 altars, many sanctuaries, and others than members of the priestly 
 house offered sacrifice. From this situation, it is concluded that the 
 Hexateuch could not have been in existence at the time. Further, 
 that we do not find the history in measurable agreement with the 
 legislation of the Pentateuch, until a short period before the exile, 
 
 38 
 
PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 
 
 must be used as the historical starting point. ‘‘ Accord- 
 ing to these older documents [Judges-Kings], the land of 
 Canaan was invaded, not by a ‘nation’ organized as a 
 grand army under one general, but by a number of inde- 
 pendent clans which had no common organization. These 
 clans coming in from the desert, merely succeeded in 
 planting themselves here and there in the highlands of 
 Judah, Ephraim, and Gilead. They did not drive out or 
 annihilate the Amorites; but the previous inhabitants 
 remained in possession of a long list of walled cities, most 
 of which were in the lowlands. The Hebrew nation, as 
 known to history, arose at the point of coalescence between 
 the incoming Israelite clans and the Amorite city-states 
 
 and only in final form after it. Therefore, it must have been com- 
 piled during this late period as an instrument for use in accomplish- 
 ing religious reformation and establishing definite institutions of 
 priestly place and service with one central and only valid sanctuary. 
 In the compiling, this body of law and literature was combined with 
 the mythology found in current documents of early tradition and 
 the few general laws also embodied in them so that the whole collec- 
 tion might be hallowed by the sanctity and supernatural character 
 attached to the ancient mythic age of heroes, so sacred and dear to 
 any ancient people. This does not mean to deny that Abram, Moses, 
 and others were not historic personages, but the mere admission of 
 their having lived becomes about the only needle of fact in this hay- 
 stack of fiction. 
 
 39 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 already established in Canaan. ‘The Amorite cities re- 
 mained for a long time independent (throughout the 
 period of the Judges and reign of King Saul); but under 
 the House of David, the earlier inhabitants became 
 assimilated with the Israelite monarchy, and lost their 
 racial identity. During the long period between the 
 original invasion and the great Babylonian captivity, the 
 Hebrew people and their kings did not observe the law 
 of the national constitution recorded in the Hexateuch; 14 
 and this law was finally brought forward in its completed 
 form, and adopted after the Captivity, by the ‘Jews,’ a 
 remnant of the old Hebrew people. This general view . . . 
 is a commonplace to the scholar who is in possession of 
 the results of scientific investigation of the Bible.” 
 
 Now the historico-sociological viewpoint and interpre- 
 tation is that consequent upon this invasion by a nomadic 
 people and their contact with the settled, city-dwelling 
 and so-called civilized peoples inhabiting Canaan, “a 
 great struggle arose between the standpoints of” these 
 groups finally resulting through fusion ‘‘in the develop- 
 ment of the Hebrew nation.” 
 
 But the conflict of different social and religious ideas 
 
 4 According to the Critics, it was not yet in existence. 
 
 40 
 
PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 
 
 continued, and ‘“‘in the long run, the two sides of the 
 struggle came to be symbolized by the terms ‘Yahweh’ 
 and ‘Baal,’ which indicate the gods of the races that com- 
 bined in the national group. By one and the same process, 
 the national deity Yahweh became identified with warfare 
 against ‘other gods’ and warfare against ‘injustice.’”’ 
 The conflict between the local Baal worship, derived from 
 the Amorites, and that of Yahweh, the national deity, 
 along with which was associated a different social mechan- 
 ism, resulted in bringing forward the great prophets who, 
 like reformers of their day, preached against polytheism 
 and various forms of social abuses and injustice, connected 
 in their minds with the Baal-system of Amorite origin, 
 so that the movement thus commenced and carried into 
 post-exilic times accomplished the purification of the 
 Hebrew religion, giving to it its final, spiritual, universal, 
 and exalted form which the prophetical books chiefly set 
 forth in a way “‘that has pierced through the ages and 
 illuminated the history of the world.” 
 
 This unique development is considered to be due to the 
 religious element which persistently characterized the 
 conflict of different social standpoints engendered by 
 
 nomadic Israel’s invasion of settled and civilized Canaan. 
 41 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 It is true that similar invasions by primitive peoples had 
 taken place in Babylonia and Egypt, but no similar con- 
 flict had ensued, for these conquering nomads had found 
 an already established national unity, social and religious, 
 to which they had to accommodate themselves. 
 
 But in Canaan nothing like this was found by Israel; 
 instead of unity in government and religion there were 
 independent city-states or provincial bodies, each wor- 
 shipping its own god, or Baal. In the conflict of Canaan’s 
 different social standpoint with that of nomadic Israel, 
 Hebrew development took place, producing in its course 
 national unity and organization with Yahweh, who at 
 first was only the tribal god of the invaders, now become 
 a national deity. 
 
 Thus social and religious elements were combined on 
 both sides of the struggle, and out of its throes, after a 
 duration of centuries, there emerged the result described 
 above. This struggle has been staged nowhere else. It 
 has been acted out only in Hebrew history. Because of 
 this distinctive and peculiar combination of elements, 
 social and religious, the Hebrew-group evolution is con- 
 sidered to be ‘‘unlike that of any other ancient people.” 
 
 It may be necessary for the sake of clearness further to 
 
 42 
 
PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 
 
 define what is meant by this conflict of differing social 
 and religious elements. The ideas and usages of all 
 migratory, unsettled races, such as Israel was at first, 
 are of a different form from those of settled civilized 
 peoples such as the Amorites. With the former, social 
 consciousness put brotherhood foremost—the good treat- 
 ment of the individual members of clan or tribe—and 
 manhood was held at par value. With the latter, man- 
 hood was held at a discount; the common man was looked 
 upon with scant respect. Most of the inhabitants in 
 settled Oriental countries were in the toils of some kind 
 of slavery, while a small, upper class used all the machinery 
 of government and religion to tighten their grip upon the 
 masses still more firmly. Abuse of individual right, and 
 much injustice prevailed with a small privileged class 
 always in the ascendant. 
 
 The reverse is true of the nomadic social and economic 
 standpoint, for it maintained a much higher standard of 
 individual right and a more impartial administration of 
 justice. The religious element of the Amorite civilization 
 reflected its social viewpoint. In it the leading men of 
 the upper social class were called “‘baals” and their gods 
 were “‘Baals” to whom the people conceded the same 
 
 43 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 thought, place, and action as that which they attributed 
 to their own human lords or owners. 
 
 Nomadic Israel, on the contrary, had one tribal god. 
 He was interjected abruptly among the Amorite Baals 
 on Israel’s invasion of Canaan along with the social cus- 
 toms and laws of nomads, and so was precipitated the 
 conflict of different religious and social elements. This 
 resulted in generating “a new ‘variety’ of religion. The 
 contact with the cult of civilization produced a ‘cross- 
 fertilization of culture’ which led to the birth of a unique 
 religion. A new body of spiritual thought was born which 
 avoided the religious evils of civilization and nomadism, 
 and combined their virtues.” 1 
 
 According to Criticism, this is a description of the course 
 of Hebrew history along with the explanation of the birth 
 and development of Bible religion. 
 
 4. The origin and making of the Bible as now explained 
 by Criticism. From the preceding sections the reader will 
 already have gleaned something of what may be expected 
 under this heading. 
 
 As to the origin of the Bible religion, we are told that 
 
 18 Quotations and extracts from Sociological Study of the Bible, 
 pp. xxiv-xxx, 95, 135-137, 176. 
 
 bt 
 
PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 
 
 this must be sought in the conflict of diverse forces as just 
 described. It is “not the outcome of one special thread 
 of influence, but the product of many tendencies and cir- 
 cumstances working together.” This process has been 
 briefly described in the outline of the course of Hebrew 
 history, as now defined by Criticism. It began with the 
 shock occasioned by the meeting of the opposing stand- 
 points represented by nomadism and civilization, com- 
 plicated by a keen religious competition between the 
 multitudinous Baal-worship of the Amorite civilization 
 and the Yahweh-worship, observed in common by all the 
 tribes of Israel, which they brought out with them from 
 the wilderness. 
 
 The contact of these alien social-religious groups pro- 
 duced the conditions of the Judges-period. During it 
 there was a constant alternation of victory and defeat for 
 the invading nomads, who assimilated in the process cer- 
 tain forms of the Baal-worship while still giving their own 
 Yahweh first place. The conflict continued even during 
 Saul’s reign, but a fusion of these elements took place 
 under David’s conquest, and this new national develop- 
 ment naturally gave the god of the conquering Israelites 
 a great new prestige which was celebrated in the building 
 
 45 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 of his great temple by Solomon. Nevertheless the Amor- 
 ite-Baal influences remained in the midst of the Hebrew 
 nation. 
 
 Toward the close of Solomon’s reign and after the dis- 
 ruption, these influences burst again into prominence, 
 especially acquiring prominence in the northern kingdom. 
 The result was really the vogue of a kind of pantheon of 
 gods, with Yahweh as the chief divinity. A system of 
 polytheism prevailed, and in the new conflict with this, 
 the conflict of opposing social law and custom, which had 
 been much suppressed during the reign of David and 
 Solomon again came to the forefront. In Ahab’s reign, 
 this condition reached a crisis when Elijah with unex- 
 ampled boldness attacked Baal-worship and social in- 
 justice,’® and demanded that the supremacy of Yahweh 
 be fully recognized. 
 
 This reformation did not prove permanent, however, 
 the old conditions returned and even grew worse as they 
 
 16 Against all this Samuel had warned when a king was first de- 
 manded. In short a throne meant the injection of Amorite influences 
 and conditions into Israel’s nomadic social structure. History shows 
 this developed, and became the root of the disruption in Rehoboam’s 
 day. This leaven of the things of Baal continued to work and spread. 
 A weak voice now and again was raised against it, but Elijah’s thun- 
 der brought revolution 
 
 46 
 
PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 
 
 had a habit of doing in the ancient imperialistic form of 
 civilization. 
 
 But ancestral influences kept the tradition of the no- 
 madic social forms of law and custom, with their greater 
 measure of practical righteousness, justice, and brother- 
 hood, alive among the common people of the kingdoms, 
 oppressed though they were, and impoverished by des- 
 potic methods and exactions to satisfy the extravagant 
 luxury of the Court and of the small upper social class 
 who also reveled in Baal-worship. Yahweh, on the other 
 hand, was always identified with the ancestral social 
 standpoint by both the oppressor and the oppressed. 
 There was a constant alternation of supremacy between 
 the conflicting standpoints: now Amorite-Baalistic in- 
 fluences dominated, then the ancestral Israelite influences 
 rose to the top. This antithesis receives recurring and 
 increasing emphasis in the history of the Kings. 
 
 What thus long smouldered, or expressed itself in con- 
 vulsive effort, as in the case of Elijah, broke out into a 
 great flame of protest, expostulation, and sound teaching 
 with the rise of the literary or writing prophets, beginning 
 with Amos and Hosea. The work thus begun, was fol- 
 lowed up and developed by successive prophets, and it 
 
 47 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 crystallized religious thought, emphasized righteousness, 
 individual and national, justice and brotherhood. The 
 original idea of Yahweh expanded. From the one god of a 
 group of tribes he grew to be a universal Deity, and the 
 figure of the one true God emerged out of this age-long 
 struggle in Canaan. As already told, He was at work all 
 the time behind the scenes in this drama. By means of 
 the tribal, and later the national deity of Israel, God was 
 preparing the way, finally to reveal Himself fully as “the 
 God of the whole earth, identical with righteousness and 
 abounding in mercy.” 
 
 All this means that the books of the Nee must be 
 taken as the great foundation strata of Bible religion and 
 literature. The Hexateuch did not exist, nor Judges 
 through Kings at the commencement of the period of the 
 literary prophets, only separate documents, containing 
 some early traditions, a few simple, primary laws and 
 some records of history were in existence, in a scattered 
 form, for they were not combined until later into a body 
 of literature. The movement to collect and compile them 
 took rise during the era of the prophets, whose work gave 
 stimulus to it. Their success in stressing and expanding 
 
 See Dp. 21,22. 
 
 48 
 
PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 
 
 the idea of Yahweh gave substance to the idea of institut- 
 ing a one only valid and central sanctuary with an author- 
 ized priesthood and ritual. Thus Deuteronomy ® was 
 written just before Josiah’s reign, hidden in the temple, 
 and suddenly “‘discovered” to be used as its compiler 
 originally intended, as the lever to inaugurate a religious 
 reformation conforming to the standpoint of the prophets. 
 Deuteronomy thus set in motion a great literary develop- 
 ment, extending through several centuries during which 
 the scattered documents and records which gave Israel’s 
 original mythology, traditions and history, were collected, 
 sifted, edited and pieced together, sometimes very skill- 
 fully, again rather loosely, in the books that we name the 
 Pentateuch, Joshua, and Judges through Kings. 
 
 This whole literary development, although the work 
 of many hands and minds is characterized by the general 
 purpose of selecting such things as would be useful in 
 strengthening and embellishing the framework constructed 
 by the Prophetic-Deuteronomic-Priestly schools which 
 began to be formed in the days of the first literary prophetz 
 —Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah.” 
 
 18 At least, most of what now constitutes that book. 
 19 “The book of Genesis, being written at a late epoch, reflects the 
 
 49 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Everything thus was ordered to contribute to the ad- 
 vancement of the central idea—the absolute supremacy, 
 unique glory and perfect righteousness of Yahweh as 
 against all the Baals and the social customs connected 
 with them. In the recognition that allegiance to Yahweh 
 was the paramount issue, lay the key to all blessing, 
 individual, national, universal. The adversities and dis- 
 asters of the national history, culminating in the captiv- 
 ities, were also made to serve this cause. ‘These were 
 selected for special emphasis by Jeremiah. During the 
 exile and after, this great religious movement continued, 
 gaining rather than slowing up under exilic conditions, so 
 that in the Ezra-Nehemiah period it reached its final 
 form, particularly as to laws and ritual. In brief, this 
 was the process of the establishment of monotheism as 
 true religion in contrast with polytheism. 
 
 Concurrently, a world-wide perspective developed, in 
 which the Yahweh of tribal Israel who had previously 
 
 struggle of the prophets against the practices and ideas of their 
 times.” Such instances as that nomadic Abraham is the friend of 
 Yahweh, and the Amorites pronounced wicked; that Abel the no- 
 madic shepherd is acceptable to Yahweh, and Cain the settled worker 
 of the soil is rejected, that Yahweh is presented as opposed to city- 
 building and city-dwelling are some of the thiugs presented as 
 proof! 
 
 50 
 
PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 
 
 become the national god of the Hebrew nation, became 
 the Redeemer of Mankind, the one only true and living 
 God. This is the grand climax to the social-religious con- 
 flict staged in the land of Canaan, carried on between the 
 opposing standpoints of invading Israel and the indig- 
 enous Amorites. 
 
 Thus the great pivot upon which the making of Scrip- 
 ture turns—the center from which it evolves like an 
 ascending and expanding spiral of religious thought of 
 ever increasing spirituality and breadth of vision—is 
 condemnation of the Hebrews for adopting Amorite law and 
 morals instead of remaining true to the ancestral tribal god, 
 Yahweh, and the code of ethics associated with him by reason 
 of their nomadic origin. 
 
 This completes our brief general sketch of the origin 
 and making of the Bible and its religion as now understood 
 and taught by the critics. 
 
 Additional details may help to elucidate their scheme 
 further and prove not uninteresting in themselves. Gen- 
 erally speaking, the critics look at the books beginning 
 with Genesis and on through Kings as composed of various 
 documents which were brought together and gradually 
 added to by a school of writers during the seventh to the 
 
 51 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 fifth centuries B.c. Only toward the end of this period did 
 this body of literature receive its present form practically. 
 The labors of these critics have been devoted to distin- 
 guishing, analyzing, and separating these documents 
 into their originals, which they claim to be able to do by 
 reason of certain literary forms, phrases, special words 
 and distinctive lines of thought or special viewpoints 
 peculiar to each of them. They believe that each of these 
 originals can be chronologically located by sifting out 
 parallelisms between these features peculiar to it and the 
 actual history of the Hebrew people. 
 
 Chronologically speaking these documents and the 
 compositions added to them are then placed in the follow- 
 ing order: 
 
 1. Two sets of narratives, called Elohistic and Yahweh- 
 istic because they make use in large measure of the names 
 “Elohim” and ‘‘Yahweh” [Jehovah], respectively are 
 separated out in which it is claimed that there exist marked 
 divergences and contradictions in their treatment of the 
 same events. The editors distributed these double ac- 
 counts throughout our Hexateuch, in some cases dove- 
 tailing passages to each together in such fashion that 
 the critics have found it necessary in certain places actually 
 
 52 
 
PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 
 
 to split verses, assigning part to one source and part to 
 another. Both these sets of duplicated narrative began 
 with the myths of creation as found in Genesis and car- 
 ried the story into the Judges period. These narratives 
 did not supply any of the material embraced in what we 
 know as Leviticus and Deuteronomy, nor parts of Num- 
 bers, and parts of the Tabernacle and Law sections of 
 Exodus. Leviticus and Deuteronomy and these parts of 
 Numbers and Exodus were produced at a much later 
 date. 
 
 2. There were certain other books of record, probably 
 contemporaneous to some extent with the above men- 
 tioned documents.”° 
 
 3. The book found in the temple by Hilkiah in Josiah’s 
 reign. This is supposed to have comprised most of the 
 present book of Deuteronomy. 
 
 For about one hundred years previous to its discovery 
 several of the prophets—Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah— 
 had been delivering their messages. This prepared the 
 way for the production of the “Hilkiah book.” “The 
 majority of the critics believe this book of the law to have 
 
 20 See Num. xxi. 14, 15,; Josh. x. 12, 13; 2 Sam. i. 18-27; I Kings 
 xiv. 19, 29. 
 
 53 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 been the result of a pious fraud promulgated by Hilkiah 
 and Shaphan with the intention of deceiving Josiah into 
 the belief that the reforms which they desired were the 
 express command of God revealed to Moses.” #4 
 
 It is then supposed that this book Hilkiah found was 
 used as a nucleus by a school of writers, now called Deu- 
 teronomistic. In conjunction with the prophets who 
 arose after its discovery, Jeremiah in particular, they 
 expanded it into our present Deuteronomy. This is 
 
 considered demonstrated by the fact that Baal-worship 
 derived from the Amorites is constantly referred to in it.”” 
 
 “The worship of the Baals is equated, or identified, with 
 everything that the prophets abhor.” 
 
 To this same school of writers, for their labors extended 
 Over many years, is attributed the final compilation of 
 the present books of Judges, Samuel and Kings. They 
 took the old records and stories of past history (Elohistic, 
 Yahwehistic, etc.) which were available, and added to 
 them the special emphasis which is laid by them in their 
 present form upon the evils of Amorite Baal-worship, 
 customs and morals. This is the process by which these 
 
 21 Hastings’ Dict. of the Bible, “ Hexateuch,’’ p. 368. 
 22 vii. 1-5; xii. 2-4; xii. 30; xx. 16-18; xxxi. 16. 
 54 
 
PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 
 
 books become such a strong witness to the use of anti- 
 Baal propaganda to enforce the cult of Yahweh. 
 
 This led the way to a combination of the Elohist and 
 Yahwehist documents, and the various laws and cere- 
 monies, after their codification, which were found needful 
 in developing the religious reformation set in motion by 
 the famous “ Hilkiah book.”’ The destruction of Jerusalem 
 and the temple, as soon as it occurred, made the writing 
 down of these priestly practices still more essential and 
 it was taken in hand during the exile. Ezekiel is credited 
 with the first step in this direction, and the result was 
 his ideal plan and constitution for the service of the temple 
 when restored. He was a priest, and other priests followed 
 in his steps. Thus all the older practices and related laws 
 were written down, as well as, doubtless, additions made 
 during a period which reached into post-exilic days; the 
 final result being what critics call the Priestly Code. 
 Leviticus is entirely made up of this material, and other 
 parts of it are found distributed throughout the Hexateuch. 
 
 To recapitulate: The order that we have now reached is: 
 the Elohist document, the Yahweh document, certain 
 books of record, the Hilkiah book, then Deuteronomy 
 and the Judges-Kings series, the writings of the prophets 
 
 55 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 before and during the exile, and the production of the 
 Priestly Code bringing us to post-exilic time. 
 
 Now the next step was the combination of E (Elohistic), 
 Y (Yahwehistic), D (Deutoronomistic), and P (Priestly), 
 probably in the Ezra-Nehemiah period, thus finally pro- 
 ducing the Hexateuch (Genesis-Joshua) as we now pos- 
 sess it. 
 
 Ezra and Nehemiah, 1 and 2 Chronicles, were put into 
 finished form during the fourth century B.c. 
 
 Daniel is placed in the second century B.c. 
 
 As to the other books, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, etc., 
 little is known concerning them, except that they were 
 in all probability incorporated in the body of accepted 
 sacred literature during the post-exilic period. 
 
 The problem of the composition of the Hexateuch is 
 aptly described by one of the critics, who makes the 
 principle underlying it applicable to all Scripture. He 
 Says: 
 
 Let us suppose a problem of this kind: Given a patch 
 work quilt, explain the character of the original piece 
 out of which the bits of stuff composing the quilt were 
 cut. First, we notice that, however well the colors may 
 blend, however nice and complete the whole may look, 
 
 56 
 
PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 
 
 many of the adjoining pieces do not actually agree in 
 material, texture, pattern, color, or the like. Ergo, 
 they have been made up out of very different pieces 
 of stuff. So far, we have only proved what may turn 
 out to be ...a conglomeration of fragments. But 
 suppose that we further discover that many of the bits, 
 though now separated, are like one another in material, 
 texture, etc., we may conjecture that these may have 
 been cut out of one piece. But we shall prove this 
 beyond reasonable doubt if we find that several bits 
 when unpieced fit together, so that the pattern of one 
 is continued in the other; and, moreover, if all of like 
 character are sorted out they form, say, four groups, 
 each of which was evidently once a single piece of stuff, 
 though parts of each are found missing, because, no 
 doubt, they have not been required to make the whole. 
 But we make the analogy with the Hexateuch even 
 closer, if we further suppose that in certain parts of the 
 quilt the bits belonging to, say, two of these groups 
 are so combined as to form a subsidiary pattern within 
 the larger pattern of the whole quilt, and had evidently 
 been sewn together before being connected with the 
 other parts of the quilt; and we may make it even closer 
 57 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 still, if we suppose that, besides the more important 
 bits of stuff, smaller embellishments, borderings, and 
 the like had been added so as to improve the general 
 effect of the whole.” 
 
 23 Hastings’ Dict. of the Bible, “ Hexateuch,”’ p. 365. 
 
 58 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 EFFECTS OF MODERNISM 
 
 The effects upon our own faith of the results reached by 
 the critics and just described at some length may be now 
 considered. 
 
 This view of the Bible produces the following effects: 
 (1) It asks us to ignore the Bible’s distinctive character 
 and manifest difference, and make the history of Greece 
 and Rome our standard in the study and interpretation 
 of Bible history. (2) It asks us to admit that most of 
 the Pentateuch and Joshua is of no higher order than 
 the mythological literature of the Greeks and Romans—a 
 little fact emmeshed in much fiction, of which the Homeric 
 epics and such stories as that of the two sons of Mars, the 
 war-god, named Romulus and Remus, both born of a 
 virgin, are notable examples. (An impartial comparative 
 study certainly shows the fallacy of this method.) (3) 
 Since so “‘many of the narratives in the earliest history 
 of Rome betray their fabulous nature by the contradictions 
 and impossibilities they involve” (Niebuhr), and giving 
 
 59 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 them credence can only result in ‘‘the prostration of the 
 understanding and judgment” (idem), it asks us to look 
 upon the Pentateuchal early history of Israel in the same 
 way, giving no more credence to its narratives of the 
 supernatural and miraculous. This puts a veto on the 
 use of the Pentateuch, as the terminus a quo for the study 
 of the Hebrew social group and its development. For 
 that, we must go to Judges, for the conditions prevailing in 
 its day are recorded there, it tells us, with a good measure 
 of historic certainty. (4) It asks us to discard, as illegit- 
 imate, all idea that the inspiration and revelation con- 
 stantly claimed by the Bible for itself throughout, does 
 really mark it off as eminently different from any other 
 body of literature. (5) Since the Old Testament was 
 treated by the early Christians as unimpeachable history, 
 its impeachment of that history poisons and devitalizes 
 the whole body of the New Testament teaching for us, 
 thus sapping the foundations of Christianity. (6) It insists 
 upon our acceptance of the Christ-dishonoring doctrine 
 of the Kenosis, vitally maiming our Lord’s unique and 
 perfect personality, making Him, as far as His knowledge 
 is concerned, nothing more than the product of His time. 
 The modified view may be taken that He accommodated 
 60 
 
EFFECTS OF MODERNISM 
 
 Himself to His time. But this would then mean giving 
 consent by silence to ignorance, superstition, deception, 
 speaking no word to dispel such clouds and mists so that 
 the truth might shine out clearly, though He knew all 
 the time that the Old Testament records He used and 
 preached from were mythical in character and authorship. 
 In that case the critics have outdone Him in kindness to 
 their deluded fellowmen; they have exceeded the Lord 
 Himself in honesty and in fearless presentation of facts 
 which He kept hidden under the cloak of His gracious 
 accomodation to His times, and so permitted the world 
 to remain under delusion concerning them for over eighteen 
 hundred years! 
 
 This question of the effects upon our own faith which 
 the acceptance of this view of the Bible would entail is of 
 such supreme importance that it will be well to state them 
 over again somewhat differently. | 
 
 1. Since its acceptance would revolutionize the whole 
 order and meaning of Biblical history, such radical con- 
 sequences may well raise a presumption against it in the 
 mind of the reverent student and cause him to hesitate and 
 seriously question its truthfulness. 
 
 2. Its acceptance would affect disastrously in a far- 
 
 61 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 reaching way the authenticity of the Bible, which would 
 thus cease to be authoritative, or to be what is claimed 
 for it by its writers; or to be considered in many cases in 
 accordance with facts, or to be true to its professed origin 
 and authorship. 
 
 3. Facing the question of its acceptance produces in 
 us a feeling that we are dealing with a deceptive set of docu- 
 ments, originally imposed upon the people for a ‘‘pious”’ 
 purpose, in the same class with those devices which priest- 
 craft in every nation and of every age has foisted upon 
 mankind. In other words, its compilers seem to be por- 
 trayed as too much like religious zealots who did not scruple 
 to use guile, prevarication, partiality, in the promotion 
 of their one central idea, namely, a determined purpose to 
 exalt an insignificant tribal god whose origin is as obscure 
 as that of any other god of the ancient world into lord- 
 ship over the whole earth. He is made to become in the 
 end an all-pervading personality. Why choose him any 
 more than a hundred others? Why should a god and a 
 people who were by comparison such insignificant factors 
 in the ancient world succeed in climbing to a place of such 
 universal and abiding importance? 
 
 4. Its acceptance, carried to its logical end, would 
 62 | 
 
EFFECTS OF MODERNISM 
 
 degrade the Book (for it must stand or fall as a unit, every 
 part of it being skillfully interlocked in testimony, theme, 
 and narrative) to the level of the religious mythological 
 literature of pagan peoples. We would have to believe that 
 whole speeches, codes of law, and various narratives are 
 put by its writers into the mouths of their great hero 
 Moses and their tribal god, either Elohim or Yahweh 
 by name, which they knew were never uttered by them. 
 
 5. Its acceptance would constitute a peremptory de- 
 mand upon us for the rejection of inspiration and revela- 
 tion as set forth in what is now called the old or tradi- 
 tional views. If Criticism is correct, these cannot longer 
 be entertained. 
 
 6. At the same time, its acceptance demands acquies- 
 cence in what defies logical explanation, acquiescence in 
 a mystery which taxes human reason more than does any 
 acquiescence in the supernatural and miraculous. It 
 asks us to believe that those who countenanced and helped 
 forward the “pious” fraud described above on the people 
 of the Old Testament, and thereby confessed to an utter 
 lack of common honesty, to say the least, were neverthe- 
 less possessed of high enough spiritual culture to evolve 
 those lofty moral sentiments and express those sublime 
 
 63 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 spiritual truths, which, it is admitted, are characteristic 
 of so much of the Bible, making it decidedly superior to 
 any other body of literature, no matter when or by whom 
 humanly produced. 
 
 7. Its acceptance requires us to believe that the critics 
 possess unparalleled literary keenness and an acumen, 
 which, indeed, must be accounted stupendous. In fact, 
 could anything short of the supernatural account for 
 their mysterious, uncanny skill in dismantling documents? 
 In recent times writers have collaborated, and yet critical 
 inspection of their joint work, aided by close acquaintance 
 with the authors themselves, has failed to assign to each 
 his part in the composite production with anything like 
 accuracy. 
 
 But the Critics of Scripture go at their task with neither 
 doubts nor qualms. They even split up the text of a 
 document into such minute fractions that a single word is 
 sometimes assigned to another source than that of the 
 rest of the verse. Resort must be had to that which their 
 highly developed historical sense requires them to discard 
 —the supernatural and miraculous—as wellnigh the only 
 adequate explanation of this extraordinary ability (?) 
 to analyze, dissect, sift, and piece together the different 
 
 64 
 
EFFECTS OF MODERNISM 
 
 documents imbedded in so complex a mass of literature 
 as the Old Testament must be, according to their views. 
 It is really too much to ask of anyone not already com- 
 mitted to it as a corollary of their peculiar view of the 
 Bible. 
 
 8. Its acceptance renders the Old Testament of very 
 doubtful spiritual worth and meaning. Indeed, it seems 
 hardly reasonable to expect the Old Testament on this 
 view to retain much of this element—little more, perhaps, 
 than the //zad and the Odyssey, or the writings of Herod- 
 otus, in fact, the Hexateuch is represented as bearing a 
 similar relation to the life of the Hebrews as do those 
 productions to the life of the Greeks.! 
 
 9. Its acceptance would discredit the New Testament 
 view of the Old Testament Scriptures, and force us to 
 admit that it makes the New Testament way of using 
 them appear foolish and childish. The sayings of Christ 
 Himself would be no exception. 
 
 1 Such allusions are of frequent occurrence in critical comments. 
 On the subject of the course of history in the book of Joshua, it is 
 remarked: ‘An instructive parellel to Joshua is found in the Greek 
 legends of the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnesus (Return of the 
 Heracleide), partition of the land by lot, etc.” Enc. Biblica, vol. ii, 
 2608. 
 
 65 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 10. It so completely disintegrates the books of Bible 
 history that the attempt to re-arrange them in accordance 
 with the critical scheme, or perhaps it should rather be 
 said to take the multiplicity of documents of which they 
 are made up, as now detected and separated apart by 
 Criticism, and throw them into some new arrangement, 
 can result only in a meaningless, disconnected, spiritually 
 impoverished collection. About all that could be done 
 is to spread them out as is done with an ancient “find”’ of 
 clay tablets or papyri, dug up in Babylonia or Egypt. 
 The historical, chronological view of the critics com- 
 pletely breaks up all unity of structure and theme, making 
 anything like a synthesis from the results of their work 
 quite impossible. Thus is revealed the barrenness that 
 would follow the acceptance of their labors, which throws 
 the Bible student back upon the so-called traditional view 
 as the only reasonable and consistent arrangement. 
 
 11. The question of accepting this new view of the 
 Bible forces upon us this direct issue: Shall we side with 
 the critics in opposition to the testimony given in the New 
 Testament by the Apostles, and even by the Lord Jesus 
 Himself? Were they so circumscribed by the ignorance 
 of the age in which they lived that they did not know the 
 
 66 
 
EFFECTS OF MODERNISM 
 
 Scriptures of their people as well as the critics do? Was 
 Jesus? To accept Modern Criticism and its legitimate re- 
 sults means thus that both Old and New Testaments are 
 turned into nothing more than any other book, and possess 
 an authority in no way above that of the literature of any 
 other religion. Even admitting that it evidences a degree 
 higher development now when compared with the religious 
 literature of other peoples, in view of what the critics say 
 may we not expect something in the future of a still 
 higher order? In fact it is surmised that we will have a 
 new Bible after a while. This Bible which we now have, 
 is to be accorded only provisional acceptance. 
 
 12. Its acceptance requires us to countenance an ab- 
 surdity. According to the critics, the main reliable early 
 history of the Hebrew nation—the Judges-Kings series of 
 books—presents nothing like conformity to such a system 
 of history, law and ceremony as is laid down in the Penta- 
 teuch, but records much which is contrary to it. On the 
 ground of this silence, we are asked to conclude that the 
 Pentateuch did not exist during all that period covered 
 by the Judges-Kings series of books; that at best only 
 fragments of it were then to be found in brief, stray 
 documents, and these were only gathered together 
 
 67 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 into two main documents in perhaps the ninth cen- 
 tury B.C. 
 
 It is admitted that there probably existed some simple 
 code of law and ceremony, such as was suitable for the 
 ordering of the social and religious life of a nomadic 
 people, like Israel at that time, and that this afterward 
 was incorporated in the Pentateuch. But the first con- 
 siderable real body of written law is said to have been 
 brought forth and authoritatively accepted in Josiah’s 
 day and imposed upon the nation in connection with a 
 startling revolution. 
 
 It is taken for granted, in the re-ordering of the history 
 according to the critics, that the nation knew nothing of 
 the existence of this law and its requirements until Hil- 
 kiah and Shaphan produced their “‘find”; but it was 
 accepted immediately by king, court, and elders of the 
 nation as the revealed law of Jehovah. This “find” is 
 now supposed to constitute the major part of Deuter- 
 onomy. 
 
 Can this extraordinary adoption and installation of a 
 national Constitution be explained except as a miracle? 
 If it were represented to be an old document, recognized 
 when thus restored, and therefore submitted to as of 
 
 68 
 
EFFECTS OF MODERNISM 
 
 known ancient genuineness and authority, all would have 
 been plain and simple. But that this mew book, written 
 only a short time before Josiah and hidden in the temple, 
 should be accorded immediate acceptance, and produce 
 such nationwide results, is impossible of reasonable 
 human explanation either from history or from analogy. 
 Indeed, it must remain insoluble, apart from the presence 
 of a supernatural and miraculous element. But this, of 
 course, the critics rule out. 
 
 After careful consideration, therefore, the historical 
 sense must reject this fundamental proposition of the 
 critics. If we identify this “find” as nothing less than the 
 restoration of the lost Pentateuch written by Moses—and 
 the contrary cannot be proved—then their position is 
 untenable. The very title used in describing this book 
 would lead one to think that the Pentateuch was meant. 
 The objection sometimes raised that it could not be read 
 at one sitting is not valid, for how long Shaphan took to 
 read it is not stated. Days must have elapsed before its 
 examination was complete, either when first presented to 
 the king, or later when made known to the elders of Judah 
 and Jerusalem. 
 
 Some general observations. If the supernatural and mi- 
 
 69 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 raculous are for the moment eliminated from consideration, 
 and the personages, circumstances, local color and mun- 
 dane events of the Bible record are examined carefully, 
 sufficient evidence from external sources will be found 
 to prove the correctness of these records. Archeological 
 discoveries have provided this outside evidence. It is 
 rather striking to note that in the standard reference works 
 of the Modern Critical School, whose influence has become 
 so widespread, these results of exploration are not set 
 forth in any connected form or treated in their relation 
 to the Bible record. They would really prove too much 
 to be comfortable for their theories. 
 
 The foundation of the whole critical structure is con- 
 tained in the general proposition that God reveals Him- 
 self only through the medium of human history which is 
 evolutionary in character. Therefore, only as we can lay 
 bare the reliable history of Israel, for example, can we 
 learn the steps of His self-disclosure. That means He 
 must work from behind and through idolatry, using the 
 low thoughts and symbols which appeal to primitive 
 people, and the slow development of these to a higher 
 plane, as the instruments or means of imparting knowledge 
 concerning Himself—His character, will, ways and pur- 
 
 70 
 
EFFECTS OF MODERNISM 
 
 poses. Israel, we are told, began on a pagan plane, and 
 their god Yahweh (Jehovah) was nothing more at that 
 time than an idol-god like those of other ancient peoples. 
 With his worship they combined, especially when in 
 Canaan, the Baal-worship; which must mean that the 
 true God then used this forbidding combination to further 
 the revelation of Himself! 
 
 God thus identified Himself with idolatry. How could 
 He do otherwise? For supernatural or miraculous dis- 
 closures of Himself, He does not, perhaps cannot, give; 
 certainly He should not, according to the critics, for to do 
 so would constitute a violent infringement of the sovereign 
 historical sense. He is restricted in the nature of the case 
 according to the critics, to the use of the creature’s own 
 ideas and customs as a means of revelation of Himself. 
 
 Now, see in what kind of pantheon He thus takes His 
 place! Idolatry prevailed in Israel as in all the Gentile 
 nations. To this the only certain historical records which 
 criticism allows us to use, bear witness. Paul tells us 
 that the things sacrificed to idols were sacrificed to demons 
 (I Cor. x. 20, 21; Acts, xvii. 22; ? see also Deut. xxxii. 17; 
 
 2In the first passage here demons should be read for devils, as 
 given by the American Revision, the R. V. margin, and other new 
 
 71 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Ps. cvi. 35-37). In other words, idolatry rested back on 
 a strange and awful power of spiritual wickedness. Moral 
 depravity prevailed in connection with it, and no system 
 of spiritual ethics can be found associated with these 
 conditions; all was sensual. But the true God, driven 
 to it, to obtain a means of revealing Himself, takes His 
 place in such a pantheon of demon influence, in order 
 finally to work out for men a righteous and holy concep- 
 tion of Himself. He chose to identify Himself with the 
 idol-god Yahweh.’ This is the logical issue of Criticism’s 
 view of the Old Testament. 
 
 If it be asked: Was not this result achieved rather by 
 the lofty and spiritual ministry of the great prophets? 
 we answer: Admitted. But do not these prophets without 
 qualification or distinction ascribe all that they thus 
 
 translations. In the passage from Acts neither A. V., R. V., nor the 
 American Revision gives the full and literal force of Paul’s expression. 
 Rotherham gives, “unusually reverent of the demons;” Darby, 
 “given up to demon worship;” Vincent says that what Paul means 
 to say is, You are more divinity-fearing than the rest of the Greeks, but 
 taking his own remarks on this statement and his further comments 
 on I Cor. x. 20 and especially those on Mark i. 34, it would appear 
 more correct to say demon-fearing. (See, Word Studies in the New 
 Testament.) In the passages from Deuteronomy and Psalms it also 
 should be demons instead of devils. 
 See pp. 22-31. 
 
 72 
 
EFFECTS OF MODERNISM 
 
 reveal to the tribal idol-god with which Israel’s history 
 began, according to Criticism, without, however, the 
 slightest intimation that Yahweh (Jehovah) was such an 
 idol-god? 
 
 Nor does the New Testament alter the conception and 
 relation thus established. There is only one God held 
 before our view throughout. According to Criticism, His 
 record begins as an idol-god of an insignificant nomadic 
 people, back of which, if this is true, there was a demon, 
 according to Paul, and from this has evolved the one true 
 God—‘‘the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 
 Back of all this unpromisingness, we are to suppose that 
 His shadowy figure ever stood, gradually emerging until 
 revealed concretely in the man Jesus. 
 
 This account of God’s history is a fit correlative to that 
 of man’s evolution from the anthropoid apes. These 
 theories lock arms; they are fit companions. 
 
 73 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 REFUTATION OF MODERNISM 
 
 These matters concerning the understanding of the Bible 
 may be considered in the light of jurispudence, and sub- 
 jected to the universally acknowledged laws of evidence.! 
 
 The case may be stated as follows: Is the Old Testament 
 a true narrative of fact or a creation of falsehood? The 
 decision must be the latter if the views of Criticism are 
 correct. Documentary or written evidence is to supply 
 the testimony by which judgment must be reached. Let 
 our examination be conducted in accordance with the 
 rules and principles which govern courts of justice. 
 
 The charge is that the literary prophets and the schools 
 of Deuteronomistic and priestly writers compiled the 
 Hexateuch, much of it their own creation, which they 
 
 1Jn this chapter the line of argument employed by Prof. Simon 
 Greenleaf, LL.D. (‘a writer of the highest authority on legal sub- 
 jects’) in his valuable work The Testimony of the Evangelists, is 
 adapted to the problem under discussion here. Though used relative 
 to another matter by him, it was one, however, very closely connected 
 in nature and evidence with our present subject. 
 
 74 
 
REFUTATION OF MODERNISM 
 
 combined with ancient myth and legend. Their labors 
 are supposed to have extended over at least three or four 
 centuries. 
 
 The question is, Did they practice this piece of decep- 
 tion upon their nation, or did the prophets and men like 
 Ezra and Nehemiah simply revive, freshly emphasize, 
 and apply a body of legislation which had served from 
 the beginning as the foundation and constitution of the 
 Hebrew people? 
 
 The issue turns upon the character of these men, their 
 competency, truthfulness in presenting what came under 
 their observation, and the degree of accuracy with which 
 they record passing events. If their credibility in these 
 respects can be established, the greatest possible sum of 
 probability will exist that they did not practice such 
 deception as that in which the critical views involve them, 
 and therefore, the Pentateuch existed from the beginning 
 in the form in which we now possess it, and was in fact a 
 possession of Israel from the time of their invasion of 
 Canaan. 
 
 Now, the credibility of these witnesses is capable of 
 ready moral demonstration, if we will put the nature and 
 character of their testimony to the test, bearing in mind 
 
 75 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 the essential marks of difference between true and false 
 witnesses. 
 
 These writers record transactions with such detail as 
 to persons, places, customs and circumstances that these 
 narratives must be considered unimpeachable evidence 
 that they possessed ability to discern and comprehend 
 what was before them; evidence that their opportunities 
 to observe were of the best, that a high degree of accuracy 
 marks their records, and that their integrity in relating 
 them cannot be questioned. The sum of evidence is 
 competent, therefore, by reason of number and variety; 
 it is cumulative in character, and conclusive by vir- 
 tue of the unity of result, found coupled with mani- 
 fest diversity. 
 
 Here, then, this rule of law may be applied: 
 
 The credit due to the testimony of witnesses depends upon 
 the following conditions: first, their honesty; second, their 
 ability; third, their number and the consistency of their 
 testimony; fourth, the conformity of their testimony with ex- 
 perience; and fifth, the coincidence of their testimony with 
 collateral circumstances. 
 
 First, as to their honesty. Here they are entitled to the 
 benefit of the principle derived from the general course of 
 
 76 
 
REFUTATION OF MODERNISM 
 
 human experience, that men ordinarily speak the truth, 
 when they have no prevailing motive or inducement to 
 the contrary. That no such motive or inducement existed 
 with these witnesses is manifest, for their testimony was 
 decidedly adverse to their best worldly interests.’ Because 
 of it they suffered greatly and labored under constant 
 disadvantages, for it is evident that there was an influential 
 school of so-called prophets in Court circles which resisted 
 them and used the powers of government to persecute 
 them; while the people also generally scorned these men 
 and despised their message. 
 
 These circumstances furnished them with every possible 
 motive to review carefully and make very sure of the 
 grounds of their faith and the evidence for the great facts 
 and truths which they asserted. These motives were 
 pressed upon their attention by sad and painful experience. 
 It was not morally possible for them to be deceived. If, 
 in company with those writers and redactors whose literary 
 work it is considered these prophets inspired, they were 
 actually employing deception in producing such literature 
 as the Hexateuch, then surely there was present in their 
 circumstances every conceivable motive for abandoning 
 this course of falsehood and ceasing their fraudulent work. 
 
 77 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Plainly they were men of our ordinary constitution and 
 of our common nature. They were swayed by the same 
 motives, animated by the same hopes, affected by the same 
 joys, subdued by the same sorrows, agitated by the same 
 fears and subject to the same passions, temptations and 
 infirmities as ourselves. Their writings show them to 
 have been men of vigorous understanding. There is 
 no motive to be found for the fabrications which 
 Critical views make them responsible for having pro- 
 duced. 
 
 Again, we cannot read their writings without feeling 
 that they were good men, of tender conscience, acting 
 under the influence of an abiding sense of God’s presence. 
 They abhorred falsehood. Yet if the Critical views are 
 correct, they were producing works characterized by 
 imposture, and known by them so to be. 
 
 From the absurdity in which these views involve the 
 whole matter there is only one escape. It is to acknowledge 
 that these writers were testifying in regard to an already 
 completed work, carefully considered and accepted as 
 the truth. If they compiled or wrote books in which they 
 testified that Moses made speeches, performed acts, 
 enacted laws, most of which were their own creation, they 
 
 78 
 
REFUTATION OF MODERNISM 
 
 certainly were sensible of the falsity and imposture of the 
 procedure. But all the evidence goes to prove that they 
 were not knaves, but honest men. 
 
 Their ability is plainly established by their extant work. 
 They were not only good men, but also men of sound mind, 
 and quite evidently of at least average and ordinary 
 intelligence. 
 
 As to their number and consistency. The Prophets, the 
 Psalm writers, Ezra, Nehemiah, and the others provide 
 a great assemblage of witnesses. In their writings they 
 give the required “ concurrent testimony,” even though 
 they were not contemporaries. There is consistency 
 throughout, and its force is not lessened in a merely legal 
 sense, even though the claim is granted that discrepancies 
 exist in the recording of the same events. 
 
 On the next point, conformity of testimony with exper- 
 tence, that would, of course, at once be denied them, since 
 they deal in the main with the supernatural and miracu- 
 lous. Where inspiration and revelation are claimed, testi- 
 mony proceding from such a source cannot expect to be 
 considered in conformity with experience. The writers 
 must either be deceivers or deceived in this matter, for 
 criticism does not allow such things; since they are con- 
 
 79 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 trary to human experiences, they are, therefore, incredible. 
 So say the radical critics. 
 
 But if we are permitted to infer from what we see and 
 know, that there is a Supreme Being by whom this world 
 was created, we may with equal reason certainly believe 
 Him capable of works which we have never yet known 
 Him to perform. It is not irrational to believe that such 
 a God, for purposes of revelation, would depart from His 
 ordinary course of action and thereby give necessary 
 attestations of Himself. Nor can it be shown that the 
 testimony in question is not in conformity with what 
 might be expected as a result of such supernatural ex- 
 periences. That these experiences were real is at least 
 suggested by the vital difference and evident superiority 
 of their religious testimony over that of all others of a 
 religious nature outside the Bible. 
 
 Finally, the coincidence of their testimony with col- 
 lateral facts and circumstances otherwise known cannot 
 be successfully denied. Variety and minuteness of detail 
 are usually regarded as certain tests of sincerity, for a 
 false witness will not willingly detail circumstances in 
 which his testimony will be open to contradiction, nor 
 multiply them where there is danger of his being detected 
 
 80 
 
REFUTATION OF MODERNISM 
 
 by comparison with other accounts, equally circumstantial. 
 He will deal, rather, in general statements and make 
 broad assertions, and will endeavor to employ or invent 
 such names or particular circumstances as best promise 
 to be out of the reach of all opposing proof. This is not 
 the way of the Biblical writers. 
 
 In the testimony of true witnesses there is a visible and 
 striking naturalness of manner and an unaffected read- 
 iness and copiousness in details of circumstances, without 
 regard to the ease or difficulty of verification or detection. 
 This is the manner of the Biblical writers. 
 
 Under this head there is also the growing witness of 
 archeological discovery, to provide the needed coincidence 
 of testimony with collateral and contemporaneous facts 
 and circumstances. The abundant and minute references 
 to manners, customs, and many other matters of time and 
 environment which mark all the Scriptures, afford plenty 
 of opportunities to apply the archeological test to the 
 truthfulness of the whole record. There is no formality 
 about them, preface and explanation as though introduced 
 by design; on the contrary, there is a striking naturalness, 
 rarely, if ever, present in creations of fiction. 
 
 Such features are also to be noted as the absence of all 
 
 81 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 parade of the writers’ integrity, any anxiety to be believed, 
 or to impress others with a good opinion of themselves, 
 or effort to excite wonder or astonishment at the greatness 
 of the events theyrecord. Complete is the evident assump- 
 tion that well-known events are being recorded which are 
 undoubtedly to be believed, like any other matters of 
 public history. 
 
 These considerations, in accord with laws of evidence 
 universally accepted and acted upon, certainly constitute 
 a connected argument for the acceptance of the Old Testa- 
 ment, and, in fact, of the entire Bible, as authentic, 
 reliable and honest in its claims and statements. The 
 evidence goes to prove that no such imposture as the plan 
 of the critics involves was really practiced; in short, that 
 the Old Testament abounds in that kind of evidence 
 which makes the probability of its genuineness and truth- 
 fulness so strong that, after examination according to 
 legal requirements, i¢ must be considered sufficient to satisfy 
 the most cautious, and enforce the assent of the most reluctant 
 and unbelieving, unless they are unwilling to be convinced 
 by such evidence as governs in all the common affairs of men. 
 
 In the testimony of these witnesses there is a total 
 absence of the kind of particulars which generate suspicion. 
 
 82 
 
REFUTATION OF MODERNISM 
 
 Hence, another rule of law applies to them, namely, that 
 in such absence every witness is presumed to be credible 
 until the contrary is shown; the burden of impeaching his 
 credibility rests on the objector. The critics, by reason 
 of their charges, carry this burden. 
 
 Another rule is: A proposition of fact is proved when 
 its truth is established by competent and satisfactory 
 evidence. The proposition of fact that these witnesses 
 were honest, had ability, manifested truthfulness and 
 accuracy is established by the competent and satisfactory 
 evidence produced in the foregoing argument, so that the 
 presumption must be considered established that they 
 did not practice the imposture with which the critical 
 views charge them. 
 
 Hence, we may safely conclude that the greatest pos- 
 sible sum of probability exists that the order of the Bible 
 history and the authorship of its books are exactly what 
 we find them affirmed to be as we read through from 
 Genesis to Revelation. 
 
 There is really only one line of argument presented by 
 the Critics against these conclusions. It is drawn chiefly 
 from the silence of the record in the historical books— 
 Judges through Kings—silence as to the order of things 
 
 83 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 given in the Pentateuch, buttressed by the fact that pre- 
 vailing conditions were manifestly contrary to that whole 
 body of legislation and ceremony. 
 
 Now if these books of history had been written as part 
 of the design, and with the purpose in view, which Criti- 
 cism claims, that of supporting and emphasizing the 
 Deuteronomic conception first promulgated as national 
 law in Josiah’s reign, it is not reasonable to conceive of 
 this history being written without its compilers’ making 
 quite constant reference, more or less full in detail, to 
 the fact that all the conditions described were contrary 
 to that central and all-important conception which these 
 Deuteronomistic writers were imposing upon the Hebrew 
 people, commencing with the reform movement of Josiah’s 
 day. Only in this way could it be made contributory to 
 their general plan. This is not the case, the Critics being 
 witness. But if both as to order of production and also of 
 history these books follow after the Pentateuch and Joshua, 
 there is consistency and unity in the whole series. There 
 is none if we are to conceive that the major part of Deu- 
 teronomy, found in Hilkiah’s book, comes first, the Judges- 
 Kings series later, and not until a century or two later 
 still the completed Pentateuch as now in our hands. 
 
 84 
 
REFUTATION OF MODERNISM 
 
 The explanations given by the critics of these historical 
 books is not demonstrative of their claims as to the origin 
 and making of the Bible, for it is more reasonable to con- 
 sider this history to be a record of decline from original 
 establishments and constitution than of evolution out of 
 pagan conditions. This will receive further consideration 
 in Chapter VI. 
 
 85 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 We are now to consider a use of the Bible? based upon 
 the modern approach to it already examined. This ap- 
 proach, as we have seen, is made along sociological lines, 
 and the Bible’s religious development thus studied is 
 supposed to present an evolution from ideas and conditions 
 of a pagan, nomadic, tribal, and provincial order to the 
 exalted morality and world-perspective of the writing 
 prophets. With them, we are told, the social-redemptive 
 program became one of universal application, so that 
 Jehovah who at the first was only the tribal god of an 
 insignificant and nomadic people became the God of the 
 whole earth, the one true and only living God. This 
 revelatory movement reached its consummation in the 
 New Testament in which we have God made known as 
 
 1 This is set forth by Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick in his recent 
 book The Modern Use of the Bible (Macmillan, Sept., 1924). It is 
 examined in this section. The references given in footnotes refer 
 to this work. 
 
 86 
 
THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Here 
 seemingly the evolution stopped, and nearly two thousand 
 years have brought nothing new to us. No further advance 
 has been made during all this period, and yet this religious 
 evolution of the Bible, quite unique in the world’s history, 
 did not cover much more than one thousand years accord- 
 ing to critical estimates. It is admitted by them to be 
 superior to all other religious movements whether of 
 previous, contemporary, or subsequent development. 
 
 Further, the Bible manner of treating those things 
 which are common to all such movements is beyond ques- 
 tion unequaled. The Bible gives us the highest form of 
 religious development known to man. It contains a rich- 
 ness of content unsurpassed by any other body of litera- 
 ture. It makes known what is of ever abiding significance 
 to the moral and spiritual welfare of the human race. 
 The Bible in its splendid isolation is one of the strongest 
 arguments against the widely accepted evolutionary 
 hypothesis of world development. It smashes through, 
 and leaves a wide open breach in the line of supposed uni- 
 formitarianism in either the physical or spiritual history 
 of the world and maintains its commanding position 
 against all attacks. 
 
 87 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 The Bible, however, so it is said, is a hard and difficult 
 book for the modern man to understand; hence the great 
 effort to make a use of it which will appeal to his highly 
 developed scientific and historic sense.2 The difficulty 
 arises from the fact that those Biblical ideals and expe- 
 riences which are admitted to possess intrinsic merit and 
 abiding importance are presented in categories of the 
 time in which the writers lived. For example, the New 
 Testament is written in the category of the first century 
 world-view, much of which the “well-instructed man of 
 today” considers it impossible to accept. Consequently 
 the modern demand is for a rephrasing in categories 
 
 2 This is made in seeming forgetfulness that man’s first great need 
 is to see himself as God sees him, sinful, helpless, and hopeless, a 
 moral and spiritual ruin, needing a spiritual regeneration, as much 
 as the chaotic earth needed just such a preparatory physical work 
 before it could be inhabitated by man. The natural man does not 
 understand the things of God (I Cor. ii.), nor by worldly wisdom can 
 he know God (I Cor. i). He must be “born again,” receiving spiritual 
 life through faith in God’s word, and the acceptance of Christ as 
 God’s appointed Saviour, whose atoning death alone redeems and 
 saves eternally (Rom. chs. i-iii; John iii; Titus ii. 11-14; iii. 3-8; 
 I Peter i; Heb. x). 
 
 3 Such as miracles, demons, angels, fiat creation, apocalyptic hopes, 
 eternal hell, bodily resurrection; and in the Old Testament “gross 
 authropomorphisms,” ‘‘belated ethics,” ‘Semitic cosmology,’’ etc. 
 (e. g. pp. 5, 89). 
 
 88 
 
THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 suited to the present world-view of those ever abiding and 
 reproducible experiences of vital religion which are found 
 in the Bible. Just what this involves we shall see later. 
 
 If we take the road of approach to the Bible which 
 Modern Criticism has built, the chronological arrange- 
 ment of the strata which make up our Bible * forms one of 
 the most important guides to Biblical study and inter- 
 
 4 The best that can be said is that this chronological arrangement 
 is approximate (p. 6), and that the result is only “‘in its outlines well 
 assured” p.7. We have examined them and these outlines seem very 
 uncertain; they in fact appear too much like the quivering line drawn 
 by the seismograph. They leave a man in a chaotic state of mind 
 regarding the Bible. ‘‘The reader, of course, must never take the 
 actual order of documents in our Bible as indicative of the chronolog- 
 ical order in which they were originally produced. The first chapter 
 of Genesis, for example, is very late” (p. 12, footnote). Some day 
 we will probably get the Bible published in its chronological order, 
 and then we may expect to find parts of Genesis in about the middle, 
 Judges perhaps at the beginning, the Psalms scattered along at 
 different points, though most of them are considered very late, and 
 Daniel would come near the end of the Old Testament. Nevertheless, 
 we are assured that this approximately chronological order, despite 
 “endless minor uncertainties,’ has an importance which “from the 
 standpoint of practical results is difficult to exaggerate” (p. 7). From 
 this grab bag of approximate results and confessed difficulties a spirit 
 of wisdom is obtained in some way by which “we can trace the great 
 ideas of Scripture in their development from their simple and ele- 
 mentary forms, when they first appear in the earliest writings until 
 they come to their full maturity in the latest books” (p. 7). 
 
 89 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 pretation. By pursuing this road the student, it is sup- 
 posed, will learn how to trace the growth of faiths and 
 ideas regarding, for example, God, man, duty, sin, worship, 
 from primitive and childlike origins as found in the Old 
 Testament up to the highly developed ethical teaching 
 of the New.° Even so, “the nub of difficulty” remains 
 that so much of all this material is expressed in categories 
 now outgrown by the world. Throughout the Bible, its 
 writers think and speak in the terms of the outworn Semite 
 cosmology, whereas today the universe must be studied 
 in the light that modern science has shed upon it. This 
 makes it necessary to think in the category of evolution 
 as to the whole order of creation, earthly and heavenly. 
 Then there are the categories of demonology, angelology, 
 miracles, apocalyptic hopes, the latter two entailing in 
 some degree divine invasion of world-affairs, a cata- 
 strophic class of ideas quite unacceptable to modern minds 
 which dwell in the realm of evolution. These things are 
 considered as vital hindrances to the modern man’s use 
 of the Bible. Of course, raising the question as to whether 
 he is right in rejecting such categories is practically ruled 
 out of order. His present vantage ground of advancement 
 len igre Eis 6 MA 
 90 
 
THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 is accepted as being sufficiently patent to put the matter 
 of his being right beyond question. 
 
 The conclusion of the whole matter then is this: since 
 this Book is (1) the one Christians must continue to use 
 as a sufficient guide in all moral, spiritual, and religious 
 relations because it records the most wonderful religious 
 development of all time, admitting by common consent, to 
 contain all that is essential to the moral and spiritual 
 growth of mankind, and yet (2) it must be considered “‘an 
 old Book in a new world,” ® because its language, style of 
 ideas, and in fact the entire framework in which its teach- 
 ing is set, have all become outgrown by the world, 
 the necessity for its abiding use (3) raises the problem 
 of making its study and interpretation consist chiefly in 
 the process of extracting from it those ideas, ideals and 
 spiritual experiences which are judged to beabiding and re- 
 producible, leaving behind that mass of outgrown categories 
 to which we have referred and to which, we are told, no 
 well-instructed man of today could possibly subscribe. 
 What is thus extracted must then be rephrased;’ in this, 
 
 EP rao, 
 
 7 We are told we must “decode the abiding meanings of Scripture 
 from outgrown phraseology” (p. 122). Paul was mistaken when he 
 thought we had God-breathed Scriptures (writings); probably what 
 
 91 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 it is confessed, ‘‘the most difficult task of all remains: 
 building up constructive statements of what we posi- 
 tively do believe in new formulas endowed with the same 
 persuasiveness and penetrating power which the older 
 mental categories once possessed.”® For this nothing 
 could suffice or avail short of inspiration such as the Bible 
 writers assert for themselves. This claim has not been 
 advanced since the close of the first century by any 
 one worthy of serious consideration. Even Modernists 
 hitherto have prudently refrained from any such pretense. 
 Yet that alone could accomplish the above task, for the 
 admissions are made “‘that the Spirit of God was behind 
 
 that process and in it,’’ of which the Bible is the result, 
 
 and “that God was speaking.” ® 
 
 he meant was that we had God-breathed ideas or ideals clothed in 
 the very imperfect and temporary dress of man-made conceptions, 
 for the “‘decoding demanded by the facts which we are now consider- 
 ing is . . . not between transient customs, but between elemental 
 forms of conception, a manifest divergence between our habitual 
 presuppositions of thought and those used in Scripture” (p. 123). 
 From this it would seem that Scripture can be broken, although the 
 Lord Jesus said “cannot” (John x., 35); little would it seem to matter 
 about its “jot or tittle” of which He spoke (Matt. v. 18); and what 
 are we to think of such wholelsale rejection of Scripture’s phraseology, 
 if “men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 
 WA TS! SAB 
 Call elt bat PED susan: 
 92 
 
THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Let us consider what it means to use the Bible in the 
 manner thus proposed. There is hardly need for further 
 remark as to the Old Testament since the modern view and 
 use of it have been considered in earlier parts of this book. 
 As to the New Testament, plainly its writers believed in 
 demons, angels, miracles, bodily resurrection, and apocalyp- 
 tic hopes. We are told they used these “mental frame- 
 works and categories of explanation”’ because they knew 
 of no other way to express what was real and vital to 
 them in the matter of religious experience. Likewise 
 when it became a question of interpreting the person 
 and work of Jesus, they could do no better than make use 
 of current and accepted categories, such as that of ‘‘ Mes- 
 siah,” with its framework of apocalyptic ideas, and 
 “Logos,” with its framework of Hellenistic philosophy.!° 
 But all of these categories are declared to be inadequate 
 for the present day. 
 
 Our author holds that the light of modern knowledge 
 has dissipated the ignorance in which demonology flour- 
 ished. As to angels, nothing is known of them today— 
 who ever saw one? Miracles simply do not happen, cer- 
 tainly not of the kind so often found in Scripture. The 
 
 10 Pp, 216, 217. 
 
 93 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 modern man comes to Scripture and says, “‘These are 
 mental frameworks and categories which I cannot use; 
 they mean nothing to me since they are not verified by my 
 
 3 
 
 experience,’ and he is tempted to go further and say, 
 
 9 
 
 “This book is of no use to me.”’ That such a conclusion 
 would result in irreparable loss to him, we are assured 
 from nearly every quarter. This then raises the problem 
 of how to find what is useful today in the Bible. We are 
 told that the reader must be brought to see that there are 
 abiding meanings and reproducible experiences wrapped 
 up in the outgrown phraseology of Scripture, and that 
 deep within its settings of thought and speech there are 
 experiences and convictions for which the book essentially 
 stands, spiritual truths which are in themselves perma- 
 nently valid, timeless and unchanging messages. The 
 deeps of the Book call to the deeps of the human heart. 
 
 But how, then, shall we explain what those categories 
 which the modern man discards because of his superior 
 intelligence meant to those who could and did use them? 
 
 What is meant by the category of demonology as 
 Scripture presents it? It is nothing more nor less than 
 “a transient phrasing of abiding experiences . . . nothing 
 
 MPp, 61, 95. 
 
 94 
 
THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 that the devils ever stood for has yet gone out of human 
 life. Personal temptation; various aspects, allurements, 
 and results of sin; disease, ... human suffering and 
 death—all this is with us still.”” ‘Everything the devil 
 and his hosts ever meant is with us yet.” ?” It is not, then, 
 the fact that the devil and demons actually exist, are 
 separate spiritual beings, as the Bible writers seemed to 
 think. It is rather that there always have been and still 
 are certain very real experiences which to these writers 
 were most intelligibly explained by the use of the current 
 demonology. That category seemed to them the most 
 available explanation of these particular abiding expe- 
 riences. We are asked to keep the truth of the experiences, 
 but utterly reject any idea of the reality of such agency as 
 that of the devil and his hosts. 
 
 What about angels? Angelology, too, is only a phrasing 
 of experiences, real enough in themselves, in another 
 category of those ancient times since outgrown. “Angels 
 represent our fathers’ profound and practical conscious- 
 ness of the reality, friendliness, and availability of the 
 spiritual world,” whether that be in strengthening the 
 spirit in temptation, opening prison doors, giving peace 
 
 MED. Lely bees 
 
 95 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 and power in time of stress, or appearing in other ways 
 to accomplish God’s ministry to man.* It is not, then, 
 that they saw angels (and we have no personal knowledge 
 of their actual existence, or non-existence, for that matter), 
 but the angel-idea was found suited by them for use as a 
 vehicle to express their spiritual experiences. 
 
 The modern man may be quite humble and “refuse to 
 claim omniscience by denying” that such beings as angels 
 exist. Evidently, that does not prevent him, however, 
 from virtually denying that the Biblical writers meant 
 what they said when they describe angelic visitation, 
 ministry, and communication as being commerce with 
 actual spiritual beings. Did the Lord mean that the 
 Father would send Him twelve legions of “‘spiritual ex- 
 
 periences,” 
 
 and what can He mean when He speaks of 
 joy in the presence of the angels over a repentant sinner? 
 (Matt. xxvi. 53; Luke xv. 10.) 
 
 What about miracles? Again, they are simply the 
 outworn ‘‘phrasing” of real enough experience. We 
 must seek “to discover what, if any, was the vital experi- 
 ence that our forefathers were trying to express by their 
 category of miracle.” ‘4 This, we are told, was simply the 
 
 18Pp, 124-126. MP, 156. 
 
 96 
 
THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 “saying that superhuman power is here, available for use, 
 and that when men are open to its inrush and control, 
 it is not easy to set limits to the results that may ensue. 
 Granting all the associated aberrations and credulities 
 of the miracle-idea, it was nevertheless our forefathers’ 
 way of saying that they believed in the living God, whose 
 ways of working are not bound within the narrow limits 
 of man’s little knowledge. . . . The crucial question for 
 modern Christianity to face is not first the credibility of 
 this or that narrative nearly two thousand years old, but 
 the possibility of retaining in our modern scientific thought 
 such a vital and vivid expectancy of divine action as our 
 fathers often phrased in terms of miracles.’’ 1° 
 
 Little wonder that Dr. Fosdick must say that, ‘‘ap- 
 proaching the Bible so, there are some narratives of mir- 
 acles there which I do not believe. ... Certainly, I 
 find some of the miracle-narratives of Scripture histor- 
 ically incredible. Others puzzle me . . . and about many 
 an ancient miracle-narrative a man may well suspend 
 judgment, awaiting light.”’® The miracle-narratives 
 
 1% P, 158. 
 
 16 Pp. 163, 164. Among those regarded as “incredible” the follow- 
 ing are named: the sun standing still, which ‘“‘may be poetry;” the 
 story of Jonah and the fish, which “‘may be parable;” the miraculous 
 
 97 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 which he “cannot help believing” are those which describe 
 “experience in terms of miracle so that we recognize 
 that the same kind of experience is open to us, or would 
 be open, if we were receptive of God’s incoming power.” 
 Such narratives are “fundamentally credible and useful.” 
 
 This class of miracles consists for him of the guidance 
 God gives as much now as ever to men and nations, of 
 divine calls and commissions received today as much as 
 ever, of spiritual endowments, answered prayers, and 
 transformed lives from which the power of God is trans- 
 mitted to others—‘‘all through the Scripture such activity 
 in divine power is presented in terms of miracle.”” Ex- 
 amples are found in Israel’s release from Egypt, God 
 speaking to Samuel, Paul’s conversion, the Church’s 
 enduement with power, as on the day of Pentecost. These 
 
 aspects of the plagues in Egypt and the fall of Jericho’s walls, which 
 “may be legendary heightenings of historical events;” ‘‘the amazing 
 tales of Elijah and Elisha [which] may be largely folk-lore;” and, in 
 the New Testament, finding a coin in a fish’s mouth, or walking on 
 water, or blasting a tree,—these “‘may be just such stories as always 
 have been associated with an era of outstanding personalities and 
 creative spiritual power.’”’ The puzzling ones mentioned are the 
 miraculous draft of fishes which might be one of “‘many symbolic 
 literary devices in an Oriental Book,” and “the physical aspects of 
 the resurrection of Christ,” such as his eating fish, passing through 
 closed doors and offering to let Thomas touch his hands and feet. 
 
 98 
 
THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 are in fact experiences being reduplicated today, only in 
 describing them we do not robe them “with the marvelous 
 drapery which ages when miracles were part and parcel of 
 men’s common thought habitually employed in their 
 imagination of events, but, for all that, the abiding exper- 
 ience involved in them is clear, and it is as true and as 
 possible for our day as for theirs.” 1” 
 
 After all, they are not miracles in the way we use that 
 term, but simply ordinary experiences which have been 
 draped by the Oriental mind in terms of the marvelous 
 and figurative, which it would never occur to anyone to 
 use today in telling about them. Are not the miracles of 
 Scripture by this treatment either looked upon as in- 
 credible, or frittered away? 
 
 The reasoning is of the same order in regard to the 
 second coming of Jesus—His return in bodily form. The 
 New Testament writers felt fully assured of the complete 
 and final world triumph of the Master. Their experience 
 with Him made them conscious that that conquest must be 
 accomplished in the end by such a “towering personality.” 
 They knew no better way of expressing this confidence in 
 Him than by using the current category of apocalypticism, 
 
 7 P, 165. 
 
 99 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 and they boldly taught that Jesus would return in person 
 to accomplish His final victory, coming on the clouds of 
 heaven with power and great glory. Of all the books of 
 the New Testament, the Fourth Gospel alone is said to 
 “spiritualize the event,” and the reason given is that its 
 writer was trying to reach Hellenistic readers to whom 
 the dramatics, catastrophic features, and physical resur- 
 rections of the Jewish apocalyptists, were very distasteful. 
 But it is admitted that just the latter view prevails else- 
 where in the New Testament. “The book of Revelation is 
 built upon it. When Paul lets his imagination dwell on 
 God’s coming victory, he draws the familiar picture with 
 which his Jewish training had acquainted him long before 
 he had known Jesus: the sudden, physical coming of the 
 Messiah upon the clouds, the ascension of the living saints 
 to meet him in the air, the resurrection of the righteous 
 dead, the day of judgment, and the final destinies.” 8 
 
 What is the kernel that can alone be considered of 
 abiding value in these apocalyptic thought-forms which 
 are entirely repugnant to the modern man? Simply the 
 hope which lies embedded in them, the hope of ‘‘the vic- 
 tory of righteousness upon this earth in the coming king- 
 
 18 Pp, 104-110. 
 
 100 
 
THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 dom of God, whereon Christ, looking, shall see of the 
 travail of his soul and be satisfied.” ‘This is to be achieved 
 through human instruments like ourselves, of “‘such a 
 spirit that God can work his victory in and through us; to 
 persuade others to be transformed by the renewing of 
 their minds; to strive for the better organization of society 
 that the divine purpose may be furthered, not hindered, 
 by our economic and political life; and then to await the 
 event in his way and time.” The modern preacher takes 
 up the hope, but drops as useless the ancient category, in 
 which it is expressed in the New Testament, and says, 
 “T do not believe in the physical return of Jesus.” 1% 
 
 The same disposition may be made of the miracle of the 
 Lord’s Resurrection. Why not consider it, also, to be the 
 phrasing in a category in common use in the first century 
 of the disciples’ intense feeling—in fact overwhelming 
 conviction—that their Master must live on, that life 
 and death such as His must be of ever abiding significance? 
 The most natural way they knew of how to pass this 
 experience on to posterity was to express it in the category 
 of bodily resurrection. Not that this actual resurrection 
 took place, but that the Jesus they knew, was so singularly 
 
 oP OF, 
 
 101 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF 7HE BIBLE 
 
 great that the result of His presence in this world even for 
 such a brief span must be an ever abiding influence of 
 tremendous consequence to mankind. Thus He was once 
 dead, but now alive again forevermore, He ever liveth! 
 But, I suppose, that ‘‘alive again forevermore” must be 
 in the experience of those men who “rediscover”? Him by 
 working through Scripture’s outworn phraseology. 
 
 This principle of reducing everything to the status of 
 subjective experience in men will dissipate all personality 
 apart from man himself, if consistently applied. Devils, 
 demons, and angels are gone. Why not God too, so that 
 the creature, man, may be left in full possession of the 
 field with his ever abiding and reproducible experiences? 
 Why may we not say that the category of God, as pre- 
 sented in the Bible, simply constitutes the way in which 
 its writers at different stages of development expressed 
 spiritual experiences which were found higher, more noble, 
 and satisfying to their yearnings than any others known 
 by them? If we are to consider Scripture teaching con- 
 cerning demons, angels, and miracles, for example, as 
 simply the phrasing used to explain certain experiences, 
 which phraseology the world has outgrown, it does cer- 
 tainly seem that there is no reason why we should not 
 
 102 
 
THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 understand the same to be true of its teaching as to God, 
 both in the Old and New Testaments. Why should we 
 suppose their personal God exists any more than their per- 
 sonal devil, and such beings as demons or angels? Would 
 we not be able, then, to go on and say that “ nothing 
 that God ever stood for has gone out of human life” for 
 “everything that God ever meant is with us yet,”—love, 
 purity, holiness, sacrifice, kindness, hope, righteousness? 
 All is reduced to a matter of ethics. 
 
 The logical conclusion seems inevitable that experience, 
 and nothing but experience, according to one aspect and 
 another of its character, is either God or the devil, angels 
 or demons, and also, I suppose, either the heaven or hell 
 of Scripture. | 
 
 Guided by this principle, how shall Jesus be inter- 
 preted? As far as we know He committed nothing to 
 writing. Let us simply consider what we may extract 
 from the Gospels as a record of His teaching. We thus 
 get a vivid conception of both His experience and char- 
 acter. It is of superlative worth, for ‘‘He is the best we 
 know, and we will not interpret God in terms less than 
 that.” 2° No one ever spake such words of spirit and life 
 
 ™P, 188. 
 
 103 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 as He did. But does this mean anything more than that 
 He had the deepest, broadest, and highest of all abiding 
 and reproducible experiences which a man could have, 
 and that He phrased them for us in the most exalted form 
 of the category of God ever known, so that in His teaching 
 we have the climax to that God-idea which had its dim 
 beginning in Israel’s wilderness history? Am I to consider 
 all this as anything more than simply the phrasing of His 
 experience which is now reproducible in all who rediscover 
 Him beneath the outgrown Messiah and Logos categories 
 of the New Testament? 
 
 Such are some of the results derived from the applica- 
 tion of this principle of interpretation by which the Bible 
 is to be made modernly useful. It is really a weapon of 
 destruction, striking down sacred things, and leaving us 
 alone—off by ourselves with the idea of experience for 
 company which we are to suppose the Bible writers have 
 explained by the use of such terms as God, devil, demons, 
 angels, and miracle-working. It reduces to this same 
 level the New Testament teaching concerning the Deity 
 of Jesus, His atoning sacrifice, the Virgin Birth, and His 
 sinless humanity. 
 
 The Gospels speak of Jesus being tempted by the devil. 
 
 104 
 
THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 But this must have been the phrasing of His experience in 
 the current category of demonology. We are not to think 
 of an external, personal, and known enemy, for the devil 
 and his hosts, we are told, simply stood for experiences 
 still common to man—temptation, sin, suffering. How 
 does this work out in relation to the Lord? Experience 
 is made up of feelings and effects resulting from a com- 
 bination of inward state and outward circumstances. The 
 outward circumstance in our Lord’s case was the wilder- 
 ness, its barrenness, isolation, and privation. What was 
 the inward state in His case? Bearing in mind the modern 
 view of the devil, it could only have been an awful strife 
 against evil desires to manifest power to satisfy self-need, 
 to act presumptuously to gain a place of national recog- 
 nition, and to sacrifice the consciousness of right to evil 
 for the purpose of securing world-power.”! Plainly this 
 means that 7m Him was sin, even as in you and me. This 
 must have been the devil that tempted Him! To just 
 such blasphemous conclusions does this principle of inter- 
 pretation lead. Yet, as reported, He spoke of Satan as a 
 distinct personality having a kingdom, and on one occasion 
 
 21Tn this I refer to the three forms of temptation recorded in the 
 Gospels. 
 
 105 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 of coming to Him, but having nothing in Him. This, 
 however, we must explain away as simply the “phrasing” 
 of experience in a current ‘‘category.” The Gospels tell 
 us the angels ministered unto Him. This again was simply 
 a phrasing of His experience. Such use of the Bible forces 
 us to the awful conclusion that the Lord Jesus possessed 
 a nature which manufactured the poison of temptation, 
 and seemingly also could produce the elixir of comfort— 
 an instance of sweet and bitter waters from the same 
 fount. 
 
 This principle of interpretation tends to the annihilation 
 of all personality outside of man himself. Human experi- 
 ences have been personified in Scripture by the use of 
 categories which now appear outgrown. As we have been 
 told that the devil and his hosts stand for certain abiding 
 experiences of human life, and the angels too, why not 
 follow this lead, and consider the category of God as given 
 in Scripture to be simply the phrasing of the highest 
 spiritual experiences of the human spirit in that class of 
 ideas which seem revelatory of a supreme Being, distinct 
 and personal, immanent within man yet having a tran- 
 scendency which leads him to strive after better things. 
 Why not consider God and his hosts the category in which 
 
 106 
 
THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 goodness and its blessings in varying degrees have been 
 interpreted by the Biblical writers just as the devil and his 
 hosts was the category in which wickedness and the misery 
 incident to it has been explained? ‘Thus, too, in their 
 ignorance of scientific thought they used the idea of place 
 as to final destinies and spoke of heaven and hell; but these 
 can only be ultimate states of experience to which men 
 make either ascent or descent according to whether good 
 (God) or evil (the devil) gains ascendency. A principle 
 which may lead to such conclusions when consistently 
 applied to all parts of Scripture must be utterly false and 
 extremely dangerous to use. It is a stepping-stone to 
 infidelity. Its consistent application leads us into diffi- 
 culties far greater than those it is supposed to dispel for 
 “the well-instructed man” of today. 
 
 Many, however, who advocate this principle would 
 recoil from such conclusions, and stoutly proclaim faith 
 in a God, living and real, whom they consider has wrought 
 for self-disclosure through the Biblical process.77 Taking 
 
 22 Dr. Fosdick says: ‘‘What has actually happened is the produc- 
 tion of a Book which from lowly beginnings to great conclusions 
 records the development of truth about God and his will, beyond all 
 
 comparison the richest in spiritual issue that the world has known. 
 Personally, I believe that the Spirit of God was behind that process 
 
 107 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 them at their word, what happens to Scripture when this 
 principle of theirs is applied to it? 
 
 It is no longer a question of God having acted to give 
 by direct personal intervention, and through the use of 
 divinely commissioned instruments a written revelation— 
 complete, final, and perfect—any more than He, by a 
 special creative act brought man upon the scene. It is all 
 a matter of evolving experience through which He has 
 struggled to get Himself disclosed to men. At first He 
 had to accomodate Himself to very much that was primi- 
 tive, childlike, even pagan, so that the revelation appears 
 today clothed in many outgrown categories, even in the 
 New Testament, with the result that men must now 
 struggle back through them to find God in the Person who 
 stands highest on the ladder of experience—Jesus. 
 
 We are not to think anything final has taken the form 
 of a written revelation. What alone abides is the realm 
 of man’s basic experiences, which are constantly being set 
 forth in changing categories. Of all such attempts the 
 
 and in it. I do not believe that man ever found God when God was 
 not seeking to be found. The underside of the process is man’s dis- 
 covery; the upperside is God’s revelation” [p. 30]. ‘‘He who long can 
 ponder the fact and not perceive that God was speaking there does not 
 earnestly believe in God at all” [p. 95]. 
 
 108 
 
THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Bible is the best and highest in spiritual content. On this 
 basis, the modern preacher’s task is said to be that of 
 decoding abiding meanings from its outgrown phrase- 
 ology. But there is no prospect that finality will be 
 reached, for though “we retreat from old categories 
 into the experiences behind them,” and “enshrine those 
 experiences in positive formulations even though that 
 means building up a new orthodoxy,” our own phrasings 
 will “in time be dissolved by a new liberalism.” 78 
 
 If the principle that we are now discussing be sound is 
 it not incredible that this Book should remain unequaled 
 by any other literary work produced during all the cen- 
 turies, notwithstanding its so-called outgrown mental 
 framework and categories? Why is it abidingly superior, 
 without a peer? If out of the first century came such a 
 collection of potent writings as those of the New Testa- 
 ment,”* how is it that the same ‘‘experience”’ process has 
 produced no set of books during the succeeding centuries, 
 especially the last two in which men have made such 
 wonderful strides in knowledge and wisdom, which even 
 in a small way approach the New Testament, or are 
 
 23P, 190. 
 24 And it everywhere accredits the Old Testament as God’s word. 
 
 109 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 destined to like results in the world? If inspiration of 
 God is the only permissible alternative explanation, and 
 it is one which the New Testament plainly predicates con- 
 cerning the whole Bible, then inspiration is a revelatory 
 process which has ceased. It is evident that nothing has 
 been produced in all the years since, with even a shadow of 
 right to be considered on an equality with the New Testa- 
 ment. God, then, having inspired these men to write for 
 all time, did He permit them to use categories which less 
 than twenty centuries have rendered unreal, untruthful, 
 or which must be considered without meaning today? Is 
 it not more reasonable to presume that He directed the 
 expression of truth throughout to be clothed in “timeless 
 and universal terms”? That the foreshadowing of good 
 things may precede the good things themselves, and on 
 their arrival that we should leave the shadow and cleave 
 to the substance, is quite true. This finds exemplification 
 in many ways upon a comparative study of the New 
 Testament and the Old. But that is something clearly 
 different from what we have been considering—a com- 
 plete rejection of ‘the cosmology, demonology, angel- 
 ology, apocalyptic, and miracle-idea,’’ which are woven 
 into every part of the Biblical fabric. 
 110 
 
THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 We are assured that ‘‘wide areas of Scripture deal with 
 abiding experiences set in timeless and universal terms. 
 The elemental needs of man’s spirit for peace, stability, 
 comfort, and divine saviorhood; the meaning of tempta- 
 tion, sin, remorse, penitence, pardon, and reconciliation 
 with God; the basic virtues of honesty, sincerity, courage, 
 charity, magnanimity, love; the great hopes of a kingdom 
 of righteousness here on earth and of life hereafter—these 
 are the fundamental matters in Scripture.” ** But the 
 very outgrown categories, of which we have been speaking, 
 so contaminate all these things too, that they must stand 
 or fall with the rest as far as being considered trustworthy 
 and authoritative is concerned. The fact is that the 
 foundations in general are destroyed by the Fosdick 
 method. 
 
 Let us look a little further. Because demonology out- 
 side of Scripture presents many crude and exaggerated 
 features, we cannot justly make this a reason for rejecting 
 demonology as presented in Scripture. Nor is the lack of 
 modern scientific knowledge or experience concerning 
 such beings sufficient reason for denying their existence. 
 Any open-minded study of demonology, as described in 
 
 2 P, 170. 
 
 111 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 the Bible, shows that it radically differs from all the 
 popular conceptions of demonology which prevailed in the 
 time of the writers of the Bible. Why this marked differ- 
 ence? If we allow inspiration to enter as a factor in the 
 way claimed for it in Scripture, who can say its writers 
 did not have knowledge imparted to them by it denied to 
 others not so inspired? This simple principle applies to 
 and accounts for all those categories which appear so ob- 
 jectionable to the modern man. He needs to humble 
 himself to the fact that what he is using is God’s word, 
 something immeasurably beyond contemporary thought, 
 knowledge, or experience. 
 
 It is not different as to angelology. Both Old and New 
 Testaments are free from “‘the absurdly puerile teachings 
 of Rabbinism.” In fact, the truth about demons and 
 angels must finally be sought in the words of our Lord. 
 This settlement of the question will be satisfactory to 
 most Christians. The modern standpoint is distinctly 
 Sadducean as to both demonology and angelology. 
 
 There is little wonder that the interpretation of Scrip- 
 ture presents great difficulties to the modern man who 
 insists upon raising many of them and solving all accord- 
 ing to contemporaneous thought. It is quite true that 
 
 112 
 
THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 he is living in a world greatly changed from that of the 
 times in which the Bible was written, and it may greatly‘ 
 help that we can once more visualize through various 
 avenues of knowledge the world-conditions amid which 
 its writers lived and wrote. This provides us explanations 
 of many things peculiar to Oriental life and its circum- 
 stances. But in the choice of ways of approaching the 
 Bible, neither a barren literalism, nor fanciful and often 
 absolutely absurd allegorism can be considered safe and 
 sound. And the modern approach, which may be called 
 historic and scientific, also fails since it presumes to reject 
 what is not a matter of present knowledge and experience, 
 knowledge and experience which another decade may 
 entirely revise. Yet we are asked to take it as our summa 
 summarum, and make contemporary thought the boundary 
 wall beyond which we dare not pass, though it be recog- 
 nized as partial in most things and defective in not a 
 few. 
 
 Not one of these three methods, taken by itself, is a 
 sufficient guide in the work of interpreting Scripture. 
 Each of them contains something good, and such elements 
 in combination may greatly help us in making a sound. 
 reverent exegesis. One general principle, however, must 
 
 113 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 bind these elements together for our use. It is this: 
 Scripture must be its own interpreter. It is sufficient unto 
 itself. This we might expect if it is what we claim it to 
 be—God-breathed. 
 
 There are allegories in Scripture which we must study 
 and interpret. But that is quite different from adopting 
 the allegorical interpretation for the great mass of Scrip- 
 ture, as occurs, for example, in the work of Philo and 
 Origen. ‘There are types, symbols, parables scattered 
 thickly throughout the Book, but we are not by any 
 means left to our own imagination to interpret them. We 
 have examples of their use and interpretation within 
 Scripture. These ought to help us. ‘‘ Wide areas of Scrip- 
 ture” are so largely filled with basic and essential truths, 
 interwoven with its types, symbols, parables, and alle- 
 gories, that there is always abundant material at hand by 
 which to check and restrain all that is fanciful and con- 
 trary to sound, sober exegesis. The great need today is 
 that all Scripture be taken into the reckoning. 
 
 Not allegorical, but rather analogical interpretation is 
 the basic principle to govern our procedure. Not analogy 
 worked out according to our own unregulated thoughts, 
 but analogy operating through careful and patient com- 
 
 114 
 
THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 parison of text, context, and the general teaching of 
 Scripture. Analogy specifically means a similarity of 
 relations. ‘“‘A prince is analogically styled a pilot, being 
 to the state as a pilot is to a vessel.” 7° Things which are 
 analogous bear some resemblance or proportion to each 
 other, they correspond in some particular or particulars 
 while differing in others. Analogy, therefore, strictly 
 denotes only a partial similarity, as in some special cir- 
 cumstances or effects predicable of two or more things 
 in other respects essentially different: thus when we say 
 that learning enlightens the mind, we recognize an analogy 
 between learning and light, the former being in the mind 
 what the latter is to the eye, enabling it to discover things 
 before hidden. Once this analogy between learning and 
 light has been accepted as sound in principle we may 
 proceed, for the sake of further illustration and instruc- 
 tion concerning it, to compare light and learning in certain 
 other respects to determine whether the analogy holds in 
 a variety of relations. 
 
 By the use of this analogical process, kept within the 
 bonds of Scripture itself, we may study its every part, 
 and find that perfect fitness links together in abiding 
 
 % Quoted from Berkeley. 
 
 115 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 interrelation and interdependence all the parts of its 
 complex structure. For example, the Levitical order of 
 sacrifice bore a very important relation to Israel’s place 
 as Jehovah’s people, while its laws were also a manifesta- 
 tion of his character and government. Analogous to this 
 in the New Testament is the teaching concerning the 
 sacrifice of Christ and its relation to the manifestation of 
 God, its bearing upon the relation of man to God, and 
 in particular upon the relation to God of those accepted 
 on the principle of faith according to the value of the 
 atonement. Between these things there is analogy, 
 similarity of relations, although by comparison very 
 much that is different. But the fact that this analogy 
 has been established for us by Scripture itself lays a secure 
 basis upon which to proceed to determine in what other 
 respects the analogy holds just as in the case of light and 
 learning suggested above. Thus the features of resem- 
 blance between the Levitical and Christian systems may 
 be studied and discovery made of what is typical in the 
 Levitical of the Christian which is indeed the perfection 
 of things, the substance of which the Levitical is now seen 
 to be the shadow. The comparative study will also enable 
 us to discern what is of an anomalous character, and the 
 116 
 
THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 contrast between them will serve to emphasize the worth 
 of the analogous features. 
 
 The analogical use of Scripture serves as a sufficient 
 reply to any reproach brought against it because of its 
 anthropomorphic statements. It must always be borne 
 in mind that the extent of the analogy or resemblance is 
 to be determined within those limits to the application 
 of such statements which Scripture itself furnishes. 
 
 Analogy established by the careful comparison of Scrip- 
 ture with Scripture opens the way into the spiritual 
 meaning of the written Word. It is a process which will 
 effectually protect its user from the extravagant and 
 fantastic interpretations characteristic of the allegorical 
 school represented, for example, by Clement and Origen. 
 
 Many a difficulty in the Bible can be solved only by a 
 careful consideration side by side of various circumstances 
 and conditions pertaining to that difficulty and these 
 related conditions may be scattered over a wide area of 
 Scripture. But once assembled and seen in their inter- 
 relation they will be found to constitute an adequate 
 explanation of that difficulty for any one except a prisoner 
 within the walls of contemporary thought. Because 
 such difficulties are not dissolved by a wave of the hand, 
 
 117 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEW OF THE BIBLE 
 
 many seem to think they are divinely commissioned to 
 turn their backs on the problem they are supposed to 
 study, and so destroy for themselves, at least, the possi- 
 bility of finding its solution. Such rashness is a sad indica- 
 tion that the fundamental message of the Book has not 
 been apprehended. It bears consistent testimony to 
 man’s spiritual destitution and sinfulness, his need of 
 new birth, the acceptance by faith of the eternal Savior- 
 hood of our Lord. As the one Mediator between God 
 and men who accomplished atonement on the Cross, 
 He is the only and all-sufficient Savior in whom men must 
 believe to be saved, and acknowledge Him to be both 
 Lord and God. Otherwise, remaining what Scripture 
 calls ‘‘natural men” (1 Cor. ii. 14), they cannot know the 
 things of God. To such men it is small wonder that the 
 Book’s points of essential difference with modern thought, 
 by which standard so much of it is judged to be outgrown, 
 are a stumbling-block to their worldly wisdom. Except 
 a man become as a little child, the Book must remain 
 enigmatical to him, so that seeing he may not see straight, 
 and, hearing, as he supposes, yet not be hearing according 
 to God. 
 
 The modern use of the Bible which we have been con- 
 
 118 
 
THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 sidering builds upon the most insecure of foundations— 
 the modern critical approach to the Book; makes use of a 
 principle thoroughly destructive in its tendencies; and 
 inevitably produces results highly inimical to man’s spirit- 
 ual welfare.” 
 
 27 Although Dr. Fosdick emphatically rejects the allegorical inter- 
 pretation of Scripture, and considers it absolutely unusable today, 
 there could hardly be anything more allegorical.in character than the 
 way he proposes to find in the Bible abiding experiences in changing 
 categories. Allegorism is arbitrarily treating what is obviously his- 
 torical as spiritual or figurative. Demons, angels and miracles, as 
 presented in the Bible, are historical, real existences and events of 
 actual occurrence. His prestidigitateur method causes them to 
 vanish, and their places are taken by figments of the writers’ brains, 
 which are nothing more than figures of, or a symbolic way of giving 
 expressions to, various spiritual experiences which ever abide and 
 are constantly reproducible. According to Dr. Fosdick’s method 
 devil, demons, angels and miracles have no existence outside of their 
 existence and function in this outgrown apparatus of explanation. 
 The Biblical writers evidently believed that devil, demons, angels 
 actually existed, and that miracles were historical events; but modern 
 men think they know better, and therefore must consider such things 
 only to be taken in an allegorical sense. 
 
 119 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 
 
 Observations already made have indicated the view of 
 the Bible which is here advocated. We may now define 
 more fully what it involves. 
 
 The revolutionary views of Criticism, which alter so 
 completely previous ideas of Bible history and also the 
 former understanding of its origin and development, 
 are contrary to the principles of Divine government and 
 at variance with the course which the evidence shows God 
 pursued in the revelation of Himself, as stated again and 
 again and confirmed in the Bible. 
 
 This weakness of Criticism, too, finds sufficient analo- 
 gous confirmation in a survey of history in general, due to 
 the fact that God is ever working behind the scenes in 
 a providential way. His revelatory way is found only in 
 the Bible, and in primary connection with one family and 
 nation, but that supplies us with a key nevertheless, 
 shown to be of universal significance. 
 
 120 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 
 
 Revelation, as Trench says, is God “‘drawing back the 
 veil or curtain which conceals Him from men; not man 
 finding out God, but God discovering Himself to man.” 
 Providence is God behind the curtain, in full control of 
 all through His omniscience, omnipresence and omnipo- 
 tence. 
 
 The general fact that God is at work in man’s history 
 working out His own eternal purposes goes without ques- 
 tion. He participates in its course, and may be found 
 present in some form at its every crisis, even though we 
 may discern His presence only in a very shadowy way 
 through our very limited vision and imperfect under- 
 standing of the issues which are involved. These may be 
 earthly and heavenly, natural and supernatural, seen and 
 unseen, human and superhuman. But in the Bible this 
 presence culminates in particular and special relations, 
 which become of universal import by showing that God 
 must through all history be there working, though at 
 the best only dimly seen by us, except where His 
 written and inspired book of revelation comes to our 
 aid. 
 
 When the Most High gave to the nations their inherit- 
 ance, when He separated the children of men, He set 
 121 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 the bounds of the peoples according to the number of 
 the children of Israel (Deut. xxxii. 8). 
 
 The God that made the world ! and all things therein, 
 He, being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in 
 temples made with hands; neither is He served by 
 men’s hands, as though He needed anything, seeing He 
 himself giveth to all life, and breath, and all things, and 
 He has made of one every nation of men to dwell on 
 all the face of the earth, having determined their ap- 
 pointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation; 
 that they should seek God, if haply they might feel 
 after Him and find Him, though He is not far from each 
 one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our 
 being; as certain even of your own poets have said, For 
 we are also His offspring (Acts xvii. 24-28; Am. Rev.). 
 
 Daniel says: 
 
 The Most High ruleth over the kingdom of men, and 
 giveth it to whomsoever He wills.”” And Nebuchad- 
 nezzar, in the day of his conversion and restoration, 
 
 declares in language which echoes the testimony of all 
 
 1 Kosmos, ‘originally order, and hence the order of the world; the 
 ordered universe. So in classical Greek. . . . The word is used here 
 in the classical sense of the visible creation, which would appeal to 
 the Athenians” (Vincent). 
 
 122 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 
 
 inspired witnesses, “I blessed the Most High, and I 
 praised and honored Him that liveth forever; for His 
 dominion is an everlasting dominion and His kingdom 
 from generation to generation; and all the inhabitants 
 of the earth are reputed as nothing; and He doeth 
 according to His will in the army of heaven, and among 
 the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay His 
 hand, or say unto Him, What doest thou? (Daniel 
 iv. 25, 34, 35; Am. Rev.) 
 _ God, then, must be working in and through all history 
 
 to the consummation of eternal purposes. He is weaving 
 together strands of many varied hues which seem to us 
 broken and disconnected, as they stretch across the 
 centuries. They may look all tangled and confused, when 
 with one quick short life-glance we try to survey the 
 expanse over which they are spread; but the eye of the 
 Divine Worker sees the end from the beginning—*“‘ His 
 eyes observe the nations” (Ps. lxvi.7)—the finished de- 
 sign is before Him, every strand has its use, and all is 
 being woven together into a perfect fabric, like a tapestry 
 of rare color and beauty. When it is finished and spread 
 out in the court of the Eternal, it shall brmg to Him 
 universal praise and worship. 
 
 123 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Read the marvelous panoramas of Isaiah, Jeremiah, 
 Daniel, as with divinely illuminated vision they portray 
 the Divine action, both in retrospect and in prospect 
 expanding in various forms until it embraces “‘all the 
 kingdoms of the world which are upon the face 
 of the earth.” Then, no other conclusion than the 
 one just stated is acceptable to the reverent student of - 
 Scripture. 
 
 This tapestry of universal history, to continue to use 
 our figure, into which is being woven the abiding illustra- 
 tions of God’s providential ways in the whole world and 
 its changeful course, is not yet finished. Thus far only 
 unfinished scenes and figures are open to view. We 
 cannot now describe in detail the final and complete story 
 of His providential ways, any more than Moses could 
 have made known the wonderful mystery unfolded by 
 Paul in his epistles. 
 
 But, if the figure is permissible, the tapestry of Divine 
 Revelation which was only beginning to be made in 
 Moses’ day, is quite unlike that of human history in this 
 respect: it is now finished. We can therefore consider the 
 wonder of its full design, and get an understanding of 
 the mind and truth of God as worked out in it in a rounded 
 
 124 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 
 
 whole. With this as a key, we can even look out upon the 
 world-course, upon mankind, and already be persuaded 
 that in the complexity of human affairs God must be 
 working, must have been working through all the ages. 
 The Book of revelation takes us behind the curtain to 
 make known to us the great principles which rule every- 
 where in the ways of God. ; 
 
 In Scripture these principles are acted out for us as in 
 a great drama. Israel occupies a central place upon the 
 stage which we may call the land of Canaan, and there 
 on a reduced scale, but with full and perfect detail, the 
 action takes place by which the revelation is made and the 
 most far-reaching understanding given of the character, 
 will, ways, purpose and glory of the eternal God. The 
 whole description and interpretation of this Divine 
 panorama is found in the Holy Scriptures recorded by 
 divinely inspired penmen. 
 
 We turn and then return, to the Bible, confident that 
 light will always be found there by which to penetrate into 
 every avenue of human interest and research, and guid- 
 ance for mind and heart as exploration proceeds. 
 
 Those principles and the course which God pursues in 
 the process of His revelation of Himself with which the 
 
 125 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 views of Modern Criticism come into conflict or of which 
 they constitute a denial may now be outlined. 
 
 The fact that God uses history in general has been 
 stated. The Bible, however, is the proof of His special 
 use of it for particular, specially chosen objects within 
 well defined limits of action and within a definite cycle 
 of relations. Thus, we may say God’s use of history in 
 the Bible bears a relation to His use of history in general. 
 This concentrated form of procedure is introduced, it 
 would seem, in order that all the features of the revelation 
 of Himself thus more vividly manifested in this smaller 
 compass may be perceived more clearly by the onlooking 
 universe, heavenly and earthly, in all their variety of part 
 and measure. In this way, attention is focused from every 
 quarter upon one circumscribed scene in which every 
 action and character plays a recognizable part, and where, 
 too, stands the mystery of the ages—the Cross of Christ. 
 
 We must now endeavor to point out the regulative 
 principles which govern, and indicate the steps which 
 constitute, the course adopted by the Master as the 
 process of the whole marvelous revelation. 
 
 1. All history presents a constantly recurring threefold 
 cycle which is especially illustrated in Bible history, thus: 
 
 126 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 
 
 (a) introduced and established perfection; (b) degradation, 
 the result of departures from this originally perfect order, 
 issuing finally in some disaster or catastrophe, invasion 
 from without combining with internal conditions to 
 produce break-up and change more or less radical; (c) 
 revival or restoration in which there is a return to original 
 and fundamental principles. Restoration, however, is 
 not to the originally perfect state, for the marks of the 
 preceding degradation remain evident in some degree and 
 exercise a salutary influence consistent with God’s govern- 
 ment. Often some higher and richer unfolding of truth 
 grows out of them by which we learn that God, in further- 
 ing His purpose of revelation, may make use of untoward 
 circumstances to manifest Himself. The initial perfection 
 is of God; the degradation is of man who proves false to 
 his responsibility to maintain what God has established, 
 and connected with the disaster which follows upon man’s 
 failure is God’s intervention in judgment. Restoration or 
 revival follows in which a return to original and funda- 
 mental principles is accompanied by God’s intervention 
 in salvation. 
 
 This constantly recurring threefold cycle determines 
 the grand divisions of Scripture history, and is found 
 
 yi 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 in operation also in the general course of the history of 
 all nations and peoples. In the light of Scripture, we 
 may account for its universality by the fact that a single 
 final issue is being worked out under the hand of God. 
 
 Illustrative stages in this threefold cycle may be traced 
 in these epochs: from Adam to the Flood period; Noah 
 to Abraham’s call; Abraham to the Egyptian period; 
 Israel’s history from the first passover to the Jordan; from 
 Joshua to the Judges period; from the commencement 
 of the Davidic kingdom to the captivities; from the return 
 to Christ; from Pentecost to the present. 
 
 Again, consider creation. First, perfection (Gen. ii. 1); 
 then, ruin (vs. 2) in respect to the earth and its immediate 
 heavenly relations; then the work of restoration as accom- 
 plished in the six days. Take the case of man: created 
 perfect and placed amid perfect conditions (Gen. ii); 
 degradation and disaster enter in by reason of failure 
 to maintain the established perfection (Gen. iii), man is 
 driven out of Eden; restoration effected afterward through 
 the provision which God Himself makes. But Paradise 
 is not restored. That man is to continue to live his life 
 amid the consequences of his failure is the edict of God’s 
 government and, so living, learn the richness of His mercy 
 
 128 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 
 
 and goodness under those very conditions, in a way not 
 otherwise possible. 
 
 Thus, too, with Israel. In the first period, a perfect 
 code of law and ceremony with the knowledge of the one 
 true God, is followed by a second in which the nation 
 lapsed into gross idolatry and utterly failed to observe the 
 covenant originally established. God brought in judgment 
 after judgment, revival after revival, the judgments 
 reaching a climax in the great captivities and the work of 
 revival in the great return from Babylon. Each revival 
 was characterized by some measure of return to the orig- 
 inal order, and this is especially noticeable in the Ezra- 
 Nehemiah period. 
 
 God thus acted to restore at the same time not erasing 
 all marks of His judgment. Nevertheless, the threefold 
 cycle was resumed; degradation followed, culminating 
 in the crucifixion of Christ, the consequent destruction of 
 Jerusalem and world-wide dispersion of the Jewish people. 
 From this debacle, restoration will again be effected, as 
 prophecy reveals; the kingdom glory will follow. Even 
 that, however, closes later in failure with an ensuing judg- 
 ment which seals up the record of time (Rev. xx). 
 
 The history of the Church tells the same story. Set 
 
 129 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 up in perfection by the Apostles, departure and degrada- 
 tion began to manifest themselves before the end of the 
 first Christian century. Conditions grew darker until 
 the midnight hour was reached in the Middle Ages. Then 
 revival came with the great reformation, and a fresh start 
 was made. The record since again has been one of suc- 
 cessive decline and revival, with a growing inability for | 
 sustained effort as the years have passed and an apparent 
 decline of scope or area to which the results of revival 
 attain. The New Testament bears witness that this 
 would be the general condition of things in its writings of 
 latest date. 
 
 Not only, however, is this threefold recurring cycle 
 manifest in such great movements as those of Israel and 
 the Church; it may also be observed in the life histories 
 of individuals given in the Bible. It is further manifest 
 in the history of human society, although here its rise and 
 fall can not be deciphered as plainly as in those which 
 are even more directly of God. Such human movements 
 take their rise in, and are governed by their relation to 
 the sinful condition of humanity. Since they start from 
 its level, we first witness a climb more or less slow from 
 certain existing primitive states to those of higher and 
 
 130 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 
 
 more advanced character. No sooner is the pinnacle 
 reached than corrupting influences begin to manifest 
 themselves; decay sets in; next some disaster or catas- 
 trophe happens. Out of the chaos which follows, some 
 measure of revival afterwards takes place only to end up 
 by tracing a similar treadmill on the historical chart. 
 
 This philosophy of history, explained and illustrated in 
 the Bible, so as to bring it within our grasp and thereafter 
 observable, also, in human society, is catastrophic in char- 
 acter and not evolutionistic except in so far as each occur- 
 ring catastrophe proves to be a summons to some move- 
 ment of recovery or leads to the introduction of some 
 element of higher character than had previously ex- 
 isted. 
 
 These sequences become so increasingly evident as 
 history proceeds that they almost point to the operation 
 of a universal law. They seem to indicate the steps of the 
 Eternal across the ages of time. This threefold constantly 
 recurring cycle is most distinctly defined in the Bible, 
 doubtless because it is concerned with God’s revelation of 
 Himself as the one true God. The explanation of Bible 
 history is plainer than that of mere human history, for 
 His personal manifestations and direct communications 
 
 131 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 are there, and elsewhere only what may be termed the 
 tracks of His providence. 
 
 2. From a study of the operation of this law, if the term 
 is permissible, emerges another governing principle of the 
 divine ways in revelation. It becomes apparent that 
 God times His acts of self-revealing according to existing 
 need, and in every case His action awaits that fullness - 
 of time which is according to His perfect wisdom. Thus 
 each part of His revelation can only be rightly understood 
 in a moral relation to the circumstances existing at the 
 time He gave it. 
 
 Let us fix our attention upon His revelatory activities 
 consequent upon man’s fall, as that timed the opportunity 
 and necessity for what the Bible reveals. 
 
 Three main features may then be noted. (a) His judg- 
 ments, never being arbitrary nor merely punitory, ex- 
 press the moral and spiritual relations of conditions 
 existing. (b) His will is so made known that those who 
 will, may hear and obey even in the midst of those condi- 
 tions, and go on to enjoy spiritual fellowship with Him 
 and become in their human measure morally representa- 
 tive of Him. (c) All is so presented that, in meeting 
 whatever might be the special need on any given occasion, 
 
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SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 
 
 instruction, edification and application suitable to the 
 need of all ages are imparted. Thus does His Word make 
 God known as omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent 
 in relation to the whole course of history, no matter what 
 the variety of circumstance, or the particular period of 
 time we may consider. 
 
 This is what the apostle Paul has in mind when he 
 affirms that, ‘‘Whatsoever things were written aforetime 
 were written for our learning, that through patience and 
 through comfort of the Scriptures we might have hope ” 
 (Rom. xv. 4). Again, after recounting part of Israel’s 
 history, he says, ‘‘ Now these things happened unto them 
 by way of example; and they were written for our admoni- 
 tion, upon whom the ends of the ages are come ”’ (1 Cor. 
 51 GI i 
 
 With this same Apostle again we too may then be sure 
 that, “‘Every scripture is inspired of God and profitable 
 for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction 
 which is in righteousness: that the man of God may be 
 complete, furnished completely unto every good work ”’ 
 (2 Tim. iii. 16, 17). This, ‘“‘word of the Lord abideth 
 forever” (Peter) and the Lord Jesus let us know that 
 “Scripture cannot be broken.” 
 
 eB) 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 The synchronism stage by stage of revelation and his- 
 tory is evident from a study of Scripture. When the full- 
 ness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son (Gal. 
 iv. 4). ‘‘For there is one God, one mediator also between 
 God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus, who gave him- 
 self a ransom for all; the testimony to be born [or, ren- 
 dered] in its own times” (1 Tim. ii. 5, 6). He came at > 
 the end or consummation of the ages to put away sin by 
 His sacrifice (Heb. x. 26). 
 
 These ages had their definite turning points in which 
 the development of revelation synchronized with the 
 existing conditions. The time of innocence was closed 
 by man’s disobedience. This called for great changes, and 
 God reveals Himself to pronounce judgment on all con- 
 cerned, to be sure, but also to make known other benefi- 
 cent purposes which He set forth both by word and action 
 (Gen. iii, iv). 
 
 The race now begins life amid the adverse conditions 
 resulting from the Fall. There is advancement in material 
 things, but degradation in moral and spiritual things. In 
 due season God acts. He speaks in warning prophecy by 
 Enoch, as Jude informs us, and takes this man miracu- 
 lously unto Himself out of the world; when in special com- 
 
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SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 
 
 munications with Noah, God announces His judgment 
 upon it and acquaints him with His plan for his salvation. 
 Noah preached righteousness during the appointed season. 
 Here elements of advance crop out in God’s revelation, 
 and still further development takes place when He recog- 
 nizes Noah as the new head of the race after judgment 
 has purged the earth. 
 
 Failure and degradation again ensue and in its course 
 this time idolatry is introduced. Its spread and prevalence 
 become the occasion for fresh action from God, and forth 
 from its midst He calls the man Abram to be a special 
 witness. With him and his seed God sets in motion a new 
 and distinct upward course of action which proceeds and 
 is developed during the rest of time, side by side with the 
 downward trend of world-conditions under the leadership 
 of evil spiritual powers which had invaded it in the age 
 after the flood and foisted idolatry upon the race of men. 
 
 This does not mean that God had the control of affairs 
 taken away from Him in so far as it pleases Him to exer- 
 cise it. The contrary has already been affirmed. It is, 
 however, in providential ways that this control is to be 
 understood as operative. His ways in revelation from 
 the time of the call of Abram are closely connected with 
 
 135 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Abraham and his seed. In those ways progress and en- 
 largement are still to be discerned, as the Bible record is 
 studied. One of the stages is timed to connect with the 
 fullness of Amorite iniquity (Gen. xv. 16). A ripeness of 
 time was reached in the course of history for Israel’s 
 deliverance from servitude with its related richness of 
 revelation and warning visitation of judgment upon the - 
 gods of Egypt, and a little later upon the awful iniquity 
 of the Amorites laid bare in the ethical laws given by 
 Moses. 
 
 While maintaining testimony as to what is His due 
 within their apprehension, so that men are without ex- 
 cuse, God permits evil fully to manifest itself before judg- 
 ment falls. Thus will His action when examined, be 
 justified in the eyes of all, His judgments vindicated. 
 But there goes hand in hand with every such manifestation 
 of what is called by the Prophet “His strange work” 
 a further revelation of Himself. His manifestation of 
 judgment upon idolatry waited from Abram’s call to 
 abandon it and witness against it in his obedience to 
 God’s word until in the time due for it His judgment 
 blazed forth in the land of Egypt, the mightiest kingdom 
 of that day, that the effect might be felt throughout the 
 
 136 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 
 
 world. A little later His judgment burned to extermina- 
 tion in the land of Canaan, the scene of Amorite iniquity, 
 which was, also, the highway for all nations, so that the 
 divine message might be carried to all parts of the habit- 
 able earth. 
 
 There at the cross-roads of the world, God set up His 
 arena for all future revelatory action, for none could miss 
 learning whatever He might there perform. The action 
 thereafter rolls on to its grand consummation in 
 Christ and the complete revelation of God and His 
 purposes by the Apostles and prophets of the New 
 Testament. 
 
 3. As this record of God’s revelation is studied, another 
 principle becomes evident. It is that God takes up certain 
 samples by the use of which He gives the manifestation He 
 desires. The sample He selects may be a nation or it may 
 be an individual. Thus, He used Israel to teach us lessons 
 of universal and eternal significance. Thus, too, He used 
 Abraham, Joseph, Pharaoh, David, Nebuchadnezzar. 
 And even though this earth upon which we live be only 
 “a floating speck in a cosmos that staggers the greatest 
 intellect,” yet God selected it as the stage upon which 
 to show His marvelous physical and spiritual creations, 
 
 137 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 and as the scene of His Son’s life and death to which 
 indeed universal and eternal significance attaches. 
 
 Alfred Russel Wallace once said that it appeared to him 
 that this “floating speck” was at the center of the great 
 physical universe. If so, its place is analogous to that 
 in which God set Israel, even at a point where flowed all 
 the cross-currents of the world’s life; a place central to 
 all the nations and peoples of the earth. God it would 
 seem chooses the small, the insignificant, the despised, the 
 weak, and makes such shine as stars of the first magnitude. 
 Is it not this in principle that Paul tells us when saying, 
 ‘“‘God chose the foolish things of the world, that He might 
 put to shame them that are wise; and God chose the weak 
 things of the world, that He might put to shame the things 
 that are strong; and the base things of the world, and the 
 things that are despised, did God choose, yea and the 
 ‘things that are not, that He might bring to nought the 
 things that are: that no flesh should glory before God”? 
 
 4. Israel’s history in particular may now be considered. 
 The view Criticism takes of it has already been set before 
 us and we have also examined its bearing upon the origin, 
 making, and character of the Bible. The argument is 
 that the conditions of the Judges can be explained only 
 
 138 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 
 
 by the non-existence of any such system of things as the 
 Pentateuch sets forth, and by denying that any such con- 
 quest as the book of Joshua describes could have taken 
 place, since in either case it would be almost impossible 
 to explain how such great religious degradation and such 
 general condition of servitude could come to prevail in so 
 short a lapse of time. 
 
 But if we accept the priority of the Pentateuch and 
 Joshua this is not hard to understand after all. Anal- 
 ogies to it have been manifest in history which cannot be 
 questioned. The Christian Church was established in 
 perfect spiritual order during the twenty-five years after 
 Pentecost. Yet before the end of the first century degrada- 
 tion had already set in, and its spread was plainly foretold 
 by the Apostles. After seventy-five years, at the most, 
 we have John’s sorrowful record of the churches in Asia 
 few more years this decline had developed to a point 
 where no one could recognize them as having any close 
 likeness to those of the early and originally perfect Chris- 
 tian order of which especially the Pauline epistles are a 
 record. 
 
 Because of this decline and degradation are we to con- 
 
 139 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 clude that those epistles were not in existence at the be- 
 ginning, or that the teachings they present were not the 
 foundation upon which the Church was established 
 through the oral ministry of Apostles and prophets? We 
 would have to do this if we apply to this history the 
 Critical viewpoint as to Israel’s defection to which that 
 of the Christian Church so closely corresponds both in 
 character and in length of time. But it has no more appli- 
 cation to the latter than to the former. The history in 
 both cases is strikingly parallel. It all shows how quickly 
 man can bring to ruin that which is committed in perfec- 
 tion to his responsibility. 
 
 Even though it be shown that the history of the period 
 between Joshua and Ezra records no practical conformity 
 to Pentateuchal legislation, this cannot be regarded as 
 proof that the Pentateuch did not exist. Does the growing 
 darkness of the Christian centuries preceding the great 
 reformation period prove that no Bible was in existence 
 until the days of the reformers? Yet who would have 
 known by looking upon the Church or reading its literature 
 during those dark ages that such a book as the New 
 Testament really existed? 
 
 In a multitude of ways the history of the Church could 
 
 140 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 
 
 be summoned as witnessing that no such Scriptural charter 
 of Christianity could be found. Plenty of traditions, 
 Church decisions, philosophic speculations and mysticism; 
 but the Bible—where was that? Seemingly not known, 
 certainly not taught or used publicly. Therefore non- 
 existent! Was it? No. Then, was the Pentateuch non- 
 existent in the Judges-period? 
 
 There is scattering evidence in the historical books to 
 show that the Pentateuch was known during the time 
 from Joshua to Josiah, just as there are isolated cases 
 during the Christian era which show that the Bible was 
 known in certain quarters, at least, during the Dark Ages. 
 
 The point is that Israel’s history conforms to the general 
 law already observed—perfection, degradation, restora- 
 tion. Convincing proof to the contrary is not to be found. 
 
 5. If the critical view of the Bible history is untenable, 
 then the companion theory of the origin and making of 
 the Bible becomes equally so, and the supposed brilliant 
 achievement of demonstrating the parallelism between 
 Israel’s history and the growth of the Bible sinks into 
 insignificance. It becomes valueless. 
 
 The question of authorship need not give us a great 
 deal of concern. We can discard the elaborate and com- 
 
 141 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 plex documentary apparatus of the Critics. What might 
 be called the reasonable things upon which they found 
 their distinctions are quite susceptible of other explana- 
 tions, and the many unreasonable ones call for scant 
 notice. The Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch need 
 not be doubted merely because it is evident that another 
 hand wrote the account of the great leader’s death and 
 burial. There is no need of denying that certain passages 
 give evidence of an editor’s work, for, as the various books 
 passed through the hands of divinely inspired men, such 
 as the prophets, Ezra, and Nehemiah, some such editorial 
 work may well have been done by men qualified by inspira- 
 tion to do it during the period in which the Old Testament 
 canon was arranged. This, however, in no way weakens 
 the claims to be authoritative accepted and witnessed to 
 within the Bible itself, a most important part of which 
 is the testimony of the Lord and His Apostles. 
 
 That documents of record and narrative were used by 
 some of the Biblical writers is evident from many refer- 
 ences to such in Kings and Chronicles. A similar refer- 
 ence occurs in 2 Samuel (i. 18), in Joshua (x. 12, 13), and 
 one in the Book of Numbers (xxi. 14, 15). The names 
 of these sources are plainly given, which puts them in a 
 
 142 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 
 
 very different category from those conjectural documents 
 named by the critics—Elohist, Yahwehist, Deuteronomist, 
 Priestly; then a combination of Elohist and Yahwehist by 
 some redactor; then a joining of this last with the first 
 three; and ultimately a combination of all together, not 
 forgetting, however, to mention that the Priestly document 
 has several parts originating in different ages. 
 
 Horeover, none of these documents, Criticism tells us, 
 is to be considered the work of an individual but of schools 
 to which are given the several names mentioned in the 
 foregoing. The method by which these supposed docu- 
 ments unmentioned in the Bible are distinguished is largely 
 one of unsupported assertion. In many instances the 
 evidence is fantastic and inconclusive; much of it is merely 
 ingenious sophistry.” 
 
 It is admitted by one of their own number that “in 
 spite of the labors of critics there still remains a consider- 
 able number of passages in which division of sources is 
 very uncertain. There is, too, always a certain danger of 
 using as criteria comparatively rare words or phrases [a 
 
 2 Reference need only be made to standard works of the Critical 
 school such, as the Encyclopedia Biblica, Hastings’ Dictionary of the 
 Bible, and the bibliographies mentioned in them to realize that such 
 is the case. 
 
 143 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 very favorite resort of this school], which possibly by 
 accident happen to occur once or twice in one source or 
 the other. The reasonings by which the critical results 
 are obtained are very complicated . . . in many cases 
 the analysis is . . . difficult and uncertain.” 3 
 
 While critics stand united in the acceptance of the 
 documentary hypothesis, their contradictory conclusions. 
 among themselves and the varying results at which they 
 arrive in the effort to distinguish the documents and 
 assign to them the Bible books piecemeal, discredit their 
 position and make them look little short of absurd. This 
 becomes evident if we compare the works of foremost 
 critical writers dealing with the same Bible book. 
 
 6. Without doubt the primary object of the Bible is 
 moral and spiritual teaching. But it is evident that the 
 history it records is history teaching by example, and is 
 an integral part of its structure, essential therefore to the 
 revelation given in this Book. This history is history put 
 
 3 ““Hexateuch,” 371, 372; Hastings’ Dict. of the Bible. 
 
 A. B. Davidson, himself of the Critical School, says as to its 
 theory, ‘‘Its weakness lies in the incapacity which as yet it has shown 
 to deal with many important details, and particularly in the assump- 
 tion, absolutely necessary to its case, that the ancient historical books 
 have been edited from a Deuteronomistic point of view.” 
 
 144 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF }NTERPRETATION 
 
 to use and made the vehicle by which God is manifested 
 and His purposes disclosed. It is permeated throughout 
 with manifold moral and spiritual instruction. 
 
 There is manifest selection of material in the Biblical 
 narratives, a selection suited to the primary object of 
 moral and spiritual teaching, which object is kept con- 
 stantly in view in every part and by every writer through- 
 out the fourteen centuries which separate the commence- 
 ment and the completion of the Bible. 
 
 This paramount object is the bond which unites all its 
 diversity into a perfect and harmonious revelation of 
 God, His character, ways and purposes. The Bible nar- 
 ratives possess a character distinctly different from those 
 of merely human production. ‘“ How often we find abso- 
 lute silence where man would have enlarged, and how 
 often a fierce light is cast on episodes that men would have 
 hidden in darkness.” 
 
 Now this interweaving of history with doctrine and 
 precept and their complete interdependence make it 
 necessary that the history in order to be fit for this service 
 should be inerrant. If it is not, all else may well be ques- 
 tioned since the historical elements are basic to the moral 
 and spiritual elements which pervade the Book. Thus, 
 
 145 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 the dislocation of the historical order which criticism 
 advocates means dislocation everywhere, and the casting 
 into disrepute of the entire volume. 
 
 These considerations make it necessary to regard infal- 
 ibility as an element of the nature of the Bible and a 
 guiding principle in its interpretation. No _ historical 
 detail may be regarded as having a neglible bearing upon 
 the moral and spiritual purpose of the Book. Though 
 there may be many instances in which the application of 
 this reference has not yet been discovered we cannot 
 presume to say that it will not be, even as many of the 
 once obscure and seemingly unsolvable problems of the 
 Biblical record have received confirmation and elucidation 
 as the different departments of human knowledge and 
 research have expanded. 
 
 The term infallibility, as here used, may need a word of 
 definition. As applied to the Bible, it means that the 
 record therein given is in every respect true and without 
 error. Both in historical details, even as found in differing 
 accounts of the same event,‘ and in the statements of men, 
 
 ‘Though there be contradiction between different accounts as 
 they are given, this furnishes no just ground for discrediting or 
 rejecting either or all of such accounts. Quite often reliable witnesses 
 due to some circumstance not known to either, or to difference in 
 
 146 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERERETATION 
 
 good or evil, of Satan, of angels, or of God, we have in 
 every case a divinely accurate report in these “Holy 
 Scriptures,” ‘the Scriptures of truth.” 
 
 This leads us to another essential element of the nature 
 of the Bible. That is its inspiration. Otherwise, it is 
 impossible to conceive that a record of what in some cases 
 did not pass under the observation of the writer and in 
 other cases could not have done so which must be true, 
 for example, of the book of Genesis should be inerrant. 
 But even that which did come under their immediate 
 observation is not simply told as any such matter would 
 ordinarily be when told for its own sake, but is connected 
 with the distinct operation of the Holy Spirit in the mind 
 and heart of the writer, producing an appreciation of it 
 in accord with the Divine Mind, and communicating it in 
 words framed according to these impelling influences of 
 divine origin. Only inspiration can account for predictive 
 prophecy and for the way in which history is treated 
 throughout the Bible. The fact of inspiration Scripture 
 
 position with respect to what they describe, are found to differ mate- 
 rially in describing the same event or scene. But when such unob- 
 served circumstances or difference in position become part of the 
 evidence, then substantial agreement in their testimony is established 
 and conflicting details reconciled. 
 
 147 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 repeatedly affirms; the method is nowhere stated. Its 
 phenomena must be gathered from the Scriptures them- 
 selves. 
 
 In those who wrote the Bible, the emotions of the soul, 
 the energies of the spirit and even the infirmities of the 
 body are made use of under the control of the divine 
 Spirit, always, of course, in a manner according to the 
 purpose in view. The individuality, peculiarity, and 
 distinctive qualities of these writers find expression in 
 their work, so that the Book is one of ever living interest 
 from the human side, while from the divine it proves itself 
 in every part to be “the word of God, living, and active, 
 and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing 
 even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and 
 marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents 
 of the heart. And there is no creature that is not manifest 
 in His sight: but all things are marked and laid open before 
 
 the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.’ 
 
 5 Heb. iv. 12, 13. It is worth noting that what is adduced by 
 the Apostle, in this section of the epistle, as an example of the 
 living, active, and judging character of God’s Word is the much 
 questioned history of the Pentateuch, and one of the Psalms (xcv) 
 which makes reference to it. Bear in mind, also, that the Holy 
 Spirit is said to speak these words (Ch. iii. 7); also Gen. ii. 2 is 
 referred to as what “He hath said” (Ch. iv. 4). 
 
 148 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 
 
 This does not prevent our believing that at least some 
 of the writers did use existing documents, consulted state 
 records and studied various sources of information which 
 were at their disposal. There is evidence that they did, 
 but the Holy Spirit, who moved them to speak or write, 
 gave perfect guidance to them here as elsewhere. It can 
 not be denied that He could direct them what to take and 
 what to leave, even when what was at hand to use was a 
 defective record. They would therefore doubtless at 
 times be conscious of a superior power directing and in- 
 fluencing them to express what might appear to be in 
 conflict with existing records or beliefs. This must have 
 been the case with Moses, who though “instructed in all 
 the wisdom of the Egyptians” (Acts vii. 22) wrote a cos- 
 mogony so entirely different from any other and superior 
 to anything yet produced, that even the savants of the 
 twentieth century are forced to admit its preéminence. 
 The scriptural account of the flood comes out triumphant 
 from a similar comparison. 
 
 Inspiration, then, is divine control of the human instru- 
 ment, sufficient to insure inerrancy; it implies divine 
 selection of the materials used in the communication given 
 by that instrument, the Holy Spirit exercising His influ- 
 
 149 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 ence and guiding every faculty, thereby effecting the 
 exclusion of error and insuring the use of divine words in 
 all such communications. With the Holy Spirit present 
 in power, to influence and direct the mind, that mind could 
 not do otherwise than submit and select and use that 
 which though of human origin, is suited to the Holy Spirit’s 
 purpose in treating the subject presented. This is not 
 mere dictation—far from it, for all the powers of the mind 
 and heart of the instrument are engaged and wrought 
 upon so that a divine impress is left upon the whole 
 man. 
 
 In view of these conditions it is not surprising to find 
 that the prophets afterwards pondered their own com- 
 munications seeking the full meaning which was not in 
 all cases readily apparent, at first, to them. We are not 
 required to regard them as being always in the exalted 
 state accompanying the work of inspiration. Hence, 
 distinguishing when under the inspiration of the Holy 
 Spirit from when they were not, they would find profit and 
 enlightenment, in the latter case, from the study of their 
 own inspired writings.® 
 
 7. This leads to the consideration of another element 
 
 61 Peter 1., 10-12. 
 
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SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 
 
 of the Bible consequent upon its inspiration. Its contents 
 constitute a revelation. 
 
 The term, revelation, may be applied to the Bible in 
 both a general and specific way. Speaking generally, the 
 whole Book is a revelation from God in the sense that it 
 has been put together for us according to His perfect will 
 and direction and hence discloses relations and meanings 
 which would not otherwise be known or understood. 
 
 But not everything in the Book pertains directly to the 
 revelation of God; this, however, is the underlying object 
 in view and everything is made to contribute its quota 
 toward this end. All is absolutely true as occurrence as 
 recorded, but not all is sanctioned truth, for record is 
 made of the words and actions of Satan as well as of other 
 wicked spirits and wicked men;—all this is plainly to be 
 distinguished from the approved revelation of God con- 
 cerning His personality, character, will, purpose, action, 
 and doctrine, commingled of truth both objective and 
 subjective, which pervades the whole volume. 
 
 The distinction thus drawn, however, does not mean 
 that any part of it is without profit, for all has been brought 
 together with reference to the underlying object of convey- 
 ing a revelation of God in every moral and spiritual rela- 
 
 {51 
 
ALTERNATIVE ViEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 tion, and with special regard to man. No part, not even a 
 list of names, could be taken from the Book without doing 
 violence to it, and causing loss to us. Nothing must be 
 taken from or added to its perfect unity. 
 
 It does not follow, therefore, that all that Scripture 
 records as said or done has of necessity the sanction of God 
 attached to it. There are things permitted and not ap- 
 proved, of which use is made, but which are not to be 
 attributed to His command. But whether commanded, 
 or merely allowed in their occurrence, His perfect wisdom 
 and power is exercised upon them afterward, and every- 
 thing made to contribute to the revelation of Himself. 
 _ We judge from the fact that He has given us a Book con- 
 taining these diverse elements that He intends us to learn 
 lessons from them all, and that all relate in some way to 
 the object in view. 
 
 God has so written His Word that constant exercise of 
 heart, mind, and conscience are rewarded with ever addi- 
 tional understanding. Concentrated study is the only 
 method of normal spiritual growth accompanied by keener 
 discernment and enlarging apprehension of God’s perfect 
 will and truth. The reverent student of Scripture in- 
 creasingly feels the need of attaining to a comprehensive 
 
 152 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 
 
 grasp of all the scriptures as he seeks to interpret any given 
 part of Holy Writ. Each part also has its contextual as 
 well as its immediate local or specific relations and no part 
 can ever be perfectly understood except in the light of the 
 whole. 
 
 Scripture cannot be considered to any solid, lasting 
 advantage as a mere volume of isolated texts, any of 
 which may be made to mean whatever may please the 
 fancy, and even applied to things entirely foreign to its 
 context. Scripture is a divine unity, each part of which 
 must be considered in the light of the whole. It is the 
 work of one Spirit, one Mind. As in a perfect organism, 
 every joint and band and member stands in relation to 
 the whole. The successful student of Scripture cannot, 
 therefore, avoid much exercise, prayer, and searching of 
 every part of this divine library, even so, his much labor 
 will be in vain unless an abiding sense of human weakness 
 in dependence upon the Holy Spirit run through it all. 
 
 The principle we need to bear in mind is given to us in 
 2 Pet. i. 20, for all Scripture is of prophetic character 
 which entwines itself about the Messianic hope, especially 
 the Old Testament. A translator of acknowledged repute 
 renders and comments upon this passage as follows: 
 
 153 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Knowing this first, [that the scope of] no prophecy 
 of Scripture is had from its own particular interpreta- 
 tion,—idias, epiluseos ou ginetai, “is not explained by 
 
 > as a human sentence. It must be 
 
 its own meaning,’ 
 understood by and according to the Spirit that uttered 
 it. The “prophecy” is, I take it, the sense of the 
 prophecy, the thing meant by it. Now this is not 
 gathered by a human interpretation of an isolated 
 passage which has its own meaning and its own solu- 
 tion, as if a man uttered it; for it is part of God’s mind, 
 uttered as holy men were moved by the Holy Ghost to 
 utter it. In the ‘‘prophecy of Scripture” the apostle 
 has in mind the thing prophesied without losing the 
 idea of the passage. Hence I have ventured to say 
 [the scope of] ‘“‘no prophecy.”” One might almost say 
 “‘no prophecy explains itself.” 
 In another place he says: 
 
 There cannot be a doubt that from the fall of Adam 
 there was one grand subject of promise and prophecy, 
 of hope and expectation—the Seed of woman who 
 should bruise the serpent’s head—the Seed of Abra- 
 ham—the Seed of David. To say that this was not pro- 
 duced in the universal mind of Israel, at all times with 
 
 154 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 
 
 which we are acquainted (and with no nation are we 
 acquainted so long, or so well at this early date), would 
 be to deny the most certain fact, sustained by the most 
 incontrovertible evidence. . . . The testimony of Jo- 
 sephus, Tacitus, and Suetonius concur, it is well known, 
 as stating that through all the East a notion prevailed, 
 that, at the time Christ arose, He should arise who 
 would possess the empire of the world. In a word, so 
 strong was the testimony and the expectation, that all 
 over the East it had reached the Gentiles, and was well 
 enough known in the West to be recorded by the two 
 Gentile historians of those times. All prophecy must 
 (if God’s promise was such and true) have centered here; 
 and so, in fact, it does—sometimes given as a relief and 
 encouragement to oppressed saints—sometimes break- 
 ing through the dark cloud of judgment, like the sun in 
 a stormy day; but, from Gen. iii to the last chapter of 
 Malachi, beginning, middle, and ending, every ray of 
 light converged to this point, that Messiah was to come. 
 This is the first enduring sense, the key and object of 
 all prophecy. All the rest is subordinate to, and conduces 
 to this. I have no doubt myself that this leads us to 
 the sense of “private interpretation” in 2 Pet.i.20. We 
 155 
 
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 have not God’s mind in it unless we take His scope in 
 the whole. No prophecy of scripture is of its own inter- 
 pretation. It must have its meaning as part of a whole. 
 
 In closing a further word must be said as to the manner 
 in which Scripture speaks. The Bible deals with man 
 according to the state and circumstances in which he 
 finds himself in this world. Things are referred to in it 
 in the way they are observed by him in the course of his 
 ordinary everyday life. Generally speaking, physical 
 facts are thus stated, and though sometimes manifestly 
 beyond the contemporary knowledge of the times, yet 
 such statements it must be admitted, have proven wonder- 
 fully accurate, even in the light of modern science. 
 
 It may be said, then, that the Bible states things as 
 they naturally appear and relate to human experience, 
 and not as they appear in scientific theory or observation. 
 Thus alone could the Book become intelligible and make 
 its appeal to men placed in the midst of these appearances 
 and experiences. This again is the chief reason that it 
 remains unimpaired as revelation, after translation into 
 every language under the sun, of use in every age, country 
 and clime—the universal Book of universal application, 
 
 156 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 
 
 ever living, immutable and eternal—the revelation of 
 the one true God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, King of the ages, the incorruptible, invisible, only 
 God, to whom honor and glory belong to the age of ages. 
 
 157 
 
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