M %■& >ofr I ■ "'^>>» J" FEB 8 1894 * 'i M«* MEM .- ..* FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM Founders of Old Testament Criticism BIOGRAPHICAL, DESCRIPTIVE, AND CRITICAL STUDIES BY T. K. CHEYNE, M.A., D.D. OK1LL PROFESSOR OP THE INTBRPRBTATION UK HOLY SCRIPTURE, FORMERLY FELLOW OP BALLIOL COLLLUK, OXPORO ', CANON OK ROCHESTER Ncto gorfe CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1893 PREFACE TlIE present volume contains a series of pictures of eminent Old Testament critics from the beginning of the critical movement to the present day, with an attempt in each case to estimate the services of the subject of the picture. It is hoped that it may be not only interesting but instructive, and may tend to remove some current mistakes and misconceptions. Let me mention a few of these. Criticism, it is said by some, is a recent invention ; it is arrogant to pretend that it has reached any final or even approxi- mate results. Criticism, say others, is of purely German origin ; it is foolish to import what has no roots in our own mental history. Criticism, says yet another school of writers, is purely rationalistic ; it has no interest in, and can be of no considerable service to, positive theological truth. Criticism, say a few other respected but isolated observers, is narrow in its methods ; it goes on grinding for ever at the same mill, and needs an almost complete recon- struction. In particular, according to these censors, it dreads archaeology, and it is time for sober English- VI PREFACE. men to strike out a new method, which will have the additional advantage of being theologically safe. All these statements are, I believe, based on un- fortunate misconceptions, which are best removed by throwing as much light as possible on the history of criticism. To do this adequately would of course be a work of immense labour, nor have I leisure to attempt it. But I venture to hope that the present series of studies may be a small contribution towards the future history, and that the personal elements in the studies may give them a certain value even after the history has been accomplished. For it is not un- important to notice how the intellectual phases and material surroundings of a writer have affected his criticism. We may see thus how natural and in- evitable his course was, and how pardonable were his errors ; we may also gather from his life both warnings and encouragements. I have taken special pains to make this clear in the cases of Ewald, who for a time almost seemed to have been annexed by liberal English theology, and of De Wette. And the whole series is concluded by a survey of the present state of Old Testament criticism, without which indeed the volume would have lacked much of any practical helpfulness which it may possess. Let me explain. The last three chapters, though more predominantly critical than the preceding ones, are by no means an excrescence. The survey of criticism which they contain is not mechanically attached to the sketches of critics, but grows natur- PREFACE. vii ally out of a personal study of one of the most blameless and devoted of living scholars. It is an attempt to supply a want which is constantly being brought before me. Introductory works are happily multiplying among us, but on the whole they scarcely give an adequate idea of the actual position of Old Testament problems (especially outside the Hexa- teuch), and yet, if we all cautiously limit ourselves by the requirements of beginners, our students will be in danger of contracting a somewhat insular and provincial spirit. The series of studies, which I have thus endeavoured to round off, is far from being as complete as I could have wished. Historically indeed it is continuous, but from an international point of view some plausible complaints may be urged against it. There is but one Dutch critic who is sketched, viz. Kuenen ; but one French-writing critic, viz. Reuss ; nor are any of the actually living and working German critics (except Schrader, who has now quitted the field of the u higher criticism") either described or criticized. The reasons for these omissions are however not far to seek. Some limitation of the range of the volume was necessary. Prof. S. I. Curtiss had already treated of the earlier precursors of criticism (including Simon and Astruc), and an able young French scholar, M. Alexandre Westphal, had given an equally accurate and interesting sketch of Hexateuch criticism. 1 With 1 Lts sources du Peniaieuque. Tom. I. Le probleme litteraire. Paris, 1888, viii PREFACE. regard to German and Dutch critics, I must confess to a feeling of profound sadness at the losses of the last few years ; the unexpected deaths of Riehm, Kuenen, and Lagarde seemed to check my pen in its progress. It is true, a similar excuse cannot be offered to French critical workers. But I hope that scholars like Bruston, Piepenring, and Westphal (who work under conditions in some respects analogous to our own) will accept the assurance of my warm interest in their researches, and my expectation of happy results from them for international Biblical criticism. 1 Friendliest greetings also to all British, American, and Australian fellow-workers ! Whether we will it or no, we must all be in some sense English, and it is one of our most characteristic features that we look to the practical results of scientific research. We cannot be mere historical or literary critics ; we feel that we must contribute, each in his degree, to the construction of an improved Christian apologetic for our own age. Happily, this is not now an exclusively English characteristic ; the same consciousness of Christian duty is visible in representative German critics, such as Hermann Schultz, author of Old Testajnent Theology. Let us see to it that, while our German kinsfolk are learning to be more practical in their theology, we on our side become not less apt 1 For a list of continental as well as British and American critical writers, see part 6 of Appendix to Briggs's The Bible, the Church, and the Reason (T. & T. Clark, 1892). PREFACE. ix pupils in the spirit and in the methods of critical inquiry. For sound Biblical criticism is neither German nor English, neither Lutheran, nor Anglican, nor Presbyterian, but international and interconfessional. It has a great history behind it, and a still greater one may, let us hope, be before it. Oxford^ Nov. 30, 1 89 2. ....%. During my absence in Egypt the correction of the proofs has been kindly undertaken by Mr. G. Buchanan Gray, B.A., Lecturer in Hebrew and the Old Testament in Mansfield College, Oxford. CONTENTS CHAT. 1. II. III. IV. v. VI. VII. VIII. IX. PAGE X. XI. XII. XIII. THE PRECURSORS IN ENGLAND : WAR BURTON, LOWTH, GEDDES THE OPENING 01" METHODICAL CRITICISM IN GERMANY. EICHHORN AND ILGEN DE WETTE, GESENIUS ... EWALD (i): THE DEVELOPMENT PERIOD EWALD (2) I HIS WEAKNESS AND HIS STRENGTH AS A CRITIC AND AS A MAX HITZIG, [HENGSTENBERG,] YATKE, BLEEK HUPFELD, DELITZSCH ... ... RIEHM, REUSS, LAGARDE, KUENEN THE OPENING OF METHODICAL CRITICISM IN ENGLAND. COLENSO, KALISCH, S. DAVIDSON, ROWLAND WILLIAMS, PEROWNE, A. P. DAVID SON (1S62), RUSSELL MARTINEAU ... THE MODERN PERIOD. ROBERTSON SMITH, A. B DAVIDSON, BRIGGS, TOY, [SCHRADER,] SAYCE, KIRK PATRICK, KYLE, FRANCIS BROWN, MOORE, WHITEHOUSF, G. A. SMITH, DUFF, FKIPP, ADDIS, MOXTLI IORL, BEVAN DRIVER (i) DRIVER (2) DRIVER (3) 31 66 99 119 149 172 *95 j 1 : 248 293 1 1 1 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. CHAPTER I. THE PRECURSORS IN ENGLAND — WARBURTON, LOWTH, GEDDES. A WELL-KNOWN and honoured representative of progressive German orthodoxy (J. A. Dorner) has set a fine example of historical candour by admitting the obligations of his country to a much-disliked form of English heterodoxy. He says that English Deism, which found so many apt disciples in Ger- many, " by clearing away dead matter, prepared the way for a reconstruction of theology from the very depths of the heart's beliefs, and also subjected man's nature to stricter observation." l This, however, as it appears to me, is a very inadequate description of facts. It was not merely a new constructive stage of 1 History of Protestant Theology y E. T., ii. 77. For the influence of Deism on Germany, see Tholuck (Vermischte Schriftcn, Bd ii.) and Lcchler {Gcscli. des englischcn Deismus). u 2 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. German theoretic theology, and a keener psychological investigation, for which Deism helped to prepare the way, but also a great movement, which has in our own day become in a strict sense international, con- cerned with the literary and historical criticism of the Scriptures. Beyond all doubt, the Biblical dis- cussions which abound in the works of the Deists and their opponents contributed in no slight degree to the development of that semi-apologetic criticism of the Old Testament, of which J. D. Michaelis, and in some degree even Eichhorn, were leading represent- atives. Transitory as the Deism of Toland and Collins was, it achieved the distinction, not only of calling forth Bishop Butler's Analogy, but of influencing or stimulating a number of eminent German scholars of various theological colours, among whom I must not omit to mention the earliest great New Testament critic, J. G. Semler (1725 — 1791). It is indeed singular that Deism should have passed away in England without having produced a great critical movement among ourselves. If Deuteronomy be, as M. Westphal rightly claims that it is, "Ariadne's thread in the labyrinth of Pentateuch criticism," it is strange that an English theological writer, who saw (for the first time) that this Book was a product of the seventh century, 1 should not have been prompted 1 Parvish, Inquiry into the Jewish and Christian Revelations (Lond. 1739), P- 3 2 4? referred to by Kleinert (Das Denteronomium, &c.j 1872, p. 2). De Wette's epoch-making dissertation on the origin of Deuteronomy was not published till 1805. WARBURTON — LOWTII. 3 by his good genius to follow up his advantage. But in point of fact there are but three isolated English scholars who appear to have shown any talent or inclination for a criticism of the Old Testament which is not merely concerned with various readings of the text — viz. Bishop Warburton, Bishop Lowth, and Dr. Alexander Geddes ; and of these the only one who can properly be called a founder of criticism is the third. I have first to speak of William Warburton and Robert Lowth. The former was a born pamphleteer and controversialist, and had neither the learning nor the seriousness requisite for the founder of a critical school ; he limited himself to throwing out hints on Job and on the Song of Songs in his correspondence with Lowth, which his friend rejected with disdain, but which so far as Job is concerned he himself manfully defended in his Divine Legation of Moses. The latter (Lowth) was, for his time, a considerable scholar, but in theology he clung (like Kennicott) to the traditional orthodoxy. Hence he felt constrained to insist on the allegorical character of the Song of Songs, and to maintain the extreme antiquity of the Book of Job. And yet even this circumspect bishop fully admits that the prophets spoke primarily to the men of their own time (sec e.g. his exposition of Isa. vii. 14), 1 and this admission contains the promise of 1 Cheyne, Propliccics of Isaiah, ii. 277. In England the in- fluence of Lowth was chiefly felt in textual criticism (sec Blayney's fcrcmiah (i7S4),and Ncwcomc's Ezckicl (1788). The 4 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. the cautiously bold criticism of Eichhorn and Ewald. Both the Isaiah (1778) and the Lectures De sacra poesi Hebrceorum (1753) were translated into German, and, enriched with Koppe's notes on the one and with those of Michaelis on the other, were among the revo- lutionary influences of that unsettled age in Germany. The third member of our trio is, from any point of view, an interesting phenomenon. Alexander Geddes was born of Roman Catholic parents in Banffshire in 1737, and studied at the Scottish College at Paris, his chief teacher of Hebrew being Ladvocat, Pro- fessor at the Sorbonne. For some years Geddes led a simple and studious life as priest of a Roman Catholic congregation near Aberdeen, and from Aberdeen University he received the honorary dis- tinction of a LL.D. degree. Difficulties having arisen from his liberal opinions, he came to London, where he became a notable figure in society, owing to his union of deep learning with wit and liberal opinions. Crabbe Robinson of course met him ; he speaks of Geddes's striking appearance, which re- minded him of Herder. 1 But again his liberal views, expressed with uncompromising frankness, brought Geddes into suspicion of heterodoxy, and without the help of his munificent patron, Lord Petre, he would scarcely have maintained his position. He himself, study of the literary aspects of the Old Testament' made no progress ; Lowth was a vox damantis in deserto, so far as England was concerned. 1 Diary, i. 113. GEDDES. 5 however, never swerved from his allegiance to his ancestral faith, and promoted the cause of moderate and reasonable orthodoxy by a courteous letter to Dr. Priestley, in which he argued that the divinity of Jesus Christ was in some sense held by the antc- Niccnc fathers. His great life-work, moreover, was one from which all Christian Churches might have profited — viz. the preparation of a new translation of the Bible with explanatory notes, and so much critical help as appeared necessary for educated and thoughtful readers. In 1786 he published a Prospectus of this work ; in 1787 a letter to the Bishop of London (Lowth) on the same subject, and in 1788 (in folio) proposals for printing this new version by subscription. He had much support from influential clergymen (notably Lowth and Kennicott), and in 1792 the first volume appeared, with a dedication to Lord Petre. 1 In the preface, however, he committed himself to critical views of the origin of the Pentateuch, and both Roman Catholics and Protestants opened their batteries upon him. He was, in fact, before his time, and knowing what he did of the temper of the Anglican bishops and the universities, 2 he should perhaps have seen the wisdom of reserving his critical views for a separate work. Vol. ii., continuing the work as far as Chronicles, appeared, under the patronage of 1 The title is as follows : The Holy Bible, or the Books ac- counted sacred ly Jews and Christians, faithfully translated front coi'rected Texts of the Originals, with J attOUS Readings, Explanatory Notes, and Critical Remarks. • See his letter to Eichhorn (Appendix to Memoir). 6 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. the Duchess of Gloucester, in 1797, but found no more friendly reception. The undaunted scholar, however, brought out a new work in 1800, entitled Critical Remarks on the Hebrezu Scriptures, correspond- ing with a new Translation of the Bible, but paid the penalty. He was suspended from his ecclesiastical functions — a lighter penalty, at any rate, than a poor Bavarian priest (Isenbiehl) had paid in 1778 for offering a critical interpretation of Isa. vii. 14. He died in 1802, leaving a nearly-finished translation of the Book of Psalms, 1 and found a competent bio- grapher in John Mason Good, the highly-cultured translator of the Song of Songs. The plan of Geddes's translation is admirable: as to its execution it would be ungenerous to make much of shortcomings which were inevitable a century ago. Even in the matter of style, one may venture to think that Geddes's ideal of a popular and comprehensible English was a better one than that of the learned Bishop Lowth. To say the least, he deserves to be had in honour as an early worker at the still unsolved problem of Bible-translation. But it is as a pioneer, and to some extent founder of criticism, that he chiefly interests us here. He was recognized by Eichhorn as " almost the only person " whose opinion on his own works he could listen to with respect, 2 1 This was published in 1807. 2 " Tu enim fere unicus es, quern, si liceret, judicem mihi ex- peterem ; quandoquidem tu in litteris biblicis habitas, in eodem stadio magna cum laude decurris, omnesque difficultates et molestias, quae talem cursum impediunt, ipsa experientia edoct- GEDDES. 7 and his Critical Remarks were partly translated into German, partly expanded by J. S. Vatcr in his Commentary on the Pentateuch (1S02-5), and so gave rise to what is commonly called the Gcddcs-Vater hypothesis. The following passages will probably interest the reader, as containing Gcddes's chief critical conclusions. They are taken from the preface to vol. i. of his Bible (pp. xviii — xix). " It has been well observed by Michaelis that all external testimony is here of little avail : it is from intrinsic evidence only that we must derive our proofs. Now, from intrinsic evidence, three things to me seem indubitable. istly, The Pentateuch, in its present form, was not written by Moses. 2dly, It was written in the land of Chanaan, and most probably at Jerusalem. 3dly, It could not be written before the reign of David, nor after that of Hezekiah. The long pacific reign of Solomon (the Augustan age of Judaea) is the period to which I would refer it : yet, I confess, there are some marks of a posterior date, or at least of posterior interpolation. " But although I am inclined to believe that the Pentateuch was reduced into its present form in the reign of Solomon, I am fully persuaded that it was compiled from ancient documents, some of which were coeval with Moses, and some even anterior to Moses. Whether all these were written records, or many of us, nosti, ut adeo nemo facile ad judicium tarn aequius quam rectius ferendum cogitari possit." — Letter to Geddes {Memoir, P- 543)- 8 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. them only oral traditions, it would be rash to deter- mine. . . . Moses, who had been taught all the wisdom of the Egyptians, most probably was the first Hebrew writer, or the first who applied writing to historical composition. From his journals a great part of the Pentateuch seems to have been compiled. Whether he were also the original author of the Hebrew cosmogony, and of the history prior to his own days, I would neither confidently assert, nor positively deny. He certainly may have been the original author or compiler ; and may have drawn the whole or a part of his cosmogony and general history, both before and after the deluge, from the archives of Egypt : and those original materials, collected first by Moses, may have been worked up into their present form by the compiler of the Pen- tateuch, in the reign of Solomon. But it is also possible, and I think more probable, that the latter was the first collector ; and collected from such documents as he could find, either among his own people, or among the neighbouring nations. " Some modern writers, indeed, allowing Moses to be the author of the Pentateuch, maintain that he composed the book of Genesis from two different written documents ; which they have attempted to distinguish by respective characteristics. Although I really look upon this as the work of fancy, and will elsewhere endeavour to prove it to be so, I am not so self-sufficient as to imagine that I may not be in the wrong, or that they may not be in the right. The GEDDES. 9 reader who wishes to see the arguments on which they ground their assertion, may consult Astruc or Eichhorn." Now, although this rejection of the " Document- hypothesis " of Eichhorn (the details of which Geddes proceeds to give) is not in itself a proof of sagacity, yet Wcstphal seems to me too warm in his invective against the " Geddes- Vater theory," or the "Fragment-hypothesis," as an ill-judged return to the crude ideas of Spinoza. The more correct view is certainly that given by Mr. Addis, whose words I have the more pleasure in quoting, because of the justice which he has done on an earlier page to Geddes, not only as a scholar but as a man. " The ' Fragment-theory ' was in some respects an advance upon Astruc and Eichhorn. It extended the investigation from Genesis and the beginning of Exodus to the whole Pentateuch, and ceased to assume that the only documents in the Pentateuch were documents used by Moses. It argued, with justice, that the Pentateuch is composed of sections, some of which had no original connection with each other, and that even the documents which use the word Elohim or Yahweh may be, and arc, of various origin. It failed to sec that the supposed ' fragments ' might, on closer inspection, form themselves into two or three documents." l Nor can it be said that Vater was wholly blind to 1 The Documents of the Hcxaieuch, vol. i. Introd. p. xxvii. IO FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. the evidence which led Astruc and Eichhorn to form the Document-theory. Vater expressly says that though the fragments of which the Pentateuch is composed had originally no connection, yet it is not impossible that some fragments of the same book may come from the same author, and he is willing to group his fragments in two great families — the Elohistic and the Jehovistic. Ilgen too, whom Westphal praises at the expense of Vater, maintains (as we shall see) that the contents of the three documents of Genesis are derived from as many as seventeen different sources. Two more short quota- tions from Vater's inspirer Geddes may be added, to illustrate his criticism of the contents of Genesis. " I will not pretend to say that [its history] is entirely unmixed with the leaven of the heroic ages. Let the father of Hebrew be tried by the same rules of criticism as Greek history." " Why might not the Hebrews have their mytho- logy as well as other nations ? and why might not their mythologists contrive or improve a system of cosmogony as well as those of Chaldaea, or Egypt, or Greece, or Italy, or Persia, or Hindostan ?" So then, in realistic as well as literary criticism Geddes is a convinced adherent of the principles of Eichhorn, from whom however, being a man of great intellectual independence, he does not scruple to differ upon occasion {e.g. on the meaning of Gen. iii.). That he has a claim to be reckoned among the founders of criticism, may be seen, not only GEDDES. I i from his influence on Vatcr, but by comparing him with our one eminent English pioneer of criticism, Thomas Hobbcs. 1 It is painful to think that the seed which Gcddes sowed fell, so far as England was concerned, on barren ground. What is the cause of this ? Geddcs, as we have seen, was no Deist, and, though a Roman Catholic, was socially and intellectually on a level with the best English Protestants. Anyone who would seek to answer this question would find — to apply some words of Mark Pattison — " that he had undertaken a perplexing but not altogether profitless inquiry." 2 At any rate, whether we can explain it or not, there are no more Englishmen to mention among the 1 Hobbes was the first modern writer who denied the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch as a whole on critical grounds. The view expressed by Siegfried, that he borrowed from Spinoza, is not in itself unplausible, since the theologico-political system of the Leviathan has points of affinity with that of Spinoza's Tractatus theologico-politicns, but is opposed to chronology, the former work having been published in 1651, nineteen years before Spinoza's great work appeared. That the English philosopher borrowed from Ibn Ezra (as seems to be suggested in Bacon's Ge?ics?'s of Genesis, Introd. p. xxiv) is of course not absolutely impossible, but considering Hobbes's singular origin- ality, is hardly probable. That Spinoza borrowed from Hobbcs is also possible, but most improbable, the indebtedness of the great Jewish thinker being rather to Jewish than to Western writers (putting aside Descartes). [The passages in Hobbcs are — Leviathan, part 3, ch. xxxiii. ; and in Spinoza, Tract, theol.-fiolit., ch. viii., " De origine Pentateuchi " ; see also ch. vii., " De interpretatione Scriptura?," and comp. Siegfried, Spinoza als Kritiker und Ausleger des Altcn Testaments (Bcrl. 1867).] - Essays and Reviews (ed. 1869, p. 39S). 12 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. founders or precursors of Old Testament criticism until we come to our own time. Indeed, I have only given these sketches of Warburton, Lowth, and Geddes because they were natives of Great Britain. Were I to linger over the continental pioneers of criticism — Baruch Spinoza, the lonely Jewish thinker of Amster- dam ; Richard Simon, the learned Oratorian of Paris ; Jean Leclerc, the French-Swiss Hebraist adopted by the Amsterdam Remonstrants ; and especially Jean Astruc, professor of medicine in various French colleges, — I should exceed the limits of this work, and enter into competition with an excellent American writer who has given us a monograph on the early critics of the Pentateuch, Dr. S. I. Curtiss of Chicago. 1 1 See his " Sketches of Pentateuch Criticism," Bibliotheca Sacra, Jan. and Oct. 1884, and comp. the parallel portions of Westphal's able work referred to in my preface. On Richard Simon see also Bernus, 7?. Simoii et son histoire critique (Lausanne, 1869), and a resume in the Revue des deux mondes. CHAPTER II. THE OPENING OF METHODICAL CRITICISM IN GERMANY — EICIIIIORN AND ILGEN. My own series of portraits of Old Testament critics begins with J. G. Eichhorn, whom, for reasons which I will give presently, I venture to call the founder of modern Old Testament criticism. I wish to show that he was not merely a "dry rationalist," as Mr. Addis represents, but a man of many-sided culture, and not without Church-feeling, a friend of science, and also a servant of religion, sensitive to the best influences of his time, though not in advance of his age. Eichhorn was born Oct. \6, 1752, and was the son of a pastor in a small principality now absorbed in the kingdom of Wurtemberg. At Easter 1770 he went to Gottingen, where the wise liberality of our George II., stimulated by his minister Miinchhauscn, had founded (in 1734) the famous Georgia Augusta university. There it was only natural that he should be profoundly affected by t\\Q genius loci. The spirit of classical literature and of historical research, equally with that of a moderate orthodox theology, could not fail to pass into his sensitive mind. These were all 14 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. subjects which Munchhausen as a statesman desired to foster, and they were cultivated with pre-eminent success in the old Gottingen university. In theology Eichhorn had among his teachers J. D. Michaelis, the Biblical scholar, and Walch, the not-yet-forgotten Church historian ; classical philology he studied under Heyne, who admitted him into his Seminar, and obtained for him in 1774 his first appointment as rector of the gymnasium at OhrdrufT, in the duchy of Gotha. How Eichhorn came to be smitten with the love of the East, it is not so easy to say. But the titles of his earliest works (from 1774 onwards) suffi- ciently prove that Mohammedan history, and Arabic and Syriac literature, were the favourite subjects of the young graduate, and this accounts for the fact that in 1775 he was appointed professor of Oriental lan- guages in the university of Jena, where in the preceding year he had already taken his doctor's degree. Hence it was not merely as a theologian (this he could not help being, for theology was then in the atmosphere) but as an Orientalist that he approached the study of the Old Testament. I would ask the reader to take special notice of this fact, because Eichhorn set the tone to his successors, by whom the Hebrew Scriptures were constantly treated, not merely as the vehicle of a revelation, but as in form Oriental books, to be interpreted in accordance with the habits of mind of Semitic peoples. (It is from Eichhorn and his more celebrated friend Herder that the custom of referring to the " Orientalism M of the Scriptures is mainly EICHHORN. 15 derived.) 1 must not pause here to defend or explain this " Orientalizing" " of books which the traditional orthodoxy had been accustomed to regard as in all senses unique. The best defence and explanation is to refer, not to the first tentative and faulty efforts of Eichhorn and Herder, but to works of our own time (belonging to different schools), which may be "known and read of all men." It would be possible, no doubt, to gather from Eichhorn explanations of miraculous narratives, and of difficult passages of prophecy, which strike even critics who are no apologists as immature and arbitrary. But this only shows that he is a be- ginner in the arduous work of entering into the ideas and circumstances of the Biblical writers, and that he sometimes forgets that, on his own theory, there is a divine element in the Bible which no other litera- ture contains in anything like the same degree. And if Eichhorn was sometimes unjust to Biblical narra- tives and prophecies, not only in his books, but in his academical lectures, yet this was the error of a good and Christian man, who was in his own way an apologist, 1 and whose reverent spirit could not but 1 Comp. Bertheau, art. "Eichhorn," in Herzog-Plitt, Real- encyclopedic, Bd iv. ; Westphal, Lcs sources, &c, i. 120. How- great was the need of critical apologists may be gathered from the appendix to the Wolfcnbitttcl Fragments published after Lessing's death in 1787, in which, while admitting the Mosaic redaction of the Pentateuch, Rcimarus inveighs passionately against the author or compiler. That Eichhorn was equal to the task* of defending Biblical religion against it> foes, 1 .mnot indeed be maintained (sec Blcck, Introduction (by Venables), § 8). His 1 6 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. neutralize any evil influence from his intellectual mistake. An early biographer in fact assures us that " faith in that which is holy even in the miracles of the Bible was never shattered by Eichhorn in any youthful mind." 1 Eichhorn, as we have seen, went to Jena in 1775. It was an event of great importance, both for his theological and for his general culture. Seldom has there been a theologian of such a width of interests as Eichhorn, and we can hardly help ascribing this to the varied intellectual stimulus which Jena at that time supplied. In that very same year another young man of promise entered the little duchy of Saxe Weimar : it was Goethe. And in the autumn of the following year, a slightly older man, destined to great things, followed his friend Goethe: it was Herder, who had accepted the office of Court Preacher and General Superintendent at Weimar. That Eichhorn took a keen interest in the literary movement of the time, is certain from his later works on the history of literature. It was his hope to contribute to the winning back of the educated classes to religion, and he may well have thought that in order to do this he must drink full draughts of general culture. In this enterprise he found a natural ally in Herder, who was a theologian among the litterateurs, as pupil Ewald was at any rate better equipped, both critically and religiously ; for he too was proud to be an " apologist." 1 H. Doring, in Ersch and Gruber's Allgemeine Eucydopddic y (I.) xxxi. (1838). EICHHORN. 17 Eichhorn was a litterateur among the theologians. The friends had their first meeting in the summer of 1780. They saw each other often, and began a regular correspondence. In 1780 appeared one of Herder's most charming books (the contents of which have now happily become commonplace l ) — the Letters on the Study of Theology; in 1782-83 his still more important work, The Spirit of Hebrezv Poetry. To both of these Eichhorn was able to give his hearty approval and admiration, and between the two ap- peared the first part of his own great work, the Introduction to the Old Testament (completed in 1783). It was a happy time of mutual intercourse and in- debtedness. I think it worth while to -state this, because M. Westphal has considerably exaggerated the dependence of Eichhorn on Herder. It is true that Eichhorn in his letters is never weary of con- fessing that he lives upon Herder's ideas, but it seems to me that it was chiefly a general fertilizing influence which the Weimar divine exercised upon the Jena professor. Such ideas as Eichhorn took from Herder were subjected by him to the testing 1 Herder's attitude towards the question of Bible inspiration, for instance, is that which all our best critical scholars now take up. " I take vastly more pleasure in winning a lively apprehen- sion of the divine in these writings," he says (Letter xii.), "than in racking my brains as to the exact manner in which it existed in the soul of the writers, or upon their tongue, or in their pen. We do not understand in what a number of human effects our soul displays itself, and shall we decide how manifoldly or how simply God works upon it ? We cannot get to the bottom of a single word of God in nature." C XS FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. of a cooler mind, and re-issued with the stamp of his own characteristic conceptions. On reading Eichhorn's third volume, Herder confesses in the frankest manner that his friend has anticipated him in a number of thoughts, as he himself had a few years before antici- pated Eichhorn. On the score of learning and critical power, M. Westphal would not deny that the superi- ority lies with Eichhorn, and Herder himself gener- ously admires the " treasures of knowlege, criticism, and taste " in his friend's work. What indeed would Herder have effected without such a helper as Eichhorn ? He could but give general ideas, and stir up an enthusiastic admiration for the " spirit of Hebrew poetry." But how few books were there that he could recommend for the study of details ! In the first edition of the Letters on Theology (1789), he has to admit that " we have not as yet a proper critical introduction to the Old Testament." In the second (1785) he appends to this the footnote, "We have it now in Eichhorn's valuable Introduction." But had Eichhorn no like-minded theological colleagues in Jena ? He had Griesbach, the famous New Testament text-critic, who could no doubt have cautioned him against attempting too much, and against neglecting accuracy in small things. Some- what later he had Doederlein, who was a bright, progressive scholar, remembered now chiefly by his Isaiah (1775), but in his own day noted as a reformer of the Biblical and other proofs of dogmatic theology. But Herder was all the more valuable to Eichhorn EICHHORN. 19 because he was not a professor ; width of range, literary insight, and Church-feeling, were Hcrderian characteristics which Eichhorn needed to carry out his mission. Afterwards it was concentration and the minute study of details that were needed ; and then a crowd of illustrious workers appeared — the true "founders of criticism." But all these stand on the shoulders of Herder and Eichhorn, and even if but little of their historical construction should be left standing, Old Testament scholars will still be bound to respect them as pioneers. Well does the aged Goethe, in the notes to the Westostlicher Divan, congratulate himself on having known the time when Herder and Eichhorn together opened up to himself and his contemporaries a new source of pure delight in the Biblical literature ! Would that he could have gone further, and expressed obligations of another and a still higher character. For Herder at any rate was a prophet. 1 In 1788 Eichhorn's residence at Jena came to a close. He was invited back to Gottingen as an ordinary professor in the faculty of philosophy. He found his old professors, Michaelis and Hcync. still alive. With the former he had only three more years of intercourse, and this intercourse does not appear to have been altogether friendly. The great classical scholar Heyne, however (who died in 18 12), must have welcomed him with open arms. For in 1 Haym, Herder nath scincm Lcben und sei/ieu Werken^ ii. (1885), PP- 1S5, 186. 20 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. 1789 came an official letter to Herder in Heyne's hand, in which the great poet and theologian was invited to Gottingen as professor of history and chief university preacher. One of the principal arguments urged by Heyne was this — that the theo- logical atmosphere in the university had completely changed, and that even those who had once been hostile to Herder (this was the second time that he had a chance of going to Gottingen) now regarded him as a pillar of the Church. 1 How would Eichhorn have rejoiced, if his friend could have joined him in the un- romantic and quarrelsome northern university ! But it was not to be — Herder, as his friends said, was " too good to be a professor," and was persuaded to remain at Weimar. Eichhorn, at any rate, was not discouraged. He lectured, we are told, twenty-four hours, or more, in the week, 2 and not only on the Semitic languages, but on the whole of the Bible, 3 and even on political history. Another Fetch, moreover — that of the history of literature — was committed entirely to him. That he lectured thus widely, one cannot, in the interests of accurate study, help regretting. One thinks of Renan's dream of devoting one lifetime to Semitic philology, another to history, and so forth ; here is a scholar of such versatility and power, that he can do two or three men's work in one lifetime. How much of this work of Eichhorn's really influenced the 1 Haym. 2 Bertheau. 3 His Introduction to the N. T., which appeared in 1804 — 1 814, may especially be mentioned. KICHHORN. 21 progress of science, is of course another question. He taught many things, and produced many works ; but did he attain many important results ? It may be doubted. On the other hand, he must have stimulated many younger men, and by his books and innumerable articles he opened many discussions, both on the Old and on the New Testament, which lasted for a long time afterwards. He had the privilege of dying in the midst of his work, full of honours, June 27, 1827. His son, K. F. Eichhorn, was the celebrated jurist and Prussian Minister of Worship, a friend and admirer of Schleiermacher, though rather on his practical than on his more strictly theological side. Let me then pass over all Eichhorn's minor works (with just a brief reference to his services as a re- viewer of contemporary literature, from which I have elsewhere derived profit myself), 1 and confine my attention to his Introduction to the Old Testament. The success of this work was phenomenal ; it went through four editions in the author's lifetime, be- sides two pirated editions, and exercised as much influence upon opinion in that day as Wellhauscn's Prolegomena has done in our own time. A long list of books might be given in proof of the latter statement, instead of which I will simply quote the calm assur- ance of J. P. Gabler, " the father of Biblical theo- logy" (who in 1791-93 republished Eichhorn's early 1 Cheync, Job and Solomon, p. 260. 22 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. work, Die Urgeschichte} with an introduction), that the analysis of Genesis into two documents " can in our day be regarded as settled and pre-supposed, with- out fear of any important opposition." 2 This remark of course only applies to Germany. In England the book only seems to have had one warm friend (besides Dr. Geddes) — the Regius Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, H. Lloyd, who tried in vain to obtain church and university patronage for a translation. The style of Eichhorn's Introduction has been called rhetorical. Certainly it contrasts with the conventional style of seventeenth-century theology. But this was one chief element in its success ; it was written for Herder and for Goethe, as well as for Michaelis and the Zunfttheologen. As the author himself observes, a new writer is bound to make concessions to the fashionable literary tone, and, as one may add, this work was not only by a new writer, but was the first of its kind, for neither Carpzov nor even Michaelis can be said to enter at all into com- petition with Eichhorn. Let us listen to his own words — " My greatest trouble I had to bestow on a hitherto 1 A critical examination of the narratives in the early part of Genesis, which first appeared anonymously in Eichhorn's Repertorium (for Biblical and Oriental literature) in 1779. Gabler was about the same age as Eichhorn, and was one of his earliest disciples at Jena, where he afterwards became a professor. Cf. Krummacher's sketch of him in his Autobio- graphy (Edinb. 1867), p. 68. 2 Quoted by Dr. Briggs, Presbyterian Review, iv. 91. EICHHORN. 23 un worked field — on the investigation of the inner nature of the several writings of the Old Testament with the help of the Higher Criticism (not a new name to any humanist)." l By " higher criticism " he means the analysis of a book into its earlier and its later elements. He comes forward as a defender of the " genuineness " of the books of the Old Testa- ment, but in order to prove this " genuineness," he claims the right to assume that " most of the writings of the Hebrews have passed through several hands." This, he remarks, has been the fate of all ancient books, and he adds that — " Even the manner in which many of the writings of the Old Testament came into existence makes it necessary that there should be in them an alterna- tion of old and new passages and sections. Very few of them came from the hand of their authors in their present form." 2 It is true that Eichhorn had been preceded, at least as a critic of Genesis, by Astruc. One might naturally infer from the similarity of their results that Eichhorn was indebted to his predecessor. In this case, the credit due to Eichhorn would still be great, for with- out him, it might be contended, Astruc's results would have been as completely lost to science as those of Ilgen were afterwards. But it has been proved by Boehmer and Westphal that Astruc's work was only known to Eichhorn at second hand. When therefore 1 Preface to second edition. - EinleUung, i. 92. 24 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. the latter makes the positive assertion that he has arrived at his results independently of Astruc, we have no reason for doubting his veracity ; and when he lays claim to being the first to observe the dupli- cate narrative of the flood in Genesis, we both may and must accept his statement (the article by Michaelis, which was one of Eichhorn's chief sources of informa- tion respecting Astruc, misrepresents that critic's view of Gen. vii.). And now as to Eichhorn's conclusions, more especially with regard to the Pentateuch. 1 The early history, he thinks, is made up chiefly of two docu- ments, Jehovistic and Elohistic, the former of which ends shortly before the death of Joseph (Gen. 1. 14), the latter with the first public appearance of Moses (Ex. iii. 25). These documents, according to him, were combined as they now stand at the end of the Mosaic age, or soon afterwards, though often in fragmentary form, and with not unfrequent glosses. 2 The lives of Abraham and of Isaac are almost entirely taken from the Jehovistic, those of Jacob and of Joseph from the Elohistic source. The four later " books of Moses" grew out of separate writings of Moses and of some of his contemporaries. Among the many features of this part of the Einleitung which deserve 1 Einleitung, iii. (Mosaische Schriften). I have used the fourth edition (1823). 2 Eichhorn also admits certain separate documents, viz. ii. 4 — iv. 24; xiv. ; xxxiii. 18 — xxxiv. 31 ; xxxvi. ; xlix. 1 — 27. He thinks too that chap. x. may have been borrowed by the Jehovist from the Phoenicians. EICHHORN. 25 notice are the thoughtful characterization of the documents (in which the Jchovist is rightly dis- tinguished from the Elohist by a diversity of ideas as well as of language), and the distinction between the priests' code of the middle books, and the people's law-book in Deuteronomy. Nothing, we are assured, hangs on the name of the compiler. 1 As to Eich- horn's analysis, it is surely a proof of his sagacity (as well as of the cogency of the evidence) that he has assigned to the Elohist almost all those passages of Genesis which are now unanimously assigned by analysts to the document commonly designated PC or P. These are better grounds for a favourable verdict upon Eichhorn's critical character than those apologetic tendencies which conciliated the regard of the late learned but uncritical Dr. Edersheim. 2 It is a defect and not a merit of Eichhorn that he still thinks the cause of true religion (or at any rate of the Bible) to be to some extent bound up with the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch. One may excuse him (having regard to the recent Deistic controversy), but one cannot help regretting that even he was touched by the polemical spirit. His other critical results need not be catalogued here. Suffice it to say that, compared with later critics, he is strikingly conserv- 1 In the edition of 1790 Eichhorn says that Moses may have written, or compiled, the books of the Pentateuch. This state- ment was afterwards modified. 2 Prophecy and History, &c. (1885), pp. 194 — 196. Appendix 1. gives Eichhorn's distribution of Genesis in three parallel columns. 26 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. ative, though even he has a clear perception of the Maccabaean date of Dan. vii. — xii. The religious con- tents of the several books do not, however, receive their due from this early critic, who was a child of the Aiifklarung, though, partly through the influence of Herder, he strove to overcome its prejudices. In this respect, as we shall see later, he contrasts strik- ingly with his great disciple, Ewald. From Eichhorn it is natural to pass to Karl David Ilgen (1763 — 1834), who was Eichhorn's successor at Jena, and most effectually supplemented his critical work on Genesis. In Ilgen the school-master dwarfed the scholar ; he is now remembered chiefly as Rector of the scholastic foundation of Schulpforte (for which he did fully as much as Arnold did for Rugby), and as the teacher of the great classical scholar, Gottfried Hermann. A striking sketch of his appearance and character is given by Otto Jahn in his memorial sketch of Hermann, for every word of which there is authority in the short but interesting Latin biography of Ilgen by F. K. Kraft. That such a man should be an eminent Biblical critic, would be surprising in our day, but in the infancy of criticism, when all problems were new, and at any rate appeared simple, it was nothing extraordinary. Ilgen's classical scholarship was extensive, and due more to his own exertions than to his teachers ; he was not disposed to fall in with routine, and when duty or inclination called him to Biblical research, it was only to be expected that there should be some fair fruits of his [LGEN. 27 studies. It was in 1789 (while Rector of the gym- nasium at Naumburg) that he made his first contri- bution to Old Testament criticism, entitled Jobi antiquissimi carminis Hebraici natura atquc virtutes. I will not claim much merit for this early work, which, as Ewald remarks {Das Buck /job, 1854, " Vorrede," p. xx), nowhere touches solid ground, and actually propounds the hypothesis that the Book of Job is a pre-Mosaic, non-Israclitish work. The hypothesis has long since become antiquated, but seemed not improbable to many scholars of that period, 1 so that we need not wonder that its author was appointed to the professorship vacated by Eichhorn in 1788, and, as it would seem, not. at once filled up. 2 While at Jena (1794 — 1802) Ilgen threw himself into the varied intellectual interests of the place — those were the palmy days when Fichte and Schelling, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and the Schlegels adorned its university. He lectured, we arc told, both on the Hebrew Scriptures and on the history of philosophy/ 3 and was strengthened in the resolution to practise Biblical criticism " with the same subtlety with which one is wont to practise Greek and Latin literature." In 1795 he brought out a Commcntatio 1 Cheyne, Job and Solomon, p. 97. 2 I follow the very positive statement of Kraft {Vita llgcnii, 1S37, p. 49). 3 The famous rationalist Paulus, too, thought it a theologian's duty to follow the progress of philosophy (letter to decides in Good's Memoir of ' Gcddcs, p. 540), though he never became very philosophical. 28 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. de notione tituli Filii Dei (referred to by De Wette in his early work on Deuteronomy), and in 1799 a critical edition of Tobit (the only special treatise on that book mentioned by De Wette in his Introduction). Between these less important works falls one of which I give the title in full, — Die Urkunden des Jerusalem' 'schen Tempelarchivs in Hirer Urgestalt, als Beytrag zur BericJitigung der Geschichte der Religion tuid Politik aus dem Hebrd- ischen mit kritischen und erkldrenden Aninerkiingen, auch mancherley dazu gehorigen Abhandlungen^ von Karl David Ilgen, Prof, der Philosophic und der oriental. Literatur in Jena. Erster Theil. Halle, 1798. The merits of this remarkable work were to some extent recognized by Ewald (at a time, as Ewald remarks, when his deserts were very generally over- looked) in the first volume of his History (ed. 1), but it is only of late years that his right place as a " founder of criticism " has been assigned to him. Although I have not been able myself to see the book on which his fame rests, 1 I venture to endorse the praise which it has lately received from others. It has evidently some rare merits, and its equally striking defects may easily be pardoned in consider- ation of its very early date. The thesis which it supports is briefly this. The Book of Genesis, as it stands, is composed of seventeen documents, which originally had a separate existence. They proceed, 1 Ilgen's book is, in fact, rarer than Astruc's Conjectures. ILGEN. 29 however, from (probably, or at any rate possibly) not more than three independent writers, whom Ilgen calls respectively Sophcr Eliel liavishdn, Sophcr Elicl JiasJisJicni, and SopJicr ElijaJi hat is lion {i.e. the first and second Elohist, and the first Yahwist), and whose dates he reserves for future consideration. To recognize and reconstitute these records is no doubt difficult, but this is simply owing to the mutilation which they could not help suffering at the hands of the redactor. Those who are acquainted with recent criticism will at once be struck by the modern air of Ilgen's theory, and will perhaps be surprised that its merits were so long overlooked. The reason is that the more cautious analysts who followed Ilgen and Dc Wette were startled by Ilgen's large concession to the adherents of the Fragment-hypothesis. They also took offence at his frequent and apparently arbitrary alterations of the divine names, his partiality for the readings of the LXX. and the Samaritan Pentateuch, and his breaking up of the text into minute fragments. More than fifty years afterwards, when the fair-minded Hupfeld read the book, he was repelled (as he informs us) by these characteristics, and it was only after he had himself rediscovered the "second Elohist" that he perceived how many points of contact his own analysis had with Ilgen's, and how many delicate observations his predecessor had made on the linguistic usage of the documents. 1 In our 1 Die Quellen tier Genesis (1S53), " Vorrcde." pp. viii— x. 30 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. own day there are many critics of Genesis who trace the hand of a second Yahwist (the Yahwists were, in fact, perhaps a school of writers) ; and this too has been anticipated by Ilgen, who, as we have seen, designates one of the writers in Genesis, " the first Sopher Elijah." 1 No wonder that contemporary scholars are loud in their admiration of this neglected critic, whose achievements in Genesis, had he been able to continue his analysis of the Pentateuch, might have been followed up by others equally brilliant. But in 1802 Ilgen left Jena for Schulpforte, and so his work remained a torso ; Part II. never appeared. 1 See especially Westphal, Les sources, &c, torn, i., who gives on pp. 140-41 a conspectus of Ilgen's analysis, and Cornill, Einleitiuig^yp. 19-20. Both refer to Ilgen's admirable treatment of the composite story of Joseph, in which this early critic an- ticipates the best points of Wellhausen's analysis. CHAPTER III. DE WETTE — GESENIUS. To the same little German duchy, to which we arc in some sense indebted both for Eichhorn and for Ilgen, we owe the subject of our next sketch — W. M. L. De Wette. This great theologian, whose life is so full of suggestiveness to thoughtful readers, was born at Ulla, near Weimar, Jan. 12, 1780. He was the eldest son of the pastor of the place, and was educated at the Weimar gymnasium. During his school-time he came into contact with Herder, whose pleasantness as an examiner and sweet seriousness as a preacher were printed deep in the lad's memory. In 1799 he went to the university of Jena, where for a time Gabler and Paulus converted him to their own cold and superficial rationalism, from the depressing effects of which he was rescued, as he tells us himself, through philosophy. His deliverer was, however, not Schelling (whom he heard with admiration but without conviction), but J. F. Fries, a too little known philosopher, brought up, like Schlciermachcr, among the Moravian Brethren, and full of strong religious instincts, who sought to unite the criticism of Kant 32 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. with the faith-philosophy of Jacobi. In 1805 De Wette took his doctor's degree and became privat- docent) offering for his dissertation a treatise on Deuteronomy, 1 in which this among other critical points is argued with much force — that on internal grounds Deuteronomy must be of later origin than the rest of the Pentateuch, and that the kernel of it was written in the reign of Josiah. Some of the critical views expressed or suggested in this work agreed with those of Vater in a famous dissertation appended to his commentary on the Pentateuch, but the generous interest displayed by this scholar in his young rival induced the latter to go on with the preparation of a larger work. This appeared in two duodecimo volumes in 1806-7 under the title of Contributions to Old Testameiit Introduction (I will call it henceforth the Beitrage), with a sensible but cautious preface to vol. i. by Griesbach. The opinions which it expressed were, it is true, modified in many respects in the author's later works, and not without cause. In vol. i. De Wette certainly deals too M rigorously and vigorously " (as Matthew Arnold would say) with the Books of Chronicles ; in vol. ii. he under-estimates the historical element in the narratives of the Pentateuch. His views on the composition of the Pentateuch are also of a highly provisional character ; he hovers between the Frag- ment- and the Document-hypothesis, and though he 1 This tractate is reprinted in De Wette's Opuscula (Berlin, 1833). DE WETTE, 33 is evidently not hopeless of reconciling them, he cannot formulate a distinct theory of his own. Still the work is full of promise, and the youthful author deserves high credit for the large element of truth in all his theories. As Wellhausen remarks, he was the first who clearly felt the inconsistency between the supposed starting-point of Israelitish history and that history itself. And if in his present stage he is too severe both on Chronicles and on the Pentateuch, his predecessor Eichhorn was undeniably too lenient, and the particular critical hypothesis (known as the Supplement-theory) for which De Wctte prepared the way, formed a necessary stage in the progress of Pentateuch-criticism. Against these merits .must we set the demerit of undevoutness ? Let that harshest of contemporary critics, Lagarde, answer. " I re- member," he says, " how De Wette's Beitrdge, against which Hengstenberg warned [every one], worked upon me. [I found in the author] a truthfulness and honesty beyond reproach, with but few results except that great one produced sooner or later upon all candid minds by him who walks before God." * Let us pause a moment here. If it be true (with qualifications) that every earnest thinker passes through three stages — a stage of seeking, a stage of finding, and a stage of applying the truth found to practical life — in which of these stages is De Wette ? I think that he has already entered on the second. 1 Mittheilungen^ iv. (1891), p 58. 34 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. He has not indeed reached mature and definite critical views, but he is in advance of older workers in the same field, while theologically he has begun to scale the height, from which he hopes to look down on the lower hills of rationalism and orthodoxy. It may be true (see Griesbach's preface to Beitrage, vol. i.) that he is at present impeded in his studies by poverty. But his first publication will soon alter this : the com- pleted Beitrcige will be his passport to a professorship. In fact, the university of Heidelberg borrowed rather largely at this time from Jena. Three eminent members, past or present, of the teaching body of Jena were appointed to chairs at Heidelberg — Fries the philosopher in 1805, De Wette in 1807, an d Paulus in 181 1. The two friends, Fries and De Wette, were thus reunited, much to the advantage of the latter. A beautiful relation sprung up between them of which we have a fine monument in the dedication of De Wette's first book on Christian Ethics. De Wette had also at this time a growing consciousness that a Biblical critic should work, not merely for criticism's sake, but for the good of the Church. He saw therefore that he must not altogether neglect either historic or theoretic theology. The fruits of this expanded view of duty were not however at once apparent outside his lecture-room. His next work was an attempt to make the results of linguistic Bible-study accessible to the Church at large. It was a new translation of the Old Testament, undertaken by De Wette and J. C. W. Augusti together. This DE WETTE. 35 work appeared in 1809, and was completed by a similar version of the New Testament in 1814 (by Dc Wette alone). 1 All honour to Dc Wcttc for the combination of frankness and considerateness which this noble work displays ! In 1 8 10 a great event occurred, which had important consequences for De Wette — the foundation of the university of Berlin. Schleiermachcr was the first theological professor appointed, and through his influence De Wette and the speculative theologian Marheincke were called to Berlin from Heidelberg ; Neander (put forward by Marheineke) came from the same university later (18 13). Here De Wette passed eight years full of delightful academical and literary work. 2 With a character deepened by the trials through which Germany had been called to pass, and a mind susceptible to all progressive ideas, he took his place among some of the noblest of scholars, and contributed to the success of that great creation of Stein and Humboldt — the Berlin university. It is during this period of his life that the third stage in De Wette's development becomes fully revealed. No one can any longer mistake the positiveness of his theology, and the practical character of his aims. Not that criticism is abandoned — far from it ; but it 1 In the second edition of this version of the Bible ( 1 S3 1) the books originally rendered by Augusti were retranslated by De Wette. The third edition appeared in 183S. 2 A valuable record of this period exists in Liicke's memorial sketch of De Wette, Theol. Studicn mid Kritikcn, 1850, Heft 3, p. 497, &C 36 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. becomes more distinctly subordinate to the higher end of promoting the religious life of the Church. In 1813 De Wette published the first part of his Christian Dogmatics^ dealing with the Biblical division 1 (part ii. on Protestant theology, appeared in 18 16) ; in 1815 a smaller supplementary treatise, On Religion and Theology ; in 18 19, his justly admired Christian Ethics (part iii., 1823), with the charming dedication to which I referred above. The last of these works does not concern us here, but the two former, in so far as they deal with the question of " Biblical myths," cannot be passed over. 2 Several of those who were students at that time have recorded the powerful impression which they produced. " De Wette," says one, " in his little work on Religion and Theology^ a work breathing a youthful inspiration, placed before us a new theological structure corre- sponding to our wishes," i. e. a system which provided a via media between a repellent rationalism and a not very attractive orthodoxy. " Indeed," this writer adds, " we now believed that we had won back, in an ennobled form, that which had been torn from us, and only at a later period discovered the delusion (? illusion) by which we had been misled." 3 Such 1 The full title of Part I. is, Biblische Dogmatik des A. und N. T.; oder kritische Darstelhmg der Religionslehre des Hebra- t'smus, des Judenthums, und des Urchristenthums. 2 For a sketch of the theory of religion contained in them, see Pfleiderer, Development of Theology, pp. 99 — 102. 3 Krummacher, Autobiography (1869), p. 59; comp. Liicke, Theol. Stud. u. Krit., 1850, p. 502, who however only gave up DE WT.TTE. 37 is the honest verdict of a practical theologian, who had neither time nor ability to rectify the defects in De Wctte's system, and who, finding it faulty, pronounced it an illusion, but would not deny the pleased surprise with which he had at first greeted it. Into the causes of De Wctte's partial failure, this is not the place to enter. Suffice it to say that in some of his root- ideas he appears to have been before his time. Arch- bishop Benson has lately admitted the possibility that the Divine Spirit may have made use of " myths," and the influence of Ritschl and Lipsius proves that an unmetaphysical but not irrational theology is becoming more and more attractive in the land of Luther. As to the value of De Wette's third work, the Biblical Dogmatics, no doubt happily can exist. It not only forms, historically, a much-needed anti- thesis to the " naturalism " of Gramberg and his school, but, though somewhat painfully thin, presents many permanent results of criticism in a lucid form. The second edition is graced by a charming and memorable dedication to Schleiermachcr. I remarked just now that criticism was not wholly abandoned by De Wette at this period. Two remark- able works are the proof of this — his Commentary o)i the Psalms (i 8 1 1) and his Historico- Critical Introduction to the Canonical and Apocryphal Books of the Old Testament (1817). 1 The former work, disappointing De Wette's theology because Schleiermacher's suited him better, not because it was too radical. 1 Six editions of the Introduction appeared in the author's 38 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. as it is when judged by our present critical and linguistic standard, marks a turning-point in the exe- gesis of the Psalms. " He was the first," as Delitzsch observes, "to clear away the rubbish under which exposition had been buried, and to introduce into it taste, after the example of Herder, and gram- matical accuracy, under the influence of Gesenius." He does not however do justice to the religious origin and theological ideas of the Psalms, which he treats as merely so many national hymns. In his views of the dates of the Psalms, he represents a necessary reaction against the extravagant or at least prema- ture positiveness of Rudinger and Venema. He declines altogether to dogmatize on the occasions when the Psalms were composed, but speaks with no uncertain sound of the historical worthlessness of the so-called tradition. On this point his subsequent course is already foreshadowed in his Beitrage, where he frankly declares (i. 158) that "David is as much a collective name as Moses, Solomon, Isaiah." He also gives valuable hints on the marks of originality and imitation in the Psalms, but when he does venture on a positive opinion as to dates, he is not always equally critical ; for instance, he thinks that Ps. xlv. is a post- Exilic work, and that it is " most appropriately referred to a non-Jewish king." 1 This is in part certainly lifetime. The seventh (1852) was edited by Stahelin ; for the eighth (1869), tne work was revised and partly recast by Prof. Schrader, then of Zurich. I may also mention De Wette's handbook to Hebrew Archaeology (18 14). 1 De Wette rejects the Messianic interpretation as " incon- DE w kti i . 39 correct, in part a plausible opinion. But the same De Wette actually thinks it possible that Ps. exxxii. may be the work of Solomon, which Hitzig severely but not unjustly describes as a "critical curiosity." Long afterwards, De Wette sought to make good one of the chief defects of his book by a short tractate On the Practical (erbaulicli) Explanation of the Psalms (1836). The booklet is, naturally enough, in some respects meagre ; how indeed could a practical ex- planation of this monument of the Jewish Church be produced for the educated class without a much deeper insight into Biblical theology than even in 1836 the author possessed? But on the subject of inspiration it contains hints which well deserve to be pondered by English students (see especially p. 12). One of De Wette's most striking faculties — that of condensation and lucid exposition — is specially notice- able in his second critical work of this period. What a pronounced opponent thought of the Introduction to the Old Testament, may be seen from these words of Heil on the posthumous Introduction of Bleek. 1 " As our final judgment, we can only state that Bleek's independent conclusions have long since been published by himself in separate dissertations, while the remainder does but reproduce the well-known results of rationalistic criticism, which are put to- sistent with the Hebrew Christology." He is favourably inclined towards a conjecture of his friend Augusti, that the author of Ps. xlv. is Mordecai. 1 Quoted by the editors of Bleek's Einleitung, [>. 21, 40 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. gether and developed in a much more acute, clever, thorough, tasteful, and complete manner in the Intro- duction of De Wette." I will not here question this " final judgment" on Bleek, but merely call attention to the earnest study of De Wette which the words of the old apologist imply, and the respect with which this study has in- spired him. Other voices, less friendly in tone, have also been heard ; the charge of instability has been freely brought against De Wette, on the ground of the variations of view in the successive editions of both his Introductions. Is the accusation justified ? It is an interesting question, because, should criticism some day be more largely represented in England, the same charge will doubtless be confidently brought against eminent English theologians. And one may reply that it is only justified, if it can be shown that De Wette never reached firm, definite, and consistent critical principles. Change of opinion on problems which from the nature of the evidence cannot with complete certainty be decided, can be no fault, and if due to honest, hard work is a subject for praise rather than blame. Constant development is the note of a great and not of a small character ; and he is a poor critic who does not criticize himself with even more keenness than he criticizes tradition. In his willingness to reconsider disputable points De Wette sets an example not unworthy of imitation. As one who knew him says, " he was free from all magisterial obstinacy and vanity, and it cost him DE WETTE. 41 nothing to give up even favourite opinions, when the truth was placed before him, and to accept without hesitation even from his junior that which he re- cognized to be better and more correct." 1 Into the details of De Wette's changes as an Old Testament critic, I cannot here enter. Suffice it to say that in the early editions of his Introduction his attitude was predominantly negative. However strongly he felt the difficulties of the traditional views, he could not readily accept the constructive criticism of bolder scholars. Whether he ever attained to a sufficiently positive standpoint of his own, whether in fact he ever gained a large and consistent critical theory, is a delicate question, upon which I may venture to offer an opinion at the close of this sketch. We have seen that De Wette began his career as a somewhat too pronounced negative critic, and that even when he had reconquered more than his old devoutness, he did not lay aside the sword of criticism. "Only the perfect in its kind is good," he said ; "there- fore let us venture into unknown fields, trusting to the Guardian of the Church to overrule all things for the best."' 2 He had found a subjective reconciliation of reason and faith, and by his philosophy of religion and his symbolic view of Biblical narratives he sought to provide a similar reconciliation for others. This 1 Liicke, "Zur Erinnerung an Dc Wette,'' Thcol. Stud. u. Krit n 1850, p. 507. 2 A paraphrase of the last two sentences of the Beiii (Bd. ii.). 42 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. however was a thing hitherto unknown among theo- logical paradoxes. Devout philosophy was rare ; but devout criticism like De Wette's was unique. His philosophic theology and his symbolizing criticism were alike uncanny to certain devout but narrow- minded " pietists " at Berlin. And when to these two dangerous peculiarities was added a political liberalism, not less intense indeed than that of Schleiermacher, but less under the control of prudence, it will be clear that De Wette's path was not likely to be strewn with roses, for the pietists and the ultra- conservative politicians were allies. De Wette's chief comfort was in the new friendships which opened themselves to him at Berlin. Younger men found an attraction in his freedom from donnishness and youth- ful readiness to hear others, and preferred, if not his theories themselves, yet his lucid and intelligible way of expressing them, to the dark Heraclitean manner of his colleague Schleiermacher. It was one of these juniors (Liicke) who brought De Wette into closer contact with the latter, by inducing him to attend the church where Schleiermacher ministered; 1 as soon as De Wette discovered the deep religious basis of that great teacher, he gave himself up without reserve to one who was only too glad of his friendship. 1 For specimens of his sermons, see Selected Sermons of ScJdeiermacher* by Mary F. Wilson (Hodder and Stoughton). Of course, the brief biographical sketch prefixed is only meant to excite an appetite for fuller knowledge. Lagarde's contempt for the piety of Schleiermacher {Mittheilungcn, iv. 5, 8, &c.) is surely not justified by the facts of his life and writings. DE WETTE. 45 Different as the two men were, they had one thing in common — a complexity of character which brought them for a time into some obloquy. In De Wettc the keen literary and historical critic existed side by side with the devout religious thinker ; in Schleier- macher the analyst and dialectician made terms with the Christian and the constructive thinker. 1 The tree of friendship grew, and no storms of time could over- throw it. They had indeed one serious dissension ; Schleiermacher favoured the appointment of Hegel in 1S16 ; De Wettc (who wished to bring Fries from Jena) belonged to a minority of professors who opposed it. But this was soon forgotten, and when in 1817 the position of De Wette seemed to be be- coming precarious, Schleiermacher (himself not free from suspicion) prefixed to one of his books 2 a dedication to De Wette which for generosity and for courageous speaking of the truth is unsurpassable in theological literature. Two years later, the storm which had long been gathering discharged itself upon De Wette under circumstances which no one could have anticipated. In 18 1 7 the prolific dramatist Kotzebue had been appointed a Russian State-councillor, with a salary of 1 5,000 roubles, and been "sent to reside in Germany, to report upon literature and public opinion." Natur- 1 See a remarkable description of the latter reconciled anti- thesis in Bluntschli, Denkwiirdigkeiten Bd. i. . - It is the Critical Essay on the Writings of Luk\\ translated by (Bishop] Connop Thirhvall. 44 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. ally enough, he incurred the displeasure of the Liberals, and especially of the young Liberal students, who were then counted by hundreds in Germany. One of these, named Sand, conceiving Kotzebue to be dangerous to freedom, murdered him, March 28, 1 8 19. The event produced a sensation throughout Germany, and the cry arose among the reactionary party, "The professors and the students are Kotzebue's murderers." Among the most obnoxious Liberal pro- fessors were Arndt, Welcker, Schleiermacher, and De Wette. 1 It is almost incredible, considering the known activity of the secret police, that one of these professors actually wrote a letter to Sand's mother, expressing not only condolence but appreciation of the patriotic spirit in which the blameworthy act had been per- formed. " Only according to his faith is each man judged. Committed as this deed has been by a pure- minded, pious youth, it is a beautiful sign of the time," and, though not concealing his own abhorrence of as- sassination, De Wette referred in the postscript to Jean Paul's idealistic judgment on Charlotte Corday. 2 No one knew how this letter fell into the hands of the police, but it was suspected that Baron von Kottwitz, the leader of the Berlin pietists, was foremost in urging the Prussian King (Frederick William III.) to take strong measures against the writer. Strange paradox ! A scoffer, who described Christianity brought to old Prussia as " a poisonous flower planted in the midst 1 See Life and Adventures of Arndt (1879), p. 376. 2 Frank, art. "de Wette," in Herzog-Plitt, EncycL, Bd. xvii. DE WETTE. 45 of the dry and dead cross," 1 becomes in death the protege of devout ascetics, and the hireling of a foreign power dictates the expulsion of one of Germany's best patriots. A large part of the university keenly felt the irony of the circumstances. The faculty of theo- logy, led by Schleicrmachcr, did all in its power to save one of its ablest members, and when De Wette's fate was irrevocably decided, the students presented him with a silver cup, bearing as an inscription the closing words of the great Reformation hymn — Nehmen sie den Leib, Gut, Ehr', Kind und Weib : Lass fahren dahin, Sie haben 's kein Gewinn ; Das Reich muss uns doch bleiben. So De Wettc sadly but proudly left his home, re- gretted by all who knew him, especially by Schleier- macher. From the Latin biography of Ilgen I learn that the chair which he thus vacated was offered to, but not accepted by, that acute critic of Genesis. De Wette retired to his native Weimar, nor can one help admiring the moral courage with which he bore his misfortune. To say, with an American biography, that he permanently suffered under a sense of in- justice, shows a want of psychological insight. His enemies did but act according to their nature ; how then should he accuse them of injustice ? That he felt the consequences of their act, need not be denied. But at first he did not even feel them as much as one 1 Quoted in art. " Grundtvig," Herzog-Plitt, v. 462. 46 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. might expect. It seemed to him as if God had called him to another important sphere of work, from which as a theologian he could not but derive profit — that of preaching the Gospel. And while waiting for a summons from the congregation he took up his pen to show that his old doubts had but issued in a firmer Christian character. In 1822 he published a "story with a purpose," called Theodore, or the Consecration of the Doubter, which, good in itself, had the additional merit of calling forth Tholuck's equally autobio- graphical story, The True Consecration of the Doubter. 1 And as a fresh proof of his attachment to the principles of the Reformation, De Wette prepared a critical edition of the letters and other papers of Luther, which however only appeared in 1825 — 1828 (5 vols.). Once during this waiting period he had the pleasure of meeting his old friends Schleiermacher and Liicke at Nordhausen. Liicke has described to us the scene. Friends were coming together in Schleiermacher's room for breakfast. The host sat by himself correct- ing the proofs of the notes (most remarkable notes) to the new edition of his Reden ilber die Religion. The others listened to De Wette, as he fervently declaimed on the beauty of the preacher's office, and his own 1 The full title is, Die Leh?'e von der Siinde imd dem Ver- sb'/mer, oder die ivahre Weihe des Zweiflers (1823). Both stories had their mission to fulfil for that period. They reflected the different experiences of their respective writers, and therefore appealed to somewhat different audiences. De Wette was the deeper thinker, but Tholuck had passed a more violent spiritual crisis, and consequently had a more Pauline fervour. DE WETTE. 47 joyful hope of studying theology under a new aspect as a minister of the Word. This hope was soon to be dashed to the ground, at least in the form in which Dc Wette had cherished it. He was elected shortly afterwards to the principal pastorate in Brunswick, but the reactionary govern- ment of our George IV., professedly on moral grounds, refused its sanction. Once more De Wette became a martyr of liberalism, but this time a free Swiss canton intervened in his favour. In spite of strong opposition both within and without the university, he was elected by the town council of Basel (who obtained the most authoritative opinions on the purity of his faith) to a professorship of theology. So, like many a scholar in the olden time, De Wette, for the sake of his life's work, passed into honourable exile. He became a true citizen of the noble little city of Basel, and an unwearied promoter of all its best interests, especially academical and ecclesiastical. Through him, the theological instruction was re- organized on the German model, and after many years a religious service with sermon was set up for the university. If Basel was but a narrow sphere of action compared with Berlin, Dc Wette's influence there was doubtless all the more intensely felt. And the democratic constitution of Switzerland gave so much theological and anti-theological liberty, that an accomplished and circumspect theologian like De Wette was perhaps more urgently wanted at Basel than at the headquarters of thought. 48 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. And what is the effect of this involuntary migration on De Wette ? Does he cease henceforth to rank among the " founders of criticism," and pass over, if not to the apologists, yet to the party whose motto is, " Quieta non movere " ? Does he become hence- forth virtually "orthodox " ? It is a common opinion, but it is one which needs some rectification. It is certainly true that De Wette took alarm at many expressions of the newer rationalism ; true, that he attached more and more weight to many of the church-formulae ; true especially, that he took every opportunity of practical co-operation with the or- thodox, and even with the " pietists," for whose heart- Christianity and good works he entertained a sincere respect. But it is also true, as one of his Swiss- German colleagues has said, that he only advocated old-Lutheran orthodoxy " conditionally and from the stand-point of his philosophical mode of thinking" ; 1 true, that while disapproving of Strauss the theo- logian, he assimilated much from Strauss the critic (who indeed had previously assimilated somewhat from him) ; true, that while rejecting Vatke's recon- struction of Israelitish history as a whole, he admitted that there was an element of truth in many of his views. Again, though it is true that De Wette (unlike Delitzsch) was opposed to the emancipation of the Jews, and would have had both mixed marriages and changes of religion made civil offences, 1 Hagenbach, German Rationalism, E. T., p. 358. DE WKT'I 1 . 4 in which, as a disciple of Fiirst, young Delitzsch expressed etymo- logical views which he afterwards found cause to abandon (see the criticism by his son, Friedrich Delitzsch, Studien iiber Indogertnanisch-Semitische Wurzelverwandtsdiafti 1873, pp. 6, 7). I mention this, not to disparage Delitzsch, but as a proof that genius may shoot wildly at first, and yet afterwards hit the mark. In 1839, the year of the Reformation jubilee, the young doctor's heart was hot within him, l6o FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. and he openly joined the strict Lutheran party, to whose critical organ, edited by Rudelbach and Guerike, he shortly afterwards became a contributor (it was here that he printed those valuable Talmudic illus- trations of Greek Testament phraseology which so well deserve to be reprinted). The literary monument of this period bears the speaking title, Lutherthum und Lilgenthiim. Let us say at once that Delitzsch never wavered in his theological allegiance. I do not think he was ever tempted to do so. " By the banner of our Lutheran confession let us stand," he said in 1888 ; " folding ourselves in it, let us die." The year 1841 is marked by a singular book, dedicated to " the scattered confessors of the Lord," and entitled Philemon oder das Buck von der Freund- schaft in Cliristo. It consists of essays on Christian friendship, signed with initials which have since been interpreted — " c " = Fraulien von Klettenberg ; " x " = her younger sister, Marie Magdalena ; "p" = Frie- drich Carl von Moser, a statesman and author of the last century ; and "d" = the editor, Delitzsch himself. Grace of style there is none ; but as an expression of the inner life of the authors, especially of the schbne Seele, for whom Goethe had so tender a reverence, these fourteen essays have an interest of their own. How Delitzsch obtained the manuscripts is not stated, but I remember his telling me of his friendly relations with Walther von Goethe. In 1844 he published one of the most popular altar manuals of the Lutheran Church, for which special thanks were rendered to DELITZS( II. I- I God by one of the speakers at the service of March 7 — Das Sacrament des waJircn Lcibes unci B lutes Christi. This shows how thoroughly he combined the High Churchman and the scholar. Meantime, in conjunc- tion with Fleischer, he had been cataloguing the Oriental manuscripts of the city library, at the con- clusion of which task he published some afiecdot 'a on the mediaeval scholasticism among Jews and Moslems (1S41). He now (March 3, 1842^; acquired the right of lecturing by a dissertation on the life and age of Habakkuk, which was followed in 1843 by an ex- haustive philological commentary on the same prophet, a companion volume to the Obadiah of his friend Caspari (better known to some by his elaborate work on Micah, and by his Arabic Grammar, which the late Professor W. Wright adopted as the basis of his own). But why was not Delitzsch a professor ? His call did not come till 1846, when he succeeded Hofmann at the small university of Rostock ; he had married the year before. But he was not to be long in this northern home. In 1850 he joined the author of the Wcissagung und Erfullung and the ScJiriftbezveis at Erlangen. For sixteen delightful years the friends worked together. 1 The " Erlangen school " became almost as famous as that of Tubingen. It seemed as if the orthodoxy for the new age were about to be found. Hengstenberg's criticisms and apologetics 1 The theological correspondence of the friends was published by Prof. Volck in 1891 (cf. Expositor, 1S91 (i), pp. 241 &C. 361 &c). M l62 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. were alike mechanical; Hofmann and Delitzsch agreed in rejecting them. They sought something better, but it must be confessed that not even Delitzsch (though, as he assures us, he had already " taken up the standpoint of free inquiry") was at all a scientific critic when he went to Erlangen, and his theories of prophecy, not less than those of Hofmann, bear the stamp of immaturity. Hofmann's works I have mentioned ; Delitzsch had already entered the field with his Die biblisch-prophctische Theologie in 1845, the theosophic element in which, partly derived from Crusius, he must afterwards have greatly modified. Delitzsch's first Erlangen book had indeed nothing to do with prophecy. But it was not unconnected with Hofmann's prophetic theories. Hofmann's view of the Song of Songs was, if I understand right, that it had a typical or ^^^^-prophetic character, arising out of the contemporary historical situation. Delitzsch was dissatisfied with this view, and proposed another which, with more right than Hofmann's, may be called the typical. The work in which it appears, Das Hohelied untersucht tnid ausgelegt (1851), is not now on the list of Delitzsch's publications, but the view is still endorsed in his later book. In 1852 appeared the first edition of his important work on Genesis. Important I may already call it, though Delitzsch himself thought but little of the early editions. There are no doubt startling peculiarities in his explanation of Gen. i. — iii., which brought upon him the sarcasms of less devout writers. But by his DELITZSCH. 163 distinct assertion of the composite authorship of the book, Delitzsch thoroughly proves his own title to speak in the conclave of critics. In 1853 he ventured to touch the problem of the composition of the Gospels (Untersuchungen iiber die kanonischen Evan- gelien), but his comparison of the structure of the Pentateuch was not helpful. In 1855 he returned to philosophical speculations. The System of Biblical Psychology has interested and perplexed not a few English readers. This is not entirely the fault of the translator. There is a touch of Talmudic con- densation in much of Dclitzsch's writing: ; in the Psychology there was the additional rock of " newly coined words and daring ideas " (author's letter in the translator's preface). Still, wherever light pierces through, striking suggestions are seldom wanting. He attempts too much, of course, but there is more to be learned from Delitzsch when he is wronc than from ten ordinary men when they are right. The year 1857 saw tne publication of two less brilliant but really more important works — the critical appendix to Drechsler's Isaiah (edited by Delitzsch and H. A. Ilahn) and the commentary on Hebrews. The former is important for the subtle theory men- tioned below, the latter for its masterly treatment of a subject specially appropriate to a Hebraist. The suggestion of a work on Hebrews may have come from Hofmann. That eminently original theologian, in commenting on passages of Hebrews in his Schrift- beweiSy had propounded a theory of the Atonement 164 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. which gave rise to a trying controversy. Probably on this account Delitzsch wrote his commentary, at the end of which is a dissertation on the " sure Scriptural basis " of the ecclesiastical doctrine of vicarious substitution. In 1859-60 a still greater treasure was given to the Church by one who had more than most a natural affinity to the subject. It was fit that " aller Heiligen Biichlein " (the Psalter) should be commented upon by the loving hand of Franz Delitzsch, and one regrets that Hupfeld, a dry though not undevout scholar, should have accused the book of faulty taste and Rabbinic philology. That Delitzsch's later editions are the best both from a literary and from a philological point of view is certain, but the first edition (which I have never seen) cannot be so vastly inferior to the succeeding ones as to deserve such a criticism. One is glad that Hupfeld lived to repent it. In 1861-62 appeared Handschriftliche Funde, mit Beitrdgen von S. P. Tre- gelles, containing studies in the textual criticism of the Apocalypse and a notice of the Codex Reuchlini, which had been used by Erasmus in 1 5 16, but had been lost for centuries, till it was rediscovered by Delitzsch himself. The Book of Job had its turn in 1864, and Isaiah in 1866. To the latter commentary I was early under obligations which I am delighted once more to express. The subtle, poetic theory by which Delitzsch accounted for the Babylonian horizon of (speaking generally) the second half of Isaiah never seemed to me critical, but philologically I was DELITZSCH. [65 conscious of a Gnindlielikeit, a penetratingness, which no other commentator on Isaiah seemed to display. In 1867 a further proof was given of the same quality by the second edition of the Psalms, which is con- spicuous for the completeness with which all that is most worth referring to in the psalm-literature of the preceding seven years has been utilized, errors cor- rected, and exegesis made more definite. The preface is dated July 7, 1867. By the October semester of the same year he had said farewell to the old Bavarian university ; he had been recalled to his native city as the successor of Tuch. It is sad to think what havoc death has wrought in the faculty of which Delitzsch became such a dis- tinguished member. Luthardt indeed remains — a valiant and skilful champion, not only of Lutheranism, but of Christianity. But Lechler, G. Baur, and above all Kahnis, have all passed away — Kahnis, the brilliant dogmatic theologian, orthodox, but not of an unpro- gressive type, and sympathizing with Delitzsch in his willingness to meet Old Testament critics half-way. That Delitzsch enjoyed returning to his Vaterstacit is clear from the preface to his inaugural lecture, de- livered October 1867. Need I say how full of recondite learning the lecture is ? The subject is, " Physiology and Music in their Relation to Grammar, especially Hebrew Grammar," which reminds us that in the preface to his earliest book he expresses his intention to write on Jewish music. Delitzsch's first Leipzig book (if my dates arc correct) was, however, 1 66 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. not philological, but apologetic. The System der Ckristlicken Apologetik (1869) is full of a gentle per- suasiveness. And here, perhaps, I may mention the series of descriptive sketches, partly imaginative, of the times of Christ, most of which have been trans- lated—/^^ and Hillel and Artisan Life in tJie Time of Jesus (these came out at Erlangen), A Day at Caper- naum, and Jose and Benjamin (these are of the Leipzig period). The descriptions of Palestine are so vivid as to suggest that the author had travelled in the Holy Land. Many valuable essays from his pen might well be collected from Dalieim and other periodicals. They would illustrate, not less than those in Iris, the versatility and wonderful productiveness of this gifted man. Nor can I pass over his earnest interest in the Jews. Jesus and Hillel was first published in Saat auf Hoffnung — one of the few missionary periodicals which have to some extent a critical interest. To- wards the close of his life Delitzsch regarded his work for Israelites as one of his greatest privileges. How he laboured on his Hebrew New Testament, he has told us himself in an interesting pamphlet called The Hebrew New Testament of the British and Foreign Bible Society (1883). The first specimen of his work was published as a separate work in 1870. It contained the Epistle to the Romans in Hebrew, with Talmudic illustrations which render the booklet indispensable to New Testament students. The New Testament has now received its definitive revision, through the loving help of G. H. Dalman ; it is (as DELITZSCH. [67 Kaufmann says) " not an inspired masterpiece, but the matured fruit of learning, working and advancing step by step." Nor did Delitzsch give less attention to the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. Besides publishing those Complutoisian Studies which will be mentioned presently, he entirely by his own exertions induced the great Massoretic scholar, S. Baer, to edit separate portions of the Old Testament in a revised text, to each of which Delitzsch prefixed a learned Latin introduction. The year 1S70 was one of keen anxiety for Delitzsch. He lost a son in the war, and could not repress the mournful words addressed to his students, A eh, ieh bin eiu arnter Maim geworden. In 1S76 he lost another son, a promising young theologian, known by an able work on Thomas Aquinas. His son Friedrich was spared, and to him are due most of those Assyriological notices which adorn his father's more recent commentaries. It was in 187 1 that I first saw Delitzsch. A work that I had published in 1870 on Isaiah at once opened his heart to me. Perhaps he judged the book from a German, not from a contemporary English, point of view. His Studies on the Origin of the Compluten- sian Polyglott began to appear in 1 87 1 (Part II. in 1878, Part III. in 1886); they arc a model of minute research in many manuscript collections. His Pro- verbs came out in 1873, Song of Songs and Ecele- siastes in 1875, the second edition of Job in 1876, the third of Isaiah in 1879, ^ 1C fourth of the Psalms in 1 68 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. 1883. Nor must I omit Delitzsch's second article on Daniel in the second edition of Herzog's Encyclopedia (vol. iii. 1878), in which he concedes the Maccabaean date of the book as a whole, and takes much pains to show this to be consistent with devout reverence. Evidently his mind was at this time in a somewhat painful state of transition. In the summer semester of 1873 he had spoken confidently of the victories gained by Hengstenberg, Havernick, and Keil over the " higher critics." But during the long vacation of 1876 he began a more careful study of the newer criticism by a perusal of Kayser's recent work, Das vorexiliscJie Buck in connexion with Grafs older book, Die geschichtlichen Biicher des A. T. "He had never," says his pupil and friend Dr. Curtiss, " recognized the strength of the critics' positions until he came to study Kayser's little book." His change of view on the subject of Isaiah probably took place shortly afterwards. I cannot easily believe that he accepted the plural authorship of the book when he published the third edition of his commentary (July 1879), in which the unity of authorship is still earnestly maintained. But it is certain that in the winter semester of 1879-80, when lecturing on Mes- sianic prophecy, he assumed that Isa. xl. — lxvi. was written at the close of the Exile. 1 Henceforth he 1 See Messianic Propliecies : Lectures by Franz Delitzsch (ed. Curtiss, 1880) ; and cf. Old Testament History of Re- de mptio)i, p. 154, &c. ; Messianic Prophecies in Historical Succession, p. 197, &c. DELITZSCH. 169 did not scruple to use the terms " deutero-Isaiah," " Babylonian Isaiah," though it was not till 1889 that he finished recasting his old book (not with perfect success) in accordance with his new views. Meantime Delitzsch began to take Church theo- logians into his confidence. In 1S79 appeared vol. i. of Wellhauscn's GcscJiicJitc Israels, and it became necessary for such a trusted orthodox leader to state his position. This Delitzsch did in two series of articles called Pentateuch-kritisc/ie Studien and Ur- mosaisclics im Pentateuch in Luthardt's ZeitscJirift. Students of Delitzsch's Commentary on Genesis (1888) ought certainly to look into these articles. They prepared the way for that great fifth edition of his Genesis which he justly regarded as a new work. For an estimate of the latter I would refer to the article in the TJieol. Studien und Kritikeu (1889 ; pp. 381 — 397) by Delitzsch's old pupil Kautzsch. The book is indeed open to much criticism, as this reviewer has indicated in the most tenderly considerate way. But it is both stimulating and instructive, and is a proof not only of physical but of moral energy. Yes, this veteran required great moral energy so elaborately to revise his old opinions. English re- viewers could not easily understand his procedure (see a well-meant article in the Guardian) : he seemed to them to be untrue to himself, and to be playing with fire. It was a mistake on their part. Delitzsch had never identified himself with tra- ditionalism like Hengstenberg, and the alternative to 170 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. critical progress was a violent theological crisis. It was natural, too, for a sympathetic teacher to enter into the thoughts of younger minds, Stade and Kautzsch, once members of Delitzsch's class, now convinced adherents of the newest critical school, though differing on many not unimportant points. And there were many more, troubled and perplexed, feeling that neither they nor the Church could put off a reasonable solution of pressing problems. One of Delitzsch's last printed utterances speaks of a compromise which the Church (as an educational institution) can safely make with criticism. Where shall we find this informal, provisional compromise better indicated than in his article on Daniel, his New Commentary on Genesis, and his fourth edition of Isaiah ? 1 The last-mentioned work, which shows no abate- ment of thoroughness, is a K€L[Aij\iov to Dr. Driver and myself, because of its gracious dedication. Of Dr. Driver the young-hearted old man always wrote to me in the warmest terms. The Oxford professor's delicate scholarship was of the utmost service in the revision of the Hebrew Testament, and Delitzsch 1 I have tried to work out this idea in an address on reform in the teaching of the Old Testament delivered to a clerical audience, and published in a revised form in the Co?ite?nporary Review {or August 1889 (see especially pp. 221 — 224). Professor H. Strack informs me that I might have quoted him as more decidedly in favour of the critical analysis of Isaiah than I have ventured to do. He, like myself, thinks Professor von Orelli's hesitating criticism (see The Prophecies of Isaiah, T. & T. Clark, 1 888) not even provisionally tenable. DELITZSCH. i;i refers with evident pleasure in the new Isaiah to Dr. Driver's Hebrew Tenses and his handbook on Isaiah. The goodwill which Delitzsch showed to us, he showed to all honest and earnest students (witness his preface to a young Canadian professor's recent work on the text of Jeremiah). That he came at last to approximate so much to my own first book on Isaiah, and to Dr. Driver's work (both of which are relatively conservative), is an abiding satisfaction. Would that I could have seen him again ! But that erect form and those flashing eyes now live only in memory. Delitzsch was taken ill in September, but was enabled to carry his last work through the press — Messianische Weissagungen in geschichtlicher Folge, the preface of which is dated five days before his death. 1 The Hebrew text of Jeremiah, edited by himself and Baer, and published after his death, has a preface dated Jan. 1890. He died at Leipzig, March 3, 1890. "Jew and Christian alike mourn the loss of a great man : one must go back to old times to find his equal," are the words of a sympathetic Jewish scholar, to which I will add that those who value the love of truth even more than scholarship, will thank God for the bright example of this high quality given by the aged Delitzsch. 1 Translated bv Dr. S. I. Curtiss. CHAPTER VIII. RIEHM — REUSS — LAGARDE— KUENEN. The group of Old Testament critics to which, by the date of his death, Franz Delitzsch belongs con- tains other eminent names besides his own. Riehm, Reuss, Lagarde, and Kuenen have all been snatched from us within the last few years. The youngest of these is Eduard Riehm, who was born in 1830 and died in 1888. A pupil of Hupfeld in his youth, he had the happiness of returning to Halle as the colleague of his old master in 1862, and upon Hup- feld's death in 1866 Riehm succeeded to the vacant chair. It is worth noticing that, like so many of our own professors of theology, Riehm had had the advantage of practical experience of pastoral work. For good or for evil this seems to have affected his work as a lecturer and a writer. For if there is one quality more striking than another in the writings of Riehm, it is that of sympathy with orthodox believers. He took an early opportunity of displaying this in an address to the Unionsverein of Halle on the special religious importance of the Old Testament RIEHM. 173 for the Christian Church \Gemeinde)} in which he meets the objection that the adoption of the modem critical standpoint disqualifies a man for ministering to the congregation ; and shortly afterwards, in the Theologische Studien und Kritiken (1865 — 1869), he published three studies on Messianic Prophecy, which are not less effective from a church-theological than from a historico-critical point of view. 2 The same rare quality is conspicuous in his two posthumous works, the Introduction to tJic Old Testament (2 vols. 1889-90) and the Old Testament Theology (1889). Sympathy with the orthodox seems to have become a part of Riehm's nature ; he could not, even in critical inquiries, divest himself of the preoccupations of a practical clergyman. Now, shall we be glad or sorry for this ? For my own part, though I fully appreciate Riehm's feeling, I regret the extent to which he has allowed it to influence him. Painful as it may be to one who would fain spare Church students the least distress of mind, there must be no compromise in "scientific" {wissenschaftlich) inves- tigation, since as De YVettc said in 1S07 " only that which is perfect in its kind is good," and true and pure religion cannot be subverted by any criticism. 1 Die besondcrc Bedeutung des A. 7\, Sec. (Yortrag gchaltcn am 13 Oct. 1863). 1 These studies, which on their appearance taught me much of which I was ignorant, were republished in a volume in 1875. They are now accessible in the faithful translation of the Rev. L A. Muirhead (1890, who bases his work on the second German edition (1885). 1/4 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. Richm's criticism was not, as I think, free from the spirit of compromise ; and the consequence is I. that he fails to reach a consistent view of the develop- ment of the religious literature of Israel, and 2. that in his tenderness towards orthodox prejudice he does not sufficiently consider the interests of that spiritual religion which is the " orthodoxy within orthodoxy." My judgment upon Riehm, both as a "higher critic" and as an interpreter of criticism to the Church, is therefore not entirely favourable. But I utter it, not as a censure, but as a criticism of some- thing which, under our present circumstances, must provisionally exist, both in Germany and in England. I never saw Riehm, but can easily believe that, with his "liebenswerthe Personlichkeit," he was incapable of such an heroic act of faith as De Wette with his cooler or rather more composite nature. Nor do I deny the relative excellence of Riehm's work both as a critic and as an interpreter of criticism. Compare him with Delitzsch and with Orelli, and his services appear in a specially favourable light. He has, I am sure, done better critical work than either, and been more effective in clearing up the views of orthodox students. His two posthumous works are specially valuable from the consideration which the author gives to the views of other critics, and I can well believe that some of the best of our coming theo- logians have been trained in his lecture- room. Among his other critical writings I may mention his early work, The Legislation of Moses in tlie Land of RF.USS. 1/5 Moab 1 (1854), and his articles in the Studien und Kritikcn, especially the criticism of Graf's theory ■ (1868), and the papers entitled respectively, "The so- called ' Grundschrift ' of the Pentateuch" (1872), and " The Conception of Atonement in the Old Testa- ment" (1877). Nor must I omit his exegetical work on the Epistle to the Hebrews (1858-59 ; cd. 2, 1867), his edition of Hupfcld's Psalms (already mentioned), and his contributions to the Dictionary of Biblical Antiquity, edited by him in 1S75 — 1884. Eduard Reuss, the Nestor of Old Testament stu- dents in our own time, died quite recently (April 15, 1891), but was born as long ago as July 18, 1804 (" 29 Messidor, xii."). His home, from youth to age, was at Strassburg. There he began his philological and theological studies, but according to the laudable custom of continental students, he sought further 1 The Deuteronomic law-book is here assigned by Riehm to the second half of Manasseh's reign. In his posthumous Intro- duction the date is thrown even further back — to the time shortly before or at the beginning of the reign of Hezekiah (against both views, see Kuencn, Hcxatcuch, p. 219). I do not understand how Westphal can date the advent of historical Pentateuch criticism from the appearance of this book [Les sources du Pent., ii. Prcf. p. xxiv). 2 To some extent this criticism is decisive against Graf, as that candid critic himself acknowledged (Merx's Archiv fur wissenschaftliche Erforschung des A. 7*., L 467). It app however from a letter of Graf, printed by Kuencn (see Hexa- teuch, Introd. p. xxxiii), that it was really a friendly criticism of Kuenen that led Graf to revise his theory, and to admit that the ritual laws could not be separated from the narratives of the " Grundschrift." 176 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. guidance at other seats of learning — first at Gottingen and Halle (1822 — 1826), and then (as was natural) at Paris (1827-28), where De Sacy reigned supreme among Arabic scholars. He then returned to Strass- burg, and after proving his capacity as a lecturer, became in 1834 extraordinary and in 1836 ordinary professor of theology. So famous a Biblical critic and theologian hardly needs to be characterized. For his devoutness, none the less genuine because it finds a modern expression, it is enough to refer to his Addresses to Students of Theology (1878); for his capacity for hard work to his monumental edition of Calvin. Both these features in his character betoken his German origin, while his clear and sometimes witty style is explained by his long French connexion. To his residence in Elsass we may also attribute the width of his range as a theologian and the comprehen- sive character of many of his works. Protestantism in Elsass needed the infusion of a vigorous but not pedantic scholarship, and the great country to which that border-land was (till 1871) united deserved such religious help as a man like Reuss could give. This was why he edited (with Colani) the Revue de thdologie^ and (with Baum and Cunitz) the first twenty volumes of the works of Calvin ; this was why he wrote in a clear and incisive style, sometimes in French, some- times in German, such works as the Geschichte der heil. Schriften N. T. (1842 ; ed. 5, 1874), the Histoire de la theologie chritienne au siecle apostolique (1852; ed. 3, 1864), the Histoire du canon des saiutes Ecri- tures (1862 ; eel. 2, 1863), the new French translation of the Bible with commentary (1874 — 1880), and the G es chic Jit c der hcil. Sckriften A. T. (1881 — 1890). There was a time when Eduard Reuss narrowly missed becoming a hero of Old Testament criticism. It was in 1S34, the year before Vatke's Biblical Theology and George's Die judiscJien Feste made a sensation in the theological world. Reuss (not as yet appointed a professor) was lecturing on Old Testament introduction at Strassburg. He had already come to results which were so much opposed to those generally received that he dared not put them forward sys- tematically. But what he did divulge then or after- wards fastened itself in the memory of two Alsatian students who were present — K. II . Graf and August Kayser. The germs grew, and we have the results in Graf's important work on the historical books of the Old Testament (1866) and Kayser's on "the prc- Exilic book of Israel's primitive history and its expansions" (1874). And what was the germ- idea deposited by Reuss in the minds of his students ? It came to him, he informs us, rather as an intuition than as a logical conclusion, and it was nothing less than this — that the prophets are earlier than the Law, and the Psalms later than both. From the first, we are told, his principal object was to find a clue to the development of Israelitish religious culture, so as to make its historical course psychologically conceivable. I lis early youth had seen the ex- travagant rationalistic exegesis of Paulus. But the 178 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM, most startling of all miracles, viz. the existence of the complete Levitical system in the first stage of the religious education of Israel, together with the absence of any sign that the greatest prophets, such as Samuel and Elijah, were acquainted with it, seemed to mock at explanations. The prevalent critical theories appeared in many points to run directly counter to psychology, nor should it be overlooked that among the young critic's difficulties were some connected with the Davidic authorship of psalms. The autobiographical passage in which Reuss has recorded all this will be found in the preface to the History of the Old Testament Scrip- tures (188 1 ), and the twelve theses in which in 1833 he formulated his conclusions in a volume of his great Bible-work {Lhistoire sainte et la lot, 1879, PP- ^3 5 24). That Vatke's difficult work produced no effect upon a lover of clearness like Reuss, is not surprising. It was Graf's book, together with Kuenen's Religion of Israel, which stimulated him long afterwards to supplement and systematize his old ideas. The fact, however, that Reuss anticipated both Vatke and Kuenen is of some significance. For he was not a Hegelian philosopher like the one, nor did he take his starting-point in the historical books like the other. It was by studying the legal portions of the Pentateuch that the young Strassburg critic sought a way of escape from the unnatural hypotheses of the day. Three such men as Reuss, Vatke, and Kuenen reuss. 179 (to mention no more), reaching the same result by different paths, arc not likely to have been entirely mistaken. And now to return to Reuss's early studies. Later on, no doubt, he completed the de- tailed criticisms which for a time he broke off. But he completed them rather for himself than for the great world of critics : — upon the whole, we cannot say that Reuss has left a deep mark on the critical movement. What he has effected for the Old Testament is to sum up and popularize with a master's hand advanced critical results. No French student can afford to dispense with his great work on the Bible, and if German students (or English students who know German) can afford to disregard his critical history of the Old Testament Scriptures, they must be very clever indeed. His judgments may not always commend themselves to us (he puts Joel and the Song of Songs early), 1 but less than any one except Kucncn can he be called a rash and inconsiderate critic. His History is unique, and a necessary companion to Kuenen's masterly Inquiry. 1 For instance, he makes Joel, Job, and the Song of Songs pre- Exilic, and sees no need for disintegrating either Micah or Isa. xl. — lxvi. His hypothesis on the Psalms, though right in some of its main features, seems not to presuppose much detailed criticism. It should be added that Reuss denied the existence of Davidic psalms as early as 1839 (in a Halle periodical). Also that in 18SS he published a tasteful translation of the Book of Job, with a brief introduction, both well adapted for the wider public. 180 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. The moral affinities of Reuss are rather with Kuenen than with Delitzsch. It was sad to see how despondent the latter became at last, and how regret- fully he looked back to the days of his youth. The concessions which he made to criticism were wrung from him by a sense of duty, and he seems to have had not much hope that his own synthesis of Church doctrine and modern criticism would be widely accepted. Reuss on the other hand had a keen sympathy with the younger generation ; he had nothing to " concede," for he had himself always been progressive. I saw him in the summer of 1890 in his country home near Strassburg full of life and hope, though preparing to put off his armour. He believed that truth was sure to win, and looked for- ward with hope to the constant expansion of our knowledge. In this faith and hope Kuenen too lived and died, and it contributed to his remarkable serenity. Of a still greater scholar, though a less notable " higher critic " of the Old Testament, Paul de Lagarde, we cannot venture to say as much. He was not (to judge from appearances) happy, save in his work, which indeed was colossal. It was well for him that his more special work was linguistic and textual — studying languages and editing texts from manuscripts. As soon as he turned his eyes away to behold mankind and its perversities, he became subjective, and both conceived and excited number- less antipathies. He could not even register his linguistic facts and theories without falling into LAGARDE. l8l sarcasm and railing (sec for instance that brilliant treatise, published in 18S9, the Survey of the Form- ation of Nouns in Aramaic, Arabic, and Hebrew) ; much less could he avoid this in speaking of things which lay even nearer to his heart — religion and the science ( Wissenschaft) of religion. This being the case, it is not surprising that in his opinions both on the history of doctrine and on " higher " critical problems there is an unusually strong subjective and even eccentric element. He could not take much account of the opinions of others ; in the subjects referred to he may even appear to have rejected the scientific methods of others. How is this to be accounted for ? Lagarde was too great, too self-denying a man for us to impute anything like a mean motive, and his services to that " lower criticism " which is so essential to Biblical study (not now to mention his brilliant intuitions in " higher criticism ") are so important that we could not excuse ourselves for passing such painful facts over altogether. The true explanation may be that which has been earnestly advocated by the pro-Rector of Gottingen University. Lagarde's self-consciousness was ab- normal ; he felt and spoke as a prophet, in that wide sense of the term according to which our own Carlyle is admittedly a prophet. " He was often a vox clamantis in deserto ; but he did not allow this to disturb him. He belonged to the class of those who penetrate more deeply than others into the essence of all that they see, but who are tied to one point of 1 82 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. view. Such men are powerful but subjective natures ; they awaken strong sympathies and antipathies. In all, there remains, the more closely we observe them, 1 ein Erdenrest, zu tragen peinlich/ In all, the point of view from which they regard the universe is in reality religious ; and — let us be frank — the moral standard, which is valid for others, is incommensurable for the prophets. They are seldom happy ; ' der Blick der Schwermut ist ein furchterlicher Vorzug.' They have a keener eye for the hurts and pains of humanity ; therefore they call for a radical change : but as a compensation, they look through the mists of earth into the region of the sun and of eternal truth." 1 There are many pages of Lagarde which must be read in the spirit of these words, if we are to think of him as highly as we could wish. With all his peculiarities there was an idealism in him which deserves veneration ; and exaggerated as much of his writing on religion may be, there is often a kernel of truth in it which cannot safely be disregarded. He did well to emphasize the truth that now, as in the days of Luther and Calvin, Biblical criticism was a great reforming agency for theology and for the Church. Lagarde was born at Berlin, Nov. 22, 1827 ; he died at Gottingen, Dec. 1891. He studied at Berlin in 1844 — 1846, and in Halle in 1846-47. From 1855 to 1866 he carried on the deepest linguistic studies in the intervals of scholastic work ; at last, on Ewald's 1 Rede gehalten am Sarge des Professors Dr. Paul de Lagarde am 25 Dec. 1891, von Ulrich von Wilamoivitz-Moellendorff, p. 6. LAGARDE. 1S3 decease, he was appointed to a chair at Gottingen. How much he was to his pupils in Semitic philology, more than one of our best known Hebraists can testify ; he was, to prepared disciples, a great teacher. Was he under similar obligations himself to others ? Certainly not, so far as theology proper is concerned. He found a way for himself to the "original Gospel." But to some great scholars and teachers he owed much — to Fried rich Rlickcrt his love for Eastern studies, to Jacob Grimm his patriotic romanticism, to Karl Lachmann his philological tastes and methods. What the last-mentioned scholar undertook for the text of the New Testament, Lagarde aspired to do for the Old. It was by far the harder task of the two ; it involved "the brave worker in those labours on the Septuagint text, in which, when struck by fatal sickness, he still persisted." x Much else he did by the way ; but this was his life's work. By this, as well as by much Hebrew philology, Lagarde well deserves to be styled a M founder of Old Testament criticism." 2 Lagarde's judgments on points of " higher criticism " will be found chiefly in the Symmicta, (1S77 — 1880), the Scmitica, i. (Critical Notes on the Book of Isaiah, &c, 1878), the Purim (1887), and the Mittheilungen (4 vols., 1884 — 1 891). I content myself with quoting 1 The last part of his Scptuaginta Studicn was published after his death by Dr. Rahlfs. - In the Contemporary Review for March 1889 (p. 393, &c.) Prof. Driver has given a full and instructive account of some of Lagarde's more recent philological works. 1 84 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. an utterance of Lagarde on the origin of the Hexa- teuch, which proves (as Kuenen remarks 1 ) that he "had reached important points of agreement with the Leiden critics independently of their help"; or to put it shortly, that, equally with Vatke and the others, he is one of the founders of the newer Hexateuch criticism. " I am convinced (and the conviction has stood the testing of years) that not a few portions of the Old Testament arose in the age of Ezra, who with incomparably better right than Moses may be called the creator of Judaism. I consider the Elohist, whose activity extends beyond the Pentateuch (as my pupils were aware as early as 1864), identical with the editor of the Pentateuch, and to be either Ezra himself or a priest of the second temple working under his direction. The abstract is everywhere later than the concrete ; therefore Elohim (as a singular) is later than Yahwe, and indeed Elohim by itself (without suffix and without an accompanying Yahwe) occurs as good as never in prophets of admitted antiquity to designate the Supreme Being. Those Israelites who wrote the earlier Elohistic portions of the Old Testament, especially the Elohistic psalms composed during the Exile, are the spiritual fathers of those who pronounced Adonai where the text had Yhwh. If this ' perpetual Q'ri ' is a late expression of a false piety, so too is that dread of pronouncing the name of Yahwe' 1 See Hexateuch (transl. Wicksteed), Introd. p. xxxiii. Kuenen also mentions similar statements of Merx, Prof, Kirchen- zeitung {or 1865, No. 17. KUEN1 \. 185 (transformed into the one God of the world). I have always been surprised that no one has yet thought of the parallel between 2 Kings xxii. 8, &c, and 2 Esdr. viii. 1, &c. If the former passage means that our Deuteronomy was written in the time of Josiah, the latter can only mean that the Tora as a whole proceeds from Ezra. Besides, the Pentateuch, or rather the Hexateuch (for the work includes the Book of Joshua), has its only raison d'etre in the idea of instructing the Jewish colony assembled under Ezra in the conditions of its reoccupation of the promised land. Those conditions are the same under which its ancestors had formerly conquered it ; hence too these ancestors arc feigned to have had the same disposition — especially with regard to the 'conubium' — which Ezra so rigorously exemplified in his community. The works of the Yahwist, a writer of the prophetic school, whose spirit doubtless agreed with that of the speech of Stephen (Acts vii.) ; of the older Elohist, presumably contemporary with the Elohistic psalms; and of the Dcuteronomist ; together perhaps with other isolated passages, were worked up together in his own spirit by the younger (hitherto designated the older) Elohist, Ezra. Thus, for instance, we can explain the beginning of the Pentateuch as intended to contradict the Persian cosmogony." l Kuenen, the last of this group of critics, resembles 1 Symmicta, i. 55, 56. For Lagarde's developed views on the latter point, see his Purim (p. 44), and cf. my Origin of tin* I'saltcr, p. 283, note co . 1 86 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. Lagarde in little except in his love of truth and his want of sympathy with traditional forms of Christian theology. His character was so pure and noble that I ask permission to dwell upon it ; if such are the fruits of criticism, we need not perhaps augur so much evil from its increased prevalence. To have known him, is a privilege ; and it is right to give the student (who alas ! cannot now see him in the flesh) some faint idea of what he was. He was born, Sept. 16, 1828, at Haarlem, where his father was an apothecary. 1 At the age of fifteen, upon his father's death, his studies were interrupted ; but friends were at last found to restore him to his school, and in the autumn of 1846 he was already qualified to enter the university. It was Leiden which he then made his academic home, and at Leiden he remained to the day of his death. The names of Dutch theologians are less known in England than they ought to be, but that of Scholten the dogmatic theologian is not unfamiliar to students of the Fourth Gospel. 2 To Scholten the young student was more indebted than to any other member of the theological faculty ; through him Kuenen became a theologian, and not merely an exegete like van Hengel or an Orientalist like Juynboll. I have ventured to 1 These facts are from C. P. Tiele's Levensbericht van Abraham Kuenen (Amsterdam, 1892), and P. H. Wicksteed's beautiful sketch in the Jewish Quarterly Review, July 1892. For a critical estimate of Kuenen's work, see Prof. Toy in the New World, March 1892. 2 See Scholten, Het Evangelie naar Johannes (1864; in German, 1 867) ; and cf. Watkins, Bampton Lectures, p. 264, &c, KUEN1 v 187 say elsewhere that one of Kuenen's many merits is that he was a theologian : not altogether baseless was the dislike expressed by Delitzsch for a purely critical theology. We must remember however that the Scholten of those days was not, either in New Testament criticism or in dogmatic theology, as radical as he afterwards became: Scholten and his pupil went on developing side by side. In Semitic philology Kucnen was equally indebted to another luminary of that day — Juynboll. For his doctor's thesis (185 I ) he presented an edition of part of the Arabic version of the Samaritan Genesis (chaps, i. — xxiv.), and was soon after appointed to succeed Dozz as " adjutor interprets legati Warneriani." The next result of his researches in the Leiden library was an edition of the whole of Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus in the same version (1854). But Kuenen's pleasant position on the Warner foundation was but like a temporary fellowship : his life's work as a teacher had yet to begin. In 1853 nc became extraordinary professor of theology (retain- ing his "fellowship" till 1855). His inaugural lecture (on the theological importance of the study of Hebrew antiquity) contained this remarkable passage — " Nor do I myself believe that the opinions of von Bohlen, Yatke, and others concerning these books can be reconciled with the utterances of Jesus and the apostles. But — to say nothing of the fact that their ravings have already been rejected by all the critics of 1 88 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. any note, to a man — the abuse of a thing should not prohibit us from using it." x In 1855 Kuenen was appointed to an ordinary professorship, and that same year he married. Kuenen, like Lagarde, had a close intellectual companionship with his wife, and his bold venture in starting from the prophets of the eighth century in his researches into the religion of Israel was partly due to Mrs. Kuenen's sympathy. Henceforth there are few events to chronicle in this modest scholar's life. He took part in all academic and civic movements, preached (though but seldom), and lectured with ability (though, like Vatke, not with uniform success). In 1882 he visited England to deliver the Hibbert Lectures. In 1883, the year of the Oriental Congress at Leiden, he lost his wife ; in 1886, his attached and ever-helpful sister. These blows told upon him, and when in 1887 he was attacked by a distressing disease, he had great difficulty in resisting it. In 1891 he was again seized with painful illness, and on December 10 he departed this life suddenly but peacefully at the age of sixty-three. Let me mention some of the moral qualities which distinguished Kuenen as a scholar. Love of truth, thoroughness in work, freedom from vanity and personal ambition, generosity in praise, considerate- ness in censure, willingness to reconsider opinions — all these can be traced in Kuenen's writings. Nor was 1 Quoted bv Wicksteed in his sketch. ICU1.M V I89 his religion of a commonplace type. Though not fervid like that of Dclitzsch, his faith was firm, serene, and most truly reverent. Reverence indeed was one of his leading characteristics. In his most contro- versial work, he asserts the claims of the prophets to our reverence, and in reviewing Steinthal's Ethics he regrets the omission of reverence in that philosopher's definition of the religious sentiment. 1 Turning now to his three critical works, I notice first of all that, when rightly understood, he is not so alien in spirit to progressive Church theologians as has been repre- sented. " Take the first edition of that monument of critical scholarship, the Historico-critical Inquiry (1861 — 1865), and see how moderate its. results are. And now compare the second (part 1, 1885 — 1887 ; part 2, 1889). Can it be said that there is any real extremeness in his conclusions ? No ; Kucnen is still as moderate and as circumspect as ever, but his eye for facts has become keener. I know that he opposed the old supernaturalism, and that he himself admits that his theological convictions may have reacted on his criticisms ; but I know that he also assures us that neither his method nor his main results were the outcome of his theological principles. It was through critical exegesis that he came to the conviction that a dogmatic supcrnituralism was untenable, and the canons of critical exegesis are independent of theo- logical dogma." 2 1 TheologiscJi Tijdsclirift, 1 SS6, p. 307. 1 From my notice of Kucnen, Expositor^ I. in. 1 190 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. Nor can it be said that Kuenen's second great work, the Religion of Israel (published in Dutch in 1869-70) is in any bad sense "naturalistic." No doubt he considered on critical grounds that the religion of Israel was but one among other religions {Religion of Israel, i. 5). But he would have fully admitted that the difference in their respective degrees of spiritual nobility between the higher religion of Israel and the best of the other religions of antiquity was so great as to amount practically to a difference of kind. All that was good both in the religion of Israel and in the other religions he would have ascribed to the same divine source. If this is to be a " naturalist," then Kuenen may be so called. I should myself have preferred to call him a psychologist, and with him I cannot help grouping such respected Church theologians as Lightfoot and Westcott, Bruce and Davidson, who are unqualified psychologists in exegesis, whatever may be their attitude towards the results of the psychological method in criticism. I am not however writing as an apologist of this able book. As a whole, it is simply unique as a specimen of the right historical method in such studies. But in details one may often differ from it. Thus, Kuenen's explanation of the rise of spiritual prophecy seems to others besides Matthew Arnold inadequate. But Kuenen was perfectly justified in offering it. He also appears to me deficient in insight into the higher religious ideas of the Israelites ; one may still turn for stimulus from the Religion of Israel to Ewald KUENEN. 191 on the Prophets and on the Poets. And if we pass to Kucncn's third work (which owes its inception to the late Dr. John Muir), called The Prophets and Prophecy in Israel (1877), the same incomplete comprehension of religious ideas is visible. As a controversial treatise, however, the work has merits of the highest order. The only question is, whether the doctrine which he opposes might not have been left to fall of itself, or rather to be superseded by some- thing far higher and deeper, to which no progressive theologian would withhold his assent. More than this I cannot say here. Nor can I venture to discuss either the Hibbert Lectures for 1882 l or the long series of articles (both critical investigations and reviews of books) contained in the TheologiscJi TijdscJirift. The Lectures show how lightly Kuenen bore his learning, while the articles show how utterly removed from rashness he was, and (so far as they deal with the opinions of others) how mild and gracious he could be to those from whom he differed. One delights to think of the latter characteristic. Fairness one expects from an opponent, but gracious- ness — how nearly unknown is this Christ-like temper among critics ! Lastly, as to Kuencn's place in the critical move- ment. There is in many respects a striking contrast between the first edition of the Inquiry (Ondcrzock) 1 A competent estimate of the Hibbert LecturesYoA been given by Prof. Tiele in his short life of Kuenen. and by Prof. Toy in his article on Kuenen in the New World. 192 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. and the second. 1 In Pentateuch criticism in particular Kuenen's position changed greatly between 1861 and 1885. Upon the whole, in 1861 he adhered to what was then the prevalent school of criticism. He found in the Pentateuch three independent writers, all pre- Exilic, though he admitted post-Deuteronomic re- vision of the Levitical legislation, and he doubted whether the Levitical laws were written down by the same hand which penned the connected narratives. But in 1862, the year after the publication of Kuenen's first volume, appeared Part I. of Bishop Colenso on the Hexateuch, and the detailed criticism of the data of the GrundscJirift contained in that work led Kuenen to re-examine his own just published critical theories. It was not the only cause, but it was not the least important one, of a complete change in Kuenen's opinion. 2 Another attack on the Grund- scJirift (with special regard to Ex. xxxv. — xl.) was made in 1862 by the Jewish scholar Dr. J. Popper, and again a third in 1866 by K. H. Graf in his "epoch-making" work on the historical books. In 1868 appeared a dissertation by W. H. Kosters of Leiden, which showed inductively that the Deutero- nomist was not acquainted with the priestly narratives. In 1869-70 Kuenen thoroughly com- 1 Of the three portions already published, only one is acces- sible in English {The Hexateuch, by P. H. Wicksteed) ; all have however appeared in a German version by C. Th. M tiller. 2 See The Hexateuch, Introd. p. xiv, &c, Theol. Tijdschrift, 1870, p, 398, &c. KUENEN. 193 mitted himself in the Religion of Israel to a Grafianism revised by its author at the instance of Kuenen, and subsequently, in the Thcologisch Tijdschrift, published a scries of papers, which are models in their kind, on special points or aspects of the new theory. Finally, in 1885 appeared the first portion of the new edition of the Inquiry. This was as great an event as the publication of the Religion of Israel. Many who, like myself, were fascinated with the view of Jewish literature and history given in the latter work must have felt, with me, that there were unexplained difficulties in Kucnen's theory. In the revised form of his views given in the second edition of the Inquiry these difficulties were much less striking, and through Kuenen and Wellhausen together it became possible even for cautious English critics to come over to the " advanced n school. Of the second edition of this critical masterpiece three portions have as yet appeared. The changes of opinion indicated in the second and third of these are less striking than those in the first, but careful students will notice Kucnen's great increase of critical sensitiveness in dealing with the prophetic literature. A survey of the results of the third portion (called Part II.) has been given by Mr. Montefiore in the feivish Quarterly Rruiew, 1890, pp. 311 — 321. I have a keen regret in learning that the fourth portion (part 3), dealing with the gnomic and lyric poetry, was not fully prepared by Kuenen for the press. The Religion of Israel is disappointing o 194 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. in its treatment of this section of the Old Testament, and Kuenen's revised opinions, with the full justifica- tion which he would have given to them, would have been of the greatest interest. On the Psalter par- ticularly one could have wished for the counsel of this wise scholar. Nor can one help deploring that there can now be no revised and corrected edition of his noble work on the religion of Israel. Pendent opera interrupta. Kuenen, more than any one else of his own generation, pointed the way for future inquiry. In particular, he saw, first of all, the right order in the stages of Israelitish religion, and secondly, the necessity of digging deeper foundations of criticism in archaeological research. Wellhausen and Robert- son Smith (leaders and representatives of Kuenen's juniors) have therefore lost more than can be said in this prince of critics. But at this point I must break off. Gladly would I have treated, even if less fully, of Dillmann, and of the younger German and Dutch scholars. But time and space are wanting. CHAPTER IX. COLENSO — KALISCH — S. DAVIDSON — ROWLAND WILLIAMS-— PEROWNE— A. B. DAVIDSON (1862) — RUSSELL MARTINEAU. We have already seen that at the end of the eighteenth century a Cambridge professor (H. Lloyd) attempted to obtain episcopal and academical sanction for a translation of Eichhorn's Introduction to the Old Testament. To his great surprise (but not to ours) the attempt failed. We will not be hard on the simple-hearted professor's rude episcopal corre- spondents ; they did but carry out the policy of restriction which then prevailed in all departments of life, and which had many and various causes. But we may regret the consequences, one of which was the failure of Lowth and Kcnnicott to produce a succession of eminent Hebrew scholars. What, in fact (so all but a few born linguists would feel), was the good of profound researches into the text of the Old Testament, when historical and theological inferences were precluded ? And though contact with German thought began the regeneration of I96 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. English theology long before 1862, yet neither Hare, nor Arnold, nor Jowett, nor even Stanley, could (for want of Hebrew scholarship and other things) be the predestined champion of reform in the study of the Old Testament. At length, in 1862, the hour came, and the man ; and, strange to say, the champion was a bishop — and though neither a great Hebrew scholar, nor a critic trained in historical investigations, he was at any rate free from the influences adverse to history which proceeded from the philosophy of Coleridge. It was John William Colenso who reopened the suspended intercourse between the critical students of England and the continent ; for I shall hardly be called upon to admit that the timid adhesion of Dr. Samuel Davidson in 1859 to the critical analysis of the Pentateuch in some not very clearly defined form entitles him to a higher title (at least in the present connexion) than that of precursor. How a South African bishop was enabled to become more than this, is a matter of history. I must, however briefly, record the striking facts. It would be unjust to pass over this brave man, who in the teeth of opposition made himself a genuine critic, and who won his battle more completely for others than for himself. We owe this iconoclast, reformer, and critic to Cornwall: he was born at St. Austell's, Jan. 24, 1814. It would have been strange if he had not been religious ; from first to last no cold, sceptical breath ruffled the surface of his soul. Early difficulties awakened a sense of responsibility and strengthened CO LEX SO. V)J his moral energy. Through friends (whose help he repaid) he entered Cambridge university, where he took all but the very highest mathematical honours, and in 1837 became fellow of St. John's College. From 1S36 to 1S41 he filled the post of mathematical master at Harrow (under Longley), and then returned to his college as tutor. In 1841 — 1843 nc brought out his very successful treatises on algebra and arithmetic, and in 1846 retired to the village-cure of Forncett St. Mary's, Norfolk, where he divided his time between his parishioners and his pupils. In 1853 h° was appointed first Bishop of Natal, and shortly before his consecration dedicated a volume of village- sermons to F. D. Maurice, avowedly doing so as a protest against the blows levelled at his friend by the Record. It may be well to quote the words in which Maurice expressed his thanks. " I should convey a very inadequate impression of my own feelings of the generosity and courage which your words manifest, and of the strength and hope which they imparted to me. I could have wished that you had stifled all your regard for me rather than run this risk. Nevertheless, I do so thoroughly and inwardly believe that courage is the quality most needed in a bishop, and especially a missionary bishop, that I did at the same time give hearty thanks to God that lie had bestowed such a measure of it upon you." ] 1 Life of Maurice y\\. 185 I98 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. To send such a " strong, simple-hearted " Cornish- man as Colenso to Natal might seem wise to the Colonial Secretary of that day, and the Bishop's devoted educational work among the Zulus might appear to justify the appointment. Colenso how- ever had a deep repugnance both to oppression and to formulae (whether of thought or of action), and here lay one of the possible germs of difficulty in his relations to others. Soon afterwards came the disputes respecting Kafir polygamy, which I refer to here, be- cause the state of things with which Colenso had to deal helped to give him a historic sense of some primitive usages in ancient Israel. In a published letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury he took a comprehensive survey, from a historical, Biblical, and practical point of view, of the question of the position of polygamists with regard to Christian baptism. He argued with great force in favour of toleration. The laws of the Church and the sayings of Christ Himself ought, he said, to be interpreted, and their letter if need be transgressed, in accordance with Christ's spirit. This view was opposed by Canon (afterwards Bishop) Callaway, who considered Christianity to be a " sacred deposit of doctrine," and the Church to be a "divine corporation with explicit regulations which cannot be modified." Bishop Colenso made up his mind after he had been only ten months in the colony. This rapidity in forming a conclusion was characteristic. Colenso was, as his subsequent oppo- nent Bishop Gray said, " impetuous," but he was not COLENSO. 199 incapable of revising his decisions (as his Pentateuch criticism proves), and his opinion of Kafir polygamy was at any rate supported by the high authority of Mr. (since Sir Thcophilus) Shepstone. 1 The deep questions suggested to Colenso by his Zulu friends followed. " To these poor lads the Bishop was emphatically Sobantu, the ' father of the people,' but as he was their teacher and guide, so in turn he was stimulated by their questions to the most momentous inquiries." " He was now trans- lating the Book of Genesis for human beings with the docility of a child, but with the reasoning powers of mature age, and he was met at every step by the point-blank question, ' Is all that true ? '• 'My heart,' he says, 'answered in the words of the prophet, Shall a man speak lies in the name of the Lord ? I dared not do so.' These questions had set him free." 2 It is easy to scoff at Colenso for giving way to a Zulu — easy, upon condition that we know all that the Bishop learned through his Zulu, and ought to have been taught long ago by his professors at Cambridge ; easy, upon condition that we do not realize the deep gulf which at that time existed between English and German theologians. But even the scoffers must admire the energy with which the Bishop set himself to study Biblical criticism in a 1 Comp. my article, " Polygamy in Relation to Christian Baptism," Mission Life, April 1880. 1 Sir G. W. Cox, hart., in Diet, of Nat. Biography, art. " Colenso." 200 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. distant colony. For him it was no merely academic question, but one of intense practicalness, and he cherished the belief that those who taught the Bible in our towns and villages would more readily listen to a working clergyman like himself than to an academic recluse. He cannot, I think, have fully counted the cost at first, but he never withdrew from the work because of its increasing magnitude, and the obloquy which it brought upon him. He con- tinued his examination of the Hexateuch, and between 1862 and 1865 came to conclusions which, though from one point of view startlingly negative, were yet from another moderate even to a fault. These earlier results of Bishop Colenso are con- tained in Parts I. — V. of his great work. 1 The sensation which they produced is now a thing of the past, and one can do full justice to Colenso without being harsh to his adversaries. Looking back upon the contro- versy one can see that he had greatly the advantage in dignity of bearing ; Colenso never lost his temper. On the other hand, there was much both in the facts which he made known, and in the suddenness and utter frankness with which he published them, that could not help irritating so prejudiced a body as the Anglican clergy of that day. It was probably unwise in Colenso to bring out the first part of his 1 A reply to Part V. was published by Dr. Kay under the rather absurd title Crisis Hupfeldiana (1865). Kay was a learned man and an able Hebraist, but did not know the superiority of Hupfeld. COLE N SO. 20 1 work separately ; it would have caused but «i brief delay to have combined with it a portion of his more technical criticism, which was already in the press. He might thus have strengthened his case with many fair-minded readers, and stopped the mouth of many objectors. But iconoclasm seemed to Colenso the more immediately necessary course, and it may be questioned whether a born reformer such as Luther would not have justified him. This policy cost him however the good opinion of many friends (including even Maurice), who did not feel the necessity of nega- tive as a preliminary to sound positive criticism, and as the Bishop of Natal was famous for his arithmetic, the materials for many a caustic gibe lay ready to hand. It is now time, however, to speak frankly and seriously respecting Colenso's work. To critics of this generation Parts II. — V. present little of special interest ; the details may be had elsewhere in a better and more critical form, and the positive conclusions, always too moderate and in some points eccentric, are now antiquated. But Part I. will remain histori- cally important, because it directed the attention of the most progressive critic of the day to difficulties in the prevalent theory which he had failed to reckon with. Colenso, as Kuenen somewhat bluntly ex- presses it, "showed that the very documents which most expressly put themselves forward as authentic, and make the greatest parade of accuracy, are in reality the most unhistorical of all. In other words, it is just the narratives of the ' Grundschrift ' or ' Book of 202 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. Origins' which turn out to be the most helpless before his criticism. . . . Colenso himself did not perceive the legitimate inferences that flowed from his demon- strations; for in Parts II. — V. he accepts the current opinion as to the date and character of the ' Grund- schrift."' 1 Colenso's sixth part appeared in 187 1, and the seventh in 1879. In these he takes his place as a critic side by side with the continental scholars, whose works in distant Natal he sedulously but critically studied. In the former he definitely adopts the theory of Graf, assigning the Levitical legislation to the post- Exilic period, while still regarding the " Elohistic narrative " as a work of the age of Samuel, if not written by Samuel himself. In the latter he examines the origin of a large part of the Old Testament out- side the Hexateuch, and considers the bearings of the results on the question of the Canon. It cannot however, be said either that the author has entirely thrown off the weaknesses which marked his early attempts at critical analysis, or that he shows a high degree of capacity for special historical criticism. 2 He is a genuine but not an eminent critic, and misses the truth on that very important point, on which 1 The Hexateuch, Introd. pp. xv — xvii. 2 Cf. Maurice, Life, ii. 510: "It should be observed that Colenso has not the least studied under Niebuhr. He belongs . . . to the later and merely negative school of Sir G. C. Lewis, who scorned Niebuhr for supposing that any discoveries could be made about the history of a nation, unless there were contem- porary, or nearly contemporary, testimony." COLENSO. 205 Graf himself finally gave way — the unity of the laws and narratives of the Grundschrift} And yet, as we have seen, he helped Kuencn at a turning-point in his path. Must we not remember Lessing's fine say- ing that, if by an error he has led another to the discovery of a truth, he has deserved as well of the cause of truth as the discoverer himself? Of the brave Bishop's later history I need not say much. Though by no means a negative critic, he was not qualified to do thoroughly sound constructive work either in historical criticism or in theoretic theology. Let us be thankful for all that he did in breaking up the hard soil, and not quarrel with him for his limitations.' 2 To have borne so many burdens at one time would have overpowered any one but this impetuous and yet long-enduring Cornish- man. For he had not only upon him the cares of a reformer of Bible-study in England, but those of a missionary bishop. To the last he protected the interests of his Zulu friends, and by his zealous and conscientious advocacy, in the cases of Langalibalelc and Cetshwayo, of a policy which was unpopular in the colony, he lost many of those whom his simple, noble character and earnest piety had brought to his side among the colonists. But at last all these cares 1 In Part VII, Preface, p. xxxi, however, he expressly reserves his final judgment in graceful deference to Kuenen. 2 Among his other works his work on Romans (1861), and his New Bible Commentary Critically Examined (1S71 — 1876), have a claim to be mentioned. Also a pamphlet entitled Wellhausen on the Composition of the Hexateueh (Land. 1878). 204 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. and anxieties (especially those which have just been mentioned) began to tell upon the strong man. After a brief illness, he passed away at Bishopstowe, Natal, June 20 ; 1883, in the same faith in which he had lived — a faith which could not be shaken by any discoveries of criticism, because it was directed to the great spiritual realities. It was one of Colenso's deficiencies as a historical critic that his insight had not been quickened by philosophical study. For his special work as a re- former this may indeed have been no disqualification ; he approached a " momentous " subject with a plain, practical, characteristically English mind. That was not the case with an eminent scholar, who by long residence had become English, but who could never (even had he wished it) have disowned his German training, M. M. Kalisch. In the preface to Part I. of his Leviticus this writer expresses the hope " that he has aided in supporting by arguments derived from his special department of study the philosophical ideas which all genuine science at present seems eager to establish," and, so far from wishing to become a popular reformer, dissuades all who cling to theological prejudice from reading his books. That Kalisch has helped to " found " criticism in England cannot however be doubted. As a learned Jew, he com- manded the respect of many who disparaged the self-trained Colenso, and he has undoubtedly pro- moted the naturalization of foreign critical theories. We may claim him therefore as to some extent an KALISCH. 205 Englisli scholar, and the fine qualities of his character may make us even proud to welcome him. And who was Kalisch ? That he came to this country as a political refugee in 1S48, that his literary labours, facilitated by the munificence of the Rothschilds, were bravely continued to the last amidst the drawbacks of impaired health, and that he died in 1885 at the somewhat early age of fifty-seven, arc the only facts of his outward life known to me. But his inner life is revealed to us in his books. We see there that he was more than a scholar, more than a Jewish theologian — that he studied deeper questions than the criticism of the Pentateuch, and had wider interests than those even of his own Oecumenical Jewish Church. This is especially clear in the latest of his books {PatJi and Goal), published in 1880, which, in the form of a conversation between friends, discusses the old problems of the " highest good." To a student the value of Path and Goal is great from its sympathetic exhibition of opposing points of view. No object was so dear to Kalisch as the growth of mutual respect and sympathy among religionists of different schools, and we cannot doubt that the host at whose house the interlocutors of the conversation assemble, and who appreciates and adopts all their highest thoughts, represents Kalisch himself. He is therefore not a " dry, cold rationalist," as one of the newspapers in 1885 described him, but has an ideal akin to that which Prof. Max M tiller describes at the 206 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. close of his eloquent Hibbert Lectures} Such a man cannot be altogether an unsympathetic commentator on the Old Testament. Kalisch had a mind sensitive to all intellectual influences, and passed through several stages of development as an exegete. His Exodus (1855) would now be reckoned orthodox and conservative ; his Genesis (1858) distinctly recognized the principles of analytic criticism. The latter work in particular displays a fine sympathetic spirit towards the nar- ratives of Genesis which reminds one of Eichhorn and Ewald. In his Leviticus however (2 vols., 1867 — 1872) Kalisch took up the most " advanced " position both in criticism and in theology. With his later theology I have here no concern, but on the critical questions I may say with Kuenen that he shows " great vigour and independence." His conclusion is expressed thus : — c< We trust we have succeeded in demonstrating that the laws of Leviticus in reference to every particular subject are of later origin than the corre- sponding enactments of Deuteronomy. We have at least spared no pains to establish this point ; for upon it hinges the true insight, not only into the composition of the Pentateuch, but into the entire history of Hebrew theology. ... In every case, Leviticus, as compared with Deuteronomy, manifests a most decided progress in hierarchical power and 1 Cf. Expositor, 1885 (2), pp. 39°-~393. KALISCH. 207 organization, in spiritual depth and moral culture ; but it manifests on the other hand a no less decided decline in freedom and largeness of conception. . . . Therefore Leviticus must be placed later than the seventh century — the date which critics almost un- animously assign to Deuteronomy." " The laws which Ezekiel, in delineating the restored commonwealth, propounds with respect to the rights and duties of priests, the sacrificial service, and the festivals, are greatly at variance with those of Leviticus. ... If, in the prophet's time, the com- mands of Leviticus had existed, or had been known as a part of the holy " Book of the Law," he would assuredly not have ignored and overthrown them by substituting others devised by himself. We must therefore conclude that the Book of Leviticus did not exist, or had at least no divine authority, in the earlier years of the Babylonian captivity." " The destruction both of the northern and of the southern kingdom, and the misery of the people scattered in the countries of the Euphrates and the Tigris, are in one of the last chapters (xxvi.) vividly and most accurately described. This part of the book therefore leads us on to an advanced period of the Babylonian rule." " The contemporaries of Nehemiah (about B.C 440) were unacquainted with the Law of Moses. When the people heard it read, they wept, exactly as about 200 years before, King Josiah had wept when portions of Deuteronomy were read to him ; and they 208 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. were grieved for the same reason — because they had not lived in accordance with the precepts of that Law." " Leviticus contains ordinances respecting several institutions, the existence or full development of which cannot be proved until long after the captivity — such as the sin-offerings and the high-priesthood, the Day of Atonement and the Year of Jubilee, institutions of all others the most characteristic or most important. Now . . . the Day of Atonement was unknown in the time of Nehemiah ; and as the Year of Jubilee was associated with the Day of Atonement, the compilation of the book must fall later than that date ; and we shall probably be near the truth if, considering the spirit of the concluding chapter on votive offerings and tithes, we place the final revision of Leviticus and of the Pentateuch at about B.C. 400." 1 It seemed only fair to give this record of a modest scholar who is in some danger of being overlooked, partly because he was an Israelite, and partly because his style of philology is not altogether that to which we are accustomed. 2 As a companion I will give him Dr. Samuel Davidson, who has also had his phases of opinion, and is not perhaps now estimated according to his deserts. This venerable scholar (born in 1807) has been severely handled by a recent 1 Leviticus, Part II., pp. 637 — 639. 2 Kalisch's other works are his well-known Hebrew Grammar, and his Bible Studies 011 Balaam (1877) and/ana/i (1878). SAMUEL DAVIDSON. 209 writer, whose contention is that Dr. Davidson's change of critical position was the unfortunate effect of his expulsion from his professorship. 1 I confess I do not see why Davidson, like Kuenen and like Delitzsch, should not, upon sufficient cause, change his opinions, and the charge of bias seems to me one which might reasonably be retorted against all who hold any educational office, for no bias perhaps can be greater than that insensibly produced by the endeavour to enter sympathetically into the minds of pupils. So much in defence of one whom as a writer I certainly cannot admire, and in whom as a re- searcher I cannot see that independence which, as I imagine, is among the signs of a first-rate critic. 2 But Dr. Davidson has in times past been so able a theological interpreter between Germany and England, and to an advanced age has shown such zeal for truth, that I cannot omit his name or ignore his services. If in his later years he has felt the bitter- ness of isolation, I would rather give him pity than censure. Of his earlier work on the Old Testament, Mr. (now Bishop) Westcott wrote thus to the author (in 1857 ?) : " No one can question the great value of your Introduction. I know no English work on the subject which can be compared with it ; and I doubt 1 Watkins, Bampton Lectures, p. 272, &c. 1 Among Dr. Davidson's works are, The Text of the Old Testament Considered; with a Treatise on Sacred Interpretation and a brief Introduction to the O. T. Books and the Apocrypha, 1S56 (ed. 2, 1859), and An Introduction to the Old Test. .critical, historical, and theological, 3 vols., 1S62-63. P 2IO FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. whether any German Introduction is equally com- plete." 1 We have now almost reached what I may call the modern age in English Bible-study, but a few names of men and books seem still to require mention. First, that of Rowland Williams (1817 — 1870), whom Ewald, as we have seen, visited at Broadchalke. The story of the life of this eminent divine is " the history of an epoch in English thought," and it is noteworthy that the chief literary production of his later years is a work on the Hebrew prophets (2 vols., 1866 — 1871), which, in its object, as Ewald remarked in reviewing it, 2 was up to that time quite unparalleled in English literature. That object was, not merely to give a better translation, but to ascertain the period of each separate prophetic writing, and to study the prophetic ideas, with which it may fairly be said that he had a natural affinity. The author's rearrangements are chiefly due to Ewald, but he has now and then strik- ing critical ideas of his own ; in philology, he is weak. Of Dr. E. H. Perowne, on the other hand, it may be said that his excellent translation of the Psalms with commentary (first ed., 1864 — 1868) is more advanced in its philology than in its criticism ; how indeed should it have been otherwise at that date ? I trust that no subsequent critics will forget the debt which England owes to Dr. Perowne, not only for 1 See the passage in full, Facts, Statements, and Explanations, by Samuel Davidson, D.D., 1857, pp. 123-4. 2 Gbtt. gel. Anzeigen, Jan. 23, 1867. PEROWNE — A. B, DAVIDSON — MARTINEAU. 211 this useful student's book, but for his timely criti- cisms of Pusey's Book of Daniel {Contemporary Re- vieWy Jan. 1866), and in more " modern " times for his defence of a moderate Pentateuch-criticism (Contem- porary Review, iSSS), of which indeed he had him- self in Smith's Bible Dictionary given a fragmentary suggestion. Recognition is also due to this scholar's learned and critical but inconclusive article " Zech- ariah " [Bible Dictionary), in which more than once the Exilic origin of Isa. xl. — lxvi. is assumed. Mr. A. B. Davidson, author of vol. i. of a learned philo- logical commentary on Job (Edinb. 1862), deserves grateful recognition ; the reader will meet him again. Lastly, Mr. Russell Martineau, by his (too few; critical articles in the old Theological Review and in the translation of Ewald's History showed his acumen and fine scholarship, and contributed to prepare the way for the modern period. 1 1 Dean Stanley can alas ! only be mentioned in a footnote. It was his main work to excite an interest in the picturesque accessories, and permanent moral interest, of Biblical history. In doing this he availed himself largely of Ewald's results. Even his most original work, the Sinai and Palestine (1856,, has numerous references to this -Meat scholar. CHAPTER X. THE MODERN PERIOD — ROBERTSON SMITH — A. B. DAVIDSON — BRIGGS — TOY — [SCHRADER]— SAYCE — KIRKPATRICK — RYLE — FRANCIS BROWN — MOORE — WHITEHOUSE — G. A. SMITH — DUFF — FRIPP — ADDIS — MONTEFIORE — BEVAN. The modern period may be opened here with the name of W. Robertson Smith, who from the first gave promise of becoming the most brilliant critic of the Old Testament in the English-speaking countries. Aberdeen university never turned out a keener intellect, and with admirable forethought his friends there bade him complete his training under A. B. Davidson (recently appointed professor) at the Free Church College at Edinburgh, and under the most learned and exacting of professors, Paul de Lagarde at Gottingen. Physical science however long strove with theology for this able student, and perhaps it was only the definite offer of a professorship of Oriental Languages and the Old Testament at the Free Church College at Aberdeen that prevented him from being finally enrolled among Scottish academical teachers of physics. At any rate, it was ROBERTSON SMITH. 213 a great advantage for Robertson Smith both as a special Biblical critic and as a theologian to have obtained so good an insight into the methods of physical science, and among other things into the right use of hypothesis according to such men as Thomson and Tait. Bold, but wisely bold, were those who appointed so young a man (he was then twenty-four) to a professorship. But our Scottish friends know when to be bold, and when cautious. The young professor came of a good stock ; attach- ment to evangelical religion might safely be presumed in his father's son. It was true that he could not have passed under the influence of Albrecht Ritschl at Gittingen without having modified some of his ideas as to what constituted orthodoxy, nor under that of Lagarde (who said that he " accepted every- thing that was proved, but nothing else") without having become increasingly strict in criticizing tra- ditional narratives. But the directors of the Free Church colleges were aware of the necessity of strengthening the scientific (wissenscJiaftlich) portion of Scottish theology, and' a policy of generous trust in the rising generation supplanted that of obscur- antism and distrust. The Bible needed to be re- examined in the light of historical research (here Lagarde's training would show itself), and both dogmatics and apologetics required rcinterpretation and revision (here the profoundly positive Ritschl would not be unhelpful). In other words, not Hcng- stenberg but Tholuck was the model of these liberal- 214 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. conservative directors — Tholuck, whom another Free Church student heard say shortly before his death, " The more liberal view of inspiration can be safely introduced among the laity, only on condition that the theologians first show that they can hold it with- out losing the power and purity of their religious life."' From 1870 to 188 1 Prof. Robertson Smith worked at Aberdeen. Those years of his life now appear so far off, and the evidence relative to the activities which filled them has become so historical, that I can venture to speak of them. As a lecturer, he not only benefited his students intellectually, but "settled them in the Bible, in their faith, in their doctrines " ; as a helper in popular education, he won the grateful regard of young men in business ; as a preacher, he confirmed his hearers in evangelical religion. This was not his whole work, however. In 1875 he began writing for the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. The first of his articles is headed " Angel " ; the second " Bible." The former shows his mastery of the historico-exegetical problems of Biblical theology ; the second, the comprehensiveness of his learning and his deep critical insight. The composition of the articles " Canticles " and " David " also comes into this period — the latter of which in particular is a model of sympathetic Biblical criti- cism. Nor must I forget contributions to the British Quarterly and the British and Foreign Evangelical Review^ and to the old series of the Expositor, all of which impress one with the singular steadiness and ROBERTSON SMITH. 2 I 5 rapidity of this scholar's development, and, not least, with the security of his theological position. In fact were we to name a scholar of this period who was qualified to be professor both of Old Testament subjects and of theology in its broadest aspects, it would be Prof. Robertson Smith. In 1878 this very scholar was charged with serious offences against sound doctrine with regard to the Scriptures. It was a historical event of no less moment than the proceedings against Bishop Colcnso in England. Into the various phases of the trial (which was of course a purely ecclesiastical one) I will not enter. 1 They were followed with keen interest by the friends and foes of criticism both in the English-speaking countries and in Germany. It is said that Delitzsch, though not as far advanced criti- cally as Robertson Smith, heartily wished him success. But the wish was not to be gratified. The Professor won his battle for others, but not for himself. Undis- turbed by this, he determined to appeal to the Scottish laity, and in the winter of 1 8S0 delivered intro- ductory popular lectures on Old Testament criticism to large audiences at Edinburgh and Glasgow. These lectures were then published in a volume, of which in fifteen months 6,500 copies were sold. In the follow- ing winter the experiment was repeated with the 1 The various publications connected with the trial arc, to a great extent, of permanent interest. See especially the Pro- fessor's Answer to the Form of Libel now before the Presbytery of Aberdeen (Edinb., David Douglas, 1S78), 2l6 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. same success, and these lectures too appeared in book-form. Need I say that these two volumes are those well-known books, The Old Testament in tlie Jewish Church and The Prophets of Israel, the former of which has lately (1892) been republished in a second, enlarged edition ? It is probable that the trial instituted in 1878 was not wholly unconnected with the appearance in the same year of that brilliant and incisive but, as English readers cannot help thinking, here and there irreverent book, Wellhausen's Geschichte Israels (vol. i.). How- ever that may be, it is no secret that the two writers, Robertson Smith and Wellhausen are (in spite of their different idiosyncrasies) close friends, 1 and that they have exchanged many suggestions which have borne abundant fruit. In Hexateuch criticism, no doubt, the indebtedness is chiefly on the side of Robertson Smith, who has been (if I may say so) the most brilliant exponent of his friend's theory, not of course because it is Wellhausen's theory, but because it is truth. It ought however to be remembered that, taking this scholar's work as a whole, with all the minute details often stowed away in notes or in special journals (like the Journal of Philology), it is distinctly original work of a high class. When Robertson Smith began to devote himself more especially to Arabic studies, it was for the immediate present (not in the long run) the greatest possible loss 1 The preface to the English edition of Wellhausen's book was written by Prof. W. R, Smith. ROBERTSON SMITH. 217 to our native Biblical criticism. He has but given us specimens of what he can do. Excellent as the Encyclopedia articles arc, they arc but very full summaries, and the two volumes of lectures arc after all in the main popular introductions. That well- deserved eulogy which a conservative writer in the Church Quarterly Review (Oct. 1892) has given to one of the latter would certainly not be repeated, were Prof. Robertson Smith to publish a work of minute research, from the point of view actually reached by advanced critics. Still, in spite of the regrets which I have expressed, we must all congratulate Cambridge on its adoption of so eminent a scholar. It was in 1883 that Robertson Smith became the colleague of Wright as a professor of Arabic, at the same time continuing the editorial labours on the Encyclopedia Britannica which he began in 1 881. Apart from his Biblical articles in this work (note especially "Messiah," 1883; "Psalms," 1886; and the latest of all, "Zephaniah," 1888), the results of his studies are mainly embodied in two important books, which prove not only his interest in Semitic research in general, but also his sense that future Old Testament studies will be largely affected by archaeo- logical investigations. These works are — Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia (18S5), and Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (first scries, 1889). It would carry me too far to discuss the theories of these brilliant and original volumes. From the point of view of an Old Testament scholar, who has not made 2l8 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. the same special studies as the author and Wellhausen, what has to be said has been put forward with due modesty by Karl Budde in a review of the latter work. 1 If the author has sometimes based a bold theory on evidence of uncertain value, this cannot obscure the many results which are in a high degree probable, and if he now and then gives us a glimpse of his own theological system, those who believe in the undying importance of a sound theology, and in its close connexion with historical facts, cannot blame him for this. Nor can I criticize him severely for taking no account of Assyriological researches. It was best to attack the subject from the side of non-Assyrio- logical Semitic study ; here the author was at home, and his necessary onesidedness can in due time be corrected. It is of course quite another thing when, as in the Prophets of Israel (pp. 377, 401), Prof. Robertson Smith betrays a degree of distrust of Assyriology which further study of the subject would even in 1882 assuredly have dissipated. 2 1 Theol. Liter aturzeitung, Nov. 1, 1890 ; cf. the review (by Mr. Lang?) in the Speaker, No. 1. 2 " Perhaps with an extreme of scepticism " is too gentle an expression to use of Gutschmid's attack on the Assyriologists, considering the elaborate and conclusive reply of Schrader {Keilinschriften tend Geschichtsforschwig, 1878). Nor is it reasonable to doubt the correctness of Schrader's Assyriological explanation of the names of deities in Am. v. 26. We may of course, with Wellhausen {Die Kleitien Propheten, 1892), obelize the verse, but if the passage is genuine, the northern Israelites in the time of Amos worshipped Assyrian deities. We may suppose that they sought to appease the anger of those powerful gods, comparing Isa. x. 4 (if Lagarde's reading be adopted). ROBERTSON SMITH. 21 | It was a great satisfaction to receive in June [892 one's old favourite, The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, in a revised and enlarged form. The addi- tions are most conspicuous in that part of Lecture V. which treats of the historical books ; a new lecture (XIII.) is also introduced, containing a general sketch of the results of Hexatcuch criticism, and the greater part of the lecture on the Psalter has been rewritten. Besides this, there arc two fresh appended notes of much interest, — one relating to the text of 1 Sam. xvii., the other to the question of Maccabxan psalms in Books I. — III. of the Psalter. The first of these I shall pass over, referring to a record of my first impressions on reading the note in the Expositor, Aug. 1892, pp. 156-7. On the second, I venture to offer some criticisms, because in my work on the Psalter (1891) I professed myself unsatisfied with the theory put forward to account for psalms like the 44th in the very able article " Psalms" {Enc. Brit.) which is reproduced in Lect. VII. of tin's volume. I am, I think, in no danger of being an unfair critic of Prof. Robertson Smith's theories on the Psalms, for two reasons. 1 First, because in my own conclu- sion as to the period of the Psalms, I have to a large extent his support. Secondly, because supposing that his theory of Pss. xliv., Ixxiv., and lxxix. is correct, I am thereby enabled to strengthen my own 1 The following criticism^ arc taken, with but little alteration, from my art. in the New Worlds Sept. 1S92, 220 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. published view 1 as to the date of Isa. lxiii. 7 — lxvi. Let me then heartily recommend, not only Lect. VII., but also Note D on pp. 437—440, in which the theory is again advocated that Pss. xliv., lxxiv., and lxxix. were written during the oppression of the Jews by Artaxerxes Ochus (about 350 B.C.). According to Professor Robertson Smith, this oppression in- cluded one important event of which no direct record has survived, viz. the burning of the temple (see Ps. lxxiv. 7, and cf. lxxix. 1). He remarks that our notices of Jewish history during the Persian period are extremely fragmentary, and that Josephus, though he does not mention the burning of the temple (as indeed he does not speak of the Jewish captivity under Ochus), certainly does mention a " defilement " of the temple by Bagoses under (as it seems) Artaxerxes II. (Ant. xi. 7, 1). Professor Robertson Smith says : " It seems to me that the objection to placing these psalms in the reign of Ochus comes mainly from laying too much weight on what Josephus relates about Bagoses. That Bagoses forced his way into the temple, and that he laid a tax on the daily sacrifices, is certainly not enough to justify the language of the psalms. But for this whole period Josephus is very ill informed, . . . and the whole Bagoses story looks like a pragmatical invention designed partly to soften the catastrophe of the Jews, and partly to explain it by the sin of the High Priest. 1 See "Critical Problems of the Second Part of Isaiah," part 2, in the Jewish Quarterly Review >, October 1891. ROB1 RTSON SMITH. The important fact of the captivity to Hyrcania stands on quite independent evidence, but comes to us without any details. The captivity implies a revolt, and the long account given by Diodorus (xvi. 40 fT.) of Ochus' doings in Phoenicia and Egypt shows how that ruthless king treated rebels. In Egypt the temples were pillaged and the sacred books carried away {ibid. c. 51). Why should we suppose that the temple at Jerusalem and the synagogues fared better ? Such sacrilege was the rule in Persian warfare ; it was practised by Xerxes in Greece and also at Babylon. I have observed in the text that a rising of the Jews at this period could not fail to take a theocratic character, and that the war would necessarily appear as a religious war. Certainly the later Jews looked on the Persians as persecutors ; the citation from Pseudo-Hec. in Jos. c. Ap. i. 22, though worthless as history, is good evidence for this ; and it is also probable that the wars under Ochus form the historical background of the Book of Judith, and that the name Holophernes is taken from that of a general of Ochus, who took a prominent part in the Egyptian campaigns " (p. 439). It will be seen that three assumptions are made here. The first is that Bagoses is the same as Bagoas, — the name of the ruthless general of the not less ruthless king, Artaxerxes Ochus. (This is a very easy one, though the character of Josephuss Bagoses does not agree with that of Bagoas.) The second is that Josephus almost completely transforms the true 222 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. story of the events, out of regard for the prejudices of the Jews, who could not understand how God could have permitted His own faithful people to fall into such misery, and His own temple to be a second time polluted and burned by a heathen enemy. The third is that the rising of the Jews (the reality of which is, I think, disputed by Professor S. R. Kennedy only) had a " theocratic character " and a religious sanction. A few remarks may be offered on these assumptions. It is too strong a statement that " sacrilege was the rule in Persian warfare," and the Jewish temple had no images in it to irritate a faithful worshipper of Mazda. I admit, however, that the second and third Artaxerxes were " reactionary kings," who, both morally and religiously, " compromised the purity of Mazda-worship " {Bampton Lectures, p. 292) ; and if I am right in assigning a number of persecution psalms (such as vi., vii., x., xi., and xvii.) to the period of Persian oppression under one or the other of these kings, it is not a great step further to assign Pss. lxxiv. and lxxix. to that dark time. Even the consciousness of legal righteousness in Ps. xliv. is perhaps not much keener than that in Pss. vii. and xvii. It is true that in Isa. lxiv. 5 — 7 (which very probably comes from the same period) the very deepest contrition for sin is expressed, but the great confession of sin to which this passage belongs may have been written in a greater depth of misery than these psalms. To the references to Pseudo-Hecataeus and to Judith not much weight can be attached ; but ROBERTSON SMITH. 223 on other grounds I think it not impossible that after glutting his revenge on Sidon, Ochus sent his general Bagoas to chastise the Jews (cf. Ju leich, Kleinasia- tischc Studicn, p. 176), and that the temple was not only desecrated but destroyed. I should be inclined at present to hold out as regards Ps. xliv., for I can scarcely believe the Jews had taken so prominent a part in the general rebellion as to account for Ps. xliv. 9. But as regards Pss. lxxiv. and lxxix., the objection to the theory of Ewald (ed. 1) and Professor Smith, which I expressed in Bampton Lectures, pp. 91, 92, 102, has grown much feebler. It may be said that Professor Smith's theory is bold and imaginative. So it is ; but it .is not on this account to be rejected. Unimaginative critics like Hupfeld are also very insipid, and do not greatly promote a vivid comprehension of the meaning of the Psalms. It cannot of course be proved, and Hitzig's view (suggested by a passage in Solinus, xxxv. 6, Mommsen) that it was Jericho, not Jeru- salem, which suffered so much under Ochus, is not unworthy of attention. But it would be a great boon to be able to explain Ps. lxxiv. 7, lxxix. 1, and Isa. lxiv. 12, without having to suppose that the liturgical poems to which these passages belong were written to commemorate more than one catastrophe. On Professor Smith's other critical remarks (directed against theories of my own) I may be brief. 1 He appears to me to be too much a prey to the love of 1 Comp. Expositor, An-. 1892, p. 159. 224 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. simplicity ; why psalms of the Greek age should not have found their way into Books I. — III. is not to me obvious, in spite of Professor Smith's remark (p. 437) on my "complicated hypothesis." That my view of Pss. xlii., xliii. is " fanciful," should be no objection to a historical student like the author. There are, as Milton has told us, two kinds of fancy : the nobler kind some of us prefer to call " imagination." Professor Smith, as we have seen, is himself not devoid of this priceless gift, without which there is no piecing together the scattered fragments of history, no vivifying the lifeless conclusions of a cold criticism. And surely it is hardly right to dismiss a critical theory too positively if you have no better substitute to propose. I myself cling less to my own views on Pss. xlv. and Ixxii. than to many other parts of my system. But I cannot see much force in the prejudiced arguments brought against them ; nor can I believe that Ps. Ixxii. can be " a prayer for the re-establish- ment of the Davidic dynasty under a Messianic king according to prophecy " (why not call it at once a purely imaginative royal psalm ? ) ; nor that Ps. xlv. is most easily viewed " as a poem of the old kingdom." Nor can I see my way to explain Ps. lxviii. of the hopes created by the catastrophe of the Persian empire. Verse 30 seems clearly to show that when the psalmist wrote, Egypt was a powerful empire, from which danger to Palestine might be reasonably apprehended. 1 These however are but minor points, 1 For my own present view of the passage, see Journal of A. B. D.W1DSON. 225 compared with those large ones on which this scholar, more completely and definitely than Prof. Driver, is on my side. And Prof. Robertson Smith cannot go back, he is still in the vanguard of critics. Of Prof. A. B. Davidson this can perhaps hardly be said ; and yet no one has done more to " found " criticism, at least in Scotland, than this eminent teacher. It is a nuble but a difficult position — that of a professor of Biblical study in one of the great Scottish schools of theology, — noble, because he has access to the keenest and most inquisitive theological students in our island, and difficult, because until of late evangelical warmth has in Scotland been com- bined with singularly strong dogmatic prejudices. If conservative reviewers will permit me to say so, I venture to think that Dr. Davidson was specially prepared by nature and by training for this great position. Of his natural gifts, I will not speak now, because my small personal acquaintance with him, though enough to give me a special interest in all that he writes, is not sufficient for me to do so as I could wish. Moreover, one of Prof. Davidson's pupils, who has since gone to a higher school, has already given a delicate psychological study of his old master, and to this I can refer the reader. 1 But I am glad to have been able to verify to some slight extent much Biblical Literature (Boston, U.S.A.), June 1S92, and cf. A to Study of Criticism, p 341. A possible historical situation is suggested by Jos., Ant., xii. 3, 3. 1 See Elmslie's study, Expositor, Jan. iSSS. 226 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. of what Elmslie has said. I see that modesty, that sense of the many-sidedness of truth and of the difficulties inherent in all systems, that disintegrating criticism, that latent heat which corrects the criticism, that love of great spiritual ideas. I see too — and I delight to see — that Prof. Davidson has a theology ; it is not indeed any one of the current theologies, it is not systematic, nor shut up in formulae, but it colours his thinking, and if all his too few sermons are like the single one which I have read (not heard), I can believe that he can sway the souls of all who are not mere church-goers but in earnest like himself. Prof. Davidson is evidently a great teacher, and the effect which he has produced proves that he has been seconded by generations of great-minded students. These Scottish students, who have owed so much to their teacher, have, as it seems, partly repaid their debt. What else can be the reason of the strange fact which I am about to mention ? His early unfinished work on Job (1862) showed a thorough philology and a power of dramatic presentation which justified the highest hopes. But not until 188 1 did Prof. Davidson give any help to critical students at large (I refer to the article " Job " in the Encyclopedia Britannicd) y and not until 1884 did he publish his excellent volume on Job in the modest Cambridge Bible-series. Then, as it would appear, he became bolder, and felt sure enough about some solutions to express them in notices of books (see the now extinct theological review published by Free Church students, A. l;. i>.\\ [DSON. 22j and the very useful Critical Review y edited by Prof. Salmond). And only last year we have received a commentary on Ezekiel in the same scries, which is a worthy companion to its predecessor. Must we not, to some extent, thank the students of New College (from Robertson Smith's time onwards) for this diminished suspense of judgment ? It was clearly- impossible for such a teacher to let himself be dis- tanced by his pupils. His pupils, in fact, had, to adopt Niebuhr's figure, become his "wings." That in his hesitativeness Prof. Davidson has been true to his nature, I do not doubt. But it is scarcely possible for all of us to accept the justification of his teacher which Elmslic has given at one point of his sketch. 1 From a " higher critic's " point of view, Prof. Davidson sacrifices too much to the Philistines in that humorous and somewhat cavalier declaration which Elmslie quotes on p. 42 of his sketch. There is not a little of the Philistine in every untutored student even at New College, and those teachers who are more sensitive than Prof. Davidson to the less conspicuous data of criticism may be pardoned -for regretting a gibe which in almost any other person they would meet with as dry and cavalier a retort. There is however much to be said in favour of the book on Job as a whole. The commentary is as thorough as under the limitations of the scries to which it belongs it could well be, and the introduction, 1 See Expositor, pp. 41 — 43. 228 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. in dealing with " higher criticism," puts forward, in an excellent form, some of the best suggestions which have been made. The objection which I shall have to raise, in speaking of Prof. Driver's views of Job, does not in the least affect my general estimate of the book. And similarly high praise is due to the Ezekiel. Both works are based upon accurate philology, though the text critical element may be hardly advanced enough for some. In the Ezekiel however the writer shows his grasp of a subject which, though closely connected with, is theoretically separate from the " higher criticism," viz. Biblical theology. And upon the whole, we may say that the best results of modern study have been passed through a cool and critical mind, and have come out in a form such as all students can appreciate. There can be no harder book than Ezekiel for the com- mentator, and if the last three pages of the introduction do but graze the surface of difficult critical problems, this is of course justified by the nature of the com- mentary. One only asks why this able scholar has not sought more opportunities of helping forward critical study. He is himself the loser by his ex- cessive caution. For how can that introduction to Biblical theology, which we are eagerly expecting from him, be produced without the aid of a wisely bold " higher criticism " ? x 1 Prof. Davidson's other works are — Outlines of Hebrew Accentuation (1861) ; A71 Introductory Hebrew Grammar (ed. i, 1874) ; The Epistle to the Hebrews (p. dry but very able work ; BRIGGS — TOY. Another eminent Biblical theologian, who may justly claim to be moderate in the use of the "higher criticism," is Prof. C. A. Briggs. A more eager worker than Prof. Davidson, he fills (one may believe) a place specially marked out lor him in his own land. We on this side of the Atlantic may however be allowed to adopt him, since his books appeal in part to a British public, and he contributes to the Oxford-printed Anglo-American Hebrew Lex- icon. His two best-known books — Biblical Study (1883) and Messianic PropJiccy (1886) — display a grasp of the religious as well as historical significance of the Old Testament, for the want of which no learning or critical keenness could atone. And with him I am bound to group another American critic of another school, Prof. C. H. Toy, author of Judaism and Christianity, and of some fine critical articles on the early traditions of Israel and cognate subjects in the Journal of Biblical Literature. Both these are Berlin students, and worthily promote the cause of international Bible-criticism. Of individualities there is happily no end. This is the pledge to Old Testament critics that their science will constantly renew its youth. How different is Gesenius from Ewald, Davidson from Robertson Smith, Schrader from Sayce ! Of the 1SS2). I may add that Prof. W. R. Smith has also written articles on Hebrews in the old Expositor. See also Prof. Davidson's articles in the Expositor on Hosea (1879), the Second Isaiah (18S3-S4), Amos (1SS7), and Joel (1888). 230 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. two latter I have now to speak ; for Sayce needs a companion, and I can find none of English race. Both are eminent Assyriologists, though the scrupulous sobriety of the former hinders him from the often happy divinations of the latter. And lastly, both have been compelled to drop behind as Old Testa- ment critics, so eager and rapid has been the advance of recent criticism. In Schrader's career two stages may be noticed. Like Dillmann, he was a scholar of Ewald, and was early drawn to the study of Ethiopic, on which he printed a prize dissertation in i860. In 1863, at the age of twenty- seven, he succeeded Hitzig at Zurich, and published some valuable critical studies on Gen. i. — xi. After this the second stage begins. From Ethiopic studies he not unnaturally passed to Assyrian. In 1869 he brought out a revision of De Wette's Old Testament Introduction, and the accuracy of his statements respecting Assyrian matters was not less a special feature of that work than his development of the older Hexateuch criticism. In 1870 he passed to Giessen, and in 1873 to Jena, as professor of theology. But his zeal for Assyrian studies could not be restrained. In 1872 he replied convincingly to Alfred von Gutschmid's attack upon Assyriology, and in 1875 had the proud distinction of becoming the first professor of that subject in Germany, passing to Berlin university as the colleague of Dillmann. His best known work, Die Keilinschriften mid das Alte Testament (ed. j, 1872; ed. 2, 1883), has been SAYCE. 231 translated by Prof. Whitchousc, whose introduction contains a full account of Schradcr's former critical theories on the Hexatcuch. Of such an old friend as Prof. A. H. Sayce I could not speak in the tone of criticism, but for serious reasons. In the past I, like many others, have derived much stimulus from him, and in obtaining a working acquaintance with Assyrian philology his advice was invaluable. His high merits are incon- testable. He has been an Assyriologist from his youth, and though he is ten years younger than Schradcr, he was able in 1871-72 to discuss with him on equal terms the question of the name of the besieger of Samaria. 1 He is probably unsurpassed in his knowledge of the data of the inscriptions, and I am sure that no living scholar can excel him in his imaginative sense of history, and in his use of the imagination as the handmaid of discovery. For the latter habit I have heard him blamed, but it would be not less futile to blame Schrader for his sobriety. If Sayce's intuitions are hasty, they arc also brilliant. His most daring hypotheses have again and again in various degrees pointed the way to truth, and when this has not been the case, he has generally corrected his own error. And yet I fear that there is one important point on which, not for the first time, I must remonstrate with him. It is too frequently his habit to appeal, not to Caesar, but to the people. 1 See articles by Sayce and Schrader, TheoL Studien und Kritiken, 1871-72. 232 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. In his historical inferences from the inscriptions he often stands, for good or for evil, alone. In spite of this, he constantly popularizes his results, without indicating whether they are peculiar to himself or not, and through the attractiveness of his style and the concessions which he makes to traditional Biblical orthodoxy, these results have obtained such a currency in the English-speaking countries that they are at present practically almost incontrovertible. The con- sequence is that our popular literature on the Old Testament is (as it seems to me) becoming an obstacle to progress. Bad as the old books on the Hebrew Scriptures were, they at any rate did not lay claim to any special degree of archaeological accuracy. Now however all this is changed. I hear of Prof. Sayce everywhere as a pillar of traditional views of the Bible. Not to quote the American Sunday School Times, the Newbery House Magazine, the Expository Times, and the publications of the Religious Tract Society, I find it confidently stated that Prof. Sayce's Assyriological discoveries on the one hand and Prof. Margoliouth's Hebraistic and metrical " discoveries " on the other, were " recognized at every hand at the late Church Congress" (of 1892) as having brought about " a complete turn of the tide against the views of the higher critics." l Now I do not for a moment accept the parallelism put forward in this quotation. To compare his 1 Letter by W. W. Smyth, Spectator, Oct. 15, 1892, 5AYCE. 233 results in the mass with those of Prof. Margoliouth's inaugural lecture and subsequent essays, is absurd. The present Laudian Professor is a Hebraist from whom brilliant results may be expected, but these arc as yet in the future, whereas Prof. Saycc can look back upon a long series of services to the study of the Bible. It is a pleasure to feel that one is at all a fellow-labourer with him — a pleasure to express a general assent to much that he has lately written (sec e.g. his article in the Coiitemp vrary Review, Sept. 1890). But one must regret, not less for his own sake than for the cause of progress, that he should popularize so many questionable theories, and that in doing so he should make so many concessions to a most uncritical form of traditional theology. There was a time when he was not ashamed to be called a friend by the unpopular Bishop Colcnso ; T a time when he tried his skill on problems of the "higher criticism" ; a time, not so far distant, when he delivered the Hibbcrt Lectures. Now however I find him coupled as an orthodox apologist with one of the most uncritical of living theologians. Now too I find him repudiating any favour for the long- tested methods of " higher criticism," and adopting that unfortunate error of conservative theologians which identifies the "higher criticism" with the con- clusions of this or that writer, perhaps even of one who lived many years since. This course Prof. 1 See Colenso. The Pentateuch, &C, Tart VI., PreC p. \x\ii. 234 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. Sayce has taken, for instance, in two articles in a journal which discharges in many respects useful functions, the Expository Times (Dec. 1891, Oct. 1892). He may tell me that he was not writing for scholars, but he was writing for those who may yet become scholars, who at any rate claim to express an opinion, and have it in their power to hinder progress. I may seem to be too fond of qualifying ; but positive and peremptory assertions, even when speak- ing pro domo, are not to my taste. I fully admit that until Schrader and Sayce arose, Old Testament critics did not pay much attention to Assyriology. This however was not because they held a narrow theory of criticism. From the time of Graf (1866) onwards the necessity of archaeological detail-criticism has been fully admitted by Hexateuch critics, and this admission implies a gradual change in the habit of mind of Old Testament critics in general. Not that literary analysis is in the least disparaged, but the time has come, as even Colenso, quite apart from Graf, dimly felt in 1862, for a greater infusion of historical " realism " into the critic's work. Since 1866, every ten years has shown an increase of this spirit, and though a vast amount of work remains to be done (we want the help of friendly and critical archaeologists), a good beginning has been made. No single worker has helped so much as Prof. Robertson Smith (working on Wellhausen's lines), and if Prof. Sayce had more time, and could and would co-operate with the " higher critics," he might himself give 5A1 invaluable assistance. In 1873-74 he was still friendly to critical analysis, though he very rightly desired the analysts to revise and, if necessary, modify their results in accordance with Assyriological data. He himself offered provisional critical con- clusions with regard to Isa. xxxvi. — xxxix., and the Deluge-narratives and the "Ethnological Table" in Genesis. 1 I fear that his suggestions on Gen. x. have not been considered by the analysts (at least in any published work), while those which he put forward on the two other passages have failed to win accept- ance. And Prof. Sayce himself has no doubt by this time given up his old view on the date of the Hebrew Deluge-stories. What Prof. Sayce should, in my opinion, have done in the semi-popular articles referred to, was to place himself frankly where he stood in 1873-74, and admit once more that Assyriology " demonstrated the untenability of the traditional view of Genesis," and " confirms the [main] conclusions of scientific criticism." If he had further said that some critics needed to be stirred up to greater zeal for archaeol< — that Kuenen for instance had not given enough attention to Assyriology, and that Wellhauscn and Robertson Smith had in former years (like other Sem- itic scholars) displayed an excessive distrust of that study, I should have had no objection. But to bring such unfair charges against the "higher critics," and 1 See Theological Review, 1873, PP- T 5~ V- J64 377; 1874, pp. 59—69. 236 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. to speak so disparagingly of their (supposed) methods, and moreover to make such ill-founded statements as to the relation between Assyriology and the Book of Genesis as he has of late years done, conduces to the spread of theological prejudice and historical error. To oppose Prof. Sayce (not indeed as an Assyri- ologist, nor as an archaeological student, but as a popularizer of questionable theories and unfair accusations) is at present, I know, a difficult task, so far as England and America are concerned. Not merely for theological reasons, but because the archaeological interest among us has become so strong. As Prof. Sayce knows, I have always been on the side of archaeology. But I conceive that one ought not to favour archaeology at the expense of criticism. Old Testament criticism is a genuine historical movement, and those who have produced it have gone on constantly widening their range and improving their methods. To speak as disparagingly of Old Testament critics as Prof. Ramsay has lately done of Homeric critics, 1 is, I venture to submit, highly unjust, and calculated to produce a quite unnecessary partisanship. That very able explorer may or may not be altogether right in drawing a line between the non-archaeological Homeric criticism of the past and the archaeological of the future. But even if he be right, there is no true analogy between this case and that of Old Testament criticism. 1 See his art., " Mr. Gladstone on Homer," The Bookman, 1 892 ; cf. Gardner, New Chapters in Greek History ( 1 89 1 ). SAY< l . Much evil has been wrought by the mistaken use of analogy, and for the sake of historical truth let those who read Prof. Sayce be on their guard. Let me take a crucial instance. "Recent dis- covery," says Prof. Ramsay, " is bringing home to us the possibility that after all Agamemnon may once have lived. . . . We may prefer to explain the origin of the 'tale of Troy divine' in some other way, and not as the history of actual events ; but we must now treat the view that it is a fundamentally true tale as conceivably right ; and there is a widely- spread and growing feeling that in the immediate future the attitude towards the Homeric poems which is least erroneous and most likely to lead to further discovery is that they preserve a picture of a period of history which did once exist." It would be natural for an unwary student to assume that the same possibility or probability exists in the case of the story of Abraham. Prof. Sayce, in his well-known work Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments (pp. 53 — 59), even speaks as if those details in the story to which he refers were, beyond doubt, strictly historical, and as if " the whole account" of the campaign of Chcdorlaomcr and his allies, and the surprise of the invaders by Abraham and his confederates, were "extracted from the Babylonian archives." lie also gives "an approximate elate for the rescue of Lot by Abraham, and consequently for the age of Abraham himself." Still more recently he has even assured us that " in every point the history of Mclchizedck in 238 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. Gen. xiv. receives confirmation." 1 I confess that I am astonished at this. So far as regards the facts mentioned in Fresh Light, pp. 55-56, they have long since been absorbed by Old Testament critics, by moderate critics like Dillmann in one way, by ad- vanced critics like Kuenen in another. 2 And what difficulty need be caused by the facts derived by Prof. Sayce from the priceless Tell el-Amarna tablets ? A distinction must however be drawn between the certain and the uncertain facts. The reported "discovery of transcendent importance" relative to Gen. xiv. 18 sinks upon examination into 1 Expository Times, Oct. 1892, p. 18 ; cf. also Records of the Past, v. 60 — 65, and articles by Sayce in Hebraic a and the Newbery House Magazine. The Guardian, in a review of Fripp's Genesis (Nov. 16, 1892) unsuspiciously adopts Prof. Sayce's results and inferences. I have no controversial animus, and simply desire a critical treatment of the facts. Comp. Winckler's translations in Zt.f. Assyriologie, Sept. 1891. Comp. also Halevy, Recherche s bibliques, last fascicule, p. 727 ; Morris Jastrow, Zt. f. Assyriologie, 1892, heft 3, and Journal of Biblical Literature, 1892, Part I. (regretting that this distinguished u scholar " should be " doing a mischief of incalculable extent "). 2 Dillmann is of opinion that the narrative in Gen. xiv. (yv. ! s — 20 excepted) contains facts derived from a foreign source. But this must be qualified by what he says of the Abraham of Genesis elsewhere (see introd. to Gen. xii. &c). The Melchize- dek-story is a justification of the practice of paying tithes to the priestly tribe, but the figure of Melchizedek is probably derived from some popular legend. Kuenen thinks that Gen. xiv. is a fragment of a post-Exilian version of Abram's life, a midrash, such as the Chronicler likewise had among his authorities (2 Chron. xxiv. 27), and adopts E. Meyer's view that the historical facts of the setting of the story were obtained by the author of the midrash in Babylon. Cf. Cheyne, Origin of the Psalter, pp. 42, 165, 270. SAY* I • 239 an interesting and valuable fact about Jerusalem which is of no direct importance for Gcnesis-criticiMii. I do not think that we can at present grant that Uru-Salimmu was anciently shortened into Salimmu, nor (though I inclined to this view myself in 1888) l that Salimmu is the name of a god, much less that his priest was the king of Jerusalem. But in any case there is ample room both in Dillmann's theory and in Kuencn's (which is my own; for these facts, if proved. I am afraid that Prof. Sayce's defence of the narrative in Gen. xiv. is not very successful. And neither by him, nor by any one else, has it yet been made probable that there was a historical individual among the ancestors of the Israelites called Abram, or that the picture of u the times of Abraham " in Genesis is (to adopt Prof. Ramsay's phrase) a u fundamentally true tale " (except indeed so far as it reflects the times of the narrators). Another chapter of Genesis, the historical characters of which Prof. Sayce is popularly supposed to have vindicated against the "higher critics," is Gen. xxiii. Was there, as he himself stated in 1S8S, a " Hittite population " in the south of Palestine, li which clustered round Hebron, and to whom the origin of Jerusalem was partly due"?- It is at any rate proved by the Tell el-Amarna tablets, which Prof. 1 The present writer himself favoured this view before Sayce had published either his views on Mclchizcdek or even his Hibbert Lectures (see Cheyne, Book of Psalms, p. 213). - The II Utiles (k.T.S. . p. 13. 240 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. Sayceand others are studying, that the Hittites made conquests in Canaan in the fifteenth century B.C., and even threatened Jerusalem. But this admission does not carry with it the historical character of the narrative in Gen. xxiii., which states that Abraham brought a " field " and a sepulchre of " the people of the land, even the children of Heth " (Gen. xxiii. 7). The historical fact of the Hittite conquest has come down to the writer symbolized as P in a meagre and scarcely recognizable form, and has become the setting of a tradition of uncertain date. There is much more that might be added. How strange it is that even Prof. J. Robertson refers quite seriously to Prof. Sayce's theories on the names of Saul, David, and Solomon. 1 One could wish that Franz Delitzsch were still alive, to write another powerful protest 2 against the audacities of a free lance. I am aware that Prof. Sayce guards himself now and then against being supposed to be a pure con- servative. He declines (in Expository Times) to make any concession to the "historical" theory of the narratives in Daniel, he believes (unlike M. Halevy) that there are documents in Genesis, 3 and even that 1 Early Religion of Israel, pp. 178-179. So a reviewer of my Aids to the Devout Study of Criticism (letter in Guardian, Oct. 5, 1892) not less seriously appeals to Prof. Sayce as a critical authority. Against Sayce, see Tide's review of the Hibbert Lectures in the Tlieologiscli Tijdsclirift, 1890, p. 96. 2 Zt.f kirchliche Wissenschaft, 1888, pp. 124 — 126. 3 For Halevy's opinions, see his strange review of Kautzsch and Sociivs Genesis, Revue critique, 14 — 21 sept. 1S91. SAYCE. 241 a good deal of the Old Testament in its present form is composite in character, though nothing definite beyond that has been established. 1 But these con- cessions to criticism cannot obtain the same wide currency as his other statements, and even were it otherwise, they come far short of justice. From a layman they would be an interesting proof of the gradual filtration of critical views, but from one who is well known to have been long interested in theology they are only an additional obstacle to progress. I cannot help deploring this state of things. Need it continue ? Why should not this " versatile and Protean scholar" (as Prof. Ramsay calls him), who has, by his own admission, " not paid much attention of late years to Biblical criticism," and speaks of "the school of Wellhausen " from hearsay, repair this omission, and seek the assistance of the critics in questions on which he and they are equally concerned ? To the services of Assyriology they arc by no means blind ; why should not he on his side once more recognize them as fellow-explorers with himself of the dark places of antiquity ? It is at any rate as such an explorer that I venture to include him among English " founders of criticism." Last, not least, in the present group is another colleague of the writer, Prof. S. R. Driver. His merits however are too great to be dealt with adequately in the space which remains in this chapter. 1 Christian Commonwealth, Oct. 22, 1891 (a report of Pro£ Sayce's opinions which has evidently been carefully correct* K 242 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. I will therefore reserve this subject, and pass on to some younger scholars who are now winning their way to the front. Prof. A. F. Kirkpatrick, in his hand- books to I and 2 Samuel {Cambridge Bible, 1880-8 1), showed himself a careful Hebraist and an able teacher, but his point of view was non-critical. Since then, in The Divine Library of the Old Testament (1891) and in his commentary on Book I. of the Psalms (same series, 1891), he has shown that he has come over to the critical side. The moral and intellectual energy presupposed by this step deserves cordial re- cognition. One can only welcome so true, so earnest, so reverent a scholar. His two earliest critical or semi-critical works are deficient (naturally enough) in maturity of judgment and in grasp of the large and complicated questions before him. But he has time yet to spare, and if he should prefer rather to follow Davidson than Robertson Smith — rather to be an exegete and a Biblical theologian than a historical critic, one can but rejoice, assuming that he too has an equally friendly feeling towards those who, for the sake of exegesis and Biblical theology, feel bound to prosecute a keener criticism. 1 Nor can one hope anything less from his younger colleague, Prof. H. E. Ryle. This scholar appears to have specialized rather late, and to this we may attribute a certain hesitatingness in his thoughtful and learned hand- book on the Canon (1891). But he too is a careful Hebraist (as his own and Mr. James's work, The 1 His Warburto?i Lectures have not as yet appeared (Nov. 1892). FRANCIS BROWN— MOORE. Psaluis of the Pharisees, proves), and his popular studies on the Early Narratives of Genesis (1892) show that he is assimilating the best results of literary and archaeological critici>m. His expected (November 1S92) volume on Ezra and Nchcmiah {Cambridge Bible) will no doubt confirm this view of his capacities and attainments. Very much light has been thrown upon these books by recent study, and no one can adapt this new knowledge to English wants better than Prof. Ryle. Nor must one overlook two rising American scholars, who, by their linguistic training and early adhesion to the critical point of view, justify the highest hopes — Prof. Francis Brown and G. F. Moore. The former has given special attention to the relations between Assyriology and Old Testament studies, the latter to critical exegesis ; and both seem to be more completely at home in the u higher criticism " than their Cambridge colleagues. Circum- stances and individualities differ, nor must we com- plain if America should for a short time surpass Great Britain in the maturity of its M higher critics." Prof. Moore's articles in American and German periodicals are models in their kind, and one looks forward with eagerness to a philological commentary from his pen. Prof. Brown's promised handbook to the contemporary history (Zeitgesehiehte) of the Old Testament in Clark's new International Library will fill a gap which is every day more painfully felt. His lecture on the use and abuse of Assyriology in 244 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. Old Testament study (1885), and his articles on the Hittites and on Babylonian religion [Presbyterian Review, 1886, 1888), will repay an attentive perusal. Above all, the Hebrew Lexicon, of which he is the principal editor, will, when completed, ensure a sound basis for Old Testament criticism for many a long day. An Episcopalian scholar, Dr. J. P. Peters, a trained Hebraist and Assyriologist, should also be mentioned with honour. The name of Prof. Francis Brown naturally suggests that of Prof. Owen C. Whitehouse, a careful student of Assyriology, who has translated Prof. Schrader's important work, The Cuneiform Inscrip- tions, with learned additions. This scholar has moved but slowly from a more conservative critical point of view as regards the Hexateuch. In 1888 he attempted to revive the theory of Ewald that the " Grundschrift " dated from the time of Solomon ; 1 from more recent articles I gather that he has seen reason to give up this view, but that he has not yet obtained many fixed points in Old Testament criti- cism. Prof. G. A. Smith, was probably trained in a freer atmosphere. Of his popular exposition of Isaiah (1889-90) I have often spoken with no lack of warmth. Why I cannot assent to his views on the dates of the later portions of Isa. xl. — lxvi., I have explained elsewhere. 2 Prof. Archibald Duff's Old Tes- tament Theology, vol. i. (1891), is a work conceived 1 Expositor, 1888 (1), p. 144. 2 Ibid. 1891 (1), pp. 150—160. FRIPP — ADDIS — M0NTEFI0K1. 245 in a free, evangelical spirit, and carried out with delicate insight and a sometimes almost too ingenious scholarship. Roth Duff and G. A. Smith have suffered somewhat as writers from the effects of over-much preaching, but if by their books preachers can be induced to study the root-ideas of Biblical religion in their historical development, the Church at large will be the gainer. But has pure criticism been neglected? Certainly not. The year 1891 saw the appearance of two new writers, Mr. E. J. Fripp with his truly practical edition of Genesis according to advanced criticism (not without some more or less original views of his own), and Mr. W. E. Addis (a ripe theological and Semitic scholar' and follower of Kuenen and Wcllhausen) with the first volume of his translation and chronological arrangement of the documents of the Hexatcuch. The latter book has useful notes, and an introduction as lucidly expressed as it is full of matter. Mr. Addis was already known to specialists by his brave attempt to familiarize Roman Catholic readers with the facts revealed by the "higher criticism" of the Old Testament. 1 1 is work, being based on more prolonged studies, has a scholarly ripeness which Mr. Fripp's work, bright and keen as he is, can hardly possess. Mr. C. G. Montefiore's Hibbert Lectures for 1892 have not yet (November 1S92) appeared, but his articles in the Jewish Quarterly Review sufficiently prove how steadily and surely he is ripening into a fine critic. Returning to America, one chronicles with pleasure 246 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. Mr. B. W. Bacon's The Genesis of Genesis (1892). This, as the title-page tells us, is a study of the docu- mentary sources of the first Book of Moses in accord- ance with the results of critical science, illustrating the presence of Bibles within the Bible. It is, as Prof. G. F. Moore says in his introduction, the fruit of long and thorough study of the text, and of intimate acquaintance with the literature of recent criticism. Mr. Bacon strikes me as the ablest of our younger critics of the Hexateuch ; his articles in Hebraica and in the Journal of Biblical Literature well deserve to be studied. Nor is he the only contributor to these two periodicals who would have a claim to recognition in a more complete record than this. From the editor himself (Prof. Harper) we may expect some solid work in Prof. Haupt's expected translation of the Old Testament. The last of the younger English critics whom I can mention at present : is Mr. A. A. Bevan. It is true that he has been chiefly attracted by the linguistic side of the Old Testament. His emen- dations 2 of the text of Isaiah and of Daniel may not commend themselves to one's judgment, but they are evidence of his critical acumen. His Short Com- mentary on the Book of Daniel (1892), though critically 1 Scholars like Prof. Bennett, Prof. A. R. Kennedy, Prof. Davison, and Dr. John Taylor (author of The Hebrew Text of Micah) will pardon me if I wait for published evidence of what I do not in the least doubt, their ability to deal from their respective points of view with critical problems. 2 See Journal of 'Philology, and The Book of Daniel BEVAN. 247 incomplete, aims at a high philological standard, not without success, and the frankness with which he adopts and defends the best current solution of the problem of Daniel, without looking about for a com- promise, deserves high praise. It is, I confess, the spirit of compromise that I chiefly dread for our younger students. Many of them are now in influ- ential posts, and arc listened to with respect. But under present circumstances it is perhaps difficult for them to avoid extending the sphere of compromise from education to scientific inquiry. May they have firmness and wisdom to meet their ofttimes con- flicting responsibilities ! r CHAPTER XI. 1 DRIVER (i). The much fuller adhesion of Professor Driver to the still struggling cause of Old Testament criticism is an event in the history of this study. That many things indicated it as probable, can doubtless now be observed ; but until the publication in the Con- temporary Review (February 1890) of a singularly clear and forcible paper on the criticism of the historical books, it was impossible to feel quite sure where Dr. Driver stood. Up to the year 1882, he was known through various learned publications (notably that on the Hebrew Tenses) as an honest and keen-sighted Hebrew scholar, but in matters of literary and historical criticism he had not as yet committed himself, except of course to the non- acceptance of any such plainly unphilological view as the Solomonic authorship of Ecclesiastes. 2 In 1882, to the great benefit of Hebrew studies, he succeeded Dr. Pusey at Christ Church, and began at 1 Chaps, xi. — xiii. originally appeared in the Expositor for Feb., March, and April 1892. They have however been carefully revised, and in some parts expanded, condensed, or otherwise modified. 2 Hebrew Tenses, § 133 (ed. 2, p. 151). DRIV1 249 once to improve to the utmost the splendid oppor- tunities of his position both for study and for teaching. He now felt it impossible to confine himself within purely linguistic limits, however much from a conscientious regard for the (> weak brethren " he may have desired to do so. It is true that in his first published critical essay, he approached the 11 higher criticism " from the linguistic side {Journal of PJiilology, 1882, pp. 201 — 236), but there are evidences enough in the pages of the Guardian and of the Expositor that he was quietly and unobtrusively feeling his way towards a large and deep com- prehension of the critical and cxcgctical problems of the Hexateuch. Nor must the old lecture-lists of the university be forgotten. These would prove, if proof were needed, that his aspirations were high, and his range of teaching wide, and that the sketch of his professorial functions given in his excellent inaugural lecture was being justified. To the delightful obliga- tion of lecturing on the Hebrew texts, we owe a singularly complete and instructive volume on the Hebrew of Samuel (1890), the earnest of other volumes to come. And that Dr. Driver did not shrink from touching the contents of the Old Testa- ment, the outsider may divine from a small and unostentatious work, 1 which forms an admirable popular introduction to the reverent critical study of 1 Critical Notes on the International Sunday School Lessons from the Pentateuch for 1887 (New York : Charles Scribncr's Sons, 1S87). 250 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. certain chapters of Genesis and Exodus. In 1888 came the excellent though critically imperfect hand- book on Isaiah (in the " Men of the Bible" Series), which very naturally supersedes my own handbook published in 1870. 1 In 189 1 we received the valuable introduction which forms the subject of this notice, and some time previously we ought, I believe, to have had before us the articles on the books of the Pentateuch which Dr. Driver had contributed to the new edition of Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. So now Dr. Driver's long suspense of judgment is to a great extent over. The mystery is cleared up, and we know very nearly where he now stands. If any outsider has a lingering hope or fear of an imminent counter-revolution from the linguistic side, he must not look to Dr. Driver to justify it. The qualities which are here displayed by the author are not of the sensational order, as a brief summary of them will show. First, there is a masterly power of selection and condensation of material. Secondly, a minute and equally masterly attention to correctness of details. Thirdly, a very unusual degree of insight into critical methods, and of ability to apply them. Fourthly, a truly religious candour and openness of mind. Fifthly, a sympathetic interest in the difficulties of the ordinary orthodox believer. Willingly do I 1 It is only just to myself to say that this work is in no sense, as a hostile writer in the Guardian states, " a youthful pro- duction," but was written at an age when some men nowadays are professors, and both was and is respectfully referred to by German critics. DRTVI R. mention these points. Dr. Driver and I arc both engaged in a work " Too great for haste, too high for rivalry," and we both agree in recognizing the law of generosity. But I must add that I could still more gladly have resigned this privilege to another. For I cannut profess to be satisfied on all really important points with Dr. Driver's book. And if I say what I approve, I must also mention what I — not indeed disapprove — but feel obliged to regret. But why should I take up the pen ? Has not the book had praise and (pos- sibly) dispraise enough already? If I put forward my objections, will not a ripe scholar like Dr. Driver fa an answer from his own point of view for most of them ? Why should I not take my ease, and enjoy even the less satisfactory parts of the book as reflections of the individuality of a friend ? And the answer is, Because I fear that the actual position of Old Testament criticism may not be sufficiently understood from this work, and because the not incon- siderable priority of my own start as a critic gives me a certain vantage-ground and consequently a responsi- bility which Dr. Driver cannot and would not dispute with me. I will not now repeat what I have said with an entirely different object in the introduction to my Bampton Lectures, but on the ground of those facts I am bound to make some effort to check the growth of undesirable illusions, or, at any rate, t i contribute something to the formation of clear ideas in the popular mind. 252 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. I must here beg the reader not to jump to the conclusion that I am on the whole opposed to Dr. Driver. As I have already hinted, the points of agreement between us are much more numerous than those of difference, and in many respects I am well content with his courage and consistency. The debt which Dr. Driver owes to those scholars who worked at Old Testament criticism before him he has in good part repaid. He came to this subject theo logically and critically uncommitted, and the result is that, in the main, he supports criticism with the full weight of his name and position. There is only one objection that I have to make to the Introduction. It is however threefold : I. the book is to a certain extent a compromise ; 2. the (partial) compromise offered cannot satisfy those for whom it is intended ; 3. even if it were accepted, it would not be found to be safe. Let us take the first point. My meaning is, that Dr. Driver is free in his criticism up to a certain point, but then suddenly stops short, and that he often blunts the edge of his decisions, so that the student cannot judge of their critical bearings. I will endeavour to illustrate this from the book, and, in doing so, never to forget the "plea " which Dr. Driver so genially puts in to be "judged leniently for what he has 7iot said " (Preface, p. ix). At present, to clear the ground for future " lenient " or rather friendly criticisms, let me only remark that I am not myself opposed on principle to all " stopping short," i.e. to all compromise. In June and August 1889, I DRIVER. 253 submitted to those whom it concerned a plan of reform in the teaching of the Old Testament, which included a large provisional use of it. 1 My earnest appeal was indeed not responded to. Even my friend Dr. Sanday passes it over in a well-known work, 8 and praises the waiting attitude of our more liberal bishops. But I still reiterate the same appeal for a compromise, though I couch it differently. It is not at all hard to find out what results of criticism arc most easily assimilated by thinking laymen, and most important for building up the religious life. Let those results be put forward, with the more generally intelligible grounds for them, first of all for private study, and then, with due regard to local circum- stances, in public or semi-public tcachin To practical compromises I am therefore favourable, but this does not bind me to approve of scientific ones. The time for even a partly apologetic criticism or exegesis is almost over ; nothing but the " truest truth " will serve the purposes of the best con- temporary students of theology. This indeed is fully recognized in the preface of the editors of the " Library " to which this book belongs, the object of which is defined as being "adequately (to) represent the present condition of investigation, and (to) indicate the way for further progress." I regret therefore that Dr. Driver did not leave the task of forming a distinctively Church criticism (of 1 See Contemporary Review^ August 1S89. - The Oracles of God ( 1 89 1 ). 254 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. which even now I do not deny the value for a certain class of students) to younger men, 1 or to those excellent persons who, after standing aloof for years, now begin to patronize criticism, saying, " Thus far shalt thou come, but no farther ! " I heartily sympa- thize with Dr. Driver's feelings, but I think that there is a still " more excellent way " of helping the better students, viz. to absorb the full spirit of criticism (not of irreligious criticism), and to stand beside the foremost workers, only taking care, in the formulation of results, frankly to point out their religious bearings, of which no one who has true faith need be afraid. I know that this might perhaps have involved other modifications of Dr. Driver's plan, but I cannot help this. I do not feel called upon to sketch here in outline the book that might have been, but I could not withhold this remark, especially as I am sure that even Dr. Driver's very " moderate " textbook will appear to many not to give hints enough concerning the religious value of the records criticized. And forcible, judicious, and interesting as the preface is, I do not feel that the author takes sufficiently high ground. I am still conscious of an unsatisfied desire for an inspiring introductory book to the Old Testa- ment, written from the combined points of view of a keen critic and a progressive evangelical theologian. Next, as to the second point. Can this com- 1 A popular semi-critical book on the origin of the Old Testament Scriptures might be of great use for schools and Bible-classes. DRIVER. ■:; promise (or, partial compromise) satisfy orthodox judges ? It is true that Dr. Driver has one moral and intellectual quality which might be expected to predispose such persons special 1)- in his favour — the quality of caution. The words M moderation " and "sobriety" have a charm for him; to be called an extreme critic, or a wild theorist, would cause him annoyance. And this " characteristic caution " has not failed to impress a prominent writer in the most influential (Anglican) Church paper. The passage is at the end of the first part of a review of the Introduction} and the writer hazards the opinion that, on the most "burning" of all questions Dr. Driver's decision contains the elements of a working com- promise between the old views and the new. But how difficult it is to get people to agree as to what " caution " and " sobriety" are ! For if we turn to the obituary notices of the great Dutch critic, Abraham Kuenen, we find that he strikes sonic competent observers as eminently cautious and sober- minded, not moving forward till he has prepared the way by careful investigation, and always distinguishing between the certain and the more or less probable. And again, it appears from the recent Charge of Bishop Ellicott that this honoured theologian (who alas! still stands where he stood in earlier crisc no great difference between the critical views of Kuenen and Wcllhausen on the one hand, and tlv 1 Guardian, Nov. 25, 1891. 256 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. of Dr. Driver and " the English Analytical School " on the other. If the former have " lost all sense of proportion " and been " hurried " to extreme results by an " almost boundless self-confidence," the latter have, by their " over-hasty excursions into the Analytical," prepared the way for "shaken and unstable minds " to arrive at results which are only a little more advanced. 1 And in perfect harmony with Bishop Ellicott's denial of the possibility of " compromise," I find a writer of less sanguine nature than Dr. Driver's reviewer warning the readers of the Gtmrdian that the supposed rapprochement will not " form a bridge solid enough to unite the opposite sides of the chasm " between the two schools of thought. 2 This is in my opinion a true saying. Some of those to whom Dr. Driver's compromise is addressed will (like Bishop Ellicott) be kept aloof by deep theological differences. Others, whose minds may be less definitely theological, will place their hope in a critical " counter-revolution " (see p. 250), to be effected either by an induction from linguistic facts, or by means of cuneiform and archaeological dis- covery. I do not speak without cause, as readers of popular religious journals will be aware. The limits of Dr. Driver's work did not permit him to refer to this point ; but considering the avidity with which a 1 Christus Comprobator (1891), pp. 29, 59. I cannot help respectfully protesting against the title of this work. 2 Guardian, Dec. 2, 1891. bRIVER. .257 large portion of the public seizes upon assertions backed by some well-known name, it may soon become necessary for him and for others to do so. Upon a very slender basis of reason and of facts an imposing structure of revived and "rectified" 1 tra- ditionalism may soon be charmed into existence. We may soon hear again the confident appeal to the "common sense" of the "plain Englishman" — that invaluable faculty which, according to Bishop Ellicott, is notably wanting, " if it be not insular prejudice to say so, v in ^11 recent German critics of the Old Testament. Critical and historical sense (which is really the perfection of common sense, trained by right methods, and assisted by a health}- imagination) may continue to be treated with contempt, and Dr. Driver's book may receive credit, not for its sub- stantial merits, but for what, by comparison, may be called its defects. These are real dangers ; nay, rather to some extent they are already facts which cannot but hinder the acceptance of this well-meant compromise. And, lastly, as to the third point. Is even a partial compromise like this safe ? I am afraid that it is not. It implies that Biblical criticism must be pared down for apologetic reasons. It assumes thai though the traditional theory of the origin and (for this is, in part, allusively dealt with) the historic value of the Old Testament books has been over- 1 1 borrow the word from Bishop Ellicott 258 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. thrown, yet we must in our reconstruction keep as close to the old theory or system as we can. This, at the present stage of intellectual development, is un- safe. Dr. Driver's fences are weak, and may at any moment be broken down. Nothing but the most fearless criticism, combined with the most genuine spiritual faith in God, and in His Son, and in the Holy Spirit, can be safe. I do not of course judge either friends or foes by their expressed theories. If it should be made decidedly the more probable view that St. John did not originate the Fourth Gospel as it now stands, I am sure, in spite of Dr. Sanday's recent words, 1 that all truly religious students would believe, with heart and with head, as strongly as ever in the incomparable nature and the divine mediator- ship of Jesus Christ. 2 They would do so on the ground of the facts which would still be left by the historical analysis of the Gospels, and on the cor- respondence between a simple Christian view of those facts and the needs of their own and of the Church's life. And so I am sure that without half so many qualifications as Dr. Driver has given, the great facts left, not to say recovered, by advanced Old Testament criticism are quite sufficient to justify the theory of Hebrews i. I, which is, I doubt not, of permanent importance for the thinking Christian. Before passing on, let me crave permission to make 1 Contemporary Review, Oct. 1891, p. 530. 2 See Hermann's article, "The Historical Christ the Found- ation of our Faith," in the Zt. f. TheoL u. Kirdie, 1882, p. 232. DRIVER. two remarks, which may perhaps take off any undue sharpness from previous criticisms. The first is, that in criticizing the author, I am equally criticizing myself. There was a time when I was simply a Biblical critic, and was untouched by the apologetic interest. Finding that this course cramped the moral energies, I ventured to superadd the function of the u Christian Advocate" (of course only in the modern sense of this indispensable phrase;. The plan to which I was led was to adapt Old Testament criticism and exegesis to the prejudices of orthodox students by giving the traditional view, in its most refined form, the benefit of the doubt, whenever there was a sufficiently reasonable case for doubt. This is what the Germans call Vcnuittcliuig, and I think that as late as ten or twelve years ago VermitUlung was sorely needed. But now, as it seems to me, we have got beyond this. / 'cnuittclung, when practised by the leaders of study in works of a scientific character, will prove a hindrance, not only to the progress of historical truth, but to the fuller apprehension of positive evangelical principles. The right course for those who would be in the van of progress seems to be that which I have faintly indicated above, and too imperfectly carried out in my more recent works. A perfectly free but none the less devout criticism is, in short, the best ally, both of spiritual religion and of a sound apologetic theology. The second is, that in Dr. Driver's case the some- what excessive caution of his critical work can be 26o FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. accounted for, not merely by a conscientious regard to the supposed interests of the Church, but by his peculiar temperament and past history. In the variety of temperaments God has appointed that the specially cautious one shall not be wanting ; and this, like all His works, is no doubt ''very good." Caution, like other useful qualities, needs to be sometimes represented in an intensified degree. And Hebrew grammar in England urgently needed a more cautious, more exact treatment. This Dr. Driver felt at the outset of his course, and all recent Hebrew students owe him a debt of gratitude. But what was the natural consequence of his long devotion to the more exact, more philological study of the Hebrew Scriptures ? This — that when he deliberately en- larged his circle of interests, he could not see his way as far nor as clearly as those critics of wider range, who had entered on their career at an earlier period. Indeed, even apart from the habits of a pure philo- logist, so long a suspension of judgment on critical points must have reacted somewhat upon Dr. Driver's mind, and made it at first very difficult for him to form decisions. These have been real hindrances, and yet to what a considerable extent he has overcome them ! How much advanced criticism has this conscientious churchman — this cautious Hebraist — been able to absorb ? And how certainly therefore he has contributed to that readjustment of theology to the general intellectual progress which is becoming more and more urgent ! DRIVER. 26l I now proceed to such a survey of the contents of the work as my limits render possible. The preface states, in lucid and dignified language, though not without an excess of caution, the author's critical and religious point of view, which is that of all modern- minded and devout Old Testament critics. Then follows an introduction on the Old Testament Canon according to the Jews, which gives nntltum i/i pan\\ and is thoroughly sound. It was desirable to prefix this because of a current assertion that critical views are in conflict with trustworthy Jewish traditions. So now the student is free, both in a religious and in a historical respect, to consider the proposed solutions of the literary problems of the Old Testament, and the accompanying views respecting the objects of the several records. The books are treated in the order of the Hebrew Bible, beginning with those of the Hexateuch, and ending with Ezra, Nchemiah, and Chronicles. To the Hexateuch one hundred and fifty pages are devoted — a perfectly fair allotment, con- sidering the great importance of these six books. The plan adopted here, and throughout the composite narrative books, appears to be this : after some pre- liminary remarks, the particular book is broken up into sections and analyzed, with a view to ascertain the documents or sources which the later compiler or re- dactor welded together into a whole. 1 The grounds of 1 Note especi ally the care bestowed on the composite narrative of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram in Num. wi.-xvii. (p. 59), and cf. Robertson Smith, The Old Testament in Jewish Church (ed. 2), pp. 402-3. 262 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. the analysis are given in small print, without which judicious arrangement the book would have outrun its limits. A somewhat different plan is necessary for Deuteronomy, which is treated more continuously, special care being taken to exhibit the relation of the laws to the other codes, and to trace the dependence of the two historical retrospects in chapters i., iii., and ix.-x. on the earlier narrative of" J E." Then follows a very important section on the character and probable date of the " prophetical " 1 and the " priestly " narra- tives respectively, followed by a compact synopsis of the priestly code. As regards the analysis of the documents, it would be difficult, from a teacher's point of view, to say too much in praise of the author's presentation. Multum in parvo is again one's inevit- able comment. The space has been utilized to the utmost, and the student who will be content to work hard will , find no lack of lucidity. No one can deny that the individuality of the writer, which is in this part very strongly marked, fits him in a special degree to be the interpreter of the analysts to young students. One only asks that the cautious reserve, 1 On the so-called " Book of the Covenant " (/. e. Ex. xx. 22 — xxiii. 33) excellent remarks are given (p. 33). Cornill, Budde, and Baentsch have lately given much attention to the study of this record, and its position in the "Mosaic" legislation. There is, as Baentsch shows, no trace of a Mosaic kernel in the Book of the Covenant, nor of its owing anything to the attempt to adapt Mosaic ordinances to a later time. It has however been much edited. Originally, it may only have contained the so-called "judgments," which may (cf. Gen. xxxi. 3S— 40) have once been fuller than thev are now. DRIVER. 263 which is here not out of place, may not be contrasted by that untrained "common sense," which is so swift to speak, and so slow to hear, with the bolder but fundamentally not less cautious procedure of other English or American analysts. Such remarks will, I am sure, be disapproved of by the author himself, who willingly refers to less reserved critics. And Dr. Driver's fellow-workers will, on their side, have nothing but respect for his helpful contributions. It should be added that whatever is vitally important is fully granted by Dr. Driver. The documents J, E, D, and P are all recognized ; and if the author more frequently than some critics admits a difficulty in distinguishing between J and E, yet this is but a formal difference. Moreover, no one doubts that J and E were combined together by an editor or (Kuenen) " harmonist," so that we have three main records in the Ilexateuch — the prophetical (J E), the Deuteronomic (D), and the priestly (P). On the limits of these three records critics of different schools are practically agreed. 1 And now, will the author forgive me if I say that neither here nor in the rest of the Ilexateuch portion does he, strictly speaking, verify the description of the object of the " Library " given by the general editors ? The book, as it seems to me, docs not, upon the whole, so much " represent the present condition of investigation, and Indicate the way for future progress," 1 On Klostcrmann's original, QOt to say eccentric, contribu- tions to Hexateuch criticism, ^cc Driver. Expositor^ M. 264 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. as exhibit the present position of a very clear-headed but slowly moving scholar, who stands a little aside from the common pathway of critics ? For the many English students this may conceivably be a boon ; but the fact (if it be a fact) ought to be borne in mind, otherwise the friends and the foes of the literary study of the Old Testament will alike be the victims of an illusion. There is a number of points of con- siderable importance for the better class of students on which the author gives no light, though I would not impute this merely to his natural caution, but also to the comparative scantiness of his space. For instance, besides J, E, D, P, and, within P, H (z. e. the " Law of Holiness," Lev. xvii. — xxvi.), I find now and then recognized both D 2 and P 2 , but not J 2 and E 2 , though it is impossible to get on long without these symbols, which correspond to facts. Nor do I find any mention of the source and date of Genesis xiv., upon which so many contradictory statements have been propounded. 1 Nor is there any constructive sketch of the growth of our present Hexateuch, though this would seem necessary to give coherence to the ideas of the student. It would however be ungracious to dwell further on this. On the dates of the documents J and E, Dr. Driver is unfortunately somewhat indefinite. It is surprising to learn that " it must remain an open question whether both (J and E) 1 See above, p. 238. On no question would a few clear and frank statements of facts, and of the critical points which are really at issue, be more useful than on this. DRIVER. ' ' may not in reality be earlier" (#. e. earlier than " the early centuries of the monarchy "). I can of course understand that, had the author been able to give a keener analysis of the documents, he would have favoured us with a fuller consideration of their period. But I do earnestly hope that he is not meditating a step backwards in deference to hostile archaeologists. One more startling phenomenon I seem bound to mention. On p. 27 we are told that * probably the greater part of the Song is Mosaic, and the modifi- cation, or expansion, is limited to the closing verses ; for the general style is antique, and the triumphant tone which pervades it is just such as. might naturally have been inspired by the event which it celebrates." I greatly regret this. To fall behind Ewald, Dillmann, and even Delitzsch and Kittcl, 1 is a mis- fortune which I can only account for on the theory of compromise. I hesitate to contemplate the con- sequences which might possibly follow from the acceptance of this view. This naturally brings me to the pages on the authorship and date of Deuteronomy. There is here very much which commands one's entire approbation, especially with an eye to English readers. Candour is conspicuous throughout, and whenever one differs 1 See, besides the works cited by Dr. Driver, Lagarde, Semitica, i. 2S ; Kuenen, HexaUuck^ p. Wcllhnuscn. Prolegomena, p. 374 [352]; Cornill EinUUitng, pp. Kittel, GeschicJi/e, i. 83, 187 : and my Bampton / '\u h give my own view since 18S1), pp. 31, 177. 266 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. from the author, it is reluctantly and with entire respect. The section begins thus — " Even though it were clear that the first four books of the Pentateuch were written by Moses, it would be difficult to sustain the Mosaic authorship of Deuter- onomy. For, to say nothing of the remarkable difference of style, Deuteronomy conflicts with the legislation of Exodus-Numbers in a manner that would not be credible were the legislator in both one and the same " (p. yy). And in particular c< when the laws of Deuteronomy are compared with those of P such a supposition becomes impossible. For in Deuteronomy language is used implying that fundamental insti- tutions of P are unknown to the author? 1 Sufficient specimens of the evidence for these statements are given with a reference for further particulars to the article "Deuteronomy" in the belated new edition of Smith's Dictionary. I look forward with eagerness to the appearance of this article, and meantime venture to state how I have been struck by the author's treatment of the question of date. Whatever I say is to be taken with all the qualifications arising from my high opinion of the author, and demanded by a fair consideration of his narrow limits. In the first place, then, I think that on one impor- tant point Dr. Driver does not quite accurately state the prevailing tendency of recent investigations. No one would gather from p. 82, note 2, that criticism is 1 Here, as always in quotations, the italics are those of the author. DRIVF.R. more inclined to place the composition of the original book in the reign of Josiah than in that of Manasseh, Such however is the case. Delitzsch himself regretfully, " It will scarcely be possible to eradicate the ruling critical opinion that Deuteronomy was composed in the time of Jeremiah." 1 If this view of the tendency of criticism is correct, it would have been helpful to state the grounds on which the reign of Josiah has been preferred. May I venture to put them together briefly thus ? Let the student read once more, with a fresh mind, the famoi:s narrative in 2 Kings xxii., which I for one do not feel able to reject as unhistorical. He can hardly fail to receive the impression that the only person who is vehemently moved by the perusal of M the law-book " (more strictly, " the book of toraJi ") is the king. How is this to be accounted for? How is it that Hilkiah, Shaphan, and Huldah display such imperturbability ? The easiest supposition is that these three persons (to whom we must add Ahikam, Achbor, and Asaiah) had agreed together, unknown to the king, on their course of action. It m ly be thought strange that all these, except Hilkiah and Huldah, were courtiers. But they were also (as we partly know, partly infer) friends of the prophet Jeremiah, and therefore no mere courtiers. Huldah, moreover, though the wife of a courtier, was herself a 1 Preface by Delitzsch to Curtiss's /. Priests ( 1S77), p. \. The latest introdurtion 'th.it of CornilP verities this ]>nv_ r nostiration. 268 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. prophetess. We must suppose, then, in order to realize the circumstances at once historically and devoutly, that to the priests and prophets who loved spiritual religion God had revealed that now was the time to take a bold step forward, and accom- plish the work which the noblest servants of Jehovah had so long desired. The " pen of the scribes " (Jer. viii. 8) had been recently consecrated to this purpose by the writing down of the kernel of what we now call Deuteronomy. This document consisted of ancient laws adapted to present purposes, and com- pleted by the addition of recent and even perfectly new ones, framed in the spirit of Moses and under the sacred authority of priests and prophets, together with earnest exhortations and threatenings. It had apparently been placed in a repository beside the ark (comp. Deut. xxxi. 9, 26), 1 and there (if we may so interpret the words "in the house of Jehovah") Hilkiah professed to Shaphan " the secretary " to have " found " it. One of these seeming " chances " which mark the interposing hand of God favoured 1 Deut. xxxi. 9 belongs to the main body of Deuteronomy, whereas ver. 26 (as a part of vv. 24 — 30) belongs to the editor. According to Dillmann, however, vv. 24 — 26a (down to ''Jehovah your God") originally stood after vv. 9—13, and belong to Deuteronomy proper. But in any case it is certain that the editor 7-ightly interpreted the " delivering " of the Torah to the "Levitical priests," when he made Moses say, "Take this law-book, and put it beside the ark." For of course the persons addressed were to carry both the ark and the " bag " or "box" {argaz, see 1 Sam. vi. 8, n, 15) which contained the most sacred objects of religion. DRIVER. the project of Hilkiah. Repairs on a large scale had been undertaken in the temple, and with his mind set on the restoration of the material " house of God," Josiah was all the more likely to be interested in the- re-edification of His spiritual house. So Shaphan reported the " finding," and read the book in the I of the king. The king recognized the vuicc of Moses ; this was not one of those law-books which Jeremiah ascribed to "the lying pen of scribes." The result is matter of history to all at any rate but the followers of M. Maurice Verncs. It may doubtless be urged against this view of the circumstances that we have enlisted the imagination in the service of history. But why .should we not do so ? Of course, we would very gladly dispense with this useful but dangerous ally, but is there a single historical critic, a single critical historian, who is not often obliged to invite its help ? Certainly in the case of 2 Kings xxii., which is an extract from a larger and fuller document, 1 it is impossible not to endeavour to fill up laaunc with the help of the imagination. The alternative view — that the " law-book " was written in the reign of Manasseh — is not one which commends it- self to the historic sense. Even supposing that some- ardent spirit conceived the idea of a reformation by means of a " law-book," yet there is a gulf between such an idea and its successful accomplishment. No prophecy pointed to the advent of a reforming king 1 This has, I think, not heen sufficiently considered by ProC Kyle in his work on the Canon, when referring to 3 Kin^s xxii. 2/0 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. (i Kings xiii., as consistent critics agree, is of very late origin) ; we cannot therefore appeal to the analogy of Ezekiel's ideal legislation. The hopeful and practical spirit which pervades the book is in- consistent with a time of reaction, when it seemed to a prophet that the " good man " had " perished out of the earth," and that there was M none upright among men " (Mic. vii. 2). I admit that the prophecy from which I have just quoted (Mic. vi. 1 — vii. 6), and which was probably written under Manasseh, reminds us somewhat, at the outset, of Deuteronomy, but the gloomy and indignant tone which predominates in it is entirely alien to the great " law-book." The asser- tion that the date of Deuteronomy must be pushed up a little higher to allow time for literary style to sink to the level of Jeremiah is a doubtful one. Cer- tainly Jeremiah's style is less pure than that of Deuteronomy (as Kleinert has well shown). But who would maintain that in all the different literary circles of Jerusalem at the same period an equally pure style was in vogue ? Proverbs i. — ix. is placed by critics, with whom Dr. Driver (p. 382) seems inclined to agree, in the reign of Josiah, and here at least we have an elevated, oratorical diction, with very little Aramaism. Jeremiah himself was too emotional to be either a purist or an artist. What is the most obvious conclusion from all the facts and indications ? Surely this — that while the heathenish reaction under Manasseh, by knitting the faithful together and forc- ing them to meditate on their principles and on the DRIVER. 271 means of applying these to practice, created some of the conditions under which alone " Deuteronomy " could arise, and while it is not impossible that a Deuteronomic style began to form itself a little before the time of Josiah, the reign of Manusseh is never- theless not the period in which the Book (/. c. its kernel) can have been composed. Instead of saying, "not later than the reign of Manassch" (p. 82), it would have been truer to the actual state of critical study to say (against M. Vernes), "by no possibility later than the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah." Indeed, the sole advantage of Dr. Driver's present theory is that it will enable popular writers to defend Hilkiah the more easily from the charge (which con- servative scholars sometimes imagine to be involved in the other theory) of complicity in a " forgery." ' But may it not be questioned whether even for popular writers it is not best to approach as near as they can to the truth ? The test of a forgery sug- gested by Mr. Gore, viz. to find out whether the writer of a particular book could have afforded to disclose the method and circumstances of his pro- duction, can be successfully stood by the writer of 1 I quite enter into the dislike of reverent Bible-readers for the theory of " pious fraud." I think that dislike an 1 ucd one. No student of Oriental life and history could be surprised at a pious fraud originating among priests. But I do not adopt that theory to account for 2 Kings wii., and have sought to be somewhat clearer and more explicit than my friend I'rof. Robertson Smith in his Old Testament in the Jewish Chin. . 272 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. Deuteronomy. Hilkiah, as representing this writer, 1 could well have afforded to make such a disclosure to literary students familiar with the modes of thought of priestly and prophetic writers. But was Josiah such a student, and even if he were, was this a time for any such minute explanation ? Practical wisdom required that the account given to Josiah should be the same which would have to be given to the people at large. The Book was " the torah of Moses," and the basis of the legal portion of it (viz. the " Book of the Covenant ") had no doubt been kept in the temple archives. What, pray, could be said of it, even by a religious statesman, but that it had been " found in the house of Jehovah " ? Such conduct as . that of Hilkiah is, I maintain, worthy of an inspired teacher and statesman in that age and under those circum- stances. It is also not without a distant resemblance to the course of Divine Providence, so far as this can be scanned by our weak faculties. Indeed, if we reject the theory of " needful illusion," we are thrown upon a sea of perplexity. Was there no book on Jeremiah bringing home the need of this theory to the Christian conscience, to which Dr. Driver could have referred ? But no doubt the student will here ask, How can 1 Hilkiah may possibly (in spite of Deut. xviii. 6 — 8) have had to do with the composition of the book. He was certainly con- cerned in its publication, and, as Baudissin remarks, was probably above the narrow class-feelings of his corporation. To say that he was " the forger of Deuteronomy " is of course a gross misrepresentation of my opinion. DRIVl 273 the kernel of the Book of Deuteronomy be justly described as the " tordh of Moses"? Dr. Driver devotes what space he can afford to this most important question (see pp. S3 — 85). lie begins by drawing the distinction (on which great stress is also laid by Delitzsch) that " though it may seem para- doxical to say so, Deuteronomy does not claim to be written by Moses. Wherever the author speaks him- self, he purposes to give a description in the third person of what Moses did or said. The true ' author ' of Deuteronomy is thus the writer who introduces Moses in the third person ; and the discourses which he is represented as having spoken fall in consequence into the same category as the speeches in the his- torical books, some of which largely, and others entirely, are the composition of the compilers, and are placed by them in the mouths of historical characters. . . . An author, therefore, in framing discourses appropriate to Moses' situation, especially if (as is probable) the elements were provided for him by tradition, could be doing nothing inconsistent with the literary usages of his age and people." This hardly goes far towards meeting the diffi- culties of the student. In a footnote (p. 84* there is a list of passages of Deuteronomy describing in the third person what Moses did or said, which closes with Deuteronomy xxxi. 1 — 30. I do not forget the demands on Dr. Driver's space, but in this closing passage there occur two statements, " And Moses wrote this tordh" (vcr. 9;, and "When Mosi had 274 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. made an end of writing the words of this torah in a book, until they were finished" (ver. 24), which demanded special consideration. Let us listen to the candid and devout Delitzsch. " If the statement, ' And Moses wrote/ were meant to be valid for the whole of Deuteronomy as it stands, Deuteronomy would be a pseudepigraphon " [Genesis, p. 23). In the sequel Delitzsch communicates his own explana- tion of the difficulty. Now should not Dr. Driver have given two or three lines to a mention of the difficulty, and a particularly full reference to the sentences in Delitzsch's Genesis, which contain that scholar's solution, if he was not prepared to give one of his own ? What Dr. Driver tells us in the text is, that ancient historians (including those of Israel) habitually claimed the liberty of composing speeches for the personages of their narratives. But where, it may be replied, is there any instance of this liberty being used on such a large scale as in the discourses of Deuteronomy ? If indeed Ecclesiastes had been introduced by the words, " And Solomon said," and inserted in the Book of Kings, an Old Testament parallel would not be wanting. But Ecclesiastes bears no such heading, and was presumably designed by the unknown writer for the narrow circle of his friends or disciples. The licence appealed to by Dr. Driver will hardly bear the weight which he puts upon it. Josiah certainly did not conceive that it was used in the composition of the Book, which he received with alarm as the neglected law-book written DRIV] :;: of old by Moses. As for the statement that the elements of the discourses in Deuteronomy were provided for the writer by tradition, if it means that the writer reproduces the substance of what Moses really said, somewhat as the writer of the Fourth Gospel is held to reproduce sayings or ideas of the Lord Jesus, I should think this, historically, a very difficult position. This does indeed appear to have been the belief of Delitzsch, but the principles which underlie it are not those which Dr. Driver would, as I think, deliberately desire to promote. Dr. Driver's second argument in justification of the writer of Deuteronomy relates to" the legislative portion of the book. lie says, u It is an altogether false view of the laws in Deuteronomy to treat them as the author's ' inventions.' Man}' arc repeated from the Book of the Covenant ; the existence of others is independently attested by the ' Law of Holiness ' : others, upon intrinsic grounds, are clearly ancient. . . . The new element in Deuteronomy is thus not the laws, but their parenetic setting. Deuter- onomy may be described as the prophetic re-formu- lation and adapatation to new needs of an older legis- lation!" Dr. Driver does almost too much honour to a view which is only worthy of some ill-instructed sccul irist lecturer. The statement that "the laws in Deuter- onomy" are "the author's inventions,'* is, i f course, utterly erroneous. But Dr. Driver's statement of his own opinion may possibly bear amendment, ileat 276 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. any rate appears to identify himself with the view of Kleinert that Deuteronomy consists of " old statutes worked over and adapted to later circumstances," x and as an instance of a law which has an ancient kernel, he proceeds to adduce the so-called " law of the kingdom " (Deut. xvii. 14 — 20). But the former view seems to have been refuted by Kuenen, and on the latter I may appeal to Dillmann's judgment that " the law is new mid purely Deuteronomic" It seems to me even possible that Kleinert and Stade may be right in regarding this law as a later Deuteronom- istic insertion. Dr. Driver refers next to the " law of the central sanctuary " (Deut. xii. 5, &c). He states distinctly that it " appears, in its exclusiveness, to be of comparatively 2 modern origin," but seems to weaken the force of this remark by saying that " it only accentuated the old pre-eminence [of the sanc- tuary where the ark for the time was placed] in the interests of a principle which is often insisted on in J E, viz. the separation of Israel from heathen influ- ences." Surely the important thing to know is that the law itself is not old but new, and that even Isaiah does not appear to have conceived the idea of a single sanctuary. " The one and essential point," says Dr. G. Vos, " which we wish the higher criticism to estab- 1 Das Deuteronomiwn und der Deuteronomiker^. 132. 2 I understand the qualification. But in view of the want of any confirming evidence from Isaiah, one may, with Stade, doubt whether Hezekiah did indeed formally and absolutely abolish all the local sanctuaries throughout his kingdom, as 2 Kings xviii. 4 appears to state. DRIVER. lish, is this, that the (Dcutcronomic; Code does not fit into the historical situation, by which, according to its own testimony, it was called forth." 1 Dr. Driver should, I think, have had some regard to this, even though he was not directly speaking of the date of the law-book. And in order more fully to represent the strictly critical point of view, he should (if he will excuse me for seeming to dictate to him) have mentioned other laws besides that of the central sanctuary, which, even if more or less developments of ancient principles, are held by consistent critics to be of modern origin. 2 Upon the whole I desiderate a larger theory to account for, and therefore to justify, the statements in Deuteronomy, "And Moses said," "And Mo wrote." May we perhaps put the whole matter thus } The book is at once legal, prophetic, and historical. Under each of these aspects a fully instructed Israelite might naturally call it " Mosaic." In so far as it was legal, it could be said that the author belonged to the " Mosaic," or, as we may describe it (in opposition to certain "lying pens," Jcr. viii. 8), the "orthodox" school of legalists. Its priestly author claimed, virtually at any rate, the name of Moses (just as the school of the prophet-reformer Zarathustra, not only virtually, but actually, called itself by its founder's name), because he " sat in Moses' scat," and con- tinued the development of the antique decisions of 1 The Mosaic Origin of the Pent ate uchal Codes (1886). p. 90. 1 Cf. Dillmann, X1tm.-Deut.-J0>.. p. 604. 278 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. the lawgiver. That Deuteronomy xii. — xxvi. was intended as a new edition of the old " Book of the Covenant," admits of no reasonable doubt. It was possibly in the mind of the author a " legal fiction," like similar developments in English, and more especially in Roman law, 1 though this may not have been understood by Josiah. In so far as the book was prophetic, it was a " Mosaic " work, because its author summed up the religious ideas of that prophetic succession of which Moses, as the writer fully believed, was the head. 2 And in so far as it was historical, it was " Mosaic," because the facts which it recorded were based on traditional records which the author believed to have come from Moses or his circle. Yes ; even the statement that Moses delivered laws to the people in the fortieth year of the wanderings, has very probably a traditional basis. In JE, as it stands, both the Book of the Covenant (Exod. xx. 22 — xxii.)and the Words of the Covenant (Exod. xxxiv. 10 — 28) form part of the Sinaitic revelation. But Kuenen has made it in a high degree plausible that in the original JE they were revealed indeed at Sinai, but not promulgated by 1 Cf. W. R. Smith, The Old Testament in the Jewish Church (ed. 1), p. 385. 2 See Deut. xviii. 18, "A prophet will I [from time to time] raise up unto them . . . like unto me." Note the emphasis laid upon the truthfulness of the prophet : how could the writer of such a passage be — a " forger " ? Even M. Darmesteter holds that the ideas of the Book are derived from the great prophets (review of M. Renan's Histoire (VIsrael in Revue des deux mo tide s^ 1 avril 1S91). DRIVER. Moses till just before the passage of the Jordan. It was, as he has sought in a masterly way to show, the Deuteronomic writer of JK who transposed the of the promulgation from Moab to Sinai, thus mal. room in the narrative of the fortieth year for the new edition (as Kuencn well calls it) of the Book of the Covenant {i.e. Deut. xiii. — xxvi. with the " parenetic setting"). 1 Dr. Driver's treatment of the other problems o( Deuteronomy shows learning, but no special critical insight. In dealing with the date of Deuteronomy xxxii., no arguments arc adduced from the religit contents of the Song. Indeed, it is here OIIC shown how unsatisfactory it is to treat the 1;, products of the old Hebrew poetry srpdratc-h\ But let us pass on to the Priestly Code. Here evidence of date is abundant, though complicated, and Dr. Driver's treatment of it shows him at his \ best. I should say that this portion (pp. I iS — 150) is the gem of the whole book. Here too at any 1 there is no deficiency of courage. The author is strong in the confidence that all that orthodoxy really requires is, that the chief ceremonial instituti referred to in P should be " ui I heir Oi antiquity," and that the legislation should be ba on legal traditions which, though modified and adapted to new circumstances from time t>» til 1 Sec Kuencn, Hexateuch) pp. 258—262, and Exod xxiv. 4) cf Cornill, EinUitun Quarterly R 28o FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. were yet in unbroken connexion with Israel's prime. This he believes that a patient criticism can show. He is therefore free to admit (frankly and without reserve) that P in its completed form is later than Ezekiel, who was the first to introduce the radical distinction between priests and Levites which we find in P (see Ezek. xliv. 6 — 16). The arguments for a later date are so fully and clearly presented, that I can hardly conceive any fresh mind resisting their force. I can only here refer to the linguistic argu- ment. Dr. Driver has, I observe, made progress since 1882, when he subjected the not sufficiently exact philological argument of Giesebrecht (in Stade's Zeitschrift for 1881) to a somewhat severe criticism. 1 It is obvious that the writer was still feeling his way in a complicated critical problem, and did not as yet see distinctly the real value of the linguistic argument. His criticism of Giesebrecht's details is indeed upon the whole sound, but, for all that, Giesebrecht was right in his general principles. It was Ryssel (in a somewhat earlier treatise, praised by Dr. Driver in 1882) and not Giesebrecht who overrated the value of the linguistic argument, and Giesebrecht has in the article referred to already, put forward what Dr. Driver, in 1891, expresses thus : "The phraseology of P, it is natural to suppose, is one which had gradually formed ; hence it contains elements which are no 1 See reference, p. 249 ; and comp. Kuenen, Hexateiich^ p. 291. Cornill (Ei?ileitung, p. 66) is slightly too eulogistic towards Giesebrecht. DRIVER. 281 doubt ancient side by side with those which were introduced later. The priests of each successive generation would adopt, as a matter of course, the technical formulae and stereotyped expressions which they learned from their seniors, new terms, when they were introduced, being accommodated to the old moulds" (p. 148). It is possible, indeed, that Dr. Driver, writing in 1 89 1, would assert the presence of a larger tra- ditional element in the phraseology of P than Giesebrecht did, writing in 188 1. But whatever difference there may now exist between the two scholars must be very small; and not of much im- portance, except to those who attach an inordinate value to proving the archaic origin of Jewish ritual laws. To Dr. Driver's excellently formulated state- ment I only desire to add the remark of Kuenen : " Linguistic arguments do not furnish a positive or conclusive argument. But they do furnish a very strong presumption against the theory that the priestly laws were written in the golden age of Israelitish literature. As long as P 8 [Dr. Driver's P] is regarded as a contemporary of Isaiah, the ever- increasing number of parallels [to later writers] must remain an enigma. A constantly recurring pheno- menon . . . must rest on some general basis." On linguistic arguments I may find space to speak later on. It is, at any rate, not unimportant to know that an "induction from the facts of the Hebrew language " cannot prevent us from accepting a post- 282 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. Deuteronomic {i.e. post-Josian) date for P, indeed that it furnishes good presumptive evidence in its favour. I do not, however, forget, nor does Dr. Driver, that the Priestly Code contains many very early elements. Leviticus xi. for instance, which is virtually identical with Deuteronomy xiv. 4 — 20, is, no doubt, as Kuenen says, "a later and amplified edition of those priestly decisions on clean and unclean animals, which the Deuteronomist adopted." 1 And above all, Leviticus xvii. — xxvi., when carefully studied, is seen to contain an earlier stratum of legislation (knovVn as H, or P 1 ), which " exhibits a characteristic phraseology, and is marked by the preponderance of certain characteristic principles and motives " (p. 54). That the greater part of this collection of laws dates from a time considerably prior to Ezekiel, may now be taken as granted. But what is the date of the writer who arranged these laws in the existing " parenetic frame- work " ; or, in other words, the date of the compila- tion of H ? Dr. Driver replies that he wrote shortly before the close of the monarchy ; but this relatively conservative conclusion hardly does justice to the natural impression of the reader that the predicted devastation of the land of Israel is really an accom- plished fact. It appears safer to hold that H as it stands was arranged by a priestly writer in the second half of the Babylonian exile. On the 1 The Hexateuch, p. 264. DRIVER. 2 .S3 question, When was H absorbed into P ? and, indeed, on the larger question of the later stages of our present Hexateuch, Dr. Driver still holds his opinion in reserve. No reference is made to the important narrative in Nchcmiah viii., which seems the counter- part of that in 2 Kings xxii. And now as to the character of the Priestly Narrative. The view of things which this narrative gives seems, according to our author, " to be the result of a systematizing process working upon these materials, and perhaps, also, seeking to give sensible expression to certain ideas or truths (as, for instance, to the truth of Jehovah's presence in the midst of His people, symbolized by the ' Tent of Meeting,' surrounded by its immediate attendants, in the centre of the camp)," p. 120. And in a footnote he says that " it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the representation of P contains elements, not, in the ordinary sense of the word, historical" {e.g. especially in his chronological scheme, and in the numbers of the Israelites. — See Numbers i. — iv.]. Similarly, in speaking of P's work in the Book of Joshua, he says that, " the partition of the land being conceived as ideally effected by Joshua, its complete distribution and occupation by the tribes are treated as his work, and as accomplished in his life-time " (pp. 108, 109). Let me honestly say that these views, though correct, present great difficulties to those whose 284 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. reverence is of the old type ; and that in order to understand, and, if it may be, to justify the author or compiler of P, careful historical training is necessary. Dr. Driver's book does not give any of the hints which the religious study of criticism appears at this point to require. But, no doubt, he was hampered equally by his want of space and by his plan. As to the ascription of the laws to Moses, on the other hand, the author is really helpful. He points out the double aspect of the Priestly Code, which, though Exilic and early post-Exilic in its formulation, is "based upon pre-existing temple-usage" (p. 135). In taking this view he is at one with critics of very different schools, so that we may hope soon to hear no more of the charge that, according to the critics, the translation of P was " manufactured " by the later priests. Dr. Driver would rather have abstained altogether from touching on Biblical archaeology, his object (an impossible one) being to confine himself to the purely literary aspect of the Old Testament. But, as Merx long ago said, a purely literary criticism of the Hexateuch is insufficient. To show that there is a basis of early customary law in later legal collections, we are compelled to consider historical analogies. In spite of Kuenen's adverse criticism of Mr. Fenton's explanation of the law of "jubilee" (Lev. xxv. 8 — 55), I still feel that there may be a kernel of truth in it ; and much more certainly the sacrificial laws have a basis of pre-Exilic priestly ordinance. But can those institutions and rites be DRIVER- 285 traced back to Moses ? Dr. Driver feels it necessary to satisfy his readers to some extent on this point. What he says is, in fact, much the same as Kucncn said in the Godsdienst van Israel in 1870. 1 It is however from an orthodox point of view, startling ; and considering that Kucncn became afterwards more extreme in his views,'- Dr. Driver may fairly lay claim, not merely to courage and consistency, but also to moderation and sobriety. Certainly I fully approve what Dr. Driver has said. It is " sober," i.e. it does not go beyond the facts, nor is its sobriety impaired by the circumstance that the few facts at his disposal have had to be interpreted imaginatively. How else, as I have said already, can the bearing of these few precious but dry facts be realized ? I am only afraid that some readers will think that Moses was more systematic, more of a modern founder and organizer than he can really have been ; but I sus- pect that a fuller explanation would show that there is no real difference between Dr. Driver and myself. I am in full accord with him when he says (in tacit opposition to Kuenen's later view) that "the teaching of Moses on these subjects (civil and ceremonial precepts) is preserved in its least modified form in the Decalogue and the Book of the Covenant." It be- comes any one to differ from Kucncn with humility, but my own historical sense emphatically requires 1 Kuenen, Godsdienst van Israel, i. 278 — 286 ; ii. 209 (E.T. i. 2 — 290, ii. 302\ - Kuenen, Onderzoe/c, i. 238 {Hexateueh, p. 244). 286 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. that from the very beginning there should have been the o-erm of the advanced " ethical monotheism " of the prophets ; and if only it be admitted that even the shortened form of the Decalogue proposed by Ewald * has probably been modified (we have no right to equalize Moses with Zoroaster), 2 we may not unreasonably suppose that the " Ten Words " are indeed derived from " Moses, the man of God," and that the other similar " decads " 3 were imitated from this one. That Dr. Driver has made no reference in this important passage to Exodus xv. (in spite of his conservative view on the authorship of the Song), deserves recognition. There is only one other point which I could have wished to see stated. I will express it in the words of Kuenen : " It is Moses' great work and enduring merit — not that he introduced into Israel any par- ticular religious forms and practices, but — that he established the service of Jahveh among his people upon a moral footing." 4 This surely ought to satisfy the needs of essential orthodoxy. For what conservatives want, or ought to 1 Ewald, Geschichte, ii. 231 (E.T. ii. 163). Comp. Driver, Introduction, p. 31, with the accompanying discussion of the two traditional texts of the Decalogue. A conjectural but histori- cally conceivable revision of Ewald's form of the Decalogue has been given by Mr. Wicksteed, The Christian Reformer, May 1886, pp. 307— 3 1 3. 2 See my article in Nineteenth Century, Dec 1891. 3 See Ewald, Geschichte, I.e. ; and cf. Wildeboer, Theolog. Studien, 1887, p. 21. 4 Kuenen, Religion of Israel, i. 292 (Godsdienst, i. 289). DRIVER. 287 want, is not so much to prove the veracity of the Israelitish priests, when they ascribed certain ordi- nances to Moses, as to show that Moses had high intuitions of God and of morality. In a word, they want, or they ought to want, to contradict the view that the religion of Israel — at any rate, between Moses and Amos — in no essential respect differed from that of " Moab, Ammon, and Edom, Israel's nearest kinsfolk and neighbours." 1 Their mistake has hitherto been in attributing to Moses certain absolutely correct religious and moral views. In doing so, they interfered with the originality both of the prophets of Israel and of Jesus Christ, and they have to avoid this in future by recognizing that Moses' high intuitions were limited by his early place in the history of Israel's revelation. I am most thankful that in this very important matter (which, even in an introduction to the Old Testament literature, could not be passed over) Dr. Driver has not felt himself obliged to make any deduction from critical results. The second chapter is one which makes somewhat less demand than the first on the patient candour of orthodox readers. It may also appear less interesting until we have learned that the narrative books are of the utmost importance for Hexateuch students, as supplying the historical framework for the Hexateuch records. In fact, all the Old Testament Scriptures arc interlaced by 1 Wellhausen, Sketch of the History of Israel and JudiiJi (1891), p. 23. 288 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. numberless delicate threads, so that no part can be neglected without injury to the rest. Undoubtedly, the criticism of Judg.-Sam. -Kings has not reached such minute accuracy as that of the Hexateuch, and it was a disadvantage to Dr. Driver that he had to write upon these books before the researches of Budde and Cornill (to whom we may now add Kautzsch and Kittel) had attained more complete analytical results. Still one feels that, with the earlier pioneering works to aid him (including Budde's and Cornill's earlier essays), Dr. Driver could have been much fuller, with more space and perhaps with more courage. At any rate, the most essential critical points have been duly indicated, and I welcome Dr. Driver's second chapter, in combination with his work on the text of Samuel, as materially advancing the study of these books in England. 1 A valuable hint was already given in chapter i. (pp. 3, 4). With regard to Judges and Kings we are there told that " in each a series of older narratives has been taken by the compiler, and fitted with a framework supplied by himself" ; whereas in Samuel, though this too is a compilation, " the compiler's hand is very much less conspicuous than is the case in Judges and Kings " (pp. 3, 4). Of the 1 The opening chapter of my own Aids to the Devout Study of Criticism (1892), which contains Kittel's analysis of 1 and 2 Samuel (in the German translation of the Old Testament edited by Kautzsch), together with notes on the eleven pairs of " doubtlets," will, I hope, be useful as a supplement to this part of the Introduction. DRIVER. 28g work of the compiler in Kings, we are further told in chapter ii. that it included not only brief statistical notices, sometimes called the " Epitome," but also the introduction of fresh and "prophetic glances at the future " and the " amplification " of already existing prophecies (see pp. 1 78, 184, 189). He judges historical events by the standard of Deuteronomy, and his Deuteronomizing peculiarities receive a careful description, which is illustrated by a valuable list of his characteristic phrases (with reference to Deuteronomy and Jeremiah). We are introduced, in fact, to what Kleinert calls the D enter onomistische Scliriftstcllcrei, and realize how great must have been the effect of that great monument both of religion and of literature — the kernel of our Deuter- onomy. On the historical value of Judges, the author speaks cautiously, following Dr. A. B. Davidson, who has re- marked {Expositor, Jan. 1887) on the different points of view in the narratives and in the framework, and who finds in the latter, not, strictly speaking, history, but rather the " philosophy of history." To this eminent teacher the author also appeals as having already pointed out the combination of different accounts of the same facts — a striking phenomenon which meets us in a still greater degree in the first part of Samuel. It was surely hardly necessary to do so. Support might have been more valuable for the ascription of the Song of Hannah to a later period, though here Dr. Driver is relatively conservative. u 290 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. The other poetical passages in Samuel have no special treatment. Still a generally correct impres- sion is given of the composition of our Samuel, and the praise given to " the most considerable part which appears plainly to be the work of a single author " (2 Sam. ix. — xx., to which 1 Kings i.-ii. in the main belongs) is not at all too high. It strikes me however that in this chapter Dr. Driver does not show as much courage as in the pre- ceding one. Not to dwell on the cautious reserve with which he alludes to questions of historicity, I must regret that the duplicate narratives in Samuel are so treated, that some of the chief critical points are missed, and that the true character of the record does not fully appear. And how strange it is to read of 1 Samuel xxiv. and xxvi., that "whether the two narratives really relate to two different occasions, or whether they are merely different versions of the same occurrence, is a question on which probably opinion will continue to be divided" 1 (p. 171) ! Nor is anything said either of 1 Samuel xvi. I — 13 (the anointing of David), 2 or of the prophecy of Nathan (2 Sam. vii.), except that the latter is included among the " relatively latest passages" (p. 173), where I am afraid that the reader may overlook it. The former passage was no doubt difficult to treat with- 1 See Budde, Die Biicher Richter imd Samuel, p. 227. 2 It is less important that nothing is said on the " doublets," 1 Sam. xxxi., 2 Sam. i. 1 — 16. DRIVER. 2 H out a somewhat fuller adoption of the principles which govern, and must govern, the critical analysis of the Hebrew texts. Nor can I help wondering whether there is the note of true " moderation " in the remark on i Kings xiii. i — 32, that it is u a narrative not probably of very early origin, as it seems to date from a time when the names both of the prophet of Judah and of the * old prophet ' were no longer remembered" (p. 183). I turn to Klostermann, whom Professor Lias at the Church Congress of 1S91 extolled as the representative of common sense in literary criticism, and whose doctrinal orthodoxy is at any rate above suspicion, and find these remarks : — " The following narrative in its present form comes in the main from a book of anecdotes from the prophetic life of an earlier period with a didactic tendency, designed for disciples of the prophets. . . . It is probable that the reminiscence of Amos iii. 14; vii. 16, 17; ix. 1, Sec, influenced this narrative, as well as the recollection of fosia/is profanation of the sanctuary at Bethel" (2 Kings xxiii.). &•■ So then this narrative is later than the other Elijah narratives ; is, in fact, post-Deuteronomic. To the original writer of 2 Kings xxii., xxiii., it was un- known. Obviously it occasioned the later insertion of 2 Kings xxiii. 16 — iS (notice the apologetic interest in Lucian's fuller text of the Septuagint of v, 18). Why not say so plainly ? And why meet the irreverence of the remarks of 292 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. Ewald and of Wellhausen on 2 Kings i. 1 (an irrever- ence which is only on the surface, and is excused by manifest loyalty to historical truth) by the some- thing less than accurate statement that this chapter " presents an impressive picture of Elijah's inviolable greatness " (p. 185) ? I know that Dr. Driver will reply that he desired to leave historical criticism on one side. By so doing he would, no doubt, satisfy the author of the Impreg- nable Rock of Holy Scripture, who, if I remember right, tolerates literary, but not real historical, criti- cism. But Dr. Driver has already found in chapter i. that the separation cannot be maintained. Why attempt what is neither possible, nor (if I may say so) desirable, in chapter ii. ? Here let me pause for awhile ; the first section of my critical survey is at an end. But I cannot pass on without the willing attestation that the scholarly character of these two chapters is high, and that even the author's com- promises reveal a thoughtful and conscientious mind. May his work and mine alike tend to the hallowing of criticism, to the strengthening of spiritual faith, and to the awakening in wider circles of a more intelligent love for the records of the Christian revelation. 1 See Ewald, History, iv. 112 ; Wellhausen, Die Composition des Hexateuchs, &c, pp. 284-5. The fundamental reverence of all Ewald's Biblical work is, I presume, too patent to be denied. He would not have spoken as he did on 2 Kings i. without ! passages which had too temporary a reference. In two ^pre- sumably) Maccabiean psalms— lxxiv. and ex. —there certainly 336 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. have myself for the first time offered a comprehensive justification. Caution and sobriety were as much needed for this as for any other critical task, nor would the want of ability to enter into the feelings of a psalmist (iiachempfindeii) and to realize his his- torical situation have been at all a helpful qualifica- tion. The result is doubtless capable of large improve- ment in detail, but in the fundamental points can hardly be modified. 1 Does this latter theory differ essentially, or only in secondary points, from that of Dr. Driver ? Only in secondary points. I made no leap in the dark when I prepared my Lectures, nor will Dr. Driver be con- scious of any abrupt transition, when he finds oppor- seem to be some omissions ; in Psalm lxxiv. there may also be a fresh insertion {vv. 12 — 17). 1 It is difficult to reply as one would wish to a series of criticisms made from a different and perhaps a narrower point of view, especially when such criticisms deal largely with sub- ordinate points which are not essential to the main theory. When the next English dissertation on the origin of the Psalter appears, it will at any rate be compelled to make considerable use of hypothesis, or it will be a failure. Prof. Davison (in the Thinker, Feb. 1892) does not seem to recognize this. To him and to Prof. Kennedy (two of the most courteous of my critics) I have given an imperfect reply in the Thinker for April ; to Prof. Kennedy also in the Expository Times for the same month. I am most thankful for any assistance in the work of self- criticism, though English critics, through their unprogressive- ness, make it rather difficult for me to learn from them. Among the criticisms to which I have been forced to reply are those of Mr. Gladstone in the Nineteenth Century, Oct. 1891 (answered, Dec. 1 891), and Mr. J. H. Moulton, in the Thinker, May and July 1892 (answered, Aug. 1892). In the interests of progress some reference to these answers seems desirable. I)Rivi:r. 337 (unity to advance further. The essential of both views is the recognition of the impossibility of proving that any psalm in its present form is pre-Exilic. " ( H many psalms," adds Dr. Driver, "the Exilic or post- Exilic date is manifest, and is not disputed ; of others it is difficult to say whether they are pre- or post- Exilic" (p. 362). Whichever view be adopted, it must be allowed that even Books I. and II. were put forth after the Return. This is not expressly men- tioned by Dr. Driver, and, as I have said, it seems to me a regrettable omission. But though not mentioned, it is not, nor can it be, denied. I venture to put this before those theological reviewers who, in their need- less anxiety for the ark of God, have hurried to the conclusion that the author has " rejected Dr. Cheyne's sweeping criticism of the Psalms," and that the " net result " set forth by the author on pp. 362, 363 is " very different from that which Dr. Chcyne has given us," 1 and to express the hope that they may perceive the error into which they have fallen, and begin to suspect that it is not the only one. We are now come to Proverbs and Job, and no- where perhaps does one feel more strongly the imperfection of Dr. Driver's plan. It is true, what was most desirable was not yet feasible — a thorough and comprehensive stud)- of the contents and origin of the Wisdom-literature, which would furnish results at once surer and more definite than the old-fashioned 1 Sec Church Quarterly Review y Jan. 1S92, p. 343 ; Guardian Dec. 2, 1891, p. 1953. z 338 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. Introductions can give. But I think that more might have been done than has been done to show the threads which connect the products of this style of writing, and to anticipate the results which a critic of insight and courage could not fail to reach. But alas! Dr. Driver has not thrown off that spirit of deference to conservatism which, if I am not mistaken, injures his work elsewhere. At the very outset the tradition respecting Solomon in I Kings iv. 29 — 34 receives no critical examination, and though the headings in Proverbs x. 1, xxv. I l are not unconditionally accepted, Dr. Driver speaks notwithstanding as if some of the Proverbs in two of the greater collections might possibly be the work of Solomon. This is hardly the way to cultivate the critical spirit in young students, and (against the author's will) may foster an unjust prejudice against critics not less careful, but perhaps less compromising than the author. As to the conclusions here offered, I feel that while censure would be impertinent, praise would be mis- leading. The " present condition of investigation " is only indicated in a few lines of a footnote (p. 381), and the " way for future progress " is not even allu- sively mentioned. It appears to me that criticism ought to start not from the worthless tradition of Solomonic authorship, but from the fact that the other proverbial books in the Old Testament are with increasing certainty seen to be later than 538 B.C. 1 Note that Sept. does not give the former heading at all, and has no " also " in the latter. DRIVER. 339 Now what docs Ben Sira tell us about his own work ? " I, too, as the last, bestowed zeal, And as one who gk-aneth after the vintage ; By the blessing of the Lord I was the foremost, And as a grape-gatherer did I till my winepress." (Kcclus. xxxiii. 16.) Who were Ben Sira's predecessors, and when did they live ? The writers of Proverbs xxx. and xxxi. 1 — 9 and 10 — 31, and of the gnomic sayings (or some of them) in Koheleth may be among them; but surely there were more productive writers or editors than these (so far as we know them from their writings). The force of the arguments against a pre- Exilic date for the final arrangement of our composite Book of Proverbs seems to me to be constantly increasing, and were I to resume the work laid aside in 1887, I feel that my results would be nearer to those of Reuss and Stade (adopted by Mr. Montcfiore) than to those of Delitzsch. 1 I am not indeed prepared to give up a large antique basis 2 for chaps, xxv. — xxvii., 1 In my article " Isaiah" (Ency. Brit., 1889) I expressed the view that the k> Praise of Wisdom" is either Exilic or post- Exilic; in my Job and Solomon (1887) 1 dated it earlier. But, as B amp ton Lcct., p. 365, shows, I have been coming back to my former view of Prow i. ix., and taking a survey of Proverbs from this fixed point, I sec that the difficulties of Rcuss's and Stadc's view (when duly qualified) are less than those of my own former and of Dr. Driver's present theory. Comp. Mr. Montc- fiore's thorough and interesting article on Proverbs, Jewish Quarterly Review^ 1S90, pp. 430 -453. * The heading in xxv. 1 reminds one of Assyrian library notes. Isa. xxxviii. 9 may rest on a tradition of Ile/ckiah's interest in books. 340 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. the proverbs in which, as Prof. Davidson has pointed out, differ on the whole considerably in style from those in x. I — xxii. 16. But not only chaps, xxx. and xxxi., but the passages forming the " Praise of Wisdom," and the introductory verses of the redactor (i. i — 6), are altogether post-Exilic (not of course contemporary), and so too, probably, is much of the rest of the book. Indeed however much allowance is made for the tenacity of the life of proverbs, and for the tendency to recast old gnomic material, one must maintain that in its present form the Book of Proverbs is a source of information, not for the pre-Exilic, but for various parts of the post- Exilic period. 1 I will only add that Dr. Driver may perhaps modify his view of the gradual formation of Proverbs in deference to recent researches of Gustav Bickell. 2 The chapter on Job is a skilful exhibition of views which are well deserving of careful study. It is evidently much influenced by a book of which I too have the highest appreciation — Prof. Davidson's volume on Job in the Cambridge series (comp. his article ''Job" in the Encycl. Brit). If therefore I object to it, it can only be in the most friendly manner, and on the same grounds on which I have already criticized that beautiful textbook. 3 I must 1 In this connexion I may refer to my notes on the Persian affinities of the "Wisdom" of Prov. viii., Expositor, Jan. 1892, p. 79- 2 See the Wiener Zeitschr. f. d. Ktuide des Morgenlandcs, 1891-92 (chiefly important for the metrical study of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiasticus). 3 Academy, Nov. 1, 1884. DRIVER. 341 however add that I think Dr. Driver should have taken some steps in advance of a book published in 1884. Until he and Dr. Davidson have a way of stopping short in the most provoking manner. At the very outset, for instance, they compromise rather more than is strictly critical on the subject of the historical existence of Job. 1 It is true, we ought not, without strong grounds, to presume that the plot of the poem is purely romantic, Semitic writers pre- ferring to build on tradition as far as they can. But to use the words "history" and "historical tradition" of the main features of the Job story is misleading, unless we are also bold enough to apply these terms to the pathetic Indian story of H arisen andra in vol. i. of Muir's Sanskrit Texts. No doubt there were cur- rent stories, native or borrowed, of the sudden ruin of a righteous man's fortunes ; but if we had them, we should see that they were not historical, but simple folk-tales, which, to a student of natural psychologies, are surely better than what we cad history. On this however I have said enough else- where ; - so I will pass on to one of the great critical questions — that of the integrity of the b >ok. Here Dr. Driver is not very satisfactory. It is 1 Among minor matters connected with the Prologue, these may be noted. I sec no explanation of the name of Job, and for the meaning of the " land of I /. mis \ .1 referent e to W. K. Smith, Kinship in Arabia, p. 261. A hint might also have been given of the appearance of a legend ^\ " three kings" from the East (Job ii. 11, Sept.). - Job and Solomon, pp. 62, 342 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. true, he thinks it "all but certain" (why this hesi- tation ?) that the Elihu-speeches are a later insertion, which, considering his conservatism on Isaiah xl.— lxvi., is a concession of much value. But he unfortunately ignores even the mildest of those critical theories, of which a wiser critic (in my opinion) speaks thus in an American review 1 — "If we are not mistaken, a much better case could be made out for a theory of many authors than for the theory of one [or of two]. As the name of David attracted successive collections of psalms, and the name of Solomon successive collections of proverbs, why may not the name of Job have attracted various treatments of the problems of suffering righteousness ? " Why not, indeed, if the evidence points, as it does, in this direction ? And my complaint is not that Dr. Driver does not adopt this or that particular theory, but that he fails to recognize a number of exegetical facts. He approaches the Book of Job, as it seems to me, with the preconceived idea that it left the author's hand as a finished and well-rounded com- position. This idea is no doubt natural enough, but is hardly consistent with the results of criticism in other parts of the Old Testament and in other literatures. As has been well said by the authors of the Corpus Poetiaim Boreale, " The great books of old time are accretions ; our Psalter is such a one, Homer is such a one, the Sagas are such a one." Ewald, who 1 Review of Genung's Epic of the Inner Life in The Nation, Aug. 27, 1 89 1, DRIVER, 343 began by believing in the unity of Genesis, found out that this unit\- was factitious; may it not very natur- ally be so with a poem, which, like the dialogues in Job, prompted to imitation and to contradiction ? 1 )r. Driver's able forerunner has indeed justified his own reluctance to disintegrate by his desire to enjoy the poem as much as he can. He can sympathize, he tells us, with those persons who arc " so intoxicated with the beauty o[ a great creation, that they do not care a whit how it arose." 1 But he forgets that the true critic is not a mere dissector, but analyzes in order to reconstruct, and that there are disintccrratinGf critics (take for instance Dr. Walter Leaf-) who arc in no respect hindered by their criticism from the fullest aesthetic enjoyment of the work of art which they criticize I may indeed venture to go further and ask, Is the Book of Job, as it now stands, really such a great work of art ? I know all that can be said on the difference between Eastern and Western art, and between Eastern and Western pyschology ; but the difference must not be pressed to an extreme. I am willing to admit — indeed, I did in 1S87 expressly admit — that the six accretions indicated in my Job and Solomon (pp. 67 — 69) need not have come from as man)- different writers. The Elihu-speeches, how- ever, which arc the most obvious of the accretions, cannot have come from the writer of the Dialogues 1 Davidson, Expositor^ 1883, p. 88. See Leaf, Companion /<> the Iliad, p. 18, 344 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. (though Kamphausen once thought so). Nor, as it would seem, can the Epilogue. I grant that the author of the Dialogues prefixed to his work not only chap, iii., but also chaps, i. and ii. But I cannot believe that he meant xlii. 7 — 17 to be the denoument of the story ; — that hypothesis at least no ingenuity can render plausible. "The only possible close of the poem, if the writer is not untrue to his deepest convictions, is that the Satan should confess before Jehovah and the court of heaven that there are 1 perfect and upright ' men who serve God without interested motives." 1 Such at least is still my own opinion. That we do not now find such a close, only proves either (what we knew before) that the original poem has not come down to us intact, or that the Book of Job, like that of Koheleth, was left in an unfinished state by the author. Whether the other passages were, or were not, added by the author is to some extent an open question. It seems to me extremely hazardous to suppose that the writer went on retouching his own work, but this is the only possible course for those who hold out against the view, which for some at least of the added passages I cannot help advocating. But at any rate one thing is certain, viz. that even after removing the speeches of Elihu, the Book of Job does not form a genuine whole — that some of the original passages have been retouched and new 1 Critical Review, May 1891, p. 253 (the present writer's review of Hoffmann's Hiob). DRIVER. J | ' ones added. That eminent critic Dillmann, who in spite of himself continually makes such gratifying concessions to young scholars, is in the main point on my side, 1 and so arc all the chief workers in this department. Against me, as I have good cause to know, there stands arrayed the host of English theological reviewers. But how many of these h tve made a serious critical stud)' of the Book of Job ? How many have even read carefully — much less worked at — any critical work' in which the unity of Job is denied, and have assimilated the positive side of a disintegrating theory ? I complain of my friend Dr. Driver because, with the best intentions, he has made it more difficult for ordinary students to come to the knowledge of important facts, and made it possible for a thoroughly representative, and in some respects not illiberal, writer in a leading Anglican review to use language which must, I fear, be qualified as both unseemly and misleading. 2 And what has the author to say on the date of the poem, or rather since the poem has, by his own admission, been added to, on the date of the original work and of the Elihu-specches ? To answer th.it the latter were added by " a somewhat later writer" is, I think, only defensible if the original poem 1>^ made post-Exilic. For surely, if anything has grown clearer of late years, it is that the 1 inguage air! i 1 See Dillmann, Hiob (1S91), A7/.7., p. xxviii, and cf. his • •marks on the controverted passages in the course of the book. '-' Guardian^ Dec. 2, 1891. 346 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. of " Elihu " are those of some part of the post-Exilic period. The new edition of Dillmann's Hiob may be taken as evidence of this. He still makes the original poem pre-Exilic (though nearer to B.C. 586 than formerly), but whereas in 1869 he thought that the Elihu-speeches " might have been written in the course of the sixth century " (/'. e. possibly before the Return), in 1891 he tells us that they are probably to be assigned to the fifth century. As to the original poem, our author states (as I did myself in 1887) that " it will scarcely be earlier than the age of Jeremiah, and belongs most probably to the period of the Babylonian captivity.'' 1 Both Dillmann and Dr. Briggs favour the former date ; Umbreit, Knobel, Gratz, and Prof. Davidson the latter. Gesenius also prefers an Exilic date, but will not deny the possibility of a still later one. And it is a post-Exilic date which many critics {e.g. Kuenen, Wellhausen, Stade, Hoffmann, 2 Cornill) 1 Prof. Bissell, I observe, hopes to prove a considerably earlier date by the help of GIase? J s discoveries in Arabia (Pres- byterian and Reformed Review, Oct. 1 891). He refers to Prof. Sayce. I trust that Prof. Whitehouse will be more cautious (see Critical Review, Jan. 1892, p. 12). 2 Prof. G. Hoffmann's arguments (Hiob, 1S91) do not perhaps materially advance the discussion, though his book ought to have been referred to by our author. His linguistic proposals are too violent, and his references to Zoroastrianism do not show enough study. Nor am I sure that he has added much of value to the argument from parallel passages. On the latter I venture to add these remarks for comparison with Dr. Driver's valuable section (p. 408), On the parallels between Job and the DRIVER. 347 are in our day inclined to accept Ought not this to have been mentioned ? I feel myself that in the present position of the criticism of the Hagiographa a post-Exilic date has acquired a greater degree of plausibility. 1 If, for instance, the Book of Proverbs is in the main a composite post-Exilic work, it becomes at once in a higher degree probable that the Book of Job is so too. It is still of course a question to be argued out in detail ; there is no escaping from the discipline of hard and minute investigation. But, so far as I can see, the evidence collected, when viewed in the light of general probabilities, and of the results attained and being attained elsewhere, justifies us in asserting that the whole of the Book of Job belongs most probably to the Persian period. probably or certainly Exilic parts of ii. Isaiah it is difficult to speak confidently. Not need we perhaps consider the Prologue of Job to be indebted to Zech. iii. ; the modes of representation used were " in the air " in the post-Exilic period. And as to the parallel adduced by Cornill (AY///., p. 234) between Job xlii. 17 and Gen. xxxv. 29, xxv. 8 (both P), this, if admitted as important, will only affect the date of the Epilogue. Then we turn to the Psalms, the Song of Ilezekiah, and the Lamenta- tions. It would be difficult indeed to say that Isa. xxxviii. 10 — 20, or that Pss. xxxix. and lxxxviii. were not written in the same period as Job, and these works can, I believe, be shown to be post-Exilic. If this seems doubtful to any one, yet Ps. viii. 5 " is no doubt parodied in Job vii. 17 : ' (Driver), and there is no reason for not grouping Ps. viii. with the Priestly Code. I admit that Lam. iii. is, by the same right as Ps. lxxxviii., to be viewed as in a large sense contemporary with Job (see Delitzsch, Hiob, p. 24). But what is the date of the Lamentations? See farther on. 1 Comp. Bampton I.ect.* p. 202. 34$ FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. On linguistic grounds 1 I should like to put the main part of the book in the first half of this period, and the Elihu-speeches in the second, but these grounds are not by themselves decisive. A word must here be said on a subject which will be in the mind of many readers. These critical results must have some bearing on theories of inspiration. But what bearing ? I have an uneasy feeling that the remark on page 405 — that "precisely the same inspiration attaches to [the Elihu-speeches] which attaches to the poem generally " — is hardly penetrating enough, and that by such a half-truth Dr. Driver has unwisely blunted the edge of his critical decision. Of course, the Elihu-speeches are inspired ; they are touched by the same religious influences which pervade all the genuine Church records of the Exilic or post-Exilic period which are contained in the Hagiographa. But it can hardly be said that these speeches have the same degree of inspiration as the rest of the Book of Job, at least if the general impression of discriminating readers may be trusted. The creator of u Elihu " may have some deeper ideas, but he has not as capacious a vessel to receive them as the older poet. 2 And though it may be true that he had a good motive, and that the course which he took was sanctioned by the religious 1 These grounds are briefly indicated by Dr. Driver on p. 404 (§ 8) and p. 406 (top) ; cf. my Job and Solomon, pp. 291 — 295. Besides Budde's Beitriige, Stickel {Hfob, 1842, pp. 248—262) still deserves to be consulted on the Elihu-portion. 2 See Job and Solomon, pp. 42 -44. i'klYKK. ^49 authorities of the day, vet it is certain both that lie has defects from which the earlier writer is free, and that he has for modem readers greatly hindered the beneficial effect of the rest of the poem. We must not, in short, force ourselves to reverence these two poets in an equal degree. I admit that the difficulties which theories of inspiration have to encounter in the Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Esther are still greater, and I think that Dr. Driver would have facilitated the reception of his critical results on these books if he had at once taken up a strong position with reference to these difficulties. It might even have been enough to quote a luminous passage from a lecture by Prof. Robertson Smith, 1 the upshot of which is that these three books " which were still disputed among the orthodox Jews in the apostolic age, and to which the New Testament never makes reference,"- and, let me add, which do not seem to be touched by the special religious influences referred to above, arc not for us Christians in the truest sense of the word canonical. 3 These books however arc intensely interesting, and a " frank and reverent study of the texts " shows that 1 The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, pp. 17J. 175 : cf. Wiklcbocr, Die Entstehung des alt test. Kanons (1891), pp. 150, 152. 2 See however Trench, Seven Churches of Asia, pp. 225, 3 Of the Song of Songs, Lowth, writing t<> Warburton in 1756, says: "If you deny that it is an allegory, you must ex- clude it from the Canon of Holy Scripture ; fur it holds it-- place there by no other tenure" (Warburton- Works, by llurd, xii. 458)- 350 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. they " have their use and value even for us," and my only regret is that in Esther and Ecclesiastes, at any rate, Dr. Driver is slightly more ''moderate" than was necessary, and that he does not make it quite as easy as it might have been for some of his readers to agree with him. I pass to a book in which I have long had so special an interest that it will require an effort to be brief — the glorious Song of Songs. Our author rejects the old allegorical interpretation as artificial and extravagant (p. 423), but does not regard Delitzsch's modification of it as untenable, provided it be admitted that there is nothing in the poem itself to suggest it. His meaning, I presume, is this — that the Song is only allegorical in so far as all true marriage to a religious mind is allegorical, 1 but that we cannot suppose the poet to have thought of this allegory when he wrote, and that, his own mean- ing being so beautiful, it is almost a pity to look beyond it. Dr. Driver's treatment of the Song is marked by much reserve. He does indeed commit himself to the lyrical drama theory, without consider- ing whether the poet may not to some extent have worked up current popular songs (just as Poliziano did in Medicsean Florence) ; and though he puts two forms of this theory (Delitzsch's and Ewald's) very thoroughly before the reader, he evidently prefers the latter, with some modifications from Oettli. Still one 1 Cf. Julia Wedgewood, The Moral Ideal (1888), pp. 269, 270. I'CIVII;. 351 feels after all that he has not given us a thorough explanation of the Song. This was perhaps justifiable in the present state of exegesis. For though the poem has not been altogether neglected by recent scholars, with the exception of Gratz and Stickcl none of them has seriously grappled afresh with the problem of its origin. To Gratz (in spite of his many faults as a scholar) and Stickel the student should have been expressly referred ; l the mention of the former on p. 423 seems to me far from sufficient. Help may also be got from Prof. Robertson Smith's able article in the Encyclopedia Britannica (1876), and by the section relative "to the Song in Reuss' French edition of the Bible. For determining the date of the Song the linguistic argument is of more than common importance. Here I must complain that such a thorough Hebraist as Dr. Driver hesitates so much. The only fresh ground for uncertainty is the discovery of a weight on the site of Samaria, ascribed to the eighth century, with btt7 as in Song i. 6 (viii. 12), iii. 7. Apart from this, a linguist would certainly say that this pleonastic periphrasis proved the late date of the poem as it stands, but now it seems permissible to Dr. Driver to doubt. That I reluctantly call an unwise com- promising with tradition. In 1876 (the date of Prof. Robertson Smith's article) we did not sec our way in the post-Exilic period as we do now. If there is 1 Shekel's book appeared in iSSS, and was ably reviewed by Prof. Budde {Thiol Lit.-ztg., iSSS, No. 6). 352 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. anything in the contents of the Song which expresses a pre-Exilic date, let it be pointed out. Meantime all the facts as yet elicited by exegesis can be ex- plained quite as well on the assumption of a late date as of an early one. Let us then (failing any fresh exegetical evidence) hear no more of the Song of Deborah and the early north-Israelitish dialect. It is certain that the use of w for nttfS is specially cha- racteristic of late writings ; certain, that npp'^ Song i. 7 is analogous to V?$ Jon. i. 7, and also to i£ ; $ ?$| Eccles. viii. 17, and HD^ T^\S : Dan. i. 10 (the fuller relative used as in Jon. i. 8 l [contrast ver. 7], in a carefully expressed speech) ; certain, too, that some at least of the loan-words mentioned on pp. 422, 423 (note 3 ) point definitely to the post-Exilic period (even one or two Greek words seem highly probable). Kuenen in 1865, in spite of his preconceived theory of an early date, admitted that "the language seemed, at first sight, to plead for the Persian period " ; Gesenius and M. Sachs — a great Christian and a great Jewish Hebraist — have expressed themselves still more strongly on the "modern Hebrew" of the Song of Songs. It is also highly probable that a careful study of the names of plants in the Song would favour a post-Exilic date. Nor can the parallelisms between this book and that " song of loves" (or, love), the 45th Psalm, be ignored. If that psalm is post-Exilic, so also presumably is the Song 1 I do not take the fuller phrase in ver. 8 to be a gloss (cf. the four lines added by Dr. Driver on p. 301 in 2nd edition). DRIVER. 353 of Songs. 1 Rut Dr. Driver's researches on the Psalms have not yet perhaps led him to see what to me is now so clear, and I am therefore content to have shown that, quite apart from this, the facts admitted by Dr. Driver point rather to a late than to an early date, and that we cannot therefore safely assume, with our author, that the poem has a basis of fact. Readers of Delitzsch's delightful essay on " Dancing, and Pentateuch-Criticism" 2 do not need to be assured that the post-Exilic period was not without the enlivenment of secular dancing and song. And now comes another little disappointment — another little compromise with conservatism, which I should prefer to glide gently over, but for the illusion which is growing up among us that paring down the results of criticism is necessary for a truly Christian teaching. The Rook of Ruth, according to our author, is a prose idyll, similar, I presume, to that which may have lain in the mind of the author of that idyllic group of quasi-dramatic tableaux — the Song of Songs, and based, like the Song (according to Dr. Driver), on tradition. We are told th.it " the basis of the narrative consists, it may reason- 1 See Bampton Lectures, pp. 167, 179 (cf. p. 298). On p. 167 (foot), read "can be better accounted for." I do not see where to find a situation for either of these poems before the Greek period. One of the early and fortunate reigns must of course be selected. But I hold myself open to correction. 2 Delitzsch, Iris (E. T.), pp. 189- 204. The Mishna ( TaanstA, iv. 8 ; see Wunsche, Talm., i. 473) tells how Song iii. 11 was sung in the vineyard dances. I \ 354 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. ably be supposed, of the family traditions respecting Ruth and her marriage with Boaz. These have been cast into a literary form by the [pre-Exilic] author, who has, no doubt, to a certain extent idealized both the characters and the scenes. Distance seems to have mellowed the rude, unsettled age of the Judges" (pp. 427, 428). This description seems to soften the facts a little too much. It is not merely a " mellowed " picture that we have before us, but, as Mr. Cobb has re- marked, 1 complete " contrariety of spirit, style, social life, and public affairs." Nor is anything gained by postulating an uncertain amount of traditional material ; the story of Ruth is practically as imagin- ative as that of Tobit, and is none the less edifying on this account. But let us see how the acute and learned author endeavours to prove a pre-Exilic date. The genealogy, as he admits, " appears to suggest an Exilic or post-Exilic date," but this "forms no integral- part of the book," while, in spite of many isolated expressions 2 which, taken together, seem at first sight to point to the post-Exilic period, the 1 Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct. 1891, p. 662. 2 ]T\b, "I3b>, D*p are, I think, decisive. I incline to add *&, which before the'Exile is poetical (see Bampton Lectures, p. 84). Dr. Driver regards Ruth iv. 7 (^P) as a gloss, cf. 1 Sam. ix. 9. But the latter passage is embedded in a pre-Exilic section, whereas Ruth iv. 7 occurs ex hyp. in a post-Exilic narrative. The narrator tries to throw himself back into early times, but has to explain a custom unknown to his post-Exilic readers Nor is there any special reason to regard fn? as a word of the early northern dialect (p. 427). DRIVER. 355 11 general beauty and purity of the style of Ruth point decidedly to the pre-Exilic period." We are not told whether the book was written before or after Deuteronomy (which is referred on p. 82 to the reign of Manasseh), but it is pointed out that the peculiar kind of marriage referred to in chapters iii. and iv. is not strictly that of levirate (Deut. xxv. 5), and that the reception of Ruth into an Israelitish family " appears to conflict with Deuteronomy xxiii. 2." In reply, it may be said (1) that in order to give the 11 present condition of investigation " it was important to give a much fuller statement of the grounds on which " most modern critics consider Ruth to be Exilic (Ewald) or post-Exilic (Bertheau, Wellhausen, Kuenen, &c.) " ; (2) that by Dr. Driver's very candid admission "the style of the prose-parts of Job ['most probably ' Exilic, p. 405] is not less pure * ; (3) that the religious liberality of the writer and the family relations which he describes in the book are perfectly intelligible in the post-Exilic period (cf. on the one hand the Book of Jonah, and on the other Kuenen's remark on Leviticus xviii. and xx., HcxatcucJi^. 268); and (4) there is clearly no necessity to suppose the genealogy to have been added in a later age. In fact the one excuse for giving this book an earlier date than that of Jonah is the greater flavour of antiquity which it possesses (notice the points of contact with Samuel given by Bertheau in the Kurzgif, Handbuch t p. 286). 1 Its real design is, not to glorify the Davidic 1 See Dr. Driver, p. 302, and cf. Bampton Lectures, p. 306. 356 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. house, but to show the universality of God's love. Just as our Lord exhibits a Samaritan as the model of practical piety, so the unknown writer of this beautiful little book brings before us a Moabitish woman as the model of an affectionate daughter who receives the highest earthly reward. 1 The five Lamentations deserve attention, not only for some classic beauties of expression which have endeared them to the Christian heart, but as (perhaps) the earliest monuments of the piety of regenerate Israel, and as (perhaps) supplying presumptive evi- dence of the cultivation of religious lyric poetry long before the Exile. Nowhere perhaps does Dr. Driver's individuality show itself more strikingly than here. What pains he takes to soften the prejudices of old- fashioned readers, and give the principal result of criticism in its most moderate form! To unprejudiced students, however, he may seem timid, and it is certainly strange to hear that " even though the poems be not the work of Jeremiah, there is no question that they are the work of a contemporary (or contemporaries)." Nagelsbach long ago saw that at any rate Lamentations ii. implies an acquaintance with the Book of Ezekiel, and, to Dr. Driver, the affinities between all the Lamentations and the prophecies of Jeremiah ought surely to suggest that the author (or authors) had made a literary study of that book. A considerable interval must therefore 1 Comp. Talm. Bab., Sanhedrin, 96 b (Wiinsche, iii. 188), where still bolder flights are taken. DRIVER. 357 have elapsed between B.C. 586 and the writing of the Lamentations, 1 and the language used in Lament- ations v. 20 (comp. Isa. xlii. 14, lvii. 11) points rather to the end than to the beginning of the Exile. This period is, moreover, the earliest which will suit the parallelisms between Lamentations iii. and the Book of Job (referred in this work to the Exile), which are more easily explained on the supposition that the elegy is dependent on Job than on the opposite theory. 2 It ought however to be mentioned that there are plausible grounds for giving a still later date to the third elegy, in which Jerusalem is not once mentioned, and which it is difficult not to asso- ciate with the Jeremianic psalms. If Psalm xxxi. is post-Exilic (and any other theory seems to me ex- tremely improbable), so also is Lamentations iii., and of course we must add, if the poem of Job (as a whole) is post-Exilic, so also is Lamentations iii. And though I do not for a moment deny that lament- ations were indited during the Exile (the Books of Ezekiel and of ii. Isaiah sufficiently prove this), yet the mere fact that the authors of Lamentations i., ii., iv., and v. refer so prominently to the fall of Jerusalem, is no conclusive proof that these lamentations too were not written in Judah after the Return. The dramatic imaginativeness of the psalmists has, I believe, been proved, 8 and the peculiar rhythm called 1 See Prof. W. R. Smith's excellent article in Encyclopedia Britannica. - Sec my Lamentations {Pulpit Coming, [ntrod. p. iii. 3 Cf. my commentary on Pss. Ixxiv. and exxxvii. The Second 358 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. "elegiac" has been traced by Budde (though not with certainty) in many productions of the post- Exilic age. It seems to me far from impossible that, just as the Church of the Second Temple composed its own psalms, so it preferred to indite fresh elegies for use on the old fast-days. 1 The next section is one of the very best in this part of the volume — it is on Ecclesiastes. I will not occupy space with summarizing it, but urge the student to master its contents. I quite agree with Dr. Driver that the work may possibly be a work of the Greek period. The language, as I remarked in 1887, favours (though it does not absolutely require) a later date than that suggested by Ewald (close of the Persian period). The objection that if the book be of the Greek period, we have a right to expect definite traces of Greek influence, I now see to be inconclusive ; the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach contains none, and yet belongs to the Greek period. 2 Isaiah, too, describes imaginatively in "elegiac rhythm" (if Budde may be followed) the state of captured Jerusalem (Isa. li. 17 — 20). 1 Discussion of this delicate question I must here renounce. Since these chapters were written Dyserinck has favoured us with some valuable remarks of Kuenen on the possibility of a post-Exilic date for these poems {Theol. Tijdschr. July 1892). It was his wish that the book might be studied anew from a linguistic point of view. But he admitted the difficulty caused by the alphabetic form of the poems and their similarity to certain psalms. Dyserinck himself proposes to publish an elaborate treatment of the subject. 2 On supposed Greek influences, see, besides Menzel, Qohelet und die nacharistotelische Philosophic, von August Palm (18S5). DRIVER, 359 Moreover, Hellenism must have influenced very many who did not definitely adopt Greek theories. Certainly the work is very un-Jewish. Very probably Kuenen is correct in dating it about 200 B.C., i. c. about forty years before the great Maccab&an rising (so too Mr. Tyler). Dr. Driver admits the force of his reasoning, though he still not unreasonably hesitates. He is him- self strongest on the linguistic side of the argument ; see especially his note on the bearings of Prof. Mar- goliouth's attempted restorations of Ben Sira (p. 447). I cannot equally follow him in his argument against a theory which I myself hold, viz. that the text of Ecclesiastes has been manipulated in the interests of orthodoxy. As was remarked above, the book is not in the strictest sense canonical, and we have therefore no interest in creating or magnifying difficulties in a theory which is intrinsically probable, and is supported by numerous phenomena in the later period. The section on Esther is also in the main very satisfactory. But why are we told that this narrative (which was not canonical according to St. Athanasius, and which, fascinating as it is, we can hardly venture to call inspired) cannot reasonably be doubted to have a historical basis ? Is it because of the appeal to Persian chronicles (Esth. ii. 23; x. 2; cf. ix. 32)? But it is of the essence of the art of romance not to shrink from appeals to fictitious authorities. One may however admit that a story like Esther, which professed to account for the origin of a popular festival, probably had a traditional, though not a 3'6o FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. historical, basis. On this point reference may be made to Kuenen's Onderzoek (ed. 2), p. 551, and Zimmern in Stade's Zeitschrift, 1891, p. 168. The latter thinks (and both Jensen and Lagarde agree) that the Feast of Purim may be derived ultimately from a Babylonian New Year's Feast, and that the story of the struggle between Mordecai and Haman was suggested by a Babylonian New Year's legend of the struggle between Marduk and Tiamat. This coincides curiously with the views proposed above to explain the origin of the Jonah-narrative. Of course, the story may have been enriched with Persian elements (on which see Lagarde and Kuenen x ) before it was Hebraized by a Jewish story-teller. Dr. Driver's linguistic argument for placing Esther in the fourth or third century B.C. is excellent. But there is one important omission in his brief discussion. If the date is so early, how is it that the earliest independent evidence for the observance of Purim in Judaea is in 2 Maccabees (see p. 452) ? Moreover, there is no mention of Mordecai and Esther 2 in Ben Sira's " praise of famous men " (Eccles. xliv. — xlix.), which would be strange if Purim and its story were well known in Judaea in B.C. 180. May not the festival have been introduced into Judaea, and the Book of 1 Lagarde's treatise Purim (1887) is important ; Dr. Driver's reference gives no idea of this. See also his Mittheilungen, ii. 378 — 381, iv. 347. On Persian legendary elements, see also Kuenen, Oud., ed. 2, ii. 551, and cf. Cornill, EinL, p. 253. 2 Cf. Ben Sira's silence as to Daniel (see/00 and Solomon, p. 194). DRIVER. 361 Esther have been written some time alter the Macca- baean War (so Reuss, Kucncn, and Cornill) ? Or, though this seems less probable, the book may have been written by a Persian Jew in the third century, but not brought to Palestine till later. Dr. Driver ought perhaps to have mentioned this theory (Mr. Bcvan, Daniel, p. 29, notes two significant words which Esther has in common with Daniel). He might also have added to his " literature " my article "Esther" in Enc. Brit. (1878); Cassel's Esther (1888) ; and Dieulafoy, " Le livre d'Esther et 1c palais d'Assuerus " in Revue des etudes juives, 1888 (Actes et Conferences). Nor can I help giving hearty praise to the sections on Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. The details, especially on style, are worked out with great care. The only objection that I shall raise relates to the sketch of the method and spirit of the Chronicler, which I could have wished not less reverent, but bolder and more distinct in expression. We are all familiar with the attacks to which writers like Dr. Driver are exposed ; some of the most vigorous passages of Bishop Ellicott's recent Charge are directed against that strangest of all theories — " an inspiration of repainting history " — to which these reverent-minded writers are supposed to have com- mitted themselves. If Dr. Driver had only been a little clearer on the subjects of inspiration and of the growth of the Canon, how much simpler would have been his task, especially in dealing with the 362 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. Hagiographa ! Of course, the Chronicles are in- spired, not as the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah, but as even a sermon might be called inspired, i. e. touched in a high degree with the best spiritual influences of the time. Dr. Driver says (preface, p. xvi) — "It was the function of inspiration to guide the individual [historian] in the choice and dis- position of his material, and in his use of it for the inculcation of special lessons." But clearly this can be true of the Chronicler only with those limitations, subject to which the same thing could be said of any conscientious and humble- minded preacher of the Christian Church. And if these limitations cannot be borne in mind, it is better to drop the word altogether, and express what we mean by some other term. That there are some passages in Chronicles which have a specially inspir- ing quality, and may therefore be called inspired, is not of course to be denied. But upon the whole, as Prof. Robertson Smith truly says, 1 the Chronicler " is not so much a historian as a Levitical preacher on the old history." The spirit of the Deuteronomistic editor of the earlier narrative books has found in him its most consistent representative. He omits some facts and colours others in perfect good faith accord- ing to a preconceived religious theory, to edify himself and his readers. He also adds some new facts, not on his own authority, but on that of earlier 1 The Old Test, in the Jewish Church, ed. 1, p. 420. DRIVER. 363 records, but we dare not say that he had any greater skill than his neighbours in sifting the contents of these records, if indeed he had any desire to do so. Dr. Driver's language (p. 501) respecting the " tra- ditional element " used by the Chronicler seems therefore somewhat liable to misunderstanding. 1 The only remaining section of the book relates to the Book of Daniel, and upon this, as might be expected, Dr. Driver's individuality has left a strong impress. It is needless to say that the student can fully trust the facts which are here stored up in abundance, also that the conclusions arrived at are in the main judicious, and the mode of their pre- sentation considerate. And yet helpful, very helpful, as this section is, it does not fully satisfy a severely critical standard. Far be it from me to blame the author for this ; I sympathize too deeply with the conflict of feelings amid which he must have written. I would speak frankly, but (on the grounds already mentioned) without assumption of superiority. First of all, I think it a misfortune that the sketch of the contents of the book could not have been shortened. I know the excuse ; there existed in English no commentary on Daniel sufficiently critical to be referred to. But on the other hand, there was the most urgent need for more preliminary matter, 1 To the "literature" of Ezra I should add Nestle, "Zur Frage nach der urspriinglichcn Einheit der Biicher Chronik, Esra, Neh.," in Studien it. KriHken^ 1879, pp. 517—520: van Hoonacker, " Ndhemie et Esdras ; nouvelle hypothese," in Lc Muscon, 1890. 364 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. especially on the characteristics of this book. Or- dinary readers simply cannot understand Daniel. Modern culture supplies no key to it, as the late Mr. Gilbert's interesting paper in the Expositor for June 1889 conclusively shows. I do not undervalue the judicious remarks on pp. 480 — 482, but on "apoca- lyptic" literature something more was wanted than bare references to various German authors, one of whom (Smend) ought, as I think, to have been made much more prominent. 1 Secondly, I think that a freer use should have been made of the cuneiform inscriptions, especially considering the unfriendly criticisms of Prof. Sayce. In this respect I believe myself to have long ago set a good example, though my article on Daniel [Enc. Brit., 1876) of course requires much modification and expansion. 2 And here let me repair an omission in chap. xi. Dr. Driver should, I think, in dealing with Hexateuch criticism, have taken some account of Assyrian and Egyptian investigations. Even if he thought it safer not to speak too positively on the bearings of these researches on the question of the dates of documents, he ought, I think, to have " indicated the way for future progress " (editor's preface), and so have pre- vented (so far as in him lay) the vehement but 1 Dr. Wright's work on Daniel in the Pulpit Comme?itary will, I am sure, be full of learned and honest discussion. But when will it appear? Mr. Bevan's Short Commentary on Daniel (1892) is so good that we may even ask him for some- thing more complete, though not more careful and critical. 2 See also Bampton Led., pp. 105 — 107 (cf. 94, 296). DRIVER. 365 erroneous criticisms of Prof. Saycc. 1 But on the relation of cuneiform rcsearcli to the criticism of Daniel no reserve was called for. It would have been quite right to say that the statement respecting Belteshazzar in Daniel iv. was erroneous, and that the names Ashpenaz, Shadrach, and Meshach could not have been put forward as Babylonian in Exilic times ; 2 also that Hamelsar (probably) and Abed- nego (certainly) are ignorant deformations of Baby- lonian names, and that though Arioch is doubtless Eri-aku, yet this name was probably obtained from Genesis xiv. 1. And much more might, I think, have been made of the writer's slight acquaintance with Babylonian ideas and customs. Above all, while on "the Chaldeans " and on Belshazzar very just re- marks are made, on " Darius the Mede " we get this unfortunate compromise between criticism and con- servatism (p. 469; cf. p. 479, note 2 ) — "Still the 1 I referred to this at the Church Congress in 1S83 (Job and Solomon, p. 6), and Prof. Robertson Smith wrote an acute paper on " Archaeology and the Date of the Pentateuch " in the Coniemp. Rev. for October 1887. Against the coloured state- ments of Prof. Sayce's paper in the Expository Times for December 1881 1 have already protested. The Tell-el-Amarna tablets introduce a fresh element, not of simplicity, but of complication ("development" is, alas! not such a simple matter as theorists used to suppose). But E. Meyer's critical inference from Egyptian history in Stade's Z/., 18SS, pp. 47 — 49 (cf. his Geseh. des Alt., i. 202), appears to be worth a corner even of Dr. Driver's limited space. 2 Few probably will accept Kohler's suggestions on "the Chaldean names of Daniel and his three friends," in the Zt. fiir Assyriologie, 1889, pp. 46 — 51. 366 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. circumstances are not perhaps such as to be absolutely inconsistent with either the existence or the office of 1 Darius the Mede ' ; and a cautious criticism will not build too much on the silence of the inscriptions, when many certainly remain yet to be brought to Hght." Now it is quite true that in the addenda to the second edition it is stated, in accordance with the contract-tablets published by Strassmaier, that neither " Darius the Mede " nor even Belshazzar bore the title of king between Nabuna'id and Cyrus. But it is not the very venial error in the original state- ment on which I lay stress, but the attitude of the writer. Out of excessive sympathy with old- fashioned readers, he seems to forget the claims of criticism. The words of Daniel v. 31 should be in themselves sufficient to prove the narrative in which they occur to have been written long after B.C. 536. 1 Thirdly, against the view that chap. xi. contains true predictions, the author should, I think, have urged Nestle's certain explanation of the so-called " abomination of desolation " in Stade's Zeitschrift 1 That Mr. Pinches should have come forward on the side of conservatism at the Church Congress in 1891 is, I presume, of no significance. He is far too modest to claim to have studied the Book of Daniel critically. The same remark probably applies to Mr. Flinders Petrie {szeBampto?i Lect.,pp.g, 10). On "Darius the Mede," compare Meinhold {Beitrcige, 1888), and Sayce, Fresh Light, &c. (1884), p. 181, who however unduly blunts the edge of his critical decision. See also my own article " Daniel," for an incidental evidence of the confusion between Cyrus and Darius Hystaspis from 1 Kings x. 18, Sept. DRIVER. 367 for 1883 l (sec Bampton Lectures, p. 105). That an Exilic prophet should have used the phrase explained by Nestle, Bishop Ellicott himself will admit to be inconceivable. I will not blame Dr. Driver for his remark on p. 477 (line 2S, &c), but I believe that it is not quite critical, and that Nestle's discovery supplies the last fact that was wanted to prove to the general satisfaction that Daniel xi., xii. (and all that belongs to it) was written in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes. I say " the last fact," because a faithful historical explanation of Daniel xi., xii., such as is given by the great Church-Father Ilippolytus in the lately discovered fourth book of his Commentary,- forces on the unprejudiced mind the conclusion that this section was written during the Syrian persecution. Hippolytus, it is true, did not draw this conclusion, but who can wonder that the Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry did ? And should we not be ready to learn even from our foes ? Fourthly. (The reader will pardon this dry ar- rangement under heads with a view to brevity.) I 1 Dr. Driver mentions this explanation in the addenda to ed. 2. But, like Mr. Bevan (Daunt, p. 193, who also refers to Nestle), he thinks the "abomination "was an altar. Surely, as Blcek saw, it was (primarily at least) a statue. The statue of Olympian Zeus bore the Divine name, and the altar was presumably erected before it. - Fragments of the Syriac version of this fourth book were given by Lagarde, Analecta Syriaca (1S38), pp. 79 — 91. (ieorgiades discovered, and Dr. E. Bratke edited the complete work in Greek in 1891. [In June 1892 Dr. Salmon gave an article on Hippolytus's commentary in Ilcruuithcna, No. 18.] 368 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. notice on p. 479 the same confusion which occurs elsewhere between " tradition " and history. I do not think that any critic who agrees on the main point with Dr. Driver would maintain that " Daniel, it cannot be doubted, was a historical person " except the newly-converted Delitzsch, who, as his article in the second edition of Herzog's Encyclopedia shows, had not worked his way to perfect clearness. Listen to the late Prof. Riehm, who is now just obtaining recognition among us. " The material of his narra- tives the author may partly have taken from folk- tales {aus der Volkssage), though at any rate in part he invented it himself. . . . And even if there was a folk-tale (Volkssage), according to which Daniel was a prophet living during the Exile and dis- tinguished for his piety, yet the historical existence of an Exilic prophet Daniel is more than doubtful." l One must, I fear, add that the two statements mentioned in note 2 as resting possibly or probably on a basis of fact are, the one very doubtful, the other now admitted to be without foundation. Fifthly, as to the date of the composition of the book. Dr. Driver states this to be at earliest about B C. 300, but more probably B.C. 168 or 167 (p. 467). Delitzsch is bolder and more critical ; he says about B.C. 168. But to be true to all the facts, we ought rather to say that, while some evidence points to a date not earlier than B.C. 300, other facts point 1 Einleitung in das A.T., ii. 329. DRIVER. 369 to the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, and perhaps more definitely still to the period between the end of Dec. 165 (the dedication of the temple, which is mentioned in Daniel viii. 14) and June 164 (the end of the seventieth year-week, when the writer of Daniel expected the tyrant Antiochus to " come to his end ")} It was a pity that so little could be said on the composition of the book. Reuss and Lagarde both held that the book was made up of a number of separate "fly-sheets," and Dr. C. H. II. Wright main- tains that it is but an abridgment of a larger work. The theories of Lenormant, Zockler, and Strack also deserved a mention. On Meinhold's theory a some- what too hesitating judgment is expressed (p. 483), which should be compared with Mr. Bevan's more decided view in his Daniel. From the form of the opening sentence of par. 3 on page 482, I conjecture that something on this subject may have been omitted. But if by so doing the author obtained more room for his linguistic arguments, I can but rejoice. Gladly do I call attention to the soundness of the facts on which these are based and the truly critical character of his judgments, and more particularly to what is said on the Aramaic of the Book of Daniel, and the eminently fair references to Prof. Margoliouth.- 1 The fullest justification of this is given by Cornill, Die siebzig Jakrwochen Daniels (Konigsberg, 1889) ; cf. Einleitung, p. 258. This little treatise deserves a fuller criticism than it has yet received. - Mr. Bevan's mainly linguistic commentary on Daniel and 1: 1: 370 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. But the treatment of the language of Daniel is but the climax of a series of linguistic contributions. To any one who has eyes to see, the special value of the book consists in its presentation of the linguistic evi- dence of the date of the documents (cf. p. 106). I do not say that I am not sometimes disappointed. No wonder; did not a good scholar like Budde, in 1876, claim the Elihu-speeches for the original Book of Job on grounds of language ? Often I could have wished both that more evidence were given and a more definite conclusion reached (e. g. on Joel) ; but I recognize the difficulties with which Dr. Driver had to contend, arising partly from his limited space, partly from the un familiarity of the reader with this style of argument. With Dr. Driver's remark in the Journal of Philosophy ■, xi. 133 (note 1 ), I agree, and when Dr. Briggs suggests that in my researches on the Psalms " the argument from language is not employed with much effect," * I feel that if not quite as firm as I might have been, I have been at least as bold as Dr. Driver would have been ; indeed, I am indebted to my colleague for criticisms of my " Lin- guistic Affinities of the Psalms," which tended rather to the limiting than to the heightening of their "effect." I think that I should now be able to put Mr. Brasted's study on the order of the sentences in the Hebrew portions of Daniel {Hebraica, July 1891, p. 244, &c.) appeared after the completion of Dr. Driver's work. 1 In a very generous notice of Bampton Lecture, North American Review, Jan. 1892. p. 106. DRIVER. 371 forward a few somewhat more definite conclusions (positive and negative), but Dr. Driver's self-restraint on p. 361 will perhaps show Dr. Briggs that if I erred, it was in good company. Let me add that the author himself has not lost the opportunity of giving some sufficiently definite conclusions on the development of Hebrew style. It is on a paragraph which begins by stating that " the great turning-point in Hebrew style falls in the age of Nehemiah " (p. 473). The result thus indicated is based upon much careful observation. It agrees substantially with the view of H. Ewald (Lehrbuc/i, p. 24), which is a decided improvement upon Gesenius's (Gesch. der hebr. Sflr.), but must however, as I believe, be qualified, in accord- ance with the great variety of Hebrew composition. In bringing this review to an end, let me say once more how much more gladly I would have echoed the words of that generous-minded eulogist of this book — Prof. Herbert E. Ryle. 2 I have written because of the illusions which seem gathering fresh strength or assuming new forms among us, and if I have shown some eagerness, I trust that it has been a chastened eagerness. The work before us is a contribution of value to a great subject, and if the facts and theories which it so ably presents should influence the higher religious teaching, no one would rejoice more than 1 Cf. Bampton Lecture, pp. 460—463 ; Geiger, Urschrift, pp. 40, 41. I need not say that I am by no means a disciple of this brilliant but too hasty critic. -' See Critical Review^ J an. 1892. 372 FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. myself. But solid, judicious, and in one place brilliant as it is, it requires much supplementing as a sketch of the present state of criticism — not merely in the sense in which this must be true of even the best handbooks, but for reasons which have, as I hope, been courteously stated. The author appears to have thought that criticism of the Bible was one of those shy Alpine plants of which it has been well said that " we can easily give our plants the soil they require, but we cannot give them the climate and atmosphere ; the climate and atmosphere are of as much import- ance to their well-being as carefully selected soil." I venture, however, to hope that he is unduly fearful, and that the mental climate and atmosphere of England is no longer so adverse as formerly to a free but reverent Biblical criticism. Indeed, one of my chief grounds for advocating such a criticism is that it appears to me to be becoming more and more necessary for the maintenance of true evangelical religion. It is, therefore, in the name of the Apostle of Faith that one of the weakest of his followers advocates a firmer treatment of all parts of the grave historical problem of the origin of our religion. 1 1 On the relation of the criticism of the Gospels to faith see some wise remarks of Herrmann in the Zt.f. Theol. u. Kirche^ 1892, p. 258. THE END. Date Due C. I' " ■ -~~ r BS1160.C53 Founders of Old Testament criticism: Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 1 1012 00040 7645 nfflH IIIhL , '■■■--■■"' SStaa ..:■••; RH EmHT ■-"■-* HP fflffffifflgfflffiff ■■■ ■ > .. ni ^ y.; ... Qs.a Km '• HI -''"Br ' Bjti srcf2§£3%