ILIlIBIS.aMr

DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

GIFT OF
Li'brary of
Dean Oharles R. Brown

Old Testament Criticism and
the Christian Church

Worhs by the same Author.
The Messages op the Prophetic
AND Priestly Historians.
The Divine Pursuit.
In THE Hour of Silence.

Old Testament Criticism
and
The Christian Church
By
John Edgar McFadyen
M.A. (Glas.), B.A. (Oxon.)
Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis
in Knox College, Toronto

New York
Charles Scribner's Sons
1903

Copyright, igoj
By Charles Scribner's Sons

Published, May, 1903

THE caxton PEKSS
New Tobk City, U. S. A.

TO THE
REV. PROFESSOR GEORGE ADAM SMITH, D.D., LL.D.
Jilg Ctactet BiiB JFtienB,
TO WHOSE TEACHING 1 OWE MORE THAN I CAN TELL
IN WORDS,
AND WHOSE FRIENDSHIP HAS BEEN TO ME AN INSPIRATION
AND A JOY,
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED
WITH GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION.

Preface
To any one who cares at all for the church of Christ,
the present theological situation must be one of unique
interest ; to many, indeed, it is one of grave apprehen
sion. It is undeniable that there is a great critical
movement within the church, almost within her every
branch. What is to be the church's attitude towards
that movement ? Shall she welcome it, or fear it, or
anathematize it ? Ignore it she clearly cannot ; for
the problems are thrust upon her by her own sons, on
the right hand and on the left.
The situation has its own element of pathos. The
energies which might be devoted to positive, if not
aggressive, religious enterprise, are largely consumed
in the discussion of questions, which, while they are
of infinitely more than academic interest, yet do not
constitute the peculiar or essential work which it is
the business of the church to do. But the questions
cannot be suppressed. They suggest themselves ne
cessarily to minds which participate, even in a small
measure, in the intellectual culture of the age. And
after all, though it is not by any means the chief task
of the church to attempt an answer to those questions,
it is, undoubtedly, one of her tasks ; for the truth for
which she stands will no longer powerfully command

vm

PREFACE

the conscience, if it remains unrelated to contemporary
thought, or if a suspicion arises that it can only be
related by artifice.
The problems are urgent and difficult, and the
answers to them divide the church. Between the
representatives of the opposing views there has, for
the most part, been a singular lack of that charity
which one might reasonably have expected within the
church. Seldom has either party been at the pains
to understand the other. Both sides have suffered
from ridicule and misrepresentation, with the result
that the religious public, as a whole, is in a state of
bewildered panic, and has very little real knowledge
of the facts of the case. It is to aid the man who
honestly desires a dispassionate presentation of what
Old Testament criticism is and does, of how it works
and what its bearings are upon vital elements in the
Christian faith, that this volume has been written.
To effect this end it has often been necessary to go
somewhat into detail. It is easy, both for friends and
foes, to make sweeping assertions as to the nature
and effects of the critical method ; but they carry
little conviction, unless they are supported by facts.
¦"Far more important, for example, than to indulge in
loose generalities about the nature of inspiration, is
frankly to face the Biblical facts, and to let our theory
— if we can frame any — be determined by them.
In order that the situation might be as fairly pre
sented as possible, I have thought it advisable, in many
cases, to let both the critics and their opponents speak
for themselves. Whether, for example, a critic believes
in the supernatural or not, will be best ascertained

PREFACE

IX

from his own utterances. This principle accounts for
the comparative frequency of quotation in certain parts
of the discussion.
It is difficult to find a word to designate those who,
in the main, support traditional opinion. It is invid
ious to call them traditionalists — even the term con
servative is not always popular — and it is somewhat
arrogant to assume that only the opponents of tradi
tion work on scientific methods.. Though I have
usually spoken of the two parties as the ci-itics and
their opponents, I do not mean at all to imply that the
opponents are devoid of critical acumen or scholar
ship. I simply use the words for convenience' sake,
as their meaning is not likely to be mistaken.
My object in not infrequently referring to foreign
writers was a threefold one: partly to enable those
who are sufficiently interested to prosecute the study
further for themselves ; partly to show that the move
ment is a universal one, and that the situation in other
countries is just as complex as in our own — • Higher
Criticism has roused just as much resentment in
Germany, for example, as in Britain or America ;
and partly to show, through the medium of their own
utterances, what precisely it is that the much-abused
foreign critics have done and said. It has been too
much the fashion to forget that there is a large
variety of opinion within the critical ranks, and that
epithets applicable to some scholars are totally inap
plicable to otliers.
This volume has in view the man whose faith has
been perplexed by current criticism, or by the rumors
and representations of it. It tries to show him what

X PREFACE
that criticism is, and how it not only in no way imperils
his faith, but even helps him to bridge the gulf that
too often yawns between faith and reason. I well
remember the confusion and sorrow that, for a time,
came into my own life, when the newer view of the
Bible first began to make its appeal to me; and I
write with the tenderest regard for all who feel as I
then felt. The times of transition are hard. It would
be a grief to me if any word of mine should wound the
sensitiveness of any who love the Lord or the sacred
Scriptures. It has been my earnest desire to help
all who have been troubled. Of ridicule, abuse, and
provocation there has already been more than enough.
Not only by familiarizing myself with the literature
which represents the opposition to the critical move
ment, but also by numerous discussions and conversa
tions with laymen, students, and ministers, on both
sides of the Atlantic, I have sought to understand
sympathetically the spirit and methods of the opposi
tion, to discover the secret of its almost vehement
earnestness, and the interests which it believes to be
imperilled by the advance of criticism. I have the
profoundest sympathy for those who share the views
from which this volume is, in part, an implicit dissent;
for I know the pang of parting with them. But in
parting with the things that can be shaken, one may
be confirmed all the raore in the things that abide.
I desire here to express my very earnest thanks to
my friend the Rev. Professor W. G. Jordan, D.D., of
Queen's University, Kingston, who, in spite of severe
pressure of official duty, very carefully read all the
proof-sheets through, and favored me with many

PREFACE xi
trenchant and valuable criticisms, of which I have
gladly availed myself. I have also to thank Professor
Kent, of Yale University, for help and encouragement.

JOHN E. McFADYEN.

Enox College, Tokonio,
7th February, 1903.

Contents

Chaptek Page
I. The Present Distress  I
II. The Discourtesies op Criticism. ... 33
III. The Confusions op Criticism  48
IV. The Function op Criticism  77
V. The Historical Method — Losses and
Gains  103
VI. The Methods op Criticism  137
VII. The Essence op Protestantism . . . . 174
VIII. Criticism and Christ  196
IX. Criticism and the Supernatural . . . 230
X. Criticism and Inspiration  268
XI. A Great Gulp Fixed?  313
XII. The Old Testament in the Church . . 345
Appendix  365
Index  371

Summary CHAPTER I
The Present Distress. — The gravity of the issue created
for the church by criticism is acknowledged on every hand.
Literary energy of the critical school. Critical movement coun
tenanced by distinguished preachers. Objections urged against
Higher Criticism : disregard of tradition, denial of credibility of
Scripture, of predictive prophecy, of authority of New Testament,
of authority of Christ, of the supernatural, of all authority.
Difficulties of the preacher. The situation illustrated by recent
cases in America and Germany. Concessions to criticism by its
opponents. Term Higher Criticism objectionable. The critics,
it is urged, are irreverent, dogmatic, tactless, indifferent to wel
fare of church. But much admirable work within the sphere of
practical religion has been done by critics. Critical processes not
to be depreciated by one who has not endeavored to understand
them. Criticism only a means to an end. Importance of con
structive work. Religious value of criticism acknowledged not
only by scholars, but by preachers. Criticism helpful, but not
indispensable. CHAPTER n
The Discourtesies op Criticism. — There is no place in
criticism for ridicule. Injustice of misrepresentation, innuendo,
caricature, and abuse. Flippancy and irreverence of some critics.
The place of humor. The need of free, earnest, and reverent
study. CHAPTER III
The Confusions of Criticism. — Differences among the
critics themselves. (A) Historical Books (i) Prose. Date of
documents in the Pentateuch, of Book of the Covenant, of

xvi SUMMARY
Decalogue. Was there a general return in 537 B.C.? Did Ezra
precede Nehemiah ? (ii) Poetry. Song of Jacob, Elegy of David,
Song of Deborah. (B) Prophets. Date of Amos, of Is. xl-lxvi.
Authenticity of Messianic passages. Suffering servant. (C)
Other books. Is Psalter entirely post-exilic ? Date of individual
Ps. xlvi, XX, xxxiii, cxxi. Psalms of sacrifice. Proverbs, Job,
Daniel. Other differences. Differences among the opponents of
criticism. Differences largely accounted for by the slenderness
of the data. Contrast Hebrew literature with Greek. Critics
often express their judgment with reserve. "Virtual omni
science.'' Criticism continually submitted to the severest tests.
Conservative reaction in criticism. Assured results : composite-
ness of the history in the Hexateuch, three codes of legislation,
date of Deuteronomy, importance of exile, contrast between
prophet and priest, date of closing of Canon, progressiveness of
revelation. CHAPTER IV
The Function op Criticism. — History of word criticism.
Criticism is involved in all opinions, conservative and radical
alike. Ps. xxiii. Pentateuch. Is. xl-lxvi. We are all critics.
Preference for certain portions of Scripture implies critical instinct.
Where there are obvious difficulties, e.g., contradictions, criticism
becomes formally necessary. Conclusions of criticism often only
probable. Conditions of sound criticism : knowledge of author's
language, text, early witnesses to text, knowledge of history of
words, sympathy with author's aim. Sympathy especially neces
sary in interpretation of Bible. " Go not into the way of the
Gentiles.'' Matthew Arnold's view of Old Testament. Concep
tion of God affects attitude to miracle, and interpretation generally.
CHAPTER V
The Historical Method. — This method not absolutely
new. Luther. Theodore of Mopsuestia. Superscriptions of the
Psalms. Definition of the historical method. Opposed to aUe
gorical interpretation. The timeless element.

SUMMARY xvii
Losses. — Many of the losses only temporary. For some the
authority of morality has been shaken. Devotional use of Bible
affected. Criticism a menace to evangelical fervor, and to inter
est in foreign missions. Counsel to young men; to preachers.
Illustrations of practical reconciliation of faith and criticism.
Dogmatic use of the Bible affected.
Gains. — Possibility of arbitrary interpretation greatly re
duced. Some books of the Bible have been rescued. Impulse
to study of the Bible. Reasonable view of the history. Apolo
getic (a) moral (b) intellectual, made easier. History corrobo
rated. Extravagances in belief and conduct rebuked. Larger
view of revelation. Best defence against scepticism.

CHAPTER VI
The Methods op Criticism. — Fairness of the claim that
the matter should not be left exclusively to the experts. (I) His
tory. Discussion of composite documents. Diatessaron. Gen.
vi, 5-vii, 5 (II) Prophecy. Is. xl-xlviii (III) Psalms. Ps. xl
(IV) Patriarchal stories. Genealogies cannot be always strictly
interpreted. Incidents very far removed from record of them.
Theophanies occasionally imply a conception of God which is not
strictly spiritual. Ethical and religious teaching often not only
in advance of time of Judges, but distinctly prophetic in tone.
I CHAPTER VII
The Essence of Protestantism. — Protestantism is a spirit
not to be absolutely identified with particular beliefs. It must
always reserve the right to protest. The Protestant cannot deny
the right of investigation. The Reformers were, in one sense,
rationalists. Conjoint appeal to Scripture and reason. Luther
at Worms. His free criticism of Scripture. Unbridled liberty
of opinion leads to endless subjectivity. Denominationalism.
Proposal to establish a council. Essence of Protestantism not
adherence to a creed, but possession of a spirit. Anti-Protestant
influences within the Protestant churches. Renaissance and Ref-

xviii SUMMARY
ormation. Knowledge and Faith. Rediscovery of man and God.
Spirit of Protestantism in all true scientific investigation, Biblical
and extra-Biblical. CHAPTER VIII
Criticism and Christ. — Did Christ give a decision on Old
Testament questions ? Reverence for Christ cherished by critics
and opponents alike. Function of New Testament. Inaccurate
allusions to Old Testament. Paul's argument from singular
"seed." "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox." Christ's attitude:
reverent, but fearless. References are large. He fulfils spirit of
Old Testament rather than detail. Certain books have peculiar
interest for Him. Alludes to ne?rly all parts. Authority is in
herent, not adherent. Omissions and discrepancies show that
evangelists laid little stress on (Mosaic) authorship. Name some
times designates book where authorship is impossible : e.g., Samuel.
What of David, Moses ? Only a few small portions of Pentateuch
claim to be by Moses. Name by which a book is familiarly
known no guarantee of authorship : cf. Apostles' Creed, 2d Peter,
Epistle to the Hebrews, 1st book of Moses. Discussion of Jonah.
110th Psalm. Ex. iii, 6. Christ's words leave the literary ques
tions open. The Person of Christ : limitations of power, knowl
edge. Distinction between what Christ taught and what lay within
the "neutral zone." His mission is spiritual.

CHAPTER IX
Criticism and the Supernatural. — Importance of super
natural. Criticism charged with denying it. Criticism has no
right to assume impossibility of supernatural at the outset. Pre
dispositions of some kind inevitable. Criticism not committed to
a denial of the supernatural. The cause of Old Testament criti
cism is not to be absolutely identified with the opinions of
Kuenen and Wellhausen. Protests : Meinhold, Loisy. Historical
criticism not to be confused with literary criticism. A man who
denies the miraculous may yet believe in the divinity of the nat-

SUMMARY xix
ural order. The real miracle of Israel is the uniqueness of her
history and religion. This is the strongest apologetic. The
Moabite stone. Holzinger, Loisy, Sanday, Stave, Lenormant.
Much poetry scattered throughout the historical books. Danger
of interpreting poetry as prose. Froude's Essay on The Lives of
the Saints: Judges iv, v. Josh, x, 12, 13. Ex. xv. Judges xv.
Poetical basis often practically certain, even where it is not
directly appealed to. Josh. vi.
CHAPTER X
Criticism and Inspiration. — (A) Difficulty of defining
Inspiration. Bible word of man as well as of God. Attempts
to explain away moral offences. Funcke. Difficulties must be
frankly faced, (i) Science : Gen. i, Gunkel. (ii) History: dis
crepancies; idea more than fact; flood story: Gen. i-xi. Deu
teronomy: Thucydides. Chronicles. Ecclesiastes. Jonah, (iii)
Moral and religious conceptions. (B) (i) History : through all
is God, an ever-present fact. Morality. Fall, Flood : Babylonian
parallels. Inspiration of the Hebrew stories undeniable, (ii) The
prophetic consciousness. Interest of the Bible predominantly
religious. Penetrate through discrepancies to central truth.
Scripture reveals the faith of its writers. The praises of Scrip
ture within Scripture show that it was designed to serve moral
and religious ends. All Scripture is not upon the same level;
and there is much great religious teaching outside Scripture.
The Canon embodies the experience of the church.
CHAPTER XI
A Great Gulf Fixed? — Critics and opponents are both
within the church. Both sides admit that the gulf is impassable.
Contrast the average belief on important points on both sides.
The historical books : the prophetical ; Psalms, Proverbs, Eccle
siastes, the Canon. The literary results usually go with certain
historic results : on the critical view, e.g., the early history would
not be so reliable, and the law would belong to Judaism. The
traditional view emphasizes the transcendence of God, the critical,

XX SUMMARY
His immanence. Each believes in the essential unity of the
Bible. The supernatural. The patriarchal stories. The truth
of Christianity does not depend on their historicity. The posi
tive religious content of Scripture remains unaffected by criticism :
cf. patriarchal stories, Ps. xxiii, li. The gulf is not so great.
CHAPTER XII
The Old Testament in the Church. — Ancient and
modern tendency to ignore the Old Testament. It has a twofold
value (i) absolute (ii) relative. (i) Its absolute value is often
forgotten. Its value to Christ ; to us. Divine purpose seen in
the history. The prophetic message stands near to modern needs.
The Psalms voice our devotion, (ii) The Old Testament condi
tions and illuminates the New. It culminates in Christ, and
without Him is not strictly intelligible. The roots of Christian
faith are in the Old Testament. Hence the importance of the
study of it in church and college. Dangers of traditionalism and
radicalism. Every help from every quarter welcome. Interests
at stake not only scientific, but religious. Our work is not final :
truth advances with the centuries.

erratum
On page 38, line 17, between "fragments" and "predicated"
insert "of the documents."

Old Testament Criticism and
the Christian Church

Old Testament Criticism
and
The Christian Church
CHAPTER I
THE PRESENT DISTRESS
A DISTINGUISHED preacher, who has had long and
ample opportunity for observation, and who has him
self borne a conspicuous part in the conflict, expresses
it as his deliberate conviction that there is being forced
" upon the British Churches the gravest issue that
any of them has had to face in living memory." ^
Few men who have been following even remotely the
most recent developments of Biblical study would
deny that those earnest words contain a large measure
of truth. No doubt it is always hard, if indeed it is
ever possible, to gauge with any accuracy the full
meaning or magnitude of a contemporary situation :
time alone can fully tell. But it does seem that the
Church to-day, in all her branches, is face to face
with a crisis of the most serious kind. Crises there
have been as keen before, and there will be again ;
but never before have the problems awoke so public
an interest or so universal a trepidation. What is
conjectured or discovered in the study to-day is pub-
1 Dr. John Smith, " The Integrity of Scripture," p. 279.
1

2 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
lished in the magazine to-morrow, and discussed by
the newspaper on the third day. The general public
know little of the results, and less of the processes ;
but they know enough — those who care at all for
these things — to know that the attitude of scholar
ship to the Bible is not what it used to be, and they
fear that the centre of gravity has shifted.
From every side comes painful corroboration of the
strong words quoted above. Careful observers assure
us that the breach between the Church and the edu
cated classes, especially upon the continent of Europe,^
is widening. Hundreds of men, we are told, have
been made infidels by criticism. Ministers who have
much to do with working men tell us that "the
lowered views of Scripture and of its truthfulness,
reliability, and Divine authority that have become
prevalent, are undermining the faith of many, multi
plying sceptics every day, and rendering appeals to
Scripture as the word of the Lord less powerful and
quickening than they were wont to be." ^ In one of
the Synodical reports of the Presbyterian Church of
1 Rev. J. J. Lias, in his "Principles of Biblical Criticism,'' p. 216,
mentions the case of a speaker at Stuttgart, addressing the Evangelical
League in 1887, and urging, amoug the deplorable results of criticism,
that the laity were being estranged from the Church, that the belief
was growing that the only advantage of Protestantism over Romanism
was the freedom to believe nothing, and that thus a plausible excuse
was afforded for taking no interest whatever in religion.
2 Mcintosh, " Is Christ infallible and the Bible true ? " p. 457. Of.
Theodore Cuyler : " I am happy to say that iu my early ministry
the preachers of God's Word were not hamstrung by any doubt of the
divine inspiration or infallibility of the Book that lay before them ou
their pulpits. The questions, ' Have we got any Bible 1 ' and ' If
any Bible, how much ? ' had not been hatched " (Recollections of a
J,ong Life, pp. 78, 79 ; cf. 285-287).

THE PRESENT DISTRESS 3
Canada, " destructive criticism " is alleged as " breed
ing irreverence," and classified as one of " the influ
ences which most strongly antagonize the advancement
of true godliness." This sentiment would no doubt
find an echo in many churches throughout many lands.
Nor is the unrest by any means confined to the
laity, who might not be expected to have any special
theological equipment. In every part of the theo
logical world the strain is equally felt. It is notorious
that divinity students, at any rate in the earlier stages
of their course, are often perplexed by the teaching of
their college : cases have occurred where they have
been constrained by conscientious scruples to abandon
the study of theology altogether. And the confusion
and distress are occasionally shared by ministers,
young and old alike, who are usually too busily en
grossed by the practical duties of the pastor's life to
follow with accuracy the often intricate processes of
Biblical study. It is a well established fact that
within recent years the number of candidates for the
ministry in almost every church on both sides of the
Atlantic has been declining, and criticism has been
held to be at least partly responsible. In every church,
there is probably a very large majority hostile to the
newer movement, which is instinctively feared, even
when it is not perfectly understood ; for that move
ment is supposed to imperil all that is distinctive of
the Christian faith. The Roman Catholic Church
itself has not been untouched by it.^ It feels the issues
1 The reality of the critical movement within the Church of Eome
has been practically attested by the series of commentaries projected
by Pere Lagrange, of wliich his own commentary on Judges is the
first instalment. '

4 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
to be serious, and a commission, representative of the
Roman Catholic scholarship of many lands, has been
appointed "to ascertain the limits of the freedom
which is allowed to the Catholic exegete in the Bibli
cal questions of the day ; to point out definitely con
clusions that must be maintained in the interests of
orthodoxy, others that must be rejected as incompat
ible with, or dangerous to, divine faith ; as well as
the debatable ground between the two where each one
is free to hold his own view." Even those who be
lieve that religion has nothing to fear from criticism
are yet compelled by the facts to admit that " criti
cism seems to make the Old Testament alike inac
cessible and unintelligible to the pastors and their
flocks." 1
Within the last twenty years or so, both in America
and Europe, churches have shown more or less em
phatically their disapproval of the newer movement.
The trial of Professor W. Robertson Smith has be
come a great historical landmark in the theological
development of Scotland. In America, the cases of
Professors C. H. Toy, H. P. Smith, and C. A. Briggs
are familiar. The Church is fully awake to the impor
tance of the issue, and it is felt that that issue is by
no means an academic one : it touches the most pro
found and sacred interests of men. The rapid suc
cess of such a book as " Is Christ infallible and the
Bible true ? " the widespread interest aroused by the
recent publication of the two great English Diction
aries of the Bible, the numerous queries touching
Biblical difficulties in the " Open Letters " column of
1 FuUiquet, " Les experiences religieuses d'Israel," p. 2.

THE PRESENT DISTRESS 5
the " Sunday School Times " — these things are of real
significance. Any powerful book, presupposing the
critical standpoint, is discussed, even when it is not
read, throughout the length and breadth of the
churches ; and it is sure of an answer, whether of
judicial calmness or of hysterical abuse. The abuse,
though not justified, is not unintelligible, when one
considers how serious the issue is felt on all sides to
be. As competent an authority as Mr. C. G. Monte-
fiore^ believes that the movement must issue either
in Christian Unitarianism or in Jewish " Reform."
The new methods, it is believed, have shaken the old
doctrines : they have affected — some would say de
stroyed — the power of the Bible as a manual of de
votion and as the source of theology. Indeed, Canon
Girdlestone, one of the more courteous opponents of
the movement, at least in its more extravagant phases,
maintains that " mission work at home and abroad
would be paralyzed if the new criticism were allowed
to have free course among us." ^
One of the most interesting features in the whole
situation is not so much the literary energy of the
critical school — though that alone would betoken an
extraordinary interest and enthusiasm ^ — but the fact
1 "Jewish Quarterly Review," October, 1901, p. 148.
2 "Doctor Doctorum," p. 185.
^ In this connection, mention should be made of the pubUcation of
a new Dutch translation of the Old Testament, with introductions
(1st part, 1899 ; 2d, 1901), designed to satisfy the demands of scientific
scholarship, and executed by four of Holland's greatest scholars (Kue
nen, Hooykaas, Rosters, and Oort), the first three of whom died in the
course of the work, which was brought to a completion by the inde
fatigable labors of Oort. A new German translation of the Old Tes
tament, edited by Kautzsch, assisted by ten other scholars, appeared in

6 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
that so much of that energy is devoted to the popular
izing of critical results. Some of the work of the
greatest scholars both in England and Germany was
delivered before popular audiences or has been pre
sented in popular form. It is enough to mention
Professor Robertson Smith's " Old Testament in the
Jewish Church," " The Prophets of Israel," and " The
Religion of the Semites;" Cornill's "Prophets of
Israel,"! and Harnack's "What is Christianity ?" 2
Occasionally books dealing with the history or the
religion frankly presuppose the critical standpoint,
such as Gray's " The Divine Discipline of Israel ; "
G. A. Smith's " Modern Criticism and the Preaching
of the Old Testament ; " Ottley's " History of the He
brews," or his Bampton Lectures on " Aspects of the
Old Testament ; " Budde's " Religion of Israel to the
Exile ; " Kent's " History of the Hebrew People." An
American series on " The Messages of the Bible " has
for its avowed purpose to enable any reader of the
Bible to understand its meaning as a devout scholar
of to-day does. Some of the best volumes in the " Ex
positor's Bible " series are written by scholars whose
sympathies with the critical standpoint are well
1890-94. In accordance with a widely expressed desire, a popular edi
tion of the latter book, omitting all critical comment, was published in
1899. We have not yet in English anything corresponding to either
of those translations. The gap will no doubt be filled in due time by
" The Students' Old Testament, logically and chronologically arranged
and translated " (Scribner's), ou which Professor Kent of Yale Uni
versity is now engaged.
1 " Der israelitische Prophetismus."
2 " Das Wesen des Christentums." To the books above mentioned
may now be added Kautzscb's lectures on " The Poetry and the Po
etical Books of the Old Testament " (1902, not translated).

THE PRESENT IDISTRESS 7
known ; those, e. g. on Deuteronomy, Isaiah, the
Minor Prophets, Daniel, aud others. Most of the
contributors to the leading theological magazines of
Britain and America, exclusive of those which are
practically, if not avowedly, conservative, write from
the critical standpoint. A'umberless efforts are
made by scholars to reconcile the religious public to
the critical attitude from which it stands aloof ; books,
e. g. like Cheyne's " Aids to the Devout Study of
Criticism," Peters' " The Old Testament and the New
Scholarship," and " Contentio Veritatis," a recent
volume by Oxford scholars who believe that " a very
considerable restatement and even reconstruction of
parts of our religious teaching is inevitable." ^
Nor is this literary activity confined to the rep
resentatives of the University and the theological
seminary ; the movement is supported and even
championed by some of the greatest preachers of the
day, among whom Dr. R. F. Horton occupies an hon
ored place. Significant in this connection is the vol
ume on " The Messages of the Old Testament," by
the late G. H. C. Macgregor, which frankly accepts
many of the critical results, such as that " prediction
was not the chief function of the prophet." ^ " Where
Scripture is silent, we should be very careful not to
make the word of God responsible for our traditional
ascriptions." ^ " The framework " of Judges " is of
much later date than the theories fitted on to it." *
'•The books of Samuel are undoubtedly compila
tions." ^ Sometimes, indeed, elaborate replies, such
1 p. vii. 2 p. 66. s p. 74.
< p. 90. ^ p. 116.

8 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
as "Lex Mosaica," and Green's volume on "The
Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch," are written on the
other side.! But the literary enterprise aud enthusiasm
displayed by the critical school is nothing short of re
markable. Slowly but surely it is disarming hostility
and forming a not inconsiderable body of public opin
ion, so much so that a reviewer in " Bibliotheca Sacra " ^
complains that " the results of the destructive critics
cease to become tentative inferences, and appear as
dogmas, which the reader is to receive on the strength
of a new tradition." ^
Now what precisely is at stake in this controversy ?
What are the interests that seem to be disregarded,
and the objects that seem to be menaced by Higher
Criticism ? (i) In the first place, it is charged with
a reckless disregard of tradition, a tradition which
for over two millennia has satisfied the Jewish and
the Christian Church. A not unnatural suspicion is
raised by the demand that the belief of many cen
turies be set aside by the work of several decades.
But it has to be remembered that unless for a spor
adic protest here and there, the belief of the centuries
was not serior.sly investigated till a century and a
half ago. An unchallenged tradition has no more
value at the end of twenty centuries than at the be-
1 A recent editorial in the " Sunday School Times" (Jan. 31, 1903)
regretfully admits the "fact that now exists, to the shame of conser
vative biblical scholars, — namely, that they are placing before tlie
public no great works which at all compare in elaborateness and pains-
staking with those issued by their opponents."
2 January, 1902, p. 199.
* This is a real danger against which scholars are anxious to guard.
See the chapter on the " Essence of Protestantism."

THE PRESENT DISTRESS 9
ginning, and its value then is precisely the thing to
be investigated.
(ii) More important, however, is the charge that the
credibility of the Bible is at stake. This has been
thoroughly dissipated, it is urged, by current critical
processes. The Pentateuch in particular has suffered
most severely, and has to be surrendered, as an his
torical authority, almost in its entirety. The history
which it contains is not only meagre : it is partly im
aginary and partly false. It has completely inverted
the real course of Israel's religious development. The
elaborated law is not a product of the earliest, but of
the latest, times ; it belongs not to Moses, but to Juda
ism. The professedly historical portions are largely
a mixture of myth and legend, which at best have an
historical kernel. The mighty patriarchs of the early
days were not men of flesh and blood at all ; they are
reduced by criticism to personifications of virtues, or
to tribes, or, at best, to tribal heroes. Much of what
is commonly regarded as distinctive of the Bible, e. g.
the theophanies, seems to be evaporated by critical
processes. The books which have been supposed to
be, if not contemporary with the incidents they record,
at any rate very early, are brought down to so late a
date as to seem to invalidate, or at least to weaken
very considerably their testimony to an early time.!
Even those who would repudiate the strong language
of a certain conservative scholar that the books are,
on this view, " a conscious and painstaking forgery,"
1 Barry, "Some Lights of Science on the Faith," p. 280; Breden-
kamp, " Gesetz und Propheten," p. 173.

IO OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
" gangrened with fraud," ! yet have an uneasy feeling
that this attitude to the Bible is not quite compatible
with a real deference to its authority.
(iii) The critical attitude to prophecy has also
given rise to much apprehension. It is often con
ceived to be a covert, or even open attack, on the
predictive power of the prophets ; and, as predictive
prophecy was for long considered to be one of the
chief bulwarks of revealed religion, the critical atti
tude is felt to be a direct attack on the essentials of
the faith. Not only prophecy proper is thus affected,
but naturally also the predictive parts of the historical
books : any promise, e. g. to Abraham, that his pos
terity should one day inherit the land, is the later
historian's interpretation of a contemporary fact —
a literary device justified by the fact that God sees
the end from the beginning.'^ The churches hold that,
within the field of prophetic prediction, nothing is of
such vital moment as Messianic prophecy, in the nar
rower sense of definite predictions bearing directly on
the life and sufferings of Christ ; and any rejection
of, or even indifference to, the predictive element,
appears to involve an inability to appreciate this cen
tral fact of revelation, and the subtle unity that binds
Testament to Testament.
(iv) One of the features regarded as most painful
and surprising in the attitude of the critics to Old
Testament questions is their apparent indifference to
the explicit language of the New Testament. Many
1 Kennedy, "Old Testament Criticism and the Rights of the
Unlearned," pp. 62, 66.
^ FuUiquet, " Les experiences religieuses," p. 15.

THE PRESENT DISTRESS ii
of its words appear to put beyond all reasonable doubt
the authorship of particular books and the interpreta
tion of particular passages ; yet the critic discusses
and conjectures and concludes, as if these things had
for him no existence. Professor Clemen, one of the
ablest New Testament scholars in Germany, roundly
says that Paul's interpretation of the Old Testament
has in certain of its applications to be given up.!
(v) But the most distressing surprise of all is the
discovery that the words of Christ seem to meet with
no more deference from the critics than the other
words of the New Testament. The authority and
finality which they deny to the New Testament in
general, they deny to Him in particular. Now to most
minds this is intolerable. It is easy to see that a very
complex Christological question is raised here — a
question affecting both the nature and mission of
Christ. But it is maintained by the opponents of
criticism that that question must not be answered by
assuming either accommodation or ignorance on the
part of Christ : we are not at liberty to suppose either
that He did not know or that He deliberately mis
stated what He knew. If then He must have known,
and if He expressed an opinion on those subjects, are
we not bound by the opinion He expressed ? The
dilemma is a grave one, seeming as it does to affect
the authority of Christ.
(vi) The fundamental objection to the newer criti
cism, however, it is argued, is that it seems to ignore,
where it does not deny, the supernatural. Its watch
word is evolution, and it has no place for miracle.
1 " Studien und Kritiken," 1902, p. 187.

12 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
Sometimes the obvious, though unexpressed, assump
tion underlying the presentation of the history is that
miracles are impossible ; and even when their abstract
possibility is conceded, the evidence is depreciated.
Many of the most thrilling sections of Old Testament
story, e. g. the story of Elijah, are thus relegated to
the domain of legend, and the miraculous elements
involved are in this way conveniently got rid of.
Thus the history of Israel loses precisely the very
thing that has often been regarded as peculiarly dis
tinctive of it, and Israel appears in history on a level
with the other peoples, an aspect in which — on the
testimony of her literature — she steadily refused to
regard herself. " The new criticism is found to be
one with the old rationalism," and it is felt that it is
only a question of time till the supernatural in the
New Testament, even in the person of Christ, will be
as readily denied as the supernatural in the Old has
been. A non-miraculous Old Testament history will
issue in a non-miraculous Jesus ; and then where are
we ? Christianity will then be, in the famous phrase
of Kuenen, but one of the principal world religions,
" nothing less and nothing more."
(vii) The result will be that for the religious man,
no authority will be left ; at least, not the authority
which the Christian counts paramount. Por a Bible
whose history is largely idealized and whose prophecy
is not predictive, for a Bible out of whose every page
the supernatural seems to have been adroitly elimi
nated, it is obvious that authority can no longer be
claimed in the old sense — so runs the argument —
nor yet can it be claimed for a Christ who shared the

THE PRESENT DISTRESS 13
errors of His contemporaries, and whose knowledge,
in important directions, was limited. As a speaker
bluntly said at a recent meeting in Glasgow, " It
is impossible to believe at the same time that the
Bible is a book of blunders, and in any reasonable
sense the word of God."
(viii) Meantime, what is the preacher to do ? His
task is unspeakably hard. His text-book is the Bible,
the very book which is treated in so cavalier a fashion,
and whose plainest statements are so coolly traversed
by the men who are giving their lives to the study of
it. Is it any wonder that some, in their intellectual
suspense, are disposed to
" Stay, till the cloud that settles round his birth
Hath lifted but a little; "
and that others are disposed to wash their hands of a
criticism which presumptuously challenges the state
ments of a book that has been as a lamp to the cen
turies, and that has won the reverence of millions ?
All these sacred interests, then, seem to be im
perilled by the newer criticism. The situation can
be concretely illustrated by two recent episodes in
America and Germany. A Methodist Episcopal Pro
fessor, holding the chair of English Literature in a
University in the United States, created a great sen
sation, not only in his OMm church, but far beyond, by
a publication in which he freely discussed, among
other things, the question of legend in the Bible,
maintaining, with reference to such stories as those
of Elijah, Elisha, and the men in the fiery furnace,
that some of them were crude and childish, others

14 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
pathetic and sublime, but that they are all alike
legendary and not historic. He frankly maintained
that it was impossible to draw any dividing line
between the miracles of the Old Testament and
those of the New.
A German Professor,! whose criticism is by no
means radical, and whose interests are essentially
constructive, had published au article on the criticism
of the Old Testament. It was severely criticised in
the " Magazine for evangelical Lutheran pastors " in
Bavaria, the following being the chief points of the
indictment, (a) The Professor was said to be putting
a powerful weapon into the hands of the critics on the
left wing, (b) He seemed to attach no credibility to
the Biblical sources for the times of Moses, (c) An
honest minister, who believed in the Professor's posi
tion, could no longer represent the creation, the fall,
etc., as historical, (d) People will never learn to dis
tinguish the religious value of a narrative from its his
torical credibility : they will say, " What is not true,
does not concern me." (e) Indifference to the histo
ricity of the Old Testament will be transferred to the
New. (f) The whole position will lead not only to
contempt for the Old Testament, but to the renuncia
tion of Christ and of all moral authority. "If the
curse is only a voice from the realm of fable, redemp
tion from the curse will be held of no account." Of
course. Professor Kohler was astonished at this criti
cism, and denied the justice of it ; but it shows the
almost fierce interest that is taken in such discus-
1 Kohler, " Ueber Berechtigung der Kritik des Alten Testamentes,"
pp. 52-55.

THE PRESENT DISTRESS 15
sions by those engaged in the active ministry, and
the seriousness with which they regard the issues at

It would be futile to underestimate the significance
of a movement which is raising such protests in
widely different parts of the world. At the same
time, some of the facts — especially the literary facts
— making for the critical position are so incontrovert
ible, that large concessions are sometimes made even
by the keenest opponents of that position as a whole.
" No one denies," we are told,! « ^i;,^^ many of the
books are in the nature of compilations. . . . No one
doubts that in the Old Testament, as we now have it,
there are here and there omissions, repetitions, unau
thorized additions, glosses, corruptions, and falsifica
tions of the text." Bishop EUicott admits distinct
sources at least for the Book of Genesis,^ and concedes
" that the narrative of the Old Testament has obvi
ously passed through the hands of a few successive
editors, and that it would be simply contrary to all
experience not to find that such procedures had im
ported some amount of divergences and inconsist
encies." ^ Mr. G. T. Smith, too, enumerates among
the concessions * the use of different documents in the
Book of Genesis, and the existence of explanatory
marginal notes which have crept into the text. Ac
cording to Hopfl, a Roman Catholic scholar, it may be
1 Blomfield, " The Old Testament and the New Criticism," pp.
94, 95.
2 " Christus Comprobator," p. 70. So H. A. Johnston, " Bible
Criticism and the Average Man," pp. 83, 89.
8 p. 77.
* " Critique on Higher Criticism," p. 43.

i6 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
conceded that there are documentary sources in Gen
esis;! that there are linguistic reasons against at
tributing to David some of the seventy-three Psalms
bearing his name ; ^ that the estimate of the number
of Israelites at the exodus, capable of bearing arms,
at 600,000 is too high ; ^ that in later times new laws
not only may have been, but actually were, incorpo
rated in the original Mosaic code,* — this is a great
concession, and would carry any one who makes it a
long way ; that a development, an advance, did ac
tually take place in the religious conceptions of
Israel.^ Very significant is his concession® relative
to Messianic prophecy, that " many predictions which
count as Messianic, and are interpreted by the evan
gelists of Christ, refer primarily to other events, to
future fortunes of the Israelitish people." Principal
Cave remarks, " The composite structure of Genesis
I hold to be proved." "^ Dr. Green's successor in
Princeton asserts that " this \i. e. the Old Testament
department] is quite ready to admit the possibility, or
1 "Die hohere Bibelkritik," p. 31.
¦'' p. 43. So Rev. Alexander Wright, who believes that twenty out
of the seventy-three psalms ascribed to David may be rescued for him,
yet admits that he has " been compelled to abandon belief in the trust
worthiness of the titles prefixed to the psalms, as a whole." " The
Psalms of David and the Higher Criticism," p. ix.
8 p. 53. * p. 56. 6 p. 60.
6 p. 101. Professor Voick, " Heilige Schrift und Kritik," pp. 83-
90, admits the composite and non-Mosaic authorship of the Hexateuch,
the exilic authorship of Isaiah xl.-lxvi., the unreliability of the super
scriptions of the Psalms, and a late date for Daniel in its present form.
" That various sources lie at the basis of the Pentateuch no one can
deny who without prejudice abandons himself to the impression which
the history makes upon the reader." p. 83.
' " The Eattie of the Standpoints," p. 33.

THE PRESENT DISTRESS

17

even the probability, of occasional duplicates in the
Pentateuch." !
The appeal is often made to Sayce ; then to Sayce
let us go.^ He assures us that " modern research has
shown that a considerable part of the most ancient
literature of all nations was of composite origin, raore
especially where it was of a historical or a religious
character. . . . The most ancient books that have
come down to us are, with few exceptions, essentially
compilations." ^ " About the general fact of the com
posite character of the Pentateuch competent critics
of all schools are now agreed." * He further assures
us that " there are narratives and statements in the
Old Testament as to which the scepticism of the critic
1 "The Presbyterian and Reformed Review," April, 1902, p. 193.
" But there is no basis," he subsequently adds, " for a belief that dupli
cation is characteristic and prevalent."
'¦* Archseological results are often represented as making for the
traditional view of the Bible, and against the critical. Such a repre
sentation is quite misleading. See Driver's very careful estimate in his
Essay on " Hebrew Authority " in Hogarth's " Authority and Archse-
ology. Sacred and Profane ; " and cf . Peters' well-balanced summary,
" The Old Testament aud the New Scholarship," p. 245. " Hebrew his
tory as recorded in those books [j. e. Samuel, Kings, and the Prophets]
is proved by the comparison [/. e. with Assyrian, Babylonian, and Per
sian records] to be honest and trustworthy, but not infallible, as, for
instance, in the matter of chronology, nor altogether without bias, and
a natural inclination toward a patriotic coloring of the story. Chron
icles, on the other hand, is shown to be of little or no value for
purposes of political history, while Esther, Daniel, and Jonah, once
supposed to be historical, are made to appear fictitious." Cf. also
p. 253. " The [Egyptian] monuments do not necessarily contradict the
Hebrew records as to the earlier periods, but neither can we say with
any certainty that they support the Bible narrative. This I say, ia
deprecation of the statements, published from time to time, that archae
ology has proved the truth of the Bible story."
* " The Higher Criticism and the Monuments," p. 3.
* p. 31. 2 .

i8 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
has been shown to be justified. The judgment he has
passed on the so-called historical chapters of the Book
of Daniel has been abundantly verified by the recent
discoveries of Assyriology." ! "The 'higher' criti
cism of the Old Testament has been justified in its
literary analysis of the Books of Moses." ^ He fur
ther assures us of a " constant exaggeration of numbers
on the part of the Chronicler." " He [i. e. the Chron
icler] cared as little for history in the modern Euro
pean sense of the word as the Oriental of to-day, who
considers himself at liberty to embellish or modify the
narrative he is repeating in accordance with his fancy
or the moral he wishes to draw from it." ^ " Oriental
archeology makes it clear that his statements are not
always exact. We cannot follow him with the same
confidence as that with which we should follow the
author of the Books of Kings. His use of the docu
ments which lay before him was uncritical ; the infer
ences he drew from his materials were not always
sound, and he makes them subserve the theory on
which his work is based."*
Doubtless some of the most important features
of the Higher Criticism, as enumerated above, are
not touched by these concessions ; but there can be
no denying that, so far as they go, they are very
substantial. Still, in spite of these concessions, it is notorious
that criticism as a whole has roused, and is rousing, a
1 " The Higher Criticism and the Monuments," p. 27.
^ p. 34. 8 p. 464.
* pp. 462, 463. The Chronicler, e. g., erroneously infers from Kings
that Pul and Tiglath-pileser, whose name he misspells, were different
persons. 1 Chr. v. 26.

THE PRESENT DISTRESS 19
very widespread opposition. Why is this ? and how
far is it justified ? In the first place, the very words
Higher Criticism are odious to many, because of what
they seem to involve. To not a few. Biblical criticism
of any kind is practically synonymous with impiety :
what is man that he should dare to criticise the word
of God ? And " higher " suggests presumption. The
term is no doubt unfortunate, but fair minds should
not allow the term to create an initial prejudice against
the process for which the term stands. Criticism is
not destruction. It is judgment : it is the effort of
the mind to understand and relate the facts. Higher
Criticism is — very briefly and roughly put — the
criticism of the contents and all that they involve, as
opposed to Lower Criticism, which is the criticism of
the text.
But even when the prejudice against the name
Higher Criticism is overcome, there is enough, it is
urged, in even a superficial study of its nature and
tendencies, to provoke distrust. Its supporters admit
tliat it is " an extremely intricate, complex, and elabo
rate intellectual procedure."! The nomenclature is
pronounced repellent. To designate the imaginary
authors of the Pentateuch by unattractive algebraic
symbols, J!, B^, P^, etc., is, besides being gratuitous
folly, a mockery and an impiety. The author of
articles on "The Old Testament and the Christian
Church" in the " Evangelical Lutheran Church News "
affirms that J, E, D, and P are figures without flesh
and blood. Professor Kautzsch points out that some
1 Rev. W. H. Hazard, in Gibson's " Reasons for the Higher Criti
cism of the Hexateuch," p. 7.,

20 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
of his remarks betray absolute ignorance of the more
recent Pentateuchal criticism, " and the reader who
understands somewhat more of it, finds it now quite
intelligible why and in what sense J, B, D, and P are
' figures without flesh and blood ' for the writer of the
articles." !
Other charges of a more serious nature are urged.
It is pointed out that criticism often assumes a flip
pant and irreverent tone ; that it has no sense of the
dignity of the great themes on which it lays unholy
hands ; that it does not even know its own mind —
witness the notorious discrepancies among the critics
themselves. It is marred from beginning to end by
subjective considerations, and by presuppositions,
which beg the whole question in advance. Its argu
ments are strained and unconvincing. The reasoning
even of the scholars who are regarded as the most
reverent and cautious will often not commend them
selves to ordinary minds.^ The references frequently
fail to support the conclusions drawn from them.
The bolder spirits, at any rate, are as unreasonably
dogmatic as the traditionalists whom they condemn
and seek to displace ; while the more cautious be
sprinkle their pages with a profusion of "perhaps,
1 Kautzsch, " Bibelwissenschaft und Religionsunterricht,'' pp. 10,
11. Cf. Blomfield, " The Old Testament and the New Criticism,"
p. 55. " These documents are so frequently spoken of as though they
had a real, substantial existence, like the acknowledged works of well-
known authors, that it is well to remind ourselves, once for all, that,
as distinct entities, they exist only in the speculations of German or
Dutch scholars and their English followers, having no atom of proof
except that which is derived from what is called ' internal evidence,'
i. c. the examination of the books themselves."
» Blomfield, " The Old Testament and the New Criticism," p. 8.

THE PRESENT DISTRESS ii
possibly, probably, very likely, no doubt," etc., which
is provoking to one who has been accustomed to find
in the Bible nothing but infallible certainties from
beginning to end. The critics, it is maintained, are
tactless : they spring their most ungrounded specula
tions on innocent and unsuspecting minds, discuss the
Bible with a freedom which perplexes and confuses
those who simply trust its every word, and entirely
disintegrate the moral and religious beliefs of large
numbers of well-meaning people, so that one is hardly
surprised at Talmage's demand that " the critics of
the Bible go clear over, where they belong, to the
devil's side." This tactlessness is only another side,
it is urged, of the general indifference of the critics
to the welfare of the Church. They are willing to
speculate ; but they will not stand in the fighting line.
They do not know how sore the battle is ; and so they
not only do not help, but, by their speculations, they
hinder. This last charge cannot with any fairness be urged
against the critics of the English-speaking world.
Professor Henry Drummond was not an Old Testa
ment critic, but he was in the profoundest sympathy
with the whole movement of which this is a part, and
the world will not readily forget his intimate asso
ciation with Mr. Moody in work that was distinctly
evangelical. Nor can any one be blind to the very con
spicuous services of Professor George Adam Smith,
in making large and unfamiliar tracts of the Bible
live and throb, as, to the ordinary student and pastor,
they had never done before. One of the best known
supporters of the critical movement in America haa

22 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
for years contributed weekly a column to the " Sun
day School Times," which is regarded by many read
ers, who are quite innocent of criticism, as one of the
strongest features of the paper. The fact that the
critic may dearly love the church of Christ, and work
with all his heart and mind for her welfare, is almost
too obvious to need elaboration. Indeed, by the very
intimate relation that subsists, for the most part,
throughout the English-speaking world, between the
churches and their theological colleges or seminaries,
the breach between the Professor and the pastor is
never likely to be a very wide one. It is different in
Germany, where the theological professor has seldom
been a pastor, and where he sustains practically no for
mal relation to the activities of the Church. There
theology is more likely to be studied as a pure science.
The gain is that theology learns to come to terms
with the other sciences; the loss frequently is that
the most essential factor in theological investigation
is ignored. The isolation of theology from the life of
the Church is even more fatal than her isolation from
the sister sciences, because the Bible is related to the
life and faith of the Church. It originally expressed
that faith ; now it nourishes and supports it : so that
a coldly scientific attitude to the Bible which ignores
its inseparable relation to the life of the Church is a
manifest injustice. But the point is that that injus
tice is little likely to be done the Bible by English
and American scholarship. The theological Profes
sor has often been — in many churches has almost
always been — a preacher. In any case, he is usually
in dix'ect contact with the life and movements of the

THE PRESENT DISTRESS 23
Church, and he has at heart the things that concern
her peace. Tactlessness there may be among the
critics, as among other men, but not indifference to
the cause of Christ and His Church. Indeed, it is
admitted by the fairer opponents of criticism that
many of its representatives are men of high character
and reverent spirit. " They are not writing against
miracles, against prophecy, or even against inspira
tion. They are simply attempting to adjust what
they hold on critical grounds with what they believe
as Christians." ! " Perhaps," the author just quoted
says elsewhere,^ " we have been in too great haste to
condemn others, as if they were almost infidels, for
holding views which they believe to be consistent with
faith in Christ." It is a mistake to suppose that the
critics are concerned only with finical and irrelevant
literary problems, or are interested in depreciating
revelation and disturbing faith. Some of the greatest
of them have repeatedly confessed that the aim of all
their critical work has been to bring into clearer light
the beauty and power of the Divine Word. Critical
discussion is justified only as it contributes to that end.
The latest, most brilliant, and enthusiastic commentary
on Genesis, by Professor Gunkel of Berlin, professedly
keeps in view throughout the needs of the men en
gaged in the ministry. Professor Kautzsch of Halle,
in a public address delivered in June, 1900, before the
Evangelical Union of the Province of Saxony, ex
pressly laid down as one of his theses that " Biblical
criticism is never an end in itself, but always only a
means to an end " — the end being the understanding
1 Girdlestone, " Doctor Doctorum," p. 157. * p, igs.

i4 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
either of the contents of Scripture in detail, or of the
history of revelation as a whole.
Whatever the deficiencies of individual critics may
be, it is at least clear that their general attitude is
quite compatible with a reverent appreciation of the
Bible as a revelation of God, and with a deep desire
to further the interests of the Church of Christ, by
presenting the positive religious truth of the Bible.
Granted. But how may that general attitude be more
particularly defined ? Every man who desires to have a
just and intelligent opinion will have to discover this
by independent study : he must, so far as he has oppor
tunity, master the critical argument for himself, and
not trust to the representations of its opponents. But
to those who have no time or taste for such study it
will be instructive to listen to the calm words of one
of England's most accomplished, courteous, and fair-
minded scholars : " It is impossible to resist the im
pression that the critical argument is in the stronger
hands, and that it is accompanied by a far greater com
mand of the materials. The cause of criticism, if we
take the word in a wide sense and do not identify it too
closely with any particular theory, is, it is difficult to
doubt, the winning cause. Indeed criticism is only
the process by which theological knowledge is brought
into line with other knowledge ; and as such it is
inevitable." ! Again, " the human mind will in the
end accept that theory which covers the greatest num
ber of particular facts and harmonizes best with the
sum total of knowledge." ^
1 Sanday, "Inspiration,"' p. 116.
'' p. 215. Delitiisch, after defending the traditional views of the

THE PRESENT DISTRESS 25
But to say that the method is right is not to say
that it always leads to definite and unassailable
results. The facts are so comparatively few and
often so difficult to co-ordinate, that the interpretation
of them will — in some cases for long, and in a few
cases perhaps for ever — be nothing more than pro
visional. But to admit that is not to admit the inva
lidity of the method. In spite of numerous differences
among the critics themselves, an astonishing unanimity
has been reached in the solution of many problems,
including some of the most intricate, e. g. the analysis
of the Hexateuch ; and this is conceded even by op
ponents. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that
criticism does not stand for a definite set of results.
It stands for a method, an attitude, a temper — the
temper which patiently collects and impartially ex
amines all the available facts, and allows them to
make their own impression upon the mind of the
investigator. Now, scientific investigation in any department of
knowledge is never an easy thing. To understand the
processes by which its results are reached demands
time, sympathy, perseverance, and patience. The
results cannot be fairly criticised apart from the pro
cesses by which they are reached ; and any man who
fails to bring to the investigation the qualities enu
merated may find the processes unattractive enough ;
but he must not call them ridiculous because he has
not been at the pains to understand them. No one
Old Testament for the be.st- part of his life with extraordinary learn
ing, vigor, and acuteness, finally adopted all the main points of the
critical position. The concessions of auch a man are hardly to be
overestimated.

26 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
expects the working minister to be familiar with the
elaborate details of critical processes : that is the
labor of a lifetime. It is easy to ridicule the Poly
chrome Bible, or the " rainbow" Bible, as it is deris
ively called ; but such a Bible was never intended to
be a people's Bible. To suppose this, as the editor of
a new German translation of the Bible points out, is
to betray a considerable degree of thoughtlessness.
Such a Bible, he reminds us, is designed to satisfy the
scientific needs of theologians, and also of the more
educated laity. But " the folly of giving out this
work for a people's Bible never entered any of our
heads."! This distinction, then, must be carefully borne in
mind. The critical processes are for those who have
time and inclination to investigate, though in outline
they may be easily followed by any intelligent man ;
but most religious men will have to do only with the
results. The teacher is justified in endeavoring to
initiate his students into the processes by which he
reaches the results on which he builds : whether he
will actually do so or not, will depend partly on local
circumstances, partly on the time at his disposal, and
on other considerations. But the preacher is — shall
we say, bound — to ignore these processes in his pub
lic work ; bound by his common sense and by the
1 " Studien und Kritiken," 1901, p. 682. The Rev. John Urqu-
hart's pamphlet on " The Coming Bible " (published at Cambuslang,
Scotland), with its colored two-page illustration from Leviticus, audits
allusious to " forgery," etc., will only startle those who do not really
understand critical methods (cf. Chapter VI.), and who forget that this
is a Bible not for popular use, but for the scientific study of the Old
Testament.

THE PRESENT DISTRESS 27
nature of his calling. And to say this is not to admit
that there is an exoteric and an esoteric teaching : one
for the class-room and another for the Church. The
pulpit does not exist for the exhibition of critical
method. The preacher's business is to call men to
God, by the presentation of positive, compelling
truth, especially of the Truth incarnate ; and he is
bound, by the nature of his solemn office, to do so, as
far as in him lies, without causing one of the little
ones before him to stumble. His sense of perspec
tive and of the proprieties, to say nothing of his high
calling, should preserve him from the folly of present
ing irrelevant or confusing facts to the needy souls
who look to him for help. These facts may be rele
vant to his work as a thorough student of Scripture,
but not to his function as a preacher of God and an
ambassador of Christ. In that capacity he will be
" too full of the awe of direct vision to lose himself in
the arid wastes of criticism, or to be led astray by
the pedantries of scientific investigation." !
The true Biblical critic will always remember that
the minister's task is everywhere already a hard
enough one, and that what he needs is to be strength
ened, not confused. He will be thankful for the
truth that will preach. It is a cheap sarcasm to say,
as some one has said, that what we need is not bread-
knives, but bread. We need both if we are to dine
like civilized men. Still there is some truth in the
sarcasm, as we can live by bread alone, but not by
1 Beard, "The Hibbert Lectures," 1883, p. 430. These words,
relatively severe, are thoroughly appropriate as against the critic who
forgets that criticism is only a means.

28 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
knives alone. The Biblical critic, if he is to do his
work well, must remember that he is a servant of
Christ far more than of his methods, and that his
work upon the Bible is essentially work for the
Church. He will therefore avoid all that is sensa
tional and that would give needless offence. He will
not be dogmatic where the evidence is uncertain. He
will not allow his inferences to run ahead of his facts.
In this sense he will be a " safe " man — a word
much abused in this connection, for it usually denotes
a man who contrives to keep in line with conventional
belief. But such a man is no more safe than the
man who opposes convention for opposition's sake.
The only really " safe " man is the man who loves the
truth and the brethren, and who is prepared to go
wherever the truth leads him. We often hear, too,
of certain men as " advanced," " going too far," etc.
In the sense in which the phrase is intended it is,
strictly speaking, a meaningless one. If the method
be wrong, to go any way with it is a mistake ; if it be
right, we cannot go too far. Sound criticism, like
Aristotle's virtue, is a mean : you cannot have too
much of it. Where it is defective, let it be corrected,
not by abuse, but by a sounder and more penetrating
criticism, which will call attention to factors ignored
or exaggerated.
If this be so — if the critic have a passion for truth,
if he have a touch of the prophet, if he love the
Church and live for her life — the gulf between criti
cism and the Church is not impassable, nor even wide.
Indeed it is being bridged over in our day, and that
not only on the confession of scholars, with whom the

THE PRESENT DISTRESS 29
wish might be supposed to be father to the thought,
but also on that of the men who are themselves in the
thick of the fight. Let us first hear the scholars.
Professor B. W. Bacon asserts the " firm confidence
that a general acquaintance with the discoveries
claimed to have been made by the higher criticism in
the Pentateuch can only conduce to the lasting bene
fit of His cause, who said, ' Thy word is Truth.' " !
Professor G. P. Moore remarks, that the apprehension
of the consequences to which the results of criticism
should give rise, if they were generally accepted, is
groundless. " That a better understanding of the way
in which God has revealed Himself in the history of
the true religion, whose early chapters are written in
the Old Testament, will diminish men's faith in reli
gion or the Scripture, or their reverence for them, is
no less unreasonable than to suppose that better
knowledge of Astronomy or Geology must impair
faith in the God of Heaven and Earth." ^ "I cannot
help thinking," says Professor Sanday, "that the
critical and historical way of looking at the Bible is
calculated to win back some of its inspiring power." ^
And elsewhere, " The proper fruit of criticism and
history " is a " vital appreciation of the real funda
mentals of Christianity."* To those who feel that
some of his results " threaten their faith in the Scrip
tures," Professor H. G. Mitchell gives the assurance
that " their anxiety is groundless," and assigns his
reasons.^ The case is put still more strongly by a
1 Bacon, " The Genesis of Genesis," p. xiii.
'^ Id. p. xxx.
8 " Oracles of God," p. 87. « p. 88.
5 " The World before Abraham," p. iv.

30 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
French Roman Catholic scholar. "The danger at
the present hour is not that of advancing on the path
of science: it is that of standing still, denying the
movement which is accomplished and accomplishing
itself round about us." !
Now let us hear the testimony of two clergymen,
distinguished members of different communions.
Prom Canon Henson we have the following confes
sion, delivered in the course of a sermon in Westmin
ster Abbey : " These far-reaching and at first sight
alarming changes worked by criticism in our whole
view and treatment of the Scriptures will, I believe,
be found to minister to religious peace, for the old
springs of exasperation and conflict are now cut off."
Dr. R. F. Horton asserts that " Higher Criticism, so
much dreaded by pious souls, is furnishing a conclu
sive answer to the untiring opponents of Revelation." ^
It " has solved far more difficulties than it has sug
gested, and gives us back the books which it has
handled, not only intact in themselves, but accom
panied by a genuine explanation of their apparent
flaws and imperfections." ^ "In the line where the
Revelation of the book is to be sought, the conclu
sions of Criticism have made, and can make, no dif
ference at all, while they have furnished a sufficient
explanation of those confusions and discrepancies
which, according to former views of the composition,
presented insurmountable difficulties." *
1 Loisy, " ]fctudes Bibliques," p. 48.
''¦ "Revelation and the Bible," p. 61.
8 p. 91.
* p. 105. Cf. Lyman Abbott, "The Life and Literature of the
Ancient Hebrews," p. v. The conclusiojis of the critical school "dp

THE PRESENT DISTRESS 31
There are many signs that the presentation of the
critical results of Bible study not only can be, but is
being understood and even welcomed by the rank and
file of the laity. A German Professor tells of an
evangelical working men's association which had been
perplexed by a study of the laws of the Old Testa
ment, and was anxious to hear the question discussed
by a specialist. The Professor undertook the task;
and they listened to him, he tells us, not only with
interest, but with grateful and intelligent apprecia
tion, as he sketched the three great codes, pointed out
their salient features, and showed how each in its day
subserved the purpose of God. A similar experiment
by a Methodist Professor in Canada was attended with
similar success.!
Criticism is helpful, but not necessary to the un
derstanding of the essential truth of the Bible. In
days when other methods of interpretation prevailed,
the Bible compelled men to listen to it, to love it, and
to live by it. Its message to the heart is too honest
and obvious to evade. The Bible can be trusted to
take care of itself. We know in what we have be
lieved. " These are days," says the venerable F. B.
Meyer, " in which men tremble for the ark of the tes
timony, as though the Word of God were in serious
not imperil spiritual faith, — on the contrary, they enhance the value
of the Bible as an instrument for the cultivation of the spiritual faith."
I Oue who would wish to see how the preacher can make the results
of the modern criticism of the Pentateuch directly contribute to the
edification of the Church, could not do better than read Rev. Buchanan
Blake's recent book on " Joseph and Moses, the Founders of Israel."
The two prophetic sources for these Hves are there taken apart and
printed continuously, and these tales are then expounded as independ
ent narratives.

32 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
peril; but those of us who have approved its living
power in solving the questions and problems of the
inner life . . . are not anxious as to the issue. The
heart of man will never allow itself to be robbed of
the Bible."!
1 From the preface to the late G. H. C. Macgregor's " Messages of
the Old Testament."

CHAPTER II
THE DISCOURTESIES OF CRITICISM
Ridicule may have its place, but that place is
hardly within the department of criticism ; and it is
with some surprise that we read the following confes
sion from a well-informed opponent of criticism : " In
the following pages, while the attempt has been made
to grapple fairly and fully with some few of the diffi
culties presented by modern criticism of the Old Tes
tament, the writer has not ccnsidered Mrnself precluded
from occasionally employing the method of ridicule." !
One feels inclined to ask, Cui bono ? Who is benefited
by such a method ? Obviously neither the critics nor
their opponents. Ridicule may provoke, but it will
seldom convince. Still, it is lamentably true that this
method, which is so little calculated to conciliate or
instruct an opponent, is but too commonly used by
both parties ; and it is with great satisfaction that we
find another opponent of the movement entering on
a difficult branch of the controversy with the noble
words : " May no bitter word be uttered ; for the
ground on which we are standing is indeed holy
ground." ^
1 Blomfield, "The Old Testament and the New Criticism," p. 38.
The italics are ours.
2 Girdlestone, " Doctor Doctorum," p. 13.
3

34 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
The greatest injustice that one can do to an oppo
nent's position is to misrepresent it. This is a species
of injustice from which the critical position has often
suffered. Doubtless the misrepresentation is not
always deliberate. Indeed it is not possible to rep
resent any position — critical or any other — fairly
and adequately without such a sympathetic study as
is seldom given to it by one who approaches it for
controversial purposes ; but whether deliberate or
not, misrepresentation is mischievous and unfair.
A very earnest and courteous defender of the faith !
avers that " the actual Moses of the analytical {i. e.
critical] view is some unknown person or persons
who lived ages afterwards in the declining days of
the Exile. Does not common sense itself," he asks,
" protest against such an absolute inversion of all
historical testimony and all historical credibility ? "
Certainly, we reply ; not only common sense, but
the majority of the critics themselves, who, even on
the admission of a conservative,^ allow that Moses
was an extraordinary personality. Dr. Lyman Abbott
is much nearer the truth when he says that " substan
tially all critics recognize in Moses one of the greatest
and most creative spirits of ancient history." ^
Again, nothing is commoner than to contend that,
on the critical view, the Pentateuch is reduced to a
" patchwork," as it is derisively called. The word is
an awkward one, but the fact which it covers is com
mon enough in literature. In spite of the Rev. L. W.
1 EUicott, " Christus Comprobator," p. 81.
2 Hopfl, " Die hohere Bibelkritik," p. 54.
* " The Life and Literature of the Ancient Hebrews," p. 92.

DISCOURTESIES OF CRITICISM 35
Munhall's dictum ! that " no other book was so con
structed, no book could be so constructed," we have
the evidence, already quoted, of so competent an au
thority as Professor Sayce to the contrary — to say
nothing of modern novels and plays. As an illustra
tion of the argument by which an attempt is sometimes
made to refute the critical solution of difficulties, the
following vigorous passage may be quoted : " A scissors
exegesis is not American. Our public schools have
taught us to be more accurate. To slice a verse or
two out of a section, or to cut a verse into halves or
thirds, may comport with German ideas of scholarship,
but we are proud to say that it will never be patented
in America. ... To treat the Bible with such indig
nity and such bungling scholarship will never become
an American custom." ^
This last quotation, with its depreciation of German
scholarship, furnishes us with a species of argument
which is more common than convincing. We hear,
e. g., of certain " objections to the credibility of the
Scriptures that are now paraded before the world by
unconverted theological professors in German Univer
sities, and then reproduced by foolish theological pro
fessors in Great Britain and America." ^ This might
be excused in the heat of a public address,* but it is
a little disappointing to find statements not very dis-
1 " Anti-Higher Criticism," p. 10. So Behrends, " The Old Testa
ment under Fire," p. 133. " It is simply incredible that Genesis was
put together as the critics claim."
2 G. T. Smith, " Critique on Higher Criticism,'' pp. 199, 200.
8 Munhall, "Anti-Higher Criticism," p. 189.
* The chapters of this book were originally addresses delivered at a
Bible Conference in Asbury Park, N. J., iu 1893.

36 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
similar occurring on the pages of a learned theological
review ; as when we are assured, for example, that a
certain interpretation of the language of the 51st
Psalm is not surprising in " a wooden German critic,
who would measure religious emotion with a foot-
rule." ! Even Bishop EUicott, after admitting the
great industry, the unexampled patience and singular
insight, of the foreign scholars, suspects that they are
destitute of " that cool common sense . . . which can
never be dispensed with."^ It would indeed be singu
lar if scholars who possessed so many senses which
are exceptional were destitute of that which was com
mon ; all the more that their opinions and attitude
are largely shared by an ever-increasing number of
scholars in English-speaking countries which are
supposed to be pre-eminently gifted with that desir
able commodity. The learned bishop is no doubt
right in suspecting that "insular prejudice" has
something to do with his opinion. The critic of the
Higher Criticism to whom we have already referred
deliberately ridicules the patient and indefatigable toil
with which the German repeats his experiments and
accumulates his facts.^ It seems a poor argumen-
tum ad hominem. Wooden heads are not the monop
oly of any one country. There is at least as much
likelihood in the truth being reached by a man who
scorns delights and lives laborious days in the search
for it, as by a man who ridicules those who take this
trouble. An argument might be good though it came
1 "Presbyterian and Reformed Review," January, 1902, p. 137.
^ " Christus Comprobator," p. 36.
8 G. T. Smith, "Critique," p. 301.

DISCOURTESIES OF CRITICISM 37
from Germany, just as it might be bad though it
came from Britain or America. Its national origin
has simply nothing to do with its essential value : that
can be, and should be, tested by scientific canons.!
This method of what may be called argument by
innuendo is not confined to the opponents of the critics ;
the critics themselves can use it when it serves them.
An argument is not carried much farther, e. g. when
we are told that " no respectable commentator " would
countenance a certain interpretation of Genesis vi. in
our day.'^ Standards of respectability are notoriously
uncertain. Nor are we greatly edified to learn that it
is "persons lacking in the literary sense" who take
the early books of the Old Testament as statements
of fact. Both parties too commonly assume that their
view is the only one possible to a man of any real lit
erary or spiritual insight. The great question, for
example, of the true principle of progression mani
fested in the history of Israel is not exactly settled
beyond dispute by the simple assertion that " to every
one who has any spiritual perception," the traditional
view is " immeasurably superior " to the critical.^ A
writer in "Bibliotheca Sacra"* affirms that those
who think that the first and second chapters of Gen
esis contradict each other " betray a dulness of lite
rary apprehension that makes an ordinary reader lose
faith in their judgment." When we remember that
this sweeping condemnation includes many men in
1 For a fine tribute to the patient and thorough methods of Ger
many, see Froude's essay ou the " Revival of Romanism," section viii.
^Briggs, "The Study of Holy Scripture," p. 333.
» J. Smith, " The Integrity of Scripture," p. 249.
4 January, 1902, p. 201.

38 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
several lands whose literary instincts, as attested by
their own literary work, are of the highest order, we
begin to console ourselves with the reflection that
standards of literary apprehension, like standards of
respectability, are variable.
Misrepresentation and innuendo prove nothing ;
neither does caricature. Probably no feature of the
Higher Criticism has suffered so much at the hands
of the caricaturists as the compositeness of the Penta
teuch and the customary nomenclature of the docu
ments. " When the critic corrects his remark," we
are airily told, " by saying ' five,' it can be shown that
no smart critic is satisfied with less than seven. If he
admits seven, nine can be laid before him ; if he con
fesses there are eleven, thirteen will be produced, and
so on, till he is weary, and yet there will be left seven
baskets of fragments predicated to exist in the Penta
teuch." ! Even the uninitiated, one would suppose,
would feel the injustice of this. Dr. Kennedy^ in
forms his " unlearned " readers that " the process
began modestly with A, B, C, D. But it grew till we
have J, E, Q, P, — with J! and J% Ei and B^, pi and
P2 and P3, D! and D^, which represent different strata
in the hypothetic original documents. . . . We ask
with confidence whether the process alleged by the
critics, or anything like it, can be made intelligible to
any but the critics themselves ? And it may be fairly
asked whether it is intelligible even to them ? " The
answer is at hand. It is this : not only that the pro-
1 G. T. Smith, " Critique ou Higher Criticism," p. 304.
2 "Old Testament Criticism and the Rights of the Unlearned,"
p. 89.

DISCOURTESIES OF CRITICISM 39
cess is intelligible to the critics themselves, but that it
has, in Robertson Smith's " Old Testament in the Jew
ish Church," and elsewhere, been made thoroughly
intelligible even to the man who is not an expert.
These letters stand for the authors of documents;
because we cannot name the men, it does not follow
that the symbols which represent them are ridiculous.
Such symbols may be prosaic, but they are useful.
It is further surprising, not to say painful, to find
ridicule cast by honored scholars upon the long and
necessarily difficult process by which the present
critical position has been reached. We shall let
Principal Cave present his case for the opposition ;
this he does in the form of a dialogue. " ' Genesis,
we aver, is a compilation of two documents, an Elohist
and Jehovist document,' said the Decomposition-
Critics about the beginning of the century. But, it
was objected, no mere compilation could have pro
duced such a book. ' Allow us to amend our theory,'
replied the Decomposition-Critics, ' and permit us to
say that Genesis, so far from being a mere compila
tion of two works, is a new and much enlarged edition
of one man's work (the Elohist) by a second (the
Jehovist).' But, it was objected, why speak of Gene
sis only, why not extend this process to all the Books
of the Law ? ' Why not, indeed,' replied the Decom
position-Critics, ' allow us to amend our theory again,
and say that the whole Law, as well as Genesis, is the
result of a supplementing by the Jehovist of the doc
ument of the Elohist ? ' But, again it was objected,
so uniform a book as Deuteronomy could not have
been the product of such a process. ' You are quite

40 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
right,' said the Decomposition-Critics ; ' we will again
amend our theory, and say that the Pentateuch is a
supplementing by the Jehovist of two original works,
written, one by the Elohist, and the other by the
Deuteronomist.' But, it was again objected, the sec
tions attributed to the Jehovist sometimes contained
the name of Elohim, and sometimes showed the style
of the Elohist. ' Again you are right,' say the De
composition-Critics ; ' we will amend our theory once
more, and say that there are two Elohistic documents,
an earlier and a later.' But, yet again it was objected,
perhaps the order of writing is not Elohist, Deuteron
omist, Jehovist. ' There is no perhaps in the ques
tion,' said the Decomposition-Critics. ' Allow us to
amend our theory; we now desire to consider that
writer as the latest whom we formerly considered the
earliest, and we now declare the order of writing to be
Jeiiovist, Deuteronomist, Elohist.' But, it was once
more objected, there are facts which will not square
with this view. ' Therefore we will amend our theory
again,' said the Decomposition-Critics, ' manifestly it
is too simple ; ' " and so on in this strain.! The pas
sage is so characteristic of much of the opposition to
Higher Criticism that no apology need be offered for
quoting at such length. Now, such a statement may
raise a laugh ; but laughter is not argument. This
caricature really conceals a delicate compliment to
the critics. It shows that they were not irretrievably
committed to theories, but were prepared to adjust
the theories to meet new facts. And is not that how
truth of every kind has grown — through the steady
1 Cave, " The Battle of the Standpoints," pp. 44-46.

DISCOURTESIES OF CRITICISM 41
accumulation of facts, and the ceaseless modification
of the theories that sought to account for them by
the discovery of fresh facts ? It is no disparagement
to the critical position to say that it has always been
willing to readjust itself, to reinstate elements that
have been depreciated or ignored, and to meet new
facts that have been discovered.!
Caricature is unworthy, but abuse is un-Christian ;
yet this is one of the weapons not uncommonly
brought into the fray. Not a few books, articles, and
reviews are plentifully besprinkled with the choicest
theological Billingsgate. One gentleman defines his
idea of a critic in the following expressive words :
" I mean by professional critic one who spends his
time and strength in trying to find some error or dis
crepancy in the Bible, and, if he thinks he does, re
joiceth as ' one who findeth great spoil ; ' who hopes,
while he works, that he may succeed, thinking thereby
to obtain a name and notoriety for himself." ^ In the
light of the very different motives which we saw in
Chapter I. to actuate the critics, such a definition may
be safely left to refute itself. " Theological scaven
gers," "noisy and pretentious heralds of a Deutero-
isaiah," with their " impudent assumptions " and their
" moonshine conjectures " — these are the terms in
which the truth of God is defended.^ One may be
1 A sympathetic knowledge of the history of criticism would fur
nish the best answer to the attacks upon its alleged unreasonableness.
An admirable sketch of the " History of Hexateuch Criticism," by
Professor W. G. Jordan, of Kingston, will be found in the " Queen's
Quarterly," January, 1903, pp. 274-300.
2 Munhall, "Anti-Higher Criticism," p. 9.
8 Sir Robert Anderson speaks of " the foreign infidel type of scholar

42 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
pardoned for wondering whether such language, to
say nothing of its vulgarity, can be supposed by any
reasonable man to tend to edification ; and we should
with gladness pass it by, were it not that it is but too
typical of much of the spirit in which criticism is
opposed and the faith defended. The lowest depths
were recently sounded by a paper which shall be
nameless, but which commented on a gentleman who
had the misfortune to differ from the editors, in the
following terms : " We are pleased to present our
readers this week with a portrait likeness of  ;
pleased, not because this picture will satisfy curiosity,
but because it carries with it a complete refutation of
the thought that has been in some minds, that  ¦
was a man of great depth and vast authority in the
subject he has rashly entered." One can only say
with sorrow, " Ye know not what spirit ye are of."
There is a time to be gentle, and a time to be severe ;
but there is never a time to be scurrilous.
It is astonishing to find that this abusive attitude is
not confined to ephemeral magazines, or to the public
platform, but has its representatives in sober theolo
gical monthlies and quarterlies. Not long ago two
important contributions to the history of Israel's
religion were dismissed, in a review as unjust as it
was brief, by a sarcastic compliment to the excellence
of the binding of the books. Book reviews are often
... as ignorant of man and his needs as a monk, and as ignorant of
God aud His ways as a monkey " (" The Bible and Modern Criticism,"
p. 19). This may be clever, but is it just ? No more than Behrends'
assertion that, according to criticism, " The history is fabricated and
false from cover to cover " (" The Old Testament under Fire," p. 185).
The cause of truth has little to gain from extravagances of this sort.

DISCOURTESIES OF CRITICISM 43
cruelly unfair, even in quarters where one would
naturally expect to find conscience and justice. A
book whose standpoint is not that of the reviewer is
often condemned outright, without the faintest regard
to the author's constructive interests or to the rever
ence of his spirit. Illustrations are legion. There
are, of course, on both sides of the controversy many
honorable exceptions.
There is not a superabundance of courtesy on the
part of the controversialists for each other ; but what,
in particular, pains the defenders of the older position
is that their opponents often seem to adopt so flippant
a tone in their discussions of the Bible. It may be
frankly confessed that the tone of the critics has often
been needlessly, sometimes absurdly, offensive ; though
here it is only fair to say that their spirit and atti
tude cannot be correctly judged by such words as
" fraud," " forgery," and the like, which appear plen
tifully enough on the pages of their opponents, but
would be disowned as misleading by practically all
the critics themselves. Still, it is nothing less than
deplorable to find so great a scholar as Duhm ! charac
terize the one hundred and nineteenth Psalm as " the
emptiest production that ever blackened paper." Flip
pancies of this kind have done immeasurable harm to
the cause of criticism. Again we would ask, Cui
bono ? No one is helped by such a criticism, and many
will be provoked by it. It is more than flippant, it
is unjust. It disqualifies the man who makes it from
1 " Die Psalmen," p. 268. Much of the recent work of that admi
rable scholar is marred by a vehemence which is neither dignified nor
necessary.

44 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
interpreting the meditative psalms. One who does
not himself respond to the tender brooding regard for
Scripture which shines through the Psalm should not
scoff at the thing he cannot appreciate.
It is necessary, however, to distinguish between the
flippancy which is never justified, and the humor
which is often wholesome and luminant. There may
easily be humor without irreverence. Gunkel, e.g.,
seems to violate no canons of propriety when he gives
as the reason for the choice of a rib as the material
out of which woman was to be made, the fact that man
had ribs enough and to spare ; ! nor yet again, when
he contends that in the original story the wrestling
of Jacob had nothing to do with prayer, for " in the
wrestlings of prayer one does not dislocate one's
thigh." ^ Of a similar kind is the remark of Well
hausen, quoted by Robertson Smith, that when the
original text represents any one as eating, a compas
sionate editor usually gives him something to drink.
This is nothing but a happy characterization of a
common textual phenomenon. Other kinds of state
ments may occasionally sound irreverent, while to one
accustomed to a severely scientific method they may
be perfectly natural. " When we read," says Hof-
mann,3 " in Numbers xiii. 22, that Hebron was built
seven years before Zoan, the accuracy of this histori
cal notice depends upon whether the author was in a
position to know it." Is it not so ? Or are we to
suppose that such a fact as the date of the building
1 " Handkommentar zum A. T. Genesis," p. 10.
2 Id. p. 326.
8 Quoted by Kohler, " Berechtigung der Kritik," p. 39.

DISCOURTESIES OF CRITICISM 45
of this town, which has little obvious relation to the
salvation of our immortal souls, was the subject of a
special revelation from Almighty God ?
All these points may be safely enough conceded,
and yet it cannot be too strenuously maintained that
the true Biblical critic must be not only temperate,
but reverent. The only science which will help us
much in a theme so lofty is the science which adds to
its knowledge reverence. Reverence is as indispen
sable as knowledge and patience. It was One who
knew that said of the Scriptures, " They testify of
me." Those Scriptures were spoken by holy men of
God, " borne on " by the Divine Spirit. They have
been the daily bread of the Christian Church for cen~
turies. Whether we regard their origin, their func
tion, or their power in the past and present, they come
to us weighted with a solemn and mysterious dignity ;
and while they must continue to be the object of the
keenest investigation, they must be approached in the
spirit of a little child. There is no quarrel between
the spirit of reverence and the spirit of science. Rev
erence is even a scientific necessity. Its function is
to keep in view not the mere documentary facts only,
but also the faith aud feeling of the Christian Church
as emerging out of and related to those facts.
So solemn a trust as is committed to us in the
Holy Scriptures does not need the defence of scurril
ity. Bduard Rupprecht defends his use of " unpar
liamentary " language against an American protest by
remarking! ^jj^t his critic had forgotten that there
1 " Die Kritik nach ihrem Recht und Unrecht," p. 58. The Bishop
of Durham, who contributes a preface to Sir Robert Anderson's " The

46 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
was an end to parliamentary language " when one
was standing not in Parliament, but in hot combat
with rebels against the absolute authority of Him who
was in every word the true God and eternal life."
There was a time when saintly men like Wesley and
Toplady could stoop to the language of extravagant
recrimination, but surely the day for that is past.
Neither science nor religion has anything to gain by
abuse. It is diametrically opposed to the temper of
both, and only brings into disrepute the cause for
which it is invoked. It is well to remember that
there will probably always be on some questions a
certain margin of difference between Biblical scholars,
to whatever school they belong. For of the two ele
ments which more or less determine every presenta
tion of truth — fact and feeling — the facts, though
the same for all, are often few and difficult to corre
late, while the feeling will naturally vary more or less
with every individual. Our only hope is in reverent
and dispassionate discussion, animated by the faith
that, as the Word of the Lord has already proved it
self in history, so it will continue to abide for ever
and ever. It has survived many perilous attacks, and
many still more perilous defences, and it will go on
conquering and to conquer ; for it is true, and truth is
eternal. A reverent spirit will inspire the critic with a sense
of perspective. He will have little to say about
Bible and Modern Criticism," nevertheless expressly dissociates him
self from " passages which reflect upon the animus of some represent
atives of the New Criticism with a severity I cannot follow " (p. vi).
Yet he allows that the " mere courtesies " of controversy " may not
always be in place " (p. x).

DISCOURTESIES OF CRITICISM 47
errors, discrepancies, and inconsistencies; and even
that little he will say with regret. He will say it
only under the constraint of scientific necessity, and
only because it has some light to shed on the progress
or nature of revelation. The ideal of criticism has
been admirably defined as "the free study of all
facts." ! Every word here is weighty. It is study, i. e.
investigation, neither blind acceptance nor inconsid
erate rejection. It is free study — study that is not
bound by conventional or traditional belief, but that is
willing to go wherever the facts lead. It is study of
facts, not of theories or speculations about the facts ;
though doubtless, when the facts are marshalled and
studied, the mind will feel the impulse to find the
explanation which will best account for them. And,
finally, it is study of all facts ; that would include, in
the case of Biblical study, psychological and spiritual
facts — such as the call of the prophets — which are
sometimes too lightly evaded ; it would include also
facts of tradition as well as facts of history. There
is a mystery about all facts, and most of all about
Biblical facts : this mystery, as soon as it is felt,
begets reverence. Biblical criticism may therefore
be defined as the free and reverent study of all
the Biblical facts.
I Nash, " The History of the Higher Criticism of the New Testa
ment," p. 85.

CHAPTER III
THE CONFUSIONS OF CRITICISM
Of the many things which have tended to bring
Higher Criticism into disrepute, not the least impor
tant has been the alleged existence of " extraordinary
differences in the results at which they [i. e. the
critics] arrive, while starting from and building on
the same critical principles." ! If the principles were
sound, it is argued, the divergences between those who
maintain them could not be so serious ; and the whole
movement is rejected because its representatives are
not wholly agreed among themselves. Now, there are
reasons for these divergences ; but, before proceeding
to discuss them, let us boldly face the facts and frankly
admit that, in many not unimportant directions, there
are wide differences among the critics — differences
which, until one sees how naturally they arise, are
perplexing and confusing, and seem, on a superficial
view, to make against the critical position as a whole.
These divergences may be illustrated from every
part of the Old Testament ; for convenience, we shall
1 Kennedy, " Old Testament Criticism and the Rights of the Un
learned," p. 24. Gladstone ("Impregnable Rock," ch. 5) complains
that there is not the same " unanimity, continuity, and ascertained
progress " in Old Testament studies that there is iu the natural sciences.

CONFUSIONS OF CRITICISM 49
adopt the division into (A) the historical books,
(B) the prophetical books, (C) the others.
(A) There is little harmony among the critics as to
the dates of the three leading documents (apart from
Deuteronomy) into which the Hexateuch has been
analyzed — the Jehovist, the Elohist, and the priestly
document. There is indeed a very large preponder
ance of opinion to the effect that the body of the
priestly code in its present form is exilic or post-ex
ilic ; but there are at least two distinguished scholars
who have given the most careful consideration to all
the available evidence, and who maintain that that
document is pre-exilic. Again, so far from the dates
of the Jehovist and the Elohist being absolutely fixed,
there is some dispute even as to which is prior to the
other. There is a growing conviction that the Jehov
ist is the earlier : this is the opinion of Kautzsch and
of the two most recent commentators on Genesis,
Gunkel and Mitchell ; but the priority of the Eloliist
is maintained by McCurdy! and others. Roughly
speaking,^ both documents are assigned by most crit
ical scholars to the eighth and ninth centuries b. c.
Sellin, on the other hand, a very brilliant and able
scholar, believes that the Jehovist belongs to the time
of David, and the Elohist to the time of Solomon.^
Nor does the difference touch the dates only of the
documents : it equally affects the dates of certain of
the more important institutions. Of the Book of the
1 " History, Prophecy, and the Monuments," vol. iii. pp. 70-72.
2 Statements that are so brief and summary are necessarily very
rough. 8 " Beitrage zur israelitischen und jiidischen Religionsgeschichte,"
vol. ii. pp. 13, 15. (David, about 1000 B. c. ; Solomon, about 970.)
4

so OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
Covenant (Ex. xx. 22-xxiii. 33) Kautzsch is not
willing to say much more than it probably arose on
the soil of the Northern Kingdom.! J)a.j, in his book
on " The Social Life of the Hebrews," ^ says that it can
not have been earlier than the eighth century ; while
Sellin is equally confident that it belongs to the pre-
monarchic period.^ The gravest divergences gather
round the institution which is, in many ways, the
most important of all, namely, the Decalogue. Budde *
roundly affirms the " impossibility of the Mosaic origin
of the Ten Commandments." Several scholars bring
it down as late as Manasseh's reign in the seventh
century.^ Piepenbring^ places it earlier, denying
that it necessarily presupposes the preaching of the
prophets of the eighth century ; but he also main
tains that " there is no serious basis in history " for
the traditional ascription to Moses. Yet one of the
latest utterances on the Decalogue by an exception
ally well-informed scholar^ is a vindication of its
Mosaic origin. Ottley, too, maintains that " the tra
ditional view of the Decalogue is intrinsically
credible." ^
Within the last few years a great controversy has
gathered round the post-exilic history in Ezra-
1 " Abriss," p. 27. = p. 183.
8 Beitrage, vol. ii. pp. 42, 43.
* " The ReHgion of Israel to the Exile,'' p. 32.
^ " Perhaps to this period the Decalogue, which is so eloquently
silent in regard to cultus, is to be assigned." Wellhausen, " Israel and
Judah" (translation), p. 112.
5 "Histoire du Peuple d'Israel," p. 200.
' Peters on " The ReHgion of Moses," iu the " Journal of BibHcal
Literature," vol. xx. 1901, pt. 2.
8 " History of the Hebrews," p. 296.

CONFUSIONS OF CRITICISM 51
Nehemiah; certain scholars maintaining that there
was no such general return of the exiles from Baby
lon about 537 b. c. as has been commonly supposed.
Some of the exiles would no doubt take advantage of
the permission granted by Cyrus to return to their
own land, but, it is maintained, there was no large
and popular movement. Again, the priority of Ezra
to Nehemiah is being stubbornly contested ; it is ar
gued that when all the circumstances are taken into
account, there is a probability so high as to amount
to a practical certainty that Nehemiah preceded Ezra
and prepared the way for him. This is one of the
most difficult controversies in the field of Old Testa
ment history, and nothing like unanimity has yet
been reached.!"
The divergence of critical opinion relative to the
prose of the historical books of the Old Testament
extends also to the sporadic poetry that is there found.
The blessing of Jacob (Gen. xlix.) assigned by some to
the reign of Jeroboam II. in the eighth century is put
back by Gunkel ^ to the reign of David or Solomon,
who argues that no verse necessarily presupposes the
divided monarchy, while the original form of the poem
doubtless goes back to the days of the Judges. Or
take the elegy of David over Saul and Jonathan, which
has been hitherto regarded by practically every critic
as an undoubted composition from the hand of David.
Professor Lincke of Jena believes it to be a late poem
I An excellent resum^, in English, for the arguments of these more
recent positions will be found in Kent's " History of the Jewish People,"
pp. 126-136, 195-204.
2 " Genesis," p. 431.

52 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
belonging to Northern Israel.! The same critic also
sees in the Song of Deborah, which has hitherto been
almost unanimously regarded as one of the oldest
poems, if not the very oldest, in the Bible, a master
piece from the golden age of Bphraimitic poetry.
(B) Let us now briefly consider the prophetical
literature. Here it might seem that the divergences
could not be so numerous; for while almost all the
historical books are anonymous, and the door for the
investigation of questions of date and authorship is
thus left open, the prophetical books have usually
superscriptions which would seem more or less to
settle all such questions. Naturally everything will
depend upon whether a superscription is integral to
the prophecy or not. If it is not, then 'the book itself
must be interrogated for an answer to all such prob
lems. And here both questions and answers arc
legion. The question, e.g., "Is the Book of Amos
post-exilic ? " has been seriously raised in the " Am
erican Journal of Semitic Languages and Litera
ture," ^ and answered in the affirmative. The position
was at once denied in an able discussion in the pages
of " Bibliotheca Sacra." ^ Again, the question of the
exilic authorship of most of Isaiah xl.-lxvi. was till
lately regarded as practically settled; and this posi
tion seemed so overwhelmingly convincing that it
1 " Zeitschrift fiir wissenschaftliehe Theologie," October, 1901,
p. 481 ff. (essay ou " The Origin of Judaism ").
2 January, 1902,
8 April, 1902. Though this is not strictly an instance of the clash
of opinion within the critical school, it fairly illustrates the general
point that the same data, examined in a scientific spirit by different
jninds, may lead to very different conclusions.

CONFUSIONS OF CRITICISM 53
was accepted by a tolerably large number who count
themselves conservatives on other questions. Within
the last year, however, the whole question has again
been raised by Rev. W. H. Cobb in the " Journal of
Biblical Literature,"! and the traditional Isaianic
authorship has been ably defended. The arguments
were promptly attacked by Konig in the pages of the
" Expository Times." ^
Many questions of the highest importance raised
by the prophetic literature receive the most diverse
answers. One of the most interesting and pressing
of those questions is the authenticity of the Messianic
passages — using the word " Messianic " in the larger
sense. Is the bright outlook that occasionally breaks
across the sombre pages of an Amos or a Hosea really
part of the vision and the message of those prophets,
or is it an interpolation born of the yearnings of a
later day ? Obviously this would be a very important
question in the discussion of the history of Israel's
religion; and there are excellent scholars on both
sides. An eminent scholar^ in a monograph on
1 Vol. XX., 1901, pt. 1. On "Integrating the Book of Isaiah."
2 December, 1901. In reply, Cobb summarized his argument for the
early date in the " Expository Times " of March, 1902. His chief
points are as follows : (i) The prophecy is addressed to comfort the
cities of Judah after the invasion of Sennacherib (ch. xxxvii.).
(ii) The polemic against idolatry is intelhgible iu Hezekiah's time.
(iii) The mixed conditions implied by chs. lvii., Ixv., lxvi. are ex
plained by divisions of parties in Northern Israel (2 Chr. xxx.) and
the influx of foreign colonists (2 Kings xvii.) . (iv) The reference to
Cyrus in xlv. 1 is interpolated, and in xliv. 28 perhaps a gloss. The
references to Babylon might apply to Sennacherib's campaign against
Merodach Baladan, and the whole might have been several times
edited, (v) Argument from style and diction proves little.
a Volz.

54 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
" Pre-exilic Jehovah-prophecy and the Messiah " re
gards practically ! all the Messianic references in the
pre-exilic prophets as interpolations. The extent to
which interpolation is supposed to have affected the
prophets may be seen by a glance through the trans
lation in sucli a book as Nowack's " Commentary on
the Minor Prophets," where the passages believed to
be late are printed in italics.
Who is the suffering servant in the latter part of
Isaiah ? On this, one of the most fascinating of all
Old Testament problems, opinion is very seriously
divided. Some take the servant to be in every case
a personification, and to have a collective reference
to the nation or the worthy element in the nation.
Others, while believing that this is true in the main,
yet hold that the subject of the four poetical pieces,
xiii. 1-4 or 7, xlix. 1-6, 1. 4-9, and Hi. 13-liii. 12, is
an individual. Again, among those who believe that
the reference is to an individual, many are the conjec
tures as to his identity. One scholar holds him to be
a martyr scribe of the Maccabean age. Others regard
him as some great unknown saint who seemed, like
Jeremiah, to incarnate in his own person the sorrow
of his generation. On this question Sellin was led to
change an opinion he had carefully formed and skil
fully defended. In his book on Zerubbabel he had
argued that that prince was the servant; in his
" History of the Origin of the Jewish Church after
the Babylonian Exile " he still contends for a per
sonal reference, but he now believes that the person
is Jehoiachin. ^ The Messianic idea, he holds, appears first in Ezekiel.

CONFUSIONS OF CRITICISM 55
(C) Numerous problems are scattered over the
remaining books of the Old Testament. In some
ways, that of the Psalter is the most intricate. Many
are familiar with Wellhausen's famous dictum that
the question is not whether the Psalter contains any
post-exilic psalms, but whether it contains any pre
exilic. In 1889, Professor Cheyne believed the whole
Psalter, with the exception of Psalm xviii., to be post-
exilic. Duhm! even goes so far as to say that no
psalm, in his opinion, is demonstrably as early as the
Persian period ; most of the Psalter he would relegate
to the third and second centuries, some of it even to
the first; and yet Baethgen, though he admits^ that
the historical situations presupposed compel us to
regard by far the larger half of the Psalter as post-
exilic, can find it possible to believe that between
thirty and forty psalms date from the time of the
monarchy. So Kautzsch : " The present Psalter con
tains in all probability a tolerable number of pre-exilic
songs or fragments." ^ The utmost variety of opinion
is also entertained with regard to the so-called Macca
bean psalms. While some would crowd the Maccabean
period with psalms, Baethgen contents himself with
saying * that the impossibility of Maccabean psalms
1 " Die Psalmen,'' p. xix.
' " Die Psalmen," p. xxiv. The first Psalm affords striking illus
tration of the divergence of critical opinion. Duhm thinks that it
probably belongs to the first century b c. ; Baethgen sets it between
622 and 597 B. c.
8 " Abriss," p. 127. Cf. Sanday, "Inspiration," p 251. "Icannot
think that it has been at aU proved that there was no psalmody in the
first temple.'' This, too, is the main contention of Robertson's " Poetry
and Religion of the Psalms."
* p. xxix.

S6 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
cannot be proved, though he himself is ready to claim
only four with certainty — 44, 74, 79, and 83 — and
a few others with probability.
When we pass from the larger question of the Psal
ter to the examination of individual psalms, we are
confronted by the same unsatisfactory divergence of
opinion. If any psalm has been confidently assigned
to a particular date, it is the forty-sixth Psalm. The
words of Bredenkamp^ express the general opinion
that it was " without doubt a song of triumph sung
after the defeat of Sennacherib." Gunkel, on the
other hand, interprets the psalm eschatologically : ^
Zion is the ideal Zion of the latter days, and the stream
which makes her glad is the stream of Paradise.
Peters,^ again, ingeniously refers at least the first two
stanzas of the psalm (verses 2-7), together with Psalm
xiii., to the temple at Dan in the north of Israel.
Again, take the twentieth Psalm, one of the " royal "
psalms scattered throughout the Psalter. Who is the
king ? Is he an historical or an ideal figure ? and if
an historical figure, is he to be identified with Zerub
babel, as Sellin suggests,* or with Josiah, on the eve
of his campaign against Pharaoh Necho, as McCurdy
suggests,^ or with some one else ?
Again, take the thirty-third Psalm. Cheyne^ re
gards this as probably Maccabean, while Baethgen,
though he does not dogmatize in favor of a definite
1 " Gesetz und Propheten,'' p. 144.
2 "Genesis," pp. 32, 33; also "Biblical World," January, 1903,
pp. 28-31.
8 "The Old Testament and the New Scholarship," p. 173.
» " Serubbabel," p. 189.
^ "History, Prophecy, and the Monuments," vol. iii. p. 165.
6 "Origin of the Psalter," p. 195.

CONFUSIONS OF CRITICISM 57
historical situation, says that it is " at any rate pre-ex
ilic." In other words, there is a difference of half
a millennium between the dates assigned by two
scholars whose general critical principles are, in the
main, the same.
Or again, take the one hundred and twenty-first
Psalm. It is regarded by some as a psalm of the
exile,! the hills being those to which in imagination
the Psalmist lifted up his eyes from the monotonous
plains of Babylonia ; and it is usually held that the so-
called Psalms of Ascent, or Pilgrim Psalms, of which
this is one, are as a whole a post-exilic collection.
But an able argument has been advanced by Dean
Walker 2 iu favor of a pre-exilic date. The psalm,
he argues, is possibly connected with the reformation
of King Josiah. Neither the sun, nor the moon,
whose high places Josiah had destroyed (2 Kings
xxiii. 5), would in any way hurt those who faithfully
clung to the worship of Jehovah. On either view, the
discovery of an historic background adds considerable
color and interest to the psalm.
The problems of the Psalter are by no means con
fined to chronological questions. Often they affect
the interpretation of the contents. For example,
there cannot be said to be any universal, though there
may be a general, agreement in the interpretation of
the references to sacrifice in Psalms xl., 1., and li.
Kautzsch regards these psalms as pre-exilic,^ because
psalms containing such an energetic protest against
1 Cf. G. A. Smith, " Expositor's Bible," Isaiah, vol. ii. p. 14.
2 "Journal of Biblical Literature," vol. xvii, 1898, pt. 2, pp. 205, 206.
8 "Abriss," 127.

58 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
the necessity of sacrifice could hardly have found
entrance into the temple hymnal, had their age not
already invested them with something like canoni
cal authority. Now only last year, in a careful dis
cussion of " The Psalms and the Temple Service," !
Professor Matthes of Amsterdam denies that the
Psalms contain any such protest. The conservative
wing of critical scholarship naturally takes this view
of such psalms.^
The differences which characterize critical opinion
on the Psalter, equally characterize it in other books.
Toy, e.g., regards 300 b. c. as the upper limit for the
Book of Proverbs, the completion falling in the sec
ond century B. c.^ Graf Baudissin, on the other hand,
is quite confident that parts of the book go back to
pre-exilic times.*
The date of the Book of Job has long been a bone
of contention among the critics. It has been the
fashion recently to regard the book as the product of
the exile. Budde, however, puts the date provisionally
about 400 B. c.,* and there is a growing tendency to
regard the book as late rather than early. It is there
fore all the more surprising to find a scholar who is
in general sympathy with the principles of modern
criticism giving expression to the following opinion,
though he adopts the triple safeguard of parentheses,
italics, and point of interrogation : " Job. Circa
1 "Zeitschrift fiir die alttestameutliche Wissenschaft," 1902, pp.
65-82. 2 Cf. Bredenkamp, " Gesetz und Propheten," pp. 59-63.
8 " International Critical Commentary, Proverbs," pp. xix-xxxi.
« " Theologische Literaturzeitung," 1898, No. 7 (April 2).
^ " Handkommentar zum Alten Testament, Hiob," p. xlv.

CONFUSIONS OF CRITICISM 59
625 (?) (It is just possible, however, that it belongs
to the Patriarchal Age)."!
Another interesting and not yet settled question is
the age and authenticity of the prologue and epilogue
to this book. If the book as a whole is post-exilic,
are these of a piece with it, or are they older ? Some
scholars believe that both those sections come from a
pre-exilic Book of Job. The younger Kautzsch, after
an examination of the linguistic features and the
religious conceptions of these sections (cf. angels,
Satan) assigns them to a post-exilic date.^
There has long been a fierce controversy between
the opposing schools with regard to the date and his
toricity of Daniel ; but for a considerable time there
has been little or no discord in the ranks of the critics
themselves, among whom the accepted date of the
book is about 168 or 167 b. c. There is an admirable
and educative statement by Dr. Selbie of the reasons
for this view in the " Critical Review " for March,
1902.^ An interesting and useful discussion in sup
port of the critical view of the book will be found in
the fifteenth chapter of Peters' "Old Testament and
the New Scholarship." But even this view, which
had come to be regarded as an almost established
fact, was recently challenged by Mr. Johnstone in
the " Expository Times," * who urged against it some
not unimportant considerations.
1 Mackay, " The Churchman's Introduction to the Old Testament,"
p. 297. 2 " Das sogenaunte Volksbuch von Hiob."
8 By a singular coincidence, a very elaborate defence of the tradi
tional view from the pen of Principal Douglas appeared a month after
wards iu "Presbyterian and Reformed Review " (April, 1902), 224 f£.
* May, 1902, p. 383. "Every scrap of evidence we possess, apart

6o OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
These divergences, to which attention has just
been called, do not by any means exhaust the actual
divergences prevailing among the critics; nor are
they perhaps even the most serious. One lays much
stress upon tradition; another less, perhaps none.
One believes Abraham to be an historical character ;
another asserts that such a belief argues lack of liter
ary appreciation. One believes that the covenant at
Sinai is a later idealization of the relation between
Jehovah and His people ; another believes in it as an
historical fact. One believes that the history of
Israel may be fairly said to start with Abraham;
another, that we have no historical ground beneath
our feet till we come to Moses ; another, that David
is the first character who stands in the full light of
history ; another, that some of the tales even about
him are astral myths. One believes in the super
natural ; another doubts or ignores it. One believes
that the prophets were reformers who continued and
developed the positive truth revealed to Moses ; an
other, that they were really innovators — in the
now famous phrase " the creators of ethical mono
theism " — that it was they and not Moses who cre
ated the religion of Israel. Indeed, from some points
of view this is the most fundamental problem of the
Old Testament, — whether there is or is not a breach
between the pre-prophetic and the prophetic religion.
It may be frankly confessed that these differences
are bewildering enough, and that they do not create
a prima facie probability for the validity of critical
from theories as to prophecy, points, and points strongly, to the conclu
sion that our Daniel must have been compiled before 300 b. c."

CONFUSIONS OF CRITICISM 6i
methods. It would be easy, however, to close the lips
of the adversary by an argumentum ad hominem. It
would be a simple matter to point out, as we have in
part done, that the ranks of the opponents of criti
cism do not present a solid front any more than do
the ranks of the critics themselves. One concedes the
compositeness of Genesis as inevitable ; another de
nies it as a ridiculous impossibility. One asserts that
the Book of Chronicles is as reliable as the Book of
Kings ; another admits that its unsupported statements
must be received with caution. One believes that the
Book of Daniel is a transcript of historic fact ; another
finds it, in many essential respects, unhistorical. One
believes that the Book of Ecclesiastes is the work of
Solomon ; another allows that, if that be so, there is
no history of the Hebrew language. And so on. It
would be easy to show that there is not much more
real unanimity on the part of the opponents than of
the supporters of the critical movement. If it be
urged that these differences touch only minor points,
that could be denied ; for surely credibility is not a
minor point.! But in any case the argument, as an
argument, falls to the ground ; for it is open to reply
that the principles which produce such discrepancies
cannot themselves be sound. Such an argumentum
1 One must, of course, admit in fairness that the majority of the
school would not go so far as Sayce in his view of Chronicles or Daniel.
The Tract Committee of the S. P. C. K. maka it quite clear in their
preface that, in publishing Sayce's " Higher Criticism and the Monu
ments," they are not to be understood as committing the Society to all
the opinions expressed in it. All the same, Sayce is often put forth as
the protagonist of the opposing movement, and his word is regarded
by the opponents of criticism as final in questions affiBCting the relation
of archseology to criticism.

62 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
ad hominem would be easy, but it would not be worth
while. It will be more profitable to try to account
for the phenomenon observable among both parties of
the controversy — that good and wise men even on
the same side differ among themselves.
The explanation may lie in either or in both of two
directions : either the principles are faulty, or the
facts are few. Now, what the critical principles and
methods are we shall have occasion hereafter to dis
cuss and illustrate ; meantime it may be enough to
remark that one who objects to those principles or to
any principles, assumes, for his own judgment, another
standard ;¦ and this assumption he must be prepared
to justify, on penalty of failing to convince his oppo
nent. Every objection postulates an implicit, and
very often unjustified — we do not say unjustifiable
— criterion.
But what seems to be too often forgotten through
out the whole controversy is the comparative paucity
of the data, our almost total absence of information
about events and movements of the very highest im
portance. Is it not obvious that such extraordinary
divergence of opinion in so many departments would
be impossible, if the data were less meagre and am
biguous ? What do we know, for example, of Jehon-
adab, the son of Rechab ? He is accorded only a
verse or two ; ! yet we know ^ that he represented a
movement of great importance and some influence in
the religion of Israel. What precisely did the guilds
or " schools " — as they are not quite correctly called
— of the prophets do or believe or teach ? What do
1 2 Kings x. 15 ff. a Cf, Jer. xxxv.

CONFUSIONS OF CRITICISM 63
we really know of the so-called " false " prophets, and
where are we to look for a sympathetic treatment of
them ? What do we know, unless by inference, of the
spiritual and intellectual life of the exiles in .Babylo
nia? What do we know of the period of seventy
years or so between the building of the second tem
ple and the preaching of Malachi ? In our historical
records it is an almost absolute blank, though we
know by inference that it must have been a time of
tragic importance. These gaps in our knowledge are
undeniable : how are we to fill them in ? for the his
torical instinct, believing in the continuity of history,
impels us to discover, where possible, the progress of
events. Our sources are lamentably meagre, and we
have to make the most of them. Is it any wonder
that one man interprets an event or a movement in
this way, and another in that ? Doubtless it may be
urged that his interpretation is controlled by an ante
cedent bias. That may be. Whose interpretation is
not controlled by some bias ? ! But the point is that
the paucity of the facts leaves it open to him to put
his own interpretation upon them in perfect good
faith. As a rule, the more numerous the facts, the
more restricted will be their possible interpretation.
Contrast, for a moment, Hebrew literature with
Greek, in point of bulk. Contrast the elaborate his
tories of Herodotus and Thucydides with the brief
narratives in the Book of Kings, which often dismiss
great reigns and important movements in a word or
two, and not seldom leave their importance to be
1 This point is discussed more folly iu the chapter on " Criticism
and the Supernatural," pp. 233 — 235.

64 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
inferred. Contrast the philosophical literature of
Greece with the prophetical literature of the Hebrews,
and add, if you like, the wisdom books. The influence
of Ames or Hosea on Hebrew religious thought was
doubtless as profound, or nearly so, as that of Plato
on Greek speculation ; yet the extant literary work of
either of those prophets would only cover a fraction
of a single book of the " Republic." And for obtaining
an insight into contemporary feeling, what are we to
compare with the criticisms of the witty Aristophanes,
who lashes in turn contemporary literature, philosophy,
and politics ? It is surely obvious that the man who
would sketch the history of the Hebrew people or
their religion is at an enormous disadvantage. To
say nothing of the inherent difficulty of the sources —
a difficulty which the most superficial study cannot
ignore ! — the sources themselves are so meagre that
the recorded facts are often fairly capable of more
interpretations than one, and a use of conjecture, or
of what has been called the historical imagination,
is inevitable. What use the historian or critic will
actually make of those things will depend upon many
considerations — his temperament, his education, his
philosophical standpoint, and so on ; but it should not
be ignored that it is the scantiness of his material
that leads him to have recourse to those perilous
helps, and that is, therefore, indirectly responsible
for the divergences which all must deplore, but
some of which will, in all probability, continue to
remain. 1 Cf. the two accounts of the origin of the kingdom in the Book of
Samuel, or of David's flrst meeting with Saul.

CONFUSIONS OF CRITICISM 65
This margin of inevitable uncertainty is often con
ceded by opponents of the critical school. Volck,!
after an elaborate argument to prove that the picture
of the religious development of Israel, " according to
the hypothesis of the new school," is impossible,
adds, " I am far from supposing that my discussion
has succeeded in finally invalidating all the objec
tions hitherto raised to the traditional conception of
Old Testament history, in removing all the resulting
difficulties, or in solving all the riddles." Breden
kamp,^ too, after showing that there is a high proba
bility that the law of the centralization of the worship
was known in Hosea's tirae, admits that it cannot be
absolutely proved, and adds that " often in the Old
Testament we cannot attain more than probability."
Dr. Green also admits that " a few puzzles remain
insoluble by us."^
Every one who has ever tried carefully to concate
nate the facts presented by the Old Testament is
compelled to admit that there is a good deal about
which it would not be safe to dogmatize ; and many
of the critics have expressed tliemselves with the most
becoming reserve — though they have not always got
credit for it — especially with regard to the more ob
scure and difficult detail. The most ardent advocate
of the Documentary Hypothesis, says one of the most
recent commentators on Genesis, " would hardly claim
that it is absolutely perfect. He would doubtless ad
mit that, at this distance from the period of the origin
1 " Heilige Schrift und Kritik," p. 187.
2 "Gesetz und Propheten," p. 157.
8 Munhall, " Anti-Higher Criticism," p. 88.
5

66 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
of the Pentateuch, it is too much to expect to be able
to unravel to the last thread the history of its com
pilation, and that therefore one must not be surprised
if the accepted theory is not applicable without excep
tions."! Again and again Gunkel emphasizes the
hypothetical nature of some of his results, especially
in the sphere of documentary analysis. In his an
alysis of the Paradise story ^ he requests that no one
overlook the reserve with which his conjectures are
advanced. He is not, he tells us elsewhere in his dis
cussion of Gen. xii., " under the illusion of having
attained certainty : on such difficult and complicated
ground one must be satisfied to attain probability." ^
In a striking passage * he emphasizes the great diffi
culty of chronologically fixing spiritual processes,
" We know ancient Israel too little to be able to
speak with certainty." No doubt many of the critics
have been unduly dogmatic, just as many of their
opponents have been ; but it would be unfair to over-
1 Mitchell, " The World before Abraham," p. 68.
^ " Genesis,'' p. 22 ; cf. p. 229.
' p. 393. This is the real answer to such a charge as that of Dr.
John Smith ("The Integrity of Scripture, "p. 119), that " the possession
of virtual omniscience " is " calmly assumed in the literary analysis of
the Old Testament." So far from that being the case. Driver (in com
mon with most of the critics) believes that with the exception of the
sections which belong to the priestly code, the analysis (from the nature
of the criteria on which it depends) is frequently uncertain, and will
perhaps always continue so (Introduction, xiv, xv). He therefore
often assigns a section to the composite document known as JE, just
because he does not feel able to assign it definitely to one or other
of the constituent documents, J aud E. So Kautzsch queries quite a
number of verses in his analysis as doubtful. Cf. Bacon's " Genesis of
Genesis," p. xxix, " There wiU always be a remainder which defies our
analysis" (G. F. Moore).
* " Genesis," p. lxi.

CONFUSIONS OF CRITICISM 67
look such direct and explicit testimony as has just
been adduced, and could easily be multiplied tenfold.
There are some, if not many, on both sides of the
controversy, who, under the constraint of fact, would
be willing to admit with Professor Terry that " some
of the main points at issue are of such a nature as not
now to admit of final settlement." ^ To the scholars
who have been over all the ground nothing is so cer
tain as that there is much that is uncertain. In his
discussion of the date of Habakkuk, the late Professor
Davidson remarks^ "how precarious it is to draw in
ferences as to the date of a passage or a writing solely
from the ideas which it contains. The literature is
far too scanty to enable us to trace the course of re
ligious thought and language with any such certainty
as to fix the dates at which particular ideas or ex
pressions arose."
The very divergences of the critics enable them to
act as a constant check upon each other. Every im
portant book receives the most minute and searching
attention, either in subsequent books or in the great
theological magazines, especially of Germany. No
critic has it all his own way. His interpretations
are subjected to the severest tests. One is regarded
as too finical, another as too modern. One of the
most recent commentators on Jeremiah criticises an
other for being capricious and fanciful.^ A recent
commentator on Chronicles is taken to task for his
unnecessary emendations of the text.* Only last
1 " Moses and the Prophets," p. 1 12.
2 Cambridge Bible, " Nahum," etc., p. 62.
8 " Theologische Literaturzeitung," 26 April, 1902.
4 Id., 9 Nov. 1901.

68 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
year Professor Konig of Bonn published a little book
entitled "The Most Recent Principles of Old Tes
tament Criticism examined," ! in which he attacks,
among other things, the undue emphasis laid by cer
tain scholars on style and metre in the determination
of text and authenticity, and vigorously combats the
view taken by Stade, Gunkel, and others of the pa
triarchal stories. To this we shall return. Perhaps
the best known scientific protest in English against
the more radical school of criticism is Robertson's
" Barly Religion of Israel."
No great movement is ever wholly in vain. The
truth that was in it is lifted up and carried on. As
critic keeps watch upon critic, it is reasonable to ex
pect an ever closer approximation to the truth. This
expectation is all the more reasonable that we notice
signs of what we might call a conservative reaction, if
that phrase were not so much in danger of being mis
understood. By that we do not mean that any of the
critics are returning to the belief that Moses wrote the
whole of the Pentateuch or David half the Psalter ;
but that more respect is being paid to the testimony
of the Bible to itself, with the result that the possi
bilities of pre-exilic and even pre-prophetic times are
far more highly estimated than they have usually been
by the hitherto dominant school of criticism. The
conjecture which Professor Sanday made about ten
years ago,^ that " the criticism of the near future is
likely to be more conservative in its tendency than it
has been, or at least to do fuller justice to the positive
1 " Neueste Prinzipien der alttestamentlichen Kritik gepriift."
^ " Inspiration," p. xii.

CONFUSIONS OF CRITICISM 6g
data than it has done," though it seems to be belied
by the general spirit and results of the " Encyclopaedia
Biblica," has, in the main, been corroborated. The
work of Professor Sellin of Vienna can hardly fail to
be without its influence.! Here again the recent
commentary of Gunkel on " Genesis " is of the pro
foundest significance. The latest document in the
Pentateuch, which it has been too much the fashion to
regard as pi-actically a work of the priestly imagina
tion, he holds to rest, in part, upon a much older
source, and to contain some very ancient material
even in the historical portions, as in the Creation and
Flood stories.2 Again, the narratives in the earlier
documents, many of which are commonly supposed to
have arisen during the time of the monarchy, he be
lieves to be in reality very much older.^ In a highly
interesting sentence he remarks : " After earlier ages
had found every possible dogmatic and ethical subtlety
in the Old Testament, modern investigators have often
fallen into the habit of painting ancient Israel as
crudely as possible ; that will also have its day." * In
particular he returns again and again ^ to his attack
on what he calls the one-sided literary criticism, which
considers the dates merely of words and authors and
books, and forgets how long a history the material
itself may have had before it received literary form.
Here again the insight of Professor Sanday has been
singularly justified. " It was natural," he said in his
^ Cf. especially his " Beitrage," vol. i.
^ pp. 101, 102. It has preserved, e. g., some lines of ancient poetry.
Cf. Gen. vii. 11; viii. 2.
8 p. xi. * p. 235. 6 pp. 30, 75, 117, 139, 341.

70 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
" Bampton Lectures," ! " that in pursuing a perfectly
unfettered inquiry and correcting one by one the
traditional dates of documents and institutions, there
should be a tendency to lay too much stress on the
first mention of either ; with the result of either con
fusing that first mention with the real origin of the
document or institution, or at least allowing far too
little for growth and not sufficiently considering what
the process of growth involves. This is a direction
in which it would seem that the researches of the
critical school will bear to be supplemented." And
supplemented they are by the movement of which
Gunkel is a singularly brilliant exponent. The follow
ing well-weighed words of his should be taken to heart
by those who think that criticism is going from bad
to worse : " The author cannot conceal his conviction
that the present prevalent literary criticism has been
too ready to declare as spurious the passages which
do not fit into its construction of history, or which are
unintelligible to the modern investigator, and that this
period of criticism must necessarily be followed by a
strong reaction." ^
The errors and extravagances of criticism will be
corrected in time by a criticism that is more alert
and penetrating.^ Theories whose inadequacy can be
^ "Inspiration," p. 118.
^ p. 113. Incidentally he afiirms the authenticity of Is. xi. 6ff., de
nied by Hackmann ; of Is. xvii. 12-14, denied by Stade; of Is. xxx. 7 b,
denied by Duhm ; of Hos. ii. 18, denied by Volz ; and he suggests a
pre-exilic date for other passages which are commonly regarded as late ;
cf. Ps. ex. ; Num. xxiv. 22, 24.
8 Cf. Sanday, " Oracles of God," p. 79. " Theology is becoming far
more international and interconfessional. . . Men are comparing
notes the whole world over, and extravagances and aberrations are

CONFUSIONS OF CRITICISM 71
proved will be modified or rejected, and the fittest will
survive. But to suppose that the whole critical move
ment is invalidated because the results of its various
supporters are not unanimous is completely to mistake
the comparative unanimity that prevails in many of
the larger issues, and in the attitude to the critical or
historical method as a whole. Two blacks do not
make a white.! It is still the fashion to-day, as it
was twenty years ago, " to deride the Higher Criticism
as the mere product of individual caprice, or to exag
gerate the discrepancies of its results, and to imagine
that they can be got rid of, like positive and negative
quantities in an equation, by setting one against the
other. But it is a mistake to suppose that thia pro
cess, however far it may be carried, necessarily makes
for the traditional view of things, which stands or falls
by itself, and must meet its own difficulties. And
criticism is making its sure way from destruction to
construction, from negative to positive results." ^
There is much that is still uncertain ; there is much
being struck off on this side and on that. Before this great tribunal,
eccentricities cannot stand."
1 Literary criticism, which has to be clearly distinguished from spir
itual interpretation, — a very different thing, — " is a perf ectly legiti
mate science, with a profoundly important end in view ; and ought no
more to be discredited than any other science, by the fact that its vari
ous exponents are not all equally wise, nor always in mutual accord."
lUingworth, " Personality Human and Divine," p. 1 82.
2 "Hibbert Lectures" (1883), p. 352. The words of Steuernagel with
regard to the analysis of the Hexateuch are worth taking to heart, and
their application can be extended : " In by far the largest number of
cases the judgment of specialists in the main points is unanimous ; and
for this, one may rightly demand the same recognition from the non
expert as he would willingly accord to the judgment of the historians
of art " (" Allgemeine Einleitung " at the end of his Commentary on
Deuteronomy and Joshua, p. 260) .

72 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
that may never be certain : but there is a great deal
more that is certain, and we shall conclude by briefly
mentioning some of the positive results in which there
is practical unanimity amid all variety of critical
opinion. It may not be out of place to add that this
unanimity, though it is usually denied by the oppo
nents of the critical movement, and its absence
made to count as one of the heaviest indictments
against critical methods, is yet conceded by other
opponents. Bishop EUicott, e. g., frankly acknowl
edges an agreement, remarkable and unexpected)
between men whose principles differ widely, as be
tween Delitzsch and Wellhausen, or Dillmann and
Kuenen.! What, then, are the things which are most surely
believed by the critics ?
(i) The compositeness of the Hexateuch, and, in a
certain sense, of all the historical books.^ There are,
as we have seen, considerable differences in the dates
to which critics assign the various documents; but
that there are various documents is doubted by no
one. This may be accepted as a practically irrefrag
able conclusion, as it is admitted, at least for the Book
of Genesis, by many opponents of criticism. But fur
ther, there is not only a universal agreement as to the
existence and the number of the documents in the
* " Christus Comprobator," p. 36.
' Fifty-five years apart, Ilgen (1798) aud Hupfeld (1853), independ
ently reached the conclusion that there were two documents which
used the word Elohim for the Divine Being. Old Testament criticism
is not the young or arbitrary science it is sometimes supposed to be.
The Hnes of the documentary analysis were laid down one hundred
and fifty years ago.

CONFUSIONS OF CRITICISM 73
Hexateuch — the Jehovist, the Elohist, Deuteronomy,
and the Priestly Code (J, E, D, and P) — but there is
a harmony which is nothing less than astonishing in
the assigning of the various chapters and verses to
their respective documentary sources. Any one may
speedily convince himself of this by a cursory exam
ination of the conspectus in Holzinger's " Introduction
to the Hexateuch," or, if he have only English books at
his command, by comparing, in detail, the analysis in
Driver's " Introduction " with that in Bacon's " Genesis
of Genesis " or " Triple Tradition of the Exodus." The
argument cannot be tumed, as is often attempted, by
saying that the critics swear by the dictum of one or
two of their great leaders. In point of fact, the results
are very often reached in absolute independence ; and
we speak from experience when we say that any one
who has once entered sympathetically into the spirit
and principles of the documentary analysis could —
especially in Genesis — relegate, without much trouble,
many sections to their documentary source, and in
doing so would often find himself in agreement with
the conclusions of the scholars.
(ii) Another result — strictly speaking, another as
pect of the same — is the conclusion that there are in
the Pentateuch three legal codes, belonging to differ
ent periods and representing different stages of re
ligious development. These codes are the Book of
the Covenant (Ex. xx. 22-xxiii. 33) ; Deuteronomy ;
and the Priestly Code, including Leviticus, together
with the long and continuous sections of Exodus and
Numbers which deal with the priestly legislation.
The codes succeed each other almost certainly in

74 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
this order, and they reveal the growing predomi
nance of priestly interests.
(iii) The Book of Deuteronomy is unanimously
believed to be connected with the reformation of
Josiah, as cause with effect ; and it was written, if
not in Josiah's reign — which we need not suppose
— then certainly not very long before it, most prob
ably in the reign of Manasseh. The question of the
date of Deuteronomy is so fundamental as to be some
times called the pivot of Old Testament criticism ; and
on this so fundamental question critical opinion is
practically unanimous that the book comes from the
seventh century B. c. — a conclusion reached about a
hundred years ago.
(iv) Another result is the new appreciation of the
enormous intellectual and spiritual significance of
the exile. On the older view of the Bible, almost the
only voice then raised was that of Ezekiel. Now we
know that neither in his priestly nor in his prophetic
activity did he stand alone. Other prophets (Is.
xl.-lv.) lifted up their word of inspiration and con
solation. Histories, ancient and more recent, were
collected and edited, and the lessons taught by the
exile were woven into them. The importance of
the exile as a formative influence on Jewish thought,
life, and literature it would be almost impossible to
overestimate. (v) The post-exilic period was a time of markedly
predominant priestly interests. The "law," if not
the product of Judaism, at least became law then in
a sense in which it had never been before. The con
trast between the prophet and the priest has no doubt

CONFUSIONS OF CRITICISM 75
often been too absolutely drawn ; ! but speaking very
broadly, it would be fair to say that the pre-exilic
period was the period of the prophet, while the post-
exilic period was that of the priest. The history of
Israel is certainly very much more than a ceaseless
conflict between these two forces. Not seldom those
forces were really working for the same ends ; and it
was in large measure the priestly forms of Judaism
that preserved the prophetic spirit against the perilous
inroads of heathenism. Nevertheless the contrast has
proved a very useful and fertile one.
(vi) Another result in which the critics are in
complete harmony is that the closing of the canon
took place at a much later date than was for
merly supposed, and that some of the greatest books
of the Old Testament — Jonah, e.g., and Daniel, and
many of the Psalms, to say nothing of books of the
most profound human interest, like Ecclesiastes —
were written at a period in which it used to be
thought that no heavenly voice had spoken. The
gain here is obvious. There are no four hundred
years of silence, as indeed there could not be. The
Old Testament revelation ran a long course : periods
which before were blank are now seen to be crowded
with interest, human and divine.
(vii) We have hitherto confined ourselves to details.
One word may be said in conclusion about the general
effect that criticism has had on the presentation of
the history. Put briefly it is this : It has made it
1 Principal Harper's " Constructive Studies iu the Priestly Element
in the Old Testament," which appeared in the " Biblical World " for
1901, and have since been published in book form, will go a long way.
toward correcting the one-sided view of the place of the priest.

76 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
abundantly clear that revelation was progressive. It
did not begin by furnishing the people with highly
elaborated laws, irrelevant to their situation ; nor did
it end by leaving them four hundred years without a
divine witness. It gave them what they needed and
could understand. It taught them what they could
bear. It had many things to say, but it was in no
haste to say them ; it said them here a little and
there a little. It led them as a father leads his child.
On tlie part of the great interpreters of God's will
and purpose, the appreciation of truth grew. In the
words of a French scholar : " God took men where
they were, in order to lift them progressively to
Himself." i 1 Loisy. " feudes Bibliques," p. 121.

CHAPTER IV
THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM
We may regulate criticism : suppress it we cannot.
It is one of the deepest necessities of our experience.
Indeed without it we could have no experience ; that
is, no coherent, connected experience. Experience
would be meaningless were the scattered facts which
seem to constitute it, though by themselves they could
never really constitute it, not lifted up into a unity,
related to one another, and to the self that judges
them. Criticism, in however technical a sense it may
be applied, and however forbidding or regrettable
some of its results in certain spheres have been ima
gined to be, always springs essentially from the im
pulse — an impulse which the man in the street shares
with the professional critic — to relate the facts of
our experience to one another. It is only another
term for judging of the relations of things. A critic
is a krites, or judge. Criticism is explicit judgment ;
and we are all critics, not perhaps formally, but none
the less really, in the sense that all our opinions,
those that are hasty uo less than those that are
mature, are judgments, at least informal and implicit.
The very nature of our experience as human beings
presupposes not only the right, but the necessity, of
criticism.

78 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
Before proceeding to establish this point by an
appeal to our current opinions about certain parts
of the Bible, let us look for a moment at the origin
of the word. Words are like men. In the course of
their checkered history they often stray far enough
from the sphere in which they first saw the light, and
from the duty for which they were originally des
tined ; but they usually retain to the last something
of their original purpose and accent. A clear con
ception of what is involved in criticism, and of all
that still constitutes its essential qualities, may be
won by even a brief examination of the use of the
word in the language from which it came. A critic
is one who judges. The root idea of the Greek word,
however, is simpler than this. Krino originally means
to separate, e. g., one thing from another unlike it, as
the good from the bad. Here in this simple illustra
tion lies the germ of all that subsequently appears in
the complex form of modern criticism. It implies a
standard in virtue of which one thing is marked off,
discriminated, from another ; and also a deliberate
judgment on the facts before us, determined by that
standard. If the standard is at fault, the judgment
will be at fault; but standard and judgment are alike
involved in the simplest act of separation — discrimi
nation. Further, from the idea of separation of one
thing from another springs the idea of selecting from
a whole ; thus Jcrino can mean to pick out, choose.
This, in its turn, gives rise to a further but perfectly
natural development — to decide, in presence of a
large array of facts or evidence, in favor of one fact
or view rather than of another, and therefore the

THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 79
word may be used in the sense of " deciding a contest
or dispute." Here we have passed subtly from a
predominantly material or sensuous sphere to one
involving moral and intellectual considerations. The
step from this meaning to the last of all is easy — to
pass an intellectual judgment; e.g. "I give my judg
ment (krino) that thou art the victor " (^sch.
Choeph. 903). This brings us, if not actually, at least
practically, within the modern use of the word which
suggests a more formal study of the material sur
veyed, but does not essentially involve any new prin
ciples. Even this modern and formal idea appears in
later Greek in which the adjective kritikos could be
used as practically equivalent to our word " critic,"
and also in the Latin, which rests- on Greek (Cicero,
Quintilian, Horace).! Critical is an epithet applied in
Hebrews iv. 12 to " the word of God," which is said to
be " critical " of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
Having traced the word to its origin, and in its
development, let us now proceed to show that criti
cism does not need to begin by substantiating its right
to exist, but is involved, even in the most conservative
opinions, as really, though not so explicitly, as in the
most radical. We are all critics, and our opinions
''are all criticisms. The man who believes that the
twenty-third Psalm was written by David is just as
really a critic as the man who doubts or denies it; ,
sand assuming that each is equally honest in his
belief, their divergent opinions are produced by the
same impulse — their desire to see facts in their unity.
The scholar who defends the Davidic authorship, even
1 Cf. Liddell and Scott's Lexicon.

8o OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
the man who believes iu it without having ever
consciously regarded the question as debatable, does
so because he believes — in the one case, after exami
nation of the question, in the other, instinctively —
that there is nothing in the psalm inconsistent with
the known or believed historical facts of David's life,
with the trend of his character, or with the progress
of divine revelation at his time. The psalm, he be
lieves, can take its place within the unity constituted
by those facts : believes, we say ; that is his judgment,
his krisis — deliberate, in the case of the professional
critic ; real, though not deliberate, but implicit, in the
case of the ordinary Christian. The scholar who ob
jects to the Davidic authorship does so because, so far
as he can see, it cannot be related to the established,
or presumably established, facts of the history. He
may argue that its repose does not seem the natural re
flection of the comparatively rude age in which David
lived, or that it is too unlike the elegy to be from
the same hand, or that the depth of its feeling and
the quiet beauty of its trust is hardly what we should
expect to meet till revelation had reached a more
advanced stage, and is hard, if not impossible, to
reconcile with the known religious facts and attain
ments of that early period. In many cases such an
argument as this might be reinforced by considera
tions drawn from the literary style or the metrical
form of the poem, though such arguments are notori
ously precarious. We are not here expressing any
opinion whatever as to the authorship, nor are we
arguing that these reasons are adequate : we are
nierely pointing out that the plain man who believes

THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 8i
that the psalm was written by David is a critic, no
less than the scholar whose conclusion he rejects and
regrets, and that he believes what he believes for rea
sons which will compel him to concede the critic's
right to differ from him, if he does so honestly. The
plain man, let us suppose, has faced the facts of
David's life and times as he understands them, and
has concluded, at least informally, that these are not
inconsistent with the claim of the psalm to be Davidic.
He cannot, therefore, deny the critic's equal right to
face the facts, and if he concede to the critic the
honest exercise of his judgment — and he surely would
not wish him to play it false — he cannot resent his
conclusion ; not, at least, on any principle which
would not equally justify the critic in rejecting his
conclusion. Or take, again, the Mosaic authorship of the Penta
teuch. The plain man believes in it, let us assume :
a critic doubts it. Which is right ? That is a ques
tion for the most careful and impartial investigation.
But in the meantime the point to notice is that they
reach their different conclusions from identical prin
ciples. Both, let us presume, have enough of the
historical sense to see that they must start from facts.
The critic believes that the facts are flagrantly incom
patible with the Mosaic authorship, even with single
authorship: the plain man believes that they are
not incompatible with it, and that, where they seem
to be, the difficulty would be easily surmounted by one
who believed in the almighty power of God, and that
to feel such difficulties proves the littleness of faith.
The critic asks how a single author could give differ-
6

82 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
ent and in some cases inconsistent accounts of what
clearly appear to him to be the same incidents ; how
the style of an author could vary so much and yet so
uniformly ; how a man could give an account of his
own death ; ! how names ^ and allusions to incidents ^
and institutions * later by many centuries than the
presumed date of the authorship could appear in a
work of so remote a time. " Impossible," says the
critic. The plain man has his answer ready. The
accounts which the critic holds to be contradictory
are supplementary. They only need to be skilfully
harmonized, and they are certainly capable of it —
though sometimes, one feels, this cannot be done with
out much juggling, which does not reflect much credit
on the clear-headedness or the literary skill of his
author. And difficulties of every sort can be readily
surmounted by the easy assumption that God can do
anything, could reveal to a man the definite facts of
the subsequent history of his people, or the manner of
his own death.
There is room for grave doubt whether such a simple
solution of difficulties and refusal to face them in the
same spirit of candor as one would bring to bear in
any other department of knowledge be really in the
true interests of religion ; but nothing is more certain
than that it is not in the interests of science, and that
1 With a curious inconsistency this point is not always pressed,
though it is maintained with iron consistency by a few.
^ E. g., Dan. Cf. Gen. xiv. 14 ; Judges xviii. 29.
8 E.g., the Canaanite was then inthe land (Gen. xii. 6).
* These are the kings that reign in the land of Edom before there
reigned any king over the children qf Israel (Gen. xxxvi. 31). There
hath not arisen a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses (Deut.
xxxiv. 10). This verse obviously implies a succession of prophets.

THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 83
it is not consistent with those principles by which our
knowledge of the material world has advanced. But
the point meantime is that the plain man's condem
nation of the critic's conclusion is not consistent with
the principles which he himself has adopted. He
condemns the critic for failing to see the unity, the
coherence, the compatibility in the facts which he
sees or imagines he sees ; he cannot therefore object
to the critic's condemnation of his own unity as arti
ficial and not natural, as superimposed on the facts,
not revealed in and through them. The plain man
makes his reason the ultimate judge: he judges,
krinei, that his assumption of the authorship, sup
ported it may be by tradition, is possible, i. e. does
not clash with his view of the world. The critic
finds that that assumption does collide with his view
of it, and he therefore rejects it. The plain man
might reply that if the critic had a truer, more
adequate view of God and His power, he would see
no difficulty. But the critic might reply that his
view of God rests on revelation, no less than that
of his opponent, and, he would probably add, does it
more justice. But whatever be their respective views
of God which appear to condition their conflicting
opinions or conclusions, both are critics ; both appeal
to the logic of the situation ; both see in their opin
ions a harmonious relation of facts.
Or again, take the question of the authorship of the
last twenty-seven chapters of the book known as the
prophecy of Isaiah. We shall tacitly assume that
the plain man is satisfied that his opinion could justify
itself at the bar of historical investigation, if only all

84 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
the facts were known. The critic points to a differ
ence of style between the earlier and the later chap
ters : his opponent answers that an author's style may
be notoriously uneven. The critic insists on the abso
lute incompatibility of the historical situations pre
supposed by the two sections of the prophecy: his
opponent admits not indeed the incompatibility, but at
least the difference ; he defends himself, however, by
assuming that the prophet of the earlier time was
transported in fancy into the later by the Spirit of
God. In other words, he is able to regard the com
plex and apparently contradictory facts or presuppo
sitions as a unity. He can relate them, at least to his
own satisfaction. He believes them, not on haphaz
ard, but on principle — on the same principle as that
on the basis of which the critic doubts them, namely,
that that which claims to be believed must be believ
able. Thus the. simple, artless belief of the ordinary
uncritical person is an implicit criticism, which he
could not only explicate, but, with a little skill and
practice, defend, if compelled by the attacks of criti
cism to do so. It is no use, then, to object to criti
cism. Every belief is a criticism — implicit, if the
belief be intuitive ; explicit and formal, if the belief
be reasoned.
It is hardly necessary further to emphasize this
position that we are all critics, and that therefore no
one can consistently object to criticism. But if fur
ther evidence were needed, practical corroboration of
it might be found in our preference for certain parts
of Scripture to certain others. In our daily reading,
unless we adopt the practice of reading mechani-

THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 85
cally through Scripture, we turn to some parts more
naturally and readily than to others, with the result
that certain parts of the Bible we know tolerably well
— fortunately, usually the parts which it is best worth
our while to know ; certain other parts, without the
knowledge of which we cannot intelligently enter into
the full counsel and purpose of God as that purpose
fulfilled itself in history, or understand the inner or
outer, the spiritual or historical, conditions of Israel,
the people whom He chose for a unique religious
task — these parts we either do not know so well or
do not know at all. Is not this choice of ours an
implicit criticism to the effect that not even all
Scripture, which is inspired of God, is equally profit
able for teaching, reproof, correction, or instruction ?
Our unexpressed but practical preference reveals the
latent critical instinct, which never is, and so long as
our experience is intelligible never can be, in abey
ance. This implicit criticism of the superior value
for edification of certain parts of Scripture to certain
others has received formal expression in a recommen
dation to be found in the Westminster " Directory for
the Publick Worship of God." After the statement,
" It is requisite that all the canonical books be read
over in order, that the people may be better ac
quainted with the whole body of the Scriptures,"
occurs the passage, " We commend also the more
frequent reading of such Scriptures as he that readeth
shall think best for edification of his hearers, as the
Book of Psalms, and such like." Here is conceded
the right of criticism within the sphere of edification ;
but that right cannot be limited by this sphere. It

86 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
will and must assert itself within every sphere that is
to be brought within the unity of human knowledge
or experience.
The criticism which is latent in all informal belief
becomes formally necessary (i) when the incident
with which we are dealing conflicts with probability,
or (ii) when it is represented by different sources in
different ways. As an illustration of the former in
profane literature, take Thucydides' critical estimate
of the statements of Homer, which he regards as at
least partly historical. In discussing the size of
Agamemnon's armament, he takes occasion to com
ment on the characteristic tendency of Homer to exag
gerate the greatness of the past. The numbers are too
high ; for poets in their songs " embellish and exag
gerate," ! and for this reason he two or three times
takes leave to doubt the value of the evidence fur
nished by the poetry of Homer. Here is the critical
instinct of the later historian, trained in the philos
ophy of the schools, playing on the glow and warmth
of the earlier poet.
The impulse to criticism, as we have said, at once
begins to assert itself, as soon as an incident conflicts
with our rightly or wrongly founded notions of proba
bility. As a Biblical illustration, take the keenly dis
cussed verses with which the Gospel of St. Mark
closes. No critical student can read these verses
without being struck by them, that is, without experi
encing the impulse to criticise them — in other words,
without asking himself how they are to be satisfac
torily reconciled with the general scope of the Gos-
1 Cf. i. 9; i. 10; i. 21.

THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 87
pel. He will see traces of what will strike him at
first as an undue emphasis on externals, and of
what has been called " the incipient formalism of
a later generation" — Re that believeth and is bap
tized shall be saved, but he that disbelieveth shall be
condemned — which he may find it hard to recon
cile with the well-supported tradition that the Gos
pel is early. If any one will take the trouble to
read anything intelligently, that is, letting his mind
go with it, he will find that he has simply been apply
ing his mind to it in a critical spirit from first to last.
Further, we said that criticism becomes formally
necessary when an incident is represented by differ
ent sources in different ways. Take, for example, the
varying! accounts presented in Samuel and Chron
icles, of David's relations with Araunah or Oman.
In 2 Sam. xxiv. 21 David pays him fifty shekels of
.silver; in 1 Chr. xxi. 25 he gives him six hundred
shekels of gold. Such divergences are characteristic
of Chronicles. Now it is not possible for us to accept
both these statements as they stand. If we assume
that they are both correct, then we have to exert
ourselves in the usually rather profitless task of find
ing a higher harmony. But we may have reasons for
believing that one of them represents the fact more
truly than the other ; and this position we shall have
the less hesitation in adopting, if we can satisfactorily
account, as we not seldom can, for the divergence.
But one thing we cannot do : we cannot take both
these statements into our mind, at the same time, as
1 Reconciliations are offered by conservative scholars ; cf . Sir Robert
Anderson, "The Bible aud Modern Criticism," p. 161.

88 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
they are. The nature of mind, the necessity for uni
fying our knowledge, will not allow us. To attempt
to believe two statements wbich seem to conflict and
whose divergence we cannot explain, would not be
faith, but credulity. What are the attempts to har
monize the Gospels but a confession that the narra
tives, as we have them, present difficulties, which
must somehow or other be met and surmounted, if
possible ? and what is this but criticism ?
Thus Bible students, indeed all students, conserva
tive and radical alike, may be divided into two classes:
not those who receive truth on evidence and those
who receive it on faith, not critics and non-critics —
for, as we have tried to show, we are and must be all
critics — but those whose criticism is capricious, il
logical, unmethodical, and those whose criticism is
scientific. We cannot dispense with criticism; it
becomes us, therefore, to see that our criticism be of
the right sort, regulated by the scientific spirit, not
inspired by party spirit or supporting party ends, but
animated by a sincere desire to know the truth, how
ever strange and unwelcome that truth may be, and
by the willingness to work and wait patiently for it.
At the outset it is well to take to heart the caution
of the late Professor A. B. Davidson.! " The conclu
sions of criticism," he says, " attain to nothing more
than a greater or less probability, though the proba
bility may be such as entirely to satisfy the mind."
Whether, indeed, conclusions will ever be attained so
probable as to satisfy every mind, to convince those
1 Quoted by Kirkpatrick, " Divine Library of the Old Testament,"
p. 8.

THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 89
who are unwilling to be convinced, may well be
doubted. Strong as the evidence is in several depart
ments of Old Testament criticism, there are yet a few
scholars, though the number is steadily decreasing,
whom it has failed to convince.! But as probability,
however high, can never be certainty, even though it
may have the practical value of certainty, we must
always, though sincere to our own convictions, be
courteous and tender to the opinions of those who
honestly profess that criticism has failed to convince
them ; for its conclusions, as Davidson says, can only
be probable.
But if our conclusions are to attain their highest
probability, then our method must be sound. This
consideration leads us to the questions. What is the
function of criticism ? what are its conditions ? what
are the qualifications of the critic ? The basal condi
tion of all valuable criticism is that we know what
our author said, not what careless copyists or later
editors represented him as saying, nor what transla
tions executed hundreds of years after the original, or
even immediately after it, suggest that he said. This
implies obviously, to begin with, not only an acquaint
ance, but an intimate and discriminating acquaintance,
with the author's language. Without that, it will not
indeed be impossible, but it will be hard, to apprehend
1 E. g. Principal Cave : " May I add, with all modesty, and yet with
aU firmness, that all that has been written of serious importance upon
these several points 1 think I know ¦? And, knowing, I dare confidently
to assert that the Development Theory of the authorship of the Penta
teuch is non-proven" ("Battle of the Standpoints," p. 57). So, Dr.
Behrends : " Professor Green appears to me to have fully answered
President Harper" ("The Old 'Testament under Fire," p. 17).

90 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
the finer shades of his thought and feeling. He speaks
to us in his oiun language, and we must learn it.
But we must know what it is that he says ; in more
technical language we must fix the text, and that is
not nearly so easy a matter as it looks, or as the
beauty, clearness, and continuity of the printed page
would suggest. For most of us, what we find on the
printed page will, of course, be practically final ; and it
always represents with more than tolerable adequacy
the actual words that came from the author's pen. But
it has to be remembered that the oldest Hebrew manu
script of the Old Testament is not a thousand years
old,! and therefore, roughly speaking, two thousand
years distant from the oldest parts of the book which
it claims to represent. What may not have happened
to the text in the course of that time ? In point
of fact, we have good reason to believe that, for a
very long time, nothing serious did happen to the
Hebrew text ; for a conservative instinct of unusual
strength was in operation, helping to rally men round
the Book, when they could no longer rally round the
Temple. Still, the possibilities are there ; and for the
earlier period these possibilities become probabilities,
nay certainties, as is attested by the different Hebrew
readings that often lie behind the Septuagint or Greek
text, and even by variant readings in the Hebrew text
itself, and in the margin.^
1 A Hebrew papyrus of twenty-four lines, however, containing the
decalogue and the Shema' (Deut. vi. 4 f.), and supposed to date from the
second century of the Christian era, has recently been found in Egypt.
2 Cf., e.g., the parallels iu Ps. xviii. and 2 Sam. xxii. The " Qeri "
and " Kethibh " are enough to indicate that the original text was not
held to be beyond dispute. Mistakes were also caused in manuscripts by
the successive changes through which the Hebrew alphabet passed.

THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 91
That being so, we must then have recourse to some
other early witness for the text ; and for this purpose we
resort to translations, — ancient translations, of course,
for modiern translations prepared on the basis of the
printed text, or of necessarily late manuscripts, can
be at best no more reliable than the text on which
they are based. In the case of the Old Testament,
the translations with which we have chiefly to reckon
in this connection are the Latin, the Syriac, the Ara
maic translations or paraphrases, known as the Tar
gums, and, above all, the Greek, which witnesses to a
text of the third or second century B. c, but only im
perfectly ; for the literary and historical causes which
contributed to the corruption of the Hebrew text con
tributed in different ways, and with possibly equal
force, to the corruption of the translations. These
translations would naturally in their turn be subject
to revision on the basis of a later and presumably
less reliable copy of the original text ; and thus the
distinctive features of the original translation would
disappear in the forced conformity to the standard
Hebrew. Even here the mischief does not end. Not
only does the later form of the Hebrew text injuri
ously affect the independent witness of the earlier
translations, but the translations affect one another.
The Greek version early attained such a widespread
recognition that it affected more or less seriously the
Latin and Syriac translations.
How, then, are we to establish our text in the
absence alike of a contemporary original, or even of a
translation which reliably reflects it ? It is no doubt
possible to exaggerate the divergence of later manu-

92 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
scripts from the autographs, and of translations from
the original ; ! but, after all, it is the task of scholar
ship to reconstruct the original text with the best aids
at its command. And no one has any right to object
to that as finical who rejoices in being able to read
the Bible in his own tongue ; for, had it not been for
scholarship, that would have been impossible. The
time has not yet come for a thorough reconstruction
of the text. Knowledge of the ancient versions is
steadily growing. But not till a highly probable text
of the Greek, Latin, and Syriac translations is, we
need not say discovered, but reconstructed, shall we
be in a position to attempt a radical reconstruction of
the Hebrew text.^ First, then, we must find, if pos
sible, the very words our author wrote, recognizing
that this process is not an easy one, but demands a
profound and extensive acquaintance with ancient
languages, and no little skill in the marshalling of
evidence and the gauging of probabilities.
Assuming, then, that we are at last in possession of
the words, whether as the result of personal investi-
1 " If comparative trivialities, such as changes of order, the inser
tion or omission of the article with proper names, and the like, are set
aside, the words, in our opinion, still subject to doubt can hardly amount
to more than a thousandth part of the whole New Testament." West
cott and Hort's " New Testament in the Original Greek," p. 565.
2 For a discussion of the question of the reconstruction of the text,
cf. Kittel, " Ueber die Notwendigkeit und Moglichkeit einer neuen
Ausgabe der hebraischen Bibel." H. A. Redpath, who justly claims
" an unrivalled experience of what the Septuagint is capable of,"
thinks very highly not only of that version, but also of the unpointed
Hebrew text. " American Journal of Theology," January, 1903,
p. 13. The laws of Hebrew metre will also have to be better under
stood, before the text of the poetical books can be reconstructed with
any confidence.

THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM

93

gation or whether we accept them on the testimony of
others whom we believe to be competent experts, what
will be our next step ? It will be to discover what
those words mean, in their isolation and in their con
nection. And this means much more than that we
make a free use of the lexicon. We have no real
knowledge of the meaning of the word dikaiosune, for
example, when we consult the lexicon, and find the
correct, but lifeless, explanation : " Justice ; in Septua
gint and New Testament, righteousness." We wish to
know what the word meant in earliest times, the simple
conception which satisfied men whose moral percep
tions were rudimentary ; even its pre-moral concep
tion, if it have one. We wish to see how the word
deepened with the deepening experience and reflection
of the Greek nation ; what it gained, and how it
changed, when it was transplanted from its native soil
to the soil of ancient Hebrew. To understand that, we
must know what gedaqah meant ; we must follow the
word from its Semitic origin through its Old Testament
developments into the New Testament, see how it was
affected by the completed revelation of Jesus Christ,
and by the Pauline formulation of that revelation.
We do not strictly know what any word means till
we similarly trace it on its way through the history,
watching how it was formed by the conceptions of
the people, and how in turn it helped to form those
conceptions. This process, in the case of such a language as
Hebrew, is linguistic as well as historical ; that is, it
demands not only a deliberate relation of the word to
its life in the minds of the people, but a reference to

94 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
the cognate languages, which are occasionally the only
sources from which we may light up obscurities.
Thus we need lexicon and concordance, knowledge of
the history and of the cognate languages, aud sym
pathy with the spirit which governed the historical
development. This work is laborious, but fruitful.
A little hard study at a few words of a verse in the
spirit and in the manner which has been described
will open the verse up, or lay it out, as the Germans
say (auslegen') ; indeed our word expound means the
very same thing. The verse remains closed to those
who refuse to take any trouble of this kind. In this
way we shall have a glimpse into its depth, though it
does not follow that, because we see the bottom, we
can reach it. We shall thus get into the heart of it,
as we never can through even the best translation.
We shall become expositors in the true sense, men
who can lay Scripture out, disengage it from the form
which protects, hides, and reveals it, show what it
means, and that will be at bottom what God means
— His purpose or message.
This, however, though indispensable, is not yet criti
cism. It is only the basis, yet the only basis, on which
a sound criticism can be raised. True criticism must
be sympathetic in spirit and constructive in aim. It
is very important to emphasize the constructive aim
of all true criticism at a time in which its aim must
seem to many to be the very reverse. The object of
all criticism is to put us in possession of an author's
mind and spirit, to place us on his standpoint and
enable us to survey the world with his eyes. The
specific object of Biblical criticism is to put us in

THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 95
possession of the mind and spirit of the men who
wrote the Bible, to help us to understand the history
in which they took part, and which they and their
books helped to mould, and to make plain the divine
purpose which unfolded itself in the history. Much
criticism does not look like this. Much of it may
even bear a close resemblance to destructive work, for
it may have to clash with venerable opinions and
prejudices. But this work, though not directly con
structive, is indirectly so ; for it is the clearing away
of obstructions. All criticism should ultimately edify,
build up. It should remeraber that it is not an end
in itself, but should serve the end of elucidating
revelation. The critic's work is to keep himself in
the background, and to let his author speak for him
self. When the critic's work stands between the
reader and the text, he has failed. His task is just to
leave us with the text with which he began, but puri
fied, radiant, transfigured, not by shedding his light
upon it, but by letting it shine in its oivn light. To
do that, he must have a spirit in perfect, if only tem
porary, sympathy with the author whora he is ex
pounding. No justice can be done to any author by a
critic who fails to fulfil this initial condition ; but the
grossest injustice is done to the Biblical authors by
such a critic, because their purpose is so earnest, and
they speak the word of One that is higher than they.
Criticism is not fault-finding. It is construction,
— not creative, but interpretative construction. It is
judgment ; and no true judgment is possible unless
one springing frora and instinct with sympathy. We
do not mean that to interpret an author or artist fairly

96 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
you must believe what he believes. If that which he
has constructed — be it statue, painting, or poem —
be faulty in conception or expression, then part of the
critic's task will be to point out the defect, and im
plicitly or even explicitly he may suggest lines for a
remedy. But that is only part of the critic's task.
The condition of success in the execution of this part
is that he have so lived himself into the mind of his
author that he sees wh}' he made the mistake he made ;
why, from his standpoint, the mistake was natural ;
and how all that he does is justified frora his point of
view. Until we realize the naturalness of our author ;
until we almost feel that we in his place would have
said exactly the same ; until, that is, we have not only
mastered his thoughts, but lived thera over again, and
felt the thrill with which they commended themselves
to him as true — we are not in a position to interpret
him on the inner side. We must first have a sym
pathetic appreciation of that which we would expound
to others or even to ourselves ; for we have not inter
preted it even to ourselves unless and until we have
entered into it in the way described. Professor
Bradley used to say to his students in the University
of Glasgow — and it is a very forcible expression of
the idea we are here trying to emphasize — that, in
reading Shakespeare (and we may extend the prin
ciple to all reading), what the characters say should
seem to us " natural, and almost inevitable." We
should feel that what they say is not only to be ex
pected, but that they could not help saying what they
said. Now nothing but the most minute and repeated
study of an author, nothing but the most rigorous

THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 97
exclusion from the mind of every disturbing subjective
influence, nothing but a sympathy so thorough as to
convert us for the time being into the author himself,
can produce in us that feeling of the inevitableness of
his work. These conditions can never indeed be per
fectly attained, but it should be our endeavor to
approximate to them ; and when we have taken tliis
trouble with any great author, we shall usually feel in
the mood for appreciation rather than censure.
All that has been urged is true in general — of the
necessity of a sympathetic knowledge of an author
whom we would criticise justly ; but it is doubly true
in its application to the writers of the Bible. For
these men, we believe, and have the most satisfactory
reasons for believing, were the inspired vehicles of a
revelation. The purpose with which they wrote was
their own, and yet not their own. It was their own ;
for they did what they did and wrote what they wrote
in the conscious possession of their powers. They
were not machines, but living men. And yet the
purpose was not their own : it was not they who spoke,
but God who spoke in them. Nothing is more obvious
than that the purpose which guided their work was
only part of a higher purpose, which used them as its
instruments at one time, but inspired no less their
predecessors aud successors. In other words, no
prophet stands alone. He is beset behind and before,
not only by God, but by a goodly company of other
God-inspired men. He has his place in an historical
development, which we may here more appropriately
regard as a religious development. Thus, in our criti
cism of the Biblical writers, everything will depend
7

98 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
upon our attitude to the divine purpose, which reveals
itself with most persuasive cogency in the history of
Israel. If we care nothing for that purpose, then we
are destitute of the very first qualification for forming
a just judgment about men to whom righteousness
was not only a passion, but the breath of their life.
As well expect a person ignorant of Hebrew to read
the Old Testament in the original, as one who cares
nothing for righteousness to understand the passion
that burned in the soul of an Amos.!
We must believe, then, in the purpose, in its
power to adapt the natural world, and the passions,
the tempers, the capacities, even the weaknesses of
men, to the end of the kingdom of God. If we do
not see this purpose, or do not believe in it, then we
shall have to study each author by himself, to regard
him as a product of nature ; and he and his work will
be an insoluble riddle, for naturalism will not explain
Israel any more than it will explain Christ. Not till
our heart beats in response to the message given him
by his God will that message receive from us ade
quate interpretation and comment. In all our criti
cism the head and the heart must never be very far
apart. Rightness of heart is not an absolute guaran
tee for rightness of judgment ; but it is an indispen
sable condition. Pectus facit theologum.
We shall see what is meant by insisting on the
necessity of sympathy as a fundamental condition of
1 Cf. Thomas a Kempis, "De Imit." "From oue Word are all
things, and all things utter that one. ... No man without that Word
understandeth or judgeth rightly" (I. iii. 2). "Each part of the
Scripture is to be read with the same Spirit wherewith it was written "
(I V. 1).

THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM

99

all true criticism, if we consider any of the difficulties
which present themselves in the words of Christ.
Take, for example, the famous logion —
Go not into the way of the Gentiles,
And into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not.
How would a shallow, unsympathetic criticism deal
with such a statement ? It would dispose of it sum
marily by pointing out that it directly contradicts the
entire spirit and to some extent even the form of
Christ's teaching, to say nothing of His conduct. Its
singular want of catholicity points, it would be said,
unmistakably to a Jewish source, which could see in
Jesus nothing but a patriot, and in His work nothing
but what was local and national.
A profounder criticism would set to work with
more caution. It would, in the first place, be struck
by tlie earnestness of the injunction, repeated in an
altered form as if for special emphasis. It would be
led by its apparent contradiction to the general tenor
of Christ's teaching to assume its probable authen
ticity. It would remember that Christ must have a
plan ; that His work must begin somewhere ; and in
the face of the prevalent antipathy to the foreigner,
that He would not be likely to prejudice His cause at
the outset by a measure which could rouse nothing
but opposition. It would feel that Christ would most
naturally secure the catholic end He had in view, by
inducing His followers to limit their earlier efforts to
their own countrymen ; the educative and expansive
power of the message might be trusted to do the rest
in time. But, above all, it would feel that this in-

IOO OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
junction of Christ practically implied that even His
previous teaching had been characterized by an im
plicit universalism. When He said, " Go not into the
way of the Gentiles," He must have been speaking to
men who had already gathered from His teaching that
it was their business to go beyond the borders of their
own people. Nothing but the most delicate sympathy
with the mind and method of Christ could keep us
from going astray in our criticism of such a passage.
Again, take Matthew Arnold's general attitude to
the revelation of the Old Testament. From his stand
point it would be no revelation, at least not a distinc
tive one. It would tell us nothing which we could
not learn with equal truth and power frora Greek
tragedy. " The word ' righteousness ' is the master-
word of the Old Testament." ! His statement is, in
a sense, correct; but it means much more than
Matthew Arnold means by it. He ignores the fact
that the Hebrew word for " righteousness " is not
seldom paralleled with the word for " grace " ^ and is
often coupled with it. In failing to accentuate the
grace rather than the righteousness, he has missed the
distinctive feature of Old Testament revelation. He
has shown with great impressiveness where Old Testa
ment religion was like other ethical religions ; he has
not shown where it was unlike them. In the words
of an English scholar, who adopts the juster view
which supplements the truth on which Arnold insists :
"The Bible is inspired because it is the record of
1 " Literature and Dogma,'' ch. i. 2.
"^ See some striking facts in Hatch's " Essays in BibHcal Greek,"
pp. 49-51.

THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM loi
the chief revelation of God to man. God revealed
Himself in creation, in conscience, and in reason ; so
that those who have never known the Bible have had
a revelation of Him. But He revealed Himself more
fully as a God of grace to the Jewish nation, in the
facts of their history and the teaching of their proph
ets ; and most fully of all to the Christian Church
in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ." ! It is the
fact that Scripture is the record of the revelation of
grace, of a God who, though He loves righteousness
and hates and punishes iniquity, yet delights in mercy,
and deals not with men according to their sins, but
loves to redeem — it is this that makes it greater than
the greatest of all other revelations, and gives it its
lonely pre-eminence as a factor in the moral education
of tlie human race.
Our recognition of the superintendence of God will
affect both our general and detailed criticism, but
within no sphere so profoundly as in that of the mir
aculous. This question will be more fully discussed
in Chapter IX., but a word or two here will not be
inappropriate to our present purpose. If God is a
free moral agent, and not only free, but gracious,
longing for the redemption of His fallen children,
it will not be surprising that He should adapt the
order of nature to the interests of His kingdom.
To a mind which believes in God as the God of order,
but does not understand that the physical order is
instinct with a moral purpose and subserves a moral
end, it must be a great satisfaction to persuade itself
that miracles do not happen. Such a dictum, how-
1 Lock, " Oxford House Papers," series 1, p. 105.

I02 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
ever, is more summary than convincing. Difficulties
are not fairly met by so simple a solution. " Miracles
do not happen : this is a miracle ; therefore this did
not happen." One who could persuade himself by so
easy a syllogism would do well to re-examine his use
of words, his conception of nature, and his interpre
tation of history. What is a miracle ? Do we know
enough of the principles on which the order of nature
depends to justify us in affirming that any particular
phenomenon is a breach of that order ? Granting
that we do, why should a breach be impossible, if
breach there be ? Is not this to shut God up within
the walls of the world which His own fingers framed ?
To do the Bible justice, we need not only scientific
method, but a Biblical conception of God. Or, to
return to the point from which we set out, our heart
must beat in sympathy with the purpose of God, as
revealed to and through and in His servants the
prophets., the psalmists, the legislators, the historians.
There is truth in Matthew Arnold's contention that
" the language of the Bible is literary, not scientific,
language ; " but when he goes on to describe it as
" language thrown out at an object of consciousness,
not fully grasped, which inspired emotion," ! is he not
doing less than justice to the formative power of the
Spirit of God within the prophets ? Their language
was not merely thrown out : did not the " object of
consciousness " which " inspired the emotion," also
give definiteness and expression, as well as direction,
to the emotion which it inspired ? Did not God re
veal His secret to His servants the prophets ?
1 " Literature and Dogma,'' ch. i. 4.

CHAPTER V
THE HISTORICAL METHOD — LOSSES AND GAINS
The historical method has been called the gift of
God to the present generation. That is true in the
seoBe that there never was a time when that method
was so fearlessly and consistently applied to all de
partments of Biblical study, or when the validity of
the method itself was so universally admitted as to
day. But it is not true in the sense that the method
was never known or used before. It is nature's own
method. Its principles are too obvious and natural to
have been wholly ignored in the past ; for one of its
fundamental postulates is that men meant what they
said. The principles, however, which to us seem so
obvious were for centuries obscured by ecclesiastical
tradition and by the misguided exegetical ingenuity
of both the Jewish and the Christian Church. But
God seldom left Himself without a witness to the
historical method. It was too patent and indispen
sable a principle of interpretation to escape the honest
eyes of a Luther or a Theodore.
Nearly four centuries ago the method was incident
ally defined by Luther in one of his commentaries in
language which sounds as if it had been written yes
terday. " To understand tbe prophets," he tells us,
" it is most necessary to know what were the contem-

104 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
porary Jewish interests, what was the state of con
temporary politics, . . . most of all, what was the form
of contemporary religion," etc. More than a millen
nium before Luther's time the same principle was
seen as clearly and applied as earnestly by that most
remarkable and sharp-sighted exegete, Theodore of
Mopsuestia.! It is amazing to find how, not only in
the broad principles, but also in many of his results,
he anticipated the findings of the most recent criti
cism. The 51st Psalm, for example, he interprets as
referring to " the people in Babylon, confessing tlieir
sins, and entreating for forgiveness and the cessation
of their banishment." .The 65th Psalm, again (" Praise
is meet for Thee, 0 God, in Zion "), he refers to "the
people in Babylon, yearning for the return." The
127th Psalm (" Except Jehovah build the house ") he
interpreted as mirroring the interruptions to the
building of the second temple after the return from
Babylon. So much for the Christian Church. But even the
early Jewish Church had some insight into the prin
ciple that literature is not wholly intelligible unless
in relation to the history of which it forms a part.
The 127th Psalm, which Theodore rightly saw to be
post-exilic, is referred by the early Jewish editors
1 Naturally neither Luther nor Theodore used the method as strictly
as we do to-day. Each was, as we should expect, in different ways
conditioned by the intellectual influences of his time. For certain
modifications of the above statement, as it affects Luther, cf. p. 184,
note. Again, it was Theodore's mechanical view of prophecy operat
ing iu the Psalms that enabled him to represent David as speaking in
the person of various individuals, and with reference to the later
historical situations which the language of many of the Psalms
seemed to him to imply.

THE HISTORICAL METHOD 105
(though not in the ordinary codices of the Septua
gint or Greek version) to Solomon, and doubtless
supposed to be connected with the building of the
first temple. The fact that this conjecture is al
most certainly wrong does not affect the argument.
They felt that the lyric was born out of a given situa
tion, and that only in relation to that situation is it
in the strictest sense intelligible. Indeed, what are
all the superscriptions in the Psalter but testiraony to
a certain historical sense, real, though often mis
guided, on the part of its early editors? Whether
the superscriptions are right or wrong, whether the
Psalms in the second book do or do not fit the vari
ous episodes in David's career to which the super
scriptions assign thera,! matters not for our present
purpose. They are, at any rate, a testimony to that
instinct for fact, which is so hard to slay, and an
acknowledgment of the vital and illuminating signifi
cance of history. The lyric may wing its way sky
ward, but it rises from the ground. The more we
know of the singer, of his home, of his church, of his
sorrows, of his hopes, the more we shall be able to
feel as he felt, and to live every tremor of his emotion
over again.
It is in line with this that so much of the ground of
the Bible is covered by history. In one sense it is all
history, if not of event, at least of spiritual fact. But
what we have to notice is that more than half the Old
Testament and more than half the New is confessedly
^ See Dr. MacLaren's expositions in his " Life of David as reflected
in his Psalms ; " also " The Psalms of David and the Higher Criticism,"
by Rev. Alexander Wright.

io6 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
history, in the ordinary sense of the word. Consider
the significance of this. This would not be so if our
religion were a mystical religion. Emotion, inner
experience, would be enough. But to the Christian
religion facts are indispensable. The Christian emo
tions can only be created and sustained by the Chris
tian facts. The nature of God was revealed from
age to age largely through historic fact. Jehovah did
great things for His people, whereof they were glad.
And the present arrangement and composition of our
Bibles is an everlasting testimony to the importance
of historic fact, and to the impossibility of believing
— in the Christian sense of that word — without re
lation to the facts through which the revelation came.
The house of faith must be built upon the rock of
fact. From the earliest times, then, history has been
in some measure respected, and felt to be in some
sense indispensable to religion ; and even in ages
when allegorical interpretation held the field, tliere
were witnesses, though for the most part very few
and feeble, to the historical method — scholars whose
efforts were slowly bringing the world back to trutli,
the truth as it is in history.
The historical method is presupposed in most mod
ern interpretations of Biblical literature, but it is sel
dom that one meets with a definition of that method.
This is unfortunate, because the attempt to define its
essence would give us a profounder insight into its
fairness and inevitableness, and would probably con
vince us that what we need is not less of that method,
but more. Now perhaps the historical method might
be most simply defined as follows : it is the method

THE HISTORICAL METHOD 107
which implies that every literary production 'is also ati
historical pli€nomcnon, and a corollary of this is that
its message, if it have one, is primarily relative to its
original historical environment. The literary product
— be it poem, or prayer, or biography, or history, or
letter, or theological discussion — does not come from
anyuhcre : it comes from somcwJicre. It is a literary
fact, but it is no less an historical fact. It has an his
torical context : it is related to other facts and to the
mind of the man who made it an historical fact. Till
we know something of the man and something of the
other facts, we cannot pretend fully to know this fact ;
and, if we know something of the man and of the other
facts, then we can, not indeed fully, but at any rate
partiaUy, explain tliis fact. Thus the historical
method, by emphasizing the necessity for examining
the mind and the time out of which a literary prod
uct came, has done something, though it cannot do
everything, to account for that phenomenon.
Now both in the ancient and the modern world
this method has had its enemies. Obvious as it now
seems to be, it has had to fight for its life. The alleg-
orists would none of it. The plain sense often seemed
too paltry to be divine. " The letter killeth," it was
aigued, "but the Spirit giveth life." At a certain
stage in the development of Biblical interpretation,
it is tme that the allegorical method served a useful
purpose ; but the gain was dearly bought. The rele
vance of a Biblical message to its original situation
was forgotten. A subtler and worthier sense was
sought which completely evaporated the concrete his
torical facts, in which the true sense lay, and, in the

io8 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
nature of the case, must lie. Interpretation was aban
doned to caprice ; and what should have been a science
became an absurdity and a confusion. Naturally all
the books of the Bible suffered ; some, however, more
than others. Such a book as the Song of Songs
offered boundless scope to the caprice of the alle-
gorist or the mystic, who contrived to avoid the ob
vious meaning with a cunning which was almost as
incredible as it was ingenious. In the Song the two
rows of teeth were transformed into priests and Le
vites, King Solomon's chariot of the wood of Leb
anon becomes the chariot of the humanity which the
Son of God made for Himself ; while " Thou art all
fair, my love, there is no spot in thee," is adduced
to support the immaculate conception of the Virgin
Mary. This type of exegesis is dying, and will probably soon
be dead ; but there is another type, not uncommon to
day, which tends to depreciate the importance of his
torical considerations, by emphasizing what is called
the timeless element in the Bible. Such psalms, it
is contended, as. the 23d, 103d, 121st, 145th, are in
telligible to the plain man on the face of them. The
fool cannot err therein : they speak home to his heart.
That is only half true. It would be a simple matter
to show that in these and in all such cases the gain
derived from a more intimate knowledge of Oriental
life, history, and religion is very great, has a direct
influence even on our religious appreciation of the
psalra and enhances its power to move us. The 23d
Psalm reveals its deepest secret only to the man who
knows something of the laws of Arab hospitality.

THE HISTORICAL METHOD 109
Even in so universally applicable a lyric as the 103d
Psalm there are distinctively Hebrew notes struck,
which have no music for the uninitiated. Who has
not at times felt the remoteness of the verse, " He
made known his ways unto Moses " ? Yet, to one
who knows the allusion, it is one of the most power
ful verses in the psalm. It is not of course main
tained that there is no timeless element in the Psalms,
but that that element is so inextricably woven to
gether with elements of time, that we must learn all
we can about the one before we can have any ade
quate idea of the other ; and this is still more true
of prophecy. In other words, whatever plea may be
made for the timeless element, the fact remains that
every literary production is an historical phenomenon,
and was written primarily not for us. The stones
at Gilgal were to be a memorial unto the children of
Israel forever. The timeless is for us, but we have
to extricate it from the temporal, in which it came
to them. THE LOSSES OF CRITICISM
Every great movement, be it social, intellectual, or
spiritual, costs ; and the price has often to be paid in
sorrow and tears. It was so when Christ came. It
was so at the Reformation. It is so to-day. It is
with deep pain that men see their long-cherished
beliefs challenged, especially when those beliefs gather
round the things which are dearest to their hearts ;
and even when, after prayerful and continued study,
they may see themselves constrained to alter or mod
ify their conceptions, they usually do so only with

IIO OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
much pain and after many a struggle. The way of
transition is hard ; and the leaders of religious and
theological thought who have embraced the new
movement cannot deal too tenderly with those whose
intellects or consciences have been perplexed. It is
quite certain that the gains of the critical movement
have not been unaccompanied by loss — in some
directions, by serious loss.
But it has to be noted (a) that the loss is in all
probability only temporary, and such as is inevitable
in the transition period. The feeling of insecurity,
for example, in moving about Scripture, which the
first acquaintance with criticism almost inevitably
brings, gradually disappears as its methods are better
understood, (b) The loss is itself often only a gain
in disguise, or at least is preparatory to a gain.
The loss, for example, of the sense of the external
authority of Scripture is a gain, if it leads to a sense
of its inherent authority. The latter could not be
shaken by any amount of criticism, (c) It is not so
much the actual results of criticism that produce the
loss — for we see good men in all the churches who
believe in those results, and yet suffer no loss —
rather it is the imperfect apprehension or the mis
understanding of those results. No doubt this does
not apply to the weightier opponents of the critical
movement, but it does seem to apply to the rank and
file, whose opportunities for informing themselves at
first hand are more limited. Partial and ill-informed
opinions about the results of criticism, as some one
has lately said, cannot but produce evil results of
a formidable kind in the near future. If this be

THE LOSSES OF CRITICISM iii
true — and it will hardly be denied — it becomes the
duty of every one who cares for the welfare of the
Church to see that no crude, offensive, or purely
hypothetical presentation of the facts be placed before
those who need all the positive and helpful truth they
can get. It becomes us also to examine what those
losses are which have to be deplored in order that, if
possible, they may be counteracted by a wise, sane,
and edifying presentation of assured truth.
(i) First may be mentioned the general unsettle-
ment that has been produced by the vague knowledge
that a process is going on in the religious world,
which is not likely to leave things as they were.
There is a large number in every community whose
hold upon moral truth is never very firm. They
believe the Bible to be in some sense, if not the only,
at any rate the ultimate, sanction of morality ; and
if its authority is depreciated, the authority of moral
ity itself suffers in the depreciation. A single proved
discrepancy — say, Jehovah moving David in one book
to number the people, and Satan moving him in
another — would, to certain minds, raise a doubt —
which some would harbor willingly, others with mis
giving and pain — of the authority and divinity of
Scripture. This, it is sad to confess, is one of the
indirect, but tragically real, results of the critical move
ment. If Scripture forfeits its authority over us, some
would argue, the morality which depends upon it is
also powerless to bind us, and we are free. Not only
lax thinking, but loose living, may and do easily result
from the vague notion that criticism has attacked,
refuted, and destroyed the Bible.

X

112 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
This is a real situation, and has to be met some
how. It would be necessary to point out, to one who
thus reasoned, the assumptions and superficialities of
this too easy logic. What gives him the right, for
exaraple, to demand that the Bible, as a divine book,
shall contain no discrepancy ? That is his demand
upon the book, but the book nowhere makes that
claim for itself. Again, what gives him the right to
magnify the importance of some slight and relatively
unimportant discrepancy ? He will have to learn not
only the purpose, but the perspective, of the Bible.
For the maintenance of his relation to God certain
facts are of the highest importance, certain others are
for this purpose of little or no importance. Again,
does he in his heart of hearts really believe that the
difficulty which has confronted him, or even many
difficulties of the same kind, really invalidate the ele
ments in the book which appeal to his heart and con
science ? or is the wish the father to the thought ?
Mr. Gladstone spoke truly when he said that negation
was as much moral as intellectual ; and though many
are undoubtedly perplexed by the difficulties of Scrip
ture, the heart is not where it should be when those
difficulties are urged as a reason for repudiating its
authoritative truth. Further, such a person as we are
considering would have to be reminded, or taught, as
the case might be, that, though the sanctions of moral
ity are enormously reinforced by the teaching of the
Bible, they were not created by that teaching. They
lie deep down in the nature of man and in the con
stitution of human society. There was a morality
before there was a Bible ; thoae who are without law

THE LOSSES OF CRITICISM 113
do by nature the things of the law. The conscience
of man is God's witness ; and no flimsy repudiation
of a book can deliver hira from that insistent sense of
moral obligation which he carries about him wherever
he goes, until he wantonly destroys it. Such an
answer might be given to such a man ; but the fact
remains that his attitude is encouraged, though far
frora justified, by the seemingly unsettling tendencies
of contemporary criticism ; and this is surely both a
danger and a loss.
(ii) But there is another loss, which seems to be
involved in the critical movement ; and this time we
are thinking, not of the man who is eager to cast off
all authority, but of the man who is willing to cling
to as much of Scripture as he honestly can. He
would not say that there is no Bible left; but he
would say that the Bible which is left is not the Bible
which he once had. If all that the critics say is true,
not only can he no longer appeal to his favorite proof
texts in theological argument with the old confidence
— that might be no great matter — but he finds it
not so easy as it once was to sustain his devotional
life upon it. He reads all the time with an uneasy
consciousness that much of this has been questioned,
and in certain sections where he is more familiar with
the discussions, or at least the problems, the rehgious
truth is blurred by the memory of the suspicions or
difficulties created by those discussions. There can
be no doubt that this is a very grave and serious peril,
and tends, though it need no more than tend, to affect
the devotional life alike of the critic and of the man
who is versed in the problems only at second hand.

114 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
A popular preacher who is abreast of the critical
movement tells us that he keeps two Bibles in com
mon use : one for purposes of the study, filled with
annotations and references that issue from his critical
work ; and the other destitute of annotation or refer
ence or any such thing — this he uses for purposes of
devotion. Of course no man has two minds. Every
man is bound to carry with hira into his devotions the
mind which he brings frora his study ; but he need
not carry the critical temper. In the hour of devotion
he approaches his Bible, not to examine, but to meet
with God and learn of Him. Criticism necessarily
concerns itself largely with the letter, whereas it is
the spirit that giveth life. Further, it is occasionally
inclined to exaggerate the importance of questions,
for example, of date, authorship, etc., which, from the
strictly religious standpoint, are quite subordinate.
The true perspective of the Bible, which has been
temporarily disturbed by the minutiae of criticism, is
restored in the calm of the devotional hour; and
though a man cannot create two minds for himself by
using two Bibles, still, if by this device or by any other
he is able to keep away the atmosphere of storm and
stress from the hours, all too few, of his strictly de
votional life, he is bound, by all that he owes his higher
nature, to do so.
(iii) The increased difficulty, whether real or imag
inary, of using the Bible as a devotional book has often
been supposed to bring with it a decay in evangelical
fervor, and to lead to a declining interest in the
evangelization of the world. Now it is true that these
effects have been observed in some of those who be-

THE LOSSES OF CRITICISM 115
lieve in the newer raovement ; but it is equally true
that they have been conspicuously absent in others.
And this raises the question, how far these effects are
due to the movement itself, and how far to the idio
syncrasies of individuals or to their imperfect appre
hension of the spirit of the movement. Just as rich,
warm piety is not the possession of every nominal ad
herent of the common view, so neither does it charac
terize every nominal adherent of the critical view ; but
that no more invalidates the one position than it does
the other. It is notoriously true that youug men who
had even shown an active interest in church life and
work, sometimes become, at least temporarily, indif
ferent when they first came under the influence of
another presentation of religious truth. But that
only proves what a dangerous thing a little knowl
edge is, and with what a high sense of responsibility
those who address such an audience, whether by
writing or speech, should use their opportunities.
Nothing is easier for a young man than to carry
away a mistaken impression of a view of truth dif
fering from that in which he has been trained, and
which seems to appeal to certain iconoclastic tenden
cies that lie deep in youth. Some will welcome it
because it is new ; others will fear it for the same
reason. Both will probably misunderstand it. The
welcome and the fear will be alike superficial.
Two words of counsel will here perhaps not be out
of place, (a) The young man must be warned against
the temptation to estimate the spirit of the movement,
from the first impression it makes upon hira. If he
thinks that it emancipates him from intellectual con-

ii6 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
vention, he must learn that it does not emancipate
him from from spiritual law. If he thinks that it is
destructive, and therefore welcomes it with a thrill of
relief, let him wait till he sees how constructive it is
before he attempts to estimate it. If he feels that it
is disintegrating his spiritual life, or diminishing his
religious activities, then he may be sure that he has
misunderstood it ; and he also needs seriously to ex
amine his moral and spiritual condition, to see whether
his affections are really set upon the things that are
honorable and eternal.!
(b) Again, the preacher has to remember that while
he may create for his hearers a new intellectual at
mosphere, it is of infinitely more importance that he
inspire thera with a sense of the imperial authority
of moral and spiritual obligation. Atmosphere is a
subtle thing, and will come rather from suggestion
than discussion. In the public interpretation and ex
position of the Bible, protests against existing views
are usually ^ offensive, and seldom edifying. It is an
1 Some good remarks on the topic of authority will be found in
G. A. Coe's "Religion of a Mature Mind," pp. 75-82, 94-107.
^ Of course, no universal law can be laid down on such a matter.
Something wiU depend on the local situation. While it is true that the
pulpit does not exist for the discussion of criticism, it is the preacher's
duty, with the help of the Spirit, to lead men into the truth ; and inci
dentally this may, on occasion, involve a reference to, or even discus
sion of, contemporary influences, which are disturbing the minds or
perplexing the faith of his audience. To deal with these successfully,
however, a preacher has to qualify himself by hard work so that he may
thoroughly, and on its inner side, understand the thing he seeks to
expound ; and again, he has to remember that his work is not done
when he has presented literary or historical conclusions. He must
show how these contribute to positive religious truth, and he must
emphasize this truth with the earnestness of a man who loves the souls
of men. The young man and his difSculties are not the only objects

THE LOSSES OF CRITICISM 117
offence, as well as an impropriety, to speak of " Sec
ond Isaiah," or formally to question thc authorship of a
psalm ascribed to David, before a mixed congregation
assembled to worship God and to listen to words of
eternal life. To whatever historical stage of the reve
lation the psalra or the prophecy belongs, it has a
positive religious message. It had at first, and it has
now ; and that is the only thing of real importance to
the Church. Doubtless the message will gain in clear
ness, power, and living interest and relevance when
seen against its original historic background. The
more history the preacher knows, the more historical
imagination he possesses, the raore he can make the
ancient world live again, and compel his hearers to
be, for the moment, " citizens of the past," the better
it will be both for his message and his people. But
he can do all this without going out of his way to in
sult conventional belief. Men may forget the sermon,
but they will not forget the shock given thera by his
incidental remark. And the shock may lead to dan
ger as well as pain ; it may shake for sorae the author
ity of the Bible. Without any offensive reference to a
Second Isaiah, which, besides having little meaning,
edifies no one, and provokes and confuses many, he
may quietly assume the exile as his standpoint if he is
preaching frora the latter part of Isaiah, and if he be
lieves that prophecy to be exilic. The people will feel
the relevance, the power, the marvel of his message
to consider. Old men and little children have also their place and
their rights within the church ; and the sight of them should sober the
wise preacher into a proper perspective of his truth. But much teach
ing which would not be appropriate in church, might be possible in
the Bible class, where the audieuce is more homogeneous.

1x8 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
— message of hope in an environment of despair ; and
thus, little by little, their intellectual atmosphere will
be transformed. Scarcely knowing how or why,
they will come to feel that prophecy kept pace with
history, that God never mocked His people with an
irrelevant word, but always sent His message to suit
their changing needs.!
With these reservations, then, it may be conceded
that some, especially some young men, have suffered
through the critical movement, whether through an
unwise and thoughtless presentation of it, or through
their own imperfect apprehension of it. But, if facts
prove anything, it may be easily shown that, so far
frora criticism involving the decay of the spiritual life,
it is compatible with the noblest evangelical earnest
ness. In the mouth of many distinguished witnesses
this thing could be established. Robertson Smith con
fessed his faith in these memorable words : ^ " The
supreme truths which speak to every believing heart,
the way of salvation which is the same in all ages, the
clear voice of God's love so tender and personal and
simple that a child can understand it — these are
things which must abide with us and prove them
selves mighty frora age to age apart frora all scientific
study." Still more explicit is the testimony of Pro
fessor George Adam Smith. " From the bottom of
my heart I believe in the Bible as the revelation of
God to sinful man. . . . The history of the divine
1 A rare iUustration of the expository method which offends none
and edifies all will be found in Professor Jordans' " Prophetic Ideas
and Ideals ; " for his treatment of this part of Isaiah, cf . pp. 223-
273. ^ " Old Testament in the Jewish Church," p. 20.

THE LOSSES OF CRITICISM 119
passion, predicted in the prophets, and fulfilled in
Jesus, is what gives the Scriptures their perennial
and their divine value. . . . They and they alone of
all books that had ever appeared in the world, told
the story of this warfaring and suffering life of God,
that in heaven above, from all eternity, and in the
person of Jesus Christ, and amidst our temptations,
bore our sicknesses, carried our sorrows, and at last,
as St. Peter said, in His own body bore our sins upon
the tree." ! From America the testimony is the same.
" I have given ten years," says Dr. Batten,^ " to the
study of the Old Testament ; I have read many criti
cal works ; I have investigated many problems my
self ; I may have earned the — to many — odious title
of higher critic, but I have never yet seen any reason
to doubt that in the many voices which are heard
throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, all the way from
Genesis to Malachi, it was possible to hear the voice
of the Holy Spirit ; or, I should rather say, it was im
possible not to hear it." Professor Karl Budde, now
of Marburg, one of the greatest Old Testament schol
ars of Germany, remarked in a letter to Professor
G, A. Smith that his belief in " a genuine revelation
of God in the Old Testament remains rockfast."^
Now it may be difficult for the opponents of criticism
to believe this, or to understand how the seemingly
bold methods of criticism, to say nothing of its results,
can be reconciled with a humble faith in it as a divine
1 At the General Assembly of the United Free Church of Scotland
on 23d May, 1902 (Glasgow).
2 " The Old Testament and the Modern Point of View," p. 315.
s G. A. Smith, " Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the Old
Testament," p. 115, note 1.

120 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
revelation ; but we must surely take such men at their
word. Faith and criticism are in their experiences
reconciled, and this is enough to satisfy our argument
that they are not irreconcilable.
A recent writer in " The Outlook " ! spoke of a
certain cooling towards foreign missions as one of
the results of criticism, though, as he admitted, only
a temporary result. Certainly there is nothing inthe
results of criticism, properly understood, to damp a
man's ardor for the great cause of foreign missions.
When the Old Testament religion came to a true un
derstanding of itself, it felt the uncontrollable impulse
to become a missionary religion, a light to lighten the
Gentiles.^ And the impulse that governed the better
spirit of Old Testament times frora the exile on, the
irapulse that thrills in the Book of Jonah, is bound
evermore to animate all who understand the inherent
authority of truth, and the solemn obligation imposed
by the possession of it. A Dutch scholar remarks
that he has observed, both in his own experience and
in that of others, that with a greater knowledge of the
Old Testament a greater love for missions went hand
in hand ; ^ and one of the most interesting and en
couraging features of the great Student Volunteer
Convention held last year (1902) in Toronto was the
presence and enthusiasm of many who are actively
identified with the critical movement.
(iv) Criticism has also affected the dogmatic use
of the Bible, and this has come as a loss to many.
It regards the Bible as a record of history, not as a
1 March 15, 1902. ^ Cf. Ps. Ixvii.
8 Valetou, " Vergangliches und Ewiges im Alten Testament," p. 8.

THE LOSSES OF CRITICISM 121
compendium of dogma, and its truths as originally
relevant to a particular historical environment. In
the words of Loisy, " One does not even conceive as
possible a book written by men and for men which
contains the truth, all truth, under a form appro
priate to the needs of all time." And elsewhere, " a
book absolutely true for all time is no more possible
than a square triangle. . . . The divine word • ad
dressed to particular men in particular conditions,
was spoken for them : in its form, it is true rela
tively to them, though it is absolutely true in its sub
stance." Of course in the Bible, as everywhere else,
form and substance are inextricably intertwined, and
are capable only of an ideal separation. But if the
form be ancient and Oriental, must not this be taken
into account in finding the legitimate dogmatic appli
cation of a text ? The old simplicity and definiteness
seem to be gone. The old appeal to proof texts loses
its confidence ; for, strictly speaking, the text is not
there to prove anything, though it may suggest the
deepest and vastest things : it is the literary record
of some historical, psychological, or spiritual fact.
It may be harder to build theological systems out of
such a Bible, but it will be easier to hold fellowship
with the men who wrote it, and through them, with
the God who inspired it. The historical method helps
us to stand where they stood. We can think their
thoughts over again. We can almost feel their
breath upon our faces — so near are they. And in
being near these men, with their thrilling interpreta
tion of life and history, and with their profound re
ligious experiences, we are near to God; for they

122 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
were His messengers. Thus, if the search for doc
trine has been complicated by criticism, we may yet
find living fellowship with living men of God and
with the living God himself ; and is not this a great
thing ? THE GAINS OF CRITICISM
Let us now look at some of the gains.
(i) The historical method, speaking broadly, elimi
nates the possibility of arbitrary, or at least unreason
able, interpretation. If writers did not mean what
they said, but something else, how shall we determine
that other thing ? No church or individual can de
termine it for us. The moment any such claim is
made, we have a right to demand a guarantee that
the proposed interpretation is correct ; and no guar
antee could be offered which would not involve a
further assumption. If the historical method be re
jected, to what method shall we go ? We are then
at the mercy of the allegorists, the mystics, the phi
losophers. Every man is free to interpret Scripture
according to his fancy, or at least according to his
theology. There is a grimly humorous illustration
of this temper in Patrick Walker's "Life of John
Scrapie." "After the unhappy Restoration and es
tablishing of Prelacy," he tells us. Scrapie's "zeal
was so great and flaming against bishops and their
underlings, that wherever he was, and whoever were
his hearers, great or small, he could never read and
explain any portion of Scripture but he found bish
ops and their underlings, and somewhat in it against
them ; even in the beginning of the Genesis, the ac-

THE GAINS OF CRITICISM 123
count of the whole creation, but not one word that
God created bishops (as such), and from that he
inferred they were none of God's creatures." ! If
the historical method be repudiated or unknown.
Scripture may be raade by its interpreters to mean
anything ; and though the possibility of arbitrary
interpretation is not absolutely eliminated by that
method, it is enormously reduced, and the perils of
allegory are avoided.
(ii) The historical method has rescued for us not a
few books of the Bible. The interpretation of the
Song of Songs is not yet settled, but on any of the
modern interpretations the book possesses an intense
fascination, has a very powerful moral application,
and would appeal to a large circle of readers whom
the allegorical interpretation would not touch. And
what shall we say of the minor prophets ? Were they
not as voices crying in the wilderness, till that wil
derness was repeopled for us by modern scholarship,
and we heard the prophetic message with the ears on
which it once fell ?
(iii) Again, the critical movement has given very
great impetus to the study of the Bible. Never has
so much strenuous and enthusiastic study been de
voted to it before. The facts are coming to be better
known. The history of the Bible is being exarained
in its relation to contemporary world-history. Its
prophecy is being understood as a living message to
the prophet's own day. The line between facts and
theories is being more firmly drawn. The wonder
1 "Six Saints of the Covenant." Editedby D. HayFleming(1901),
vol. i. pp. 198, 199.

124 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
of Israel's story — unique on any interpretation —
is impressing itself more and more upon the attentive
mind. This direct and earnest contact with the
words, the men, and the movements of Scripture
can only result in good.
The literary interest of the Bible becomes more
absorbing, when it is seen to be an ancient literature,
with an extraordinarily varied, yet singularly har
monious, interpretation of life, man, history, God —
a literature in which, for many hundreds of years,
some of the finest spirits of the race have expressed
their noblest thoughts with almost unparalleled beauty
and power. But more absorbing than its literary in
terest is its intensely human interest. The tempta
tion of the older method of study was to neglect the
humanity of the Bible. The neglect was not un
natural, nor was its origin unworthy ; it arose from
its eagerness to know the mind of the Spirit. But
it tended to forget that that mind was only to be
known through the minds of the men whora the Spirit
had chosen. And when the book lost its humanity,
it largely lost its interest as well. Men are not all
interested in theology ; but most men are interested
in raen. It is the great merit of criticism that it has
revealed to us again the interesting and varied hu
manity of the Bible.
Nor has it done that at the expense of its divinity ;
but it has shown us that in the Bible, as in Christ,
divinity and humanity meet. It has taught us to find
in the Bible a God who is not afar off. The thing
most to be dreaded in Biblical study is what some
one has not unaptly called vivisection — the attempt

THE GAINS OF CRITICISM 125
to cleave the living harmony between God and man.
The ultra-theological and the ultra-literary types of
student are both exposed to this temptation. The
one will see in it nothing but God, the other nothing
but man. The one robs the book of its interest, the
other of its glory. The truth demands their union.
The God who dwells in the heavens is also a God
who tabernacles among men. The divine truth has
a human mediation, and the recovery of the humanity
of the Bible is not the least of the fruits of modern
criticism. While it has heightened the interest of the Bible, it
has also brought with it a fresh sense of reality and
truth. It puts us in immediate contact with fact. It
plants our feet upon the firm ground of history. We
can all but see the footprints of God as He moves
across the centuries. We can watch His purpose de
velop. We can see how His chosen instruments grew
in their apprehension of that purpose ; and the sense
of security which comes from the knowledge that we
have the solid ground of historic fact beneath our
feet, deepens when we remember that these facts
have been repeatedly tested by the keenest of critical
processes. (iv) The historical method presents us with a
reasonable, probable, and even thrilling view of the
development of Israel's history and religion. The
various books reflect the various ages, and we can
watch the life that is in thera expand. Literary and
spiritual influences are shown to have been at work
in unsuspected times and places. Men were writing
history in an age that we thought dumb. Prophets

126 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
were raised up to utter their words of lofty hope at a
tirae when we thought that prophecy was dead. The
historical method has peopled what once we thought
were the waste places of history with witnesses for
God. It is not altogether fair to say that that method
has thrust a theory of evolution into its interpreta
tion of the facts. Rather the unbiassed interpretation
of the acknowledged literary and historical facts has
revealed an evolution in the religion, as in the his
tory. But of this raore hereafter.
(v) The historical method has relieved the double
strain of (a) moral and (b) intellectual difficulty. In
one sense, the apologetic of the Bible is easier to-day
than it ever was before.
(a) Not many years ago, distinguished theologians
thought it necessary to defend Israel's wars of exter
mination.! Few would feel called upon to do so
to-day. We now know that this was one of the prac
tices which Israel shared with the Semitic peoples.
Further, our view of revelation as coming through an
historical development forbids us to believe that the
morals and practices of the twelfth century b. c. must
necessarily commend themselves to consciences which
have enjoyed centuries of Christian culture.
(b) Intellectual. Faith is not believing the incred
ible. It is not doing violence to the intellect which
God has given us for the apprehension of truth. It is
often opposed to sight, but never to reason ; and many
of the difficulties and discrepancies due to the literary
methods of the ancient East are to be recognized as
inseparable from the human element in the Bible, and
1 Cf . Mozley, " Ruling Ideas in Early Ages," Lecture lv.

THE GAINS OF CRITICISM 127
are not to be driven home as articles of faith at the
point of the sword. We cannot believe that Jehosha
phat both did and did not remove the high places.!
We cannot believe both that the children of Korah Nr^
perished and did not perish in the divine chastise
ment that overtook the rebels.^ With the best inten
tion in the world we cannot hold these things together
in our mind at the same time : they constitute for us
a mental impossibility. Nor need we believe them ;
for they are no indispensable part of the revelation of
God. Neither, however, ought we to magnify them
or the difficulty created by them. We shall recognize,
in the case of discrepancies, that we have two versions
of the same story, deviating perhaps in trivial detail,
but agreeing in the main issue. Such discrepancies
only show how faithful the final editors were to their
sources. They took the discrepant statements, and
often let them stand side by side, though in many
cases a touch here and there would have reconciled
them. But they did not allow the often obvious dis
crepancy to trouble them ; why should we ?
Now many of the sceptical attacks on the Bible,
such as those with which the crowds in many of our
city parks are regaled on Sunday afternoon, centre
round just such difficulties as these — the dimensions
and contents of Noah's ark, the delinquencies of David
1 2 Chr. xvii. 6 ; xx. 33.
2 Num. xvi. 32 ; xxvi. 11. An illustration of the flimsy apologetic
which tries to defend such things, recently came under my notice. A
gentleman maintained that by the phrase the sons of Korah iu the last
passage, only the little children were meant ! Of course, it really means
the Korahites, just as the phrase the children of Israel, where the same
word is used, means Israelites.

128 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
" the man after God's own heart," and so on. The
apologete will still have to answer the science and
the philosophy of his time, and it would be foolish
to underestimate the difficulty of the defence. But
attacks of the kind referred to are only valid against
an obsolescent conception of revelation; they have
no power at all against the modern view of the Bible.
All such objections may be met by emphasizing the
revelation as, on the one hand, ethical or religious,
and, on the other hand, historical and progressive.
To the revelation conceived under the former aspect,
any objection based, for example, on the contents of
Noah's ark or the age of the antediluvians becomes an
irrelevant triviality ; while to the revelation conceived
under the latter aspect, the iraperfections of David
need offer no stumbling-block. David lived a mil
lennium before Christ. Besides, his sin, so far frora
being commended or ignored, was the object of a
searching prophetic rebuke, and left a trail of sorrow
over all his life.
(vi) Another gain is this, that the discrepancies,
etc., which have perplexed many and given occasion
to the adversary to blaspheme, may be turned to real
apologetic account. One of the greatest objections to
the critical position, urged by many, though, as we
have seen, not by all, has been the documentary an
alysis of the Pentateuch. But, if that analysis be
justified — and this is one of the most certain results
of criticism — then we are not only delivered from
the necessity of believing that the same man was
guilty of inconsistencies so strange as sometimes
meet us within the limits of a couple of verses, but

THE GAINS OF CRITICISM 129
we have further several witnesses to a story where we
formerly supposed we had only one. Almost all the
important incidents in early Hebrew history are at
tested by three sources — the two prophetic docu
ments (J and E) and the priestly (P). Even if the
evidence of the priestly document is weakened by the
fact that it is late — though there is good reason to
believe that in some cases, at least, it rests on ancient
sources independent of the two older prophetic docu
ments — it is still a powerful witness to the tenacity
of the popular belief, and reinforces the twofold testi
mony of the older sources. Now, it is never a scien
tific thing to disregard the testimony of a people to its
own past ; but it becomes precarious, not to say absurd,
when the leading incidents of that past are supported
by a twofold, a threefold, and, in certain cases, even
a fourfold ! historical tradition. We have in the
Hexateuch, when the critical analysis has discovered
and reconstituted the documents, so far as it can,
precisely the same phenomenon as we have in the Gos
pels — a fourfold witness to the epoch-making facts
on which the subsequent history, in the one case of
the Jewish, in the other of the Christian, Church was
founded, and to which later ages made their constant
appeal. Indeed, though this is the important point
of the comparison, the parallel extends still further.
In each case, one of the sources is later than the
other three, and approaches its task in a somewhat
different spirit ; in each case, too, the other sources
show similar resemblances, differences, and, generally
1 If we include the Deuteronomist, as, for certain facts, we may.
9

I30 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
speaking, mutual relationships.! So far, then, is the
documentary theory from reducing the history to an
absurdity, that it has confirraed it in its raost impor
tant particulars.
(vii) Again, many an extravagance in belief and
conduct would never have been heard of had the
Bible been interpreted by the historical method.
That great moral and intellectual offence which we
know as Morraonism, no doubt finds one of its chief
supports in the corruption that is in the world through
i lust ; but, so far as it is based upon an appeal to the
Bible, it derives its strength from a false and unhis
torical view of revelation. It is no use for twentieth
century raen to appeal to the polygamous practices of
the patriarchs. The Bible represents many stages of
moral illumination, and it is no less than a religious
crime to appeal to the earliest as of equal validity
with the latest. The whole trend of prophetic
thought and example,^ to say nothing of Christ's
teaching and its implications, is in the direction of
monogamy. (viii) This, again, suggests that the appeal to the
Bible must always be made with exceeding care.
Many who would repudiate its so-called testimony to
polygamy would accept its so-called testimony to war.
The warlike spirit has always found one of its
strongest supports in the Old Testament. But the
appeal is not so easy as it looks. It is, indeed, easy
to show that Jehovah was a man of war, a God of
1 The Jehovist and the Elohist might, for example, for certain
purposes, be compared with Luke and Matthew, and the Priestly
Document with John.
' Cf. Hosea, Isaiah, Ezekiel.

THE GAINS OF CRITICISM 131
battles, and that His people loved and all but glorified
war. But it is only fair to note that most of the
poetry and history instinct with the martial spirit is
very early, and that men of the true prophetic spirit
yearned for a time when swords would be broken and
the art of war forgotten. The application of the his
torical method, therefore, imposes a great and noble
obligation on the modern religious consciousness.
The illustrations already adduced prove the exceeding
difficulty, if not futility, of an appeal to single texts.
Questions can no longer be decided by such texts, for
one text may be qualified, even contradicted, by an
other. The appeal must rather be to the spirit which
brooded over the whole development of the revelation,
but which is greater than any single text, greater
even than all of them put together. Thus every new
problem in the moral life demands from us original
ity. Its solution is not to be found in any single
text ; for that text is related to a situation which is
not ours. Still, through the particular message comes
a message from the Eternal ; only it has to be disen
tangled by us from all that makes it particular, and
read in the larger light of that vast and orderly revela
tion, whose perfect word was Christ. Thus the histor
ical method ushers those who use it into the spiritual
world. It delivers them from bondage to the letter.
It compels them to face every fresh moral and intellec
tual problem with courage and originality.
(ix) In conclusion, it may be urged that the his
torical method furnishes the simplest and strongest
defence against the attacks of scepticism. This has
already been dealt with in part under paragraph v ;

132 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
the point may here be amplified. The arguments
which have so often been urged in the supposed inter
ests of Biblical doctrine, the explanations occasionally
offered of particular texts and passages, are frequently
so far-fetched and improbable that they carry little
conviction to an ordinarily fair and unprejudiced
mind, and none whatever to a mind accustomed to
the severe methods of exact science.! jjqJ; ^jiat
Biblical truth can be reduced to a mathematical dem
onstration : far from it. But arguments and ex
planations which would not pass muster in other
departments of investigation are seriously urged as if
the fact of their being Biblical exempted them from
the ordinary laws of logic, and from the natural chal
lenge of the thinking mind. Of course we are not
here alluding to the spiritual mysteries of the Bible,
which must be spiritually discerned ; nor are we for
getting the indefeasible necessity of religious instincts
and sympathies, in a word, of faith, if there is to
be any true or even approximately adequate inter
pretation of Scripture : we are speaking merely of
certain common intellectual presentations of Biblical
truth. Now, truth is a unity. There are not two compart
ments in the human mind : one for the reception of
theological, another for the reception of scientific,
truth. And the man who begins to think for himself
1 Much of the often ironical polemic of Huxley in his " Science
and Hebrew Tradition " was undoubtedly just as agaiust contem
porary apologetic. Cf. especially VI. on " The Lights of the Church
and the Light of Science." Christian apologetic is learning to adjust
itself more to facts. See the articles on " The Need of a New Apolo
getic" iu the "Biblical World " for the current year.

THE GAINS OF CRITICISM 133
will sooner or later come to feel this. He may for a
time contrive to hold them apart, until sorae incident
in his intellectual career, or it may be his general in
tellectual development, leads him to see that there can
be no ultimate disharmony in truth ; and then the
middle wall of partition breaks down. If Biblical
truth has been presented in an illogical or unscientific
way, if improbable arguments and unconvincing inter
pretations have been urged upon him, on pain of being
considered a reprobate, or — as a prominent Ameri
can Bible teacher lately put it — the possessor of a
" sin-warped intellect," is it any wonder that, when
the time comes, it is the Biblical, and not the scien
tific, truth that he parts with ? No doubt to part with
the Biblical truth for such a reason is an unscientific
thing to do. A man of really scientific training should
know how to distinguish essence from accident, and
the substance of truth from imperfect and even illogi
cal presentations of it. Still, it is not unnatural for
such a man as we are considering, especially if he be
a young man, to conclude that the truth which stands
in need of so unconvincing a defence can never be
truth for him ; and, to his own immeasurable loss, he
rejects it. Now, the historical method would not offer
him such a defence, and so it would deprive him of
such an excuse for his scepticism.
As an illustration of the forced interpretations
which have not seldom alienated honest and open
minds from the Bible may be cited the case of a can
didate for the teaching profession in Germany. On
being asked to give a specimen lesson on Genesis i.,
when he reached the verse, " God said. Let us make

y

134 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
man in our image," he paraphrased thus, " Then spake
God to the Lord Jesus," etc. When the inspector
asked him where he got this interpretation, he an
swered that it had been taught him in the seminary ;
adding that, when he was teaching a class of older
children, he had been instructed to say, "Then the
first person of the Trinity spoke to the second," etc.!
There can be no doubt that exegesis of this type goes
to swell the ranks of the sceptics. When the child
that is drilled in notions of this kind becomes a student
and puts away childish things, he will in all probabil
ity put away those childish interpretations too. The
pathos of it is that he is likely to put away with them
all reverence for the book which, had it been wisely
and intelligently taught, might have been a light to
his feet and a lamp to his path.
Some recent words of Rev. Dr. Selbie should be
taken to heart by every teacher of the young : " Above
all, we must be on our guard against seeking to save
the reputation of Scripture, where we imagine that to
be necessary, by methods we should hesitate to adopt
elsewhere ; " and " pause, whenever we are tempted
to resort to special pleading, or to strain the evidence
in order to avoid conclusions that are unwelcome." ^
Doubtless one of many reasons for the well-known in
difference of large numbers of University students to
religion and the Church is the sense of unreality and
improbability in the customary presentation of Biblical
truth with which, whether from, education or associa-
1 See Kautzsch, " Bibelwissenschaft und Religionsunterricht," p. 7,
note 1.
2 " Critical Eeview," March, 1902, pp. 99, 100.

THE GAINS OF CRITICISM 135
tion, they are most familiar. It is truly a strange
phenomenon to find numbers of men earnestly bent
on the search for truth ignoring or rejecting the pro
foundest book in the world. But if they had been
taught in earlier days to read the Bible for the truth
that was there, not for the truth that might be thrust
into it ; to read it for the inspiration rather than for
the doctrine it contained ; to read it as a book of reli
gion, not as an encyclopaedia of all human knowledge ;
to find God in it rather than to learn how the world
was made and how denominational prejudices might
be vindicated, — how different it might have been
when they entered the liberal atmosphere of the Uni
versity ! They would have had much to learn but
nothing to unlearn, and there would have been no
great gulf fixed between their present and their past,
for both would have been inspired by reason as well
as by faith.!
It is pathetic, too, to find that many of the great
literary and scientific opponents of Christianity know
next to nothing of the modern historical interpreta
tion of the Bible. Just as the ordinary Christian,
under the influence of a mistaken view of revelation,
is apt to confuse essence with accident, eternal sub
stance with temporary form, and to elevate trivialities
into points of faith, so in many cases the scientific op
ponents of the faith, with far less excuse, do the sarae.
In a way that is often crude as well as unjust, they take
the popular presentation of the Bible and ignore the
scientific. They combat positions which the scientific
scholars of the Bible have given up decades ago. It
1 Cf. Plato, " Eepublic," iii. 401, 402.

136 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
is notorious that some of the most violent and popular
attacks have been made by men who, however great in
science ! and literature, have shown the most lamen
table ignorance of the attitude and results of modern
Biblical scholarship. These deplorable attacks are
undoubtedly injurious, and often justly give rise to
the gravest apprehension, especially when they are
attractively delivered in the presence of young men
whose beliefs are in the formative stage. Such attacks
are to be deprecated as much in the name of science
as of religion, for they are as unworthy of the one as
of the other. But it is to be noted that they are pow
erless as against the modern historical interpretation
of the Bible ; and the more that interpretation under
lies the teaching of the young, the more certain are
those attacks to die a natural death.
1 Haeckel's presentations of Biblical truth have been justly resented
by Biblical scholars. Cf. Zange, " Unwissenheit und Unglaube," p. 1 6 ;
Kautzsch, "Bibelwissenschaft und Religionsunterricht," p. 19.

CHAPTER VI
THE METHODS OF CRITICISM
It is often claimed that the problems with which
criticism deals must not be left exclusively to the ex
perts. The demand is a perfectly just one, and the
great critics do not resent it. Robertson Smith's lec
tures on " The Old Testament in the Jewish Church,"
epoch-making as they were for the English-speaking
world, were delivered in the faith that the case for
criticism could be appreciated by any man of educa
tion and intelligence. To master the intricacies of
the case is, of course, the work of years ; but, if the
problems are real, and not imaginary, their burden
should be felt by every man who reads his Bible with
the attention which it deserves ; and, if its main argu
ments are reasonable, they should be capable of being
stated iu such a way as to comraend theraselves to
the man who brings to their appreciation ordinary
intelligence and openness to conviction. It will be
the object of this chapter to illustrate the critical
methods by a few examples. We shall then be in a
position to judge whether the problems are real and
the methods reasonable.
Illustrations of the critical method will be drawn
from its operations within the sphere of history,
prophecy, and the Psalter. Firstly, from history.

138 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
I
One of the stones of stumbling has been tho alleged
compositeness of the historical books. The possi
bility of such a phenomenon has often been roundly
denied; and, even where it is conceded, it is main
tained that it is nothing short of absurd to attempt
to delimit the sections aud versos which belong to
the constituent documents. Who, it is argued, would
presume to separate Beaumont from Fletcher, or
Besant from Rico ? and, if this cannot be dono in a
tongue with which wo are familiar, how much raore
impossible, not to say preposterous, in the case of an
ancient and comparatively unfamiliar tongue ?
Now there can be no doubt at all about the possi
bility of such a composite work as the Hexateuch ia
by the critics believed to be. There is an exact par
allel in the " Diatessaron " of Tatian, a sort of har
mony of the four Gospels.! This composite book
constituted the official gospel of the Syrian Church
for about two centuries, and but for tho intervention
of certain Syrian bishops might have actually dis
placed the Gospels in tlieir separate form. The com
posite Hexateuch would correspond to the composite
Diatessaron, and the documents out of which our pres
ent Hexateuch is believed by criticism to be consti
tuted would correspond to the four Gospels. Wo
need not waste words, then, discussing whether a
composite book be possible, when we know it to be a
I An English translation of the Arabic version, with introduction
and notea by Rev. J. Hamlyu Hill, B.D., is published by T. & T. Clark
(Edinburgh) .

THE METHODS OF CRITICISM 139
fact. In arguing, however, from modern analogies to
thc impossibility of discovering the constituent docu
ments, some important considerations are apt to be
overlooked. It must be remembered that the two
prophetic documents known as the Jehovist and the
Elohist are not contemporary in the sense in which
Beaumont and Fletcher, or Besant and Rice, are ; and
the priestly document is three or four hundred years
from either. In other words, these authors are not
collaborating, as thc modern authors do;! tjjgy are
traversing practically the same ground more or less
independently. True, one document often records in
cidents ignored by the others ; but in many cases the
same incident is recorded by two and sometimes by
three documents ; so that, for those who admit the
possibility of a composite narrative, the duplicated
accounts, when compared with one another, afford
valuable clues to the nature of the constituent docu
ments, their vocabulary, style, interests, standpoint,
theology. Apart from the analogy of ancient and modern
literature, the possibility of composite origin cannot
be denied in the presence of certain undisputed phe
nomena of the historical books of the Bible itself.
They refer to their own sources again and again.
The book of the wars of Jehovah, the book of Jashar,
the book of the acts of Solomon, the book of the
chronicles of the kings of Israel and Judah — these
and many others are admittedly drawn upon and in
some cases directly quoted. As the sources are then
I Rice, e. g., thought out the plot and construction ; Besant wrote
the Btory, adopting and developing Rice's suggestions.

I40 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
in certain cases expressly acknowledged, there can
be no harm in criticism seeking, if possible, to dis
cover the larger unacknowledged documentary sources.
The duplicates, as we have seen, enable us to make a
start, by giving us some insight into the characteristic
differences of the sources.
But we are met by a difficulty on the very thresh
old. What is to hinder the so-called duplicates
from being accounts of two different incidents, in
stead of two different accounts of the sarae incident ?
The critics, we are told, " systematically assume that,
when one sin, like that of Abraham in the case of de
nying Sarah, has been committed, neither he nor any
body else can commit another like it." ! But surely
the case is not so simple. No critic in his senses
ever assumed such a thing. It is not this considera
tion alone, but this coupled with others, that induces
the critics to interpret two such accounts as dupli
cates of the same incident rather than as accounts of
independent incidents. It was, no doubt, perfectly
possible for Abraham to deny his wife twice, possible
also for his son to deny his wife, though it would be
not a little strange that the circumstances in all these
cases should be so very similar. But when we find
that the moral tone in the second story of Abraham's
denial (Gen. xx.) is a distinct advance on that of the
first (Gen. xii.), displaying a more delicate sense of
the sin involved in Abraham's lie ; when we further
find that the second story indicates more developed
religious conceptions, emphasizing as it does the
power of intercessory prayer, and representing God
1 "Bibliotheca Sacra," January, 1902, p. 201.

THE METHODS OF CRITICISM 141
as coming in a dream, whereas in the first story He
speaks to Abraham directly ; and when, in addition
to those undeniable differences, we find that Jehovah
is the word used for God throughout the first story,
and Elohim throughout the second — we begin to feel
that there is a high probability that the two narra
tives are but different versions of the same incident,
told from different standpoints.! If similar pheno
mena be found elsewhere — if, for example, two simi
lar stories display the same differences in tone and
conception, and concomitant with these differences a dif
ference in the name of God — then the probability
that the narratives are different versions of the same
incident, and that there are really two documents
here in question, is raised to a practical certainty.
And precisely this we find to be the case; for the
phenomena observed in the story of the denial are
equally observable in very many other stories ; and
their cumulative evidence it is impossible to turn
aside by any other hypothesis, for there is no other
which, with anything like the same adequacy or prob
ability, accounts for all the facts. These, then, are
some of the grounds, and not the inadequate one
already alluded to, which induce the critics to believe
in the presence of duplicates.
There is the less occasion to resent the supposition
of duplicate narratives within the Pentateuch as that
very phenomenon is presented by other historical
books. The raost extensive illustration of this is the
Book of Chronicles, which, in the main, covers the
1 In this way such tales would incidentally illustrate the progresa
of moral and religious conceptions.

142 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
same ground as the Books of Samuel and Kings, often
in the very same words, but regards the history from
a different standpoint. The differences between the
priestly and prophetic documents lying behind our
Pentateuch, between, for example, the creation story
as told in Genesis i. and ii. respectively, are roughly
paralleled by the differences between Chronicles and
Kings. Only, in the latter case the books are sepa
rate, whereas in the former they are combined in such
a way as to form a new composite whole, which it is
the task of criticism to analyze into its constituent
parts. When, however, those parts are discovered,
they stand in much the same relation to one another
as Kings and Chronicles stand — that of a common
theme treated from different points of view. Com
positeness of narrative is not confined to the Penta
teuch : it is tolerably obvious even in the Book of
Samuel. Volck! goes so far as to say it cannot
escape any attentive reader that at least two sources
are blended in that book ; and a recent scholar, who
is inclined to believe that the two accounts of David's
magnanimity in sparing Saul's life,^ and of the origin
of the proverb " Is Saul also among the prophets ? " ^
represent in each case two different incidents, is yet
willing to allow that the contradiction in the story of
David's introduction to Saul " certainly proves that
there were two accounts." * But if there are " cer
tainly " two accounts here, there is at least a fairly
1 " Heilige Schrift und Kritik," p. 85.
"^ I Sam. xxiv. and xxvi. ^ 1 Sam. x, 12 ; xix. 24.
' Mackay, " The Churchman's Introduction to the Old Testament,"
pp. 122, 123.  -,

THE METHODS OF CRITICISM 143
strong presumption that the similar duplicates just
noted are to be similarly explained; and minute
examination and comparison make it practically cer
tain that throughout the greater part of first Samuel
there are two accounts of David's career.!
In the light of all these facts, the general possibility,
if not the practical certainty, of the compositeness of
the historical books must be conceded. Now let us
consider how criticism proceeds to establish that com
positeness in a particular case. For this purpose, it
is common to begin with the Creation story. Certain
phenomena there, however, slightly complicate the
issue, and, on the whole, a more helpful illustration
of critical method is to be found in the Flood story.
Part of that story we shall transcribe, in order that
it may make its own impression. It is unfortunate
that the Authorized Version starts the narrative with
a serious mistake : " And G-od saw " (Gen. vi. 5), for
which the Revised Version rightly substitutes, " And
the Lord saw," or more correctly Jehovah, which the
English Bible almost uniformly renders by the Lord.
This mistake shows that the linguistic argument,
which is only one of many in favor of the critical
position, cannot be adequately appreciated by one who
is wholly dependent on the English translation.
And the Lord^ saw that the wickedness of man was
great in the earth, and that every imagination of the
1 For a presentation of these sources side by side, see my " Mes
sages of the Prophetic and Priestly Historians," pp. 147-162, where the
resemblances and differences between these sources may be con
veniently compared in the paraphrase.
^ The quotations are given in the language of the English Eevised
Version.

144 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it
repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth,
and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I
will destroy man whom I have created from the face of
the ground ; both man, and beast, and creeping thing,
and fowl of the air ; for it repenteth me that I have
made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the
Lord (Gen. vi. 5-8).
It will be noted that all through this section — once
in each verse — the Divine Being is named the Lord,
that is, Jehovah.
These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a
righteous man, and perfect in his generations : Noah
walked with God. And Noah begat three sons, Shem,
Ham, and Japheth (Gen. vi. 9, 10).
These verses certainly look like an interruption ;
and it may be further significant — whether it is or
not we cannot determine till we read on — that here
the Divine Being is called God (Elohim), and this
applies to each of the next three verses.
And the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth
was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and,
behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his
way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The
end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is
filled with violence through them ; and, behold, I will
destroy them with the earth (Gen. vi. 11-13).
These verses seem to start the story again. They tell
us practically nothing we do not already know, namely,
that the earth was corrupt and God had purposed to

THE METHODS OF CRITICISM 145
destroy it. Note, however, that as the word for the
Divine Being has changed, the word rendered destroy
has also changed. In verse 7 it was machdh, to blot
out ; in verse 13 it is hishcMth, to destroy.
Make thee an ark of gopher wood ; rooms shalt thou
make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without
with pitch. And this is how thou shalt make it : the
length of the ark three hundred cubits, the breadth of
it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A
light shalt thou make to the ark, and to a cubit shalt
thou finish it upward; and the door of the ark shalt
thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and
third stories shalt thou make it (Gen. vi. 14-16).
This is a description of the ark, and makes a proper
enough continuation of the immediately preceding
verses. And I, behold, I do bring the flood of waters upon the
earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life,
from under heaven ; every thing that is in the earth
shall die. But I will establish my covenant with thee ;
and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons,
and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee. And of
every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt
thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee;
they shall be male and female. Of the fowl after their
kind, and of the cattle after their kind, of every creep
ing thing of the ground after its kind, two of every sort
shall come unto thee, to keep them alive. And take
thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and gather it
to thee ; and it shall be for food for thee and for them.
Thus did Noah ; according to all that God commanded
him, so did he (Gen. vi. 17-22). 10

146 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
This passage seems to continue the last — an ob
servation confirmed by the circumstance that in verse
22, which points to the preceding verses, the Divine
Being is called God (Elohim). A point to be particu
larly noted about this passage is its extreme circum
stantiality — " thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and
thy sons' wives with thee : " " fowl after their kind,
cattle after their kind, every creeping thing of the
ground after its kind : " " take unto thee of all food
that is eaten, and gather it to thee ; and it shall be
for food for thee and for them : " " thus did Noah ;
according to all that God commanded him, so did he."
There is here an almost legal precision and elabora
tion of detail. Note further that two of every sort of
living thing are to be taken into the ark.
And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all
thy house into the ark ; for thee have I seen righteous
before me in this generation. Of every clean beast thou
shalt take to thee seven and seven, the male and his
female ; and of the beasts that are not clean two, the
male and his female ; of the fowl also of the air, seven
and seven, male and female : to keep seed alive upon the
face of all the earth. For yet seven days, and I will
cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty
nights ; and every living thing that I have made will I
destroy from off the face of the ground. And Noah did
according unto all that the Lord commanded him (Gen.
vii. 1-5).
At once we are struck with the change in the name
of the Divine Being. In this section the Lord invites
Noah into the ark, instructs him to take with hira of
clean beasts seven pairs, and of unclean one pair.

THE METHODS OF CRITICISM 147
Now this section cannot be a continuation of the last,
for according to verse 22 of that section Noah and his
family with the animals are already in the ark ; for
it is recorded that he did what God commanded him,
and that was the substance of the command. This
section is therefore parallel to the last, recording,
like it, the command of the Lord to Noah, and Noah's
execution of that command. Notice that verse 5 is prac
tically the same as verse 22, with the significant change
in the use of the divine names. Further, the passage
is not expressed with the same minute elaboration as
the last. For example, instead of " thou, and thy
sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives," appears the
simpler phrase " thou and thy house." There is an
important difference, too, between the two sections in
the number of animals to be taken into the ark : in
the former passage, it was two of every kind; here,
two of unclean and seven pairs of clean. It has often
been said that the second passage simply amplifies
the first and makes its general directions more ex
plicit. But that would surely be an awkward style of
amplification — to begin by saying " a pair of every
sort," and to go on by explaining " one pair of one
sort and seven pairs of another sort." But there is
no necessity for accusing the original writer of such
literary impotence. For this passage is, as we have
seen, not continuous with the former, but parallel to
it ; and therefore we are prepared to do justice to this
important distinction between the two. It is further
no accident that, in the two passages, different words
are used to express "male and female" — in the
former (vi. 19) the words are somewhat technical, in

148 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM

the latter they are more ordinary — " the man and his
wife." (So twice in vii. 2.) !
We have now a number of phenomena on the basis
of which we may form a tentative judgment. The
narrative is obviously not a unity. Two accounts
are given of the corruption of the earth, of God's
command to Noah to enter the ark with his family
and with specimens of all the animals, and of Noah's
execution of that command. These accounts are
distinguished by different names for God, by a some
what different vocabulary (e. g. destroy, male and
female), and by not unimportant differences in the
recital of fact (e.g. in the number and classification
of the animals which entered the ark). Practically
all doubt of the compositeness of the story is dispelled
when the parallel accounts are placed side by side.
Corruption of the earth (vi. 5-13).

Prophetic Narrative
{Jehovistic) .

And the Lord saw that
the wickedness of mau was
great in the earth, and that
every imagination of the
1 vii. 3, which uses the priestly
been touched by the redactor.

Priestly Narrative
(Elohistic).
These are the generations
of Noah. Noah was a
righteous man, and perfect
in his generations : Noah
walked with God. And
Noah begat three sons,
Shem, Ham, and Japheth
(vi. 9, 10).
And the earth was cor
rupt before God, and the
earth was filled with vio
lence (vi. 11).
words for " male and female," has

THE METHODS OF CRITICISM

149

thoughts of his heart was
only evil continually (vi. 5).
And it repented the Lord
that he had made man on
the earth, and it grieved
him at his heart (vi. 6).
And the Lord said, I will
destroy man whom I have
created from the face of the
ground; both man, and
beast, and creeping thing,
and fowl of the air ; for it
repenteth me that I have
made them (vi. 7).
But Noah found grace in
the eyes of the Lord (vi. 8).

And God saw the earth,
and, behold, it was corrupt ;
for all flesh had corrupted
his way upon the earth
(vi. 12).
And God said unto Noah,
the end of all flesh is come
before me ; for the earth is
filled with violence through
them; and, behold, I will
destroy them with the
earth (vi. 13).

Description of the ark (vi. 14-16).
The divine command and Noah's execution thereof
(vi. 17-vii. 5).

The Prophetic Narrative
(Jehovistic).
For ^ yet seven days, and I
will cause it to rain upon the
earth forty days and forty
nights; and every living
thing that I have made will
I destroy from off the face
of the ground (vii. 4).
And the Lord said unto

The Priestly Narrative
(Elohistic).
And I, behold, I do bring
the flood of waters upon
the earth, to destroy all
flesh, wherein is the breath
of life, from under heaven ;
every thing that is in the
earth shall die (vi. 17).
But I will establish my

1 The order ofthe priestly narrative, which determined the final form
of the story, has here been followed. Verse 4 has been printed out of
its place, simply to show its parallelism with vi. 17.

I50 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM

Noah, Come thou and all
thy house into the ark ; for
thee have I seen righteous
before me in this genera
tion (vii. 1).
Of every clean beast thou
shalt take to thee seven and
seven, the male and his fe
male; and of the beasts
that are not clean two, fhe
male and his female (vii. 2).
Of the fowl also of the
air, seven and seven, male
and female : to keep seed
alive upon the face of all
the earth (vii. 3).

And Noah did according
to all that the Lord com
manded him (vii. 5).

covenant with thee; and
thou shalt come into the
ark, thou, and thy sons, and
thy wife, and thy sons'
wives with thee (vi. 18).
And of every living thing
of all flesh, two of every
sort shalt thou bring into
the ark, to keep them alive
with thee ; they shall be
male and female (vi. 19).
Of the fowl after their
kind, and of the eattie after
their kind, of every creep
ing thing of the ground
after its kind, two of every
sort shall come unto thee,
to keep them alive (vi. 20).
And take thou unto thee
of all food that is eaten, and
gather it to thee ; and it
shall be for food for thee,
and for them (vi. 21).
Thus did Noah; accord
ing to all that God com
manded him, so did he
(vi. 22).

Any one who is convinced that this method and
analysis are correct has a good deal of material which
will guide him in his analysis of the rest of the story.
The name of the Divine Being, where it exists, is an
exceedingly important clue ; where it does not exist,
there are other clues practically as decisive. For
example, every one has been puzzled by the duration

THE METHODS OF CRITICISM 151
of the flood, the truth being that each version has its
own story to tell. The Jehovist narrative announces
that it will come in seven days and last forty (vii. 4),
therefore the verses which involve this view of the
narrative will belong to this source, for example, vii.
12 and viii. 6-12, etc. ; according to this version, the
flood lasted in all sixty-eight days (1+^0+1+1+1).
The other verses, which represent the waters as pre
vailing for one hundred and fifty days (e.g. vii. 24),
and assign a period of over a year (cf. vii. 11 and
viii. 14) to the general duration of the flood, will
belong to the other narrative. So the verses which,
whether implicitly or explicitly, distinguish the clean
from the unclean animals, will belong to the Jehovist
document (e. g. viii. 20) ; those which do not, will be
long to the other (e. g. vii. 15). The growing knowl
edge of the characteristics of the documents which
every new such acquisition brings, enables us to delimit
the remaining verses still further ; until finally every
verse, by a natural and easy process, finds its place
within one document or the other. In this way the
extraordinary repetitions,! elaborations, and sequences
are satisfactorily explained.
Now this is the critical method. Is it reasonable
or is it not ? The phenomena are too striking to be
evaded ; does this explanation satisfy them or does it
not ? It is not a theory introduced ab extra : it is an
explanation suggested by the phenomena themselves.
The alternative, after making every allowance for the
historiographical methods of the East, is to suppose
that the author — on the assumption that the piece is
1 Cf. vii. 13, 14 (P.) with vii. 7, 8 (J.).

152 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
an original unity — was destitute of the first elements
of literary skill ; and this surely cannot be said of the
writer who gave us so fine a passage as viii. 6-12.
Rather is it not clear that this is the work of a re
dactor, careful, conservative, and reverent, who had
before him two documents, and whose aim was to
preserve as much as he consistently could of both ?

II
From history let us pass to prophecy. Here the
critical method may be illustrated by a brief consider
ation of the latter part of Isaiah (chs. xl. to lxvi.) ;
and for our purpose a section of this will be sufficient
(xl. to xlviii.). Why is it that the critics so unani
mously deny this prophecy to Isaiah, the son of Amoz,
and assign it to the exile (circa 540) ? Not because
they regard prediction as impossible ; the reality of
prediction is repeatedly claimed by this prophecy,!
and the critical no less than the traditional view of
the prophecy compels us to admit the truth of the
claim. The prophet predicts something, and his
prediction is fulfilled. But what is that something
which he predicts ? It is not the exile itself — that
is everywhere presupposed — but redemption from
the exile ; and that redemption was accomplished
through the instrumentality of Cyrus, on the critical
view, not indeed long after, but in any case after,
the prediction itself was made. So it is not a ques
tion of the possibility or impossibility of predictive
prophecy. The critics are led to their belief in the
1 Cf. xii. 26; xiii. 9 ; xliv. 8; xlviii. 3-7.

THE METHODS OF CRITICISM 153
exilic origin of the prophecy by a consideration of the
facts themselves.
What, then, are those facts ? Obviously the legiti
mate impression which the section makes as a whole
can only be gathered frora continuous reading. But
some of the more significant verses may be singled
out for special consideration.
Israel is in despair.
Why sayest thou, 0 Jacob, and speakest, 0 Israel,
My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is
passed away from my God ? (xl. 27).
From what or from whom is she suffering ?
I was wroth with my people, I profaned mine inheri
tance, and gave them into thine hand.
Thou didst show them no mercy ; upon the aged hast
thou very heavily laid thy yoke (xlvii. 6).
Into whose hands, then, was Israel given ? Into the
hands of the Chaldaeans ; for
Sit silent, and enter into darkness, 0 daughter of the
Chaldaeans :
For thou shalt no more be called the Lady of king
doms . . .
I gave them into thine hand (xlvii. 5, 6).
The Babylonian background is as plain as words
can make it. In the light of the following verses, it
is clear that Israel is languishing on Babylonian soil,
if not in Babylonian prisons.
For your sake I have sent to Babylon (xliii. 14).
Go ye forth of Babylon, flee ye from the Chaldaeans
(xlviii. 20).

154 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
Israel's own cities, including the capital with its
temple, are destroyed.
(He) saith of Jerusalem, She shall be inhabited ;
And of the cities of Judah, They shall be built . . .
Saying of Jerusalem, She shall be built ;
And of the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid (xliv.
26-28). He (i. e. Cyrus) shall build my city (xlv. 13).
The people then are exiles in Babylon.
He shall let my exiled ones go free (xlv. 13).
And it is these broken-hearted exiles whom the
prophet is addressing ; his audience is a real, not an
imaginary, one.
Lift up your eyes on high (xl. 26).
On this scene of despair and sorrow the prophet
appears with a message of comfort.
Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people (xl. 1).
Por redemption is drawing nigh.
Speak home to the heart of Jerusalem, and cry unto her
That her warfare is accomplished (xl. 2).
Israel's God will not forget her.
Thou shalt not be forgotten of me (xliv. 21).
What Israel needs, then, and is promised, is redemp
tion from exile. But how is that to be brought about ?
By a great conqueror who is twice expressly named as
Cyrus, and occasionally alluded to as a figure almost
too familiar to need naming :

THE METHODS OF CRITICISM 155
Named. — That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd.
And shall perform all my pleasure (xliv. 28).
Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose
right hand I have holden to subdue nations before him
... I will go before thee (xlv. 1, 2).
Unnamed. — I have raised him up in righteousness
(xlv. 13).
I have raised up one from the north, and he is come ;
From the rising of the sun one that caUeth upon my
name (xii. 25).
Cyrus, then, is to be the human instrument of the
redemption and restoration.
He shall build my city, and let my exiled ones go free
(xlv. 13).
And the redemption of Israel is to come through the
overthrow of Babylon by Cyrus.
He shall perform his pleasure on Babylon,
And his arm shall be on the Chaldaeans (xlviii. 14).
The situation is very plain. Israel is enduring the
sorrows of exile in Babylon. But a great menace to
the Babylonian power has been raised up in the per
son of Cyrus. He has embarked on his victorious
career. The prophet sees in him one who is divinely
called to deliver Israel. Redemption is only a ques
tion of a year or two. Soon the triumphant Cyrus
will be upon Babylon ; then Israel shall be free.
She will go home to her own land ; her cities and
temples will be rebuilt.
If there had been no tradition to the effect that this
part of the book was written by the Isaiah who spoke

y

156 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
more than a century and a half before, undoubtedly
we should have supposed that the prophet who uttered
this original and inspiriting word lived and moved in
the very midst of the situation which he so sympa
thetically describes — that he was himself a member
of the people whose sorrow he meets with his message
of hope. But a tradition which goes back at least to
the second century b. c. points the other way. It is
very natural to suppose that a section of the book
bearing Isaiah's name should have been written by
hira. But the assumption underlying this expectation
is that every part of a prophecy must come from the
prophet by whose narae the book is known. In the
Book of Isaiah, however, there are the best of reasons
for supposing that this is not the case. It is hardly
reasonable to suppose, for example, that the section
embracing chs. xxxvi. to xxxix. is from him, as he is
spoken of throughout in the third person (xxxvii. 21 ;
xxxviii. 1, 21) and the very same section, which is
historical rather than prophetic, occurs in the Book
of Kings (2 Kings xviii. 17-xx. 19). And there are
other sections which are expressly assigned to him
(cf. xiii. 1), as they would hardly have needed to be,
if the opening verse was a guarantee that the whole
book came from his hand. These facts are a suffi
cient answer to the argument that Isaiah xl.-lxvi.
must be frora Isaiah, because they appear in the book
known by his name.
If there is nothing of this kind, then, to compel us
to believe that Isaiah was the author, it remains to
ask who the real author was, or, at any rate, when he
lived. Now one of the cardinal principles of prophecy

THE METHODS OF CRITICISM 157
— a principle to which, apart frora this disputed sec
tion, there is no exception — is that the message of a
prophet is not only addressed to, but relevant to, the
contemporary situation. Doubtless the prophet sees
beyond that. His power to do that — to ascend his
watch tower, like Habakkuk, and survey the dis
tant sweep of the field — is partly what makes him a
prophet. There need be no attempt to deny that the
prophet could predict : that, as we saw, is claimed by
this prophecy and adraitted by the critic. But in the
large body of his message he speaks to his own con
temporaries : rebukes their sins, and comforts their
sorrows. This is a simple fact. Amos and Hosea
address themselves to the situation of Jeroboam the
Second's time. The prophecy of Jeremiah is so in
woven with contemporary history that it is practically
our only authority for the details of that history. Eze
kiel speaks to the exiles, deals with their fears, hopes,
needs, and problems ; Haggai and Zechariah appeal to
the situation after the return ; and so on. We will
not argue that no moral end would be served through
a prophet being transported in spirit into another
time ; nor will we say that it is impossible. But this
we can say, that analogy is completely against it.
In every other case ! the time in which a prophet
lived could be at least approximately, and in certain
cases accurately, inferred frora the substance of his
prophecy. If that rule held here — and we have seen
that the appearance of the prophecy in the Book of
Isaiah does not bind us to the Isaianic authorship —
1 With the possible exception of Joel, where much of the data is
capable of being referred either to pre-exilic or post-exUic times.

158 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
then we should infer without hesitation that the
author lived during the Babylonian exile, and deliv
ered his message not long before Cyrus took Babylon.
While the oppressor in Isaiah's time is Assyria, to
this author it is Babylon. While Jeremiah predicts
the exile, this author presupposes it. He names Cyrus
not in the language of prediction, but as an existing,
mighty fact — a fact of terror to Babylon, of comfort
and reassurance to Israel.
Criticism has much more to say in support of the
late date of this section. But what has already been
offered is a normal specimen of critical method. Is
it reasonable or is it not ?

m
Let us now glance at the critical method in its
application to the Psalms ; and for our purpose it
will be instructive to take a psalm ascribed to David.
We here select the fortieth, as having a special inter
est of its own. To begin with, the critics, passing at
first over the superscription, " For the Chief Musi
cian. A Psalm of David," which is obviously no part
of the psalm proper, would at once proceed to the
internal evidence afforded by the Psalm itself. The
most obvious point about it is its sudden change of
tone in the middle from gratitude to lament. The
temper of both parts of the Psalm is so different
that some are disposed to believe that two independ
ent psalms have been put together. It will be better,
however, to find, if possible, some historical situation
within which both parts of the psalm are at the same

THE METHODS OF CRITICISM 159
time intelligible. Assuming for the moment that the
psalm is a imity — and it is at any rate a unity to the
final editor and to us — let us try to discover who
the speaker is.
I waited patiently for the Lord ;
And he inclined unto me, and heard my cry (verse 1).
Who is the I ? Is it an individual or the church
that is speaking ? Verse 3 with its " praise to our
God," suggests — though it does not absolutely com
pel — a wider outlook than the individual ; but this
view receives substantial confirmation from verse 5,
not only because it speaks of the raany wonderful
works which Jehovah has done, but still raore because
of the words And thy thoughts which are to us-ward.
Is the wider interpretation of the J then not the more
natural ? In that case, it is the church that is speak
ing, or at least the individual in the name of the
church. Now let us look at verse 2.
He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of
the miry clay ;
And he set my feet upon a rock, and established my
goings. Is this to be interpreted literally or metaphori
cally ? Some, interpreting it literally, refer it to the
fortunes of Jeremiah in the dungeon. But apart
from the fact that the metaphorical interpretation is
equally possible, and perhaps more natural, the literal
view will be impossible, if we were right in conclud-

i6o OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
ing that this psalm reflects the experience of the
church. In that case, we should have to find sorae
horror in the history of the people, which could be
fittingly described in these words ; and although we
know that history much too little to estimate all the
possibilities, it will hardly be denied that these meta
phors would appropriately characterize the exile.
The probability of this will have to be tested by the
subsequent verses.
And he hath put a new song in my mouth.
Even praise unto our God,
Many shall see it, and fear.
And shall trust in the Lord (verse 3).
Now the new song is the term applied in the latter
part of Isaiah to the song which Israel is to sing to
Jehovah for His deliverance of the people from exile.
Sing unto the Lord a new song (Is. xiii. 10).
But more. The effect of the deliverance wrought for
Israel in the psalra is to be the conversion of raany
to Jehovah, that is, to Israel's God ; and, though not
absolutely necessary, it is most natural to suppose
that those who are to be converted are heathen,!
Now precisely this point — the world-wide influence
and destiny of Israel's gospel of redemption — is
repeatedly emphasized in the latter part of Isaiah : cf .
the passage already quoted —
Sing unto the Lord a new song.
And his praise from the end of the earth (Is. xiii. 10).
1 This point is obscured by the rendering The Lord.

THE METHODS OF CRITICISM i6i
Cf. Ps. Ixvii. 1, 2.
God be merciful to us, and bless us. . . .
That thy way may be known upon earth.
Thy saving health among all nations.
Now the full force of Ps. xl. 5 begins to be felt.
Many are the wonderful works which thou hast done.
This verse is a swift retrospect of God's love frora the
distant days of the exodus to the recent deliverance
from exile. In such a context — cf. thy thoughts
which are to us-ward — it is really too large to be
applicable only to the individual.
How, then, is Israel to recompense this God for
all His goodness ? Not through sacrifice and offer
ing, but through obedience to His will, the law Avrit-
ten on the pages of Scripture and on the heart;
for Sacrifice and offering thou hast no delight in ;
Mine ears hast thou opened :
Burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required.
Then said I, Lo, I am come ;
In the roll of the book it is prescribed to me (verses
6, 7, E. v., margin).
What is this book ? Clearly, in such a context, a
book which laid little stress on the requirements of
sacrifice. Now that condition is hardly satisfied by
the Pentateuch, of which so large a proportion is taken
up with the very things which God is here declared
not to require. Whatever the book was, it must, it
would seem, have included at least some of the eighth
11

i62 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
century prophets : the sentiment of the psalm is pre
cisely paralleled by such a passage as Hosea vi. 6 — /
desire mercy and not sacrifice ; cf, Amos v. 25, Micah
vi. 6-8. This consideration would make an exilic
date alraost the earliest possible ; and thus our view
of the psalm receives important confirmation. But
the exile would seem to be over ; the song of deliver
ance is already in Israel's mouth. And if the latter
part of the psalm is connected with the former, as
it well may be, then the whole psalm might come
from a period soon ! after the return, when the
brilliant hopes of the exiles had received so bitter a
disappointment. In this way, a psalm which a very ancient tradition
ascribes to David, is assigned by criticism to a period
later than him by five centuries. The result may be
startling, but is the process by which it is reached
unnatural or unreasonable ? It is not claimed that
the result is certain ; only that it is highly probable,
and that it meets the varied elements of the case
more adequately than does the view of the author
ship implied by the superscription.
Illustrations of critical method have now been
drawn frora history, prophecy, and poetry. These
illustrations are perfectly typical ; it is in these ways
that criticism works. Mathematical accuracy in the
results is not to be expected, as the material is too
meagre to admit of it ; but, by the use of these and
similar methods, results have been reached along
certain lines which are so highly probable as to be
1 Or long after, if we assume that verse 7 implies the practical
canonicity of the prophets.

THE METHODS OF CRITICISM 163
practically certain, and which are commanding an
ever-widening circle of allegiance. Are these methods
legitimate and reasonable or are they not ?

IV
Let us now briefly consider one of the problems in
another department, of which criticism has keenly
felt the pressure, and the way in which a solution has
been sought — the problem of the patriarchal stories.
Are they strictly historical or are they legendary ?
Now it must be confessed that the discussion of this
question has occasionally been marked, on both sides,
by somewhat rash and inconsiderate dogmatism. At
the same time, the question is not so simple as it
looks to one who has never gone into it and it may
be worth while to state some of the difficulties which
have led the critics to doubt the strict historicity of
the narratives ; for, if there has been dogmatism,
there has also been argument.
(i) First, then, it is obvious that the genealogies
cannot always be literally interpreted. An examina
tion of Genesis x., for exaraple, proves that names
which seem to be names of persons are often in real
ity names of peoples or countries. The Hebrew
plural masculine ends in im ; any one who reads the
chapter through with this fact in mind, and notes the
number of words which have this ending, will be as
tonished. Take, for exaraple, verses 13 and 14 : Miz
raim begat Ludim with six others whose names end
in im. Mizraim is the regular word in the Old Testa
ment for Egypt; so that this verse is only another

i64 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
way of saying that the Lydians, etc., are sprung from
Egypt. Many names which are not plural in form,
yet are intended without doubt to refer to peoples ;
see, in particular, verses 15-19 : Canaan begat . . .
the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgashite ; and
the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite; and the
Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite. In
every one of these cases the article is used ; the form
of the word is precisely the same as in the similar
enumerations of the Canaanite peoples scattered
throughout the Pentateuch, cf. Gen. xv. 19-21, where,
in spite of the plural of the English Authorized Ver
sion, the Hebrew words with the single exception of
the Rephaim, are in the singular. In other cases,
some of the names are really names of places ; e. g.,
Tarshish, in verse 4, a son of Javan, or Greece. This
whole verse offers an instructive combination of
places and peoples: The sons of Javan; Mishah,
and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim (or rather Roda
nim). The first two words are names of places not
yet with certainty identified, while the last two are
names of peoples, probably the inhabitants of Cyprus
and Rhodes ; and the whole verse practically means,
" connected with Greece were her colonies in Italy
and Sicily, together with the islands of Cyprus and
Rhodes." The whole makes much the same kind of
impression as if we were to say that the sons of
Britain were England, Scotland, the Irish and the
Welsh, and England begat the Canadian and the
Australian, etc. Obviously the interest of this table
in Genesis x. is in no way diminished by this circum
stance ; only it is the interest of ethnology colored

THE METHODS OF CRITICISM 165
by geographical and historical associations, not the
interest of genealogy. From this point of view, it is
one of the most important ethnological monuraents of
the ancient world. It illustrates the relations con
ceived to subsist between the peoples of a large part
of the then known world, and preserves some valuable
historical and ethnological facts, or traditions, which
perhaps, like the illustration above in which England
begets the Canadian and Australian, occasionally need
correction. The Hittites, e.g., were not racially con
nected with the Canaanites (verse 15) nor the Canaan
ites with the Egyptians (cf. verse 6, where the sons of
Ham are Ethiopia, Egypt, North Africa, and Canaan).
It is considerations like these which, at any rate
within this chapter, are unanswerable, that have led
raany of the critics to see in the earliest names of
Hebrew story the personification of peoples or tribes.
For example, it is not a little surprising to find that
long after Abraham is so old a man that the birth of
a child to him is regarded by Sarah as an impos- \
sibility, it is recorded, without surprise or corament, 1
that he had six children by his second wife (Gen. \
xxv. 1, 2). When we find that some of these chil
dren beaxJthe_names_of_A^rab^^ (e. g. Midian) '
and that the son of one of these children has three
sons, all of whose names end in im, and are therefore
names of peoples (verse 3), we begin to see the relative
justification for supposing that these notices inform
us about tribal rather than personal relations. This
suspicion receives suggestive confirmation from the
word to Rebekah with regard to the birth of her
children.

i66 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
Two nations are in thy womb,
And two peoples shall be separated even from thy bowels ;
And one people shall be stronger than the other people.
And the elder shall serve the younger (Gen. xxv. 23).
(ii) Another reason for questioning the strict his
toricity of the patriarchal stories is the vast interval
of time between the incidents and the record of thera.
Frora Genesis xiv., the date of Abraham may be ap
proximately inferred as 2250 b. c. Now assuming that
the critical view of the dates of the earliest, that is,
the prophetic documents in the Pentateuch, is correct
(roughly 900 to 750 b. c), the writers stand no less
than fourteen centuries from the incidents they re
cord — as far as the English historian of to-day is
distant from St. Columba. Even assuming the
Mosaic authorship, the record is over ten centuries
later than the history. In other words, the historian
of that early period is as much at a disadvantage as
the modern historian of the times of Alfred the Great.
Indeed, unless he has some special means of knowing
the facts, he is at a much greater disadvantage ; for
the modern historian has chronicles and books in
numerable to consult, which, after making every
allowance for the widespread knowledge of the art
of writing in the ancient world, has no real parallel
in the case before us. Besides, no claim is ever made
by the writer that he had access to special sources of
information. So far as we can tell, he may be de
pending on tradition. Indeed this would account, as
nothing else will, for the slight discrepancies between
parallel accounts ; and it is well known that tradition,
though it preserves much, loses, confounds, and ob-

THE METHODS OF CRITICISM 167
scures much. In the face of the variations which the
written statements of Samuel and Kings undergo
about three centuries afterwards on the pages of the
Chronicler.! it would be idle to deny the possibihtv of
even more serious modifications of a tradition which
was purely oral.
It is only natural, then, in estimating the histor
icity of the patriarchal narratives, to remember the
immense interval that separates the incidents from
the record : and whether, in the absence of any guar
antee, a history which is from ten to fourteen centuries
later than the events with which it deals, can have
all the value of a history that is contemporary, may
well be the subject of reverent doubt. Many inci
dental statements betray the touch of a later hand.
Abraham, for example, is said to have pursued a sec
tion of the invading army as far as Dan (Gen. xiv.
14). Now there was no Dan in Abraham's time ;
according to an interesting notice in Judges xviii.
29. the original name of the place was Laish : it was
not called Dan tiU the time of the Judges (1200-
1000 B. c). This fact alone, unl^s we assume that
an original reference to Laish in the Abraham story
had been subsequently altered to Dan, would be
enough to bring down that story to a point eleven
hundred years later ; - and it would be little short of
a miracle — so the critical argument runs — if pure
1 Cf . 2 Chr. viu. 2, where Hiram gives citie? to Solomon, thongh in
1 Kins? ix. 1 1-14, it was Solomon who had given them to Hiram, in
return for a loan.
- Considerarions like these — not to mention others — dispose of the
thecrv, which has no support in feet, probability, or analogy, that the
tiaditions were preserved from the very earliest rimei in wriring.

)C

i68 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
history had been orally preserved across so many
centuries.! (iii) A further difficulty in the way of accepting the
patriarchal narratives as strictly historical has been
their religious implications. It is difficult, for ex
ample, to reconcile the theophanies with the teaching
about God in the New Testament, or even in the more
exalted parts of the Old. The story of the appear
ance of Jehovah to Abraham in Genesis xviii. is a
singularly attractive one. It has all the freshness
and naivety of the early world ; and it suggests noble
thoughts as to the fellowship of God with mortal
men. But literally interpreted, it has difficulties of
its own. Are we to suppose that God really ate of
" the butter, and milk, and the calf which Abraham
had dressed " ? The narrative says so ; but Christ
says, " God is spirit ; " and elsewhere we are assured,
" No man hath seen God at any time " (John i. 18 ;
cf. vi. 46).
There is a real difficulty here — a difficulty which
is heightened by the analogy of other literatures ; for
if it be a literal fact that God stood as a man before
Abraham, spoke with him audible words and enjoyed
his hospitality beneath the tree, why may we not ac
cept Homer's statement as a literal fact, that Athene
caught Achilles by his yellow hair and spoke to him ?
1 Herodotus has several stories of prodigies to relate even of the
Persian war. Cf. in particular viii. 37-39, where sacred weapons were
set by unseen hands before a temple ; two crags burst away from Par
nassus, and killed many of the Persians ; and two resurrected Greek
heroes of the olden time, of more than human stature, pursued and
slew the foe. Only about half a century can have elapsed between
these incidents and the record of them.

THE METHODS OF CRITICISM 169
Have both these statements not to be tested by the
notion of the spirituality of God ? There can be no
question of their religious suggestiveness and power ;
the question is as to their historicity. And that
question is raised not by the caprice of the critic,
but, as we have seen, by the express teaching of
Christ. Even conservative scholars sometimes waive
the historicity of such theophanies. Hopfl, for ex
araple, writes thus : " In the Biblical narrative God
very frequently appears on the arena of the history.
He warns, or encourages to this enterprise or that,
frustrates the execution of a plan, blocks the way of
a proposal, rewards, reproaches the children of Israel
with their misconduct. We should hardly properly
grasp the sense of the Biblical historian, were we to
suppose that in all these cases, God was immediately
and visibly acting, like a deus ex machina. What is
here ascribed to God, will in most cases, have been
done by some prominent personality or other who
was filled with the spirit of God, and enjoyed among
the people the reputation of being a man of God. If
God made use of this man, then it was God himself
who did what he did." ! This argument, which is
not very convincing, and which, in trying to save the
text, takes grave liberties with its plain meaning, yet
serves the useful purpose of emphasizing the difficulty
which is created for an honest and reverent mind by
the narratives of the theophanies. It is further to
be noted that the story of Joseph, which shows a ma-
1 "Die hohere Bibelkritik," pp. 47, 48. Luther often adopts a
somewhat similar principle. He thinks, e. g., that Rebekah may have
received the oracle in Gen. xxv. 23 through Shem.

y

170 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
JarSJUitcraiT arfcjthan tho earlier stories, does not pre
sent the same religious dillicultics as tbey do. There
is no theophany in it at all ; God is ratlicr seen as a
providence, shaping and governing human life.
(iv) The religious argument has also been urged
from another and apparently an opposite side. In
spite of the primitive nature of the theophanies, which
are paralleled by many other early literatures, the
general religious tone of the patriarchs is much su
perior to that of the heroes in the Book of Judges. It
is impossible, some one has said, that the ancestors of
men like Ehud, Gideon and Jephthah could have led
such lives as the patriarchs are recorded to have
lived. Of course those who believe in the strict his
toricity of the narratives will regard the society re
flected in the Book of Judges as an illustration of the
too familiar phenomenon known as degeneracy. But
that interpretation, though possible, is not necessary,
and most of the critics would add, not probable. In
the time of the Judges, for example, human sacrifice
appears as a thing that can be tolerated. It is not
common ; it is an awful moment when Jephthah offers
his daughter in sacrifice. But he does offer her. Now
in the story of Abraham, human sacrifice appears as
a thing intolerable, at least to the religion of Jehovah.
In the impulse to sacriflce his son, Abraham is like
any other Semite ; the revelation, the new thing, that
which is to distinguish Israel's religion from the sister
religions, is contained in the words^" Lay not thine
hand_mtan_the lad." That is the voice from heaven.

This story looks almost like a protest against the
practice which in the time of the Judges, could at

THE METHODS OF CRITICISM 171
least be tolerated. It does not, of course, necessarily
follow tliat the Abraham story is later than the other;
but it certainly remains a problem why, if the religious
attainments of the patriarchal age were so high, those
of the age of the judges were so low. It is in large
measure the noble prophetic tone of these narratives,
so much superior to the tone of the Judges, and bear
ing such strong affinities to the teaching and spirit of
the great prophets, that has confirmed the critics in
their belief, reached along other lines of evidence,
that the writing of these stories falls shortly before
the prophetic period.!
These then are some of the reasons which have led
the critics to doubt whether the patriarchal narratives
are, in the strict sense, altogether historical.^ It is uo
part of the purpose of the present sketch to criticise
the adequacy of tlie arguments ; it will be enough if
they have been felt to be reasonable. Besides, the
same criticism which has led to those conclusions, has
also something to say of a constructive kind, and en-
1 There is no real inconsistency between the advanced religious
ideas ot tlic patriarchal stories, and the much older and more primitive
theophanies, with which those ideas are often associated. Such stories
as GcM. xviii. would bo on the lijis of tho people for generations ; they
constitute part of tho material by which the prophetic historian is
bound. But, as a rule, he breathes into tliom the profound spirit of
tho prophetii: religion, as he does with the Babylonian stories of the
Flood, etc. Cf. Chapter X. There can bo no question that, whatever
tho dates of the documents may bo, they contain much very ancient
material. Everything points that way.
'' For furtlior discussion, reference may be made to the articles on
the patriarchs in the recent Bible dictionaries ; also to Gunkel, " The
Legends of Genesis" (English translation) ; Guthe, "Geschichte des
Volkos Israel," jip. 1G1-1C8 ; Reuss, " Geschichte der heiligen Schriften
des A. T.," pp. 163-173,

172 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
courages a belief in the historicity — if not of all the
details — at any rate of the broad outlines of the early
Hebrew stories. It has pointed out that the amount
aud nature of the personal detail in some of the stories
is hardly reconcilable with the view that the patriarchs
are nothing but personifications of tribes, or idealiza
tions of Hebrew virtues. It has further reminded us
that there is a double, and sometimes a triple tradition
for the early stories — each document telling essen
tially the same tale with variations, and thus confirm
ing the substantial historicity of the salient facts.!
The discussion may be concluded in the sober words
of Driver: "The view which on the whole may be
said best to satisfy the circumstances of the case is the
view that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are historical
persons, and that the accounts which we have of them
are in outline historically true, but that their characters
are idealized, and their biographies in many respects
colored by the feelings and associations of a later
age." 2 And again : " It must further be allowed that
the characters of the patriarchs are colored religiously
by the feelings and beliefs of a later age. In the days
of the patriarchs, religion must have been in a rudi
mentary stage : there are traces of this in the idea, for
instance, of the revelations of deity being confined to
particular spots, and in the reverence paid to sacred
trees or pillars ; but at the same tirae the patriarchs
often express themselves in terms suggesting much
riper spiritual capacities and experiences. Here we
1 See especially Kittel's treatment of these stories iu his " History
ofthe Hebrews."
^ Hastings' " Dictionary of the Bible," ii. p. 534.

THE METHODS OF CRITICISM 173
cannot but trace the hands of the narrators, who were
men penetrated by definite moral and religious ideas,
and who, writing with a didactic aim, idealized to a
certain extent the characters of the patriarchs, and,
while not stripping them of the distinctive features
with which they were traditionally invested, so filled
in the outlines supplied by tradition as to present the
great figures of Hebrew antiquity as spiritual types,
examples, for imitation, or warning, as the case might
be, for successive generations." !
1 Loc. cit. p. 535. For a defence of the historicity of the patriarchal
narratives, see au article by Professor Konig on " Shall we believe the
Narrative of Israel's growth ? " in " The Sunday School Times," De
cember 14, 1901. A brief, but good discussion wiU be found in " The
Book of Genesis," by Professor G. W. Wade, who reaches much the
same conclusion as Driver. " The patriarchal narrative is, in its broad
features, historical, but, from the lateness of the documents in which
it is contained it may be suspected of including an ideal element "
(p. 54).

CHAPTER VII
THE ESSENCE OF PROTESTANTISM
Criticism is the inalienable right and duty of all
churches which call themselves Protestant ; for Prot
estantism itself, in the narrower sense of the word,
had its origin in the fearless criticism of the then ex
isting church. In another sense. Protestantism is
older than the Reformation ; it is as old as the hatred
of lies and the passion for truth. The essential spirit
of Protestantism has been often obscured by the not
unnatural tendency to identify it with a body of doc
trine, and to see it in opposition to the doctrines of
the Romish Church. But the moment it is so identi
fied, it ceases to be, in the strict sense. Protestantism ;
for as it originated in criticism and protest, it reserves
to itself the eternal and indefeasible right of criticism
and protest. In the words of Frederic Myers, " One
might say that the characteristics of Protestantism lie
rather in the maintenance of this spirit of freedom,
than in the profession of any definite peculiarities,
either doctrinal or ecclesiastical." ! Protestantism is
the spirit that is ever ready to challenge all that ob
scures the truth, whether that be the teaching and
traditions of an ancient church, the solemn decisions
of ecclesiastical councils, the authoritative decrees of
1 " Catholic Thoughts on the Bible and Theology," p. 365.

ESSENCE OF PROTESTANTISM 175
Popes, or even the ' traditions which in its own name
have been established. The exigencies of Reformation
controversy, similar in their effects to the exigencies
of the Gnostic and other controversies of the early
church, precipitated the beliefs of the Reformation,
in no long tirae, into a form almost if not quite as
scholastic as the scholasticism which it repudiated;
but it would be unfair to Protestantism to identify
it absolutely with the particular theological systems
which, in a given historical environment, it more or
less necessarily assumed. It is a spirit ; it raoves ; it
impels ; it compels ; it revises ; it reforms ; it creates.!
No historical form can ever do it full justice. As
some one has happily said, " The Reformation was
a revolt against finality, and it would be strange if
finality were to be its result."
Protestantism is the human answer to the divine
call to " prove all things." It is the duty of the Protes
tant reverently but fearlessly to test all things, espe
cially the things which concern his most holy faith.
The things which cannot stand this test, it is better
that he should lose ; they are but cumberers of his
ground. And the things which have stood it trium
phantly, he will love and trust with the profounder
confidence. He must not have the lie in his soul, as
Plato would say ; in whatever things he is deceived,
he must not allow himself to be deceived there. The
1 Cf. Hamack : " What Luther did was not to create for us a
finished religious system — systems come and go — but to set before
us a perennial task, viz., on the basis of the gospel to be ever reform
ing anew and ever protesting courageously against indifference and
ex cathedra utterances " {" Martin Luther iu seiner Bedeutung fiir
die Geschichte der Wissenschaft und der BUdung," p. 26).

>

176 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
true Protestant will be the last man to fear investiga
tion. If it be real investigation, earnest, thorough,
and brave, he will welcome it as an ally of the truth.
He knows that the truth — and that alone — will
make him free. Doubtless intellect alone will not
settle the great problems of faith. The mind of man
will not by merely intellectual appliances enter into
the mind of the Spirit which throbs through Scrip
ture. The Reformers kept this truth nobly in the
forefront. Luther, e. g., insists that besides thorough
linguistic knowledge, the help of the holy Spirit is
necessary, besides fear, humility, and devout prayer.!
The Reformation was a moral even more than an in
tellectual protest. But the presence of these indis
pensable spiritual qualities, though they will lead a raan
into as ranch of the truth as is necessary for his sal
vation, will not, by themselves, put him in possession of
all that is contained in the Scriptures. To attain that
even approximately, he needs helps of many kinds,
helps which are happily multiplying abundantly in
our day ; but more even than those he needs the love
of truth, and the desire to follow her freely and gladly
wherever she will take him. To resent or circum
scribe the inquiry of one who brings to his task the
spiritual qualifications to which we have alluded, is to
deny the first principles of Protestantism.^ It fur-
1 For a fine summary of the methods and spirit of the Reformers,
see Diestel, " Geschichte des Alteu Testamentes in der christlichen
Kirche," pp. 230 ff.
^ " It should be sufBcient for us to hold fast tenaciously — aggres
sively if occasion requires — to the root principle of the Reformation,
that reason in man is the caudle of the Lord, aud that by reason we
are to prove all things and to hold fast to that which after proof is

ESSENCE OF PROTESTANTISM 177
ther creates in the minds of men who stand outside
the church the injurious and unfortunate suspicion
that she cannot afford to risk an unfettered investi
gation of the truth on which she stands ; and it raises
for them the question why liberty is granted for the
investigation of every kind of truth, but the one on
which the church claims that practically eve^rything de
pends, both for this world and that which is to come.
Fortunately the churches as a whole, not even alto
gether excepting the Roman Catholic Church, are
practically conceding to their scholars the right of
investigation. There is hardly any living church in
any part of the world, which has not made more or
less influential contributions of a distinctly Protestant
kind, to the literature of Biblical discussion ; aud by
that we do not mean a contribution to the support of
Protestant doctrine, but one animated by the Protes
tant spirit. There are men in every church gladly
conscious of standing in the liberty wherewith Christ
hath made them free, and humbly yet fearlessly pros
ecuting the study of His truth. But though the
churches tolerate, and in a sense encourage investiga
tion, there are influences at work tending to circum
scribe its limits, to dictate how far it shall go and
where it shall stop. These influences are very power
ful. They represent a great deal of the best, the
noblest, the most devout life of the church. They
may seem to make for Protestant doctrine. But they
are not themselves Protestant influences. " We are
found good. . . . ' Where are we to stop 1 ' is a question which none
but a man void of living faith would ask." W. F. Cobb, " Theology
Old and New," pp. 29, 30. 12

178 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
all aware now," says Harnack, " that to dictate to
knowledge the result at which it is to arrive is to
make knowledge impossible." ! Investigation is at an
end, if the result is already a foregone conclusion.
The very word means following upon the tracks of
something ; you cannot go both where the tracks lead
and somewhere else. You cannot give a raan the
right to investigate and at the same time bind him, in
advance, to one particular conclusion. The right you
give him is in that case, a delusion : you give with the
one hand what you take away with the other. There
is no law to prevent your doing so ; but you cannot do
so and consistently call yourself a Protestant. In
opposition to centuries of tradition, the Reformers
faced the facts of Scripture for themselves with their
emancipated reason, and under the good spirit of
God, reached their own conclusions. They did not
all agree among themselves. They differed on some
of the most vital points. Luther — giant as he was
alike in intellect and faith — seems to many to have
imperilled the unity of the great work which Prov
idence had enabled him to do, through his misinter
pretation of a metaphor. But they were all alike
Protestants. Their differences among themselves
were as nothing to the great gulf which separated
them from the church against whose abuses they
had protested. Custom was lord of the one ; reason
and conscience were lords of the other.
We are not forgetting the part that Scripture
played in all this ; how it was the spirit that moved
in it that stirred the Reformers to attack the giant
^ " Thoughts on Protestantism" (English Translation) p. 24.

ESSENCE OF PROTESTANTISM 179
system which had now become but a hollow and
immoral caricature of the New Testament Church.
The Protestant appeal was an appeal to the Scripture.
But had that been all, it could have been answered,
because the Catholics appealed to Scripture too. The
Protestant appeal however, was unanswerable, because
it was an appeal to what, for want of a better word,
we may call the reasonable interpretation of Scrip
ture. Centuries of often clever, sometimes tortuous,
but almost always irrelevant allegorizing had ob
scured the original meaning of the Bible. It had
become a dark and impossible book, for the interpre
tation of which the layman was entirely dependent
upon the decisions of the Church. Luther! denied
that it was a dark book. " The Scripture is for all,
and is clear enough — as much as is necessary for
salvation — though obscure enough for souls which
wish to know and investigate more." Speaking very
broadly, the meaning of Scripture was on the face of
it ; a passage which was obscure might be illumined
by a clearer passage elsewhere. That a book meant
what it said ; that reason is not to be violated in an
attempt to believe that it means something else, some
unintelligible thing, which will need special interpre
tation : a simple thing this principle seems to us, and
yet it is one of the greatest acquisitions in human
history. It broke the force of ecclesiastical systems
that were hoary with age. It created new worlds of
1 Luther in the main repudiated the aUegorical method. At best,
he holds, it has only the value of ornament. It never carries convic
tion unless when supported by Scripture (e. g. Gal. iv. 22, 1 Pet. iii. 21 ).
He severely criticises the allegorical methods of Origen, and others of
the fathers. Cf. Eger, " Luther's Auslegung des A. T.," pp. 24, 25.

i8o OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
life and thought. It inspires all the noblest thought
and enterprise of modern civilization.
The appeal of the Reformers was to Scripture —
a Scripture, however, which neither needed nor would
tolerate for its interpretation the trammels of tradi
tion or councils or Popes ; in other words, to a rea
sonable interpretation of Scripture. In this sense
the Reformers were rationalists. Doubtless they de
nounced reason, and proclaimed their submission to
Scripture; but the different interpretations which
were presently put upon facts and institutions of the
most comraanding importance, are enough to show
that Scripture is not simply an objective thing, before
whose word one can humbly bow, but that the mind,
no less than the heart, has to go forth to meet it ; and
the interpretations will vary as the minds do. In
other words, it was impossible, even had it been de
sirable, to shut reason out. The two aspects of Prot
estantism, which are ultimately only one — the appeal
to Scripture and the appeal to reason — find admi
rably concentrated illustration in a moment, which
perhaps more perfectly than any other sums up the
spirit of the Reformation, just as the pathos of it is
summed up in the fruitless discussion over Hoc est
corpus meum in the Schloss of Marburg. It is the
historic raoraent when Luther replies in the " Diet of
Worras " to Bck's demand for a straightforward
answer to his question whether he would retract or no.
" I can retract nothing," said the monk, " unless I be
convinced either /rom Scripture or by clear argument." !
1 Cf. Froude's second lecture on " The Times of Erasmus aud
Luther." " In those words lay the whole meaning of the Reforma-

ESSENCE OF PROTESTANTISM i8i
Here, in one of the most tremendous moments in
history, Luther deliberately co-ordinated reason with
Scripture.! We say " deliberately " ; for the great
words have all the ring of a solemn confession. In
later years and with growing bitterness he spoke, it is
true, with contempt of reason, in language of almost
incredible coarseness aud vehemence. No doubt
Luther had grave, not to say insoluble problems to
face, such as those which gathered round the Eucha
rist ; and the struggle sometimes provoked hira to an
extravagant depreciation of reason. The very inten
sity of his difficulty is due to the fact that he had not
broken, and indeed could not break, completely with
the past. But there are tiraes when Luther treated
with extreme boldness the Scripture to whose word at
other times he professed to bow; and we see the raan
as truly at the one time as at the other. He repre-
.sents in his own person the joint claims of reason and
of Scripture.
How bold he was — how rational, shall we say ? —
in his criticism of the worth of the various books of
Scripture, will hardly be believed by one accustomed
to identify Protestantism with the absolute infallibility
of the Bible. Every one is familiar with his opinion
that the Epistle of James is an epistle of straw. His
opinion of the Epistle to the Hebrews is also depreci-
tion. Were men to go on forever saying that this and that was true, be
cause the Pope afiirmed it ? Or were Pope's decrees thenceforward to be
tried like the words of other men — by the ordinary laws of evidence ? "
' Doubtless Luther would never in formal discussion have co-ordi
nated the two. All the same, this great utterance is as a window
through which we see into the man's real soul. On the whole question,
cf. Preuss, " Die Entwicklung des Schriftprinzips bei Luther bis zur
Leipziger Disputation."

i82 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
atory. He objects to the book of Revelation because
of its visions and obscurity. His spirit " does not fit
into " that book, because Christ is not taught in it ;
and to witness to him is the first duty of an apostle
("Ye shall be my witnesses"). The book of Kings,
he admits, is more credible than Chronicles. What
would it matter, he asks, if Moses himself did not
write the Pentateuch ? He thinks it probable that
Jeremiah, Hosea, Isaiah, and Ecclesiastes received
their final form at the hands of later redactors. In
spite of the superscription, he designates the Solo
monic authorship of the 127th Psalm as only probable.
He admits chronological difficulties and contradictions
in the statements of historical fact. He concedes that
we do not always hear God Himself speaking in the
Old Testament. Esther might well have been outside
the canon, and the first book of Maccabees within it.
If this is not criticism, what is ? It is the comment
of a powerful, intrepid, and original mind, upon the
contents of the Biblical books ; and, at first sight, it
would seem to be an arbitrary comment. Perhaps, at
bottom, it is arbitrary, its criterion really being that
of an individual mens sana. But the norm which he
acknowledges as determinative of his decisions is
this : " I abide by the books which give me Christ clear
and pure." That accounts at once for his eulogy of
St. John and St. Paul, and for his depreciation of St.
James. Obviously this principle cannot be so fruitful
in its application to the Old Testament ; but here,
too, it has its place. The exceptional value of the
Psalms, he tells us, lies in this, that they speak so
clearly of the kingdom, death, resurrection, and

ESSENCE OF PROTESTANTISM 183
ascension of Christ. Whatever may be said of the
adequacy of Luther's criterion ! — and it certainly led
him to do less than justice to some of the Biblical
books — we cannot close our eyes to the fact that he
criticised the Bible in the spirit of a free, not to say
a bold, man. His comments reveal the instinctive
temper ofthe Protestant. No modern scholar claims a
liberty of discussion which he could not justify by the
critical utterances and temper of Luther ; and there is
much truth in the words of Fronde, that " the work of
the Reformation was done when speculative opinion
was declared free." ^
Intellectual freedom was won, but at the cost of
ecclesiastical unity ; and as it was in the beginning
of Protestantism, so it is now, and so perhaps it ever
shall be. Quot homines, tot sententiae : hence Prot
estantism assumes numerous denominational forms.
The Bible is not always so clear, even in its greatest
statements, as to compel all thinking men to one in
terpretation. What then ? Is liberty of thought not
likely, not certain to lead to infinite subjectivity?
The individual has a right to the Bible ; the priest
must not stand in his way. But is the individual's
interpretation sure to be right? and where individuals
differ, how shall we decide ? The new principles of
interpretation — grammatico-historical as they are
now called — greatly minimized the dangers of sub
jectivity. The interpretation of a passage was now
no longer determined by the caprice of the reader or
1 There is a good deal to be said for Kohler's assertion that for
church dogmatic Luther substitutes his own. Th. Ltztg. 1 1th October,
1902. 2 Essay ou " The Condition and Prospects of Protestantism."

i84 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
the tradition of the Church, but by the rigorous appli
cation of the laws of language and grammar, and by
the consideration of its context and purpose.! Still
experience soon showed that this was not enough to
fix the meaning of a passage beyond dispute. Neither
is the union of the individual with Christ by itself
sufficient. For while it will enlighten the eyes of his
spirit, and enable hira to behold all that essentially
concerns the welfare of his soul, it does not guarantee
hira an infallible answer to all the probleras that can
be raised on the ground covered by the literature of
the Bible. The very existence of various denomina
tions is sufficient proof of that. Between Christ and
many of the individual members of every denomina
tion there exists a real and intimate union, yet that
union coexists with widely different interpretations
of important texts, and even with not inconsiderable
doctrinal differences. The remedy for the inevitable
subjectivities of an active Protestantism does not lie
there. Where then does it lie ?

1 Of course it is not maintained that the historical method was
practised with anything like the same consistency as it is to-day. In
one sense indeed, it had hardly yet begun to be. There was practically
no sense of development, and without the appreciation of that fact, the
historical method could not yield its richest fruits. New Testament
doctrine was found even in the earliest parts of the Old Testament.
Luther remarks e. g. that Abimelech must have been a Christian ; be
cause God says to him " I know that in the integrity of thy heart thou
hast done this," (Gen. xx. 6) and no one could act in the integrity of
his heart but a Christian. In many respects, Luther's exegesis still
moves along the lines of mediaeval interpretation. But the spirit of
freedom was born. The new principles were beginning to work ; the
new day of interpretation had dawned. For an interesting sketch of
the principles of Luther's interpretation of the Old Testament, cf. Karl
Eger, " Luther's Auslegung des Alten Testaments."

ESSENCE OF PROTESTANTISM 185
The Reformers soon became painfully conscious of
the perils to which the new principles of interpreta
tion exposed the Church ; and we find both Melanch-
thon and Calvin suggesting a council of pious doctors,
whose definitions, though they need not be infallible,
might yet practically decide controverted points. How
ever useful or even necessary such a proposal may be
when the Church is face to face with the practical exi
gencies of a given situation ; however wise and just it
may be that the individual should, in points of contro
versy, submit his judgment to the collective piety and
wisdom of those who are presumably the worthiest
representatives of the Church, the proposal is yet an
undoubted reversion in principle to the methods of
the Romish Church, which Luther, at least, had
in the most emphatic way repudiated. He had re
jected the schoolmen. He had rejected the Fathers.
But the unpardonable sin was that he had rejected the
councils. It was this that dumbfounded the Papal
delegate at Worms. " It is as clear as day," Luther
maintained in his splendid vindication, "that both
Pope and Councils have often erred." Eck was
thunderstruck. " Do you really mean," he asked,
"that a Council can have erred?" Luther "hard
ened himself like a hard rock," and answered that it
was manifest that they had erred often. " Yes. Here
stand I. I can do no other. So help me God. Amen."
That was Luther's opinion of councils in the greatest
moment of his life; and though such a council as
Melanchthon or Calvin would have established would
probably have been animated by a spirit different
from that of the councils to which Luther gave such

X

i86 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
short shrift, in principle it would have been the same.
The Protestant, so long as he remains a Protestant,
cannot abandon either the right or the duty of search
ing for hiraself. That does not mean that he will
search alone, indifferent to the researches and results
of others. He is not alone ; the Spirit is with him.
And he will not forget that the Spirit which is with
hira is also with the Church. He will keep the open
ear for all that the Spirit has to say. But infallibility
is no more the attribute of a council than it is of a
man. An authority which aspires to command the
reason and the conscience must be able to impose
itself. If it cannot impose itself, it cannot, by Pope
or council, be superimposed.
This, then, is the true test of Protestantism — not
adherence to a creed, which necessarily shares the
imperfections of all human things, but possession of a
spirit ; and in the possession of this spirit lies the
hope of the Protestant churches in every field of their
activity, whether it be criticism, preaching, evangeliza
tion, home or foreign missionary enterprise. Indeed,
in the possession of this spirit lies the hope of the
world, of its science and art, of its social, economic,
and political progress. In the mighty words of Luther,
We must be courageous and free, and not allow the
spirit of liberty to be overawed by the fabricated words
of Popes. This is the manifesto of one who was both
a freedman and a free man. He knew the bitterness
of bondage before he tasted the exhilaration and re
sponsibilities of liberty. The tonic which the churches
need to-day is the recovery of this intrepid faith.
There are always numerous and subtle influences at

ESSENCE OF PROTESTANTISM 187
work tending to transform the Protestant spirit into
the Romish spirit.! One of the greatest of living
church historians has recently called attention to the
grave phenomenon which he describes as the pro
gressive catholicizing of the Protestant churches, a
phenomenon which expresses itself not only in the
increased emphasis on the liturgical side of worship
and on the ecclesiastical machinery of the church, but
in other and subtler ways. As it attempts to bind to
forms of worship, so it attempts to bind to forms of
thought. It is in both directions a repression of the
liberty and spontaneity which are inseparable from
true Protestantism. Protestantism, he assures us, is
not flourishing as the Protestant churches are ; and
he expresses the fear that these churches may become
" the mere double of Catholicism." ^ A church which
is not willing to welcome new facts, if they be facts ;
a church which is not able to respond to new truth,
frora whatever quarter it coraes ; a church which
binds old forms of truth upon the consciences of men,
or refuses to accommodate the truth which they em
bodied to contemporary modes of thought : such a
church, though she will hardly allure within her walls
profound and reverent thinkers who stand outside
her, may yet be able to do something for others, and
especially the more emotional sort of men. But she
cannot call herself a Protestant church.
Against the spirit of true Protestantism within the
Protestant churches, the subtlest and most attractive
1 For some trenchant remarks ou existing anomalies in the Protes
tant attitude to authority, cf. G. A. Coe, " The Religion of a Mature
Mind," pp. 82-94.
¦¦^ Hamack : " Thoughts on Protestantism," pp. 32-46.

i88 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
influences are arrayed. The glamour of an elabo
rate ritual, the imposing authority of the past, are not
the most helpful allies of intellectual and spiritual
liberty. There are Popes in other churches than the
Church of Rome — influences that make for the re
pression of the spontaneous life of the mind and
spirit ; and Luther's brave words are as needful to-day
as ever. " We must not allow the spirit of liberty
to be overawed by the fabricated words of Popes."
Protestantism has its traditions and theological sys
tems just as Catholicism has ; and, in their own way,
they can work as fatally. Every church, like every
age, has to readjust itself to truth. The truth itself
does not change. But the form of it does ; the age's
perception of it does. And if the form does not keep
pace with the changing perception, due among other
things, to truer methods and advancing knowledge,
then it becomes a form
" Through which the spirit breathes no more."
The form is stiff, and the spirit is gone.
It is at once the necessity and the misfortune of
a great and original age like the Reformation to
embody the spirit which created it in institutions and
systems. The spirit craves, nay, compels expression.
But, while the spirit is immortal, the body is not;
and the pathos of church history has just been the
general inability to distinguish between the mortal
body and the iraraortal spirit. The spirit of the
Reformation translated itself into theologies, which,
like all translations, did less than justice to the
original. Those theologies hardened into scholastic

ESSENCE OF PROTESTANTISM 189
forms which did less and less justice to the origi
nal impulse of the Reformation ; and the intellectual
salvation of the church lies in continuing to work in
the spirit of the original impulse, not of the scholas
ticism which it created.! Both for good and for evil,
the conservative instinct lies deep in the natures of
men. In religion, this instinct has worked largely,
but by no means exclusively, for good. This it was
that slew the prophets and that nailed Christ to His
cross ; but it is this, too, which has enabled men to
withstand the encroachments of insidious innovations,
and to preserve many of the fundamental elements in
religion which might have disappeared, had the ears
been too readily open to the plausible suggestions of
every new comer. But in spite of the great soul of
good at the heart of it, it has in many of its phases,
been an obstacle to progress. It has kept men stand
ing, when they should have been moving on. It has
often made them ungenerous and unjust to other men
who loved truth as they loved their lives. Men of
purely conservative instincts repose comfortably in
traditions and beliefs which have existed long simply
because they were never challenged ; and they angrily
resent the challenge when it comes, forgetting that
they call themselves Protestants, only because they
are children of fathers who were not afraid to chal
lenge all that offended their divine instinct for truth.
In the Reformation, we must not forget the Renais-
1 Cf. Froude's essay on " Criticism and the Gospel History" : "Of
all positions the most fatally suicidal for Protestants to occupy is the
assumption, which it is competent for Roman Catholics to hold, but
not for them, that beliefs once sanctioned by the Church are sacred,
and that to impugn them is not error, but crime."

I90 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
sauce.! It was an epoch of advancing knowledge as
well as of courageous faith. The facts of classical
antiquity revealed a new world of profound fascination
and of throbbing humanity, which put to confusion
the unrealities that the mediaeval church had only too
successfully imposed upon tho spirits of men. The
Renaissance was the re-discovery of man and tho
world : the Reformation was the re-discovory of God.
And that re-discovcry of Him was, in part, tho dis
covery of Him in the life of ancient humanity, or, in
more definite language, in the historical movements
and experiences reflected in tho Bible. It was surely
part of tlie gracious Providence of God that the recov
ery of the idea of humanity should be accompanied by
the perception that humanity was the theatre of tho
divine activity, that God was not a being apart, but
one who communes with men and governs history.
The Bible had been a book of the doctrines of salva
tion : it now became the record of the history of
salvation. Thc divine life and love wore soon in
their living relations to humanity ; and that is one
of the truths which it is the function of the Protestant
churches to keep before themselves aud tho world.
Wherever it has been forgotten, its neglect has been
fearfully avenged. Deism tore the heart out of re
ligion, by relegating God to a distant throne. Tho
issue was desolation and death. The nineteenth cen-
1 Harnack strikingly shows, however, that the Uenaissnnco, im
portant as it was, would never by itself and without tho Kifoiiiiatiou
have created the modern world, as it was essentially a reversion to
the past, "a resuscitation of antiquity" ("Martin Lnthor in seiner
Bedeutung, etc.," pp. 10, 11, 23).

ESSENCE OF PROTESTANTISM 191
tury has seen the idea of humanity, which received
so lurid an emphasis in the horrors of the French
Revolution, again interpenetrated by a sense of divinity
— partly in consequence of a dominant phUosophy
which has profoundly affected modern thought, and
partly through the revived historical study of the Bible.
And now, not merely because humanity is interesting,
but because within it the operations of divine law are
manifest, and upon the field of its history the divine
purpose is worked out, the theological scholar no less
than the historian may say, Humani nihil a me c/Menum
puto. It is quite impossible that the spirit of the Reforma
tion should ever be wholly lost. Whether there are
signs, as Harnack supposes, that it is vanishing frora
the Protestant churches or not, of one thing we may
be quite sure — that it is not vanishing from the world.
It is inspiring investigation in every department of
science to-day. A Galileo is free to-day to propound
any theory which he can commend to the reason of
those who will listen to him. There is very much
Biblical study, too, which is essentially Protestant in
spirit. The Biblical criticism of to-day, when it is
real criticism, and does not assume the thing to be
proved, is the direct outcome of the Reformation spirit,
working with the more scientific methods, and the
ever-enlarging material of our own age. The reverent
critics are the lineal descendants of the Reformers.
Criticism is not an isolated phenomenon which can be
located and controlled by those who fear it. It is part
of a universal movement, affecting every department
of human thought — a movement which wiU continue

192 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
so long as the world is full of problems and mystery,
and men have minds to think.
The Reformation taught the world fearlessly to in
vestigate all current beliefs, and to welcome new truths
as a source of strength. Hard heads need sound
knocks, said Luther; and sound enough were the
knocks which he and his brother reformers dealt at
sorae of the traditions and practices which could not
substantiate their claims on any better ground than
that of antiquity. The Reformation gave an enormous
irapulse to the respect for facts, and to the earnestness
of the search for thera. That was an age of discovery.
Brave and adventurous spirits worked hard and trav
elled far. They crossed oceans. They touched
undreamt-of continents. They explored antiquity.
They recreated theology. They stood upon the thresh
old of scientific discovery. The old world was passing.
New worlds of absorbing interest were breaking upon
their vision. All the facts that they could offer were
welcome ; but everything which claimed to be believed
must be able to bear the light. If it could not stand
to be criticised, it could not stand to be trusted. So
the quest went on from year to year, suffering contin
ual checks, but making continual progress. Every
traditional opinion was put on its defence ; and the
Bible could claim no exemption. Even Luther, as we
saw, had boldly challenged traditional belief as to the
authorship and value of certain of its books ; and the
challenge was bound to be repeated, wherever men
felt the impulse of the Reformation.
No mistake could be profounder than to suppose
that higher criticism, which is only another name for

ESSENCE OF PROTESTANTISM 193
literary or historical criticism, is a thing of yesterday.
In its spirit, it is as old as Luther, and older ; ! but,
even in something like its present form, it is a century
and a half old. It is exactly a hundred and fifty
years ago since what may be called the documentary
theory was devised to meet some of the more notorious
difficulties of the book of Genesis ; and that theory,
doubtless with important supplements and modifica
tions, holds the field to-day, and is accepted by many
who count themselves the opponents of criticism. It
is not without interest that Astruc, who first started
the theory, was a Roman Catholic.^ The impulse
given to intellectual liberty by the Reformation had
been powerful enough to compel at least a spasmodic
response from the raore original minds even in the
Church of Rome. Just as there are men of the Roman
Catholic spirit in Protestant communions, so there are
men of Protestant temper in the Romish Church,
such as Astruc in the eighteenth century, and Loisy
to-day, though the incubus of the Church is too heavy
to allow their thinking to attain clear consistency. It
is not possible to maintain that Astruc's theory was
devised in the interests of unbelief. The title of his
book 2 shows that, though he believed that there were
documents lying behind Genesis, he also believed that
the book had received its present form at the hands
1 See the references to the interpretation of Theodore of Mopsues
tia (350-429 A.D.) on p. 104.
^ Cf. Julia Wedgwood, — " The Message of Israel," p. 53. " Bib
lical criticism was born under the shadow of a liberal Romanism ; it
has been matured in the home of Protestantism."
3 Conjectures sur les Me'moires originaux dont il paroit que Moyse
s'est servi pour composer le livre de la Ge'nese.
13

194 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
of Moses. The problems raised by the phenomena of
Genesis press themselves upon the minds of all who
read with the desire to understand.
This is only one of numberless problems created
by the facts of Biblical literature ; it is the genius of
Protestantism to do what it can to find an answer for
them. It may not always succeed, but it is bound to
try ; and in the attempt it will at least learn the limi
tations within which it has to work. Biblical criti
cism does not stand alone. It is part of the intellectual
life of the age ; and the one can no more stop than the
other. Wherever there is a problem, there is some
thing upon which the Protestant mind must work —
whether that problem be in the heavens above, or on
the earth beneath, or in the Scriptures by which men
live. All scientific investigation is impelled by the
desire to know, and the investigation of the Bible is
governed by this impulse among others. For others
there assuredly are : the Bible will only utter its
deepest secret to those who fear the Lord, and who
desire, through it, to enter into fellowship with Him.
The impulse to the highest study of the Bible will be
the desire to have true religion increased within us.
But besides this impulse, the science of Biblical study
shares with all other sciences the desire to know and
understand, by patient investigation of all the avail
able facts. Biblical criticism is but one phase of that
great intellectual movement, essentially Protestant in
origin and impulse, in which every thinking man,
and, above all, every scientific student, must humbly
play his part. Truth has many forms ; one man
studies it under one aspect, another under another.

ESSENCE OF PROTESTANTISM 195
But there is one God over all, and all truth is ulti
mately related to Him. The search for it must be
undertaken in the reverent, yet fearless spirit of Him
who was Truth incarnate ; and where the spirit of the
Lord is, there is liberty.

CHAPTER VIII
CRITICISM AND CHRIST
No part of the discussion needs to be approached
with more reverence or with more delicate considera
tion of the feelings of others than this. Any theory
which would flippantly set aside a solemn decision of
Christ on any question, even were it purely literary or
historical, would stand self-condemned. This, then,
in brief, is the problem : Has Christ anywhere given
a deliberate decision on such questions ? The ques
tion is not. Did He hold certain opinions on these
matters? but. Are these opinions which He held, or-
iganic and necessary to His spiritual teaching? Did
He lay them emphatically upon the consciences of
those whom He sought to bring to God ? Were
they essential or incidental ?
Nothing has so distressed and disappointed the op
ponents of the critical view of the Old Testament as
its apparent disregard of the testimony of Christ. To
them it seems that Christ has plainly and deliberately
endorsed their own views of the Old Testament, and
implicitly condemned in advance the views of the
critics. One can have nothing but respect for the
jealousy with which they safeguard the honor of
Christ, and the enthusiasm with which they combat
belittling views of His person. But it must be noted.

CRITICISM AND CHRIST 197
on the other side, that most of the critics are animated
by precisely the same motives. No doubt it will not
seem so to their opponents. But one has only to read
such a statement of the case for criticisra as is pre
sented by Professor Meinhold's " Jesus and the Old
Testament " to see that this is the case. The critics
are contending for what they hold to be a worthier
conception of Christ's person than that which the
traditional theory offers them. They do not believe
that the Christ whose truth makes men free, would
bind in advance the intellectual conscience of unborn k
generations and wrap up faith^in Hiraself with issues ])(
that are wholly irrelevant to the spiritual life. We
may assume, indeed we know, that many men on both
sides love the truth, and would scorn any solution
which would be dishonoring to Christ.
Is the discussion of Old Testament probleras fore
closed by stateraents in the New Testament, 01: is it
not ? That is the real point at issue ; and the oppo
nents of criticism answer with no uncertain sound.
Referring to a statement of Dr. McCurdy's! that
" there is really no biblical tradition to the effect
that David was a psalm-writer, the titles to the
Psalms being unauthentic," a reviewer remarks, " We
do not know what he calls the New Testament, or
what he would say of Christ and the apostles, who
repeatedly affirmed that some of the Psalms were writ
ten by David, and based their argument upon the fact
of his authorship." ^ Again, we are told by another
writer that " the authority of the Psalter depends
1 " History, Prophecy, and the Monuraents," vol. iii. p. 52.
J "Bibliotheca Sacra," January, 1902, p. 204.

198 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
upon the testimony of the New Testament." ! Now
the New Testament has a very distinct function ; but
it seems to be no part of that function to give its read
ers information on literary problems arising out of the
Old Testament. It nowhere claims that right for it
self, and if any man makes such a claim for it he must
be prepared to justify his claim. He must show that
it was part of the purpose of the writers of the New
Testament to correct traditional views of authorship
and history, if those views were mistaken. Further,
he must show that they had access to information
which wouH" enable them to correct those views ; or,
in the absence of such information, he must show that
they were miraculously led to a knowledge of such
matters. Till these claims can be substantiated, the
New Testament endorsement of a tradition, say, as
to the Mosaic authorship of the law, or the Davidic
authorship of the Psalms, can have no more value
than the tradition itself ; and that must be independ
ently investigated. There need be no reason for
alarm at such a conclusion, unless it can be shown
that these questions are integrally bound up with the
spiritual function of Scripture.
What, then, is that function ? It is defined in the
famous text, 2 Tim. iii. 16, 17.
Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable for
teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which
1 Dr. T. W. Chambers in Munhall's " Anti-Higher Criticism,*'
p. 144. Paley, however, in his " Evidences," more than a hundred years
ago, frankly admitted that " a reference in the New Testament to a
passage in the Old does not so fix its authority as to exclude all inquiry
into its credibility, or into the separate reasons upon which that credi
bility is founded."

CRITICISM AND CHRIST 199
is iu righteousness ; that the man of God may be com
plete, furnished completely unto every good work.
Now whatever be the translation of the much-dis
puted sixteenth verse, it ought never to have been used
to sflence the discussion of literary problems. If we
translate with the Authorized Version, All Scripture
is given by inspiration of God, etc., we shall have in
the first place to determine the original compass of
Scripture ; and that is a notoriously hard question.^
For eight or nine passages, which are not found in the j V/
Old Testament, are quoted in the New — though not /
by our Lord — apparently as Scripture; and again,
though Christ does not quote the Apocrypha, there
are also books in the Old Testament itself which He
does not quote, e.g. Esther, the Song, Ecclesiastes.
Thus, to begin with, the Scripture of which inspiration
is predicated, though no doubt practically synonymous
with our Old Testaraent, is yet not specifically de
fined. The other translation of the passage would at
least seem to leave the question of the limits of Scrip
ture still more open. But on either view, tlie verse
contains valuable suggestions as to the nature of In-
Cspiration. Every inspired Scripture is useful within
the sphere specified. Surely no one doubts that. But
that is all that the verse directly says. It has nothing
to say of inerrancy, nothing of infallibility. If any
thing more is to be read iuto the word " inspired,"
that must be discovered by an inductive examination
of Scripture itself. The ethical and religious function
of Scripture is pointedly indicated in the following
verse, which is too often dissociated frora verse 16 :

200 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
That the man of God may be complete, furnished com
pletely unto every good work. If Scripture is found to
be useful for the purposes indicated, if it can make
the man of God complete, and furnish him completely
unto every good work, then it has fulfilled its func
tion, and that irrespective of the accuracy or inac
curacy of traditional views of authorship which have
come in the course of the centuries to be associated
with it. We must distinguish between the things
that affect faith and life, and other things which,
however interesting and important of themselves,
are for this purpose irrelevant — powerless to fur
nish us unto good works.
This great text of St. Paul, then, does not even
pretend to block the way of a scientific investigation
of the problems raised by the Old Testament. The
literary problems of the Old Testament must be dis
cussed on the ground of the Old Testament. To look
for the solution of such problems in the New Testa
raent is to raistake altogether its spirit and purpose.
How much we should be perplexed by starting from
the New Testaraent in our investigation of the Old
we shall readily see if we consider the inaccuracy of
some of the allusions to the Old Testaraent in the
New. The number of those who perished, for ex
ample, as the result of the idolatrous connection of
Israel with Moab is given in Num. xxv. 9 as twenty-
four thousand : St. Paul puts it at twenty-three thou
sand (1 Cor. X. 8). The priest who gave David the
consecrated bread bears in the Old Testament the
name of Abimelech (1 Sam. xxi. 1) ; in the New he is
called Abiathar (Mark ii. 26). Iu the Old Testament,

CRITICISM AND CHRIST 201
the famine which fell upon Israel during the reign of
Ahab lasted three years (1 Kings xviii. 1) ; in the
New Testament, three years and a half (Luke iv. 25 ;
Jaraes v. 17). Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada (2 Chr.
xxiv. 20), is spoken of as tbe son of Barachiah (Matt.
xxiii. 35), by a not unnatural confusion ! with the more
famous prophet (Zech. i. 1). Doubtless these and simi
lar discrepancies which might be mentioned are exceed
ingly trivial, and, to any one who realizes that the
Bible is a spiritual revelation intended to strengthen
and equip the man of God, not in the least disconcert
ing ; but it is necessary to call attention to such
things when it is claimed that the New Testament
utterances concerning the Old Testament are to be
taken as in all respects authoritative.
A much more delicate question than that involved
in the allusions to the Old Testaraent is the New
Testament interpretation of the Old. Let us glance
at two of the more striking instances. From the use
of the singular word " seed " instead of the plural
"seeds" in the promise raade to Abraham "and to
his seed," St. Paul, in his letter to the Galatians
(iii. 16), argues that the original word contemplated
an individual, and that individual is Christ. There
can be no manner of question about the sincerity of
this logic of St. Paul, or even about the substantial
accuracy of his conclusion ; but, unless we waive all
claim to examine Biblical words by the ordinary laws
of language, the process by which Paul reaches this
conclusion must fail to convince an open Western
1 The mistake may be that of the evangelist or of a copyist ; but it
is enough to show that our present text of the New Testament is not
always in harmony with the Old Testament, even in matters of fact.

202 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
y 1 mind to-day. The word " seed," in English, in
'^ V Hebrew, or in Greek, is a collective word ; and while
it may be, and occasionally — though seldom — is,
applied to an individual, it is never inevitably so
applied, and no argument can be built upon it. For
suppose for a moment that the promise contemplated,
as most scholars would claim that it originally did, not
one individual, but many! — |;]ja,t it is for Abraham
and his posterity — are we to suppose that in that
case the plural word " seeds " would have been used ?
That would be as awkward and impossible in Hebrew
or Greek as it is in English. It is not denied that
the promise receives its ideal or perfect fulfilment in
Christ ; that is a fact which does not depend on any
dialectic process. What is denied is that the use of
the singular word necessitates the individual interpre
tation. There was a time when this could be accepted
as an argument. It no doubt carried weight with
those for whom Paul intended it. He was too
shrewd a man, too keen-sighted and intense in his
zeal for converts, to offer them irrelevant or vulnerable
logic. But we cannot to-day, with our different type
of mind, feel the cogency of the argument ; we cannot
admit that it is the natural and inevitable interpreta
tion of the passage.
Or take the well-known passage in which St. Paul
is arguing that the minister of the gospel deserves to
he supported by those to whom he ministers.^ He
supports the argument by a quotation from the law :
It is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle
^ Paul himself so interprets it in Gal. iii. 29 and Rom. iv. 16.
2 1 Cor. ix. 7 ff. Cf. 1 Tim. v. 18.

V

CRITICISM AND CHRIST 203
the ox when he treadeth out the corn. The quotation
is an admirable illustration of the point he is enforc- , /
iug; but he goes on to say. Is it for the oxen that God W
careth, or saith He it altogether for our sake ? Yea, \
for our sake it was written. Paul rejects, and almost
resents the idea, that such legislation should mean
what it says. In the interests of what he regards as a
worthier conception of revelation, he allegorizes and
thus dissipates the magnificent and tender generosity
of the law in its original application. To his question,
"Is it for the oxen that God careth?" our answer
must be, " Most assuredly." The Deuteronomic legis
lation is inspired not only by a noble love for God, but;
by a no less worthy love for man and for the animals.
One of the distinctions of the Old Testaraent is its
profound and beautiful interest in the animal creation.
The animals often appear in the prophetic visions of
the latter days ; and God was willing to spare Nineveh,
" that great city ; wherein are more than sixscore
thousand persons that cannot discern between their \ .
right hand and their left hand ; and also much cattle " /'.
(Jonah iv. 11). Can we, in the light of all these facts, '
conscientiously say that Paul's interpretation of that
passage is normative for us? Is it not rather in
the spirit of Philo! .,^1,0 interprets allegorically the
law that a garment taken in pledge must be restored
before sunset, because God did not care for such
things ? Unless we are to abandon the principle that
the Bible means what it says, there can be only one
1 "De Somn." i. 16, 17. The garment signifies speech. To sup
pose that the law in Ex. xxii. 26 reaUy referred to garments would be
" to impart the triviality of human affairs to the uncreate aud immortal
nature of God."

204 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
natural interpretation of the law that dealt so gener
ously with the oxen ; and that law, as it stands, is
sufficiently divine to be able to dispense with allegori
cal interpretation.!
The allegorical interpretation is found in other parts
ofthe New Testaraent, and is expressly acknowledged
by St. Paul in Gal. iv. 24, " Which things contain an
allegory; for these women are two covenants;" and
in 1 Cor. x. 11 the incidents of the wilderness wander
ings are said to have happened typikos, typically, by
way of figure. The meat and the drink which sus
tained thera in the desert are spiritualized, and the
rock of which they drank was Christ. It would take
us too far out of our way to trace the origin and pur
pose of allegorical interpretation, and to show its rela
tive justification for that day. It is enough here to
say that, so long as we believe in the graramatico-
historical principles of interpretation won for us by
the Reformation, though not adopted with uniform
consistency by the Reformers, the allegorical method
can never be ours. Be it said, however, once for all,
that not one of these points — whether arguments
which do not now convince or allegory which does not
now comraend itself to the historical sense — is of vital
importance to the Christian faith, or impairs by one
jot the power of Scripture to edify or reprove, to cor
rect, instruct, or inspire. If the essential aim of Scrip-
1 Jennings and Lowe (" The Psalms," vol. i. p. xxvii) defend the
passage thus : " All that is meant is, that the moral Law — which is
to guide the Christian as well as the Jew — prescribes humanity, and
liberal recognition of service, even in the case of brute beasts, a fortiori
then in the case of men." Doubtless this is what is ultimately meant,
but it is not precisely what Paul says.

CRITICISM AND CHRIST 205
ture, as defiued by St. Paul, be steadily kept in view,
all these things will fall into their proper place as
matters of very subordinate importance. It is a grave
error to confound the soul of a man's message with
his particular presentation of it, or to confuse the
heavenly treasure with the earthly vessel.
Let us now pass, however, from the New Testament
in general to a more particular study of the attitude
of Christ to the Old Testament. In one who believed
that God cared for every sheep, and for every sparrow
that falls to the ground, we do not expect, and we do
not find, any such interpretation of the Old Testament
as that which St. Paul gives of the divine law of kind
ness to animals. Every utterance of Christ is marked
by a sweet and convincing reasonableness. He is the
Rabbi, yet there was nothing Rabbinical in Him, and
we reverently approach the consideration of His
words with the assurance that He spoke with author
ity. With that authority He partly confirmed, partly
modified, and partly abolished the older covenant.
He came to fulfil, and He urged the people to do all
that they were bidden by those who sat on Moses'
seat ; but He also abrogated the law of retaliation aud
rebuked two of His disciples for their too ready imi
tation of an ancient prophet.! The sovereign yet
reverent freedom of His attitude to the Old Testa
ment lends a peculiar interest to His numerous direct
and indirect allusions to it.
Some of the references are of a large kind, others
1 Luke ix. 55. The words of the rebuke. Ye know not what manner
qf spirit ye are of, are not found in most of the best manuscripts ; but
tlie fact of the rebuke is enough for our purpose.

2o6 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
are more minute. More than once we read that He
showed thera that all things must be fulfilled which
were written in the law and the prophets and the psalms
concerning Him. " These," that is, the Old Testa
ment Scriptures, "are they which testify of rae."
" Moses wrote of me," etc. What we should very
much like to possess, and what we seldom find upon
His own lips, is a direct reference to actual passages
in the law, the prophets, and the psalms concerning
Him. This is no doubt in part made good by the
Book of Acts, which repeatedly emphasizes particu
lar passages of Old Testament Scripture. But what
would we not give to possess the very words in which
our Lord opened up the Scriptures to His disciples ?
In the largest sense. He regarded Himself as fulfill
ing the law and the prophets : they without Him could
not be made perfect. He fulfilled them by embody
ing their inmost spirit. He loved them because they
" hung upon love." The love that they expressed He
came to be. He gave shape to their suggestions. He
elicited their inmost spirit. He said what they had
struggled and meant to say. He completed what they
had begun. He is the fulfilment of their purest and
most passionate hopes.
And all this in the largest sense. Hardly ever does
there fall from His own lips such an Old Testament
reference to the definite details of His life as has so
often formed the staple of the Messianic argument.
When He does connect a definite passage with Him
self, when, for exaraple, in the Nazareth synagogue.
He claimed that the great prophecy in Isaiah lxi. was
fulfilled that day in Himself, it is, we find, a passage

CRITICISM AND CHRIST 207
which illustrates the spirit and character of the Mes
siah, and not the detailed incidents of His life. It
was not on the fact that He was born in this place or
that, or belonged to this tribe or that, that He based
His claims to Messiahship ; but on the fact that He
was one who had a message of good tidings for the
poor, one whose task was to proclaim release to the
captives, sight to the blind, liberty to the bruised — in
general, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
To follow out this line of argument would lead to an
elaborate discussion of Messianic prophecy, and this
is aside from our immediate purpose. But it is im
portant to note that Christ regards Himself as fulfill- j \/
ing the Old Testament rather in its general spirit than
in its pai'ticnlar detail. His comparative indifference
to the detail which Messianic prophecy has for cen-
turies loved to emphasize lifts us above externalities
to a larger view of the Old Testament as a great and
impressive religious unity, the meaning of which be
came fully clear only when it gathered upon Himself.
Another instructive feature in the references of
Christ to the Old Testaraent is that, though He re
gards the whole as a real unity, certain books within
that unity seem to interest Him much more, than
others — so far, that is, as we can judge from the quo- ),wi^ --^
ta tions. More than two-thirds of all His citations j *i*tt>*>^^*^'^
from the Old Testament come from four books alone : 1 V/
Exodus, Deuteronomy, the Psalter, and Isaiah. It was \
in these books that He found a spirit most nearly
akin to His own, and this must be taken into account
in any estimate of His attitude to the Old Testament.
It is surely no accident that in His temptation it is

2o8 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
three mighty words of Deuteronomy that rise to His
lips — large words, the truth of which appeals to every
religious soul.! j^ j^jjg words of Exodus He institutes
the supper which is to commemorate His death for all
time ; by an appeal to that book lie justified the faith
in immortality. In words from the Book of Isaiah He
opens and vindicates His ministry ; and in the words
of a Psalm He commends His spirit into the hands of
His Father.
But while Christ could contemplate the Old Testa
ment as a whole, and while within that whole He had
his favorite books. He was familiar with all its detail,
and for purposes of illustration, argument, and ap
peal He referred to it again and again. He alludes,
directly or indirectly, to the creation of man, male
and female, the divine institutions of marriage and
the Sabbath, the murder of Abel by Cain, the times
of Noah and the flood, the patriarchs, especially father
Abrahara, the twelve tribes of Israel, the destruction
of Sodora and Gomorrah together with Lot's wife,
Jacob's ladder, the burning bush, incidents of the wil
derness wandering, such as the giving of manna and
the raising of the serpent, David's eating of the shew
bread, the splendor and wisdom of Solomon, the queen
of Sheba, the drought of Elijah's time, the widow of
Zarephath, the cure of Naaman by Elisha, the story of
Jonah. Besides these historical references are others
to the legislation — to the law of leprosy, for example,
which is ascribed to Moses ; and indeed language is
1 " Man shall not live by bread alone." " Thou shalt not tempt
the Lord thy God." " Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him
only shalt thou serve."

CRITICISM AND CHRIST 209
used which may be not unfairly construed as suggest
ing that Moses is the author of the whole Pentateuch.
Besides the definite phrase in John (v. 46), Moses
wrote of me,! ^^q occasionally meet with the combina
tion Moses and the prophets (Luke xvi. 29, 31), in
which Moses stands for the Pentateuch.
Now there can be practically no doubt that Christ
believed in the historicity of all the incidents to which
He alluded, as well as in the Mosaic authorship of
the Pentateuch, if not also in the Davidic authorship
of the Psalms. Doubtless it is abstractly possible to
maintain that He really held other views — • knew, for
example, that the Pentateuch was composite, and that
some of the incidents He alluded to were not strictly
historical — but that He accepted and expressed the
comraon view in accoramodation to contemporary
opinion. But besides the suggestion of trimraing
which would attach to a Christ who was thus divided
in His own mind, it can hardly be maintained that
that is the natural impression made by His words.
As it was in the days of Noah, even so shall it be. He-
member Lofs wife. The power of such statements
and appeals depends largely on a real conviction, on
the part of speaker and hearer alike, of the historical
reality of the incidents alluded to. This much it
seems imperative to concede. Now arises the ques
tion. Does this concession necessarily stamp the
incidents as historic? Does Christ's incidental en
dorsement of such incidents and ascriptions of author-
1 The analogy of Acts iii. 22 ; vii. 37 (cf. John vi. 14 ; vii. 40), might
be urged as indicating that the reference here is only or particularly
to Deut. xviii. 18 ; so that this, strictly speaking, might imply no more
than the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy. 14

V

2IO OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
ship foreclose scientific investigation ? It is here
that the two schools of interpretation part company,
the one maintaining that the question is still open,
the other that loyalty to Christ leaves only one course
possible. Let us look first at the question of authorship. It
is in all probability only an accident that the two
passages from Isaiah which Christ cites with compar
ative fulness ! are passages whose genuineness is not
contested by modern scholarship. There can be little
doubt that He, in common with His contemporaries,
would have cited with equal readiness, as Isaiah's, a
passage from the latter part of the prophecy. But
what we cannot too strongly accentuate is this, that
the truth of a prophecy does not stand or fall with the
accuracy or inaccuracy of the traditional ascription,
nor is the authority of Christ in any way compro
mised by adopting such an ascription. When the Book
of the Prophet Isaiah was given Hira in the synagogue
of Nazareth, He claimed that the passage which He
read frora it was that day fulfilled in Himself. Now,
is it not clear as noonday that that claim is justified,
whatever be the literary origin of the prophecy ? Both
the truth of the prophecy and the authority of Christ
^- which are spiritual things — remain unaffected by
that consideration. The ideal there enunciated —
for it is an ideal rather than a prediction — becomes
a reality in Him. Whether it be an utterance of
Isaiah the son of Amoz, or of an exilic prophet in
Babylon, or even of a post-exilic prophet, the proph
ecy assuredly found its fulfilment in Him ; and it
J Is. vi. 9 f. (Matt. xiji. 14 f.) ; Js. xxix. 13 (Matt. xv. 7 f.).

CRITICISM AND CHRIST 211
is quite beside the point to adduce such a passage
to decide the literary question of the authorship, a
question which at that time had never been raised,
and which in any case is quite irrelevant to the spir
itual purpose for which the passage is quoted.
It has been too much the fashion to confuse author
ship with authority. Disproof, if it were forthcoming,
of the traditional view of the authorship of a book
would not in any sense invalidate its raessage, if it
have any. Whatever real authority it has, is inher
ent. It is not essentially strengthened, if it comes to
us under the cover of a great name ; nor is it essen
tially weakened if it come to us anonymously, nor
even if it be ascribed to a wrong source. If any one
were now-a-days to quote as Milton's, Conscience does
make cowards of us all, we should not dispute the
truth of the quotation, but the error of the ascription.
How little importance was attached to the question of
authorship we can see by examining the citations
from the Old Testament in the New. Out of nearly
two hundred and eighty-six express quotations, only \ V
in fifty-one cases, less than a fifth, is a personal
name connected with the quotation. This proves —
what ought to need no proof — that the truth was felt
to be its own witness, and that, though it was often
associated with the name of a particular man, it did
not depend for its worth or power on that association.
It is interesting to note how often Christ, in quoting
from the Pentateuch, omits all reference to Moses ;
as, for example, in the words with which He repelled
the temptation. In such case the omission is no loss,
nor would the addition be a gain. The ascription is
in no case the important thing.

212 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
This will be the more clear, if we remember how
large a tract of the Old Testament is anonymous. To
begin with, all the historical books except Nehemiah,
that is, nearly half of the Old Testament. Not unto
us, 0 Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give glory
would be a not inappropriate motto for the literary
men of Israel. Their God was their glory, and many
of the greatest of them were content to be forgotten.
Non omnis 'moriar, multaque pars met
Vitahit Lihitinam —
this proud self-consciousness, at least within the lit
erary sphere, is alien to the Hebrew spirit ; so that
the anonymity of so large a portion of the Old Testa
ment need occasion no surprise. But it ought to put
us on our guard against unduly accentuating the fact
of reputed authorship. Even if the authorship be
disproved, the authority would not vanish. If it
were proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that
Isaiah lxi. is post-exilic, it would not in the faintest
degree mar the splendor of the original prophecy,
or the wonder and certainty of its fulfilment in
Christ. While Moses is often synonymous with the law,
and no doubt, in Christ's time, was regarded as its
author no less than its hero, two things have to be
remembered : (i) that the literary question of author
ship had not yet been raised, and that therefore the
popular nomenclature has only the value of an un
proved tradition ; ! and (ii) there are hints enough
' Even the conservative Delitzsch, in his " New Commentary on
Genesis," could say, " Our Lord aud His apostles conceive of the Thorah

CRITICISM AND CHRIST 213
scattered all over the Gospels, that the human author
ship of the books is a matter of comparative indif
ference. They are a word of God ; that is of more
importance than that they are the words of some par
ticular raan. A prophetic word is often referred to
simply as the word that was spoken by the Lord
through the prophet (Matt. i. 22 ; ii. 15). Wbo the
prophet was is, comparatively speaking, immaterial.
Even when his narae is wrongly given, as it is by
Matthew ^ when he refers a prophecy of Zechariah's
to Jeremiah, it is still a word of the Lord, and, as
such, stands fast. It is particularly instructive to
compare the stateraents of the synoptists in their
accounts of the same incident. In Matthew's ac
count^ of Christ's answer to the challenge of the
Scribes and Pharisees for transgressing the tradi
tions of the elders, we read: God said, Honor thy
father and thy mother; Mark ^ gives His words as,
Moses said. Honor thy father and thy mother. It will
hardly be maintained that Christ used both expres
sions ; we are therefore left to the conclusion that, in
the eyes of the evangelists, the Mosaic authorship of
the words — doubtless believed in by both — is an un
important matter. One of them ignores it ; what is
of importance is that the fifth commandment is a
word of God. When we read both that Moses said
and God said, our attention is at once directed not to
the man who spoke, but to the divine word spoken.
as might be expected of them as members of their nation : it is to them
the work of Moses ; . . but historico-critical investigation as to his
share as author in the composition of the Pentateuch is left free, as far
as New Testament statements are concerned."
1 xxvii. 9. 2 XV. 4. " vii. 10.

214 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
Still more significant are the three accounts of the
reply of Jesus to the challenge of the Sadducees. The
words of Luke ! run thus :
That the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in (the
place conceming) the Bush, when he caUeth the Lord the
God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob. In Mark 2 we read :
Have ye not read in the book of Moses, in (the
place concerning) the Bush, how God spake unto him,
saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob.
According to Matthew : ^
Have ye not read that which was spoken unto you
by God, saying, etc.
Here, as in the previous citation from Matthew,
the name of Moses is omitted : the only thing of real
importance is that the great word with which Christ
puts the Sadducees to shame was a word of God. It
is also highly interesting and significant that Matthew
quotes the words as " spoken unto you by God ; " the
New Testament writers regard the Old Testament as
a book fitted and intended to edify subsequent genera
tions. The phrase in Mark suggests that the book
was regarded as written by Moses. Possibly, too, this
is the meaning of the phrase in Luke. The looseness,
however, of Luke's allusion is very obvious ; the word
which in Exodus iii. 6, followed by Matthew and Mark,
is spoken by God, is here represented as spoken ly
1 XX. 37. 2 xii, 26. 8 xxii. 31.

CRITICISM AND CHRIST 215
Moses. These discrepancies, as we have often said,
do not touch the heart of the matter ; they are only
perplexing to one who approaches tbe Bible with pre
conceived ideas of what it must be, and expects from
it what it does not pretend to offer. Indeed the dis
crepancies are incidentally of great value, suggesting,
as they do, that we are at liberty to emphasize only
that comraon element in which they all agree. Even
if the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch were ab
solutely disproved, it would not in the slightest affect
Matthew's account of the scene, nor would it essen
tially affect either of the other two accounts. The
omission of the human authorship by one writer
shows that it is in no case important. Besides, the
name of Moses is often nothing but a convenient des
ignation for the Pentateuch ; it is undoubtedly so in
the words of Paul, " Whensoever Moses is read, a veil
lieth upon their heai-t " (2 Cor. iii. 15).
It is quite clear that the narae of a raan may be
used for convenience' sake to designate a book.
Samuel is represented by St. Peter! as foretelling
tlie Messianic days. Now the reference here must
be to a prophecy of Nathan, as no such word appears
anywhere upon the lips of Samuel. Besides, Samuel
could not have written, at any rate, the whole of the
books that go by his name — though there is a Tal
mudic tradition to that effect — because they contain
an account of his death. We must conclude, then, that
the name " Samuel " is simply a convenient designa
tion for the book, and leaves the question of author
ship completely open. Similarly, David is used as
1 Acts iii. 24.

2i6 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
synonymous with the Psalter. A Psalm ! which is not
ascribed to hira in the Hebrew text is quoted by the
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews^ as in " David."
Here are two undoubted cases in which the name of
a man is used to designate a book, without any neces
sary implication that tlie man wrote the book : in the
latter case, there is no proof at all in our only authori
tative source, that is, the Hebrew text of the Psalter ;
and in the former case the thing is impossible. There
is, then, every probability that the name of Moses was
similarly used to cover the Pentateuch. As all that
was written in the books of Sarauel could be ascribed
to Samuel, and as any Psalm might be ascribed to
David, so any part of the Pentateuch could be ascribed
to Moses, as he was the central figure of its history
and the source of its legislation. Doubtless in his
case there was a very strong tradition to the effect
that he also wrote it — a tradition which has sorae
slender support in isolated stateraents of the Penta
teuch itself. But it is no more than a tradition,
which has to be examined ; and even if it were re
futed, it would not affect any New Testament alluj
sion. It would be as true, in the sense explained, to
say " Moses wrote of me," as to say " Samuel told of
these days."
The Pentateuch makes no claim anywhere to be
from the hand of Moses. On five or six occasions he
is said to have written or to have been commanded
to write something : the war with Amalek (Ex.
xvii. 14), the book of the covenant (Ex. xxiv. 4;
xxxiv. 27), the itinerary (Num. xxxiii. 2), a song
1 xcv. '' iv. 7.

CRITICISM AND CHRIST 217
(Deut. xxxi. 22), and the words of the law (Deut.
xxxi. 9, 24) — a phrase which has very often been
interpreted to refer to the Book of Deuteronomy at
least ; but the very same phrase is used elsewhere !
in a context where it can only refer to a small nucleus
of the law — possibly the Ten Commandments — at
any rate, brief enough to be engraved on the stones
which were to be set up when the people crossed the
Jordan. These references to the literary activity of
Moses are valuable and interesting; but they are a
long way from proving that he wrote the Pentateuch.
Rather the explicit statement that he did write
those things suggest that he did not write the rest ;
else why should these be specially singled out?
And this, be it remembered, is the testimony of our
oldest source. It is easy to see, of course, how the
fact that the law was derived from him should in
course of time have given rise to tbe idea that it had
been written by him, especially as an important part
of it was expressly claimed for hira.
It is a familiar fact that, once a book has been
known for some time by a certain name, it often retains
that name with astonishing tenacity, even when its
right to it has been satisfactorily and completely dis
proved. The Apostles' Creed will probably be known
by this name to the end of time, though we now know
that the apostles had nothing to do with the framing
of it.2 Even if the Petrine authorship of the Second
Epistle of Peter were conclusively disproved, we should
in all probability still continue to call it, at any rate
1 Deut. xxvii. 3.
2 Cf . McGiffert, " The Apostles' Creed," pp. 27-30.

2i8 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
for popular purposes, by its familiar name. It is truly
astonishing to find that in the English edition of the
Revised Version of the New Testament the Epistle to
the Hebrews is entitled the Epistle of Paul ihe Apostle
to the Hebrews ; and that although the best New
Testament scholars were working on the Revision and
there is a practically unanimous consensus of New
Testament scholarship for rejecting the Pauline author
ship. It is no less astonishing to find German writers,
such as Kautzsch and Meinhold, who have not only
discarded the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch,
but argued against it, still retaining the ordinary
German names for its various books — Genesis as the
first book of Moses, and so on. This should surely be
enough to prove that no argument can be founded
upon a name. Tradition dies hard ; and, once a book
has found a convenient designation, it is likely to re
tain it, in spite of all disproof of its historical propriety.
After this general discussion it may be well to look
more particularly at three passages which have played
an important part in the consideration of Christ's atti
tude to the Old Testament : His reference to Jonah,
to the 110th Psalra, and to Exodus iii. 6, with its argu-
raent for immortality. The peculiar nature of His
allusion to the book of Jonah has been held to prove
that He regarded the much debated incident of that
book as an historical reality. Possibly He did ; there
is no proof that He did not. But the charm and the
educative power of Christ's allusion to the story lies
partly in this, that He lays no stress on that aspect of
it. It is in the larger issues of the book that He is
interested. The " sign " that appealed to Him most

CRITICISM AND CHRIST 219
powerfully was not the sea-monster, but the conver
sion of raen. " No sign shall be given you," He teUs
the adulterous generation, " but the sign of the prophet
Jonah." Now what was that sign ? That, as Jonah
was three days and three nights in the fish's belly, so
the Son of raan should be three days and three nights
in the bosom of the earth ? That is simply impossible :
firstly, because Christ was not three days and three
nights in the earth, but only one full day and two
nights. We may indeed, considering the ancient way
of reckoning tlie two extreme days, speak of Him as
having been three days and two nights in the earth,
but in no case three days and three nights. In this
very important detail the statement breaks down.
But again, supposing this insurmountable difficulty
were got over, we should then be left with a statement
equally impossible, namely, that no sign would be given
Ibut the resurrection of Christ — the most stupendous
sign conceivable ; for Christ said on another occasion
that men who could resist the message of Moses and
the prophets, would not be convinced, even if one were
to rise from the dead ; that is, even by a miracle of the
most startling kind.
There are these two reasons, founded in the nature
of the case, for believing that these words could not
have been spoken by Christ. When we turn to the
text, we find our suspicions confirraed. The utterance
is recorded both by St. Matthew (xii. 39-41) and St.
Luke (xi. 29, 30, 32), and in St. Luke the troublesome
words do not occur. In this place we read : For as
Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also shall the Son
of man be to this generation. Jonah was himself the

y

220 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
sign. The tragedy was that while the Ninevites re
pented at his preaching, the Jews resisted the preach
ing of One who was greater than he. This version
bears upon the face of it the starap of probability. It
is not encumbered by the insurmountable difficulties
of the other. It does not appeal to externalities : it
moves within the sphere of the spirit. Whether the
amplification of the sign in Matthew's Gospel be due
to Matthew himself or another, we cannot now tell.
Here, then, lower criticism, which is criticism of the
text, and higher criticism, which is criticism of the
contents, converge towards the same result. They
lead us, no doubt, to believe that Jesus regarded the
story of Jonah as historical, but they also show that
His interest in the book was a spiritual interest, and
did not gather about the miracle of the fish.
Let us examine now His reference to the 110th
Psalm. This, be it noted at the outset, is the only case
in which the argument turns upon authorship. Im
portant as it always is to read texts in the light of
their context, it is of peculiar importance here. We
have to remember that the utterance of Christ was not
made in the course of preaching or teaching, but in the
course of disputation. It has all the minuteness and
color of controversy. It is addressed to Pharisees,
and, as addressed to them, has a peculiar relevance
and propriety. Its design, as Valeton ! has aptly
suggested, was not to convince us that the Messiah is
at once David's son and David's lord, but to convince
the Pharisees. He puts His question not to instruct,
but to shame them. He wishes them to feel that their
1 " Christus und das Alte Testament," p. 48.

CRITICISM AND CHRIST 221
zeal in a bad cause has betrayed them into ridiculous
indiscretion, and that they have not carefully consid
ered the consequences of admissions which they would
all have made without hesitation. He takes them
upon their own ground, and shows them how short
sighted and illogical they are. They ascribe the Psalm
to David, without realizing the problem relative to the
person of the Messiah which such an ascription in
volves. No doubt Christ shares their belief in the
Davidic authorship ; we cannot reconcile the explicit-
ness of His words with any other supposition. But
the passage is not adduced to settle a literary question :
it is cited to silence the controversialists who had
thought so skilfully to silence Hira. Even if the
Davidic authorship of the Psalm were completely dis
proved, it would not in the least destroy the relevance
of the argument as against the Pharisees. " I am not
prepared to assert," says Peters,! « ti^^t it is absolutely
impossible that these words might have been, in sub
stantially their present form, composed by David
himself, although it is extremely improbable. As far
as our Lord's utterances are concerned, however, I
consider it a matter of complete indifference whether
they were composed by David or Siraon Maccabaeus." ^
One more passage remains to consider: the argu-'
ment for immortality deduced frora Exodus iii. 6 — I
am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and
the God of Jacob. Here again we have to remember
1 " The Old Testament and the New Scholarship," p. 74.
2 It is also worth remembering, as has already been pointed out,
that any quotation from the Psalter could be cited as David's. A quo
tation from Ps. xcv. 7 is cited in Heb. iv. 7 as in David, and the second
Psalm, anonymous in the Hebrew, is in Acts iv. 25 also assigned to him.

222 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
that this passage issues from an atmosphere of con
troversy. It is addressed not to us, but primarily to
the Sadducees. If it convinced or silenced them, it
served the purpose for which Christ uttered it. It is
therefore beside the point to adduce this passage in
proof of the historicity of the patriarchs. It was
cited to establish not a historic, but a spiritual fact —
the fact of immortality. The fact on which the argu
ment was based was believed by the Sadducees to be
historic, and no doubt by Christ as well. We cannot
conceive of Him as offering, even for purposes of
controversy, an argument whose basis He knew to be
insecure. But even if the historicity of the patriarchs
could be disproved, it would not in any way affect the
argument as against the Sadducees. Neither would it
affect the spiritual fact of immortality, for that is a
fact independent of this particular argument. It is
therefore unfair to say that if you deny the exist
ence of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you destroy the
argument for immortality. You destroy only this
particular form of the argument, which was for the
Sadducees, and not for us. The fact of immortality is
an independent spiritual fact, resting on the intimacy
of the relations between God and raan, and would be in
no way disturbed if Abrahara, Isaac, and Jacob had
never been. The words of Christ, born as they were
in controversy, assume the form of an argument ;
but they are words for all time, and they have the
force, if not now strictly of argument, at any rate of
illustration. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are types
of the men with whora God enters into living re
lationship. The relationship stands whether these

CRITICISM AND CHRIST 223
particular illustrations of it are historical or not ; and
on that relationship rests the fact of immortality. If
the intimacy between God and us is such that He is
not ashamed to be called and to call Himself our
God, then we too are immortal with His immortality.
It cannot be that a communion which a man had
all his life enjoyed with God, should be interrupted
by death. Beneath the controversial form and the
Old Testament appeal, that is the real drift of the
Master's utterance.
The result of the whole discussion has thus far
been to suggest that Christ leaves perfectly open the
literary and historical questions which occupy modern
scholarship and divide its ranks. Repeatedly He
quotes the Pentateuch, but never to prove that Moses
wrote it; nor is the Mosaic authorship ever really
relevant to the spiritual purpose for which the quota
tion is raade. Repeatedly He quotes the Psalms, but
never to settle the question of their authorship. Once,
indeed, the argument turns upon authorship, and on
that psalra opinion is now seriously divided ; but, in
the given situation, the argument was in any case
valid. Repeatedly He quotes the prophets, but never
to settle the literary questions which engage us to
day. Many of the greatest words are left without a
prophet's name, for example, I will have mercy and
not sacrifice.
It may fairly be asked, however, whether the ques
tions be really left as open as they seem to be. It is
admitted that in all probability Jesus believed that
Moses wrote the Pentateuch, however little that
belief affects the substance of IJis teaching, It is

224 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
practically certain that He believed in the Davidic
authorship of the 110th Psalra. It is quite certain
that He believed in the historicity of the patriarchal
narratives. That being so, can these things remain an
open question to those who bow the knee to Him as
the Truth incarnate? Do the opinions which He can
be proved to have held on these subjects not foreclose
all scientific investigation or discussion, or at least
do they not necessitate one conclusion ? This question
leads directly to a consideration of Christ's person
and mission ; and the only approximate answer is to
be found, not in abstract speculation, but in an un
prejudiced examination of such statements and sug
gestions as we can find on the pages of the New
Testament, and, in particular, of historical statements
relative to His earthly life. Little is gained for our
present purpose by the discussion of kenotic theories,
or by large assumptions as to what Christ could or
could not have known. We will not argue, as has
been argued, that His human nature was like the
original nature of Adara before the Fall; that this
perfection was still further enhanced — if, indeed,
perfection can be made more perfect — by the super
natural grace bestowed at baptism, and also through
the elevation of the human in His person, by reason
of its union with the divine. We shall try to steady
our discussion upon the acknowledged facts.
The most stupendous of those facts is that the
Word became flesh.! xt is impossible to fathom the
1 We are here arguing with those who would not resent an appeal
to St. John's Gospel. But in any case these words summarily express
what the others throughout imply — the reality of Christ's humanity.

CRITICISM AND CHRIST 225
implications of this simple statement. It suggests
infinitely more than the mere corporeal visibility of
the Godhead. The incarnation was itself au accom
modation. Something of what it meant, on its ethical
side, is suggested by the stories of the temptation and
the passion. In the days of His flesh — here we are
on the ground of historic fact — He offered up prayers
and supplications with strong crying and tears} The
prayer recorded in the Gospels, " Not my will but
Thine be done," helps us to imagine how sore a
struggle it was. He was in all points tempted like as
we are. He learned obedience. Here we are assured
that, even within the ethical sphere, Christ grew.
We may call it development or we may resent the
application of such a word to Christ; but the fact
reraains that He grew.
If it be possible to predicate growth of Christ
within the sphere of His ethical and religious nature,
it will surely not be irapossible within the sphere of
intellectual knowledge. This, or at any rate mental
growth in the larger sense, is expressly attested in so
many words by St. Luke, twice indeed within the same
chapter. The child grew and waxed strong, becoming
full of wisdom (ii. 40). Jesus advanced in wisdom
(ii. 52.) It behooved Him in all things to be made
like unto His brethren,^ and one of those things may
well have been the limitation of His knowledge.
Indeed, in one of the most solemn utterances of His
life. He admits this limitation. He admits that iu
common with men and angels He does not know the
day nor the hour of His second coming: that is
1 Heb. V. 7. ^ Heb. ii. 17.
15

226 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
known to the Father alone. Now, if a priori argu
ment is ever admissible, we should have been inclined
to argue that this is just one of the things which
Christ was bound to know, for it seems to fall directly
within the sphere of His special mission. This, at
least, is no irrelevant literary question. It bears
directly, though we need not say vitally, on His work
as judge of humanity ; yet He does not know. It is
impossible to turn the argument by saying that there
is a great difference between ignorance of the future
and ignorauce of the past ; to omniscience there can
be none. This particular future is one which in the
most intimate way concerns Christ Himself; in any
case, this utterance is enough to disprove His omnis
cience in His earthly life. It is not possible to claim
omniscience for Hira in the face of an utterance of
His own in which He implicitly denies it ; and, if He
be not omniscient, it is arbitrary to assert that He
must at least have known the past. If He did not
completely know the future, there is no reason in the
logic of things why He must have completely known
the past. If one of the things which was intimately
bound up with His mission He confesses that He did
not know, it is difficult to see why He must have had
perfect knowledge of facts and problems that lay com
pletely outside the immediate sphere of that mission.
In all matters which were not strictly relevant to
His work as Saviour and Redeemer, why may He not
have shared the opinions of His time ? Why may
He not have been like His brethren in this as in other
things? He wore an Oriental dress. He spoke an
Oriental language. He expressed Himself in Oriental

CRITICISM AND CHRIST 227
ways. We are assured that He learned. He grew.
Just as there was a limitation of power, attested by
His being hungry, thirsty, and weary, so it would not
be unnatural to suppose — even if we had not His
own express testimony — that there was a limitation
of knowledge. But the more He has in common with
His brethren, the more amazing are the differences
that separate Him from them. Assuming that both
He and they believed in the Mosaic authorship of the
Pentateuch, how infinitely more profound is His
interpretation and application of it than theirs!
Whence hath this man these things ? There is the
marvel of Christ, — that His spiritual insight is so
immeasurably above theirs. He may well have shared
their opinions on questions of authorship, etc., with
out thereby endorsing them for all time, just as He
shared their opinion that the mustard seed was the
smallest of all seeds, without thereby binding it upon
the modern conscience, in spite of irrefragable evi
dence to the contrary.
Further, it is necessary to distinguish between the
things which Christ definitely taught, and those which
lay within what some one has happily called the
" neutral zone." He teaches that talents are given in
trust and to be used; but He does not teach that /^
Moses wrote the Pentateuch. He may assume it ; He
may believe it ; but He does not teach it. He does
not make it a condition of salvation. It falls within
the neutral zone. It could never be so important to
believe it, even if it were demonstrable, as to believe
that no man can serve two masters. The one has to
do with literature, the other with life. The former

\

/

228 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
belief does not touch a raan's character. He is not
the better for believing it, nor the worse for doubting
it. But the latter belief will guard him frora that
compromise which is the ruin of life. To the religious
life some beliefs are vital, others are irrelevant. It
would be a great surprise to find Christ co-ordinating
these two in importance. In point of fact. He does
not do so. His positive teaching is confined to the
vital beliefs. He does not teach anything at variance
with the results of Old Testament scholarship. There
is nothing to hinder a man from accepting every word
of Christ's teaching and every result of the literary
criticisra of the Old Testaraent. He leaves the ques
tions which it discusses severely alone. Once we
read that Christ taught as one having authority, and
we have but to examine the Sermon on the Mount
to see within what sphere His teaching lay. The dif
ference between Jesus and the scribes was too obvi
ous to ignore. The people were astonished by His
teaching. The teaching of the scribes was confined,
in the main, to trivialities which never smote the
conscience unless to offend it : Jesus dealt directly
with the tremendous issues of the moral and spiritual
life. Men may hold views other than His on questions
of the authorship or composition of Old Testament
books ; but no one can dispute what He taught. So
far is He, however, from teaching definitely on liter
ary and historical questions, that these problems had
not even been raised in His day. His mission was
not to speak authoritatively on the science of Old
Testament Introduction, any more than on medicine
or astronomy. These are matters which, in the provi-

CRITICISM AND CHRIST 229
dence of God, men are left to discover for themselves.
They constitute no part of revelation. He came to
preach the good tidings of the kingdom of God. He
came that men might have life, and that they might
have it more abundantly. His mission was a spiritual
one, and literary issues were irrelevant to it. It was
no part of His task to dispute current traditions,
unless when they perverted the souls of men; and
then He did so unsparingly. But He refused to cum
ber Himself with cares which did not properly belong
to Him as Saviour. Who made me. He said, a Judge
or a divider over you ?
The words of Christ do not then foreclose the
investigations of modern scholarship. His kingdom
is not of this world, and the truth which He came to
proclaim is not that of hterary authorship or histori
cal fact. Current opinions on these things He may
have accepted, as He spoke the current language and
wore the current dress ; but they are no part of His
raessage. He defined His mission as the proclaiming
of good news and the bringing of abundant life, and
He deliberately confined Himself to that mission as
thus conceived. He had the single eye. He knew
the road on which He must tread, and He trod it,
setting His face steadfastly and refusing to be turned
aside to the right hand or the left. In accordance
with His purely spiritual conception of His mission.
He cannot have desired, and He certainly did not
claim, to pronounce any final word on literary or
historical problems. These remain to baffle and
stimulate succeeding generations of scholars, and to
provoke to a more earnest study of the Scriptures.

"M

CHAPTER IX
CRITICISM AND THE SUPERNATURAL
One of the heaviest counts in the indictment
against criticism has been its alleged attitude to the
supernatural. Often criticism has ignored it ; some
tiraes it has denied it ; usually it is indifferent to
it. So runs the count; and where it is true, it is
serious. For whatever we may include under the
somewhat vague and subtle term " supernatural," it
has always been felt to represent something vital to
Christianity. If it goes, Christianity, as a unique and
distinctive thing, goes with it. It becomes only one
of the great religions of the world, " nothing less and
nothing more." An attack upon the supernatural
has therefore always been felt to be a blow aimed at
the heart of Christianity, and has been hotly resented,
wherever Christianity is dear.
It is quite clear that, next to its apparent disregard
of the appeal to Christ, no part of the issue raised by
the critical position has thrown the opponents of crit
icism into so real or profound an anxiety. Echoes of
the distress come frora raany lands, from Britain and
America, from Germany and France. Thinkers who
differ widely in the concessions they are prepared to
make to the critical position, unite in opposing, with

THE SUPERNATURAL 231
all the force they can, the alleged elimination of the
supernatural frora the history and literature of the
Hebrews. On this point the Rev. Dr. John Smith, in
his " Integrity of Scripture," repeatedly and emphati
cally dwells : to him, as to many, the issue here
raised is one of altogether unique gravity. Objection
is taken — and rightly, so far as it applies — to the
naturalistic assumptions of the critics. The Old Tes
tament has been made by criticisra to fit "into a
naturalistic idea of human development" (p. 32).
" The anxiety of the critics," we are told, " has been
to bring the history into line with a normal huraan
development" (p. 183). The only thing which the
critical reconstruction justifies is a " current view of
the growth and progress of religions. . . . The truth
is, the whole hypothesis is naturalistic" (p. 282).
" Disbelief in the supernatural," says Bishop EUicott,
" has had a great deal to do with the development of
modern views of the Old Testament."! Dr. Blom
field goes further, assuring us that "no question
can reasonably be raised as to the fact that the fons
et origo of the disintegration of the Old Testament
which has been now for so many years attempted, is
the determination of a large number of Continental
scholars to reject the whole of the supernatural ele
ment which its books contain — with which, indeed,
most of them are saturated and imbued." ^ A Ger
man Roman Catholic scholar, who is both fair and
well-informed, makes his charge in the following
trenchant words : " Modern critics suppose that they
1 "Christus Comprobator," p. 16.
2 " The Old Testament and the New Criticism," p. 54.

232 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
have by their investigations won a deeper insight into
the essence and growth of the people and the religion
of Israel. The tendency which comes more or less
clearly to light in their restless scientific activity is
to let the historical and religious development of the
people of Israel appear as natural as possible. Many
investigators are remarkably shy of everything super
natural : an extraordinary interposition of God in the
fortunes of His people is inconvenient for them. The
Almighty must keep His hand as much as possible
out of the game. The whole history of the elect
people must run a purely human course and must be
explained entirely with the natural light of our under
standing. In a word, the ground-idea of the entire
modern criticism of the Bible is Evolutionism, is, if
we may say so, the transference of the Darwinian
theory of evolution to the departments of history and
religion. The higher critics seek to divest Holy
Scripture entirely of its supernatural character, and
to set it up as a work of man." ! Elsewhere ^ the
same scholar urges as a reason for rejecting criti
cism the fact that it stands upon the ground of ra
tionalism, and tends to undermine the foundations of
faith by representing " everything supernatural, all
supernatural revelation of God, as superfluous and
impossible." It is hardly possible to exaggerate the iraportaiice
of the question, or the gravity of the charge, so far
as it is true. As some one has not unaptly said, " If
the supernatural is removed frora the Bible, no Bible
is left." Indeed no Christianity is left. If the super-
1 Hopfl, "Die hohere Bibelkritik," p. 12. 2 p_ gg.

THE SUPERNATURAL 233
natural be denied on principle on the ground of the
Old Testament, it will be equally denied on the
ground of the New. The criticism which does that
will seek to rob Christ of His divinity. It will give
us a Saviour upon our own level, and therefore one
who can be no Saviour at all. Little wonder that
criticism has been despised and rejected, if it either
assumes or issues in the denial of a factor whose
absence would cause the fabric of the Christian reli
gion and experience to fall to pieces.
This, then, is the question : Does criticism either
assume or issue in the denial of this factor ? There
are really two questions here, and they must be kept
distinct. It is quite conceivable that criticism should
issue in the denial of this factor ; but it has no right
to assume it. In so far as it has accepted, as one of
its a priori principles, the impossibility of the super
natural, it is vitiated from the start. It stands self-
convicted of incompetence to give an unbiassed
investigation to what we may call miraculous facts.
It rules them out as impossible, and so merits the
condemnation of those who desire to see fair play
given to every order of fact. For fair play is not
done when facts are investigated frora a standpoint
which makes only one interpretation of them possible.
The whole question of the presuppositions which
one is justified in bringing to historical study is a
thorny one. The ambition of a scientific mind should
be to approach all such study without prepossessions
of any kind. There are some who strive to do so :
many who think they can do so. But is the thing
possible ? No man's mind is a tabula rasa : every

234 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
student brings himself to the investigation. The
mind which he uses may indeed be working for the
first time upon this particular department or problem ;
but it has already worked upon other problems, and
has been shaped and determined by that work, and by
all the mental and spiritual experience of the man, in
very special directions. To one who can point to an
apparently sudden transition in his spiritual experi
ence, nothing will be impossible : a divine power has
convulsed and regenerated his life, and he will laugh
at a theory which denies the possibility of divine inter
position.! To the man, on the other hand, who has
spent his years in the laboratory or in some scientific
study, which has steadily and surely impressed upon
him the unvarying sequences of cause and effect, and
/ what he can only call the inexorableness of law, raira-
j cle will seem so remotely possible that its possibility
I is hardly worth considering : every day of study
deepens its improbability till it raay pass, in his mind,
into a practical impossibility. Both types of men are
deterrained, and inevitably determined, by their experi
ence. Study, disposition, temperament, experience,
have much to do with a man's general mental atti
tude. It is a familiar fact that deepening experi
ence and wider study may lead him conscientiously to
doubt what he once believed with all his soul, or con
versely, to believe what once he doubted. Every day
the mind is being determined by the subtlest influ
ences. There is no such thing as a perfectly open
mind. There may be the passion for truth, and the
desire to be fair ; but the mind is already, by its pre-
1 We are using these words in the popular sense.

THE SUPERNATURAL 235
vious history and growth, predisposed to one view of
the facts rather than another.
To approach a study without prejudice or pre
possession of some kind is irapossible. But it is one
thing to have a prepossession, conscious or uncon
scious; it is another thing to have a fixed opinion.
And it is a mere mockery of scientific method to bring
to the investigation a definite opinion which prejudges
some of the most important problems that will emerge
in the course of it. We cannot bring a tabula rasa ;
but neither ought we, in fairness, to settle in advance
what we are pretending to examine. Any man gives
away his case as an impartial historian of the facts
who says, as Renan did, " It is because they relate
miracles that I say the Gospels are legends." No
historian has any right to approach his task with the
assumption that the rairaculous is necessarily unhis
torical, and that it is his business to eliminate it or
explain it away. Whether it is, in reality, historical
or not, will of course depend on many considerations,
— partly on the credibility of the witnesses to it,
partly on their nearness to the incident recorded, and
so on. The historian is justified in demanding more
testimony to a miraculous event than he would to an
ordinary one. But he is not justified in rejecting it
simply because it does not happen to fit into his view
of the world. He can only rightly do so if he first j
successfully vindicate that view ; and in so doing he I
will have to leave the fieldof^thehistoriaiijorjtha^
of the philosopher. Besides, any view, to be valid,
would have to rest on an induction of all the relevant
facts ; and this very fact which he rejects may be one

V

236 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
which, if given its proper and natural weight, would
seriously modify his view. True science reckons, so
far as it may, with objective facts. To condemn the
miraculous in advance as impossible, is as unscientific
as it is unfair. The critic has a right to demand from
his opponent that he do not approach the Bible with
a dogmatic bias. His opponent has an equal right
to demand of him that he do not prejudge the case by
an anti-supernaturalistic bias.
A criticism which on a priori grounds rejects the
miraculous is itself to be rejected. But when we ask
whether this attitude to the supernatural is a univer
sal and necessary feature of higher criticism, we must
answer with an emphatic negative. It has indeed
been a too familiar feature of criticisra, but it is
neither inevitable nor universal. The tendency of the
opponents of criticism has been too much to identify
the whole movement with the principles and results
of Kuenen and Wellhausen. Considering the very
eminent services which both these scholars have
rendered to the cause of Old Testament study, this
tendency is explicable. These men, whose ability
and learning — whatever we may think of their con
clusions — are beyond all question, have, in a sense,
been the pioneers of the movement, in its more modern
phase. They have given an extraordinary impetus
to the study of the problems, which even those who
differ frora them have not always been reluctant to
acknowledge. However much their results may be
modified — and they are being modified — their in
fluence has been stupendous. But it must be strenu
ously maintained that the movement does not stand

THE SUPERNATURAL 237
or fall with them. Pioneers often take extreme posi
tions which are seriously modified in the clash of
subsequent discussion. We have already seen that a
reactionary movement has begun, which finds its most
brilliant and outspoken representative in Gunkel,
and which, though confessing its profound indebted
ness to Wellhausen, is yet more conservative in
its tendency, and reserves for an early, sometimes
a very early, period much that he had relegated to
the tirae of the raonarchy. This statement holds good
also of other aspects of the subject. Very relevant
to our present purpose is the confession of Professor
Meinhold, who had been reproached by his opponents
for his dependence on Wellhausen.! '¦'¦Well I know"
he says, '•'¦what separates me from him; namely, the
accentuation of the supernatural moment in the history
of Israel and its prophetism. That is assuredly not
a subordinate point. But at the same time, the grati
tude with which I regard this scholar, I shall the less
forget, as many who, like myself, are indebted to hira,
hold it proper to accentuate rather that which separates
them than that which they have received from hira.
. . . One may be an opponent of Wellhausen's," he
warmly remarks later on, " and at the same time
be far enough from Christianity. One may be an
adherent of his, and yet with glad heart confess his
allegiance to the religion of revelation. Many of my
colleagues do this in common with myself. We
accuse any one of falsehood who maintains the con
trary of us." What Meinhold maintains with some
vehemence is precisely that, the possibility of which
is denied by most of the opponents of criticism.
1 "Jesus nnd das Alte Testament," p. xviii. The italics are ours.

238 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
But this is surely a matter in which each man is
his own best judge. Each man knows whether he
believes in and accentuates the supernatural factor in
Israel's history and religion or not; and if he says
he does, are we not to take hira at his word ? There
is perhaps no point of sirailar gravity on which the
critics have received less justice than this. Their
deliberate and solemn confessions have been repeatedly
ignored or explained away ; and, considering the im
portance of the supernatural to the Christian religion,
this is the point on which they have been most grieved
to be misunderstood. " It is necessary to distinguish,"
says a French scholar, " between the naturalistic
interpretation which Kuenen and Wellhausen have
given to the history of Israel, and that history as it
manifests itself to the unprejudiced observer who
accepts, in the matter of purely literary criticism, the
general conclusions of these scholars." ! The prin
ciple of the development of the history of Israel, he
affirms, must always be sought outside of its apparent
causes, which are insufficient to explain it. It is
therefore supernatural.
This last quotation strikes the key-note of the dis
tinction to be found within the ranks of the critics
themselves. One may accept the general methods
and conclusions of the criticism of Wellhausen and
Kuenen, in so far as it ispurely literary, without com
mitting one's self to all of their historical conclusions.
For it must be remembered that their historical con
clusions do not all represent the inevitable issue of
their literary conclusions. Those which have given
1 Loisy, " :fetudes Bibliques," p. 89.

THE SUPERNATURAL 239
most offence nearly all rest upon an unproved philo
sophical assumption. A man may be a believer in
revelation and the supernatural, whatever view he
may hold of the date and literary origin of the Pen
tateuch. Whether it is a unit or composite, whether
it be composed by the great lawgiver or by members
of prophetic and priestly guilds, whether it belongs
to the thirteenth century b. c. or in the main to the
eighth century, it contains an account of certain facts.
Obviously no view of the date or authorship can affect
the quality of these facts — • considered, that is, as
objective facts, apart from the record of them. If
these facts are miraculous, using the word in its pop
ular acceptation, they do not become less so because
the record of them comes from a period five centuries
later than we supposed it did. We are not here
speaking of the conceivable modifications which a
tradition may have undergone in the course of that
time. That is a question by itself, and not an easy
one. But in any case, tradition, however it might
work upon an epoch-making fact, such as the Exodus,
could not obliterate it. Again, some of the greatest
facts were enshrined in almost contemporary song,
and thus were carried safely across the centuries.
Assuming then the recorded facts to be facts, whatever
be the medium of their preservation, whether tradi
tion, song, or some visible and material memorial,
they remain, as objective things, unaffected by the
problems that gather round the litera 17 record. They
would so remain, even were there no literary record;
and the compositeness of the Hexateuch may enable
us, as we saw, to adduce several witnesses to a fact

240 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
where, on the theory of its unity, we have only one.
No decision within the sphere of the purely literary
problems can evaporate historical facts or eliminate
the supernatural from facts which cannot be ex
plained as the result of purely natural forces.
This is an elementary point, but it cannot be too
earnestly emphasized, that literary criticism is one
thing, historical criticism another ; and that the ac
ceptance of the general methods and results of literary
criticism does not bind a man to one view of the
history more than another. It furnishes him with
the record of certain facts : how he will arrange and
interpret these facts will depend upon altogether dif
ferent considerations. If he be predisposed, either
through philosophic or scientific study or by the nat
ural bent of his mind, to deny the supernatural, then
he will do his best to put a natural construction on
those facts. Where this is difficult, he may attribute
the difficulty to the slenderness of our information.
He may stop gaps by conjectures, and indulge gener
ally in feats of the historical imagination. If, on the
other hand, he be not predisposed against the super
natural, if he believe in the power of God to interpose
in the interests of a great purpose, he will let the facts
which are most adequately explained in that way, and
which were interpreted in that way by those who were
specially called to read the divine meaning of the past,
make their own impression upon him. He will not
depreciate the supernatural as impossible, if it be
sufficiently attested ; he will rather welcome it as a
proof that God is Lord. But in either case the liter
ary and the historical questions must be kept strictly

THE SUPERNATURAL 241
apart. They are closely connected, no doubt. Lit
erature, in the largest sense, supplies the material for
the historian ; but literary criticism does not supply
principles for the interpretation of that material.
The literary criticism of the Pentateuch would not
have to be modified in the smallest detail if the exist
ence of the supernatural were placed beyond all con
troversy. Literary analysis does not depend on the
denial of the supernatural. It rests upon the obser
vation of literary phenomena ; and its main results
are accepted, as we saw, by many who are opposed, in
general, to the modern critical position. The cry,
then, that criticism is an open or covert attack upon
the supernatural is not justified by the facts. Of some
critics, it is true ; of many others, and especially of
more recent critics, it is false, and emphatically re
pudiated by their own express testimony.
Throughout the discussion we have been using the
terms " natural " and " supernatural " in a somewhat
loose and popular way, as it was no part of our design
to deal with the question philosophically, but simply
to discuss the relation of criticism to the supernatural,
as popularly understood. But such terms are, in the
very nature of the case, relative. We know too little
of either to be able to delimit incidents by so simple
and convenient a nomenclature. A distinguished the
ologian has said, " I utterly deny that God's action
can be correctly described as miraculous ; it is natu
ral." God is not arbitrary. He must have a purpose,
He cannot deny Himself; and therefore His action
must be always essentially self-consistent, however it
may seem to us, who have not the key to it.
16

y

242 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
But though the opponents of criticism have been
justified — though by no means as against all criti
cism — in their emphasis on the supernatural, they
have not been justified in supposing, as they have
sometimes done, that those who deny the supernatu
ral, as commonly understood, in history, therefore
deny the divine in it. To see the divine merely in the
so-called supernatural is to run a grave risk of ignor
ing it, or doing less than justice to it, in the ordinary
flow and sequences of history. We must see it as
that power, if we may modify the lines of Tennyson,
" Which makes the darkness and the light.
And dwells not in the dark alone."
We cannot afford to find God merely in the gaps, and
to call Him in as a deus ex machina, to unravel tangled
knots, or to perform acts that are too difficult for the
so-called natural factors. He must be in all, and
through all, as well as over all. And many men who
believe that there is everywhere throughout the uni
verse inexorable law and the unbroken sequences of
causation, yet find in this majestic order the reflex
of Him who is without variableness, or shadow cast
by turning ; and many such men have confessed that
the universe, as thus interpreted, presents to them a
spectacle of nobler and more mysterious majesty than
would a universe whose God appeared only fitfully ani.
in corners. However this may be, we are not justi
fied in setting a man down as an atheist who disbe
lieves in miracle. The ordinary may be to him as
divine, as, to another man, the inexplicable and the
extraordinary. The saintly William Law has put

THE SUPERNATURAL 243
this truth with his customary lucidity : " Could we
see a miracle from God, how would our thoughts be
affected with an holy awe and veneration of His
presence! But if we consider everything as God's
doing, either by order or permission, we shall then be
affected by common things, as they would be who saw
a miracle. For as there is nothing to affect you in a
miracle, but as it is the action of God, and bespeaks
His presence ; so when you consider God as acting in
all things, and all events, then all things will become
venerable to you, like miracles, and fill you with the
same awful sentiments of the Divine presence." !
The argument from Messianic prophecy has often
been vitiated by this exaggerated attention to details,
and comparative inattention to the whole scope and
spirit of the older dispensation which, by what it
lacked as well as by what it promised, pointed to
Christ. The older argument revolved for the most
part round a limited number of Old Testament texts,
most of which have no warrant for their Christological
application in the New Testament, least of all in the
words of Christ Himself. We have already seen how
large and noble is the Messianic argument offered by
Christ. He claims to fulfil the law and the prophets ;
He shows His disciples out of the Old Testament things
concerning Himself. Yet He hardly ever calls atten
tion to the particular texts which have for ages been
the stock-in-trade of the Messianic argument. His
Father was working hitherto, guiding not only this
utterance and that, but tbe whole history towards its
fulfilment in Himself. In the law and the prophets,
1 " Serious Call," ch. 22, towards the end.

244 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
not merely in stray verses and isolated sections. He
found the promise and prophecy of Himself. " It
would be an ignoratio elenchi," as Professor Charles
happily says, " to press the fulfilment of special pre
dictions as proofs of the Divine guidance of events,
where we regard the whole movement as Divine." !
Certainly it is not from the Bible that men have
learned to elevate the supernatural at the expense of
the natural. True, God is Almighty : is anything too
wonderful for Jehovah ? ^ But His presence and power
are revealed as much in the sustained order of the
world as by the breaches of that order. The very
same Hebrew word for " wonderful " as occurs in the
passage just quoted is used by the author of the great
lyric on the omnipresence of God to describe the
marvel of God's nearness to hira in the common life
\ of every day (Ps. cxxxix. 6). Meteors have their
^ place ; but even without them the heavens would de
clare the glory of God. The unbroken procession of
day and night offers its endless testimony.
Day unto day is a well-spring of speech.
And night unto night a revealer of knowledge.'
Another psalmist was moved to wonder, when he con
sidered the heavens, the work of God's finger, the
moon and the stars which He had established. He is
the God of the calm, as well as of the storm ; the au
thor of peace, as well as of confusion. The Flood mani
fested His power ; but it was equally manifested by
the order that followed. While the earth remaineth,
1 "Expositor," April, 1902, pp. 249, 250.
* Gen. xviii. 14. ^ Ps. xix. 3,

^(

THE SUPERNATURAL

HS

seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer
and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
But it is not enough to say that criticisra does not
deny the supernatural ; it has a positive contribution
to offer. By laying bare the facts, it has forced us to
feel how marvellous those facts are. The older apolo
getic emphasized the supernatural in detailed incident;
the results of criticism, while not ignoring this, sug
gest its presence rather throughout the long develop
ment of the history and the religion. Even if objection
were successfully taken to much of the detail which it
has always been the custom to regard as miraculous,
the history and the religion would remain unique
and undeniable facts. No one who has but the faintest
smattering of history or the most rudimentary knowl
edge of the times in which he lives, will dispute the
uniqueness of the Jewish people ; and that uniqueness
is due to the uniqueness of their early discipline and
experience as a nation. And their religion is as ex
traordinary as their history. The religion developed f
as the history advanced. But how did it develop ? and |
why did it develop in Israel along lines which find a ;
parallel nowhere else ? How did Israel attain hert
pure and noble thoughts of God, related as she was by
blood and language, by custom and institution, by
trade and travel, to peoples whose worship of God
was at once cruel and licentious ? There is the real
rairacle of Israel's religion, and no amount of petty
criticism of detail can overthrow the solid fact of
Israel's separateness among the peoples of the world.
She was in the world, yet not of it ; at least we may
say this of the " Israel indeed " — the elect men who

246 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
represent Israel before the world ; for the mass of the
people, as the prophets often and bitterly complain,
were really no better than the peoples by whora they
were surrounded. The religion of Israel, with every
temptation to be absorbed by or assimilated to the re
ligions of the cognate peoples, not only resisted them,
but outlived them, and, in the completeness which was
given to it by and in Christ, is substantially the reli
gion of the progressive nations of the world to-day,
and the only religion which can, with any reasonable
ness, aspire to be the universal religion of humanity.
We still think of God largely in the language of the
prophets, and pray to Him in the language of the
Psalms. Is the undeniable uniqueness of this strange people
an accident? No one will believe that who believes
that there is a purpose in history. And if there be
such a purpose, then this people was chosen, as it felt
itself to be, to contribute, in some high and special
way, to its fulfilment. It was not for nothing, or for
reasons that were selfish, that they prayed the God who
had chosen them to be merciful to them, and bless
them, and cause His face to shine upon thera : it was
that His way might be known upon earth, and His
salvation among all nations (Ps. Ixvii.). They felt
that they had a cosmic function, and they responded
with intelligence and enthusiasm to the largeness of
their destiny. History has confirraed the stupendous
claims of Israel. She did not misread her mission in
aspiring to bring all the round world to a knowledge
of the living God.
But who are these, and whence came they — these

THE SUPERNATURAL 247
whose message is so profound, original, and divine?
We know whence they did not come : the science of com
parative religion has made that plain enough. Where
to-day are Zeus and Poseidon and Hephaestus?
Where are Chemosh and Mileom and Melkart ? Their
very names are forgotten by alraost all but the learned,
and with the gods are perished the religions under
whose sanction they were worshipped. Who is a god
like unto Israel's God ? And how does it corae that
the God of this one little people lived on — a people
which had little science and less art, a people whose
land for centuries forraed but a tiny and insignificant
province of the great empires to which it was in turn
compelled to give allegiance ? The reign of this
particular God was destined to be universal, because
He was a moral God, and morality is universal. But
why precisely in that land did thoughts of such a
God arise ? This is the real problem of Israel's
history : how are we to account for that which differ
entiates her from the sister peoples ?
How certainly Israel would have gone the same way
as they did, had she been left to her own devices, we
shall see, if we remember how very much she had in
common with them. The language of the Moabite
stone,! with its startling resemblance to that of the
Old Testament, perhaps reveals this as simply and
1 A monument erected by the king of Moab (2 Kings iii. 4) about
850 E. o. to commemorate his victories over Israel. It was discovered
in 1868, and it is of great linguistic interest and some historical impor
tance. Text and translation are easily accessible to English reader's in
Hastings' " Dictionary ofthe Bible," vol. iii. pp. 404-408, and in Driver's
" Notes on the Hebrew Text of Samuel," pp. Ixxxv-xciv. There is
also a translation in G. W. Wade's " Old Testament History," pp. 514,
515.

24^ OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
graphically as anything else would do. A few of the
raore illustrative sentences will make the point clear.
"I [that is, Mesha, king of Moab] made this high
place for Chemosh . . . because he caused me to see
my desire upon all them that hated me. . . . Omri
was king over Israel, and he afflicted Moab for many
days, because Chemosh was angry with his land.
And his son succeeded him, and he also said, I will
afflict Moab. . . . But I saw my desire upon hira and
upon his house, and Israel perished with an everlast
ing destruction. Now Omri took possession of the
land of Medeba, and [Israel] dwelt therein during his
days and half his son's days, forty years : but Che
mosh restored it in my days. . . . And the men of
Gad had dwelt in the land of Ataroth from of old,
and the king of Israel built for himself Ataroth.
And I fought against the city and took it ; and I slew
all the [people of] the city, a spectacle for Chemosh
and for Moab. . . . And Chemosh said to me. Go,
take Nebo against Israel. And I went by night and
fought against it frora the break of dawn till noon,
and I took it, and slew the whole of it, seven thousand
men and . . . women, and . . . maidservants ; for I
had devoted it to Ashtor-Chemosh. And I took
thence the [vessels] of Jehovah, and I [dragged ?]
them before Chemosh. And the king of Israel had
built Jahaz, and he abode in it while he fought against
me. But Chemosh drove him out from before me.
And I took of Moab two hundred men, all its chiefs,
and I led them against Jahaz, and took it. . • . Che
mosh said unto me. Go down and fight against Horo
naim, and I went down. . . ."

THE SUPERNATURAL 249
It is not merely that the language of this Moabite
inscription is so like Hebrew as to be, in the main,
quite intelligible to the student of ordinary Hebrew
historical prose ; but the religious ideas and usages
attested by the inscription are no less remarkable
for their resemblance to much that is to be found in
the Old Testament than the phraseology itself. If
for Chemosh the god of Moab we were to substitute
Jehovah the God of Israel, we might almost mistake
the inscription for a chapter of Joshua or Judges.
Chemosh has high places just as Jehovah has, and
they have the same name. He saves from the oppres
sor those who trust in him, just as Jehovah does. He
lets the king see his desire on all his enemies, just
as Jehovah does. He can be angry with his land, as
Jehovah with His land ; and his anger is similarly
shown in the devastation of the land by its enemies.
He too, like Jehovah, restores the land when his
anger is turned. His oracle, like Jehovah's, com
mands and inspires an attack upon the enemy. He,
like Jehovah, drives out the enemy from before his
people ; and so on. Here we see, within the com
pass of a few lines, unmistakable testimony to a
phenomenon familiar to the student of the Semitic
peoples — the remarkable agreement of their lan
guages, ideas, practices, and rituals.
It is precisely this remarkable agreement between
Israel and the sister peoples that compels us to face,
and if possible to account for, the still more remark
able difference between her and them.! Almost all
1 How profoundly the Hebrews were affected — directly and indi
rectly  by the institutious of the dominant Semitic peoples has never

250 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
the factors in her development were matched by those
of her neighbors. If the ultimate difference was so
extraordinary — her religion has lived, while theirs
has been dead for centuries — must it not have been
due to the presence and influence of another factor ?
As Bredenkamp puts it : " The principle of natural
development is insufficient to explain the history of
Israel. The uniqueness of the Old Testament religion
demands the uniqueness of her history. As long as
we must recognize the distinction in principle between
the Old Testament religion and all heathen religions,
so long shall we be unable to measure sacred history
with the measures of profane history." ! Without
endorsing this use of the words sacred and profane,
we yet cannot help admitting the force of the argu
ment. The history of Israel must remain a riddle to
all who refuse to acknowledge the power of God to
intervene in history. Scholars may differ as to when
that which was distinctive of Israel's religion first
came to be. The Old Testament itself ascribes it to
Moses ; much recent scholarship has been inclined to
give the honor to the literary prophets of the eighth
century b. c, though there are not wanting signs that
this conclusion will have to be seriously modified, and
modified, too, in the direction of the traditional belief
which sees in Moses the real founder of Israel's re-
received more striking illustration than in the recently discovered code
of Hammurabi (2250 B. c), which furnishes many striking parallels to
Biblical laws. Here again, however, the differences are equally strik
ing. "No oue can fail to recognize the higher moral standards re
flected in the Old Testament laws " (Professor Kent, in the " Biblical
World," March, 1903, p. 189).
1 " Gesetz und Propheten," p. 11.

THE SUPERNATURAL 251
ligion, not only in a national, but in a distinctively
ethical sense. But however that question raay be dis
puted, there is no dispute about this, that the religion
of Israel is, in point of fact, distinctive : it has some
thing which the others had not. Where did that
something come from ?
To say that it is due to the influence of command
ing personalities is simply to shift, not to solve, the
difficulty. It pushes the problem only a step further
back. Moses, Nathan, Elijah, Amos — wherever the
distinctive thing began, that which made Israel's re
ligion different from that of Moab and Amraon and
all competing religions, it began somewhere, and not
only began, but was maintained, under conditions any
thing but promising, by a succession of like-minded
men. Personality is the profoundest of all secrets;
to waive it aside as itself a natural stage in a natural
development is to beg the whole question at issue.
When personalities of a particular kind appear only
on a special soil, and that under conditions which do
not adequately explain them, and which are unable to
produce similar personalities on similar soil, we are
entitled, to assume that so unique a phenomenon
demands a unique explanation.! In other words,
natural development is insufficient to explain the
acknowledged distinctiveness of Israel's religion.
1 " That revealed religion is revealed, and is not the product of
human genius, despite the gradual unfolding of that religion, and the
coherence of its parts, becomes increasingly evident, the more thor
oughly its characteristics are appreciated. Its unique character finds
no satisfactory explanation in the native tendencies of the Semitic race.
History belies such a naturalistic solution." Fisher, "Nature and
Method of Revelation," p. 50.

252 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
Without, then, entering into detailed discussion of
miraculous incidents, to some of which, on various
grounds, exception has occasionally been taken, the
great and indisputable fact of the uniqueness of Is
rael's religion furnishes us with a potent argument
for the presence within it, or influence upon it, of the
supernatural. This argument, be it noted, is as valid on the criti
cal view of the Old Testament as on the traditional.
The uniqueness of Israel's religion is not essentially
affected by the critical reconstruction of the history.
Whether the prophets precede the law, or the law the
prophets, there was a law and there was a prophecy :
a law which purified much that was offensive, miti
gated much that was harsh, and spiritualized much
that was material, in common Semitic custom ; and
a prophecy which has no parallel anywhere else in the
world. These are simple facts ; they are not affected
and not explained by any chronological readjustment.
A German scholar testifies that the picture of Israel's
history resulting from the Higher Criticism " can be
placed under the idea of the government of God, and
under the conception of revelation, as well as, nay,
better than, the common view." And Alfred Loisy
calls attention to the utterance of a Roman Catholic
scholar, to the effect that "this development of Is
rael's religion across the centuries " (that is, the de
velopment as portrayed by criticism) " is a thing not
less admirable, not less worthy of God, not less visibly
supernatural, than the idea of a revelation complete
from the beginning and which would not have been
understood before the end of the captivity ; of an

THE SUPERNATURAL 253
immobile legislation written in the desert and ob
served only in the time of the second temple," etc.!
Such utterances we must accept as proof of this, at
least, that the critical view of the history is not in
consistent with a belief in the supernatural.
By some it is even held to necessitate such a belief.
Professor Sanday, for example, makes the following
reassuring statement, which in its simple emphasis
leaves nothing to be desired : " My experience is that
criticism leads straight up to the supernatural, and
not away frora it." He is here thinking of the singu
lar phenomena of prophecy in particular, of the sense
of divine prompting enjoyed by the prophets ; but the
remark is capable of generalization. " We are willing
to explain them " (that is, the Biblical writers), " to
set them in their proper place in space and time, to
give them their true position in the development of
God's purposes, but we refuse to explain thera away."
In a public lecture delivered before a convention of
the Christian students of Scandinavia in 1901, Pro
fessor Erik Stave of Upsala eraphatically raaintained
that " neither in regard to its political outlines, nor
in regard to its religious developraent, is the history
of Israel a result of merely human forces, or of the
free play of accident." 2 In dealing with the remark
able differences, in spite of the often quite minute
resemblances between the early stories in Genesis and
their Babylonian counterparts — a point on which we
shall have occasion to dwell raore fully in the next
1 " :fetudes Bibliques," p. 89.
3 " Der Einflnss der Bibelkritik auf das christliche Glaubensleben,"
p. 16; cf. p. 23.

254 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
chapter — Lenormant strikingly remarks, in his " Be
ginnings of History," that " between the Bible and
the sacred books of Chaldea there is all the distance
of one of the most tremendous revolutions which has
ever been effected in human beliefs. Herein consists
the miracle. . . . Others may seek to explain this
by the simple natural process of the conscience of
humanity ; for myself, I do not hesitate to find in it the
effect of a supernatural intervention of Divine Provi
dence, and I bow before the God who inspired the law
and the prophets."
It is clear, then, that criticism is not fairly described
as involving the denial of the supernatural. At the
same time, its treatment of the detail of the history
has sometimes not unnaturally raised the suspicion
that one of its objects is to eliminate the supernatural,
where possible. A closer examination of the facts,
however, will show that this is not so, and to this
examination we propose to devote the rest of this
discussion. We do not propose to enter into any
exhaustive discussion of the miracles of the Old Tes
tament. We merely desire to show that some of the
incidents which have coraraonly passed for rairacles
are not represented in the oldest sources as miracles
at all ; or, at best, are miraculous in happening only
when and where they did.
We must remember, to begin with, that the Old
Testament contains much more poetry than would be
supposed by one familiar only with his English Bible,
and with the principles of English poetry. The Re
vised Version has done a good deal to disinter the
poetry that was buried out of sight by the typographical

THE SUPERNATURAL 255
methods of the Authorized Version ; and in few parts
of the Bible do the changes of the raore modern version
come with a greater shock of surprise and pleasure
than in the historical books. We have not read far
tUl we come upon an ancient poem, the barbarous
song of Lamech, which breathes the wild, vengeful
manners of an early time. And this is only the first
of a series of poems, or snatches of poems, which meet
us again and again. Not only long poems like the
blessing of Jacob, the song of Moses, the song of
Deborah, or the elegy of David, but briefer strains
like the curse of Canaan, the blessing of Shem and
Japheth, the oracle of Rebekah, the song of Miriam,
the song of the well, the riddle of Samson, the song
of the Hebrew women over Saul and David, find their
place within the pages of Hebrew historical prose.
Now the effect of this is very striking. It imparts
a quaint archaic flavor to the recital of the deeds of
the remote or recent past. It stirs the blood as ballad
poetry has always done ; and — what for our purpose
is important — -it is an indication of the sources on
which, in many cases, the prose narrative undoubtedly
rests. Nor is this any mere conjecture. For in several
cases the prose narratives themselves refer to the
poems for corroboration or illustration of the incidents
with which they deal ; and it is a thousand pities that
we know no more of the Book of Jashar or of the
Book of the Wars of Jehovah than they have preserved
for us in their citations. But it goes almost without
saying that they relied upon these books, and possibly
others similar, in cases where no direct appeal is made.
This seems to lie in the nature of the case. Such a

256 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
book as that of the Wars of Jehovah would surely
contain more songs of the conquest than one. May
not even the song of Deborah have found a place
within it ? We know that for the story of the con
quests of Joshua, the Book of Jashar was drawn upon,
a book which seems to have been devoted to Israel's
heroes, as we know it to have contained the elegy of
David over Saul and Jonathan, and probably also the
song — preserved in the Septuagint — in which Solo
mon dedicated the temple.
If that be so, is it not reasonable to suppose that
either or both of these books lie behind the story of
many an exploit in Joshua and Judges, especially as
there are other citations in the latter book, notably in
the story of Samson ? It is surely no unfair use of
the historical imagination to suppose that, as a poem
confessedly lies behind our present story of Joshua's
victory over his confederated foes in the south (Josh.
X. 12, 13), so the story of the capture of Jericho may
rest upon another poem (Josh. vi.). But even if this
be not conceded, it is as plain as the laws of Hebrew
verse can make it that there is far more poetry, espe
cially in the earlier books of the Old Testament, than
is acknowledged even by the Revised Version. The
words of Adam, for example, on the creation of woman
are expressed in verse :
This is now bone of my bone.
And flesh of my flesh :
Woman shall she be called.
For from man she was taken (Gen. ii. 23).
For him that has ears to hear, the echo of an old poem
can often be heard even in a context that is matter of
fact to the last degree ; for example,

THE SUPERNATURAL 257
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second
month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the
same day
All the fountains of the great deep were broken up,
And the windows of heaven were opened (Gen. vii. 11).
To any one who undertook it, this study would be as
profitable as it is fascinating — to search for the poetry
behind the prose, especially in the earlier historical
portions of the Old Testament. The illustrations
adduced could easily be amplified even by a cursory
study. If, however, all this is true, what follows ? That
often we are reading poetry where we had supposed
we were reading prose ; and poetry has its own laws
and canons of interpretation. No greater injustice
can be done to poetry than to interpret it as prose.
It will not do to treat as if they had statistical or
annalistic value the bold and fervid utterances of the
lyric imagination, nor will it do to interpret a raeta-
phor as if it were a plain and sober statement. But
that is precisely what has always happened to poetry,
when interpreted into prose by the less elastic minds
of a later age, which has lost the art of suggestion,
and insists on having everything defined and classi
fied. In his Essay on " The Lives of the Saints,"
Froude aptly illustrates this universal tendency from
the life of St. Patrick. " The marvellous in the poeti
cal lives," he tells us, " is comparatively shght ; the
after-miracles being composed frequently out of a
mistake of poets' metaphors for literal truth. . . .
The poetical life of St. Patrick is full of fine, wild,
natural imagery. The boy is described as a shepherd
17

/

258 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
on the hills of Down, and there is a legend, well told,
of the angel Victor coming to him, and leaving a
gigantic footprint on a rock from which he sprang
back into heaven. The legend, of course, rose from
some remarkable natural feature of the spot : as it
was first told, a shadowy unreality hangs over it, and
it is doubtful whether it is more than a vision of the
boy ; but in the later prose all is crystalline ; the
story is drawn out, with a barren prolixity of detail
into a series of angelic visitations. And again, when
Patrick is described as the after-apostle raising the
dead Celts to life, the metaphor cannot be left in its
natural force, and we have a long, weary list of literal
deaths and literal raisings. So in many ways the
freshness and individuality was lost with time."
So long as metaphors are liable to be misunder
stood, so long will poetry be exposed to such a fate.
Whether ancient Hebrew poetry suffered in this way
is a question to be settled, not by a priori considera
tions, but by an examination of the available evidence,
each case upon its own merits ; and it will not be out
of place to remeraber that, on more occasions than
one, Christ's own disciples missed the meaning of
metaphors which one might well suppose would have
readily suggested their own interpretation. When
He bade them beware of the leaven of the Pharisees,
they said, "It is because we have no bread" (Mark
viii. 15-18). And when He spoke of a sword, they
said, " Lord, here are two " (Luke xxii. 36-38).
It is fortunate for our consideration of this problem
that we have in the Old Testaraent two or three cases
of a duplicated narrative — one in prose and one in

THE SUPERNATURAL 259
verse — so that we can watch the transition from the
one to the other, and see how, if at all, the story has
been affected in its transit. It goes almost without
saying in such a case that the poetical version is the
older; the poet never appeals to the prose history,
but the prose historian appeals to the poem. The
process of transition can perhaps be studied to most
advantage in the duplicated account of the attack by
Jael upon Sisera, for in this case both the prose and
poetical narratives go into fairly minute detail. Let
us hear the testimony of the poem first, as it is the
older (Judges v. 25-27) :
Blessed above women shall Jael be,
The wife of Heber the Kenite.
Blessed shall she be above women in the tent.
He asked water, and she gave him milk j
She brought him butter in a lordly dish.
She put her hand to the nail,
And her right hand to the workmen's hammer;
And with the hammer she smote Sisera,
She smote through his head,
Yea she pierced and struck through his temples.
At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay ;
At her feet he bowed, he fell :
Where he bowed, there he fell down dead.
This description is as clear as it is powerful and
graphic. When the tired chieftain was drinking the
milk which Jael brought hira, she seized a hammer
and struck him therewith a mighty blow upon the
temples, and down he fell. A whole verse is devoted
to the description of the fall : there is a weird repetition
in the lines which would fain sink the grim scene into

26o OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
the most sluggish imagination. When we pass to the
prose version, however, the scene is changed (Judges iv.
18 ff.).
Sisera turned in unto her into the tent, and she cov
ered him with a rug. And he said unto her. Give me, I
pray thee, a little water to drink ; for I am thirsty. And
she opened a bottle of milk, aud gave him drink, and
covered him. And he said unto her. Stand in the door of
the tent, and it shall be, when any man doth come and
inquire of thee, and say, Is there any man here ? that
thou shalt say, No. Then Jael, Heber's wife, took a
tent-pin, and took an hammer in her hand, and went
softly unto him, and smote the pin into his temples, and
it pierced through into the ground ; for he was in a deep
sleep ; so he swooned and died.
No apologetic device can successfully reconcile these
two narratives. If he was in a deep sleep, how then
did he " bow, and fall and lie, yea, bow and fall " ?
With the most elaborate and impressive art the poet
rivets our attention on the fall — a fall which in the
prose narrative is impossible, for Sisera is sleeping.
How then did the mistake arise ? Possibly, as Robert
son Smith has suggested,! through the idea that two
actions instead of one are described in the first two
clauses of verse 26 — an idea encouraged by the bold
use of the word " peg " in the sense of the handle of
the hammer. The hand which Jael puts to the peg is
not the left hand, but the right. In accordance with
a very familiar usage of Hebrew poetry the second
clause often describes, with a little enlargement, or
repetition, or diversity, the same act as the first. If
1 " Old Testament in the Jewish Church," p. 132.

THE SUPERNATURAL 261
the question be still asked how a Hebrew could come
to misunderstand a thing so simple, we can answer
that, in any case, the prose version is irreconcilable
with the poem, while this explanation would account
for the rise of that version in course of time. Be
sides, an old word, or a word used in a rare sense,
can easily give rise to misunderstanding. And as we
have already seen, language as simple, though of a
different kind, was misunderstood by those who com-
panied with the Master. There is, of course, no rair
acle here ; but the passage is an admirable illustration
of the dangers to which ancient poetry was exposed
through later misinterpretation.
This general consideration prepares the way for the
examination of incidents which have been commonly
regarded as miraculous. First, consider the alleged
miracle of the sun standing still as narrated in Joshua
X. 12-14 :
Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon ;
And thou, Moon, in the valley of Aijalon.
A glance at the Revised Version reminds us, if
the form of the story were not of itself sufficient
to remind us, that this narrative is partly prose and
partly verse. Joshua's apostrophe to the sun and
moon is a poetical quotation, excerpted from the Book
of Jashar, and acknowledged as such by the later
historian. Doubtless he had the whole poem before
him, while we have only the extract which he has seen
fit to give us. But it is enough to justify us in doubt
ing whether the interpretation of the incident as a
miracle is a correct one. What the apostrophe pre-

262 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
cisely means has always been a moot point among the
commentators — whether that Joshua is praying for a
prolongation of the light, in order that the fell work
of vengeance may be completed, or whether he is
praying for darkness ; for the literal translation of
the words rendered " stand still " is " be silent."
But on either view the words are poetry, and are
not to be interpreted as prose. To do so is to argue
one's self destitute of poetic sympathies, and to apply
to poetry a standard which, by its very constitution,
it must refuse to acknowledge. The modern historian
must have no prejudice against the miraculous as
such, if it be properly attested ; but neither must he
seek miracle in incidents which the oldest sources
relate with all the imaginative freedom that has
always been the special prerogative of poetry.
A very instructive illustration of the way in which
a poetic narrative is affected when it is paraphrased
by later generations is to be found in the various
accounts of the crossing of the Red Sea, given in the
different documentary sources.! The oldest source is
undoubtedly the poem in Exodus xv. ; and there the
incident is thus described :
With the blast of Thy nostrils the waters were piled up,
The floods stood upright as an heap ;
The deeps were congealed in the heart of the sea (ver. 8) .
This is a powerful poetic description of a storm — of
the effect of wind upon a shallow sea. So in verse 10 :
Thou didst blow with Thy wind, the sea covered them.
1 The manner in which the separate documents are discovered has
already been illustrated in Chapter VI.

THE SUPERNATURAL 263
Now in the Jehovist narrative which stands nearest
in point of time to the poem, the action, though divine,
is still ordinary.
Jehovah caused the sea to go back by a strong east
wind all the night, and made the sea dry land, and the
waters were divided ; and the Egyptians fled against it,
and Jehovah overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the
sea.Here, as in the poem, though with more detail, the
sea is driven back by a furious wind ; the Egyptians
try to cross as the Israelites had done, but they perish
in the returning water. In the Elohist document, a
little further removed from the original source, the
incident begins to assume a somewhat more miraculous
aspect. Moses lifts up his rod — a regular feature of
the Elohistic narrative - — the angel of God places him
self between Israel and her pursuers, and took off their
chariot wheels. ^ In the priestly document, which is
much the latest, the original metaphor "of~Ehe poem is I V
hardened into a plain prosaic statement. The waters
were divided, and the Israelites went into the midst of
the sea upon the dry ground, and the waters were a wall
unto them on their right hand and on their left. The
bold figures of the poem are interpreted by the later
historian into a miracle of the strangest sort : the piled-
up waters become a wall on the right hand and on the
left. Here we see the transformations of a poem as it
passes across the centuries. The story is in each
document substantially the same ; but it increasingly
tends to take on a miraculous shape.
Two other interesting illustrations of the same

264 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
tendency are to be found in the story of Samson.
The Revised Version makes it clear that the tale in
Judges XV. rests on an ancient poem, two lines of which
are quoted in verse 16. Now let us start with the
poem, as that is the older source. The text and trans
lation are not just as certain as we could wish,! but
the translation of the Revised Version will serve our
purpose. Now the first thing to notice is that the
first two words of the poem — bilechi in the Hebrew —
are capable of two translations : they may mean either
with a jaw-bone or at Lehi. Again, the Hebrew word
for " ass " is identical with the word translated
" heap," so that what originally meant at Lehi, heaps
upon heaps, could easily be interpreted to read with
the jaw-bone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, especially if
we assume that the word for "heap" was written
once too often — and nothing is commoner in ancient
manuscripts in such a context. Once the word " ass "
appeared in the first line, under the influence of the
interpretation of lechi as jaw-bone, the same influence
would naturally attract the word into the second line ;
so that the lines of the original may have simply run :
At Lehi, heaps upon heaps.
At Lehi, I smote a thousand men.
This is on the assumption that the dubious word ren
dered " jaw-bone " should be translated by " Lehi."
But should it ? How shall that question be settled ?
The margin of the Revised Version reveals the inter
esting fact that in other verses besides the one in
1 Cf. Cobb in "Journal of Biblical Literature," 1901, vol. xx. pt. 2,
" Hebrew Khythm."

THE SUPERNATURAL 265
question, notably in verse 19, the same alternative
translations occur, and it deliberately inserts " Lehi "
in the text of verse 19, where the Authorized Version
translates by " the jaw," thus removing, by this simple
change, one miracle out of the passage : " God clave
the hollow place that is in Lehi, and there came water
thereout " (R. V.). The story describes the origin of
a spring or well ; and that " Lehi," not " jaw-bone,"
is the correct translation is raade practically certain
by the concluding statement that the spring (En)
exists in Lehi unto this day (so A. V.). With this
clue we go back to verse 17, and find that the place
of Samson's exploit was Ramath-lehi, which literally
means " the high place of the jaw-bone." Now the
bearings of the story begin to be intelligible. The
scene of the exploits was known as Lehi or Ramath-
lehi, the hill of the jaw-bone, which in all proba
bility took its name from its shape, just as possibly
the shape of another hill gave to it the name of Gol
gotha, the place of the skull. Samson then wrought
his deeds of daring bilechi, that is, not with a jaw
bone, but at Lehi. There can be little doubt that that
is the sense of the earliest form of the story, and that
the subsequent version of it rested on misunder
standing. In all the cases which have been discussed, frag
ments of the ancient poetry on which the prose history
rests have fortunately been preserved ; but it is practi
cally certain, as we have seen, that there is a poetical
basis for much of the present historical narrative, even
where no direct appeal is made. It remains to ask
whether we have any reason to believe that this im-

266 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
plicit poetry shared the fortunes which some of the
poetry that has been preserved undoubtedly shared at
the hands of later interpretation. The description of
the fall of Jericho would seem to be such an instance.
The impression one naturally derives from the story
as told in Joshua vi. is that the walls miraculously fell
at the sound of the trumpet.
When the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the
people shouted with a great shout, and the wall fell
down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every
man straight before him, and they took the city.
Now is it not clear that this must be interpreted as
the language of poetry ? The religious meaning be
hind the poetical form is that no walls can stand
before Jehovah when He fights for His people; fall
they did, as fall they must, at the blast of the horn
and the battle-shout. The story is so told as to em
phasize the mysterious presence of the divine help;
but only a dull imagination would suppose that it
implied the absence of fighting.! r^he victory was
complete, and very likely easy, but it was at least
contested. We are fortunate to possess, in another
part of the book,^ interesting and quite incidental
testimony to the fact that there was fighting. " Ye
went over Jordan, and came unto Jericho : and the
men of Jericho fought against you." A battle there
1 The passage receives admirable illustration in Professor Smith'a
" Historical Geography of the Holy Land," pp. 267, 268 : " In war, Jeri
cho has always been easily taken. That her walls fell down at the sound
of Joshua's trumpets is no exaggeration, but the soberest summary of
all her history."
^ Josh. xxiv. 11.

THE SUPERNATURAL 267
was, though perhaps not a very fierce one ; but the
poets and historians of Israel always and lovingly
dwell rather on the help given them by their own
God-man of war, than on the prowess and tactics of
the human warriors, though these are not forgotten.!
Scholars who interpret in this way such narratives
as those we have been considering are obviously not
inspired by any animus against the supernatural, but
simply by the desire to be true to all the facts, and to
interpret each department of literature by the canons
which are properly applicable to it. If, however, the
results of a legitimate exegesis are, as we have seen,
to set in a natural light some incidents which we had
been accustomed to regard as supernatural, it is all
the more incumbent upon us, who believe in the
supernatural, to rest it upon a larger argument, which
will not be shattered upon the minutiae of exegetical
interpretation, but which is as broad as history and as
incontrovertible as the uniqueness of Israel.
t Thomson (" The Christian Miracles and the Conclusions of Sci
ence," p. 31) regards the fall of Jericho as belonging to those " events
which are not in themselves miraculous, unless in so far as they derive
this character from a meeting together of ordinary circumstances in a
way so strange and singular as to demand reference for their conjunc
tion to the immediate interposition of a personal and supernatural
power." There is an element of truth in this ; but the narrative needs
no special defence as soon as its poetic character is recognized. H.
Clay Trumbull ingeniously explains the falling of the walls by the
vibratory motion of the march, rendering the foundations insecure ;
and for the effects of the shout he compares the concussions of cannon
ading or the blasting of rocks (" Sunday School Times," Oct. 4, 1902).

CHAPTER X
CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION
If criticism is to have its way, what is to become
of the inspiration of the Scriptures ? That is a ques
tion that is perplexing many minds to-day. Before
discussing the possible fate of inspiration, it is worth
while to know what we mean by it. Whether it is
imperilled by criticism or not, will depend very much
upon what we conceive it to involve. And here at
the outset we are met by a difficulty of no mean order.
For, as the late Canon Liddon said, " No authoritative
definition of what the inspiration of Holy Scripture
is, of what it does or does not permit or imply, has
ever been propounded by the Church of Christ." The
Church, under the providence of God, has shown her
wisdom in abstaining from defining a quality so subtle,
however real and pervasive, as to elude definition ; and
there is much to be said for the cautious statement of
the late Master of Balliol, in his famous essay on the
" Interpretation of Scripture," that " all definitions
perhaps err in attempting to define what, though real,
is incapable of being defined in an exact manner."
Nothing would seem at first sight to be easier than
to enumerate the qualities, or some of thera, that must
be possessed by a book for which inspiration is
claimed. The Bible is commonly known as the Word

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 269
of God ; its authorship, therefore, should guarantee its
perfection in every department and in every detail.
In ancient times the relation between the Biblical
writers and the God who inspired them was expressed
by the simile of the lyre or the harp, which had but
to be struck by the hand of the player ; and the simile
perfectly illustrates the supposed passivity of the
recipients of revelation. But we no sooner examine
the books than we see that there was more than
passivity. Everywhere there are marks of the keenest
activity and the strongest individuality. We find in
the Old Testament, for example, two prophets offering
opposite messages to the same people at almost the
same time : Isaiah sublimely sure that the temple
will stand, Micah sternly confident that it will be
levelled with the ground. We find in the New Testa
ment Christian truth apprehended and appropriated
in widely differing ways: Paul's emphasis on faith
matched by James's insistence on works. There is
anything but monotony in the books of the Bible:
there is the ever changing interest of varied human
personalities. In other words, the Bible is more than the Word of
God, or than words of God. It is also a word of men,
or words of men ; and would it not be natural to
expect that, as surely as it has upon it the stamp of
divinity, because it coraes frora God, so surely will it
also bear the stamp of humanity, because it comes
through men ? We would, from this point of view,
have as much reason for supposing that it shared the
imperfection and fallibility of all human things, as
that it was perfect and infallible, unless we could

\V

270 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
convince ourselves that the presence of God within
it preserved it from those otherwise inevitable dangers.
Now it is easy to argue that God must have so pre
served it; but it is both more profitable and more
reverent to examine what He did than to assume and
dogmatize about what He must have done. We have
no right to bring to the examination of Scripture any
preconceived notion of inspiration : if we do, by what
authority shall we justify it ? To learn wherein their
inspiration consists, we must interrogate the Scriptures
themselves as to what they are and what they claim
to be and do. Then and not till then shall we be in
a position to judge whether their characteristic quality
has been essentially affected by criticism or not.
Now it is more difficult than it seems to approach
Scripture without prepossession. Our knowledge of
its place in history, our experience of its power in
our own lives, often encourages a certain reverence,
neither unintelligible nor unworthy, which prevents
the facts from making their natural impression upon
our minds and impels us to vindicate or explain away
all that, to our better judgment, seems unworthy.
It was this that led the fathers into the flowery paths
of allegory. To men who did not realize that morality
and religion had a history, and that God revealed
Himself to men as they could bear, much in the Old
Testament was bound, if interpreted in its plain and
natural sense, to seem beneath the dignity of reve
lation ; ^ so it was purified by the easy method of alle
gory. This spirit is far from dead to-day.
1 For this reason, the Gnostics rejected it. In the absence of the
idea of historical development and of degrees of inspiration they could
do nothing else.

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 271
Otto Funcke, the German Spurgeon, humorously
tells in his autobiography ! how adroitly his mother
used to extricate herself from the difficulties of inter
pretation into which she was occasionally led by her
view of Scripture. " It was very hard for her," he
says, "to allow that the sins of the holy men and
women of whom Scripture tells us were real sins. So
she adopted the most daring interpretations in order
to preserve the immaculate virtue of her ' saints.' "
She excused, for example, Rebekah's deception of
Isaac on the ground that " the old man was already
no doubt a little childish ; and Isaac would certainly
thank Rebekah in heaven for having raade him against
his will an agent in the divine purpose." David's
dancing she cautiously justified by asserting that he
danced alone and not with a woman! It was not
easy to exonerate Abraham of his lie before Pharaoh.
This she explained — by a happy approximation to
the truth — as due to the imperfection of the old dis
pensation, under which lying was not regarded as a
real sin. As proof she urged that the pious Jews of
to-day do not count it a sin to cheat and deceive their
Christian fellow-citizens !
All such evasions of the obvious sense, whether in
ancient days or modern, all such defences of the
morally indefensible, have their roots in the recogni
tion of a divine presence in Scripture, with which the
natural and obvious interpretation of such incidents
is supposed to be inconsistent ; but they arise no less
from the failure to recognize the intense humanity of
Scripture. The men who wrote and the men of whom
1 "Fussspuren des lebendigen Gottes," vol. i. pp. 75, 76.

272 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
they wrote were of like passions with ourselves. We
have in the Bible not so much the pure presence of
the Divine Spirit, as that Spirit moving araong, acting
upon, blended with very human spirits. Some one
has said that we cannot have the assurance of infalli
bility " unless we could ensure not only the presence
of the Divine Spirit in the man, but also tbe absence
of everything else." Now one of the supreme tasks of
criticisra — a task in which it has been very success
ful — has been the recovery of the humanity of the
Bible. Por centuries this had suffered an almost
total neglect which, historically considered, was quite
explicable. When the Bible was felt to be not a com
pendium of more or less intelligible doctrines, but a
message of the living God, it began to be appreciated
also as a message of and to living raen. The interest
in ancient humanity generally was accompanied by
an interest in the humanity of the Bible ; and criticism
may be described as the process which has raore and
more striven to lay that humanity bare.
Now it will be clear why there is often a seeming
antagonism between criticism and inspiration. The
latter regards the Bible as a divine book ; the former,
as a human book. The critics will often seem to
ignore its divinity, just as their opponents often seem
to forget its humanity. But there is no real or neces
sary opposition between the two. The Bible is in
deed a word of God, but it is a word which came not
only to men, but through them. In justice to both
its elements, then, it not only may, but must, be stud
ied on both its sides. The studies are not mutually
exclusive, but complementary. To feel the living

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 273
throb of the message, the plain man must try to
understand the thrill of response which it woke in the
heart of the man to whom it first came ; while the
scholar who studies the men and their times, ideas,
equipment, genius, may yet believe with all his heart
that there is an unseen presence in this book, that it
is not these men themselves that speak, but the Spirit
that speaks in them.
Perhaps we do not really appreciate the divine
majesty of the Bible, until we see how varied and fas
cinating is the humanity of it. Let us look, then, at
the latter first, and this will help us to see the con
ditions under which inspiration, using that word in
the loosest sense, had to work. Whatever it is, it
cannot be inconsistent with the acknowledged facts
of the Bible. If we find facts which are not congruous
with what we should expect in an inspired book, we
shall not pervert or reject or explain away the facts
in the interests of the theory ; but we shall allow the
facts themselves to suggest to us a theory which will,
if possible, meet them all. It is an ungracious task
to fasten our attention, even for a little, on the diffi
culties of Scripture. Its message is, in the main, so
plain and direct, its words so simply and so univer
sally true, that they readily lodge themselves in the
unsophisticated conscience, and constrain a true heart
to acknowledge them as divine. At the same time,
difficulties there are, and they are not far to seek.
"The attempt to interpret all divergencies in the
Scriptures as the result of misconception or ill-will on
the part of the reader is arduous and wearisome." ^
1 Julia Wedgwood, " The Message of Israel," p. 19.
18

274 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
And these difficulties must be frankly faced. Intel
lectual honesty demands that, no less than the desire
to know what things remain unshaken, amid all the
change of critical opinion. A study of this kind is
preparatory to an appreciation of the distinctively
divine element in the Bible ; if it cannot directly tell
us what inspiration is, it will at least clear the way
by showing us what it is not.
A book that is divine must be true. That seems to
be a postulate which may be conceded without misgiv
ing. But difficulties arise as soon as we begin more
closely to define and apply it. What kind of truth
must it possess ? (i) Must it be always scientifically
true — never clashing with the facts that science has
discovered, and could no more doubt than she could
doubt her right to examine them ? (ii) Must it be
always historically true — never falling into error in
its statement of the objective facts of history, and,
above all, never showing any inconsistency with it
self, or making two irreconcilable statements about
the same incident ? (iii) Must it be always morally
true — never exhibiting as praiseworthy a character
which our moral sense condemns, and never urging a
moral precept whose validity would not be universally
acknowledged ? (iv) Must it be always religiously
true — never presenting us with a conception of God
which needs to be abrogated, purified, or transcended ?
Obviously these questions are not to be answered by
any a priori views of what the revelation purporting
to be divine must contain, but only by a patient
and exhaustive examination of the literature of that
revelation.

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 275
(i) The number is decreasing perceptibly of those
who would claim that the words of the Bible are a
perfect revelation on such matters of physical science
as it touches, and that they therefore preclude the
possibility of scientific conclusions that differ from its
own statements or implications. The first chapter
of Genesis, when read in the right spirit and for the
right purpose, is a word of unapproachable majesty ;
but there are few scholars who believe that it rep
resents with absolutely literal accuracy the process
of creation. It is indeed a providential approximation
to the truth of science, but it is not a substitute for
it. It presupposes the cosmogony of an age very dif
ferent from our own. Those who feel that the truths
of science are too convincing to be evaded, attempt to
bring the Scriptural account into harmony with them,
by urging that one day is with the Lord as a thousand
years, and so on. All that is beside the point. It
arises from a mistaken view of the function of Scrip
ture, and besides is contradicted by the whole spirit
and letter of the narrative. If the days be not con
ceived as real days, then the institution of the Sab
bath as the seventh has no meaning ; neither would
the constantly recurring phrase " the evening and the
morning" have any.! iphe writer gives us a clear
and orderly account of his conception ; we must do
him the honor of supposing that he meant what he
said. If his scientific notions can no longer be shared
by students of modern science, the logical conclusion
is that it is not his science that the Divine Spirit
1 " God called the light day, and the darkness he caUed night."
Qen. i. 5. This is surely explicit enough.

V

276 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
intended that we should learn from him, but some
thing else.! ^jj^ jf ^ije design of the first chapter of
Genesis was not to inform us about truths which, in
the long course of history, were to be discovered by
investigation, but to usher us into the awful presence
of the Creator-God, then the chapter has served
its divine purpose, and it is idle to speak of its
conflict with science, and frivolous to urge that as a
reason for rejecting its specific truth. " Only an alto
gether unhistorical sense," says Gunkel, " can make
the attempt to harmonize Genesis i. and modern sci
ence, or to bring Darwin into the field against Moses.
It is truly pitiful that our church has not yet won a
clear and worthy relation to Genesis i. so that the
uneducated, or half-educated, when they hear for the
first time of the ' natural story of the creation,' think
the Bible is refuted. The dispute between theology
and geology is settled when both keep to their own
limits. Religion will have to allow science to speak
of the origin of the world and of mankind, as best
she can. Science, on the other hand, will neither af-
firra nor deny the dograa of the creation. This dograa
has other than scientific roots. It is (according to
Schleiermacher) the expression of faith in the absolute
power of God over the world." '^ Whether the more
incidental stateraents of the Bible touching matters
of physical science — for exaraple, that the earth is
founded upon the seas, or stablished so that it can-
1 Cf. Aubrey Moore, " Science and the Paith," p. 220. We muist
not " claim for Genesis what it never claims for itself — that it is a
prophetic anticipation of nineteenth century science."
^ Genesis. " Handkommentar zum Alten Testament," p. 120,

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 277
not be moved; or its more deliberate statements,
such as those concerning the creation in Genesis i. —
whether these are or are not corroborated by modern
science, is a question to be examined quite dispas
sionately. If these are found to be scientifically un
tenable — and this is sometimes undeniably the case
— then we shall have to conclude that the inspiration
of the Bible does not guarantee its scientific truth.
(ii) What, then, of historical truth? Here the
phenomena are, to say the least, surprising. Con
flicting accounts of the same incident cannot both
be true, and yet such accounts are undoubtedly to
be met with. According to Kings, Solomon ceded
Hiram cities in Galilee in return for a loan he re
ceived from him ; in the Chronicler's account of the
same transaction, it is Hiram who gives Solomon the
cities, and it is not easy to see why. David numbers
the people, according to one account, at the prompting
of Jehovah ; according to another, at the prompting
of Satan. Even a cursory comparison of Chronicles
with Sarauel and Kings would yield a large number
of illustrations. There are even two cases in which
the Chronicler contradicts himself.! "With all such
phenomena we may do one of two things : accept the
inconsistencies, or attempt to explain them away.
Some of them, at any rate, are not to be explained
away by any apologetic device; and the only other
alternative is to accept them. If we do this, as we
sometimes must, then we shall have to admit that
inspiration does not necessarily guarantee the abso
lute accuracy of every historical statement.
1 Cf . 2 Chr. XV. 17 with xiv. 5, and xx. 33 with xvii. 6.

278 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
This is not surprising when we remember how
comparatively indifferent not a few of the Hebrew
historical books are to history in our sense of the
word. " The reigns of two of the greatest kings of
Israel and Judah — Jeroboam II. and Uzziah — are
dismissed in seven verses each, — verses, too, which
in the latter case contain no hint, and in the former
not much more than a hint, of their exceptional
importance" (2 Kings xiv. 23-29 and xv. 1-7).!
When we think of the elaborate and lively accounts
of the battle of Salamis in Herodotus, or of Cannae
in Livy, and then turn to the meagre pages of the
books of Kings, with only a word for the siege of
Samaria, and only a verse or two for the capture of
Jerusalem, we begin to realize that whatever the
function of the Bible is, and however high, in certain
directions, is its appreciation of fact, yet its interest
in the details of history, if we may judge from its
extant historical records, was not so living or con
suming as our own. It is not without significance
that the Jews placed their historical books, from
Joshua to Kings, in the second section of the Old
Testament, known as The Prophets, thereby indicating
that the history is there considered from the prophetic
standpoint, and that its interests gather round the
ideas and principles it illustrates rather than round
the recorded facts. It would not be proper to say
that the Hebrew people were not interested in the
facts of their history. The appeal of the older his
torians to such collections of ballads as the Wars of
Jehovah, or the Book of Jashar, the reiterated appeal
^ McFadyen, "Messages of the Historians," p. 91.

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 279
of Kings and Chronicles to royal annals for the ex
pansion of a hint or for information on points con
cerning which they are silent, prove abundantly both
that there was an appetite for fact and that that
appetite was fed. But our contention now is that
that is not the leading characteristic of the historical
books of the Bible. Their large omissions and occa
sional inconsistencies are significant of their aim,
which is not so much to record as to interpret.
We shall not allow ourselves to be unduly discon
certed by the difficulties which occur to every more
or less attentive reader of such a story as the Flood
story. We know, as Delitzsch says — and nothing but
a false view of the function of the Bible obliges us to
believe otherwise — that a flood covering the whole
world up to the highest mountain tops is physically
and geologically inconceivable. We must all have
silently wondered how Noah contrived to get so many
animals of so many different kinds into his ark, how
food and drink were to be procured for them all, how
the small window that ran round the upper story
would supply the lower stories with light, how the
narrator could speak so confidently of what was pass
ing in the mind of God, and so on. These are all
difficulties, and though some of them may not be
insurmountable, they are enough to raise a legitimate
suspicion as to the historical probability of all the
details recorded. Should this suspicion arise in any
one's mind, and deepen with further study, he will be
in a painful dilemma, unless he lets these facts teach
him, as they are surely calculated to do, that the
importance of such a story cannot lie in its historical

28o OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
detail, but in something else. What that other thing
is we shall have occasion subsequently to examine.
Meantime it is clear that whatever inspiration does, it
does not necessarily guarantee accurate, lucid, and,
self-consistent historical statement.
In the narrower sense of the term. Biblical history
begins with Abraham. There is a weird titanic
majesty about the vast period before him, covered by
the first eleven chapters of Genesis. The discoveries
of Egyptology, Assyriology, and palaeontology suggest
the great interval of time that must have separated
early man from the first familiar figure of Hebrew
history. We feel that we are moving about in worlds
unrealized. The outlines are vague ; ages are repre
sented by names which are nothing but names ; and
when for a moment the vagueness defines itself, it
looms out with an awful impressiveness but for a
moment, and is lost in shadow again. Even if we
were to accept the Biblical chronology for the period
between Adam and Abrahara, it is obvious at a glance
that the Biblical account of that period cannot be
historical in the narrower sense at all. Two millennia
are represented by hardly half a dozen incidents, and
when we begin to ask ourselves why, the reason is
not far to seek. Doubtless this was not a period of
great importance from the point of view of the Bibli
cal historian. His interest is with the elect people ;
and to them he hastens with all speed, discarding
much within their history and nearly all before it
that is alien to his purpose, and selecting mainly what
is relevant and illustrative of it. But there was the
best of all reasons for writing with brevity concerning

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 281
a period so early. How could any one know anything
about it?
Gird up now thy loins like a man ;
For I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the
earth ?
Declare, if thou hast understanding (Job xxxviii. 3, 4).
This simple challenge is the real answer to the asser
tion that in the account of the creation and the
temptation we are treading the firm ground of literal
history. The truth is that there is and there can be
no account of the scene in the garden, historical in
the sense in which the account of the revolution of
Jehu is historical. It would be grotesque to suppose
that the account was actually written then ; and there
is no claim anywhere made, as indeed one would not
expect any, that the story is ultimately derived from
those whose temptation and fall it describes. Neither
is any claim made by the author — whether Moses
or another — that he enjoyed a special revelation
concerning that particular incident, or indeed con
cerning any part of the period that lay beyond the
range of historical knowledge. From the Hebrew
point of view the period is really prehistoric; and
the section devoted to it is, in part, the Hebrew
attempt to answer some of the problems with which
the present condition of the worid confronted them.
Evil, pain, sorrow are ever present facts in life.
Whence came they ? Whence came the various lan
guages that so effectually separate people from people ?
In these and in other such questions affecting human

282 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
life, every people that has reached even a rudimen
tary stage of reflection is interested ; and they answer
the questions in a large, naive, imaginative way.
They express, or rather suggest, their thoughts in the
language of poetry, for the days of philosophy were
not yet ; and the stories in which they embody their
thoughts of those days in the gray past, when the
gods walked up and down among men upon the earth,
I are commonly known as myths. As an index to the
.. /j deeper thoughts of an early people, the myth is of
^l incomparable value, but it is not to be confused with
' history. It is a story with a moral : the story is the
body and the moral is the soul. It is not the quasi-
historical form, but the idea which it imaginatively
embodies, that is the thing of real importance.
The myth has a contribution to offer to the history
of ideas, but hardly anything, beyond possibly a faint
historical reminiscence, to the history of fact. The
facts with which it confronts us move nearly all
within the realm of poetry, in which animals can
speak, and the gods can take on the likeness of
travellers frora a far country,! and eat and drink and
speak with their earthly friends.
Now if it should be found or supposed that there
was myth in Hebrew literature, as there is in Baby
lonian, Greek, and many another, would any one who
appreciated the facts we have been considering have
any occasion to resent it ? Facts are facts, with which
we must reckon, and to which we must accommodate
our theories ; and if it be proved, or even highly prob
able, that the earlier part of Genesis is not strictly
1 Homer, " Odyssey," xvii. 485.

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 283
historical, but, in this sense, myth, then we should
simply be compelled to admit that the inspiration of
the Bible is not inconsistent with the presence of
myth in it,! and this would be another illustration
of the pruiciple already alluded to, that the Hebrew
historians are more interested in idea than in fact. It
is not for us to say what elements shall be taken up
by the Spirit of God into the Bible. He will do what
soever seemeth good to Him ; and it would be only
natural, if the material of revelation should represent
as many varieties as the literary forms in which that
material is permanently embodied. Just as we have
within the Bible historic and prophetic prose, lyric
and dramatic poetry, so may we not have myth and
legend and parable as well as history ? It is a grave
error to suppose that myth is synonymous with lying
or deception : it is the ancient man's way of talking
of a remote past, which explained some of the phe
nomena of his present. Nobody is deceived by it but
one who completely misunderstands it ; and there are
hints enough, on the face of it, that it is not to be
taken as history. If we are to suppose that ani
mals spoke, then are we also to suppose that trees
can speak ? Jotham's parable maintains that they \
did : and this is as much a warrant for believing in ^
the speech of trees as Genesis ii. is for believing in the
1 " We are the dupes of words," says Bishop Perowne, " when we
start back in horror from the thought of myth and legend in the
Bible." Cf. G. S. Streatfeild : " I cannot but think that we owe a debt
of gratitude to the modern critic for making it so clear that, in the
account of the Creation, the Fall, and the Flood, we are not reading
history in the strict sense of that word." " Expositor," December,
1902, p. 410.

284 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
speech of animals. Nobody would dispute the right
of parable to a place in Scripture ; it has the high
sanction of the Master Himself : and on what ground
but that of prejudice can we dispute the right of myth ?
If through such ancient forms there breathes the spirit
of the living God, it savors more of presumption than
of reverence to reject them, because they seem to us
unworthy. God is the best judge ; and it often seems
to be part of His plan to choose, for the execution of
His purpose, the weak things of this world and the
things that are of no account. The presence of myth,
then, in Scripture, should such presence be proved, is
no more prejudicial to its inspiration than the presence
of inconsistencies.
It is often maintained that inspiration is a moral
impossibility, if some of the books of the Bible origi
nated as the critics claim they did. This difficulty
has perplexed many a tender conscience, and perhaps
ought to have been taken raore seriously by criticism
than has usually been the case. It is not an easy
matter to accept, on the first hearing, the critical view
of Deuteronomy as a production in the main of the
seventh century b. c, published during the ministry
of Jeremiah, and raore than a century after the tirae
of Hosea. It cannot be denied, in the light of its open
ing words, that the coramon interpretation of the book
as a speech delivered by Moses to Israel at the conclu
sion of their wanderings is the natural one. But the
opening verses of the book constitute only one of the
facts ; there are numerous other facts in the course of
the book, and, above all, numerous facts of the most
serious kind in other books, which seem to many to

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 285
render the " natural " interpretation of the book abso
lutely impossible, and to make, with a probability
amounting to a practical certainty, for the critical
view. This is not the place to discuss the actual
merits of so complicated a question ; but the critics
are all as sincere in their views, and many of them
as reverent, as their opponents in theirs. And too
often the concessions which many critics would be
prepared to make are practically ignored ; as, for ex
ample, that in all probability Moses did actually deliver
a final exhortation which enforced the truths that he
was anxious to lay upon the conscience of his people ;
and this they can believe, though they also believe
that the speech, in its present form, is an adaptation
of Mosaic ideas to the needs and perils of a later and
more complicated time. On the face of it, the speech
is not literally and entirely such a speech as Moses
could have delivered ; it is interrupted on more occa
sions than one by an archaeological note,! which, if any
one will take the trouble to read the context, he will
see to be simply incredible on the lips of Moses on
that occasion, particularly as it already implies the
conquest of Canaan by Israel. This interesting note
proves, at the very least, that the original book was
touched by later hands, and adapted to the needs of a
later generation ; and that is all that is claimed for
1 Cf. ii. 10-12. "The Emim dwelt therein aforetime, a people great,
and many, and tall, as the Anakim : these also are accounted Kephaim,
as the Anakim; but the Moabites call them Emim. The Horites also
dwelt in Seir aforetime, but the children of Esau succeeded them ; and
they destroyed them from before them, and dwelt in their stead ; as
Israel did unto the land of his possession, which the Lord gave unto

286 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
the book by the critics, though they considerably ex
tend the application of the principle.
Additions to and expansions of an original nucleus
are not so uncommon in literature as is often supposed.
The Rev. Dr. Cobern aptly illustrates ^ the tendency of
law-books especially to break their original bounds ;
and such a modern parallel as that which he adduces
proves at least the reasonableness, though it takes
other considerations to prove the probability, of the
critical view of the Pentateuch. " The original legis
lator would naturally impress his name upon the whole
body of laws. Blackstone's and Kent's ' Commen
taries ' and Story's ' Equity Jurisprudence ' must
always go by these great names, though much new
matter has already been added to them. I think any
one acquainted with the facts would be struck with the
application to the Hebrew law-book of the preface by
Dr. Bigelow to the thirteenth edition of Story's great
work mentioned above. He says : ' In later editions
a practice had grown up of making changes in the origi
nal text and notes in one way or another, generally by
bracketed interpolations . . . [but] in process of time
the brackets had sometimes moved into wrong places
or dropped out altogether, and the result was that the
work of the author could not always be distinguished
frora that of his editor. . . .' " If Moses was the
founder of Israel's legal systera, there is nothing to
prevent a later readaptation of his laws in his spirit
being known by his name.^
1 "Biblical World," August, 1901, pp. 108, 109.
^ For a very interesting parallel furnished by " Alfred's Dooms,"
see " The Oxford Hexateuch," vol. i. pp. 5, 6.

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 287
But a further question arises : Do the speeches of
the book not claim to represent his very words, whereas
the critical contention is that those speeches in their
present form are the composition of others ? We
have already seen that at the very least some of the
interspersed notes could not have been his ; but with
regard to the bulk of the book, the analogy of ancient
literature, would again suggest that the speech, in spite
of its introduction, might yet be the more or less free
composition of a later historian, on the basis, no doubt,
of an older record aud of actual fact. Much light is
thrown upon ancient methods of literary composition
by an interesting passage in Thucydides,! in which he
states the principles on which he composed his history.
" As to the various speeches made on the eve of the
war, or in its course, I have found it difficult to retain
a memory of the precise words which I heard spoken ;
and so it was with those who brought me reports.
But Ihave made the persons say what it seemed to me
most opportune for them to say in view of each situa
tion ; at the same time, I have adhered as closely as
possible to the general sense of what was actually
said." This is the candid statement of a historian
who took the most scrupulous care in sifting his
facts. He does what he can to produce the substance
of the speeches ; but he confesses that he is in part
guided by a dramatic instinct for probabilities. Some
times, as Professor Jebb has pointed out,^ his speeches
betray a distinct consciousness of later events, and
1 L22.
* In his instructive Essay in Dr. Evelyn Abbott's "HeUenica,"
p. 287 ff.

y

288 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
contain allusions which would have been impossible
or highly improbable on the occasions on which they
are represented as being delivered. Occasionally the
speeches are little more than the dramatic presenta
tion of a situation on which the historian desires to
concentrate his reader's attention. In any case
they are illustrations of the comparative freedom
which ancient historians allowed themselves in the
composition of speeches ; and there is no reason
in the nature of things why the liberty expressly
claimed by Thucydides may not be exemplified in
Deuteronomy. With the Book of Chronicles the case is different.
Even if we allow that sources other than the Books of
Samuel and Kings were at the disposal of its author
or authors, the very numerous and extensive parallels
subsisting between these books and Chronicles put it
beyond all reasonable doubt that they constitute the
principal source ; yet the modifications of that source
are not only numerous, but apparently systematic.
The story of the revolution of Jehoiada in Chronicles
(2 Chr. xxii.-xxiii.) is essentially the same as in 2 Kings
xi., with the substitution of Levites for body-guard —
a substitution which, in the light of other facts in the
book, we cannot regard as accidental or insignificant.
The reformation of Josiah takes place, according to
Chronicles, six years before the finding of the book
upon which, according to Kings, that reformation was
based. Very many facts of this kind are revealed by
a close study of the book, most of thera clearly in
dicative of a certain attitude and temper. It may be
possible — the critics think it is possible — to explain

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 289
these facts ; but it is surely unfair to explain them
away, in the interests of a theory to which they are
inconvenient. Any valid conception of inspiration
will have to take account of them ; and it is not im
possible that a fair consideration may lead to the re
sult that inspiration is not a factor equally present
in all books, but that some sustain the function of
revelation more directly and adequately than others.
Were this to be admitted, it would be no more than
the Jews themselves admit when they arrange the
books of the Old Testament in three divisions of
varying degrees of inspiration. Modern criticism no
doubt gives the honor to the prophets which the Jews
assigned to the law ; but both agree in admitting that
there are Bibles within the Bible, and that its ele
ments vary in their intrinsic religious worth. The
Old Testament is not a monotonous plain, but has all
the variety of mountain and valley.
A difficulty has been raised by the so-called pseu
donymous books, that is, books which bear a fictitious
name. There may be a place for such books, but
assuredly not — it is argued — within Scriptures in
spired of God. Here, again, may we not be in danger
of bringing to the discussion our unjustified ideas of
what revelation must be, of what it must include and
exclude, instead of allowing the facts to suggest to us
its methods and possibilities ? There is a multitude
of practically unanswerable arguments for the late
date of the Book of Ecclesiastes : in that case, it can
not be from the hand of Solomon, as some of its
words most naturally lead one to suppose. But what
then ? If the book, whether by reason of its sombre
19

290 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
truth, or of its inarticulate suggestions of the need of
a Redeemer, or for any other more adequate reasons,
deserves its place in the canon, it cannot forfeit that
place, to which it has an inherent right, because of its
pseudonymous ascription. If the book is both pseu
donymous and independently worthy of a place in the
canon, then we shall simply have to admit that pseu-
donyraity is not inconsistent with inspiration, and that
this literary device was used by the Divine Spirit, as
many others were. We must carefully distinguish
between such a literary device and moral dishonesty.
The book may be regarded as a soliloquy, fittingly
put into the lips of a king, whose knowledge of the
world was wide, and whose name was a proverb for
wisdom. These are his " words," — that is, a dramatic
interpretation of life put into his lips by the gloomy
and almost baffled thinker of a later age, whose prob
leras pressed hira sorely. This is one of the com
monest devices of literature, especially of poetry. It
is illustrated, for example, by the soliloquy of Ulysses
in Tennyson. " I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move."
Such a speech the Odysseus of Homer could not con
ceivably have uttered. Still, there is a fine poetic pro
priety in Tennyson's choice of the wise and far-travelled
hero to suggest a particular line of meditation.
The Book of Jonah is another book the critical
interpretation of which has given offence as a delib
erate attempt to ignore the miraculous. Now, without

V

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 291
discussing the incident, round which an altogether
disproportionate interest has gathered, the place of
the book in the canon is enough to suggest where its
real importance lies. The book has the singular dis
tinction of appearing among the prophets, in spite of \/
its narrative form. The obvious inference is that its ^
affinities are more with prophecy than with history ;
in other words, that its value lies in its ideas, rather
_than its facts — Jromffiis point of vipiw t.b^ g^nry nf
the whale, even if it were corroborated by Paley's
twelve raen of known probity, would be very subordi
nate in importance to the majestic ideas of the book —
its missionary enthusiasm, its conception of the long-
suffering and universal love of God, which embraces
Nineveh as well as Palestine, and stretches down in
pity even to the animal creation. We have already
seen that ideas were more to the Hebrew historian
than facts ; and when we find a quasi-narrative book
taking its place alongside of others whose business
is not to narrate, but to bring horae to the indolent
consciences of raen the mighty truths of God, we are
left with no alternative but to emphasize the prophetic
element of the book rather than the narrative.
(iii) The scientific, historical, and literary aspects
of the Bible have been briefly considered, and certain
phenomena have been pointed out with which any
theory of inspiration will have to reckon. What is to
be said of the morality of the Bible ? Here we seem,
at first sight, to be on less debatable ground ; but no
sooner do we pass frora generalities to the examina
tion of detail, than we are confronted with some stub
born facts, of which only one or two need be here

292 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
recalled. A blessing is pronounced on Jael for an
act which, brave and patriotic as it was, involved
a breach of one of the fundamental principles of Ori
ental moralitv — the law of hospitalitv. The Mosaic

law of divorce was abrogated by Christ Hiraself, just
as the temper of the prophet Elijah was rebuked by
Him. Most of all is the modern Christian sense
startled by the imprecatory tone of some of the
psalms, even of some of the utterances of the tender
hearted Jeremiah.
Let his children be fatherless,
And his wife a widow,
Let his children be vagabonds, and beg,
And let them seek their bread out of their desolate places,
Let there be none to extend mercy unto him.
Neither let there be any to have pity on his fatherless
children (Ps. cix. 9-12. Cf. Jer. xviii. 19-23).
This does not look as if it could be one of the rules
of faith and conduct. It is rebuked and repudiated in
the gospel of Him who told His followers to do good
to them that used them despitefully, and who prayed,
on His cross, " Father, forgive them ; for they know
not what they do." The precepts and examples of
the Old Testament, however intelligible they may be
in the light of history, are clearly not all of such a
nature as to command the homage of the enlightened
Christian conscience, so that inspiration does not
guarantee the unimpeachable perfection of the moral
ity of the Old Testament in all its parts.
(iv) No more does it guarantee the uniform purity
of all its religious conceptions. In the earliest sources,

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 293
for example, God is found in fashion as a man. He
walks about the garden in the cool of the day ; He
shuts the door of the ark behind Noah; He comes
down from heaven to see the city and the tower which
the children of men had built ; He partakes the hos
pitality of Abraham His friend. There is a splendid,
he^althy reality about this intense anthropomorpliisra.
Only rnen wEo" b'elieved in God with all their souls
could have so spoken or written of Hira. But such
a conception is hardly a spiritual one ; and, indeed,
we can see it in the Old Testaraent gradually disen
gaging itself more and more from its material ele
ments. One striking passage in Exodus xxiv. 9-11,
says of the company on the mountain that they beheld
God, and did eat and drink. In Deuteronomy, which
criticism assigns to a later period, the spirituality of
God is emphasized in such a fashion as to suggest
almost a tacit correction of the older form of the
story. " Jehovah spake unto you out of the midst
of the fire : ye heard the voice of words, but ye saw J j^
no form ; only ye heard a voice. . . . Take ye there- '
fore good heed unto yourselves ; for ye saw no manner
of form on the day that Jehovah spake unto you in
Horeb out of the midst of the fire" (iv. 12, 15).
An early source represents God as speaking to Moses
face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend (Ex.
xxxiii. 11) ; according to another source within the
same chapter that was impossible : Thou canst not see
my face : for man shall not see me and live (verse 20).
In the light of such passages — and they could be in
definitely multiplied — it would be idle to deny that
religious conceptions underwent a change. God had

294 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
many things to say to the people of Israel, but He
could not say them all in 1200 B. c. The people could
not have borne them then. When Israel was a child,
God taught him to walk. He led Israel to more ade
quate thoughts of Himself by that gentle and gradual
process which marks the divine dealings with men.
When Israel was a ciiild, he spoke as a child, even
about God. He spoke with all the earnest simplicity
and vivid imagination of childhood. When he became
a man, he learned to think deeper thoughts, though he
never forgot that such knowledge was ultimately too
wonderful for him, and that no raan by searching can
find out God to perfection.
It is along these lines that criticism has done its
work. Its peculiar province is to deal with the Bible
on the side of its humanity, and it has discovered in
many directions numberless proofs of that humanity
in its imperfection as well as in its fascination. It
has found the natural science of the Bible to share
many of the ideas of the ancient East, its history to be
not uniformly self-consistent, its moral and religious
conceptions to be progressive. It has treated the
Bible like any other book, and the result has been the
disclosure of these indubitable facts.
But are these all the facts ? The Bible needs no
favor from its investigators, but it has a right to de
mand justice ; and one who saw no more in the Bible
than such facts as these to which we have called at
tention, would have missed its whole purpose, and
grotesquely failed to account for its undying influence
on humanity. For more obvious than the differences
between the books, and the difficulties raised by some

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 295
of them, is the great unity which binds them all
together, and justifies us in speaking of this large and
diversified literature as a Bible, a single book. No
other race " has left on the ear of humanity so definite
an impression of a single voice." ! Prom raany points
of a large circumference every section of the literature
finds its way to a comraon centre, and that centre is
God. Immanuel is the motto of the Bible, as well
as the name of the Messiah : God with us — in war
riors and prophets, in psalmists and sages, in rite and
ceremony. God is the stupendous fact of the Bible ;
and while there is a revelation of Him in men, in their
words, their aspirations, their institutions, and while
it is on these things that the critic and historian, as
such, concentrate themselves, it is not with these, but
with the God who thus reveals Himself, that the
religious man is primarily concerned.
It is a commonplace to say that the Bible is a
religious book ; but it is really a fact of unique signifi
cance. Why should no other literature betray just
this kind of unity ? And why should Hebrew litera
ture, out of an immense mass of songs, annals, histo
ries, and poems, to which it occasionally alludes, have
selected just those things which produce this impres
sion of unity ? By briefly examining the Bible in the
light of its tendencies and interests as indicated alike
by what it contains and what it omits, we may win
sorae clearer perception of its own purpose, and so be
the more able to estimate the effect of criticism upon
that. Take, for example, the story of the Pall. Whatever
1 Julia Wedgwood, " The Message of Israel," p. 21.

k'

X

296 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
else that is, it is primarily a moral history. Whether
it does or does not represent a single fact occurring at
a definite point of time, it assuredly represents an
eternal fact, re-enacting itself anew in the experience
of every new soul that cometh into the world. It
would be impossible to exaggerate its psychological
truth. As a statement of the origin, essence, and
consequences of sin, it will stand as long as the
world. Every age will find there its own tragic ex
perience reflected. The story shakes the conscience :
\ it suggests the inalienable responsibility of man, the
j^ awfulness of estrangement from God, and the curse
which He pronounces upon sin. If that is what it
does, we may assume that that is what it was meant to
do ; and nothing that criticism can say about the story
can alter its power to do that.
Or take the story of the Flood. Here again the
moral interest is undoubtedly predominant. What
the dimensions of the ark were, and how long the flood
lasted, are of no consequence at all in the light of the
majestic truths which the story was written, or at
least adapted, to illustrate. It teaches with a power
/ that is weirdly grand the fearfulness of sin in the
j sight of the Creator, who would rather see His fair
I world desolated by a flood than peopled by men, the
\ thoughts of whose hearts were only evil continually.
ut illustrates also the pity as well as the justice of
God. In this case the teaching which the narrative
was intended to convey is not only not shattered, but
strongly corroborated by criticism. For we are fortu
nate in having a Babylonian counterpart to this story ;
and, by comparing the two, we can easily learn what

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 297
constitutes the distinction of the Hebrew version of
the story. There is much that is vivid and beautiful
in the Babylonian story. For example, when the
return of the seventh day had brought calm after
the six days and nights of storm, Par-napishtim, the
hero of the Babylonian story, says : " I opened a win
dow, and the light fell upon my face" — a passage
which, for vividness, reminds one of the "Ancient
Mariner." But both in its statements and in its
omissions the Babylonian story is separated by the
whole length of a moral world from the Hebrew
story. When, for example, Par-napishtira built an
altar and offered sacrifice, the gods sraelt the savour, ^ \ /
and " gathered like flies over the sacrificer." The ' ^
Hebrew story touches this very closely (Gen. viii. 21).
Yet what a difference ! It is monotheism against
polytheism, the simplicity of a moral religion against
the extravagances of superstition. Moral purpbse,
which is barely suggested in the Babylonian story,
rings throughout the whole of the Hebrew story. In
religious dignity, power, and truth there can be simply
no thought of comparison between the two. " The dif
ference," says Gunkel, " is immense. The polytheism,
which is so strikingly prominent in the Babylonian
story, has completely fallen away in the Israelitish
tradition. . . . There is nothing in the Babylonian
story of that profound sense of sin with which the
Hebrew bows before the judgment of God. . . . How
immeasurably superior, therefore, is the Hebrew story
to the Babylonian ! Shall we not then be glad that
we have found in this Babylonian parallel a criterion
to estimate the height of Israel's thought concerning

/

298 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
God, which is powerful enough thus to purify and
transform what is strangest and most repulsive." !
This impression is confirmed by a study of all the
Babylonian parallels to the stories of Genesis i.-xi.
The question then naturally arises : How, on the basis
of the same literary material, is this " immeasurable "
difference to be accounted for ? and the only adequate
answer is, that here is the finger of God. Jhe in-
spiration of Genesis i.-xi., at least, ceases to be a
debatable question to one who has taken the trouble
to compare the Hebrew stories with their Babylonian
parallels ; and the difference lies within the moral
and religious sphere. The grossness, the superstition,
the moral purposelessness of the one are matched by
the earnestness, the truth, the dignity of the other.
Here, then, is a section which is inspired, if the word
" inspiration " means anything at all. Without at
tempting to define inspiration — though we need not
altogether believe with Erasmus that every definition
is a misfortune — we have yet to acknowledge here
the presence of the thing itself. The breath of another
life is upon it. Mere human genius alone could not
have made it what it is ; for it was a people of no
mean genius from whom the parallel story came.
And to urge that the Hebrews had a special aptitude
for religion is only to ignore the mystery of person
ality, and to answer its difficulties with a sounding
phrase. The " immeasurable " difference is adequately
accounted for only by the controlling presence of a
factor in the one which was absent, or all but absent,
from the other. If religion and morality mean any-
1 " Handkommentar zum Alteu Testament," Genesis, p. 66.

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 299
thing at all, and if the worid's chief task is to learn
what they do mean, the facts we have been consider
ing show that one of these peoples is qualified to
teach it, while the other is not. Therein lies Israel's
uniqueness. To those who believe that God is in His
world and that history has a purpose, do not the facts
themselves suggest that this people, or at any rate
the leaders of her religious thought, were moved by
God in some mysterious way to utter the truth about
Him — a truth which grew indeed in clearness and
purity, but which from an early time was powerful
enough to assimilate and adapt to its own high ends
the indifferent and sometimes unpromising material
of common Semitic story ? !
With the hints derived from a comparative study
of Hebrew and Babylonian tales, we have but to con
tinue our advance through the Old Testament to find
the presence of the sarae spirit as the early Hebrew
stories manifest — a presence not always so power
fully felt, or so attractively embodied, but on the
whole the presence of a Spirit with the same horror \ V
of sin, the same passion for righteousness, the same
yearning to redeem. In no part of the Old Testament
is that presence so imperious and unmistakable as in
the prophets. If ever there were men who felt that
1 For a detailed presentation of the argument in the two preceding
paragraphs, see Ryle's admirable book on " The Early Narratives of
Genesis." Very interesting in this connection is the confession of
Professor Hilprecht, than whom no man speaks with more authority
on this matter : " As the attempt has recently been made to trace the
pure monotheism of Israel to Babylonian sources, I am bound to de
clare this an absolute impossibility, on the basis of my fourteen years'
researches in Babylonian cuneiform inscriptions." Quoted from " Der
Alte Glaube" in " The Sunday School Times," March 21, 1903.

300 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
they were not their own, but the servants of Another,
these men were the prophets. Perhaps there is
nothing in literature so amazing as this phenomenon
of the prophetic consciousness. It defies analysis and
even explanation, unless on the view on which the
raost original of the prophets themselves continually
insisted — that they were called by God to the special
service of uttering His truth, and inspired by Him
with the truth they were to utter. How the call and
the inspiration were psychologically mediated we do
not and cannot know ; but that they were tremendous
facts, no one who is even superficially familiar with
the pages of prophecy can for a moment doubt.
Neither the one nor the other can be adequately ex
plained simply as the result of an inner development.
The prophets were not ambitious men who sought
popularity, and created the call to which they re
sponded. It was another voice than that of their own
hearts that they heard, and often they heard it with
misgiving and dismay. They could not go, they said ;
one, because he was a poor speaker, another because
he was but a child, another because his lips were not
pure, and so on. But they cannot help themselves.
They are borne on by an irresistible impulse. Je
hovah took me and said, Go and prophesy (Amos vii.
15). That is all. When the lion roars, who is not
afraid? When Jehovah speaks, who can help proph
esying? (iii. 8). They feel, as it were, a strong hand
laid upon them (Is. viii. 11), and in that constraint
they speak.
And as it was Another who called them, so it is
Another's words they speak. Jehovah said unto me.

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 301
They may try to repress it, but it refuses to be re
pressed. It is as a fire shut up within their bones
(Jer. XX. 9), and it burns its way out into flaming
utterance. Their chief task is, in an age of time
serving and superstition, to declare to Jacob his trans
gression, and to Israel his sin (Micah iii. 8). They are
as the voice of God to an ungrateful and immoral
people. But besides this, or perhaps as part of this,
they occasionally show a strange power to interpret
the meaning of events, and to forecast in great crises
the more immediate future. It is more than political
insight ; they themselves would have scorned such an
explanation. It was not so much a conviction that
grew up within them — though it may have been
partly that — as a voice from without that came upon
them. It was not they that spoke, but the spirit that
spoke in them. They were not led to their utterances
by the logic of events, though of these events none
were keener observers than they. God spoke, and
they could not help prophesying any more than they
could help being called. " The distinguishing char
acteristic of the prophets, first of their speech and
action, and afterwards of their writings, was the firm
and unwavering belief that they were instruments or
organs of the Most High, and that the thoughts which
arose in their minds about Hira and His Will, and
the commands and exhortations which they issued in
His Name, really came at His prompting, and were
really invested with His authority." ! Now, if there
were nothing more than this sense of divine posses
sion, it might be disposed of as the outcome of
1 Sanday, " Inspiration," p. 394.

302 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
ecstasy, and relegated to the domain of an antiquated
Orientalism. But when we look at the character of
the raen thus possessed and at the quality of their
work ; when we think of their conception of God,
with its unmatched blend of dignity, purity, justice,
and pity ; when we remember how their grasp and
expression of the elemental truths of religion stands
after centuries unrivalled, — we are bound to confess
that the zeal which consumed them was equalled
by their sanity. Their message, though spoken in
Hebrew words, is a message for the universal heart ;
for, though they dealt for the most part with specific
issues, they dealt with them in the light of the eternal
and unchangeable truth of God.
Inspiration may be difficult to define, but the fact
is impossible to ignore, whether we regard the express
testimony of the prophets that they received their
words from God, or the indirect testimony of the
earlier part of Scripture to the presence of a spirit
which effectually differentiates Hebrew literature from
others to which it is akin. This spirit, which is the
spirit of God, determines the point of view from
which all things are considered. They may be inter
esting for other reasons ; but they stand in the Bible,
because they are religiously interesting. Once we
grasp this clearly, neither inconsistencies nor even
conceivable inaccuracies in the historical books will
give us trouble any more. These things lie upon the
surface, they do not touch the soul. The two great
prophetic documents at the basis of the Pentateuch,
for example, differ perceptibly in language, in theo
logical conceptions, in other things ; but in the spirit

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 303
that animates them, and in their interpretation of
Israel's past, they are absolutely at one. They both
read in the history the progressive march of God's
purpose. God with Israel — always in love and often
in chastisement — is the theme of both. Another
illustration on a small scale, of the essential unanim
ity of the Biblical writers amid many not unimpor
tant differences, is to be found in the three comments
on the fall of Samaria in 2 Kings xvii. Characteris
tically very little is said of the historical fact, im
portant though it was ; but the religious comment is
varied and ample. By successive writers " the fall of
the northern kingdom is seized upon as a vivid, nay
terrible, illustration of the ways of God with Israel.
Verses 18, 21-23 find the sin of Israel to consist in
' walking in all the sins of Jeroboam.' Verses 7-20,
except 18, trace the calamity to more specific sources,
like star-worship and the neglect of the prophetic
word. In a later passage still, 34 b-40, the fall of
the kingdom is ascribed to the neglect of the written
word. The chapter shows impressively how the fall
of the northern kingdom haunted the minds and im
aginations of men who believed in the divine discipline
of Israel, and how by different ways they arrived at
the conclusion that it corroborated divine justice." !
As soon, then, as the dominant religious purpose of
the Bible comes clearly into view, all the difficulties
which have been the stock-in-trade of the scorner from
time immemorial fall into their proper place of com
parative insignificance. From this point of view,
which is the Bible's own, it is time and labor lost to
J See my " Messages of the Historians," pp. 97, 98.

X

304 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
discuss how the serpent could have been erect before
the curse upon him, or whether animals could ever
have spoken, or what was the length and elevation of
the Mesopotamian plain.! What we ought to concern
ourselves with is what those naratives have to teach us
of sin, of the world, of raan, of God. It is foolish to
raake raerry over such difficulties as how in Genesis ii.
raan was raade before the animals, while in Genesis i.
the order is reversed ; but it is equally a sign of little
faith and understanding to be afraid of these difficul
ties. The student who reads the Bible iu the spirit in
which it was written, will dwell rather on the truth
they share in common. Both sources agree alike that
raan and aniraals were created by God, and both
emphasize, though in different ways,^ the altogether
unique position of man in relation to his maker. It
is the duty of the reader to " penetrate through narra
tives which ignore and belie each other to a central
truth which glows through each." ^ Divergences are
of great value in enabling us to discover the stand
point and the interests of the various authors, but
almost raore as suggesting that no undue stress is to
be laid upon the words themselves. If a fact which
, one would suppose must have been so familiar as the
superscription on the cross can be rendered by the
evangelists in four different ways, it is surely clear
that inspiration does not guarantee verbal accuracy.
It is very plain that the New Testament writers,
1 This last point has played a part in the discussion of the Flood
story. Cf. Huxley, " Nineteenth Century," July, 1890, with Gtladstone's
reply in the last chapter of " The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture."
2 Gen. i. 27 and ii. 7.
' Julia Wedgwood, "The Message of Israel," p. 18.

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 305
as a rule, laid little stress upon pedantic precision.!
Their quotations are often from the Septuagint rather
than frora the Hebrew text: sometimes they agree
neither with the Hebrew nor wifh the Septuagint ; and
once or twice the argument depends upon the Septua-
gint^^evCTw^rethaJb is a mistranslation.^ This may
"be very unlike what we should expect, but we"must
learn to conform our expectations to the facts ; and
these teach us, at the least, how little importance
attaches to the words. We must pierce behind the
words to the spirit, which no words can perfectly
express. This is a point of great importance, and the Bible
becomes a new book to the man who clearly grasps it.
Scripture is not merely, as it is often called, a record
of revelation : it is itself a revelation of the spirits of
the men who wrote it. The historical books, besides
recording the history, reveal the faith of the historians.
The books are a testimony to the splendid faith which
inspired their interpretation of the past, no less than
their outlook upon the future. Everything contributes
to the divine purpose. The foreign Cyrus is even
spoken of as Jehovah's Messiah (Is. xlv. 1), which
shows how generous as well as comprehensive is the
Biblical conception of history. No movement or event
1 The subject of Old Testament quotations in the New can be very
conveniently studied in Hiihn's " Die messianischen Weissagungen,"
II. Teil ; and Dittmar's " Vetus Testamentum in Novo," in two parts,
the first containing the references in the Gospels and Acts published in
1899, the second promised for this year (1903).
2 Cf. Heb. X. 5. " A body didst thou prepare for me." In Psalm
xl. 6 the corresponding words in the Hebrew mean, "Ears hast thou
digged for me." 20

k

3o6 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
in the past had been by accident. The raovement
which brought Abrahara from Babylonia to Canaan
was due to a divine impulse. He had not merely wan
dered westward : according to one source, it was God
that had caused him to wander (Gen. xx. 13) ; ac
cording to another, Jehovah had said to him. Get thee
out of thy native land (Gen. xii. 1). Neither was it
any accident that took Israel to Egypt : it was God
who had sent them there for discipline, that, having
tasted the bitterness of bondage, they might know the
gladness of redemption. And so on through all the
history, which is always immeasurably more than a
passionless record of objective fact. It is a window
into the soul of the historian, through which we see
how mighty a faith inspired him in God as the Lord
of history, guiding it evermore to a divine event. No
criticism of detail can in the least affect the significance
of the history as a reflex of the author's faith ; and
this would still remain to instruct and inspire, even
did that history present more difficulties than it does.
Inspiration is, as its etymology suggests, a thing of the
spirit, and its primary operation was upon the spirits
of living men. The men were inspired, rather than
I the books ; and if the books, then the books through
the men. The difference, for example, between the
Hebrew and the Babylonian stories was ultimately
the result of an action of the Spirit of God upon
the spirits of particular men.
The purpose of the Bible can be inferred, as we have
seen, from the character of its contents. It introduces
the spirit of an ethical religion into Semitic tales frora
which that spirit was practically absent ; and it ignores,

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 307
as foreign to its purpose, very much of the historical
detail which would have been of the highest interest
and value to us. In other words, the book is written
for the sake of the religion which it enshrines ; and
it is no doubt intended, as it is fitted, to inspire its
readers with the spirit which animates itself. That
this was its purpose, or at any rate was felt to be one
of its effects, may be gathered from the occasional
praises of Scripture that are scattered throughout both
Testaments. Besides the famous testimony to its
power to reprove, correct, exhort, and instruct, and
besides Paul's explicit statement of its character as
fitted to inspire us with hope through patience and
comfort,! there are even in the Old Testament splendid
and elaborate tributes to the value of such Scriptures
as were then known — tributes which teach us what
were the elements in Scripture that constituted its
worth and power to those who were most familiar with
it. The Psalter opens with its simple assurance that
the man in whose heart the Scriptures are will be able
to keep his feet when the storms of judgment drive
the chaff away. Perhaps in no part of the Bible is its
moral and religious function so clearly and lovingly
expressed as in the nineteenth and the one hundred
and nineteenth psalms. The law of Jehovah gladdens
the heart, and lightens the eyes : it is finer than gold
and honey. And it is all this, because it is right and
pure, and clean and true. It brings the soul home and
makes the simple wise. It brings one who feels that
he is a stranger upon the earth into blessedness and
peace and fellowship with the most high God : it pre-
1 Rom. XV. 4.

3o8 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
serves him from pride and falsehood, and is as a light
shining upon the dark path of his earthly days.
Utterances like these show what it was in the Bible
that interested and attracted its earliest students, as
the authors of such psalms may without impropriety
be called. Their Torah, or Law, of Jehovah consisted
of many things ; but when they come to sing its praises,
it is as a moral and religious force that it is sung. It
is great, and worthy to be praised, because it makes
for morality and God. " The Bible," says Myers, " is
concerned with the formation of man's character
through the exhibition of God's." ! That character
is proclaimed by the prophets, it is suggested by the
legislation, it shines throughout the history. In every
form of its presentation it makes its eloquent appeal
to the hardened hearts of men, that, in the language
of the New Testament, they may become children of
their Father who is in heaven. It is precisely this
moral and religious power that is ascribed to it in
psalms like these ; and they thus explicitly corroborate
what the general contents of the Scriptures themselves
suggest, that Scripture was preserved, as it was written,
for moral and religious ends ; and within that sphere
lies its special inspiration.
Here, of course, questions of extreme difficulty are
raised. It may be urged, on the one hand, that all
parts of Scripture do not possess this power equally ;
and, on the other, that other books, both ancient and
modern, also possess it in no inconsiderable measure.
In that case, what becomes of the canon, and of the
inspiration which is predicated of it ? The first of
1 •' Catholic Thoughts on the Bible and Theology," p. 3.

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 309
these objections may be conceded. Scripture does not
all stand upon the same moral and religious level ; and
although, in the main, there is a gradual advance from
less to more adequate conceptions of God and of the
duty He requires of man, that advance is neither
steadily nor uniformly maintained. The bitter,
violent, and revengeful temper of the late Book of
Esther, however intelligible under the circumstances,
can only be condemned and deplored by the Christian
conscience. We know that this book, together with
Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs had a long fight
for their place in the canon. Even those who theoreti
cally believe in the equal value of all parts of Scrip
ture unconsciously develop a sort of instinct for the
relative religious value of its various parts ; this is
proved by the naturalness and frequency with which
they turn to certain books rather than to others.
Again, it would be idle to deny that in Greek
tragedy and philosophy, in ^schylus, Sophocles, and
Plato, as well as in much modern literature, there are
religious and ethical conceptions of a very noble order,
which, in certain directions, it would be very hard, if
not impossible, to differentiate from some of the
teaching of Scripture. But when every concession
has been made that can be made, it remains a simple
fact that the Biblical conception of the character of
God, taken as a whole, is not approached, far less
surpassed, by that of any other literature. Modern
religious teachers, whether in prose or verse, will be
found to draw most of that which is best in their
teaching, if not directly from Scripture, at any rate
from that moral and religious atmosphere which has

3IO OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
been created by Scripture; and most of them would
be willing to acknowledge this. With regard to the
teaching of the classical poets and philosophers, pro
found and lofty as that often is, the modern religious
consciousness is often struck by its coldness, its uncer
tainty, its inadequacy. They know of the relentless-
ness of fate, but little or nothing of the love of God.
They have no gospel to preach to the poor, and few
words of comfort for him that is weary and ready
to die. The God of the Bible, on the other hand, is
a God of redemption, who in history, in life, in
Christ, unceasingly commends His love toward us.
There is a distinction between Greek and Hebrew
literature, judging each by their noblest representa
tives, which cannot escape any one who has studied
both literatures sympathetically. But it would be
idle to deny that there are many utterances in Plato
worthy of a place in Scripture, just as it has to be
adraitted that there are certain utterances in Scrip
ture which fall below the raoral dignity of the collec
tion as a whole. " To suppose," says Mr. Montefiore,
" that Esther and Ezra are inspired, but that the
Republic and the Antigone are not, is revolting to
our common sense."!
This is all true ; yet the limits of the canon, though
theoretically open, are practically closed. The books
that constitute the canon had already commended
themselves supremely to the Church before they were
incorporated in a canon. Their incorporation only
gave formal recognition to an established fact — the
fact of the religious value and power of the books as
^ "Jewish Quarterly Review," October, 1901, p. 151.

CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION 311
proved by the experience of the Church. It was, on
the whole, a happy instinct or rather a kindly Provi
dence that created the Canon of Scripture. In so far \
as that has encouraged the idea that every book within \ \ ,-
it differs in kind from every other book without it, it j .^
has led to a mechanical view of inspiration ; it has j
fostered Bibliolatry ; it has forgotten that God's spirit '
cannot be imprisoned within books any more than it
can be confined to temples made with hands. But
there can be little doubt that, however hard, perhaps
impossible, in certain cases it may be to justify the dis
tinction between the books within and those without
the canon, the practical wisdom of the Church has been
shown in drawing the general distinction. Of course
no historical decision of this kind can be absolutely
binding on subsequent generations; but as that de
cision or those successive decisions only crystallized
the experience of the Church, first the Jewish and then
the Christian, and as that experience has been con
stant and uniform, it may safely be acquiesced in;
and it will probably stand as long as the Church
itself. We are at the end of our long discussion, and the
result has been to show that criticism in no way im
perils a belief in the inspiration of the Bible. It is
only when it confines its attention to some of the
facts, and these the least important, that it can even
seem to do so. But the other facts which a compre
hensive study equally forces upon our attention —
the acute prophetic consciousness, the extraordinary
differences between Hebrew and Babylonian story,

312 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
the marvellous unity, in spite of the utmost diversity
among the books of Biblical literature, and similar
phenomena — can only be explained by the presence
within it of such a real influence as is implied by the
great term " inspiration." The Bible has been not un
aptly described as a history of salvation. The former
term suggests that salvation is not an abstract thing,
apart from human needs and interests, but wrought
out, act by act and scene by scene, within the theatre
of history. The latter term suggests that the histor
ical facts are charged with divine meaning and pur
pose. While the religious man is concerned with this
inner purpose, it is with those facts, with all the
available literary and historical facts, that criticism
has to deal. If some of those facts are calculated to
give a shock of surprise to one who approaches his
study with preconceived notions of what a divine
revelation must be, other facts are bound to impress
upon him far more vividly and powerfully that strange
uniqueness of Biblical literature, which, when every
account of it has been given that can be given, has
ultimately to be referred to the direct inspiration of
Almighty God.

CHAPTER XI
A GREAT GULF FIXED?
The eagerness with which the critical view of the
Old Testament has been repudiated by the supporters
of the traditional view suggests that between those
views there is a great gulf fixed. If this were true,
it would indeed be lamentable ; for it would mean
that the Christian Church was divided against itself.
Almost every representative of both parties — at any
rate in Britain and America — stands within that
Church ; and this it is which constitutes the real
pathos of the whole situation. If the critics were all
without the Church, careless of her interests and in
different to her Lord, while their opponents were all
within the Church, alone in their devotion to the ser
vice of Christ, the situation might be easily and plau
sibly explained. But it is not so. Many of the
critics are conspicuous for the devoutness of their life
and the enthusiasm of their service ; and if the differ
ences between them and their opponents are irrecon
cilable, then is the situation sad indeed. But does
not this very fact that, in the practical work of the
Church they can shake hands, suggest, though it may
not prove, that the breach is not really so hopeless as
both parties are sometimes tempted to suppose, and

314 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
that the things which unite them are more numerous,
or at any rate more important, than those which sep
arate them ?
It is particularly difficult to discuss the quality of
the differences that separate the parties, because, as we
have already seen,! so many varieties of opinion are
represented within the ranks of each. The conces
sions made by large numbers of those who identify
themselves with what, in the main, may be called the
traditional opinion, are both numerous and impor
tant : many admit the literary analysis of the histori
cal books, an admission vehemently repudiated by
others as ridiculous and impossible ; and so on. On
the other hand, the critics, as we have seen,^ are by
no means the sworn foes of the supernatural. Many
believe in it with all their hearts, and express their
belief explicitly and unambiguously ; many admit,
too, that the phenomena presented by Biblical liter
ature are only to be explained by its direct inspira
tion. When such important concessions are raade
by each side to the other, it becomes increasingly
clear that, if there be not indeed a common standing
ground, the more moderate members of both parties
are yet not so far apart after all. Though they may
differ in method and attitude, yet they hold in com
mon much that is fundamental.
It must, however, be confessed that there has not
been on either side much of the spirit of compromise.
Antagonism has been frankly accepted by both as the
relation subsisting between them. The points of dis
tinction have been pressed, and the points of agree-
1 Chapter III. 2 Chapter IX.

A GREAT GULF FIXED? 315
ment, which are by no means inconsiderable, have
been for the most part ignored. Professor Volck of
Dorpat, though a representative of the more tolerant
phase of conservative opinion, yet maintains that
"peace between the two camps is impossible: the
gulf which separates them cannot be bridged." ! Pro
fessor Jordan of Kingston, who represents tolerant
critical opinion, is of tlie same mind. " It is no use,"
he says, " attempting to minimize the difference be
tween the traditional view and the critical treatment
of the Old Testaraent. The difference is immense ;
they involve different conceptions of the relation of
God to the world, different views as to the course of
Israel's history, the process of revelation, and the
nature of inspiration." ^ Similar is the testimony of
the Rev. Dr. Hazard, in his Introduction to the Rev.
Isaac Gibson's " Reasons for the Higher Criticism of
the Hexateuch : " " As compared with the . . . obso
lescent treatment of the Bible that was accepted out
side the limited circle of specialists down to within
the last two or three decades, the present system is
an advance of such profound significance, that the
two are nothing short of mutually destructive." ^
So Mr. Gibson himself: "The traditional and critical
views of revelation are face to face in open antag
onism." * Thus it cannot be said that either side has
been lacking in candor, or has been eager to cry
peace, when there was no peace.
We have no alternative but to believe the represent-
1 " Heilige Schrift und Kritik," p. 190.
2 " American Journal of Theology," January, 1902, p. 114.
s p. 17. * Id. p. 100.

3i6 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
atives of the parties when they emphatically assert
their mutual incompatibility ; but what if it should
turn out that this incompatibility is not so much one
of positive religious belief as of standpoint, attitude,
and method ? Radii from widely diverging points on
the circumference will meet in a common centre.
But before attempting to show that in some of the
most important essentials these diverse views agree,
it may be well to consider briefly the main outlines of
these views, with their chief characteristics, in spite
of the difficulty already alluded to, of summarizing
positions which are held by nearly every representa
tive iu a way of his own. Wc shall take the average
belief in each case, so far as, amid such variety, one
can with any propriety speak of an average belief at
all ; and we shall touch in the main only the points
where they seriously differ.
(i) On the traditional view, the Pentateuch, with the
exception of a few verses towards the end of Deuteron
omy, was written by Moses, who, in composing the
Book of Genesis, may possibly have used and welded
together existing documents. Repetitious of inci
dents are, in the main,! ^q j^g regarded as real repeti
tions, not as discrepant versions of the same incident.
The stories of the patriarchs certainly, and the stories
that precede them very probably, are historical, as
much so as the account of the reign of Hezekiah.
Similarly the incidents of the wilderness wandering
are historically as trustworthy as the account of the
1 Professor Davis, as we have seen (pp. 16, 17), admits the probability
of occasional duplication, but does not believe it to be characteristic.

A CREAT GULF FIXED? 317
intrigues by which Jehu succeeded to the throne of
Israel. The three codes of law are, in the strictest
sense. Mosaic: the Book of the Covenant (Ex. xx.
22-xxiii. 33) being preparatory ; the Book of Leviti
cus, with the kindred sections in Exodus and Num
bers, an elaborate professional code designed for the
priests ; and the Book of Deuteronomy, a simple and
non-techuical presentation of the law for the guidance
of the people. The Book of Joshua was written by
a contemporary soon after Joshua's death, aud has
practically all the value of a contemporary docu
ment. A similar value attaches to the Books of
Samuel and Kings. The Book of Chronicles differs
from the two latter books not in its inferior accuracy
and reliability, but only in being written from a
different standpoint — that of the priest.
The prophetical books are all written by the
authors whose name they bear. Each book is com
plete in itself, and no part of it is to be denied to its
reputed author . — as is done by criticisra in the case
of Isaiah — because it does not seem to fit the histori
cal situation of the prophet. For one of the most
remarkable things, if not indeed the unique thing, in
prophecy is the prophet's power to foretell the future,
— not only the very near future, but one that is remote
from himself by centuries. In particular do they
predict, in what is known as Messianic prophecy,
many of the details associated with the life, career,
and death of Christ. Tlie Books of Jonah and Daniel
are regarded as literal history.
With regard to the Psalms and Proverbs, their
authorship is determined by their superscriptions.

3i8 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
Nearly half the Psalter is by David, and the histori
cal notes, which are occasionally found in the su
perscriptions, indicate accurately the occasion and
origin of the psalm. A large element in the Book of
Proverbs is from the hand of Solomon, as are also
the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes. Practically the
whole of the Old Testament was completed by the
time of Ezra.
(ii) On the critical view of the Old Testament, the
Pentateuch was composed at various times and under
various influences. Setting aside the Book of Deu
teronomy, which was found in 621 B. c, and hardly
composed earlier than a century before that, its
history rests upon three different documents : two
written from a prophetic standpoint, and under
slightly different conditions, not earlier than the
establishment of the monarchy (circa 1000 B. c), and
probably from one to two and a half centuries later ;
and another from the priestly standpoint, in or after
the exile {circa 500 b. c). There are also three strata
of legislation, markedly different from each other,
corresponding to and emerging out of three different
stages of the history : the Book of the Covenant, com
ing possibly from the time of the early monarchy,
in any case not earlier than the Judges ;. Deuteron
omy, which belongs to and reflects, in the main, the
spirit and conditions of the seventh century B. c. ; and
the Priestly Code (including Leviticus and the kin
dred sections), partly codified in the exile, amplified
and modified in post-exilic times, practically fixed,
though not in its final form, about the middle of tlic
fifth century, tbe time about or not long before

A GREAT GULF FIXED? 319
which! the Pentateuch assumed its existing form by the
welding together of its various historical and legisla
tive elements. The part of Genesis that precedes the
story of Abraham is hardly history in any sense of the
word. The Flood narrative may contain an historical
reminiscence, but Genesis i.-iii., vi. 1-4, xi. 1-9, for
example, express religious truth in terms of the myth.
The patriarchal stories are not, strictly speaking,
history, in the sense, for example, that many of the
stories of the Judges are history. The figures, all or
some of them, may be historic, but prophetic ideas
have gathered round them, so that they " become . .
spiritually significant — embody spiritual lessons, or J^^
become spiritual types, for the imitation or warning
of succeeding generations." ^ The incidents of the
wilderness wandering have the value of tradition ; in
any case, they are the vehicle for the teaching of
great moral and religious truths. The Book of
Joshua, like the Pentateuch, with which it is asso
ciated, rests upon tradition ; but it no doubt contains
valuable historical material. The books of Judges,
Sarauel, and Kings were edited to illustrate the les
sons inculcated by Deuteronomy, that faithfulness
meant prosperity, while apostasy spelt ruin; but
much of their material is very old, and has practically
the value of contemporary testimony. The Chronicler
not only wrote from the standpoint of the priest, but
he has modified the material presented to him by
Samuel and Kings — in the interests, of course, of a
religious purpose.
1 These statements must, in the nature of tbe case, be very general.
- Driver, " The Old Testament in the Light of To-day," Expositor,
January, 1901, p. 40.

y\

320 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
A prophetical book is not necessarily entirely writ
ten by the man whose name it bears. Old prophecies
were adapted to later conditions. Their message was
modified so as to be a more appropriate, true, or com
prehensive word of God to a later age, when the
voice of prophecy was hushed, — ¦ a promise, for
example, being sometimes added to a prophecy which
had once ended in a threat. Further, prophecies which
had circulated, for various conceivable reasons, anony
mously (cf. Is. xl.-lxvi.) came in course of time to be
attached to prophecies whose authors were known,
and were tiienceforward familiarly known by those
names. But the historical situation implied by a
prophecy — especially if it be long and detailed enough
to justify us in forming an accurate judgment — is
the situation out of which it at first emerged, for all
prophecy is relevant to its environment. There are
times when the prophet foretells the future ; but the
prediction is not the essence of the prophecy. That
is rather preaching, the proclamation of the justice,
mercy, and power of God, and the eternal laws of
His moral order. No prophet directly predicts details
of Christ's life; but the prophetic utterances were
justified and fulfilled by the larger facts and by the
whole spirit of that life. The books of Jonah and
Daniel, which do not occur among the historical
books, are not literal history, but the allegorical or
parabolic representation of magnificent religious
thoughts, — the one illustrating the universal love of
God, the other His power to deliver His people.
The superscriptions of the Psalms are seldom, if
ever, a guide either . to their authorship or to their
historical origin. They are no integral part of the

A GREAT GULF FIXED? 321
psalms themselves, but represent tradition or the con
jectures of later editors. Some psalms — probably, in
any case, not many — may be from David ; but with
the exception of the eighteenth,! it is impossible to
say with any certainty which are his. Though there
are no doubt several pre-exilic psalms and proverbs,
the great bulk of both books is post-exilic. Ecclesi
astes voices the scepticism and despondency of the
third or second century b. c. The canon of the Old
Testament was a gradual growth. Only the Penta
teuch could be called, in any formal sense, canonical
in the time of Ezra. The canon of " the prophets "
was determined probably about 200 b. c. ; and the
rest of the Old Testaraent, whose position was for a
long time less definite and stable, probably about
100 B. c. But what fixed the canon was ultimately
no formal and authoritative decision ; the books
obtained their unique place because they had already
proved their power in the hearts of men and in the
experience of the Church. They lived because they
deserved to live.
It is hardly necessary to remark that this brief
sketch of the two opposing schools is not even ap
proximately exhaustive ; but it contains the raore
salient points of distinction, so far at least as the liter
ary results are concerned. Of course the literary
results are usually accompanied by other results of
an historical nature.^ If the earlier historical books
1 Some deny even this psalm to David, e. g. Cheyne, Duhm, Well
hausen. 2 For the sense iu which these results may justly be considered apart,
see pp. 238-241. 21

322 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
be as late as current criticism claims, the question of
their historical trustworthiness is at once raised ; for
it will hardly be maintained that a narrative which
stands over a thousand years from the earliest inci
dent it records, and three or four hundred from the
latest, has the value of contemporary history. Again,
if the critical view of the date of the priestly part
of the Pentateuch is correct, undoubtedly the result
is to invert the ordinary reading of the history of
Israel. According to that reading, the Pentateuch
with its priestly legislation occurs at the very
beginning of Israel's national history. The nation
was launched on its career with a priestly pro-
grararae. The prophets follow, and follow at a long
interval. The phrase, " the law and the prophets,"
expresses a chronological truth. On the critical
view, however, the law, technically so called, is a
product of Judaism ; the prophets, at least the more
conspicuous, precede the law. This is not the place
to attempt either to justify or refute the critical
inversion of the history ; suffice it to say that the
conclusion has been reached by a very minute and
extensive study of literary and historical facts. Criti
cism, of course, would not dream of denying the exist
ence of priestly interests all through the history, nor
would it deny that the law was the first part of the
Old Testaraent to obtain canonicity. What it denies
is that the prophets were acquainted with the Penta
teuch which we know ; what it asserts is the priority
of the prophets to the law in its present elaborate and
literary form.
With that conclusion has usually gone another — ¦

A GREAT GULF FIXED? 323
the religious superiority of the prophet to the priest.
The priest, it is argued, represents the element that ^
Hebrew religion shares in common with other Semitic
religions ; the prophet, on the other hand, is peculiar
and distinctive to Hebrew religion. It is he, under
God, who makes that religion the unique thing it is.
He is the man of original ideas, whereas the priest is
the man of convention ; and the Judaism which was
largely created by the priesthood cherished just that
legal type of religion which had always been abhorrent
to the soul of the great prophets. Such judgments in
their extreme form will doubtless have to be qualified.
The antagonism between the prophets and the priests,
if it be not largely a figment of the critical imagination,
cannot have been anything like as keen as it has been
the fashion to represent it. In many cases, indeed,
those interests are seen to work harmoniously together,
and even to be blended in the same persons. They
are combined in the Book of Deuteronomy, as well as
in the persons of Ezekiel, Haggai, and Malachi ; while
even on the critical view the Psalter, which is surely,
in the main, prophetic in spirit, was preserved, ar
ranged, and edited, if not largely composed, by the
temple priests — the very men who, we are given to
understand, possessed so little of the prophetic spirit.
But after every readjustment has been made which
these considerations suggest, it still remains true that
on the ordinary view the law appears at the beginning
of Hebrew history ; on the critical view, it does not
appear till Israel has ceased to be a nation and has
practically become a church.
It would be idle therefore to minimize the serious

>^

>

324 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
differences between the two views, or to ignore the
fact that these differences touch not only the literary,
but also the historical, problems. Nay, more. They
involve, speaking generally, different views of the rela
tion of God to the world and to man. On the tradi
tional view, the transcendence of God is emphasized.
He works upon the world and upon man from without.
They are the clay, and He is the potter. They are
passive ; He moulds them as He will. This attitude
has tended in turn to produce a somewhat mechanical
conception of inspiration and an inadequate view of
revelation. The spirit of man responds to the touch
of God as the strings of the harp to the touch of the
player : only so, and in no more living way. The truth
is superimposed rather than appropriated. So reve
lation, too, tends to become the imparting of certain
dogmas, the reception of which is conceived as neces
sary to the soul's salvation.
The critical view, on the other hand, emphasizes the
immanence of God. He is within the world, and with
in the souls of men ; not only their Creator, but the
principle of their life. He reveals His nature not only
to and by men, but in and through them, so that the
revelation is determined not only by His love, but by
their capacity : it will advance as their capacity to ap
prehend it advances. The prophet's individuality is
not suppressed, but rather exalted, by the divine affla
tus. The truth which comes to him comes not as a
finished dogma, but in living relation to his own spirit
ual experience, and to his social, political, or religious
environment ; it has all the warmth of a definite his
torical situation. Again, God reveals His nature not

A GREAT GULF FIXED? 325
only by the words His servants utter, but in the long
march of history, so that history itself becomes a rev
elation, and in its crises and tendencies may be read
the purpose and the mind of God.
These views are not indeed mutually exclusive, but
each has an attitude of its own, which is conceived to
be iraportant and reasonable, and interests of its own
which it is especially eager to safeguard. Each em
phasizes elements that the other tends to ignore.
Transcendence and immanence, dogma and life — in
some such terms the conflict might be bluntly stated.
Now, in spite of all that has been said as to the dif
ferences, which are neither few nor inconsiderable,
between the rival schools, it must be maintained with
equal emphasis that they have much — and much that
is of fundamental importance — in common. To begin
with, each believes — and again we speak of the aver
age representative of the two parties — in the essential
unity of the Bible. Doubtless that unity is differently
conceived. To the one, all Scripture stands on practi
cally the same level, as it is the Word of God ; to the
other, it exhibits great varieties of moral and spiritual
attainment, because, besides being the Word of God, it
is also the word of man. But to the one as unambigu
ously as to the other it is the Word of God. He is
the controlling force in the long movement of which
Scriptureis jlie literary reflection ; and if the extreme
traditional view finds the unity in the equality of all
its parts, the critical view regards the unity as that of
a living body — the life of the whole being in each of
its parts, but the members differing in usefulness and
dignity from one another. To both, the theme of the

326 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
Bible is God — His ways being made known inthe
history, His deraands in the legislation, His character
in the prophecy, the need and joy of fellowship with
Him in the Psalms. And all that is as true on the
critical view of the Old Testament as on the other.
To both parties, then. Scripture is profitable for
teaching. The critical view, recognizing the relativity
of the revelation, is not perplexed by the appearance
of moral and spiritual crudities. It accepts them as
inevitable in a plan according to which men were
taught as they could bear. Nay, it finds in the grad
ual progress of Israel the presence of One whose
considerate love for her never slumbered or slept.
Thus every stage of the history, every appeal of the
prophecy, every yearning of the Psalter, has something
to teach us. It is all profitable, on the one view no
less than on the other ; for on both it is a revelation
of God.
It has indeed been common to represent the critical
view as antagonistic to the idea of revelation, and of
the supernatural generally.! This, as we have seen, is
not a fair statement of the case. It touches only that
class of critics who approach their studies with a bias
against the supernatural, and who naturally find what
they bring, minimizing the significance of unique facts,
or coercing them into their scheme. But so far is
the statement from being applicable to all critics, that
many of them have earnestly repudiated it. Nay, they
have gone further, not only asserting their faith in
the supernatural, but maintaining that the phenomena
1 Higher Criticism is designated a " rationalistic and anti-christian
crusade " by Sir R. Anderson, " Daniel iu the Critics' Den," p. 4.

/

A GREAT GULF FIXED? 327
of Israel's history are not explicable, unless the super
natural be postulated. Natural developraent utterly
and absolutely fails to account for the incontestable
facts of Israel's history and prophecy: the unique
phenomena can only be accounted for by the presence
of a unique factor. How are we to explain the superb |
isolation of Hebrew prophecy ? asks Professor Davis
of Princeton. " Under identical historical conditions,
none of Israel's neighbors or kinsfolk among the
nations produced religious teaching such as that of
Israel concerning God, righteousness, sin, and redemp
tion." ! His answer is that they received iraraediate
communications from God. The very same point re
ceives admirable emphasis from a representative of the
opposite school. " The gradual self-revelation of God
to raan, while norraally working upon the principle of
Evolution, or, in other words, while adapted to man's
capacity for apprehension, reaches, at certain times, a
stage at which the ordinary course of that Revelation
is suspended, and an extraordinary step is taken,
whereby man is placed within reach of a new concep
tion and a new knowledge of God, to which it would
have been impossible for him under normal circum
stances to attain. . . . When we compare the concep
tion of Yahwe held by the latest of the Nebiim (in
the early sense of the word) with that of the first of
the ' literary ' prophets, the difference is found to be
so prodigious, both in kind, as well as in degree, that it
is absolutely impossible to believe that Evolution alone
can have been the cause of such an advance." ^ Surely
1 " Presbyterian and Reformed Review," AprU, 1902, p. 203.
2 W. O. E. Oesterley, in "Expositor," August, 1902, pp. 94, 95.
Yahwe — Jehovah, and Nebiim = prophets.

X

328 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
this is no trivial point. Christianity is usually held to
stand or fall with the supernatural ; yet not only the
supporters of the traditional view, but also all their
opponents who are not committed to a philosophical
position which denies the supernatural at the outset,
agree in maintaining that without it the history and
prophecy of Israel are a hopeless riddle. The gulf
fixed cannot then be so very great, after all. Here is
absolute agreement expressed in the most unmistak
able terms on a point which both parties rightly
regard as fundamental.
Let us now take the sufficiently crucial question of
the patriarchal stories, and ask whether there is any
radical difference between the attitudes maintained
towards them by the opposite schools respectively.
An important difference there undoubtedly is. The
critics as a whole believe that those stories are largely
legendary, and can only be used for historical purposes
with the utmost caution and reserve. Their oppo-
TienEsTon the ot¥er "hand, believe that they are, in the
strictest sense, history. We have already discussed
some of the reasons which have led the critics to
question the historicity of these early stories.! In the
meantime we are only concerned with the question
whether the breach between the opposing parties is
as great as it seems to be. Plainly stated, it would
seem to be the question of fact versus fiction ; and to
the opponents of criticism the presence of fiction in
Scripture would be altogether intolerable.
Now, to begin with, this statement of the antithesis
is too blunt. In no case would the patriarchal stories
1 Chapter VI., pp. 163-173.

A GREAT GULF FIXED? 329
be pure fiction. The writers of those stories, assum
ing that they wrote between the tenth and the eighth
century b. c, did not invent them : they found them.
They had been on the lips of the people for genera
tions, and they represent at the very least traditions
which reach back to a more or less distant past. If
their value is no more than that of tradition, neither
is it less. They are not deliberate inventions. They
are not the creations of imaginative artists. They
are, at the least, ancient tradition adapted and inter
preted by raen of prophetic spirit.
Note, too, by men of prophetic spirit. We have
already seen that a large section of Hebrew history
appears within the canon of the prophets, just as the
Book of Jonah, which is in form a narrative, also ap
pears within that canon, though in a different part.
The thought is at once suggested that the history is
narrated for the sake of the ideas it embodies and
illustrates ; its extraordinary omissions in sorae
cases, and singularly brief notices in others, of events
of the highest political magnitude, are proof enough
that the aim of the historian is not so much to record
the facts of the history as to illustrate its underlying
principles. And this applies to all parts of Hebrew
history, to the narratives of the Hexateuch no less
than to the more specifically historical books. In
any case, then, the real core of a patriarchal story
is the divine discipline and purpose which it illus
trates. Whence the material came through which the
illustration is effected is another question ; but even
if it should turn out that that material is derived
from tradition, the religious value of the story would

^

330 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
be in no way diminished, though its historical value
would naturally be less. These two elements, how
ever, are quite different, and are too often confused.
The historical value of a document depends upon the
sources upon which it rests. The Book of Kings, for
example, rests in part upon court annals and pro
phetic biographies ; therefore, in addition to the reli
gious lessons which it emphasizes, it sets us directly
upon the arena of history. The Book of Genesis,
however, is not, in this respect, quite parallel to the
Book of Kings. The more distant the sources are
frora the events, the less confidence, as a rule, can
be placed in the history as history ; but the religious
power and truth of such stories raay be nevertheless
of the highest. Indeed, Gunkel maintains that the
Book of Genesis is a far more religious book than the
Book of Kings.! The Spirit of God condescended to
use fable and allegory in the Old Testament ; what
^ was to hinder that same Spirit frora using tradition ?
The material is transfigured by the spirit which shines
through it.
Long ago Plato laid down the distinction between
moral and historical truth. " We cannot tell," he
virtually says, " what the gods and heroes did when
they were on earth among men ; for in the nature of
the case no permanent record could be kept. We
should not therefore insist that the myths be histori
cally true. But we have a right to demand that they
be morally true ; they must on no account be allowed
to misrepresent the nature of the gods. If the poets
tell us that the gods did a cruel or a wicked or a wan-
1 Genesis, " Einleitung," II.

A GREAT GULF FIXED? 331
ton thing, that is a falsehood which we must reject and
dread, as we should dread a loss to our souls ; for it
is a loss to the soul to believe that the gods can be
other than good." ! And may we not say, following
Plato, that the stories of the Old Testament, which
deal with very early times and whose historicity has
been called in question by some, may yet be admira
ble vehicles for the presentation of moral and reli
gious truth ? Their historicity is to be settled, if it
can be, by the evidence ; but their spiritual value is
not affected by the decision, one way or the other, on
the question of the historicity. When Christ intro
duces a parable with such a definite statement as
There was a certain rich man clothed in purple and fine
linen, and a certain beggar named Lazarus, are we to
suppose that He intends to state a definite historical
fact ? Clearly the truth of the parable does not de
pend upon the historicity of this statement. Christ
is simply giving concrete and pictorial expression to a
universal truth. The Pilgrim's Progress is not his
tory, but it is not therefore false. It is true. Its
truth, however, is not that of objective, but of inner,
fact : it is the truth, not of history, but of moral and
religious experience. We do not for one moment
mean to suggest that the patriarchal stories are no
more historical than the parables or the Pilgrim's
Progress ; but that, in any case, even supposing
their historical value could be shown to be altogether
secondary, their spiritual significance would abide
unshaken. " Even if all the tales of the Pentateuch,"
remarks Professor Kohler, " about the great deeds of
1 Cf . " Republic," II. 377-in. 392.

X

232 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
God during the wilderness wanderings were unhis
torical, we could still infer frora thera what Israel
conceived to be possible, on the ground of other expe
riences, in respect of the power and grace of her
God."! We may take this opportunity of saying a word
incidentally about the critical attitude to history. It
is common to maintain that the critics have evapo
rated the history. They go to work with what they
call the historical method, and end by giving us ideas
for facts. The charge, if it were true — and the gen
eral critical attitude to the patriarchal stories seems
to lend it some plausibility — would be serious ; for
it would strike at the heart of the Christian religion.
That religion rests upon great historical facts ; and if
they could be obliterated or denied, the ideas with
which they have been associated would lose their jus-
tification.2 " Christianity at least," says Professor
Sanday, " is definitely historical. The Christian emo
tions have their roots in certain historical events, and
as without these events they would never have come
into existence, so also it is not likely that they can be
raaintained without reference to thera. From the days
of the primitive Church onwards, we can see that the
minds of Christians have been full of one great pre
supposition. Remove that presupposition, and the
rest falls to the ground." With the demolition of the
facts would go the destruction of the religion created
by them. But just because the facts are of such im-
1 " Ueber die Berechtigung der Kritik," p. 26.
2 For some powerful and timely remarks on this subject, see Pro
fessor Denney's lecture on "The Gospels and the Gospel" in the
"British Weekly," Nov. 6 and 13, 1902.

A GREAT GULF FIXED?

333

mense importance, it is necessary to ensure that those
on which we build are real facts. Now, while criti
cism has on the one hand cast doubt upon the his
toricity of certain sections which have hitherto almost
universally passed for history, it has on the other
hand emphasized with enthusiasm the facts which
have stood the test of its investigations, and it has
conclusively shown that certain facts, and these the
raost important, are unassailable. Apart from some
of those facts, the faith and religion of Israel are
inexplicable ; just as, apart from the resurrection of
Christ, the enthusiasm of the early Church is inexpli
cable. But we must not rest the faith upon an irrele
vant foundation. Christianity does not stand or fall
with the historicity of the patriarchal narratives. Its
truth does not depend upon their truth. It stands or
falls with the great facts of the life of Christ, and
above all with the fact of Christ Himself. Nothing
that could be said of the patriarchal narratives
could affect His power to lead men to the Father,
or invalidate His claim to be the Way, the Truth,
and the Life.
It may still be asked whether the patriarchal
stories would not lose much, though, as we have seen,
they could not lose all, of their religious value, on the
assumption that they are unhistorical. To different
minds the question will appeal in different ways.
There can be no doubt that much of their attraction
has been due to their supposed biographical interest.
The struggles and temptations, the discipline and
attainments, of real persons have an interest and
stimulus which, for most men, do not attach in quite

334 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
the same degree to imaginary characters. The moral
triumphs of real men appeal to our better heart, and
provoke us to emulation ; the attainments of the hero
of fiction do not lay so heavy a burden upon the con
science or touch so powerfully the springs of resolve.
There would be exceptions to this attitude, no doubt ;
but this approximately represents the general opinion
of the average man as to the relative influence of biog
raphy and fiction. This will be particularly clear if
we consider the greatest biography of all — that of
Christ. Most people would agree with the Hib
bert lecturer who said : " There are sorae who think
that ideals are just as good for all practical purposes
as facts, and the charra of the Christ what it is, were
the Gospels no more than the most consummate of
religious fictions. ... It seems to me that there is
all the difference in the world between a Christ who
actually walked the earth in the consummate beauty
of holiness, and one who owes the strength and sym
metry of his character to vivid ethical imagination
and subtle literary skill. The last may still charm
and raise and refine those who study him ; but the
first makes mankind richer, opens out new possibilities
to human nature, effectually calls upon all who love
him to come up into the mount of God." ! Fortu
nately the tirae has gone by when the life of Christ
can be regarded as an imaginative creation: the
mythical hypothesis is refuted beyond all possibility
of rehabilitation.^ But the evidence for the patriarchal
1 Beard, " Hibbert Lectures" for 1883, pp. 418, 419.
2 Even Schmiedel magnanimously concedes that certain passages
" projre that he p. e. Christ] really did exist, and that the Gospels

A GREAT GULF FIXED? 22s
stories falls iraraeasurably behind that for the life of
Christ;! and if it should be made highly probable
that the stories were not strictly historical, what
should we then have to say ? We should then have
to say that their religious value was still extremely
high. The religious truth to which they give vivid
and immortal expression would remain the same.
The story of Abrahara would still illustrate the trials f
and the reward of faith. The story of Jacob would I v
still illustrate the power of sin to haunt an^T determine | .V
a man's career, and the power of God to humble,!
discipline, and purify a self-confident nature. The |
story of Jose^^would still illustrate how fidelity amid
temptation, wrong, and sorrow is crowned at last with
glory and honor.^ The spiritual value of these and
similar tales is not lost, even when their historical
value is reduced to a miniraura, for the truths which
they illustrate are truths of universal experience.
In discussing the critical attitude to the Book of
Daniel, Dr. Selbie makes some apposite remarks.
He assumes — what we have taken the liberty to
doubt above — that fictitious characters are ethically
as influential as real ones ; but with this limitation
the argument is a cogent one. " If the personages
who figure in the pages of Shakespeare or Goethe
exercise an influence as great as if they had been
contain at least some absolutely trustworthy facts conceming him."
" Encyclopaedia Biblica," vol. ii. col. 1881.
1 Chapter VI., pp. 166-168.
2 The permanent religious value of the patriarchal narratives has
been attractively set forth by FuUiquet, in " Les experiences religieuses
d'Israel," though his treatment does not always conform to the strict
demands of the historical method.

X

226 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
flesh and blood, realities instead of being merely the
creation of a poet's genius ; if Dives and Lazarus and
the good Samaritan appeal to us as powerfully as if
the incidents recorded of them had actually occurred,
why should Daniel lose his moral influence if the
narratives concerning him should have to be relegated
to the realm of edifying haggada ? Or, to put it still
more plainly, if fiction is a legitimate vehicle for con
veying moral lessons outside Scripture, is its use to
be forbidden within it ? Or may we conclude that
God, who of old time spoke by divers portions and
in divers manners, who found a place in His word for
allegory and parable and fable and drama, did not
disdain to employ this literary device as well ? Shall
we presume to exclude a book from the Canon, if its
contents should prove to be fiction rather than his
tory ? Are we to ignore a writer's purpose and miss
the lesson he teaches, because the literary form he
employs and which is now found to have been coramon
when he lived, is not what tradition had taught us to
expect ? " ! The story of Daniel does not belong to
the same class of literature as the stories of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob ; but the argument, with the neces
sary modifications, would hold. We are very far
from maintaining or believing that the patriarchal
stories are fiction ; but the point is that, even if they
were, then, though their stimulus to action might not
be quite so great, yet whatever moral and religious
truth they possess on the assumption that they are
historical would remain absolutely unaffected.
Here the critics and their opponents are essentially
I "Critical Review," March, 1902, pp. Ill, 112.

A GREAT GULF FIXED?

337

at one. While the latter accept and the former doubt
the strict historicity of those narratives, both believe
that they are the vehicle of great spiritual truths.
Both believe in the educative religious value of the
stories. Both believe in their power to impress those
who read them with lofty and inspiring truths about
the ways of God with man. These things in any case
constitute the essence of the narratives, and in these
things they agree. The gulf between the two is
surely, therefore, not impassable.
It is hardly possible to over-emphasize the impor
tance of this point, that the positive religious content
of Scripture remains untouched by critical methods,
and is, to say the least, as real and effective on the
critical as on the traditional view. Criticism has
made considerable readjustments in the chronological
setting of the literature ; but it has not affected, and
cannot affect, the substance of it. Probably it would
be difficult to distinguish — except in wholly inciden
tal touches — whether a sermon on some narrative in
Genesis was preached from the critical or the tradi
tional standpoint. The preacher who repudiated
critical methods and results would have much the
same to say as the preacher who accepted thera. They
would both be interested in those features of the
story which were "profitable for teaching." They
would differ, and might differ very seriously, in the
place they would assign to the story in Hebrew litera
ture. The one might regard it as composed by Moses
on the basis of ancient documents, which had the
practical value of contemporary testimony ; the other
might believe it to have been written four hundred
22

338 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
years after Moses was in his grave, and to have been
subject to all the fluctuations of oral tradition for
centuries. But in the pulpit neither of them is
called to express his opinion on the literary origin of
the story. The preacher's business is to expound the
religious truth which it suggests, and only in this way
does he co-operate with the purpose for which the
story was written. Both parties could shake hands
over such an admirable exposition of the stories as
is to be found in Professor Dods' " Genesis " in the
" Expositor's Bible " series. Literary questions are for
those whora they concern ; but it is not for such dis
cussions that the people asserable theraselves together
in the house of God on the Sabbath day. They corae
to worship God, and to be perfectly furnished unto
all good works. The preacher should live with the
historian or the prophet till his heart is kindled into
something of the faith that glows in their words ; it
should then be his passion to kindle that faith in the
hearts of those who listen to hira. Though the critic,
as a critic, has to deal with literary and historical
questions, as a preacher he is concerned only with the
religious message of the passage he has selected ; and
there is no reason why that message should not be as
dear and impelling to him as to the preacher who
cares nothing for critical methods and results. In
truth, the message to both is the same. There is no
gulf fixed.
Take, again, an illustration from the prophets.
Isaiah is regarded by criticism to-day rather as an
anthology than as a book. The late Professor David
son's volume on that prophet in the " Temple Bible "

A GREAT GULF FIXED? 339
series is a valuable proof that this is a reasonable, if
not an inevitable, view of the book ; for Professor
Davidson was not only a noble scholar, but a scholar of
altogether remarkable and almost proverbial caution.
But the fact that a book supposed for centuries to be
a literary unit is divided by most modern scholars
among a number of authors living at different times,
varying in their gifts, and appealing to dissimilar
situations, does not by one jot or tittle impair the
religious value of the book. Each section has its own
message, whose importance depends not upon its date,
but upon its truth. If it be a real message, it matters
not whether it be pre-exilic, exilic, or post-exilic. If
a prophet breaks the silence with his Comfort ye,
comfort ye my people, the preacher will read on till he
begins to understand the situation of those by whom
the raessage was needed, and to whora it sounded too
good to be true. If, after an irapartial and exhaust
ive study of the situation, he can, without violence to
his intellectual conscience, believe that these words
could have been spoken by Isaiah, the son of Amoz,
to his contemporaries, and could have stood in living
relation to them and their needs, good and well : if
he believe that there is no relevance or reality about
these words unless they were spoken to broken-hearted
exiles, also good and well. But in either case the
passage contains a gospel, the gospel of the pity, the
grace, the love of God, to be manifested — in a year
or two on the one view, in a century and three-quar
ters on the other — in redemption from captivity.
No readjustment of tlie date in the least affects this,
which is the core of the message. Criticism, in plac-

340 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
ing the bulk of the last twenty-six chapters within
thc exile, has not dreamt of depriving the section of
its religious value, and could not do so if it tried.
Indeed its claim has rather been that it has shown
how raarvellously high that value is by showing the
need, the relevance, and the originality of thc mes
sage. But without here insisting on such claims, it
is enough to maintain that every section of prophecy
has an indefeasible religious value of its own, totally
unaffected by questions of literature, history, or chro
nology. The positive religious message is the same
for every interpreter, whether he accept the critical
conclusions or not.
Perhaps no part of the Old Testament has so
thoroughly divided scholarly opinion as the Psalter.
On the dates of certain psalms scholars differ by
almost a millennium ; and many have been the disputes
as to whether the speaker in the Psalms is an indi
vidual or the Church.-' But here again it must be
emphatically said that no decision either way, on such
questions, affects the religious value of tbe psalm,
which is essential, inherent, and indestructible. Place
the psalm where you will, in the tenth century B. c. or
in the second, it does not cease to be the expression of
a human spirit in the presence of its God. Adoration
is adoration, and penitence is penitence, whether on
the lips of David on the throne or of an exile by the
waters of Babylon.
1 Engert, who has made the most recent contribution to this question
in his " Der betende Gerechte der Psalmen " (1902) concludes that tlie
" I " of the Psalms is always to be Interpreted of the church, " the
true Israel,"

A GREAT GULF FIXED? 341
Take, for example, so dear and familiar a psalm as
the twenty-third. The Psalm is ascribed to David;
but it would be no less powerful if it had come to us
without any superscription at all. Doubtless it would
gain a little, a very little, in definiteness, and the
character of David would be beautifully illustrated on
the side of its simple, tender trust, if the psalm were
certainly his. But that is all. If it is not his, it is
somebody's ; on any view of its authorship or origin,
it will continue to the end of time to express in terms
of majestic simplicity the quiet confidence with wbich
one who knows Jehovah to be the Shepherd of his life
can face even the valley of the deep shadow. It
expresses the fearless and abiding joy of one who
knows himself to be the guest of God. So with the
fifty-first Psalm. The natural interest of this psalm
has been greatly heightened by the belief that it was
the song in which David expressed his penitence after
his tragic fall ; and many have revived, through its
words, their own hope in the pardoning grace of God,
under the idea that it was written by one who
had been guilty of exceptionally aggravated sin. But
the power of the psalm to awake and express peniten
tial feelings in the forlorn heart does not depend upon
its author having committed two of the blackest sins
that ever stained a royal career. If criticism is right
in regarding the psalm as " a prayer for the restoration
and sanctification of Israel in the mouth of a prophet
of the exile,"! it will still be used by the Church
IW. R. Smith, "The Old Testament in the Jewish Church,"
p. 441."

342 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
collectively and by her sons individually as the classic
expression of their penitence. The poet who com
posed the psalm, whether to voice his own penitence,
or that of the church whose fortunes he shared, had
tasted in his own soul the horror of sin, and longed
with longing unspeakable for the clean heart, the
right spirit, and the joy of salvation ; and every other
soul which has known that horror and yearned for
that salvation can make these words its own. It
would indeed add much to the historical interest of
the psalm could we discover with certainty its
occasion. It is the duty of criticism to attempt this
discovery ; but even if it be not effected, the religious
value of the psalm is undiminished. Professor
Kautzsch has said — and no one will accuse him of
being indifferent to critical interests — " How idle the
dispute about the inscriptions is, must be especially
clear to one who uses the psalms for the purpose for
which they were collected ! What in all the world has
the inexhaustible power of songs like Psalms 23, 90,
103, 121, 127, and many others to do with the question
whether some post-exilic redactor did or did not err
in his ascription of them to David or Moses or
Solomon?"! It is abundantly clear, then, that criticism leaves
the religious message of the various sections of
Scripture absolutely intact. It may show that an
historical book is composite which was supposed to
be an original unity. It may show that a prophecy
which has usually been regarded as a unity is in
reality an anthology. It may revolutionize the tradi-
1 " Abriss," p. 128.

A GREAT GULF FIXED? 343
tional chronology of Hebrew literature. But it does
not affect the religious content of the literature itself.
With all its argument about a book, it cannot argue
the book out of existence ; after it has said its last
word, the book remains as a fact, a religious no less
than a literary fact. Its message may not hold the
sarae place in the development of revelation which we
once supposed it to hold ; but it is there — albeit in
another place — as a positive, indestructible fact. It
expresses the faith or aspiration or penitence of a
human heart, and it does so none the less though we
may not even know the century within which that
heart beat.
" No readjustment," said Robertson Smith with ref
erence to the words of the Bible, — " no readjustment
of their historical setting can conceivably change the
substance of them." ! And that is a truth which, in
the present vexatious controversy, should never be for
gotten. It is quite true, and no attempt need be made
to conceal it, that the differences between the tradi
tional and the critical view are " immense ; " but it
is equally true that those differences do not touch the
religious essence of Scripture : they affect questions
of method, of standpoint, of history, of chronology, of
literature. But in points that are vital to the faith
both parties — the supporters of the older view and the
critics who are not biassed by a theory — are in perfect
harmony. Both believe that the Bible is the record of
a unique revelation of God ; that it could not be what
it is unless by His direct inspiration ; that it is profitable
for teaching, reproof, correction, instruction in right-
1 " The Old Testament in the Jewish Church," p. 19.

h

344 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
eonsness ; that it is potent to mould " man's character
through the exhibition of God's ; " or, in the language
of the Bible itself, that it can furnish a man completely
unto every good work. Is the gulf, then, so very great
after all ?

CHAPTER XII
THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE CHURCH
More than two hundred and fifty years have passed
since the Westminster Assembly recommended that
" ordinarily one chapter of each Testament should
be read at every meeting" of the congregation for
the public worship of God. The practice of reading
from both Testaments is common to all the churches
which owe their confession to that Assembly, and, in
deed, to most of the English-speaking churches, and
the recommendation of the Westminster divines but
gives formal expression to a practice almost as old
as the Christian Church. But, widespread as is the
feeling that the New Testament not only does not
move in a radically different world from the Old, but
is only its completion and crown, and that the Old
Testament may fairly be reckoned among the Scrip
tures of the Christian Church, this feeling has never
been universal, either in the ancient or the modern
world. There have always been men who have felt,
more keenly perhaps than was right, the contrast be
tween the law which was given by Moses and the grace
and truth which came by Jesus Christ ; sects in the
ancient world which believed that the God of the Old
Testament was not gracious but cruel, that He was

346 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
not revealed but abolished by Christ ; churches in the
modern world which content themselves, as many do
in Germany, with publicly reading selected portions
of the Gospels and Epistles. And even those who
have a keen enough historical sense to see that the
separation of the Old and New is impossible, have yet
to confess to a lurking sympathy with the tendency to
relegate the Old Testament to the background and
to bring into prominence the New, and not even all of
the New, but only those parts of it which are more
directly concerned with the sayings and doings of our
Saviour, — a tendency which seeks to find its justifi
cation partly in the unsettled and unsettling state of
Old Testament criticism, partly in the growing ap
prehension of the person of Christ as the ultimate
authority for the Christian conscience. We find our
selves then face to face with the question : Standing
as we do in the full brightness of the revelation of
Christ, holding as we do that the truth which He
teaches is final, are we in a position to dispense with
the Old Testament, or have those churches been right
which have sought to reinforce their faith and hope
through psalm and prophecy no less than through
epistle and evangel ?
History has decided in favor of the retention of the
Old Testament ; and her judgment will abide so long
as men have hearts to be thrilled by the record of the
communion of the living God with His people of old,
or minds to see how all that was good in the Old has
been preserved, even when it has been transformed
by the New. In particular we may claim for the Old
Testament a twofold value — absolute and relative. It

THE CHURCH 347
lives both because of what it is in itself and because
of that for which it prepared the way, and which
without it would have been irapossible. It is, per
haps, too much the fashion to accentuate the latter
and to miniraize the former. To take a large view of
the redemptive purpose of God for humanity is, no
doubt, to see the Old Testament in its preparatory or
preliminary aspect; it did not bring that purpose to
fulfilment, but by its repeated failures pointed men
to something more strong and saving than itself.
But it had its triumphs as well as its failures, and to
look at the slow but sure historical process by which
God disciplined the people of Israel is to see in the
Old Testaraent one continuous triuraph, for it is the
undying proof that God was never very far frora His
people, but sought thera without ceasing, sometimes
in the joy with which He touched their hearts at fes
tivals, sometimes through the insight of a seer whose
eyes were opened to read the riddle of the past, some
times in the stern and lofty rebuke of a prophet,
sometimes in the tender, plaintive notes of a psalmist
whose heart was breaking with penitence for his own
sin or with shame for the sin of his people. Sternly
or gently, God's voice can be heard through every
period of Israel's history, the most sinful and the
most forlorn. When there is " no more any prophet"
in the land, there is sure to be a psalmist who strength
ens his sorely tried faith and hope in God by looking
back to the salvation which He wrought for His
people in the days of old. There is no part of the
Old Testament in which we cannot see the finger of
God, shaping the institutions which were in part to

348 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
determine the practice of the Christian Church, writ
ing His will on the tables of the heart and conscience,
moulding the men who were to declare His purpose.
Were there no New Testament, with its perfect reve
lation of God in Jesus Christ, the Old Testament
might yet in its own way bring us into the presence
of God, show us God moving through history, and
working in the deep places of the human heart. It
can not only refresh, but satisfy, the soul that lives in
it and by it. Its power to give corafort and strength
and peace, and to lead men into the secrets of God, is
the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. Men whose
hearts had only responded in joy or humility to the
written or spoken word, but had not yet been thrilled
by the sight of the Word become flesh, knew it to be
a lamp to their feet and a light to their path,
" More to be longed for than gold,
Yea, than fine gold in plenty,
Sweeter than honey,
Even honey that drops from the comb.''
To our Saviour it was no less dear than to the men
of the older time. Though His coraraunion with the
Father was direct — for He and the Father were one
— yet when He voices the deepest thoughts that
move Him, it is not seldom in words consecrated by
age and by the experience of holy men of God. Most
of all do the words of Scripture rise to His lips in
solemn, lonely, or tempestuous hours : when tempted
of the evil one in the wilderness, when face to face
with the false justice of an earthly tribunal, when
founding that sacrament which was to keep His re--

THE CHURCH 349
demptive work ever before the eyes of men, when
passing from the shame and cruelty of earth to the
peace of His Father in heaven. Throughout the
almost unbroken tragedy of His ministry the Old
Testaraent was His comfort and stay.
And what it was to Christ it has been since to those
that loved Him. They have felt that the sublimest
teaching of the New could not wholly supersede the
Old, that in certain directions the Old has been able
to help them even more than the New. In the Old
we see a people small in numbers but great in mean-
ing and possibilities, marching down the centuries
like an army of God ; we see how that, by the grace
of the God who specially loved it, it rose frora the
heathenism in which it began and by which it was
surrounded, and won its way through the purifying
fires of persecution, war, and exile into clear and
spiritual conceptions of God; how that God, never
leaving Hiraself without a witness, raised up patri
archs, judges, kings, psalmists, prophets, priests, and
would not let His people go until He blessed them.
There is no history like the history of Israel for con
vincing us of the transcendence of God, and no book
like the Old Testament for teaching us the inner
meaning of history. And scarcely less wonderful
than the vastness of the divine purpose realized
through Israel is the romance of the incidents, and
the charm of the domestic and social life through
which it is unfolded. That purpose works itself out
in a world so full of simple beauty, so rich in all that
is touchingly human, in all the tender charities of
home and friendship and love, that we feel as if the

350 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
varied life that moves before us is not the product of
a distant land and time. Though the field over which
the story takes us is only a few scores of miles, there
¦ is nothing petty or local about it ; it is so splendidly
human, aud speaks home to the hearts of all men.
Again, there is a sense in which the prophets stand
nearer to modern needs, and mean more for our time,
and especially for the preachers of our time, than the
apostles do. The prophets breathe a freer air. Most
of them lived at times in which preaching had, or at
least might not unreasonably be expected to have,
some practical effect on politics. They spoke their
fearless words to men who had still in part their
political destiny in their own hands. They believed
that their message, if obeyed, would conserve the
national prestige, if not power, and give the people a
place worthy of the calling wherewith God had called
them. While trembling with pity and sorrow at the
thought of the overthrow which the moral corruption
of the nation had made so certain, their despair is
often redeemed by a certain latent belief in national
possibilities, a belief which the course of the subse
quent history foreclosed to the New Testament
writers, before whose eyes the political greatness of
Israel lay too surely prostrate. This was no doubt in
part a gain, concentrating men's minds, as it did, on
raoral and religious relations which abide amid all
change of political form. But it was a gain that in
volved a loss. In the New Testament the nation as a
nation has all but ceased to be. In the great period
of Old Testament history life is still moving freely
and vigorously among the problems created by the

THE CHURCH 351
political relations of the time. The prophets present
us with a vivid transcript of political life ; the apostles
have none to transcribe. The fiery rebukes of the
prophets have often a strangely modern sound ; for the
civilization which they feared would work ruin to
tbe people and the religion of Jehovah sprang from
the same sources, was permeated by the same princi
ples, and created the sarae problems as the more com
plex civilization of modern times. In the burning
words which they hurl at the carelessness and licen
tiousness of society, at the heartless ceremonialism of
priests and people in their worship of God, at the
polished selfishness and cruel luxury of the rich, we
might almost fancy we heard the voice of a twentieth-
century preacher whose heart was aflame with love to
God and the people.
And if the prophets teach us how to relate religion
to public life, we learn from the Psalms, as we could
hardly learn even from the New Testament, to enter
into the sanctuary of our hearts and coramune with
God as with a friend. In the Hebrew Psalter men
have poured out their hot hearts to God. Heights of
joy, depths of penitence and anguish, resolution and
failure, thanksgiving and confession, every experience
of the soul is here anticipated, expressed, and, above
all, related to God, in whora alone the weak found
their refuge and strength, and in whose light men saw
the mysteries of huraan life, if not with perfect clear
ness, yet clearly enough to flll their hearts with quiet
ness and confidence. Here are the prayers that teach
us to pray, the songs on which men and nations have
modelled their praises, the confessions that inspire and

2S1 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
express our penitence. In the Psalter the human
spirit in all the checkered possibilities of its experi
ence lies in the presence of God. There is no mood,
whether of depression, struggle, or triumph, which
does not here find its reflex and expression. The
range of its sympathy has made it the comfort of men
in persecution, their inspiration in struggle with foes
within and without, the hope and stay of their dying
hours. It is not without a deep and suggestive truth
that the Psalms are sometimes bound up with copies
of the New Testament. Consecrated by centuries of
Christian experience, and filled by the coming of
Christ with a richness of meaning which they could
never have had for those who first wrote and sang
them, the Psalms belong almost more truly to the
Christian than to the Jewish Scriptures. The most
convincing testimony to the absolute value of the Old
Testament is just the experience of the Christian and
the pre-Christian world.
But it has a further value as ancillary or prepara
tory. We have just seen that it was not only a means,
but an end. We have now to regard it not as an end,
but rather as a means. It prepared the way for the
Testament by which it was transcended, though not
superseded, and for Him whose coming marks a new
departure, and yet was no less truly conditioned and
directed by all that had gone before. In many ways
it is more important to recognize the continuity be
tween Judaism and Christianity than the breach be
tween them. Some Judaism is practically Christian,
some early Christianity is still Judaic. There are
passages in the Old Testament, like those which

THE CHURCH 353
describe the suffering servant, that help us to feel that
the glory of the New Testament lies not so much in
teaching us a deeper secret, or a new way, but in
bringing us into living fellowship with One who was
Himself the way ; and there are tracts of the New Tes
taraent so near to the Old in form and spirit that they
have been supposed to be a product of the older time.
Christ belongs to both Testaments. His presence
in either is no surprise ; both find their justification
and unity in Him. Christianity is Judaism trans
figured by Christ. Thus to study the Old Testament
by itself, without regard to the teaching and person of
Him to whom it points and in whom it culminates, is
the most unscientific thing that we could do. It is to
assume that we can know the significance of a process
apart from the result which alone explains it. It is
to move on a way that leads nowhere, because we do
not know where we are going. We are children of
the New Covenant, our faith rests directly on the
teaching of the New Testament. But on what does
that rest ? What would the New be without the Old ?
Historically impossible ; and the New loses much even
of its religious value when divorced from that with
which it is historically continuous; for the religion
and the history cannot be separated without loss to
both. There is not a page of the New Testament
which will not clothe itself in fresh beauty and power
when it is historically related to the antecedent life
and thought of the Jewish people. Indeed, much of
the New Testament is practically a dead letter to one
who chooses to ignore its historical relations. Few
would pretend that the Apocalypse or the Epistle to
23

/

354 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
the Hebrews will yield their richest meaning to one
who does not trace them to their roots in the symbols,
the laws, the institutions of the Old Testament. And
what is so palpably true of these books is true, in its
own measure, of every book of the New Testament,
Epistle and Gospel alike. The great scheme elabo
rated by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans is based
upon a certain view of the early history of our race as
recorded in the Old Testament and supported by state
ments from psalm and prophecy. Even the parables
j of the Gospels, whose simplicity and naturalness come
home to the untrained mind with matchless power,
gain in clearness and force when we know some
thing of the national life and mind from which they
sprang. Who, for example, were those heartless
people that passed pitilessly by the man who was set
upon by robbers on the way to Jericho and who lay
bleeding and prostrate on the wayside ? And who
was it that bound up his wounds, and set him on his
a own beast and brought him to an inn ? Half the
^ I beauty and more than half the sting of this parable
f ll are lost upon those who do not see its Old Testament
background. If to understand the poet we must go
to the poet's land, so, to appreciate the many-colored
life that lies before us in the pages of the New Testa
ment, the evangelists and the apostles and Him whose
life they set forth, and whose gospel they bring into
relation to the needs and problems of their time and
implicitly of all time, we must go to their land and study
the influences which made them what they were. In
the Old Testament lie revealed all the elements of
that life which, on its better side, prepared those who

THE CHURCH 355
were waiting for the consolation of Israel to receive
the Christ when He should come, — Simeon, Anna, the
glad-hearted shepherds in whose ears rang the angels'
song, and the little band that shared our Saviour's
toils and passion; and which, on its worse side,
developed into the cant, the formalism, and the heart
lessness against which Christ had to hurl His woes.
The roots of the New are in the Old ; what we see
in the transition is rather a development than a
revolution. Some of Christ's words, indeed, point
to the recognition of a breach between the two
epochs which His own person divided. " The law and
the prophets were until John ; since that time the
kingdom of God is preached." But He is more im
pressed with the continuity than with the breach.
His promise of life to those who do what is written
in the law sounds almost as if there were no difference
between the two dispensations; to believe in Moses
and the prophets with heart and soul ought to carry
men on further to belief in Himself. He criticises the
old covenant with the flrmness of one who speaks
with authority, but also with the tenderness of one
who felt that it was a true word of God, though con
ditioned as it could not but be by the hardness of
men's hearts, and by the rudimentary conditions of
ancient society. He thus at once confirms and trans
forms the Old Testament; what it needed and re
ceived from Him was not so much contradiction as
correction, not so much correction as completion.
His work is not destructive ; it is a revelation of
the spirit which moved the holy men of old, freed
from the limitations of temper and environment by

356 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
which they were bound. In a deep sense His mes
sage was the same as theirs. On love to God and to
man hang all the law and the prophets ; on that love,
too, hangs His own gospel. His relation to the liter
ary record of the past of His people was one of sym
pathy and appreciation, not of antagonism. When
God spake unto us in a Son, it was not to refute, but
in the main to corroborate, to deepen, to expand,
the earlier messages He had given to the prophets
in divers portious and in divers manners. This
question of the relation of the Old Testament to
Christ is a fundamental one. If that relation could
be disproved, it would be difficult to justify the
prominence given to the study of the Old Tes
tament in the theological colleges of the Christian
Church. Nothing could ever prevent it frora being
the book which enshrined the greatest religion of the
past ; but in a Christian college it is not enough that
a book on which so much tirae and effort are expended
be religious ; it must be implicitly, if not explicitly.
Christian. If in the New Testament Christ has
come, in the Old He is coming ; if in the New we see
Him, in the Old we hear Him. It is perhaps more
difficult to understand the Old Testament apart from
Christ than Christ apart from the Old Testament.
The result sheds light on the process, shows what it
meant and whither it tended. No doubt there are
raoraents in which one cannot but sympathize with
Schleiermacher when he confesses " I can never con
sider this effort to prove Christ out of the Old Testa
ment prophecies a joyful work, and am sorry that
so many worthy men torment themselves with it."

THE CHURCH 357
Much may be lost, and little, if anything, gained, by
seeking iu the Old Testament for the Christ whom
we find in the New, with all the rich detail of a his
toric personality. We must look with generous eyes,
not dwelling upon the letter, which killeth, if we
would find Hira. But it is Christ Himself who tells
us that He is the goal of Old Testament Scripture ; it
is He of whom Moses spake, and all that is written
concerning Him in law, prophecy, or psalm must bo
fulfilled. In Him the purpose of God which before
Him was partially veiled, though growing in clear
ness, became manifest ; what more natural, what
more scientific, than to carry our knowledge of this
purpose, revealed by and in Christ, back into our in
terpretation of that history and thought which but
partially revealed it ? In this sense Christ is present
in tbe Old Testament, and He is the light thereof ;
we trace Him, not in minute predictions of place and
time, but in the hearts of men and in the course of
history. Scripture has been well defined as "the
record of the redeeming activity of God, culminating
in the history of the Redeemer." The Redeemer
explains tlie redemption. If it was formerly the
fashion to see too much in the Old Testament, and to
force it to speak to us in the language of the ripe
Christian consciousness, it is now perhaps the custom
to see too little, and to dwell more upon its kinship
with the cognate Semitic religions than upon its
latent Christianity. To do it justice we must know
what spirit it was of ; and to know that, we must
learn of Him in whom that spirit found its perfect
expression.

358 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
The presuppositions of our Christian faith are not
the axiomatic truths we sometimes take them to be ;
they are all historically dependent upon revelations
granted to men whom God raised up from time to time
for the special purpose of making known His way and
will, upon truths preserved with tenacity by select
souls amid periods of indifference and opposition.
Take, for example, the elementary truth that God is
one, the belief that is the radical condition of all re
ligious progress. That belief, simple as it is, has a
background of warfare and pain ; it sums up the his
tory frora the days when the ancestors of the Hebrew
people left their own land for the land of promise,
down to the days when the clearer revelation of God
to Moses broke upon them as they were girt with the
idolatry of Egypt, and perhaps to days later still.
Or take the truth that God is moral and cares
more for righteousness than for splendid ceremonial.
Simple as it seems to men who have been taught the
inwardness of true religion, it was neither simple nor
credible to the average Hebrew of the eighth cen
tury B. c. It required the thunder of an Amos to
remind him that God despised his sumptuous offer
ings, and would punish him for his iniquity. Or take
the truth that God is gracious. That is not a dis
tinctively New Testament truth, though the grace of
God is seen in its perfection only in Jesus Christ ; it
was revealed in general by the whole course of Israel's
history, especially at great crises, when by a more
than huraan might the nation and the religion which
it represented and shielded were preserved from the
perils which threatened their destruction; and in

THE CHURCH 359
particular, by the raore definite word of God to the
psalmists, whose hearts He had touched with the
blessed consciousness of sin forgiven, a consciousness
as real and glad to the men of the old as of the newer
time ; and to the prophets, who were fond of compar
ing the watchful love of God over Israel with the care
of a shepherd for his flock. Or take the truth that
God is the God of all men. Here we seem to be on
peculiarly New Testament ground, moving in a sphere
of thought created for us by Jesus Christ. Yet it is
not quite so ; at more than one stage there is an im
plicit universalism — in the opening chapters of Gen
esis, which are characterized by a large-hearted
humanity ; in the Book of Proverbs, which has guided
the life of Western raen as well as of Orientals ; in
psalras, like the sixty-seventh and the hundredth, in
which the salvation of God is ideally related to all
men. Oue distinguished scholar confesses that the
study of the Old Testament, with its magnificent
breadth of sympathy, fostered and deepened in him a
love for missions. Or take the truth of the life beyond
death. Here we miss the massive strength and assur
ance of New Testaraent doctrine, nor could we expect
it till the coming of One who had plainly robbed the
grave of its victory. And yet, in the tender voices of
men whose hearts tremble with hope in the God who
had been the light of their life, we raark plainly enough
a preparation for the clear, strong assurance of Christ,
that God is the God of the living. All that is deep
est and dearest in our faith comes from the New Tes
tament ; and every great truth of the New Testament
finds its historical preparation and support in the

360 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
Old.! What, therefore, God and Christ have joined
together, let not man put asunder.
Such, then, is the place of the Old Testament in
our faith, and a position corresponding to its impor
tance to our faith must the study of it hold in every
school of learning which professes to train men for
the ministry of Christ and His Church. But, while
a clear view of the task to be performed is the first
requisite to the successful performance of it, it also
brings us face to face with the necessity of selecting a
method which will conserve all the interests at stake.
A great French critic remarked that it was at once
" the privilege aud danger of Semitic studies to touch
on the most important problems of the history of
humanity." It is the privilege — for the greatest
study of mankind is God, with the religion, the people,
the Christ through whom He has made Himself
known ; and the danger — for here the sin that so
easily besets is the temptation to traditionalism on
the one hand, and on the other to a rash disregard of
the gathered experience of the past. But so long as
we remember that the true end of all our study of the
Old Testament is religious, in the great words of St.
Paul, " that the man of God may be complete, fur
nished completely unto every good work ; " so long as
we recognize that sound criticism cannot deprive us,
and does not seek to deprive us, of the substance of
the revelation, but strives merely to set it in its own
light, we shall see that we have everything to gain and
1 A simple, but scholarly treatment of this point will be found in
G. A. Barton's "The Roots of Christian Teaching as found in the
Old Testament."

THE CHURCH 361
nothing to fear from the application of a rigorously
scientific method. While the criticism of the Old
Testaraent is not of yesterday, the pressure of its
problems has never been so keenly felt as to-day ; and
it would be fighting with the spirit of our time and of
our God to reject, in the study of His word, those
principles and methods which have widened our
knowledge and deepened our wonder in the study of
His world. The problems of the Old Testaraent were
not created by the critics, but by the facts ; they are
felt, not only by the professional scholar, but by every
one who reads his Bible with ordinary care and with
an open mind. What we have to do in the interests
of our faith is not to suppress the problems — indeed
we cannot — but to face thera, and if possible to solve
them. Many of the old landmarks have been re
moved, but the land remains, every inch of it. It
may have to be redistributed ; but its redistribution
will only make it a more real possession, by giving us
order for confusion. Reconstruction cannot destroy
the history ; it can only make it more lucid and help
ful. Criticism is only a means, to be everywhere —
at least in Biblical scholarship — subordinated to a
moral and religious end. Its aim is constructive ; the
need for it is iraperative ; the result of it is to make
many a rough place plain, and to remove many a
stumbling-block from the path of honest doubt. But
the criticism that will do that for us must be a sane
criticism, which knows its own limitations, which will
not raistake caprice for logic or substitute theory for
fact. It will recognize that behind the history and
the literature with which it is its province to deal, are

y

362 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
the throbbings of a life which it cannot explain but
must accept, and that the criticism which would truly
interpret the literature must be possessed of the same
spirit which inspired it. Our search for truth is sus
tained by Christ's promise of the Spirit who leads into
all the truth.
In our search we shall be grateful for any help
from any quarter, whether from the ruins of a buried
city, the fragments of a broken gravestone, the monu
ments of a forgotten people, or the conjectures of
criticism. All that makes the Old Testament live is
a contribution to history, and therefore to faith. " If
the Church wants to be saved," remarks a prominent
clergyman of the Church of England, " it must be
come contemporary." True, in the sense that religion
can only be vital when it relates itself to contemporary
needs and forces : true, in the sense that the prin
ciples of religion have to readjust themselves to the
changing conditions of social life. But if the Church
wants to be saved, she must also continue to be his
toric, to recognize that while Christianity is as a
mighty tree, that grows mightier with the ages, her
roots are deep in the past. Her life is not separable
from the redemptive activity of God in the history of
that people through whose mediation He purposed to
bring men in the fulness of time into saving com
munion with Himself ; and for us that activity is not
now separable from the record of it, that is, from the
Old Testament. We shall not gain the present by
throwing away the past. The power of a ministry to
mould the time into which God has sent it will largely
depend upon the depth of its knowledge of the past

THE CHURCH 363
on which its faith is built, and on the richness of its
sympathy with the spirit which shaped it. That criti
cism will be most welcome which will present the
history in its most reasonable sequence, and most
satisfactorily justify the ways of God to men. It will
have at once the impartiality of science, and the bias
which is forced upon the careful student by a true
interpretation of history. But though the method
must be scientific, the interests at stake are not only,
nor even mainly, scientific, but religious, indeed
Christian ; the end is not knowledge, but increase of
faith through the scientific presentation of knowledge.
And this end will be best attained by the exercise of
courage and of caution : of caution — for the way is
not always as clear as it might be ; of courage — for
the ground beneath our feet is firm.
Such studies as these must be pursued with a rever
ent regard for all that is good, whether it meet us in
the present or the past. They will not needlessly
clash with the ripe experience or reasoned convictions
of the past, neither will they repudiate the obligation
to research to which the wider knowledge and pro
gressive spirit of our day have bound us. Our study
of the Old Testament will be guided by two considera
tions: First, that it is old, and therefore demands
the most careful and scientific treatment from an age
which prides itself on looking at things in their gene
sis and growth. But far more important for us is the
consideration that it is a Testament, a covenant be
tween the living God and living men, through which,
in words borrowed from the opening paragraph of the
Westminster Confession, " it pleased the Lord at

364 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
sundry times and in divers manners to reveal Him
self and to declare His will unto His Church, for the
better preserving and propagating of the truth, and
for the more sure establishment and comfort of the
Church against the corruption of the flesh and the
malice of Satan and of the world." But the most
strenuous study and the raost probable conclusions
will be sobered by the reflection that the work of our
own age is in all likelihood no more final than that of
the age which our work tends in part to supersede.
But though not final, it is not therefore futile. Every
age has its own work to do, its own truth to learn
and appropriate. The future will owe much to the
earnest effort of the present, as the present owes
much to the toil and sincerity of the past ; and we
shall be well content to play our little part in the
unfolding of that truth which advances with the cen
turies, and thereby show ourselves true children of
the God who is " patient, because He is eternal."

APPENDIX
OUTLINE OF THE RESULTS OF OLD TESTA
MENT CRITICISM
It is obviously impossible to sketch and summarize even the
main results of Old Testament criticism within the compass of
a paragraph or two ; yet, for the sake of those who have no
time to follow the argument into its complicated detail, it may
be worth while to present, though necessarily in the briefest
outline, the leading points of that argument.^
One of the books which has played a radical part in Old Testa
ment criticism is the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, who pro
phesied during the earlier part of the exile (592-570 b. c).
The last nine chapters of his book (xl.-xlviii.) constitute a pro
gramme — ideal in parts — for the regulation of the worship
after the exile is over ; and laws are laid down which are not
always in harmony with the corresponding laws of the Penta
teuch. The discrepancies are undeniable : so real are they,
indeed, that at oue time the right of Ezekiel to a place in the
canon was disputed, and, as the Jewish story runs, its place was
only assured when a great scholar, after consuming "three
hundred measures " of midnight oil, succeeded in reconciling
the discrepancies. Now, if the Pentateuch was already in ex-
1 Cf. Gladstone, "Impregnable Rock," ch. v. : " It seems but com
mon equity that we, who stand outside the learned world, and who find
operations are in progress, which are often declared to have destroyed
the authority of these ancient books, should be supplied, as far as may
be, with available means of rationally judging the nature and grounds
of the impeachment. And it is unfortunate that this has been little
thought of ; aud that, while we are, it may almost be said, drenched
with the deductions and conclusions of the negative critics, it is stUl so
difficult, in multitudes of instances, to come at any clear view of the
grounds on which they build."

366 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
istence with its elaborate regulation of the worship, which, as
is repeatedly said, was to be valid for all time, why should
Ezekiel have thought it necessary to lay down any such pro
gramme at all ? And why should his programme difiev, in
certain material respects, from a book which had so high,
ancient, and venerable a sanction ? A comparison of the
two sets of laws makes it pretty clear that the Priestly Code
(that is, Leviticus and kindred sections) is an advance on
the programme of Ezekiel. Ezekiel, therefore, it is concluded,
chronologically precedes that code, and so his apparent deviations
from it are not difficult to account for. Again, if that code,
with its ceaseless and elaborate insistence on sacrifice, had
been in existence in pre-exilic times, it is highly improbable
that Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, and Jeremiah would have ex
pressed themselves as they did on the subject of sacrifice.*
One of the important arguments by which this conclusion is
reached — of the priority of Ezekiel to the Priestly Code '^ — is
that, while in Leviticus a sharp distinction is recognized be
tween the priests and the Levites, we see in Ezekiel xliv. 5 ff.
the origin of that distinction. The Levites who had minis
tered at the idolatrous shrines in the various high places
throughout the land were to be degraded from the priesthood.
In the Book of Deuteronomy, however, with hardly any ex
ception, no such distinction between priests and Levites is
drawn. The chronological order would therefore he Deuteronomy,
Ezekiel, the Priestly Code.
But what is the date of Deuteronomy ? There is little doubt
that that was the book found in the temple, on which Josiah
based his reformation. Now there is much in the book which
suggests that, as a whole, it was written not earlier than the
time of Manasseh (696-641 b. c). But the most important
feature of the book is its emphatic demand for the centraliza-
1 The elaborate collection of references in Stanley Leathes' " The
Law in the Prophets " is a long way from proving his contention that
" the several books of the Pentateuch, substantially as we have them,
were well known to all the prophets, and must have been studied by
them" (p. ix).
' The post-exilic date of this code is also suggested, though not
proved, by the fact that there is practically no trace of its operation
till the days of Nehemiah and Ezra.

APPENDIX 367
tion of the worship : the local sanctuaries were declared illegal.
Now throughout the earlier history no such attitude seems to
have been maintained towards these sanctuaries. Not only did
the people worship there, but also their leaders, men like Saul,
Samuel, and Elijah, who were bound to know ; and there is no
hint of reproof or censure, no suspicion that they are doing
anything illegal. Even Amos and Hosea do not condemn the
sanctuaries as such; therefore, besides internal reasons, there
is this external consideration for placing Deuteronomy after
Amos and Hosea, that is, after 735 b. c. Thus the chronological
order would be Amos, Hosea; Deuteronomy ; Ezekiel; ihe Priestly
Code. Two of the Pentateuchal codes have thus been accounted
for. There remains the briefer code known as the Book of
the Covenant (Ex. xx. 22-xxiii. 33). In comparison with
Deuteronomy, the character of this code is rudimentary, but
little more can be determined about its date than that it is
prior to Deuteronomy. There are then three strata of legislation
in the Pentateuch, : the Book of the Covenant, Deuteronomy, the
Priestly Code, in this chronological order.
Setting aside the Book of Deuteronomy, whose legislation is
introduced and concluded by history, there are also three strata
of historical narrative. The double accounts of the Creation,
the Flood, the Covenant with Abraham, etc., differing so
strikingly in their phraseology and religious conceptions, sug
gested the idea that behind, at least, the Book of Genesis
there lay two documents. Further examination confirmed this
supposition, and proved that the documents ran on at least
into the Book of Joshua. One of these documents — that
which uses the name of "Elohim" for God — was shown to
have unmistakable linguistic and religious affinities with the
priestly legislation ; so that it must also have a priestly origin
and belong to the later period. When this section, beginning
with the Creation, ending with the conquest and division of the
land, and centring in the legislation of Moses, was deducted
from the historical part of the Hexateuch, what was left was
found, on closer examination, to be not quite homogeneous.
There were stiU duplicates left. Two very similar stories would
be told, with this difference, among others, that one of them
named the Divine Being " Jehovah," and the other " Elohim"

368 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
(cf. Gen. xii. and xx.). This observation suggested to two
scholars quite independently * the idea that there were here two
cognate documents, one of which resembled the priestly docu
ment in using the word " Elohim," but in nothing else. These
two documents are prophetic in spirit : they have each charac
teristics of their own ; but in language, tone, nature, and range
of interest they are both utterly unlike the priestly history.
But as they bear such a general resemblance to each other, and
were subsequently welded into one, the resultant history is
sometimes spoken of simply as the prophetic history, and
known as JE. Thus there are believed to be three strata of
history in the Hexateuch: two prophetic documents (J and E),
written before or about the time of the earliest literary prophets
(Amos, Hosea), gathering up the ancient traditions of the
people, and iising them to illustrate the purpose of God for
Israel — that purpose which was rooted in the distant past ;
and the priestly document {P), the interest of which centres very
largely in the worship.
These histories all deal with Israel's origins ; but the purpose
which was illustrated by the story of the early days could be
illustrated with equal clearness by the subsequent history of
the nation ; and this appears to have been done by certain writers
during the exile. To their sad eyes the lessons of the past were
clear ; and the abrupt break in the national history afforded an
opportunity to recount the long story from the days of Joshua
and the Judges to the fall of Jerusalem. There was plenty of
material in the form of brief histories, biographies, court
annals, etc. This material was all worked over in the spirit
of Deuteronomy, and the facts were so set as to illustrate its
characteristic teaching, that national faithfulness meant pros
perity, and idolatry, ruin — a lesson which had received the
most tragic confirmation from the exile itself. It was this
period then (i. e. the exile) that gave us the Books of Joshua, Judges,
Samuel, and Kings in much their present form.
After the exile, priestly interests began to predominate.
Jerusalem, and especially the temple, became for the Jew the
centre of the world. The priestly activities were directed to
literature as well as ritual, and the period was marked, as we
should expect, by religious poetry and history. Older psalms
1 Cf. p. 72, note 2.

APPENDIX 2^9
were adapted and new psalms were composed for use in the
public worship of the temple. To this time (i. e. ihe post-exilic
age) much, if noi most, of the Psalter is relegated by modern
criticism. Further, the whole history of the people, from the
very beginning down to the days of Ezra, was written from
the priestly standpoint ; so that the Books of Chronicles, Ezra,
Nehemiah, are the outcome of the same spirit as elaborated the
priestly legislation, and the priestly history in the Hexateuch.
The stern facts of the third and second centuries b. c. cre
ated a new species of literature. Their gloom is reflected in
Ecclesiastes ; their sorrows are echoed in the Maccabean
psalms ; their concentrated passion and invincible hope glow
in the pages of the Apocalypse of Daniel; and within half a
century the last word of the Old Testament had almost cer
tainly been spoken.
A very brief tabulation of the more important dates, some of
which are necessarily very uncertain, and are only offered
provisionally, will show at a glance the main bearings of the
critical reconstruction of the literary history. B. c.
Traditions, war-ballads, and other songs . . 1200-1000
The prophetic history of the Jehovist document 850
The prophetic history of the Elohist document 750
Amos and Hosea  750-735
Isaiah  740-700
Micah  725-690
Nahum  .... 650
Zephaniah  630
Deuteronomy (written probably in Manasseh's
reign), published  621
Jeremiah  626-586
Habakkuk  600
Exile 697 b. c. (first deportation) 586 (second
deportation) to  538
Ezekiel  592-570
Lamentations  586
All the historical books up to Kings edited in
the spirit of Deuteronomy  600-560
Deutero-Isaiah  540
Haggai and Zechariah  520
Psalter, collected, edited, and largely composed 520-150

370 OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM
B. C.
Priestly Code (Leviticus, etc.)  600-450
Malachi  460
Ruth  450
Joel, Jonah, Obadiali, Job  450-400
Pentateuch in practically its present form, before 400
Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah  350-250
Song of Songs   350
Proverbs  300
Ecclesiastes  250
Daniel  167
Esther  150

INDEX

Abbott, Evelyn, 287.
Abbott, Lyman, 30, 34.
Abuse of opponents, 41.
Allegorical method, 107, 108, 179.
American Journal of Semitic Lan
guages and Literatures, 52.
American Journal of Theologj', 92,
315.
Anderson, Sir E., 41, 45, 87, 326.
Anonj'mous books, 212.
Anthropomorphism, 293.
Apologetic, 126, 131-136.
Archaeological results, 17.
Argument by innuendo, 37.
Arnold, Matthew, 100, 102.
Astruc, 193.
Authority, 12, 211, 212.
Authority and Archseology, 17.
Authorship, 211-216.
Babylonian stories, 296-298.
Bacon, B. W., 29, 66, 73.
Baethgen, 55, 56.
Barry, 9.
Barton, 360.
Batten, 119.
Baudissin, 58.
Beard, 27, 71, 334.
Behrends, 35, 42, 89.
Besant and Rice, 139.
Bias in interpretation, 63, 233-236.
Biblical World, 56, 286.
Bibliotheca Sacra, 8, 37, 140, 197.
Blake, 31.
Blomfield, 15, 20, 33, 231.
Book of the Covenant, 50, 73, 367.
Bradley, A. C, 96.

Bredenkamp, 9, 56, 58, 65, 250.
Briggs, 4, 37.
British Weekly, 332.
Budde, 50, 58, 119.
Canon, closing of, 75, 321; limits of,
308-311.
Caricatuie of opponents, 38.
Catholicizing of Protestant churches,
187.
Cave, Principal, 16, 39-40, 89.
Chambers, T. W., 198.
Charles, Professor, 244.
Cheyne, 7, 56, 57.
Christ, 11, 205 ff., 348, 355 ff.
Chronicles, Book of, 288.
Clemen, 11.
Cobb, W. F., 177.
Cobb, W. H., 53.
Cobern, 286,
Coe, G. A., 116, 187.
Cognate Semitic languages, 94.
Coming Bible, 26.
Composite books, 38, 49, 138-143.
Concessions to criticism, 15-18.
Conservative instinct, 189.
Conservative reaction, 68.
Contentio Veritatis, 7.
Cornill, 6.
Credibility of the Bible, 9.
Critical Review, 59, 134, 336.
Critical view of the Old Testament,
318-321, 365-370.
Criticism: its aims, 23; attitude to
history, 332; conditions, 89 ff.;
gains, 122 ff. ; losses, 109 ff. ; mean
ing, 7§, 79 ; methods, 136 ff. ; ne-

m

INDEX

cessity, 79-88; popularization of,
6-7, 31; processes, 19,25; relation
to church, 22; results, 72-76;
temper, 28, 47.
Cuyler, 2.
Daniel, Book of, 18, 59.
David, 215, 216, 221.
Davidson, A. B., 67, 88, 338.
Davis, 327.
Day, E., 50.
Deborah, Song of, 52, 259-261.
Decalogue, 50.
Delitzsch, 24, 212, 279.
Denney, 332.
Deuteronomy, 74, 284-286, 366.
Devotional use of Scripture, 113,
114.
Diatessaron, 138.
Dictionary, Hastings' Bible, 172,
173, 247.
Diestel, 176.
Differences among critics, 48-61 ;
reasons for, 62 ff .
Difiiculties, moral and intellectual,
126-128.
Discrepancies, 111, 128-130, 200 f.,
215, 277.
Dittmar, 305.
Dods, 338.
Dogmatic theologv, 120-122.
Driver, 17, 66. 73,"l72, 173, 247, 319.
Drummond, Henry, 21.
Duhm, 43, 55.
Duplicate narratives, 140-151.
Dutch translation of Old Testament, 5.
Duty of investigation, 186.
Eger, Karl, 179, 184.
EUicott, 15, 34, 36, 72, 231.
Encyclopsedia Biblica, 69, 335.
Engert, 340.
Esther, Book of, 309.
Evolution, 230 ff., 327.
Exile, infiuence of, 74, 368.
Exposition, meaning of, 94.
Expositor, The, 244, 285, 319, 327.
Expositor's Bible, 6, 338.
Expository Times, 53, 59.

Ezekiel, 365 f.
Ezra-Nehemiah, 51.
Fact, importance of, to Christian
religion, 106, 332 f.
Fall, story ot, 295 f.
Fiction, 333-338.
Fisher, 251.
Flippancy, 43.
Flood, story of, 143-151, 279, 296-
298.
Foreign missions, 120.
Forgerv, 43.
Froude", 37, 179, 183, 189, 257.
Fulfilment of Old Testament in
Christ, 206 f., 353-357.
FuUiquet, 4, 10, 335.
Funcke, 271.
German scholarship, in its relation
to the churches, 22; depreciation
of, 35 ; Froude's tribute to, 37.
German translation of Old Testa
ment, 5 f.
Gibson, I., 315.
Girdlestone, 5, 23, 33.
Gladstone, 48, 112, 304, 365.
Gnostics, 270.
Grace, 100.
Grammatico-historical principles of
interpretation, 183 f., 204.
Gray, G. B., 6.
Greek literature, 63 f., 309 f.
Green, W. H., 8, 65.
Gunkel, 23, 44, 49, 51, 56, 66, 69 f.,
171, 276, 297, 330.
Guthe, 171.
Haeokel, 136.
Hammurabi, code of, 249 f.
Harmonistic devices, 82, 87.
Harnack, 6, 175, 178, 187, 190.
Harper, 75.
Hatch, 100.
Hazard, W. H., 19, 315.
HeUenica, 287.
Henson, 30.
Herodotus, 63, 168.

INDEX

373

Hexateuch, 72 f., 367 f. (See Com
posite books.)
Hibbert lectures, 71.
Higher criticism, objects menaced by,
8-13; meaning of, 19; difficulties
of, 19; not new, 193.
Hilprecht, 299.
Historians, faith of Biblical, 305 f.
Historical criticism, 238-241, 321-
323.
Historical method, 107, 184.
Historical truth, 277-291.
History in the Bible, 105 f., 329 f.
Hofmann, 44.
Holzinger, 73.
Homer, 86, 168, 282.
Hopfl, 15 f ., 34, 169, 231 f.
Horton, 7, 30.
Hiihn, 305.
Humanity of the Bible, 272 £E
Humor, 44.
Illingworth, 71.
Immanence of God, 324.
Incarnation an accommodation, 225.
Inspiration, 268 ff.
Jashar, Book ot, 256, 261.
Jebb, R. C, 287.
Jehonadab, 62.
Jennings and Lowe, 204.
Jericho, fall of, 266 f .
Jewish Quarterly Review, 5, 310.
Job, Book of, 58 f .
Johnston, H. A., 15.
Johnston, J. B., 59.
Jordan, W. 6., 41, 118, 315.
Journal of Biblical Literature, 50, 53,
57.
Jowett, 268.
Kautzsch, 6, 20, 23, 49 f., 55, 57, 59,
134, 136, 342.
Kennedy, 10, 38, 48.
Kent, 6, 51.
Kittel, 92, 172.
Kohler, 14,44,331.
Konig, 53, 67 f., 173.
Kuenen, 12, 236, 238.

Lagrange, 3.
Law, William, 242 f .
Leathes, 366.
Legislation, growth of, 286.
Lenormant, 254.
Lex Mosaica, 8.
Lias, J. J., 2.
Liddon, 268.
Limitation of Christ's knowledge,
225-227.
Lincke, 52.
Literary criticism, 69, 71, 238-241,
321-323.
Literary interest of the Bible, 124.
Lock, 101.
Loisv, 30, 76, 121, 238, 252 f.
Luther, 103 f., 169, 176, 178-183.
Maccabean psalms, 55.
Matthes, Professor, 58.
Meagreness of our knowledge, 62 ff.
Meinhold, 197, 237.
Messianic prophecy, 10, 16, 53, 206 f.,
243.
Meyer, F. B., 31.
Miracle, 101-103, 261-267.
Misrepresentation of opponents, 34.
Mitchell, 29, 49, 65 f.
Moabite stone, 247-249.
Modern religious teachers, 309.
Montefiore, 5, 310.
Moody, 21.
Moore, Aubrey, 276.
Moore, G. F., 29, 66.
Moral difficulties, 126, 284-291.
Morality, 111-113, 291 f.
Mormonism, 130.
Moses as a writer, 216 f .
Mozlev, 126.
Munhall, 35, 41, 65, 198.
Myers, 174, 308.
Myth, 280-284.
McCurdv, 49,56,195.
McFadyen, 143, 278, 303.
McGiffert, 217.
Macgregor, 7, 32.
Mcintosh, H., 2, 4.
Mackay, 59, 142.
MacLaren, 105,

374

INDEX

Nash, 47.
New Testament, attitude to Old
Testament, 10 f., 197-205 ; cita
tions, 305 ; goal of Old Testament,
352 ff.
Nowack, 54.
Oesterley, 327.
Old Testament, absolute value, 347-
852; as preparatory, 352-360.
Ottley, 6, 50.
Outlook, The, 120.
Oxford Hexateuch, 286.
Paley, 198.
Patriarchal stories, 9, 163-173, 328-
338.
Paul's interpretation of Old Testa
ment, 201-205.
Pentateuch, 81 ff. (See Composite
books.)
Perowne, 283.
Personalitv, 251.
Peters, J. P., 7, 17, 50, 56, 59, 221.
Philo, 203.
Piepenbring, 50.
Plato, 64, 135, 330 f.
Poetry in Old Testament, 254-261.
Polychrome Bible, 26.
Positive religious message of Scrip
ture, 117, 337-344.
Postrexilic period, 74 f.
Praises of Scripture within Scripture,
307 f.
Preachers, difficulties of, 3, 13; duty
of, 26, 116 f.
Prepossession in study, 233-236, 270.
Presbyterian and Reformed Review,
17, 36, 327.
Preuss, 181.
Priestly code, 73, 366 f.
Progressiveness of revelation, 76,
293 f., 353 ff.
Proof texts, 130 f.
Prophecy, 10, 152-158.
Prophets, inspiration of, 299-302,350.
Protestantism, 174 ff.
Psalms, 55-58, 341, 351 f.
Pseudonymous books, 289 f.

Recovery of books of the Bible,
123.
Red path, H. A., 92.
Eed Sea, crossing of, 262 f.
Renaissance, 189-191.
Reuss, 171.
Reverence, need of, 45.
Ridicule, 33.
Eobertson, James, 68.
Roman Catholic Church, 3 f., 189.
Rupprecht, 45.
Ryle, 299.
Samson, story of, 264 f.
Sanday, 24, 29, 68, 70, 253, 301, 332.
Sayce, 17, 18, 61.
Schleiermacher, 356.
Schmiedel, 334.
Science, 275-277.
Selbie, 59, 134, 335.
Sellin, 49, 50, 54, 56, 69.
Smith, G. A., 6, 21, 57, 118 f., 266.
Smith, G. T., 15, 35 f.
Smith, H. P., 4.
Smith, J., 1, 37, 66, 231.
Smith, W. E., 4, 6, 39, 118, 137,
341, 343.
Stave, Erik, 253.
Steuernagel, 71.
St. Patrick, life of, 257 f.
Streatfeild, 283.
Students' attitude to Scripture, 134 f.
Studien und Kritiken, 11, 26.
Suffering servant, 54.
Sunday School Times, 5, 8, 22, 173,
267, 299.
Supernatural, 11 f., 230 ff.
Superscriptions of Psalms, 105.
Sympathy necessary for interpreta
tion, 95-98.
Teaching of Christ, 227 f.
Terry, M. S., 67.
Theodore of Mopsuestia, 104.
Theologische Literaturzeitung, 58,
67, 183.
Thomas a Kempis, 98.
Thomson, W. D., 267.
Thucydides, 63, 86, 287.

INDEX

3TS

Timeless element, 109.
Toy, C. H., 4, 58.
Tradition, 9.
Traditional view of Old Testament,
316-318.
Transcendence of God, 324.
Translations, ancient, 91.
Trumbull, H. C, 267.
Unity of the Bible, 295.
Urquhart, 26.
Valeton, 120, 220.
Variant readings, 90.
Volck, 16, 65, 142, 315.
Volz, 54.

Wade, G. W., 173, 247.
Walker, Patrick, 122.
Wars of Jehovah, book of, 255.
Wedgwood, Julia, 273, 295, 304.
Wellhausen, 44, 50, 55, 236-238.
Westcott and Hort, 92.
Westminster Assembly, 345 ; Con
fession, 363 ; Directory, 85.
Wright, A., 16, 105.
Zange, 136.
Zeitschrift fiir wissenschaftliehe The
ologie, 52.
Zeitschrift fiir die alttestamentliche
Wissenschaft, 58.

INDEX OP SCRIPTURE REFERENCES

Page
Genesis, i. 5  275
i. 26  134
ii. 23 . . ... 256
vi. 5-vii. 5 . . 143-151
vii. 11  257
viii. 21  297
X  163-166
xii. 1  306
xii. 6  82
xiv. 14  82, 167
xviii  168
xviii. 14  244
XX. 13  306
xxv. 23  166
xxxvi. 31  82
Exodus, iii. 6  221-223
XV  262 f.
xxiv. 9-11  293
xxxiii. 11, 20  293
Numbers, xvi. 32  127
xxvi. 11  i27
Deuteronomy, ii. 10-12 . . . 285
iv. 12-15  293
vi. 4f  90
xxvii. 3  217
xxxiv. 10  82

Page
Joshua, X. 12-14  261
Judges, iv. 18 ff  260
V. 24-27  259
XV  264 f.
xviii. 29  82, 167
2 Samuel, xxii  90
xxiv. 24  87
1 Kings, ix. 11-14  167
2 Kings, X. 15 ff  62
xi  288
xvii  303
1 Chronicles, xxi. 25 ... . 87
2 Chronicles, viii. 2 . . . . 167
xiv. 5; XV. 17; xvii. 6; xx.
33  127,277
xxii.-xxiii  288
Job, xxxviii. 3, 4  281
Psalms, i  307
xviii  90
xix  307
xix. 2  244
xxiii. . . 79-81, 108, 341, 351
xl  158-162
xl. 6  305
li  104, 341 f.
Ixv  104

376

INDEX

Page
Psalms, Ixvii  246
ciii  109
cix. 9-12  292
CX  220 f.
cxix  307
cxxvii  104
cxxxix. 6  244
Ecclesiastes  289
Song of Songs .... 108, 123
Isaiah, viii. 11  300
xlv. 1  305
xl.-lxvi. . 52-54, 83 f., 152-158, 339 f.
Jeremiah, xviii. 19-23 ... 292
XX. 9  301
xxxv  62
Amos, iii. 8; vii. 15 .... 300
Jonah  218-220, 290 f.

Page
Jonah, iv. 11  203
Micah, iii. 8  301
Matthew, x. 5  99
xxii. 31  214
Mark, xii. 26  214
xvi. 9ff  86
Luke, ix. 55  205
XX. 37  214
John, i. 18; vi. 46  168
Romans, xv. 4 . . . . . 307
1 Corinthians, ix. 7 ff. . . 202
X. 11  204
Galatians, iii. 16 ... . 201 f .
iv. 24  204
1 Timothy, v. 18  202
2 Timothy, iii. 16 f. . . . 198-200
Hebrews, x. 5  305

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