THE FIRST "HIGHER CRITICS."

The Higher Criticism.

REV. W. WOOLLS RUTLEDGE.

Much has lately appeared in the columns of "The Methodist" on the subject of the Higher Criticism, and some of the contributors have strongly urged the acceptance of what they speak of as its " ascertained results." They have not indicated what those results are, or what their acceptance involves. I propose, in this paper, to supply at least some information on these important points. In doing so I shall not presume to express any opinions of my own, or to discuss the pros and cons of the theories of the numerous and various critics. I shall simply endeavour to accurately state the position, relying for the facts and judgments expressed upon such authorities as Professor Orr, Professor Sayce, Dr. Wace, Dean of Canterbury, and others whose names, when mentioned in the quotations as they occur, will command respect. Further, I shall confine myself for the present to the criticisms upon the Pentateuch. Of course there are numerous and, to my mind, successful replies to the theories of the Higher Critics, one of the most scholarly and convincing being, "The Problem of the Old Testament," by Professor Orr, D.D., Professor of Apologetics and Systematic Theology in the United Free Church College, Glasgow. No one can reasonably object to criticism. If the Bible cannot stand the test of fair and honest investigation, it had better be put on one side or classed with Thomas a Kempis and similar books of devotion.

 A CHANGE OF VIEW.

 I want, also, to point out and emphasise the fact, that the controversy is not yet over, and that the more recent discoveries of archaeological science are so important in their bearing on the theories of the critics, and in their confirmation of the conservative view, that some of the critics themselves are abandoning their position, and others are retracing their steps. Professor George Adam Smith, as we shall see later on, is a noteworthy instance. Professor Gunkel, of Berlin, is another. Winckler, in a recent address at Eisenach, delivered a vigorous assault on the whole foundation of the Wellhausen theory of the religion of Israel in its advance from "a tribal god" to ethical monotheism in the age of the prophets. He also decisively rejects the cardinal Wellhausen tenet of the origin of the Levitical law in the exile, and contends that "law and prophets" must have been present from the beginning. He mentions that he also is here recanting an earlier view. A further evidence of the swing of the pendulum back to the conservative view is in the statement made by Dr. Robertson Nicoll in his notice in the "British Weekly" in September, 1906, of the late Dr. George Matheson, that, after a period of sanguine acceptance of the processes and results of the Higher Criticism, as expounded by Prof. W. P. Smith, and of the doctrine of evolution, "he came," in later life, "to disbelieve in the Higher Criticism and in the doctrine of evolution — at least in its extreme form." Leading archaeologists too, such as Professors Sayce, Hommel, Halevy, Ditlef-Nielson, and others, formerly advocates of the higher critical view, have abandoned it. Dr. Driver having stated that Hommel agreed with Wellhausen's analysis of the Pentateuch, Hommel replied, in a letter to the late Professor Green, that the citation referred to was from an earlier publication, and that he no longer held these views, but was increasingly impressed with "the utter baselessness of the view of Wellhausen." It has been the same with Professor Sayce, and one result is his recent and very interesting work entitled, "Monumental Facts and Higher Critical Fancies," and Halevy, at a meeting of the International Congress at Paris in 1897, made a strong defence of the essential truth of the Mosaic history, as against the Wellhausen school with which he had been identified.

 THE FIRST "HIGHER CRITICS."

The criticism of the Bible is not a new thing. It began so long ago as 1753, when a French physician named Astruc drew attention to the presence of different styles of authorship in the book of Genesis. It is significant that the first higher critic was not a man of correspondingly high personal character, for, says Dr. H. Osgood, "Astruc's personal character was deeply marred by the vices of French society." It is also worthy of note that what is called the "Higher Criticism" was "cradled in and received its characteristic set from the older rationalism. " Unfortunately, this vice of its origin has clung to it, more or less, in all its subsequent developments. The term "Higher Criticism" was first applied to the writings of Eichhorn, in 1779, a rationalist of a pronounced type, who set himself to give naturalistic explanations of the miracles of the Bible. De Wette, in 1805, Bleek (1822), Ewald (1831), Hupfield (1853), Graff (1866), Colenso, Kuenen, Wellhausen, Cheyne, Strack, Dillman, Driver, G. A. Smith, and others of later date have carried on the controversy from the critical side. The higher critics' base in carrying on the war against the orthodox view, is the fact that one of the narratives of the creation, in speaking of the Divine Being, uses the name "Elohim," while the other uses the name "Jehovah" (Yahveh). It was on noticing this fact that Astruc wrote a book entitled "Conjectures on the Original Memoirs, of which it appears Moses made use in composing the Book of Genesis." The title was appropriate, and notwithstanding all that has been said since Astruc's day, the most that can honestly be said to-day about the higher criticisms is, that they are still only "conjectures." The early critics seem to have been fairly unanimous in the view that the Pentateuch was composed from the writings of several different authors.

J.E.D.P.

 It was observed that certain expressions recurred where the word "Elohim" was used, and a different set appeared where the word "Jehovah" was used. It is not known who these supposed different authors were, but the one is called E and the other J. Yet the name "Elohim" is sometimes found in J passages and Jehovah in E passages. The book Deuteronomy, they say, stands by itself, and the writer, or writers, they designate as D. The remainder of the Pentateuch, containing what is called the Priestly Writings, or Priestly Code, form a fourth section, to which is given the name of P. Thus far the critics seem to be agreed amongst themselves. Dr. Orr says, "It is agreed that four main sources are to be distinguished in the Pentateuch — J.E.D.P, and that these have been combined by one or more hands to form the present work." From this onwards there is scarcely a point of importance on which the critics are agreed. And even on this point there are serious modifications and multiplications of sources. As the analysis has proceeded some of the critics have found it necessary to split up the four documents into yet minuter parts, and, now, we have authors and redactors, or editors, known as J1, J2, J3 ; E1, E2, E3 ; P1, P2, P3, P4; R1, R2, R3;.H1, H2, H3; Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, Q5 ; Sm ; S1, and so on. The critics are not content with apportioning certain chapters of the Pentateuch to one or other of the numerous sources above named, but, according to them, two or three of them had a hand in the construction of even a single verse. Dr. Orr gives as a sample Numb. xiv. 1, "And all the congregation lifted up their voice and cried, and the people wept that night." Now, according to the critics "And all the congregation lifted up their voice" was written by P, "and cried" was written by E, "and the people wept that night" was written by J. Let it be further understood that there is no agreement as to the dates when J E D and P were written ; hundreds of years separating one from another. Dean Milman, in his "History of the Jews," forcibly says "That any critical microscope in the nineteenth century can be so exquisite and powerful as to dissect the whole with perfect nicety, to decompose it, and assign each separate paragraph to its special origin in three, four, or five, or more independent documents, each of which has contributed its part, this seems to me a task which no mastery of the Hebrew language, with all its kindred tongues, no discernment, however fine and discriminating, can achieve."

 SOME HIGHER CRITICAL THEORIES.

 Readers of the "Methodist" have been urged to "fall in line" with the Higher Critics, and accept the "demonstrated truths" which are the "settled results" of criticism. It is well that we should first show what it is we are asked to accept. Here are some of the results which, at least some of the Higher Critics have declared with much self-confidence to be demonstrated truth. Taking the Pentateuch as a whole, they declare that it is made up largely of legends and myths. "The religion of Israel at first," says Kuenen, "was polytheism."  "Monotheism," says Wellhausen, was unknown to ancient Israel." "Yahveh" (Jehovah), according to Budde, was originally the storm-god of Sinai, worshipped by the Kenites, from whom Moses borrowed the name and cult." Kuenen identifies Yahveh with Moloch. He was in no sense the sole god, nor was thought of as such by his worshippers. He was one amongst many, the god of this particular people — a "tribal god" like Chemosh of Moab. According to the Encyclopedia Biblica, the story of Eden is a "myth moralized"; the account of Cain and Abel is "a legend." Enoch is "a solar myth"; the Deluge is "fundamentally a myth of winter and the sun-god"; the record of the Divine covenant with Abraham is "the fiction of a promise given to the mythical ancestor of Israel; the story of Melchizedec is "a fragment of a post exilic midrash." The Ark of God, which contained the two tables of stone, was really "a fetish chest," and the stones were "probably meteorites" appropriate to the "lightning-god." "The House of God," mentioned in Scripture, "is never anything but the house of an image." In the "Nineteenth Century," magazine for December, 1902, Canon Cheyne commends to English readers the speculations of the latest school of Biblical critics, according to which the Jewish literature is largely a borrowed mythology. According to Dr. H. Winckler, who represents this school, not only are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob legendary heroes whose histories are derived from astronomical myths, but something similar must be said of Saul, David, and Solomon. David, he holds, is a solar hero, his red hair is the image of the rays of the sun, and, if Saul and Jonathan correspond to the constellation Gemini, David and is the legendary reflection of Leo, while Goliath corresponds to Orion. Dr. Cheyne chides what he calls the English "sobriety," and "moderation" which rejects these fantasies. Abraham, according to Stucken, is the Moon-god, Lot the Sun-god, Sarah is Ishtar, etc. Gunkel formerly held that Genesis is a book of legends, the different names of God — Elohim, El-Shaddai, Jahweh (Jehovah) denoted originally different gods. Jacob and Israel are different legendary persons. Noah is composed out of three originally distinct figures; Cain originally but of three, etc.

 MOSES A MYTH.

Wellhausen says, "Jehovah is to be regarded having been originally a family, or tribal god, either of the family to which Moses belonged, or of the tribe of Joseph." Cheyne goes almost to the length of pronouncing Moses himself to be a myth. Here are his words: "But again the questioning spirit revives, when one is asked to believe that Moses is partly at least, a historic figure. Alas! how gladly would one believe it! But where are the historical elements? No one can now be found to doubt that Sargon is a historical personage with mythical accretions. But can one really venture to say the like of Moses?" Kuenen declares that "The Exodus, the wandering, the passage of Jordan, and the settlement in Canaan, as they are described in the Hexateuch, simply could not have happened." The same confident critic says, that "the elaborate descriptions of the tabernacle and its arrangements, the dispositions of the camp in the wilderness, the accounts of the consecration of Aaron and his sons, of the choice and setting apart of the Levites, of the origin of the passover, etc.— all was a "product of the imagination." The tabernacle, as described in the book of Exodus, the Graf-Wellhausen critics tell us, never existed. The tent of the wilderness is a pure creation of the post-exilian imagination. "The truth is," says Wellhausen, that the tabernacle is the copy and not the prototype, of the temple at Jerusalem." Noldeke also declares that the tabernacle is "a mere creature of the brain."
 The critics would have us believe that there never was a choice of Aaron and his sons to be priests. There never was a tithe system for the support of the priests and Levites; there never were Levitical cities there never were sin and trespass offerings, or a day of atonement, such as the Pentateuch prescribes; there never were feasts having the historical origin and reference assigned to them in the law. Those institutions were not only not Mosaic, but they never existed at all; and the constructors of the code knew it, for they were themselves the inventors of it hundreds of years after the time of Moses.

REDACTORS.

 Nothing was known, according, to Wellhausen, of the Aaronic priesthood before the exile about 900 years after. "Aaron," he says, "was not originally present in J, but owed his introduction to the redactor who combined J and E into JE." The redactor is a very convenient person, and is frequently made use of in this way by the critics. The high priest, according to this critic, is a creation of the exile. He is, we are told, "unknown even to Ezechiel." Unfortunately for the theory, the high priest is expressly mentioned in at least four places in II. Kings, viz., in Chaps, xii. 10, xxii. 4, 8; xxiii. 4.. The texts are sustained by the parallel passages in Chronicles. What is to be done with them? They are simply struck out as interpolations. That is an easy method of dealing with inconvenient texts, but it is most unsatisfactory and inconclusive.
 Referring to the "Redactor," Dr. Orr says, "The behaviour of this remarkable individual— or series of individuals (R1, R2, R3, etc.) — is one of the most puzzling features in the whole case. At times he (R) puts his sections side by side, or alternates them, with little alteration; again he weaves them together into the most complicated literary webs; yet again, he "works them up" till the separate existence of the documents is lost in the blend. At one time, as Klosterman says, he shows an almost "demonic art" in combining and relating; at another, an incapacity verging on imbecility. At one moment he is phenomenally alert in smoothing out difficulties, correcting mistakes, and interpolating harmonistic clauses; at another, he leaves the most glaring contradictions, in the critics' view, to stand side by side. Now, he copies J's style, now D's, now P's. A serviceable but somewhat unaccountable personage."

 (To be continued.)

Methodist (Sydney, NSW : 1892 - 1954), Saturday 18 January 1908, page 10