The Dominion. SATURDAY, APRIL 29, 1911. THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1114, 29 April 1911, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, APRIL 29, 1911. THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM.

v :— The celebration of the Tercentenary of the Authorised Version of the Bible, which is to commence in New Zealand to-morrow, will be an impressive reminder to men of all shades of religious thought of the incalculable influence for good which the translation of 1611 has exercised upon the life and literature of the English-speaking peoples. For 300 years it has held a supreme and unrivalled position, and some idea of what effect the supremacy of such a book must have had upon the national character may be gathered from Huxley's declaration that it has been woven into all that is best and noblest in English history; that it has become the national epic of Britain; that it is written in the purest English and abounds in exquisite beauties of literary form; and that it forbids the veriest hind who never left his village to be ignorant of the existence of other countries and other civilisations, and of a great past stretching hack to the farthest limits of the oldest nations of the earth. If this is not enough, we have the deliberate verdict of Immanuel Kant, one of the profoundest philosophers of modern times, that "the existence of the Bible as a book for the people is the greatest benefit which the human race has ever experienced." There are many, however, who, while admitting all this to be true of the past, have serious doubts as to whether the Bible will be able to maintain its influence in the years to come. Modern criticism has thrust aside the halo that surrounded the sacred volume as our forefathers knew it, and every book, and chapter, and verse is being submitted to the most relentless examination. Timid people fear that it cannot survive the test of this fiery furnace, and look upon the process as a desecration of sacred things; but, generally speaking, those who are most hostile to what is known as the Higher Criticism are those who least understand it, and it may therefore serve a good purpose to give a brief skotch of its origin, development, and results.

According to Professor _ G. A. Smith, one of its most brilliant exponents, modern criticism of the Old Testament may be said to have begun in 1680, when a French priest called Simon drew attention to the fact that within the Bookof Genesis there are duplicate descriptions of the same event, as in the case of the Creation and the Flood. He accounted for this by the suggestion that the work of different authors had been combined. This first step in modern criticism was quite simple and easily verified—two accounts of the same event; and it is on the presence of many such "doublets" in the Hexateuch (as the first six books of the Bible are called), and in the historical books, that the Higher Criticism of the Old Testament was based. The next step was taken in 1753 when Jean Astruc, a Roman Catholic physician, made the discovery that one of the. Creation stories always speaks of the Creator as El6him, the Hebrew term for God, while the other calls Him Jeh6vah-Elohim, the name of Israel's national deity. A few years later Eichh6kn and Ilgen, two German scholars, carried the process a little- further by the discovery of other variations, Tho existence of

two, and then three, separate documents incorporated in the Book of Genesis was thus revealed, and this method of investigation was soon extended to the rest of the Hexateuch. In 1805 De AYette pointed out the peculiar character of the Book of Deuteronomy, both in language and contents, and thus a fourth document appeared. Further important discoveries were made by Hupiteld in 1850. In this way the modern method of criticism in its broad outlines was laid down, and since then it has been tested and tried by scholarsof different nationalities and various intellectual tendencies, who have gradually extended the process to the other Books of the Old Testament with remarkable results. There is, of course, much disagreement among critics as to details, but the generally accepted conclusions may be summarised in broad and comprehensive outlines as follow:—

. (1) The literature of the Old Testament is largely' anonymous, and is spread over a period of about a thousand years; much of it is separated by many generations from the events narrated; the whole system of chronology has been reconstructed, one of the principal changes being the placing of the prophets before the law.

(2) The. Hexateuch (the first six books of the Bible) is a compilation of various documents, and soino of its component parts are of comparatively late date; tho account of the Creation is not literal history; the story of the Fall is an allegory; the Mosaic authorship of tho first five books cannot be sustained, though Moses remains in some sense a founder of the religious polity of Israel; the Patriarchs arc, perhaps,' little more than legendary figures. (3) Tho historical books are of a composite character, the Chronicles probably constituting a link between true history and traditional stories with a religious purpose. There is much uncertainty regarding the bulk of the writings that bridge the gulf between Moses and David, and it is only with the Monarchy that wo hegin to s.tand on firm ground. (4) The Psalms have a complicated literary history extending over a period of over SOO years; there is not much trustworthy data as to their authorship. Proverbs is a combination of previous collections, and probably more than one writer is responsible for the Book of Job.

(5) The old conception of a prophet as one whose sole duty was to foretell the future'has given place to that of a preacher of righteousness, a censor of morals, a revealer of new truths and a religious reformer.

(l>) The Bible as a whole may be regarded as the record of a progressive revelation in which can be traced an upward development of morality, and an evolution of the id?a of God from that of a tribal deity to the magnificent conceptions of the great prophets, which are in turn enriched and completed in the New Testament.

The above brief summary of the results of the application of modern methods to the Old Testament shows that the critics are making it in many respects a new and more living book. They are, as a recent writer tells us,. reinstating it to the intellect and conscience of the modern world; they are bringing a now vitality into its popular interpretation; they are restoring its historical perspective; and they are showing that the figures of Hebrew history aro clothed in flesh and blood and subject to the same loves and hates,_ hopes and fears as ourselves. This is a great gain. Modern criticism has also given us a truer sense of proportion, and of relative value of the various books which comprise almost every form of literary expression and various degrees of spiritual insight. AH is not on a dead lcvel/i-'but- the contents range from historical romance like the Book of Esther, and a collection of love songs' like Canticles, to the moral .grandeur of the great prophets and the spiritual, heights attained in the writings of St. Paul and the author of the Fourth Gospel.

As regards the New Testament in particular, the present tendency of criticism is towards a more conservative position in questions of date and authorship, and Professor Harnack, the famous German scholar, who is one of the greatest living authorities, states that this tendency is not likely to weaken. In his latest book he expresses the opinion that the Gospels of Mark and Ltjke were written as early as the sixth decade, that is, before 60 a.d. Matthew is put immediately after 70 a.d., but an earlier date cannot be pronounced impossible. As for "Q" (that is a lost document which was used by both Matthew and Luke), _ there is nothing in the way of dating it at 50 a.d., or before. These results are admittedly revolutionary when compared with late date's reached by the majority of German scholars, and even with some of those suggested by Harnack himself in 1897 (Mark probably between 65 and 70 a.d., Luke and Acts between 75 and 93 a.d.). Dr. Harnack, however, warns us not to expect similar conservative results from the internal criticisms of the Now Testament.

\Ye shall (he states) have to learn to see our religion in its intimate connection with ■ the history of religion as a •whole, and to recognise that Christianity not only presents contrasts to other religions.'but also stands in a close inner connection with them. The higher religions are not to be conceived as antitheses, but as representing various stages of truth. The new point of viewis certain to bring much unsettlement, but I am absolutely certain that it will not lead to a weakened seuso of the value of Christianity. It will si-rve to make the true worth of our faith moro evident; the larger understanding will have an effect quite' other than that of a deprecation of Christianity. The comparison of Christianity and other faiths will still leave our religion supreme ,in its unique worth.

Taking a broad and _ comprehensive view of the whole position it may be sard that, in the place of a verbally infallible Bible produced by a mechanical process of inspiration acting on a purely passive human instrument, modern criticism has given us the living record of a progressive revelation contained in the literature of an inspired people. It is all the more divine because it is so, intensely human. It comes as a message from men to men. As Professor Dickie, of Dunedin, points out in a masterly article which we publish in another part.of this issue, the ,Bible has been "made a more truly human book to all intelligent readers, and a more truly, because more livingly, divine book to not a few." The Bible has had a great past and an equally great future lies before it, for, after making every deduction which the most exacting criticism demands, it remains the supreme record of man's highest spiritual experience and of the deepest yearnings of the human heart.