360 I. The Relative Religious Value of the Books of the Old VII.-Rev. William Rupp, D.D. BY REV. GEORGE W. RICH- THE REFORMED CHURCH REVIEW No. 1.-JANUARY, 1904. I. THE HIGHER CRITICISM: POSITIVE AND BY PROF. F. A. GAST, d.d. The Pentateuch, according to modern criticism, is of composite structure. Its material is drawn from four main sources, usually designated J, E, D and P. These sources have marked characteristics of thought, language and style, by which for the most part they can readily be distinguished one from another. The compiler of the Pentateuch did not, like a historian of to-day, after a careful comparative study of his sources work out the story for himself and then tell it in his own words; but, like the old chroniclers, he made verbatim extracts, longer or shorter, now from this document, now from that, as seemed to him best, and without recasting his material, worked it up into the form of a continuous narrative. It is this fact that has made it possible for the critics, by an accurate analysis of the Pentateuch, to resolve it into the several sources from which it was compiled, and so, by recombining the material of each source, to reproduce the original documents lying back of the whole book. Of course, a document thus reconstructed from fragmentary extracts would necessarily be more or less incomplete. The compiler might LIBRA find the story of an event given in one form in one of his sources, and in a different or even contradictory from in another. He might wish to retain both forms of the story, as, for example, the two accounts of creation, or he might displace the story as related, say, by J, and insert it as related by E, thus creating a gap in J. Yet in spite of these unavoidable breaks the several documents have been so far reconstituted that we can easily and clearly discern their peculiar points of view, their modes of religious thought and their animating spirit. Criticism, however, has not confined itself to the Pentateuch. Its task is not finished when it has traced out the process by which the five first books of the Old Testament gradually grew into their present form and extent. By the application of the scientific historical method it has discovered that the other historical books, if we except Ruth and Esther, are likewise compiled from earlier and later sources which the editor has generally used with little alteration. The Book of Joshua, in fact, stands on the same plane with the Pentateuch. As they belong together, they are now commonly named the Hexateuch. The former is the natural continuation of the latter, inasmuch as it records the conquest and division of the Promised Land, to which from the beginning the Pentateuch looks forward as the goal. Whether Joshua was always an independent work separate from the Pentateuch, or whether both originally formed a single whole from which Joshua was cut off at a later time, it is demonstrable that precisely the same sources furnished the material from which both were composed. In other books the case is somewhat different. The use of documentary sources is clearly manifest, but the process of combining them is, in general, less complicated than in the Hexateuch. The prophetical books, also, have been, and still are, subjected to the closest scrutiny. We are wont to think of them as having been written throughout, each by the prophet whose name it bears. This, as regards several of them at least, is found on examination to be a mistake. In the Book of Isaiah, for example, a critical eye at once detects such differences in language and style, in the historical situation implied and the religious ideas expressed, as can be naturally and satisfactorily explained only on the supposition of several authors, writing at different times and in different circumstances. The conclusion reached by a large majority of professional Old Testament scholars is that the only genuine discourses of Isaiah that have come down to us are confined within the limits of chapters 1-35, where, moreover, they are surrounded by non-Isaian discourses of a later, sometimes much later date, than the age of Ahaz and Hezekiah; while chapters 40-66 are assigned to a time not earlier than the later years of the Exile, and in part, by a growing number of critics to-day, to the period after the Exile. And what is held to be true of this book is regarded as equally true of other prophetical books-Jeremiah, Micah, Zechariah -that severally they are not the exclusive work of the prophets to whom their authorship is traditionally ascribed, but contain also discourses by other, unnamed prophets. Now, such an analysis of the Hexateuch and other historical books of the Old Testament for the purpose of discovering the sources from which they were compiled, and such a resolution of prophetical books into discourses written by different authors, yet united in one book bearing the name of an individual prophet, may seem strange, may even be startling. And some plain reader, who has found in the Old Testament as well as in the New a lamp to his feet and a light to his path, may well ask: "What is the good of it all-this rending of the literary unity of Biblical books into ill-assorted fragments? Did not our fathers feel, has not the Christian Church in all ages felt, in the Bible the presence of the living Word-of-God, and experienced the life-giving power of that Word"? We answer, Yes; and we thank God that for the highest, the religious, use of the Bible, human learning is not indispensable. The Bible is not a text-book of metaphysical theology which only a trained philosophic mind could comprehend, nor yet a treasury of general knowledge which man may discover by his own reason. It is a book of religion, not of the science of religion. It is the medium of communication between God and the human soul. Through it man comes into the immediate presence of God and hears His voice speaking directly to his heart in some precious promise, some sweet word of consolation, some needed injunction, some solemn warning. Its testimony to God's awful hatred of sin, His tender forgiving love, His constant guardian care, comes with irresistible, selfevidencing power, not primarily to the intellectual, but rather to the moral and spiritual nature, of the unlearned as well as the learned, of the simple as well as the wise. Such a use of the Bible as this, which brings us face to face with God, is practical and devotional; and it is the noblest use to which this noblest of all books can be put. "Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness: that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work" (2 Tim. 3:16, 17, R. V.). In it God speaks the word suitable to every spiritual need of man. Not, indeed, with equal clearness and power in all portions. The table of nations in Gen. ch. 10, the genealogies. in 1 Chron. chs. 1-9, the minute ritual prescriptions in the Book of Leviticus minister little to spiritual edification, as compared with other parts of the Old Testament, such as Psalms 51, 103, 91 and 23. Devotional reading is, for the most part, eclectic. It passes lightly over what is difficult or obscure to fasten upon some word which thrills the heart as a message direct from heaven and fitted to our present state, whether of penitential grief, or of gratitude for Divine goodness, or of deep longing for communion with God. What is needed, if we are to derive spiritual profit from the Word of God, is not the learning acquired in the schools of earth, but a childlike mind, a reverent spirit, an open ear listening to hear the divine Voice. |