-WHO WROTE IT- WHEN-WHERE~HOW HVLL DivisIoS -B£h Section ' ' ' ' * Mof^es^ Hull Our Bible: •= = = = WHO WROTE IT? : : : When = Where - How? IS IT INFALLIBLE? - MAY S9 191P %fl6ICAL St«\:*^ A Voice From The Higher Criticism, A Few Thoughts ON Other Bibles. 0CO** 'Prove all things, hold fast that which is good." — PAUL. ^ BY HOSES HULL. AuthoT of "Two in One,'' ''Encyclopedia of Biblical Spirit- ualism,'' ''The Spiritual Alps, and How we Ascend Them," "Joan, The Medium," and manj other Works on Psychic and Biblical Questions. — § — § — § 5 — 5 BUFFALO: Moses Hall & Co. CHICAGO: J. R. Francis, 40 Loomls Street, ULY DALE, N. Y.: Sunflower Publishing Company. — 1900. — Entered accoramg to Act ot Congress, in the year 1900 By MOSES HULL the Office of the Lil)rarian of Congress at Washington.D. C. TO MATTIE E. HULL, MY FAITHFUL COMPANION, WHO FOR NEARLY THIRTY YEARS HAS BEEN MY "TRUE Y^OKE-FELLOW" IN EVERY GOOD work; who has been my counselor in matters of business, my attendant and solace in hours of affliction; wpio has kyer had words of comfort for me in HOURS OF despondency; WHO HAS been AT ALL TIMES MY INSPIRATION IN THE DI YIN EST SENSE OF THE WORD; TO REV. A.J. WEAVER, THE NOBLE REFORMER AND RIPE SCHOLAR, WHOSE SOUL GOES OUT TO LABOR FOR HUMANITY, AND WHO WITH PURSE AND PEN HAS LABORED TO MAKE THE SPIRITUALIST TRAINING SCHOOL A SUCCESS AND WHO AS TEACHER AND ADVISER HAS BEEN OF INCALCULABLE ASSISTANCE TO THE SCHOOL; AND TO THE STUDENTS OF THE TRAINING SCHOOL "WHO HAVE URGED THE PUBLICATION OF THIS BOOK, IS THIS WORK OF MY HAND, HEART AND HBAD DEDICATED. PREFACE. I have many times given lectures or portions of lectures on the Bible or part of the Bible, in the light of the Higher Criticism, and invariably left my audience with a desire to hear more on the subject. This has caused me to feel that that portion of the world with which I happen to be in touch, need something of the kind here pre- sented; but the task of writing it out seemed so great for a man so busy as I have been that I shrunk from the work. I strove to ease my conscience by writing a series of thirty Bible lessons, most of them on the subject here treated, and sending them to such students as chose to take them through the mail. All this but whetted the appetite for more. In our Summer Training School at Mantua, Ohio, (now at Lil3^ Dale N. Y.) in the summer of 1899, 1 gave to such of our students as could take the time from other studies to listen to them, a series of twenty lectures on the subject. On the last day of the school those of the class who remained on the PREFACE. ground presented to me the following letter: Mantua, Ohio, July 14, 1809. Rev. Moses Hull. Dear Friend and Teacher: — The interest awakened by your instructive lectures on the Higher Criticism has been so intense that we, the members of your class earnestly request you to publish them in such form that not only we but the world at large may receive benefit from the invaluable instruction so freely given by you to The Spiritualist's Training School. Your class believes that by so doing you will add to scien- tific literature a work much needed by Advanced Think- ers of today, and one which will be of incalculable benefit to every one who will give it the attention it merits. Hoping that you will find it for your own as well as for the interest of others to publish the results of your long study and mature thought on this import- ant subject, we are with love and gratitude. Your Devoted Pupils, Mrs. S, Comstock-Ellis, Auburn^ N. Y S. A. NivER, Auburn, N. Y. Mary A. Ingalls, Philadelphia, N. Y. A. B. LovETT, Beulah, Mich. M ^ ^'^wRBACH, SejTnour, Ind. H. C. r... "Bennett's Switch, Ind. G. W. Way, Wii.. ng, W. Va, Victoria C. Moore, Dryden, N. Y. Nina E. Cole, Mantua Station, Ohio. It is unnecessary to say that this letter ex- pressing such appreciation of my work increased my desire to get about the work; this book is the result. PREFACE. Whether the book meets with general favor or not is yet to determine. That it was wanted by many is proved by the fact that nearly two thousand persons subscribed and paid for it in advance. It will be discovered that though I have made many quotations, not many of them have come from old standard authorities. There were two reasons for this; first, these older works are no better than those I have used; and second, this book has for the most part been written while en route, going from camp to camp, and generally lecturing or preaching once or twice each day. Under these conditions I could not carry a great library with me. I used mostly such authorities as were at hand, and in smaller compass. • Of one thing I am sure, no one will gainsay either my authorities or arguments. That this book may lead man^^ into the light and stiil many others to investigate further, and that heaven's blessings may rest upon the read- ers as they iave upon the v^riter is the eai'nest wish of The Author. Buffalo, N. Y., Feb. 15, i &00. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. [NTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS — WHAT THE BIBLE IS. Motives in Studying the Bible— Why this Book is Written— How to Read the Bible— Nothing Comes for Nothing- Wisdom; Its Benefits— Bibles Not Inspired— Holy Ghost; Its Work — Inspiration no Evidence of Truth — The Road to Great Thoughts— Dr. Talmage on the Bible— What is Inspiration? — Inspiration Natural— What is Demonstrat- ed Concerning Genesis — Talmagean Logic Proves Sin Di- vine — Changes in Manuscripts — How Erasmus got Por- tions of Greek Testament — Mistakes in Transcription — Some of the Changes in Revised Version — Search The Scriptures — How Jesus Reasoned — Is all Scripture Divine- ly Inspired? — More Sure Word of Prophecy. Page 17. CHAPTER II. WORD OF GOD— WHAT IT IS \0T AND WHAT IT IS. What the Westminister Confession of Faith Says — Dean Burgon on the Word of God — An Adventist Divine on the ' Same— Reply— What Samuel Thought— Word of God Through a Medium to Rehoboam — Word of God to John the Baptist — Word of God Quick and Powerful — Heb. vi. 12, in a New Light — Talent Hidden Under a Napkin — Word of God and Spirit of Prophecy — Words of God to and through Balaam — Pri- vate Sittings with Ezekiel in order to Oljtain the Word — Word of the Lord to the Child Samuel— Word of the Lord through ''Man of God" to Jeroboam — Famine for Word of the Lord — Word Compared with Scripture — Words of the Lord spoken through the Mouth of Tii-emiah — "Is there any Word from the Lord?" — Dreams CONTENTS. and the Word of the Lord — Word not in False Prophets — Word Exorcises Demons — Word in tiie Heart — Word among the Spiritual Gifts — Word of the Lord in Elijah's Mouth — Word of the Lord Against Four Hundred False Prophets. Page 39. CHAPTER III. HIGHER CRITICISM— WHAT IT IS. The word Criticism Objectionable — Esoteric Criticism — Criti- cism a Newly Discovered Science — A few Authors to Con- sult — The Facts Kept from the People — Rev. R. Heber Newton on Criticism — Change in Church Tactics on the Question — Rev. Mr. Cadnian and Rev. Washington Gladden on Higher Criticism — Mr. Newton's Further Remarks on the Same — Andrew D. White sets forth Old Opinions of the P.il^le — Dean Burgon on Inerrencj of Bible — Canon McNeile on the same — Extract from the Westminster Confession of Faith — Higher Criti-^ism and Shakespeare's Plays — The After Thought which i ade Jesus a God — Impossible Miracles attending Jesus' Birth and Death — Other Gods and Revelatio" — No part of the World Abandoned — Peter's Lesson — ..j Every Nation thought Itself Heaven's Favorite — Bibles not Finali ;es. Page 68, CHAPTER IV. APPROACH TO THE BIBLE. Pentateuch, Meaning of— Does Jesus Endorse the Mosaic Law?— The Writer of Deuteronomy and Jesus on Loving your Enemies — Two Old Testaments in Jesus' da}' — Apostles used Apocr-^nhal Books — Quotations from the Apocryphal Old Tr.wament — Books of the Bible quoted,, not now known to Exist— Did Moses write the Latin Words in the Pentateuch? Page 87. CHAPTER V. MORE OUTSIDE TESTIMONY. A FEW THINGS IN GENESIS. A Plurality of Goda — Word eight times translated Jehovah CONTENTS. is Ei^ht thousand times Translated Lord— Contradictions in First and Second Chapters of Genesis — ^Astruc's Dis- covery — The Pentateuch Young — A More Ancient Moses — Two Stories of the Flood— Same of Beer-sheba— Rev. R, Hcbcr Newton against luerrenc^ of Old Testament — A Quaker Scholar on Genesis — Sensible Remarks from Rev. John Chad wick. Page 99. CHAPTER YI. GENESIS TO JOSHUA. Isles of the Gentiles— No Gentiles until the Rebellion of the Jews under Jeroboam— Canaanites in the Land — Where Abraham pursued his Enemies — Before there reigned any Kin;< in Israel — "Unto this Day" — What Josephus thought of Exodus — Two sets of Ten Commandments — Who said Md^es was Great? — Could Moses have written Exodus xvi. 35 — Leviticus xviii written after the Nations were Spued Out — Leviticus xx written after Babylonish Cap- tivity — How Meek was Moses? Deuteronomy the Sec- ond Law— Extract from Mr. Chadwick— Solomon's Shortcomings Depicted by the Deuteronomist — A King Demanded — Samuel Astonished — Yahweh Surprised — Did Moses write the Account of his own Death? — Ancient Land Marks — Deuteronomy Compares Moses -wnth his Successors — Book of the Wars of the Lord — Opinion on Origin of Pentateuch. Page 112. CHAPTER YII. JOSHUA TO JOB. Thr TTrxateuch— The Other side of the Flood— Did Joshua Write about "The Elders that overlived Joshua?" — Dr. Briggs' Testimony — Other Historical Books — Writers of these Books knew little about Moses — Samuel, David, Solomon and others Knew Nothing of the Mosaic Law — Dr. Gladden on Mosaic Legislation — Gideon and Deborah Solar Myths — Was Jesus part Moabite? — Did Samuel Write the Books which l>ear His Name? — Events mostly post Samuel — Samuel and David Extolled at the Expense of Saul— Bible Samuel and the Sunday School Samuel; the difference— Saul Slightb' Mixed on David— The Two Books CONTENTS. of Kings but One — Written After Babylonish Captivity — Books of Chronicles Unhistorical — Chronicles, Ezra and Nehcmiah all One Book— Written l)}- a Priest— John Chad- wick's Comments — Chronicles Contradicts Other por- tions of the Bible — Ahaziah Too Old — Numerous Contra- dictions Between Kings and Chronicles — How Satans and Devils got into Chronicles — Dr. Gladden on these Old Writings — Alliance between Cyrus and The Jews — The Jews' Return — Ezra Compelled them to Forsake their Fam- ilies — Nehemiah's work under Artaxerxes — Book of Esth- er no Benefit to the Bible — Vashti the only Noble Charac- ter in this Book. Page 136. CHAPTER YIII. JOB TO ISAIAH. An Unsolved Problem — Old Opinions of the Book — Not an Israelitish Book — Prose Prologue and Epilogue — How the Book is Divided — Mr. Chadwick's Opinion — The Psalms — Reverence once Attached to them — Simply a Col- lection of Hebrew Hymns — How they are Divided — Five Benedictions — David Wrote only a few Psalms — Did Dav- id Write the Fifty-First Psalm?— Chad wick on the Char- acter of David— Some of the Psalms Written During the Babylonish Captivitj- — A Wicked Psalm — Many Wise and Good F*ro verbs — Sages and "Wisdom Books" — Who Wrote the Proverbs? — Discourse on Wisdom — Some Proverbs not Wise — Bad Advice on Drink — A Virtuous Woman- Book of the Preacher — His Effcjrts for Happiness — He Tries Wisdom, Mirth, Wine and Wealth— All Fail— Life Not Worth Living — Man Only a Beast — Final Solution — Mr Sunderland's Opinion — Ecclesiastes not Written by Solomon — The Canticles — Many Opinions — Insane Head- ings of Chapters — Not in Nehemiah's Canon — Resume' of the Poem — Chadwick's Comments. Page 161. CHAPTER IX. HAVE THE PREDICTIONS OF TH^ PROPHETS BEEN FULFILLED? The word Prophet; What does it mean?— Rev. R. Heber CONTENTS. Newton on Prophecy— A Medium of any kind is a Proph- et—Old Testament Meaning of the Word — Did Prophe- cy Fail?— How Prophesying is Done — Providence Journal nn Spiritualism — ^Jesus' Failures in Prognostication — F'^silure of the Resurrected Jesus' Predictions— Other Mis- tokrs made by the World's Supposed Savior — David's Tijrone — It is to be Occupied by David's Sons .as long as Si?n or Moon Exists — Exiinnnati-on of Supposed F'ullilled Prophecies — What it takes to fulfill a Prophecy — Mistakes of tiic New Testament in Quoting and Apph'ing the Old — The Vircfin Born Son — Piiine on Prophecy — Ahaz Con- quered — VVas Jesus to be Born in Bethlehem? — Several star-an!iounced Gods — Was Jesr.s called out of Egypt? — Rachel Weeping — Xazarite or Nazarene — Did Jesfts Die in Fuliiiiment ot Prophecy? — Were the Disciples Armed with Swords? — Who Bought that Potter's Field? — How did Jesus Die? — Was the Veil rent in Twain? — Did the Dead com^ out of their Graves? — Edward Gibbon on these Phenomena— A few of the Fulfilled Biblical Predictions— The Serpent's Prophecy— That made by the Woman of Endor — Some True Prophecies not in the Bible. Page 183. CHAPTER X. ISAIAH TO DANIEL. Isaiah Fra.q^mcntary— Change of Authors at Chapter Forty — When the First Isaiah Lived — Dr. Chad wick on Isaiah — Isaiah a Mosiac — A Voice fromCommentators^eremiah a Doleful Prophet — Divided into three Parts— Last three Chapters not Written by Jeremiah — Jeremiah's Predictions not Fulfilled — Texts to be Examined — Ezekiel Apocalyptic but not True — More of a Priest than a Prophet — Perhaps a Good Physical Medium — His Temple and City Never Built. Page 216. CHAPTER XL DANIEL TO END OF OLD TESTAMENT. When Daniel was Written — Not less than two Authors — Chadwick on Daniel — Encyclopedia Britannica on the Same — Fulfilled Before. Written — Five Reasons Why Dan- iel could not have been Written long Before Christ — Words CONTENTS. in Daniel not known long at the time of the Captivity- Relates to Antiochus Epiphanes— The Twelve Minor Pra phets— Hosea Among the Earlier Prophets— Did he Maf« ry two Naughty Women?— Only an Illustration— He Deir nounces Prophets, Priests and People— Pleads With Is# rael to Repent, and Promises Great Blessings— Amos nc? Prophet— Predictions co-ncerning David's Throne- Art Honorable but Misled Man— Did not like Ceremonies —Foretells a Famine— Obadiah of Little Importance— The Book of Jonah— Jonah not its Author — All in the past Tense— Did Jonah Think to Escape Cod by Going to Tarshish?— Nebetniah Knew Nothing of Jonah — Didactic Fiction — Who Believes!, etc. — Dr. Gladden on Jonah — Micah — When he Prophesied— Did he prophecy of the Messiah? — His Prognoses Failures — Against Assyria and Nineveh — Did he foretell Railroad Trains? — Rabakkuk's Prophecy — Zephaniah — Israel Suffered Justly — Maggai asks Zeruba- bel to Rebuild the Temple — He Promises Much — His Book Carelessly Edited — A Mediumistic Work— Threats and Promises About Jerusalem — None of Them True — Malacbi- Meaning of the Word — Considered Last and Least of all the Prophets. Page 226. CHAPTER XII. MATTHEW AND MARK. New TfiSTAMENT not one Book— Epistles Written First — ^vlark Probably the First Gospel Written — How it Origi- nated — Sunderland on the Origin of the Gospels — Gospels Written in Greek— How Mark got his Gospel — Mistakes in the Genealogy of Jesus — Coutradictmy Stories About the Blind Man, "'or Men— Difterent Stories About the Ill- ness of Peter's Mother-m-law~DilTerent Stories About the Superscription on the Cross— Matthew a Jewish Book— Who Wrote Matthew?— Mark— Perhaps the First Gospel — How Mark Begins his Record — Chad wick on Origin of Gospels. Page 253. CHAPTER XIII. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST LUKE. Many Gospels Written Before Luke— Luke Not an Bye-wit- CONTENTS. ness^Tells Only What he Believes— Growth From For- mer Gospels— How Stories Grow— The Case of St. Xavier — Luke Begins Farther Back than Either Mark or Mat- thew—Luke and Matthew Utterly Irreconcilable— Some of the Differences Stated — The Destruction of Jerusalem — Many Other Stories Found in Luke not in Other Gospels — Some of Luke's Miracles not Elsewhere Stated— Who Wept, Jesus or the Women?— Did Both Thieves Rail on Jesus, or did one Pray?— End of Synoptics. Page 268. CHAPTER XIY. THE LAST GOSPEL. "Nimbtts of Legendary Matter"— In What Does John Differ From Other Gospels?— Dr. Sunderland's Statement— Leg- endary Stories— The Author of John not Trustworthy as a Historian— Mr. Chadwick's Thouohts on John- Jesus' First Miracle— A Drunken Civilization— No Drunk- en Buddhists or Alohammedans— The Miracle at the Pool of Bethesda— Did This Miracle Occur?— Did Jesus Make New Eyes for one Born Blind?— Resurrection of Lazarus— Differences Between John and the Synoptics- John not the Author of Fourtn Gospel— Stories which have no P'oundation in Fact— Too Many Books— Not Written Until After Justin Martyr's Day. Page 27& CHAPTER XV. ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. Different Titles to this Book— Claims to have been Writ- ten by the Author of Luke— Not Written in the First Cen- tury-Why this Book was Written— Writer Claims to be a Ctnnpanion of Paul- The Luke of Acts Cotitradicis the Luke who Wrote the Gos[)el^Paul Contradicts the Writ- er nt Acts— Paul, in Galatians Exphiins the Controversy Kelvnod to m Acts xv.— Was this a Conference, or a (Juarrel?— Did Paul Circumcise Timothy?— Who Made the Speeches in Acts?— Did *Paul Retain his Judaism?— Paul Opposed to the Jewish Law— Chadwick Explains— Why Acts Wc-u Written. ' Page 291. CONTENTS. CHAPTER XVI. THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. New Testament a Grqwtli— Authenticity and Order of the Pauline Epistles — Matter of Authorship of Minor Im- portance— ^Paul sPoes Not Claim Plenary Inspiration — How Romans is Di.vided — Did Paul Thank God That the Romans were Sinners? — The "Gifts;" What They Are— A Good System of Ethics— Chapter Sixteen the Work of Another Hand, Page :.! 302. CHAPTER XYII. FIRST AND SECOND CORINTHIANS. Three Epistles to the Corinthians — Divisions in the Church- Corinthians Slack in Morals — Paul's Idea of Freedom — Pafll on the W^oman Question — Chapters Twelve, Thir- teen and Fourteen to be Read Together — Argument on the Resurrection of Jesus — His Evidence — The Logical Sequence— Baptized for the Dead — We- Shall not all Sleep — A few Words from Dr. Peebles — Whj- Second Corin- thians Was Written — Wants the Incestuous Man Restor- ed to the Church — His Belief in the Unseen — Exhortation to Bodily and Spiritual Cleanliness — Exhorts to Cheerful Giving— Renews his Quarrel with the Other Apostles- Accuses Them of Being False Apostles — Deceitful Work- ers — Paul's Pedigree — Spiritual Intromission. Page 311 CHAPTER XVHI. THE OTHER SUPPOSED EPISTLES OF PAUL. Galvtians Certainly Paul's Letter— The Aftermath of the Conference in Acts xv — A Conflict with the Jerusalem Apostles— Paul Not Ordained by Men— Paul States the Issues Between Others and Himself^ — Names James, Ce- phas and John as "False Bi-et>hren"— Paul Brings Serious Charges Against Peter— H agar and the Old "Dispensa tion— Ephesians Not Written by Pa'ul- The Book Mis- represents Paul— Was the Letter Written to the Ephe- sians?— Reasons for Doubting that Paul Wrote It— Good CONTENTS. Things in Colossians— Author Unknown— Reasons Whr Paul Could Not Have Written This Letter— Thessalon- ians an Old Document— Did Paul Write It?— Second Thes- salonians — Perhaps Post Pauline— The Pastoral Epistles — Chadwick on These Epistles — Dr. Davidson's .Opinion — Epistle of Philemon Sends a Man Back to Slavery — Who Wrote the Book of Hebrews? — Anti-Pauline— Makes the Old Typical of the New— Paul a Manly Man— Responsi- ble for the Spread of Christianity. Page 325 CHAPTER XIX. THE SEVEN CATHOLIC EPISTLES. Why Called Catholic?— Some of Them not General— James not Written by an Apostle — Written not to Christians but "to the Twelve Tribes"— What James vras it?— Luth- er's Opinion of this Epistle — A Good Reproduction of the Theology of Jesus — This Epistle Anti-Pauiine — When was First Peter Written? — Written -from Bab3-lon — Was this Bab)'lon Rome? — The Epistle more like Paul than Pete^ — Why it may have been Written — Second Peter— Its Genuineness Always Doubted — Was it an Enlargement of Jude? — Its Author Over-acts — Written After "the fath- ers fell Asleep" — Epistles of John Anonymoush' Written — Sunderland's Opinion— Xot Written b^' the John who was the Associate of Jesus — The Book of Jude— Hard Work to Get into our Bible — Was it Written by the Brother of James and Jesus?— Pertinent Remarks of Dr. Chadwick —Jude gets the Wrong Enoch. Page 342. CHAPTER XX. THE APOCALYPSE. Has At Least two Authors — Some Things Written Before the Destruction of the Temple — Son.^e in the Second Century-:- Wise Words from Dr. Martineau — An Apocryphal Era — Some of the Judaisms of the Book — Red'cTcLCjr Works Geiitiles in — Apocalypse not by the Author of Fourth Gosp-el — Thoughts from Chadwick — Wild Interpretations — It Contains no Prophecy of Distant Future — Tioie is at Hand — Why Written in Symbols — Chadwick's ^xplana- CONTENTS. tion— Dr. Gladden Explains Six-Hundred Three Score and Six — Conclusion. Page 352. CHAPTER XXI. HISTORY OF THE GANON, Canon, Definition of— Our Canon made up of Sixty-six Tracts — Canon not Closed with the Apocalypse — Canon began Under Ezra — Continued Under Nehemiah — Nehemiah En- dorsed Books now Lost — Facts as Stated bj Enc3''clopedia Britannica — Samaritans and Sadducees Rejected Prophets and Other Writings — Two Old Testaments — Light on the Subject from Dr. Gladden— Suspended on a slender Thread — Old Testament Divided into three parts — Only Twenty-two Books in Josephu.s', Canon — How the Num- ber Increased — Church P'athers used Apocryphal Books — Canon made under St. Augustiiie in 393 — Another in 397 — Another made in 154-(3 — Ours made About 1650 — Old Testament more Authoritative Among Early Christians , — Catholic Canon made at Trent in 154G — Anathematiza- tion of all w^lio Rejected it — Greek Church niade Canon in 1638 — Protestant Canon made at Westminster AV)out 1650 — Protestants Reject P\)urteen Books— Paul's Writ- ings Rejected by tlve Early Church — Constantine's Canon Rejected Several of our Books — Luther made his own Canon — Rejected Several of our Books. Page 362. CHAPTER XXII. IS THE BIBLE GOD'S REVELATION? A FURTHER REVIEW OF AFFIRMATIVE ARGUMENTS. The Demand and Supply Argument— The Syllogistic Argu- ment—Logic Spoiled by too much Logic — Reductio ad Ahsurdum Arguments — Why was this Revelation Given as a Secret to a Race of Brickmakers?— Was Jesus sent to do Away with a God-given Revelation?— Jesus Quotes the Old Testament to Dispute it— Old Testament could not be a Revelation to us — Testimony of Rev. T. W. Chambers and many Others— How Hebrew Bibles Were Written— Hebrew "loop-holes"— "Spots on the Sun" Ex- CONTENTS. plains— Hebrew People Ignorant-^ew Testament— Was JeSiis Educated?— Jes-us not Immediately Reported — Gos- pels not Original Documents — New Testament title mis- leading—Manuscripts Discovered since the Authorized Version was Published— Mistakes of Copyists— No Man- uscript Authority for our Version— How Jerome got in as a Bible Maker. Page 380. CHAPTER XXIII. OTHER SACRED BOOKS. Bible Makers erer at Work— Ours more than an Average Bible — A Few Bibles Named — The Number of Religionists in the World— Reverence for Other Bibles — Facts Stated by Prof. Jowett — i*rof. Max Muller on the same — ^Jewish Opposition to Septuagint Bible— Other Jewish Legends— Piiilo's interpretations— The Good in Other Bibles— Our Religious Fasts, Feasts, Forms and Cerenvonies long Be- fore Christ — Was Christianity drawn from Buddhism? — A Heathen Psalm — The God of Pythagoras — The Religion of Zoroaster — Extracts from Parsee Catechism — Prof James T. Bixby on Religion of Persians — Max MuUer's Opinion — Golden Texts from Confucius — No Drunken or Warring Buddhists — Buddhistic Missionaries — Did John and Jesus Study B'uhlhism? — Legends of the Birth of Siddhartha and of Jcs«}s — Rejoicings in Celestial and Terrestrial Na- ture — Asita and Sin>eou — Origin of the Gospel of Buddha — Similarities of Buddha and Jesus — Beatitudes of Bud- dha and Jesus — How Men are Defiled — Both on Lov- ing your Enemies — Similarity on Other Points — How Disciples of Buddha must Live — Buddha on Good and Evil — Ten Th'mgs to be Avoided — Five Buddhistic Com- mandments — Buddha On Thought — Socrates' Praj-^r — His Dying Speech — Some things from the Koran. Page 399u THE BIBLE ^ AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS — WHAT THE BIBLE IS. Motives in Studylnf^ the Bible— Why this Book is Written— How to Read the Bible— Nothing Comes for Nothing- Wisdom; Its . Benefits— Bibles Not Inspired— Holy Ghost; Its Work — Inspiration no Evidence of Truth — The Road to Great Thoughts— Dr. Talmage on the Bible— What is Inspiration? — Inspiration Natural— What is Demonstrat- ed Concerning Genesis — Talmagean Logic Proves Sin Di- vine — Changes in Manuscripts — How Erasmus got Por- tions 'of Greek Testament — Alistakes in Transcription — Some of the Changes in Revised Version — Searcli The Scriptures — How Jesus Reasoned — Is all Scripture Divine- ly Inspired? — More Sure Word of Prophecy. "How rcadest thon?" Luke x. 26. The Bible is read in various ways for various purposes, and from many different motives. Real criticism is a newly developed science. Until within a few years one party has made a kind of fetich of the Bible; it has regarded m^any say- ings in that book as true because they are there. Many did not seem to think that they were placed there because, in the estimation of their authors they were true, and that the3' would have been equall3^ as true and as divine if they had been found in any other book. Others have regarded the Bible as the production of a per- 16 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. verse and wicked priesthood: made with the de- sign of deceiving a supci;iwitiotis and ignorant pubHc. Thus, by each party — one praising and the other condemning the Bible, the truth has been almost entirely overlooked. It is hoped that the reader of this book v^ill study the Bible but not with the design to make any theor\^ true; nor of mak- ing it support any particular cult. The world wants the truth about that book; it also wants to find a natural and sensible interpretation of the truths and errors it m^.y contain. For . ...iiy hundred years an effort has been made to force the sa3angs of the Bible upon the world as infallible truths, but, in spite of all these efforts the w^orkl gets farther from that position ever^^ day. Others have tried to force tlie Bibie away from the position it holds in the world as a factor in our present civilization; this too has been without success. The Bible holds its place in the minds and affections of the people. It is regarded by a large majority of the enligntened w^orld as a wonderful, and on the whole as a good book; and the one who either ignores or condemns it is himself ignored or con- demned by the people. While people look to the Bible as they do, may it not be well for those who do their own think- ing to look into it and see wrhether, on the whole, when correct^ interpreted, it condemns or sus- tains the newer thoughts which are now forcing their way to the front? With the design of ac- quainting a few honest students with a correct INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS. 17 knowledge of the Bible, and a correct interpreta- tion of its teachings, this book is written. How Shall The Bible Be Read? There are various ways to read the Bible, one of which is to read it through a few times b^^ course. Of course there is much dry and unin- teresting matter found in it, but in no other w^y can one become familiar with all the events recorded in that book. One hour devoted to the study of it each day for sixty days is sufficient to read every word of the Bible. There are ie^w who cannot spare that hour. More than that much time is spent by nearly ever3^ one in some kind of games, gossip, or something possibl3^ not so innocent as either. The party who reads the Bible through once v/ill be likely to read many parts of it again. I have rea,d King James' translation of the Bible through b3^ course over thirty times; besides that I have read several other translations, including the Revised Version. I have also read the Ca.tliolic Bible which has many good things in its fourteen extra books, not in our Bibles. Ours is not a Bible, it was never called so un- til we get down centuries this side of the open- ing of the C-l.ristian era. The sixt3^-six tracts composing it were written bj' difierent authors in different countries aaid ages of the world; and the books, whether taken together or as a who.e, were simply called Scriptures. Those of what we call the Old Testament were regarded of as much more importance than the New, because the3^ were older; the world has alwa^'s looked backward to 18 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. good times, and for wise men, more than it has ever looked forward. * After a few centuries they were called Ta Biblia; or the Literature, or, perhaps more literally the Library. When the fight came on as to which was first, the church or the Bible — ^which ^^as founded on the other, the part^- believing the Bi- ble to be the foundation of the Church and not that the Church made the Bible, ceased to call it Ta Biblia, but began to c411 it Ton Bihlion; thus The Library became The Booky and, as m'ght have been expected, its importance was greatlj^ enhanced. The Bible should be studied by subjects. The Protestant Bible has sixty-six different books in it, with nearly as many authors. The Cat! > olio Bible has eighty books, and several more authors than the Bible commonly used by Protestants. Every one of these authors has liis say on a variety of themes. The only way to arrive at a consensus of Biblical opinion on any subject is to study the Bible by subjects — to find and compare all that each writer in every place, has to say, on any given subject. This will not be found to be the work of a day, a w^eek, or a year. No one would expect to ar- rive at an extended knowledge of any science by simply sitting down and reading a page on the subject on Sunday morning, or even by reading a page a day; yet thousands who think they re- gard the Bible as the most important book ever written, if they study it at all, read it in the way I have indicated. INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS. 19 This will not do; knowledge which is worth anything conies with labor. There is no ro^^al road to knowledge. That which conies too cheap- ly is esteemed too lightty. If the reader has not made tip his mind to sttidj^— to work for knowl- edge he had better now lay this book down and never touch it again. But no matter how much knowledge costs it al^ways pays. The Bible, upon the study of which we are now entering, sajs: **Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; if thou seekest her as sil- ver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God for the Lord giveth wisdom; out of His mouth coraeth knowledge and understanding. He layeth up sound wisdom f i the righteous; he is a buckler to them that walk uprightly. * * * Then shalt thou understand righteousness and judgment, and equity, j^ea, every good path." Pro v. ii. 3-6. No matter who wrote these proverbs; these sayings are almost axiomatic truths. He who would be wise must seek for knowledge as for hidden treasures, and search for it as earnestly as the miner searches for gold; the3^ must cry af- ter knowledge and understanding. The^'- must lay up wisdom. In chapter iii. 13-18, this same -writer says: "Happy is the man that findcth wisdom and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than ru- bies; and all things that thou canst desire arc not to be compared to her. Length of days is in her right hand; 20 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. and in her left hand riches and honor. Her ways ase ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are pea^c. She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her; and hap- py is every one that retaineth her." This statement is true; of all men in the world he is the happiest who gets the most understand- ing. What will not speculators endure for mer- chandise, and yet this writer says the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver and the gain thereof than fine gold. Length of days are liable to go with wisdom; but whether it does or not, the one who has the most wisdom- — the one who learns the most, has the most happiness. Ihe right kind of an education is company for its possessor in what v^'cuid c'-ber\Yi.se be hours of solitude. A ^se person cannot be isolated. The man or woman witliout knowledge is always bankrupt when alone. This wise man in his lecture to his son pro- ceeds as follows: "Get wisdom, gel understanding; forget it not; neith- er decline from the words of my mouth. Forsake her not, and she will preserve thee; love her and she shall keep thee. Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; and with all thy getting get understand- ing. Exalt her and she shall promote thee; she shall bring thee to honor, when thou dost emhrace her. She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace; a crown of glory she shall deliver to thee." Prov. iv 5-9. Any one will find it a help to commit to mem- ory and reflect on these wise proverbs. In chai>- ter iii, wisdom cries and understanding puts INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS. 21 forth her voice. In verse 11-21 wisdom is per- sonified as follows: *'For wisdom is better than' rubies; and all the things^ ..hat may be desired arc not to be compared to it. I^^ wisdom, dwell wnth prudence and I find out knowl- edge of Avitty inventions. The fear of the Lord is ta hate evil; pride, arrogancy, and the evil way, and the forward mouth do I hate. Counsel is mine, and soundi wisdom; I am understanding; I have strength. Byrne kings reign, and princes decree justice. By me- princes, rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth. I; love them that love me^ and those that seek me early; shall find me. Riches and honor are with me; yea,| durable riches and righteousness. My fruit is better^ than gold, 3'ea, than fine gold; and my revenue thau; choice silver. I lead in the paths of righteousness, and( in the midst of the paths of judgment; that I maj^ cf'.ase those that love me to inherit substance; andflj will fill their treasures." I take it that many who read this, may do so« with a desire to prepare themselves to w^ork pub^ licly for humanity. Hence, these preliminary:^ tl:otiglits. I will noTV come more directly to myj work by premising that the Bible is 1 Not An Inspired Book. A moment's reflection w411 convince the sensible reader that no book can be inspired. Men, w^o- .nen and children are inspired, but books never. Eiihu said: "There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them under- standing." Job xxxiii. 8. Peter said: *'Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghoat." 2 Pet. i. 21. The terms men of God, and man of God will alwa3^s be found in the Bible to 22 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. refer to mediums. The Holy Ghost, ' is alwaj^s Spirit power. If the reader will remember this, it will be of great assistance to him in under- standing the Bible. Nowhere has the Bible Iclaimed that its pages were inspired. To inspire lis to breath into; every breath is an inspiration. To inspire one with thought is, in a certain sense, to breath thoughts into the one thus in- spired. When Yah well breathed into man the breath of life, or of lives, as the margin reads, (see Gen. ii. 7.) then man ^tvas inspired. Jesus promised that v/hen he went away he would send another comforter — the Greek reads parakleton, that is, a helper. This comforter was a spirit; he called it, the spirit of truth. See Jno. xiv. 16, 17. In this same discourse he says, this comforter is the Holy Ghost, that is, the pneum.'zt- ica hRgion, good spirit, or, literally, spirit the good — and that its business should be to ''teach you all things, and bring all things to your re- membrance." Verse 26. He also says: ''But the comforter v^hich is the Holy Ghost, whom the father will send in my name, he shall teach ^you all things, and bring all things to jonr remem- brance, whatsoever I have said unto you." Thus, this inspiration was no.: to teach only, but to quicken their memory. In John XV. 26, Jesus refers to this comforter as a teacher, and its oiiice as being to enable them to teach. In Jno. xvi, 8 he said: "If I go not away the comforter w^ill not come unto you; but if I depart I will send him unto you, and he will reprove (convince) the world of sin, of right- INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS. 23 eotisness and of judgment." In verse 13, he says: "Howbeit, when he, the spirit of truth is come, he will gnide you into all truth." No^^ this comforter, or helper was inspiration — an inspiration, which, in some cases enabled its recipient to speak and to write. Neither the speeches nor writings were inspiration; they were both partial results of the inspiration of those thus stimulated. Inspiration is no evidence that the matter spok- en or written by the one inspired is truth. It is only evidence that thoughts are given him; and, in some cases ability to utter these thoughts. The fact that I am now putting the result of my inspirations on paper is no proof of their divinity or of their truth. I fully believe the writers of the Bible to have been inspired, a^sniost other ^vriters were, with tHe best thoughts they were capable of receiving; and that they gave out to the best of their abil- it^^ these inspired thoughts. Nor do inspirations always come from a super- mundane source; everything you see or hear has an inspiring effect on you. When 3^ou took your summer vacation into the country and beheld the magnificent trees; the streams of water and all the beauties of nature, they had an effect upon your sensorium which set you to cogitating. That was inspiration. These things bring com- posite, if not complex thoughts; hills brought one set of thoughts, rivers, lakes and trees brought others. Then the combination of scenes as a combination brought other thoughts. 24 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Now permit me to say that thoughts cannot jtimp a great distance. It is impossible for the infant of only a few days to jump at one bound into the thoughts of a statesman or a philoso- pher. It takes years to reach great thoughts, and the whole way is paved with lesser thoughts. As it is with individuals so it has been with the world; it took thousands of thinkers to pre- pare the world for such magazines oT thought as Sir Charles Darwin, Iluxlev and Alfred Russell Wallace. The intermediate t^xinkers as a\c11 as the intermediate thoughts between the lowest and the * highest, are necessary to hold the frame- work of thought, as well as of thinkers, together. If this is so the Bibles and the religions of the past -vv^ere quite as necessary in their day and generation as the thought of toda^^ is to the great future. As the past laid the foundation for the present, so we are now la3^ing the foun- dation for the greater thoughts and thinkers of the future. In laying a'fotmdation we dig deep; and the higher we are to build the deeper we dig for the foundation, so, for the superstructure we are to build we must lay a foundation in past ages. The Bible has its place in the iiearts of the peo- ple; ^^e must not too rashly tear it out. When it is discovered that our Bible is only one of the many Bibles of the past, and that it takes its place as a foundation stone with all like produc- tions of former ages and nations, then the Bible worshipers and the Bible haters v^ill all meet on one common ground. We, in this age of the INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS. 25 world, above all ages and peoples profess to be liberal and free; therefore it behooves us above all people to examine all, and to try to interpret in the light of today the voices of the past. I am sure our study of the Bible, if properly conduct- ed and diligently and persistently pursued will place us where we can be the teachers of teach- ers. With the understanding that we neither en- dorse nor condemn as a v^hole, the book called the Bible — a book which is at once so revered and detested, let us begin our investigations. The Bible is usually spoken of as one book, vv'hich it Is not; as though God made it in heaven and handed it down to us. With those who talk thus it is the infallible Word of God. Such will seldom tolerate an^^ criticism; Avith them the Bi- ble was infallibly written, unmistakably translat- ed and miraculousl3' preserved. On this subject Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage, in one of his. Taberna- cle sermons, has the following: "A London fog has settled down upon some of the churches and ministers, in the shape of what is called 'advanced thought.' Without a single exception all such deny the full inspiration of the scriptures. The book of Genesis is to them an allegor3% and much of the Bible a myth, and they philosophize and reason, and guess, and evolute * * * The Bible is no more cer- tainly- inspired than it has been divinely protected in its present shape. * * * During the last eight hundred years it would have been impossible to have made any important changes in the Bible. * * * The fact that the Bible, notwithstanding all the infuriate assaults on all sides, stands intact, is a miracle^ and a mirack isGod«" 26 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. This quotation might be lengthened almost in- definitely but more of the same kind ^vould neith- er add to the dignity nor weight of the argument of that class of theologues which is now being labelled and prepared for the shelf of the anti- quarian. Perhaps it -would not be amiss to reply to the supposed arguments of this great preacher seria- tim. 1. Something akin to a London fog has caus- ed ^'advanced thought" to deny the full, that is, the plenary inspiration of the scriptures. I need not here repeat the argument already made to convince my readers that no scripture, that is, no writings, can be inspired. ' Our Bibles can neither breathe nor think, therefore they cannot by any possibility be inspired. Men, women and children can be inspired according to their ca- pacity to take in what may be presented to their senses or to their inward consciousness. But as T. L. Harris said: "No two men in creation think aUke; No two men in creation look alike; No two men in creation are alike. No worlds, or suns, or heavens but are distinct And wear a separate beauty. Not a star But differs from the star that nearest seems And most congenial to its own pure state. And this unlikeness grows with all their growth. '^ Creeds dissolve the soul, Corrode and eat the fibres of the heart; INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS. 27 Make alabaster images ablaze With sunshine on great heaven's imperial height Seem dark and foul as fiends from Acheron. Creeds are the leaden weights dead corps-men wear When they are buried from lone ship at sea, Freighted wherewith thej' never rise again. Why should we cease to feed on luscious grapes Because the ass loves thistles? Why refuse To road with loving ejQ, more loving heart, The l)eautiful Evangel that our Lord Hath writ in diamond letters on the skies, In tracery radiant as his blessed smile, Because, in monasteries old and grim, Some lean celibate, feverish and a-thirst, With topS3'-turv3^ brain, forbids us to? The thirst of knowledge never made man bad. O how vain Creed-building looks to free and cultured minds! The swallow's nest of mud beneath the eaves Holds not the swan's golden-feathered brood. If thou wouldst make thj^ thought, O man, the home Where other minds may habit, build it large. Make its vast roof translucent to the skies, And let the upper glory dawn therein, *Till morn and evening, circling round, shall drop Their jeweled flames of sun-flame and of stars. Build thou that home upon a mountain top Where all free winds shall have space to blow. Inspiration alwa3^s takes the inspired one as be is; thus one nia3^ be inspired to pray^and another under the same circumstances may be 28 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. inspired to s^vear. Inspiration is natural alike in all nations and ages. Moses was undoubted- ly inspired; that was good for himself. Under that inspiration he may have said and written many things which were good for others. The inspiration was not in the things written, but behind them. That inspiration came to Moses*- a man; and it came to him because he was a man. Now we have men in this age of the world, and if mankind can be inspired why should in- spiration cease with one or even with one hund- red men. The trouble with Mr. Talmage is, that with him, as with many others distance lends enchant- ment to the view. He over estimates the inspi- ration vouchsafed to those who he supposes wrote the Bible, and under estimates that given to other ages and nations. While the Higher Critics admit that Bible writers were inspired, they do not believe that other nations were brought into existence to be abandoned. They, too, had their inspired leaders and prophets who held communion with superior intelligences. 2. Mr. Talmage urges that these preachers of "advanced thought," acknowledge that the book of Genesis is an allegory and some other portions of the Bible a myth. In this he is right. It is now demonstrated that the world did not come into existence six thousand years ago. No enlightened person now believes that the two contradictory histories of creation told in the first and second chapters of Genesis arc both true; very few believe that the INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS . 29 first woman was made of cue of man's ribs; that the eating of fruit brought death with all its concomitants into the world; that God made the world and then repented of having done it; that in a fit of wrath he destroyed it with a uni- versal deluge of water; that he repented of that and placed a rainbow in the sky lest he should forget himself and repeat that folly; that God came down to see the Tower of Eabel; that on another ocassion he came down to interview Abraham and Mr. and Airs. Lot concerning the destruction of Sodom; that Mrs. Lot turned into f^ pillar of salt because she turned back to see fthe destruction of her home. But as this will ^naturally come up in its proper place we will not (DOW follow it farther. 3. The Divine protection and miraculous pres- iers,^ation of the Bible in all its purity is a proof to the Kev. Mr. Talmage of its divinitj^ That argument Vv^ould prove sin divine. Sin is old; some power has preserved it unchanged. Has sin not been "assaulted on every side?" and :till it exists! Mr. Talmage himself has devoted his whole life — all his wonderful talents to its des- truction, but there it is, older than the Eib'e, and at the same time as-j-oung as at the last mc- ment. Sin is on the increase; how can this be, with all the batteries of the great army of clerg^-- men playing on it every moment for thousands of 3'ears. Is not this a proof of a miraculous power sustaining and protecting sin? A wise man once said "cursed is he that put- teth the cup to his neighbor's lip." A warfare has 30 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. been kept up against rum from that day to this; yet right in Mr. Talmage's own city, where he and hundreds of others fight it constantly, two dollars is paid for strong drink for every dollar that is paid for bread; shall we therefore say that whisky is divine, and protected by a mira- cle-working God? Brother Talmage your logic is weak! 4. There has been little need of changes in the Bible in the last eight hundred years; the changes before that time were quite sufficient. In the preface to the Unitarian Version of the New- Testament will be found the following: * 'There v^ere in the manuscripts of the New Testament one hundred and thirty thousand various read- ings." One would think that many changes made before the time mentioned by Mr. Talmage would be quite sufficient without having many great changes made in the last eight hundred years. The above is confirmed by the *' Companion to the Revised New Testament," a book issued by the revisers themselves. Among their reasons for re- vising the New Testament they give the following: "The number of various readings in the New Testa- ment has been differently estimated at different times. Nor could this have been otherwise. Every new MSS which has been discovered increases the amount, and every more accurate examination of already known MSS.s, tends to the same results. Hence, while the varieties of reading in the New Testament were reckoned at about thirty thousand in the last century, they are generally referred to as amounting to no less than one hundred and £fty thousand at the avesent dav." INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS. 31 The same authority, in giving reasons for alter- ations made in the New Testament sa^-s: "They are all to be traced to one of two causes — eith- er to a change in the Greek text which it was found necessary to adopt, or to change of translation w^hich strict fidelity to the original seemed to require." All this proves that if there has been little change in the text of the New Testament in the last eight hundred 3^ears there were plentj^ of changes made before that time. Again this same authorit3' sa3^s: "It, (the authorized version of the New Testament) was commenced about 1604, when the above named Greek texts were, in one form or another generally circulated. Which of them, we ask with eagerness^ formed the original from which our common English t;-anslation was derived? To this question the answer is, that Beza's edition of 15S9 was the one usually followed. It had been based on Stephen's edition of 1550, and that again had been from the fourth edition of Erasmus, published in 1527. Such is the parent of the authorized Version — Beza, Stephens, Erasmus. "What Manuscript authority, let us ask, is thus repre- sented? *** For the Apocalypse he (Erasmus) had on- ly one mutilated manuscript. He had thus no docu- mentary materials for publishing a complete edition of the New Testament. The consequenscs would have been that some verses would have been wanting had not Erasmus taken the Vulgate and conjecturallv trans- lated the Latin into Greek. Hence has arisen the re- markable fact, that in the text from which our author- ized version was formed, and in the ordinary uncriti- cal editions of the Greek, current at the present dav» there were, and are, words in the professed original for which no divine authority can be pleaded, but 32 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. which are entirely due to the learning and imagination of Erasmus." Once more, Mr. Talmage says: "The fact that the Bible, notwithstanding all the infuriate as- saults on all sides, stands intact, shows me that it is a miracle, and a miracle is of God." I again ask would not the logic of that statement make sin a miracle of God? Look at the attacks made upon it, yet it is here thous..Tids of years older than the Bible, and at the same time as fresh as the last new born moment. But I am led to ask, has the Bible proved it- self infallibly correct and is it intact? Then why do we have the Rev. Mr. Talmage's attempts to save it from ci'iticism? If the Bible was not somewhat vulnerable why do we have the Revis- ed Version thrown out as a "tab" to "advanced" *Vhale?" Mr. Talmage next acknowledges that tk^re are mistakes of copyists in the Bible, but they amount to nothing more than it would to drop the letter u out in spelling the word f-o-r-t-li. In no case do they change any doctrine. ]n answer to this I will again quote from the "Companion to the Revised Version." **A universal experience has proved that- nothing is more difficult than to get any large amount of mere copying done with absolute correctness. The tran- scriber may be careless or incompetent, and then, of course, his work will be badly done. No doubt this has given rise to not a few of the mistakes, which appear in manuscripts of the New Testament. Some of the copyists knew very little of what they were do- ing, while others disliked the drudgery; aud so from INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS. 33 ignorance or -weariness they fell into error. But even the most skillful and patient of them might easily go astray in the work of transcription." In another place this same * 'Companion" says: "A committee of the American Bible Society, in examining six different editions of the authorized version discovered nearly twenty-four thousand variations in the text and punctuation." **The changes amount to nothing," says the elo- quent doctor. Let us see. In Rev. \aii. 13, the Old Version represents John as saying: "And I beheld and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saj^ng with a loud voice, v^^oe, woe to the inhabiters of earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound." The New^ Version changes the angel to an eagle. The Old Version had talking snakes, and talking donkej-s; the New- goes one better, and has talking eagles. The Old, calls Jesus the Son of God; in many places the ncAv changes this phrase to ''The serv^ant of God." The Old Version has King Agrippa almost persuaded to be a Christian; The New^- has him sa}-; "With little persuasion thou w^ouldst fain make me a Christian." See Acts xxvi. 28. The three which "bear record in heaven" and the "God manifest in the flesh," in the Old Version, are among the things w4sely left out of the New. In the light of all this, how ridiculous are the words of Dr. Talmage about believing "the whole Bible," accepting the Bible "in its entirety," and telling his audience that, "from scalp to heel" he believes the Bible "from lid to lid." 34 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. I feel to beg the pardon of my readers for allow- ing a popular minister's popular sermon to thus switch me off from my argum.ent. A few words here on searching the scriptures cannot come in amiss. In John Y. 38, 39, Jesus said: ''And ye have not his word abiding in you; for v/hom he hath sent,, him ye believe not. Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are they which testify of me." The expression, *'his word," does not refer to the Bible, nor to any portion of it; but to an in- spiration coming to themselves. This v^ill be ful- ly proved in this and in subsequent chapters. This is generally taken as an admonition to search the scriptures; but it is not so. The Re- vised Version gives the correct rendering when it says: ''Ye search the scriptures because 3^e think that in them ye have eternal life and these are they ^vhich bear witness of me." The Emphatic Diaglott, said by Zion's Watchman, to be "the best translation of the New Testament extant," renders this text as follows: "You search the scriptures, because you think by them to obtain aionian life and they are those testifying of me." The Douay (Catholic) Bible is the same. Jesus is simply telling the Jews that they search the scriptures, because they hoped by reading them to get eternal life. He does not Gay they would thus get eternal life. He- sa^^s: "You search the scriptures, and they testify of me." I tell my audiences the same thing when I say you INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS. 35 are Bible readers, and the Bible proves Spiritual- ism. This text then, does not leave us to infer that Jesus regarded the Bible or any part of it as the infallible word of God; but, as they thought that in that way they w^ere to obtain eternal life, they were continually searching the scriptures which taught his doctrines and they did not know it. His contention was, whether right or wrong, that their own writings or scriptures would sus- tain him instead of them. Paul made a similar argument when he went to Athens, among the enlightened Grecians and quoted their own poets to them. He said: ''For certain of your own poets have said, 'for we are also his offspring.' " Paul did not urge that Cle- anthes the Sicilian poet was plenarily inspired. He only intended to say that he w^as preaching no new doctrine — that they would find his senti- ments uttered b\' their own inspired poets. So when we find that the Bible, which the church thinks was ma.de for its exclusive benefit, sustains our viev^'s it is well for us to inform it that its own Bible is on our side of the question. Christians believe certain things because they are in the Bible; we do not; we believe they are in the Bible beca.use the writers of that book thought the^v^ were true; and we believe them be- cause in our estimation they are true. They would be quite as true if they had never found their way into that book. While we are neither afraid nor ashamed to go alone, we are glad to find that some people,, even in the dark ages of 36 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. the world, saw and recorded these truths. It isf well to occasionally show those who think the Bible Avas made especially for them that they do- not believe the Bible; exactly as Jesus showed the Jews that they did not believe their own scrip- tures. In verse 45, of this chapter Jesus said: "Do not think that I will accuse you to the father;; There is one that accnseth you, even Moses, in whom' ye trust. For had you believed Moses ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings how shall ye believe my words?" In 2 Tim. iii. 15, 16, the writer says: "And that from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto sal- vation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profita- ble for doctrine, for reproof, for correction for instruc- tion in righteousness; that the man of God may be- perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." I would first call the reader's attention to the Tact that the word "scripture" here can by no pos- sibilit3'- refer to the New Testament. So if there \vas a thorough furnishing for every good work in the ''all scripture" here mentioned, it was the scripture which this man had studied from a child. The New Testament was not all ^vritten- ^when this was Avritten, nor -was any of it as yet compiled. These scriptures were the same that Timothy was instructed in, when a child, by his mother and grand-mother. 2 Tim. i. 5. Timo- thy's father was a heathen, and it remains to be proved that the scriptures he studied in his child- hood were not heathen scriptures. Now I will draw the attention of the student INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS. 37 to the fact that the word is, in this text is in italic letters. That means that there is no word in the original corresponding with it. The Re- vised Bible has it as follows: "All scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for con-cction, for instruction which is righteousness." This translation is very nearly correct. I think I like the Emphatic Diaglott better; it reads as follows: "All scripture divinely inspired, is indeed profitable for teaching, for cotivieiion, for correction, for that dis- cipline which is in righteousness." The word rendered scripture, in the text is graphe, and simply means writings. No transla- tion could be more literal than, ''All writing di- vinely inspired, is profitable." While this may liave included the Old Testament, it did not ex- clude any other inspired writings; and as before intimated, it could not by any stretch of the im- agination be made to coyer the New Testament, ^vhich was not yet written. With one more tQ:s.t the argument on this point must close. In 2 Pet, i, 19-21, the writer says: "We have also a more sure word of prophecy where- -unto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day star arise in jour hearts; knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private in- terpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man; but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." I do not think the ''more sure word of proph- ecy," here introduced, refers to any written proph- 38 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM, ecy. We shall yet learn, that the word, word refers to mediumship, or inspiration. The ''word of prophecy," refers to something which came to them individually; not to those who lived a thousand years before they were bom. Peter had just referred to the wonderful manifestation on the mountain at the time Jesus was transfigured^ and Moses and Elias both materialized, also he heard a voice. Here was witnessed the most of the phenomena which occasionally occurs today. This was proof to the writer that they had not followed ''cunningly devised fables." See verse 16. Then after describing the phenomena on the mountain, he says: "we have also a more sure word of prophecy." That is, to say, we are al- so inspired. We do not depend wholly on physi- cal manifestations, such as transfigurations, ma- terializations and voices, but we have something more sure— an inspiration— "a more sure word of prophecy." This prophecy is an inspiration which shines for us— about our feet— not some- thing which shone for our grand-parents. After that he refers to the predictions of old time which came by the same power — by the Ho- ly Ghost — the pneumatos hagion — that is spirit power. The fact is, there is not one prophecy of the Bible which was designed to apply to the distant future. It will be shown in the proper place that the most of the so-called predictions of the Bible were not predictions in the sense of being prognostications of the future; the prophets were not prognosticators. CHAPTER II. WORD OF GOD— WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS. What the Westminister Confession of Faith Says— Dean Burgon on the Word of God— An Adventist Divine on the Same— Reph'— What Samuel Thought— Word of God Through a Aledium to Rehoboam— Word of God to John the Baptist— Word of God Quick and Powerful— Heb. vi. 12, in a New Light— Talent Hidden Under a Napkin— Word of God and Spirit of Prophecy— Words of God to and through Balaam— Pri- vate Sittings with Ezekiel in order to Obtain the Word- Word of the Lord to the Child Samuel— Word of the Lord through "Man of God" to Jeroboam — Famine for W'ord of the Lord— Word Compared with Scripture. — W'ords of the Lord spoken through the Mouth of Jeremiah— "Is there any Word from the Lord?" — Dreams and the Word of the Lord— Word not in False Prophets — Word Exorcises Demons— Word in the Heart — Word among the Spiritual Gifts— Word of the Lord in Elijah's Mouth— Word of the Lord Against Four Hundred False Prophets. Let us next attempt to find out what in the Bible is called ''The Word of God," "Jhe Word of the Lord," "His Word," "My Word," "Thy Word," etc., etc. I shall attempt to show that such terms, in the Bible, never mean anything else than meditimship or its products 40 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. These terms are used every day in the pulpit, and every Sunday in the Sunday School, as belonging to the Bible. In order that the reader shall get the old idea of the word of God, before I give the new, I will make three quotations from ortho- dox and Adventist standard authorities. The first is from the Westminster Confession of Faith. In that document held by our fathers almost as sacred as the Bible, we read: **The authority of the Holy Scripture * * * dependeth wholly upon God, the author thereof; and, therefore is to be received, because it is the word of God * * * and the perfection thereof are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the word of God, and establish our persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authoritj^ thereof." Here the assertion is made again and again, that the Bible is the word of God. This is not an isolated expression. In proof of that, I will present a testimony from no less a church light than Dean Burgon, of the Episcopal Church. An- drew D. White, in his ** Conflict between Science and Theology," quotes the good Dean as follows: **The Bible is none other than the voice of Him that sitteth upon the throne! Every book of it, every chap- ter of it, every word of it, every letter of it is the di- rect utterance of the Most High. The Bible is none other than the word of God— not some parts of it more, and some parts less, but all alike— the utterance of Him that sitteth upon the throne— absolute, faultless, unerring, supreme,^' Let it be remembered, I am not making these quotations to show the extravagance of these THE WORD OF GOD. 41 men and creeds in asserting the faultlessness of the Bible, I am only illustrating the fact that all claim the Bible to be the word of God. I have one more quotation; this time from the leading light of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. I wish I had space to make the quota- tion three times as long. I will content m^'self with quoting a single paragraph. I assure my readers that quoting three times as much more would only show the ability of these people, who think themselves to be about the only people who know anything about the Bible, to deal in ut- terly groundless assertions. This writer, Rev. Alonzo T. Jones, sa3^s: "For anybody to profess to believe the Bible for what it is, — the Word of God, — and at the same time not allow that the Bible must be the leading book in all education, arc two things that will not hold together at alb The Bible claims for itself that it is the Word of God. It comes to men as the Word of God. If it is not accepted and held as the Word of God, it is no more than any other purely national book. To believe the Bible, is to accept it as tlie Word of God; for that is the only claim the Bible makes for itself. Not to ac- cept the Bible as the Word of God, is not to believe the Bible at all. The Bible, then, being the Word of God, is supreme knowledge and supreme authority up- on every subject that is true. There cannot be any truer knowledge than that of God; there cannot be any higher authority than that of the Word of God." Here, in about fifteen lines, the Bible is eight times said to be the word of God. Moreover this author says: ''The Bible claims itself to be 42 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. the word of God." Now no such claim is made by the Bible for itself. The reader need have no fear in ofiering a chromo for any place in the Bible where such a claim is made. This is an important assumption of the church, and leads to hundreds of other errors. It should be met thoroughly. The term ''Word of the Lord," occurs ninety- eight times in the Bible; "Word of God" forty-six' times; "Words of God" seven times; "His Word," thirty times; "Thy Word," forty-four times; "My Word," seventeen times. This makes a grand to- tal of two hundred and forty-two opportunities to prove the Bible to be the Word of God, and yet these ministers who have been asserting it for generations, cannot find one text that looks that -w^ay. In order to prove this I will refer to a few of the numerous places where these terms occur. The first time the expression the "Word of God" occurs in the Bible is in 1 Sam. ix. 27. There Sam- uel and Saul were taking a morning walk. The record says: "And as tliej were going down to the end of the Ci- ty, Samuel said to Saul, bid the servant pass on be- fore us, (and he passed on,) but stand thou still awhile, that I may show thee the word of God." It was not a Bible that Samuel designed to show him, but he did design to give him some tests. He immediately gave liini messages which proved to be tests. He there and then anointed Saul to be King of Israel, or as it is expressed, THE WORD OF GOD. 43 * 'captain of his inheritance." Then in verse 2, of the next chapter begin the communications which proved to be tests. 1st. He says: **\Yhen thou art departed from me today, then thou s>>alt find two men by Rachel's sepulchre in the bor- der of Benjamin at Zelzah; and they will say unto thee, the asses which thou weniest to seek are found; and lo, thj' father hath left the care of the asses, and sor- roweth for you, saying, what shall I do for my son?" This was a test; Saul's father was at that time sorrowing for him. 2nd. The next test was: "Then shalt thou go on forward from thence, and thou shalt come to the plain of Tabor, and there shall meet thee three men going up to God to Bethel, one carrying three kids, and another carrying three loaves of bread, and another carrying a bottle of wine; and they will salute thee, and give thee two loaves of bread; w^hich thou shalt receive at their hands." 3rd. "After that thou shalt come to the hill of God where is a garrison of the Philistines; and it shall come to pass, when thou art come thither, to the city that thou shalt meet a company of prophets coming down from the high place with a psaltry, and a tabret, and a pipe and a harp, before them, and thej' shall prophesy and the spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man. And let it be when these signs (tests) are come unto thee that thou do as occasion serve thee; for God is with thee." All this will be found in the first ten verses of the tenth chapter of First Samuel. These w^ere direct messages from the spirit world, and are 44 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. called the word of God. That they proved to be tests will be proved by verse nine, which says: **And it was so that w-hen he turned his back to go from Samuel, God gave him another heartj and all those signs came to pass." This scripture ought to be enough to alone settle the question as to what the Word of God is. But I am not writing for the multitude, but for diligent students who, it is presumed want to know all about the question; I will therefore j)ursue the. matter farther. It would be interesting, if \\^ had the time to spare, before giving the next evidence on this point, to give a histor3^ of some of the evidences of Shemaiah, the one who is here called **liie man of God;" it will suihce to say now that the term ''man of God," wherever it occurs in the Bible, with a single exception, means mediumship, I will say before introducing the next evidence that Rehoboam, Solomon's son, was king of Ju- dah; he undertook to reign over all Israel, as his father, Solomon and his grand-father, David had done; but his tyranny vras more than the people could endure; the result was, that ten of the tribes of Israel rebelled, and set up a kingdom of their own, with Jereboam as their king. Reho boam determined to go and whip them in, and got ready for the battle when a message was giv- en to the king. The record reads as follows: "But the word of God came unto Shemaiah the man of God, saying, speak unto Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, king of Judah, and unto all the house of Judah and Benjamin; and to the remnant of the THE WORD OF GOD. 45 people, saying, thus saith the Lord, ye shall not go up nor fight against j'our bretheren the children of Israel; return every man to his house; for this thing is from me. They hearkened therefore to the word of the Lord, and returned to depart according to the word of the Lord. I King xii. 22-24," Here this message coming to this Man of God, or medium, is once called the Word of God, and twice called the Word of the Lord. A Bible did not come to this medium, as those must believe who claim that the Bible is the Word of God. Only a spirit message came to this medium. Hence, the Word of Godr is mediumship. David who was himself a prophet, (See Acts ii, 29, 30.) always kept mediums around him. One of these mediums was Gad the seer, r.nother was Nathan the prophet, David had intimations in a vision that he was to build a temple; he sent for Nathan the prophet to speak w4th him about it; Nathan favored the move, but when he got off to himself then he had a vision w^hich told him differently. The record will be found in I Chron. xvii. 3, 4, and reads as f' ows: "And it came to pass the same night that the word of God came to Nathan, saying, go and tell David my servant, thus saith the Lord, thou shalt not build me an house to dwell in; for I have not dwelt in an house since the day I brought up Israel unto this day; but have gone from tent to tent and from one tabernacle to another." With this message we now have nothing to do; I am now only interested to show that the message is called **thc Word of God." Thus, in 46 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. every place in the Bible, the Word of God is a direct message to some one. In Luke iii. 2, 3, is the following: "Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came to John in the wilderness. And he came into all the country about Jordon preaching the bap- tism of repentance for the remission of sins." Now nobody believes a Bible came to John in the wilderness. But an inspiration, a medium- ship did come to him in that place. In the v/ilderness, where Elijah lived and passed away, John went for meditation and reflection; how- natural that Blijali should come to him and in- spire him under these conditions. John lived as Elijah did, dressed as Elijah did, went to the place where Elijah spent his days. He went there for development, so it is supposed; now what is more natural than that the spirit of Elijah should come to him? See Matt. xvii. 10, 11., xi. 13, 14. This is the Word of God, which came to John in the wilderness. In Luke xi, 27, 28, is another expression which connot be tortured into anj^thing else than that the Word of God is an especial message to an especial person. After a certain woman had pronounced a bless- ing on Jesus and his mother, he saj^s: * 'Rather blessed are they that hear the Word of God and keep it." That is to say, rather blessed is the one who is inspired, or who receives spirit messages, than the one who gives birth to a person who is inspired, as I am. In Heb. iv. 12 the writer savs: THE WOKD OF GOD. 47 **For the word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than an3^ two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." Here the Word of God is quick; that means liv- ing. The Greek literally reads living and power- ful. This does not apply to Bibles but to pres- ent, or living inspiration. More than that it discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart. If mediumship does not do that, what does? Saul could not deceive the woman of Endor. I. Sam. xxviii. 8-12. Mrs. Jeroboam could not deceive the old, blind medium, Ahijah. I Kin. xiv. 1, 5-7. Ananias and Sapphira could not deceive Peter. Acts v. 3, 9. The real meaning of this passage is, the Word of God, that is, medium- ship, is a living, energetic and cutting pow- er, discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Heb. vi. 4-6, makes this distinction still more plain. It sa3^s: "For it is impossible for those who were once enlight- ened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted of the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again to repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame." What could more plainly refer to a medium than the expressions, ''Were once enlightened," ''have tasted the heavenly gift," "were made partakers of the Holy Ghost," that is spirit pow- er; "Have tasted the good word of God," and * 'the powers of the world to come. ' ' Mediumship 48 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. is enlightening; it is a heavenly gift. It is many times in the Bible called a gift. See Rom. xii. 6. I Cor. xii. 7-11. Verses 27-31. Eph. iv. 11-14. The word "Holy Ghost," comes from two Greek words pneumataka and hagion. Pneumataka signifies spiritual, hagion signifies good or conse- crated. It means a good or consecrated spirit- ual power. Thus it can refer to nothing else than mediumship. The expression ''powers of the world to come," signifies powers of ages to come, and is so rendered in the Revised Version. Mediumship does hold in it the powers of ages to come. Now, if a person turns his back on his medium- ship it will leave him, and he cannot renew it. That is what is meant by this text. I have known many cases of the kind. I am well ac- quainted with a lady who had developed the power of taking spirit pictures. She was once upon a time plying her brush under spirit powei when she heard the gate open and shut; she looked up and beheld her minister coming; she thought it would not do to let him know any- thing about her newly developed power, so she threw a napkin over her v^ork, and went to I : her minister in. She distinctly heard a spirit voice say: "there, you have hidden your gift un- der a napkin." Her mediumship that moment left her and though she has carefully sought it with tears, it has never returned. "They crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh." This is an idiomatic expression. It signifies that they have sacrificed a divine power. Mediumship is THE WORD OF GOD. 49 called the Son of God. When Jesus was baptized, and when he saw the divine power descend and light upon him, as doves descend and light, he heard a voice say to him, (the multitude did not hear it,) "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased." Matt. iii. 17. That is, this power which you now see and feel is divine. That this is an idiomatic expression will be read- ily discerned by consulting the following scrip- tures. Jno. xvii. 12. Acts iv. 36. 2 Thes. ii. 3. Mark iii. 17. Though this subject is a little tedious, I feel that I cannot leave the matter without giving one or two more references to the Bible. In I Jno. ii. 14, the writer says: **I have written to you fathers because ye have known him that was from the beginning. I have written to you young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome ■the wicked one." Instead of "wicked one," the Revised Version reads "ye have overcome evil." These young men were mediums, and he writes to them be- cause they were inspired. Their mediumship abides or remains with them, or as the text reads, in them. In Acts xvii. 11, the writer says: **These were more noble than those in Thessalonaca, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the scriptures daily whether these things were so." Here they were comparing the word with the scripture in order to find out whether the mes- sage received through the word would correspond with scripture. 50 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. The subject of the Word, in its various connec- tions is very important; it is one on which the whole world has gone wrong. This is one of the reasons why I prefer to be more thorough in its discussion than I otherwise would. The next text to which I will refer is in Rev. i. 2 and reads as follows: "Who bear record of the word of God, and of the the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things which he saw." John could not bear record of a Bible, but he could testify to Spirit communion with himself, a-nd to his having witnessed the mediumship of others. Verse 9, of this chapter says: "I John, who also am j-our brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of. Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ." John was not banished to this dreary island for having a Bible in his possession, but for his tnediumship. He here connects the Word of God with the testimony of Jesus. Revelations xix. 10, plainly tells us that *'the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." In II Tim. ii. 9 the writer who has been suppos- s the recon SI ruction must go on. Delay in pulling down may make building up the old struct- ure impossible. "As the story of past civilizations sadly shows, the gulf between popular superstitions and the thoughts of scholars may widen until no life can span it, and religion perishes in it. It seems to me that the time has come when the pulpit must keep no longer silence. Its silence will not seal the lips of other teachers. Books and papers are everywhere forcing the issue upon our generation. Men's minds are torn asunder, their souls are in the strife." ^-Right and Wrong uses of the Bible, Preparatory to showing the new views of the Bible, I wdll make a few quotations to show from what the new departs. In Andrew D. White's Second Volume, pages 307-308 I find the following w4th foot notes telling where he finds his authorities. ''Eminent Lutheran divines in the Seventeenth Cen- tur3', like Gerhard, Colovius, Cocceius, and multitudes of others, wrote scores of Quartos to further this sys- tem, and other branches of the Protestant Church em- ulated their example. The pregnant dictum of St. Augustine — 'Greater is the authority of scripture than all human capacitj-' — was steadily insisted upon, and toward the close of the Seventeenth Century, Yoctius, the renowned professor of Utrecht, declared, 'Not a word is contained in the Holy Scriptures, which is not in the strictest sense inspired, the very punctuation not expected,' And this declaration was echoed back from multitudes of pulpits, theological chairs and coun- cils. * * * To increase this vast confusion, came, in the older branch of the Church, the idea of the 78 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. divine inspiration of the Latin translation of the Bible, ascribed to St Jerome— the Vulgate. It was in- sisted by Catholic authorities that this was as com- pletely a product of divine inspiration as was the Hebrew original. Strong men arose to insist even that where the Hebrew and the Latin differed the Hebrew should be altered to fit Jerome's mistransla- tion, as the latter, having been made under the new dispensation, must be better than that made under the old." On page 369, Mr. White quotes and comments as follows: "In 1861 Dean Burgon preached in Christ Church Cathedral as follows: 'No sirs, the Bible is the very utterance of the eternal; as much God's word as if high heaven were opened, and we heard God speaking to us with human voice. . Every book is inspired alike and is inspired entirel3^ Inspiration is not a difference of degree, but of kind. The Bible is filled to overflow- ing withthe Holy Spirit of God; the books of it, and the words of it and the very letters of it." *'In 1865 Canon McNeile declared in Exeter Hall that 'we must either receive the verbal inspiration of the Old Testament or deny the veracity, the insight, the integrity, of our Lord Jesus Christ as a teacher of divine truth." "As late as 1869 one of the most eloquent pulpit orators in the Church of England, Canon Liddon, preaching at St. Paul's Cathedral, used in his fervor the same dangerous argument: 'That the authority of Christ himself and therefore Christianity, must rest on the Old View of the Old Testament; that since the founder of Christianity, in divinely recorded utteran- ces, alluded to the transformation of Lot's wife into a pillar of salt, to Noah's ark and the flood, and to the THE HIGHER CRITICISM— WHAT IT IS. 79 sojourn in the whale, the biblical account of these must be accepted as historical or that Christianity must be given up altogether." To further show the old opinions which are now rapidly being relegated to a deserved obliv- ion I quote the following from the Westminster Confession of Faith, once adopted by all Evan- gelical Churches. A want of space compels me to greatly abridge. "The light of Nature and the works of creation and providence * * * are not sufficient to give that knowl- edge of God and of His will which is necessary to sal- vation. *** The authority of the Holy Scripture de- pendeth wholly upon God, the author thereof; and therefore is to be received, because it is the word of God. * * * The perfection thereof arc arguments wherebj' it doth abundanth^ evidence itself to be the word of God, and establish our persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof." "The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in scripture, or by good and necessary consequences may be deduced from scripture, utito which nothing is at any time to be added by new revelations of the spirit." "Being immediately inspired by God, and bj^ his singular care and providence kept ivre in all ages * * in all controversies of religion the church is finally to appeal to them." Here, the light of nature and the w^orks of creation are not sufficient, so it seems necessar)^, as Rev. Dr. Newton said, "That a book be let down out of the skies, immaculate, infalli- ble, oracular." Such is the Bible, ** which doth 80 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. abundantly evidence itself to be the word of God," '* of infallible truth, and divine authority." This is not all but the Bible contains ''the whole counsel of God," — ''all things necessary for his own glory — man's salvation." It is all "ex- pressly set down in the scriptures," and "unto this nothing is at any time to be added by new revelations." This cuts off all communications between God and this world in the future. This may be well as God has kept the Bible "pure in all ages." Could language be stronger or more inconsist- ent than this, until within the last score of years endorsed by all Christians, and now en- dorsed by nine-tenths of them? It amounts to this: God once upon a time came down from heaven and gave a few Jews a book — all that man needed, or ever would need. God had de- termined to never speak again, or allow any one else to speak by his authority; and no knowledge outside of, or beyond what was con- tained in that book could under any circumstan- ces be tolerated. The "awful state of human- ity," coming as a result of an effort to taste the fruit of the forbidden tree of knowledge has ever been held before the world as a solemn warn- ing against seeking knowledge from forbidden 'C5 sources. As before remarked, this doctrine of the West- minster Confession of Faith, was once the doc- trine of Universal Christendom. The Higher Criticism began to wash the sandy foundation THE HIGHER CRITICISM— WHAT IT IS. 81 from tinder the church. This caused some of the wiser and more bold Christians to see that thej were carrying a load "which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear." While hundreds of pages could be filled with such quotations as I have made, I could, if I were so disposed, find assertions quite as extrav- agant made by the people whom the world calls Infidels, many of whom supposed that the Bible is a forgery of wicked priests, who, perhaps had no other motive than to deceive the people and get their money. The Higher Criticism puts all sacred books in- to the same crucible and kindles the same fire under each of them. After burning the drpss out of all of them alike, it finds in each of them much pure silver left — much without which the -world w^ould be poor indeed. The debate on Shakespeare and his writings will never settle until the Higher Criticism does the w^ork. Some iconoclasts have gone so far as to deny that such a man as William Shakespeare ever existed; others admit that he existed, but argue that he w^as only an inferior actor at best — a drunken loafer; and that he never could have written the plays which go by his name. A few years since an able and popular maga- zine had a symposium in its columns on the sub- ject of "Who wrote Shakespeare's plays?" which lasted a whole year. W^hether the people were any "wiser after having read these articles is a question. I will say this; the application of the 82 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. principles of the Higher Criticism to the writ- ings of *'The Bard of Avon," has led nearly, if not quite all deep students,. who had no axes to grind, to say, yes, Shakespeare lived; he was an actor, and wrote plays; but it w^as many years before his plays Avere printed. The tastes of the world had greatly changed in that time; so much so that those who put Shakespeare^s plays on the boards, found it necessary to change some passages in them so as to adapt them to the popular tastes of the time and locality of their production before the people. Thus, per- haps, whole stanzas -were taken out and others added; among them an occasional paragraph which could not by any possibility have been written by the great bard. Thus has it been with the Bible; there is little room to deny the existence of the man of Naz- areth, yet hundreds, and among them honest, learned and able men have satisfied themselves and others that he never existed. Long after Jesus' death the thought occurred to some of them who thought they believed in him, that as other nations had been supposed to produce children born of the friendly relation which existed between gods and girls it would not be a bad thing to make a semi-god of Jesus; so the dream of Joseph, the probable father of Jesus, (seejno. i. 45,) was invented and put into certain manuscripts nearly one thousand years before the art of printing prevented such interpolations. THE HIGHER CRITICISM — WHAT IT IS. 83 As stars had told of the births of Zoroaster, Brahma and Buddha, Moses, the Caesars, and other great men; and as it was not at that time known to be impossible for stars to behave in that manner, it became necessary to interpo- late the story about the queer behavior of the Star of Bethlehem. The story of the slaying of the children of Bethlehem, and the surrounding country every one who thinks at all knows to be impossible. All these things and other mir- acles represented as having occurred in connection with the birth of Christ can be demonstrated to not have occurred at all. Many were led to reject the truths hidden in this chaff. As an in- stance, connected with the death of Jesus, who can believe that the veil of the temple could have been rent in twain from the top to the bottom, and the Jews who were in the temple at that very moment, and every day from that time until its destruction by Titus, over a quar- ter of a century afterwards, never have heard of the mishap that occurred to the veil. The fact is, these stories have been proven to be after- thoughts. The result of all this was, that many good and wise people, thinking those stories to be part of the real history of the Naz- arene, and not knowing but that they must re- ceive or reject the whole together, have been led to deny the existence of such a person as Jesus. From this it was not a great step to that con- dition where honest and somewhat educated 84 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. men felt it their duty to overthrow faith in a book which contains such stories. It has been urged that there w^ere many other pretended revelations besides our Bible, and sev- eral other divine personages bom into the world besides the man of Nazareth; that many of those revelations w^ere given to a more progres- sive and vdse people than the Hebrews; the question is often asked: "Why should the Hebrews have the only true Revelation? Why should all the rest be frauds, and this alone be true? In short, why should a just God create a world and then abandon all of it except a few Hebrew brick makers?" These questions are pertinent, and cannot be sneered down. They involuntarily ask them- selves, and demand an answer. Yet those who use the Bible as a fetish— as God's only, and in- fallible revelation, cannot answer them. In answer to the above questions I will state that God has not abandoned any part of the world; spirit communion, once supposed to be God's communication, is as universal as human- ity. There has never been a people who have not enjoyed communication vi^ith spiritual beings, and have hence supposed themselves the particular favorites of heaven. Revelations and Bibles have been as jealous of each other as silly people -are today. This matter has gone so far that in former times, * 'God's people," no matter what nation or what God it was, would not defile themselves THE HIGHER CRITICISM— WHAT IT IS. 85 by eating with other people. Paul told his bretheren of certain persons with whom they must not cat. I Cor. v, 11. He also blamed Peter for eating with the Gentiles and then not allow- ing his bretheren the same privilege. Gal. ii. 11, 12. Buddhists and Brahmins must on no account eat with others not of their cult. The Chinese believe the "Flowery Kingdom" to be the only one that God recognizes; and most of them abhor the ignorant barbarisms of Caucasian* and other races. Spiritualism teaches, and the Higher Criticism emphasizes what Paul quoted from the heath- ens, and the comments he made when he said: "For certain of your own poets have said, 'for we are also his offspring.' God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." See Acts xvii, 26-28. Peter, when he first began his work, thought God knew no other people, nor cared for any others than the Jews. And, of course there could be no salvation except through the Jewish sav- ior. In Acts iv. 12, he said: "Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved." After a while he learned that "God is no respecter of persons, but that in every nation, he that feareth God and work- eth righteousness is accepted of him." Acts x. 34, 35. The flow of inspiration is always from heaven towards earth; certain spirits have au interest S6 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM in those left behind, and the gods have generally worked for their own people and for none others: hence every nation has supposed itself the pecu- liar favorite of heaven. As each god worked for his own peculiar peo- ple, and was jealous of any interference from other gods who might obtrude their presence and undertake to take their business from them it was natural that their people should regard themselves as the only people with whom their god would deal. Even when they learned of the existence of other gods, and of their revelations, it was their duty to think theirs the very best of all gods, and their revelations vsriser and better than any other gods could impart. It now becomes the duty of those having the various cults in charge, to strive by argument and by sword to bolster up their own religion and to cry all others down. All mediums were, perhaps, inspired up to their capacity, or at least to their development, and all Bibles contain the best truths that the people to whom they were given at the time could receive. Thus as we examine Bibles wc will receive them, not as finalities, but as step- ping stones towards Bibles yet to be written. This will bring the readers to where they are ready to investigate the question **\Vho wrote the Bible?" CHAPTER IV. APPROACH TO THE BIBLE. Pentateuch, Meaning of— Does Jesus Endorse the Mosaic Law? — The Writer of Deuteronomy and Jesus on Loving your Enemies — Two Old Testaments in Jesus' day — Apostles used Apocryphal Books— Quotatior.s from the Apocr^'iDhal Old Tcstanient- Books of the Bible quoted, not now known to Exist — Did Moses write the Latin Words in the Pentateuch? I HAVE SAID the Higher Criticism is a criti- cism from within, or from the inside. I think by this time the reader is prepared to approach that work. We will begin with a few general dissertations on which is commonl3' called the Pentateuch; that is, the first five books of the Bible, said to be the five books of Moses. The word Pentateuch means live-fold book. Most of the late writers include the book of Joshua, and call it the Hexateuch, or six-fold book. It has been argued that Aloses must be the author of these books, and that the^^ must be divine, as Jesus and the apostles everywhere recognized them as such; and to invalidate their authorship would be to invalidate the authority of the world's Savior. 88 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. The answer to this is that Jesus and the apostles quoted from them, and received them as the Spiritualists do today, neither necessarily endorsing or rejecting them. If a truth happened to be found in them Jesug endorsed it; so, if he found something which seemed to him to be erroneous he rejected it. In his Sermon on the Mount he quotes many commandments . for no other purpose than to express his dissent from them. Rev. Washington Gladden says: "Our Lord nowhere ssljs that the first five books of the Old Testament were all written by Moses. Much less does he teach that the contents of these books are all equally inspired and authoritative. Indeed he quotes from them several times for the express purpose of repudiating their doctrines and repealing their leg- islation. In the ver3^ forefront of his teaching stands a'stern array of judgments in which undoubted com- mands of the Mosaic Law are expressly condemned and set aside, some of them because they are inade- quate and superficial, some of them because they are morally defective. *Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time' thus and thus, 'But I say unto you' — and then follow words that directly con- tradict the old legislation. After quoting two of the commandments of the Decalogue, and giving them an interpretation that wholly transforms them, he pro- ceeds to cite several old laws from these Mosaic books, in order to set his own firmly against them. One of these also, is a law of the Decalogue itself. There can be but little doubt but that the third commandment is quoted and criticised by our Lord, in this discourse. That commandment forbids, not chiefly profanity, but APPROACH TO THE BIBLE. 89 pcrjur}^; by implication it permits judicial oaths. And Jesus expressly forbids judicial oaths. .'Swear not at all.' I am aware that this is not the usual inter- pretation of these words, but 1 believe that it is the only meaning the words will bear. Not to insist upon this, however, several other examples arc given in tbe discourse concerning which there can be no question." Jesus ({uoted Moses, or rather the writer of Deuteromony on diA^orce. He refers to Deut. xxiv. 1,2, which told on what terms and how a man could divorce an unreasonable wife; but Jesus referred to this in order to tell his friends that he had a different opinion from this writer. In Matt. V. 31, 32, he says: "It hath been said, whosoever shall put aw^ay his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement; but I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery; and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery." If Jesus quotes the sixth commandment, he quotes to improve it, and he informs his ^^iends that whosoever hates his brother without cause has violated its spirit. See Matt. v. 21, 22. When Jesus quotes "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," he quotes it because he does not endorse it. He follows all ^hese quotations with the disjunctive conjuacdon *'but." See verses 38, 39. It is no part of my present work to say who was right, Jesus, or the author of the comm^and- ments he quoted. All that is necessary to do now is to show that Jesus took a different view 90 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. of things from the writer or writers he quotes. Jesus said: ''love your enemies," but the Penta- teuch writer had said, in Deut. vii. 1-4. "When the Lord, thy God shall bring thee into the land, whither thou gi st to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mighter than thou; and when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them; thou shall make no covenant with them, nor show mercy to them.'' I submit that this does not look much like loving one's enemies, and doing good to those who despitefully used them. The old theory which Jesus opposed is stated still stronger in Deut. xxiii. 3-6. Here it is. **An Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to their tenth genera- tion shall they not enter into the congregation of the Lord forever. * * * Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days forever." This is enough to show that the two sets of views, one put into the Pentateuch by somebody and the other held by Jesus, were utterly irreconcilable. It is argued that Jesus urged the Jews to search the scriptures; and, that Paul told Timo- thy that ** all scripture was written by inspira- tion of God." In answer to that I will invite the reader to carefully rft-read the first chapter of this book, where this matter is fully explained. APPROACH TO THE BIBLE. 91 It may be well to say here, that there was in Jesus' day two collections of the Jewish Script- ures, that is, of what we now call the Old Tes- tament. I cannot state the matter more clearly or concisely than Dr. Gladden has done. On pages 8-10, of ''Who Wrote the Bible? He say- "At the time when our Lord was on the earth, i ae sacred writings of the Jews were collected in two dif- ferent forms. The Palestinian collection, so called, was written in the Hebrew language, and the Alexandrian collection, called the Septuagint, in Greek. For many 3^ears a large colony of devout and learned Jews had lived in Alexandria; and as the Greek language was spoken there, and had become their common speech, they translated their sacred w^ritings into Gi^jk. This translation soon came into general use, because there were everyw^here manj' Jews who knew Greek well enough but no Hebrew at all. When our Lord was on earth, the Hebrew was a dead language; it may have been the language of the temple, as Latin is now the language of the Roman Catholic Mass; but the common people did not understand it; the vernacular of the Palestinian Jews was the Aramaic, a language similar to the Hebrew, sometimes called the later He- brew, and having some such relation to it as the English has to the German tongue. * * * At any rate the change had taken place before the coming of Christ, so that no Hebrew was spoken familiarly in Palestine. When the Hebrew tongue is mentioned in the New Testament it is the Aramaic that is meant, and not the ancient Hebrew. The Greek, on the other hand, was a living language; it was spoken on the streets and in the markets everywhere, and man3' Jews under- stood it almost as well as thev did their Aramaic 92 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. vernacular. ♦ * » The Greek version of the scriptures was, for this reason, more freely used by the Jews even in Palestine than the Hebrew original; it was from the Septuagint that Christ and his apostles made most of their quotations. Out of three hundred and fifty cita- tions in the New Testament from the Old Testament writings about three hundred appear to be directly from the Greek version made at Alexandria." This needs no other comment than to say it is true, and that no scholar will deny it. In Jesus' day, what is now called the Canon of the Hebrew Old Testament was not closed. Many books were in dispute, and the matter was not settled until a full half century after Jesus had left the world. While this was not true of the Alexandrian or Greek versions, called the Septuagint, which was the one Jesus quoted ^ it is true that that version contained the Apoc- ryphal portion of the Old Testament which all Protestants now reject. It is also true that the apostles quoted from the Apocryphal books with as much confidence that they were quoting from ''holy writ" as when they quoted from other books. Dr. Gladden says. "They handled these scriptures, quoted from them; found inspired teaching in them; but the scriptures which they chiefly handled, from which they generally quoted, in which they found their inspired teaching, contained, as we know, worthless matter. It is not to be assumed that they did not know this matter to be worthless; and if they knew this, it is not to be asserted that they intended to place upon it the stamp of their approval."— "TT^/ia Wrote the Bible,'' p. 29. APPROACH TO THE BIBLE. 93 I said the Apocryphal books were quoted by the apostles. Jude in verse 14, quotes from the book of Enoch as follows: "And Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these things, saying, behold, the Lord cometh with ten Thousand of his saints." How Jude should get the Enoch who lived and wrote only two hundred years before his own day mixed with the one who w^as the seventh from Adam is hard to tell. This serves to show the liability of Bible writers to err. James i. 9, says ''Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak." The book of Sirach says: "Be swift to hear," and in another place the same book says: "Be not hasty with thy tongue." Keb. i. 3, is taken with only the change of one or two words from Wisdom of Solomon, vii. 26. Ro. ix. 21, says: "Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and anoth- er unto dishonor." Now turn to Wisdom of Solomon, xv. 7, and you can read: "For the potter tempering soft earth fashioneth every vessel with much labor for our service; yea, of the same clay maketh he both the vessels that serve clean uses, and likewise also such as serve to the con- trary; but what is the use of either sort the potter himself is the judge." I Cor. ii. 11, says: "For what man knoweth the things of man save the spirit of man which is in him? even so, the spirit of God knoweth no 94 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. man, but the spirit of God." Now turn to Judith vii. 14, and read: "For ye cannot find the depth of the heart of man, neither can ye perceive the things that he thinketh: then how can ye search out God that hath made all these things, and know his mind, or comprehend his purpose? Nay, my bretheren, provoke not the Lord our God to anger." Nobody pretends to believe that we have the books of Moses as written by Moses. All ac- knowledge that these books were lost, but many good Christians claim that they were found again in clearing away the debris preparatory^ to rebuilding the Temple, described in II Kin. xxv. and II Chron. xxxiv. Others claimed that Ezra re- wrote the Pentateuch b3^ inspiration. This idea is sustained by the Apocrapha, in II Esdras xiv. 1-3, where an angel appears to Esdras, (Ezra) in a bush. He purports to be the same angel who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, and \vho was Avith Moses in the wilderness. This angel gives Esdras a drink of something which thoroughly inspires him and enables him to dictate to his scribes two hundred and four books. Most of these books however, were not written. The books which v^ere written were supposed to be a redaction of the law of Moses. See II Esdras xiv. 37-47. Before getting too deep into this subject I will say that our Bible refers to and quotes more fre- quently from books not now known to be in existence than from others. I do not now think APPROACH TO THE BIBLE. 95 of but one place where the prophets refer to the law of Moses; that is in Mai. iv. 4. * 'Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I command- ed unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes ^nd judgments." This will be commented on later. I will refer to a few places where books are mentioned which are not in our Bibles. I will quote them and ask the reader to try to ascer- tain how our Christian neighbors reconcile them with the statements in Mr. Talmage's sermon before quoted or with the Westminster Confes- sion of faith, where it speaks about our Bibles "Being immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages." In Num. xxi. 14, 15, w^e read: * 'Wherefore it is said in the book of the Wars of the Lord, what he did in the Red Sea and in the books of Arnon." In fact several verses are here quoted from this book of the "Wars of the Lord." In Sam. i. 17, 18, is the story of David's lamentation over Saul and Jonathan, and the fact that he bade them teach the children the use of the bow, and adds: "It is written in the book of Jasher." I Chron. xxix. 29 says: "Now the acts of David the king, first and last, be- hold, they are written in the book of Samuel, the seer, and in the book of Nathan the prophet, and the book of Gad, the seer." It strikes me that a book written by either of these three gentlemen would be of immense im- 96 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. portance; but neither of these books have been preserved, and handed down with the MSS v^hich makes our Bible. II Chron. ix. 29, says: "Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, first and last, are they not written in the book of Nathan the proph- et, and in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and the visions of Iddo the seer against Jeroboam the son of Nebat?" Here reference is made to several books which have never, in this age of the v^orld, been seen. All this proves what I have said, that our Bi- ble is not a book; it is a mosaic, made up of selections from various sources. But of this, more when I get to the chapter on the Canon. Besides what I have given you, we are inform- ed in II Chron. xxvi. 22, that Isaiah, the proph- et, the son of Amoz, wrote a history of Uzziah, king of Judah. There is nothing of the kind in our Bible. We must therefore conclude that the great prophet wrote a book which has not reached us. It is now time that we came more closely to the so-called "Five Books of Moses" themselves. As an introduction I will quote once more from Rev. Mr. Gladden. On pages 18, 19, of his ad- mirable w^ork he says: "Who wrote these books? Our modern Hebrew Bi- bles give them the general titles, 'Quinque Libra Mo- sis.' This means 'The Five Books of Moses.' But Mo- ses could never have given them that title, for these are Latin words, and it is not possible that Moses should have used the Latin language, because there was no Latin language in the world until many hun- APPROACH TO THE BIBLE. 97 dreds of years after the day of Moses. The Latin title was given to them of course by the editors who compiled them. The preface and explanatory notes in these Hebrew Bibles are also written in Latin. * * * When we look at our English Bibles we find no separation, as in the Hebrew Bible, of these five books from the rest of the Old Testament writings, but w^e find over each one of them a title by which it is ascribed to Moses as its author,— 'The First Book of Moses, commonly' called Genesis.' 'The Second Book of Moses, commonh' called Exodus;' and so on. But when I look into m3' Hebrew Bible again no such title is there. Nothing is said about Moses in the Hebrew title of Genesis. It is certain that if Moses wrote these books he did not call them 'Genesis,' 'Exodus,' 'Leviticus,' 'Num- bers,' 'Deuteronomy,' for these words again come from languages that he never heard. Four of them are Greek words, and one of them, Numbers, is a Latin word. These names were given to the several books at a very late da\^" The scholars of the world are now agreed that Moses was not the author of these books. Prof. Ladd, of Yale College — a man whom no one would suspect of any leaning away from the Orthodox intrepretation of the Bible, says: "With very few exceptions anywhere, and with al- most no exceptions in those places where the Old Testament is studied with the most freedom and breadth of learning, the whole world of scholars has abandoned the ancient tradition that the Pentateuch, in such form as we now have it is the work of Moses." Many testimonies similar to the above might be given but this will suffice. 98 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. We are now prepared with the opening of the next chapter, to begin an inside view of the contents of the books of the Bible. I shall not take the books in the order in which they have been written, but in the order in which they are placed in our Bible. Many of the prophetic books are older than the Pentateuch. CHAPTER V. MORE OUTSIDE TESTIMONY. A FEW THINGS IN GENESIS. A Plurality of Gods — Word eight times translated Jehovah is Eight thousand times Translated Lord — Contradictions in First and Second Chapters of Genesis — Astruc's Dis- covery — The Pentateuch Young — A More Ancient Moses — Two Stories of the Flood— Same of Beer-sheba — Rev. R. Heber Newton against Inerrency of Old Testament — A Quaker Scholar on Genesis— Sensible Remarks from Rev. John Chad wick. It will be impossible for me in this chapter to avoid saying something on the book of Genesis, although the subject properly comes up in the next chapter. There has been much controversy over this book for nearl3^, or quite two thous- and years. Many of the recognized mistakes in it have been excused on the ground that the author, supposed to be Moses, undertook to cover the entire history of twenty-five hundred years of the world in fifty short chapters. In this history he tells of the first manufacturing of the world; of its destruction by a flood; of its being re-fitted and re-peopled after that event. 100 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. The brevity with which the whole had to be -written left no time or space to go into details- nor for the correction of seeming errors. In all my discourses on this subject during the last third of a century I have asserted and tried to prove that this book had at least two- authors. In the first place, there are two sets of gods running through the book. In the first chapter, and the first three verses of the second chapter the v^ord God occurs thirty-two times. Any scholar will tell you that in all these places the Hebrew word is Elohim, and is plural. Indeed that was one of the arguments once used to prove the trinity. It should in every instance be rendered, the gods. Gen. i. 26, says: ''and God said, let us make man in our image, and after our likeness." Beginning with Gen. ii. 3, and going through the entire second and third chapters a god whom v\re call Yahweh, is introduced. Our English Bible, in these chapters, calls him "The Lord God" nineteen times. ' That word rendered Lord here followed hy the Avord God, Yahweh-God, or Jehovah-God ,. occurs over eight thousand times in the Hebrew Bible, and is translated /eAova/z eight times — that is, once in one thousand times. In all other places it is put in as though it signified an office or rank. In our Bible it will always be found in small capital letters. Wherever the word oc- curs in small caps, in our Bible, the original is- Yahweh. To prove that I am not mistaken in MORE OUTSIDE TESTIMONY. 101 all this I will quote once more from IJr. Glad- den. On page 47 he saj^s: "In the Book of Genesis the evidence of the combi- atior. of two documents is so obvious that he who runs ir.ay read. These two documents are distinguish- ed fro It each other, partly by the style of writing, and partly .y different names which they apply to the Su- preme Being, One of these old writers calls the Deity Elohim, the other calls him Yaveh, or Jehovah. These documents are known therefore as, Elohistic, and Je- hovistic narratives." Religioiiists have tried for a thousand years to harmonize the first and the second chapters of Genesis, as well as some other things in the book, and have failed. In the first chapter of Genesis, God— the god& made heaven and the earth, and the firmament, and then had the earth bring forth grass, fruit and herbs. Next, God, or rather the gods made light; the sun, moon, **and he made the stars also." Then the ''wat- -ers brought forth abundantly" "the many crea- tures." Not only whale but fowl, "and every livins: creature that moveth." Then the earth brought forth cattle and creeping things. After all this man and woman are made "in our im- age; and after our likeness." Then the gods gave man and woman everything. No "garden was planted eastward in Eden." Then he, or they, wind up by "ending his work" and resting on the Sabbath. In the second chapter Jehovah, or "The Lord God," goes to work, but he works in a different manner from the other gods called Elohim. He 102 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. begins by making plants and herbs, "before thev wrere in the earth." Though the Elohim had just made a man and a woman "there was not a man to till the ground." Then he planted a garden for him in the eastern portion of Eden. He puts every thing that was good in the gar- den and one tree besides, that bore poison fruit. He caused four rivers to head there and run out in different directions. Next the Lord God formed the beasts of the field and every fowl and brought them to Adam to be named. It was here that the discovery was made that Adam had no help-meet and that it was not good for him to be alone; so he was put to sleep and a rib taken out and a woman manufactured of that bone. I might carry the story of these contrad'ctions through almost the whole book, but for the pres- ent this is enough. As before remarked, men have worked more than a thousand years to harmonize these difficulties, but without success. Finally about the year 1750 the thought occurred to a P'rench physican by the name of Astruc, that the book of Genesis was made up of older documents, and that originally it had at least two authors — worshippers of two different deities. He separated the documents one from the other. When he had done this he had the outlines of two different books; for this discovery he was bitterly persecuted, and came near losing his life. Now all criticism says he was ri^ht. ' MORE OUTSIDE TESTIMONY. 103 On Astruc's discoveries and persecutions An- drew D. White writes as follows: "The second of these books was Astruc's 'Conjectures on the original Memoirs which Moses Used in Com- piling the Book of Genesis,' In this was for the first time clearly revealed the fact, that, amid various frag- ments of old writings, at least two main narratives enter into the composition of Genesis; that in the first of these is generalh^ used as an appellation of the Al- mighty the word 'Elohim,' and in the second the word 'Yahveh,' (Jehovah;) that each narrative has charac- teristics of its own, in thought and expression, which distinguish it from the other; that, by separating these, two {clear and distinct narratives may be obtained, each consistent with itself, and that, thus, and thus alone, can be explained the repetitions, discrepancies, and contradictions in Genesis which so long baffled the ingenuity of commentators, especially of the two ac- counts of the creation, so utterly inconsistent with each other. "Interesting as was Lowth's book, this work of As- true was, as the thinking world now acknowledges, infinitely more important; it was indeed the most val- uable single contribution to biblical study. But such was not the judgment |of the world then. While Lowth's book was covered with honor and its author promoted from the bishopric of St. David's to that of London, and even offered the primacy, Astruc and his book were covered with reproach. Though as an Or- thodox Catholic, he had mainly desired to reassert the authorship of Moses against the argument of Spinoza, he received no thanks on that account. Theologians of all Creeds sneered at him as a doctor of medicine who had blundered beyond his province; his fellow Catholics in France bitierlv denounced him as a here- 104 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. tic; and in Germany the great Protestant Theologian, Michaelis, who had edited and exalted Lowth's work, poured contempt over Astruc as an ignoramus. "The case of Astruc is one of many which show the wonderful power of the older theological reasoning to close the strongest minds against the clearest truths. The fact which he discovered is now as definitely estab- lished as any one in the whole range of literature or science. It has become as clear as the day^ and yet for ii wo thousand years the minds of profes- sional theologians, Jewish and Christian, were unable to detect it. Not until this eminent physician applied to the subject a mind trained in making scientific distinctions was it given to the world." — Warfare of Science, Vol. II, pp 322-323, These old documents contain certain anachron- isms which prove them to have been edited or redacted not earlier than five hundred years be- fore our era. The Pentateuch, as we have it now, is much younger than many other portons of the Bible; in fact it did not assume its present form until about four hundred years before Christ. The older stories, the history of creation, the flood, etc., have been found to be old Assyrian poems, much older than the oldest parts of the Bible. While I cannot now refer to them with full references to original documentary proofs I cannot resist the temptation to quote from Mr. White on the story of the birth of a king one thousand years before Moses. In his ''Warfare of Science with Theology," pp. 371-372, he has the following* MORE OUTSIDE TESTIMONY. 105 'The more general conclusions which were thus given I > biblical criticism were all the more impressive from che fact that they had been revealed by various groups of earnest Christian scholars working on different lines, by different methods, and in various parts of the world. Very honorable was the full and frank testimony to these results given in 1885 by the Rev. Francis Brown, a professor in the Presbyterian Theological Seminary at New York. In his admirable though brief book on Assyriology, starting with the declaration-* that 'it is a great pity to be afraid of facts,' he showed how As- syrian research testifies in many waj's to the historical value of the Bible record; but at the same time he ireely allowed to Chaldean history an antiquity fatal to the sacred chronology of the Hebrews. He also cast aside a mass of doubtful apologetics, and dealt frankly with the fact that very many of the early nar- ratives in Genesis belono^ to the common stock of ancient tradition, and, mentioning as an example the cuneiform inscriptions which record a story of the Acca- dian king Sargon — how 'he was born in retirement, placed by his mother in a basket of rushes, launched on a river, rescued and brought up by a stranger, af- ter which he became king' — he did not hesitate to re- mind his readers that Sargon lived a thousand j^ears and more before Moses; that this story was told of him several hundred years before Moses was born; and that it was told of peveral other important personages of antiquity. The professor dealt just as honestly^ with the inscriptions which show sundry statements m the book of Daniel to be unhistorical; candidly making admissions which but a short time before would have filled orthodoxy with horror." As I explained briefly the difference in the supposed history of the two beginnings in Gen. 106 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. i. and ii., so I must briefly refer to some other Jehovistic and Elohistic documents. The two stories of the flood are so mixed that it would take a smart lawyer to separate them.. Let us first look at the contradictions. In Gen. vi. 19, the Elohim says: "And, of every living thing of all flesh, two of every kind shalt thou bring into the ark." Now turn to Gen. vii., Elohim gives place to the other God, Jehovah, who says in verse 2, "Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female." In some places these stories very nearly agree, yet they are two documents coming from two different sources. In Gen. vi. 5, vntc read: "And God (Jehovah) saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagin- ation of his heart was only evil continually." Now go to verses 11 and 12, and the other "God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence." Go back to verse 7, and you will hear Jehovah say: "I will destroy man whom I haA^e created." But Elohim is not to be beat- en in that, so in verse 13 he says: "The earth is filled with violence through them, and behold I will destroy them from the earth." In verse 9, we read: "Noah was a righteous man and perfect in his generation, Noah walked with God" — Elohim. In vii. 1, Jehovah says to Noah, "Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me." MORE OUTSIDE TESTIMONY. 107 It would take several lessons for me to bring out all the points on this subject. There are many other stories in Genesis which cannot be explained on the hypothesis that the original of the book was written by one writer. Take, as an illustration, the two stories concern- ing Beer-sheba and its origin. They do not agree in any particular. The first story was written by an Elohist, the second by a Yahwehist. In Gen. xxi. a covenant was made between Abraham and Abimelech. Verses 31, 32, records the matter as follows: "Wherefore he called the place Beer-sheba; because there they swarc, both of them. Thus they made a covenant at Beer-sheba; and then Abimelech rose up, and Pichol the chief captain of his host, and they re- turned into the land of the Philistines." Now turn to chapter xxvi, and notice the Je- hovah document. There is another Abimelech who takes Isaac's wife, as the former Abimelech took the wife of Isaac's father. Strange to say^ Isaac denies his wife as his father had done. As his father had done again, he calls his wife his sister. By and bye matters between Isaac and Abime- lech were settled, as was the case with Abraham and Abimelech; then comes that same old disturb- ance about the well; finally in verses 32, 33, it terminates as follows: "And it came to pass the same day, that Isaac's servants came, and told him concerning the well which they had digged, and said unto him, we have found 108 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. water. And he called it Sheba; therefore the name of the city is Beer-sheba unto this day." This must suffice on this point. Before enter- ing upon the direct argument permit me to make one more quotation from Rev. R. Heber Newton. In ^* Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible," pages 22, 23, he says: "The Old Testament historians contradict each oth- er in facts and figures, tell the same story in different ways, locate the incident at different periods, ascribe the same deeds to different men, quote statistics which are plainly exaggerated, mistake poetic legends for sober prose, report the marvelous tales of tradition as literal history, and give us statements which cannot be read as scientific facts without denying our latest and most scientific knowledge. I shall not enumerate these mistakes of Moses, and others. That is an un- gracious task for which I have no heart. It may be needful to remind the children of a larger growth, who persist in believing a saintly mother's belief to be final authority in their studies, that she is not infallible. But one does not care to catalogue her mistalvcs and taunt her with them." " I have indicated that the story, or rather the stories, of creation was an old Assyrian fable, probably a poem. The evidences on this point are too numerous for me to even refer to many of them. I will make an extract from Thomas El wood Longshore the Quaker Liberal. On page 11, of his book, ''Higher Criticism in Theology and Religion," he says: "The story of creation we know is but a fable of Sanscrit origin. There is no other authority or foun- dation for it. The Pentateuch, or five books fo Moses, MORE OUTSIDE TESTIMONY. 109 is but a compilation of Legends loosely and awkward- ly put together, with enough of pretended history to connect the different stories, legends and laws to pass among the uncritical, the ignorant and credulous, who are blinded to the absurdities, the contradictions, and the incoherencies, through a reverence for the super- natural and impossible that forbids them to think, to question or to doubt. From the time these books were prepared to the present hour they have been used and accepted as a faith and as a guide for the ignorant believer," The eccentric but -really learned Rev. Robert Taylor said: *'The whole fable of Moses however, will be found in the Orphic verses sung in the Orgies of Bacchus, as celebrated in S^^ria, Asia Minor and Greece for ages before such a people as the Jewish Nation were known to be in existence." Diegesis, page 25. When I quote these things, and cite to more di- rect evidence, as I shall, please do not accuse me of disputing the old gentleman after whom I was named, for I think I shall convince my readers that he wrote very few, if any of the words in these five books, and that if he did write some of these things he took them from older writings, With two more quotations, I will be prepared CO sift the internal testimonies of the five-fold oook. Mr. Sunderland saj^s: "Scholars have been puzzled over much that they ^ound in the Pentateuch. Jerome, the one great bibli- •'al scholar of the early church, was. Several of the most learned of the Protestant reformers of the six- teenth century' were. Manj^ Jewish scholars of differ- 110 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. ent ages have been. Later Christian scholars have been more and more. The idea of the work being composite— a compila- tion from earlier documents, which might be separated from each other was suggested by Astruc, a disting- uished professor of medicine in Paris, in 1753. This has proved a key to the puzzle." "Origin and Growth of the Bible" p, 67. This man gives eight cogent reasons why Mo- ses could by no possibility have written the Pentateuch. I am sorry we do not get along faster, but I prefer to do the w^ork wnth some thoroughness rather than to skim over the ground. With a single quotation from that magnificent work of Rev. John Chadwiek, ''The Bible of To- day," I will leave the external evidences, and consult those found in the Books under consid- eration. On pages 81, 82, Mr. C. says: "So few even of the most conservative scholars, are, at the present time disposed to contend for the Mo- saic authorship of the Penetateuch in its present form that it is difficult to believe that within a few years a denial of this has been regarded as a horrible offense against the Bible and religion; and that in a majority of Christian pulpits the Mosaic authorship of the Pen- tateuch was entertained by a few distinguished schol- ars; notably by Jerome, decidedly the scholar, and almost the only one with any critical perception among the fathers of the church. But then for more than a thousand years the Mosaic authorship had full credit. Late in the seventeenth century we find Hobbs, the English philosopher of the Restoration, throwing doubt upon it, and Spinoza, the father of modern criticism, MORE OUTSIDE TESTIMONY. Ill cvijdtever be his rank as a piiilosopher, was still more explicit in that direction. But the controversy which has been so protracted and so violent was not inau- gurated until Astruc, a French Ph3^sician, in 1753, an- nounced the discover3^ of two parallel documents in Cenesis, characterized by different designations of the Deity. This discovery was at once allowed by various critacs, but strenuously denied by otbers. Little by little the fragmentarv composition of the Pentateuch gained ground, un;til now it would be difficult to finr' a scholar of even respectable ability who would not concede that if the bulk of the Pentateuch came orig- inally^ from the hand of Moses this bulk has been sinc*» his time subject to much alteration and enlargement. The existence of the ditferent documents is almost uni- versally admitted, and when it is denied, the denial i*^ supported with such elaboia'ie ingenuity as is its owr sufficient refutation. I have not given all these quotations becans^j I wanted to over-load this department of the sub- ject with quotations from great men who have been led to see the ■'■ru^h on the origin of these books; but because, ^ want the world to see that its great theologians are thinking on these lines. The books themselves contain all the proof need- ed that were not waatten for many hundred years after Moses had gone to join his fathers. CHAPTER YI. GENESIS TO JOSHUA. Isles of the Gentiles — No Gentiles until the Rebellion of the Jews under Jeroboafn — Canaanites in the Land — Where Abraham pursued his Enemies — Before there reined any King in Israel-— "Unto this Day" — What Josephus thought of Exodus — Two sets of Ten Commandments — Who said Moses was Great? — Could Moses have written Exodus xvi. 35 — Leviticus xviii written after the Nations w^ere Spued Out — Leviticus xx written after Babylonish Cap- tivity — How Meek was Moses? — Deuteronomy the Sec- ond Law — Extract from Mr. Chadwick — Solomon's Shortcomings Depicted by the Deuteronomist— A King Demanded— Samuel Astonished— Yahweh Surprised— Did Moses write the Account of his own Death? — Ancient Land Marks— Deuteronomy Compares Moses with his Successors— Book of the Wars of the L©rd— Opinion on Origin of Pentateuch. If the reader has feithfully followed the argu- ment thus far he is prepared to go into a more minute examination of the five books Moses has been supposed to have written. We will begin with Genesis and end with Deuteronomy. I will not give all the evidence found in these books, but will present enough to make the GENESIS TO JOSHUA. 113 critical student positively sure that an inside criticism will, in Moses' case, prove an alihi. In Gen. x. 5, the author sa^^s: "By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue; after their families and nations." Now there can be no Gentiles until after the Jews became a nation, and this was not until in the time of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon. Tehoboam was the fourth king of Israel; it was in his day that Israel split off from Judah, and set up an independent kingdom. Indeed, with the exception of Judges iv. 2, the word Gentiles does not occur again until in Isaiah xi. 10, and the text in Judges was not written until after the writings of the first part of Isaiah. At the time these lands were said to have been divided among the Gentiles, the world had not advanced within to three generations of the birth of Judah, and Judah did not become a distinct nation until Israel rebelled under Jeroboam. Webster says the term Gentiles applies at large to the nations as disting'tiished from the Jev.^s. Nations could not be distinguished from the Jews until there was a Jewish Nation. Alexan- der Cruden defines Gentiles to be those who do not accept the Jewish Religion. The Jews had no distinctive religion until long after the days of Solomon. Until the tribe of Levi rebelled un- der Solomon's son Rehoboam the Levites had entire control of all religious matters. After Israel went northward into Samaria, and took 114 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. the Levites with them the Jews were compelled to get along without the Levitical priesthood. Then they inaugurated a religious S3^stem of their own. This is enough; it shows that there could have been no Gentiles at the time this text tells of what occurred before *' these isles of the Gentiles were divided." This is what is called an anachronism. Moses could no more have written it than he could have written about the Mississippi River Steamers. Gen. xii. 6, tells us that ''the Canaanite was then in the land." xiii. 7 adds, "And the Can- aanite and the Perizzites dwelled then in the land." These texts are supposed to apply to Abraham's earliest da^^s. Th2 work of expelling the Can- aanites did not begin until in the days of Joshua, not much less than five hundred years after Ab- raham; and did not end until in the daj^s of David •eight hundred years after Abraham. As this text could not have been written while the Can- aanite was 3'et in the land, its writing must date at least four hundred and fifty j^ears after Moses. It is much easier to ascertain who did not write such texts as have been considered than it will be to find who did write them. There are many other things in this book that it is positively certain Moses did not write. In Gen. xiv. 14, we read that: *'When Abraham heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan " GENESIS TO JOSHUA. 115 This was not true; nor could it have been written by Moses. Abraham did not pursue his enemies to a city which had no existence; nor could Moses have written of a city which was not founded for more than a century after he left the world. Dan was Jacob's son. Jacob was Abra- ham's grandson; Dan's great-great-grand-children became a tribe, one of the twelve tribes of Israel. This tribe went to a certain city in the land of Canaan — a city by the name of Laish, and des- troyed it; afterwards they rebuilded it and changed its name to Dan, which was the name of their tribe. The history of this transaction will be found in Judges xviii. 25-30. There we read of a quiet people who lived in a city by the name of Laish, and that the chil- dren of Dan w^ent there and smote the inhabi- tants with the edge of the sword, and burned the city with fire. On the ruins of that old city they builded a new one. Verses 29, says: "And they called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan, their father, who was born unto Israel; howbeit, the name of the city was Laish at the first." Thus it appears that the city of Dan was build- ed about four hundred and fifty years after Abra- ham had conquered his enemies within its bor- ders. Do you say this may have been. True, but how does Moses happen to caU it Dan, so many years before anyone ever thought of build- ing such a city on the ruins of which, in Moses^ da3^ must have been in the height of its pros- 116 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. perity? Remember there was a city there ?ct that time, but it was not Dan, it was Laish. Gen. XXX vi. 31, says: "And these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom before there reigned any king over the children of Israel." This is surely another evidence that Moses was not the author of this book. This text could not have been written until after Saul \Nras king of Israel, which was not until near a half a mil- lennium after Moses' death. Indeed the phrase, '•before there reigned any king over the Children of Israel," leaves the reader to infer that several kings had reigned over Israel before this had been written If only Saul had been king at the time -of the writing of this, the text would have called him by name instead of speaking of "any king reigned over Israel." I purposely skipped Gen. xxxv. 20, because it fits in a little better with the next evidence to be used in considering the date of this book. The previous verse tells of the death of Rachel, the younger wife of Jacob; then this verse adds: ■*'And Jacob set a pillar upon her grave; that is the pillar of Rachel's grave unto this day." This expression seems to indicate quite a lapse of time between the time of the event and the time of writing — the writer could not have writ- ten "unto this day," if he had been writing from materials gathered only a few days afterwards. Moses, be it remembered, knew nothing of this matter. He never, in his life saw Rachel's tomb and could not know that it was standing at GENESIS TO JOSHUA. 117 that time. Until his dying day he was never permitted to ascend the mountain where he could look over, and get a glimpse of even the country in which Rachel was buried. See Deut. xxxii. 48-50. With one more quotation we will leave this,, the supposed First Book of Moses. Gen. xlvii. 26, reads as follows: "And Joseph made it a law over the land of Eg_vpt, unto this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth part; except the laud of the priest's only, which be- came not Pharaoh's." The writer of this was later than either Joseph or Moses, otherwise he could not have referred to this as an ancient law. Tht thoughts here presented are not new: for nearly a century the world has abused Thomas Fame for presenting them. Bishop Colenso was persecuted and driven out of his position in the Episcopal Church for presenting them. Twelve centuries before Colenso s amc, St. Jerome, the only rea% learned Theologian among the Latin Fathers, held the same opinions. For some reason Josephus, the Jewish priest and historian regarded these books as a kind of daily journal kept by Moses, as a secretary of a Society would keep Che minutes of daily occur- rences, and, to this da\^ man^- Christians follow in his tracks, and accuse all who do not ignore all the evidence to the contrary, and fall into their ways of thinking, of being Infidels. Thanks to the progressive spirit of the age, the day ha& 118 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM passed when by such odium theologium the spirit of investigation can be crushed. I have already- asserted, and I think proved, that the book of Genesis had at least two authors, one an Elo- hist, and the other a Jehovist — that Moses was neither of them is now believed by about all who have given the matter attention enough to make their opinions of enough value to at- tract attention. EXODUS. I shall pass lightly over the book of Exodus. I would briefly premise, however, that like Gen- esis, it had more than one author. People, in- cluding ministers, have looked at me in blank astonishment when I have asserted that there are two sets of Ten Commandments, which could not both come from the same author. There are tautoligies and repetitions that I will not now take time to repeat. In Ex. XX. 3-17, are the Ten Commandments as spoken b3^ Yahweh, on Mount Sanai; in chap- ter xxxiv. Moses is told to prepare slates or tables of stone, and come up to the mount where God was and while he was there, and the^' were holding a private seance, God would write upon the two tablets the words on thfi broken tables. As this thought is new^ to man3', and may be disputed oy a few who have not read up on the question, I will copy verses 1-5, entire. "And the Lord said unto Moses, hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first; and I will w^rite upon these GENESIS TO JOSHUA. 119 taoies the words thai were ia the lirst tables which thou breakest. And be readv in the morning, and come up in the morning unto Mount Sinai; present th_\ self there to me in the top of the mount. And no man shall come up there with thee, neither let any man be seen throughout all the mount; neither let the iiocks and herds feed before the mount. And he hewed the two tables of stone like unto the first and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up into Mount Sinai, as the Lord had comnT nded him, and took in his land two tables of stone, and the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord." Here Moses was told that the words which were on the former stones were to be re-written. As it is presumed that most of my readers under- stand the Ten Commandments as given in the twentieth chapter of Exodus I will not here repro- duce them; but I will separate them one fron> another and reproduce them as found in Ex. xxxiv. beginning with verse 17, and endmg with verse 26. They read as loUows; I Thou shalt make thee no molton Gods. II The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib; for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt. Ill All that openeth the matrix is mine; and every 120 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM firstling among the cattle whether ox or sheep, that is a male. But the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb; and if thou redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the first bom of thy sons thou shalt redeem, and none shall appear before me empty. IV Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest; in earing time and in bar- vest thou shalt rest. Y Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end. YI Thrice in the year shall all your menchildren appear before the Lord, the God of Israel, for I will cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders. VII Neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord thrice in the year. VIII . ^ Thou shalt not offer the blood of my^^'^OTnce with leaven; neither shall the sacritics of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning. IX The first of the firstfruits of the land shalt thou bring into the house of the Lord thy God. GENESIS TO JOSHUA. 121 X Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk. Here the first Commandment as stated in Ex- odus XX. is left out. In its stead we simph- have one forbidding, the worship of molten images. This is more like the second Com- mandment in chapter xx. than it is like the first. The second Coiumandment makes the feast of unleavened bread ver\' important. There was nothing of that in the Commandments as spok- en on Mount Sinai. The third Commandment, about taking the name of Yahweh, 3'our God, in vain is not found in this decalogue. Apparenth' if one offers the firstfruits of his flock to the Lord, his God, there is little harm in taking his name in vain. The fourth Commandment recognizes the same sabbath as that in Exodus xx. The fifth Commandment instead of telling children to honor their parents urges them to observe certain annual feasts. The sixth is an especial Commandment to menchildren. The seventh Commandment forbids an^-one coveting the lands of those who, to use a mod- ern phrase, attend church. The eighth relates to sacrifices. The ninth commands them to bring the first- fruits of the land as an ofi"ering to the Lord. The tenth forbids seething a kid in its moth- er's milk. 122 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. To make assurance doubly sure, that these are the original Ten Commandments, after giv- ing them as above God said to Moses, ''Write thou these words; for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel." Then is added: ''And he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the v^ords of the cov- enant, the Ten Commandments." Verses 27, 28. Moses, if he really was a great man would hardly write, as he is represented as doing, in Ex. xi. 3, "Moreover the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of all the people." Again in Ex. xvi. 35, the writer says: "And the children of Israel did eat manna forty years, until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat manna until they came unto the borders of the Land of Canaan." As Moses did not live until they reached Ca- naan, it is hardly probable that he wrote that sentence. In fact all the testimony is, that these books are pieces of after-writing. We "vsrill next briefly examine the book of LEVITICUS. In chapter xviii. 26-28 it is written: "Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judg- ments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your nation, nor any stranger that so- journeth among you; for all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and GENESIS TO JOSHUA. 123 the land is defiled; that the land spue not you out al- so when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations which were before you." This was certainlj^ written by some one who was in the land, and had seen the nations spued out before the Children of Israel; Moses never had seenthe land, nor had any one to whom he spoke, or for whom he wrote this text. In fact the nations were not driven out of the land until in the da3's of David; this, therefore, coukl not have been written before that period. As the Hebrews were spued out so soon after David's day, it seems that tliQj were not much different from their naughty predecessors. Lev. xxvi. 33-35, sa^^s: "I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you; and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and j-e be in your enemies' land; even then shall the land rest and enjo3- her sabbaths. As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths when ye dwelt upon it." It must be evident to any one who carefully reads from veidc 28, to, and including verse 44, that this was written after the Babylonian cap- tivity. It describes a state of affairs when "the land enjo3'ed her sabbaths," as "it did not rest when jQ dwelt upon it." This could by no pos- sibility have been written in the wilderness; in fact it could not have been written until after the land was in the enjoj^ment of that rest which they refused it when they dwelt upon it. 124 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. At the expense of leaving other important matters out I must quote verses 43, 44. ''The land also shall be left of them; and shall enjoy her sabbaths while she lieth desolate without them, and they shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity; because, even because they despised my judgments and because their soul abhorred my statutes. And yet, for all that, when they be in the laud of their enemies I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them; for I am the Lord their God." How easily this could have been written after the Babylonish captivity — after they had returned to their own land; how natural it would be for the belief that their violations of the sabbath caused their dispersion, and as a result caused such texts to be written. How utterly impossi- ble it was that Moses should have written these words. NUMBERS. The book of Numbers is not without evidence that Moses was not its author. A single quo- tation is sufficient for the present. Num. xii. S, says: **Now the man Moses was very meek, above all men that were upon the face of the earth." It is just possible that Moses may have been a very meek man; but if he was he did not write that. It is not a mark of excessive meek- ness to publish such a thing in one's own book. Especially is it bad taste to claim to be the meekest man on the face of the earth when he did not know one person in a thousiand of the GF.NRSIS TO JOSHUA. 125 people who were on the earth. Any person writing such a thing about himself today would be put dowm as a braggart. The only way to let Moses out of this is to deny that he wrote this sentence. But the evidence that he wrote this is as conclusive as the evidence that he wrote anything in this book; that is, there is just none at all. We will now go into something of an extended examination of the fifth of this series of books, DEUTERONOMY. This is not an original book; indeed the word itself implies as much. It comes from two Greek words; deuteros, v^hich means second, and nomos, which means law^. It means second law^, or rather, second giving of the law. The law was embodied in three of the former books. This book claims to be more particularly a report of what may be claimed as Moses' dying speech, in w^hich the law^ was rehearsed to Is- rael. This speech, or rather these speeches, were the invention of a later writer, intended to fas- ten on the minds of the people, and drill into their lives the system of ceremonies which had been shaping itself among them for several cen- turies. The temptation is great to here quote sev- eral pages from Rev. John W. Chadwick. I will greatly abridge in quoting. I would here recom- mend every reader to procure his work, "The Bible of Today," and study it. On pp. 103-106 he savs: 126 THE I5IBLE AXI) THE HIGHER CRITICISM. "The book of Deuteronomy was much more of a man- ufacturer than any previous portion of the Pentateuch. Here calculation takes the place of spontaneity. The Yahwehist, and elder Elohist had unconsciously allow- ed their predilections to determine their interpretations of the past, but the Deuteronomist went about to in- vent a great historic fiction. He knew what he want- ed; namely, to abolish all idolatrous worship of Yah- weh, all worship of all other gods; and, as a means to these ends, to confine the worship of Yahweh to Jerusalem. His book was written to enforce these ideas, with the sanction of the greatest name in He- brew History, The writer was tremendously in earnest; his hatred of the false gods and the image worship of Yahweh was immense; but at the same time he was an artist, and had an eye to dramatic effect. Choos- ing Moses as his mouth-piece, he presents him as call- ing the people together, in the fortieth year of their wanderings in the wilderness, to refresh their memory of the law, which had been previously revealed to them. Sternly commanding to serve no other gods but Yah- weh, he adjures them to utterly exterminate the Ca- naanites when they have come into their land. Rehears- ing the 'ten words,' he makes the 'word' forbidding any images of Yahweh, much more explicit than it was before. But he is still more emphatic in his prohibition of the worship of Yahweh at the various altars here and there throughout the country. He must be wor- shipped nowhere but in the Temple at Jerusalem. And as there can be but one proper place of worship, so there can be but one proper tribe of priests, and this the tribe of Levi. The Levites who minister in the Temple have fixed dues assigned them, those vScat- tered about the country are commended to the charity of the people. * * * If I had time to take up different GENESIS TO JCSHUA. 127 portions of this wonderful composition, point after point, 1 could, I think, convince even the most skepti- cal that Moses was entirely innocent of all complicity-- in its publication, that it was the work of a religious reformer in the time of King Josiah, and is written to correct the abuses, and to fix the formal worship of that time. The state of things it presupposes is al- ways the state of things existent in Josiah's reign. The command to utterly exterminate the Canaanites was only written with the view of making the wor- shipper of Yahweh intolerant of all Canaanitish prac- tices. The Canaanites were not so exterminated. The representation to this eftect in the first dozen chapters of Joshua is the Deuteronomist's ow^n fulfillment of his own imaginary command. The Book of Judges, which is much more trustworthy on these points, gives an entirely different impression. The image worship of Yahweh had been customary for hundreds of years at the time when Deuteronomy appeared, and the first feeling of its wrongfulness dates, not from Moses, but the prophets of the eighth century before Christ. So with the worship of Yahweh at various sanctuaries. Not only was it customary up to this time, but it is expressly allowed in the earlier portions of the Penta- teuch. So with the Levitical priesthood. A preference for Levitical priests dates back as far as Solomon, and increased, until at length, we infer the Deutcrono- mist did little more than to formulate the customs of his times. That Moses expressly commanded an^- such Levitical function we have no particle of evidence. Prophesy and kingship claim the Deuteronomist's at- tention to a large degree. And he was guided entireljf by the phenomena of prophesy and kingship that were visible about him in the seventh century, and by his knowledge of their past abuses. His portraiture of 128 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRIT CISM. what a king sliould not be, is an almost photographic likeness of what Solomon really was." This language needs no comment from me. As I have thus far brought most of my evidences from within the Bible, I will, for the present con- tinue in that line, and examine the book of Deu- teronomy itself. One thing I had intended to omit from this chapter, but as Mr. Chadwick's remarks lead up to it I cannot see how I can do my duty and leave it out. The testimony to v^hich Mr. Chadwick refers, but does not quote, is found in Deut. xvii. 14-19. It reads as follows: "When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt sa\^, I will set a king over me, like all the nations round about me; thou shalt in any- wise set him over thee whom the Lord, thy God, shall choose; one from among th3- brethren shalt thou set king over thee; thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother. But he shall not mul- tiply horses unto himself, nor cause the people to re- turn to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses; for as much as the Lord hath said unto you, ye shall henceforth return no more that way. Neither shall he multiply wives unto himself, that his heart turn not away; neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold. And it shall be when he sit- teth on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a cop\' of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests, the Levites. And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life; that he rnay learn to fear the Lord his God, and to GENESIS TO JOSHUA. 129 keep all the words of this law and these statutes to do them." Mr. Chadwick thinks this law a direct drive at the conduct of king Solomon. 1 think no one can read the history of Solomon and his fort^^ thousand stalls of horses; his seven hundred \vives, beside numerous other women, who turn- ed his head and heart in the wrong direction; of his making gold and silver as plentiful as the stones in the street; (See I King. iv. 26, x. 26, and xi. 3, 4. Also Psa. xx. 7.) without deciding that Mr. Chadwick is correct. This then proves that Deuteronomy xviii. 14-20, could not have been w^ritten until after the reign of King Solo- mon. This fact is greatly strengthened by an ex- amination of the viii. chapter of I Samuel. Here the people are greatly displeased w4th the conduct of Samuel's sons w^ho w^ere their judges; and therefore they w^ent to Samuel and demand- ed a king. They said, "Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways; now make us a king to judge us like all the nations." Verse 5. This w^as evidently an unheard of pro- position. It astonished the old medium; this could not have been the case if he had before him and was familiar wnth the ver\' law just quoted from Deuteronom3^ He w^ould have ex- pected it. More than that, when the people came to Samuel they would have cited him to this command of Moses concerning making a king. Samuel listens to this proposition oi the 130 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. people, and then in verses 6-9 takes it to Yali- weh. The matter is recorded as follows: "But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said^ give us a king, to judge us. And Saniuel prayed unta the Lord. And the Lord said unto Samuel, hearken tmto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee; for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. Ac- cording to all the works that they have done since the day that I brought them out of Egypt even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me, and served other gods, so do they also unto thee. Now therefore hearken unto their voice; howbeit, yet pro- test solemnly unto them, and show them the manner of the king that shall reign over them. And Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people that asked of him a king." Still the people demanded a king. Samuel acted as a go-between the people and the Lord.- Sam- uel heard all the words of the people and pre- sented them in the ears of the Lord. ''And the Lord said to Samuel, make them a king." This was evidently the first Yahweh ever thought of such a thing as any one beside him- self being king of Israel. So he knew nothing of the book of Deuteronomy at so late a date as in the days of Samuel. In Deut. iii. 27, 28, Moses is informed that he shall not go over Jordan into the Land of Ca- naan, yet we read in Lev. xxvi. 34, 35, of the terrible curses that came on the land because they — the Hebrews — did not permit the land to keep its sabbaths. In connection with these two GENESIS TO JOSHUA. 131 texts it may be well to quote Deut. xxxiv. 4-8. "And the Lord said unto Moses, this is the land which I sware unto Abrahnm, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed; I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither. So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. And he buried him ii: the valley in the land of Moab, over agaliist Beth-peor; but no man knoweth his sepulchre unto this day. And Moses was an hundred and twenty ^^ears old when he died; his eye was not dim; nor his natural force abated. And the children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty da3's; so the days of weeping and mourning for Moses were ended. And Joshua, the son of Nun, was full of the spirit of wisdom; for Moses had laid his hands upon him; and the children of Israel hearkened unto him and did as the Lord commanded Moses." Here Moses went up to view the land, as he was told to do in chapter iii. After the land was shown him he was again informed that he could not enter the land. Then follows the ac- count of his death and burial, the tliirt3^ da^'S mourning for him, and the fact that "No man knoweth his sepulchre unto this da3\" Now I am led to ask, did Moses write all this? If so, the Bible contains one more argument for Spiritualism than I had sus- pected. "No man knoweth his sepulchre imto this day," leads one to suppose that this must have been written not by Moses b::-ore his death, but by some other person hundreds of years after. 132 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Deut. xiA. ^f was evidently written for those who had long Hved in the country. It says: "Thou shalt not remove thy neighbor's landmark^ which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, Evhich thou shalt inherit in the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess it." I would like to inquire how this could be given to a people, not one of whom had ever seen the land? Certainly none of their ' 'neighbors nor their friends of old times" set up any ancient landmarks in that country. When it is under- stood that this is given to a people this side of the captivity all is plain. I will state only one more case. In Deut. xxxiv- 10, the writer says: "And Joshua, the son of Nun, was filled with the spirit of wisdom; for Moses had laid his hands upon him; and the children of Israel hearkened unto him and did as the Lord commanded Moses. And there was not a prophet in Israel since like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face." It is clear that this was not written until after other prophets had arisen after Moses to be compared with him. Moses could not possibly have said, "And there was not a prophet in Israel since, like unto Aloses." This should bring us somewhere near the end of our inquiry on the Pentateuch. If I spend a proportionate amount of time on each book of th« Bible ^we shall all be quite old before we get through it. Before closing this argument I will again refer to the fact that the Pentateuch re- fers to, and quotes from other books not found GENESIS TO JOSHUA. 133 in tlie collection now erroneously called the Bible. I ^Yill quote one instance on this point. In Num. xxi. 14, the writer said: "Wherefore it is said in the book of the wars of the Lord, what he did in the Red Sea, and the brook of Arnon." If I should be asked for my opinion as to where the book of Deuteronomy had its origin I would answ^er by asking my interlocutor to turn to II Chron. xxxiv, and read from verse 14 to verse 24. Also to read II Kings xxii. 8-18. There it will be found that Josiah, a boy only eight years old was made king. See II Chron. xxxiv. 1-3. This young king began at the age of sixteen, under the influence of certain priests and scribes, to tear down the places of idolatrous worship, and to "purge Judah and Jerusalem." Among the superintendents of this work were Shaphan, the scribe, and Hilkiah, the priest. These gentlemen had charge of clearing away the debris preparatory to rebuilding the "house of the Lord." In that debris the priest Hilkiah found a book, which, on examination, proved to be the "book of the law of the Lord, given by Moses." Now let it be remembered that they had been for some time tr34ng to enforce their opinions <:oncerning certain forms and ceremonies of the "law of the Lord" upon the people, but in this they failed because they had no written law to back them in their work. The thing they needed above all things else was a written code. What 134 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. a miracle it was to find this law just at the time when they could get along no farther with- out it! Fortune just at the right time favored the priests, and the long lost "book of the law,'* written by Moses came to light— found by Hil- kiah, a priest, who above all others could go no farther in his work without such a document to back him. Who after that event will not be- lieve in miracles? Now I ask, does not the story bear upon its face the stamp of fraud? The priest, who, above all others needed the book to back him in his usurpations on the young king and the people, was in luck. What matters it that the finding of the book by a priest, instead of by some of the workmen fails to fit the case? The king was not yet out of his teens and the people poor and ignorant. This code must be forced upon them. The finding of the book was not in itself the only miracle, nor the moe^: suspicious circum- stance attending the matter. The book was placed in the hands of Shaphan the scribe, and he read it. That, of itself was a miracle. The Hebrew language, such as Moses used was at this time a dead language. The Hebrews as v;e have proved, had to have their Bible translated into Greek before they could read it. Who can today pick up a book even three hundred years old and read it as Shaphan was supposed to have read this newly found law of Moses? As before remarked, it was not long after this GENESIS TO JOSHUA. 135 that the Jews had so far lost their own language that their friend Ptolemy Philadelphus had. their scriptures translated into Greek for them. Now will the student please re-examine the evidences presented in these pages and then believe if he can that the Moses of Eg^^ptian birth and edu- cation wrote the Pentateuch. CHAPTER VII. JOSHUA TO JOB. The Hexateuch— The Other side of the Flood— Did Joshua Write about "The Elders that overlived Joshua?" — Dr. Brigs' Testimony — Other Historical Books — Wnters of these Books knew little about Moses — Samuel, David, Solomon and others Knew Nothing of the Mosaic Law — Dr. Gladden on Mosaic Legislation— Gideon and Deborah Solar Myths — Was Jesus part Moabite? — Did Samuel Write the Books which bear His Name?— Events mostly post Samuel — Samuel and David Extolled at the Expense of Saul— B?ble Samuel and the Sunday School Samuel; the difference — Saul SHghtly Mixed on David— The Two Books of Kings but One — Written After Babylonish Captivity — Books of Chronicles Unhistoripal — Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah all One Book — Written by a Priest— John Chad- wick's Comments — Chronicles Contradicts Other por- tions of the Bible — Ahaziah Too Old — Numerous Contra- dictions Between Kings and Chronicles — How Satans and Devils got into Chronicles — Dr. Gladden on these Old Writings — Alliance between Cyrus and The Jews — The Jews' Return — Ezra Compelled them to Forsake their Fam- ilies — Nehemiah's work under Artaxerxes — Book of Esth- er no Benefit to the Bible— Vashti the only Noble Charac- ter in this Book. JOSHUA. We now come to notice the book of Joshua^ the sixth book of the Bible, as we have it. The JOSHUA TO JOB. 137 last book of what is properly called The Hcxa- teuch. At the first formation of the Jewish can- on it was made a part of the Pentateuch. The style of the writing, in fact, everything proves that it belongs with the five books which have been falsely called the Five Books of Moses. It closes up the era before the introduction of Judg- es and Kings. It has always been claimed that Joshua was the author of this book. If he was, he wrote as one who lived hundreds of years after his time. In fact he wrote of occurrences which did not take place until after his body had mingled with its fel- low dust. In chapter xv. 63, he says: "As for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out; but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jer- usalem unto this day." This was surely not written until after the Jeb- usites, that is the Jerusalemites gave their chal- lenge to David in II Sam. v. 6-9. David builded the City and fort of David because he found him- self unable to take Jerusalem proper. I hardly think that Joshua would have written the following with all its mistakes: "And Joshua said unto all the people, thus saith the Lord of God of Israel, your fathers dwelt on the oth- er side of the flood iu old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor; and the\' serv- ed other gods. And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him throughout all the Land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed, and gave him Isaac." Ic8 THE BII5LE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. I can imagine how a later writer could have made suck mistakes as are here made, but I can- not bring myself to believe that it was possible for Joshua to have believed that the flood, w^hich occured in the days of Noah, was this side of Abraham. I am acquainted with the puny efforts which have been made to change th^e translation, and the reading of this. They all serve to illustrate the fact that drown- ing theologies, like drowning men, grasp at straws. In xxiv. 29-31 Joshua, if he is the author of the book, writes the history of his own death and burial, and records the fact that the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua and of the elders that overlived Joshua. That beats Moses, for he only recorded the thirty days' mourning because of his death. This paragraph reads as follows: "And it came to pass after these things, that Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord died, being an hundred and ten years old. And they buried him in the border of his inheritance in Timnath-serah, which is in Mount Ephraim, on the north side of the hill Gaash. And Israel served the Lord all the daj^s of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that overlived Joshua, and which had known aU the works of the Lord, that he had done in Israel." The first thirteen chapters relate and I hope over-state the particulars of Joshua's butcheries in the conquest of the Land of Canaan. I hinted that Joshua was perhaps, not the butcher that he is here represented to have been. We know JOSHUA TO JOB. 139 that he did not conquer and drive out the inhab- itants of the land as is here stated. All through the book of Judges this same work of driving out these same enemies is continued. After that Saul died for not doing his duty in driving thes'e same enemies out. After Saul, David spent the most of his life in exterminating these same peo- ple whom Joshua blotted off the face of the earth, in so much that there was not one ^'left to breathe." The fourteenth chapter of Joshua, to the close of the book is devoted to dividing the lands of that conquered people among the tribes o'f Israel. Before leaving this book I feel to quote Mr. Sunderland, who says on page 87, of his "Origin and growth of the Bible:" "The narratives of the book give a graphic picture of society in this early period, but the^^ are much mixed with legend, from which it is difficult to sepa- rate the real history. The book was probably written during the Babylonian exile. Its writer is prophetic rather than priestl^^ in spirit. He constructs his book out of such writings and oral traditions as he can gather at that late date." Now I feel that I would not be justified in closing this examination without leading the student to see how universally the learned world have of late been led to adopt the Higher Criti- cism on this question. I quote from Prof. Briggs, as quoted by Rev. Dr. Gladden, on pages 57, 58 of his ''Who wrote the Bible?" 140 THE BIULE AND THE IIIGHER CRITICISM. the critical analysis of the Hexateuch is the result of more than a century of profound study of the doc- uments by the greatest critics of the age. There has been a steady advance until the present position of agreement has been reached, in which Jew and Christ- ian, Roman Catholic and Protestant, Rationalistic and Evangelical scholars, Reformed and Lutheran, Presby- terian and Episcopal, Unitarian, Methodist and Bap- tist, all concur. The Analysis of the Hexateuch into several distinct original documents is a purely literary question in which no article of faith is involved. Who- ever in these times, in the literary phenomena of the Hexateuch, appeals to the ignorance and prejudices of the multitude as if there were any peril to faith in these processes of the Higher Criticism, risks his repu- tation for scholarship for so doing. There are no He- brew professors on the Continent of Europe so far as I know, who would deny the literary analysis of the Pentateuch in the four great documents. The profes- sors of Hebrew in the Universities of Oxford, Cam- bridge and Edinburgh, and tutors in a large number of theological colleges, hold the same opinion. ♦ ♦ ♦ i doubt whether there is any question of scholarship whatever in which there is a greater agreement among scholars than in this question of the literary analysis of the Hexateuch." With this we must leave the first six books of the Bible. Remember our effort have not been to show that these books did not contain grand truths, but that they come from different authors who were like the people of today, extremely fallible. JUDGES— RUTH— THE SAMUELS. 1^ The other historical books of the Old 'Testa- JOSHUA TO JOB. 141 ment are Judges, Ruth, First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings, First and Second Chron- icles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther. The book of Judges is first in the list; while they will, in a sense, be considered seriatim they are so closely connected that thej^ cannot wholly be separated. The book of Ruth is the conclusion of the book of Judges. The two books of Samuel, and the two books of Kings ought all to be in one book. In the Sep tu agin t they are called First, Second, Third and Fourth books of Kings. The book of Ezra is torn off from the book of Second Chronicles as i*^ by accident. It is torn apparently in the mid- dle of a vSentence. The book of Nehemiah is really but a continuation of the book of Ezra. All the literature of all these books is of a composite character. The collection of their ma- terials was from many sources, and the process of the collection extended through many hundred years, and yet not a thing of all of them was collected from Moses. It is doubtful whether rnany of these writers and collectors ever heard of Moses. The work of collecting these books was not fully done until the return from the Babylonish captivity, fully two-thirds of the way from Moses to Jesus. In the first four of these books there is no note of the Mosiac legislation. Indeed the name of Moses is not mentioned more than six times in these four books. This looks as though the Mo- saic work was done here and not at all by 142 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Moses. The Mosaic work and laws were at least for the most part, after-thonghts. Mr. Gladden says: "Samuel the prophet anointed Satil, and afterward David, as kings of Israel; but, if on these occasions, he said anything about the writings of Moses or the law of Moses, the fact is not mentioned. The records afford us no ground of affirming that either Samuel or Saul was aware of the existence of such sacred writ- ings. This is a notable fact. That the written law of Moses should for four centuries of Hebrew history have disappeared so completely from notice that the historian did not find it necessary to make any allusion to it, is a circumstance that needs explanation. It might be here added that the supposed law of Moses would premit of offering sacrifices at po other place than in the tabernacle, yet none of the people who figured in the books under con- sideration had ever heard of it. Samuel offered burnt offerings at Gilgal. I Sam. x. 8, 13, 15. Both David and Solomon permitted the people to offer sacrifices in many ''high places" I Kin. iii. 24. In collateral proof that in the book of Judges, for four hundred years they had not heard of the Mosaic law, Mr. Gladden says: "According to Levitical law it was positively un- lawful for any person but the high priests ever to go into the innermost sanctuary, the holy of hohes, where the ark of God was kept; and the high priests could not go into that awful place but once a year. But we find the boy Samuel actually sleeping in the temple of the Lord, 'where the ark of the Lord was.' The old JOSHUA TO JOB. 143 version conceals the fact by a mistranslation. These are only a few of many violations of Pentateuchal legislation which we find recorded in these books. ''From the silence of these earlier histories concern- ing the law^ of Moses, and from these many trans- gressions, by the holiest men, of the positive require- ments of the Pentateuchal legislation, the conclusion has been drawn by recent critics that the Pentateuchal legislation could not have been in existence during this period of history; that it must have been produced at a later day." See pp. 74, 75. The stories of Gideon, of Deborah, and other stories in these books were undoubtedly legends and solar myths, as explained by Rev. Robert Taylor and others. On this point nearly all late writers are agreed. Mr. Chad wick says: "Will the story of Sampson be any less sugges- tive to the poet, when he is told that his place amono: the Judges is an extremely doubtful one? He is nowhere represented as exercising military leader- ship, the characteristic function of the Judges. In fact, his story proves to be a solar myth, the name Sampson signifying the sun-god, and many of the de- tails of his story easily admitting of a mythological explanation. So evident is this, that it was the storj' of Sampson which first suggested to Steinthal and other critics, the existence of an underlying stratum of solar myth in the Old Testament histories. As the story has come down to us it has been amalgamated with the story of some Danite hero. In the course of development sometimes the mythical name absorbed the hneaments of some actual hero, and sometimes the name of some actual hero absorbed the lineaments of the solar mvth." 144 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. The book of Kuth, a small book of only four chapters, is cut off from the book of Judges. It is a legend, perhaps founded on fact. It is the story of Ruth, a Moabitish woman, falling in love with, and finally marrjang a Jew, by the name of Boaz, the great-grand-father of David. Of that illicit alliance between the Israelite and this hated Moabite-Gentile, was Jesus, **the world's savior" bom. Thus, Jesus is not wholly of the tribe of Judah, but a combination of Jew and the detested Moabites,— one who was not to be allowed to ''enter the congregation of the Lord to the tenth generation." It was said to the Israelites, "thou shall not seek their peace, nor their prosperity all their days forever." See Deut. xxi . 3-6. This is pret- ty hard on one of Jesus' grand-mothers, and would even keep David out, and debar Solomon from the temple which he builded, but it is in the prose-poem which winds up the book of Judges, and has been set off in tract form b3' it- self and called "Ruth," after the name of its heroine. SAMUEL. We now pass to notice the two books of Sam- uel. Here, as in the case of Moses and Joshua, we have the old, old story, that is, that Samuel, the prophet, wrote the two books which bear his nam^e. It would sound much more like truth to say that Ruth wrote the book of Ruth, Esther the book of Esther, and Job the book of Job. JOSHUA TO JOB. 145 The first book of Samuel gives the account of the death and burial of Samuel, and of his re- turning to communicate. (See I Sam. xxv. 1, xxviii. 3-19.) Neither of the other before mentioned books inform us that the ladies or gentlemen after whom they were named ever passed away. The second book of Samuel runs down to the close of David's forty years reign, which did not begin until some time after Samuel had gone to join his fathers. Even the first of these books records several post-Samuel events. As an illustration I might quotfe Chapter xxii, and verses 6 and 7. There we find the following record: "Then Achshish (King of Gath) gave him Ziklag that day; wherefore Ziklag pertaineth unto the kings of Judah unto this day. And the time that David was in the country of the Philistines was a year and six months." Here the king of Gath made a present of a small province to David, at a time when David and his few friends w^ere outcasts in Israel, and were in hiding from Saul and his army, w^hich was after Samuel's death. In fact this could not have been written until after Israel had re- belled against Judah in consequence of the cruel conduct of Rehoboam, David's grandson. The expression 'Svherefore Ziklag pertaineth untc. the kings of Judah unto this day," must havc been written after Judah had become a separate government from Israel and had had more than one king. Mr. Chadwick rightly argues that the object 146 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. of the writer of these two books, who, by the way, could not have lived earlier than about four hundred years after Samuel, was to glorify Samuel and David at the expense of Saul. I cannot present the matter better than he has done. Bible of to-day pp. 59, 60, says: "The text of Samuel is more 'corrupt' than that of any other book; that is to say, more mistakes have occurred in the transcription of manuscripts and more liberties have been taken by transcribers. Davidson marshals hundreds of absurdities or contradictions that have occurred in one or the other of these ways. But through this haze of doubt and contradiction we distinguish the impressive forms of Samuel, Saul and David; we see the growing dawn of Hebrew nation- ality; and we see, in spite of the final author's pre- dictions, that not to Samuel or David, but to Saul belongs such credit as inheres in that event. But if to Saul belongs the credit of national union, to Sam- uel, who opposed this union belongs the credit of re- viving the worship of Yahweh. Apparently no mono- theist, and conceiving of Yahweh as a God delighting in the blood of human sacrifice he was a strict rnona- litrist, insisting that to Yahweh Israel must paj' ex- clusive homage. A very different person from the Samuel of the Sunday-school books and the popular theology, ecclesiastical forerunner of the headstrong Hildebrands, Bernards, and Beckcts of the Christian era, he had a work to do and did it wonderfully well. For all the writer's good intentions the David of the book of Samuel is not the David of the Psalms, as w^e shall see in due time. He is a man of cruelty, treachery and lust; a man after Yahweh's own heart, as he conceives Yahweh, a god to whom he sacrifices JOSHUA TO JOB. 147 the seven sons of Saul. Yahweh was a god after his own heart, and that was the heart of a man who passed the Ammonites under saws and under harro\YS of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kiln'— that is, burned them or roasted them to death." The writer of the books of Samuel often gets mixed up in his historical facts as well as in his dates. As an illustration, in 1 Sam. xvi. 14- 23, David is introduced to Saul, as a "mighty, valiant man and a man of war." Verse IS. He became a member of Saul's household, and Saul's armor-bearer. See verse 21. After this, when Goliath challenged any man in Israel's army to meet him in open combat and all were afraid of him, the boy David went from his father's house, by command of his father, to carry some parched com, ten loaves of bread and some cheese to his **big brothers" in war. The lad hears this boast- ing Goliath and accepted his challenge. The re- sult is well known; the "stripling" killed the olc? warrior. He, of course, carried his head to th^ king. Then Saul, who it appears had nevei- heard of David until the "stripling" came to him, to get the opportunity to accept the war- rior's challenge, inquired, "who is this strip- ling?" Gen. Abner then took David and intro- duced him to Saul, whereupon Saul propounded certain inquiries. He said to David, "Whose son art thou, young man?". And David answered, "I am the son of thy servant Jesse, the Bethle- hemite." See Chapter xvii. 55-58. Here I must leave the books of Samuel and take up the 148 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. BOOKS OF KINGS. I have said the two books of Kings were or- iginally but one book. The books have the ap- pearance of having been torn in twain in the middle, and thus made into two books. The first book breaks off in the middle of its talk about King Ahaziah, the son of Ahab. To illus- trate the fact that these books are both one I Avill quote without making any break the last Averse of first Kings, and the first two verses of .second Kings. "For he served Baal, and worshipped him, and pro- voked to anger the Lord God of Israel, according to all that his father had done. Then Moab rebelled against Israel after the death of Ahab. And Ahaziah fell down through a lattice in his upper chamber that was in Samaria., and was sick; and he sent messen- gers, and said unto them, go and inquire of Baal- zebub, the god of Ekron, whether 1 shall recover of this disease." Now who can tell from reading this where one book ends and another begins? It would be well for the student to rea^ sev- eral verses of the context both preceding and following this paragraph. These books begin with the end of David's reign where Second Samuel leaves off, and carry the history down to the time of the Babylonish narratives. Those who afterwards decided that Jesus was not Joseph's son forgot to- adjust these genea-: logics to fit the changed condition of affairs. There is a wide difference between Matthew and Luke in their report of Jesus' discourse on the destruction of Jerusalem and its etceteras. 274 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER' CRITICISM. The matter as told in Matthew xxiv was a pri- vate conversation between Jesus and his dis- ciples one evening when they were on the Mount of Olives, after having spent the day in the tem- ple. See verses 1-4. Luke represents that this same discourse was delivered as a public dis- course in the temple. It began when he saw a w^idow cast two mites — all she had — into the treasury. Luke xxi. 1-4. At its conclusion Luke says: "And in the daytime he was teaching in the temple; and at night he went out and abode in the Mount that is called the Mount of Olives. And all the peo- ple came early in the morning to the temple for to hear him." Verses 37, 38. The book of Luke contains much matter not found in either of the other three Gospels, which is a proof that the other writers were sadly de- ficient, or that the stories had grown since the others wrote, as those concerning the priest Xavier grev^ from generation to generation. Among the things found alone in Luke, are the parables of the lost piece of silver. Luke XV. 8-11. The Prodigal Son xvi. 1-12. The Rich Man arid Lazarus, xvi. 19-31. The same may be said of the Good Samaritan. Luke x. 30-35. Also of the publican and the pharisee who went into the temple to pray, xviii. 10-14. By the way, the Good Samaritan was not a Jew. He was of a people who had no dealings with the Jews. See Jno. iv. 9. This was writ- ten to prove the superiority of some of the Gen- THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE. 275 tiles over the Jews; and that the Gentiles, in- stead of being **dogs," as Matthew accuses Jesus of saying, were "neighbors." Jesus h^d said, ''Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." The question was asked, **who is my neighbor?" This story of the Samaritan shows the Gentile to be a neighbor— not a dog. It will be re- membered that the priest passed this sufferer by, as did the Levite; the Samaritan was the true neighbor. The same may be said of the pharisee and the publican. The poor publican's prayer was heard rather than that of the pharisee. Thus Luke everywhere stands up for the Gentiles as against the Jews. Luke contrasts the Jewish and Gen- tile dispensations as follows: **The law and the prophets were until John, since that the king- dom of God is preached and e\ery man pressetb into it.'' Luke xvi. 16. Luke manages to get in a few miracles of which Mark or Matthew either had net heard, or they thought them fabulous, and not worthy of recording. The Resurreetion of the Son of the Widow of Nain is a remarkable case in point. Matthew and Mark both record the fact that Jesus wept over Jerusalem; while Luke makes a record which leaves us to infer that at least some of the women of Jerusalem wept over him. He represents Jesus as saying, "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for your- selves and for your children." Luke xxiii. 28. 276 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. This is certainly a beautiful sajnng; and Luke did well to embellish his book with it. If Jesus did use these words it was an oversight in the other evangelists to forget to put them into their narratives. The same might be said of Jesus' last words; * 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." Luke xxiii. 46. Either the vnriter of this book invented these words, or the other evangelists did not know of them; or if they did they thought them not worth record- ing. In either case, the words themselves, beau- tiful as they are, are a proof of the fallibility of the Gospel writers. Matthew and Luke differ again with respect to the thieves who were crucified with Jesus; Matthew makes the two rail out on Jesus, and cast the same into his teeth that his persecutors did. Matt, xxvii. 44. Luke represents one of the malefactors as railing out on Jesus and the other as rebuking him and calling upon Jesus to remember him when he comes in his kingdom. Luke xxiii. 39-43. On the Universalism of Luke compared with the Judaism of Matthew, I will here add that Matthew has Jesus send out twelve disciples to preach. He told them not to go into. the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the. Samaritans enter ye not, etc. But when Luke records that circumstance all that matter is left out. See Luke. vi» .13^513;^ 3p* ^ But Luke, being a Universalist, . send^ seventy out; that is one for each, of the: ■ seventy ;G€ntiie na- tions. See Luke >s.'li -2. ^ ^- •': '^■'- ^'^"-- v^v;-^: THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE. 277 This ends the review of the Synoptic Gospels. If the evidence is not sufficient to convince the candid reader that they were merely human pro- ductions, it is because he is lost to reason. CHAPTER XIY. THE LAST GOSPEL. -'Nimbus of Legendary Matter"— In What Does John Differ From Other Gospels?— Dr. Sunderland's Statement— Leg- endary Stories— The Author of John not Trustworthy as a Historian— Mr. Chadwick's Thoughts on John- Jesus' First Miracle— A Drunken Civihxation— No Drunk- en Buddhists or Mohammedans— The Miracle at the Pool of Bethesda— Did This Miracle Occur?— Did Jesus Make New Eyes for one Born Blind?— Resurrection of Lazarus— Differences Between John and the Synoptics- John not the Author of Fourth Gospel— Stories which have no Foundation in Fact— Too Many Books— Not Written Until After Justin Martyr's Day. We will next consider *'The Gospel according CO St. John." A writer has said, "Every Historic Religion that has won for itself a place in the world's history has evolved from a core of fact a nim- bus of legendary matter which criticism cannot always separate, and which the popular faith does not always separate." This is a truth which I think no theological scholar will deny. This "nimbus of legendary matter, which criticism cannot always sepa- rate/' though it may take from the historical THE LAST GOSPEL. 279 prestige of religions, takes very little from their ethical status. If the reasoning which has been submitted on the Synoptic Gospels is true, then they are human and only human. It is human to err. While all modern criticism denies the inerrancy of these writings, I know of no real scholars who will tell us they are utterly worthless. Our best historians may and do err, j-et no one would think of throwing all history away be- cause of the errors and interpolations which oc- casionally creep into the writings of historians. So while the Synoptic Gospels differ on many points there is at least a general ethical and spiritual agreement. Nearly all great students agree that there was a great moral teacher in Palestine near twenty centuries ago, around whom all these legends cluster. The book of John, while perhaps as high in its ethics as any other, has more of these legends than any other of the so-called Gospels. It is a record sai generi'S. I cannot better explain my meaning than b^'- making a rather lengthy ex- tract from Dr. Sunderland. On pages 129, 130, of his ''Origin and Growth of the Bible," he sa^'s: The Sj-n optics represent Christ's ministry as only one year in length; the Fourth Gospel a« three years. Ac- cording to the Synoptics his ministry was carried on almost wholly in Galilee, and only once did he visit Jerusalem and that was near the close of his life. Ac- cording to the Fourth Gospel he viiited Jerusalem re- peatedly, and a large part of his ministry was carried 280 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM on in juaea. in the S3moptics his human birth is giv- en; in the fourth he is the pre-existent Logos or Wore —co-existent with God— and, as such, descended to the earth, and manifested in human form. In the Synop- tic Gospels Jesus is a man; he eats, sleeps, hungers, thirsts, grows weary, is tempted, grows in knowledge, shrinks from pain, is dissappointed, prays, even loses temporarily his vision of God, is limited in knowledge and power — goes through the world even as a man among men. True, he is represented as having had a miraculous birth; but men in that age thought Plato and Alexander and Augustus Ceeser miraculously bom. He is represented as working miracles; but miracle working was regarded as common. He is represented as rising from the dead; but, so had Samuel and Moses, and Elijah risen from the dead, and they were only men. "But when we pass on to the Fourth Gospel we are in a wholly different atmosphere; Jesus is no longer a man. He descends into the world from above, not quite God, but much more than man; and he walks through the world as a being from another sphere. His whole manner of teaching is different. In the Sy- noptic Gospels he ever\'where teaches in parables, and in brief and concise sentences. In the Fourth Gospel there is not a parable; and in place of the crystal, clear, short sentences, each so brief and sharp and fresh and full of meaning that nobody can ever forget them; he everywhere speaks in long sentences, and elaborate, mystical, metaphysical discourses. In short, the whole Fourth Gospel shows that it was composed with a doctrinal purpose in view. It is not a mere narrative, written without bias, to tell simply what Jesus did and said. It is a plea, an argument, a doc- THE LAST GOSPEL. 281 ument, written to show that Jesus was the Incarnate Word of God." I think the statement made in the above para- graph is true, though not to so great an extent, of the synoptics; especially of Matthew and Luke. It seems to me that I have demonsti^ited the Judaizing tendency of Matthew and the ten- dency to the opposite extreme of Luke. These quotations, though lengthy, are ft-om a high and honorable source; I must therefore make one more. On pages 131, 132 of this book, Mr. Sunderland says: *'Tn the light of the scholarship of otir time it has to be confessed that there is a legendary element in the Gospels, just as we haA'-e found that there are legends in the various part of the Old Testament. Not a few of the Gospel miracle-stories are undoubtedly legends. For example that exceptionally interesting group of wonder-stories which gather about the birth of Jesus, as so many similar tales have gathered around the birth of so many other great characters of history. Indeed these birth-stories of our Evangelists are almost pre- ciseU' the same as those we find in Buddhistic litera- ture haloing the birth of Guatama. "An interesting thing about our Gospel birth-stories is that we are able to detect them in the very process, as it w^ere, of their legendary growth; and by this means, we get proof that, instead of being a part of the real events of the life of Jesus they almost certain- 1\^ attached themselves to the Gospel records late, at a time which we can approximately fix. To see this w^e have only to open oirr Bibles. Turning to the book of Mark, our earliest Gospel, wc find not one of these birth-stories of Jesus there. Passing on to the 282 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. mter records, Matthew,, and Luke we find them all. The inference seems inevitable that when Mark's Gos- pel was written they were not yet in existence, but when the later Gospels were compiled they have come into being, and have found general credence, as such wonder-stories easily do; and hence, the edit©rs of these two Gospels incorporate them into their narra- tives." I; have said before that it has been supposed that the Gospel according- to St. John was writ- ten, not as containing a synopsis of all that Jes- us said and did but as a kind of addendum to the Synoptics; and, as Mr. Sunderland says: ''with a definite end in view." John, following all the other Gospels in point of time will natur- ally contain more of the marvelous than jeither of the others. He writes to build up a system, and, in his efforts to dogmatize, pa^^s little re- gard to historic verity. Mr. Chadwick says: "If he was the man of Matthew's Gospel, he was not the mysterious being of the F'ourth. If his minis- try w^as only one A'^ear long it was not three. If he only made one journey to Jerusalem, he did not make many. If his method of teaching was that of the Sy- noptics, it was not that of the Fourth Gospel. If he was the Jew of Matthew he was not the anti-Jew of John. It may be doubted whether any difference of stand-point or subjective bias is sufficient to account for such differences of representation as there are be- tween the Fourth Gospel and the Synoptics. But granting the possibility of this, Jesus was one thing or another; what was he? What did he teach? What did he do? It is an astonishing Revelation, which in eludes such different representations of its central per* THE LAST GOSPEL. 283 sonage without distinguishing them as true and false, er at least as more or less true." I have proved that Matthew relates many things that Mark leaves unsaid, and that Luke relates mRnj more which were forgotten or thought of so little importance by both Mark and Matthew that neither of them referred to theni. I now say that John beats all of the Svnoptics. Among the miracles related by John concerning w^hich the other Gospel writers knew nothing, or if they knew, thought not worth mentioning are: First, the turning of water into wine, at the wedding in Caana of Galilee. As this was the very first miracle that Jesus ever performed and as the Gospel writers undertake to prove who and what Jesus was by his miracles they were surely reprehensible for throwing this one into the waste basket. This miracle was done in order that people, who were "well drunken," (or, who were verv^ drunk, would read better,) might, contrary to the usual custom, have better wine on which to finish their bibulous feast. See Jno. ii. 1-11. Jesus was jonng when he tried his hand at t":iis miracle, and he never repeated it; and the most of us are glad. Right minded people think that he there lost a golden opportunity to de- liver a short temperance lectxire— that if he had done that instead of making wine to make these people more drunk— or if the writer of the story had consigned the story to the wastebasket, 284 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Christianity would stand higher than it does. Christianity has given us the most drunken civi- Hzation under the sun. If Buddha had done the same thing as John represents Jesus as having done, there might be the same proportion of drunkenness among the five hundred millions of Buddhists, as there are in England or America, which are par excellence Christian nations. If Mohammed had followed the example of Jesus there would perhaps be as much drunken- ness among his two hundred and eighty million of followers as there is in Christian England or America. Second, the story of the miracle wrought at the Pool of Bethesda, recorded in John v. 1-9, is found no where else in the Bible. It does not seem possible that it can be true. There could hardly be such a place, where a great multitude of sick people could assemble and remain for a period of not less than thirty-eight years, (see verse 9) that an angel could come down and cause an annual troubling of the waters, and heal just one and no more at each visit, atid nobody but the writer of this book ever have heard of it. It seems strange if Jesus was as good and great as he has been represented to be, that he did not extend his miracle working power to a few more of that "great multitude of sick folk.'* Had he tried his hand on all of them, or set even a small majority of them to carrjHng away their beds it would have recommended him to THE LAST GOSPEL. 285 the world and advertised his work as nothing else has ever done. But we must not foisget the main question, which was, what were these synoptical gentle- men doing that they overlooked this matter? A cripple carrying his bed around, especially after having lain upon it for thirty-eight years would, one would think, naturally create some excite- ment; 3^et nowhere else in all the world has this been mentioned. Third, the story of making new ej^es for a man born blind, recorded nowhere else in the Bible except in the ninth chapter of this book, ought to have been recorded elsewhere. It e^ves the Jews an opportunity to cast the man out of the synagogue, and to manifest their wrath toward Jesus. It should have been noticed by the s\'n optics. Fourth, the greatest of all miracles, which the other biographers thought not worth mention- ing, is the resurrection of Lazarus. How strange it is, if this story is true, that the other writers should tell of the resurrection of the Ruler's daughter, and Luke should mention the resusci- tation of the widow's son when on the way to the grave, and yet they should all forget this greatest of all miracles. Lazarus had been dead four days, and, "by this time he stinketh." Jno. xi. 39. This was the most wonderful of all resurrections, and yet it is not once referred to elsewhere in the Bible. Is not this proof that the stories of miracles like other stories grew in. 286 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. the inverse ratio as distance intervenes between the narrator and the time when it should have occurred? Mr. Chadwick, after making the statement that Mark has but twentj^-four verses which cannot be found in one of the other synoptics, and that Luke is one-third new mattc4-. says: ''Two-thirds of John are absent from the three synoptics put together." I have shown that the S3moptic Gospels differ from each other, but John differs from all of them. In fact the difference is so great that the one v^ho makes an attempt to make them har- monize with each other only makes a laughing stock of himself. As samples of these incongru- ities I present the following. 1. The Synoptics represent Jesus as eating the passover. Matt. xxi. 26-29. Mark xiv. 12-18. Luke xvii. 7-20. John represents Jesus as not eating the passover, but as being killed on that day. Jno. xix. 14. There is no possi- bility of harmonizing these contradictory posi- tions. 2. Jesus' driving the money changers out of the temple was, according to the Synoptics, among his last public works. Matt. xxi. 12. Mark xi. 15. Luke xix. 45. With John this was done at the very beginning of his ministr3\ It was the very first thing he did after turn- ing water into wine. One is almost led to sus- pect that the wine may have had something to do with this rather anarchistic manifestation. THE LAST GOSPEL. 287 3. The Synoptics place Jesus' ministry in Gali- lee; he does not go to Jerusalem until he goes there to deliver a private talk to his disciples, according to Matthew, or a public discourse ac- cording to Luke, and to die. According to John, Jesus' first sermon was delivered in Jerusalem. 4. In the Synoptics Jesus' ministry only lasted one year. In John he attended four annual pass- overs. Here it is three against one— somebody was mistaken. 5. In the other Gospels the Jews treat Jesus with some respect; the common people "heard him gladly." In John the life of Jesus was one continuous quarrel with the Jews; and several times they sought to stone him to death. The fact is, this book represents the Jews as being not only wicked in their opposition to Jesus, but almost idiotic in their manifestations of enmity. According to John the Jews made not less than eight attempts to kill Jesus before tliey succeed- ed. See Jno. v. 16-18. vii. 1, 30. viii 40, 59. x. 33, 39. How strangely remisj these other writ- ers were to allow these eight attempts to murder their master pass without notice. 6. That glorious sermon on the mount is not reported in the book of John, but there are nu- merous discourses and debates reported, as hav- ing been delivered in the temple and elsewhere. Jno. xiv. is a sermon delivered to his disciples — a kind of funeral sermon, not elsewhere reported. 7. While the Lord's prayer is not in John there is a lengthy prayer reported in the seven- 288 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. teeni'li chapter. The prayer is very narrow. In it he says, **I pray not for the world, but for those thou hast given me out of the world." Verse 9. In one place the hatred of Judaism by the au- thor of this book led him to represent Jesus as saying: *'A11 that came before nie are thieves and robbers." Jno. x. 8. This was rather hard on Moses; that may have been the reason why Matthew left it out of his book. Taking the book of John altogether, I am glad that the Higher Criticism has proved that John was not its author — that it \\ras the product of the latter half of the second centur3\ On this point Mr. Chad wick says: "Ever3^\vhere in John wt come upon a more develop- ed stage of Chri'^tianity Jhnn in the Synoptics. The scene, the atmosphere is different. In the Synoptics, Judaism, the temple, the law, the Messianic kingdom are omnipresent. In John they are remote and vague. In Matthew Jesus is always yearning over his own nation. In John he has no other sentiment for it than hate and scorn. In Matthew the sanction of the prophets is the great credential. In John his dignity can tolerate no previous approximation. 'All that came before me' he says, 'are thieves and robbers.' Surely, to put such narrowness into the mouth of Jesus, was not to do him honor." There are several stories in the book of John, which are now acknowledged to have no found- ation in fact. The story of the Pool of Bethesda is one. Also the story of the woman taken in the very^ act of adultery. It is now almost uni- THE LAST GOSPEL. 289 versally conceded that the last chapter of John was put in by a later hand; those who do not acknow1edp:e that, admit that if the John who wrote this book when he was between ninety and one hundred A-ears old, wrote this chapter it was at a nuicli later date than when he wrote the twenty previous chapters. It seems that this Avriter finally became tired of writing big stones, and so he winds his book up with the following: "And there are also many things which Jesus did, the which, if they shoukl be written, everj^ one, I sup- pose that even the world itself could not contain ttie books that should be written," The writer must have intended this as hyper- bole, otherwise, what a library we should have. In conclusion upon the internal testimonies of this book, I will say that ^when the time comes for me to write on the book of Revelation, I will show that there was no possibility of Jesus' dis- ciple John writing all of this book; I will then show that the author of one of these books could by no possibility be either of the authors of the other. Wliile it is no part of the Higher Criticism to go into the external evidences, or Lower Criti- cism, there is no harm in m^^ sa^^ng the writ- ing of this book was never attributed to John, the immediate disciple of Jesus, until it was done by Theophilus, about A. D. 180. Justin Martyr believed in and advocated, if he did not origi- nate the Johnine doctrine. He wrote about A. 290 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. D. 150. The wonder is, if he knew of the exist- ence of such a book as that of John, he did not quote from it. The church in all its quarrels about the paschal doctrine, in 100 to 150, never in any v^ay referred to this book^ which makes Christ our pass over. Here I must leave the Gospels. 1 cannot study or write on them ^thout increasing my con- viction of the human frailties of their writers. I would advise all who believe in their inerrancy^ if they wish to retain that behef, to avoid criti- cally reading them. CHAPTER XV. ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. Different Titles to this Book— Claims to have been Writ- ten b\^ the Author of Luke — Not Written in the First Cen- tury—Why this Book was Written — Writer Claims to be a Companion of Paxil — The Luke of Acts Contradicts the Luke who Wrote the Gospel — Paul Contradicts the Writ- er of Acts — Paul, in Galatiaus Explains the Controversy Referred to in Acts xv. — Was this a Conference, or a Quarrel? — Did Paul Circumcise Timoth3'? — Who Made the Speeches in Acts? — Did Paul Retain his Judaism? — Paul Opposed to the Jewish Law — Chadwick Explains — Why Acts was Written. Tiaking the Bible in its regular course I must next examine the Acts of the Apostles, or as the ti- tle reads in the Greek, *'The practice," or "The Deeds of The Apostles." It is said that the Sinaitic manuscript has the title simply "Acts," while the Vatican has "Acts of Apostles." This book is cer- tainly not the Acts of all the Apostles; it might, if true, be called "Some of the Acts of Peter and Paul, with an occasional mention of other Apostles." This book has justly bean called a "charming fiction." If it is not a fiction it is at least a 292 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. piece of ''tendency writing." That is, the author had a theory to maintain — a theory of which, from first to last, he ne^er lost sight. If there wrere facts to justify him in the points he had in view he was, perhaps, glad of it. If not, he went on and made "facts" to suit the case. The idea that *'The Gospel according to St. Ivuke" was written by Luke, has led to the mis- taken supposition that Dr. Luke must have been the author of the book of Acts. The author of Luke writes his narrative as a private letter ta his friend, ''The Most Excellent Theophilus." The book of Acts begms with a reference to that book by saying: "The former treaties have I made with thee, O,, most excellent Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day that he was- taken up, after that, he, through 'the Holy Ghost, had given commandments unto the apostles, whom he ha^ chosen." Acts i. 1-2. As it has been clearly proved that "Luke, the beloved physician," did not write the book of Luke, and as this book, by referring, as it does,, to the book of Luke, clearly proves that it was not written until after that book was in the hands of Theophilus, it follows that Luke did 'not write this. J think the fact that no one ever thought of Luke being the author of this book until about the year 182, puts the idea that Luke was its- author out of the question. In fact, Ireneus' statement made in 182, is the earliest genuine ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 293 reference to this book; all others being interpo- lations. After this, testimonies are numerous as to the existence of this book; but, as Mr. Gladden says: * 'The earliest of them testified a hundred years after the death of Luke. The direct testi- mony as to the existence of this book in the first two centuries is not therefore altogether -satisfactory." If time and space were not just no^v at a premium it might be interesting to go through this book and present a kind of resume of its contents. As it is I will forego the pleasure. The book of Acts w^as not written until after the Christian Religion had ceased, or was about •ceasing to be a kind of addendum to Judaism, and had become catholic or universal. On this point Peter and Paul differed, and even quar- reled. Peter made Christianity a kind of side attachment to Judaism. Paul cut it entirely away from every former religion. Paul was what might be called a Gnostic Catholic. This will be proved by his letters. These men, as be- fore stated, not only differed, but they actually quarreled and parted over these differences of opinion. About the year 185, the Gnostic or Universal Christians and the Jews, or Ebionitish Chris- tians met and settled their differences, which had lasted nearly a century; this settlement formed the Church Universal, or the CathoHc Church. Some one interested in that universalism as opposed to Judaism wrote first the book of 294 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Luke, to counteract the Ebonitish book of Mat- thew; and afterwards the book of Acts, with the view of harmonizing the differences between the Petrine and Pauline Christians. As the task was an impossible one, the mistakes in the book of Acts are so palpable that he who runs may- read them. There is little room to doubt that Luke was for a time a companion of Paul. It -was there- fore a point well taken for this writer to repre- sent himself as being a traveling companion of Paul, as he does in several places. In Acts xvi. 10, after speaking of Paul's vision of the man of Macedonia, he says, '^Immediately we endeav- ored to go into Macedonia." In verse 11 he says, "Therefore loosing from Troas -we came, v^ith a straight course to Samothracia." Verse 13 says, ''And on the Sabbath we went out of the city by the river side." The word r/s, in verse 15 is supplied by King James' translators. Verse 16, ''We went to prayer." Verse 17 tells of the damsel following as. The same kind of statements are found in several other places in this book. Vide xx. 4, 15; xxi. 1, 18; xxvii. 1; xxviii. 16. Whether the writer quotes these statements^ or whether he wanted to represent himself as belonging to the party of whom he was speak- ing is not positively knov^m. Tliese are the things which have led people to think the book of Acts was written by one of Paul's immediate companions. ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 295 It is well known that Paul and Luke were to- gether during the latter part of Paul's life. In his second letter to Timothy, which was writ- ten at Rome, he says, in chapter four, verse 11, ^'Only Luke is with me; take- Mark and bring him with thee; for he is profitable to thee and to me." Such texts made it handy for a second century writer to affix the name of Luke to his produc- tion. Although this book is written, perhaps, by the writer of the book of Luke, his memory was not the best. He forgot some things he said in Luke, and contradicted them in Acts. In Luke he puts the ascension of Jesus on the day of his resurrection. See Luke xxiv. 49-51. Also he made him ascend from Bethany. In the book of Acts he makes him ascend forty days later. See Acts i. 3; and from the Mount of Olives. Verse 12. A writer who thus contradicts him- self may be expected to contradict others. Those who expect this will not be disappointed, for the writer of Acts does that very thing. He has Jesus ascend from Bethany, in Luke, and from the Mount of Olives, in Acts, while Matthew has him ascend from Galilee. Matt, xxviii. 16. So far as this book refers to matters con- tained in other bibhcal records is concerned it contradicts them. In Acts as soon as Paul is converted he goes to Jerusalem. Acts ix. 26. When Paul relates the matter, he tells us that he went to Arabia; and that he did not go to Jerusalem for three years. Gal. i. 17, 18. 296 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. In Acts XV. 1, 2, we find the cliurch was troubled with Judaizing teachers who required the Christians of other nations to be circumcised and keep the laws of Moses; Paul and Barnabas were sent from Antiooli to inquire about it. They went and disputed the matter and then went to Jerusalem. In the second chapter of Galatians Paul gives a vastly different version of the story. Please read the whole chapter; there Paul represents that he took one side of the question and Peter the other. Paul says that "Peter was to be blamed," and that he w^ithstood him face to face. Paul says in verse 14, "But when I saw that they walked not up- rightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, if thou being a Jew, livest after the manner of the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?" The fact is, Paul writes in the interest of his party. The writer of Acts writes to try to con- vince the church of a century later that the church ^^as practically a unit; hence he makes use of every opportunity to mimify these differ- ences. The writer of the book of Acts makes this meeting a formal conference, assembled on pur- pose to advise with each other as to what posi- tion the church should take with reference to the law of Moses. In the report, as made by Paul in his letter to the Galatians, there was nothing formal about this. It was a kind of "go as you ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 297 please" quarrel between two of the apostles and their followers. In this dispute Barnabas final- ly decides with Peter and the pa.rty of the Ebio- nites, and against Paul, and his Universalist friends. This decision broke friendship between Paul and Barnabas, in so much that he, and Paul separated. Barnabas joined the Jewish- Petrine party, and Paul and a Gentile by the tlie name of Silas formed a copartnership. Paul saj's: "Barnabas was carried awa3' with their dissimulation." Gal. ii. 13. When the apostles who held this conference, according to this writer, wrote to the Gentile brethren, they admonished them to abstain from meats offered to idols — Acts xv. 21-28; but when Paul who is represented as having endorsed this letter, wrote to the Gentiles he told them a dif- ferent story. See I Cor. viii. whole chapter, x. 25-27. These Judaizers wanted Paul to have Titus, a Greecian, circumcised; but this he refuses to do. He wrote to his Galatian brethren that he would give place to such, "no, not for an hour." See Gal. ii. 3-5. Notwithstanding all this, the writer of the book of Acts represents Paul as taking Timothy and circumcising him. Acts xvi. 3. Can anyone believe that Paul was such a toady as that? There are many speeches made in the Acts of the Apostles, but they all evidently came from the same mind. No matter by whom they were ostensibly made, the speeches have a general 298 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. sameness which cannot be explained on any other hypothesis than that they were made for, and not by the supposed speakers. Peter makes at least, three speeches, Paul, not less than six; Stephen makes the longest one of any of them. ' I will not say that these gentlemen did not all make speeches; I will say they did not make the speeches attributed to them. The reports are too short to be verbatim reports, and too long to be mere references to what was said. It is well known, and can be proved by his speeches and writings that Paul abandoned all his Jewish ideas; yet the writer of Acts represents him as being neither more nor less than a Jew with a few Christian attachments. He is repre- sented as being thoroughly devoted to Jerusalem, the Jewish rituals and the temple service. He is quoted as saying, '*! must by all means keep this feast at Jerusalem." Acts xviii. 21. He was ready not onlj^ to be bound but to die at Jerusalem. Acts xxi. 13. When he went to Jerusalem he is represented as taking v^ith him four men — impecunious tramps, and he had his and their heads shaved, and went through the Jewish process of purifi- cation. Acts xxi. 23-28. This was "undoubtediy put into this book to show the readers, or at least to lead them to suppose that Paul was not so much opposed to Petrine Judaism as might be supposed. I now ask, is the story reasonable? Can it be ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 299 that an apostle who called that law and those ceremonies, **The Ministration of Death," which was abolished — II Cor. iii. 7-11 — would thus prostitute himself? This man said he was ''dead to the law." Gal. ii. 19. He also declared the law to be dead. Ro. vii, 5, 6. He told the Gal- atians that those who were of the worJis of the law were **under the curse." Gal. iii. 10. His position was that Christ had ''redeemed them from the curse of the law." Verse 13. This Paul talked about "the middle wall of partition" being "broken down," and that the law of commandments contained in ordinances was abolished. Eph. ii. 4-15. He tells his Colossian brethren about the "handwriting of ordinances being blotted out and nailed to the cross," and therefore he exhorted his brethren to "let no one judge them, in meat or drink, or in respect to an holy day, or the new moon, or the Sabbath days," etc. Col. h. 14-17. If Paul w£is the double character that the book of Acts, as compared with the above ex- cerpts from his epistles would show, he was an unworthy disciple of either Christianity or Judaism. I -will conclude the argument on this book with a quotation from Air. Chadwick. On pages 259, 260 of his "Bible of Today" he says: **Be certain that it was not from accident that the attributes of Peter and Paul were so shuffled up to- gether, that they masquerade in each other's armor, 300 THE biblt: and the higher criticism. fight with eaeh other's weapons, talk with each other's voices. It is not accident that we have twelve chap- ters devoted to Peter and then about as many more devoted to Paul. It is not accidental that for almost every event in Peter's career there is a parallel in Paul's, —that if Peter confutes Simon, the Magician, Paul must confute El^^mas, the Sorcerer; if Peter raises Ta- t)itha from the dead, Paul must raise Eutichus; if Peter has a vision Paul must have one for a similar purpose, if Peter's shadow would work miracles, so could Paul's handkerchief. It is not accidental also that the sufferings of Peter are parallel with those of Paul; that the two men of striking individuality are represented as being as alike as two peas. To repre- sent them as being so alike is the very purpose for which the book was written; in order to conciliate the rivalries and hatreds of opposing Pauhne and Petrine parties in the early church. The writer was himself a Paulinist; himself a Universalist, and this book was w^ritten as the basis of a compromise between this party and the other. Come, said he, let us pretend that they were not so very different; that Peter was the first apostle to the Gentiles; that Paul was a de- vout adherent to the law. Is not this better than to go on fighting? United we stand; divided we fall. Apparently the other party said, Amen. Certain it is that there was a compromise on pretty much this basis in the second centur3,\ A Catliolic Church was lormed midway between the two extremes^ of Petrine Ebioniteism and Pauline Gnosticism. Its spirit became more and m.ore Pauline and its name and tradition more and more Petrine." The compromise above mentioned was abont the year A. D. 125. The Gospel of Luke was ACTS OF ti:e apostles. 301 written about the time this book was written, perhaps a httle earher than this, and for the same purpose; that is to make the church a Uni- versal and not simply a Jewish institution. Like the book of Luke, much of the book of Acts was drawn from older documents. I have above referred to several passages in which the writer of this book refers to himself as the trav- eling companion of Paul; this of course was nec- essary to make the book effective. In the days when this book was written, as in the daj^s when the book of Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, and the book of Daniel were written, it was considered no crime for writers to use a great and popular name. The design of the author was, no doubt, good. He wanted to effect a union between two sects of Christians which could probably have been done in no other way. Of course, in this attempt the author has greatly injured the character of the "great apos- tle to the Gentiles." Not being able to compre- hend a great character he was not able to rep- resent one. Here we must leave this great forgery. The Acts of the Apostles, and pass to a very brief no- tice cf the Epistles. CHAPTER XVI. THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. New Testament a Growth— Authenticity and Order of the Pauline Epistles — Matter of Authorship of Minor Im- portance—Paul Does Not Claim Plenary Inspiration — How Romans is Divided— Did Paul Thank God That the Romans were Sinners?— The "Gifts;" What They Are — ^A Good System of Ethics— Chapter Sixteen' the Work of Another Hand. As most of the Epistles were written before either of the four Gospels they should have been examined first. My determination to take the Bible by course, as it stands, was the principal cause of placing their examination after the Gospels and the book of Acts. The New Testament, like the Old, was a growth; it was considerably more than one hun- dred years in being written, and was many more years in getting into the Canon. Then again after it had found its way there, and was considered in some sense a sacred book, it was many years before it was esteemed of as much importance as the Old Testament. In the New Testament, as we have it, are several kinds of writing. THE EPISTLES TO THE ROMANS. 303 1. Biography; or, rather, Biographical His- tory. This \ve have examined in the four Gos- pels and the Acts of the Apostles. 2. It has the Epistolary writings of the Apos- tles and others. Those are now to pass under review. 3. It has a book of supposed prophetic writ- ings called "The Revelation of St. John the Di- vine." This is the name in the heading; the name in the book itself is, "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass." We will first consider the Epistles of Paul. There are fourteen Epistles with which Paul's name has been connected, but he certainly did not write them all. Mr. Chadwick sa\'s: "The nominal Epistles of Paul may be properly classed under four heads. Those certainly Pauline — Romans, Corinthians, Galatians; those doubtfully Pauline in the order of their doubtfulness, from more to less, Ephesians, Colossians, Philipians, Second Thes- salonians, Philemon and First Thessalonians. Those almost certainly not Pauline — the two to Timothy and one to Titus. One certainly not the Apostle's— The Epistles to the Hebrews. Strangely enough, this graduation of authenticity has been preserved in the arrangement of the Pauline Epistles. First we have the impregnable four; Romans, the two Corinthians, and Galatians; next the doubtful, led off as they should be, by Ephesians. Then the more doubtful pastorals to Timothy and Titus, and the most doubt- ful 'Hebrews' last of all." —Bible of Today, p. 192. 304 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. It is tlius seen that it is not certain that Paul wrote more than four of the Epistles attributed to him. Some of the world's best scholars are perfectly sure that Paul wrote no more than four of tlicm; others think he wrote seven, and stiil others think he may have written ten of the fourteen Epistles which are now accredited to him. To the real student, who is after thought in- stead of great names, it makes little difference who wrote them; they contain many good things. The Epistle to the Hebrews, al^'iost universally acknowdedged by scholars to be a second or tliird century production, contains some as good things as can be found in Romans or either of the letters to the Corinthians. Even if Paxd did write all the Epistles which have come down to us as his, they contain things which originated in no higher source than his own brain. Paul says in I. Cor. vii. 6, that he speaks by permission, and not by commandment; and in verse 11 he says: *'But to the rest speak I, not the Lord." Tliere were many things, as we have shown, which prove that the apostles were not so in- spired as to "see eye to eye." Galatians is one of the books which was undoubtedly written by Paul. It shows that the apostles were not so inspired as to agree in doctrine or practice. In the second chapter of this book, Paul classes Peter among ''false brethren;" and adds, *'I gave place, by subjection, no, not for an hour. **Gal. THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 305 ii. 4, 5. He goes on in this chapter to talk about ''James, Cephas and John." Finally in verses 11-15 he says: "But when Peter was come to Antiocli, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles; but when they were come he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision. And the other Jews dissembled hkewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimidation. But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, if thou be- ing a Jew, livest after the manner of the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiies^ to live as do the Jews?^' All of this goes to prove that their inspiration did not guide them infallibly, nor in the same groove. Each writer wrote from his own stand- point. Let us now notice THE BOOK OF ROMANS. This is, perhaps, Paul's greatest Epistle; and there are in it man3^ things which justify the writer of the second Epistle of Peter in saying that he wrote "many things hard to be under- stood." See II Pet. 'iii. 15, 16. Paul's letters were generally written ta churches where he was acquainted, and had preached. This book, however, is an exception. He had as yet, never seen Rome. See Ko. i. 13, Tjus letter is properly divided into three parts. Chapter i. to viii. comments on the law, and sets 306 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CiaTICISM. forth the doctrine of justification by faith. These chapters refer more fully than any other portions of the Bible to the old idea of death by sin, and salvation by grace. "Where sin abounded grace did much more abound." See V. 20. In verse 17, of chapter vi, King James* version makes Paul say: "But God be thanked, that Y€: were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered unto you." It seems strange that Paul would thank God that the Romans had been sinners; but it was in order to illustrate the grace of God. The re- vised version softens that somewhat by saying: ^'But God be thanked that whereas ye were the servants of sin ye became obedient." etc. Chapters ix and xi, inclusive, constitute a commentary on the old system; he tries to recon- cile the fall and rise of many in Israel with the goodness and mercy of God. He shows that they are not all Israel that are of Israel; and that blindness hath happened to Israel in part until the fullness of the Gentiles hath come in. His arguments in these chapters are more subtle than can be found elsewhere in the Bible. Chapters xii to xvi consist mainly of exhorta- tions. Chapter xii is one of the finest exhorta- tions and contains the finest system of ethics that can be found in our language. Every reader of this book is asked to commit this chapter to memory, to practice its admonitions and to repeat them to others. A beautiful argu- THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 307 ment for tlie perpetuity of spiritual gifts is found in this chapter, which, owing to the pre*- vaiHng infidelity on that question I will quote; Verses 6-8 read as follows: "Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given unto ns, whether prophecy, .et tis proph- ecy according to the proportion of faith; or ministry let us wait on our ministering; or he that teacheth on teaching; or he that exhorteth on exhortation; he that giveth let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with dilhgence; he that showeth mercy, with cheerful- ness." Here among the especial gifts, bestowed not merely upon the apostles, but on the whole church, are prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhor- tation, giving and ruling. Most of the biblical expositors of today acknowledge that many of these are in the church today. I would like to ask by what authority they have teachers, preachers and exhorters today, and yet refuse to allow that there can be prophets and heal- ers? Who has the authority to separate these gifts; to welcome one of them, and to say to another, **thus far shalt thou go, and no far- ther? I believe the * 'gifts" spoken of above belong alike to every age of the world, that giving and ruling are spiritual gifts as much as prophesy- ing. *'He that giveth let him do it with sim- plicity." That is, with liberality. That is the meaning of the word. Each one is urged to cultivate the gift that is developed in himself; no one should try to 308 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. usurp the place of another; and each department of the work should be regarded , as equally lionorable. A digest of Paul's statement of the kind of life that he advises in order to enjoy the results of these gifts, as given in chapter twelve, thir- teen and fourteen might be summed up as fol- lows: 1. It is but a reasonable service for them to each ofter his body, his life, his all, in the cause he loves. 2. Such persons, having given up all, should tiot conform to the fashions and follies of this world, but should be transformed by the renew- ing of their minds; that is, they should reach beyond mere worldly dress, pleasure and appe- tites — they should have in their lives this con- tinuous stream of inspiration, which he calls '''the renewing of the mind." 3. Everv' one is admonished to conquer pride; not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; each should regard himself as only a steward over what he may have of tal- ent or worldly possession. 4?. In showing that every member of the body IS useful, Paul shows that every person has a olace to fill which is peculiar to himself. 5. Then follows his argument on gifts, as quoted above. - 6. He next pleads with them to let love be -without dissimulation, or hypocrisy. He urges them to ''be not slothful in business," but to be THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 309 * 'fervent in spirit, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing instant, or constant in pra3'er." 7. He wants them to distribute of their worldly goods to those who need; to be given to hospitality^, to bless even those who persecute them; to bless and curse not; to rejoice and weep with others; to condescend to men of low estate; to alwa3"s recompense good for evil; to* try to live peacefully with all men. 8. In order to do this he urges them to not retaliate, or to take vengeance on enemies, but to "heap coals of fire on their head" by feeding them if they are hungry, and giving them drink if thirsty. 9. He next exhorts them to be submissive to- the powers that be; to pay their tribute or tax; to honor wherever honor is due, and to owe no man anything. 10. He argues that love never works ill, but rather fulfills the law; they should walk hon- estly, and refrain from rioting and drunkenness. 11. He admonishes them to receive those wha have but little faith, but not to doubtful disputa- tions; that is, not receive them with the idea of disputing with them with regard to their faiths oi* lack of faith; to throw away superstitions about eating and drinking; esteeming one day above another, or every day alike. He Welshes everyone to be fully persuaded in his own mind — have no controversy over such matters. 12. He concludes by urging his brethren to 310 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. follow after the things which make for peace. I must again say, no matter who wrote this book, the ethical parts of it if studied and car- ried out in every day life, will elevate the one w^ho thus practices, beyond those who do not thus live. The Epistle proper is supposed to end with chapter fifteen. Chapter sixteen is generally re- garded as the work of a later writer. It does not read at all like the former chapters. Indeed the persons named in this chapter did not be- long in Rome— probably never saw the "seven hilled city." Many have, with good reason sup- posed that this chapter should have been the closing, p^.rt of the Book of Ephesians. CHAPTER XVII. r'mST AND SECOND CORINTHIANS. Three Epistles to the Corinthians — Dirisions in the Chnrch — Corinthians Slack in Morals — Paul's Idea of Freedom — Paul on the Woman Question — Chapters Twelve, Thir- teen and Fourteen to l>c Read Together — Argument on the Resurrection of Jesus — His Evidence — The Logical Sequence — Baptized for the Dead — We Shall not all Sleep — A few Words from Dr. Peebles — Whr Second Corin- thians Was Written— Wants the Incestuous Man Restor- ed to the Church — His Belief in the Unseen — Exhortation to Bodilv and Spiritunl Cleanliness — Exhorts to Cheerfal Giving — Renews his Quarrel with the Other Apostles— Accnscs Them of Being False Apostles — Deceitful Work- ers — Paul's Pedigree — Spiritual Introniissiotu This is called ''The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians;" but it is not the first. It is the first we have, but not the first he wrote. In the fifth chapter of this Epistle, verse 13, he says: **I wrote un- to you in an Epistle not to keep company with fornicators." This is proof positive that at lea,st one Epistle was written to the Corinth- ians before this one. That this Epistle was lost does not harmonize very well with the idea that 312 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM the BUAq was miraculously preserved, as many of our creeds say. The letter under consideration is supposed to liave been written at Ephesus, about A. D. 57, or 58. This Epistle seems to have been written main- 13^ because of certain reports brought to Paul of divisions in the church. Also that the system of etliics practiced by the Corinthian church was not of the highest t3q3e. It seems that there were at least four divisions in the church. One party said, "I am of Paul," another, "I am of Apollos," another, "I am of Cephas," and still anotlier, "I am of Christ." Paul tries, in this letter, to shame them out of these ideas, and to restore harmony-. I gather from his next letter to this people that in this he^ was successful. Next, he finds much fault with the . morals of this pcvople. He tells of reports of v^orse crimes anions^ them than was mentioned amono" the Gentiles. One man among them had his father's wife, and the others seemed to be rather glad of it than otherwise. All this was done in di- rect opposition to his te.aching in a former let- ter. He now draws the lines a little tighter than he had ever done before. In v. 11, he sa^^s: "But now I have written unto you not to keep com- pany, if any man that is called a brother be a forni- cator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunk- ard or an extortioner; with such an one not to eat." In the next two chapters he talks of the mar- FIRST AND SECOND CORINTHIANS. 313 riage relation and the duty of husbands and wives to each other. On the whole he has rather a crude opinion of marriage, and especi- idly of the reasons why men should marry. See especially vii. 7-9. In this, however, he admits tliat it was himself that was talking, and not the Lord. The instruction in this book, on eating and drinking is, to go with the crowd, but not to use this liberty as a stumbling block to the weak. In fact, he thought it best to, in every- thing, be as 3'ielding as possible to the senti- ments of others. His doctrine is that no one should cross any other in nonessentials. In this I cannot sa^^ that he was wrong. In chapter ix. 19-22, he says: "For though I be free from all men, yet have I made m\'self servant to all, that I might gain the more. And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; to them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ) that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak; I am made all things to all men that I might by all means save some." In chapter ten he holds the ancient Jews up as a kind of example. He draws lessons from both their good deeds and their mistakes. Verse 24, has by certain LiberaHsts and Spiritualists 314 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. been wrongly interpreted. "Let no man seek his OMvn, but every man his brother's wealth." This do^ not mean, as has been in- terpreted, let every man seek to rob his brother; bttt let every one look out for the good of oth- ers. It is an expression of true brotherly affec- tion. The Revised Version makes it plainer. It says: "Let no man seek his own, but each his neighbor's good." After this he again takes up lil>erty on the eat- ing and drinking question. This seems to be a theme on which the3^ had some trouble and dis- cussion. He re-states in substance what he had said in a former chapter. In chapter eleven he undertakes to show the superiority of man over ^sroman, and as such man must assert his au- thority and woman must allow man to be the head. She must wear long hair as a kind of badge of subjection. At the same time he thinks it is a shame and a disgrace for man to wear long hair. His ideas may have been adapted to that age of the world, but the world has so far departed from the inspirations of this writer that he would stand higher in the estimation of many if he had not said anything on that ques- tion. In this chapter Paul also show^ that the Christians of that day were not all paragons of perfection. Some of them even went so far as to get intoxicated at the communion table. Read Terscs 17-22. In chapters twelve, thirteen and fourteen Paul FLRST AND SECOND CORINTHIANS. 315 talks sensibly of the spiritual gifts, and of char- ity. Really the whole subject is spiritual gifts. Chapter thirteen is throwni in as a kind of chain to bind chapters twelve and fourteen together. In chapter twelve he shows what the gifts are, and their . importance, and winds up by exhort- ing them to covet them; and adds: **Yet show I unto you a more excellent way." Chapter thirteen is devoted to the subject of charity, or love. He shows that, as important as the gifts are; or I will say, as important as mediumship is, it is worthless without that charit^^ which "thinketh no evil," — that the time may come and will in the life of every one when he will need no more of the other gifts, yet * 'charity never faile th . ' ' Then chapter fourteen, after exhorting them to ''follow after charity,'* again urges them to "desire spiritual gifts." Chapter fifteen is a dissertation on the resur- rection of Jesus, and the lesson his resurrection gives us concerning the resurrection of all. In this chapter Paul thoroughly meets the doctrine of the Epicureans and other materialists, that death ends all. Paul's argument is so much like the argument for Modern Spiritualism that I am tempted to give a brief digest of it. The apostle begins by reminding the Corinthians of what he iiad preached to them, that is, that Jesus had been killed, but the killing of him had resulted m no 316 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. injury, as he was seen alive many times after- wards. He then presents the names of witnesses who had testified that they had seen him aUve after his death. After mentioning Cephas and James^ he mentions ''all the Apostles," as witnesses; and then says, "he was seen by over five hundred at one time, of whom some had fallen asleep." Af- ter all this, he himself had seen him. 'This really ends this statement of the facts on which to base his argument. In verse twelve he begins his argument, with the question, "Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among jon that there is no res- urrection from the dead." The whole argument amounts to this: In de- nying the resurrection from the dead, that is, out of the dead, — that word ek signifies out of— you deny that Christ was raised; and when you deny that Christ was raised you call in question the word of more than five hundred witnesses who testify that they saw him; you thus place it beyond the power of human testimony to prove any fact; you question a fact proved by more than five hundred witnesses. The thing thus proved is a fact unless these people have testified to a falsehood; but that was out of the question, for, while there are liars in the world people seldom lie without a motive. He then shows that these witnesses could have no possible motive to teU a falsehood. ^'We are of all men the most miserable." Abet- FIRST AND SECOND CORINTHIANS. 317 ter rendering would be as the Revised Version has it, "We are of all men most i)itiable." The reason he gives for this is, their suflferings. They had been compelled to fight with wild beasts at Ephesus — not for an opinion — but for their testimony as to what they had seen. Having thus settled the question of Jesus' resurrection from, or out of the dead, he argues from that and logically too, that all shall like- wise rise out of the dead. Jesus is the "first- fruits of them that slept." Not that Jesus was the first one who ever rose out of his body, but that he showed himself alive, as a sample, that is the meaning of the words firstfruits. The ones now dead were sampled when Jesus showed him- self alive. In verse 29 he says: "Else what shall th<"y do that are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead?" The proper rendering would be: "Why are they then baptized for the dead, if the dead are not risen?" The Revised Version and other Ver- sions so render it. I have never yet examined a commentary on this text that satisfied its own author. The Comprehensive Commentary be- gins by calling it "an obscure passage," and, after several hundred weary words about the matter, winds up by saying: "If we do not un- derstand thia passage undoubtedly the Corin- thians did." If this were the proper place I wotild prove 318 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITIC iSM. that baptisin in Bible-making times was always for spiritiici.i, or mediumistic development. Thus they were baptized on purpose to bring them into communion with those whom the world called dead. Paul next tells of their standing in jeopardy QYQvy hour for their testimony, and asks why they should thus expose their lives if the thing they were telling is not true. In most of the places where we read, ''if the dead rise not," and other similar expressions, the text should read: "if the dead are not raised." Paul next argues that the body which is sown, that is, the fleshy body, *is not raised. He then speaks of the different conditions in the resur- rection state. After that he argues that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God neither doth corruption inherit incorruption." The text which says "we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," was most beautifully illustrated in the case of the resurrection of that grand old Quaker reformer, Isaac T. Hopper. Dr. J. M. Peebles, in his Better Life relates the matter as follows: "It is related of Isaac T. Hopper, the well known Philadelphia Quaker aboHtionist, that at 4 o'clock Judge Edmonds bade him farewell, and at 7 o'clock the same evening, three hours after, Hopper came a,id controlled the judge's daughter and said: 'Now I know what Paul meant when he said we shall not all sleep but shall be changed. I did not sleep; I never lost consciousness for a moment.' FIRST AND SECOXD CORIXTIJIAXS. 319 "The above reference to Isaac T. Hopper was pub- lished by me a number of j'ears ago; Judge Edmonds relating to me the circumstances personally. "The occurrence transpired in one of Judge Edmonds' Thursday evening seances. His daughter Laura was the writing medium in this seance. Hopper, only a few hours in spirit life, wrote: — 'I am in the spirit world,' signing it *I. T. H.' 'Who is that for?' was the inquiry. All present were puzzled. The judge, looking at the communication the second time, re- marked: — 'Why, those are the initials of Isaac T. Hop- per; but that cannot be, as I was there this ciftev- noon, finding him feeble, but as comfortable as I ex- pected. I will test the matter.' The judge, throwing on his cloak, was soon at the Hopper residence, where he found his friend's body slumbering in death. "The judge, returning to his residence, and the seance reopened bj-- a short prayer. Hopper again wrote: 'I am in the spirit world and I now under- stand what the apostle meant when he said, w^e shall not all sleep, but we shall all be chan;[;ed. I have not slept, I w^as not unconscious for a moment, only a little dazed by the event called death; b^t I've been changed, or have changed worlds. I have met my companion and friends, many of whom I knew. Oh, it is blessed.' This fact establishes Hopper's contin- uity of consciousness, identity and memor>'." Chapter sixteen provides for the collection for the poor saints, and promises that when he passes through Macedonia, he will call and see them, and possibly spend the winter with them. He recommends two younger ministers Timo- theus and Apollos to them. He .skives them some 320 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. words of exhortation, and finally with his own hand attaches his signature. SECOND CORINTHIANS. In his former letter we found Paul was going to Macedonia. When he got there he learned something of the effect his former letter had on the Corinthians; and so he wrote this letter partly to cheer and comfort his brethren. This was only a few months after the writing of the former letter. The first letter seemed very bitter in places; in this he explains the cause. That letter, per- haps, led them to withdraw their fellowship from the man who had his father's wife. Paul's sympathy is now drawn out to the poor fellow. He tells them that he has suffered enough, and that now it is their duty to forgive him, "lest he should be swallowed up of overmuch sor- row." He- pleads with them to "confirm their love toward him." See chapter ii. 6-8. In the third chapter he reminds them that they are his Epistles — "known and read of all men." He then contrasts the spiritual dispensation with former dispensations. He tells of the blinding of the minds of the Jews for a purpose. In the next chapter he rejoices that they haA^e "renounced the hidden things of dishonestj^," and that they have commended themselves to the consciences of the people among whom they live. His paramount belief in spirituality— in the FIRST AND SECOND CORINTHIANS. 321 realitj^ and the permanency of unseen things, and in the eternal, and in the fact that we shall en- joy them after *'our earthly house of this taber- nacle shall have been dissolved," is fully express- ed in the last three verses of this chapter and the first eight verses of chapter five. In the first part of chapter six he tells of his sufferings — his stripes, imprisonments, tumults, labors, v^^atchings and long suffering for the cause he loved. In the latter part of this chapter he exhorts his brethren again to purity of life. Inasmuch as they are the temple of the living God he pleads with them to separate themselves from every- body and ever3'thing w^hich is unclean. Chapter seven opens with the same kind of ex- hortation to "cleanse themselves from all filthi- ness of the flesh and spirit." He tells them again that his former letter caused them sorrow, and that very sorrow had made them better men and women; and that he had written for the benefit of the one w^ho had done the wrong. Chapters eight and nine are in the main exhor- tations to generosity — exhortations which it would be well for Spiritualists of today to foUow. In chapter xi. 6-9 he says: "But this I say, be which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall also reap bountifully. Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudg- ingly, or of necessity; for God loveth a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound toward 322 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. you; tliat ye, always having strfficiency in all tilings, may abound to every good work." In chapter ten begins the real warfare — the point in which he was evidently more interested than he was in anything he ever wrote. Paul and some of the other Apostles had no love for each other, and it crops out in Paul's writings. It seems that some of the Apostles had denied PatiVs Apostleship. This struck him in a vital place. He talks about "casting down imagina- tions, and every high thing that exalteth itself.'* He begs that his brethren will not look on things after the outward appeara^nce, for outward ap- pearance was really against him; he had not known Jesus during his life — had persecuted his followers and done many things which rendered him somewhat unpopular; now with his anti- Jewish sentiments, to lay claim to being an Apostle v/as more than his fellow Apostles were willing to endure. He gives his Corinthian brethren to under- stand that he does not boast of his authority^ yet he has no reason to be ashamed of it. He said he dare- not count himself as one of the number of those who "compare themselves with themselves." He will not boast of things be- yond his measure, nor stretch himself beyond his measure. He finally went so far as to say that he sup- posed he was not a whit behind the very chief- est of the Apostles. He acknowledged that he was rude in his speech, but not in knowledge. FIRST AND SECOND CORINTHIANS. 323 He tells of liaving abused himself for their ex- altation; that he was not chargeable to them; that he had robbed other churches, taking wages of them in order to do the Corinthians service. Finally in chapter xi. 13-14 he says: "For such are fa.lse Apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the Apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for satan himself is transformed into an angel of Light." Thtis does this great Apostle reveal some of the jealousy brought out in the examination of the book of Acts. He charges them again and again not to think him a fool. He then com- pares himself with the other apostles, and gives his pedigree as follows: "Are they Hebrews? so am I. Are they Israelites? so am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? so am I. Are the^^ ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft; of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once v/as I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day have I been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea; in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness, beside those things which are without that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches." Verses 22-28. In the twelfth chapter he tells of a wonderful 324 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. vision he had, in 'which he was intromitted into paradise. This was so real that he could not tell whether he was taken up bodily, or whether he was taken out of the body; of one thing he was sure, he heard words impossible of utter^ ancc by mortals. He also tells of a * 'thorn in the flesh," which he thinks was given him to keep him from be- ing too much exalted because of his revelations. In the closing chapter is an exhortation which is good almost anywhere. CHAPTER XVIII. THE OTHER SUPPOSED EPISTLES OF PAUL. Galatians Certainly Paul's Letter— The Aftermath of the Conference in Acts xv— A Conflict with the Jerusalem Apostles— Paul Not Ordained by Men— Paul States the Issues Between Others and Himself^Names James, Ce- phas and John as "False Brethren"— Paul Brings Serious Charges Against Peter — Hagar and the Old Dispensa- tion— Ephesians Not Written by Paul— The Book Mis- represents Paul— Was the Letter Written to the Ephe- sians? — ^Reasons for Doubting that Paul Wrote It — Good Things in Colossians — Author Unknow^n — Reasons Why Paul Could Not Have Written This Letter— Thessalon- ians an Old Document — Did Paul Write It? — Second Thes- salonians — Perhaps Post Pauline — The Pastoral Epistles ^ — Chadwick on These Epistles — Dr. Davidson's Opinion — Epistle of Philemon Sends a Man Back to Slavery-- Who Wrote the Book of Hebrews? — Anti-Pauline— Makes the Old Typical of the New — Paul a Manly Man — Responsi- ble for the Spread of Christianity. We now come to a very brief examination of the book of Galatians, which is the only remain- ing book which there is any certainty that Paul, the Great Apostle to the Gentiles, wrote. If there was no assurance to the contrary one 'would naturally think this was about the first Epistle this Apostle wrote to a Christian church; 326 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. it would also be supposed that it followed very soon after the noted controversy between Paul and the Pe trine Apostles, described in the fifteenth chapter of A.cts. He boils over with this controversy and its aftermath, from start to finish. Some writers, including Marcion in particular, regard this as Paul's first Christian Epistle; that is, his first Epistle after he became a Chris- tian. Some one who knevv^ little of the facts in the ca,se, has added a paragraph to each of the Epistles telling where he supposed it was writ- ten. Althougli this sta,tement is taken as of the same atithorit}^ as the Bible, it has no authority; it is simply a guess which 'was added at a late date. At the end. of this Epistle they have said in the added paragraph, that it wks written at Rome, but this is known to be not true. The most reasonable conclusion is that it was writ- ten from Corinth somewhere between the j-ears 56 and 58. That is before Paul ever saw Rome. Paul was tlie founder at least of some of the churches in Galatia, and had afterwards visited them. The Jerusalemites, or Ebionites had sent their emissaries there v^ho had denied the Apos- tleship of St. Paul. This excited his ire and called out this letter. Paul had not been or- dained, nor sent out by the Jerusalem Apostles, and of course they questioned his apostleship. He begins his letter by practically disclaiming fellowship with the Jerusalem Apostles. He says: THE OTIIEE SUPPOSED EPISTLES OF PAUL. 327 "Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but b\' Jesus Christ, and God, the Father, who raised him from the dead;) and all the brethren which are with me, nnto the churches of Galatia." Gal. i. 1-2. Here, he is not an apostle neither of man, nor b3^ man, but claims Jesus Christ and God as his authority', and extends the greeting of the breth- ren only, who are with him. He then marvels that the church is so soon moved away from his teachings. They had embraced "another gospel," which he claimed was "not another," but was a per\^ersion of the Gospel of Christ. He is so thorouglil^^ at v^^ar with the docrines of the other apostles that inverses 8, 9, he says: "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto 3'ou, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so say we now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto j^ou than that ye have received, let him be accursed." He then, probably in answer to charges which had been made by the Petrine partv, goes on to sa^^ that his gospel was not after man, for he neither received it from man; neither was he taught it but bj^ the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is, Jesus Christ as a spirit had taught him and sent him out to preach. He next lets them know that he once en- dorsed the Jews' religion and profited in it; but now from the resurrected Jesus he had learned a better religion. He then undertook to show that the enemies to which he referred as preach- ers of another gospel, or, as pre verting the gos- 328 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. pel of Christ, were none other than the other apostles. That they opened war on him he proves by the fact that he did not go to Jeru- salem for three years, but went to Arabia in- stead. He had not even visited any of the churches in Judea. But while he had not disturbed them, he had not sul^mitted to them;, "no, not for an hour." Paul mentions Peter and James as be- ing two vvdiom he went to see on the occasion of his first visit to Jerusalem — two of those to whom he would not submit; "no, not for an hotir" — two of those who preached "another gospel, which is not another;" but a perversion of the Gospel of Christ. As Paul was recognized as a self-appointed apostle, and without reputation, he ironically spoke of "them which Vv^ere of reputation." He then told them that, after fourteen years he went up to Jerusalem, and found himself "among false brethren," tov^hom he "gave place by sub- jection, no, not for an hour." He next charac- terizes these brethren as follows: "But of these who seemed to be somewhat, (whatso- ever they were, it maketh no matter to me; God ac- cepteth no man's person;) for they who seemed to be somewhat in conference added nothing to me." GaL ii. 6. Thus it is plain that they "added nothing" to Paul. Among these he mentions by name, "James, Cephas, that is Peter, and John, wha seemed to be pillars." THE OTHER SLTPOSED EPISTLES OF PAUL. 329 It is perfectly plain that liis whole fight against Judaizing teachers is against those who took Christianity as an attachment to Judaism, and not against Jewish teachers as sucli. In Gal. ii. 11-15 the matter is made plain enough so that I marvel how it is that the world has been kept in ignorance so long. There Paul says: "But when Peter was come to Antiocli, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. For before that certain came from James he did eat with the Gentiles; but when they were come he withdrew and separated li/mseh', fearing them which were of the circumcision. And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation. But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, if thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the gen- tiles to live as do the Jews? We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we, who have be- lived in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law, for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified." What can be plainer than that Paul's argu- ment in this entire book was against Peter and the Petrine Christians? Peter and his followers believed that in order to become a Christian one must first become a Jew. Paul believed that in the new dispensation there was neither 330 TFLK DICLS AND THE lilGliiZR ClilTICIS^I. Jew nor Greek, hence he refused to have Titns circumcised. Gah ii. 3. Paul compares tlie old dispensation and the Jews to Ha.gar and her child. Hagar was the bondwoman. The new dispensation he compares to the free woman. Then he urges his Galatian brethren to "stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." Gal. t. 1. He then talks of the dire calamities of those who take Judaism with its rites as necessary prerequisites to be- coming Christians. After this long argument, made apparently to disabuse the minds of his Galatian brethren, he closes the book with a fine exhortation and a few words of good advice. The next book to pass under review is the letter to the Ephesians. This book was prob- ably not w^ritten by the Apostle Paul. The reasons given by those who contended for the Pauline authorship wall not stand the test for one moment. Critics are now all coming to the other side of the question. The writer of this letter claims to be a stranger to those to whom he wrote, w^hich could not have been the case v/ith Paul. Eph. i. 15 says; "Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers." Can this be the language of Paul, who, if he THE OTHER SUPPOSED EPISTLES OF J>AUL. 331 did not found the church at Ephesus, cei-tainh', if the author of the Acts of the Apostles can be beheved, baptized the Ephesian Christians, and laid his hands on them that they miglit receive the Holy Ghost; and after that stayed vv'itli them three months and preached to them until he raised a great turmoil in the citjr, and then continued there as a preacher two years after the preaching which caused the outcrj/, "great is Dianna of the Ephesians." See Acts xix. 1-10. The only way the weight of this argument is avoided is by the statement that Paul wrote the letter, but there are in it interpolations; and one is the word Ephesus, in chapter i. and verse 1, which ssljs: "Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints v.diich are at Ephesus, and to the faithful scattered abroad " We are told that "saints which are at Exjhesus," should come out. That Paul only wrote to the "faithful in Christ" Jesus. The words at Ephesus are w^anting in the oldest ma-nuscripts. This is true. Some contend that this Epistle v/as written to the Laodiceans; others, that it was a Catholic Epistle, written to all the churches everywhere.: It is true that the words "at Ephesus," are not in the older manuscripts, but that fact does not prove that Paul w^as the author of the letter. In fact there is not a particle of proof that Paul ever knew that any such letter was written. In his "Origin and growth of the Bible," the Rev. T. J. Sunderland gives many cogent re^s- 332 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. ons why Paul could not have written this let- ter. I abridge and slightly change and give some of them. 1. The Epistle is addressed to a Gentile pub- lic. Paul could not have made that mistake as he himself had taken many Jews into the church at Ephesus. 2. The Epistle is addressed to strangers; the -writer had no acquaintance with the Ephesians; Paul's acquaintance with them must have been intimate inasmuch as he preached to them over two years. 3. The writer sends no greetings; Paul sends greetings in all his letters. 4. Paul was engaged in a battle to gain a place in the church for the Gentiles; but this Epistle knows nothing of that; instead, it is de- voted to a unity already existing. It is a kind of dissertation on God's plan for reaching and saving the whole world, which is contrasted with the former division of the world into Jews and Gentiles. 5. The writer of this letter refers to the Apos- tles as a third party, to which he did not be- long. In the real Pauline Epistles he ever claimed to be an apostle; **Am I not an Apostle? have I not seen the Lord?"" 6. The style is not that of Paul; it is an easy flowing stjde; Paul's was quite the reverse. I have greatly abridged and put the reasons of this learned man into my own language; THE OTHER SUPPOSED EPISTLES OF PAUL. 333 some of them I have omitted entirel3', but here are enough. I do not say the book is not as good in every respect as though Paul had written it; it may be better. Inspiration belongs alike to all ages and nations of the world. I will also add that in those da\'s it was not considered wrong for one man to write a book and attach the name of another and more popular writer. This is done in many of the books of the Old and New Testament. This Epistle bears marks of having been written by a second century Gnostic. It is not denied that Paul was a Gnostic, although Gnosticism had not developed in Paul's day to what it was a century later. All this proves that the confidence of Chris- tians has outrun their critical acumen. They have taken much as apostolic, plenary inspira- tion, vvrhich was written by men quite as falli- ble as themselves. I have not the space to give a synopsis of the contents of this letter. PHILIPPIANS. We next come to the epistle to the Philip- pians. This is a good book, no matter who wrote it. It is the shortest epistle written to the church, in the Bible. Perhaps it will never be known who is the author. With no other reason than that Paul's name is attached to it, it has been affirmed that it was written by Paul. With, I think, as little reason it is de- nied by certain hypercritics. The Gnosticism in 334 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. this book is the reason why some deny the Pauline authorsliip of this letter. It must be renieni^;ered tliat if Paul did write this, he wrote it in his old age, after he had ceased his war- fare "Upon other branches of the churches, and after he had become more reflective, and per- haps more practical than he was while in the heat of his controversies. Like the book of Epliesians, this book con- tains many things worthy of the great Apostle to the Gentiles. Who ever wrote anything more worthy to be set in a gold frame than the fol- lowing? "Fina'.lv', brethren, whatsoever things are true, what- soever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever tilings are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Phih iv. 8. Whether Paul wrote this letter or not I am glad it was written. • COLOSSIANS. We next' come to the book called Colossians. That book contains many good things no mat- ter Yv'iio v/rote it. Others beside Paul could write good things. It is hardly thought possi- ble that Paul could have Vv^'itten this. The fol- lowing are among the reasons why critics reject its Pauline origin. 1. It is very similar to the letter to the Ephe- sians, which we know Paul did not write. Many, in fact all, think that if it w?cS not vv^ritten THE OTHER SUPPOSED EPISTLES OF PAUL. 335 by the same hand that wrote the letter to the Ephesians, it was written with a copy of that letter before the author. The writer of this Epistle was evidently acquainted with the Epis- tle to the Ephesians. 2. It contains Gnosticisms which were very young in Paul's day; some saj^ they were not born until after Paul had gone to his fathei .. Besides that, the book smacks strongly of Mon- tanism. Montan, the father of that particular ism was not born until after the death of Paul. 3. There are peculiarities of style, and words used in this letter not elsewhere found in Paul's writings. 4. Paul preached an unpopular, almost an un- heard of gospel, but the writer of this preached an old gospel, which they had all heard before he came among them, and which had been * 'preached to every creature under the whole heaven," and whereof the writer, w^ho calls him- .self Paul, was ''made a minister." Col. i. 23. The man who wrote one hundred years after Paul could represent the gospel as being an old story when he was made a minister. Paul could hardly do that. • Chapters three and four of this letter contain some old fashioned thoughts, and some very good and practical advice. FIRST AND SECOND THESSALONIANS. l\la.nj, even among those who criticise closely, suppose the First Epistle to the Thessalonians 336 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. to be genuine, and I am not prepared to say that it is not. Those who regard It as a gen- uine apostolic doctiment regard it, rightly, per- haps, as the first Christian letter that Paul ever wrote. More than that, if it is, so it is thought to be, the oldest written document of Christianit3-,— the first thing written of our present New Testament. Davidson and some other learned men regard Second Thessalonians as having been written before the First. This conclusion Mr. Chadwick thinks a reasonable one. The balance of testimony seems to favor the Pauline authorship of the First Epistle, but the concensus of competent opinion is that Second Thessalonians is clearly post Pauline. Whoever wrote the First Epistle evidently expected in his day the event which is now called the second advent of Christ. See I Thess. iv. 14-27. Some think the second book was w^ritten as an anti- dote to that idea. See II Thess. ii. 12. The st^de of Second Thessalonians is very dif- ferent from that of First Thessalonians; 3^et there are places where it seems that there is an effort to imitate the former Epistle. Or if, as some say, the Second Epistle was written first, then it' is the First Epistle v^hich tries to imitate the Second. There are statements however, in the Second Epistle which seem to contradict the First. I know of nothing by which to definitely fix the date of these Epistles; some make them THE OTHER SUPPOSED EPISTLES OF PAUL. 337 the earliest of Paul's writings, and some date them in the second century. The next three Epistles are written to Timothy and Titus. These are called Pastoral Epistles, perhaps because they were written to pastors of churches. These letters contain much good ad- vice for pastors and others, no matter who wrote them. On these Epistles I cannot do better than to quote from Mr. Chad wick. On pages 212 and 213, of his "Bible of To-Day" he says: "The so-called Pastoral Epistles follow next in our New Testament order. These are the two to Timothy and the one to Titus. Their form is that of adx^ice from Paul to his disciples and companions, Timothy and Titus, in regard to their Ecclesiastical and person- al conduct. Their authenticity has been questioned even by the most conservative critics. Neander, re- markable for his conservatism, denies the Paufine au- thorship of First Timothy. But the three Epistles have but one character, and they must stand or fall together. Davidson, who stretches Iflie limits of Paul- ine authorship to its utmost tension, so that it in- cludes Philippians and Colossians. finds these bevond its pale with Hebrews and Ephesians. The date which he assigns to the three pastorals is about 120 A. D, The grounds for this conclnsion are mainly that these Bpistles presuppose an ecclesiasticism much more de- veloped, as well as certain controversies, than they could have been within the lifetime of the Apostle. The advice to Timothy and Titus would have been superfluous considering Paul's acquaintance with them and the confidence he had in them. Some of it smacks of Polonius more than of the Apostle to the 338 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Gentiles. The very passages that are cited in proof of Paul's authorship are manifestly realistic touches, in- troduced to create an authentic appearance. It will be safe for us to leave these three Epistles out of the account in judging of Paul's life and thought. But they are interesting memoirs of the ecclesiastical and speculative notions which prevailed in the forepart of the second century." Mr. Sunderland, after giving us a long list of atithors who deny the Pauline authorship of these three" Epistles, quotes Dr. Davidson as follows: "We rest in the conclusion that the author was a Pauline Christian who lived at Rome in the first part of the second century, and wished to conform the in- cipient Catholic Church in the old paths, by exhorta- tions to piety, and warnings against error. His view was polemical only in part. To the growing dangers of the time he opposed the orthodox doctrine of the Church, and a well ordered ecclesiastical organization. ^' * * Like many others of his daj-, the author chose the name of an apostle to give currency to his senti- ments. In all this there was no dishonesty. The de- vice was a harmless one." PHILEMON. This must end our reference to the Pastoral Epistles. The next Epistle is a private letter to a man by the name of Philemon; it has only one short cha^Dter and has no business in any Bible. The letter is not of enough importance to use any space in discussing w^hether Paul was or was not its author. Since slaver^^ has been abolished there is noth- ing left in this letter that anybody thinks worth THE OTHER SUPPOSED EPISTLES OF PAUL. 339 quoting. In this Paul sends a runawa3' slave back to his master in direct violation of Deut. xxiii. 15, which says: "Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee." Nobody knows when nor by wdiom the Epis- tle to the Hebrews was written; nor to w^hom it was addressed, any further than that it w^as addressed to the Hebrews. The first word of every one of Paul's real or supposed Epistles is "Paul." Paul's name is not in this Epistle, al- though it occurs in the title. Martin Luther supposed, and not without reason, that it was written by Apollos, to the Hebrews in Alexan- dria, in Eg3^pt. I said the word Paul is in the heading of this book; I now add that that was not the case in the older manuscripts. The Western churches of the early centuries rejected this book. Indeed this Epistle bad a hard time getting into the Canon; and never did find its w^ay there until in the second council of Car- thage, in the year 419. While numerous references to the temple ser- vice, seems to indicate that it was w^ritten while the temple was yet standing in Jerusalem, and perhaps, while Paul was still upon earth, verse three, of chapter tw^o, indicates that Paul could not have been the w^riter. That verse says: "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at first began to be spoken by the Lord and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him." 340 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. The writer of this got his knowledge from those who heard Jesus preach. Paul never would admit anything of the kind. He got his knowl- edge from direct revelation. Gal. i. 12. The doctrine taught in this Epistle is more like that taught in the book of Romans than it is like anything else in the Bible; yet the style is much smoother than is that of Paul. The writ- er makes the whole Jewish system a type of the Christian system. This continues to chapter ten, verse nineteen; from that to the end of the book the teachings are hortatory or admonitory, rather than doctrinal. This brings us to the end of all the real and pretended writings of Paul, the great Apostle to the Gentiles. I close with a profound admiration for the writings and for the chara-cter of this 'Great Apostle. His life as revealed in his Epis- tles, as unwittingly told by himself, is very differ- ent from that told by the author of the Acts of the Apostles near a hundred yeaFS later. His Avas a continuous warfare with opposition to what he supposed to be Christianity. The prin- cipal part of that opposition came from the other apostles. The Romanists found their church on Peter. As compared with Paul, they are welcome to him. Paul was scholarly, logical, manly — one ^who never swerved from what he believed to be right. Peter lacked many if not all of these elements. If it had not been for Paul I doubt whether THE OTHER SUPPOSED EPISTLES OF PAUL. 341 Christianity' would have been heard of later than the third century after the death of Jesus. If all had been required to be circumcised and become Je\YS before thej^ could become Christians, as Peter and other apostles taught, then the one hundred and fort3'-four thousand, spoken of in the book of Revelation as having been sealed from the twelve tribes of Israel, would have made up more than all the Christians there ever would have been in the world. Paid, in spite of all opposition, made the Christian Religion a uniA'crsal religion, and thus scattered it among all nations, and left it as an inheritance until there should be given a newei and wiser dis- pensation. CHA.PTER XIX. THE SEVEN CATHOLIC EPISTLE^. Why Called Catholic?— Some of Them not General— James not Written by an Apostle — "Written not to Christians but "to the Twelve Tribes"— What James was it?— Luth- er's Opinion of this Epistle— A Good Reproduction of the Theology of Jesus— This Epistk Anti-Pauline- When was First Peter Written?— Written from Babj-lon- Was this Babylon Rome?— The Epistle more like Paul than Peter —Why it may have been Written— Seaond Peter— Its Genuineness Always Doubted— Was it an Enlargement of Judo?- Its Author Over-acts- Written After "the fath- ers feM Asleep" — Epistles of John Anonymously Written— Sunderland's Opi^nion — Not Written b3^ the John who was the Associate of Jesus — The Book of Jude— Hard Work to Get into our Bible — Was it Written by the Brother of James and Jesus? — Pertinent Remarks of Dr. Chadv^'ick —Jude gets the Wrong Enoch. There are eight more books in the Bible not yet examined. Seven of them are Epistles. They are called "Catholic Epistles," on the ground that they are general, or utiiYersal. This how- ever is not the cas'e with all of them. The Sec- ond and Thipd Epistles of John ''to the elect Lady," and to ''The Beloved Gains" are certain- ly not general. It is supposed that the designa- tion Catholic was applied to them to designate THE SEVEN CATHOLIC EPISTLES. 343 them from Paul's Epistles every one of which was written to some definite church or person. The only exception being that of Colossians. This he commanded them to cause to be read to the Laodiceans, also that they should read the Epistle from the Laodiceans. Col. iv. 16. Of these seven Epistles one has been ascribed to James, two to Peter, three to John, and one to Jude. Jude is in other parts of the New Test- ament called Judas. In our Bibles the Epistle of'Ta.mes is first of the seven; this is not s-o in all Bibles. Who the James was, if it was a James who wrote this Epistle is not known. He does not claim to be an apostle, but was evidently a Jew. He saj-s he was a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. Pie addii-esses his letter, not to Christians, but to *'the twelve tribes who are scattered abroad." There wei-e at least three Jameses vvho figured in the Ncay Testament. One was James, the son of Zebedee. This James sureh^ did not write this book, for he was put to death by Herod not more than seven 3'ears after the mart^-rdom of Jesus. S<^ Acts xii. 2. Another James was cal- led "The Lord's Brother." Gal. i. 19. There was also a James, ''the son of Alpheus." No matter who wrote the book, it had a hard time to get into the Bible. Finalh', by a trick of its friends it got into the Bible when a m.a- jority wrre opposed to it. This was done at Carthage in the year 397, 344 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Martin Luther had a very poor opinion of this book. He is quoted as saying: **It is an epistle of straw, in comparison with them, (other Epis- tles) for it has nothing evangelical about it." Again, in speaking of its author, Luther said: "Methinks it must have been some good, pious man who took some of the sayings of the dis- ciples of the apostles down on paper." Mr. Chad wick, after referring to some of Luther's sayings on this Epistle says: ''But this was because it contradicted his favorite doctrine of justification b3' faith. The chances are chat it is the best reproduction anywhere contained in the New Testament Epistles of the Christianity of Jesus, a moral, not a theological system. THe object of the letter was to correct certain abuses that were prevalent among the Jewish Christians, such as invid- ious distinctions between the rich and poor, and am- bition for ecclesiastical preferment. The expectation of the second coming of Jesus is nowhere more con- ^picious. 'Stablish your hearts; for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Behold the Judge standeth before the door.' But the anti-Pauline drift of the Epistle is the most evident trait. 'What doth it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, and hath not ^works? Can faith save him?' From the common ;sense point of view this writer makes an excellent ap- pearance; but it is certain that he was not deep-natur- ed enough to appreciate the spiritual significance of Paul's religion. And so he arrogantly addresses him. 'But wilt thou know, O vain man that faith without works is dead?' Possibly Paul is not intended, but probably he is. That his doctrine is intended does not admit of a doubt. The early church was not quite THE SEVKX CATHOLIC EPISTLES. 345 the happy family of the popular imagination. Divis. ions, hatreds, rivalries, were as common then as now, and quite as sharp and bitter." THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER. The First Epistle of Peter must next pass un- der review. Great writers, Baur among them, have concluded that this was not written tmtil about the end of Trajan's reign, about the year 117. This letter purports to have been written from Babylon. At least Chapter v. 13 says: *^The church that is at Babjdon, elected together with you, saluteth you, and so doth Marcus, my son." This could not have been written from the ancient city of Babylon, where there never was a church — a city which had become the home of wild beasts long before Peter was born. This Babylon must therefore have been Rome. This city v^as first called Babylon in the Apocalpse, but that book was not written until nearly or quite forty years after Peter had fallen under Nero. These things, together with the idea that the doctrines in this book were Pauline, and not Petrine, have caused critics to conclude that this book could not have been w^ritten before the second century. Again, this Epistle refers to a general persecution, which did not take place until in the reign of Trajan, in the latter part of the first and early part of the second century. There are certain second century w^ritings now extant, which give a somewhat dififerent view of 346 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CKITiCISM. the battle between Peter and Simon Magus than is found in the Acts of the Apostles; also that give a very different account of the conference in the fifteenth chapter of Acts from that one. These represent Paul as throwing James down from the top steps of the house where the meet- ing w^as held. This account does not dispute that Paul talked to Peter as he represented in Galatians, but it represented Peter as saying to Paul, "What if 3rou did see Jesus? It was only for a single hour, and while you were asleep. I was with him a whole 3^ear when I was awake." Thus the quarrel began and thus it continued through their whole lives. Such a man as that could hardly have written these Pauline doc- trines in this Epistle. It is much more likely that this was written after the effort had been made to harmonize the two churches and they were made one — written perhaps to create the impression that there never was any diffierence between Peter and Paul. The difference however was too plainly stated by Paul in Second Cor- inthians and Galatians to be covered up by any Pauline Epistles professing to come from Peter. THE SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER. Next comes the Second Epistle of Peter. The real author of this book is not and perhaps never will be known. On this Epistle Rev. Wash- ington Gladden truthfully says: "The second Epistle of Peter is the one book of the New Testament concerning whose genuineness there is the most doubt. From the earliest days the canonicity THE SEVEN CATHOLIC EPISTLES. 347 of this book has been disputed. It is not mentioned bj any early Christian writer before the third century; and Origen, who is the first one to aUude to the book, testifies that its genuineness has been doubted. The early versions do not contain it; Eusebius marks it doubtful; Erasmus and Calvin, in latter times, regard- ed it as a dubious document. It seems almost incredi- ble, with such witnesses against it, that the book should be genuine; but if it is not the work of St. Peter it is a fraudulent writing, for it openly anncun- cea him as its author and refers to his First Epistle. There is a remarkable similarity between this letter and the short Epistle to Jude; it would appear fhat this must be an imitation and enlargement of that, or that a condensation of this. There are some passages in this book with, which we could ill aJBford to part, with which indeed, we never shall part; for whether they \ytre written by Peter or not they express clear and indubitable verities; and, even though the author, Uke that of Balaam, whom he quotes, may have been no true prophet, he was constrained, even as Balaam was, to utter some stimulating and wholesome truths." — Who Wrote the Bible, pp. 232, 233. This Epistle was forced into the Canon, at Carthage in the year 397; even then its Peferine authorship was denied by many of the best Christians. It has been supposed that some of it was copied from the Epistle of Jude, which was written much earlier than this Epistle. Mr. Chadwick thinks that the writer of this Epistle over-acts in his attempt to pass himself oif as Peter. As a sample, note the expression. "Our beloved brother Paul." Chapter iii. 15, 16 This over-does the m/^tter. I have shown tha< 348 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITKHSAL. Peter and Paul were theological enemies; and that the breach between the Petrine and Pauline part- ies was not healed until w^e get at least one quarter of the way through the second century. Furthermore, he speaks of some of the * 'unlearn- ed and unstable," -wresting the^wri tings of Paul, as they did the "other Scriptures.'* No part of the New Testament was classed with *'the other scriptures," until near the close of the second century. Again, it is evident from the words of Jesus and Paul, that that event which was designated as the second advent of Christ was expected during the days of the Apostles. They were mistaken, and the writer of this Epistle suffered under the odium arising from that mistake. In Chapter iii. 3, 4-, this writer says: "Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers walking after their own lusts, and saying, where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." What does this mean, if it does not mean that they must have expected the very scoffing they were meeting? Were not the Apostles asleep? thus giving them an opportunity to say "since the fathers fell asleep"— that is the fathers who promised the event in their day— "all things con- tinue as they were from the beginning of crea- tion." I do not see how any one could suppose this could have been written by an Apostle. But, as Mr. Gladden intimates, there arc good THE SEVEN CATHOLIC EPISTLES. 349 things in this letter, no matter \Yho wrote it. The next three Epistles, are without any in- ternal reason, ascribed to John. They are pure- ly anonymous. The similarity of the first of these Epistles to some things in *'The Gospel ac- cording to St. John," was, probably the reason for ascribing these Epistles to that author. Mr» Sunderland says: "The first of these Epistles is in every way superior to the other two. It has all the characteristics of the Fourth Gospel and was most certainly written by the same author. The date that ^xe must assign to it,, which cannot be far removed from that of the Gospel, depends whether we accept or reject the theory' that it was written by the Apostle John. If we accept that theory, we must date our Epistle about 95, or 100, A. D; or, if, with the growing tendency of scholarship, we reject it, we must carr^^ the production of the Epistle forward to near the year 140, A. D. Most of the arguments that bear upon the authorship or date of the one book, hold good when applied to the other. The place of the writing was probably Asia Minor. For purposes of spiritual edification, the Epistle, as well as the Gospel, stands at the very head of the New Testament literature." — Origin and Growth of the Bible, pp. 158, 159. The belief is every day gaining ground among critical thinkers that the first of these Epistles was written, as was once supposed, by the same John who wrote the fourth Gospel, and as a kind of addendum to it; if that is so it affords an additional proof that the fourth Gospel was not written by the same John who wrote the 350 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Apocalypse. The more general and critical opin- ion among the learned today is, that the Apos- tle John wrote the Apocalypse, and that the Gospel of John was from a different and later author. If the same John who wrote this was the au- thor of the fourth Gospel, then it was not the John who was the personal friend and disciple of Jesus. This will appear in the examination of the book of the Apocalypse. Mr. Chadwick says: "Tnat there is here anticipation of the Fourth Gos- pel rather than imitation I am convinced, but also that it is the anticipation of the same mind whose striking individuality is impressed upon the later work. As- sured that the Fourth Gospel is not the work of John, the Epistle must give up all claims to be his. The date of its appearance, somewhat prior to the Fourth Gospel, may he approximately fixed at 130 A. D." As the other two Epistles of John are unim- portant private letters, one of them written by *'the elder unto the elect lady," and the other, by the elder unto ''the well beloved Gaius." I will not examine them. We now come to the last Epistle, and the last book but one in the New Testament, — The Epistle of Jude, or Judas. This book though it contains but one short chapter had a hard time getting into the New Testament. There were two Jud- ases, one of whom, probably committed suicide. They were both disciples of Jesus. The Jude w^ho wrote this book professes to be ''the brother of James." One naturally asks which James? This THE SEVEN CATHOLIC EPISTLES. 351 James was evidently not an Apostle; if he was he would sturdy not seek to identify himself as "the brother of James." One of these Jameses was the brother of Jesus; this would make Jude the brother of Jesus. Air. Gladden says of this book: "It is not in the early Sj-riac version; Eusebius and Origen question it, and Chr>^sostom does not mention it; we may fairly doubt whether it came from the hand of any apostolic witness. One feature of this short letter deserves mention; the writer quotes from one of the old apocryphal books, the book of Enoch, treating it as scripture. If a New Testament citation authenticates an ancient writing, Enoch must be re- garded as an inspired book. We must either reject Jude or accept Enoch, or abandon the rule that makes a New Testament citation a proof of Old Testament Canonicit^^" There are man 3' good points in the book of Jude. It is an able and somewhat vigorous at- tack on some of the licentious kind, who had found their \y3.j into the church. These he char- acterized as "spots in your feasts of charity;" "clouds without water," "trees whose fruit with- ereth, twice dsad, plucked up by the roots," "raging waves," and "wandering stars." He quotes from the book of Enoch, which was w^ritten not more than two centuries before Christ, and which was rejected from the Canon. He calls Enoch "the seventh from Adam." CHAPTER XX. THE APOCALYPSE. Has At Least two Authors— Some Things Written Before the Destruction of the Temple — Some in the Second Century — Wise Words from Dr. Martineau — An Apocr3'phal Era — Some of the Judaisms of the Book— Redactor Works Gentiles in— Apocalypse not by the Author of Fourth Gospel— Thoughts from Chadwick— Wild Interpretations- It Contains no Prophecy of Distant Future— Time is at Hand— Why Written in Symbols— Chadwick's Explana- tion— Dr. Gladden E.Niplains Six-Hundred Three Score and Six — Conclusion. We now come to the last, and by far the most Apocalyptic book of the Bible, called in our Bi- ble ''The Revelation of St. John the Divine." That word ''Divine," has been added by later writers. Scholars are as much at sea about the authorship of this book, as on that of any other in our Bible. To me the most probable of all hypotheses is, that it was written by some Jew with a definite end in ^iew; then, perhaps, some Christian doctor undertook to patch it t^ and make a Christian book of it. It must have had not less than two authors. There are difficulties in the way of any theory of exposition that has THE APOCALYPSE.. 353 yet been OiTered; this seems to have fewer of them than any other; and now seems to be growing in favor with critical investigators. There are some things in this book which must have been written while the Jewish temple was 3'el: standing; that temple was distro\'ed in A. D. 70. There are other things in the book which indicate that it must have been written not earlier than the second century. Chapter xi. 1- 1-i, must have been written while the temple was standing; other portions are of much later date. Dr. Martineau said: "Plow strange that we should ever have thought it possible for a personal attendant on the ministry of Jesus to write or edit a book mixing up fierce Messianic conflicts, in which, with sword and gory garment, the blasting fiame, the rod of iron, as his emblems, he leads the war-march, and treads the wine- press of the wrath of God 'till the deluge of blood rises to the horses' bits, wdth the speculative Christol- ogy of the second century, without a memory of his life, a feature of his look, a word from his voice, or a glance at the hill side of Galilee, the courts of Jerusa- lem, the road to Bethan3', on which he must be for- ever seen." From two hundred years before Christ until two hundred years after Christ, was pre-eminent- ly the age of apocal3^ptical writing among the Jews. Not long before or about the opening of this period was the book of Daniel written; about the close, or not long after the last redac- tor applied the closing touches to the book of the Apocalypse. 354 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Before exlilbiting the strong evidences of Juda- ism in this book, I will say that even the Christ- ian portions of it partake more of the Spirit of the Joshua, or Jesus of the Old Testament than it does of the Jesus or Joshua of the New Test- ament. Remember the claim is, that this book was written hj the John who was a personal friend^ aye, a disciple of Jesus — by the John whom Jesus loved. Is it possible that this disciple could have written the Gospel of John, the first Epis- tle of John and then have represented Jesus as one who wore blood-dipped garments? If this book was written by a Christian it was by one of the most narrow minded of the Ebion- ites. He believed in nothing else but Judaism. In chapter ii. 9, the angel in speaking to the church of Ephesus said: "I know thy works and tribulations, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews and are not, but are of the synagogue of Satan." Again, in chapter iii. 9, the angel in speaking to the church at Sardis said: "Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; be- hold I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee." In vii. 4-8, the writer says: "And I heard the number of them that were sealed; and they were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel. Of the tribe of Judah were sealed twelve thousand. Of THE APOCALYPSE. 355 the tribe of Reuben were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Gad were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Aser were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Nepthalim were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Alanases were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Simeon were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Levi were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Isachar were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Zebulon were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Joseph were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Benjamin were sealed twelve thousand." At the close of this is a good place for the in- terpolator or redactor to get in his work, and he improves his opportunity to work the Gentiles in. He sa3^s, in the next verse: "And after this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude which no man could number, of all nations, and kind- reds and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the lamb, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands." This was an addition to the hundred and for- ty-four thousand not elsewhere provided for, iu this book. See Rev. xiv. 3. This other writer, as was suggested brings his lamb with him into this scene. The writer of this book, who everywhere fav- ors the Jews could not have been the writer of the fourth Gospel, which everywhere denounces them. Thus, the middle wall of partition is kept up through this book. Scholars, who understand the matter, tell us that the Gospel of John was written in good, pure Greek, while the one who wrote the Apoca- 356 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. lypse wrote m the particularly bad Greek used in Palestine; filling this book with Aramaic and Hebrew idioms. This is all sufficient proof that the John of the Gospel was not the John of the Apocalypse. When it comes to the question as to which of the two Johns was the real disciple and personal friend of Jesus, the balance of critical opinion is decidedly in favor of the one who wrote the Johnine part of the Apocalypse. Before closing the argument on this part of the subject I must make rather a lengthy quota- tion from Rev. John Chad wick. On pp. 242^ 243 he says: ''Those who have failed to find the individuality of John in the Apocalypse base their ideas of his indi- viduality entirely upon the fourth Gospel. Aside from this, the Apocal3^pse is in singular harmony with what w^e know of the Apostle. He appears in the Synoptic Gospels as the 'son of thunder,' impetuous and fierce, wishing to call down fire from heaven on a Samaritan village. He appears in Paul's Epistles and even in the- mediating Acts of the Apostles, as a narrow, Judaizing^ conservative opponent of the Apostle to the. Gentiles^ and in the Apocalypse he is thoroughly Jewish. The Elders, or elect sit upon thrones immediately adjacent to Yahweh's and participate in his Judicial functions. These are all Jews. The Gentiles have back seats as- signed them. They become quasi Jews. In the catas- trophe which he foretells, the temple is miraculously preserved and Jerusalem is the capital of the Messianic Kingdom. The hostility to Pauline universalism is exactly what we should expect from John, forming our conceptions of him upon Paul's Epistles. One must be THE APOCALYPSE. 357 wilfully blind not to perceive that Paul and his fol- lowers are designated when we read of 'those who say they are Apostles and are not, but are liars,' and of 'those of the synagogue of Satan, who say the}' are Jews, but are not,' and of 'the doctrine of Balaam,' that it is lawful to eat things offered to idols. Paul claims to have knowledge of 'the deep things of God.' 'The deep things of Satan' ratherj re- torts the Apocalypse. "Was it by any accident that the names of only twelve Apostles were in the foundations of the New Jerusalem? Is it not much more likely from the gen- eral tone of the Apocalypse that Paul was purposely excluded? There is no other feature of the Apocalypse which differentiates it from the fourth Gospel so much as this; The Apocalyptist is one of the narrowest of Jewish Christians; the fourth Evangelist is one of the narrowest of anti-Jewish Christians." Ever}^ possible imaginary interpretation has been put upon this book, as has been upon all books of its kind. Even now there are numerous wildeyed interpreters, fitting all essentials of this book to our war with the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands; and if, by any chance there should be found a text that will not exactly fit there, it can be easily fitted into the war between Great Britian and the Boers of South Africa. Emanuel Swedenborg wrote "The Apocalypse Revealed," a commentary of over twelve hundred pages on this book, and by the way, as sensible a commentary as the book ever received. Others have written and still others will be found to writ^ on it as long as there are ships on the sea 358 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. or nations on tlie earth. Every new war, or even every new invention or every new disease which may attack the potato crop may expect to find some one who will fit some portion of the Apocalypse to it, and find it to fit as neatly as ever a glove fitted a hand. John Calvin man- ifested good sense by refusing to comment on this book. The Apocalypse had a hard time in getting in- to our Canon; and, at last got in by only one vote. If that vote had been cast the other way the world would have been as wise, and our in- sane as3dums, at certain periods would not have been over-crowded as they have been. Dr. South was not far out of the way when he said: "The book of Revelation either finds a man mad, or makes him so." I do not think the author, or authors, as the case may be, of this book intended it as a series of prognostications of the future of this world. It was undoubtedly intended to apply to events which had past and were at that time passing. The writer perhaps, looked no farther into the future than we do when we give the prognosis of an approaching election. The first three verses of this book state the matter so plainly as not to be easily misunderstood. "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it unto his servant John; who bear record of the word of God and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of THE APOCALYPSE. 359 all things that he saw. Blessed is he that readeth, and the^' that hear the words of this prophec3^ and keep those things which are written therein; for the time is at hand." Rev. i. 1-3. How this can be made to refer to the then distant future it will take at least a theologian to tell. As further proof that the writer was re- ferring to passing events verse, 19 of this same chapter says: * 'Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are and the things which shall be hereafter." The things which shall be hereafter, should be rendered as the Emphatic Diaglott has it; **The things which are about to transpire." The writer of this book evidently shared the belief of all the New Testament writers, that the end of all things was right upon them. In Rev. xxii. 7, he said, "Behold I come quick- ly." In verse 12, he said: "Behold I come quick- ly, and m\' reward is with me." Verse 20 says: "He which testifieth these things saith, surely I come quieklv." And the writer adds, "Amen, even so, come Lord Jesus." On this point this writer proved himself as thoroughly mistaken as were Jesus, Paul, Peter and Jude. Perhaps the main part of this book was writ- ten during the persecution of the Christians un- der Nero, and his immediate successors; or near the destruction of Jerusalem. Perhaps, reader, if you and I had been there it might have look- ed the same to us. Perhaps again if we had written on the matter to seven churches, or to 360 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. seven cltibs of otir friends, we w^ould have writ- ten in a language not easily understood by our enemies. Perhaps, again the people for whom this was written had a key which would help them to understand the matter. On this point Dr. Gladden quotes Dr. Hamack as follows: "The political situation culminated in a crisis for the people of God, the Apocalypse appeared stirring up the believers; in spirit, form, plan, and execution they closely resembled each other. * * * They all spoke in riddles; that is, by means of images, symbols, mys- tic numbers, forms of animals, etc., they half conceal- ed what they meant to reveal. The reason for this procedure was not far to seek; (1) Clearness and dis- tinction would have been too profane; only the mys- terious appears divine. (2) It was often dangerous to be distinct." For a rather sensible exposition of a part of this book — a part, by the way which may serve as a key to other portions I once more refer the reader to John Chadwick. On pa<3^e 244 of his ''Bible of Today," he says: "And there are seven kings, 'we read,' 'five are fallen and one is, and the other is not yet come, and when he cometh he must continue a short space; and the beast that was and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.' The five fallen kings evidently are Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero. The one that is reigning is more doubtful. Galba, Otho and Vitellius reigned so short a time, and were so partially acknowledged through- out the Empire, that possibly they were passed over. In this case Vespasian is the sixth, and as his like- THE ArOCALYPSE. 361 Itest successor, Titus, is the other who is uot yet come. 'When he comes he must continue a short space,' because the beast that was and is not is to re- turn and rule the Empire in his place. Who is this 'beast that was and is not?' Nero beyond a doubt. For there is abundant evidence of a wide spread be- lief after the death of Nero that he was not reall3^ dead, but somewhere concealed, and that he would come back again to seize the sceptre. For this belief we have the evidence of the four great historians, Sue- tonius, and Tacitus, and Dio Chrisostom and Dio Cassius, besides a great abundance in the Sibylline or- acles and the church fathers." The ''six hundred three score and six," Mr. Gladden does not apply to the future, but ex- plains as follows: "John here tells us what is the numerical value of the letters in the name of the Beast. If we tried the Latin or the Greek name of Nero the clue w^ould not be found; but John was written mainlj^ for the He- brews, and the Hebrew letters of KESAR NERON, the name by which every Jew knew his Emperor, amount to exactly 666." Here our work on the Higher Criticism, prop- er must end. It remains now that we present a few facts concerning the Canon, and how it was made* Also a chapter on other Bibles. CHAPTER XXL HISTORY OF THE CANON. Canon, Definition of— Our Canon made up of Sixtj-six Tracts ^Canon not Closed with the Apocalypse — Canon began Under Ezra— Continued Under Nehemiah— Nehemiah En- dorsed Books now Lost — Facts as Stated by Encyclopedia Britannica — Samaritans and Sadducees Rejected Prophets and Other Writings— Two Old Testaments— Light on the Subject from Dr. Gladden— Suspended on a vSlender Thread— Old Testament Divided into three parts — Only Twenty-two Books in Josephus', Canon — How the Num- ber Increased— Church Fathers used Apocryphal Books — Canon made under St. Augustine in 393 — Another in 397 — Another made in 1546 — Ours made About 1650— Old Testament more Authoritative Among Early Christians — Catholic Canon made at Trent in 1546— Anathematiza- tion of all who Rejected it — Greek Church made Canon in 1638 — Protestant Canon made at Westminster About 1650 — Protestants Reject Fourteen Books — Paul's Writ- ings Rejected by the Early Church— Constantine's Canon Rejected Several of our Books — Luther made his own Canon — Rejected Several of our Books. The word Canon conies from the Greek word **Kanon.'' It originally meant a straight rod or pole. Metaphorically it meant that which serTCS to keep a thing straight. The word is translated rule in Gal. vi. 16, where Paul says: "As many as walk according to this rule, HISTORY OF THE CAXOX. 363 (kanon,) peace be on them, and merc^^, and up- on the Israel of God." Webster's second defi- nition of the word Canon is the one in which the word is used in reference to the scriptures: "A law or rule of doctrine or discipline enacted bA"- a council and confirmed by the pope or the sovereign; a decision, a code, or constitution made by an ecclesi- astical authority. The collection of books received as the genuine Hoh^ Scriptures, called the Sacred Canon, or general rule of moral and religious duties given by inspiration; the Bible." Thus *the Canon is nothing more nor less than a catalogue of the books which have been de- clared by councils as the authoritative books of the Bible. In the Protestant churches the Canon consists of the thirt3^-nine books bound up in the Old Testament and the twent3'-seYen of the New. Thus our Bible is made up of sixtj^-six tracts written in different countries and ages of the world. In the last book of our Bible, as we have it bound, but not the last one written, by nearly one hundred years, we find a text which says: "For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, if any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book; and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take aw^ay his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book." Rev. xxii. 18, 19. This has been interpreted to mean: ''The Can- on is now complete; God has uttered his last 364 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. word; no more books will be written. Should such a thing be attempted, the prescribed pen- alties will be the result. Woe to the man who does not accept the Canon herein completed. We must take the Bible, all of it, as it is— no more, no less." This interpretation, which has been the popu- lar one, is incorrect. The author of the text only intended to warn his readers not to at- tempt any change in his book by adding to it or taking from it. Similar texts are found else- ^where in the Bible. Proverbs xxx. 6-, says: "''Add thou not unto his words lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar." This warning is against putting out as inspiration that which is your own. When John -wrote the Apocalypse he did not add to the words of the book of Proverbs; nor does any one add to the book of the Apocal^^pse by writing another, even though such boolj be written under inspiration. When the text under consideration was writ- ten, even the books of the New Testament which then existed, were not collected into a volume. The passage could not, therefore, have any refer- ence to the Bible as a whole. The questions to be considered in this chapter are: How was our Bible, that is our collection of books, made, as a collection? Who made it, and what authority did its makers have for their work? These questions are purely histori- cal, and can only be settled by an appeal to history. HISTORY OF THE CANON. 365 It is not claimed that our Canon was made by inspired men, nor that it was all made at once. In fact with the Protestant church, which never accepted the Catholic Canon, the question as to what JDooks belong to our Bible was not settled until late in the sixteenth century of our era. The work began by Ezra nearly five hun- dred years before Christ. Ezra gathered to- gether the Pentateuch, or what is called ''the five books of Moses," if he did not write them; and made one "Hoh^ Book" of them. Nehemiah continued the work of Ezra. The work is told at length in Second Maccabees, second chapter. Verses 13, 14, read as follows: "The same things also were reported in the writ- ings and commentaries of Neemias (Nehemiah;) and how he, founding a Hbrary, gathered tog'ether the acts of the kings, and the prophets, and David, and the Epistles of the kings concerning the holy gifts. In like manner also, Judas gathered together all those things tha-t were lost by reason of the war we had, and they remain with us." Nehemiah certainly gathered in this **libra4*y" books which are not in our Bible; w^hile "tbe acts of the kings and of the prophets, and of David." may possibly refer to the books now called I. and II. Samuel and I. and II. Kings, we have no books corresponding to "The Epis- tles of the Kings concerning Holy Gifts." Sev- eral of the books of the Old Testament were not yet written; among them were the book of Malachi, and the book of Daniel. The Encj-clo- pedia Britannica says: 366 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. "This Canon, however, was not considered to be closed before the first century after Christ. There were doubts about some portions. The book of Eze- kiel gave offense because some of its statements seem- ed to contradict the law. Doubts about others were of a more serious nature— about Ecclesiastes, the Can- ticles, Esther and Proverbs. The first was impugned because it had contradictory passages and a heretical tendency; the second because of its worldly and sen- sual tone; Esther for its want of religiousness; and Proverbs on account of inconsistencies. This skepti- cism went far to procure the exclusion of the suspected works from the Canon, and their relegation to a class of the genuzim. But it did not prevail. Hananiah, son of Hezekiah, son of ©aron, about 32 B. C, is said to have reconciled the contradictions and allayed the doubts. But these traces of resistance to the fixity of the Canon were not the last. They reappeared about 65 A. D., as we learn from 'the Talmud, when the controversy turned mainly upon the canonicity of Ecclesiastes, which the school of Shammai, who had the majority, opposed; so that the book was prob- ably excluded. The question emerged again at a later synod at Jabneh or Jamnia, when R. Eleaser Ben Asaria was chosen Patriarch, and Gamaliel the Sec- ond, deposed. Here it was decided, not unanimously, however, by a majority of Hillelites, that Ecclesiastes and the So'^c" of Songs pollute the hands, that is, be- long properiy to Hagiographa. This was about 90 A. D. Thus, the question of the canonicity of certain books was discussed at two synods. The canon was virtually settled at Jamnia, w^here was confirmed what R. Akiba said of the Canticles in his usual extrava- gant way. *No day in the whole history of the world is of so much worth as the one in which the Song of HISTORY OF THE CANON. 367 Songs was given to Israel; for all scriptures are boly, but the Song' of Songs is most holy.' The Hagio- graphia were not read in public, with the exception of" Esther; opinions among the Jewish Rabbins might still diflfer about Cant-icles and Ecclesiastes, even after the synod of Jamnia." The books of the Bible were by the Jews di- vided into three parts. First in importance was the law— the Pentateuch. Second, the Prophets, and third, the Hagiographa or writings. The Samaritans were the Israelites who separated from the Jews in the da3^s of Solomon's son Rehoboam. At the time of the separation only the Penta- teuch was recognized, and it is doubtful it even that existed as it is now, or even as a Penta- teuch. The Samaritans never accepted an}- other portions of the Old Testament than the Penta- teuch, the same is probably true of the Saddu- cees. As the law was the only^ authority- the Saddu- cees acknowledged, Jesus found it necessarv, when he wanted to refute them, to quote their own law to them. Besides these two books, there was A'et an- other Old Testament in existence in the days of Jesus. It was called the Septuagint. Mr. Glad- den speaks of it as lollows: "We have seen alread3' that two different collections of Old Testament writings were in existence, (^nc in Hebrew, and the other a translation into Greek, made b^' Jews in Alexandria, and called the Septuagint. The latter collection was the one most used bv our 368 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Lord and the Apostles. Much of the greater number of quotations from the Old Testament found in the Gospels and Epistles are taken from the Septnagint, This Greek Bible contained quite a number of books which are not in the Hebrew Bible; the^' were later in their origin than any of the Old Testament books; most of them were written in Greek; and while they were regarded by some of the more conservative of of the Jews in Egypt as inferior to the Law and the Prophets, they were generally ranked with the Hagio- grapha as sacred writings. This is evident from the fact that they were mingled indiscriminately with these books of the older Scriptures. You know that I am now speaking of the Apocryphal books which you find in some of your old Bibles, between the Old and New Testaments. These were the later books contained in the Septuagint and not in the Hebrew Bible. But they were not sorted out hy themselves in the Septuagint; they were interspersed through the other books as of equal value. Thus in the Vatican Bible, of which we shall learn more by and by, Esdras first and second succeeded the Chronicles; To- bet and Judith are between Nehemiah and Esther; the Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach follow Solomon's Song; Baruch is next to Jeremiah; Daniel is followed by Susanna and Bell and the Dragon, and the collec- tion closed with the three books of Maccabees. "All the old manuscripts of the Bible w^hich we pos- sess — those which are regarded as above all others sa- cred and authoritative — contain these apocryphal writings thus intermingled with the books of our Can- on. It is clear, therefore, that to the Alexandrian Jews these later books were Sacred Scriptures; and it is certain also that our Lord and his Apostles used HISTORY OF THE CANON. 369 the collection which contained these books." — Who Wrote the Bible? pp. 303-305. Mr. Gladden makes a semi-attack on some of the Old Testament Books as follows: "When we are asked what are our reasons for believ- ing that Esther and Ecclesiastes and Solomon's Song are sacred books and ought to be in the Old Testa- ment Canon, let us answer: It is not because any prophet or inspired person adjudged them to be sacred for no such person had anything to say about them; c is not because our Lord and his apostles indorsed them, for they do not even mention them; it is not because they held a place in Sacred Scriptures used by our Lord and his apostles, for their position in that collection was in dispute at that time; it is because the chief priests and scribes who rejected Christ pro- nounced them sacred. The external authority of these books reduces them to exactly this. Those who insist that all parts of the Old Testament are of equal value and authority, and that a questioning of the sacred- ness of one book casts doubt upon the whole collec- tion, ought to look these facts in the face and see on what a slender thread they suspend the Bible which they so highly value. The later books, says one, 'have been delivered to us; they have their use and value, which is to be ascertained by a frank and rev- erent study of the text themselves; but those who in- sist on placing them on the same footing of undisputed authority' with the law, the prophets, and the Psalms,, to which our Lord bears direct testimony, and so make the whole doctrine of the Canon depend on its weakest part, sacrifice the true strength of the evidence on which the Old Testament is received by Christians." pp. 310, 311. As has been indicated, the Jewish canon was 370 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. divided into three departments; the Law the Prophets and the Hagiog^raphia, or the writings. In their estimation the Law was of the most im- portance; the Prophets came next; then the Writings; that is; the books oi"" Ruth, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lamen- tations, Daniel, Esther, Ezra, Chronicles, were considered of least importance and authority. This third division was a later addition to the canon, which may have been the main reason why it was esteemed so lightly. The later the scripture the smaller importance was - attached to it. It was not I think until in the fifth cen- tury after Christ that the Gospels and the writ- ings of the apostles were considered as being as sacred as the Old Testament Scriptures. On this the Encj^clopedia Britannica has the follow- ing: "The threefold division of the Canon, indicating three stages in its formation, has continued. Josephiis, in- deed, gives another, based on the nature of the separ- ate MSS. We learn nothing from him of its history, which is somewhat remarkable considering that he did not live two centuries after the last work had been added. The account of the Canon's final arrange- ment w^as unknown to him. The nuntber of the boctks was variously estimated. Josephus -gives twenty-two, which was the usual number among Christian writers in the second, third and fourth centuries, having been derived from the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Ori- gen, Jerome and others have it. It continued longest among the teachers of the Greek Church, and is even in Nicephorus's Stichometry. The enumeration in ques- HISTORY OF THE CANON. 371 tion had Rtith with Judges, and Lamentations with Jeremiah. In Epiphanius, the number twenty-seven is made by taking the alphabet enlarged with the five final letters, and dividing Samuel, Kings and Chroni- cles into two books each The Talmud has twenty- four, which originated in the Greek Alphabet, and prob- ably proceeded from Alexandria. After the Pentateuch and the former prophets, which are in the usual order, it gives Jeremiah as the first of the latter, succeeded by Ezekiel and Isaiah with the twelve minor prophets." Here we find that the Canon of the Old Testa- ment Scriptures was not fixed in Josephus' day; Josephus was born in about the 3^car 37 A. D. When the facts come to light it is found that it was neither the prophets nor the apostles that made our Canon. The men who told us what to put in and what to leave out of our Bibles were, to say the least, as ignorant as the aver- age Christian of today. In fact the speakers and writers who figured in the New Testament referred to the Apocrj^phal parts of our Bible as though thej.^ were equally authoritative with the other portions to which they referred. The Encyclopedia Britannica says: "The writings of the Ne^r Testament show their au- thor's acquaintance with the Apocrj'phal books. They have expressions of ideas derived from them. Stier collected 102 passages wdiich bear some resemblance to others in the Apocrypha; but they needed sifting, were cut down to a smaller number by Bleek. They are James i. 19. From Syrach v. 11, and iv. 29; I Peter i. 6, 7, from Wisdom iii. 3-7; Heb. xi. 34, 35, from II Maccabees vi. 1- 18-42; Heb i. 3, from Wisdom vii. 26, etc.; Ko. xi. 20-32, from Wisdom xiii. 15; Ro. 372 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. -ix. 21; from Wisdom xv. 7; Eph. vi. 13-17; from v. 18-20; I Cor. ii. 10, etc., from Judith viii. 14. Others .are less probable." Further on this writer saj^s: "Jude quotes Enoch, an Apocryphal wo^k not in the Alexandrian Canon; so that he, at least, had no rigid notions about the difference of canonical and uncan- •onical writings." The above is true; it is also true that the Church Fathers, including the apostolic fathers used the Apocryphal Old Testament writings exactly as they used those now regarded as can- onical. There is much testimony on this point, but I will quote only one of them; it comes from the same authority so often quoted in this book — The Ency^clopedia Britannica. Every Quota- tion thus far made will be found under the head- ing, Canon. "The early fathers used the Greek Bible, as almost iiU of them were ignorant of the Hebrew. Thus re- ;«tricted, they naturally considered its parts alike, cit- ing apocryphal and canonical in the same way. Ac- cordingly Ireneus, (202 quotes Baruch under the name of 'Jeremiah the prophet,' and the additions to Daniel as 'Daniel the prophet.' Clement of Alexandria (220) uses the apocryphal books like the canonical ones, for -explanation and proof indiscriminately. He is fond of referring to Baruch, which he quotes upwards of twentA'-four times in the second book of hks Fed agogus^ ;and in a manner to show that he esteemed it as high- ly as many other ])arts of the Old Testament. A pas- isage from Baruch is introduced by the phrase 'the di- vine scripture says;' and another from Tobit by 'Scrip- ture has briefly signified this, saying.' Tertullian C220) HISTORY OF THE CANON. S73 quotes the Wisdom of Solomon expressly as Solomon's^ and introduces Sirach b}: 'As it is written.' He citeS' Baruch as Jeremiah. He also believed in the authentic- ity of the book of Enoch and defends it at some length. C3'prian often cites the Greek additions to the Palestinian Canon. He introduces Tobet with the words, 'as it is written' or 'divine Scripture teaches, saying;' and Wisdom, w4th 'the Holy Script shows by Solomon.' The African fathers followed the Alexandrian^ Canon without scruple." In 393, and also in 397 councils were held irr Hix3po, in which the Canon was discussed. The books agreed on as constituting the inspired Scriptures includes all the books of our Old Testament; and besides these it contains The Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Tobit, Ju- dith and First and Second Maccabees. This council had the sanction of the good St. Augus- tine who was present to give personal direction to all its deliberations. This Canon was authoritative until the coun- cil of Trent in 1546, which adopted the Old and New Testament, as we have them now, or rather as the Catholics and the Greek church have them now, with fourteen of the Apocry- phal books included. Today a Holy Catholic curse rests upon every one who fails to accept the Canon as there made. The Protestants com- pleted their Canon sometime between 1647 and 1657, at Westminster. Of this more, further orir THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON» It is not easy to separate these Canons as 374 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. thoroughly as I would like, but they went to work on the Old Testament Canon 500 years before Christ, and did not begin on the New Testament Canon until 200 years A. D. From that time forward the work of both went on together. As before indicated, the older a book v/as the more authority it had. For that reason the Old Testament was much more au- thoritative in the early church than in the new. It would be dry and unprofitable reading to follow all the canon makers and Christian coun- cils between the second and sixteenth centuries. I will state a few things briefly and spare the student much laborious and almost useless re- search. Between the periods above named wre had almost as many canons as Canon makers. Almost every bishop made his own Canon. Finally the Catholic church,, at a council of Trent, in the year 1546, made a canon which consisted of eighty books; that is the sixty-six books used by Protestants, and fourteen Apoc- ryphal books. As this was authoritative, it sentenced to damnation all who would not re- ceive the list there proclaimed as being authori- tative. Their anathema read as follows: **If any one will not receive as sacred and authori- tative the whole books with all their parts, let him be accursed." Seventy-nine 3^ ears afterwards, in 1638, the Greek Catholic church adopted the same Canon; then fort3^-four years after that, in 1672, in a council held at Jerusalem it re-adopted it. Thus HISTORY OF THE CANON. 375 one of the great churches, mistakenly called Catholic was without an authoritative Bible for OYC^ 1,500 years and the others for over 1,600 years. The Pi'otestants had no authorized Canon until they made one at Westminster about the j-ear 1650. This was done in connection with the making of the Westminster Confession of Faith, and the Assembi3^'s Larger and Shorter Cate- chism. This assembly brought the curse of the great Catholic church upon itself by rejecting fourteen of its inspired books, and making a Qp^on of its own. After giving a list of the books in the Bible as we have them, it adds: "The bonks called Apocryphal are not of divine inspiration, and no part of the Canon, and of no authority in the church, nor to be approved or made use of otherwise than as human writ- ings." These three councils or synods show at what period in the world's history the Bible became the "vehicle," as the Confession of Faith says of **the w^hole council of God." Though the Bible was immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and providence k-ept ''pure in aH ages," the world had searched over tw^o thous- and years, from Ezra until this Westminst'er As- sembly before it found it out. Now, happily, the * 'chaff is severed from the w^heat" of this miraculously preserved book, which "has been kept pure"— "miraculously preserved in all ages." The Christian world went through over fifteen 376 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. hundred years of debates, quarrels and fights over what was and was not the Bible, before it agreed to disagree. It would require a volume to bring all these facts to light. During the first two hundred years the battle raged between the Pauline and the Petrine Christians. The Petrines rejected all the writ- ings of St. Paul. During this time there was only individual Canons. Notwithstanding my determination to be brief, and to quote as little from others as possible, I feel that this point is so important I must make one quota- tion from the Encyclopedia Britannica. Vol. v., p. 7, says: "No New Testament Canon, except a partial and unauthoritative one existed till the latter half of the second century; that is, till the idea of a Catholic church began to be entertained. The Ebionites, or Jewish Christians had their favorite Gospels and Acts. The Gospel of Matthew was highly prized by them, existing as it did in various recensions. Other docu- ments, such as the Revelation of John, and the preach- ing of Peter, (Jewish-Christian history subsequently re-written and emploj^ed in the Clementine's Recog- nitions and Homilies) were also in esteem. Even so late as 170-175, Hegesippus, a Jewish Christian used the gospel according to the Hebrews and despised Paid's writings, in conformity to the leading principle of the party to wdiich he belonged, viz., the identity of Jesus' w^ords with the Old Testament. The Clem- entine Homilies, (161-168) used the four Canonical Gospels, even the fourth, which they assign to the Apostle John. The Gospel, according to the Eg3^p- HISTORY OF THE CANON. 377 tians, was also emploA-ed. Paul's lipistles were reject- ed, of course, as well as the Acts, since the Apostle of the Gentiles was pointed at in Simon Magus, whom Peter re-futcs. It is, therefore, obvious that a collection of the New Testament writings could make little progress among the Ebionites of the second cen- tur3\ Their reverence for the Law and the Prophets hindered another Canon. Amoiag the Gentile Chris- tians the formation of a Canon took place more rap- idly, though Judiac influences retarded it even there. After Paul's Epistles were interchanged between churohes a few of them would soon be put together. A col'lection of this kind was implied in II. Pet. iii. 16." I think no really authoritative Canon was made until about the middle of the fourth cen- tury, when Constantine appointed Eusebeus to give ■♦■rhe world a Canon, whic4i he did. He left the Apocah^pse out of his list. The most of the Canons before this one rejected the book of He- brews, II. Peter, the Second and Third Epistles of John and the Epistle of Jude. Many of them contained the Epistle of Iler-mas, the Revel^ation of Petsr, the Acts of Paul, and other books now rejected. About every ?oi5inMl from this on had more or less to do w^ith making a^d unmaking Cations*. That of Laodicea in the year 363 adopt6d that of Eusebeus, except that it said nothing of the seven Catholic Epistles. In 895 Amphtlochius wrote agakist the book of Hebrews and the Apocalypse, as being spuri- ous. It is weH known that Martin Luther trans- 378 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. lated the Bible into his own language. He ac- cepted no Canon that the world has ever ac- knowledged, either before or since his da^/. He translated and put into his Bible all of the now Canonical books of either the Old or New Testa- ment. Beside these his Bible contained the books of Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Tobet, Sirach, Bartich, First and Second Maccabees, the Greek additionals to Esther and Daniel, with the pra3^er of Manasseli. He writes a preface to most of these books, in which he freely expresses his opinion of them. Maccabees he thinks about equal to the othet books of the Holy Scripture, and not unworthy to be reckoned among them. Of Wisdom he had some dotibts. Of Sirach he said: ''It is a right good book, proceeding from a wise man." He does not think so much of Baruch or Macca- bees. The book of Esther he thought ought to be rejected. Few Protestant ministers, or few even of the Lutheran clergy would approve of Luther's opinions of some of the New Testament books. He thought the book of Hebrews was written by a learned man, but not by Paul nor any other apostle. The Apocalypse he said, *'was neither apostolic nor prophetic." It was one of the books he would have tossed into the Elbe. The Epistle of James was **unapostolic" — "an Epistle of straw." The Epistle of Jude he said, '*did not proceed from an apostle." He considered that somebodv made it out of the HISTORY OF THE CANON. 379 Second Epistle of Peter, and it was a bad job. Other early reformers followed in Luther's wake. Zwingii asserted that the Apoealj-pse was not a Bible book. Ecolanipadius rejected more of the books of the Old and New Testa- ment than did either Luther or Zwingii. Calvin did not believe in Hebrews, Second Peter, nor the Apocah^pse. Here 1 must leave the matter of the Canon; if I have succeeded in giving the student a glimpse of how the Bible was made I have done all I expected. CHAPTER XXII. IS THE BIBLE GOD's REVELATION? A FURTHER REVIEW OF AFFIRMATIVE ARGUMENTS. The Dematid and Stipply Argument — The Syllogistic Argu- ment — Logic Spoiled by too much Logic — Redactio ad Absitrdum Arguments — Why was this Revelation Given as a Secret to a Race of Brickmakers?— Was Jesus sent to do Away with a God-given Revelation?— Jesus Quotes the Old Testament to Dispute it — Old Testament could not be ''a Revelation to us — Testimony of Rev. T. W. Chambers and manj' Others — How Hebrew Bibles Were Written — Hebrew "loop-holes" — "Spots on tnie Sun" Ex- plains — Hebrew People Ignorant — New Testament— Was Jesus Educated? — Jesus not Immediately Reported — Gos- pels not Original Documents — New Testament ti^e mis- leading — Manuscripts Discovered since the Authorized Version was Published — Mistakes of Gopvists- No Man- uscript Authority for our Version — How Jerome got in as a Bible Maker. This chapter should have gone into the first half of this book but as it was doubtful, wheal these plates were made, whet-har I could make room for it, it was laid aside with much other matteis to be put in here if room could be found for it, ThfC Westminster Confession of Faith, and Dean IS THE BIBLE GOD'S REVELATION? • 381 Burgon have both been quoted to show that it has been and still is Avith some Christians, the belief that the Bible is God's full and oni3' reve- lation — that it is plenarily inspired, and that no other word will ever be heard from God until the w^orld is summoned to judgment. It is also aflirraed that bA^ God's especial care, ("singular care and providence," is the language of the Con- fession of Faith,) this book has been kept pure in all ages. To this might be added statements to the same effect from Dr. Lardner, Bishop Ilorne, Watson, Pale^', Rev. David Nelson, and other eighteenth and nineteenth centur\- theologians. Dale}'-, Mcllvane and Patterson all make argu- ments, whicii, when reduced to logical forms must anioimt to about this: Demand and sup- ply are co-extensive and co-eternal. One never can exist without the other. If water had never existed there could never have been thirst, or a demand for water. Food is adapted to the stomach, and the stomach to the work of digest- ing food. Indeed there is no other use for food except to put into the stomach, and the stomach has no other function than to digest food. Light would be of little use to us if we had no ej-es, and e^-es would be useless without light. So of the ear, it is adapted to catch soured, and sound is absolutely useless where there is no ear. After repeating this argument in various forms of phraseology for many wearj^ pages, the* au- thors usually bring it to a climax with the as- sertion that when God was making appetites for 382 THE BIiVlE AMD THE HIGHER CRITICISM. men he placed within them an appetite — a hun- ger or thirst for a revelation, — a desire to hear from God. Inasmuch as this desire for a revel- ation is in man, v^herever found, and inasmuch as God has given man no desires or appetites for which he has not provided a means of grati- fication, he must have provided man with a rev- elation from himself. The argument when reduced to something like a syllogistic formula is about as follows: 1. Man's maker has provided the means for the gratification of his every appetite; 2. Man has an appetite for a revelation from God; 3. Therefore man's maker has provided for him a revelation. This is Logic; I think it is good logic; but log- ic which proves too much proves nothing, and as this proves too much it is fata! to the one who uses it to prove the doctrine set forth in the Westminster Confession of Faith, that the Bible is God's only revelation. The minor proposition says, man has an ap- petite for a revelation from God; that would make a foundation for another syllogism wliich should be stated about as follows: 1. Man has an appetite for revelations from the super mundane world; 2. The Buddhists and the Brahmins are men; 3. Therefore the Buddhists and the Brahmins have an appetite for revelations from the super- mundane world. 13 THE TUBLE GOD'S REVELATION? 383 Now kt the major proposition become the foundation for another syllogistic argument as follows: 1. God has provided for the gratification of every appetite of Brahmins, Buddhists and Christians; 2. Brahmins, Buddhists and Christians have appetites alike for a revelation from God; 3. Therefore God has prepared a revelation for Brahmins, Buddhists and Christians. rhis staple Christian argument, under review, asserts that the appetite for a revetation from God proves the existence of such revelation; if this is true wall not a similar appetite prov-e the same for those who never heard of the Bible, or of Christianity? If it does not then there is a faliac\^ somewhere in the learned logic of these Christian gentlemen. Ho\V w^ould it do to say? God has provided for humanity's every appe- tite: But he has provided no revelation for the South Sea Islanders; Therefore the South Sea Islanders are not hu- man beings. These reductio ad ahsurdum arguments might be followed indefinitely, but I do not propose to pursue them farther. Does it not seem strange, that if God is, as these writers suppose, under obligation to give man a revelation he did not see his duty before some evil power got around with so many false revelations? How strange that His Satanic Ma- 384 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. jesty was permitted to overload the most en- lightened people in the world with the counter- feit so long before the genuine existed. Not only were there counterfeit Bibles, but think qf the Ayatars or saviors who counterfeited our sav- ior hundreds of years before he was born. Such mysteries as these are among the greatest of the mj^steries of godliness. Why did not God think of his duty to give man a revelation — a duty so easily seen by the theologians of todRj, before the da^^s of Moses, Abraham, or Noah; the world, these same good people say, was once destroyed because of its wickedness. Possibly had the revelation been given which God was under obligation to bestow, that same wickedness, and the consequent des- truction of human life might have been averted. Cannot those who make these arguments, see that their logic utterly annihilates the idea of the Bible being God's only revelation to the hu- man family? At best if the Bible is a revelation from God to man it can be only one of the num- erous revelations he has made to some of the numerous families of man. The a'rgument so of- ten made to prove that the Bible is God's only revelation to man represents God as neglecting his duty to the human family until hundreds of thousands of years after he /had sent man to the earth, and billions ujDon billions of souls had gone for want of such revelation, to feed the eternal flames. Even when he got ready to attend to his long IS THE BIBLE GOD's REVELATION? 385 neglected duty, instead of revealing himself to all men he called a few ignorant brickmakers away from the nations of earth, and after get- ting them out into the ^vilderness and swearing them to have nothing to do with their brothers and sisters of other nations he confided a part of the needed revelation to them, as a secret tc be kept from the world. Yet when this revela- tion gets out where other people can get hold of it, it is found to be only a repetition of old laws and ceremonies they had obtamec from some evil source so many ages beiorc^ that iti^ origin was lost in antiquity. But this is not the worst feature of the cast After all his efforts in that direction, he did not succeed in giving them a revelation. He tried almost constantly for nearly fifteen hundred years, as Jeremiah says, ''rising up early." See ]ei. XI. 7; XX vi. 5; xxxii. 33. After all these effort? to give a revelation he failed. Through one ol his instruments he exclaimed m despair, ''What could I have done for my vineyard that I have not done in it? Wherefore when I looked that it should have brought forth grapes brought it forth wild grapes." Is. v. 4. In verse 7, he tells the house of Israel and the house of Judah that they are the vineyard to which he refers. Finally tiring of these repeated efforts and de- feats in giving a revelation to this people through the prophets as a last resort he is rep- resented as sending his son to do away with 386 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. the old, nailing it to his cross. See II. Cor. iii. 13-15. Eph. ii. 15. Col. ii. 14-16. Jesus told them the Old was insufficient. He said: "Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and the Pharisees^ ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." Matt. v. 20. Indeed he told them, and so did his apostles, unless they have been misrepresented, that he was the w^ay — the only way — that all who came before him were "thieves and robbers" — that there was no name given under heaven or among men whereby men could be saved, but the name of Jesus. See Jno. X. 8; Acts iv. 12. It must be confessed that this was rather hard on Moses and others, but when he takes up the precepts given by Moses, or through Moses, he quotes them, in every instance, either to amend or dhspute them. Does he quote "an e^-e for an eye or a tooth for a tooth?" he quotes it not because he believes it, but because he does not believe it. He follows it with a dis- junctive conjunction "but," and adds, "I say unto you, resist not evil." Matt. v. 39, 40. When he quotes the old saying, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy," he follows it with that same "but," "I say unto /ou love your enemies." Matt. v. 43, 44. If he quotes, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," he does so for the purpose of adding an amend- ment: *'But I say unto 3^ou whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed IS THE BIBLE GOD'S REVELATION? 387 adultery with her already in his heart." Matt. v. 27, 28. When he quotes, ''Thou shalt not kill," he carries that farther, and adds, ''Who- soever is angiy with his brother without cause is a murderer." Matt. v. 21, 22. He quotes, "Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform iito the Lord thine oaths." He fol- lows it with that same inevitable "but," and adds, "I say unto 3'ou, swear not at all." Matt. v. 33, 34. Whatever the books of the Bible, especially those of the Old Testament, may have been for those for whom they were written, they cer- tainly cannot be a revelation to those livmg to- day. At best these books were only primer books,^ given to an infantile race, and are not adapted to the people of today. The Old Testa- ment w.'is written in languages, v^^hich, perhaps, not a person on earth now understands. I believe that it was Geseneus, the great He- brew Lexicographer, who said, that if Moses' books could have been found in the days of Ezra, or Nehemiah, there was not a man in Israel who could have read and understood them. Rev. Talbott W. Chambers, in his "Companion to the Revised Old Testament," says, on pages, 70, 71: "The oldest of these (documents on which to base the Old Testament,) are the Targums, which are sup- posed to owe their origin to the disuse of the Hebrew tongue, by the exiles in Babylon. (Neh. viii. 8.) They 388 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. were at nist, and for maii3^ years oral. As miglit be expected, they are usually paraphrases, in which the ideas of the translator are more followed than those of the original writer. * * * The oldest Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures, is the one known as the Septufigint, a name derived from the worthless tradi- tion that it was made b3'' a company of seventy Jews, at the request of Ptolemy Philadelphus, who was gathering a librar^^ The truth about its origin is, that Alexandrifi hcoame after the dispersion, a centre of Jewish poptilation, and afterwafd, of religions but as time went on the Jews lost coniniand of their own language, and therefore required a translation of their sacred books into Greek." A^ this point is an important one, I will quote For my readers a few such excerpts as I happen to have at hand. Henry Craik says, in the "Ec- clesiastical Magazine," for April 1881. "))■' "(508, at the early dawn of the reformation, John Reuchlin compiled the first grammar of an\^ real value, (of the Hebrew language,) excepting such as bad at an earlier period been composed by Jewish grammarians." The Christian Spe(>tator Vol. ili. p. 232 said: "It is not generalh' known that the ancient Hebrew language, ^uch as was used i-n the older parts of the Bible, was written in solid blocks of consonant let- ters. There was, perhaps, not a vowel used in the whole Old Testament." Again, *'The vowel points are not very ancient. The most sacred copies of the Scriptures which the Jews deposi- ted in their S3inagogues, are, and ever have been> without points." Ibid 237. 389 This of course rendered reading difficult, and somewhat uncertain. This might be illustrated in the use of hundreds of different words. The word BRD, if the English language was spelled and pronounced as was the Hebrew in the Bible could be translated bride, bard, bird, bared bor- ed or board. The first verse of the twenty-third Psalm would read; THLRDSMSHPHRDSHL- LNTWNT. Here we must be guided mostly by conjecture in dividing this into words. Then again, we cannot know what vowels to put in nor where to place them. Bishop Marsh said, in his fourteenth lecture. "The Old Testament is the only work which re- mains in ancient Hebrew, nor have we a lexicon or glossary composed while it was yet a living lan- guage." Godfrey Higgins said: "I am quite certain that I shall be able to prove chat ever^' letter of the Hebrew language has four, and probabl}^ five meanings." LeClerk affirms, in his "Sentium," p. 156, that: 'The learned merely guess at the sense of the Old Testament, in an infinity of places, which produces a prodigious number of discordant interpretations." St. Jerome, in his Commentary- on the fortieth chapter of Ezekiel saj^s: ''When we translate He- brew into Latin we are sometimes guided by conjecture." As an illustration of the difference of opinion what the Hebrew means I quote the following from The Inquirer's Text Book. "Our version saA's (of Noah's ark,) it was made of 390 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Gopher wood; Ouklehos' translates it, as made of ce- dar; Castelus says it was juniper; the Arabic commen- tators declare that it was boxwood; the Persians say that it was pine w^ood; the celebrated Bochart affirms that it was ebony, and Dr. Geddes affirms that it was wicker work; while Dawson says that it was made of bulrushes and daubed with slime." Giles' Hebrew and Christian Records says: ''Vowel points were not invented before the second century. The present Hebrew letters are later than the Christian era." I am painfully aware that this is irksome, yet I cannot feel quite willing to leave it without a few more words confirmatory of what has been said. Once upon a time I held a several day's discussion with a shrewd and learned theologian. I laid m^^ plans to entrap my opponent; he ap- parently did not see the snare I had laid for him, and, of course walked into it. When I sprung a text on him which was to forever fasten him, he looked at me with all the non chalance imagin- able, and asked me if I did not know that there were as many as fourteen different ways of get- ting out of the difficulty through other transla- tions of the Hebrew? You may judge that I was astonished; I could have endured a round dozen of Hebrew ways of getting out of a diflS- culty, but when he told me that there were four- teen I allowed him to escape. I would give up any text in the Bible rather than to undertake to stop fourteen Hebrew loop-holes. When I was much younger than I am now and felt that what the world calls infidelity must be 391 put down at any cost, I got kold of an anony- mously written book, called ''Spots on the Sun." This book claimed to harmonize every difficulty in understanding the Bible. I read it with great interest; I found according to its statements it was neither the devil nor a serpent that tempted grandmother Eve. The old lady was temp^xl by a monkey, an ape, or an orangoutang. T' sun did not stand still for Joshua; it was only the color bearers of Joshua's army. Samson never caught any foxes and set their tails on fire; the ^word rendered fox should be rendered sheaf, and neither the foxes nor the sheaves ran and burned the green corn. It was the fire that ran and burned the ripened grain. Samson turned the sheaves head to head instead of turning the foxes tail to tail. Ahaziah was not two years older than his father as is represented in II Chron. xxii. 2. In- stead of that he was eighteen, j^ears younger. A fly sat down upon the freshly written text, and left a naught3^ speck, which changed the young man's age from twent^'-two to forty-two. While there are so many infidel flies ^in the world, bent on trying to make the Bible false, I w^ould a little prefer that a revelation given for my benefit be given in a language not so easily af- fected by fly specks. This is enough; with dozens of arguments sim- ilar to those quoted above, the author of this book attempted to prove to the world that he was about the onlv Hebrew scholar since Moses 392 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. went to Mount Nebo. The only thing he really did prove was, th^t the Hebrew language was the wrong language in which to make a revela- tion calculated to benefit the people of any age since at least five centuries before Christ. I might here add that the Hebrew people are not the special people v.'ith vvdiich to entrust a Divine Revelation. They were the most ignorant people, who, in their day made any pretensions to knowledge or civilization. riiey had no mechanics among them. I Sam. xiii. 17-21, mfornis us that they had no smith throughout the land of Israel; but that the Is- raelites went down to the Philistines when they wanted plowshares, coulters and axes sharpened. About the only tool they used which required any mechanical skill was a file with which to sharpen a mattock, or an ox goad. When they wanted to build a meeting house — a residence for their God, they had to go to the heathens to find mechanics to do the work. See I Kin. V. 6. They were so superstitious that they were afraid of thunder. Once when it thun- dered they thought that Samuel produced it. After they went into Babylonish captivity, and then learned of the existence of ange'ls, they thought when it thundered it was the voice of an angel. Jno. xii. 29. Please remember, I have no word to say against the Bible. I am only giving a few ad- ditional reasons why I do not believe that IS THE BIBLE GOD's REVELATION? 393 God gave a perfect revelation for us to that ignorant people. I believe that each people has its voice of inspiration, which if followed consci- entiously will lead its possessor into the regions of higher wisdom. It is acknowledged that many of the difficul- ties here mentioned regarding the Old Testa- ment do not apply to the New; but new difii- culties arise in their place; — difficulties, which, like Banquo's ghost, refuse to ''down," even at the bidding of theology. A man said, not long ago, that he fully be- lieved that Jesus Christ wa'ote the New Testa- ment. Of course this was an aggravated case of superstitious ignorance. The only ^vriting that Jesus is reported to have done, was at the time he wrote on the ground at the time the woman taken in the very act of adultery was brought before liim. Indeed that ^vriting was only scratching as the Greek signifies. Possibh^ Jesus did not know his alphabet. I have heard it hinted, and heard John vii. 15 quoted to prove that Jesus could neither write nor read. This text sa3^s: "How knoweth this man let- ters, having never learned?" I really think the text justifies the conclusion, but as there are other texts which indicate that he could read, (Luke iv. 17.,) I prefer to think that the word ''letters," in this instance was used to signify a profundity of learning to w^hich the Jews suppos- ed he had not attained. We often speak of one who has read much, as a man of letters. This 394 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. text rather signifies that Jesus was not a man of great learning. To return to the case under discussion, the writer of the book of John did not think what Jesus here wrote was of enough importance to give it to his readers. The truth is, as I have elsewhere shown, the Airhole story is exceedingly apocryphal. We are left entirely without reports of what Jesus said, which were made by men on the ground. Even though the writers of the life of Jesus had been eye-witnesses of what they re- corded they wrote them out from memory many years after the death of Jesus. If any one sup- poses that such a S3^stem of reporting can be an3'thing like exact let him try to call up and report today a discourse to which he listened twent3^-five ^^ears since. But there is no possil^Ility that one of the writers of either of the synoptic Gospels ever saw Jesus. These Gospels were not written by those whose names they bear. They are Gospels ac- cording to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; not Gospels written by them. That is they were written out after these men had passed away, and written according to the writers' memory of their preaching. In a former lesson it was shown that Luke does not pretend to be writing an original history. *'Many," had written before him; and inasmuch as they had done so, he would undertake, not to tell a new story, but to tell that which he had learned from the be- IS THE BIBLE god's REVELATION? 395 ginning, and from "eye-witnesses." He then said that Theophilus had been instructed in the things in which he would further instruct him. How any one can suppose that Luke supposed himself to be writing an original history I cannot tell. Indeed a great writer has said: ''All the writ- ers of the gospels drew their materials from one common original." Even the title page of the New Testament :ontains a misleading statement: ''The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; translated out of the Original Greek; and with the former translations diligently compared and revised." The above is not true; our New Testament has no connection with the Original Greek; the original would be the autograph manuscripts of the Apostles. The best Greek manuscripts we have are only copies of copies which were copies of copies, which somebody supposed he copied from some one who supposed he copied from some one who copied from Paul. Our Greek manuscripts certainh^ get no nearer back to the original than is here represented. As the King James' translation was made in 1611, if there were any Greek manuscripts for the whole New Testament they had not been discovered. The whole New Testament, as we have it, ex- isted only in Latin. And when Beza, and Eras- mus wanted a Greek Testament they had no al- 396 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. tcrnative but to translate certain portions of it from the Latin Vulgate back into Greek. This looks very little like the ''original Greek." The preface to the "Cmpanion of the Revised Version of the New Testament;" in its apology for its departure from the authorized version said: "Not one of these alterations appeared without what appeared to a majority of the Revisers an ade- quate reason. They are all to be traced to one or the other of two causes. Either a change of the Greek text which it was found necessary to adopt, or to a change of translation which stricter fidelity to the original seemed jto reqinre. Under these two heads, all necessary explanations (so far as space permitted,) will be found in the following p.ages." Here it will be noticed, is a change in the Greek text. Certainly no one would change the ''Original Greek," — the writings of the inspired apostles. What then does this mean? I answer that it means that other manuscripts have been discovered, some of which are supposed to be older and more nearly correct than any manu- script known to exist at the time the transla- tion was made, which bears on its title page the false statement that it was "translated out of the original Greek." On p. 4, this "Companion" quotes from Scrive- ner's Introduction as foUow^s: "It has been so ordered that vastly more copies of the sacred volume have come down to us in manu- script than of any other ancient writing:. We learn from the best authorities on the subject that no fewer than 1,700 manuscripts of the New Testament, in whole or in parts, are known to the scholars of our day." Here are 1,700 manuscript copies of the New Testament, *'in whole or in part," and these manuscripts differ in their reading one hundred and Hfty thousand times. How does this happen? They were copied from each other, or from older manuscripts. The copyists were all of them fal- lible men — exceedingly fallible; and their fallibility has left its mark all over our ''infallible" Bible. We have just learned that not less than 1,700 manuscripts of the New Testament, "in whole or in part," are known to scholars. How many of these are "in whole," is a question of more than ordinary interest. The same work from which the foregoing quotations are made, says: "And now we have reached the interesting point of this sketch as to the history of the printed text of the New Testament, just given, which has led us very near the date at which the authorized version began to be made. It was commenced about 1604, when the above named Greek texts were, in one form or another, generally circulated. Which of them, we ask with eagerness, formed the original from which our common English version was derived? To this ques- tion the answer is, that Beza's edition, of 15S9, was the one usually followed. It had been based on Stephen's edition of 1550, and that again had been derived from the fourth edition of Erasmus, published in 1527. Such is the parentage of the authorized ver- sion; Beza, Stephens, Erasmus. What manuscript au- thority, let us ask, is here represented? 398 THE BIBLE AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Clark's Commentaries do not happen to be just now where I can place my hands upon them, but I can from memory give the substance of what he says on the subject. He says that many of the copyists of these manuscripts were ignorant transcribers, not knowing a letter they wrote. They simply sought to imitate the let- ters they were copying. Thus many marginal notes and glossaries crept unnoticed into their copies, the writers supposing that these com- mentaries were parts of what they were to copy. Thus he informs us that Jerome wrote on his cop3^ of the first Epistle of John, ''There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one." An ignorant transcriber in copying this text wrote Jerome's remarks in as a pari of the text. Tlius the one great text for the prool of the trinity found its way into the Bible. That these glossaries thus became parts of the Bil^le in the way here mentioned is proved by the authors of the Revised Bible. On pages 7, 8, of the ''Companion," Mr Roberts says: "Mere glosses, doxologies, or liturgical formularies written on the margin of manuscripts were sometimes inadYe;-tentIy introduced by transcribers into the text. * * The doxology of the Lord's prayer Matt. vi. 13, which seems to have been quite un- known to the early fathers of the church, probabh crept into the church in the same manner. And iehen can be hardly a doubt that the ecclesiastical formula, Acts viii. 37, found in many manuscripts, but certainly not genuine, owed its place to a similar mistake," CHAPTER XXIII. OTHER SACRED BOOKS. Bible Ma1