^.7^ V !.^ ./^^ ti-,- *'*.i^J U ^v ^lovSaicov 'eGtiv." The Divine deliver ance springs out of the Jews. II. THE LITERARY ANALYSIS CRITICALLY AND HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. LECTURE II. THE LITERARY ANALYSIS CRITICALLY AND HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. "From a child thou hast known the sacred writ ings which are able to make thee wise unto salvation." — 2 Tim. iii. 15. The history of Old Testament criticism may for the sake of clearness be divided into three periods. The first of these ends with Eichorn, the father of the modern critical methods ; the second with Ewald ; the third is that in which our own lot is cast. It may be well, in order to gain a broad and comprehensive view of the movement under consideration, very briefly to note the distinguishing characteristics of each of these three periods. The rise of Old Testament criticism is usually traced to the questions raised by the Jewish Commentator, Abenezra, in the twelfth Chris tian century, and revived by Spinoza and others in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These questions centred round a small number 44 THE LITERAR Y ANAL YSIS. of passages which appear to imply a later redaction than the rest of the narrative ; such as, "And the Canaanite was theji in the land" (Gen. xii. 6) ; " These are the kings that reigned itt the land of Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel'' (Gen. xxxvi. 31), or the narrative of the burial of Moses in Deut. xxxiv. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that such obvious matters were unnoticed by Christian antiquity, or that they had escaped the discernment of great Christian teachers. We have already noted St. Jerome's full discus sion of the last-named passage from Deuter onomy ; and his surmise that the words "to this day " referred to the time of the Redaction under Ezra. Nor was it merely to a great scholar like St. Jerome that such matters were familiar. Turn over the pages of St. Augus tine's " De Genesi ad Htteram" and you will find yourself in the midst of questions that to our ears sound strangely modern, yet which it is quite clear from the treatise were matters commonly discussed in the contemporary North African Church. The Christians of Carthage in the fourth century were familiar with differing views on such points as the PA TRISTIC CRITICISM. 45 meaning of the days of creation, or the evolu tion in time of the various orders of created things ; the nature of the seventh day of God's rest ; the connection between the two narra tives of the creation, and so on. Or if we descend to a somewhat lower plane of difficulty, we shall find in the " De Civitate Dei" or still earlier in the Homilies of St. Chrysostom, solu tions of questions like that of the lack of information regarding Cain's wife, his building a city, and so forth. Nor, when in the course of a discussion we come across such golden sentences as these — "When one fails to understand, let him give honour to the Scrip ture of God, and himself fear ; " * " Even where the details of Scripture cannot be fully investigated or made clear, at least (we can learn) that which a sound faith pre scribes "f — can we fail to catch the spirit of humility and reverence in approaching the shrine of the self-manifestations of God which marks the devout student of Holy Scripture in every age. Whilst let us note also, this spirit is found in conjunction with a sympathetic and cordial * " Ubi autem intelligere non potest, Scripturae Dei det honorem, sibi timorem. " ¦|- " Si autem et Scripturae circumstantia pertractari et discuti non potest, saltern id quod fides sana praescribit." 46 THE LITERAR Y ANAL YSIS. recognition of the claims of all truth, from whatever side it may happen to come, which we have been too prone to regard as a special mark of our own age. Speaking broadly we may say that the " Re cension Hypothesis " in one form or another, which we have traced back to the early Chris tian Teachers, remained the critical hypothesis to the middle of the eighteenth century ; one school, represented by Fleury and Vitringa, still maintaining the Mosaic authorship of the Penta teuch with its subsequent Ezrahlte revision ; whilst Simon attributed it to the work of the Prophetical Schools making use of older docu mentary authorities. This latter point — the use of older documents — for example In Genesis — was conceded also by the defenders of the Mosaic authorship. A new era opened with the proclamation to the world in 1753 by the French physician, Astruc, of the theory that the Book of Genesis was divided into " Sections " or " Memoirs " marked by the use of the two Divine Names Elohim and Jahveh, which thus distinguished the sources employed by Moses in the compo sition of the Book. The hint of the " Docu mentary Hypothesis " thus given was at once ASTRUC AND EICHORN. 47 followed up. Men turned with avidity from the barren controversies as to the Textual Criti cism of the Hebrew Scriptures and the date of its vowel points, which had engrossed the thoughts of the literary world for more than a century previous, to the new and attractive vista of investigation thus disclosed. Eichorn's " Introduction to the Old Testa ment," published in 1780, expresses the natural result. The eleven Memoirs of Astruc now become two original documents, the Elohistic and Jahvistic sources respectively, upon which Moses drew in the composition of Genesis. The middle books of the Pentateuch also were the result of the combination of Mosaic docu ments ; the Redaction dating from the Mosaic age, but with later glosses or insertions. Thus the science which Eichorn himself named "The Higher Criticism " was more than a century ago started on its way ; and the main divisions of the present literary analysis, so far as the book of Genesis at least is concerned, outlined to the world. In the closing years of the cen tury Ilgen discovered a third document, now called the "Second Elohist" in Genesis; but the hypothesis was forgotten until revised by Hupfeld some thirty or forty years since. 48 THE LITER A RY ANAL YSIS. From that time it has become a recognized part of the critical position. Thus before the pres ent century had opened, P, J, and E, as docu mentary sources of the Book of Genesis, were already separated in substantially their present divisions. The " Fragmentary Hypothesis " of Geddes, which unsuccessfully disputed the ground for a time at the close of the century, requires but a cursory mention. It was soon felt that what ever the literary design of the Pentateuch, it was at any rate far more than a chance collec tion of fragments of early date loosely strung together in a subsequent age. Thus the " Fragmentary Hypothesis," as it is called, soon disappears from view ; although the latest disin tegrating results of criticism seem to come very near to its revival in another form. Such language as the following from Prof Sanday's recent " Bampton Lectures " * describes a new "Fragmentary Hypothesis " almost as destruc tive of the real unity of the Books as the earlier and discredited one. Thus he tells of "copies" "passing often from hand to hand and enriched on the way by insertions and an notations ; " of the "layers of gradual accretion * Bampton Lectures for 1894. Pages 158-160. THE ERA GMENTAR Y HYPO THESIS. 49 which have gone to make the books which we now possess what they are ; " or depicts to us, how, when "one hand laid down the pen, another, and in most cases a kindly and a friendly hand took it up, each working after a manner which had become traditional." It may be doubted, however, whether this expla nation of the Old Testament Historical Books will have any better success in satisfying the mind of the twentieth century, than attended the theories of Geddes in the early years of the nineteenth. Before entering upon the second period with the work of De Wette, from whom the " Frag mentary Hypothesis" received its final condem nation, and noticing the new turn of things which grew out of his strong protest for the unity of plan of the Books, it may be well to cast a glance backward at the position already reached. Eichorn has been called by a recent English writer of the critical school "a dry German rationalist." This appears a somewhat un grateful description of the father of the Higher criticism on the part of one of its advanced disciples. But granting that the epithet " dry " is hardly merited by a writer who possessed 50 THE LITERAR Y ANAL YSIS. undoubtedly much literary insight and power of historical discernment, still the fact remains that Eichorn was a thorough-going Rationalist of the eighteenth-century type, and that the task which he set before himself was to account for the facts of the Pentateuch, whilst explaining away its supernatural side. Thus, to distin guish between the different aspects of Divine Revelation implied in the two Names of God, was a matter of but little moment in his eyes. The Names served as convenient sign-posts to mark off the hand of one writer from that of another, and this was enough. This tendency to ignore the meaning or origin of the Names themselves (whilst using them as aids to an artificial division) , which was so natural from the standpoint of the eighteenth- century Rationalists, seems to have survived largely down to the present day. Canon Driver, for instance, tells us of the preference of P for the Name Elohim ; but he gives no explanation of the phenomenon.* J, the Jahvistic source, we are informed, emanated from the kingdom of Judah, and E * Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament. "For such a variation in similar and consecutive chapters no plausible explanation can be assigned except diversity of authorship." p. ii. THE DIVINE NAMES. 5 i from Northern Israel,* for the not very conclu sive reason apparently that E makes the patri archs worship at the sacred shrine of Northern Israel, whilst "J displays a large hearted inter est in the myths and sacred places both of Israel and Judah." f Or, as Mr. Addis puts it — " His (the Elohist's) stories of the patriarchs centre round the shrines and sacred places of Northern Israel." "Hence," continues Mr. Addis, "though there is much dispute about the place in which the Jahvist wrote, there is a general consensus of critics that the Elohist belonged to the Northern Kingdom " \ — verily, a cogent argument, which needs to be stated only to produce conviction ! ! So far as I know, no one attempts to explain why the Northern writer should habitually use the name Elohim, and the Southern, Jahveh. M. Renan, in deed, propounds a theory which is clear cut and simple. According to him, Elohim is the God of the Patriarchal period, and Jahveh the * Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, p. 115. f Canon Driver admits that " the grounds alleged may seem to be slight in themselves, but in the absence of stronger grounds on the other side, they make it at least relatively probable that E and J belonged to the northern and southern kingdoms respectively." p. 116. J Addis, Documents of the Hexateuch, Introduction, p. 55. 5 2 THE LITERAR Y ANAL YSIS. national deity of later times.'-' From all which we should conclude that the two Elohistic doc uments P and E (in Genesis) have repro duced the history of the Patriarchal period in its contemporary dress, and that J, in which the later name of God is used, represents the subsequent Redaction. Yet nothing could be more at variance than this with present critical conclusions. It would seem, therefore, that if the choice of the Divine Names in the two documents can be explained neither from their date, nor the local ity in which they took their rise, it must depend either upon Theological considerations involved In the Names themselves, or must be dismissed as purely arbitrary. The latter alternative appears to be generally adopted by the critics ; and It is therefore impossible to avoid attaching the idea of a certain artificiality to a division which is thus made. Then, when the documents have been ascertained by this means, the guide who first pointed out the way is comparatively ignored, and the burden of proof, so far as the division Is concerned, laid *" Notre opinion est que I'Elohisme patriarchal doit fitre con?u comme anterieur et superieur an Jahveisme.'' Renan, Histoire du Peuple d' Israel, vol. i. p. 65. ARBITRARY USE OF THE NAMES. 53 upon independent differences of style and vocabulary. Yet, as every one knows, the ar gument from such differences is proverbially uncertain. Moreover, there are not wanting passages in which it is difficult to see any rea son for the analysis other than the use of the Divine Names themselves. (Compare for ex ample. Gen. xxix 31 — xxx 24, the narrative of the birth of Jacob's children.) When we bear in mind that the change from one Divine Name to the other occurs in exactly the same way in other parts of the Bible, and yet, has never been held in those sections to indicate any dif ference of authorship ; (take the 1 9th Psalm as a familiar example) and the further fact that in a large number of cases the choice of Name is without doubt made advisedly in accordance with the subject matter : (e. g., in conversation with a non-Israelite, Elohim is used, not Jah veh), it would certainly be more convincing if the occurrence of the Names in the several documents were not so purely arbitrary. Un der these circumstances, too, there seems no necessity for endeavoring to explain the occur rence of the wrong Name of God in certain places in P and E: twice in P, xvii i and xxi I^ and four times in E, once in a com- 54 THE LITERARY ANALYSIS. pound (iT'lDrl) in xxii 2 and absolutely in xxii II and xxii 14 (twice). It seems unnecessary, I say, to attempt with Canon Driver to account for this as being the work of the "compiler" or "even a scribe," who subsequently made the substitution " under the Influence of the usage of the verses preceding. " * If the only explanation that can be given of the use of the Sacred Names in J on the one side and in P and E on the other, is the simple one that so it is, it becomes hard to see why the same reason should not be adequate to explain the disregard of the use in these instances, or, in fact, any other possible phenomenon. The truth is, that this arbitrary division of the Names of God between different documents is a leg acy of the Rationalistic origin of the literary analysis, and constitutes an a priori difficulty of some weight against a full acceptance of its accuracy. But to return to the history of the criti cal movement and trace the second period of its development. 'The work of Astruc and Eichorn was carried still further by De Wette. De Wette was the first to place the composi tion of Deuteronomy, or rather of the " kernel " * Introduction, p. 20. DE WETTE. 55 of Deuteronomy, in the days of Joslah. He also made a vigorous onslaught upon the historical character and fidelity of the Books of Chron icles, which he regards as transformed in the Levitical interest and holds much of its sources to be entirely legendary and unhistorical. These points have, with more or less modifica tion, remained important bases of the critical position down to the present day. It is diffi cult to avoid associating them at least in their origin with De Wette's own personal history, with his loss of faith in the supernatural through the influence of the great Rationalist Paulus, which was followed at length by his re covery of religion through intercourse with Fries and Schleiermacher ; with both of whom religion was rather a matter of the heart than of the head, and to whom all religious feeling must be true, even though its intellect ual expression might be false. Moreover, Schleiermacher, who was De Wette's sheet- anchor in religious matters, attached little or no value to Judaism as the precursor of Chris tianity. It seems probable that De Wette would at least have modified some of his posi tions (which even Canon Cheyne admits to be too extreme), had he possessed a less one- 56 THE LITERARY ANAL YSIS. sided religious adviser. Very pathetic are the words in which De Wette sums up the re sult of his life-work, confessing the failure of its results to satisfy the ideals of a sincere high- minded soul. "I have sown the seed," he says, "but where is the harvest now ripening? I lived in a troubled time, the union of believ ers was broken. I mixed with the struggle, but it was In vain. I have not succeeded in making it cease." * A striking illustration, I would venture to assert, of the inevitable fail ure of Rationalistic Pietism in all ages to meet the spiritual needs of men. De Wette's strong condemnation of the " Fragmentary Hypothesis " prepared the way for the work of Bleek and Ewald ; who, to account for the unity of Genesis, put forth what is known as the " Supplementary Hy pothesis." According to this view, the second of Eichorn's two documents (called by most critics JE) occupies a position like that of the Fourth Gospel. It was written expressly with the view of supplementing the omissions of the previous account. Thus, the original Elohist was supplemented by the later and more de- * Lichtenburg, History of German Theology in the 19th century, P-44S- BLEEK AND EWALD. 57 tailed Jahvistic writing. The division adopted by Ewald is the same in principle, although it ulti mately became more complex. He, too, engrafts upon his Elohistic " Book of Origins," which he says was compiled from ancient sources in the Solomonic period, successive supplementary accounts J and E. Ewald put back the date of the composition of Deuteronomy from the reign of Josiah to that of Manasseh, and postu lated two redactors ; one, who combined P, J, and E, and a final redactor who made some further additions and brought the whole to its present state. The complexity of Ewald's analysis was soon felt to detract from its value, although modern scholars have gone far ahead of him in this re spect. But his deep sense of God, his unfal tering reverence for the religion of Israel as a unique manifestation of God to the world, coupled with his keen sympathetic insight, will always maintain for him a position of the first rank amongst German critical scholars. In his true reverence, as well as his fondness for broad abstract impersonal conceptions, Hein- rich Ewald was cast in much the same mould as our own Frederick Denlson Maurice. We cannot fail to trace the spirit of Maurice in the 58 THE LITERAR Y ANAL YSIS. vivid portraiture which Canon Cheyne has pre served of the great German teacher pointing two English visitors to the Greek Testament with the remark, "In this little book is con tained all the wisdom of the world : " * or, in his indignant protest against the "so-called criticism" "which has given up Moses and so much that is excellent besides," and which "leads on directly to the contemptuous rejec tion of the Old Testament, if not of the New." -j- That Ewald's faith was less complete than Maurice's in some important particulars, is probably due rather to his less fortunate en vironment, cut off as he was from the organic unity of the Catholic Church, than to any essential difference of spirit. Schrader, in 1869, put forth Ewald's analysis in a simpler and more attractive form by dispens ing with the two redactors. The Jahvist writ ing In N. Israel In the time of Jeroboam II. becomes (according to Schrader) at once the redactor and the supplementer of J, E, and P, each of which had used earlier sources. The Deuteronomlst is also the final redactor, who both wrote that book and added it to the rest. * Cheyne, Founders of Old Testament Criticism, p. 115. t Ibid., p. 107. THE OLDER CRITICISM AND THE NE W. 59 Schrader is now better known for his later work on the cuneiform inscriptions as illustra tive of the Old Testament history than for his directly critical hypotheses. So far, then, as we have yet gone (with the exception of De Wette and allowing for the Rationalistic standpoint of Eichorn,) the path of criticism has kept true to the main position held by Astruc at the first. It has aimed at reconciling the critical analysis with the histor ical trustworthiness of the dissected records, and has postulated in these throughout the use of earlier materials. Moreover, it has uni formly assigned priority of date to the less graphic and more formal Elohistic documents, and placed later in time the pictorial and flow ing supplement of the Jahvist. The time was now at hand when both these positions were to be completely abandoned. The Elohistic document was henceforth to be dethroned from its position of superior an tiquity and historical pre-eminence, and to be relegated instead to an origin of unconscious mythical idealization, or, as the more thorough going exponents of the new theory would not hesitate to say, of conscious and fraudulent in vention. The new Pentateuchal controversy 6o THE LITERAR Y ANAL YSIS. begins. Its first postulate is the complete reversal of the main results of the older criti cism which gave it birth. The first note of the coming storm was given by Hupfeld, who, in re-discovering Ilgen's for gotten second Elohistic document, had brought forward assumed antagonisms between the two narrators, similar to those so much in vogue at the time in the current criticisms of the New Testament records. The immediate object of Hupfeld was to show the untenable- nessofthe " Supplemental Hypothesis." But his application of the Tiibingen methods to the Old Testament was soon to be made on a far wider scale and with correspondingly startling results. The " Development Hypothesis," as it is called, has reached its full form under the hands of Wellhausen and Kuenen, who worked out in detail and with great power the positions of Graf and Reuss. But the whole theory can rightly be understood only when it takes its place, in company with the New Testament criticism of Baur and Strauss, as an ultimate re sult of the Hegelian Philosophy. As Principal Fairbaim truly says : "In Germany every speculation has its corresponding theological THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS. 6\ tendency and crisis," * and the remark holds good in the present instance. In fact the same year, 1835, which saw the publication of Baur's " Die Christliche Gnosis," and of the original edition of the "Leben Jesu" of Strauss, was marked by the issue of Vatke's " Biblische Theologie," in which, avowedly from the Hegelian standpoint, he contended that the order of development of the Israelitish Religion had been wrongly apprehended, and that henceforth Prophetism and Mosaism must change places. A similar position with regard to the Sacrificial and Priestly legislation of the Pentateuch had been reached almost simul taneously by Reuss ; as he claims intuitively, but the intuition was probably conditioned by the prevailing philosophy. It is true that the strong currents of parallel thought which we have thus traced back to a common date and origin, were to run a strangely different course in the domains of the Old and New Testament criticism respectively. The decades which witnessed the rapid develop ment of the school of Baur in its reconstruction of the New Testament history, were not those in which the "Tendency Hypothesis " was des- * Fairbaim : Christ in Modem Theology, p. 205. 6 2 THE LITERARY A NA L YSIS. tined to achieve Its triumphs In the Old Testa ment field. For a time It seemed as though the theory in its Old Testament application was still-born. Vatke retracted his position, and for long decades the school of Bleek and Ewald held the field successfully against all comers. Strangely enough in the case of movements so closely connected in origin and date, the period of sterility in the Old Testa ment application of the theory was coincident with that of full growth and maturity in the similar treatment of the New Testament ; whilst the rapid decadence of the Tiibingen theories was quickly followed by the resuscita tion of the similar method in the sphere of the Old Testament. " Paulinlsmus " and " Petrin- ismus," " Particularlsmus " and " Unlversalls- mus " with their corresponding developments of antithesis and subsequent synthesis had had their brief day. The unexpected discovery of piece after piece of Sub-Apostolic literature had "planted one nail after another in the coffin of the Tiibingen theory " as soon as their full consequences were discovered. In this work of inestimable importance, the two great Cambridge scholars, Westcott and Light- foot, deservedly took the first place. Hardly THE NEW TUBINGEN THEORIES. 63 had Dr. Lightfoot concluded that famous series of articles* which forever destroyed the hold upon England of the Tiibingen attack by his masterly demolition of the book known as "Supernatural Religion," when the pubUcatlon of Wellhausen's " Prolegomena to the History of Israel " in 1878, began an attack in force of the old foes upon a new part of Divine Revela tion. The discredited antagonism between Petrine and Pauline parties was again reproduced in an assumed struggle between the supporters of the " high places " on the one side and of the "central sanctuary" on the other. A vivid picture was drawn of the Levites generally who ministered at the country sanctuaries, engaging in unequal conflict with the sons of Aaron who served at the Royal shrine at Jeru salem, and soon sharing the fate of the van quished. Once again we have antagonistic tendency writings, Deuteronomy and P on the one side, J and E on the other ; with the later conciliatory document in the Chronicles which, it was asserted, (just as had been said of * Originally written for the Contemporary Review, but since repub lished under the title of " Essays on Supernatural Religion.'' Mac- millan, 1889. 64 THE LITERAR Y ANAL YSIS. the Acts in the New Testament) swept away all trace of the struggle by a false appeal to antiquity. The resuscitation was as complete as that of the dead mariners in the sweet fancy of the poet, who tells how : " They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose Nor spake, nor moved their eyes. It had been strange, even in a dream To see those dead men rise. " The helmsman steered, the ship moved on Yet never a breeze up-blew. The mariners all 'gan work the ropes Where they were wont to do." Of course, it is not pretended that all this decides the matter. The evidence is quite distinct in the two cases, and so must its ex amination be likewise. The arguments of Wellhausen are based upon a new set of phe nomena, which must receive as full and search ing examination as was given to those of the Apostolic history. The theory is, I repeat, entitled to, and it must receive, the same ex haustive investigation that was given to its other self It cannot be laughed out of court as if the issue in its first essay were decisive in HISTORY REPEA TING ITSELF. 65 the new encounter. But neither on the other hand can it shake itself free from the just stigma of that first crushing overthrow. These assumed antagonisms lack the virility and ease of their New Testament counterparts. They flit uneasily across the stage as if half conscious that they are but the ghosts of their former selves. Once again history seems to be re peating itself The successive discoveries of the Didache, of S. Clement's Epistle in its full form, and of the Diatessaron, with the flood of light they cast upon the actual facts of sub- apostolic history, are being paralleled, in the all-wise Providence of God, by the marvellous unveiHng of the contemporary history of the Old Testament period which is now going on beneath our eyes. Nor can we doubt that as in the case of the New Testament so also here, the ultimate result will be to awaken in the Church a more intelligent and living apprecia tion of the Old Testament dispensation, as with quickened eyes and mind we earn again the lessons of its wondrous history. So may the sequel of the sweet lay of Coleridge find its analogue here also : ' Twas not those souls that fled in pain. Which to their corses came again, 66 THE LITERAR Y ANAL YSIS. But a troop of spirits blest. For when it dawned, they dropped their arms And clustered round the mast. Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths And from their bodies passed." We may note here that already the theory in Its first clear cut outlines shows signs of disintegration. Dillmann still in the main adheres to the position of his great teacher Ewald, and assigns to P a pre-ExIlIc date. Schrader, from Archaeological grounds, arrives independently at the same conclusion. Schultz, who assigns J to the reign of Solomon and E to the early years of the Northern Kingdom, makes P to be the work of a priest in the Exilic period itself The most recent critical school, represented in Germany by Strack and Kittell, in England by Prof Driver, as has been already noticed, regard P as in the main a codification of existent pre-ExIlIc and ancient usage, with Its roots, at least, stretching back to the time of Moses ; so that the unique por tions of P alone belong to the Exilic or post- Exilic period and even so represent a develop ment growing naturally and vitally out of long existent priestly usage. Unquestionably, as was mentioned in the first Lecture, the com- DISINTEGRATION BEGUN. Qj plex nature of the legislation of P is being increasingly conceded by recent criticism ; and the issue is thus narrowed down to the date of the full completion and development of Israel's institutions under the guidance of God, not to that of the origination of the institutions them selves. Critics like Prof Briggs acknowledge that " Law and Prophecy are not two distinct and separate modes of revelation, but the same " ; * a position clearly irreconcilable with the fundamental thesis of Wellhausen, as stated in his Prolegomena, that "there is between them all the difference that separates two wholly distinct worlds." f There is no mistaking the fundamental position implied In the words with which Prof Briggs closes his recent volume on "The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch," as follows : ' ' The deeper study of the unity and variety of the Hexateuchal narratives and laws, as we defend their historicity against Reuss, Kuenen, and Wellhausen, and advance in the apprehension of their sublime harmony, will gratify and enrich the theology of our day, just as the deeper study of the unity and vari ety of the Gospels in the defence of them against Strauss, Renan, and Baur, * Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch, p. l6l. t Prolegomena, Introduction, p. 3. 68 THE LITERAR Y ANAL YSIS. has been an unspeakable blessing in the past gen eration."* So much time has been spent on this histor ical resume that but little opportunity remains for anything like an Independent examination of the critical positions themselves. Much of this must therefore be postponed to a later lecture. Still, the time will not have been ill spent, if I have been able to show the causes which historically underlie the chief critical positions, and the intimate connection which exists between the religious and philosophical environment which they reflect and those main conclusions themselves : and then flowing out of the connection thus established, the conse quent essential link between the Old Testa ment problems and the New ; between the issues which still hang In the balance and those other main questions concerning the New Tes tament, which, speaking generally, may now be taken as finally and certainly determined. If I mistake not, the battle is half-won when the position and strength of the opposing forces are thus accurately gauged. Before bringing this lecture to a close, how ever, I may perhaps venture on a short criti- * Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch, p. 162. THE AIMS OF THE REDACTOR. 69 cism of two fundamental points. One affecting the literary analysis in general, and the other the "Tendency" theory of the Wellhausen school. First, then, as to the artificial character of much of the analysis itself. Few people, I think, who will give the time to mark out for themselves in a Hebrew or for that matter in an English Bible, the divisions of the Hexa teuch (as given for example, in Canon Driver's Introduction), will not experience a strong, a priori repugnance to a dissection often so minute, and in many cases apparently so ar bitrary. It is not merely that narratives, or even verses, are cut up piecemeal fashion in de fiance of what seems the closest connection, and the fragments distributed in their mutilated state between the several documentary sources ; but that (even if we postulate the division) it is so difficult to premise the inten tion of the Redactor in selecting such disjointed fragments from his original sources. The pro cess of dissection is not usually attractive to persons of keen sensibilities, whether literary or otherwise, but the repugnance may entirely disappear if the purpose to be attained is rea sonably clear. Where no' adequate purpose 70 THE LITERAR Y ANAL YSIS. can be seen the repugnance is with most people exceedingly strong. Take for example such a verse as Gen. xxi. 1: "And the Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did 2into Sarah as he had spokefi." In spite of the repetition of the same sacred Name, the first half of this verse, "And the Lord visited Sarah as he had said," is as signed to J, and the second, " And the Lord did unto Sarah as he had spoken " to P. Pre sumably this is done, partly because of the duplication of the same idea In the two clauses, and partly from the necessity of finding head ings for each of the assumed parallel accounts which follow. Now, let us assume that all this is correct, and that the division corresponds to the fact. Then see what follows. The Jahvistic docu ment by hypothesis already contained the clause, " And the Lord visited Sai^ah as he had said." What then should induce any redactor to insert in his own composite narrative almost identically the same thing from P and join the two clauses thus together ? Is it contended that the two clauses are not identical ? If so, what is the difference between them ? Had P added anything to the previous account it RED UP LLC A TIONS. 71 would all have been natural enough, but, as the two clauses read, the assumed action of the Redactor appears very hard indeed to un derstand. Of course, the critical theory re quired the combination of two parallel narra tives, and so, as noted above, the verse had to be divided to supply a heading for each. The more natural explanation would seem to be that we have simply a somewhat redundant parallelism, such as is common in Hebrew and other Semitic literature, whether Poetry or Prose. This view does not, however, fall in with the required critical conclusion, and is dismissed unnoticed. As instances of such parallelism take for example the common verslcles : " O God, make speed to save us." " O Lord, make haste to help us." * Or in prose. "And no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up." \ From the narrative of Creation. Take another instance. In Gen. xxxi 17 18 * Taken from Ps. Ixx. i. f Genesis ii. 5. 72 THE LITERARY ANALYSIS. we have an account of Jacob's return from Paddan-aram as follows : " Then Jacob rose up, and set his sons and his wives upon the camels ; and lie carried away all his cattle, and all his substance which he had gathered ; the cattle of his getting, which he had gathered in Paddan-aram for to go to Isaac his father unto the land of Canaan." This passage occurs in the midst of a long extract of 40 verses as to Jacob's stratagem about the cattle and his interview thereon with Laban, all of which criticism asserts to have been taken from E. But unfortunately, the word for "substance" tJ^'iD^ and the geograph ical term Paddan-aram, are words which are uniformly assigned to P. Accordingly the last clauses beginning with " and all his substance " are torn away from the rest of the 40 verses and set down to P's account. Now, assuming once more that this is correct what would be the object of the Redactor in Inserting out of an assumed parallel narrative from P this one little formal statement ? The one distinguish- ing point in which, is, by the way, assumed in the subsequent dispute which arose over Jacob's theft of Laban's household gods. Or again take Gen. xxv 26. In this narrative of INSERTIONS FROM P. 73 the twin sons of Isaac we have the follow ing : "And after that came forth his brother, and his hand had hold upon Esau's heel; and his name was called Jacob ; and Isaac was three-score years old when she bore them.. And the boys grew," and so on. What would seem more natural than this note of time giving the father's age at the birth of his sons ? Yet because it is a critical postulate that dates belong to P this clause is severed off as P's contribution. As though the Jahvistic writer who is assumed to have composed this work in the palmy days of Hebrew literature did not know the Hebrew for "Isaac was 60 years old," or knowing could not have used it. Moreover the use of the Kal Trbl for the HIphll n^'^iinn which would be much more natural in P's assumed narrative seems to point the other way. It is not then, I repeat, merely that the dissec tion often seems microscopic and piecemeal, but that it is so difficult to realise the reverse process by which " ex hypothesi " the narra tive actually reached its present form. Take another point. Look at some of the assumed excerpts from the several documents in their mutual relation as they must have once 74 THE LITERAR Y ANAL YSIS. stood in those original documents them selves. Here are three consecutive fragments which are said to come from P : " And Laban gave to Rachel his daughter, Bilhah his handmaid to be her handmaid." Gen. xxix 29. "And all his substance which he had gathered, the cattle of his getting, iv/nch he gathered in Paddan- aram for to go to Isaac his father, unto the land of Canaajt." Gen. xxxi 18. "And Jacob came in peace to the city of Shechem ; which IS in the land of Canaan, when he came from Paddan-aram." Gen. xxxiii 18. It seems inconceivable that these passages could have stood in close connection In P's narrative, and very difficult to see how they were originally strung together save by a narrative like that of Genesis itself We may note also in passing that the first passage is so clearly postulated in J's subsequent narrative (xxx 4) as to make its insertion from another document seem unlikely, whilst the second passage has already been examined above. For instance of similar difficulties of connection compare from P. "And all the men of his house, those born in the house, and those bought with -money of the stranger, were circumcised with him." Gen. xvii 27. CONSECUTIVE PASSAGES. 75 The next passage from P is : "And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the Plain, that God remembered Absalom, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in the which Lot dwelt." Gen. xix 2 9. Both the construction and the subject matter make it very difficult for us not to regard the last verse as the final summing up of a narra tive like the existing account in Genesis ; but because of the Name of God used and the oc currence of a word assigned to P it is affirmed to be taken from that source. Why should the Redactor trouble to extract from P's narra tive this mere formal recapitulation of what he had already fully described ? Now compare passages from J : "And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights." Gen. viii2. "And the Lord shut him in. And the flood was forty days upon the earth," etc. Gen. vii 16. Clearly the intervening context of J must have contained the account of Noah's entrance into the Ark exactly as in Genesis, but all this is said to be taken by the compiler from P. 76 THE LITERAR Y ANAL YSIS. Again, take these passages : " And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went towards Haran." Gen. xxviii ii. "And behold the Lord stood above it ; (or him); and said, T am the Lord, the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac." Gen. xxviii 13. Clearly some intermediate narrative like E's in verses 1 1 and 1 2 is necessary if we here try to reconstruct J. It would be easy to multiply similar exam ples from the middle books of the Pentateuch, perhaps even more- striking than these, but time forbids. I must therefore content myself with the examples already given and throw out this hint of a method for further investiga tion, of which some may possibly care to avail themselves. Our examination of the literary analysis then seems to shut us up to one of two conclusions. Either P J and E were originally parallel documents closely resembling each other, after the fashion of the first three Gospels, or the analysis hopelessly breaks down. This anal ogy of the Synoptist Gospels may help to con firm our conclusion from an independent point of view. As against the objections to a piece meal and microscopic analysis so naturally PENTA TEUCH AND DIA TESSARON. 'J'J raised, at least on the first blush of the matter, the critics have referred triumphantly to the example of the Diatessaron of Tatian recently brought to light. See, say they, an exam ple of the very thing you are objecting to. Analyze the Diatessaron into its known ele ments as you have them in the Canonical Gos pels, and you must treat it in precisely the same fashion as we have treated the Book of Genesis. The plea is undoubtedly valid up to a certain point. There certainly is a strik ing general resemblance between the process of resolving the Diatessaron into its compo nent parts, and that with which we are famil iar in the critical treatment of the Pentateuch. Of course this would not show that the Penta teuch was actually thus built up, but it does away with the antecedent improbability of the method from its being found applicable in a parallel case. In a parallel case. Precisely. But then, mark the consequences which flow from assum ing the Book of Genesis to be thus parallel in its structure to the Diatessaron. For the Dia tessaron is no ordinary compilation. The very possibility of forming such a harmonistic trea tise depends upon a certain relationship be- 'yS THE LITERAR Y ANAL YSIS. tween its original sources. Three of these are known to be strictly parallel to each other, and rest back upon a large amount of common matter which each reproduces with almost verbal accuracy. The fourth source has ex actly the same general outline, but is intended to supplement the other three. Moreover, Tatian had a special object in view. He wished to combine in one consecutive narrative all that the four sources contain, and so to supersede (as for a time in some Churches he actually did) the use of the four separate Gos pels.* Now, bearing in mind the peculiar re lationship of his sources, as well as the special object of the work, we do certainly find in it phenomena of most striking similarity to those of the critically dissected Genesis. Let any one write out in colored ink the parts of the Diatessaron which come from each Gospel, and he will obtain an almost startling counter part of the variegated Pentateuch under sim ilar treatment. There will be, for example, exactly the same irregularity in the distribution of color. Large sections of one color will alternate with a succession of mosaics in which the coloring is almost as complicated as * See Theodoret, Hcer. Fab. Comp. i. 20. ORIGINAL SOURCE OF p. >jg the solar spectrum. If we now proceed to examine the two sets of passages in which these different phenomena occur, we shall find that the long excerpts of one color correspond to those parts in which S. John (we will say) preserves sections entirely lacking in the other sources (take the great discourse in S. John vi., as an example), whilst the short fragmentary pieces occur in the parts where the sources had material largely common to them all, as in the narrative of the miracle of the 5,000, which introduces the discourse above mentioned. Now, when it is borne in mind that P in Genesis is, with the exception of larger sections such as those in Genesis i., v. and xvii., mainly composed of these short disjointed fragments ; the analogy of the Diatessaron forces us to this most important conclusion, viz., that P in its original shape was a document for the most part containing the same material as J and E except in a few of its unique sections. Thus, if we find that P in the fragments preserved is silent about any point mentioned in the inter mediate narrative of J and E, so far from this arguing that P did not contain this matter originally, or was ignorant on these points, all 8o THE LITERAR Y ANAL YSIS. the evidence constrains us to the exactly oppo site conclusion. The " argument from silence " is as completely reversed as in the well-known case of the New Testament notices in Eusebius. The method of Bp. Lightfoot's famous article on the " Silence of Eusebius " is exactly applic able to the "silence" of P. In a word, P's " silence " on any point in the greater part of Genesis is certain evidence that this point formed part of the original P from which the fragmentary quotations were subsequently made. Thus if in Genesis, as we are told by Wellhausen, P speaks of no altars erected by the Patriarchs, no offerings brought, and in fact no sacrificial act prior to the time of Moses, while J and E do record these things ;* all this only renders it practically certain that P's account was just like that of J and E in these important respects. The "silence" of P demonstrates its knowledge not its igno rance, as certainly as the " silence " of Euse bius with regard to any particular New Testament writing, so far from telling against it, only shows its acknowledged reception. * Prolegomena, p. 54. " The contrast with the Priestly code is ex tremely striking, for it is well known that the latter work makes men tion of no sacrificial act prior to the time of Moses." ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE REVERSED. 8 1 The precariousness of the " argument from silence " has of course often been pointed out. The confident use which is everywhere made of it in the critical literature appears to argue an amount of daring hardly justifiable under the circumstances of the case. But, unless the preceding investigation is radically unsound, it follows that the results so gained are not merely precarious but become absolutely worthless and wrong. Whilst upon the valid ity of these results, be It remembered, practi cally hangs the whole " Tendency Hypothesis." Not to dwell further upon this vital point enough has at any rate been said to justify the contention that the question of the literary analysis is very far indeed from being closed. The same method has been applied to the Homeric writings, where no theological ques tions come in, but has failed to produce gen eral acquiescence in its results.* A great Western historian, Bp. Stubbs, doubts whether it can be ever applied with a reasonable amount of certainty ; while a distinguished Orientalist, Prof Sayce, protests that even if applicable to Western histories it is entirely out of place in regard to ancient Eastern records. The *See Appendix G. 82 THE LITERAR Y ANAL YSIS. "literary tact of a modern European" he holds to be " worthless when it is exercised on the Sacred Books of the East," * or again, he says : "The accuracy of language and expression demanded from the sacred writers was mathe matical in its exactness ; it was an accuracy which could not with fairness be demanded from any ancient writer, more especially one whose home was in the East." f We shall see directly that in cases where the analysis can be tested by comparison with the cuneiform records, the result is distinctly unfavorable to its accuracy. As, for example, In the case of the narratives of the Creation and the Flood. Even where It may be assumed to rest upon a basis of fact, we have already shown how uncertain are many of the conclusions which have been drawn from it. To summarize then our results so far. Whether we consider the critical conclu sions from the point of view of their mutual divergence, of the philosophical presuppositions by which they were historically conditioned, or the methods by which they are attained ; these separate lines of investigation all seem to con- *The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 557. \ Ibid., p. 21. RESULTS OF THE INVESTIGATION. 83 verge to one and the same result. If, as a great master in spiritual things has lately said, we must not seek to " withdraw one document which helps to define our faith from the opera tions of any established law of criticism ; " * neither must we ignore the correlative fact, not merely that as the same master teaches " no historical inquiry can decide that there is no revelation,"-}- but also that in the present condition of things there are scarcely any im portant conclusions of literary criticism applied to the Pentateuch which we can safely take to be finally decided, whilst many of them are open to the gravest doubt. Other critical theories again, like the revolutionary views which distinguish Kuenen and Wellhausen from our best English scholars, may be for all practical purposes put out of court. For most of us it would seem that the weighty obligation and high privilege of mould ing the Hfe and character of our generation by means of the sacred writings of the Old Testa ment must be discharged under conditions not greatly changed from those in which a similar service was rendered to men in the genera tions that are gone ; and that we may with sure * Westcott, Gospel of Life, p. 92. f Tbid. 84 THE LITERAR Y ANAL YSIS. confidence and reverent diligence follow hum bly in the steps of the great teachers who have preceded us, in applying to the needs of the flocks committed to our charge those same "sacred writings which are able to make them wise unto salvation," and to build them up a holy temple in the Lord." III. THE CREATION AND PARADISE. LECTURE III. THE CREATION AND PARADISE. For of Him and through Him and unto Him are all things. To Him be glory for ever. Amen. — Rom. xi. 36. For ye are all sons of God, through faith, in Christ Jesus. . . . For ye are all one in Christ Jesus. — Gal. iii. 26-28. A great master in theology has happily summed up the office of the opening chapters of Genesis as furnishing a preface to Holy Scripture by bringing out the three funda mental conditions which render all revelation at once possible and necessary: That "the world was made by God," and therefore "in all its parts is an expression of the will of God ; " a real revelation in the varying meas ure of its several orders of His Divine Glory. " That man was made in the image of God," and is therefore "capable of holding fellowship with Him," and so susceptible of as unique a rational, moral, and spiritual development. 87 88 THE CREATION AND PARADISE. That man had "by self-assertion broken his rightful connexion with God," and thus " for the fulfilment of his destiny" now "needs the help of God, not merely for his growth, but also for his restoration." * These are " the three postulates of Relig ion," f as Dr. Westcott calls them, which underlie the whole subsequent course of Reve lation. "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him ; male and female created He them." These "postulates" are expressed in lan guage and Imagery so simple that even a child can appreciate them, yet are so deep and far- reaching both In themselves and in their conse quences that they form a true "Gospel of Life." To quote once again : " The3Hjjz_4own irrevocably the essential relations of God and naan. and the world. They go back to a point beyond all experience. The final sanctions of every noble form of human activity, the promises which illuminate the ' toppling crags of duty,' are implicitly contained in them. . . . They show that the conception of humanity as a living whole is not a dream but a truth. They show that the aspira tions of man to God answer to his essential constitu tion and contain the pledge of fulfilment. They * Westcott, Gospel of Life, pages 183, 184. ¦\ Ibid., p. 199. THE PRIMITIVE GOSPEL. 89 show that the sinfulness by which he is bound and the sins by which he is stained are not parts of his real self, that they are intrusive and that so they can be done away."* In a word, they place the abiding facts of human existence in their right " connexion with an unseen order," they form in themselves, "rightly apprehended, the primitive Gospel of the world." ¦)- All subsequent revelation is but the work ing out of the consequences which already lie implicitly contained in that primary message. The new creation of men in Christ Jesus our Lord, what is it but the loving confirmation and renewal in the abundant mercy of God of the hopes that lie there already latent and in germ ? The most glorious revelations of the Gospel, the office and work of our Lord in re lation to humanity, the supernatural powers and energies of the Church inspired by the Eternal Spirit working through the living Word and Sacraments, the blessed rest with Christ of the faithful departed — all these are the exact counterparts of this initial revelation, and hence we find them often clothed in Holy Scripture in imagery drawn therefrom. Think * Westcott, " Gospel of Life," p. 197. \Ibid., p. l86. go THE CREATION AND PARADISE. of the closing visions of the Apocalypse: ' ' The city which lieth four square where they need no light of lamp, neither light of sun ; for the glory of God did lighten it and the lamp tliereof is the Lamb ; into which there shall in no wise enter anything unclea^i ; but amidst the lis^ht whereof the nations shall walk and the kings of the earth bring their glory with it. So that they that wash their robes may have the right to come to the tree of life, and may enter in by the gates into the city." These last voices of inspiration in all their wealth of imagery and beauty unsurpassable, what are they but the final confirmation in the great love of God of the plan imaged forth in the narrative of Crea tion, the assurance of its ultimate triumph, all appearances notwithstanding, the reversal of the sentence of our expulsion, the perfect realization of the conditions foreshadowed in the first Paradise, the fulfilment surpassing all imagination of the counsel of that God who said : " Light shall come out of darkness, who shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ!' Yes, it surely needs no further proof that the lessons thus given in this "preface" to all revelation are primarily moral and spiritual THE CHARTER OF HUMAN LIFE. 9 1 rather than merely physical and historical. They underlie all existence, all life, all service, all hope. They form the charter of humanity, the defence of its nobility, the revelation of its destiny, the gospel of its hope. " No criticism," as Dr. Westcott truly says, " can rob them of their sublime majesty and pathos,"* nor, we may add, detract one iota from their spirit ual greatness, their abiding importance to all the generations of men. Before passing to consider the narrative itself in the light of these primary considera tions we should perhaps refer for a moment, in order to dismiss the matter further from our thoughts, to what the same high authority already quoted calls the "flood of irrelevant controversy " f which has gathered round the first chapter of Genesis. One of my distinguished predecessors in the office of Paddock Lecturer, Bishop Hugh Miller Thompson, with all that brilliancy and fire of eloquence of which he is so accom plished a master, has already dealt with this subject in his opening lecture on "The World and the Kingdom." He has so clearly and forcibly expressed my own position that I am * Westcott, " Gospel of Life," p. 187. t ^^id., p. 185. 92 THE CREATION AND PARADISE. relieved from the necessity of doing more than quoting one or two sentences from that work. As the Bishop justly says with regard to much literature of this sort : "It was a literature at which both religion and science were at their weakest, and men were trying to apologize to the finder of a flint arrow-head or a human skull " (or, we may add, a fossil), " for their belief in Almighty God and eternal righteous ness, and the awful mystery of human life ; a literature only to be compared with its opposite, that in which every experimentalist who had discovered a new microbe or a new chemical compound felt himself at once qualified to declare the throne of the universe vacant and himself capable of explaining and accounting for all things seen and unseen. Such litera tures will be curious studies in psychology to the men of the twentieth century." * Anglican theologians must have digested to little pur pose, I will not say the teachings of the great Fathers of the undivided Church, but the argu ment of our own judicious Hooker, if they ever suffered or encouraged scientists to as sume that the primary object of the narra tive of Creation was to give a scientific account * " The World and the Kingdom,'' Paddock Lectures for 1888. ITS AIM NOT PRIM ARIL Y SCIENTIFIC. 93 of the sequence or evolution of the different forms of life, so that a great scientist of to-day can still think of that sublime prologue to all revelation as a fence placed across the path of scientific investigation. That all this should have been even possible shows how bitter has been the Nemesis which has overtaken us for the past neglect of Patristic, or for that matter of Theological study which was so common, alas, before the spread of the great Oxford movement. A more Catholic theology would assuredly have guarded men from the snare of regarding the sublime prologue of Genesis as a sort of advanced copy of a monograph on Geological Biology three thousand years before its time. S. Augustine states it as a commonplace that the object of Holy Scripture is "to teach men things of which they ought not to be ignorant, yet cannot know of themselves." Again and again he Insists that the "days" in Genesis have a causal, not a temporal, signifi cance ; * in a word, that they represent a state, not a span. S. Chrysostom reminds us in several places that we must recognize In the form of the historical narration an "accommo- * De Genesi ad Litt., i. 33, ii. 28, iv. 25, 32. 94 THE CREATION AND PARADISE. dation of the merciful God" unfolding "the order of the things that were made " and how " each was brought forth," * an accommodation which he contrasts with the brevity of the cor responding part of the prologue of S. John's Gospel. "The son of Thunder," he says, " does not proceed in this way " (of historical narrative) " when the human race had advanced in virtue, but leads on to more lofty teaching." S. Gregory of Nyssa again tells how Moses sets before us doctrine in the form of a history tCT'opt^iccoT'epov KoX hi aivLyiidtav. t All these * Homilia in Gen. iii. 2 (ed. Gaume, p. 2i). 4 tpiXivdpiinros 0ebs Sih TTis Tov Trpocfj^Tov yK(i>TTr]S Tratd^vaii' rh tuv av^puirwy yeyos, elBevat Tuv yivo^evav t)]v rd^ty, Kal ris d rod iraprhs STjfiiovpyhs, Kal Siras eKaarov Trapiix^V- 'ETeiSJ) 7^^, erl aTtXiimpov SifKeno rb rav av- ^ptiyKwv yej/os, Kal obK ijBiiyaTo tccv reKeior^pav ixvvUvai r-^v Karav6yiinv, 5ia TOVTO Tphs T^v Twy aKouSvrajv aff^eveiay rh Hyev/xa rh &yioy t^v TOV irpotpiiTov yXwTTav Kiyrja'av outojs aivayra Tjfuv StaKeyerau Kai '{ya fid^s (in 5i^ rh arches T^y Tj/xerepas Siayoias ravTrf exp^fcfro Ty ffvyKara^affei T^s Styiyfjffetos, '6pa rby Trjs ^poyTTJs vlhy, ore Trphs &per^y inedwKe rh twv ay^pajTioy yeyos, ovk^ti Ta^rriv epx^fievoy r^y 6Shy, aW ^ttI Tijv iifn]\oTepay SiSaiiKa\lav iyoyra Tohs aKpou/ifyovs. Eliruv ykp, Ev apxy ^v 6 Aoyos K. t. A, f Oratio Catechetica c. viii. (p. 33 ed. Migne). S. Gregory is com menting upon the "coats of skins " in Gen. iii. The whole passage is as follows : " Th Se TOiovroy S6yiia l¦ 6, 12. X iv. 5- § iv. 23, 24. II vi. 2. IT ix. 21, ** xi. 4. 146 THE FALL AND ITS IMMEDIATE RESULTS. lightly this Divine and humbling revelation of the real loathsomeness which is hid there, concealed beneath the outward beauty of her flowing skirts ? Can we, the Divinely commis sioned guardians of human souls, ever allow those hallowed portraits by which from earli est childhood such vitally essential truths are brought home to the hearts of all, gentle or simple, learned or unlearned, to men of every differing degree of civilisation or enlighten ment, to be in any degree weakened in their force through our neglect or failure to appre ciate their true aim and power ? Dare we take the awful responsibility of allowing their spiritual force to be blunted by any supposed inferences from the results of modern criticism? It cannot be. On the contrary, the Church of the twentieth century, I am bold to predict, will point her children with a quickened reverence, and yet deeper spiritual insight than that to which we have attained to these divine portrai tures, as she traces in them the counterparts of the revelation given in the Passion and suffer ings of the Christ. Like the blessed Apostle, she will find there foreshadowed the manifold workings in each age of that ancient woe, whereby through the disobedience of the one SIN UNMASKED. 147 the many were made sinners, that with deeper, truer gratitude she may appropriate the sav ing power of the obedience of that Blessed One, through whom the awful stream has been reversed, and the many shall be made righteous. But to return to the narrative itself Be tween the account of the Fall and the succes sion of portraits which illustrate the varied growth of evil proceeding therefrom, there is a pause. The great transgression must first be shown to us as it stands unmasked in the presence of God. The sophistries of Satan are seen at their true worth when brought to the bar of a Divine questioning. The enormity of human sin must be mani fested in the light of the just sentence of God. In the judgment passed upon the serpent we can trace already the dim outlines of the Cross, as it stands uplifted against the dark back ground of evil. The necessary law of our Redemption, whether in our Lord's atoning work or in the sanctifying ministration of His Church, stands already clearly indicated, that only in one way — by the voluntary acceptance of suffering — can the awful power of sin be overcome. 148 THE FALL AND ITS IMMEDIATE RESULTS. It might surely have been supposed that this majestic passage, in which faithful souls have ever loved to see the inviolable purity and the all-searching judgment of God com bined with the manifestations of His loving mercy ; that this " Protevangel," as it has been so rightly called, would have been safe from the superficial disparagement of modern criticism. But it has not been so. President Harper, commenting upon this section of Gen esis, tells us " that so far as concerns the attri butes of God, the representation, however in terpreted, is not so clear and distinct " * as in P, as to which document we are informed that any thought of Divine "jealousy, so com mon throughout antiquity, is entirely foreign." Whilst here, " when man has eaten the fruit and thus gained one superhuman attribute, viz., wisdom (iii. 7), there is danger that he will gain another such attribute, viz., immortality (iii. 22), and that this may not happen he is driven forth from Eden." f " Gained super human wisdom " indeed ! Where, we may well ask, save in the lying sophistries of the Tempter, is there any vestige of such a con- * Hebraica, Oct., i888-July, i88g, vol. v., p. 30. f Hebraica, Oct., i888-July, i88g, vol. v., p. 31. THE WAGES OF SIN. 1 49 ception ? Dr. Harper fortunately gives the reference, so that we may be in no uncertain ty as to the authority on which he relies. We are referred to Gen. iii. 7, and there we are plainly told the real nature of the su perhuman wisdom which they had gained. " So the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were — naked" ! ! So in the awful poverty of their new-born shame, " they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons." This, then, was the superhuman knowledge they had won, which criticism rep resents as exciting the jealousy of God. The bitter consciousness of their own shame, the knowledge which was itself the dark shadow of a hateful blindness, was settling down upon their whole being. The phrase in iii. 22, which Dr. Harper does not cite in this con nection, " Behold the 7nan is become as one of us, to know good and evil," when taken, as it should be, in the fight of its context, is seen to refer not to a real advance in wisdom, but to the rending of merciful limitations, which shielded the development of man's knowledge ; to the premature and illicit acquisition of the knowledge of evil by experience, which, like everv soecies of unlawful knowledgre, does not I50 THE FALL AND ITS IMMEDIATE RESULTS. really impart wisdom to the possessor, but rather destroys it. Surely we are entitled to protest against all this as not merely a grossly inaccurate but an utterly unjustifiable method of dealing with Holy Scripture. As soon might one expect to hear the sacred volume branded as atheistic on account of the well-known utterance of the fool in the Psalter, as to find the merciful Creator sus pected of an unworthy jealousy of the shame of his poor fallen creatures. But Dr. Harper does not stand alone in this matter. His comparatively guarded statement is entirely thrown into the shade by Professor Addis in his recent volume entitled " the Documents of the Hexateuch." This writer bluntly puts the critical position as follows : " Man," he says, " had learnt wisdom by eating the for bidden fruit, and had become Yahweh's rival. Hence Yahweh was afraid that man having learnt to distinguish physical good from evil, would eat of the tree of life and so ward off death and decay for ever. Yahweh is far from omniscient, and he is also envious. The same idea of the Divine jealousy is prominent in Herodotus," etc.* It is hardly necessary * Documents of the Hexateuch, pp. 6, 7. MERCY IN JUDGEMENT. 1 5 1 to say how entirely destitute of any shadow of foundation the whole conception is. The immortality from which God's sentence of ex pulsion shielded man was, like the knowledge he had acquired, a loss and not a gain. It is clear from the sacred text that man had, prior to his fall, the right to eat of the tree of life as a sacramental means of sustaining that life of God within him, in which life lay the gift of a true immortality. But when, by his own act, the Hnks which bound his soul in communion with God were severed, and the purity of his nature was defiled, the sacramen tal means became changed into a fresh source of his condemnation. To have approached it now in the condition in which man had fallen, with the law of spiritual death working in his members, might possibly (if we are right in so interpreting the text) have prolonged his bodily existence. But to have permitted this would have been not merely the infringement of a Di vine sentence, it would have been a terrible ag gravation of human misery — nothing less than to fasten upon him a Hfe in the same relation to the immortality for which he was originally destined as the illusory knowledge he had acquired stood to that wisdom he was origi- 152 THE FALL AND ITS IMMEDIATE RESULTS. nally designed to gain. For as S. Athanasius so beautifully teaches in the " De Incarnatlone Verbi," * physical death is but the first and most striking external sign of the inward pro cess of dissolution which sin causes in the whole nature of man. The law of death slow ly but surely works itself into the whole man, spirit and soul as well as body. The Divine sentence runs, "For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shall surely die!' Not, Thou shalt be put to death, as of a finished act, but, " Thou shalt surely die" as of a process of death which, though already begun, yet awaits its own ultimate manifestation in the spiritual and psychical as much as in the bodily sphere. The first death of the body is but the significant type of that " second death," which marks the final consummation of the developing results of evil ; and neither the one nor the other is equivalent to a mere cessation of existence. Moreover, immortality in its true and highest sense must not be regarded simply as an origi nal gift to humanity, but as the ultimate reward of man's rightful development, which was to be crowned at length by the predestined fellow ship with the Eternal Word, who is Himself * See Sections 5 and 6. DIVINE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 1 53 the Life. To refer once again to the teaching of S. Chrysostom. In his commentary on this passage he clearly indicates that the ejection from Paradise was rather the sign of God's care than merely of His wrath, lest man should sin perpetually.* The same merciful judgment is shown in the other sentences also. In that of physical death, with its necessary humbling of human pride and limitation of the power of human wickedness, or in the separate sentences of labour and toil on man,t of subordination and travail-pain on woman,t in all of which may be clearly seen not merely the vindication of God's holiness by the due and appropriate punishment of each offence, but also (humanity having be come what it has), we can recognise therein gracious barriers against the oncoming flood of evil, which else might have burst upon the race with resistless force. But Mr. Addis goes further: Not only is Yahweh jealous, he is also " far from omni- '* " "no-TC KM rh w\riffioy Kal aireyavn rov TtapaSeiirov irpoiTTd^ai kotoi- Ke'iy rhy eKeWev iKirevTaKOTa iJ,eyi " The great goddess lifted up the mighty bow which Anu had made according to his wish. " These gods, by my necklace never will I forget. " Those days, I will think of them and never will for get them. " May the gods come to my altar (but) let not Bel come to my altar, since he did not take counsel but caused a flood and counted my men for judgment." * Other features of interest are the allusion to the questionings of the people as to the reason for building the ark ; the mention of the thick darkness which enwrapped the earth at the time of the Deluge itself; and the closing scene in which Bel blesses Sisosthros and his wife, and grants them to become as the gods. It may be noted also that Sisosthros, who seems to hold a kingly position, brings into the ship he had built besides the living creat ures and his family, all his slaves and hand maids as well as the sons of his people. As to the reason of the flood no consistent account is * Sayce : The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 112. ]68 THE DELUGE AND THE PATRIARCHS. given. The writer appears to hover between the wickedness of men, the secret design of the gods, and the impulsive perversity of Bel. Possibly we have here reminiscences of separ ate versions of the story which were then sub sequently combined. The account itself is of extreme antiquity, although recopied by order of the great King Assurbanipal. Professor Sayce places its probable composition about B.C. 2350, and describes it as already ancient in the days of the Patriarchs.* If now we turn to the critical analysis of the Biblical account and examine the so-called Elohistic and Jahvistic sections In the light of the cuneiform records, our results quite cor roborate the similar conclusions drawn in re gard to the pictures of Creation and Paradise. Even more obviously than before each ac count, Elohistic and Jahvistic, is seen to have independent marks of common ancestry with the Babylonian Epic. Thus as points of importance common to the Elohist and the cuneiform writer we note the following : The pitching of the ark with pitch, the detailed specification of its dimen sions and construction ; the specified duration * Sayce : The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 113. RESEMBLANCES WITH P AND J. 1 69 of the stormy flood of waters (in the cunei form records six days, in P one hundred and fifty) ; the grounding of the ark in the moun tains ; the looking forth in each case after the flood had ceased, and the mention of the bow in connection with the averting of any similar catastrophe. The special points of agreement of the Jah vist with the cuneiform writer are as follows : The closing of the door of the ship after the entrance of Noah ; the narrative about the sending forth of the three birds with the re turn of all but the third ; the offering of the sacrifice after the flood and its acceptance ; the assurance which is implied in the cuneiform inscription, but directly given in the Biblical narrative, that a judgment so sweeping and universal should not again be visited upon mankind. Even the bare enumeration of these points of coincidence will suffice to show how evenly they are distributed between the two accounts. These phenomena place the conclusion be yond doubt that each narrative stands in a similar relationship to the Babylonian tradition. Thus, for example, it is impossible to suppose that the Jahvist used material derived from 170 THE DELUGE AND THE PATRIARCHS. ancient sources and of " Palestinian origin," whilst the Priestly account " was copied or rather paraphrased from the cuneiform tablets in the age of the Babylonian exile." * Inde pendent historical reasons have already been given which make it in the highest degree improbable that such an hypothesis would in any case correctly explain the connection be tween the two sets of documents.! AH the historical evidence points to the conclusion that the original of the various recensions of this great epic of Assurbanipal was in circu lation prior to the age of the Patriarchs, and may therefore, with the highest degree of probability, be assumed to have been known to the Patriarchs or their descendants during the period of their prosperity in Egypt under Se mitic rule, and with hardly less probability to Moses also. The points of similarity already noticed are very striking. Professor Sayce indicates three points, viz., the shutting the door of the ark, the sending forth of the birds, and the sacrifice of Noah, in which he thinks that the polytheistic original was corrected by the inspired Jahvist writer. This conclusion in * See Sayce : The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 116. f See Lecture III., pp. no, in. ITS HIGH ANTIQUITY 171 the limited state of our knowledge as to the exact point at which the two streams diverge can, however, hardly be pressed. But the evi dence does at least clearly point to a contact of the Jahvistic and Elohistic accounts with the Babylonian tradition under conditions of no great divergence in the two cases, whilst from historical and other grounds we may with a high degree of probability place the time of such contact in the Mosaic or pre- Mosaic period. Certain points in the Biblical account are held by Professor Sayce to point strongly to a non-Babylonian source, and, as he thinks, to a Palestinian origin.* It seems open to ques tion, however, whether the points selected would not be equally well explained by the Egyptian environment of the author. The substitution of an "ark" for a "ship" is at least as likely to be Egyptian as Palestinian, especially as the word used for the ark has marked affinities with the language of ancient Egypt. The nature of the gopher-tree is not certainly known. If it be correctly identified with the cypress, this wood, although not in digenous in the valley of the Nile, is yet in use *The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 117. 172 THE DELUGE AND THE PATRIARCHS. in Egypt,* whilst the olive is common in Egypt as well as in Palestine. f The argument from the month in which the flood is stated to have begun seems somewhat too precarious to bear any great weight. There appears, therefore, as much to be said in favour of the hypothesis of Mosaic authorship as for that of a later com position In Palestine, e.g., in the Solomonic age. No presumption arises against a Mosaic authorship from the non-occurrence of the his tory of the Flood in Egyptian literature, for it is a commonplace that the undoubted Mo saic literature and institutions have no analogy with Egyptian religious thought or systems. The fact that Egyptian literature stands prac tically alone amongst the records of ancient peo ples as the one literature in which no memory of the Deluge has been preserved is explained by the obvious consideration that in Egypt alone, the flooding of the country is a benefit rather than a misfortune ; whilst an Egyptian narrative has actually been found describing * ' ' The weeping willow, myrtle, elm, and cj^ress are found in the gardens and plantations." — Article " Egypt," in Encycl. Brit., by R. S. Poole. \ " The fruit, seeds, or leaves of the . . . olive have been found in the tombs of Thebes. " — Willcinson : Ancient Egypt (abridged ed., Murray), vol. ii., p. 36. WIDELY SPREAD TRADITIONS. 1 73 the slaughter of men as an act of Divine judg ment, which seems to point to an Egyptianized recension of the Babylonian Epic* The well- known wide diffusion of the tradition of the Flood, even though it becomes necessarily lo calized in the hands of the separate peoples, points strongly to the original unity of men and to the historical reality of the event itself Such traditions are found not merely amongst the Semitic peoples but In India, China, Greece, Persia, and amongst a number of different sav age races originally Inhabiting our American continent. Thus from many converging lines of evidence we may deduce a very strong prob ability that the inspired Biblical account rests back on a common historical tradition which was in the possession of the Israelites at least as early as the Mosaic period. This conclusion is not necessarily at variance with the hypothesis that two separate versions of the Deluge are combined in our present nar rative. It is of course possible that each may represent a form assumed in later times by the original Mosaic account. It must be borne in mind, however, that the comparison already * Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, t. iv., pp. I-I9, cited in Lenormont, Les Origines de I'Histoire, p. 448. 174 THE DELUGE AND THE PATRIARCHS. made with the cuneiform records certainly does not strengthen this possIblHty. We must there fore consider the arguments for such division on their own merits, remembering that, to say the very least, they derive no support from ex ternal sources. It may be premised at the outset that the analysis would present much less difficulty un der the assumption which until quite recently was universally made (that P represented the original account and J the later supplemental one), than when the reverse is taken to be the case. It must be borne in mind that the analytical division itself was made when the former and more natural hypothesis was every where accepted ; and that it has since been engrafted bodily on the newer and precisely opposite view. Thus, the Jahvistic narrative contains no mention of the command to build an ark, or of the nature of its construction. It commences with the bare statement, " And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark." Clearly this could not have been the original commencement of J's account. We must therefore conclude that the Redactor here rejected the original Jah vistic narrative in favour of the Elohistic docu- THE ASSUMED REDACTOR. 175 ment. As the Jahvist is uniformly picturesque and flowing, and his narrative consequently attractive, it is hard to see why this sweeping rejection should have taken place. Or again, why, if the Elohistic account had preserved ad ditional details (though it seems to have none which are not paralleled In the cuneiform tra dition) they should not have been introduced into the existing narrative of J. The account as it now stands in Genesis is predominantly that of the Elohist, with the insertion of three main Jahvistic fragments — the supplemental injunctions given to Noah when about to enter the ark, the narrative about sending forth the birds, and that in regard to Noah's sacrifice and its acceptance. We are thus forced to con clude that if the analysis has any foundation at all, the main portion of the Jahvistic narrative was rejected, although, in the nature of the case, it must have covered practically the same ground as the Elohistic document. This sup position seems most improbable, and is more over directly contrary to the usage of the Redactor elsewhere in Genesis. In the other sections where the two documents are com bined we find exactly the reverse phenome non, that only fragments from the Priestly 176 THE DELUGE AND THE PATRIARCHS. writer are embedded in the narrative of J and E. Passing now from these general considera tions to examine the specific grounds on which the critical division rests, the two main points adduced are the alleged duplication of the nar rative of the entrance into the ark, and of the account of the actual Deluge itself As to the first of these, the duplication is purely imagi nary. We have quite naturally a command to build the ark for the reception of Noah and the living creatures, followed, after the long inter val of time needed for its construction, by the definite injunction to enter into the ark now built. With this later command Is given a spe cific Indication of seven days as the interval yet to elapse before the final catastrophe, and precise directions as to the distinction to be observed between clean and unclean animals. What could be more natural than this? The. somewhat disconnected reduplications in the actual narrative of the Deluge itself are easily explicable from the desire of the narrator to throw into strong emphasis the central catas trophe. A serious objection arises to the critical division from the radical divergence it has RIVAL CHRONOLOGIES. lyj produced between the two documents as to the duration of the Flood. The analysis arbi trarily requires the forty days of chapter viii. 6, between the first subsidence of the waters and the sending forth of the birds, to be made identical with the forty days of chapter vii. 1 2, during which the rain was upon the earth / so causing a complete antagonism between the duration assigned to the Flood in the Jahvist and Elohistic accounts respectively. If, then, as is assumed in the assigned dates of the two documents, the Jahvistic account had been current for centuries, and the Flood had thus been long known to have lasted some sixty days, it is hard indeed to see what should have induced a Priestly writer to set himself in flagrant opposition to this accepted chronology, and to claim for the Deluge a duration of a whole year. Even the fruitful assumption of unconscious idealisation of his tory so frequently made in reference to the Priestly writer seems to fail us entirely here in furnishing a solution of the puzzle. The Elohist could not have been influenced by the cunei form tablets, for these assign to the Flood a total duration of only fourteen days. But even if this point be conceded as in some way explica- 178 THE DELUGE AND THE PATRIARCHS. ble, it seems still more extraordinary that when the later narrative had in its turn won for itself acceptance, a Redactor should go out of his way to insert in a consistent and acknowledged account the absolutely contradictory figures of the now discredited Jahvist writer. Here is a plain case of direct contradiction between the two accounts. We are asked to believe that a Redactor, presumably inspired, harmonised these contradictory sets of figures in the subtle and misleading way in which they now stand connected in the Genesis narrative, instead of selecting either the one chronological system or the other. The contradiction is so glaring that it cannot have escaped notice. Such an estimate of the Redactor seems inconsistent with his possession of either common sense or common honesty. In truth, the analytical hy pothesis bristles with insuperable difficulties as soon as we attempt to realise to ourselves the process by which the assumed narratives reached their present form. It is a compara tively easy thing to take the narrative as it stands and to explain in any particular case the supposed duplication, but to proceed from this point to accept the results which flow from the assumed division, whilst endeavouring to recon- THE MANIFESTATION OF GOD. 179 cile them with the sacred character of the nar rative or with the great ethical and spiritual truths with which it is undoubtedly charged, forms a task of the most arduous and difficult character. Further, it can hardly be questioned that in the critical examination of this narrative far too little weight has been given to its theological, as distinct from its purely historical side. The main object of the inspired writer was not ac complished by merely imparting to his readers correct historical information as to the doings of Noah or the natural phenomena of the Del uge. The inspired history of Noah is not one in which God is, as it were, thrown in to form a dark mysterious background to the earthly story. On the contrary, in the mind of the writer historical detail is throughout subordi nate to his central aim, to reveal the character of God and the immutable principles which underlie His dealings with sinful men. From the point of view of a Rationalist like Eichorn or De Wette, it may appear an incomprehen sible reduplication that God should first have given specific direction to his servant Noah as to the building of the ark, indicating in general terms the object it was to serve, in order to I So THE DELUGE AND THE PATRIARCHS. supply a reasonable ground of faithful obedi ence to so startling and toilsome an Injunction ; and that long years afterwards, when at last his toil was over, he should have received a further Divine Revelation telling him to take the next step in the venture of faith, to entrust himself and his dearest to this novel structure, to utilise the short interval that still remained ere the flood came, in the detailed arrange ments necessary to carry out the Divine inten tion. Surely from no fair standpoint can this be really classed as mere iteration. Again, the duplication of the picture of the wickedness of the antediluvian world seems perfectly nat ural when we remember that in chapter vi. 9, with the Elohistic narrative we are beginning a new section of the book. The results of the preceding section are summarised at the begin ning of the new one, just as in precisely the same way we find a double mention of the three sons of Noah. What can be more inse cure than a theory that postulates two separate documents because of the doubled statement ¦as to the wickedness of the world, and yet itself assigns to one and the same document the equally doubled statement concerning the three sons of Noah. Clearly both duplications are THE DIVINE NAMES. iSl perfectly natural and neither needs any explana tion at all. The two cases are exactly analo gous, and if it has never been thought neces sary to assume separate sources in the second case, why is it essential In the first ? To take another point. The distribution of the Divine Names in this section, the primal ground of the analysis, is entirely appropriate to the subject-matter in each case, and flows naturally therefrom. Where the relationship of God to all mankind is the predominating conception we find the name Elohim employed. Again, when the special relationship of grace in which God stood to Noah is prominent, there, just as we might expect, the Covenant name Jahveh is found. Thus take the suc cessive Jahvistic sections ; the command to enter the ark, the gracious act of protection implied in the Lord's shutting Noah in, the ac ceptance of his sacrifice and the recorded Di vine purpose that such a Judgment should not again be visited upon the earth. Here clearly in each case Noah is contemplated as the object of God's electing grace; as the link on which hang the saving purposes of redemption. In the Elohistic sections the outlook is wider. The opening words, "And God looked upon 1 82 THE DELUGE AND THE PATRIARCHS. the earth ; and it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way tipon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence throtigh them, and, behold, I will de stroy them with the earth" * plainly indicate a verdict given to Noah upon human society in general as It existed before the Flood. Or again, the Elohistic section in chapter ix. con templates Noah not now as the ancestor of the elect people but as the progenitor of a new world, gathering up into himself all future generations of men. This is indicated quite distinctly in the opening charge, '"'' Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth." Whilst a little later the all-embracing rainbow Is made the sign set In the heavens of "an everlasting coveizant between God and every living creat ure of all flesh!' The standpoint of this con cluding section is unmistakably clear. It is the standpoint which naturally suggests the name of God which is used. To sum up, then. With sincere deference to the great authorities who are ranged on the other side there seem valid grounds for claim ing that whether or not, as Professor Sayce says, * Gen. vi. 12, 13. NEED OF RE-EXAMINATION. 1 83 "the literary analysis which has given us a Jehovist and an Elohist and a Priestly Code must be supplemented or replaced by an anal ysis of the Book of Genesis into Babylonian, Canaanite, and other similar elements ; " * at least it is necessary that that analysis itself should be throughout re-examined, both from the literary standpoint and also from the theo logical position of Catholic Christendom. At present it can hardly escape the judgment which so disinterested a critic as Mr. Matthew Arnold passes upon the rationalistic concep tion of Scripture generally; that " it makes far more difficulties than it solves," and again, " it rests on too narrow a conception of the history of the human mind." f We may add on " too narrow a conception " of the spiritual greatness and unique aim of the Holy Script ures. Meanwhile the conclusion seems amply justified that the basis upon which the whole analytical division rests is much too precarious to admit of our building upon it any important conclusions whatever. As we pass now to the Patriarchal history, these questions of literary analysis occupy a * The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 171. f Literature and Dogma, p. 149. 1 84 THE DELUGE AND THE PATRIARCHS. position of comparatively minor importance. With the exception of some genealogical tables and two or three narratives like those concernlnof the institution of circumcision or the death of Sarah, only fragmentary scraps here and there are assigned to the Priestly writer. The great mass of the narrative is fairly divided between the Jahvist and the second Elohist. As these writers are assumed to have been nearly contemporaneous, writ ing, the one in the Northern Kingdom and the other in the Southern, about the ninth cen tury B.C., the division is, except on purely liter ary grounds, comparatively unimportant. The striking parallelism between the two narratives may fairly be held to imply a common original, which may or may not be identical with one of them, but the date of which must be prior to the division of the monarchy and the con sequent separation of the kingdoms. Schultz, for example, places J in the Solomonic period. The dates usually assigned to these closely interrelated documents are conditioned by the fact admitted on all hands, that the narrative as we have it was well known to the great Prophets of the eighth century. Beyond this the evidence for the dates assigned is almost THE PATRIARCHAL HISTORY. 185 entirely subjective — whilst if J and E (as seems probable if the division itself be as sumed) rest back on a common original, we are absolutely without any means of determining the date of that original, Mosaic or otherwise. We shall then omit any further discussion in regard to J and E, and proceed to consider a far more essential matter which claims our attention. I refer to the question as to the alleged unhistorical character of the whole Patriarchal history raised by the extreme crit ical school, and in particular by Kuenen and Wellhausen. According to Kuenen " the narratives in Genesis present us, not with historical per sonages, but with personifications" * of Israel itself and of the nations round about. " They teach us what the Israelites thought as to their affinities with the tribes round about them, and as to the names of their own settlements in. the land of their abode." t So, too, Wellhausen to similar effect : " In the patriarchal legend the ethnographic element is always predomi nant." X " The legend itself for the most part is the product of a countless number of nar- * Kuenen : Religion of Israel, Engl, ed., p. ni. f Ibid., p. 113. \ Prolegomena, p. 320. 1 86 THE DELUGE AND THE PATRIARCHS. ratives unconsciously modifying each other's work." * With regard to Abraham, it is true, Wellhausen acknowledges some difficulty in satisfactorily explaining his existence on ethno graphical principles. Not bearing " the name of a people like Isaac and Lot, he is some what difficult to interpret." t We must not, however, any the more on this account con sider him " as a historical person " J — he might with more likelihood be regarded as " a pure creation of unconscious art." § So, too, the story of Joseph is in considerable part the " free work of poetry." Truly this is a clever way of getting rid of an unpleasantly insoluble dif ficulty — thus to sublimate the whole of the facts into the mysterious cloud-land of uncon scious and therefore unknown art. A better illustration could hardly be found of what has been well described as the omnipotence of a German professor's ink. Even a reverent critic like Schultz, who acknowledges that we cannot in point of fact picture to ourselves the rise of the Hebrew religion in any other way than the Biblical account does, || when it repre- * Prolegomena, p. 327. f Ibid., p. 320. X Ibid. § Ibid., p. 320. 11 Schultz : Old Testament Theology, p. no. THE ETHNOGRAPHIC HYPOTHESIS. 1 87 sents Abraham as called out of the country of his birth into an unknown land, as entering into a covenant of circumcision with the God of his fathers, who appears to him, as bearing trial upon trial, receiving revelation upon reve lation, promise upon promise, until he passed away honoured of God and man, whilst thus acknowledging that the facts connected with the Hebrew religion require exactly such a series of events as we find recorded in the his tory of Abraham, yet contends that we must " leave it undetermined in the present state of tradition how far the name of Abraham and the general sketch of his life are to be consid ered historical." * As soon, then, as we have overcome our first natural repugnance to regarding these inimi table pictures which have won the admiration of unnumbered generations as the singularly happy outcome of a countless number of frag mentary attempts at political idealisation, we naturally ask on what grounds we are to ac cept so startling and unlovely an hypothesis. We may conveniently group the reasons given under three heads : I. Considerations based on the difficulty of * Schultz : Old Testament Theology, p. 95. l88 THE DELUGE AND THE PATRIARCHS. transmitting historical accounts of the Patri archal period to the date assigned for the com position of J and E. 2. Reasons growing out of the character of the patriarchal narratives themselves ; and, lastly, 3. The confirmation which this hypothesis affords to the similar assumption made as to the Priest's Code, and in particular to the non-existence of the law of the one sanct uary prior to the days of Josiah or there abouts. Let us briefly notice each of these points. With regard to the difficulties of transmis sion the recent discoveries at Tell-el-Amarna have completely destroyed whatever force they were supposed to possess. We now know that there was no more difficulty in transmit ting the records of the time of Abraham to Moses than in the similar transmission of the " Chronicles of the Kings of Israel and Judah " in the days of the Israelitish monarchy. The primal ground of the hypothesis having fallen through, owing to our better knowledge of the circumstances of the Patriarchal period, the sub jective considerations next to be considered are correspondingly weakened in force. Stand- ITS FAILURE. 1 89 ing as they now do severely isolated, their weakness is much more easily seen. We have already noted how completely the ethnographical hypothesis breaks down when applied to the history of Abraham — a large and fundamentally important part, surely, of the whole narrative. Moreover, it fails just as signally, as Wellhausen practically confesses, when apphed to the case of Joseph.* As Mr. Watson, who has so carefully investigated this question in his capital book, " The Book of Genesis : a True History," well says, " If Judah and Joseph were to change places in the patriarchal narrative, we might get a remarkable antici pation of the history of later times. There was a tribe which surpassed its fellows in moral and religious qual ities. There was a tribe which like Joseph was separated from its brethren, and, standing alone, was the more faith ful representative of the Kingdom of God. That tribe was Judah, not Joseph. Although that tribe had abun- * ' ' Joseph here (in the blessing of Jacob) appears always as the pil lar of the North-Israelite monarchy. . . . The story of Joseph, however, in so far as historical elements can be traced in it all, and not merely the free work of poetry, is based on much earlier events, from a time when the union was first being accomplished of the two sections which together became the people of Israel. The trait of his brothers' jealousy of him points perhaps to later events." — (Prole gomena, p. 323.) This vague oscillation, with the appeal to " the free work of poetry " as an ultimate refuge, surely amounts to the sur render of the ethnographic theory. 190 THE DELUGE AND THE PATRIARCHS. dant opportunity, had it so willed, of manipulating the na tional tradition to its own honour and glory, yet we find in the facts of Genesis the very negative of any such purpose. It is the progenitor of the rival and faithless Kingdom of Ephraim who stands forth as the chaste and faithful deliverer of his brethren. The record of Judah, on the other hand, is stained by undisguised im purity and evil." * A similar difficulty occurs, only in a more acute form, when we try to picture the history of Levi as the idealisation thrown back into the Patriarchal period of the history and character of that priestly tribe. A certain resemblance at first sight and in broad out line there undoubtedly is (as might indeed be expected) between the careers of Jacob and Esau and those of the nations which they represent. A moment's reflection, however, will show how impossible it is to conceive of an Israelite in the days of the monarchy, illus trating the relations of his people to the Edom- ites, whom they were again and again subdu ing, by the cringing artifices to which Jacob had to resort in order to pacify the wrath of Esau. It seems unnecessary to pursue the inquiry into further detail. The hypothesis of * Watson : The Book of Genesis : a True History, p. 201. VERDICT OF ARCHEOLOGY. I9I political personification helplessly breaks down, and our first indignant revulsion from the vandalism which it involves is fully justified by the results of minute examination. In truth this whole method of accounting for ancient narratives is already out of date. Dis coveries like those of Schllemann at Troy and the other verifications of ancient records which have crowded upon us within the last two decades have completely altered the accepted views as to the formation of early traditions. A distinguished English archaeologist has lately summed up the changed conclusions on this matter in these unmistakable terms : " The more we look into fairly early legends, the more disinclined we become to say that there is nothing substantial in them." * Archaeological discovery has returned an unqualified nega tive to the wholesale assumption of mythical idealisation as forming the real basis of ancient narratives like those we are now considering. But we are not left to rest our answer mere ly upon the general tendency of archaeological science, strong and definite though it be. The * Canon G. F. Browne, late Disney Professor of Archaeology at Cambridge, in a lecture on English Church History, at St. Paul's Cathedral, since published. 192 THE DELUGE AND THE PATRIARCHS. recent discoveries in Biblical archaeology have largely aided In forming this general tendency, and they affect in the most direct and obvious manner the historical character of the patri archal narrative. A history like that of Gen. xiv. presented us with a picture of the political condition of the Asiatic kingdoms In the days of Abraham, which was until recently regarded as entirely unsupported by any other source. It was easy under these circumstances to as sume that we had there only a free poetic creation of unconscious art, or the conscious invention of a later age. Such in point of fact was the verdict expressly passed upon it by critics like Noldeke or Reuss, the real fathers of the Wellhausen school, and implied in the positions of Kuenen and Wellhausen, already noted. Recent discovery, however, has con firmed the whole historical setting of the narrative in such unqualified manner that it is now universally recognised to be a lifelike portraiture of the then political condition of the nations of Western Asia. The same stern logic of discovered fact has summoned back the person of Melchizedek the Priest-King of Salem, from the region of mythical fancy to which criticism had relegated him, into the MODERN HISTORICAL WITNESS. 1 93 clear light of historical reality. We now know that at the date of the Tell-el-Amarna tablets, Jerusalem was already an important city governed by a Priest-King, who, al though subject to the Egyptian power, is expressly stated to hold a unique position of singular interest. He derived his appoint ment neither from the will of the Pharaoh, nor by hereditary descent from his father or his mother, but by the will of the great King, i.e., the God to whom the inhabitants of the city offered supreme worship.* There can hardly be a doubt that in this peculiar political consti tution of Jerusalem, of which no trace remains in the subsequent literature, we have the orig inal of that magnificent figure, " the setting sun," f as he has been well called, of the prim itive revelation, to whom Abraham did such signal homage. Equally conclusive is the tes timony of Egyptian archaeology to the fidelity of the picture drawn in the later chapters of Genesis. Semitic influence, as we now know, was dominant in Lower Egypt in the time of the Patriarchs. The general fidelity of the * See this given in much greater detail in Sayce's The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. I74f. f Delitzch : New Commentary on Genesis I., p. 412. 13 194 THE DELUGE AND THE PATRIARCHS. Biblical narrative in its incidental references to Egypt has long been recognised. Yet it is interesting to note how each fresh discovery throws light upon points previously not fully understood. Thus, for example, the saluta tion with which the investiture of Joseph was greeted by the Egyptian people has occa sioned much trouble to commentators. The word " Abrek" had no known Egyptian deri vation, while " it was puzzlingly Semitic in its look." The Semitic character of the court of Lower Egypt, as now discovered, removes the difficulty, and we have been enabled to identi fy the word with a Babylonian title signifying "Seer."* The whole passage is thus made luminously clear. We can picture to ourselves that scene of long ago when the courtiers of the Pharaoh saluted the great " Seer " who had received this magnificent reward for his ser vices In the interpretation of the royal dreams. What has been already done is, as Professor Sayce rightly says, "only an earnest of what will be achieved hereafter when the buried cities and tombs of the East have all been made to deliver up their dead." f Meanwhile * See Sayce's The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 214. ¦|- The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 233. FIDELITY OF THE HISTORY. 1 95 we may unhesitatingly affirm that the fidelity of the Book of Genesis to the contempora neous local colouring and to the actual history of the times and countries described has been already made good, and this is equally the case whether we consider the Canaanitish or the Egyptian parts of the narrative. It is quite obvious from the recent article of Professor Driver in reply to Professor Sayce's new book, published in the Contemporary Review, that this point is fully conceded.* Canon Driver, so far from disputing the general position taken up by Professor Sayce as to the fidelity in this respect of the narratives in Genesis, is at great pains to show that con servative critics like Ewald and Ebers have previously asserted the same. He is very anxious to clearly distinguish himself and critics in general from those whom he calls " certain extreme critics who accompany their literary criticisms of the Old Testament by a far-reaching and excessive historical criticism." Just below (the words are Canon Driver's) he complains that Professor Sayce's habit of never particularising names, and using always * See Article on " Archeology and the Old Testament " in Contem porary Review for March, 1894, p. 416. 196 THE DELUGE AND THE PATRIARCHS. general terms, creates the impression in the reader's mind that critics generally are in cluded in the same condemnation. In view of the wide-spread distress which has been caused to thousands of devout souls by the well known views of Wellhausen in this re gard, it might perhaps have been well if Pro fessor Driver, in thus separating himself from these extreme critics, had himself particularised names, and had expressed a well-deserved con demnation of the Wellhausen theory as to the unhistorical character of even the setting of the Patriarchal history. We may take it, therefore, that the position of Wellhausen and Kuenen as to that history can no longer be maintained, and may be assigned to the limbo of so many other forgotten theories. The confession of Hommel, one of Wellhaus en's own followers, is practically conclusive as a full surrender of the *' free creation " hy pothesis. He says distinctly, " The Exodus of Abraham from Babylonia, the battle of the Canaanites with the Babylono-Elamite league In the valley of Siddim, and the jour ney of Abraham to Egypt are historic facts." * * Cited in Scrader's Cuneiform Inscriptions of the Old Testament Introductory Preface to English ed., p. xxi. SUBORDINATE QUESTIONS. IQJ But Professor Driver, whilst conceding the historical colouring of the Pentateuch com plains that it is deficient in local details. The distinction is perhaps somewhat subtle, but it is obviously made in the interests of his own critical position, viz., that the documents J and E were reduced to writing at a late period in the days of the monarchy, and hence although they rest upon a sound historical basis the writers had no information beyond that con tained in their source. They were thus unable to add the little details which flow so naturally from the pen of a contemporary. In support of this view the only instance adduced is the fact that the individual personal names of the Pharaohs who appear in Genesis and Exodus are not given. From this Professor Driver in fers that the author of the narrative was igno rant who these Pharaohs really were, which he could not have been had he been a contem porary.* The whole argument turns upon the assumption that if the author of the Book of Genesis had known who the Pharaoh was he would unquestionably have mentioned his name, as is done for instance by Jeremiah in speaking of Pharaoh Necho. I venture with * Contemporary Review for March, 1894, p. 418. 198 THE DELUGE AND THE PATRIARCHS. some confidence to think that we have here a distinctly unsound assumption. Not merely, as Professor Sayce points out, is the usage of the Egyptian records themselves, in speak ing of contemporaneous foreign kings, in exact agreement with that of Genesis,* but the Bi ble itself disproves the whole argument. Was Rabshakeh, for example, ignorant of the per sonal name of the master whom he served that in addressing the people on the wall of Je rusalem he never once breathes his name, but speaks only of " the great king, the king of Assyria!' \ Or was Isaiah, the confidant of kings, ignorant of the name of the Pharaoh of his days, that he again and again lifts his warn ing voice against " the counsellors ofPharaoh!'X the trust " in the strength of Pharaoh!' § and so on, without specifying the name of the then reigning monarch. It surely needs no argument to show that the real heroes of the * The Higher Criticism and the Monuments. "The individual name of a king is of little use to a stranger, however important it may be to those who draw up legal documents at home." P. 229. ¦|- 2 Kings xviii. 19, 23, 28. Cf. also the reference to " Pharaoh, king of Egypt," in ver. 21. The parallel passage in Isaiah agrees with that in 2 Kings. The synopsis in the Chronicles clearly does not preserve the original form. X Isaiah xix. n f. § Isaiah xxx, 2 ff. LAW OF THE ONE SANCTUARY. I99 Biblical narrative are not the rulers of Egypt but the Patriarchs of Israel, and that the per- sonahty of the Pharaoh is not further described simply because it had no bearing upon the object in hand. We might as well object to the Gospel of St. John because he nowhere specifies the name of the then reigning Caesar to whom he refers.* Few words are necessary to indicate the bear ing of all this upon the question of the non-exist ence of the one sanctuary in the days of the composition of J and E. The theory by which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are made to worship at various places in order to throw additional sanctity round these different shrines in the days of the later monarchy is clearly a part of the general mythical hypothesis. It may be re garded, therefore, as being now as thoroughly discredited as it has all along been repulsive to any devout mind. The critical hypothesis as to the law of the one sanctuary gains no support from the Book of Genesis. If it is to be main tained at all it must be on the ground of con siderations which claim an entirely different ori gin, and so lie outside the sphere of these Lect ures. One thing at least, gentlemen, I trust * St. John xix. 12, 2O0 THE DELUGE AND THE PATRIARCHS. I have succeeded in placing beyond all doubt, viz., that in studying the rich lessons of spirit ual development which are found so abundant ly in the history of the patriarchs, we are not giving heed to cunningly devised fables, but are in very truth standing at the fountain- head of that mighty stream whose waters ever issue forth from the Sanctuary of God — that we are sitting at the feet of those who in act ual deed were the leaders amongst the heroes of faith, with whom by God's great mercy we too hope in his own good time to be made par takers of His glorious promises. APPENDICES. APPENDICES. APPENDIX A. Lecture I., p. ii. — " Professor Ramsay has lately shown their special dangers" etc. In his recent work, "The Church in the Roman Em pire." (Preface, p. viii.) He is speaking of German conclusions in New Testament criti cism, but, as shown in Lecture II., the essential similarity of their treatment of the Old Testa ment writings justifies the application of his words to that subject also. " If I reach conclusions very different from those of the school of criticism whose originators and chief ex ponents are German, it is not that I differ from their method. I fully accept their principle, that the sense of these documents can be ascertained only by resolute criticism ; but I think that they have often carried out their principle badly, and that their criticism often offends against critical methods. True criticism must be sympathetic, but in investigations into religion, Greek, Roman, and Christian alike, there appears to me, if I may venture to say so, to be in many German schol ars (the greatest excepted), a lack of that instinctive 204 APPENDICES. sympathy with the life and nature of a people which is essential to the right use of critical processes. None admires and reverences German scholarship more than I do, but it has not taught me to be blind to faults or to be afraid to speak out." An instructive illustration of the kind of evi dence which led Professor Ramsay to express this judgment upon a school in which he had himself been trained will be found in the dis cussion on "The Royal Road," p. 32 ff APPENDIX B. " Limitations which affected alike the scope of His teaching," etc. (p. 25). It seems unfortunate that this matter should have been so closely connected with a largely irrelevant controversy as to the limits of our Lord's human knowledge — a region of thought which is so sacred and probably so far beyond our powers that it behoves our words in regard to it to be few, and our very thoughts kept un der strong restraint — the last subject surely to be brought into the arena of mere intellectual or critical discussion. The questions connect ed with our Lord's use of the Old Testament APPENDICES. 205 seem essentially akin, not so much to this deep and mysterious subject, as to the essen tial laws of Divine Revelation, and the Divine accommodation to circumstance and human capacity which lies inherent in the very con ception of Revelation itself We are familiar with the thought of an ethical accommodation of Almighty God to the varying stages of prog ress of His sinful creatures. Our Lord Him self lays stress upon a typical instance of this in S. Matt. xix. 8 ; cf also Gen. xxii. 2, as an Old Testament example. In S. Matt. v. 32 and xix. 9, compared with S. Mark x. 11, and parallels, we have almost certainly an accom modation of the Christian law of marriage, ren dered necessary by the Mosaic enactment as to the punishment of adultery, 'which was still in force whilst the older covenant was not yet done away. So in our Lord's adaptation of His teaching with regard to His own Person and work to the slowly growing apprehension of the Disciples, we have a clear instance of sim ilar limitation in teaching. Thus, when on the point of leaving them. He could say, I have yet m,any things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now, and so commit them unto the en lightenment of that Blessed Spirit, who should 206 APPENDICES. guide the Apostles into all the truth, and sup ply that which our Lord had designedly left lacking in His own spoken words. If this be the case with regard to matters so supremely important, is it a strange assumption that, in any case, our Lord would naturally have spoken to the Jews of the authorship of their Sacred Scriptures in the way in which they could alone have understood Him, and would not have partially defeated His own purpose by entering upon comparatively irrelevant crit ical matters where His hearers could not have followed Him ? Whatever view we may hold in regard to this difficult question, at any rate it should be based upon the general analogy of Revelation, and not carried up into a mys terious region with which it has properly little or nothing to do. APPENDIX C. " The Elohistic and Jahvistic sources respec tively" (p. 47). It has been thought better in a treatise dealing with critical matters to employ the nomenclature usual in the critical writings, so speaking of a "Jahvistic" rather than of a "Je- APPENDICES. 207 hovistic " source. It seems well also to call attention to the fact that the spelling of the Divine Name which has become familiar and hallowed to readers of the English Bible has no ancient authority. All ancient authority is unanimous that the first syllable of the Sacred Name is to be vocalized Jah, a form which is preserved in the English Bible in Ps. Ixviii. 4. An unfortunate confusion, originating in the sixteenth century, led to the adoption of the form " Jehovah," by which the identity of the abbreviated form of the Sacred Name em ployed in Ps. Ixviii. 4 with that generally used is greatly obscured. After some hesitation, therefore, the form Jahveh has been employed throughout the book. It is hardly necessary to add that the change of vocalization does not imply any alteration of meaning. The two forms connote' precisely the same thing. APPENDIX D. " Eichorn was a thorough-going Rationalist of the eighteenth century type " (p. 50). " Schleiermacher, with whom religion was rather a matter of the heart than of the head" etc. (p. 55)- 208 APPENDICES. It may be of interest to note the contem porary estimate of these men as given by an English scholar of high reputation, who was at the time a post-graduate student attending their lectures. The extracts are from Liddon's "Life of E. B. Pusey, D.D.," vol. i. " In 1825 Eichorn was lecturing on . . . the Books of Moses. Pusey attended the . . . course. He was struck by Eichorn's total insensibility to the real religious import of the narrative, although the crit ical and historical information was often astonishing. . . . Yet Eichorn certainly meant to be on his guard against the shallow and frivolous scornfulness of vulgar unbelief. Only in him religious interests were entirely subordinate to the supposed interests of literature ; the supernatural element was treated not as an objective reality, but as representing an ancient and profoundly interesting state of mind. . . . Eichorn assumed that every phenomenon in revealed religion had a hu man origin," etc. (pp. 73-75). " Frederick Ernest Daniel Schleiermacher was, in 1825, the most commanding figure in the religious world of Berlin, and indeed in Protestant Germany. . . . Pusey often spoke in later life of his inter course with Schleiermacher, and would describe him as a man of great earnestness and genius, who was feeling his way back from rationalism toward positive truth. . . . Even Schleiermacher's mistakes were some times allied to the upward tendency of his thought. If he erred in making feeling alone the seat of religion APPENDICES. 209 in the soul, he was opposing the narrow academical tendency to treat revealed religion as merely a subject for philosophical discussion, or the Kantian tendency to resolve it into mere morality. The bias of his mind in his later years was toward an increased reverence for the Bible. . . . Schleiermacher's theory, which makes religion consist altogether in a feeling of de pendence on God — exaggerated though it was — pow erfully appealed to elements in Pusey's character ; and it is even probable that Pusey owed the beginnings of some prominent features of his devotional life to his intercourse with Schleiermacher " (pp. 80-84). APPENDIX E. " The most recent critical school represented in Germany by Strack and Kittel" (p. 66). Professor Briggs thus describes the position of these scholars : " They are agreed as to the order of development of E, J, and D, but think that the legislation of P is in the main pre-exilic, and that a considerable part of it is very ancient. They magnify the amount of ancient and original documents used by P " (" Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch," p. 130). But if this be true, what becomes of the Wellhausen position as to the character of P, and of the grounds on which it was rested. It 14 2 1 0 A PPENDICES. Is clear that the difference is only one of de gree between the position of this newest Ger man school and the old view of the superior antiquity of P. So the critical wheel goes round. APPENDIX F. "Both the construction and the subject-matter make it very difficult for us not to regard the last verse (Gen. xix. 22) as the final summing up of a narrative like the existing account in Genesis " (p. 75). How strong the presumption is may be gathered from the verdict of Bleek on this mat ter, writing at a time when the current critical theory placed no obstacle in the way of accept ing the natural literary deduction from the sacred text. The quotations are from Bleek's "Introduction to the Old Testament" (ed. Venables), vol. i. " The author, in the further course of the book " (i.e., in the later Patriarchal narratives) " has not fully adopted the Elohistic work in all his narratives, but has some what revised and enlarged it, though in some places he has also abridged and omitted ; of this there are distinct traces. Thus it results from the decidedly Elohistic APPENDICES. 2 1 1 verse (ch. xix. 29) that just before, in the Elohistic writ ing, there must have been an account of Lot, and par ticularly of his sojourn in Sodom ; but the later reviser cannot have included this account in his work as he there found it, as what goes before referring to Lot, particularly as to his separation from Abraham, is Jeho- vistic " (p. 294). " The manner in which the later author has contin ually, and in increasing measure as his work advanced, dealt with the ancient Elohistic document, prevents us in many instances from effecting any detailed determi nation between the matter which belongs to it and that which does not " (p. 295). Of course Bleek is now considered quite out of date. The fashionable critical hypothesis as to the relative dates of P and J is the exact reverse of that which he held. But surely that method of literary analysis must be very unsound which from a mere reversal of the relative dates of P and J deduces completely irreconcilable results as to the nature of the original document of P. It is quite evident what Bleek would have said to the argument from the " silence of P," yet on such a flimsy foundation as this we are asked to accept the whole Wellhausen theory as to the antagonis tic stand-points of P and J with all the repul sive consequences which flow therefrom. APPENDIX G. Lecture II., p. 8i. — " The same method has been applied to the Homeric writings!' etc. A full discussion of this question will be found in " Homer and the Epic," by A. Lang (Long mans). The following extracts will show the remarkable parallelism between the Wolfian theory and the corresponding elements of the Old Testament criticism: "Wolf's theory is that writing was not used for liter ary purposes when first the Homeric lays were sung, nor for hundreds of years afterwards. That through these hundreds of years, the lays floated in the memory of rhapsodes, who being also poets, altered and added to them at will. Then they were reduced to writing for the first time in the age of Pisistratus " (p. 76). Compare with this Professor Sanday's ac count of the literary history of the Old Testa ment Books cited In Lecture II., pp. 48, 49. Mr. Lang's emphatic verdict upon the Wolf ian hypothesis is as follows : " The whole argument of Wolf no longer holds water. . . . Modern discoveries have destroyed his premises so far as writing is concerned " (p. 77). APPENDIX H. " S. Augustine states it as a commonplace that the object of Holy Scripture is to teach men things of which they ought not to be ignorant, yet cannot know of themselves " (p. 93). The quotation is from the " De Civ. Dei," XI., 3. The whole passage is as follows ; " Hie prius per Prophetas, deinde per se ipsum, postea per Apostolos, quantum satis esse judicavit, locu- tus, etiam Scripturam condidit, quae canonica nomi- natur, eminentissimse auctoritatis, cui fidem habemus de his rebus quas ignorare non expedit nee per nosmet ipsos nosse idonei sumus. Nam si ea sciri possunt testibus nostris, quae remota non sunt e sensibus nostris sive interioribus sive etiam exterioribus ; unde et prssentia nuncupantur, quod ita ea dicimus esse prae sensibus, sicut prae oculis quae praesto sunt oculis ; perfecto ea quae remota sunt a sensibus nostris, quoniam nostro tes- timonio scire non possumus, de his alios testes requiri- mus, eisque credimus a quorum sensibus remota esse vel fuisse non credimus." The passage forms part of an introduction to the exposition of the narrative of Creation in the early chapters of Genesis, similar in character to that in the " De Genesi ad Ht teram." Note also the following from the same 214 APPENDICES. work (XIX., 1 8). Referring to the Neo-Plato- nlsts, "quibus incerta sunt omnia," he says: " Omnino civitas Dei talem dubitationem tanquam dementiam detestatur, habens de rebus, quas mente atque ratione comprehendit, etiamsi parvam propter corpus corruptibile, quod aggravat animam, quoniam sicut dicit Apostolus, ex parte scimus, tamen certissimam scien- tiam ; creditque sensibus in rei cujusque evidentia, qui bus per corpus animus utitur ; quoniam miserabilius fallitur, qui nunquam putat eis esse credendum. Credit etiam Scripturis Sanctis et veteribus et novis, quas Canonicas appellamus, unde fides ipsa concepta est, ex qua Justus vivit ; per quam sine dubitatione ambulamus, quamdiu perigrinamus a Domino ; qua salva atque certa de quibusdam rebus, quas neque sensu, neque ratione percepimus, neque nobis per Scripturam canonicam cla- ruerunt, nee per testes quibus non credere absurdum est, in nostram notitiam pervenerunt, sine justa repre- hensione dubitamus." For practical instances of the way in which S. Augustine embodied these principles in his own teaching, showing his anxiety to bring to bear upon the interpretation of Holy Scripture each branch of knowledge in its proper sphere, see the following passages from " De Genesi ad Htteram, I., 21 (differing lengths of day and night in various parts of the earth) ; I., 39 (warning against rash interpretations conflict- APPENDICES. 2 1 5 ing with the laws of nature ; II., 2 (discussion as to the way in which water can be stored in the air as vapour) ; II., 20 (as to the shape of the firmament surrounding the earth) ; II., 23 (on the rotation of the heavenly bodies) ; II., 23 (as to the phases of the moon) ; IV., 5 1 (a striking picture of the creation as containing germinally within itself the seeds of a progres sive evolution); VI., 18 (a similar passage); VII., 20 (as to the connection of nervous ac tion throughout the body into the brain, and the effects which follow from various lesions of the brain, demonstrating the distribution of the seats of various faculties within it). It may be well to note the fine passage on the inevitable limitation of human knowl edge in the " De Genesi ad Htteram," VI., 34. The following extracts will sufficiently indi cate the line of thought, but the whole passage well deserves perusal: " (Deus) propinquior nobis est qui fecit, quam multa quae facta sunt." " Ignota enim sunt fundamenta terras oculis nostris, et qui fundavit terram, propinquat mentibus nostris." APPENDIX L The spiritual lessons which lie enshrined in the several "days" may be studied in the pages of S. Augustine (p. 124). The following quotations will give a fair view of S. Augustine's teaching with regard to the " days." The references, unless otherwise stated, are to the " De Genesi ad Htteram." Some things in the narrative of Genesis must clearly be taken figuratively : " Nam non esse accipienda figuraliter, nullus Chris- tianus dicere audebit, attendens Apostolum dicentem, omnia autem hac in Jigura contingebant illis ; et illud quod in Genesi scriptum est, et erant duo in came una " (I., i). After noting that day and night are of dif ferent lengths at various parts of the earth's surface (l., 21), he suggests that "one day" includes all time, as follows : " An hie dies toties temporis nomen est, et omnia volumina saeculorum hoc vocabulo includit ; ideoque non dictus est primus, sed unus dies " (I., 33). The appointment of the great luminaries for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, upon the fourth "day," suggests that the lan guage is figurative and leads on to the follow ing important statement : a 16 APPENDICES. 21 J " Vespera autem et mane non quasi per temporis prffiteritionem et adventum, sed per quendam ter- minum, quo intelhgitur quousque sit naturae proprius modus, et unde sit naturae alterius consequenter exor dium " (II., 28). Similar in effect is his comment upon the absence of mention of " the evening and the morning" in regard to "the seventh day." " Si in cseteris diebus vespera et mane talium tem- porum vices significant, qualia nunc per hsec quotidiana spatia peraguntur, non video quid prohibuerit et septi- mum diem vespera, noctem ejusdem mane concludere, ut similiter diceretur, et facta est vespera, et factum est mane, dies Septimus (IV., 33). "The seventh day " clearly does not denote a mere temporal Divine resting : " Ipse nee cum creavit defessus, nee cum cessavit refectus est" (IV., 25), but represents the inner life of God, Who hath no need of any created thing. " Insinuatur nobis Deus per banc scripturam, qua dicitur requievisse ab omnibus operibus suis quae fecit, nullo opere suo sic delectatus quasi faciendi ejus eguerit, vel minor futurus nisi fecisset, vel beatior cum fecisset " (IV., 26). The sanctification of the seventh day was for our sakes, a benediction of the inner super natural life of the soul : and so the Christian 2X8 APPENDICES. "perpetuum Sabbatum jam observat, . . . ut in novitate vitae ambulans, Deum in se operari cognoscat, qui simul et operatur, et quiescit, et craeaturae praebens congruam gubernationem, et apud se habens aeternam tranquillitatem " (IV., 24). He concludes his argument on this head, after stating that these " days " contain within themselves a great mystery, by an emphatic disclaimer of their resembling ordinary periods of time. " Istos septem dies, qui pro illis agunt hebdomadem, cujus cursu et recursu tempora rapiuntur, in qua dies unus est a soils ortu usque in ortum circuitus, sic il- lorum vicem quamdam exhibere credamus, ut non eos illis similes, sed multum impares minime dubitemus" (IV., 44). To a similar effect, the passage from the " De Civitate Dei," quoted by Delitzch in his " New Commentary on Genesis," vol. i., p. 84. " Qui dies cujusmodi sint ; aut perdifficile nobis aut etiam impossibile est cogitare, quanto magis dicere " (De Civ. Dei, XL, 6). Another favorite thought with S. Augustine is that the " day of creation " was both an end ing and a beginning, as he explains below. APPENDICES. 219 " Nunc autem quia jam et consummata quodammodo, et quodammodo inchoata sunt ea ipsa quae consequenti- bus evolvenda temporibus primitus Deus omnia simul creavit, cum faceret mundum ; consummata quidem quia nihil habent ilia in naturis propriis, quibus suorum temporum cursus agunt, quod non in istis causaliter factum sit ; inchoata vero, quoniam quaedam erant quasi semina futurorum, per seculi tractum ex occulto in manifestum locis congruis exserenda " (VI., 18). With reference to the Divine Word in crea tion : " Cum ergo audimus, Et dixit Deus, fiat ; intelligimus quod in Verbo Dei erat ut fieret. . . . Non ergo Deus toties dixit, Fiat ilia vel ilia creatura, quoties in hoc libro repetitur, Et dixit Deus. Unum quippe Ver- bum ille genuit, in quo dixit omnia, priusquam facta sunt singula ; sed elogium scribentis descendens ad parvulorum capacitatem, dum insinuat singulatim gen era creaturarum, per singula respicit uniuscujusque generis aeternam rationem in Verbo Dei ; nee ilia re- petita, ille tamen repetit, Et dixit Deus. " Cum vero audimus, Et sic est factum ; inteUigimus factam creaturam non excessisse praescriptos in Verbo Dei terminos genesis sui. " Cum vero audimus, Et vidit Deus quia bonum est, in telligimus in benignitate spiritus ejus, non quasi cog- nitum posteaquam factum est placuisse, sed potius in ea bonitate placuisse ut maneret factum, ubi placebat ut fieret " (II., 13, 14)- 220 APPENDICES. Mr. Coggin's book, " Man's Great Charter," win show how fully a modern writer has im bibed the spirit of S. Augustine, whilst in per fect sympathy with the most recent scientific investigations. I subjoin a few extracts per tinent to the matter in hand. " Day is not a time-word, but stands for that state or those laws of existence by means of which any thing is what it is, or for the very essence of that to which it is related " (p. 44). Thus " God's days make man's days possible. God's working makes man's working possible " (p. 35). " The correspondence between God's days and man's days is like that between foundation and superstruct ure, or between substance and shadow, or between the original and its image " (p. 36). " The seventh day, without beginning or end, marks the changeless attributes of God ; the six days whose beginnings are noted, but of whose end no hint is given, mark the reality of the Divine activity. Each of the six days is brought to morning, all six .are continued. Man lives in these six days " (p. 59). " The six days are insufficient for man, with these alone his nature remains in partial eclipse, but when God shines upon him, the dim recesses of his being are flooded with light and his dullest task is brightened with a radiance not its own " (p. 192). " It is not sufficient for a man to work like a horse, he must work like God" (p. 201). APPENDIX J. " The questions raised by the genealogies in Chapter V., and the numbers therein contained, which appear as insoluble upon the critical as upon the traditional methods" (p. 157). The following citations from Kuenen's " Les Origines du Texte Mazoretique," Paris, 1875, a critical examination of various hypoth eses as to the origin of the differences in the Hebrew, LXX., and Samaritan texts, will sub stantiate the position above taken. The ex tracts represent Kuenen's final summing up of the whole matter : " La difficulte soulev^e par les trois textes de Genese V. et xi., 10-26, n'est pas encore resolue. ... La d6monstration que je demande n'a pas encore fete four- nie, et vous m'en croirez volontiers sur parole si je me declare hors d'etat de resoudre le probleme d'une maniere tout k fait satisfaisante " (p. 46). And again : " Dans le jugement que je porte sur toutes ces solu tions de la difficultfe, je me trouve d'accord avec Geiger, dont le propos sur ce sujet contient bien des choses excellentes. II reussit i expliquer d'une maniere sim ple et naturelle un certain nombre de divergences pe- tites ou grandes des trois recensions, en se servant des indices fournis par les traditions juive et samaritaine elles-memes. Mais lui aussi ne va pas plus loin. Nous 222 APPENDICES. pouvons toujours demander si, apres avoir constats ces divergences, et apporte au texte les corrections qui en decoulent, nous avons completement atteint le but que nous poursuivons ; en d'autres termes, ce qui est rela- tivement plus original, est-il aussi I'original ? Ici Geiger nous laisse dans I'incertitude " (pp. 49, 50). To a similar effect Dillmann in the last edi tion of his " Commentary on Genesis" : " Das zu grund liegende Princip der Berechnung ist bis jezt nicht gefunden. Das Problem ist um so schwieriger, well in diesen Zahlen die altesten krit- ischen Zeugen, der hbr., Samar., u. LXX. Text stark von einander abweichen " (p. no). Upon Budde's plan for identifying the latter half of the genealogy in Genesis v. with that in Genesis iv. 16-19, Dillmann's verdict is ad verse. "Aber auch dieser Construction ist mehr scharf- sinnig als beifallswiirdig " (p. 109). APPENDIX K. " The analysis would present much less diffi culty under the assumption which until quite recently was universally made" (p. 174). It is interesting that an acute critic like Bleek APPENDICES. 223 claims, from a consideration of the simple text, to arrive at a conclusion absolutely opposed to the present critical theory. This is a strong confirmation of the position taken in the pres ent work. Bleek is speaking of the history of the Flood, on which he remarks as follows : " The consideration of the context here, quite apart from the changes in the naming of God, shows that the Jeho- vistic passages of the narrative did not originally belong to it. It cannot fail to be observed that the connection is often interrupted by the Jehovistic passages, and that by cutting them out a more natural and clearer conti nuity of the narrative is almost always obtained " (p. 273)- [The italics have been added to emphasize Bleek's claim to deduce his results directly from literary considerations, irrespective of any de duction from the use of the Divine Names.] In plain truth the current hypothesis does violence to the literary phenomena of this sec tion. It is maintained not in consequence of the literary facts, but in spite of them, and really rests upon different foundations alto gether, viz., the assumptions as to the widely differing dates of the three Pentateuchal codes and in regard to the law of the one sanctuary. APPENDIX L. The following analysis of the first nine chapters of Genesis may illustrate the argu ment of Lectures III., IV., and the first half of Lecture V. : /. THE GENERAL INTRODUCTION, OR THE DIVINE CHARTER SHOWING THE ESSENTIAL RELA TIONS OF MAN, THE WORLD, AND GOD. I. I-Il. 4 {A) The First Creative Act— Creation of Physical Nature. i. i Detailed reference to the Divine Vo lition carried out by the Eternal Word of five groups or orders of the Physical world. (i) Light, or the foundations of Physical Order and Law. i. 2-6. Day i. (2) Firmament, connecting the earth with the greater order of the universe outside, i. 6-9. Day ii. (3) Separation of earth and waters, adapting the earth for vegetation and Hfe. i. 9-11. (4) Production of vegetable life, r ^^y ™- for the support of sentient liv ing things and for beauty. 1. 11-14. APPENDICES. 225 (5) Luminaries, adapting the earth to sentient and rational life, embodying the principle of rational order, i. 14-20. (jB) The Second Creative Act— Crea tion of sentient Life. Detailed reference to the Divine Vo lition carried out by the Eternal Word, of tw^o groups or orders of sentient life. (6) Life in water and air. i. 20-24. (7) Animal life on the earth, i. 24—26. (C) The Third Creative Act— Crea tion of man as a rational and spir itual being, capable of progress and perfection, i. 27. Detailed Reference to the Divine Vo lition carried out by the Eternal Word, of the following relations : (8) Relation of Man to Nature as representative of God's char acter and authority therein, i. 26, 28. (9) Relation of Vegetable to sen tient life as Its source of sus tenance and support. i. 29-31. Solemn ratification of the whole order as corresponding to the Divine purpose, i. 31, 11. i. Day iv. I. 21 Day v. ¦ Day vi. 226 A PPENDICES. (D) The Divine Rest, or the unseen order : the Eternal world of God, to which the visible universe stands in closest relationship, and by which the higher life and worship of man is sustained, n. 2-4. Day vii. //. THE GENERATIONS OF THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH, OR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HIGHER LIFE OF MAN IN ITS ESSENTIAL PRIN CIPLES, AS SEEN IN THE DIVINE PURPOSE ORIGINALLY, AND AS IT HAS ACTUALLY COME TO BE. II. 4-1 V. 26 (A) The Development of the higher life of man in its essential principles as seen in the Divine purpose orig inally. II. 4-25 (i) Recapitulation showing — (a) Initial chaotic condition of things. II. 5, 6 (b) Man's double relationship; on his physical side to the earth, on his spiritual side to the Divine world. II. 7 (2) The first Paradise : its nature, limitations, and blessings. (a) The nature of the Paradise. 11. 8-15 {U) The commission to man in re gard to it. II. 15 (c) Its blessings and the law of pro bation it enshrined. 11. 16-18 APPENDICES. 227 (3) The relation of man to woman a Divine provision for the higher development of man's nature. (a) Reference to the Divine Voli tion of this relation in its higher aspects. II. 18 {J}) The insufficiency of the animal creation for this purpose demon strated. II. 19-21 (c) The Divine protection of wom an, alike in her origin and in the charter of her mission. 11. 21-25 (d) The absence of any polluting element in this relation. 11.25 (!B) The development of the higher life of man in its essential princi ples, as it has actually come to be. III. i-xv. 26 (i) The Profanation of the first Paradise. {a) The entrance of Evil through the Creation. in. i (b) The temptation and fall of the woman. in. 2-6'' (c) The temptation and fall of the man. in. 6b (2) The essential consequences of this profanation. (a) Man's ineffectual attempt to cover his sin from God, in. 7, 8 228 A P PEN DICE S. (b) The subterfuge defeated and the sin unveiled. m. 9-14 (c) The judgment on the source of temptations, with the sentence of its final overthrow by the seed of the woman. m. 14-16 (d) The judgment on the woman, in which the tie to her husband which she has profaned becomes the source of her punishment and the channel of her discipline. in. 16 (e) The judgment on the man in which the tie to Nature which he has profaned becomes the source of his punishment and the channel of his discipline. in. 17-20 (/) The Divine cleansing and cov ering of sin foreshadowed. iii. 20-22 (g) The withdrawal of the privi leges of the profaned sanctuary. iii. 22-25 (3) The radical schism thus in troduced into human devel opment between nature and grace, between the natural and the spiritual man. (a) The enmity between the child of fallen nature and the child of grace. iv. 1-9 (b) The judgment upon Cain; the tie of brotherhood which he has profaned, the source of his punish ment and the channel of his disci pline, IV. 9-16 APPENDICES. 229 (