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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

THE PROBLEM OF THE PENTATEUCH

THREE LECTURES ON THE REINECKER
FOUNDATION DELIVERED AT THE
VIRGINIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
IN DECEMBER, 1905.

By the same Author:
The Gospel in the Christian Year
Longmans, Green, and Co.

Present Day Problems op Christian Thought
Christ and Modern Unbelief
Thos. Whittaker

THE PROBLEM
OF THE PENTATEUCH
AN EXAMINATION OF THE
RESULTS OF THE HIGHER CRITICISM

BY
RANDOLPH H. McKIM, D.D., LL.D.
RECTOR OF THE CHURCH OF THE EPIPHANY, WASHINGTON, D. C.

WITH A FOREWORD BY
THE DEAN OF CANTERBURY

06 yap aeaocpuriUvou fiv$ots i^aKoKovB-tiaavres

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
LONDON AND BOMBAY
1906

2>K\S

Copyright 1906
Bt R. H. McKim

The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. V.8.A.

HENRY WACE, D.D., DEAN OF CANTERBURY
THESE LECTURES ABE DEDICATED
AS AN EXPRESSION OP HIGH PERSONAL REGARD
AND IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION
OF HIS IMPORTANT SERVICES
TO CHRISTIAN SCHOLARSHIP

Xlll

CONTENTS

Foreword 
Introduction  1
The author follows the great critics in appealing
the critical controversy to the jury of plain men. He
writes as one of the jury. v-The trend of modern criti
cism toward destructive conclusions, from Eichhorn
to Wellhausen. ?Perilous reaction in our generation.
""The new views becoming traditional. ~ Signs of this
radical trend. 'The Encyclopaedia Biblica. Cheyne's
" Bible Problems." (intolerant spirit of the negative
school. Examples of this. Its assumptions; its one
sided method; its subjective standards. Examples of
this. Arbitrary dealing with witnesses. The vital
issue in this discussion is the trustworthiness of the
books. Close connection between literary and his
torical criticism. Opinion of Prof. Lotz in confirma
tion. Prof. Kirkpatrick's view revolutionizes concep
tion of Jewish history. The "skeleton" view of
Driver and Ottley. Substantial agreement with Well
hausen. Views of the moderate school tell against
trustworthiness of Old Testament. Real issue be
tween them and Wace and Lotz and Hommel and
Robertson. Dillmann's dissent from Wellhausen.
Dr. Driver's claim of a consensus not established.
Dillmann's true position. Driver and Robertson fun
damentally disagreed. The former's contention shown
to be ill founded. Wellhausen's position: Holds the
Pentateuch unhistorical, and Abraham an artistic

viii CONTENTS PAGE
creation. His view of date and structure of Deute
ronomy; of the Priestly Code. Both considered unhis
torical. In what sense Wellhausen acknowledges
Moses the founder of the Torah. The ancient law, in
his view, not written but oral in form; pentateuchal
legislation codified a thousand years later. The
writers of P completely altered the ancient history.
Men of Ezekiel school wrote a thin, fictitious history.
The Tabernacle, Aaron's consecration, the Day of
Atonement, all fictions. Attempt to show virtual agree
ment between Hommel and Wellhausen; its failure.
Hommel formerly a disciple of Wellhausen. AJso,
Orelli, Klostermann, and others. Margoliouth's posi
tion: His book "Lines of Defence" not contradicted by
his article on "Language." The really vital question
is the trustworthiness of the books as records of the
race and the religion. Dr. Robertson's concession as
to the various editings of the laws. The outlook in
Biblical criticism. Recent reaction from Wellhausen's
views. Opinion of the Dean of Canterbury. Not
committed to all the views of authors quoted. Adolph
Harnack's conclusion that New Testament hterature
is veracious and trustworthy. Same result may be
anticipated for the Old Testament.
Lecture I  37
The Higher Criticism; its ancestry, its history, its
shitting character. Wellhausen's theory; its triumphs.
These Lectures directed against Wellhausen's hypoth
esis; that theory not a finality. The fate of Christian
Baur suggestive of the fate that may overtake Julius
Wellhausen. Is " development hypothesis " philosophi
cally akin to the Tubingen theory ? Opinion of Prof.
Van Oettingen and of Dr. Wright. Dr. Briggs's chal
lenge answered. Real issue between Wellhausen and
Klostermann. Ebb of the wave of historical skepti-

CONTENTS
cism. Middle ground between the traditional view
and the critical view of Wellhausen. Intolerant spirit
of the Wellhausen critics. Modern hypothesis rejected
by many critics. Wellhausen's view of Deuteronomy
contested by Klostermann. Principles and methods
of Higher Criticism accepted. Free investigation of
the Bible. Our debt to the Higher Criticism; but
burden of proof on those who advocate revolutionary
ideas. Attitude of mind in which we should approach
the criticism of the Bible. Opinion of Bishop Stubbs.
Prepossessions behind conclusions of extreme school.
Assumptions against the supernatural and against
prediction of future events. Positions of Kuenen and
Wellhausen and Ernest Renan. Critical questions
settled by a priori assumptions. Scientific accuracy
of criticism disturbed by naturalistic bias. Opinion of
Prof. G. T. Ladd. These Lectures addressed to
Christian students. Our criticism should start from
the basis of the New Testament. Some grievous mis
takes of the modern school of oritics: (1) that the age
of Moses was not a literary age; (2) that Genesis xiv
was unhistorical — the invention of a later age; (3)
that the Cairene Ecclesiasticus was of date B.C. 200,
an error of 1200 years. Judgment of some great
scholars upon the critical scholarship of our day: Prof.
Ramsay, Bishop Lightfoot. Opinion of Prof. Sayce
and Dr. Hommel on the modern theory. Wilhelm
Moller's work. Dr. James Robertson on the modern
critical theory. Opinion of Dr. Klostermann. Dis
agreement among the critics. Dr. Driver's claim for
a consensus. Opinion of Dr. A. B. Bruce in rebuttal.
The "results" lacking in harmony. Examples. The
critics differ on the historicity of the Pentateuch; on
revelation, on origin of the Jewish religion, on the
structure of the Priestly Code. These considerations
free the mind to examine the soundness of alleged

x CONTENTS PAGE
results. Our appeal is to reason against authority.
The warning of Lightfoot.
Lecture H  71
Limitations of my subject: Criticism directed solely
to the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis. Compilation of
Priestly Code from ancient documents not challenged.
Again, the documentary hypothesis is not here chal
lenged, nor the Mosaic authorship insisted upon as
essential. The use of allegory legitimate. View of
Gregory of Nyssa. These questions not involved
in the discussion. Sketch of the analysis of the
Pentateuch enunciated by Graf-Wellhausen school.
Date and structure of J, E, D, and P. Twenty-
six redactors alleged. Impossibility of such a piece
of literary anatomy. Milman's Critique of Ewald.
Enormous antecedent improbability of above analysis.
Illustrated by story of Joseph. Infinitesimally split up
by critics. Literary improbability of theory. Critics
intoxicated by philology. Propositions involved in
the hypothesis: (1) Law later than the Prophets.
(2) Deuteronomy a fiction. (3) Priestly Code post-
exilic. (4) Mosaic theocracy post-exilic. (5) History
reduced to legends. (6) Evolutionary origin of the
religion of Israel. Hypothesis destroys authority of
the Pentateuch and divine origin of Judaism and
trustworthiness of the history. Revelation compro
mised. Wellhausen discredits Jewish history. Pe-
tichism among Israelites. Progressiveness of revela
tion admitted, but reality of revelation maintained.
Wellhausen holds heathen origin of the religion of
Israel. Kuenen's views. Disastrous consequences of
these views. Opinion of Bishop Stubbs. Relation to
the authority of Christ. The Kenosis. Prof. Nosgen's
views. Obligation to adhere to the teaching of Christ.
Views of Dr. Wright. Is the theory established?

CONTENTS xi
PAGE
Weighty adverse opinion of Hommel, Moller, Kloster
mann. Hommel's refutation of Wellhausen under
eight heads. Alleged consensus not justified. Next
consider the merits of the case. Reasons for rejecting
the theory: (1) Based too largely on philology; history
and archaeology not sufficiently regarded. Views of
Dr. Emil Reich and of Dean Milman. (2) Rests on
two doubtful assumptions. Views of Dr. Jacobs and
Canon Rawlinson. (3) Arbitrary methods of this
author. Examples of this. Dr. Driver's criticism ex
hibits same fault. (4) Philology turned against it by
Margoliouth. Outline of his argument. (5) Hommel's
argument from personal names. (6) Contradicted by
the accepted history. Wellhausen's chief argument,
correspondence between law and history, breaks down.
Resume of lecture: The theory lacks the conclusive
proof which the case demands.
Lecture IH ... . . 105
Lines of defense: Historical considerations decisive;
writings of Amos, Hosea, and Ezekiel supply basis for
argument against the modern critical theory; parallel
to the argument for Christianity from undisputed Epis
tles of St. Paul; Amos and Hosea presuppose history
and institutions of the Pentateuch; Hebrew prophets
agree with the Hebrew historians; Amos acquainted
with the Pentateuch; Hosea alludes to written law;
many allusions to the Pentateuch; arguments from
Ezekiel; the critics consider him father of Judaism,
but argument against this conclusive; cannot treat part
of Ezekiel's picture as practical programme and other
part as ideal. Contrast between Ezekiel and the
Priestly Code: They have different theological stand
points; they live in different worlds; accuracy of P
in local references evidence of antiquity; Ezekiel well
acquainted with P. Deuteronomy problem: Origin

PAGE
in reign of Josiah essential to Wellhausen's theory; this
view contested by Klostermann, Hommel, and others;
no consensus; theory based on unproved assumption.
Deuteronomy lost and forgotten in reign of Manasseh:
Inconsistency of advocates of theory; theory destitute
of external support; argument from internal evidence
examined; in conflict with books of Samuel and Kings;
how the critics evade this; their logical inconsistency;
allege that Deuteronomy legislation was never carried
out; Mihnan's answer; Wellhausen's argument from
threefold correspondence of law and history; unsound
ness of argument shown. Argument in favor of early
date of Deuteronomy: Mosaic authorship an open ques
tion; alterations in text; growth of legislation not denied.
Historical truth the essential point; considerations which
sustain that view: (1) recapitulation and codification of
laws natural; (2) traces of Deuteronomy in reign of Hez
ekiah and Amaziah, and in books of Joshua, Amos,
and Hosea and Jeremiah; central sanctuary at Shiloh;
(3) ready acceptance of the book by King and people;
(4) internal evidence of early date; difficulty of simu
lating time and manners of Mosaic age; impossibility
of avoiding anachronisms; Dean Mihnan's opinion; (5)
argument from the Samaritan Pentateuch; (6) other
particulars. Review of argument: Revolutionary change
should be sustained by conclusive proof. Resume of
argument of Lectures: Our view sustained by many
able scholars. Conclusion: Driver's assurance of se
curity of moral and devotional value of Old Testa
ment insufficient; Strauss's similar assurance; critical
opinion grown more destructive; strong current of
belief against divinity of Christ; connection of destruc
tive criticism with this; disintegrating tendency of ad
vanced Higher Criticism; the danger a very real one.
How to meet it.

FOREWORD
I am gratefully sensible of the honour conferred
on me by the President of the Lower House of the
General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal
Church of America in associating my name with
these Lectures; and apart from that honour, it is
a great pleasure to me to express the cordial sym
pathy and the deep conviction with which I concur
in their general argument, and in the motive by
which they are prompted. It ought not to be req
uisite for me to express, in the first place, my entire
acceptance of the duty and the advantage of an
unfettered application to the Holy Scriptures of
the processes of sound criticism, which are, after
all, only the application to the most important of
all subjects of that faculty of reason, which we feel
bound to apply to all other great problems in life.
I fear, indeed, it is sometimes insufficiently borne
in mind that reason has its moral as well as its purely
intellectual function, and that its operations are
sure to be imperfect if either the one or the other
is imperfectly exerted. But no true Christian
scholar can speak or think disrespectfully of criti-

xiv FOREWORD
cism in itself, or can fail to desire its full use in the
study of the Scriptures. It, is however, no dis
paragement to criticism to question the conclusions
of particular critics, and it is this, and this only,
which is done in these Lectures.
Dr. McKim believes, and I cordially agree with
him, that the alleged results of the current criticism
of the Old Testament, as put forward by the school
which has of late been predominant, are in certain
cardinal points unsound, and, as an inevitable con
sequence, injurious to the Christian Faith. It is
not to the purely literary analysis of the Penta
teuch, and other works of the Old Testament, that
our chief exception is taken — though, for my own
part, I think that this analysis has gone far to refute
itself by the excessive elaboration to which it has
found itself driven. Our main objection is to the
conclusions deduced by many critics as to the un
historical and untrustworthy character of the Old
Testament narratives. We are plainly told that
the Patriarchal narratives are not "historical," or,
in other words, that we cannot rely upon the revela
tions recorded as made to the Patriarchs having
been really made. One momentous book, that of
Deuteronomy, purports to record exhortations and
laws solemnly given by God through Moses; and
we are told, not only that they were never really
so given, but that they convey a materially erroneous

FOREWORD xv
account of the work of Moses, and attribute to him
directions which he never gave. On the whole it is
represented that the general account of the history
which is conveyed by the plain statements of the
Pentateuch, and which has been consistently be
lieved by the Jewish nation from at least the time
of Ezra, is gravely erroneous, and we are told by
one of the most moderate representatives of this
school in England, that our ideas on the subject
must be " revolutionized."
What constitutes the gravity of such conclusions
in relation to the Christian faith is that the tra
ditional belief thus rejected was beyond question
that of the first preachers of the Gospel, of St. Peter,
St. Paul, and St. Stephen, not to mention the most
Sacred Name. To myself, it appears that, apart
from all dogmatic considerations, this fact alone
is sufficient, on mere historical grounds, to show
the unsoundness of the current critical views. The
distance from the time of our Lord and the Apostles
to the time of Solomon is about the same as the dis
tance from our own day to the century preceding
the Norman conquest; and we may judge from
that comparison of the probability that the whole
Jewish nation, their learned class and the people
at large, should, without an apparent exception,
have entertained radically erroneous ideas as to the
course which their history had pursued. That a

xvi FOREWORD
whole nation should thus be mistaken, not as to the
details, but as to the substance, of its history, would
seem inconceivable, especially as no one doubts
that written records were in use during the whole
of the period in question. But how the unreserved
acceptance of such error, and unqualified reliance
upon it in argument, would be consistent with the
character of inspiration in apostolic men would
appear at least equally perplexing.
Of course if the new views were proved, we should
have to accommodate ourselves to them, at the cost
of the reconstruction of our faith in vital points.
But it seems to me sufficiently shown in these Lec
tures that the views have not been proved, that the
arguments on which they rest are defective in prin
ciple, and on broad issues, and not merely in detail,
that critics of the first authority, and in increasing
number, reject them, and that those who accept
them are divided on points of cardinal importance.
German critics of the highest ability, and even
genius, led a whole generation astray in the criti
cism of the New Testament, and there seems no
presumption in deeming it possible that critics of
similar learning and genius may have led the next
generation astray on the Old Testament. An
impartial reader of Dr. McKim's argument will,
I think, arrive at a conclusion respecting the tra
ditional history of the Jewish nation similar to that

FOREWORD xvii
which Bishop Butler was modestly content to estab
lish respecting the Christian Revelation : — " that
it is not, however, so clear a case that there is noth
ing in it. There is, I think, strong evidence of its
truth; but it is certain no one can, upon principles
of reason, be satisfied of the contrary."
Henry Wace.
The Deanery, Canterbury.
April, 1906.

INTRODUCTION

"I plead for a criticism of a saner sort."
Prof. Jas. Robertson, D.D.
"There is a criticism which is the very wantonness of experi
mental curiosity." Bishop Stubbs.
"A sober observer cannot but conceive the greatest possible
mistrust of the so-called assured results hitherto reached by the
criticism of the Pentateuch." Dr. Fritz Hommel.
"Let it be distinctly stated that the true point in dispute is the
supernatural origin of the Law. Under the disguise of a purely
hterary investigation, an attack is really made upon the Divine
origin of the religious dispensation which was to be ' a schoolmaster
to lead us tojChjist.'" Dr. Alfred Cave.
"The Spirit of Truth cannot take into His service hterary
fictions which trifle with the law and the sense of truth."
Canon Liddon.
"The real enemies and ultimate levellers of this so-called
Higher Criticism are they of its own household. . . . Expert is
ranged against expert; theory is displaced by theory; hypothesis
by hypothesis." Bishop Ellicott.

INTRODUCTION
When one who is neither an orientalist, nor a
Hebraist, nor an archaeologist, nor an expert in
literary analysis, undertakes to discuss the results
of the Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch, it is
natural that he should be met with the reminder, —
"Shoemaker, stick to your last!" I acknowledge
myself entirely open to such a criticism in taking
up my pen on this subject; but I ask my critics on
the threshold to remember that both Wellhausen,
the oracle, and Robertson Smith, his interpreter,
nearly a generation ago undertook to appeal their
cause from the court of the orientalist, the linguist,
and the expert scholar, to the forum of opinion over
which common sense presides. The " Prologomena "
of the former addresses itself to "the mass of Bible
readers." The argument is declared to be "within
the scope of any one who reads the English Bible
carefully, and is able to think clearly."
A similar view has been recently expressed by an
eminent scholar in relation to the most burning of
New Testament problems. "The only thing to be

4 THE PENTATEUCH
done," he says, " is for each of us to state his view
of the case as he sees it, and to appeal to the public,
to the jury of plain men, ... to decide between the
competing theories." 1
Now it is customary for jurymen, before rendering
their verdict, to discuss the question at issue, and
to give each his opinion of the arguments of the
advocates in the case. It is this which I have
undertaken to do. In the Lectures which follow
I am speaking as one of the jury, not as one of the
counsel. I give my judgment upon the arguments
of the expert, hoping that my view of their respec
tive merits will commend itself to my fellow jury
men, who must in the last resort pronounce the
verdict. It may not be amiss to say that I have been in
fluenced to undertake these Lectures by observing
the trend of modern criticism to more and more
radical and destructive views. An eminent scholar,
surveying the field of criticism forty years ago, could
say that "most of the boldest writers, Eichhorn,
De Wette, Ewald, Bunsen, Bleek, admit that it [the
Law] is of the age, if not from the lips or the pen of
Moses; that it existed in its primitive form and
words, and, with some of the poems and other
historical passages, was among the materials worked
iRev. Wm. Sanday, D.D., "The Criticism of the Fourth
Gospel."

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 5
up at a later date by the compilers or authors of
the present books of Moses." 1 Within ten or
twelve years after these words were written, Well
hausen came forward with his elaborate theory
based upon the denial that the books of the Law
were of Mosaic origin, refusing to concede even the
Decalogue to the authorship of the man whom the
Hebrews have ever reverenced as their lawgiver.
This able, ingenious, and profoundly learned critic
differs from Ewald as much in the spirit in which
he treats the Hebrew Scriptures as in the conclu
sions which he reaches. The devoutness, the rever
ence, the religious depth of the earlier scholar is
painfully lacking in the later.2 His views are (nat
urally, if not necessarily) destructive not only of
the antiquity of the books, but of the reliability of
the early history of the Jews. Indeed, we have the
authority of one of the most distinguished of living
scholars for saying that " it is only since Wellhausen
that theory in regard to the events of sacred history
has assumed a shape which is diametrically opposed
to Biblical tradition, and especially to the narrative
1 Mihnan's History of the Jews, 4th Edition, Vol. I, Bk. HI,
p. 177.2 Compare Ewald's 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 contempt
uous rejection of the Old Testament, if not of the New." —
Quoted by Prof. Body, Permanent Value of Genesis, p. 58.

6 THE PENTATEUCH
parts of the Priestly Code." * We have seen, in fact,
in our generation a sharp and perilous reaction from
the traditional view of the Scriptures. " On matters
of Biblical criticism," says a recent writer, "the
pendulum has unduly swung from the standpoint
of a narrow traditionalism towards that of an exces
sive toleration. The most destructive critics are
now welcomed as fellow-workers in the path of
progress, while there is a disposition to regard all
conservative critics as more or less obstructives.2"
The new views, meanwhile, are crystalizing into a
tradition of scholarship, and are accepted by large
numbers, especially of the younger students, without
thorough examination, in obedience to the authority
of the guild of scholars, rather than in obedience to
reason. One hears from the pulpit and the platform,
admissions that many of the Old Testament narra
tives are not historical but legendary, or fabulous.
The appeal of Christ and his apostles to the Law
and to the Prophets, as the test and touchstone of
truth, is disallowed by not a few who to-day
preach in his name. Mothers are counseled by
clergymen not to read the Old Testament to their
children. It is debated in Church papers whether
the histories of the Hebrew Scriptures should
be taught to the children of the Church. And
» Hommel, " The Ancient Hebrew Tradition," p. 13.
2 Dr. W. H. Wright's Introduction, p. 6.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 7
Diocesan Sunday-school Committees recommend for
study in our Bible classes, histories and introductions
written by disciples of the Wellhausen school.
One of the most noteworthy signs of the radical
trend of modern criticism is the issuance of a great
Biblical Encyclopaedia in recent years, in which we
find not only the most extreme views of the structure
and character of the Holy Scriptures, but also elabo
rate articles assailing some of the fundamental
articles of the Christian faith. The editor of this
monumental product of the negative and subjective
criticism has recently published a volume ("Bible
Problems") in which he denies that there is a shred
of evidence for the Resurrection of Christ, and
elaborately argues that the story of the Resurrection
is due to the incorporation into the Christian gospel
of the ancient resurrection myths — as of the Baby
lonian Sun-god, the Egyptian Osiris, and the Phoe
nician Adonis.1
I have in one of my Lectures directed attention
to the spirit which unfortunately tinges much of
the literature of the modern critical school. To
characterize it as overbearing and intolerant may
seem harsh, but I fear the facts fully justify such
a description. One observes a scarcely veiled con
tempt for any scholar who undertakes to defend a
1 Cf. Article on "The Narratives of the Resurrection," Con
temporary Review, Nov. 1905.

8 THE PENTATEUCH
conservative position on the critical questions at
issue. It is assumed that such writers are obscu
rantists — that they resist the application of modern
scholarship to Biblical investigation — that their
conclusions are predetermined by the inexorable
demands of orthodoxy. Dr. Sanday has recently
given us an example of this in connection with a
great New Testament problem. He quotes the
following from Dr. Cheyne:
" Apologetic considerations are brought in to limit
our freedom. The Fourth Gospel must be the work
of the Apostle John, and must be in the main
historical, because the inherited orthodoxy requires
it." To this Dr. Sanday replies:
"Does he really think that 'the inherited ortho
doxy ' is nothing better than a taskmaster that stands
over us with a whip to keep us from straying? Is
that his view of the divine meaning in the history
and development of nineteen centuries ? " *
Even Dr. Driver descends to this style of argu
ment. In his "Introduction" (p. 14) he says of
certain conclusions, "They are only opposed in the
present instance by some theologians because they
are supposed to conflict with the requirements
of the Christian faith."
Another characteristic of the method of argument
1 " The Criticism of the Fourth Gospel," Preface, p. 10.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 9
too often employed by the negative critics is brought
out by the same able scholar. Commenting on the
"critical assumptions" of the school which denies
the authenticity and authority of the Fourth Gospel,
he says:
" In the eyes of the school to which Dr. Schmiedel
belongs, I will not say exactly that all the data of
which they approve are certain, but they are treated
very much as if they were; in building up an argu
ment upon them, possibilities easily and imper
ceptibly glide into probabilities, and probabilities
into certainties." '
This pungent criticism is the more noteworthy
because it proceeds from a writer of such character
istically eirenic spirit as Dr. Sanday. His words
are, I think, just as true, mutatis mutandis, of much
of the reasoning of Old Testament critics of the
Wellhausen school.
To yet one more feature of the method pursued
by many of the leading critics, attention should be
called : I mean the practice of discrediting the sources
whence the materials of the history are drawn, when
they conflict with the theory which the critic seeks
to establish. The records are appealed to as wit
nesses to establish the theory, but their veracity is
impugned when the testimony is damaging to the
theory! The inconvenient passages are set down
1 "The Criticism of the Fourth Gospel," Preface, p. 38.

10 THE PENTATEUCH
as "late insertions," or "palpable glosses," etc.
This method is described by one of our ablest and
most candid and fair-minded scholars in the following
caustic passage ' :
"On what authority are these 'insertions' to be
removed? By what guide are we to adjust the
prophetic misapprehensions ? The only fixed thing
perceivable is the theory itself; the only standard is
'strike out' or 'I consider.' For the rest, what
may be called by admirers a delicate process of
criticism may appear to others uncommonly like a
piece of literary thimble-rigging.
"You come upon the critic suddenly when he
professes to be engaged in one of these delicate
processes of criticism, and you find him slipping his
subjective scale up his sleeve. The passages which
disturb a pet theory are declared to disturb the
connection. "We have, in fact, no contemporary documents
until the critic has adjusted them, and the theory
ultimately is appealed to in confirmation of it
self." Here is an instance of this method : The books of
Samuel contain a plain reference to Levites and
Levitical cities. But this is in conflict with Well
hausen's theory of the post-exilic origin of these.
Accordingly he declares, oracularly, "There is not
1 Prof. Robertson in his "Early Religion of Israel."

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 11
a word of truth in the whole story — it is a gloss
by a later editor!"
Compare the following from the new edition of
"The Cyclopedic Handbook of the Bible," by Dr.
Angus and Dr. Green:
" When the facts are against the theory, the facts
have to be altered that the theory may stand! Not
once or twice merely Elohim is found where the
hypothesis demands Jehovah, and the converse: the
critic's inference being that the text is corrupt or
that the redactor has thrown it into confusion, etc."
(p. 399).
"Nothing," writes Prof. C. Von Ovelli, "is more
astonishing to me than the readiness with which even
diligent explorers in the field attach themselves to the
dominant theory, and repeat the most rash hypotheses
as if they were part of an unquestioned creed." l
I would like here to emphasize what I have stated
in the text of the Lectures which follow, that the
vital issue in this discussion is not the authorship,
or the date, or even the structure of the sacred
books, but their trustworthiness as historic records
— as the records of God's older revelation. It is
because the critical theories now in the ascendant
are fatal to the trustworthiness of the Scriptures
that I feel moved to show the inconclusiveness of
1 Introduction to Moller's book, "Are the Critics Right?"

12 THE PENTATEUCH
the arguments by which they are sustained.1 Dr.
Driver, indeed, insists that the Higher Criticism is
concerned only with questions of the date, and
authorship, and structure of the documents, and
has nothing to do with historical conclusions. He
says that Wellhausen's view of the date of the
Priestly Code has no necessary connection with his
view of the early stages of Israel's religious history.
But certainly there is a natural, in some cases even
a necessary, connection between literary criticism
and historical criticism. The trustworthiness of the
record cannot but depend upon its antiquity. Note
also that Wellhausen's chief argument for his theory
is the threefold correspondence between Law and
History. How then can it be maintained that the
Higher Criticism has nothing to do with historical
conclusions? That the theory of Wellhausen
has disintegrated the confidence of those who have
embraced it in the trustworthiness of the Hebrew
records is undeniable. Thus, Dr. Lotz, Professor
of Theology in the University of Erlangen, in his
recent work, " Das Alte Testament und die Wissen-
schaft," 1905, p. 22, says: "The newer criticism
1 Compare the judgment of Prof. Jas. Robertson: "The
hypothesis of Graf carries with it the assumption that the narra
tives accompanying the laws of the Pentateuch are not history
in the proper sense of the word at all, but the product of late
imaginative writers, and, in short, fictitious." — Early Religion
oj Israel, p. 466.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 13
pronounces the whole representation of Old Testa
ment history as we read it in the Bible, and as
Jesus read it and acknowledged it to be, false." He
further says that one of the chief points of the new
view is that "Israel, previous to the discovery of
Deuteronomy, possessed no written torah . . . except
certain collections of judicial decisions." "The law
of ceremonial worship was first produced in the
time of the Exile, and after." x
Even the moderate wing of the Wellhausen school,
of which Dr. Driver and Dr. Kirkpatrick are illus
trious representatives, is justly liable to the charge
of denying the trustworthiness of the Hebrew
records. Asserting, as these writers do, the inde
pendence of the literary problem and the historical
problem, yet their recent essays on the "Higher
Criticism" concern themselves prominently with
historical conclusions, thereby illustrating the fact
that the two classes of problems are inextricably
interwoven, indeed often mutually dependent.
Prof. Kirkpatrick tells us in his recent "Church
Congress" paper that "historical criticism affirms
that much of the history has been colored by the
beliefs and practices of the times in which the books
were compiled, long after the events, and must be
regarded as rather an ideal than an actual picture
of the national life. It bids us, to a great extent,
1 1 owe these quotations from Lotz to the Dean of Canterbury.

14 THE PENTATEUCH
revolutionize our views of the course of the history of
Israel."1 Dr. Driver says, "We are not reading
literal history, but history that has been idealized . . .
or transformed." Now I have no wish to impute
to these eminent scholars responsibility for all the
destructive conclusions of Wellhausen. I recognize
gladly their devout and reverent spirit, and their
earnest effort to retain their hold upon the divine
revelation of the Old Testament. But their position
appears to me illogical. Having conceded so much
to the views of their master, it is not easy to see why
they do not concede more, and I think it very un
likely that the majority of those who accept their
guidance will stop where they have stopped, on the
slippery path that leads to the rejection of the author
ity and inspiration of the Old Testament Scriptures.
Wellhausen himself admits that "Moses was the
founder of the torah, — that there is a certain Mosaic
root to the Mosaic law as we now have it." Yet
how thoroughly did he discredit the trustworthiness
of the record! Dr. Driver, Dr. Kirkpatrick, and
Prof. Ottley hold what has been called the skeleton
view. In their opinion the patriarchal histories
were not written for hundreds of years after the
events. Nothing but a skeleton of tradition could
have come down to the writers, and consequently
they must be supposed to have clothed them with
1 The italics are mine.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 15
a moral and religious vesture of their own times.
In other words, oral traditions furnished the skeleton,
and out of these the pattern figures of the patriarchs
were created. The statement of the Dean of Can
terbury seems amply justified, "that the general
view of the history that is associated with the school
of Wellhausen is treated by these writers as having
been established." Thus we must suppose "the
Jews of the time of Ezra accepted a view of their
national history which was a revolutionary misrep
resentation of the facts." Dr. Driver has recently
declared that he does not hold to the revolutionizing
of the main outlines of Israelitish history. And
yet, in his article on " Jacob," in Hastings's Diction
ary of the Bible, he says that "the primary canon
of sound historical criticism" is "that only narra
tives contemporary, or nearly so, with the events
narrated, . . . can claim such a character" (of
literal exactness). "The basis of the narratives in
Genesis is, in fact, popular oral tradition; and that
being so, we may expect them to display the char
acteristics which popular oral tradition does in other
cases." " Wellhausen may be wrong in not allowing
a more historical sub-stratum of the patriarchal
narratives, but his general characterization of them
is just." And what is his characterization ? Why,
he holds the entire Pentateuch not historical but
legendary!

16 THE PENTATEUCH
It is clear, then, I think, that while moderate
critics like Driver and Ottley and Kirkpatrick can
not fairly be charged with the more extreme con
clusions of Wellhausen, they do, nevertheless, belong
to the Wellhausen school, and their influence must
be held to tell, on the whole, for the disintegration
of our confidence in the trustworthiness of the Old
Testament Scriptures. One sees a fundamental
antithesis between the positions of these critics and
those of such scholars as Prof. Sayce, Prof. Hommel,
Prof. Robertson, Prof. Orr, Dr. Lotz, and Dr.
Wace, the Dean of Canterbury. Yet these scholars
are prepared to concede much on questions of purely
literary criticism. Thus Prof. Sayce admits that
the critics may be right in affirming the late com
pilation of Deuteronomy and of the Priestly Code.
Prof. Robertson concedes the possibility of the late
compilation of Deuteronomy, and Dr. Wace re
marks that "we must allow great scope to literary
criticism in books which have come to us from such
remote antiquity, and from the manuscripts of such
late date." Yet these scholars stand in acute antag
onism, not only to the extreme views of the Well
hausen school, but to the moderate wing as well.
What, then, is the real fundamental issue at stake
between these opposing groups of scholars? It is
not that the one group accepts the principles of the
Higher Criticism, and the other does not. In other

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 17
words, it is not literary criticism, as such, that divides
them, but it is the conclusions of literary criticism
which are associated with the name of Wellhausen,
and which are fatal to the historical trustworthiness
of the books of the Pentateuch. Their criticism
demands, as Prof. Kirkpatrick confesses, that "we
should, to a great extent, revolutionize our views
of the course of the history of Israel." The other
group of scholars, -while conceding the possibility
of the late compilation of these books, maintain
that they rest, not upon ancient oral tradition, but
upon ancient documents contemporaneous with the
events described.
If any confirmation of the correctness of the above
statement were needed, it is found in the controversy
waged in the columns of the Record for several
months last autumn, between Dr. Driver and his
friends on the one hand, and Dr. Wace on the other.
That correspondence furnishes incidentally a strong
confirmation of the position which I have taken in
these Lectures, namely, that there is no consensus
of opinion among the critics themselves upon the
matters at issue. Dr. Driver, who has gone so far
as to declare that it is a suppressio veri to
deny that the critics are agreed, asserting that on
all essential points they are at one — himself fur
nishes incidentally a refutation of his own position.
He expresses great admiration of the scholarship of

18 THE PENTATEUCH
Dillmann, yet he acknowledges that Dillmann differs
from Wellhausen respecting the date and structure
of the Priestly Code. Now precisely that is the
distinctive feature of Wellhausen's theory. His
views upon that point revolutionize the whole atti
tude of the critics who accept his leadership. How,
then, can Dr. Driver claim a consensus of the critics
on all essential points, when so great a critic as
Dillmann, and many who follow his leadership,
absolutely reject Wellhausen's view upon that point ?
As the Dean of Canterbury writes, the significance
of Dillmann's position lies in the fact that, though
he accepted the chief results of the literary criticism
of the Pentateuch, he formally, and even indignantly,
denied the conclusions which are based on it by the
historical criticism of the school of Wellhausen.
The fact is notorious enough for the writers of the
article on the Tabernacle, in Hastings's Dictionary
(Vol. IV, p. 64), to speak of "so strenuous an
opponent of the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis as
August Dillmann." The Dean quotes Dillmann's
own statement that "The Vatke-Kuenen Wellhau
sen view is, according to my conviction, wholly
inconsistent with the statements of the Old Testa
ment." Again, in reference to the same view, Dill
mann says, "As to the internal contradictions and
impossibilities of this theory, compare the work of
James Robertson, of Glasgow, ' The Early Religion

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 19
of Israel as Set Forth by Biblical Writers and by
Modern Historians,' a book which is, no doubt,
written on somewhat broad lines, but which hits
the nail on the head."
Notwithstanding these clear utterances of Dill
mann himself, Dr. Driver will have it that the
difference between Dillmann and Wellhausen is not
vital. He is so firmly resolved that the critics shall
be agreed "on all essential points," that he ignores
the most pronounced differences between them. It
must, indeed, be considered a remarkable fact that
so great a scholar as Dr. Driver should contend
almost with vehemence that it is a suppression of
the truth to deny the consensus of the critics on all
essential points, when such critics as Dillmann, and
Klostermann, and Hommel, and Dr. James Robert
son, and Dr. Lotz, and Dr. Hermann Strack
(Professor of Theology at Berlin) and Prof. Van
Oettingen (to mention no more), stand in distinct
opposition to Wellhausen and his school, both as to
the literary and the historical criticism of the Penta
teuch. And I think the fact must seriously impair
our confidence in the judgment, if not the accuracy,
of the scholar who maintains such a paradox. The
distinguished professor has given us recently
another example of this infirmity of a noble mind.
In the columns of The Guardian he calls attention
to Prof. James Robertson's expressed "approval"

20 THE PENTATEUCH
"of the line" taken by him (Dr. Driver) in his
"Introduction." He insists, too, that Dr. Robert
son's commendation of his book is " without reserve."
Now it is very true that Prof. Robertson commends
Dr. Driver's "fairness in the treatment of details,"
and his "cautious reserve in face of doubtful or
conflicting evidence." He notes also, "with no
little satisfaction," indications that "he holds much
more moderate views than those of the prevailing
school of critics" (p. xi). But, having said this,
Dr. Robertson clearly intimates his decided dissatis
faction with Dr. Driver's position on some very
vital points. He regrets that that scholar does not
"accentuate the difference," which he hopes really
exists, between himself and Wellhausen, as Konig
has done. Perhaps there was a good reason why
Dr. Driver did not accentuate that difference, namely,
because the difference was not fundamental. We
have seen that he holds Wellhausen's general
position to be correct.
Prof. Robertson differs from Driver in maintaining
the topographical accuracy of the Old Testament
(p. xii), surely a very important particular bearing
on its trustworthiness. But his chief difference with
him — and it is an acute difference — touches " the
relation of modern criticism of the Old Testament
to the authority of the New Testament, and to the
subject of inspiration." He demands of Dr. Driver

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 21
whether Christianity would have equal value to us
if Abraham be " a free creation of unconscious art,"
and a great part of the Pentateuchal narrative " the
fruit solely of late Jewish fancy." And he finds
Dr. Driver's reply "altogether inadequate." The
assurance that "criticism in the hands of Christian
scholars does not banish or destroy the inspiration
of the Old Testament — it presupposes it," does
not satisfy this profoundly reverent and earnest
scholar. He wants to know what Dr. Driver means
by inspiration. He is distrustful of his attitude on
this point, and desires to be informed wherein his
position differs from that of critics who profess no
such reverence for the Old Testament.
That the attitude of these two scholars on the
question of the general trustworthiness of the Old
Testament history is sharply contrasted cannot be
doubted for a moment by careful readers of their
works. As to Wellhausen, the one is in full agree
ment with his general position, though differing on
some points, while the other writes an elaborate
work in refutation of his views.
Exception has been taken to the representation
given in the following Lectures of the position of
Wellhausen in several particulars. Let a word be
said here, then, on that subject. In his " History of
Israel" (pp. 3, 4) the great German critic tells us

22 THE PENTATEUCH
how he eagerly embraced the hypothesis of Graf,
"who placed the Law later than the Prophets."
This, indeed, is the fundamental feature of his
system, and is generally recognized as such. That
Wellhausen held to the unhistorical character of
the Pentateuch is also, I think, generally conceded
by students of his works. In his " Prologomena "
(p. 320), he says, "In the patriarchal legend, the
ethnographic element is always predominant," and
. again (p. 327), the legend itself, for the most part,
is "the product of a countless number of narra
tives unconsciously modifying each other's work."
He finds a difficulty in classifying Abraham, since
he does not bear the name of a tribe, but he is
quite sure he is not an historical character — no,
but "a pure creation of unconscious art" (p. 320).
His view of the origin of Deuteronomy, that it
was produced in the reign of Josiah, and that it was
designed by its author, or authors, to be the basis,
and to furnish the programme, of that monarch's
reformation, does unquestionably destroy its his
torical character. Dr. Driver, indeed, objects to
calling the book "a pious fraud," but if the situa
tions it describes never existed, if the speeches it
contains were never delivered (even in substance),
and if the legislation it ascribes to Moses was not
actually promulgated by him (again even in sub
stance) — and this I understand to be Wellhausen's

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 23
view — then what was it but an invention for pious
purposes, a fiction designed to produce a desired
religious result ? Dr. Hommel, once his enthusiastic
disciple, so understands the matter. He denomi
nates it as, on his view, " a forgery on a grand
scale." As to the Priestly Code, I have said that Well
hausen regards it as " a work of the imagination of
the priestly school in the time of Ezra," and I am
sustained by so able and candid a specialist as
Dr. James Robertson, who characterizes the sup
posed work of the Ezra school as "a wholesale
manufacturing of incidents and situations." Again
he says, "It amounts to an ascription of fiction, if
not fraud, to the writers" ("Early Religion of
Israel," pp. 419, 420). This statement is particu
larly noteworthy in view of the fact that its author
accepts the composite character of the Pentateuch,
and holds that " The Biblical theory of the history
is not inconsistent with the supposition of a late
date for the book of Deuteronomy." However,
Wellhausen's denial that there ever was a Taber
nacle in the Wilderness, or a Day of Atonement
appointed there, or for ages after, coupled with his
declaration that the writers of these books "com-
jpletely altered the ancient history," is sufficient
(proof of what his real view was.
But we are told that Wellhausen holds that

24 THE PENTATEUCH
" Moses was the founder of the Torah " (the Law).
But we ask, in what sense and to what extent?
Let us listen to his own account of the matter:
'" Moses may have been the founder of the Torah,
though the Pentateuchal legislation was codified
almost a thousand years later; for the Torah was
originally not a written Law but the oral decisions
of the priests at the sanctuary — case-law in short.
. . . But while it was only at a late date that the
ritual appeared as Torah, as it does in the Priestly
Code, its usages and traditions are exceedingly
ancient, going back, in fact, to pre-Mosaic and
heathenish times. It is absurd to speak as if Graf's
hypothesis meant that the whole ritual is the inven
tion of the Priestly Code, first put into practice
after the exile; all that is affirmed by the advocates
of that hypothesis is that in earlier times the ritual
was not the substructure of an hierocracy, that there
was, in fact, no hierocracy before the Exile, but that
Jehovah's sovereignty was an ideal thing, and not
visibly embodied in an organization of the com
monwealth under the forms of a specifically spiritual
power." 1
In this passage it is to be noted that the laws
codified a thousand years after Moses were, in
Wellhausen's opinion, not written but oral; also,
that the usages and traditions of the Priestly Code
•Art. "Pentateuch," Encyc. Britt., p. 513.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 25
go back even of Moses, and have a heathenish
origin; and that there was no Jewish hierocracy or
priesthood before the Exile. Then we must recall
another statement of Wellhausen, that "No trace
can be found (before the Exile) of acquaintance with
the so-called Mosaic Law" (the Priestly Code).
Add to this his declaration that the Pentateuch is
not historical but legendary; that Moses is not the
author of the Decalogue; and that the writers of
P " completely altered the ancient history," " idealiz
ing the past to their hearts' content " — and it
must become clear that what Moses contributed
to the Law as we now have it was, in his view, a
very slender and attenuated root indeed! Accord
ing to him, the priestly school of Ezekiel "wrote
a thin, fictitious history complementary to the
legend which JE had already written hundreds of
years after the events." They further embellished
their record with "the fruit of late Jewish fancy"
— the fiction of the Tabernacle, the fiction of
Aaron's consecration to the priesthood, the fiction
of the Day of Atonement. 1
One of my critics 2 has made an elaborate attempt
to show that Hommel, Margoliouth, and Sayce
are very doubtful allies for one who holds my views.
1 "Prologomena," p. 348, quoted by E. E. Spencer.
2 See the Churchman, Dec. 9, 1905.

26 THE PENTATEUCH
Quite true, if his representation of their position
were correct.
But let us see. We are assured by this writer
that Dr. Fritz Hommel's position is " little removed
from Wellhausen's," because he places the compila
tion or redaction of the original documents of parts
of the Pentateuch in the time of the Kings, while
Wellhausen places it in the time of Ezra. But the
point is that the latter holds the Priestly Code, and
Deuteronomy too, to be chiefly a work of the
imagination, while Hommel holds the documents
"are based on a trustworthy Mosaic tradition."
Wellhausen says of the men who "produced" that
Code, that they made " an artificial and ideal repris-
tination." Dr. Hommel says the Priestly Code is
"notoriously regarded by the Wellhausen school as
a post-exilic forgery." And Wellhausen himself
says, in his article, "Pentateuch" (Encyc. Brit., p.
512), "The substance of the Pentateuch is not
historical, but legendary." It is true Hommel does
not affirm the Mosaic authorship of the Penta
teuch; neither do I: I hold it an open question. It
is true, also, that he admits several sources in the
Pentateuch — a position which I do not contest.
But Hommel differs toto caelo from Wellhausen on
the really vital parts of his theory, as any one who
will read his " Ancient Hebrew Tradition " will see
in places too numerous to cite. He speaks of the

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 27
"ingenious but misleading arguments" of Well
hausen in allotting "the different sources to various
dates ... all distant from the time of Moses"
(p. 13). The purpose of his book is to show that
" the traditions concerning the early history of Israel
. . . contain a whole host of records, the antiquity
and genuineness of which are vouched for by external
evidence" (p. 25). Again, "Wellhausen bases one
of the main pillars of his system " on " the assump
tion " that Deuteronomy first came into existence in
the latter half of the seventh century b.c"; but this,
he says, "we have no right to assume" (p. 10).
On the contrary, " Deuteronomy must have been in
existence at least long before Hosea" (p. 11). Again,
" To assume that the inconsistencies — which are
often enough merely superficial — between the
Priestly Code and the state of affairs in the time
of the Judges afford sufficient reason for proclaiming
the whole Priestly Code a post-exilic fabrication,"
involves "a monstrous falsification of tradition"
(p. 17). Yet again, "Only since Wellhausen a
theory in regard to the events of sacred history has
assumed a shape which is diametrically opposed to
Biblical tradition" (p. 13). Yet again, "It is un
questionable that the higher critics have gone
virtually bankrupt in their attempt to unravel . . .
the web in which the different sources are entangled "
(p. 18). Finally, "The Graf-Wellhausen theory is

28 THE PENTATEUCH
contradicted in various particulars by evidence of
the most direct kind, which defies contradiction"
(p. 27).
Yet we are assured that Hommel is "in virtual
agreement" with Wellhausen! Strange that Hom
mel himself didn't find it out! Strange he should
have written an elaborate work to show that Well
hausen's theory was untenable! Let me thank my
critic for bringing out the fact that Hommel, who
in 1892 was an enthusiastic adherent of Wellhausen,
saw at length the error of his views and repudiated
his former position in 1897.
Again, this critic has discovered that Prof.
Margoliouth is not an antagonist, but an ally, of
Wellhausen. He quotes from an article in Has
tings's Dictionary a passage which proves to his
satisfaction that the Laudian Professor considers
that Deuteronomy was composed in the reign
of Josiah, and then he gloats over the discovery
of another passage in the same article in which
Margoliouth is supposed to assert that no part
of the Bible is of greater antiquity than 1100 B.C.!
And so he finds that I have cited in support of
my position an author who " sends the Decalogue
flying into the air," and " pulverizes the patriarchal
stories," and, in short, proves to be a more dar
ing and destructive critic than Hermann Gunkel
himself!

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 29
Had my ingenious critic no misgiving when he
wrote these words? Did it not occur to him
that such a discovery was really too good to be
true? Had he not heard echoes of the battle between
this same Professor Margoliouth and Professors
Cheyne and Driver and Dr. Neubauer, of the
Bodleian Library, because of his contention that
"between the date 200 b.c. and the books of the
Old Testament there must lie the deep waters of
the Captivity, the grave of the old Hebrew and the
old Israel, and the womb of the new Hebrew and
the new Israel."
That my critic has completely misunderstood
Margoliouth's meaning can easily be made clear
from one or two passages in his volume entitled,
"Lines of Defense of the Biblical Revelation."
First, as to the date of Deuteronomy: Margoliouth
has an elaborate essay to prove that the Book of
Wisdom is from the hand of Solomon.1 He then
declares (p. 71) that "Wisdom, without question,
contains references not only to Genesis but to
Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy." It follows that
in his opinion Deuteronomy must have existed
before the date of Solomon, which was, say, 1000
B.C. How, then, could he maintain in Hastings's
1 1 give no opinion upon this hypothesis of his. Its soundness
or unsoundness does not affect my argument.

30 THE PENTATEUCH
Dictionary that it had its origin in 621 B.C. ? Sec
ondly, as to the antiquity of the Pentateuch, Mar
goliouth writes (Id. p. 70): "The importance of
this result is that it seriously damages the modern
criticism of the Pentateuch. For that the Penta
teuch known to the author of Wisdom (i.e., Solomon)
was practically the same as our Pentateuch does
not admit of question." Is this a view in harmony
with Wellhausen? Add to this his positive state
ment of his acute difference with the modern school
as to "the date and analysis of the Hebrew docu
ments." (Id. p. 309.) Notice also his sarcastic
reference to "the modern Hebraists who reject
Deuteronomy" (p. 287), and his boast, "We can
walk through the camp of the Biblical critics without
striking a blow" (p. 293). Again he refers to the
"hopeless failure of the Hebraists of our time" to
solve a particular problem, and amimadverts on
their self-contradictions (pp. 294, 295). In another
passage (p. 70) he "doubts whether our critical
instruments are sufficiently powerful to analyze
documents of such remote antiquity"; and again he
says (p. 285), " Therefore the criticism of the Penta
teuch collapses." Would Margoliouth use such
language about the Hebrew documents if they
ascended no higher up the stream of time than
1100 b.c? Credat Judaeus Apella; non ego! And
was he really in " virtual agreement," as this writer

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 31
tells us, with the dominant school of critics, when he so
vehemently declared his acute antagonism to them ?
It is not surprising, I admit, that one who is not
familiar with Margoliouth's book, from which I
have quoted, should have misunderstood the meaning
of his article in Hastings's Dictionary; but it is
simply impossible to interpret him as this critic has
done, with that book of his before us, especially
when one observes that the articles in the book
were contributed to the Expositor in 1900, and the
article in the Dictionary bears the date " 1899."
In the latter he is writing on "Language," and is
considering only the linguistic argument; and in
stating that no verse of the Old Testament can
"probably" be named which is "earlier than 1100
B.C.," he is referring to the existing text, and cannot
be supposed to deny what he has elsewhere so
positively affirmed, that one of the books, or at any
rate, parts of it, existed much earlier. He has in
mind the work of the compilers, not the original
documents. The same is true of his affirmation
that "there seem cogent reasons for assigning the
fifth book of the Pentateuch " to the reign of Josiah.
That statement probably refers to the date when it
assumed its present form — the date of its compila
tion, if you will. My contention, let me repeat, is
not against the composite character of the books of
the Pentateuch, nor against their compilation in

32 THE PENTATEUCH
their present form, at a late date. Those ques
tions are, to my mind, of quite secondary im
portance. But the vital question is, Are they
trustworthy records of the Hebrew race and of
the Hebrew religion ? Dr. Robertson, whose work
on " The Early Religion of Israel " is an elabo
rate and learned argument against the theory of
Wellhausen, as to the books and as to the his
tory (even in its modified form, as stated by Dr.
Briggs), nevertheless holds that " there is nothing to
preclude the supposition of various editings of the
laws at different times, while yet the system, as a
whole, and even the three separate Codes, had a
positive basis in Mosaic legislation" (p. 386).
I conclude, then, that instead of there being
"virtual agreement" between Hommel, Margo
liouth, and Sayce on the one side, and Wellhausen
on the other, there is in reality a bottomless gulf of
difference between them upon the one point which
to me is vital in this discussion, viz., the trust
worthiness of the Hebrew records preserved in the
Pentateuch.1 THE OUTLOOK
What is the outlook in the field of Biblical Criti
cism? Will Wellhausen maintain his supremacy?
'I have not quoted from Sayce — only because everybody
knows his acute opposition to the modern theory.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 33
Will the English critics who, while recoiling from
some of his extreme conclusions, yet on the whole
belong to his school — continue to be dominant in
critical circles, in the mother country and in
America ?
There are good reasons, I think, for anticipating
that this will not be the case. Since 1893 there has
been a noticeable reaction, and it appears to be
gaining in strength and volume year by year. Some
accomplished scholars who ranged themselves then
under the leadership of Wellhausen, forsook his
standard before the close of the century, as I have
pointed out in Lecture I, and recently Prof. H. H.
Kuyper, of the Free University of Amsterdam, has
delivered a University address entitled, "Develop
ment, or Revelation," in which he is reported to
have held that recent archaeological investigation in
Bible lands undermines the whole subjective recon
struction of the Old Testament religion advocated
by the advanced critics. Meanwhile, scholars of
reputation have been coming forward with strong
arguments against the modern view of the Scriptural
history. In addition to those mentioned in the text
of my Lectures I may mention Dr. Baxter, Dr.
Kleinert, Prof. Nosgen, Dr. Hoffman, and more re
cently Dr. Hermann Strack, Professor of Theology
at Berlin, Dr. Lotz, Professor of Theology in the
University of Erlangen, and Prof. Van Oettingen,

34 THE PENTATEUCH
an able Lutheran theologian.1 The older works of
the late Prof. Wm. Henry Green, of Princeton,
ought also to be mentioned. His masterly review
of W. Robertson Smith must be considered by the
candid reader a conclusive refutation of Wellhausen
as interpreted by the Scotch professor. The great
Princeton critic, though dead, yet speaketh, and his
arguments in at least some phases of the great
critical issue will yet prevail. Dr. Fritz Hommel
and Dr. Wace speak with the greatest appreciation
of his ability and of his "relentless logic." He is
quoted with great respect by the editor of the new
edition just published of the Cyclopaedic Handbook
to the Bible.
The Dean of Canterbury expresses the opinion
that "destructive criticism is receiving a real check
in England," and the late Prof. Van Oettingen,
treating of modern criticism under the head of
Inspiration, in his important book on Lutheran
Theology, comes to the same conclusion.2
It may be proper to say here that I by no means
commit myself to all the views of the scholars to
whom I have referred in the following Lectures as
1 1 would also call special attention to the able and compre
hensive work of Prof. Jas. Orr, "The Problem of the Old
Testament," published since these Lectures were delivered. It
is satisfactory to find my chief positions confirmed by so accom
plished a scholar.
2 This fact I owe to the Dean of Canterbury.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 35
allies in refuting the modern theory of the books
and of the history of ancient Israel which is asso
ciated with the name of Julius Wellhausen. Dr.
Hommel, Dr. Dillmann, Dr. Klostermann, Dr.
Margoliouth, and others, may each uphold views on
some points of this discussion to which I could by
no means yield adhesion. The words of Horace
are nowhere more applicable than in the field of
Biblical criticism,
"Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri."
But because one cannot follow subserviently in
the footsteps of any master of criticism, one is not,
for that reason, debarred from citing any competent
scholar who offers sound arguments against a par
ticular view, which one is unable to accept. Because,
for instance, I summon Dillmann as a witness against
the post-exilic date of the Priestly Code, I cannot be
faulted because I do not agree with him on some of
the other critical problems.1
In conclusion I may refer to Adolf Harnack's
famous Preface to his Chronologie der altchristlichen
Literatur, in which, after characterizing our time as
1 "I am not concerned," says Dr. Wace, "to defend all of
Dillmann's opinions, or to maintain his consistency, but at least
he was a great force. He described himself as the 'brakesman'
in German criticism, and by this, says Count Baudissin, he did
not mean that he was merely 'a regulating influence,' but he
believed that 'with recent critics it was a matter of driving to
ruin, and it was against this he wished to guard.'"

36 THE PENTATEUCH
one in which the New Testament writings had been
treated as a tissue of illusions and falsifications, he
declared that, for critical science, that time was
past; that the net result of its investigations was that
the tradition of the Church in regard to the early
Christian literature was in the main reliable; and
that that literature was for the most part veracious
and trustworthy. Such a conclusion as this — that
the critical labors of the latter part of the nineteenth
century have resulted in a definite return to tradi
tion — cannot but raise the question whether a
similar result may not be anticipated as regards
the Old Testament also, and so the next genera
tion of critics may conclude that the most ancient
Hebrew literature, which has so long been treated
by many of the leading critics as a tissue of illusions
and falsifications, is, after all, a veracious and
trustworthy record, according to the tradition of the
Jewish and the Christian churches for two thousand
years and more.
Note. — Reference is made on p. 33 to the recent work of
Dr. Hermann Strack Die Genesis, and to his Einleitung in
das Alte Testament, 1895, in which, for example, after stating
the view of the " Vatke-Wellhausen " school as to the origin of
Deuteronomy, he says " weighty reasons (wichtige Grunde)
speak against this opinion" (p. 57). Both these works are pub
lished in Munich.

LECTURE I

"The Pentateuch accounts for the mighty fabric of the Jewish
faith — without it, the whole system becomes confused and
unintelligible." Dr. Angus.
" Given the existence of the Mosaic institutions, and the history
of Israel is intelligible and consistent. Remove them, and the
history at once becomes a dissolving view: all that we know is
that it is false, and each successive critic has his own peculiar
ideas as to how much is fact and how much fable." J. J. Lias, D.D.
"There are Popes in the Higher Criticism as well as in The
ology." Prop. Sayce.
"Much which in these days passes for 'results of criticism' is,
in tendency, openly destructive, and distinctly rationalistic in
spirit. It disintegrates the Bible, subverts its historical founda
tions, and, in the chaos of conflicting theories, leaves the mind
in utter bewilderment and doubt."
Prop. Jas. Orr, D.D.

LECTURE I
In beginning my lectures on the Higher Criticism
of the Pentateuch, I am reminded that it is just
one hundred years since that great scholar, the
immortal De Wette, as he has been called,1 who
may be considered the direct ancestor of the now
dominant critical theory, published his epoch-
making book, the "Dissertatio Critica." In that
work he maintained, as the Graf-Wellhausen school
does to-day, that Deuteronomy was a composition
struck off in the reign of Josiah, 621 b.c, and that
the Pentateuch contains no history at all but only
legend and poetry. But the ancestry of the preva
lent critical opinions is more remote than this.
1 By Dr. Saml. Davidson, " Introduction to Old Test.," Vol. I,
p. 131, who quotes the following from his pen: " Pentateuchum
non esse a Moses conscriptum, sed seriori tetate ortum, nostris
diebus, postquam tam multum tamque docte atque sagaciter
hac de re disputatum est, neminem adhuc esse puto, qui neget,
prseter eos qui auctoritatis suae magis tuendse causa, quam
veritatis studio ducti, contrariam sententiam defendunt. Neque
tamen satis est negare, Mosem Pentateuchi auctorem esse; res
eo ducenda est, ut statuamus, diversorum auctorum scripta in
eo volumine esse congesta et concinnata." 39

40 THE PENTATEUCH
They must be traced to Baruch Spinoza, the excom
municated Jew, the father of modern Pantheism,
who, as early as 1671, published the opinion that
Ezratj not Moses, was the author of the so-called
"Books of Moses." Some, indeed, find the same
thought in the Apocrypha, 2 Esdras xiv. 21-22,
where Ezra prays, "Lord, . . . thy law is burnt
. . . but if I have found grace before Thee, send
the Holy Ghost into me, and I shall write all that
hath been done in the world since the beginning,
which were written in thy law." It was another
man of Jewish race, though of, Roman Catholic
faith, Jean Astruc, the French physician, who in
1753 gave forth the view that Genesis is a composite
book, made up from two documents, the Elohistic
and the Jehovistic; while the theory that Deuter
onomy was a composition of the reign of Josiah
boasts as its originator the famous Tom Paine,
author of "The Age of Reason."
As we scan the history of the modern science
which Eichhorn christened " The Higher Criticism,"
we are impressed with its changeful, shifting char
acter. School follows school in quick succession.
The " Documentary Hypothesis " is followed by the
"Fragmentary Hypothesis," which is succeeded by
the "Supplementary Hypothesis," and this again
by the "Development Hypothesis." De Wette
reigned supreme "for several decennia." He is,

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 41
however, deposed and the crown passes to Ewald.1
That illustrious scholar is in time discrowned, and
Hupfeldt reigns in his stead (1853), only to be
himself deposed, and the kingdom transferred to
Wellhausen (1878), for whom the way had been
prepared by the Alsatian scholar Reuss 2 (1833),
and his pupil Graf (1868), and by Kuenen the
Dutch theologian (1870).
It is now about a quarter of a century since the
critical theories of Julius Wellhausen were injected
into the mind of the English speaking world, through
the medium of various articles in the ninth edition
of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, by Wellhausen him
self, and by Robertson Smith, his disciple. Within
that period they have come to have an immense
vogue among critical scholars. Indeed his school
is the dominant school among Old Testament
scholars to-day. So confident — not to say arrogant
i "So far," says Dr. Body (i.e., to the time of Hupfeld), "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 historical trustworthiness of the dissected
records . . . and has uniformly assigned priority of date to the
. . . Elohistic documents. . . . The time was now at hand when
both these positions were to be completely abandoned. . . .
The new Pentateuchal controversy begins. Its first postulate is
the complete reversal of the main results of the older criticism
which gave it birth." — The Permanent Value of Genesis, p. 60.
2 Reuss wrote in 1833, but did not publish till 1879, his
"L'Histoire Sainte et La Loi."

42 THE PENTATEUCH
— are his disciples, that they are disposed to
ignore the existence of any other school of criticism,
and to assume that to be a Higher Critic is to be,
ex vi termini, a disciple of Wellhausen. An index
of the dominance of these critical opinions is seen
in the fact that not only are they supreme in the
Encyclopaedia Biblica, edited by Dr. Cheyne, the
mirror of the most extreme and destructive criticism,
but they have also largely controlled the contributors
to the more conservative Biblical Dictionary of Dr.
Hastings, and have made effective lodgment in the
pages of the new Jewish Encyclopaedia, the eleventh
volume of which has just been issued. A well-known
American scholar declares that "the scholarly
world has definitely adopted " the Graf-Wellhausen
analysis of the books and of the legislation : " in the
field of scholarship the question is settled." And
Prof. Kautsch, of Halle, describes the theory of
Wellhausen as "one of the verdicts which no exe-
getical skill can now hope to reverse," while Prof.
Cornhill speaks of the progress of his theory as
" an uninterrupted triumph."
Nevertheless it is my purpose, in these lectures,
to deny that this critical hypothesis of the great
German scholar is a finality, and to give reasons,
which I hope will convince your judgment, that
there are just grounds for this denial. In setting
my hand to such a task I would fain emulate the

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 43
spirit of a great English scholar who in like manner
opposed the conclusions of the famous German
critics of his day, — De Wette, Bleek, Ewald, Bun-
sen. He said of them, "These are men distin
guished by indefatigable research, by vast knowledge
of the Hebrew language and of the cognate tongues,
by seemingly the most sincere and conscientious love
of truth, in some cases ... of the most profound
Christian piety." And then, as to why he opposed
their views, he said, "It is not, I trust, from igno
rance, nor from want of respectful and candid exami
nation ... I trust, too, from no narrow-minded
prejudice, nor from superstitious reverence for ancient
opinions, nor from any religious timidity." 1 What
that illustrious historian felt then, I feel to-day.
Only it is not so much my own arguments upon
which I rely, as the arguments of scholars of great
ability, who have convinced me that many of the
alleged " results " which Wellhausen and his school
have reached, rest upon a very insecure foundation,
and will not stand as "finalities of scholarship."
Experience does not justify us in concluding that
Right and Truth are always on the side of the
heaviest battalions of scholarship. Wellhausen him
self points out that " for several decennia all who were
open to critical ideas at all stood under De Wette's
» Dean Mihnan, " History of the Jews," Vol. I, p. 177, note.
(4th Edition, 1866.)

44 THE PENTATEUCH
influence " 1 — yet the reaction came and that great
scholar's influence waned and sank. Who shall say
that a similar fate does not await Wellhausen him
self ? He has been supreme "for several decennia,"
but there are not lacking signs of his eclipse.
Some years ago I took up a volume of Essays
published by John Fiske in 1876.2 In that volume,
side by side with his beautiful and inspiring discus
sion of Immortality, I found an essay upon "The
Jesus of History," which I confess was to me any
thing but "inspiring." That essay began by de
claring the writer's acceptance of the "results"
reached by the Tubingen school, as a finality of
scholarship — as furnishing the basis and starting-
point for a study of the life and work of Jesus of
Nazareth. I need not remind you how grave was
Mr. Fiske's mistake in building upon such a foun
dation. The then triumphant Tubingen theory has
been completely discredited, and its epitaph tersely
written in the words " Tubingen fuit I " Is it pre
sumptuous to suggest that the fate that befell
Christian Baur may yet overtake Julius Wellhausen ?3
» Art. "Pentateuch," Encyc. Brit., p. 505.
2 "The Unseen World."
3 The Dean of Canterbury, in a recent letter, received since
the above was written, calls my attention to the opinion expressed
by the late Professor Van Oettingen, in his recently published
work on Lutheran Theology, to wit, "that Wellhausen must go
the way of Baur."

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 45
This result may be anticipated on logical principles,
when it is observed that Wellhausen's "Develop
ment Hypothesis" is philosophically akin to the
Tubingen theory. An able critic of our own com
munion calls attention to this. He says: "The
whole theory can rightly be understood only when
it takes its place, in company with the New Testa
ment criticism of Baur and Strauss, as an ultimate
result of the Hegelian Philosophy. ... In fact, the
same year, 1835, which saw the publication of Baur's
'Die Christliche Gnosis,' and of the original edi
tion 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." ("The Permanent Value of
Genesis," C. W. E. Body, D.C.L., pp. 60, 61.)
That scholar's theory is already challenged by a
considerable and growing school of accomplished
scholars and critics, one of whom J boldly predicts
that "the hypothesis (of Wellhausen) will not long
be regarded by any number of scholars as a satis
factory solution of the question of the composition
of the Pentateuch."
Writing in 1893, Professor Briggs, having declared
i Dr. Chas. H. Wright, "Introduction to the O. T.," p. 97.

46 THE PENTATEUCH
his adhesion to the critical analysis of the literary
documents and legislation of the Pentateuch, calls
a most formidable roll of European and American
scholars who accept that analysis, affirms that they
are sustained by the unanimous voice of the Hebrew
scholars of Europe, and triumphantly demands,
"Where are the Professors in the Old Testament
Department in the Universities and Colleges of
Europe who hold a different view ? " *
Well, it was soon possible to answer this challenge
by pointing to D. S. Margoliouth, Laudian Professor
of Arabic in the University of Oxford, and to Dr.
James Robertson, Professor of Oriental Languages
in the University of Glasgow, and to Dr. Fritz
Hommel, Professor of Semitic Languages, Univer
sity of Munich, and to A. H. Sayce, Professor of
Semitic Languages, University of Oxford, all of
whom arrayed themselves in opposition to the Well
hausen critical analysis of the documents and the
legislation. Moreover, several of the scholars whom
Dr. Briggs puts in his roll of Wellhausen adherents,
within a short time thereafter changed their views,
and took strong ground on the opposite side. Among
these was the illustrious archaeologist, Dr. Hommel,
who in 1897 published his " Ancient Hebrew Tradi
tion" declaring his new attitude. Another was
Prof. C. Von Orelli of Bole, who in 1899 stood
1 The "Hexateuch," pp. 94, 144.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 47
sponsor for Wilhelm Moller's monograph,1 "Are
the Critics Right?" in which that young scholar
renounced his allegiance to Wellhausen. Another
was Prof. Klostermann of Kiel, who that very year,
1893, issued his work on Deuteronomy, controvert
ing Wellhausen's views. Dr. Driver has recently
sought to weaken the force of the appeal to Prof.
Klostermann, by pointing out that he accepts the
composite character of the books of the Pentateuch,
as when he says that P is distinct from JE,
that JE is composite, and that the discourses of
Deuteronomy as we have them "are the expansion
and translation into the religious phraseology of the
age of the old Law book found by Hilkiah in the
Temple." But all this does not touch the real issue between
him and Wellhausen. In Klostermann's view the \
book found by Hilkiah was "The old Law book,"
whereas Wellhausen regards it as a newly composed
book. The two men occupy opposite poles of
thought. The one holds the book historical and
trustworthy — the other holds it unhistorical. The
one holds the discourses to be the expansion of
discourses actually delivered by Moses in the situa
tions described — the other that the discourses and
the situations too were invented without any real
'"Historische-Kritische Bedenken gegen die Graf-Wellhau-
sen'sche Hypothese."

48 THE PENTATEUCH
historical basis. Another scholar claimed by Dr.
Briggs is Kohler, of Erlangen: yet Moller tells us
it was he who first directed his attention to the
weakness of the Wellhausen positions. Within a
year another distinguished orientalist, M. Halevy,
is reported to have publicly repudiated the views of
the dominant school.
These and other indications seem to show that
Prof. Sayce was right when he predicted the ebb of
the wave of historical skepticism, and encouraged
the hope that those who cannot accept the Well
hausen analysis of the literary documents and legis
lation of the Pentateuch will no longer occupy so
lonely a position among critical scholars as they
have done.
Perhaps, then, we may take up our task without
feeling that we are attempting the impossible,
attacking an impregnable position, or leading a
forlorn hope.
Let me on the threshold of our discussion put you
on your guard against an assumption frequently
made by writers in both the secular and the religious
press, that there is no middle ground between the
traditional view of the Holy Scriptures and the
critical view of the Graf-Wellhausen school. Thus
a representative writer some while ago said:
"The real conflict is between modern scholarship

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 49
and the traditional view — between reason and
authority." " It is the battle of truth against preju
dice." We are assured that "practically all Old
Testament scholars " have accepted the Wellhausen
theory; and any attempt to contest its finality is at
once declared to be "the protest of theological
prejudice against the application to Bible study of
modern methods of historical, linguistic, archaeolog
ical and literary investigation." l In other words,
there are two, and only two, classes of thinkers on
this subject, — the traditionalists and the disciples
of Wellhausen. If you would be one of the guild of
higher critics, it is not enough to pursue the historical
method of Biblical study — you must accept a
certain set of "results," you must pronounce the
shibboleth of a certain school, you must bow down
to the majority. Otherwise you are in the army of
Prejudice: Truth disowns you!
The great Lightfoot, in introducing his monu
mental work on the Ignatian Epistles, refers to
" the moral intimidation " of certain eminent writers
who seemed to wish to foreclose the further investi
gation of the Ignatian problem by the iterated
assertion that " all impartial critics " have condemned
those Epistles as spurious.
We meet the same kind of " moral intimidation "
in the pages of critics who seem to desire to foreclose
1 The Churchman, Nov. 4, 1095, p. 704.

50 THE PENTATEUCH
the critical problems of the Pentateuch by loudly
proclaiming that all impartial critics are substan
tially agreed in accepting the main features of the
modern view of the analysis and structure of those
ancient documents which is associated with the
name of Wellhausen.
But in the interests of clear thinking, and of truth
itself, it must be said that the above is not a scientific
classification. It smacks of literary intolerance.
There is a great company of divines and scholars
who are found neither in the one nor the other of
these camps. They vigorously reject the hypothesis
which turns the books of the Bible topsy-turvy,
putting the Prophets before the Law, making
Deuteronomy, to all intents and purposes, a pious
fraud in the reign of Josiah, 621 b.c,1 and sub
stantially the rest of the Pentateuch a work of the
i Wellhausen, in the Introduction to his " Prologomena," says
that "in all centres where scientific results may hope for recog
nition, it is admitted that Deuteronomy was written at the time
in which it was discovered, and was employed as a basis for the
reforms introduced by King Josiah. " Upon which Prof. Hommel
remarks, " In other words, however pious the intention may have
been, a downright forgery on a grand scale had been carried
out." ("The Ancient Hebrew Tradition," p. 4.) He adds that
"Prof. Klostermann has recently shown most conclusively that
the narrative of the discovery of a legal code in the time of
Josiah, which is rightly taken to refer to Deuteronomy, bears the
impress of absolute credibility, and consequently excludes the
possibility of any such subtle deception as that predicated by
critics of the modern school." (Id. p. 10:)

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 51
imagination of the time of Ezra;1 which in effect
destroys the historical ground that underlies the
Jewish religion and theocracy, which eviscerates the
Hebrew Scriptures of all true prophecy, and of their
traditional supernatural origin and authority; and
which, finally, expels the sweet psalmist of Israel
from the Psalter, making it the Psalm-Book of the
second temple: this hypothesis, I say, these men
reject, yet they themselves apply to the study of the
Bible the principles and methods of the Higher
Criticism. They have no fear of the ultimate result
of letting in all the light that history and philology
and archaeology can throw upon the Bible.
With this view your lecturer is in full sympathy.
I stand for the freest investigation of the Bible.
As a Protestant theologian I abhor the idea of
fettering the reason. Let the light shine. "Prove
all things, hold fast that which is good." I am not
embarked upon any cast-iron theory of inspiration
which may conceivably be cracked or broken in
the process of free inquiry. I even sympathize
with the avowal of a late Archbishop of Canterbury
(Benson) that the Church is bringing home rich
sheaves from the much dreaded fields of criticism.
But when I have said this, there is something else
1 Hommel says the Priestly Code "is notoriously regarded by
the Wellhausen school as a post-exilic forgery." — The Ancient
Hebrew Tradition, p. 25.

52 THE PENTATEUCH
which I must also say : Though we should be open-
minded to truth from whatever quarter it comes,
and though we should be prepared to accept conclu
sions that are based on sound reasoning, we must
never for a moment forget that the onus probandi
rests upon those who ask us to abandon beliefs
which the Jewish and Christian churches have
cherished for over two thousand years. They who
advocate revolutionary ideas, whether in govern
ment, in scholarship, or in religion, must show good
cause, and their arguments must possess conclusive,
even overwhelming force. Wise men will not be
lightly persuaded to overthrow long established
institutions, or to abandon long inherited beliefs.
And if we are summoned by the critics to revolu
tionize our whole conception of the structure and
nature and significance of the Scriptures, we have a
right to demand proof — clear, strong, conclusive,
without a shadow of suspicion on its reality or its
sufficiency. We do not profess, then, to approach the criticism
of the Bible without any prepossession. We come,
indeed, with open minds, but we come as Christians.
Our minds are not as a tabula rasa : no, the Christian
creed is graven upon them. We could not, if we
would, erase it — or just ignore it for the purposes
of the investigation. And that creed, graven on our
hearts, tested by experience, proven by its power

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 53
over our lives, must inevitably influence our judg
ment in weighing the validity of some of the most
important arguments in the critical discussion.
Here I avail myself of some weighty words of an
illustrious writer, the late Bishop Stubbs: "The
Bible is not like any other book; no other book
comes to us with a claim authorized by the Church
of our baptism as containing the Word of God . . .
This means that it is to us a paramount witness of
Truth . . . The whole form and character of our
religious thought is framed on it ... It is impossi
ble for those who have been so taught to put them
selves in a neutral or impartial attitude regarding it,
without such a strain, such a wrench of mental and
moral force, as drives them past the central station
of fair judgment. . . . Indifference to Holy Scrip
ture means disregard for it: We cannot treat it as
any other book, even if it were susceptible of such
treatment: but it is like none other, and, indeed, it
is the fact that it is like none other that has led
critics to apply to it methods of arbitrary, wanton,
and conjectural criticism, which applied to Greek,
or Roman, or even Anglo-Saxon literature would
be laughed out of court." *
In this connection I would call attention to the
prepossessions which lie behind some of the most
1 Bishop Stubbs's Visitation Charge, May, 1893, p. 138. (Re
peated in "Ordination Addresses," pp. 147, 148.)

54 THE PENTATEUCH
fundamental conclusions of the extreme school with
which we are concerned in these lectures. One of
the axioms of the criticism of Kuenen and Well
hausen is that there can be no real prediction of
future events by divine revelation, and that no
narrative embodying a supernatural occurrence is
credible. The critical theory has been thus formu
lated: "The representation of a course of history is
a priori to be regarded as untrue and unhistorical
if supernatural factors interpose in it." 1 Ernest
Renan says, "A supernatural account cannot be
admitted as such; it always implies credulity or
imposture." And Kuenen, " Their representations,
to put it in a word, are utterly unhistorical, and
therefore cannot have been committed to writing
until centuries after Moses and Joshua." Thus
critical questions are settled by the a priori
assumption that whatever is set down as super
natural must be unhistorical, and that every
passage containing prediction of future events
must have been written subsequent to the events
described. Now, in the search after truth, the wise man will
consider the antecedents and prepossessions of the
witnesses, and it is not narrowness or dogmatic
prejudice, but a precaution due to scientific accuracy,
1 Frank, "Geschichte und Kritik der neuen Theologie,"
p. 289, quoted by Whitelaw.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 55
for the Christian student to take note of this natural
istic bias on the part of some eminent scholars,
whose opinions have great weight in the critical
world. Their critical judgments are colored and
conditioned by this anti-supernatural bias, and we
are bound, as honest men, to consider how far their
arguments are invalidated and their conclusions
vitiated by it.
As to the seriousness of the issue ultimately in
volved in the modern critical theory, I beg to refer
to the judgment expressed concerning Wellhausen's
views by a scholar far removed, indeed, from tra
ditionalism, I mean Prof. G. T. Ladd : " It is evident
that such views of the Pentateuch, on account of
the naturalistic philosophy which underlies and
shapes the criticism upon which they depend, are
calculated to exercise a profound influence upon
the entire theological conception of the Bible. They
do not simply tend to change further those theories
of the nature of biblical inspiration and infallibility,
which belong to the post-reformation dogma; they
rather take hold upon the very idea of biblical
revelation, and upon the fundamental question of
the general credence to be given to the records of
an alleged supernatural religion." 1
Such is the radical and vital character of the issue
at stake in the acceptance of the critical opinions
1 "Doctrine of Sacred Scripture," Vol. II, p. 241, 1883.

56 THE PENTATEUCH
of Julius Wellhausen. It is not the date, or the
authorship, or the structure of the books of the Bible,
but "the very idea of biblical revelation" and the
very existence of a supernatural religion.
Just here let me remind you that I am speaking
as a Christian student to men who are also Christian
students. In our critical studies we are not dis
cussing the evidences of Christianity: we are not
trying to convince unbelievers of the truth of our
holy religion. In that case we could not assume
the Christian ground. We could not ask of them
any concession to our convictions as Christian men
about the reality of the supernatural, or the authority
of Christ.
Neither am I, in these Lectures, addressing myself
to agnostics, or to Buddhists, or to the disciples of
Confucius, but to Christian students, who must
necessarily approach the study of the critical ques
tions as convinced believers, nay as men who believe
themselves inwardly moved of the Holy Ghost to
take upon them the office of ministers of Christ.
" The Christian critic," it has been well said, by an
able scholar, "ought to start from the basis of the
New Testament," and hence he cannot consent to
judge the critical questions about the Old Testament
from the naturalistic standpoint, which discredits
miracle and prophecy, — although, at the same time,
he is equally bound to conduct his investigations

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 57
without regard to any theory of inspiration which
he may have formulated.
We cannot, indeed, demand that the unbeliev
ing critic should accept our Christian standpoint in
his critical investigations any more than we can
accept his naturalistic point of view. But my con
cern here is not with him, but with men who are
believers, and who desire some guidance in judg
ing of the critical theories so much in vogue at
the present day. And speaking to such, it is right
to ask the question, Why should we sit at the
feet of men who begin their critical investigations
by assuming that neither miracle nor prophecy is
possible ?
Another cautionary signal I feel in duty bound to
show for the guidance of the earnest seeker after
truth in these critical discussions is this:
You will find on the side of the remarkable
hypothesis which I am making bold to challenge,
an immense array of able and accomplished scholars.
You will be told that Wellhausen's theory has
passed the experimental stage: it is no longer a
subject for debate : it is one of the accepted finalities
of scholarship. Now lest your judgment be over
borne by the weight of what we may call this tra
dition of scholarship, it is well to recall the fact
that a number of grievous mistakes have, within

58 THE PENTATEUCH
recent years, been brought home to this triumphant
school of critics, which should put us on our guard
against accepting their conclusions too readily.
Let me give one or two instances:
1. Writers of this school formerly based their
skepticism concerning the Mosaic authorship, or
date, of the Pentateuch on the assumption that the
age of the Hebrew lawgiver was not a literary age.
The literary use of writing could not have been
known to an Israelite at that epoch. Therefore
these books could not have originated then. Vatke,
one of Wellhausen's oracles, denied that the age of
Moses had the knowledge of writing. Similar was
the view of Wellhausen himself. He says, " Writing
had been practised earlier than 850-750, but only
in formal instruments, mainly on stone." (Article
"Israel," Encyc. Brit., p. 408).
But the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, uncovered
by the spade of the archaeologist in 1887-88, revealed
the fact that in the century before the Exodus,
Palestine was a land of books and schools. Thus
the hypothesis for which the critics claimed a
consensus of scholarship was completely overturned,
and assertions like that of Kautsch, that " there was
not, and could not be, much writing in the early
days of Jewish history," shown to have no founda
tion. Such a colossal and fundamental mistake as
this may well caution us not to accept too trustfully

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 59
the conclusions now urged by the same critics as
final and unimpeachable.
2. Another instance in point: It is a common
opinion among critics of this school that there is no
history in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. But
a few years ago they drew the historical line farther
down the stream of the narrative: they looked upon
the fourteenth chapter of Genesis as unhistorical.
The campaign of Chedorlaomer was a pure inven
tion: the names of the kings mentioned in the story
"were resolved into etymological puns." One emi
nent orientalist pronounced this chapter to be "a
fantastic grouping together of names . . . expressly
invented for the occasion," and the critics straight
way adopted this view. The whole chapter was
the invention of a later age, — nothing of history
about it! But archaeological scholars by and by
were able to show from the cuneiform inscriptions
that these strange names were historical, and there
had been a king of Elarh, Chederlaomer, who held
supremacy over Palestine.1 So the critics were
compelled to acknowledge their error; but they then
put forward a new hypothesis, that "the Jew who
inserted Genesis xiv., one of the latest portions of
the whole Pentateuch, in its present position, must
have obtained in Babylon exact information in
regard to the early history of the country, and for
1 Cf. Sayce, "Higher Criticism and the Monuments," p. 161.

60 THE PENTATEUCH
some reason which we are unable to fathom mixed
up Abraham with the history of Kudur Lagamar." 1
Dr. Fritz Hommel, the illustrious orientalist of
Munich, tells us that this fourteenth chapter of
Genesis has come to be a sort of Shibboleth for the
two leading schools of Old Testament critics,"
Id. p. 164, and he adds, "The authenticity of a
narrative such as that ... is an unanswerable
criticism upon the views which are now in fashion
with regard to the credibility of the ancient Hebrew
tradition." And how do the negative critics deal
with it? Certainly in very inconsistent fashion.
Dr. Peters, for instance, admits that Amraphel,
Arioch, and Tidal, are historical personages, and
that the story "probably contains a reminiscence of
actual events." But he denies that Abraham was
an historical character. On this a recent reviewer
in the Guardian asks Dr. Peters this pertinent
question: "How is it that the names are unreal on
the Hebrew side but historical on the side of the
foes? If the invaders were individuals, does not
this justify the expectation that the defenders were
individuals also, and that Abraham and Lot were
as much real persons as Amraphel and his allies ? "
3. Between the years 1896 and 1900 a document
was discovered, since known as the Cairene Eccle-
siasticus, and "was accepted by all the leading
1 Meyer, quoted by Hommel, Id. p. 161.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 61
Hebraists of the time as a work of the second
century B.C., whence the existing Greek and Syriac
translations were derived." But, in fact, it has been
shown to date from the eleventh century after Christ,
and to have been compiled from those two existing
translations. Upon this D. S. Margoliouth, Laudian Professor
of Arabic in the University of Oxford, remarks,
"The Ecclesiasticus experiment was forced on the
Hebraists of our time, and, though an easy problem,
belonged to precisely the same region as that in
which the criticism of our time was accustomed to
run riot. And it resulted in hopeless failure." And
this brilliant scholar concludes his essay in these
words :
"In differing about the date and analysis of
Hebrew documents from a school which could be
deceived for a day by this document . . . and could
spend a year in defending it, I do not seem to
myself to be incurring any serious risk." x Mistakes
such as these — of so serious a nature — may very
properly be noted by the student, as showing that
conclusions which claim a large consensus of expert
scholarship may after all turn out to be erroneous.
In order to emphasize the caution, I shall now
direct attention to the judgment pronounced upon
i "Lines of Defence of the Biblical Revelation," pp. 294, 309.

62 THE PENTATEUCH
the critical scholarship of our generation by several
scholars whose opinion must carry great weight.
Prof. Ramsay, the famous author of "St. Paul the
Traveller and the Roman Citizen," thus expresses
himself in the Preface to that work:
"There is no class of literary productions in our
century [the nineteenth] in which there is such an
enormous preponderance of error and bad judgment
as in that of historical criticism. To some of our
critics Herodotus is the Father of History, to others
he is an inaccurate reproducer of uneducated gossip !
One writer at portentous length shows up the
weakness of Thucydides, another can see no fault
in him" (p. 3). And the late Bishop Lightfoot —
that illustrious scholar of the Victorian era — in
the course of his overwhelming reply to a famous
attack on Christianity, expressed the opinion that
the historical sense of eighteen centuries is more to
be depended on "than the critical insight of a
section of men in one late half century." He
compares the negative school of critics with the
Rabbis, and thinks their work as "perverse and
unreal" as theirs, and he anticipates for it a like
fate. Referring to German critical literature, he
says, nowhere, in any literature, does he know
of such a mass of absurdities as have been heaped
together by some of the most able and learned
German critics in connection with the names

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 63
Euodias and Syntyche in the Epistle to the Philip-
pians.1 To these weighty opinions on the critical scholar
ship of the age, I will now add some citations of
expert opinion upon the particular hypothesis which
directly concerns us.
Prof. Sayce, of Oxford, having affirmed that the
end of the nineteenth century was "witnessing
the ebb of a wave of historical skepticism which
began to flow more than a century ago," gave his
judgment upon the general question in these words :
"The higher critic may be right in holding that
the historical books of the Old Testament in their
present form are compilations of comparatively late
date, but he is no longer justified in denying that
the materials they embody may be contemporaneous
with the events recorded in them."
This, I may remark, flatly contravenes the con
clusions of Dr. Driver in his Commentary on
Genesis. Dr. Fritz Hommel writes, "According to
the principles put forth by Meyer in his historical
capacity, the theory of the history of Israel which
Reuss, Graf, and Wellhausen have built up with
such wonderful ingenuity, ' must collapse ' inevitably
and irretrievably . . . for the Graf-Wellhausen
theory is contradicted in various particulars by
evidence of the most direct kind, which . . . defies
1 "Supernatural Religion," pp. 23, 24.

64 THE PENTATEUCH
contradiction." * Wilhelm Moller, in his Mono
graph on the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis (1903),
says: "I myself was immovably convinced of the irre
futable correctness of the Graf-Wellhausen hypoth
esis, so long as I allowed it alone to have an effect
upon me. But after my attention was once directed
to its weaknesses (first by Kohler in Erlangen),
after I had studied with some thoroughness the
scientific literature on the other side, this hypothesis
seemed to me more and more monstrous."
Next, I give the opinion of Rev. James Robertson,
D.D., Professor of Oriental Languages in the Uni
versity of Glasgow, one of the ablest, most open-
minded and candid writers on critical subjects.
He says:
"The modern critical theory . . . raises difficul
ties of a much more serious kind in the way of its
own acceptance." "A history is no doubt con
structed, but the supporting beams of it are sub
jective prepossessions, and the materials are only
got by discrediting the sources from which they are
drawn." "The self-styled 'higher' criticism is,
indeed, not high enough, or we should perhaps
more appropriately say, not deep enough, for the
problem before it." "The heart of the religion is
hardly looked at, or rudely torn out of it." The
1 "The Ancient Hebrew Tradition," p. 27.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 65
modern theory "postulates miracles of a literary
and psychological kind, which contradict sound
reason and experience as much as any of the
physical miracles of the Old Testament transcend
them." ' Dr. Klostermann, of Kiel, in his work,
"Der Pentateuch," makes fun of the scientific
analysis set forth in the Rainbow Bible. He de
scribes the method of the critics as "hair-splitting
and atom-dividing." Commenting on his work,
the Expository Times said, "By a skilful use of
the lower, or textual, criticism, Prof. Klostermann
is believed to have given the Higher Criticism the
greatest shake it has yet received."
Yet another important fact to be borne in mind,
preliminary to the study of this modern view of the
structure and character of the Biblical writings, is
the pronounced disagreement among the critics
themselves upon matters of capital importance.
It is claimed, indeed, that "the scholarly world
has definitely adopted" the Graf-Wellhausen hy
pothesis. Dr. Driver denies that the critics are
divided among themselves, and affirms that on all
important points they are agreed. Now in rebuttal
of this statement, I cite the judgment of a scholar
who certainly cannot be accused of being biased in
favor of traditional views, and whose ability is
unquestionable. I refer to Dr. A. B. Bruce, who,
i "The Early Religion of Israel," pp. 465-477.

66 THE PENTATEUCH
writing in 1899, when the claim for unanimity was
just as positively made by Wellhausen's disciples as
now, says: "Once more the apologist may plead
the unsettled state of critical opinion. It will be
time enough for the apologist to dogmatize when
criticism has arrived at the stage of finality. It is
far enough from having reached that stage yet.
Not to mention endless diversity of view on special
points, there are broad contrasts between different
schools even with reference to the leading critical
problems." i
There is, indeed, an agreement among them that
there are four principal sources whence the so-called
Hexateuch is derived — and upon that point I do
not undertake to challenge their conclusion — but as
to the authorship, date, contents, and limits of these
four documents, and as to their real character,
there is fundamental disagreement. In other words,
the agreement appears to be upon matters of sec
ondary importance, while on the primary and pal
mary question of the reliability and the historical
character, to say nothing of the inspiration, of
the documents, the disagreement seems hopeless.
The "results" are curiously lacking in harmony.
Thus, as to the Mosaic origin of the Decalogue —
Kuenen affirms it, Wellhausen denies it. Ask
Wellhausen if the Exodus was an historical event,
1 "Apologetics," p. 171.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 67
he answers in the affirmative. Ask Stade, and he
will say, "Impossible! The Israelites never were
in Egypt." As to the documents, or "sources,"
which the critics discover in the Pentateuch — one
critic will tell you D is earlier than P, another
that P is earlier than D. As to the order of
the four chief "sources," J, E, D, and P, almost
every possible order has been maintained by
reputable critics within a comparatively short
period. Even as to the prophets — whether they are pre-
exilic or no — there is no consensus. Some of the
critics maintain that the whole Biblical literature is
later than the Exile.
But what have the critics of the Wellhausen school
to say of the character of the Biblical books ? Are
they historical? Have they any divine authority
behind them? Do they record any divine revela
tion, strictly so called? To all these questions we
get diverse, often contradictory, answers. Speaking
generally, the historicity of the Pentateuch is rejected
by the Graf-Wellhausen school, — but there is no
agreement about it. Dr. Briggs accepts it. George
Adam Smith finds an " historical substratum " in it.
Dr. Driver appears to occupy a middle ground,
advancing (in his " Genesis ") some probable argu
ments for considering the patriarchs historical char
acters, though he finds no "history" in the first

68 THE PENTATEUCH
eleven chapters of Genesis. Dr. J. P. Peters holds
that the patriarchs are not historical characters —
Moses is the first man of flesh and blood in the
narrative; but Dr. Cheyne thinks scholars will ere
long see that Moses, too, is a fictitious character.
As to Revelation, Driver and George Adam Smith
find some record of it in the Pentateuch, at least in
a certain sense. Not so Kuenen and Wellhausen.
Wellhausen holds that the Israelitish religion, so far
from having its origin in a divine revelation, as the
Bible asserts, worked itself up by degrees out of
heathenism; and Kuenen affirms that the Jewish
and Christian religions are no more entitled to be
considered of supernatural origin than Buddhism or
Islamism. If we inquire whether the critics of this
school do not agree, at least about the four principal
sources, say of the Pentateuch, we find the master
of the school affirming that P, the Priestly Code,
was a post-exilic fabrication — made, so to speak,
out of the whole cloth by the priestly school, while
Dr. Briggs holds that though it did indeed assume
its present shape in the age subsequent to Ezekiel,
yet it rests ultimately upon an ancient traditional
basis. He would say it was compiled at that time,
not composed, or "produced," as Wellhausen says.
In face of facts such as these, the argument from
unanimity for the "assured results" of criticism
does not impress one as very convincing.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 69
These considerations may emancipate the inquirer
from the bondage which the mind suffers in presum
ing to examine the soundness of a body of conclusions
which are declared to be supported by the unani
mous verdict of modern scholarship. Freed from
the shackles of this dreaded critical authority, we
may dispassionately and without fear approach the
subject. In the discussion of the questions involved, I shall
make my appeal to reason against authority, and
shall put in a plea against surrendering your judg
ment to the authority of the great scholars and
linguists. My counsel shall be, Beware of accepting
such vital conclusions on authority instead of on
evidence; exercise the right of private judgment;
examine the evidence against, as well as for, this
theory; "Prove all things, hold fast that which is
good," and remember that the burden of proof lies
upon those who ask us to revolutionize the beliefs
held by the Christian Church for nearly nineteen
hundred years, and by the Jewish church for a
much longer period.
The advocates of the new opinions inveigh in
season and out of season against the influence of
authority as represented by tradition, and then, too
often, seek to impose upon us the yoke of authority
in another and less honorable form. They say in
effect, "The question is settled; the great scholars

70 THE PENTATEUCH
have decided it: Schola locuta est, causa finita est.
The debate is closed; there is but one alternative —
bow down to the decision of the hierarchy of the
critics, or take your place among the despised
traditionalists, who are the slaves of theological
prejudice." The warning of the great Lightfoot is sufficient
reply to this magisterial demand:
"The idols of our cave never present themselves
in a more alluring form than when they appear as
'the spirit of the age.' It is comparatively easy to
resist the fallacies of past times, but it is most
difficult to escape the infection of the atmosphere in
which we live." l
1 "Essays on Supernatural Religion," p. 23.

LECTURE II

"The modern theory leaves the earlier formative and funda
mental periods of the history of Israel almost completely without
a hterature, in order that it may concentrate all the productive
energies of the nation in the age of Ezra."
Prop. G. T. Ladd.
"I may be pardoned for expressing my belief that this kind of
investigation is often pursued with an exaggerated confidence.
Plausible conjecture is too easily mistaken for positive proof.
Undue significance is attached to what may be mere casual
coincidences, and a minuteness of accuracy is professed in dis
criminating between different elements in a narrative which
cannot be attained by mere internal evidence. In all writings,
but especially in the writings of an age when criticism was un
known, there will be repetitions, contradictions, inconsistencies,
diversities of style, which do not necessarily indicate different
authorship or dates." W. E. H. Leckt.
"Moses has become a shadowy personage whose very existence
has been denied; the narratives of Genesis have been turned into
fictions; the story of the Exodus has been refuted; and the greater
part of the Pentateuch brought down to the age of the Exile."
Prop. Sayce.
Prof. Eduard Konig thus enumerates some of the various
forms of the personification -theory in regard to Abraham: he is
the personification of a Tribe; he is the personification of ideas;
he is one of the native Canaanite forms borrowed by Israel; he
is a discrowned deity (einen depotenzierten Gott) . See Neueste
Prinzipien der altestamentlichen, Krilik, 1902, p. 65.

72

LECTURE II
In resuming the discussion of the Higher
Criticism, let me remind you of the limitation
of my subject. My criticism shall be confined to
the conclusions, literary and historical, of Wellhausen
and those who, since the publication of his great
work in 1878, have followed closely in his footsteps.
I would not be seriously concerned to challenge the
view that the compilers of the Priestly Code merely
codified ancient documents which were substantially
Mosaic, or of the Mosaic age, — documents, observe,
not oral traditions, — but it is the theory of the
master, not of the pupil, that counts and is the chief
matter to be reckoned with. We observe that the
accomplished scholars who have contested the
alleged results of the Higher Criticism address
themselves to the theories and arguments of the
Graf-Wellhausen school. We observe, also, that in
the critical world generally it is the Wellhausen
theory that bulks largest. Even such a scholar as
Dillmann is not, we are told, listened to in Germany
when he argues that the Priestly Code is a pre-exilic
73

74 THE PENTATEUCH
document, and in his conclusion on this point "he
stands almost alone." Dr. Hommel, writing about
ten years ago, said, "The new views are pressed
home so triumphantly that any attempt to return
to the old line seems only worthy of a 'pitying
smile.' " *
I beg you also to understand that I am not con
tending against the documentary hypothesis. There
is much to be said in favor of the theory of the
composite character of the books of the Pentateuch.
Neither do I hold a brief for the traditional view of
the Mosaic authorship. It is, I conceive, a legiti
mate subject of inquiry how far these books, in the
form that we have them now, proceeded from the
hand of Moses, provided they are accepted as
authentic accounts of the transactions they record.
Nor yet am I arguing the question of how far alle
gory may be made use of as a legitimate vehicle of
divine revelation. In my judgment it is an entire
mistake to suppose that the value of the narrative
of the Fall, in the book of Genesis, is dependent
upon its being accepted as literal history. If we
suppose it to be an allegory and not history, the
teaching it embodies is just as important, is, in fact,
just the same. This view was held by many of the
early Christian fathers. Gregory, of Nyssa, de
scribes the account of Paradise and the Fall as
1 That could not be said so positively to-day.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 75
"ideas in the form of a story." On this occasion
I make no affirmation in regard to these several
points. I wish only to make it clear that in chal
lenging the Wellhausen hypothesis, of the books
and of the history, these questions are not involved
one way or the other.
Let me proceed now, without further preface, to
state in outline the analysis of the first six books of
the Bible which the Graf-Wellhausen school claim
to have established. Taking as our guides some
eminent recent representatives of that school, we
are informed that the oldest portions of this so-called
Hexateuch may be dated about 930 b.c, at the close
of Solomon's reign, viz., Genesis xlix. 1-27, Exodus
xxi.-xxiii., Numbers xxi. 14, Joshua x. 13, and
Numbers xxiii.-xxiv. These fragments were subse
quently incorporated in the larger work which had
its origin a century later. Leaving these fragmen
tary pieces on one side, the critics discover four
chief sources, or documents, at the basis of the
books (J, E, D, P), which were interwoven with
each other by a series of editors, and into which
were incorporated quite a number of smaller pieces.
The author of "J, the Jahvist, lived, they say, in
Judah about 850 B.C. The Jehovistic document,
lowever, is really the work of three narrators,
P, J2, J3: J1 writing about 850 B.C.; J2 about 700
i.e.; and J3 about 650 b.c

76 THE PENTATEUCH
One hundred years later, about 750 B.C., a second
story-teller took the field, this time in Israel, who
receives from the critics the designation E, the
Elohist. His work was revised a hundred years
later by an Ephraimite (E2). Next we are told
these two story-books were united into one history
book (JE), and woven together as they now stand,
about the year 650 b.c
Next we come to the writer called D, the author
of the book of Deuteronomy. This writer com
posed that book, according to Wellhausen, about
the year 621 B.C. Perhaps we ought to say, parts
of the book, for other critics introduce at least
two revisers, Dh and Dp, who wrote at a later
period; and during the Babylonian Exile amalga
mated their several documents, producing Deuter
onomy substantially as we have it to-day. Some
of the critics place its composition in the reign of
Josiah; others in that of Manasseh; others in that
of Hezekiah, and others in that of Uzziah. The
writer did his work so cleverly that he succeeded in
deceiving king and people into the belief that
Deuteronomy was the work of Moses many centuries
before. The next step was the combination of the history
book JE with Deuteronomy, during the Babylonian
Exile (JED), about 540 b.c
The fourth document in the Hexateuch the critics

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 77
call P; that is, the Priestly writing. This corre
sponds roughly with the sacrificial system contained
in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers,
besides many passages in the book of Genesis.
Several writers were successively concerned in it,
P1, P2, P3, P4, P5, etc., to P10. Begun during the
Exile, it was completed and brought to Jerusalem
about 444 b.c Ezra told the people it was "the
book of the Law of Moses, which the Lord had
commanded to Israel," though, in fact, it was no
such thing, but a pious fraud cleverly composed by
;some of the priests in exile in Babylon.
Not till about 400 b.c was this Priest's Code,
after receiving many additions (Genesis i.-ii. 4,1 v.,
vi.-ix., x.), combined with the previously existing
history book (JED), making at length the Hexateuch
(JEDP).1 I may add that Prof. Cornill discovers twenty-six
writers, or redactors, who had a hand in the com
position of the Hexateuch, and a later writer, author
of the Oxford Hexateuch, assures us that there were
at least twenty-eight.
Now, I ask, what degree of probability can attach
to a theory so elaborately artificial as is embodied
in the above analysis? What likelihood is there
that modern scholars, two or three thousand years
'See "Old Testament Critics," Thos. Whitelaw, D.D.,
pp. 4-14.

78 THE PENTATEUCH '
after these books were composed, can successfully
perform such a feat of literary dissection as is here
involved ? If these scholars are right, we may truly
say that the so-called books of Moses were " framed
according to a literary method altogether unparal
leled in order to manufacture a history which never
was." Some forty years ago, that great scholar,
Dean Milman, in writing a preface to a new edition
of his " History of the Jews," gave the following
weighty judgment in his critique upon Ewald's
"Geschichte des Volkes Israel":
"That the Hebrew records, especially the books
of Moses, may have been compiled from various
documents, is assuredly a legitimate subject of
inquiry. But that any critical microscope, in the
nineteenth century, can be so exquisite and so
powerful as to dissect the whole with perfect nicety,
to decompose it, and assign each separate para
graph to its special origin in three, four, or five, or
more independent documents, each of which has
contributed its part, — this seems to me a task
which no mastery of the Hebrew language, no
discernment, however fine or discriminating, can
achieve." You will remember that Paley lays the foundation
for the truth of the Christian religion upon the
antecedent probability of revelation. I think we
may lay a solid basis for calling in question the

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 79
truth of this hypothesis upon the enormous ante
cedent improbability which it involves. For my
own part, I avow that I would as soon believe that
the Apollo Belvedere, and the Venus de Milo, were
each the work of twenty or thirty sculptors in
different epochs of ancient history, and that our
modern expert artists could mark off the parts of
those masterpieces which were wrought by each, as
I will believe that the exquisite story of Joseph and
his brethren (to take but a single example) — a
veritable masterpiece of literary art — was the work
of a score or more of authors and "redactors," and
that our clever professors of critical anatomy can
dissect it, verse by verse, and clause by clause, and
distribute the fragments severally to their various
writers and compilers. Let me give you a concrete
example of this their literary anatomy of that
beautiful story. Take, at random, Gen. xlv. 1.
We read:
"Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that
stood by him; and he cried, Cause every man to go out from me.
And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself
known unto his brethren. And he wept aloud : and the Egyptians
and the house of Pharaoh heard."
Surely this narrative is like a seamless garment
woven from the top throughout! But the critics
have no compunction in rending it asunder. They
consider it a piece of patchwork. The first half of

80 THE PENTATEUCH
verse 1 came, they say, from the source J, the
second half of the same verse from the source E.
On the other hand, the first half of verse 2 is from
the source E, the second half from the source
J. The following verses are treated in the same
way, but verse 5 is rent into four parts, of which
the first and third were assigned to J, and the
second and fourth to E. Sometimes you will find
the beginning of a verse assigned to one writer,
the middle to another, the end to a third! Thus
right through this exquisite story, the text is " infini-
tesimally split up by merely formal criteria."
Surely the canons of art, if not of common sense,
may have something to say in such a case. There
is such a thing as literary probability and improb
ability, and I make bold to affirm that the supposi
tion that any critical scalpel is delicate enough, and
any critical hand steady enough, and any critical
brain omniscient enough to perform such a feat of
dissection twenty-five hundred or three thousand
years after the date of the work, is a literary improb
ability raised to the nth power ! One can only con
clude that our critics must have been intoxicated
by philology to that degree that their judgment has
ceased to be reliable. Festus's exclamation, " Much
learning doth make thee mad," would be entirely
appropriate in the case of these our Higher Critics,
and it could not be successfully gainsaid.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 81
But to proceed. In order to grasp the full sig
nificance of the Wellhausen hypothesis we must
set before our minds clearly the propositions which
it involves. Here are some of them:
(1) The Law (that is, the books of the Law
including the greater part of the legislation) is later
than the prophets.1 (2) The book of Deuteronomy
is an invention — a fiction — a pia fraus — dating
from the year 621 b.c (3) The Priestly Code, in
volving large parts of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and
Numbers, is of post-exilic origin; it was composed in
the time of Ezra and was a work of the imagination
of the priestly school. (4) The Mosaic theocracy was
never actual until after the Exile. (5) "It reduces a
large portion of Israelitish history, up to a short time
prior to the Exile, to a mass of legends and uncer
tain traditions." 2 (6) This hypothesis involves the
evolutionary view of religion as contradistinguished
from the view presented throughout the Holy Scrip
tures, namely, that religion has its origin in revela
tion. (7) The religion of Israel, in particular, had
its origin, not in a divine revelation, but in a self-
evolution, by slow stages, out of heathenism.
1 "It is no longer possible to regard the Law as a whole as
prior to the Prophets; on the contrary, and speaking broadly,
the prophetic stage was considerably anterior to the legalistic,
this latter not attaining its full development until after the Exile."
— Contentio Veritatis, p. 172.
2 Dr. Wright.

82 THE PENTATEUCH
Now, if the above view of the origin and structure
of the early books of the Bible be accepted, it
follows that the Jews have been utterly wrong in
their view of their own history from its earliest
beginnings down to the time of Ezra. It follows
further that both the authority of the Pentateuch
and the divine origin of Judaism must be abandoned.
Wellhausen says, " The substance of the Pentateuch
is not historical, but legendary." 1 For it is clear
that this analysis of the Pentateuch goes much
deeper than mere questions of the date and author
ship of the books. It cuts up by the roots the truth
of the history narrated. Moses not only did not
write the Pentateuch (which, indeed, we do not
assert), but he was not the author of the Laws; he
did not build the tabernacle or promulgate the
sacrificial system in the wilderness. All that was a
post-exilic invention a thousand years after the
event. If there was any revelation through Moses,
we cannot be sure what it was. The patriarchal
stories must also be labeled unhistorical. George
Adam Smith thinks they may have about the heart
of them "historical elements." Dr. J. P. Peters
holds that the patriarchs were none of them indi
viduals who actually existed. Moses (as already
remarked) was the first historical personage in the
story. 'Art. "Pentateuch," Encyc. Brit., p. 98.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 83
The critics differ among themselves on the ques
tion whether the Pentateuch records any real reve
lation. Driver and George Adam Smith say " Yes,"
Kuenen and Wellhausen say " No " ! The value of
this admission by the former writers will depend,
however, on their definition of revelation. George
Adam Smith writes, " Revelation is not the promul
gation of a law, nor the prediction of future events,
nor the imparting to man of truths which he could
not find out for himself." * To say, then, that there
is a revelation from God in the Pentateuch is not
to admit that God therein promulgated a law, or
gave any power to predict the future, or revealed to
Moses, or others, any truths which they could not
find out for themselves.
But excluding these ideas of revelation, what
remains but natural development of religion under
Providential guidance? It is, in fact, difficult to
see how the idea of a divine revelation, or of the
inspiration of Scripture, in any real sense, can
survive, if the preceding account of the structure
of these books is once accepted. In that case, not
only are the stories of the Fall and of the Deluge
destitute of historical foundation, and the patriarchs
fictitious characters, but God never spoke to Moses,
or ordained the Mosaic statutes. Practically the
whole book of Deuteronomy is an invention — a
1 "Histl. Geography of Holy Land, p. 33.

84 THE PENTATEUCH
fiction — composed seven hundred or eight hundred
years after the events it undertakes to chronicle.
Wellhausen says of these writers of Scripture, that
" They completely altered the ancient history," they
" idealized the past to their heart's content," and the
result was "an artificial and ideal repristination."
Their books are mostly unhistorical. They were
spun out of the inner consciousness of the school of
Ezekiel in the time of Ezra. But this is not all.
It appears to be an essential element of Wellhausen's
system that the early Israelites were uncivilized
nomads; that they not only practised the worship
of ancestors, but were worshipers of trees, stones,
springs, etc. Fetichism and Totemism prevailed
among them. This is another of the "results" we
must be prepared to accept if the Graf-Wellhausen
school offers the true explanation of the critical
problems of the Biblical literature.
Now, that the revelation in the Old Testament is
progressive we may certainly recognize,1 but such
i "I am quite prepared to say, with an able English writer, We
do not, as is sometimes supposed, argue that it is essentially
dangerous and heretical to hold that the ancient legal formularies
of Israel may have been re-edited and rearranged at some period
subsequent to the Exile. All we say is, there is sufficient evidence
to support the belief that they were not materially altered or
added to at that period. ... If the whole of the Pentateuch
had been recast, and modernized, and rearranged after the Exile,
it would be a matter of no practical moment to us, just as the
modernization of the spelling in the Authorized version, or in

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 85
a view as this strikes a very serious blow at the
reality of the revelation itself. "The opponents of
scientific criticism," says a prominent member of the
school, "are quite right when they speak of its
destructive tendency." If God did not speak to
Abraham or to Moses — if there was no Sinaitic
covenant — no revelation of the Decalogue — no
tabernacle — no sacrificial system in the wilderness
— although the Bible affirms all these things; if
" the Israelitish religion at first worked itself up out
of heathenism by degrees," as Wellhausen says,
instead of having its origin in a divine revelation,
as the Bible asserts; if, as Kuenen affirms, the
Jewish and the Christian religions are no more
entitled to be considered of supernatural origin than
Buddhism or Islamism; if the Bible in its earlier
parts is but a congeries of myths and legends and
folk-lore, and if its "histories" are, in fact, written
by men who lived from five hundred to a thousand
years after the times of which they write, and are
the work of writers who, having no definite infor
mation, supplied the lack of it " by inventing occur-
the Prayer Book, is a matter of no practical moment. It is only
a question of purely academic interest so long as the historic
character of its contents is admitted. . . . Two perfectly distinct
questions have been mixed up by many . . . the question of
editorship, author, and arrangement, and that of substantial
historical accuracy." — Rev. J. J. Lias, Lex Mosaiea, pp. 269,
270.

86 THE PENTATEUCH
rences and experiences that never took place " ; by
setting down speeches and orations that were never
spoken, in fact or in substance, as if they had
been; and by recording laws "that were not pro
mulgated by the legislators to whom they were
assigned," — then the reality of the revelation which
the Old Testament has been supposed to record,
can hardly be maintained.
The conclusion, indeed, can scarcely be resisted,
that if these critical theories shall finally prevail,
both the historical truth of the Old Testament, and
the supernatural character of the religion it con
tains, must be abandoned.
Such is the conclusion of that great scholar and
historian, Bishop Stubbs, who writes: "Here the
crisis becomes most urgent, the issues most imminent,
and fatally important. I cannot imagine greater
issues than those which these considerations are
likely to force upon us. If the result of the present
speculations should be the displacement or rejection
of any considerable part of the Jewish Law and
Record, it would involve the rewriting of the whole
of Catholic, of Christian, theology; and, what is
more critical still, such an explanation of the way
in which the Old Testament Scriptures are used in
the New as would call in question the knowledge
and honesty of the writers whom we believe to
be inspired, and in some matters endanger the

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 87
authority of the words reported to be spoken by
our Lord." (" Biblical Criticism," p. 11, S. P. C. K.,
London, 1905.)
We cannot, as Bishop Stubbs suggests, in measur
ing the significance of these alleged " results," avoid
considering their relation to the divine authority
and personality of Jesus Christ. We ask how are
we to understand his solemn statement, "Abraham
rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad,"
if, as these critics tell us, Abraham never existed?
And if in reply we are referred to the doctrine of the
Kenosis, and asked to believe that in his humiliation
he was quite ignorant of the real facts of early
Jewish history, we wonder where this Kenosis is to
stop? Can we rely on his teaching at all? In
what sense was he the " Truth " ? And why was
it that even after his resurrection, when his humilia
tion was past, and the days of his Kenosis should
have been past also, did he continue to appeal to
the authority of the Law and the Prophets and the
Psalms ? It is often urged that our Lord could no
more have considered the problem of the Higher
Criticism than of modem astronomy or geology,
and hence that we can infer nothing in regard to
the antiquity or authorship, or even the historicity,
of the books of the Old Testament from his manner
of speaking of them. But surely the matter cannot
be thus summarily disposed of. He was, to say the

88 THE PENTATEUCH
least, the author and finisher of our faith. He
claimed to reveal God and his truth. He inter
preted the ancient religion and revelation. There
fore, as has been well pointed out by Prof. Nosgen,
he must have studied and rightly estimated the
previous stages of the divine revelation; he must
have "intuitively penetrated and estimated the
integrity and truth of the Scriptures which attest
that revelation": consequently he could not "allow
to pass as a divine revelation" that which was no
revelation but the invention of men; nor could he
"recognize as divinely given prophecy" what was
nothing but the speculation or imagination of men.
"His claim to be the true revealer of God would
break down if such mistakes in spiritual and ethical
estimate could be brought home to him." J The
words of an eminent living scholar are pertinent here :
"As Christians we cannot abandon the teaching
of Christ, or forget the endorsement of the Old
Testament books by the writers of the New. We
therefore refuse to seat ourselves as pupils at
the feet of critics who, to a large extent, regard the
Old Testament histories as mere fictions, and the
visions of the Hebrew prophets as only grand
poetical imaginations." 2
1 "The New Testament and the Pentateuch," p. 32. C. A.
Nosgen, D.D., Professor in Rostock.
2 Dr. Chas. H. Wright, Introduction, p. 10.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 89
And Prof. Nosgen puts the case none too strongly
when he says:
"He treated, used, and vindicated the legislation
of the Pentateuch in all its parts as proceeding
from God. Hence there opens up an impassable
chasm between the modern critical analysis and
the manner in which Jesus esteems and enforces
the Law." x
Such, then, is this theory of the structure of the
earlier books of the Bible, such are its implications,
and such its revolutionary consequences to the
immemorial beliefs of the Christian and the Jewish
churches. But if the theory is established by sufficient
evidence, it must be accepted, be the consequences
what they may. But is the theory firmly based
upon sound reasoning ? Is the evidence convincing,
— conclusive ? I make bold to answer that ques
tion in the negative, and first I adduce some weighty
adverse expert opinion. In the very face of the
confident assertions of many of the critics that these
conclusions are now regarded as finalities in the
field of scholarship, the student of the Bible finds
himself perplexed by observing that some very able
and scholarly critics hold a contrary opinion. Take,
for instance, Wellhausen's conclusion that Deuter
onomy was written at the time of its discovery in
1 Id. p. 77. See also pp. 88, 89.

90 THE PENTATEUCH
the seventh century b.c, which he says is accepted
" in all centres where scientific results may hope for
recognition," — and the corollary thereto as stated by
Dr. Justi, the orientalist, of Marburg, viz., that the
book is "a wholesale perversion of history," "a
clumsy forgery " to which " only the narrow-minded
can shut their eyes." All this, I say, we find flatly
contradicted by such scholars as Dr. Klostermann
in his work on the Pentateuch, and Dr. Hommel in
"The Ancient Hebrew Tradition." The theory is
recognized by all the critics as one of the pillars of
Wellhausen's system. Yet Hommel says it is only
a theory : it has not been proved. And Klostermann
declares the Deuteronomic narrative " bears the im
press of absolute credibility," and "excludes the
possibility of any such deception." Similar is the
view of Dr. James Robertson.
Or, take Wellhausen's general scheme of criticism.
That brilliant orientalist, Dr. Hommel, undertakes
to prove Wellhausen in error in various points, and
maintains: (l) That in its beginnings the Israelitish
religion was a mixture of ancestral worship and
fetichism is negatived by the absence of any traces
of the same in the language. Philology is against
it. (2) The Tel el-Amarna tablets (1430 B.C.) and
the Egyptian Minnaean inscriptions indirectly con
firm the reliability of the Hebrew tradition, and the
existence of pre-Mosaic records. (3) Wellhausen's

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 91
view of ancient Hebrew tradition meets an unanswer
able argument in the authenticity of Genesis xiv.,
which he says can no longer be denied. Its alleged
exilic date " must be absolutely abandoned." (4) As
to the origin and meaning of the name Jehovah.
(5) As to the alleged post-exilic date of the Priestly
Code, Hommel finds proof of a far earlier date in
the absence of Babylonian and Aramaic loan words.
(6) The personal names ascribed to patriarchal and
Mosaic times, instead of being late exilic inventions,
Hommel finds to have been in actual use at those
periods and could not have been invented even as
late as the time of the Kings. (7) The supposition
that the Priestly Code was a post-exilic invention,
"having no existence in the time of the prophets,"
involves in Hommel's view " such a monstrous falsi
fication of tradition between Ezekiel and Ezra as is
absolutely incompatible with everything we know
of the national characteristics of the Israelites during
their previous history." (8) In short, Hommel,
writing in 1897, nearly twenty years after the pro
mulgation of Wellhausen's theory, declares that the
" Graf-Wellhausen theory is contradicted in various
particulars by evidence of the most direct kind,
which defies contradiction."
In view of all these utterances of learned and
accomplished scholars, the consensus of Hebrew
scholars, so confidently claimed, appears hardly

92 THE PENTATEUCH
justified — even for the Graf-Wellhausen theory as
modified and toned down by Dr. Briggs and Dr.
Driver. Turning now from the adverse judgments of par
ticular scholars, let us come to the merits of the case,
and note some of the grounds upon which this brilliant
and widely dominant hypothesis is to be condemned.
1. Well, first the method by which it is arrived
at is inadequate. It is based predominantly on
philology, and philology cannot furnish sufficient
support — broad enough and deep enough — for so
weighty a superstructure. History and archaeology
must also be used as foundation stones. This
argument was urged, intemperately, perhaps, but
with great force, by Dr. Emil Reich in The Contem
porary Review for February and April, 1905. He
reminds us that Theseus and Romulus "were mur
dered by a pack of philologists " ; that Lycurgus was
by the same class " dissolved into a myth " ; that they
first robbed Homer of his character, branding him
as "an impudent plunderer of other men's wits,"
and finally did him to death, by proving conclusively
that he never existed at all! Like considerations
were urged by Dean Milman more than a genera
tion ago to the critical theories then in vogue.
What he wrote of them may be applied equally to
the Graf-Wellhausen theory:

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 93
" There seems to be a fatal fallacy in the ground
work of much of their argument. Their minute
inferences, and conclusions drawn from slight prem
ises, seem to presuppose an antiquity and perfect
accuracy in the existing text, not in itself probable,
and certainly utterly inconsistent with the general
principles of their criticism. They are in this
respect, in this alone, almost at one with the most
rigid adherent of verbal inspiration. . . . The argu
ment from language appears to me to be equally
insecure, and to be used with great caution and
judgment. . . . This criticism must always bear in
mind the uncertainty of the received text, which on
its own principles ... it is bound to admit." 1
2. This theory is condemned also because its
whole vast structure rests implicitly upon two de
cidedly questionable assumptions, viz., that it is a
law of the development of religion that ritual tends
to grow more and more elaborate, and that in
examining the sources of any sacred literature, we
may assume that the older sources will, of course,
reflect the earlier stages of ritual use. Commenting
on this, a writer in the new Jewish Encyclopaedia
remarks :
" The former is against the evidence of primitive
i Milman, "History of the Jews," Vol. I, Bk. Ill, note,
pp. 177-181. This note was written for the fourth edition, about
1866. It should be read with care.

94 THE PENTATEUCH
cultures, and the latter finds no support in the
evidence of ritual codes like those of India." 1
Compare the view of Rawlinson, a high authority
in historical investigation: "It does not appear,"
says he, "that very simple systems of law and
observance do belong to very primitive societies,
but rather the contrary. Accadian institutions as
revealed to us by the earliest cuneiform inscriptions
are very complicated, the regulations of the ancient
Phoenician ritual are most minute, and Burckhardt
tells us that the great Bedouin community of Arabia
has a most carefully elaborated system of social
and legal observances, which has descended to it
from a remote antiquity, through a long succession
of ages." (Rev. George Rawlinson, M.A., in "Lex
Mosaica," p. 29.)
3. The theory is still further discredited by the
arbitrary methods of its author. To assure yourself
of this, you have only to take down the Encyclo
paedia Britannica and turn to the article "Israel,"
by Julius Wellhausen. You will find that, in giv
ing an outline of the history of Israel, he freely
reconstructs it at his own sweet will. He is
not embarrassed by the Hebrew history books at
all. He inserts incidents which the text knows
nothing of — for example, that there was a battle
on the shores of the Red Sea between the Egyptians
1 See Art. "Pentateuch," Vol. IX, p. 592, by Joseph Jacobs.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 95
and the Israelites. On the other hand he arbi
trarily rejects the testimony of the Hebrew text;
and again urges arguments as based upon the
narrative, which the narrative does not support.
One of his arguments against the Mosaic author
ship of the Decalogue is that Moses clearly did not
object to graven images, inasmuch as he "made
a brazen serpent which down to Hezekiah's time
continued to be worshiped at Jerusalem as an
image of Jehovah." x I ask, Is a writer who can
thus boldly and completely misrepresent the his
torical facts in his search for an argument, — is
such an author a reliable guide in the study of the
Scriptures ?
Another example of Wellhausen's arbitrary method
may be given. He declares magisterially that the
principle of "One God, one Sanctuary" was never
|heard of in Jewish history till the time of Josiah.
Yet the books of Samuel and the Kings testify
clearly to the contrary. Why, then, is their testi
mony not to be received? "The view is unhistori
cal," replies Wellhausen. In what way? Because
subsequent history shows that the high places were
not removed. In other words, the Law could not
have existed, because it was violated! But upon
what testimony is Wellhausen convinced that Josiah
established the one central sanctuary? On the
iArt. "Israel," p. 399.

96 THE PENTATEUCH
testimony of that same book of Kings, whose state
ments he has just declared unhistorical.
In further illustration of the arbitrary methods
of the Wellhausen school, I now direct your atten
tion to a passage in Dr. Driver's edition of the
book of Genesis. Commenting on Genesis x. 22,
where Elam is mentioned as one of "the children
of Shem," Dr. Driver says:
" Racially the Elamites were entirely distinct from
the Semites ... It is true, inscriptions recently
discovered seem to have shown that in very early
times Elam was peopled by Semites . . . and that
the non-Semitic Elamites spoken of above only
acquired mastery over it at a period approaching
2300 B.C., but the fact is not one which the writer
of the verse is very likely to have known."
Now, what is the natural inference from these
inscriptions which archaeology has brought to light?
Surely it is a confirmation of the accuracy of the
statement of Genesis that Elam was one of the
descendants of Shem! Surely, also, we naturally
infer from this archaeological fact that " the book of
Genesis quotes documents, or reports conditions, at
least as old as 2300 b.c," and this strengthens our
confidence in the antiquity and accuracy of the
narratives in that book. Why, then, does not Dr.
Driver draw these obvious inferences ? " Because,"
replies the Dean of Canterbury, to whom I am

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 97
indebted for this example, "he is possessed by the
theory, which is one of 'the assured results' of
which he speaks, that the verse belongs to the por
tions of the chapter assigned to the source P, which
he considers belongs to the age of Ezekiel and the
Exile, or nearly two thousand years after the date
when Elam was peopled by Semites." I do not
wonder that Dr. Wace exclaims, " It would surely be
difficult to find a more perverse piece of criticism ! " 1
4. This theory, I have said, is insecure because
built upon too narrow a foundation — viz., philology.
But the philological argument is not by any means
wholly on one side. Prof. Margoliouth has turned
the sword of philology against the Graf-Wellhausen
critics. Here is a meager outline of his argument: 2
One of the books of the Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus,
was written by Ben-Sira.
(1) The book was originally written in Hebrew.
(2) The original has been lost; but
(3) The Talmud contains some thirty or forty
quotations from it.
(4) The grandson of Ben-Sira translated the work
of his grandfather into Greek.
(5) The age when the grandson lived is known;
(6) And thereby it is placed beyond doubt that
the date of Ecclesiasticus is about 200 B.C.
1 The Churchman, London, July, 1905, p. 505.
2 By Maxwell M. Ben-Oliel.

98 THE PENTATEUCH
(7) Besides this Greek version we have another in
Syriac, and others in Latin, Armenian, iEthiopic, etc.
(8) The language in which Ben-Sira wrote his
proverbs is not the language of the Biblical period,
nor that of the post-exilic prophets; it is the new
Hebrew of the Mishna.
(9) The difference between the Hebrew of Ben-
Sira and that of the Old Testament writers is marked
in every one of the seven ways in which language
travels. (10) Therefore a long period of time lies between
the writers of the Bible and the time of Ben-Sira; and
(11) As the date of Ben-Sira is 200 B.C., the latest
writers of the Old Testament must be placed back
hundreds of years to allow for the vast changes in
the language as we find it in Ben-Sira's days.
To use Prof. Margoliouth's own language:
" If by 200 b.c the whole Rabbinic farrago, with
its terms and phrases and idioms and particles,
was developed, and was the classical language of
Jerusalem, and the medium for prayer and philo
sophical and religious instruction and speculations,
then between Ben-Sira and the books of the Old
Testament there must lie centuries, nay, there must
lie, in most cases, the deep waters of the captivity,
the grave of the old Hebrew and the old Israel, and
the womb of the new Hebrew and the new Israel." '
1 Inaugural Lecture, Oxford, 1889, p. 21.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 99
5. Another serious blow to the accuracy of Well
hausen has been given by Dr. Fritz Hommel in the
demonstration of the important fact "that the
numerous personal names ascribed to patriarchal
and Mosaic times were in general use at this very
period; and could not have been invented in or
after the time of the Kings — when a totally different
system of nomenclature obtained." Wellhausen has
said, "The long lists of names in Numbers i., vii.,
and xiii. are nearly all cast in the same mold, and
are in no way similar to genuine ancient personal
names." Dr. Hommel's refutation of this assertion
should be carefully read, Id. pp. 119 and 297.
6. But the most important, perhaps, of all the
considerations which show the unsoundness of
Wellhausen's theory is, that it is contradicted by
the history which all parties to this discussion accept
as authentic. The palmary argument for his views
is the correspondence between the law and the
history. He alleges a threefold correspondence:
the Books of the Covenant (Ex. xx.-xxiii. and
xxxiv. 10, 14-26), with the history down to Josiah's
reformation; the book of Deuteronomy with the
history after that reformation; and the Priestly Code
with the history after the Exile.
It is this third instance of correspondence which
Wellhausen has, it is alleged, been the first to
establish on a firm basis. Now it has been shown,

100 THE PENTATEUCH
I think, conclusively that his theory breaks down
in this its most conspicuous feature; that is to say,
that his hypothesis of the origin of the Priestly Code
in the time of Ezra, 444 B.C., does not correspond
with the history. He bids us read the account of
the publication (or republication) of the Law as
recorded in Nehemiah viii.-x., and note the fact that
when the book is read aloud to the people its con
tents were unfamiliar to them — were in fact new,
and then he argues that it could not have been
known previously, and must have had its origin at
that time, or very shortly before.
But observe what is involved in this method of
argument. The book then read to the people was,
according to Wellhausen, the whole Pentateuch.
Now the Pentateuch embraced the Books of the
Covenant and the book of Deuteronomy, each of
which contained laws which are (if we are to believe
the critics of this school) in direct conflict with the
laws of the so-called Priestly Code. But the Books
of the Covenant (see Exodus xx. 24), they say,
legalize altars and sacrifices, anywhere and in how
many places soever, while the Priestly Code limits
them to one altar in the Temple at Jerusalem.
Again, Deuteronomy gives to all Levites the pre
rogatives of the priesthood, but the Priestly Code
excludes the Levites from the priesthood. Is it con
ceivable, then, that the priests, who had fabricated

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 101
this Priestly Code in their own interest, would
have published as canonical at the same time
these two codes, the Books of the Covenant and
Deuteronomy, which impose, with all the author
ity of the name of Moses, laws which are in
direct conflict with the very code which they have
taken so much pains to clothe with the Mosaic
dress in order to secure the weight of his venerable
name? But this is not all. Wellhausen affirms that the
Books of the Covenant had been in existence since
about 900 B.C., and the book of Deuteronomy since
623 b.c, and yet he admits that when the Penta
teuch, which embraced both these codes, was read
to the people by Ezra, its contents were evidently
new to the people. It follows that unfamiliarity
with a legal code does not necessarily prove that the
code itself was new, but only that it had been lost
or forgotten. Hence it is not to be concluded that
the Priestly Code, either, was something new merely
because it was unfamiliar when read to the people
by Ezra in 444 B.C. It may, like the other two
codes, have been of ancient origin, but have become
forgotten in the lapse of time and the conditions of
the captivity.
Thus this much vaunted argument of the corre
spondence between the law and the history breaks
down completely.

102 THE PENTATEUCH
Let me now, in conclusion, sum up the results of
this lecture. The theory of the dominant school
of critics as to the origin and character of the Pen
tateuch has been shown to be burdened with an
immense antecedent improbability, besides involving
consequences destructive of the authority and cred-
Iibility of the books, — destructive also of the divine
origin of the Jewish religion and of the divine
authority of our Lord Jesus Christ. It has been
shown that, in spite of the great weight of modem
scholarship which has been thrown into the scale in
its favor, this theory is stoutly contested by a group
of very accomplished scholars. Then we have seen
that, taken on its merits, there are a number of
cogent reasons for rejecting this popular hypothesis :
as these, (l) It is built too exclusively on philology;
history and archaeology being not sufficiently recog
nized as factors in the problem. (2) It relies on two
assumptions, of very doubtful validity. (3) It is
discredited by the arbitrary methods of its author
and his followers. (4) Philology itself furnishes a
valid argument against it. (5) Archaeology supplies
another. (6) It is out of harmony with the accepted
history of the periods at which the books are alleged
to have had their origin.
Of course, my limits have forbidden my attempt
ing more than a meager outline of the arguments
which are brought forward in refutation of this

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 103
elaborate theory, but I hope enough of the argument
against it has been developed to make it clear to
your minds that it is far indeed from offering that
conclusive proof which alone would entitle it to
acceptance. For let me again remind you that
when we are asked to adopt views of the nature and
structure of Holy Scripture which are nothing less
than revolutionary, we are entitled to demand proof,
clear, positive, unassailable, conclusive.1 We cannot
lightly barter away our birthright. We cannot sur
render the belief inherited from the Christian ages,
and supported by the authority of Christ himself,
in the antiquity and authority of the Pentateuch,
at the challenge of a theory, which is at best sup
ported by nothing better than plausible arguments,
and which is open to the very serious objections
which we have seen may be brought against it.
1 It is admitted by some of the advocates of the dominant
theory, that the spade of the archaeologist may any day undermine
and discredit it fatally. Thus the Bishop of Gloucester, Dr.
Gibson, writes:
"Fresh discoveries may any day be made which will upset the
dominant theory, and so long as the spade of the explorer is at
work, and new facts come to light, the conclusions of the critics
must be subject to review." This is a naive confession of the
subjective character of the criticism on which the theory is built.
Yet it is constantly put forward as "an assured result," to the
distress of multitudes of souls, and the disturbance of the faith
of not a few.

LECTURE III

" Oiroi ot X6701 o5s £\&\i]<Te Muvarjs rravrl 'Io-po^X iripav too
'lopSdvov iv tJ iprfiiitp." Deut. i. 1.
"The newer criticism not merely offers to correct particular
points in the narrations of the Old Testament, which would be
comparatively admissible, but it pronounces the whole represen
tation of Old Testament history, as we read it in the Bible, and
as Jesus read it and acknowledged it, to be false. It further
describes the books of the Old Testament as having been pro
duced, almost without exception, by a series of editings, curtail
ments, augmentations and dislocations of the original text; so
that the resulting Scriptures come before us with a character
which is the very reverse of trustworthiness." Prop. Lotz of Erlangen.
" Clouds which are formed in the time of grandsires are not
in the habit of raining upon grandsons. Could people not
write in preexilic times? Must they not be allowed to write?
Why tear with violence the pen from the hand of the ancient
Israelitish priests?" Bredenkamp.
"The question is whether the palm of ingenuity is to be
assigned to the writers of these books or to the modern critics;
whether a school composed of men like Ezekiel and Ezra were
likely to have, with boundless inventiveness, concocted all this
history, or our modern critics are ransacking the treasures of
their wits to find an artificial explanation of a thing that is much
more simple than they make it? "
Dr. Jas. Robertson.

106

LECTURE III
Hitherto I have adduced considerations, for
the most part of a general nature, to show the
inconclusiveness of the arguments by which the
modern theory of the origin and character of
the Pentateuch is supported. I now propose to
come to closer quarters with the subject, upon some
of the cardinal points at issue, and to indicate some
of the lines of defense of the belief of the Christian
Church in the antiquity and authority of these
venerable books as against the views of the domi
nant school of critics. I shall first take up the
argument from the contents of the writings of the
prophets Amos and Hosea (of the eighth century
b.c) and of Ezekiel (of the sixth century), and then
I shall take up, somewhat more at length, the
Deuteronomy problem, which may be considered
the pivot of the whole theory against which I
contend. Linguistic arguments I shall pass by as the special
province of experts in philology, but the historical
issue ought to be intelligible to us all, and it would
107

108 THE PENTATEUCH
seem that historical considerations must be decisive
of the chief matters in question.
Now, just as the apologist for Christianity a
generation ago found firm ground for his defense of
Christianity in the first four Epistles of St. Paul,
whose genuineness could not be denied by their
opponents, so we may find in the extant writings of
Amos, Hosea, and Ezekiel a sound basis for our
argument against the theory that the book of Deute
ronomy is a tissue of fictions dating from about
621 b.c, and that the Priestly Code (large parts of
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers) was also
a legendary work of the time of Ezra. All the great
doctrines of Christianity can be established from
the undisputed Epistles to the Romans, Galatians,
and Corinthians; and in like manner the main facts
of Jewish history, and the main institutions of the so-
called Mosaic legislation, can be established as the
accepted beliefs of the Jews in their times, from the
books of Amos, Hosea, and Ezekiel, which the critics
generally acknowledge to be genuine and authentic.
We open these prophetic writings, then, and ask,
Do they support the Graf-Wellhausen theory of the
date and character of the early books of the Bible ?
The English reader will be quite able, by careful
scrutiny, I think, to see that they do not support it.
He will find that these acknowledged writings of
the eighth century b.c — I mean Amos and Hosea

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 109
— presuppose much of the history and many of the
institutions of the Pentateuch, just as the writings
of the early Fathers presuppose the Gospels. And
although the famous saying that, if the Gospels had
been lost, they could be reconstructed out of the
writings of the Fathers, could not be paralleled in
the case of the Prophets and the Pentateuchal
history, yet we can say that enough of that early
history is found imbedded in these prophetical books
to convince us of the unreliability of the theory that
the Prophets are older than the Law, and that those
books which the Church has for nineteen hundred
years believed to be historical, are in reality (save a
very trifling residuum of history) the work of priestly
legend-spinners in the age of Ezra. Let me here
avail myself of the words of a writer who seems to
me to have dealt the theories of the negative critics
a blow almost as crushing as was dealt the author
of "Supernatural Religion" some fifteen years ago
by the great Lightfoot, — I mean Prof. Robertson
of Glasgow. He says, " Amos and Hosea are found
to hold essentially, for the period succeeding Moses,
the same scheme of history which is by modern
critics pronounced to be late and unhistorical." " I
take it that the views of Israel's past history given
by the prophets of the eighth century (b.c) were
the views entertained by the nation generally in
their time. These views, so far as they amount to

110 THE PENTATEUCH
a comprehensive conception of the history as a
whole, agree exactly with the views of the Hebrew
historians, and so far as reference is made to actual
occurrences in the history, the prophets are at one
with the historians. The great landmarks are
clearly traceable: the deliverance from Egypt, the
guidance in the wilderness, the conquest of Canaan,
the continuance of God-guided men in the nation,
the preeminence of the house of David."
Another able writer, Prof. Stanley Leathes, ady
duces forty-five allusions to the books of Moses in
the prophet Amos, and concludes, "There is ap
parent acquaintance with and reference to each
book of the Pentateuch in this prophet. What is
there to show that the apparent acquaintance was
not real and that the references were not intentional ?
The Priestly Code is implied in ii. 4, 7, 8, 12; iv. 4, 5;
v. 12, 21, 22; ix. 4, etc.; and yet Amos flourished in
the former half of the eighth century B.C."
Allusions are found in Amos to the Exodus, the
overthrow of Sodom, the gigantic stature of the
Amorites, the sacrifices of the Law, the Nazarite
vow, etc. " Thus Amos presupposes that his hearers
were well acquainted with the Pentateuch, and had
a firm belief in its history: otherwise much of the
prophecy would have lost its force, or have been
unintelligible." J
1 "The Law and the Prophets," p. 160.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 111
Similar are the phenomena in the prophecy of
Hosea, another prophet of the eighth century B.C.
He alludes to God's "covenant" with Israel, and
to his "Law." In viii. 12 ("though I wrote for
him the ten thousand things of my Law"), the
prophet alludes to a copious written law of divine
authority. See also viii. 13, ix. 10, xi. 1, 5; xii. 9,
and xiii. 4.
I may here refer to an important essay by the
same writer upon the eighth century b.c, in the
volume entitled "Lex Mosaica," 1894, in which
the writer says, "It seems impossible to set aside
the multiplicity of evidence which is found in Hosea
of his acquaintance with every book of the Penta
teuch. This evidence is not obtrusive and super
ficial, but it is latent, and yet conspicuous when
attention is drawn to it. Nothing but blind attach
ment to a favorite hypothesis can make us insensible
to the manifold indications of familiarity with the
language, the promises, the threatenings, and the
history of the books of Moses."
The writer then directs attention to the internal
evidence that Hosea was familiar with the book
Deuteronomy two centuries before the time which
the critics assign to its composition. Hosea shows
familiarity also with the history of Genesis, Exodus,
and Numbers, and makes such "reference to the
books of Samuel, Judges, and Joshua as can only

112 THE PENTATEUCH
be explained by supposing him to have had those
documents before him." He concludes thus:
"Repeated consideration of these passages has
served to convince me that the late origin of the
Law in the time of the Exile, or later, is a pure
fiction." THE ARGUMENT FROM EZEKIEL
This prophet is considered by Kuenen and Well
hausen as the father of Judaism, the real creator
of the Priestly and Levitical system as we find it in
the Pentateuch. He and his " school " are declared
to have " attributed, with innocence and satisfaction,
fictions and codes which were the growth of ages to
God by the immediate instrumentality of Moses
and Aaron." It is even asserted by Wellhausen
that the paternity of the Levitical Code is so clearly
Ezekiel's that to deny it is to incur ridicule as a
person incompetent to understand critical pro
cesses.1 Nevertheless, the argument against it appears to
not a few able and competent critics conclusive.
It is pointed out that the chapters (xl. to xlviii.) in
Ezekiel can only be made to support the theory by
treating one part as a practical programme and
the other as an ideal picture. Two thirds of it
being "clearly ideal," how can the other third be
i "The Early Religion of Israel," p. 430.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 113
treated as a " serious historical programme " ? If
the measurements of the temple and of the Holy
Land and the situation of the tribes are not to be
taken as matters of fact, why should what he says
of the ritual and the ordinances of worship be so
treated ?
Again, it is urged that it is immensely improbable
that men like Ezekiel should have " invented a false
historical setting for the laws of the Levitical Code,
by carrying them back to Moses and the desert,
simply in order to give the Law higher sanction."
According to this theory there never was a taber
nacle, and the other chief early institutions were
equally of fictitious origin — the fruit of the " legend-
spinning invention " of men of the post-exilic period.
But to come to closer quarters with the com
parison between Ezekiel and the Priestly Code in
the Pentateuch, it is pointed out (a) that the two
have a different theological standpoint; (b) that they
live in different worlds, — there is in the latter no
complexion of later history, or later allusion; the
two use different vocabularies; the atmosphere is
different; the style is sharply contrasted; the idol
atry-legislation contains no allusion to the more
modern forms of idolatrous worship. In a word,
the prima facie view of the two writings " would on
any rule of literary analogy place them ages wide
apart." (c) A strong evidence of the antiquity

114 THE PENTATEUCH
of the P document is the accuracy of its local
references to Egypt and the Peninsula of Sinai.
It is free from the slips which could not but char
acterize it, had it been written in Babylonia in that
late age. It shows an archaeological accuracy in
the use of terms, words, linens, etc. "With the
Priestly school working thus with a free hand, and
giving the reins to their fancy, as this theory de
mands, it would be quite unnatural not to find in
their writing some trace of the influence of Ezekiel
land of Babylonia, and their exilic and post-exilic
surroundings; equally unnatural to find continuous
traces of quite other and different and more ancient
surroundings in the very work which is due to their
pure imagination. A study of their supposed writing
has been shown to indicate, in very prominent par
ticulars, no traces of Ezekiel or Babylonia, but
distinct traces of Egypt and the desert." (d) It is
mirther urged that a careful study of Ezekiel shows
that he was well acquainted with P, for he "not
'only uses the expressions of the Priest's Code," but
writes as one whose mind was impregnated with
them, and he takes for granted a familiarity there
with on the part of the people whom he addressed.
These are a few of the matters found in Ezekiel
which are urged as negativing the theory of Well
hausen that the P document — that is a large part
of the Pentateuch — was the creation of an Ezekiel

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 115
school of priests in the post-exilic period. My
purpose, of course, is only to indicate the lines
of defense against this attack upon the historical
character of the Pentateuch, believing that these
arguments as presented by Prof. James Robert
son in his " Early Religion of Israel " and by several
writers in "Lex Mosaica" (1884) are of great force,
and go far towards overthrowing the theory above
described.1 THE DEUTERONOMY PROBLEM
The importance of the problem presented by the
book of Deuteronomy in the critical controversy
is of the first order. Its origin about 621 B.C. is
recognized on all hands as one of the pillars of
Wellhausen's system, though it did not, of course,
originate with him. Accordingly he is (suo more)
very dogmatic in asserting the finality of the hypoth
esis on that point. This is his language:
"In all centers where scientific results may hope
for recognition, it is admitted that Deuteronomy
was written at the time at which it was discovered."
Dr. Driver is equally positive in asserting that the
1 1 would refer here to "Sanctuary and Sacrifice," by W. L.
Baxter, D.D. (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1895). It refutes the
Graf-Wellhausen theories by patient inductive proof. Mr.
Gladstone said of some of his essays, "Unless your searching
inquiry can be answered, Wellhausen's character, both literary
and theological, is destroyed."

116 THE PENTATEUCH
book is " by unanimous consent " of critical scholars
assigned without hesitation to a late date.
Yet this view is stoutly contested by such scholars
as Klostermann, Hommel, Kohler, Robertson,
and Delitzsch.
We are entitled, then, to demand the proofs of
this assertion that this venerable book had its origin
in the reign of Josiah, some eight hundred years
after the time of Moses, and was, therefore, "a
downright forgery on a grand scale " — to use
Hommel's phrase.
Well, in the first place, the passage in 2 Kings xxii.
is appealed to, where we are told of the discovery in
the Temple, by Hilkiah, of the book of the Law.
But you will observe here that the sacred historian
gives us no intimation that the book then found,
whether Deuteronomy or the whole Pentateuch, was
then first composed, but rather clearly implies that
the King and the people believed it to be, in whole
or in part, the ancient book of the Law. On what
ground, then, do these critics base their assertion,
or their inference, that the book then found was
recently composed? They base it on the assump
tion that since its contents came as a surprise and
shock to the King and the priests and the people, it
must have been an unknown book to them, and
therefore a book recently written. But this assump
tion is by no means self-evident. It is not axiomatic.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 117
It requires proof. We demand, why might it not be
a book of ancient origin which had been lost and
forgotten ? Seventy-four years before the discovery
of this book, Manasseh ascended the throne of
Judah, and very soon directed all his energies with
fanatical zeal to extirpate the worship of Jehovah
and establish in its stead idolatry in manifold forms.
He even set up an idol in the Temple itself. It was
a reign of terror for the adherents of the Mosaic
religion. Would it be strange if the few copies of
the books of the Law had disappeared during the
seventy-five years of religious persecution, and that
the terrible denunciations of the book of Deute
ronomy had been forgotten by priest and people?
But observe here the strange inconsistency of the
Wellhausen school. They acknowledge that the
two so-called Books of the Covenant, Exod. xx.-xxiii.
and xxxiv. 10, 14-26, wrought together into the
sources JE, are to be dated before the Major
Prophets. Now if you examine these passages you
will find that they contain strong prohibitions of
idolatry and denunciations of the divine judgment
upon those who worshiped any other God but
Jehovah alone. For instance, "He that sacrificeth
unto any God, save unto the Lord only, he shall be
utterly destroyed" (xxii. 20). King Josiah, there
fore, had he known these Books of the Covenant,
would have learned from them, as plainly as from

118 THE PENTATEUCH
Deuteronomy, the divine displeasure and the divine
threatenings against idolatry. It would seem, then,
that he was as ignorant of the former as he was of
the latter. Consequently, by the rule of the critics,
applied to Deuteronomy, the two Books of the
Covenant could not have been of ancient origin —
they, too, must have been recently composed. But
instead of this they tell us the Books of the Covenant
were very ancient, perhaps even Mosaic in origin.
By parity of reason, then, Deuteronomy, too, may
be of similarly ancient origin.
Another inconsistency of theirs has been pointed
out in this connection. They argue (very incon-
. clusively, as I think) from Exodus xx. 24 that Moses
allowed the building of altars and the offering of
sacrifices everywhere. Yet they say the author
of Deuteronomy assumed the name of Moses in
order to secure acceptance for a book which forbids
but one altar, and makes sacrifice unlawful any
where except on that one altar at Jerusalem! This
first proof, then, turns out to be only a conjecture
built upon another conjecture. That is to say, the
theory is destitute of external support. Ewald's
hypothesis that it was written in Egypt is worth
just as much and just as little.
Let us come, then, to the internal evidence relied
on to destroy the historical value of the fourth book
of the Pentateuch.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 119
(a) Great stress is laid, first of all, on the fact
that the book contains a prospective provision for
changing the republican, or theocratic, form of
government into a monarchical form. But when
we remember that Israel was probably the only
people who in the time of Moses were not ruled by
a monarch, why should not Moses have foreseen
that, in time, Israel, too, would desire a king ? And
on the principles of a believer in revelation, why
should not the future contingency have been revealed
to the divinely commissioned leader and lawgiver
of the chosen people ? And, on the other hand, on
what principle can we explain a writer of the age
of Josiah, after the monarchy had been so long
established, and when that form of government was
universal, representing Israel as having had a repub
lican, or theocratic, form of government ?
(b) Again it is urged as unhistorical that Moses
should have set forth in detail and at length the
evils and inconveniences of kingly rule, as Deute
ronomy represents him as doing, at a time when
they were not governed by a king. But, it is
answered, would it be any more natural or to be
expected, as Wellhausen's theory demands, that a
writer in the time of Josiah, when the monarchy
had long been firmly established, and when from
no quarter do we hear any hint or suggestion of
popular government, should paint in lurid colors

120 THE PENTATEUCH
the evils and oppressions to be expected from kingly
rule? (c) Another argument for the late date of this
book is found in the fact that it contains alterations
and modifications of the Law as established in the
other so-called Mosaic legislation. But was it not
natural that the changed circumstances of the people,
having the desert life behind them, and standing
on the verge of their entry into the walled cities and
cultivated fields of Canaan, should have made neces
sary, or at least desirable, some considerable changes
in legislation ?
(d) The argument, however, on which Wellhausen
chiefly relies, is that the law of the one sanctuary
as set forth in Deuteronomy was unknown until the
days of Josiah. The principle of " One God — one
sanctuary," he says, was " never heard of till Josiah."
He finds no evidence of it in the history down to
that period. And yet the books of Samuel and
Kings testify to the contrary. To give one instance,
1 Kings iii. 2, 3, in mentioning that sacrifices were
offered on the high places, distinctly alludes to this
being in conflict with the law of the one sanctuary.
See also, 2 Kings xviii. 4-6. These critics, how
ever, are not embarrassed by this evidence. They
ascribe such passages to a " Deuteronomic revision "
of the books of Kings. That is to say, the witnesses
are reliable when they testify in their favor, but

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 121
their veracity is promptly impeached, if their testi
mony is on the other side! See now Wellhausen's
colossal inconsistency. With great emphasis, and
complete confidence, he argues that the law of the
one sanctuary was not observed until Josiah's time,
and argues from this that it is inconceivable that
such a law had any existence. And then he pro
ceeds to acknowledge, in the next breath, that after
the death of Josiah the law ceased to be observed.
In the very next reign there were "almost as many
altars as towns! " Non-observance of the law in
the epoch after Moses is proof irrefragible that no
such law existed in Moses's time, but non-observance
of the law after the death of Josiah does not prove
the non-existence of the law in Josiah's time.
Such a logical inconsistency well deserves to be
called colossal!
(e) Yet another argument relied on to destroy
the historic credibility of Deuteronomy is that it
outlines a programme of legislation that in important
particulars was never carried out. In answer to
this I would direct your attention to the weighty
words of Dean Milman, discussing a similar theory
nearly fifty years ago. He writes: "Now a pro
spective Utopia in the mind of a man of consum
mate wisdom like Moses is intelligible, especially at
the time of the occupation of a whole country by
a conquering tribe, and its partition among the

122 THE PENTATEUCH
conquerors. But a retrospective Utopia, purely
imaginary, as an afterthought of later times, and
attributed to Moses, when it was known never
to have been carried into effect, seems a strange
assumption." '
What conceivable motive could there be for a
late writer or compiler to attribute such visionary
and unreal schemes to the great lawgiver?
(/) But again: Wellhausen argues with great
force and plausibility the threefold correspondence
of the Law with the history of Israel. As to Deute
ronomy, it is argued that the law it contains corre
sponds with the history of Josiah's reign; in fact,
that it was composed with a view to bring about
the reformation which actually occurred at that
time, of which we have an account in 2 Kings xxii.
But a careful study of the contents of the book
will show that it does not fit the history, and that
many of its provisions were not adapted for the
time or the circumstances of the people in the reign
of Josiah. Let me enumerate as briefly as possible
some of the features which are in conflict with this
theory. The reformation of King Josiah was a
religious reformation; but the legislation of Deute
ronomy pertains in great part to the civil sphere.
The chief emphasis — we might almost say the
exclusive emphasis — of the king's reform was laid
1 "History of the Jews," pp. 206, 207.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 123
on the abolition of idolatry; but the leading feature
in the book of Deuteronomy is the centralization of
worship — the abolition of all altars save the one
in Jerusalem. In the seventh century b.c. the king
dom of Judah was in an advanced state of organiza
tion; but the legislation of Deuteronomy was of a
general nature, — a mere outline sketch, — unsuited
to the stage of development attained by that time.
Note, also, a number of particular injunctions
entirely unsuited to the conditions and environment
of Josiah's reign. Why, for instance, should a
writer of the seventh century introduce repeated
injunctions to destroy the Canaanites and raze their
fortified cities, when they had ceased to exist as a
people ? Why, again, should he command that the
Amalekites should be utterly exterminated as a
retribution for their opposition to Israel in the
wilderness, eight centuries before, when, in fact,
there were no longer any Amalekites to be found
in the land? (A comparison of Deut. xxv. 17-19
with 1 Sam. xxx. 1, 17, shows that the former must
antedate the time of Saul. The destruction of a
small remnant of Amalek, recorded in 1 Chron.
iv. 41-43, is not in conflict with this conclusion.)
These are some of the particulars in which we see
that the actual character and contents of Deute
ronomy are quite out of harmony with the supposi
tion of its origin in the seventh century.

124 THE PENTATEUCH
But let us turn to the other side of the argument.
What is to be said in favor of the early date and
the historic truth of the book of Deuteronomy ?
Now at the outset let it be clearly understood that
I am not contending for the Mosaic authorship of
the book as it stands, though I think it altogether
likely that Moses was its author, but for the sub
stantial antiquity and integrity of the book, and its
substantial historical accuracy. Alterations in the
text — modifications in certain parts — we not only
do not question, but would be forward to assert;
but these are not of sufficient importance to impair
the historic truth of the narrative as a whole.
In brief, then, these are some of the considerations
which sustain that view:
1. It is altogether natural, and to be expected,
that the great lawgiver should have given such
farewell counsel as we find here, and that on the
eve of the conquest of Canaan he should have left
on record such a recapitulation and codification of
the laws which lie in the text of Exodus, Leviticus,
and Numbers, in some confusion, without order,
and mixed up with the history of the people in the
wilderness. 2. We find traces of Deuteronomy long before
the seventh century, as in the account in 2 Kings
xviii. 4-6 of the reformation of Hezekiah. That
monarch removed the high places and the altars

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 125
Vutside of the Jewish capital, and bid the people
Worship at one altar only. We find this reflected
in the words of the Rabshakeh to the messengers of
Hezekiah :
" But if ye say unto me, We trust in the Lord our
God, is it not he whose high places and whose
altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and hath said to
Judah and Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this
altar in Jerusalem."
Here we have the most prominent principle of
the Deuteronomic legislation distinctly recognized,
viz., the centralization of worship at Jerusalem.
Another trace of Deuteronomy is found in the
reign of King Amaziah, 797 b.c, by comparing
2 Kings xiv. 6 with Deuteronomy xxiv. 16. Yet
another is found in comparing Joshua viii. 30, etc.,
with Deuteronomy xxvii. 1, etc.
Further: it would seem that Amos and Hosea,
prophets of the eighth century B.C., were acquainted
with Deuteronomy. Compare Hosea iv. 4 with Deu-
teronomyxvii. 12; and Hoseaiv. 14 with Deuteronomy
xxiii. 18; and Hosea v. 10 with Deuteronomy xix.
14; also Amos iv. 4 with Deuteronomy xiv. 28.
Jeremiah also was acquainted with the law of
centralization of worship, for he tells us that Jehovah
set his name in Shiloh before the choice of Jerusalem
(chap. vii. 12), which corresponds with what we read
in 1 Samuel i.-iii., where Shiloh actually appears as

126 THE PENTATEUCH
the central sanctuary. Elkanah betakes himself
there year by year in order to pray and offer sacrifice,
and all the people resort there to offer sacrifice, and
the sons of Eli stand in a relation to all Israel.
There also was the ark of the covenant, the pledge
and witness of the presence of the God of Israel.
From this, as Wilhelm Moller has pointed out, it
follows that the Deuteronomic requirement of a
central sanctuary was already in force in the time of
the Judges. The idea is also certainly harmonious
with the history of the wanderings in the wilderness
and the passage of the Jordan.
3. Another argument which has much force is
that this book, whether Deuteronomy only, or the
entire Pentateuch, was accepted so readily as au
thentic and authoritative by king and priests and
people. Though it bore with such crushing weight
on the habits and the life and the worship both of
priests and people — though it touched their prop
erty and their livelihood, yea their very life, in its
denunciation of the death penalty upon idolaters,
yet we hear of no challenge of its genuineness as the
law of God by his servant Moses. The modern
theory requires us to make two assumptions, of very
doubtful validity : first, that such a colossal deception
as the theory postulates should be undertaken by
good men, in the fear of God; and second, that it
should meet with such complete and unchallenged

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 127
success. Dean Milman says with great force, "It
would have been inconceivable audacity in the
priesthood, and equally inconceivable blindness and
stupidity in the king and people, to have been
imposed upon by a book written but a few years
before, and now presented and received by them
as the ancient and authoritative Law." (History
of the Jews, Vol. I, Bk. VIII, Note, p. 435. Fourth
edition.) 4. Then again we are to consider the complexion
of the narrative of Deuteronomy, the tone and color
of the events it describes, the marks of a time far
more antique in manners than the time of Josiah;
we are to ask ourselves whether the atmosphere we
breathe here is not the atmosphere of the desert
rather than of the great city, whether the dress and
bearing of the characters that move on this stage
do not bespeak an earlier, a more primitive time
rather than that of the dwellers in a great city in a
highly developed stage of civilization.
It is said, indeed, by some critics that this veri
similitude is not real, but assumed: — the late writer
has clothed his book in Mosaic garb; he has given
it the appearance of antiquity, and by this means
he was able to impose it upon king and people as
indeed the work of the great lawgiver.
But before accepting that as a probable supposi
tion, we have to consider, over and above the moral

128 THE PENTATEUCH
improbability of such a gross deception, whether it
would have been possible for a writer of Josiah s
time to so perfectly simulate the time and the
manners and the spirit of the Mosaic age as the
author of Deuteronomy has done. Remember that
there lay a tract of more than eight centuries between
him and the age into which he was to throw back
his composition. His task was, on the supposition
of these critics, similar to that of a romancer of our
day who should undertake to write a book which
should reproduce the life, and the language, and
the manners, and the thought of the age of William
the Conqueror, and to do this without being betrayed
into anachronisms, or geographical or other inaccu
racies, above all without failing to give to his picture
the tone and color of the time. Only his work would
be unspeakably more difficult, for, unlike the writer
of our day, he could not draw upon the stored
treasures of archaeology in some great library to
secure himself against erroneous conceptions of the
age he was seeking to picture. I avail myself here
again of the language of Dean Milman:
"Strange," says he, "if a late imaginative
writer should preserve this singular accuracy —
if I may so say, this naturalness of detail . . .
Read the book of Deuteronomy, and fairly estimate
the difficulties which occur — and that there are
difficulties I acknowledge, such as the appointment

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 129
at this time of Ebal and Gerizim as the scene of
the rehearsal of the Law by Moses, or a writer on
the other side of Jordan, . . . though one cannot
suppose Moses or the Israelites at that time unac
quainted with the main features, the general topog
raphy of Cis-Jordanic Palestine. Then read it
again, and endeavor to assign it to any other period
in the Jewish annals, and judge whether difficulties
do not accumulate twenty-fold. In this case, how
would the signs of that period have inevitably ap
peared — anachronisms, a later tone of thought, of
incident, of manners! Even at this special point,
at what period would Ebal and Gerizim have been
chosen as the two equal antagonistic centers of
Jewish reverence and sanctity ? If it is a fiction, it
is certainly a most felicitous one." (Id. p. 253.)
5. Yet again. The antiquity of Deuteronomy
has striking external support in the fact that it is
found as one of the books of the Samaritan Penta
teuch. Would the Samaritans have accepted a new
book — never heard of till the reign of Josiah, a
monarch of the rival kingdom of Judah — accepted
such a book, I say, and placed it among their sacred
books of the Law? When we consider the acute
jealousy between the Jews and the Samaritans, is
it not far more likely that they would have rejected
it, and proclaimed themselves the guardians of the
purity of the Law against the Jewish innovators ?

130 THE PENTATEUCH
Other particulars of a like nature might be men
tioned, if time allowed, as the fact that in Chron. xxiii.
1-8 — the laws for the admission of strangers and
aliens — Edom is mentioned as the most favored
nation, whereas from the time of David onwards
Edom was one of Judah's bitterest enemies. Surely
a writer of Josiah's time would not have expressed
a feeling of brotherhood for a people whom the
psalmists and prophets uniformly denounced as a
cruel enemy! On the other hand, there are omis
sions which must be held very strange on the hy
pothesis of the origin of the book in the seventh
century. We find in it, for instance, no mention of
the great kingdoms of Syria, Assyria, and Babylon,
with which the later fortunes of Judah and Israel
were so closely associated, but we do find a reference
to Egypt, and to Edom, Moab, and Ammon, which
are associated with the time of Moses. Neither do
we find any allusion to the great schism which rent
the twelve tribes asunder in the reign of Rehoboam,
but everywhere the unity of the nation is taken for
granted, and its religious unity as well. Such are
some of the grounds upon which the antiquity and
historical reliability of the book of Deuteronomy
are reasonably supported.
Reviewing the whole argument, let me state
clearly what we claim has been established by the

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 131
scholars who contest the modern view of Deute
ronomy. We do not claim that all the difficulties
marshaled with so much skill by the advocates of
that view have been met. But our claim is that
the most important of them have been cleared up,
and that, on the other hand, the difficulties of the
modern view are far greater — are, in fact, in
superable. In some of its cardinal points the
argument for it has been shown to have completely
broken down. Now we insist that nothing but
clear and conclusive proof will suffice to establish
a view which, like this, demands a radical and
revolutionary change in the belief of the Christian
Church respecting the antiquity, and therefore the
authority, of one of the venerable books of the
Bible. Such proof its advocates have most cer
tainly not produced, and till they have produced
it, their hypothesis can have no claim to displace
the long settled belief of the Church. I think, how
ever, a dispassionate review of the respective argu
ments, merely on their merits, must lead to the
conclusion that apart from the immense weight of
the tradition of two thousand years, the balance of
probability is immensely against the modern view.
I hope what has been urged in these Lectures
may convey a fair idea of some of the reasons which
appear to me to justify one in hesitating to accept

132 THE PENTATEUCH >
the view of Jewish history and literature now so
popular among the critics. I have sought to show
as well as my narrow limits would allow that
an unlearned Christian may still keep his Bible,
as the record of revelation and of a divinely guided
history of the chosen people, without disloyalty to
truth and without justly incurring the charge of
shutting out the light which scholarship has to offer.
On the whole, we find ourselves in pretty good
scholarly company when we withhold our assent
from the elaborate and pretentious theories which
turn the Biblical writings upside down — placing
the prophets before the Law — and, " with all the
paraphernalia of erudition," emasculate the early
history of Israel of all historical truth, as well as of
all supernatural significance. We need not yet dis
miss Abraham, the father of the faithful, from the
stage of history as a personification of Hebrew
national tradition. We need not yet resolve the
beautiful story of Joseph into an astral myth. We
need not yet lose from the goodly fellowship of the
prophets the majestic figure of Moses, the leader
and lawgiver of the chosen people, nor identify
Caleb, the faithful, with the dog star Sirius.1 We
1 Assyriologists like Winckler will have it that the religion of
Israel sprang from Babylonian mythology. Jacob's twelve sons
represent the twelve signs of the zodiac; Saul and Jonathan the
constellation Gemini; David is a solar hero, his red hair an
image of the rays of the sun, while Goliath represents Orion.

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 133
may still without shame decline to believe the
latest theory of the Assyrological higher critics,
that the whole ancient Biblical history is "a mere
flimsy plagiarism of Babylonian myths " — a mere
"perversion of Chaldean legends."
In conclusion, let me say that the assurance of
even so devout and erudite a scholar as Dr. Driver,
that the moral and devotional value of the Old
Testament remains unaffected by the popular critical
views, has not been forgotten, but it fails to allay
our apprehensions of the baleful influence of those
views upon the public mind both as regards the Old
and the New Testament.1 It may not be amiss —
we hope it is not invidious — to recall the fact that
Strauss gave the Christian world a similar assur-
1 A modern scholar of high repute, in a volume published
since this Lecture was written, says: "With the best will in the
world to accept whatever new light criticism may have to throw
on the structure and meaning of the Old Testament, the author
has to confess that his study of the critical developments — now
for over thirty years- — has increasingly convinced him that,
while Biblical students are indebted to the critics, and to
Old Testament science generally, for valuable help, the Graf-
Wellhausen hypothesis now in the ascendant is, neither in its
methods nor in its results, entitled to the unqualified confidence
often claimed for it. He is persuaded, on the contrary, that it
rests on erroneous fundamental principles, is eaten through with
subjectivity, and must, if carried out to its logical issues — to
which, happily, very many do not carry it — prove subversive of
our Christian faith." — The Problem of the Old Testament,
Jas. Orr, D.D. Preface, p. xv.

134 THE PENTATEUCH
ance in the preface to his " Leben Jesu " (1835). All
the great facts and doctrines of Christianity were,
he declared, entirely unaffected by his criticism;
but in the end, when his criticism had come to its
fruitage in his second Life of Christ, a generation
later, the futility of that assurance was plainly seen,
for not one of the distinctive doctrines of Christianity
remained. There is no question that the more advanced
wing of the critical army have waxed bold even to
arrogance in the advocacy of views that are destruc
tive of faith in the divine origin and authority of
the Holy Scriptures, both of the Old and the New
Testament. If any proof were demanded that the
tendency of the criticism here under review is to
the serious prejudice of faith and the disintegration
of Christian doctrine, it were enough to point to the
Encyclopaedia Biblica, and to remind the reader that
it is edited by a dignitary of the English Church.
Certainly no one can thoughtfully survey the world
of religious thought without perceiving that there
is a strong current of thought, making itself widely
felt, which is distinctly antagonistic to recognizing
in Jesus of Nazareth the Christ of the Christian
ages, the Son of God and the Saviour of the world.
And it is as little doubtful that the destructive
criticism, which has so seriously disintegrated the
Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, has a

AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM 135
very close connection with that anti-Christian spirit.
It is partly its cause, and partly its consequence: it
produces unbelief, and in turn is produced by it.
To Kuenen and Wellhausen Jesus was a great
religious genius — the greatest in history — the
purest interpreter of God to man that ever lived —
but yet not the Son of God in the sense of the
Christian Church. He calls himself the Son of God
"not because he is of a unique nature, but because
he is a man" (Wellhausen). To Dr. Driver and
Dr. Robertson Smith, on the other hand, Jesus is
possessed of absolute Godhead. But the question
is not of the beliefs of particular theologians, but of
the tendency of the system they hold. And I
frankly avow my belief that the history of the
advanced Higher Criticism for the last quarter of a
century justifies the belief that it tends to destroy
faith in the divine origin of the Scriptures, in the
truth of the New Testament history, and ultimately
in the divine authority and the divine nature of
Jesus Christ.1
1 Dr. James Orr, in the conclusion of his admirable work,
writes in similar strain:
"The storm of criticism which, in the last decades, assailed
the Old Testament, was fondly thought by many to leave
intact the New Testament. What mattered it about Abraham
and Moses, so long as Jesus and His Gospel remained. That
delusion is passing away. . . . The principles of a rationalistic
criticism, having once gained recognition and approval in the

136 THE PENTATEUCH
The danger is a very real one. It is to be met,
however, not by putting barriers in the way of free
inquiry, but by training up scholars in Biblical
science who shall be able to meet the destructive
critics on their own ground, and overcome them
with their own weapons. It is a matter of profound
thankfulness that there is already a goodly company
of scholars equipped for this work, and it has been
one of the chief purposes of what I have written to
direct attention to their able vindication of the truth
of the Scriptures.
Let me in conclusion express the conviction that
as the work of true Criticism is tested by time, and
purified in the alembic of a yet riper and more
reverent scholarship, the Church will be more and
more its debtor. Truth is a fire which will consume
the wood and the hay and the stubble, both of the
critics and of the theologians, but the gold and
the silver and the precious stones — the eternal
verities of God's revelation — will come out of the
furnace unharmed, not even the smell of fire upon
them, brighter and more resplendent than ever.
region of the Old Testament, are now being transferred and
applied with increasing boldness and vigour to the New, with
the result that it is rapidly coming to be assumed that only a
Christ from whom all supernatural traits are stripped off can
be accepted as historical by the ' modern mind "... A grave
peril has thus arisen." — The Problem of the Old Testament,
p. 477-8.

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